N13259:583
Sermons, on the following subjects
Sermons, on the following subjects; The manner in which salvation is to be sought. The unreasonableness of indetermination in religion. Unbelievers contemn the glory of Christ. The folly of looking back in fleeing out of Sodom. The warnings of Scripture in the best manner adapted to the awakening and conversion of sinners. Hypocrites deficient in the duty of prayer. The future punishment of the wicked unavoidable and intolerable. The eternity of hell-torments. The peace which Christ gives his true followers. The perpetuity & change of the Sabbath. / By the late Reverend Mr. Jonathan Edwards, president of the College of New-Jersey.
Hartford: printed by Hudson and Goodwin, 1780
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
1. WHAT is the thing to be done concerning which the apostle gives them direction, and that is the making of a collection for the saints; the exercise and manifestation of their charity towards their brethren, by communicating to them, for the supply of their wants; which was by CHRIST and his apostles often spoken of and insisted on, as one main duty of the christian religion, and is expressly declared to be so, by the apostle James, chapter i. 27. Pure religion and undefiled before GOD and the father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.
2. WE may observe the time on which the apostle directs that this should be done, viz. on the first day of the week. By the inspiration of the Holy Ghost he insists upon it, that it be done on such a particular day of the week, as if no other day would do so well as that, or were so proper and fit a time for such a work.—Thus, although the inspired apostle was not for making that distinction of days in gospel times, which the Jews made, as appears by Gal. iv. 10. Ye observe days, and months, and times, and years: I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain; yet here he gives the preference to one day of the week, before any other, for the performance of a certain great duty of christianity.
3. IT may be observed that this is the direction, which the apostle had given to other churches that were concerned in the same duty, upon this occasion: he had given direction to them also to do it on the first day of the week: As I have given orders to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye. Whence ⟨p. 223⟩we may learn that it was nothing peculiar in the circumstances of the Corinthians at Corinth, which was the reason why the Holy Ghost insisted, that they should perform this duty on this day of the week. The apostle had given the like order to the churches of Galatia.