Title: Sermons on Various Important Subjects

Author: Andrew Lee

Release Date: February 13, 2005 [eBook #15031]
HTML version released February 28, 2005

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SERMONS ON VARIOUS IMPORTANT SUBJECTS***

This text has been transcribed from the original by Fredric Lozo, Mathis, Texas, January 2005.

The original text was typeset using the convention of the American Colonial Period with a second "s" symbol resembling the letter "f" which makes reading somewhat difficult for the modern reader. The text was thus transcribed using the modern single "s" symbol convention.

The original text was photographed and read with an OCR program and then transcribed word by word. An attempt was made to proofread the final text for transcription errors and wherever an mistake has not been corrected, the transcriber sincerely apologizes to the reader. As for the rest, the transcriber has endeavored to faithfully maintain as much of the historical record as the ASCII TEXT format permits, including the original spelling and grammar. Page numbering was omitted in keeping with e-book format conventions. The reader is encouraged to use the search feature of the text reader to locate chapters listed on the contents page.

The work was published by the son of Isaiah Thomas, who is known both as the father of American printing, and as a Minuteman at Lexington and Concord in the War of Independence.

Some of the thoughts expressed in these sermons are a refreshing return to an earlier time before American religious denominations became fixed in their particular "systematic theology."

Reverend Lee's language and logic give us a glimpse of the purity of mind and soul that followed in the wake of desperate revolutionary conflict and the tumultuous years following independence when the greatest minds of the time formulated the American Constitution and The Bill of Rights. These sermons seem to address the universal issues with which men of all times and places have also struggled, in times of peace as well as war. These issues are articulated here with a clarity that is perhaps only achieved in those times of great testing, tears, and tenuous victory that began in 1776 and that would remain tenuous until after the War of 1812.

Lee lived in a time of great intellectual pursuit and Lee's views of life and the Lord's Providence seem particularly blessed with illumination through the Holy Spirit.

Fredric Lozo,
January, 2005

That thick darkness overspread the church after the irruptions of the northern barbarians, and the desolations which they occasioned in the Roman empire, is known and acknowledged. Those conquerors professed the religion of the conquered; but corrupted and spoiled it. Like the new settlers in the kingdom of Ephraim, they feared the Lord and served their own gods. In those corruptions antichristian error and domination originated. The tyranny of opinion became terrible, and long held human minds enslaved. Few had sentiments of their own. The orders of the vatican were received as the mandates of heaven. But at last some discerning and intrepid mortals arose who saw the absurdity and impiety of the reigning superstition, and dared to disclose them to a wondering world! Among those bold reformers, LUTHER, CALVIN, and a few contemporary worthies, hold a distinguished rank. Greatly is the church indebted to them for the light which they diffused, and the reformation which they effected. But still the light was imperfect. Dark shades remained. This particularly appeared in the dogmatism and bigotry of these same reformers, who often prohibited further inquiries, or emendations! They had differed from Rome, but no body must differ from them! As though the infallibility which they denied to another, had been transferred to themselves!

Too many others, and in more enlightened times, have discovered a strand measure of the same spirit . . . a spirit which hath damped inquiry and prevented improvement.

Hence, probably, the silence of some expositors on difficult scriptures, and the sameness observable in some others. For the complaint of the poet is not without reason,

"That commentators each dark passage shun, and hold their farthing candle to the fun."

And the sameness which we see in several writers is probably dictated by fear of singularity, and of incurring the charge of heresy. Minds are different. When a dozen expositors interpret a difficult text alike, they must, for some reason, have borrowed from one another.

The writer of the following pages claims no superiority to others, either in genius or learning; but he claims a right to judge for himself in matters of faith, and sense of scripture, and presumes to exercise it—calling no man master. He hath found the original scriptures, compared with the different translations, to be the best exposition. To these he early had recourse, and in this way formed an opinion of the meaning of sundry difficult passages in the volume of truth. But comparing them afterwards with several expositions, perceived their meaning to have been mistaken, either by those writers, or by himself. As they did not convince him that his constructions were erroneous, he now offers them to the public—Not as certainly devoid of error—He knows himself to be fallible—but as the result of some attention; and as that which he conceives their most probable meaning.

On the prayer of Moses to be blotted out of God's book—the wish of Paul to be accused from Christ, and the prevalence of infidelity before the coming of the Son of Man, he published a summary of his views, some years ago. By the advice of several respected literary friends, they are now corrected, enlarged and inserted. On the last of these he wrote A.D. 1785. Subsequent events tend to confirm him in the sentiments then entertained. Expositors generally consider the prayer of Moses and the wish of St. Paul to stand related as expressions of the same temper, and argue from the one to the other. The author conceives them perfectly foreign to each other, and totally mistaken by every expositor he hath consulted; as also several of the other scriptures on which he hath written.

A hint dropped, some