reserved for our concluding discourse; but a few brief remarks must be added on the present occasion.

We have seen how dangerous would be the doctrine of Justification by Works; because, however qualified and explained it might be, it would inevitably induce men to assume merit to themselves on account of their actions, and because we all have a tendency to think that some claim of our own to reward is valid in the sight of God. Such feelings must engender pride, and destroy that humility which is the first element of the Christian character, and without which its virtues cannot exist. There is no such objection to Justification by Faith; for that man must be possessed by an incurable and incredible vanity, who can pretend to merit for believing that his sins have been pardoned by a spontaneous act of God's mercy. The Gospel does not recognise the least merit of any description whatever on the part of man, either in thought or in action; but fixes our minds on our own unworthiness, and refers salvation altogether to the free grace of God.

In this state of trial and probation, every thing is capable of abuse and perversion: and the best of God's good gifts, whether natural or revealed, seem most liable to this depravation. Let us not wonder, then, that the doctrine of Justification by Faith should form no exception to this general rule. We have seen that its object is to produce repentance for past sin, with amendment of live for the future, and that it invariably produces moral holiness, whenever

in its primitive simplicity it is sincerely received into the heart. We have anxiously endeavoured to establish this important point, and to make faith appear the only sure foundation of mental purity. If this be true, and if it be on this account that faith has been made the condition of our acceptance with heaven, how great must be the depravity, how deep the guilt of those, who so far misrepresent its nature and object as to make this heavenly truth a vehicle for vice and profligacy. Yet how frequently is this the case! It is incalculable how much moral evil is produced, and how much scandal to the pure faith of Christ's Gospel is occasioned, by those who insist upon the abstract doctrine without immediately applying it to those purposes of morality, which it was designed to answer, and without producing which it is of no avail to Justification.

Let us then, judge of this and every other doctrine, not by its corruptions, for these we are taught to expect by the Saviour himself, but by its natural effects on the mind; and "try the spirits whether they are of God "," remembering that "the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned."

1 John iv. 1.

SERMON V.

ROM. iii. 28.

Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.

..

A FEW subordinate departments of the important subject which has been pursued in the preceding discourses still remain to be considered. They possess too great an interest to be overlooked, and yet were of such a miscellaneous nature as not to be comprised under any of the former heads. We have seen the injustice and danger that would attend the doctrine of Justification by Works; and have further shewn that faith in Jesus Christ, as a condition of acceptance with God, is open to no valid objection whatever, being in perfect accordance with the divine attributes, and naturally calculated to produce personal holiness by purifying the heart and exalting the mind of man.

It remains that we should establish the complete harmony that pervades all God's dealings with his rational creatures, by proving that the two dispensations, the law and the Gospel, are in no respect at

variance with one another. We also propose to shew that a perfect unanimity exists on this subject between all the inspired writers of the New Testament.

I. Had the moral law of Moses stood by itself, that is, had man known no other mode of acceptance with heaven than an undeviating obedience to that sacred code of duties, his condition would indeed have been hopeless. Its motives to moral purity were few and weak compared with those which the Gospel puts in operation, and it had no power of repairing the ravages which sin had already made by actual transgression. Thus it placed before man's eyes a height of moral excellence and happiness which he could not reach, an abyss of moral degradation and punishment which he was not able to avoid. But in reality he never was left to the moral law of God. The principle of Justification by Faith had always been recognised from the fall of our first parents; it was very prominently brought forward in the Mosaic dispensation, and was not forgotten until that period of the Jewish history which immediately preceded our Lord's advent. The promise of a Saviour, who should restore man to that moral and intellectual eminence which he had forfeited by disobedience, was made immediately after his lapse from the original righteousness in which he had been created. The ordinance of sacrifice was cotemporaneous with it, and may be considered as the seal of that merciful promise. It was intended to express, in him who offered it, a conviction of his own sinfulness, a sense of his inability

to make any compensation for guilt once contracted, and a firm faith in that promised Redeemer who should effectually make atonement for all sin.

This symbolical expiation was repeated on every occasion of known sin, and the pardon which accompanied it was granted, not to the outward action, for that could have no merit, but to the internal quality, that confidence in God's truth and reliance on his promised mercy, which prompted the outward act, and which the ordinance itself was designed to perpetuate till the Messiah's coming. It was, in the strictest sense of the word, a sacrament, in every respect analogous to that of our Lord's supper, with this slight difference, that the outward visible sign in sacrifice prefigured, whereas in the latter it commemorates man's redemption by the blood of Christ. Both were acts of faith, and the thing represented in both precisely the same. It is clear also that the sense of sin, under which a sacrificial or representative expiation was made, could only be derived from some known law of God; for sin is not imputed where there is no law "," and St. Paul says,

b

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I had not known sin, but by the law ” Besides the light '.: of natural religion, we may therefore conclude that a revealed moral law was not unknown before the time of Moses, for without it the ceremonial ordinances, which we know then existed, could have answered no purpose. Both were perhaps handed down by tradition through successive generations,

a Rom. v. 13.

b Ibid. vii. 7.