turally is engendered of the offspring of Adam; whereby man is very far gone (or as it is in the original Latin, as far as possible gone) from original righteousness, and is of his own nature inclined to evil.”"* And in her authorized Homilies she more fully enlarges on this subject. In the second part of the Sermon on the Misery of Man, the church teaches us "so to think and judge of ourselves as we are taught of God our Creator, by his holy word. For of ourselves we be crab trees, that can bring forth no apples. We be of ourselves of such earth as can but bring forth weeds." "We be evil of ourselves, we have no goodness, help, or salvation; but contrariwise, sin, damnation, and death everlasting." Now such declarations as these will ever be offensive to man, nor will they be urged by those who seek to please man. But they who would approve themselves to God, will thus testify of human depravity.

To give equal prominency to the blessed doctrine of salvation by Christ only, without any admixture of human merit, is also a characteristic of that preaching which is pleasing to God. "We are accounted righteous," saith our scriptural church again, in her eleventh Article, "we are accounted righteous only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works and deservings: therefore that we are justified by faith only, is a most wholesome doctrine,

* Article ix.

and very full of comfort, as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification." Christ, in all the glory of his person, and in all the fulness of his offices, is the centre of the system of revealed religion. He is himself the substance of all evangelical preaching; the Sun of Righteousness, without which all must be gloomy, dark, and hopeless. It is in him alone that the apparently jarring attributes of justice and mercy, holiness and love can be blended, without violation to either. God is just, and his law is perfect, holy and good; it is unbending, it must be perfectly fulfilled; and Christ has fulfilled it for the sinner, and the righteousness of Christ freely imputed to the penitent sinner, who by faith accepts it, entirely justifies him in the sight of God. Thus "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth."* "And by him all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses." To such persons no sin is imputed; they are accounted perfectly righteous in Christ. "Even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man, unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works, saying, Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven, and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin." And as the law has been kept. + Acts xiii. 39.

* Rom. x. 4.

Rom. iv. 6-8.

and honoured by the sinless obedience of the Lord Jesus, so has justice been perfectly satisfied by his costly atonement. "He was made sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”* "He became a curse," an accursed thing, "for us, that he might redeem us from the curse of the law." He has borne our punishment, removed our guilt, made our peace with God; and now every penitent believer may look up to heaven in the spirit of adoption and "cry, Abba, Father!"

man.

But these truths also are deeply offensive to How humbling to be assured that he cannot save himself, that he cannot justify himself, that he cannot keep the law so as to please God, that he cannot wash out the guilt of past sins by floods of penitential tears, nor make amends by newness of life in future; that he is wholly lost, ruined and undone, and must be saved only by a meek reliance on the merits, righteousness and atonement of another, even of Jesus! Nor will he consent to this, nor embrace this only way of salvation, unless he be constrained by the influences of the Holy Spirit. And this introduces another wide branch of Christian doctrine by which faithful preaching is distinguished. Man is to be stripped of all POWER as well as of all merit, or he will not be put down into his TRUE place. Of himself he will never find his way back to God, * 2 Cor. v. 21. † Gal. iii. 13.

nor will he even feel any disposition to return. "No man can come to me," saith the Saviour,

except the Father which hath sent me draw him."* "Without me ye can do nothing."† "Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit." All are by nature equally dead in trespasses and sins, and no man hath quickened his own soul: it is the Spirit alone that quickeneth, or giveth life; and from the first emotion of godly sorrow that is awakened in the bosom of the sinner, to the moment of his departure hence in peace in the full assurance of faith, the work in him is the work of God, and "by grace he is saved."

It is gratifying to see how scriptural our church is on this important point. "The condition of man after the fall of Adam is such, THAT HE CANNOT TURN AND PREPARE HIMSELF by his own natural strength and good works to faith, and calling upon God: wherefore we have no power to do good works, pleasant and acceptable to God, without THE GRACE OF GOD BY CHRIST PREVENTING US,” (that is, anticipating, or preceding any volition of ours,) "that we may have a good will, and WORKING WITH US When we have THAT GOOD WILL."§ And again in the homily already referred to, the church saith, "We are all become unclean, but

we all are not able to cleanse ourselves, nor make

one another of us clean.

children of God's wrath;

We are by nature the

but we are not able to

make ourselves the children and inheritors of God's glory. We are sheep that run astray: but we cannot of our own power come again to the sheepfold, so great is our imperfection and weakness." No, "we must be born again;"* "the heart of stone" must be taken away, "the heart of flesh," a tender, softened, penitent heart must be imparted, or we shall continue wanderers, straying further and further from God, lost in the mazes of an evil world and impelled by the dispositions of a corrupt nature.

But once more; that preaching which is pleasing to God will not fail to proclaim many things to be sinful which are esteemed innocent by the world, if not praiseworthy. While the more obvious relative duties of life will be inculcated with all fidelity, bold denunciation of the pleasures and practices of many nominal Christians will not be omitted. And here we know that the children of vanity and their advocates endeavour to evade the plain declarations of Scripture. The world, there so palpably denounced, is declared to be the heathen world, although some of the most striking appeals respecting it are addressed by our Lord himself to the Jewish church, then the nominal church of God! But a candid exami* John iii. 7.