raised against the Apostles in their own days, and that they solved it, not by representing good works as the condition of justification, nor by denying or weakening the full grace of the doctrine; but by showing that, when really admitted into the heart, the abuse of it is impossible, on account of that new principle of obedience which is at the same time cominunicated: Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein3 ?

While he ascertains in this manner the precise place which is assigned to good works in the Christian system, he discovers at the same time the source from which they flow. He remarks, that they are represented in the New Testament to be the produce of the grace of God, of faith in Christ, and of the influences of the Holy Spirit; and are accordingly enforced, not from motives drawn from the condition of man under the law, but from the privileges of the penitent under the Gospel; from the love of Christ, from the high relation to which the Christian is advanced, and the totally new principle which the grace of God has implanted. So that the immutable obligations to duty, by which he is bound to his Creator as a moral and accountable agent, are now strengthened and

surpassed by that astonishing grace of redemption which gives him at once the power and the disposition to aim at universal obedience.

He receives a further degree of establishment in the belief of this point, in a manner which no merely human deductions could produce, by tracing in his own breast the origin whence the disposition to the performance of good works has proceeded. He cannot but know that whatever he has at any time done in the way of duty has flowed from the faith of Christ. It is impossible for him to mistake here. He well remembers that, when he considered the law as a foundation of merit and a condition of life, he was, notwithstanding some external observances, absorbed in carelessness and sin, and totally averse in his heart from the love and service of God: in fact, he never understood the spirituality of His commands, never loved their injunctions, never attempted their fulfilment. But now that he is dead to the law as a covenant, he is alive to it as a rule; he now loves and obeys it from those motives which are derived from the grace and mercies of redemption. His abilities, learning, and every advantage, before he was reduced to this right state of heart, and placed on this new footing, were like the fortifications of a revolted city; but they are now like those of one restored to its lawful sovereign, and employing

every instrument of defence for its own benefit and the honour of its Lord. Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid. Yea, we establish the law.

But how will these Scriptural passages on the subject of justification strike the mind of a reader who has no suitable preparation for the inquiry? I ask, whether it be possible for him to know of the doctrine, whether the language of Scripture can in any measure convey to him adequate ideas, without some introductory impression on his heart. I inquire, whether his state of mind be not an insuperable obstacle to his deducing from the word of God the genuine plan of divine mercy. However abundantly he may be enriched with the treasures of secular literature, still how great will be his difficulties in viewing what must appear to him the confusion and even contradictions of the passages I have laid before you! In what way will he attempt to solve the question, which, like a lock of complicated wards, can be turned by no key but its own? Will he consider one part of the representation as annihilating the force of the other, and consequently neglect both? Or will he assume the gloss on the position of St. James to be the more rational and therefore the true statement, and resort

4 Rom. iii. 31.

5

to St. Peter's declaration concerning the difficulties in the Epistles of St. Paul, as a sufficient warrant for undervaluing his testimony? Or will he endeavour to extricate himself by forming a crude and unscriptural union, or rather confusion, of the Law and the Gospel, and, by accommodating some acknowledgment of the doctrine of the atonement with a reservation for human merit, maintain the fashionable, but absurd and pernicious, invention of a new or remedial law? Whatever acuteness he may call

5 2 Pet. iii. 16.

This new or remedial law, which is by some called the law of Christ, is stated to be more lenient in its tenor, and therefore better suited to the frail powers of man, than the original law of his creation; the complete fulfilment of which, as it requires perfect love, is generally admitted to be impossible. It is supposed to consist in a mitigated rule of judgment, and to demand sincere though imperfect obedience, which, when joined with repentance and faith, is to entitle us to acceptance with God. These are denominated the conditions upon which divine mercy is offered to man under the new and evangelical covenant.

By this insidious perversion both of the Law and the Gospel, their whole design is corrupted and their efficacy weakened and in fact destroyed. The holiness and justice of God are slighted as to the first, his stupendous grace is contemned as to the second, and his wisdom is impeached as to both. With regard to the Law, the standard of the divine commands is represented as lowered to the depraved taste and powers of man, instead of man being recovered and elevated, by the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ*,

• Phil. 1. 19.

into exercise in his attempts to unravel the difficulty, this at least is clear: till he knows the entire depravity of his nature, and the real extent of the divine commands; in other words, till he has a view of his actual circumstances,

to the love and practice of its genuine purity: and a vague rule of duty, which every one is at liberty to interpret as he pleases, is made to supersede the immutable and infinitely holy rule of righteousness ordained by God. With regard to the Gospel, the reliance of the sinner for justification and eternal life is covertly transferred from the atonement and righteousness of Christ to his own imagined virtues ; and the astonishing and matchless grace of redemption is reduced in the event to a mere subordinate appendage to human efforts. Thus the pride and unholiness of the natural heart* are on this plan equaily consulted; and the criminal presumption, which must always mark the character of him who in any degree relies on his own merits, is allowed to form an unnatural, though in many cases unsuspected, union with a specious modification of the licentious tenets of the Antinomian.

This pernicious corruption however, under various disguises, of which some, from the exertion of greater dexterity, are more plausible and therefore far more dangerous than others, too generally pervades the instruction which in the present day is frequently but very fatally mistaken for Orthodoxy. It is indeed so well adapted to the proud and rebellious dispositions of fallen man, and therefore appears so fascinating to those who are not practically engaged in doing the will of God, that it constitutes the principal resort of that numerous description of inquirers who are negligent and superficial in the concerns of religion.

1 Cor. ii. 14. Rom. x. 3, 4.