less man, behind his shield, from the dart of an enemy. These may form agreeable images in eloquent discourse, but do not explain the subject to the understanding. The efficacy of faith does not arise from any natural, or necessary virtue in this act of the mind to merit, or procure the blessing, but from the good pleasure of God, and the merciful constitution of the covenant of grace.-To render the subject more obvious, I lay down the following propositions. God infinitely merciful delights not in the misery of the offender. His supreme felicity consists in imparting happiness to all who can be made to enjoy it in consistency with the holy perfections of his nature, or, in other words, with the eternal and necessary laws of the moral universe. Having been pleased that the indispensible claims of his justice should be satisfied by the sacrifice of the cross, he now only wants a fit subject of his mercy, most freely to bestow it. Faith possesses this virtue, that, by the belief of the gracious truths, and promises of the gospel, it becomes, the most efficient principle of the regeneration and sanctification of our nature. The proper efficacy of faith then is, that it prepares the soul to be a fit recipient of those blessings which the infinite benevolence of the Deity is ever willing to confer on those who know how to value them, and are qualified to enjoy them. All the mercies of the gospel are transferred to the believer through Jesus Christ, through whom it has become just in God to justify the sinner. Such being the constitution of the covenant of grace, faith hath been made the principle of a moral and legal union with Christ, so that all his merits are imputed to the believ er, and become his title with divine justice, as if he were one with the Redeemer. This union is represented in the holy scriptures under different images which indicate it to be of the most intimate kind. It is the union of the members with the head—the connexion of the branches with the vine -the junction of the whole building with the corner stone upon which it rests. Expressions which convey, in lively figures, the relation of believers to Christ through faith, and the intimacy of union which subsists between them.-Such is the virtue of the grace of faith, on which it becomes a rational, as it is acknowledged to be the scriptural ground of bestowing on the believer all the blessings of the New Cove pant. OF THE COVENANT OF GRACE. 1. OF VICARIous substituTION, AND ATONEMENT. FROM the declarations of holy scripture it appears that, immediately after the Fall, our condemned and unhappy parent, together with his whole race were, in the infinite mercy of God, transferred from the Covenant of Works, now brok en, and cancelled as the condition of life, and placed under the protection of the Covenant of Grace, organized and administered under a Mediator, through whom their repentance might be accepted with their heavenly Father, and the Ho ly Spirit imparted to sanctify and restore their fallen nature. In treating of this covenant to which I now proceed, the first consideration which requires our attention, and that, indeed, which is fundamental to its existence, is the necessity of full and complete satisfaction for the sin of man. On no other condition could the holiness and justice of God receive the repentance of the sinner, and admit him to a new probation, on a new covenant, for eternal life. In discussing this subject, three preliminary questions present themselves to our inquiry. 1. In the first place, was satisfaction, or atonement for the sin of man indispensable to the existence of any |