SERMON VIII. 1 Cor. vi. 20. YE ARE BOUGHT WITH A PRICE, THEREFORE GLORIFY GOD IN YOUR BODY, AND YOUR SPIRIT, WHICH ARE GOD'S. In the foregoing discourse I connected this text with another in the same Epistle, in which the learned Apostle draws a different conclusion from the same premises; by a paraphrase of them, taken together, I endeavoured to shew the relation which each of the conclusions had with the other, and how they mutually resulted from those premises; but the limits usually assigned to discourses of this kind would not permit me to enlarge on the two precepts conveyed by these conclusions with equal latitude: I therefore chose to take the negative injunction of the Apostle first under consideration, though it stands last in the arrangement of the Epistle, and shall now discourse on the positive one. My reason for this was, that I considered the duty of glorifying God as a precept more peculiarly belonging to the Christian scheme of morals than the other; which, though founded (as we have seen) on the greatest of all Christian principles, and receiving a superadded importance from that principle, is yet in itself a duty which mere morality was sufficient to inculcate, and which indeed it had done amongst the best sects of Gentile philosophers. Innumerable instances of this truth might easily be drawn from the writings of the Stoics in particular; the contempt in which they held the time-serving and dependent person was almost without bounds, yet I believe it would be difficult to find amongst their dogmas, one which prescribes the practice of virtue for the sake of glorifying God; indeed this practice led them necessarily from their principles only to glorify themselves, and this they did to so great an excess, that their boastings on this head frequently verge on impiety.* Being therefore authorised, as I think I am, to call this doctrine in the text a divine one, and taught only by Revelation, I have thought proper to reserve it for a later consideration, as being a duty of the greatest importance, and from which almost all our other duties as Christians may be deduced; because the momentous consideration of our being purchased by so inestimable a price as the blood of Christ, ought not only to induce us to be above becoming the servants of men (in the sense I have already explained) but above becoming the servants of sin; or, * See one instance of this from Seneca, quoted in a note to Sermon II. P. 22. in other words, to be above the pollutions not only of the world, but of our own natural passions and vicious inclinations. Indeed it is for this latter purpose that St. Paul, in this place, uses so cogent an argument; but it is observable that he uses a term here not analogous to the other. In that case he says negatively, be ye not the servants of men; but in this he does not say affirmatively, be ye the servants of God; he employs one of a much higher signification, he bids us glorify him. This seems to require an illustration; and I think the best method of giving it will be by a short comparative view of the difference there is between every degree of human servitude, and of that which relates to the service due from man to the Deity; for I conceive, from this essential difference, the duty inculcated in the text arises, and that it was on this account St. Paul used the peculiar term in question. First, Absolute servitude, amongst individuals, in a state of human society, is merely productive of benefit or advantage to the superior party. The slave reaps nothing from the alliance (if it may be so called) but mere subsistence; and even this subsistence may properly enough be considered as promoting the master's emolument, when we reflect that without it he would not be enabled to answer the end for which his master purchased him, and consequently would to him be a useless purchase, |