yet will I not deny thee.-The refolve was noble and dutiful to the last degree, —and I make no doubt as honest a one -that is, both as juft in the matter, and as fincere in the intention, as ever was made by any of mankind;-his character not fuffering us to imagine he made it in a braving diffimulation :-no ;-for he proved himself fufficiently in earnest by his subsequent behaviour in the gar den, when he drew his sword against a whole band of men, and thereby made it appear, that he had lefs concern for his own life, than he had for his Master's fafety.-How then came his refolution to miscarry?—The reason feems purely this:-Peter grounded the execution of it upon too much confidence in himself, -doubted not but his will was in his power, whether God's grace affifted him or not;-furely thinking, that what he had courage to refolve fo honestly, he had likewise ability to perform.-This was his mistake,-and, though it was a very great one,-yet was in fome degree a-kin to a virtue,-as it fprung merely

from a confciousness of his integrity and truth, and too adventurous a conclufion of what they would enable him to perform, on the fharpeft encounters for his Mafter's fake-fo that his failing in this point, was but a confequence of this hafty and ill-confidered refolve ;-and his Lord, to rebuke and punish him for it, did no other than leave him to his own ftrength to perform it ;-which, in effect, was almoft the fame as leaving him to the neceffity of not performing it at all. The great apostle had not confidered, that he who precautioned him was the fearcher of hearts,-and needed not that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man :-he did not remember, that his Lord had faid before,-Without me ye can do nothing; -that the exertions of all our faculties were under the power of his will:-he had forgot the knowledge of this needful truth, on this one unhappy juncture, -where he had fo great a temptation to the contrary, though he was full of the perfuafion in every other tranfaction of

his life, but most vifibly here in the text, where he breaks forth in the warm language of a heart ftill overflowing with remembrance of this very miftake he had once committed ;-Ye men of Ifrael, why marvel ye at this?-as though by our own power and holiness we had wrought this ?-the GOD of Abraham, of Ifaac, and of Jacob,—the GOD of our fathers, through faith in his name, hath made this man whole, whom ye fee and know.

This is the best answer I am able to make to this objection against the uniformity of the apostle's character which I have given :-upon which let it be added, that was no fuch apology capable of being made in its behalf;-that the truth and regularity of a character is not, in justice, to be looked upon as broken, from any one fingle act or omiffion which may feem a contradiction to it:-the best of men appear sometimes to be strange compounds of contradictory qualities and, were the accidental overfights and folly of the wifest man,

VOL. VIII.

-the failings and imperfections of a religious man, the hafty acts and paffionate words of a meek man;-were they to rife up in judgment against them,and an ill-natured judge be fuffered to mark in this manner what has been done amifs-what character fo unexceptionable as to be able to ftand before him?

-So that, with the candid allowances which the infirmities of a man may claim when he falls through surprise more than a premeditation,-one may venture upon the whole to fum up Peter's character in a few words.-He was a man fenfible in his nature,-of quick paffions, tempered with the greatest humility and most unaffected poverty of fpirit that ever met in fuch a character. -So that in the only criminal instance of his life, which I have fpoken to, you are at a lofs which to admire most ;-the tenderness and fenfibility of his foul, in being wrought upon to repentance by a look from Jefus ;-or the uncommon humility of it, which he teftified thereupon, in the bitterness of his forrow for

what he had done. He was once presumptuous in trusting to his own ftrength; his general and true character was that of the most engaging meekness,-diftrustful of himself and his abilities to the last degree.

He denied his master.-But in all inftances of his life, but that, was a man of the greatest truth and fincerity ;-to which part of his character our Saviour has given an undeniable teftimony, in conferring on him the fymbolical name of Cephas, a rock, a name the most expreffive of constancy and firmness,

He was a man of great love to his mafter, and of no lefs zeal for his religion, of which, from among many, I fhall take one inftance out of St. John, with which I fhall conclude this account. -Where, upon the desertion of feveral other difciples, our Saviour puts the queftion to the twelve,-Will ye alfo go away? Then, fays the text, Peter answered and faid,-Lord! whither shall we go? Thou haft the words of eternal life, and we believe, and know, that