Sermons on Various Important Subjects Written Partly on Sundry of the More Difficult Passages in the Sacred Volume — Text and Context

The Courtroom as Recurring Image

Lee builds his sermon on 1 Corinthians 4:5 around a single controlling metaphor: judgment. He distinguishes between lawful civil and church courts, which “may give judgment according to law and evidence,” and the forbidden practice of presuming to know another’s moral state. The latter, he argues, is “judging before the time” and “without evidence.” This legal vocabulary recurs throughout the excerpt: “bar,” “tried by the same Judge,” “wrong judgment will then be reversed.” The metaphor is not decorative; it structures the entire argument. Lee treats the final revelation as a courtroom scene where hidden motives become evidence. Readers will find this forensic pattern in other sermons, where Lee often poses a scriptural difficulty, then examines it as if cross-examining a witness.

Hidden Motives and the Limits of Self-Knowledge

Lee devotes considerable space to the difficulty of knowing even oneself. He quotes Proverbs: “Whoso trusteth his own heart is a fool,” and adds that “pride, passion, prejudice, or the corrupt bias” can blind the mental eye. This skepticism about self-knowledge is striking. Lee argues that we have better access to our own motives than to others’, yet still remain “strangers at home.” The heart is “deceitful above all things.” This psychological realism tempers the sermon’s moral urgency. Lee is not simply warning against gossip; he is questioning whether any human judgment—including self-judgment—can be reliable. The coming revelation is necessary precisely because ordinary perception is so clouded.

Movement Between General Principle and Specific Application

Lee’s sermon structure follows a predictable but effective pattern. He begins with a general principle—here, the caution against rash judging—then moves to a specific case: the Corinthians who “listened to his enemies” and “given into their suspicions of the apostle.” This oscillation between abstract rule and concrete example appears throughout the excerpt. Lee cites the “wise man” (Solomon) and then immediately applies the principle to “the enemies of the apostle” at Corinth. He then widens the lens again: “This had been done at Corinth… and hath been done by others in every age.” The movement is deliberate, creating a rhythm that keeps the listener anchored in both scripture and contemporary experience. Modern readers can observe this same pattern in other sermons in the collection.

The Role of the Transcriber’s Note

The digital edition includes a lengthy introduction by the transcriber, Fredric Lozo, which frames the sermons as a “refreshing return to an earlier time before American religious denominations became fixed.” While this contextual note is not part of Lee’s original text, it shapes how a reader approaches the sermons. Lozo emphasizes the historical moment—the years after the Revolutionary War and before the War of 1812—and suggests that Lee’s “language and logic” reflect a period of “great intellectual pursuit.” Readers should be aware that this framing is interpretive, not neutral. The sermons themselves do not mention the Revolution or the Constitution. Lozo’s note offers one lens; the sermons’ own preoccupation with hidden motives and divine judgment provides another.

Lee’s sermons reward readers who attend to their argumentative structure rather than expecting emotional uplift. The courtroom metaphor, the skepticism about human perception, and the careful movement from text to application give the collection a distinctive intellectual rigor. Approaching these sermons as exercises in moral reasoning—rather than as devotional literature—will yield the richest reading.