LECTURES.

LECTURE I.

INTRODUCTORY.

GENERAL VIEW OF THE EPISTLE TO THE COLOS-.

SIANS.

Of all the epistles of St. Paul, there is, perhaps no one more instructive, or more adapted to meet the errors of the times in which we live, than that addressed to the converts at Colosse.

The first chapter of it can scarcely be surpassed in sublimity by any other part of scripture. Nor are there many portions of Holy Writ more exalted in spirituality and devout affections than the third. Whilst the second is conspicuous for directly censuring those very "traditions" of men, and that "voluntary humility," which have of late years been working amongst us, and which so early led on the Roman church to the margin of that gulf of superstition and idolatry into which it has been plunged from the sixth or seventh century.

B

The main cause of the temporary prevalence of these tendencies to "will-worship" has been an insensible departure from the one sure foundation of the Gospel as laid in this epistle-the inexhaustible sufficiency of Christ for all the parts of man's salvation -that the penitent believer is, as the apostle expresses it," complete in him," whether for the free and gratuitous remission of sins by faith in his blood, or for the sanctification of his nature by the internal grace of the Holy Spirit, in the use of the means which he has himself ordained. Men once letting go their hold of Christ, naturally become the sport of self-invented schemes for attaining pardon and holiness. And when human additions to the Gospel begin to be admitted, a lapse into all the corruptions of the church which falsely claims antiquity and universality, and impiously, infallibility, is inevitable.

It is with the humble design, should God bless the attempt, of guarding the clergy and their flocks in India from any remaining efforts of this " mystery of iniquity," and of building up the young on their "most holy faith," that I propose to deliver the following course of practical lectures on this epistle.

The apostle does not here go through the scheme of the Gospel systematically, as in his noble epistle to the Romans. Nor does he enter on detailed censures of irregularities in the public worship of God and the conduct of the christian converts, as in the first of his epistles to the Corinthians. Nor does he

argumentatively refute any open and general defection from the Gospel in the matter of justification, as in his Epistle to the Galatians.

He had not occasion to take any of these courses in the instance of the church at Colosse. His address to it is tender, instructive, and cautionary. He touches, without dwelling, on the errors which had been introduced; and bestows his main strength in delineating the person, glory, and fulness of Christ. All this, however, will be better understood if I make a few remarks on the occasion and scope of the Epistle itself.

Colosse was a city of Phrygia, now called Natolai, in the lesser Asia, situated at an equal distance between Laodicea and Hierapolis.*

It is uncertain whether the church was planted there by St. Paul himself, or by Epaphras, Timothy, or some other evangelist. It is most probable that Epaphras was honoured as the chief instrument in the work.

The Epistle was written during St. Paul's first imprisonment at Rome, and nearly at the same time with those to Philemon, and the churches of Philippi and Ephesus, about A.D. 64.

It appears that the general body of the Colossians

* Eusebius informs us that Colosse, Laodicea, and Hierapolis, were destroyed by an earthquake the year following the date of this Epistle, A.D. 65. The site of Colosse is uncertain now; but travellers point to its supposed ruins on the river Lycus, about nine miles from the ancient Laodicea.

continued stedfast in the apostle's doctrine at the time when he addressed to them this letter; but that Satan, the great spiritual adversary, had succeeded in sowing tares amongst the wheat, though not to the same extent as in the churches of Corinth and Galatia.

Certain persons had privily crept in, probably from amongst the Jewish converts, who began to enforce human traditions, the obligation of the Mosaic law, and airy speculations on the mediation of angels and the necessity of excessive bodily austerities, borrowed from the dreams of Pythagoras and Plato.*

Thus the fancies of a vain philosophy as to doctrine, united with a mixture of Jewish and heathen superstition as to practice, were in danger of corrupting the unstable in the flock from the simplicity of Christ. Upon this, as it appears, Epaphras resorted

*Long before the light of the Gospel, the Greeks had introduced their philosophy into many of the countries of Lesser Asia, and among the rest, into Phrygia, where the tenets of Pythagoras (about 500 B. C.) were disseminated, which taught the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, of crimes committed by men in pre-existent states punished in their present, the unlawfulness of killing animals, and the possibility of men's freeing themselves from vices by excessive abstinence.

The followers of Plato (B.c. 400) held that the government of the world was carried on by beings inferior to God, but superior to men-such as the Jews believed the angels to be. These they called Aaμoves-a kind of divinities; and these they enjoined their sect to worship on account of their agency in human affairs.