NG REFLECTIONS.

FIRST: Though faith be a duty, the requirement of it is not to be considered as a mere exercise of AUTHORITY, but of INFINITE GOODNESS; binding us to pursue our best interest. If a message of peace were sent to a company of rebels, who had been conquered, and lay at the mercy of their injured sovereign, they must, of course, be required to repent, and embrace it, ere they could be interested in it; yet such a requirement would not be considered, by impartial men, as a mere exercise of authority. It is true, the authority of the sovereign would accompany it, and the proceeding would be so conducted as that the honor of his government should be preserved; but the grand character of the message would be mercy. Neither would the goodness of it be diminished by the authority which attended it, nor by the malignant disposition of the parties. Should some of them even prove incorrigible, and be executed as hardened traitors, the mercy of the sovereign in sending the message, would be just the same. They might possibly object, that the government which they had resisted was hard and rigid; that their parents before them had always disliked it, and had taught them from their childhood to despise it; that to require them to embrace with all their hearts a message, the very import of which was, that they had transgressed without cause, and deserved to die, was too humiliating for flesh and

blood to bear; and that, if he would not pardon them without their cordially subscribing such an instrument, he had better have left them to die as they were; for, instead of its being good news to them, it would prove the means of aggravating their misery. Every loyal subject, however, would easily perceive that it was good news, and a great instance of mercy, however they might treat it, and of whatever evil, through their perverseness, it might be the occasion.

If faith in Christ be the duty of the ungodly, it must, of course, follow, that every sinner, whatever be his character, is completely warranted to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of his soul. In other words, he has every possible encouragement to relinquish his former attachment and confidences, and to commit his soul into the hands of Jesus to be saved. If believing in Christ be a privilege belonging only to the regenerate, and no sinner, while unregenerate, be warranted to exercise it, it will follow, either that a sinner may know himself to be regenerate before he believes, or that the first exercise of faith is an act of presumption. That the bias of the heart requires to be turned to God antecedently to believing, has been admitted; because the nature of believing is such, that it cannot be exercised while the soul is under the dominion of wilful blindness, hardness, and aversion. These dispositions are represented in the Scriptures, as a bar in the way of faith, as being inconsistent with it; and which, consequently, require to be taken out of the way. But, what

*

* See Proposition IV. p. 52.

see.

ever necessity there may be for a change of heart in order to believing, it is neither necessary nor possible that the party should be conscious of it till he has believed. It is necessary that the eyes of a blind man should be opened, before he can see; but it is neither necessary nor possible for him to know that his eyes are open till he does It is only by surrounding objects appearing to his view, that he knows the obstructing film to be removed. But, if regeneration be necessary to warrant believing, and yet it be impossible to obtain a consciousness of it till we have believed, it follows, that the first exercise of faith is without foundation; that is, it is not faith, but presumption.

If believing be the duty of every sinner to whom the Gospel is preached, there can be no doubt as to a warrant for it, whatever be his character; and to maintain the latter, without admitting the former, would be reducing it to a mere matter of discretion. It might be inexpedient to reject the way of salvation, but it could not be unlawful.

Second: Though believing in Christ is a compliance with a duty, yet it is not as a duty, or by way of reward for a virtuous act, that we are said to be justified by it. It is true, God does reward the services of his people, as the Scriptures abundantly teach; but this follows upon justification. We must stand accepted in the Beloved, before our services can be acceptable or rewardable. Moreover, if we were justified by faith as a duty, justification by faith could not be, as it is, opposed to justification by works:

To him that worketh is the reward not reckoned

of grace, but of debt. But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness. Rom. iv. 2-5. The Scripture doctrine of justification by faith, in opposition to the works of the law, appears to me as follows:-By believing in Jesus Christ, the sinner becomes vitally united to him, or, as the Scriptures express it, joined to the Lord, and is of one spirit with him, (1 Cor. vi. 17:) and this union, according to the divine constitution, as revealed in the Gospel, is the ground of an interest in his righteousness. Agreeable to this is the following language :—There is now, therefore, NO CONDEMNATION to them that are IN Christ Jesus.—Of him are ye IN Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us RIGHTEOUSNESS, &c.-That I may be found IN him, not having mine own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ. As the union which, in the order of nature, precedes a revealed interest in Christ's righteousness, is spoken of in allusion to that of marriage, the one may serve to illustrate the other. A rich and generous character, walking in the fields, espies a forlorn female infant, deserted by some unfeeling parent in the day that it was born, and left to perish. He sees its helpless condition, and resolves to save it. Under his kind patron

age, the child grows up to maturity. He now resolves to make her his wife, and marries her in legal form, and she becomes his wife. She is now, according to the public statutes of the realm, interested in all his possessions. Great is

the transition! Ask her, in the height of her glory, how she became possessed of all this wealth; and, if she retain a proper spirit, she will answer in some such manner as this: "It was not mine, but my deliverer's-his who rescued me from death. It is no reward of any good deeds on my part. It is by marriage. It is of grace."

It is easy to perceive, in this case, that it was necessary she should be voluntarily married to her husband, before she could, according to the public statutes of the realm, be interested in his possessions, and that she now enjoys those possessions by marriage; yet who would think of asserting that her consenting to be his wife was a meritorious act, and that all his possessions were given her as the reward of it?

Third From the foregoing view of things, we may perceive the alarming situation of unbelievers. By unbelievers, I mean not only avowed infidels, but all persons who hear, or have opportunity to hear, the Gospel, or to come at the knowledge of what is taught in the Holy Scriptures, and do not cordially embrace it. It is an alarming thought to be a sinner against the greatest and best of Beings; but to be an unbelieving sinner is much more so. There is deliverance from the curse of the law, through Him who was made a curse for us. But if, like the barren fig-tree, we stand, from year to year, under Gospel culture, and bear no fruit, we may expect to fall under the curse of the Savior; and who is to deliver us from this? If the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every