"had many things to say, which his opponent "had probably not well considered." This was not the apostle's manner: he knew that nothing but the Devil could resist the gospel; that nothing but darkness could be opposite to light; so he makes the man no fair speeches; but tells him and his friends in plain terms what he thinks of him, "O full of all subtlety and all mischief; thou child of the Devil; thou enemy of all righteousness; wilt thou not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord ?" The ways of the Lord are the ways of truth, and the ways of truth are strait: this man wanted to make them appear crooked and false; and the apostle seeing that this was his design, had no mercy upon him; but gave him his real character at once. And from this example, we have a rule for our own conduct in like cases. Where persons err through ignorance, or cannot see properly, for want of light, we are to make a proper difference, and treat them with all gentleness: but if they pretend to be wiser than wisdom, and wish not to see by the light, but to put it out that nobody else may see by it: in short, if their design is bad, then we are never to spare them; we are never to be tender to malice; for that he same as to be cruel to all true men: there fore, fore, there are cases, when the difference between good and evil must be expressed without reserve. Our power upon such occasions can be shewn only in words; but the words of the apostle were confirmed by a miracle; and that so remarkable that there is nothing more So. Consider, that truth is light; and that this man resisted the light of truth: therefore the apostle for a season consigned him to a state of darkness, in order that he himself and all present might know what he had done. Christ is the Sun of righteousness; and he who will not own his light is not fit to see the light of heaven. The punishment is exactly apposite to the crime all who will not see the gospel, deserve no other. All are not struck blind; for that is not necessary, nor would it be expedient: but one is here struck blind for a warning to the rest. This Bar-Jesus, or Elymas, was probably one of those who called themselves the illuminated: perhaps he would not have refused the gospel, had he not in opinion. had a better light of his own. Woe be unto them, therefore, who think they see : no men are in a worse state than they: you see their fate in this man: his bodily blindness is a pattern of their spiritual blindness; and there is nothing more terrible in this world. What What a remarkable judgment is here upon unbelief! You may argue upon it, and say, surely it must have changed his opinion. When he perceived, that for resisting the gospel he lost his eyesight, that must immediately have convinced him of his mistake, and he must have been converted to the truth: but this was not the case we do not find, that it wrought any difference in him. He makes no confession of his sin; he utters neither prayer nor cry for mercy; but goes about seeking for some to lead him by the hand. He can direct his feet no longer; that seems to be his concern: he wants somebody to lead him, that he may find his way home: as for finding the way to truth, he is as far from it as ever; he had an hatred towards it, and had purposely withstood and prevented it; and therefore did this evil come upon him. Where wickedness is in the manners of a sinner, his mind may be rectified, and that will mend his manners: but when the wickedness is in the mind, there is little hope it is not a departure from God and goodness through the prevailing lusts of the flesh; but it is a hatred of them ; and then there is no remedy. St. Paul calls him by his true name," thou child of the Devil;" and for this reason the miracle has no effect upon him; hẹ he that is a devil, will continue to be a devil. This is a fearful consideration; and it is a doctrine which it highly behoves us to understand. The character of this wretch is very instructive: it shews us what sort of people there are in the world; men whose eyes the god of this world hath blinded: whose minds are actually incapable of receiving the light of truth. This man was by profession a Jew; but with it, was a Sorcerer, and a false prophet: and have hot we as strange characters amongst us? Put together another composition of the same kind; instead of the Jew, and the false prophet, and the sorcerer; say, a Christian, and a Socinian, and a philosopher: how often do these meet together? and when they do meet, they form as strange a character as that of Elymas: a Christian, but no more of a Christian than Elymas was of a Jew; a Sorcerer, big with conceit about the mysteries of nature; a false prophet, denying as false what the Scripture reveals to be true: and teaching that the Lord of Glory is a mere man like ourselves; that the writers to whom the Holy Ghost dictated were not inspired; that man neither hath nor wants any redemption in Jesus Christ: with other things of the same kind; so hurtful to man, man, and so contrary to truth, that no Jew, no sorcerer, no false prophet, could teach worse. If St. Paul had met with one of these, he would certainly have addressed him as he did. Elymas; he would have accused him of subtlety and mischief, and called him a child of the devil, whatever his companions might have wished to call him: they, perhaps, would have extolled and magnified him, as a great, a learned, an ingenious man, wonderful in wisdom and knowledge and so, very probably, was this man reputed by people at the island of Cyprus; if he had not been eminent in his way, he would scarcely have been encouraged by Sergius Paulus, the chief person of the place: and with this man, prudent as he was, the sorcerer might have succeeded, and turned him away from the faith, if it had not been for the miracle which was wrought in his sight. For no sooner was Elymas made blind, than the deputy, seeing what was done, believed what he had heard, being astonished at the word of the Lord he was astonished at the miracle, and he believed what was so confirmed. The power that made one man blind, opened the eyes of another; and this was the way in which it pleased God to bring men to the gospel. When the wisdom of man thinks |