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conclusion? How can justification be any other than confirmed and increased, when the faith is made perfect by works? Is there no danger of attributing merit to faith?

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It has been observed upon the wording of our eleventh Article, that the opposition there is not between works and faith, but between works and the merits of Christ: and as, according to St. Paul, we are not justified propter opera," so neither indeed are we propter fidem," but " per fidem :" in the same manner the Article does not forbid us to assert, in conformity with what is conceived to be the intention of St. James, that we are nevertheless justified "per opera:" in other words, though not by works primarily, or indeed at all, as a meritorious cause; yet subsequently, and dependently, as a necessary means. When the same Apostle puts the question, "Can faith SAVE a man?" there is no reason why we should consider the expression as more comprehensive than that of justification before God; nor can a barren and dead faith be said to justify in any sense. The notion of a justification before men probably took its rise from a passage of St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans, which the context requires should be differently interpreted. The Apostle's words

m James ii. 14.

are these; "If Abraham be justified by works, he hath whereof to glory, but not before God"," seeming to imply, that he might glory before men: but considering that St. Paul's object clearly was to prove that Abraham was not justified (in his sense of the word) by works at all, it is probable that nothing of the kind was intended. The meaning of the passage may perhaps be imperfectly expressed as follows. If Abraham were justified by the works here spoken of, if he were admitted into covenant with God on the ground of any antecedent merit of his own, any works of righteousness previously performed, (for here is no allusion to the offering up of Isaac,) of such a nature too as to impose an obligation, in that case case he would undoubtedly have whereof to glory: and had it been a transaction with any inferior and created being, such a thing might have been admitted—ἀλλ ̓ οὐ πρὸς TOV OEÒv-but never surely before the God to whom alone it belongs to justify. How shall the creature render the Creator his debtor, to whom he owes his very being? THEREFORE Abraham is not justified by works. In full agreement with which conclusion are the declarations of Scripture, to which therefore the Apostle at once resorts.

" Rom. iv. 2.

Respecting the sacrifice of Isaac, there can be no doubt that had it been performed previously to the promise, to atone for sin, and to purchase the favour of God, it had been a work of a far different character from that which belonged to it, when performed in obedience to a God in whom the patriarch believed. Let it ever be remembered, that the notion of human merit is impious and profane, and also totally absurd as involving an essential impossibility; we should be careful therefore how we charge any one in a Protestant country with entertaining it.

But secondly, the doctrine of human inability and the necessity of Divine grace, as it is equally important, so is it equally consequent upon baptismal regeneration. It is very

evident that there is no room left for selfsufficiency and self-dependence, when we have been taught to acknowledge that every good desire, even the first motions of the soul toward God and virtue, are the effects of preventing grace, implanted in us in our earliest years, and that we need also the continual help of God's Spirit assisting our own endeavours, that we may be enabled to bring them to good effect. As without this aid we can effect nothing, so here is no opportunity afforded for making the vain experiment. Moreover,

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lest the holy Spirit of God should be provoked to withdraw from us this necessary assistance, (which is therefore supposed to be granted,) we have warnings as to our obedience, very similar to those given to the Israelites, respecting the angel which conducted them, "Beware of him, obey his voice, provoke him not, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him P." It is true that the degrees of natural corruption are various, and the image of God in which man was created is not wholly obliterated before the sinner's final condemnation, nevertheless an estrangement from God, and an inability to return to him, are the universal effects of the fall. This we consider a fundamental doctrine, and one which must form a part of a correct religious education, notwithstanding the objections on the score of taste which have been lately raised against it. Further than this, however, Scripture and experience do not warrant us in asserting. The

Is it not a strange contradiction to assert at one time that man is totally corrupt and destitute of a spark of goodness; and at another, that a man may be virtuous and moral, and almost every thing praiseworthy and excellent, and yet at the same time unregenerate? in which case he must possess all those good qualities in his own strength and by nature.

P Exod. xxiii. 21.

belief that man is so corrupt as to be unable to follow the leadings of the Spirit, unless he is forced along by an irresistible impulse, is surely neither necessary, nor conducive, to the glory of God, or to the piety of man. We are apt, at times, to be misled by the apparent plausibility of our motive, and the claim which some have set up to a superior degree of divine illumination, by which their total corruption is revealed to them, is sufficient to compensate the feelings of debasement and degradation, which such a discovery would otherwise occasion. In truth, the pride and self-complacency which such an imagination is calculated to produce, greatly exceed any thing of the kind now to be apprehended from self-righteousness; and it is itself the more dangerous, as it is imposed upon us under the specious pretext of humility, and zeal for the honour of Christ. The mention of this enthusiastic pretence naturally leads us to notice an additional advantage to be derived from a conviction of the efficacy of Baptism, seeing it would furnish the most effectual means of preventing any one from falling into those doubts and perplexities, as to the secret counsels of God, which are the necessary accompaniments of a system of exclusive favouritism. The Church, in her Catechism, early instructs children to consider themselves as of the num

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