In the days of Jofhua, that eminent type of Christ, faith and works are happily reconciled; and whilst they walk hand in hand, Ifrael is invincible, the greatest difficulties are furmounted, and the land of promife is conquered, divided, and enjoyed.

Under the next judges faith and works feldom meet; but as often as they do, a deliverance is wrought in Ifrael. Working believers carry all before them : They can do all things thro' the Lord ftrengthening them: They are little omnipotents: but if they fuffer the antinomian Delilah to cut off their locks, you may apply to them the awful words of David (fpoken to magiftrates, who forfake the way of righteousnefs): I have faid, Ye are Gods, and all of you are children of the moft High; but ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes; like Zimri or Corah, Dathan or Abiram.

The character of Samuel, the laft of the judges, is perfect. From the cradle to the grave he believes and works; he ferves God and his generation. His fons, like thofe of Eli, halt in practice, and their faith is an abomination to God and man. David believes, works, and kills the blafpheming Philistine. He flides into antinomian faith, wantonly feduces a married woman, and perfidiously kills an honest man. Solomon follows him in the narrow path of working faith, and in the broad way of fpeculative and practical antinomianifm. The works of the fon correfpond with those of the father. Happy for him, if the repentance of the idolatrous king, equalled that of his adulterous parent!

In the days of Elijah, the gates of hell feemed to have prevailed against the church. Queen Jezebel had cut off the prophets of the Lord, and appointed 400 chaplains to his majefty king Ahab, who fhared the dainties of the royal table, and therefore found it easy to demonftrate, that pleading for Baal was orthodoxy, and profecuting honeft Naboth as a blafphemer of God and the king, was an inftance of true loyalty. But even then all were not loft: Seven thousand men fhewed

their faith by their works; they firmly believed in Jehovah, and steadily refused bowing the knee to Baal.

In the days of Ifaiah and Jeremiah, wickedness, perfecution, and imaginary good works prevailed under a show of zeal for the temple, and of regard for the people of God. But even then alfo, there was a small remnant of believing and working fouls, who fet fire to the ftubble of wickedness during the pious reigns of Hezekiah and Jofiah. ·

Follow the chofen nation to Babylon. They all profefs the faith ftill: but how few believe and work! Some do however: and by their work of faith and patience of hope they quench the violence of the fire, and flop the mouths of lions: and what is more extraordinary ftill, they ftrike with astonishment a fierce tyrant, a Nebuchadnezzar; they fill with wonder a cowardly king, a Darius: and difarming the former of his rage, the latter of his fears, they fweetly force them both to confefs the true God among their idolatrous courtiers, and, throughout their immenfe dominions.

In the days of Herod the double delufion is at the height. John the baptift boldly bears his teftimony against it in the wilderness, and our Lord upon the mount, in the temple, and every where. But alas! what is the confequence? By detecting the antinomianifm of the pharifees, and the pharifaifm of antinomians, he makes them defperate. The fpirit of Cain rifes with tenfold fury against an innocence fo far fuperior to that of Abel. Pharifees and Herodians must abfolutely glut their malice with his blood. He yields to their rage; and while he puts away fin by the facrifice of himself, he condefcends to die a martyr for the right faith, and the true works: he feals as a dying priest the truth of the two gospel axioms, which he had so often fealed as a living prophet, and continues to feal as an eternal Melchifedec.

The apostles, by precept and example, powerfully enforce their Lord's doctrine and practice. Their lives are true copies of their exhortations: Their deepest fermons are only exact defcriptions of their

behaviour.

behaviour. It is hard to fay which excite men most to believe and obey, their feraphic difcourfes or their angelic conduct. Their labours are crowned with general fuccefs. Judaism and heathenifm are every where ftruck at, and fall under the thunder of their words of faith, and the fhining power [might I not fay the lightening] of their works of love. Thus the world is turned upside down before faith and works; the times of refreshing come from the prefence of the Lord; and earth, curfed as it is, becomes a paradife for obedient believers.

Hell trembles at the revolution; and before all is loft, Satan haftens to transform himself into an angel of light. In that favourable difguife, he puts his usual ftratagem in execution, against the believing, working, and fuffering church. He inftills fpeculative faith, pleads for relaxed manners, puts the badge of contempt upon the daily crofs, and gets the immenfe body of the Gnoftics and Laodiceans into his fnare. Sad and fure is the confequence. The genuine works of faith are neglected: Idle works of men's invention are fubftituted for thofe of God's commandments. And fallen churches, thro' the smooth way of antinomianifm, return to the covert way of pharifaism, or to the broad way of infidelity.

Such was the deplorable condition of the western church when Luther appeared. True faith was dethroned by fuperftitious fancy: and all the works of the former were well nigh choaked by the thorns that fprang from the latter. The zealous reformer with his fharp feythe juftly cut them down thro' a confiderable part of Germany. His terribly-fuccessful weapon, which had already done fome execution in the Netherlands, France and Italy, might have reached Rome itself, if the effects of his unguarded preaching had not dreadfully broke out around him in the North.

There the balance of the evangelical precepts was loft. Solifidians openly prevailed. Our Lord's fermon upon the mount, and St. James's epiftle, were either explained away, or wished out of the bible.

The

The amiable, practicable law of Christ was perpetually confounded with the terrible, impracticable law of inRocence: and the avoidable penalties, of the former, were injudiciously reprefented as one with the dreadful curfe of the latter, or with the abrogated ceremonies of the Mofaic difpenfation. Then the law was publicly wedded to the devil, and poor proteftant folifidians were taught to bid equal defiance to both.

The effect foon anfwered the caufe. Lawlefs believers, known under the name of Anabaptifts, arose in Germany. They fancied themselves the dear, the elect people of God; they were compleat in Chrift; their election was abfolutely made fure; all things were theirs; and they went about in religious mobs to deliver people from legal bondage, and bring them into gospel-liberty, which, in their opinion, was a li berty to defpife all laws divine and human, and to do, every one, what was right in his own eyes. Luther was fhocked and cried out; but the mischief was done, and the reformation difgraced: nor did he perfeveringly apply the proper remedy pointed out in the minutes, falvation not by the merit of works, but by the works of faith as a condition.

"We

Nevertheless he was wife enough to give up the root of the mifchief in the Lutheran articles of religion, prefented to the Emperor Charles the Vth at Augsburg, whence they were called the Augsburgconfeffion. In the XIIth of thofe articles, which treats of repentance, we find thefe remarkable words, teach touching repentance, that thofe who have finned after baptifm, may obtain the forgiveness of their fins AS OFTEN AS they are converted," &c. Again, "We condemn the Anabaptifts, who fay, that those who have been once juftified can no more lofe the holy spirit."

This doctrine clearly opened, and frequently inforced, might have flopped the progrefs of antinomianifm. But alas! Luther did not often infiit upon it, and fometimes he feemed even to contradict it. In the mean time Calvin came up; and tho' I must do him the juftice to acknowledge, that he feldom went

C

the length of modern Calvinifts in fpeculative antinomianifm, yet he made the matter worse by advancing many unguarded propofitions about abfolute decrees, and the neceffary, final perseverance of backfliding believers.

:

This doctrine, which, together with its appendages, fo nicely reconciles Baal and free Grace; a little, or [if the backflider is fo minded] a good deal of the world, and heaven; this fiefh pleafing doctrine, which flyly parts faith and works, while it decently unites Chrift and Belial, could not but be acceptable to injudicious and carnal Proteftants and to make it pafs with others, it was pompously decorated with the name of the doctrine of grace; and free grace-preachers, as they called themselves, infinuated that St. James's doctrine of Faith being dead without works, was a doctrine of wrath, an uncomfortable antichriftian doctrine, which none but "proud jufticiaries" and rank papifts could maintain. Time would fail to mention all the books that were indirectly written against it; or to relate all the abuse that was indirectly thrown upon these two propofitions of St. Paul, Whatsoever a man foweth that shall he also reap, and If ye live after the flesh ye fhall die.

Let it fuffice to oblerve, that by these means the hellish fower of antinomian tares prevailed. Thoufands of good men were carried away by the stream, And, what is more furprifing ftill, not a few of the wife and learned, favoured, embraced, and defended the antinomian delufion.

Thus what Luther's folifidian zeal had begun, and what Calvin's predeftinarian mistakes had carried on, was readily completed by the fynod of Dort; and the antinomianifm of many proteftants, was not lefs confirmed by that affembly of calviniflic divines ; than the pharifaifm of many papitts, had been before by the council of Trent,

It is true that as fome good men in the church of Rome, have boldly withstood pharifaical errors, and openly pleaded for falvation by grase thro' faith: fo

fome