of among the Christians of the New Testa- | to gloss it over with the gentle epithet of ment. It is not that Christ is set forth an infirmity. It is readily allowed, then, a propitiation for their sins,—it is not that that we have our infirmities; and then to they stagger not at the promise of God, be- make all right, and secure, and comfortacause of unbelief,-it is not that the love of able, the sentiment with which they bring him is shed abroad in their hearts, by the the matter round again, is, that though we Holy Ghost,-it is not that they carry along have our infirmities, God is a merciful God, with them any consciousness whatever, of and he will overlook them. This vague, a growing conformity to the image of the and general, and indistinct apprehension of Saviour, it is not that their calling and the attribute of mercy is the anchor of their their election are made sure to them, by hope; not a very sure and steadfast one, the successful diligence with which they certainly, but just as sure and as steadfast, are cultivating the various accomplishments as, in their peaceful state of unconcern, they of the Christian character;-there is not have any demand for. A vessel in smooth one of these ingredients, will we venture to water needs not be very strongly fastened say, which enters into the satisfaction that in her moorings; and really any convictions many feel with their own prospects, and of sin they have, agitate them so gently, into the complacency they have in their that a very slender principle indeed, uttered own attainments, and into their opinion, occasionally by the mouth, and with no that God is looking to them with indulgence distinct or perceptible hold upon the heart, and friendship. With most of them, there is enough to quiet and subdue all that is is not only an ignorance, but a positive dis- troublesome within them. A slight hurt gust, about these things. They associate needs but a slight remedy, and however with them the charges of methodism, and virulent the disease may be, yet if the pamysticism, and fanaticism: and meanwhile tient be but gently alarmed, a gentle applicherish in their own hearts a kind of im- cation is enough to pacify him in the mean pregnable confidence, resting entirely on time. Now, a tasteful and a tender sentisome other foundation. ment about the goodness of God, is just such an application. He will not be severe upon our weaknesses; he will not cast a glance of stern and unrelenting indignation upon us. It is true, that there is to be met with, among the vilest dregs and refuse of society, a degree of profligacy for which it would really be too much to expect forgiveness. The use of hell is for the punishment of such gross and enormous wickedness as this. But the people who are so very depraved, and so very shocking, stand far beneath the place which we occupy in the scale of character. We, with our many amiable, and good, and neighbourlike points and accomplishments, are fair and befitting subjects for the kindness of God. When we err, we shall betake ourselves to a trust in that indulgence, which gives to our religion the aspect of so much cheerfulness; and we will school down all that is disquieting, by a sentiment of confidence in that mercy which is soothing to our hearts, and which we delight to hear expatiated upon in terms of tastefulness, by the orators of a genteel and cultivated piety.

We believe the real cause of their tranquillity to be, just that eternity is not seen nearly enough, or urgently enough, to disturb them. It stands so far away on the back ground of their contemplation, that they are almost entirely taken up with the intervening objects. Any glimpse they have of the futurity which lies on the other side of time, is so faint, and so occasional, that its concerns never come to them with the urgency of a matter on hand. It is not so much because they think in a particular way on this topic, that they feel themselves to be at peace. It is rather because they think so little of it. Still, however, they do have a transient and occasional thought, and it is all on the side of tranquillity; and could this thought be exposed as a minister of deceitful complacency to the heart, it may have the effect of working in it a salutary alarm, and of making the possessor of it see the nakedness of his condition, and of undermining every other trust but a trust in the offered salvation of the gospel, and of unsettling the blind and easy confidence of his former days, and of prompting him with the question, "What shall I do to be saved?" and of leading him to try this question by the light of revelation, and to prosecute it to a scriptural conclusion, till he came to the answer of, "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." What is the way, then, in which they do actually make up their minds upon this subject? There is, in the first place, a pretty general admission, that we are sinners, though along with this, there is a disposition to palliate the enormity of sin, and

Under this loose system of confidence, then, by which the peace of so many a sinner is upheld, it is the general mercy of God on which he rests. I shall, therefore, in the first place, endeavour to prove the vanity of such a confidence; and, in the second place, the evils of it.

I. There is one obvious respect, in which this mercy that is so slenderly spoken of, and so vaguely trusted in, is not in unison with truth; and that is, it is not the mercy which has been made the subject of an actual offer from God to man, in the true

message that he has been pleased to de- | himself. But God tells us that he will not liver to the world. In this message, God be so drawn upon. He chooses, and has he makes a free offer of his mercy, no doubt; not the right of choosing, to bestow all his but he offers it on a particular footing, and favours upon a guilty world, in and through on that footing only, will he have it to be his Son Christ Jesus? If you choose to received. Along with the revelation he object to this way, you must just abide makes of his attribute of mercy, he bids us by the consequences. The offer is made. look to the particular way in which he God sets himself forward as merciful. But chooses that attribute to be put forth. The he lets you know, at the same time, the man who steps forward to relieve you of particular way in which he chooses to be your debts, by an act of gratuitous kind- so. This way may be an offence to you. ness, may surely reserve the privilege of You would, perhaps, have liked better, had doing it in his own way; and whether it there been no Christ, no preaching of his be by a present in goods, or by a present cross, nothing said about his cleansing and in money, or by an order upon a third per-peace-speaking blood,-in a word, nothing son, or by the appointment of one whom he of all that which forms the burden of makes the agent of his beneficence, and methodistical sermons, and which, if met whom he asks you to correspond with and with in the New Testament at all, is only to draw upon, it would surely be most pre- to be found in what you may think its dark posterous in you to quarrel with his gene- and mystical passages. It would have been rosity, because it would have been more to more congenial to your taste, perhaps, had your taste, had it come to you through a you been left to the undisturbed enjoyment different channel of conveyance. He has a of your own soothing and elegant concepfair right of insisting upon his own way of tions,-could you just have gone direct to it; and if you will not acquiesce in this way, God himself, whom the eye of your imaand he leaves you under your burden, you gination had stripped of all tremendous sehave nothing to complain of. You might verity against sin, of all the pure and holy have liked it better had he authorized you jealousies of his nature, of all that is mato draw upon himself, rather than on the jestic in the high attributes of truth and agent he has fixed upon. But no; he has righteousness. A God singly possessed of his reasons, and he persists in his own way tenderness, in virtue of which, he would of it, and you must either go along with smile connivance at all our infirmities, and this way, or throw yourself out of the bend an indulgent eye over the waywardbenefit of his generosity altogether. It is ness of a heart devoted with all its afconceivable that, in spite of all this, you fections to the vanities and pleasures of may be so very perverse as to draw upon time, this would be a God highly suited himself, instead of drawing upon the au-to the taste and convenience of a guilty thorized agent. Well, the effect is, just that world. But, alas! there is no such God. your draft is dishonoured, and your debt To trust in the mercy of such a Being as still lies upon you; and, by your wilful re-this, is to lean on a nonentity of your own sistance to the plan of relief laid down, are imagination. It is to be led astray, by a left to remain under the full weight of your fancy picture of your own forming. There embarrassments. is no other God to whom you can repair And so of God. He may, and he actu- for mercy, but God in Christ, reconciling ally has stepped forward, to relieve us from the world unto himself, and not imputing that debt of sin under which we lie. But unto them their trespasses. And if you he has taken his own way of it. He has resist the preaching of Christ as foolishnot left us to dictate the matter to him,-ness,-if you will not recognize him, but perbut he himself has found out a ransom. Hesist in your hoping, and your trusting, on the offers us eternal life; but he tells us where general ground that God is merciful, you this is to be found, even in his Son, and he are just wrapping yourselves up in a delubids us look unto him, and be saved; and sive confidence, and pleasing yourselves he says, that he who hath the Son hath with your own imagination; and the only life, and that he who believeth not the Son, real offer that ever was, or ever will be the wrath of God abideth on him. To re-made to sinful man, you are putting away strain, as it were, our immediate approaches from you. The mercy upon which you to himself, he reveals an agent, a Mediator rest, is in disunion with truth. It is a spark between God and man, and he lets us of your own kindling, and if you continue know, that no one cometh unto the to walk in it, it will lead you into a path of Father, but by him. He makes a free offer darkness, and bewilder you to your final of salvation, but it is in and through Jesus undoing. Christ, to whom the whole revealed word of God directs our eye, as the prime agent in the recovery of a guilty world. To say that we have our infirmities, but God is merciful, is like drawing direct upon God

II. The evils of such a confidence as we have been attempting to expose, are mainly reducible to two, which we shall consider in order.

First, this delusive confidence casts an

Now, those who, without any reference to Christ, find their way to comfort on the strength of their own general confidence in God's mercy, make no account whatever of his truth, or his righteousness. What becomes of the threatenings of God? What becomes of the immutability of his purposes? What becomes of the unfailing truth of all his communications? What becomes of the solemnity of his warnings? and how is it possible to be at all impressed by them,if they are ever and anon done away by a

aspersion on the character of God. It manifestation of his truth and his righteouswould inflict a mutilation upon that cha-ness along with it? racter. It is confidence in such a mercy as would dethrone the lawgiver, and establish the anarchy of a wild misrule, over his fallen and dishonoured attributes. We may lightly take up with the conception that God is all tenderness, and nothing else, and thus try to accommodate the character of the Eternal, to the standard of our own convenience and our own wishes. We, instead of looking to the immutability of the Godhead, and taking our fixed and permanent lesson from such a contemplation, may fancy of the Godhead, that he is ever as-weak and capricious system of connivance? suming a new shape, and a new character, according to the frail and fluctuating caprices of human opinion. Instead of God making man according to his pleasure, man would form God in the mould of his own imagination. He forgets that, in the whole range of existence, he can only meet with one object who is inflexibly and everlastingly the same, and that is God,-that he may sooner think of causing the everlasting hills to recede from their basis, than of causing an infringement on the nature of the unalterable Deity, or on the designs and maxims which support the method of his administration,---that to assume a character for him in our own mind, instead of learning what the character is from himself, is in fact to make the foolish thought of the creature, paramount to the eternal and immutable constitution of the Creator.

What becomes of the wide and everlasting distinctions, between obedience and sin? What becomes of the holiness of the Deity? What becomes of reverence for his name, among the wide circle of angels, and archangels, and seraphim, and cherubim, who have all heard his awful proclamations against the children of iniquity,-if they see that any one of them may, by a mere act of confidence in his mercy, turn all that has been uttered against them into an unmeaning parade? Where, in a word, are all those sanctions and securities which can alone make the government of the Deity, to be a government at all? These are all questions which the people to whom we allude, never think of entertaining; nor do they feel the slightest concern about them. and they count it quite enough, if they can just work themselves up into such a tolerable feeling of security, as that they shall not be disturbed in the quiet enjoyment of the good things of this life, which form all in fact that their hearts long after, and which if only permitted to retain in peace, they positively care not for the glory of God, or how shall it be kept inviolate. This is not their affair. The engrossing desire of their bosoms, is just a selfish desire after their own ease: and the strange preparation for that heaven, the unceasing song of which is, Holy and righteous are thy judgments, O thou king of Saints, is such a habit of confidence, as lays prostrate all the majesty of these high and unchangeable perfections.

Let us therefore give up our own conceptions, and look steadily to that light in which God hath actually put himself forth to us. He has dealt out a variety of communications respecting his own ever-during character and attributes, to the children of men; and he tells us, that he is a God of truth, and that he is jealous of his honour, and that he will not be mocked, and that heaven and earth shall pass away, ere any of his words pass away. Let us just attend to some of these words. He who continues not in the whole book of this law, is accursed. The whole world is guilty before God. He will by no means clear the guilty. Without shedding of blood, there is no remission. These are And yet if you examine these people the words of God. He has put them into a closely, you will obtain their consent to the record. Every one of us may read them, position, that there is a law, and that the huand compare the sayings of God, with the man race are bound to obedience, and that the doings of God, and if they do not correspond, authority of the law is supported by sancthe one with the other, we may charge him tions, and that the truth, and justice, and with falsehood in the face of his insulting dignity of the Supreme Being, are involved enemies, and lift the voice of mockery in these sanctions being enforced and exeagainst him, and feel the triumph which cuted. They do not refuse the tenet that man rebels feel, when they witness the timidity is an accountable subject, and that God is a of a feeble monarch, who does not, or dares judge and a lawgiver. All that we ask of not, carry his threats into accomplishment. them, then, is, to examine the account And is it possible, that the throne of the which this subject has to render, and they eternal God can rest on a basis so tottering,- will find, in characters too glaring to be reor that, if ever he shall descend to the mani-sisted, that, with the purest and most perfestation of mercy, he will not give the fect individual amongst us, it is a wretched

account of guilt and of deficiency. That law, which is held to be in full authority and operation over us, has been most unquestionably violated. Now, what is to be made of this? Is the subject to rebel, and disobey every hour, and the king, by a perpetual act of indulgence, to efface every character of truth and dignity from his government? Do this and you depose the legislator from his throne. You reduce the sanction of his law to a name and a mockery. You bring down the high economy of heaven, to the standard of human convenience. You pull the fabric of God's moral government to pieces; and unsubstantiate all the solemnity of his proclaimed sayings, all the lofty annunciations of the law, and of the prophets, all that is told of the mighty apparatus of the day of judgment, all that revelation points to, or conscience can suggest, of a living and a reigning God, who will not let himself down to be affronted, or trampled upon, by the creatures whom he has formed.

They who, in profession, admit the truth of God, and yet take comfort from his mercy, without looking to him who.bare in his own person, the accomplishment of all the threatenings, do in fact turn that truth into a lie. They, who, in profession, admit the justice of God, and yet trust in the remission of their sins, without any distinct acknowledgement of him on whom God has laid the burden of their condemnation, do in fact prove, that in their mouths justice is nothing but an unmeaning articulation. They who, in profession, admit the authority of those great and unchanging principles, which preside over the whole of God's moral administration, and yet assign to him such a loose and easy connivance at iniquity, as by a mere act of tenderness, to recal the every denunciation that he had uttered against it, do in fact put forth a sacrilegious hand, to the pillars of that immutability, by which the government of creation is upheld and perpetuated. Let them rest assured, that there is no way of reconciliation,but such a way as shields all the holy, and pure, and inflexible attributes of the Divinity, from degradation and contempt.

Out of that hiding-place which is made known in the gospel, all that is just, and severe, and inflexible in the perfections of God, stands in threatening array against every son and daughter of the species. And if they will not look to God as he sets himself forth to us in the New Testament,-if they refuse to look unto him as God in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, and not imputing unto them their trespasses, if they set aside all that is said about the blood of the everlasting covenant, and the new and living way of access, and the manner in which the mediatorship of Christ hath repaired all the indignities of

sin, and shed a glory over the truth and justice of the lawgiver,-if they will still persist in looking to him through another channel than that of his own revelation; he will persist in looking to them with the aspect of a stern and unappeased enemy. He will not let down the honours of his inflexible character, for the sake of those who refuse his way of salvation. He will not fall in with the delusions of those who profess to revere this character, and then shake the whole burden of conscious guilt and infirmity away from them, by the presumption, that in some way or other, the mercy of God will interpose to defend them from the vengeance of his more severe and unrelenting perfections. The one and the only way, in which he dispenses mercy, is through the atonement of Christ,—and if your confidence be laid in any other quarter, he will put that confidence to shame. He will not accept the prayers of those, who can thus make free with the unchangeable attributes which belong to him. He will not descend with such to any intercourse of affection whatever. He will not own the approaches, nor will he deal out any boon from the storehouse of his grace, to those who profess a general confidence in his mercy-when, instead of a mercy which guards, and dignifies, and keeps entire the whole glory and character of God, it is a mercy which belies his word, which invades his other perfections, which spoils the divine image of its grandeur, which breaks up the whole fabric of his moral government, and would make the throne of heaven the seat of an unmeaning pageant, the throne of an insulted and degraded sovereign.

The religion of nature,-or the religion of unaided demonstration, or the religion of our most fashionable and philosophical schools, leaves this question totally undisposed of;-and at the same time, till the question be resolved, all the hopes of the human soul are in a state of the most fearful uncertainty. This religion makes God the subject of its demonstrations, and it draws out a list of attributes, and it makes the justice of God to be one of these attributes, and the placability of God to be another of them, and it admits that it is in virtue of the former perfection of his nature, that he makes condemnation and punishment to rest on the head of those who violate his law, and that it is in virtue of the latter perfection that he looks connivance, and extends pardon to such violations.

Now, the question which the disciples of this religion have never settled, is, how to strike the compromise between these attributes. They cannot dissipate the cloud of mystery, which hangs over the line of demarcation that is between them. They cannot tell in how far the justice of God will insist on its exactions and its claims, or