to the uttermost, all that come to God through him. Such is the virtue of his righteousness and blood, and such is his honor and interest in the court of heaven, and such is his faithfulness to all that believe in him, that now it is perfectly safe to return to God through him, and venture our everlasting ALL upon his worth and merits, mediation and intercession. Heb. iv. 16.... Let us, therefore, come boldly unto the throne of grace.

Thus we see what necessity there was of satisfaction for sin, and that the demands of the law should be answered: And thus we see what has been done for these purposes, and its sufficiency to answer all the ends proposed. The Mediator was of sufficient dignity, as to his person....he had sufficient authority, as to his office, and he has faithfully done his work. And now the honor of God's holiness and justice, law and government, and sacred authority, is secured; and a way is opened in which he may honorably put his designs of mercy into execution, and sinners safely return unto him. And now, before I proceed to consider more particularly what way is opened, and what methods God has entered upon for the recovery of sinful, guilty creatures to himself, I shall make a few remarks upon what has been said.

REM. 1. As the law is a transcript of the divine nature, so also is the gospel. The law is holy, just, and good; and is, as it were, the image of the holiness, justice, and goodness of God; and so also is the gospel: The law insists upon God's honor from the creature, and ordains that his everlasting welfare shall be suspended upon that condition; and the gospel says amen to it: The law insists upon it that it is an infinite evil for the creature to swerve in the least from the most perfect will of God, and that it deserves an infinite punishment; and the gospel says amen to it: The law discovered also the infinite goodness of God, in its being suited to make the obedient creature perfectly happy; but the gospel still more abundantly displays the infinite goodness and wonderful free grace of God: The law was holy, just, and good, and the image of God's holiness, justice, and goodness; but the gospel is more

eminently so :-In it the holiness, justice, and goodness of God are painted more to the life, in a manner truly surprising, and beyond our comprehension-yea, to the amazement of angels, who desire to look and pry into this wonderful contrivance.... I. Pet. i. 12.

Here, in this glass, the glory of the Lord is to be beheld.... II. Cor. iii. 18. The glory of God is to be seen in the face of Christ....II. Cor. iv. 6. What has been done by him in this affair, discovers the glorious moral beauty of the divine nature. Much of God is to be seen in the moral law....it is his image: but more of God is to be seen in the gospel; for herein his imis exhibited more to the life-more clearly and conspicuously.

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The moral excellence of the moral law sufficiently evidences that it is from God: it is so much like God, that it is evident that it is from God: So the moral excellence of the gospel sufficiently evidences that it is from God: it is so much like him, that it is evident that it is from him: It is his very imagetherefore it is his offspring: it is a copy of his moral perfections, and they are the original: It is so much like God, that it is perfectly to his mind ;-he is pleased with it....he delights to save sinners in this way; and if ever this gospel becomes the power of God to our salvation, it will make us like unto God-it will transform us into his image, and we shall be pleased with this way of salvation, and delight to be saved in such a way; a w. wherein God is honored....the sinner humbled.... the law established....sin discountenanced....boasting excluded, and grace glorified.

If any man has a taste for moral excellence....a heart to account God glorious for being what he is, he cannot but see the moral excellence of the law, and love it, and conform to it; because it is the image of God: and so he cannot but see the moral excellence of the gospel, and believe it, and love it, and comply with it; for it is also the image of God. He that can see the moral beauty of the original, cannot but see the moral beauty of the image drawn to the life: He, there

fore, that despises the gospel, and is an enemy to the law, even he is at enmity against God himself....Rom. viii. 7. Ignorance of the glory of God, and enmity against him, makes men ignorant of the glory of the law and of the gospel, and enemies to both. Did men know and love him that begat, they would love that which is begotten of him....I. John v. 1. He that is of God, heareth God's words; ye, therefore, hear them not, because ye are not of God....John viii. 47.

And therefore a genuine compliance with the gospel supposes that he who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, shines in the heart, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ....II. Cor. iv. 6: And a sight and sense of the moral excellence of the gospel-way of salvation assures the heart of its divinity; and hereby a supernatural and divine assent to the truth of the gospel is begotten in the heart. And a sense of the infinite dignity of the Mediator, and that he was sent of God, and that he has finished the work which was given him to do, and so opened and consecrated a new and living way of access to God....together with a sense of the full and free invitation to sinners to return to God in this way, given in the gospel, and the free grace of God therein discovered, and his readiness to be reconciled ;-a spiritual sight and sense of these things, I say, emboldens the heart of a humbled sinner to trust in Christ, and to return to God through him. Hence the apostle to the Hebrews, having gone through this subject in a doctrinal way, in the cousion makes this practical inference :- Having, therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus....by a new and living way which he hath consecrated for us, through the vail, that is to say, his flesh; and having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart and full assurance of faith....Heb. x. 19—22.

REM. 2. From what has been said, we may observe, that the necessity of satisfaction for sin, and of the preceptive part of the law being answered, takes its rise from the moral perfections of the divine nature, and the moral fitness of things;

and therefore a true idea of God, and a just sense of the moral fitness of things, will naturally lead us to see the necessity of satisfaction for sin, &c. and predispose us to understand and believe what is held forth by divine revelation to that purpose. On the other hand, where a true idea of the moral perfections of God, and the moral fitness of things, is not-but, on the contrary, very wrong notions of the divine Being, and of the true nature of things, there will naturally be an indisposition and an aversion to such principles; nor will what the gospel teaches about them be readily understood or believed: And doubtless it was this which originally led some to deny the necessity of satisfaction for sin, and others to go a step farther, to deny that Christ ever designed to make any. John viii. 47 ....He that is of God, heareth God's words; ye, therefore, hear them not, because ye are not of God.

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REM. 3. The death of Christ was not designed, at all, to take away the evil nature of sin, or its ill deserts; for sin is unalterably what it is, and cannot be made a less evil: But the death of Christ was rather, on the contrary, to acknowledge and manifest the evil nature and ill desert of sin, to the end that pardoning mercy might not make it seem to be a less evil than it really is So that, although God may freely pardon all our sins, and entitle us to eternal life for Christ's sake, yet he does look upon us, considered merely as in ourselves, to be as much to blame as ever, and to deserve hell as much as ever; and therefore we are always to look upon ourselves so too: And hence we ought always to live under a sense of the freeness and riches of God's grace in pardoning our sins, and under a sense of our own vileness and ill desert, in ourselves, upon the account of them, although pardoned-That thou mayest remember and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more because of thy shame, when I am pacified toward thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord God....Ezek. xvi. 63. But this is not the way of hypocrites: for being once confident that their sins are pardoned, their shame, sorrow, and abasement are soon at an end: and having no fear of hell, they have

but little sense of sin: and, from the doctrine of free grace, they are emboldened, as it were, to sin upon free cost. But thus saith the Lord, When I shall say to the righteous, that he shall surely live; if he trust to his own righteousness, and commit iniquity, all his righteousness shall not be remembered; but for his iniquity that he hath committed, he shall die for it....Ezek.

xxxiii. 13.

REM. 4. Nor was the death of Christ designed to draw forth the pity of God towards a guilty world: for God could find it in his heart, of his mere goodness, without any motive from without, to give his only begotten Son to die for sinners: But this was greater goodness than it would have been to have saved mankind by an act of sovereign grace, without any mediator ;-it was a more expensive way: As, for an earthly sovereign to give his only son to die for a traitor, that the traitor might live, would be a greater act of goodness than to pardon the traitor, of mere sovereignty. It was not, therefore, because the goodness of the divine nature needed any motive to draw it forth into exercise, that Jesus Christ obeyed, and died in our room; but it was to answer the ends of moral government, and to secure the honor of the moral Governor; and so open a way for the honorable exercise of the divine goodness, which, in its own nature, is infinite, free, and self-moving, and wants no motive from without to draw it forth into action: And the same, no doubt, may be said of Christ's intercession in heaven. We are, therefore, in our approaches to God, not to look to Christ to persuade the Father to pity and pardon us, as though he was not willing to show mercy of his own accord; but we are to look to Christ, and go to God through him, for all we want, under a sense that we are, in ourselves, too bad to be pitied without some sufficient salvo to the divine honor, or to have any mercy shown us: And, therefore, when we look to be justified by free grace, it must be only through the redemption that is in Jesus Christ; who has been set forth to be a propitiation for sin, to declare God's righteousness, that he might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus....Rom. iii. 24, 25, 26.