Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SERMONS ON VARIOUS IMPORTANT SUBJECTS. SERMON I. THE arORTANCE AND ADVANTAGE OF A THOROUGH KNOWLEDGE OF DIVINE TROT ?. 12. ? For when, for the time, ye ought to be teachers, ye have need that one teach you again wnirh he the first principles of the oracles of God; and are Iiecome such as have need of milk, ana not of rung meat. These words are a complaint, %vhich the apostle makes of a certain defect in the Christian Hebrews, to whon he wrote. Wherein we may observe, 1. What the defect complained of is, viz., a want of such a proficiency m the knowledge of the doctrines and mysteries of religion, as might have been expected of them. The apostle complains of them, that they had not made that progress in (heir acquaintance with the things of divinity or things taught ? the oracles of God, which they ought to have made. And he means, o reprove them, not merely for their deficiency in spiritual and experimental knowledge of divine things, but for their deficiency in a doctrinal acquaintance If with ye princFples of religion, anaTjEebuths of Christian divinity; as is evident by several things. It appears by the manner in which the apostle introduces this complaint or reproof. The occasion of his introducing it, is this: in the next verse but one preceding, he mentions Christ's being a high priest after the order of Melchi zedek: Called of God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek. This Melchizedek being in the Old Testament, which was the oracles of God, held forth as an eminent type of Christ, and the account we there have of Melchi zedek containing many gospel mysteries, these the apostle was willing to point out to the Christian Hebrews. But he apprehended, that through their weak ness in knowledge, and little acquain...