SERMON X.

Romans xiii. 8.

OWE NO MAN ANY THING, BUT TO LOVE ONE ANOTHER.

THERE is no passage in Holy Scripture (though no book abounds with more passages of the kind) in which the duty of benevolence and love of our neighbour is put in a stronger light, and recommended to our practice on more rational grounds, than in this short but comprehensive sentence. Suffer me to attempt an explanation of its full meaning: it will require a pretty long paraphrase to explain it compleatly, but the inferences deducible from it are of so great importance to our wellbeing, both here and hereafter, that I trust the present time cannot be better employed than in enlarging upon it.

My brethren, says St. Paul to his converts the Romans, and what he delivered to them is equally applicable to every Christian society at this day, be strict observers of the rule of right in all your dealings, which you cannot be, if you strive by unnecessary delays, or any more sinister arts, to hinder any person whatever from receiving

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those dues which, either by the laws of your country, by private compact, or on account of obligations received, he is authorised to require at your hands.

Your civil rulers require of you certain taxes, tribute, or customs, by the receipt of which they are enabled to answer the demands and support the dignity of government, and by that means secure to you those great national blessings of liberty and peace.

Your ecclesiastical teachers, according to their legal establishment, are authorised, in like manner, to require of you a certain proportion of the produce of your lands, by your due payment of which they may be capable of leading that life of learned leisure, which may qualify them to give you good spiritual instruction, to preserve you from heresy and error, and to ground you in those right principles of religion, which make your prayers and praises to God a fit and reasonable service.

You require of one another, by those particular agreements which the laws of your country give you a right of making, certain rates and contributions for various necessary purposes. By the regular discharging of which the welfare of your separate community is promoted, and the comforts and conveniencies of life are increased.

Whatever therefore is required of you, for all or any of

these good ends, if it be demanded equitably, pay it freely, and by this means acquit yourselves of that part of your duty which, as subjects or as citizens, you owe to your country.

As private persons, in your mutual traffic and negociations with one another, it will necessarily happen that, whatever your stations or situations in life are, you must incur debts, and stand accountable to one another for certain goods and commodities received, for labour done, or for money borrowed. The common course of the world, and the very nature of society make this necessary. When St. Paul therefore directs you to owe no man any thing, he cannot be supposed to mean this in a strict and absolute signification. No certainly; he only means, that you are not to incur debts wantonly, nor keep in debt needlessly. That you are not to borrow, when you have neither intention nor ability to repay, and that you are always to repay whenever the exigencies, or even the inclination of the lender demands a restitution. This is his meaning, and all that a, cool and rational interpretation can deduce from the expression.

But there is one debt, my brethren, which the Apostle tells you, that you can never discharge. You must always be paying it, and yet still continue as much in debt as ever. No independent, opulent, or exalted situation in life can, or ought, to prevent you from being as deeply in

debt in this point, as the poorest and most necessitous of your fellow-creatures. No commutation, no substitution or mode of exchange, can excuse you from being responsible in person in this point, and from being ready to pay it on any, on every occasion where it is demanded, nay even where it is not demanded; neither is it the hope of being repaid that must prompt you to lend in this case; you must lend, even where this return is not to be hoped for. Do I keep you in suspence? No: you are all aware that this debt is the debt of Christian love: that debt of goodwill and benevolence which you owe to your neighbour; that debt which St. Paul means when he bids you 66

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66 no man any thing but to love one another:" when he tells you that " love worketh no ill to his neighbour," and that "love is the fulfilling of the law."

This then being the full and compleat meaning of the text, let us examine into the reasons on which it is founded, and why this exertion of Christian love is a debt of that kind, which can never be paid so fully as to absolve us from any further payment of it; but must be always owing, though we are constantly employed in discharging it.

The first reason is founded on the relation in which we stand to Almighty God. The innumerable benefits which we daily and hourly receive at his hands demand the constant tribute of our love, affection, and gratitude; but

we have no way of expressing this love, affection, and gratitude, so effectually as by acts of kindness and beneficence to our fellow-creatures: and in confirmation of this truth we have the express declaration of St. John, who says, that "If a man say he loveth God and hateth "his own brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his "brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God "whom he hath not seen?" He concludes, therefore, that this commandment comes immediately from God, that whoso loveth him should love his brother also. Now, if we conceive that we can ever repay our Maker sufficiently for all his mercies to us, we say in effect that this love which we owe to him may cease; than which there surely cannot be a more impious assertion. But if we ought constantly to express this love towards him, we ought constantly to express it towards our brethren, because it is his commandment that divine and human love should constantly go together, and his declaration that one cannot exist or be acceptable in his sight without the other.

The force of the next reason depends on the frame and constitution of human nature, which is so replete with wants and weaknesses, consisting indeed of various kinds, yet distributed in pretty equal proportion among the species, that it is, morally speaking, impossible for us to be independent one of another. The community in which we happen to be born gives us laws to obey, duties