divine life, which worketh by love, and produceth obedience; that which St. James condemns, a speculative assent, an indolent presumption, a shadow, a name. That the effect of the one is the conscientious and habitual, though imperfect, discharge of every duty; while the fruits of the other are notions, pride, envy, and disputation. That the first is of the operation of God, the second the product of man. That he who has the one is the penitent, humble, practical Christian; he who has the other is at best but the advocate of a correct system, which he has never received into his heart, nor obeyed in his conduct. Thus he does not invalidate any one expression of the two apostles, but gives their full and entire weight to all; he does not confound but combine their views, and dwells on both statements, as the occasion may require. To the afflicted penitent he holds out the encouraging positions of St. Paul; and cautions him who professes to receive these positions, from perverting them, by urging the exhortation of St. James.

If any object, as men who do not understand the question always have objected and always will object, to the scheme of justification by faith alone, as of an immoral tendency, he will observe that this very difficulty was

Gal. v. 6.

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 şecular 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.

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.

6 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. i. 19.