put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God doth it, that men should fear before him *, and acknowledge, that the excellency of converting power is of him, and not of us t. A modern schismatic, now living, thought he both showed his wit, and graveled his opponents, in saying, that, according to the doctrine of our church, "The souls of men can no more vanquish the saving grace of God, than their bodies can resist a stroke of lightning." I would ask the objector, whether he ever knew of any lightning, like that which flashed from the Mediator's eye, when he turned and looked upon Peter? And something similar is experienced by every converted person. The Lord turns and looks upon a sinner, who then relents, and cries out, with his whole heart, O Lord my God, other lords besides thee, have had dominion over me; but now, by thee, through the energy of thy renewing influence, will I make mention of thy name only.-Whom have I in heaven, but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire, in comparison of thee ‡.-When God says to the heart, seek thou my face; the reply is, and cannot but be, thy face, Lord, will I seek §. For God, who, in the beginning of the creation, commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath, by an exertion of power, equally invincible, and as certainly effectual, shined into our hearts, to give us the light of the knowledge of God, as it is manifested in the person and grace of Jesus Christ. Wherefore then do men say, we are lords, and we will come no more unto thee*, except we ourselves choose it?—Alas, alas! did the matter rest with us, we should never choose to come to God at all. If he did not first change our wills, we should never even will that great change, that internal regenera * 2 Cor. iv. 7. + Isa. xxvi. 13. 2 Cor. vi. 6. Psalm lxxiii 25. * Jer. ii. 31. tion, without which, no man can see the kingdom of heaven *. God, I am bold to declare, would not have been Lord of any hearts, now under this roof, had he not, by the constraining power of his own love, effectually gained them over, and invincibly attached them to his blessed self. The glorious and independent Creator made us at first, without our leave; and yet, according to the modern system, he must ask and wait for our leave, before he can make us anew! Do you desire to know the judgment of the church upon this point? You have it in her XVIIth article; where speaking of God's elect people, she asserts, that "they are called, according to his purpose, by his Spirit working in due season:" and immediately adds, that "they through grace, obey the calling." God's converting call, therefore, is such as produces obedience to it: i. e. it is triumphantly efficacious; and rendered successful, not by the will and towardliness of the person called, but by the power and grace of him that calleth. Nay, so far is the efficacy of divine influence from being suspended on any internal or external ability of the creature, that in our Xth article, concerning free-will, the church expresses herself thus: The condition of man, since the fall of Adam, is such, that he cannot turn, nor" even prepare himself, by his own natural strength and good works, to faith and calling upon God." VI. What think you of Antinomianism? By Antinomianism, I mean, That doctrine, which teaches, "That believers are released from all obligation to observe the moral law, as a rule of external obedience: That, in consequence of Christ's having wrought out a justifying righteousness for us, we have nothing to do, but to sit down, eat, drink, and be merry; that the Messiah's merits supersede * John iii. 3. the necessity of personal inherent sanctification; and that all our holiness is in him, not in ourselves ; that the aboundings of divine grace give sanction to the commission of sin; and, in a word, that the whole preceptive law of God is not established, but repealed and set aside, from the time we believe in Christ." This is as contrary to sound doctrine, asit is to sound morals; and a man need only act up to these principles, to be a devil incarnate. It is impossible that either the Son of God, who came down from heaven to perform, and to make known his Father's will; or that the Spirit of God, speaking in the scriptures and acting upon the heart, should administer the least encouragement to negligence and unholiness of life. Therefore, that opinion, which supposes personal sanctification to be unnecessary to final glorification, stands in direct opposition to every dictate of reason, to every declaration of scripture. Indeed, the very nature of election, of faith, and of all covenant grace whatever, renders holiness absolutely indispensable: forasmuch as, without a spiritual and moral resemblance of God, there can be no real felicity on earth, nor any future enjoyment of heaven.-Suppose, we appeal to experience? I speak now to you, who know in whom ye have believed; to you, who have received the atonement, and who have been sensibly reconciled to God by the death of his Son. If, at any time, ye have been off your guard, and suffered to lapse into sin; how have ye felt yourselves afterwards? Ye have gone with broken hearts and with broken bones *. Ye have found it to be indeed an evil and a bitter thing, to depart, though ever so little, from the Lord. Ye know by dismal experience, that the way of transgressors is hard; and that sin, like Ezekiel's roll, is written within and without, with lamentation and mourning and woe. The gall of bitterness is inseparable from the bond of iniquity. Upon the principle, therefore, of mere self-interest (to go no higher), a true believer cannot help aspiring to holiness and good works. Heaven must be brought down into the human soul, ere the human soul can be fitted for heaven. There must, as the school men speak, be "a congruity and similitude between the faculty and the object," i. e. there must be an inward meetness for the vision and glory of God, wrought in you by his holy Spirit, in order to render you susceptible of those exalted pleasures, and that fulness of joy, which are in his presence, and at his right hand, for ever. Was thy soul, O unconverted sinner, to be this moment, separated from thy body, and even admitted into heaven (supposing it was possible for an unregenerate spirit to enter there); heaven would not be heaven to thee. You cannot relish the blessedness of the new Jerusalem, unless God, in the mean while, makes you partaker of a new nature. The Father chose his people to salvation; the Son purchased for them the salvation, to which they were chosen; and the blessed Spirit fits and qualifies them for that salvation, by his renewing influences: for, as a dead man cannot inherit an estate, no more can a dead soul (and every soul is spiritually dead, until quickened and born again of the Holy Ghost) inherit the kingdom of God. Yet, sanctification and holiness of life do not constitute any part of our title to the heavenly inheritance; any more than mere animal life entitles a man of fortune to the estate he enjoys: he could not, indeed, enjoy his estate, if he did not live; but his claim to his estate arises from some other quarter. In like manner, it is not our holiness that entitles us to heaven; though no man can enter heaven, without holiness. God's gratuitous donation, and Christ's meritorious righteousness, constitute our right to future glory: while the Holy Ghost, by inspiring us with spiritual life (of which spiritual life, good works are the evidences and the actings) puts us into a real capability of fitness for that inheritance of endless happiness, which, otherwise, we could never in the very nature of things, either possess or enjoy. "Let it be observed," says one of the most learned and judicious writers of this age, "that Christ's active obedience to the law for us, in our room and stead, does not exempt us from personal obedience to it; any more than his sufferings and death exempt us from corporal death, or from suffering for his sake. It is true, indeed, we do not suffer and die, in the sense he did; to satisfy justice, and atone for sin so neither do we yield obedience to the law, in order to obtain eternal life by it. By Christ's obedience for us, we are exempted from obedience to the law, in this sense: but not from obedience to it, as a rule of walk and conversation, by which to glorify God, and express our thankfulness to him for his abundant mercies."-Travellers inform us, that in Turkey, the partisans of the several denominations there, are distinguished by the colour of their shoes: so that, if you meet any person in the streets, you need only look at his feet, to know of what religion he is. And may not the truth of grace be discerned, to at least, an high degree of probability, by the life and conversation of those who make a religious profession? The man who says that he knows God, and in works denies him; who calls Christ, Lord, Lord, but does not the things that he enjoins; whose voice, indeed, is Jacob's voice, but his hands are the hands of* Esau; resembles our Saviour's persecutors and mur * A very capital painter, in London, lately exhibited a piece, representing a friar, habited in his canonicals. View the painting at a distance, and you would think the friar to be in a praying |