works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying. But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof. If any man can read this passage without perceiving that the precepts of the moral law are still binding on believers, he must be proof against evidence; and with such a person it is in vain to reason. If God give him not repentance to the acknowledging of the truth, he must e'en go on, and abide the consequences. V. Believers are either under the law, (in the sense in which we plead for it,) or without law. By the language of the Apostle there can be no medium. There is no other way of exonerating ourselves from the charge of being without law to God, but by acknowledging that we are under the law to Christ. Such was the acknowledgment of Paul in behalf of the primitive Christians: To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. His words plainly intimate a change, indeed, in its administration; but not of the thing itself. Formerly it was administered by Moses, and attended with that terrific aspect which properly pertains to it when addressed to transgressors: now it is administered by Christ, who has placed it at the foundation of his legislative code, and by divesting it of its curse, 'has rendered it to the believer a friendly guide. But the thing itself is the same, and will remain so when heaven and earth shall have passed away. VI. Those who have the greatest aversion to the law being a rule of life, yet are very willing that others should make it a rule of their conduct towards them. Whether they are bound to love their neighbours as themselves, or not, if they are treated unkindly or unjustly, even by their brethren, they are as much alive to resentment as any other people. But if they be not obliged to love others, why should others be obliged to love them; and why should they be offended with them for the contrary? And if the * Even the terms, "Let us," &c. have of late given offence to some hearers, as savouring of legality: yet Paul's writings abound with such language second table of the law be mutually binding, on what ground can we plead exemption from the first? We have often heard it intimated, that the obligation of sinful creatures to love God with all their hearts is very difficult to be understood; yet we can any of us understand, with the greatest ease, the obligations which others are under to us. If a man be a kind and good father, he feels no difficulty in understanding the fitness and reasonableness of his children loving him, and that with the most unfeigned affection; receiving his instructions, following his example, and taking pleasure in obeying his will. Should any one of them be ungrateful or disobedient, and plead that he could not love his father, nor take pleasure in obeying him, he would instantly perceive that what was alleged as his excuse, was the very height of disobedience of which he ought to be ashamed. Yet when God is concerned, the same man will tell you, ' We are poor sinners, and cannot love him; and as to your nice distinctions between natural and moral inability, we cannot understand them. If we are unable, we are unable, and it does not signify of what kind the inability is.' So also when we insist on every person or thing being loved in subordination to the blessed God, and every action done with a view to his glory, it is objected, that the subject is too abstruse and metaphysical for common Christians to understand it. Yet I never knew a Christian or any man but who could pretty well take in the doctrine of subserviency as it related to himself. He can easily understand that a servant whom he pays for his time and labour ought to lay them out in promoting his interest, and not merely his own; and if such servant, when pursuing his own private interest, should accidentally, or without design, promote that of his master, would his master thank him for it, or think a whit better of him on account of it? No, in all these things man is wise in his generation it is only where God and religion are concerned that he finds such insuperable difficulties. Every nation, community, or individual, knows how to set itself up as supreme, and to wish for all others to be rendered subservient to its interests. Man, by his ingenuity, can draw into subordination to himself, the light, the : darkness, the fire, the water, the air, the earth, the animals, and almost every thing else that comes within his reach but man cannot understand the abstruse doctrine of loving every thing in subordination to his Creator, and doing every thing in subservien cy to his glory! PART II. THE INFLUENCE OF ANTINOMIANISM IN PERVERTING SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL DOCTRINES OF THE GOSPEL. IF the law and the gospel be in harmony, (and which if the author of both be immutable they are,) it may be expected that the same great design pervades them both. Such is the fact. The law requires us to love God supremely, and our neighbour as ourselves. Had this requirement been obeyed, the honour of God and the happiness of creatures had been for ever united. But men by sin have fallen into a gulf of selfishness. They neither love God, nor their neighbours for his sake. They are lovers of their own selves; and care for neither God or man any farther than as they conceive them to be necessary for their own happiness. But what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the corruption of human nature, God sent his Son to accomplish. God would be glorified in Christ, though men had dishonoured him ; and though they had incurred his wrath, and become hateful and hating one another, yet peace and reconciliation should be restored in him. Hence, on his first appearance on earth, the angels, entering into the grand design of his coming, sang, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men ! But if the law and the gospel be in harmony, they that fall out with the one must fall out with the other. A scheme that sets out with rejecting all obligation to the love of God and man cannot be friendly to either, nor to that gospel whose tendency is to promote them. It must be a mere system of selfishness; suited not to the condition but to the propensities of fallen creatures. It might be expected that a system founded on such a principle would go on to a flat denial of most of the doctrines of divine revelation. It is not so, however; the forms of orthodoxy are in general retained, it is the ideas chiefly that are given up. The same terms may be used by different persons to express very different ideas. The Jews, in our Saviour's time, professed the same creed, perhaps, in the main, as their forefathers. They reckoned themselves, however, to believe in Moses: but holding with Moses to the exclusion of Christ, their faith was so different from that of their forefathers as to become void. If ye believe Moses, said our Lord, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me. From the same principle it follows that the faith of those who hold with Christ to the exclusion of Moses, is void; for if they believed one they would believe the other, seeing both are in perfect harmony. : The doctrine of Election, as it is taught in the scriptures, is of a humbling and holy tendency. The whole difference between the saved and the lost being ascribed to sovereign grace, the pride of man is abased. Upon every other principle, it is the sinner that maketh himself to differ; and he must, therefore, find whereof of glory. We may allow ourselves to be unable to repent and believe without the aids of the Holy Spirit but while we maintain that these aids are afforded to sinners in common, and that faith, instead of being" the gift of God," is the effect of our haying improved the help afforded, while others neglected it, if we think we do not ascribe the very turning point of salvation to our own virtue, we greatly deceive ourselves. But election, while it places no bar in the way of any man which would not have been there without it, resolves the salvation of the saved into mere grace: and if of grace, then it is no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace. Such a view of things tends to humble us in the dust. It is frequently the last point which a sinner yields to God it is the giving up of every other claim and ground of hope from his own good endeavours, and falling into the arms of sovereign mercy. And having here found rest to his soul, he will not be less but more attentive to the means of salvation than he was before. His endeavours will be more ardent, and directed to a better end. Then he was trying to serve himself, now he will serve the Lord. But if election be viewed in certain connexions, it will : |