land, to submit yourselves unto the Holy Ghost, who alone can work in the heart the fruits of righteousness; and to give the honour and glory to Jesus, who baptizeth with the Holy Ghost; who died for our sins, and rose again for our justification: into whom they have been baptized, and through whom they have the remission of sins; in whom God is reconciled unto a sinful world, not imputing unto them their trespasses. Him reverence, Him worship, who hath given Christ to be Head over all unto his church: head over the state, which is power; head over science and knowledge; head over holiness; the Author and Finisher of our faith; God over all, blessed for ever.

III. Let us now endeavour to search a little deeper into this formality of godliness without its power, and endeavour to expose what we conceive to be the most subtle, and therefore the most successful, of Satan's delusions. That revival of reverence for the outward form of religion which hath shewn itself in Christendom since the first explosion of infidelity, and that greater pride in the various establishments and denominations of religion, is a thing which, though it buoys up the hopes of pious people with better days about to come unto religion, they do yet clearly discern, and readily allow, to be a form of godliness without its power: and in like manner may it be said of the other artifice of Satan, described above, that, though pious people are strangely deluded by the pre

tensions of infidelity to do the work of the Holy Spirit amongst the people, and though they very wrongfully associate themselves with these free-thinkers, and take part in their infidel schemes of enlightening, emancipating, improving, and blessing the people; still, when the subject is pressed home, they are able to perceive, and will allow, that little true benefit will be effected, save by the dissemination of the Scriptures, the preaching of the Gospel, and the work of the Holy Ghost. And all that I have further to say upon these two heads is, that I greatly desire that pious people, who have attained unto such discernment of the formality on the one hand, and the intellectual usurpation upon the other, would be a little more decided in their judgment, in their speech, and in their behaviour, with respect to both. But I have now to take up a third view of this work of Satan in counterfeiting the Spirit, which doth wholly and entirely concern the pious and spiritual themselves. It is a very difficult subject, but I do not despair, by the blessing of God, of throwing some light upon it, for the guidance of his people. It is the direct counterfeit of the work of the Spirit in the heart and soul of believers: to expose which it will be necessary, first, to open more exactly what is the work of the Spirit, that we may the better discern its form. The fruit of the Spirit, as set in contrast with the works of the flesh, is "love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness,

goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." These are the blessed conditions into which a soul is brought by the inhabitation of the Holy Ghost; being the natural dispositions of the new man, which no culture of education, nor gifts of nature, can work in the old man. And the Apostle,having made this enumeration, addeth these words,

Against such there is no law;" to signify, that these dispositions of the renewed man are not at all under the cognisance of the law, even of the law moral; but are really and truly proper to the Spirit only as he saith in the same place, " If ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law." In order, then, to the presence and power of these spiritual dispositions, there must be a deliverance from the legal dispositions. The bondage of the Law must be removed, in order to the freedom of the Spirit, the work of the Spirit being wholly super-legal. Now, I observe that the great body of the pious are still under the Law-not, I mean, as the ground of their justification, but as the rule of their living: there is nothing upon which they are more resolved, than that a man is not justified by the Law, but freely by the righteousness of Christ. And, next to this, they are rooted and grounded in the belief that we can do no good works but by the Holy Spirit. And, allowing these to be the two feet upon which standeth the body of doctrine taught and held amongst the pious, how can I say do you ask me?-that they are yet legal? I will shew you how.

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After you have received the Spirit, for what end have you received it? what doth he enable you to do? Is it not to lead a holy life? Yes, surely, to lead a holy life. According to what rule? of the Ten Commandments of the moral law? Yes, according to the moral law. Here, then, we have the Spirit bringing us back unto the Law; and, I ask, is not that legal?-Further, from what, I pray you, hath Christ delivered us? is it not from the curse of the law, by having been made a curse for us? And if Christ hath delivered us from the curse of the law, how should we still be under its obligations? that looks very much as if Christ had died in vain. If Christ delivers us from the law, and anon the Spirit brings us back again to the law, what shall we say, but that Christ and the Spirit work the one against the other? Furthermore, if the Spirit bringeth us again to what they call the moral law of the Ten Commandments, I ask, Doth he enable us to keep them, or not? You answer truly, Not, for I do daily offend in thought, word, and deed. So, then, the Spirit doth not enable us to keep the law; and it is a dishonoured law still; and the Spirit's work needeth to be atoned for, no less than the natural work; and it is still but an imperfect obedience, accepted for a perfect one: God enables us, by his Spirit, to do so much of his law, and Christ's work is accepted for the rest. Now, I freely confess that this

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sounds in my ear very much like the worldly man's theory of salvation,-that he does what he can, and God accepts Christ for the rest. Yet, notwithstanding these evident contradictions and confusions, I believe there is hardly one of the spiritual who dares say, with Paul, "I am not under the law;" I am redeemed from being under the law. They will readily say, I am not justified by the law; but they dare not say, I am not under the law as the rule of my life, but under grace. They are afraid of the retort which Paul immediately addeth, "What then; shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace?"

9

Now, before shewing how this returning unto the law is the mother of formality or death in the spirit (the law being to the spirit, what Babylon is to the church, the mother of fornications), I think it good to pause a moment, and remove the charge of Antinomianism, or licentiousness, which is fastened upon this, the doctrine of Paul's holy Epistles. Whenever you say a word against the law--like Paul, or like Luther, who spared it not-they wince again, and take offence, and set you down for a licentious and immoral man. But, holy brethren, the law of the Ten Commandments is not surely the beginning and origin of holiness, which beyond all doubt is in God himself: and being in God himself, anterior to its being upon the two tables, is not, I pray, the principle and fountain-head of holiness in the Holy Ghost?