quities; to reconcile you to himself; to give you a name and a place among his children; and will you reject his offer? Reflect on the madness of such a conduct. Reflect on your utter need of the blessing which you thoughtlessly despise. Can you stand in judgment before the Almighty? Can you perfectly answer the just demands of his spiritual and extensive law? Consider what that law requires of you. 66 The law requires you to love God supremely above all things. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart." It forbids you to "set up your idols in your heart;" to bestow on any creature that place in your affections, which belongs to your Creator only. "My son, give me thine heart."* The law requires you to be pure in heart." It pronounces the inward indulgence of sin to be equally criminal with the outward practice. "Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. He that hateth his brother is a murderer."+ The law requires you to maintain "truth in the inward parts." It examines the motives of your conduct. It determines the relative value of any action, not by its outward appearance, not by its seeming agreement with the letter of the precept, but by the secret principle from which it springs. It commands you in all things to have a single eye towards God; to be influenced by a prevailing regard to his favour, his will, and his glory. "Whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." Such is the extensive and spiritual nature of that law, which never for the shortest interval, abates of its strictest demands. Bring then your hearts and lives to this test. Compare your actions, words, and thoughts, your desires, affections, tempers, and intentions, from the first dawn of reason to the present moment, with the heartsearching and comprehensive demands of the moral law. Survey, reflected in this faithful mirror, the number and the magnitude of your sins. How repeatedly have you violated the letter of this most holy law, by doing what it prohibits, by leaving undone what it enjoins? How incessantly have you violated the spirit of it? Nay, when * Deut. vi. 5. Prov. xxiii. 26. + Psalm li. 6. + Matthew v. 28. 1 John iii, 15. 1 Cor. x. 31, did you ever fully comply with its spiritual injunctions? In numberless instances you have evidently broken its precepts. Even in those things in which you have appeared to obey them; has your obedience been such as is required? In all your best actions, in all your seeming compliances with the divine commands, have you been actuated supremely by love to God, and by regard to his glory? Have not many selfish, inferior, unworthy motives continually interfered? Recollect, if you are able, that one single day, throughout which you have preserved, in the outward and in the inward man, a perfect conformity to the letter and the spirit of the divine law. Recollect, if you are able, that one single transaction of your life, which you could call upon the holy God to witness as being free, both in the motive and in the execution, from any mixture of selfishness and impurity. Weighed in these balances (and they are the balances of the sanctuary) are you not found wanting? Measured by this standard, far from having a righteousness of your own commensurate to the demands of the law, are you not miserably defective? Are you not "all as an unclean thing? Are not all your righteousness as filthy rags?" Thus circumstanced, will you refuse the gift of righteousness? Will you reject the offer of that weddinggarment, in which alone you can be worthy to partake of the marriage supper of the Lamb? Deal not so unwisely. Look forward to the time, when, if you shall have persisted in this refusal, you will be speechless before God, and the assembled universe. Have mercy on your own souls. "We pray you in Christ's stead, Be ye reconciled to God. As workers together with him, we beseech you, that ye receive not the grace of God in vain." No longer treasure up wrath against the day of wrath. Cast away the of your weapons fruitless warfare. "Submit yourselves unto God.-Take hold of his strength, that you may make peace with him, and you shall make peace with him." But are there not some who deeply feel their need of the gift of righteousness; who earnestly long for the possession of it; but who from a sense of their exceeding sin * Isaiah, lxiv. 6. 'Reconciliation with fulness distrust their title to it? our offended God is the blessing, which we most fervently desire. But it is a blessing, of which at present we are utterly unworthy: a blessing, to which under our load of guilt, we cannot venture to aspire: a blessing, for which we must be content to wait, till we are more fitted for receiving it.' Such is their language. But whence do such sentiments arise? They have a shew of humility: but at the bottom they spring from the suggestions of pride, which still lurks within. My brethren, if you maintain these sentiments the cause is manifest. You have not yet entirely dismissed the idea of merit in the sinner. You have not eradicated the notion so firmly implanted in the natural heart, that the Almighty, in dispensing his favours, is influenced by a regard to some antecedent worthiness in his creatures. But what say the scriptures? "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord: As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.' Where is this antecedent worthiness to be obtained? If your guilt is now so great as to incapacitate you for receiving the gift of righteousness, when will it be sufficiently diminished? If you are now unfit for participating the grace of God, how will you be rendered fit? Admit, that from this moment you so entirely reform your heart and life, as never in a single instance to add to your present numberless transgressions; will such a reformation make the number of those transgressions less? Will future obedience, even if perfect, atone for the guilt, will it purchase the remission of the sins that are past? Will an unfailing compliance with the most rigorous demands of the law for the time to come, cancel the debt of ten thousand talents, which you have already contracted? Dismiss such vain pretensions. Your debt, your unworthiness, your guilt will never become less by any method of your own devising. Every attempt will but augment and aggravate them. Accept then the blessing, which is freely offered to you: offered, not because you are worthy to receive it; but because you are utterly unworthy because "where sin hath abounded, there *Isaiah, lv. 8, 9. grace has much more abounded.”* Say not, my sins are so great, that the blessing can never be designed for me.' Shall the beggar urge his poverty as a reason why he should not be relieved? Shall he say, ' when I am less in want, then I shall be a fitter object of your bounty?' Did the sick desist from applying to Jesus for for a cure, till by other means they had checked the progress, or had abated the violence of their disorders? Did the prodigal forbear from returning to his father, till he had first qualified himself for appearing before him in a more becoming and suitable condition! Had they acted on this principle, would not the diseased have remained without a cure? Would not the prodigal have miserably perished? Follow these examples. Apply without delay to your spiritual Physician." Have mercy on us, thou Son of David." He has grace and power to heal your guilty soul. "His blood cleanseth from all sin." Arise, and go to your heavenly Father. Say unto him, "Father I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son." He will run to meet you. He will stop your self-reproaches with tokens of his mercy. He will forgive you freely. He will put on you the best robe, the robe of righteousness. He will invest you with all the privileges of a son. He will save, He will rejoice over you with joy; He will rest in his love; He will joy over you with singing." For this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found." SERMON III. THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH ONLY, VINDICATED FROM THE CHARGE OF ENCOURAGING LICENTIOUSNESS. Do we then make void the law through faith? establish the law.-Romans iii. 31. God forbid! yea, we IN a former discourse I explained to you that method which infinite wisdom has revealed for the justification of * Rom. v. 20. a sinner. On the present occasion I purpose to direct your attention to the practical effects of that leading doctrine of the gospel. So early as the days of the apostle we find from the text that there were persons, who represented this doctrine as unfavourable to the interests of morality. They objected to the preachers of Justification by faith only, that they "made void the law." This charge the apostle most strenuously denies. He solemnly protests against any such inference as deducible from his doctrine and contends that it furnishes a conclusion of a very opposite tendency. "Do we make void the law through faith? God forbid! Yea, we establish the law." : In the subsequent ages of the church, objections of a similar nature have repeatedly been urged against the doctrine in question. And though their futility has been repeatedly exposed, yet even in the present times they are not seldom advanced with an air of confident assurance as if they had never been advanced before, or were incapable of being refuted. It is presumed then that a particular discussion of this point will prove neither an unseasonable nor an unprofitable employment. Accordingly I shall consider, I. The objection, that faith makes void the law. I. It is objected to the doctrine of Justification by faith only, that it "makes void the law:" that it renders the moral law useless and nugatory; and thus eventually tends to introduce and encourage licentiousness and sin. The charge is of a most serious nature; and if substantiated, must doubtless prove an insuperable bar to the admission of the doctrine; for it would prove that the doctrine could not be the doctrine of scripture. But it is contended on the other hand that no such objection can reasonably be urged; that faith does not make void the law. Let the examination of this question obtain that dispassionate attention, to which from its great importance it is entitled. The moral law is that rule to which we are obliged to conform. Whence does this obligation arise? From our relation to God, as rational creatures. Subjects of his universal empire, we are bound to obey, according to our D |