St. Matth. xvi. 18.
I say also unto thee, that thou art PETER, and upon this rock I will build my church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
The way of giving a new name to an eminent person, more immediately concerned in any great transaction; a name, expressive of that transaction, and therefore proper to fix and perpetuate the memory of it; this custom, I say, was of known use in the ancient world. Thus, when God renewed his covenant with Abram, and engaged to multiply him exceedingly, the name of this patriarch was changed to Abraham; which name, in the Hebrew language, signifies the father of a great multitude[287]: and, for a like reason, the patriarch Jacob took the name of Israel[288]; to omit many other instances of this usage, which occur in the sacred scriptures.
Just so, when one of the Apostles, known before by the name of Simon, had made a memorable confession of his Master’s being the Christ, the son of the living God, i. e. the redeemer, the prince of Israel, the Messiah foretold, our blessed Lord, to give weight and emphasis to this confession, confers a new name upon him. For he answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven: That is, no man hath revealed this great truth to thee, nor has any interest of man, any thing, indeed, but the spirit of God, influencing thy impartial and well-disposed mind, prompted thee to entertain and avow it thus heartily and publicly (the proofs of it not being, at present, so strong, as they hereafter shall be): Therefore, to express my approbation of this great testimony to a truth, which is the fundamental article of my religion, and, at the same time, to signify to thee the honour, with which I mean to reward thee for it, I further say unto thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my Church; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.
The name, Peter, signifying a rock in the Greek language, implies, we see, the immoveable truth of the confession, here made, on which the Christian religion was to be built; and the immoveable firmness, too, of the Confessor, who should have a share, with the other Apostles, in supporting the whole fabric, and be himself, in point of time, the first stone, on which the glorious superstructure was to be made.
It follows—and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it—that is, Death, or Destruction (for that, only, the oriental phrase—the gates of hell—here signifies[289]) shall never prevail against this church, being founded on thee, and the testimony, made by thee, as on a rock of ages, which shall never give way, or be removed.
We see, then, the full meaning of this famous text, which contains, in effect, TWO prophecies: ONE, respecting the foundation of the Christian church, and (so far as the Apostle Peter was personally concerned in the prediction) then verified, when Peter laid the first stone of this august building in the converts made by him both among the Jews[290] and Gentiles[291]: the OTHER prophecy, respecting the perpetuity of this church; which the divine Providence would, in no future age of the world, permit to be destroyed.
So that, not the supremacy of Peter over the rest of the Apostles (as the church of Rome vainly pretends), but the priority of his claim, in point of time, to signal services in the conversion of mankind, is expressed in this memorable promise made to Peter—on this rock will I build my church: and, for the second assurance, here given, and which, to so zealous a master-builder, as our Apostle, must have been singularly welcome—that the gates of hell shall never prevail against it—we may, now, by the experience of more than seventeen hundred years, understand, how far it has been, and how likely it is, in the full extent of the words, to be fulfilled.
But, to see little more distinctly what this experience is, and what presumption arises out of it for the truth of our holy religion, let us call to mind, if you please, the more remarkable of those attacks, which have been made, at different times, on the church of Christ, and yet how constantly and successfully they have been repelled.
I. No sooner had the foundations of the church been laid on the rock of this testimony—that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God—than the storms of persecution arose, and beat violently upon it. Nor was it, indeed, strange, that this new doctrine, published every where, with great boldness, by men who had been eye-witnesses of what they affirmed, and calculated to overturn all the favourite maxims and usages of the world, should meet with the fiercest opposition. And how easy did it seem for that world to crush the infant society, now struggling for life in the hands of twelve poor, illiterate, and friendless men, if the decree of Heaven had not gone forth—that the gates of hell should not prevail against it!
I know, indeed, that this violence of persecution was, in the end, of advantage to the Christian cause; and, from the nature of the human mind, when once persuaded of any thing, true or false, might be expected to be so. For cruelty, in such cases, only excites an unconquerable firmness and perseverance. But what was persuasion in succeeding converts to the gospel of Christ, was knowledge, or rather the infallible evidence of sense, in the first publishers of it. The Apostles witnessed a matter of fact, when they made known the resurrection of Christ, on which their whole doctrine rested. And it is not in nature for any single man, much less for twelve men, to suffer, and to die, for a false fact, not taken upon trust from others, but asserted on their own proper and personal experience. If Jesus did not rise from the dead, they neither saw, nor felt, nor conversed with him after his resurrection, that is, they had no persuasion for force to harden into obstinacy, but a consciousness of falshood in their attestation, which could not have held out against the rage of their persecutors[292].
If it be said, that criminals are often supposed, and not without reason, to die with a falshood in their mouths, I answer, it is very possible: but, besides that the Apostles gave no signs, in the rest of their conduct, of a want of principle, by declaring the truth, in this case, they might have saved their lives, whereas a criminal, for the most part, is but the more likely to lose his, by a true confession.
Or, if, lastly (for suspicion, I am aware, is not easily satisfied, if) the perseverance of the martyred apostles be accounted for from a false point of honour, I admit, that this strange principle sometimes overpowers conviction; but rarely, in any number of men confederated in the same cause, and, least of all, in a number of men of so plain and artless characters, as the Apostles.
On the whole, we have reason to conclude, that, if Christianity had not been true, it must have perished with its first preachers: at least, it cannot be denied, that in outliving the violence, with which it was assaulted, both by Jew and Gentile, on its appearance in the world, this religion has thus far verified the remarkable prediction of its author.
II. The external peace of the church was scarce settled under Constantine, when internal commotions shook its frame, and with a violence, which was likely to bring on, and that in no long time, its entire dissolution. By these commotions, I mean the heresies, that sprung up in abundance, and distracted the Christian world for several centuries. The zeal, or rather fury, with which these disputes were carried on, was unappeasable; and, if it be true, that a house divided against itself cannot stand, there was reason to expect that the houshold of Christ would exemplify this maxim: While, at the same time, the Christian name was so dishonoured by these contentions, and the lives, as well as the faith, of Christians, so polluted by them, that believers themselves were almost tempted to renounce a profession, which laboured under so much infamy; and the rest of the world could scarce fail to contract an incurable aversion to it.
This, indeed, was so much the case, and the advantage, given to the enemies of our faith, by these scandalous abuses of it, so great, that one is not surprised to find
III. A third, and still more alarming danger of the Christian church, in the sudden rise and propagation of the Mahometan religion.
For it was the corruption of Christianity, that gave occasion, or success, at least, to this daring imposture. And now it might seem, that the gates of hell were set wide open, and destruction ready to rush upon, and seize, its defenceless prey, the Christian church, disheartened and disabled by its own vices. The uncontroulable spirit of this ruthless sect was, indeed, alarming to the last degree; when a secret providence, first, softened its ferocity, and, then, put a stop to its successes.
I ascribe these effects to the good providence of God, watching over the preservation of our holy faith; for what else could make the disciples of Mahomet tolerant in spite of their ignorance and bigotry; and pacific, when their law breathed nothing but war and universal dominion?
Still the church had other trials to undergo; and hell had yet in reserve some further engines of its wrath to employ against her. For
IV. While the African and Asiatic Christians were in danger of a total suppression by the rage of their Ottoman masters, the European had almost as much to apprehend from exhaustless swarms of Northern barbarians. And, what darkened the prospect still more, all knowledge and learning had disappeared, during these turbulent ages. Hence, to the destructive fanaticism of the East, was added the grossest superstition of the West; which, growing up in a long night of ignorance, and yet directed by policy towards the establishment of a vast and gloomy empire, involved all Christendom in its pestilential shade, and threatened the very extinction of all true religion.
Yet it pleased God, in this distressful state of his church, to provide for its continuance, and even integrity, in due time, by making the cloystered ignorance of the Monks serve to the preservation of the sacred canon; and the enslaving projects of a tyrannical hierarchy, to the restoration of religious and civil liberty.
And thus, though the powers of hell had been successively let loose against the church of Christ in the terrible shapes, first, of Jewish and Gentile persecution; then, of heresy, in the church itself; next, of Mahometan enthusiasm; and, lastly, of Antichristian superstition; yet have they not prevailed against this sacred structure, founded on a rock, guarded, as we believe, by heaven itself, and therefore destined to be eternal.
I have touched these several particulars slightly and rapidly, just to put you in mind of what the Christian religion has endured, since its appearance in the world; and to let you see how unlikely it is that this religion should have kept its ground against these various and multiplied attacks, if it had not been divinely protected.
But of all the trials, to which it has been exposed, the greatest by far, if this religion had been an imposture, is ONE, which I have not yet mentioned; and that is, the examination of severe, enlightened Reason.
And this trial, to complete its honour, our divine faith hath TWICE undergone: once, in the very season of its birth; and now, again, for two or three centuries, since the revival of letters, in our Western world: periods, both of them, distinguished, in the annals of mankind, by a more than common degree of light and knowledge; which must, in the nature of things, have been fatal to any scheme of religion, pretending only to a divine original, and not really so descended.
But this part of the argument is too large, as well as too important, for me to enter upon at present. Let me therefore conclude with a short and interesting reflexion on so much of it, as we have been considering.
It was natural, no doubt, for the author of a new religion, full of his scheme, and impressed with the importance of it, to promise to himself the perpetuity of his work. But a wise man might easily conjecture that a religion, like the Christian, would meet with the fiercest opposition: and, though this be not a proper time to shew it, it might be shewn, that the spirit of Christ[293] distinctly foresaw the several species of opposition, which his religion had to encounter[294].
Yet, in the face of all these perils, our Lord predicts, in the most direct and positive terms, that his church should brave them all, and subsist for ever. It has subsisted to this day, after encountering such storms of persecution and distress, as must, in all likelihood, have overturned any human fabrick. Is not the true solution of the fact, this, that it was founded on the word of God, which endureth for ever[295]? The rest, then, follows of course. The wise master-builder (to use his own words on another occasion, near akin to this) had built his house upon a ROCK: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house: and it FELL NOT, for it was founded upon a ROCK[296].