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requires a perfectly holy heart and life; supreme love to God, and equal love to man, influencing every imagination, intention, and affection of the soul, every word that is spoken, and every action that is done, to perfect conformity with the divine will; entire devotedness to God's service, and zeal for his glory, and for the universal benefit of all men, in the most disinterested manner, from the beginning to the end of life: when it is declared in God's name, and by his authority, that every failure of this obedience is sin, and that every sin is deserving eternal death that cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them; and that this curse shall be executed when even the merciful Jesus shall, as Judge of all, say to the wicked, Depart, e cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: when further it is shewn, by a declaration of the divine perfections, and of our relations and obligations to God and to one another, that this law is holy, and just, and good; that the transgression of it is infinitely wrong and base, and the penalty righteously merited :—then the proper means are used to bring sinners to see their lost condition, and to cry, What must I do to be saved? And, if the divine Spirit by his blessed influences accompany the word, then the sinner's understanding being enlightened, his judgment is convinced; his conscience, being stired up to do its office, anticipates the judgment of God; and he is self-condemned. Inwardly consenting to the law that it is good, he sees by this light what he ought to be: comparing his former conduct, his present dispositions, his best days and best works, with this perfect rule, his own heart condemns him, and he becomes more and more sensible that, according to this divine rule of judgment, God will condemn him too. Thus by the law he becomes dead to the law* renounces his dependence on and expectation from it; submits to God's righteousness; condemns himself; despairs of help from himself; and, as a poor hell-deserving, helpless rebel, casts himself, as his only possible remedy, on God's free and sovereign mercy. God be merciful to me, a sinner! is now the genuine language of his humbled heart; however moral and strict his former conduct may have been in the sight of man.

* Gal. ii. 19.

REPENTANCE.

"Thus true repentance is begun in the heart, which increases continually in the experience of the sincere and thriving Christian. When he is enlightened by the Holy Ghost to a discovery of the loveliness and glory of God, and of his own obligations to him, he then perceives the reasonableness and excellency of the law; then he discerns, not only the danger he has incurred by transgressing it, to alarm his apprehensions, but especially the evil, the baseness, ingratitude, and odiousness of his conduct, to the humbling and breaking of his heart for sin. He hath perverted that which was right:* and his own character and conduct appears odious in his eyes: he abhors himself:† he loathes himself in his own sight for the abominations of his heart and life his mouth is stopped: his excuses are silenced his self-admiration is turned into self-abasement : his godly sorrow is excited: he is truly grieved and pained at heart for his sins-and not only or chiefly for the punishment which he fears: and this godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation not to be repented of. And, the more he sees of the glory of the divine character, and of the excellency of the divine law, in all his subsequent discoveries to the end of his days; though they serve to remove terror, and to inspire confidence and consolation; yet, so far from putting a stop to the flow of godly sorrow and repentance, increasing love and gratitude to God, produce an increasing sense of the hatefulness of sin, set the heart more against it, and fill the soul with more deep humiliation and remorse on account of it: and the more a man grows in all other graces, the more natural do godly sorrow, self-abasement, and deep repentance become to him. So that, though true repentance does not, as some suppose, first spring from a view of Christ dying for us, in particular§ but from a discovery of the glory of that God whom we have offended, of the goodness of that law which we have broken, and of the hatefulness of those sins which we have committed; yet the after discovery, by faith, of the glory of God in the gospel, if genuine, tends greatly to enlarge our repentance and even the full assurance of hope, and

Job. xxxiii. 27.

† Job. xlii. 6.

Ezek. xxxvi. 31. See note on the Pilgrim's Progress, quoted above, p. 140, 141.

the utmost certainty that any true saint ever enjoyed that Christ died for him, and would certainly save him, would still more and more deepen repentance, and promote self-abasement.-And hereby true faith, in its first rise, in its after growth, and in its full maturity, is distinguished from that dead faith, which, by increasing confidence, destroys any appearances of repentance, with which in its feebler state it might, through fears of hell, be accompanied.

2. THE GLORY OF THE GOSPEL SHEWN BY THE LAW.

"THE law thus seen in its glory (for the ministration of condemnation is glorious,)* shews the humble repenting sinner the real glory of the gospel.-The preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness: and this for many reasons; but, eminently, because they see no need of it: and it must needs appear foolish to a rational creature, for any one to put himself to great trouble, loss, and suffering, to effect a purpose which might have been as well either effected without it, or not effected at all. But, except a man really see the glory and excellency of the law, both in its precept and its penalty, he cannot possibly see any need there was for the incarnation, sufferings, and death of the son of God, to put honour upon it in the sight of the whole universe, in order that God might honourably pardon, justify, and save those who had broken it..... .The more extraordinary this transaction was, the more unaccountable and foolish must it appear in the eyes of him who sees not the excellency and goodness of the law. If he be consistent with himself, and understand his own sentiments, it must appear to him that the purpose of conferring such honour on the law had better never have been accomplished at all; and that the salvation of sinners might have been better effected another way; namely, by an act of sovereign mercy, without any satisfaction to justice."

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DELUSIVE EXPERIENCE.

"THESE things I would state strongly, in order to shew that antinomianism borders much more nearly upon Socin

* 2 Cor. iii. 9.

:

ianism and infidelity than any of the parties are willing to allow and thus, so far as my feeble voice shall be heard, I would sound the alarm, and endeavour to excite the watchfulness of all true Christians and ministers against this insinuating mischief; which underhand, and without avowing itself, probably does as much or more harm to the cause of God in this age and nation, than any one of the numerous heresies which prevail; because it is more specious, less suspected, and therefore less opposed. Nor do I scruple to aver that all those supposed converts, however numerous and in other respects specious, who see no glory and excellence in the law of God; who think hardly of it, and cannot bear to hear it much insisted on in preaching; who use derogatory language concerning it, and have a fixed antipathy to ministers who stand up for its excellence; IF THEIR EXPERIENCE BE CONSISTENT, are mere stony · ground or thorny ground hearers.-Let no man deceive himself; he who indeed sees no glory in the law of God, which St. Paul calls holy, just, and good, cannot possibly perceive any glory in the gospel, which is designed by God to put honour on the law. He really has no more knowledge of, or love for the intrinsic excellency of the one than of the other; however his self-love, which influences him to hate the ministry of condemnation, may, by co-operating with a strong delusion concerning his own good state, influence him to a selfish love of the ministration of righteousness.....

"I cannot help expressing my melancholy apprehensions that this sort of religion, and experience is too common amongst us, and too little guarded against. May God of his infinite love and mercy stir up the hearts of all his faithful ministers to oppose it; and to counteract that malicious enemy, who thus carries on his black designs, transformed into an angel of light!

"He then, who perceives the spirituality and excellency of the law, understands in consequence the malignant nature of sin, and the insufficiency of any temporal sufferings of his own to atone for it; and by the same light he sees the sufficiency of the atonement of Christ in our stead. He sees the utter insufficiency of his own defective righteousness to jutify him before God, who requires truth in the inward parts; and by the same light he discovers the sufficiency of the divine righteousness of the Mediator for that purpose. Seeing then that in this way God is just,

and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus; convinced by this internal glory of the gospel that it is indeed from God, he truly believes; in prayer waits for the hope of righteousness by faith; and receives the gift of righteousness from God-by which gift or imputation it becomes his own and now he is allowed to say, He, who knew no sin, was made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Thus the law is our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith."

3. THE LAW A RULE OF LIFE.

IT may possibly assist the apprehension of some readers to observe, that we are said to be under the law as a cove nant, when we are to stand or fall by our own obedience or failure of obedience to it. This is to be understood as having been the case of Adam in his probation. But we are under the law as a rule of life only, when it forms, îndeed, to us the standard of our duty, every deviation from which calls for repentance, and needs to be pardoned, but shall not be imputed to us to condemnation. And this, it is contended, is the case of every true believer in Christ. This premised, we proceed with the extract.

"God doth further honor his law, in the application of redemption, by delivering it through the hands of a Mediator, to be a RULE OF LIFE to all true believers; who are not without law to God, but under the law to Christ.

"If the moral law have its foundation in the reason and nature of things, it must necessarily be, in substance, unalterable for, being perfectly right and good, suited to the nature and relations of God and man, and resulting from them, if it were to be altered it must be for the worse: which must be impossible to an infinitely wise and good God. ......Indeed, as the loveliness of God manifested in the gospel, and the rich goodness exercised towards every true believer, immensely transcend every thing that had before attracted the attention of any creature; every such character must be under vastly greater obligations to love and obey God than before; and sin, the transgression of the law, must in him be immensely baser.

"The truth of our present proposition might be argued vastly more at large from almost innumerable passages of the New Testament, wherein Christians are exhorted to perform the duties which the law required, and to avoid

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