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believe that thou hast sent me.

And the glory

which thou gavest me I have given them; that they may be one even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one; and that the world may know that thou hast sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me. And I have declared unto them thy name, and will declare it; that the love wherewith thou hast loved me, may be in them, and I in them "."

May therefore "God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Saviour, the prince of peace, give us grace seriously to lay to heart the great dangers we are in by unhappy divisions. May he take away all hatred and prejudice, and whatsoever else may hinder us from godly union and concord; that as there is but one body, and one Spirit, and one hope of our calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God, and Father of all; so we may henceforth be all of one heart, and of one soul, united in one holy bond of truth and peace, of faith and charity, and may with one mind and one mouth glorify God, through Jesus Christ our Lord"."

a John xvii. 20, &c.

b Collect in the Service for the Anniversary of the King's Accession.

HULSEAN LECTURES

FOR 1821.

PART III.

LECTURES XVIII-XX.

OUR LORD'S NOTICE OF THE REJECTION OF HIS CLAIMS BY THE JEWS; AND OF THE CAUSES, PROGRESS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF

INFIDELITY.

LECTURE XVIII.

OUR LORD'S NOTICE OF THE

REJECTION OF HIS

CLAIMS BY THE JEWS. HE SPECIFIES SOME OF THE MORAL CAUSES OF INFIDELITY.

St. JOHN V. 40-46.

Ye will not come to me that ye might have life. I receive not honour from men. But I know you, that you have not the love of God in you. I am come in my Father's name, and ye receive me not; if another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive. How can ye believe, which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only? Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?

WE have cited in our text the whole of the third and concluding division of that discourse of our Lord before the Jewish Sanhedrim, the former portions of which have occupied so much of our attention in the course of these Lectures. We have done this in order that we might at once announce the subject of this day's Lecture.

FF

You cannot, I conceive, have heard these words, without calling to mind the infidelity of the Jews. You must already have pictured to yourselves that sullen perverseness and watchful malignity, which exposed our Lord, during his public ministry, to contradiction, calumny, and persecution; that enmity, which continually became more fixed, determined, and extensive, till, through the machinations of the rulers, and with the consenting plaudits of the multitude, they finally rejected and crucified him. Carrying forward your recollections to the days, when the Apostles, "with great power, gave witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus," and wrought those "notable miracles," which the rulers could not deny, yet by which they were not persuaded to embrace the Christian faith, you observe them rejecting and persecuting the servants, in like manner as they had before hated their Master. You behold every Jewish prejudice and jealousy rousing them to vehement and desperate opposition to the doctrine of Christ; amidst the excesses of which "deceivableness of unrighteousness," and partly through its instrumentality, their "faith became faction," their polity was subverted, and their name and place as a nation removed.

a Acts iv. 16.

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