73.  Let me particularly recommend to your careful perusal, the xii, xiii, xiv, and xv chapters of the Epistle to the Romans.  In the xiv chapter, St. Paul has in view the difference between the Jewish and Gentile (or Heathen) converts at that time; the former were disposed to look with horror on the latter, for their impiety in not paying the same regard to the distinctions of days and meats that they did; and the latter, on the contrary, were inclined to look with contempt on the former, for their weakness and superstition.

74.  Excellent is the advice which the Apostle gives to both parties:  he exhorts the Jewish converts not to judge and the Gentiles not to despise; remembering that the kingdom of Heaven is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

75.  Endeavour to conform yourself to this advice; to acquire a temper of universal candour and benevolence; and learn neither to despise nor condemn any persons on account of their particular modes of faith and worship:  remembering always, that goodness is confined to no party, that there are wise and worthy men among all the sects of Christians, and that to his own master every one must stand or fall.

76.  I will enter no farther into the several points discussed by St. Paul in his various epistles; most of them are too intricate for your understanding at present, and many of them beyond my abilities to state clearly.  I will only again recommend to you, to read those passages frequently, which, with, so much fervor and energy, excite you to the practice of the most exalted piety and benevolence.  If the effusions of a heart, warmed with the tenderest affection for the whole human race; if precept, warning, encouragement, example, urged by an eloquence which such affection only could inspire, are capable of influencing your mind; you cannot fail to find, in such parts of his epistles as are adapted to your understanding, the strongest persuasives to every virtue that can adorn and improve your nature.

The Epistle of St. James.

77.  The Epistle of St. James is entirely practical, and exceedingly fine; you cannot study it too much.  It seems particularly designed to guard Christians against misunderstanding some things in St. Paul’s writings, which have been fatally perverted to the encouragement of a dependence on faith alone, without good works.  But, the more rational commentators will tell you, that by the works of the law, which the Apostle asserts to be incapable of justifying us, he means not the works of moral righteousness, but the ceremonial works of the Mosaic law; on which the Jews laid the greatest stress as necessary to salvation.  But, St. James tells us, “that if any man among us seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, that man’s religion is vain;”—­and that “pure religion, and undefiled before God and the Father, is this, to visit the fatherless and widow in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”  Faith in Christ, if it produce not these effects, he declareth is dead, or of no power.