sanctity, and not-guiltiness. Christ came not to possess God with any false opinion of us, nor is he such a physician as to perform but a supposed or reputative cure: he came not to persuade his Father to judge us to be well, because He is well; or to leave us uncured, and to persuade God that we are cured. It is we that were guilty and unholy; it is we that must be justified or condemned, and therefore it is we that must be restored unto righteousness. If Christ only were righteous, Christ only would be reputed and judged righteous, and Christ only would be happy. The Judge of the world will not justify the unrighteous, merely because another is righteous, nor can the holy God take complacency in an unholy sinner, because another is holy. Never did the blessed Son of God intend, in his dying or merits, to change the holy nature of his Father, and to cause him to love that which is not lovely, or to reconcile him to that which he abhorreth, as he is God. We must bear his own image, and be holy as he is holy, before he can approve us, or love us in complacency. This is the work of our blessed Redeemer, to make man fit for God's approbation and delight, Though we are the subjects, he is the cause. He regenerateth us, that he may pardon us; and he pardoneth us that he may further sanctify us, and make us fit for our Master's use. He will not remove our guilt till we return, nor will he accept our actual services till our guilt be removed. By supernatural operations must both be accomplished: a regress from such a privation as was our unholiness, requireth a supernatural work upon and a deliverance from such guilt and deserved punishment, requireth a supernatural operation for us. The one Christ effecteth in us by his sanctifying Spirit, through the instrumentality of his word, as informing and exciting; the other he effecteth by his own (and his Father's) will, through the instrumentality of his Gospel grant, by way of donation, making an universal conditional deed of gift of himself, and remission and right to glory, to all that return by repentance and faith. His blood is

us;

the meritorious cause of both, but not of both on the same account; for, directly, it was guilt only that made his blood necessary for our recovery. Had there been nothing to do but renew us by repentance and sanctification, this might have been done without any bloodshed, by the work of the word and Spirit. God at first gave man his image freely, and did not sell it for a price of blood; nor doth he so delight in blood, as to desire it, or accept it for itself, but for the ends which it must, as a convenient means, attain. Those ends are the demonstration proximately of his governing justice, in the vindication of the honour of his law and rule, and for the wrong of others: ultimately and principally, it is the demonstration of his natural sin-hating holiness, and his unspeakable love to the sons of men, but specially to his elect. In this sense was Christ a sacrifice and ransom, and may be truly said to have satisfied for our sins. He was not a sinner, nor so esteemed, nor could possibly take upon himself the numerical guilt, which lay on us, nor yet a guilt of the same sort, as having not the same sort of foundation or efficient; ours arising from the merit of our sin and the commination of the law; his being rather occasioned than merited by our sin, and occasioned by the laws threatening of us. He had neither sin of his own, nor merit of wrath from such sin, nor did the law oblige him to suffer for our sins; but he obliged himself to suffer for our sins, though not as in our persons strictly, yet in our stead in the person of a Mediator." d

This extract is not less worthy of attention for the beauty and felicity of some of its language, than for the accuracy of the thoughts and sentiments it contains. Being divested of every thing controversial, it presents before us, in a plain, inartificial manner, the writer's views of the damage man sustained at the fall, and of the nature of the salvation provided in the

d Confession of Faith,' Preface.

Gospel. As conveying the real opinions of Baxter, it is worth ten thousand pages of his controversial writing; it demolishes the whole system of Antinomianism.

Some passages, on the subject of perseverance, in his treatise on 'The Right Method of Peace of Conscience,' having been misunderstood, he left them out of a second impression of that book; but, to prevent any misunderstanding that might arise from this, he published a quarto pamphlet, in 1657, entitled 'Richard Baxter's Account of his Present Thoughts concerning the Controversies about the Perseverance of the Saints.' It contains, chiefly, a statement of the great variety of opinions which prevail, according to Baxter, about the last of the five points. He enumerates twelve several modes of holding this doctrine, and gives his own views in the shape of objection to, or approbation of, each of these modes. This method of stating his sentiments is sufficiently tiresome and unsatisfactory. He professes not to have attained to certainty in understanding this point, with all the Scriptures that concern it, better than Augustine, and the common judgment of the church for so many ages; and, therefore, he dares not say that he has attained to certainty that all the justified shall perOn the other hand, he is not disposed to maintain the opposite opinion; but he endeavours to show that the certainty of the final perseverance of all who have been justified is not so necessary to comfort, much less to salvation, as many suppose. What his own opinions, stripped of all controversial and metaphysical distinctions, were, seems plainly expressed in the following passage: "Therefore, notwithstanding all the objections that are against it, and the ill use that will be made of it by many, and the accidental troubles into which it may cast some believers, it seems to me that the doctrine of perseverance is grounded on the Scriptures, and therefore is to be maintained, not only as extending to all the elect, against the Lutherans and Arminians, but also as extending to all the truly sanctified,

severe.

against Augustine, and the Jansenians, and other Dominicans; though we must rank it but among truths of its own order, and not lay the church's peace or communion upon it,"

This statement will, I apprehend, satisfy the most fastidious reader of the substantial orthodoxy of Baxter on this point, Had he said less about the opinions of others, in his controversial writings, and given us his own in fewer words than he commonly employs, I apprehend he would have been found a more consistent and thorough Calvinist than has generally been sup→ posed. The grand controversy on the subject of perseverance, about the period when Baxter wrote his pamphlet, was carried on between Dr. Owen and John Goodwin, Kendal replied to Goodwin in defence of Owen, and by the way offered some remarks on Baxter's sentiments respecting justification and perseverance.

"Dr. Kendal," says Baxter, "was a little quick-spirited man, of great ostentation, and a considerable orator and scholar. He was driven on further by others than his own inclination would have led him. He thought to get an advantage for his reputation, by a triumph over John Goodwin and me; for those who set him to work, would needs have him conjoin us both together, to intimate that I was an Arminian. While I was replying to his first assault, he wrote a second; and when I had begun a reply to that, meeting me at London, he was so earnest to take up the controversy, engaging Mr. Vines to persuade me that Bishop Usher might determine it, and I was so willing to be eased of such work, that I quickly yielded to Usher's arbitration. He owned my judgment about universal redemption, perseverance, &c.; but directed us to write against each other no more, And so my second reply was suppressed."e

Baxter's Confession of Faith,' proving little more satisfactory

Life, part i. p. 110,

than his Apology,' and various animadversions having been made on it, he published in 1658 his Four Disputations of Justification,' 4to. pp. 423, with a view to meet some of the exceptions of his "learned and reverend brethren." The chief of those whom he notices, was Mr. Blake, who died some time before Baxter's work appeared; Mr. Anthony Burgess, whom he had drawn by correspondence into a discussion with him on the nature of faith and of imputed righteousness; Mr. John Warner, against whose "confident but dark assaults" he defends himself; and Mr. John Tombes, with whom he fought the famous battle of Bewdley. All these writers receive that measure of attention which he deemed due to their respective merits; and though he treats some of them rather sharply, he spoke of them all with great kindness and respect. The discussion is carried on in a very elaborate and scholastic style. The differences between himself and his brethren often turn on mere verbal quibbles; though in a few instances the distinctions

The work of Blake, to which Baxter refers, is a' Postscript,' addressed to Baxter, at the end of his book 'The Covenant Sealed,' which was published in 1655. It is written in a very kind and gentlemanly manner; though it exposes, somewhat strongly, several of Baxter's mistakes and unprofitable distinctions.

8 The work of Burgess, on which Baxter animadverts, is The True Doctrine of Justification asserted,' 4to. 1654. The author was a man of considerable talents and learning. He was a member of the Westminster Assembly, and the author of several considerable works. He was ejected from Sutton Coldfield, in Warwickshire,

Warner's book, to which Baxter replies, is the following, 'Diatriba Fidei Justificantis, &c.' or a Discourse of the object and office of faith as justifying, distinct from other objects and acts and offices of the same faith as sanctifying. 8vo. 1657. It is a scholastic and metaphysical work of some ability. The views of the author on the subject of which he treats are both sound and well stated. They are much more satisfactory than what Baxter would have substituted in their place, and contain nothing of confidence or dark assaults that I can see. The author was bred at Oxford, but became pastor of the church of Christ at Christ's-church, Hampshire, where he was when this treatise was written.

i The book of Tombes, to which Baxter replies, is the Latin animadversions on his Aphorisms, referred to in the note to a former page. Anthony Wood says, "They were published by the said Baxter, without the author's knowledge, in 1658,"-Athen. Oxon, vol. iv. p. 1066.