quire the salvation of those that believe in Christ, as ever it required their damnation; salvation is an absolute debt to the believer from God, so that he may in justice demand and challenge it, not upon the account of what he himself has done, but upon the account of what his surety has done for him. For Christ has satisfied justice fully for his sin; so that it is but a thing that may be challenged, that God should now release the believer from punishment. The believer may demand eternal life, because it has been merited by Christ." First set of Posthumous Sermons.

We need not lead our readers through the mazes of imputed sin and imputed righteousness, transferred guilt and transferred merit, notions which imply that all which exposes men to punishment was attached to the Saviour as his, when he died for our sins; and on the other hand, that all which was meritorious in him was made ours by a like dispensation. It is seen in the very terms themselves, that there could not be any call for gratuitous mercy in a transaction so entrenched in legal forms.

Our remarks are limited for the present to the single topic of Divine Mercy as it is affected by the theories respecting the mode of forgiveness, which are prevalent. It seems to us that this quality is quite removed from any expedient which lays punishment and merit at the foundation of pardon. But the Holy Scriptures do most assuredly ascribe the remission of sins to the tender mercies of our God! And in the nature of things it must be so. Were there no lenity with God, no pity for a frame so weak attacked by temptations so powerful, nor compassion for penitence when it does its best to repair the injuries which it laments to have committed, what hope

for us could be found? God commendeth his love to us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Be the influence then, of our Saviour's death, what it may, we are sure it was not anger, but affection, which it manifested. This none will in terms deny, while many will yet say, that Christ was punished in our stead. We add then, that it is no less clearly stated by the sacred writers, that Jesus was not forsaken by his Father nor subjected to his anger, when he was suffered to be crucified. Our Lord himself declares, "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life. Behold, the hour cometh, yea is now come, that ye shall be scattered every man to his own, and shall leave me alone; and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” In allusion to his approaching sufferings he exclaims, "Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him. God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him." In the garden, where his agony was so great, we are assured that aid was imparted by God from heaven, to support him. With holy confidence he had prayed to his Father just before, and had said, "Now come I to thee! Father, glorify thy Son!" We can discover no cause for the belief of some, that God at this very moment was preparing to inflict tortures inconceivable and unmerited, upon the mind of Jesus. As everything indicates in our Saviour an undiminished piety, to say no more, so all shews, that God, to whom with his dying breath he committed his spirit, had not left him to his enemies without comfort, far less was aggravating by his own secret agency, the pains he endured. How can any man believe, after perusing the evangelical history, that Jesus died beneath the invisible but irresistible strokes of divine anger on his soul?

The doctrine of atonement, as it is commonly maintained, obliges us to pitch upon the last scenes of Jesus' life as those in which God inflicted on Jesus the penalties of his law, even such as countervail the eternal woes of hell. And yet in no part of his history do we find stronger evidences of a sublime confidence in his Father's love. Was our Lord deceived in supposing that he was still beloved, when, it is pretended, he was deserted and made subject to the divine wrath? If that was a penal suffering which Jesus endured in Gethsemane, how happened it to be alleviated by the Judge and Lawgiver who was then inflicting it? We are constrained to believe that whatever was the occasion of our Saviour's sorrow, it was not mingled with any sense of divine anger, so often as we read those touching words addressed to Peter, "The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" It is not thus that the apprehension of the insupportable displeasure of his Father would have been expressed; nor, in the awful moment of its visitation, should we have heard, "Nevertheless, not my will, but thine be done!"

[To be continued.]

MORAL INABILITY.

CAN man do his duty? Make this inquiry in the places of trade and commercial resort, in the market, in the court of justice, wherever men exact service from each other, or have occasion to enforce moral obligation, and you are likely to be answered with a smile that will

show there is absurdity in the question. That every human being can do all which he is obliged to do, is by all mankind acted upon as the plainest principle in morals, and what common sense and experience have settled long ago. Nobody admits as an excuse for a fraud, that the perpetrator was weak in his moral nature, and had no power to be fair in his dealings. Nor would it help a thief to plead that he was unable to keep his hands off from what did not belong to him. Public opinion, civil law, and individual conscience, agree in disowning such inability.

all.

But the power to do one duty implies power to do It cannot be said we have power to do right in the shop, and no power to do right in the house, power to do our duty to our families, and no power to do our duty to our neighbors, power to be just and none to be temperate, power to be true to man, and no power to be true to God. All which we are obliged to do, we can do, and must do, or, but for divine mercy, suffer the penalty. Our obligations are not changed by the variety of our duties. Nor is our power to discharge those obligations diminished or increased, by the like diversity. Moral obligation, that which our nature as moral beings imposes, comprehends every relation we stand in to God and one another, and lies no less heavily upon us in piety than in justice.

It is well known probably, by most of our readers, how much importance has been attached to the confession of our utter helplessness and impotence by nature. The common language on the subject is such as the following, which we quote from standard authorities.-Calvin writes thus. "It has long been a common opinion that the faculties of men are coextensive with the requirements of

the divine law, but it proceeds from a total want of acquaintance with the law." And quoting from Augustine, "God requires what we cannot perform, in order that we may know what we ought to seek from him." Inst. B. II. chap. v. 6, 7, &c. The Catechism of the Reformed Dutch Church says, "Are we then so corrupt that we are wholly incapable of doing any good, and are inclined to all wickedness? Indeed we are. Doth not God then do injustice to man by requiring from him, in his law, that which he cannot perform? Not at all." Dr Scott, in his commentary on Genesis, declares, "All capacity of delighting in holy services, is extinct in every descendant of Adam." President Edwards in his works has used these expressions, "When man sinned, God left him; therefore immediately, the superior divine principles wholly ceased: so light ceases in a room when the candle is withdrawn; and thus man was left in a state of darkness, woful corruption, and ruin,-nothing but flesh. without spirit. The inferior principles of self-love and natural appetite, being left to themselves, of course became reigning principles, having no superior principles to regulate or control them." Vol. vi. pp. 428, 429, &c.

It is obvious that nothing less than an absolute inability, a literal want of capacity and power to do good, is here implied. The defect lies in the constitution itself, in the faculties we possess at birth. We find it accordingly represented by many as a punishment inflicted for Adam's sin. Dr Smalley informs us in his sermon on the subject, that "Some account for God's suspending our salvation on impossible conditions, and condemning men for not doing what it is not in their power to do, by observing that we lost our power by the fall. Our present weakness