A

DISCOURSE,

TREATING OF

Legal Righteousness, Evangelical Righteousness, or, the Righteousness of Faith

THE DIFFERENCE

BETWEEN THE LAW AND THE GOSPEL,

AND

THE OLD AND NEW COVENANT;

O F

JUSTIFICATION AND DIVINE ACCEPTANCE;

AND THE CONVEYANCE OF THE EVANGELICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS TO US BY FAITH.

" Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." MATT. 5: 20.

" For the law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did." HEB. 8:

OF

LEGAL RIGHTEOUSNESS

AND OF

THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF FAITH.

ROMANS 9: 31, 32.

" But Israel which followed after the law of righteousness, has not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore Because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law.”

CHAP. 1:

The Introduction, spewing what it is to have a right Knowledge of Divine Truth, and what it is that is either available or prejudicial to the true Christian Knowledge and Life.

THE doctrine of the Christian religion propounded to us by our Savior and his apostles, is set forth with so. much simplicity, and yet with so much repugnancy to that degenerate spirit that rules in the hearts and lives of men, that we may truly say of it, it is bath the easiest and hardest thing. It is a revelation wrapped up in a complication of mysteries, like that book of the Apocalypse, which both unfolds and bides those great secrets that it treats of. The principles of true religion are all in themselves plain and easy, delivered in the most familiar way, so that he that runs may read them; they are so clear and perspicuous, that they need no key of demonstration to unlock them; and yet it is wisdom in a mystery which the princes of this world understand not; a sealed book which the greatest philosophers may be unacquainted with. It is like that pillar of fire and of a cloud that parted the Israelites and the Egyptians, giving a clear and comfortable light to all those that are under the guidance thereof, but being full of darkness to those that rebel against it. Divine truth is not to be discerned so much in a man's brain as in his heart. Divine wisdom is a tree of life to them that find her, and it is only life that can feelingly converse with life; all the thin speculations and subtile discourses of philosophy cannot so well unfold or define any sensible object, nor tell any one so well what it is, as his own naked sense will do. There is a Divine and spiritual sense which only is able to converse internally with the life and soul of Divine truth, as mixing and uniting itself with it, while vulgar minds behold only the outside of it. Though in itself it be most intelligible, and such as man's mind may most easily apprehend; yet there is a crust of impurity (as the Hebrew writers call it) upon all corrupt minds, which hinders the lively taste of it. This is the thick and palpable darkness which cannot comprehend that Divine light that shines in the minds of all men, but makes them deny that very truth, which they seem to entertain. The world through wisdom (as the apostle speaks), knew not God. Those great disputers of this world were too full of nice and empty speculations to know him who is only to be discerned by an humble and self-denying mind. Their curiosity served rather to dazzle their eyes than to enlighten them; while\hey rather braved themselves in their knowledge of the Deity, than humbly subjected their souls to a compliance with it; making the divinity nothing else but, as it were, a flattering glass that might reflect and set off to them the beauty of their own wit and parts; and while they seemed to converse with God himself, they rather courted their own image in him. Therefore the best acquaintance with religion is, a knowledge taught by God. It is a light that descends from heaven, which is only able to guide the souls of men to heaven from whence it comes. The Jewish doctors used to put it among the fundamental articles of their religion,” That their law was from heaven;” we may much rather reckon it amongst the principles of the Christian religion in a higher way, that it is an influx from God upon the minds of good men. And this is the great design of the gospel, to unfold to us the true way of recourse to God; a contrivance for uniting the souls of men to him, and deriving a participation of God to men, to bring in everlasting righteousness, and to establish the true tabernacle of God in the spirits of men, which was done in a typical and emblematical way under the law. And herein consists the main pre-eminence which the gospel has above the law, in that it so clearly unfolds the method of uniting human nature to Divinity, which the apostle seems mainly to aim at in these words-” But Israel which followed after the law of righteousness, bath not attained to the law of righteousness.”

CHAP. 2:

An Inquiry into that Jewish Notion of a legal Righteousness, which is opposed by St. Paul, viz. that the Law externally dispensed to them, and conjoined with the Power of their own- free Will, was sufficient to procure them Acceptance with God, and to acquire Merit enough to purchase eternal Life.

FOR the unfolding whereof we shall endeavor to search out, first, What the Jewish notion of righteousness was, which the apostle here condemns.

Secondly, What the evangelical righteousness, or righteousness of faith is, which he endeavors to establish iii: the room of it.

For the first. That which the apostle here blames the Jews for, seems to be nothing else but a compendium of all that which he elsewhere disputes against them for; which is not merely concerning the notion of justification,. as some think, viz. whether the formal notion of it respects only faith, or works in the person justified, (though there may be. a respect to that also), but it is of a greater latitude-it is concerning the whole way of life and happiness, and the proper scope of restoring mankind to, perfection and union with the Deity, which the Jews expected by virtue of that system of laws which was delivered upon Mount Sinai, augmented and enlarged by their own traditions; which, that we may the better understand, perhaps it may not be amiss a little to traverse the writings of their most approved ancient authors, that so finding out their constant-received opinions concerning their law and the works thereof, we may the more fully understand what St. Paul and the other apostles aim at in their disputes against them.

The Jewish notion generally of the law, is this: “That in that body of laws, distinguished ordinarily into moral, judicial, and ceremonial, was comprised the whole method of raising man to his perfection; and that they, having only this book of laws, without them to converse with, needed nothing else to procure eternal life, perfection, and happiness; as if this had been the only means God had for the saving of men and making them happy, to set before them, in an external way, a volume of laws, and so to leave them to work out and purchase to themselves eternal life in the observance of them.”

This general notion of theirs we shall unfold in two particulars: First, as a foundation of all the rest, they took. up this as a common principle, “That man had such an absolute and perfect free-will, and such a sufficient power from within himself to determine himself to virtue and goodness,- that he only needed some law to exercise this

innate power about; and therefore needed not that God should do any thing more for him than merely to acquaint him with his Divine will.”

And for this we have Maimonides asserting fully and magisterially, that this was one of their radices fidei, or articles of faith, and one main foundation upon which the law stood. His words are these, *, or treatise on, repentance, chap. 5: a The Power of freewill- is given to every man to determine himself (if he will) to that which is good, and to be good; or to determine himself to that which is evil, and to be wicked if he will. Both are in his power, according to what is written in the law, Behold, man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; that is to say, behold, this sort of creature, man, is alone (and there is not a second like to man) in this, viz. That man from himself, by his own proper knowledge and power, knows good and evil, and does what pleases him in an-uncontrollable way, so as none can hinder him as to the doing either good or evil.”

And a little after he thus interprets those words in the Lamentations of the repenting church, chap. 3: 40,”Let us search and try our ways, and turn unto the Lord, “Seeing we, who are endued with the power of free-will, have most wittingly and freely committed all our transgressions; it is meet and becoming we should convert ourselves by repentance, and forsake all our iniquities, forasmuch as this also is in our power; this is the importance of those words, Let us search and try our ways, and turn unto the Lord. And this is a great fundamental, the very pillar of the law and precept.”

Thus we see Maimonides, who was well versed in the ancientest Jewish learning, and in high. esteem among all the Jews, is pleased to reckon this as a main principle and foundation upon which that law stood; as indeed it must needs be, if life and perfection might be ac4uired by virtue of those legal precepts set before their external senses, and promulgated to their ears, as the statute-laws of any other common-wealth use to be. Which was the very notion they themselves had of these laws; and therefore in Bereshith Rabba, (a very ancient writing) the Jewish doctors taking notice of that passage in the Canticles,” Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,” thus comment upon it;” At the time of the giving of the law,.. the congregation of Israel desired that Moses might speak to them, they being not able to hear the words of God himself. And while he spoke, they heard, and, hearing, forgot; and thereupon moved this debate among themselves, What is this Moses, a man of flesh and blood and what is his law, that we so soon learn and so soon forget it 0 that God would kiss us with the kisses of his mouth!” That is, in their sense, that God would teach them in a more vital and internal way. And then (as they go on) Moses makes_ this answer,-” That this could not be then; but it should so come to pass in the time to come, in the days of the Messiah, when the law should be written in their hearts, as it is said, Jer.. xxxi. ~~ I will write it in their hearts.”

By this we may see how necessary it was for the Jews,, that they might be consistent to their grand principle of obtaining life and perfection by this outward law, to establish such a power of free-will, as might be able uncontrollably to entertain it, and so readily by its own strength perform all the dictates of it.

And that Maimonides was not the first of the Jewish writers who expound that passage, Gen. 3:” Behold, man is become like one of us, to know good and evil,” of free-will, may appear from the seventh Chaldee paraphrasts upon it, who all intimate the sense, and I grant, not without something of truth; for that liberty which mankind only in this lower world has above other creatures, may be there also meant. But whatever it is,, I am sure the Jewish commentators upon that place generally follow the rigid sense of Maimonides.

To this purpose R. Bechai, a man of no, small learning. both in the Talmudick and Cabalistical doctrine of the, Jews, tells us, that upon Adam's first transgression, that grand liberty of indifferency equally to good or evil began to discover itself; whereas before that, he was all intellect and wholly spiritual, being from within only determined to that which was good. But I shall at large relate his words: “Adam, before his sin, acted from a necessity of nature, and all his actions were nothing else but the issues of pure and perfect understanding. Even as the angels of God, being nothing else but intelligences, put forth nothing else but acts of intelligence; just so was man before he sinned, and eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil; but after this transgression, he had the power of election and free-will, whereby he was_ able to will good or evil.” So that, according to the mind of our author, the original free-will is to be derived not so much from the creation, as from man's transgression, or eating of the forbidden fruit. So that the indifferency of man's will to good or evil, and a power to determine himself freely to either, did then first of all unfold itself; whereas before, he conversed like a pure intelligence with its First Cause, without any propension at all to material things, being determined, like a natural agent, solely to that which is good.

All this we have confirmed out of Nachmanides, an author sufficiently versed in all matters concerning the Jewish religion. His words are these, in his comment upon Deut. 30: 13,”From the time of the creation man had a power of free-will within him to do good or evil, according to his own choice, as also through the whole time of the law; that so he might be capable of merit in freely choosing what is good, and of punishment in electing what is evil;” wherein he tells us that this free-will has continued ever since the creation; we must not understand rigidly the very moment of man's creation, but that epocha taken with _ some latitude, so' that it may include the time of man's first transgression. For he also after suggests, that before the first sin, Adam's power to good was a mere natural power, without any such indifferency to evil; and therefore he makes that state of Adam the model of future perfection, which the most ancient Jewish authors seem to expect in the time of their Messiah, which he expresses in this manner; “He shall not covet nor desire, (after a sensitive manner) but man shall return in the times of the Messiah to that primitive state he was in before the sin of the first man, who naturally did whatsoever was good, neither was there any thing and its contrary then in his choice.” Upon which ground he afterwards concludes, “That in those times of the Messiah there shall neither be merit nor demerit, because there shall be no free-will, which is the alone mother and nurse of both of them: but in the mean while, that good or evil is wholly in our own choice'; none prejudicing, or in the least degree hindering, the exercise of this liberty, neither from within nor from without, “none either in heaven or in earth.” And thus the same Nachmanides expounds that solemn attestation, Dent. 30: 19, wherein heaven and earth are called to witness that that day life and death were set before them; as if God himself had now established such a monarchial power in man, as heaven and earth should be in league with and faithful to.

Hereupon R. Saadia Gaon (so called by way of eminency) doubts not to tell us that the common sense of all the Jewish doctors was, that this liberty to good or evil was such an absolute authority established in a man's soul, that it was independent upon God himself; this being, as he says in the book called Sepher emunah, the meaning of that maxim amongst the Jews, sometimes mentioned in the Talmud, “All things are in the hand of God, except the fear of God.”

I am not ignorant there is another axiom of the Jews, which may seem partly to cross this,” That, assistance is. perpetually afforded to all endeavors both of sanctity and impiety.” But Maimonides has told us, they mean nothing else by it but this: That when men endeavour after the performance of the law, God, in a way of Providence, furnishes them with external matter and means, giving them peace and riches, and other outward accommodations, whereby they have advantage and opportunity to perform all that good which their own free-will determines them to. Whereas wicked men find the like help of external matter and means for accomplishing their wicked designs.

Thus we see how the Jews, that they might lay a foundation of merit, and build up the magnificent fabric of their happiness upon the sandy foundation of a dead letter without them, endeavored to strengthen it by as weak a rampart of their own self-sufficiency and the power of their own free-will, able, as they vainly imagined, to perform all righteousness, as being adequate and commensurate to the whole law of God in its most comprehensive sense and meaning; looking upon the Fall of Man as the rise of that giant-like free-will, whereby they were enabled to bear up themselves against heaven, as a great accessory to their happiness, through the access of that multitude of Divine laws which were given to them. And so they reckoned upon a more triumphant kind of happiness, to be achieved by the merit of their own works, than that beggarly kind of happiness, as they looked upon it, which cometh like an alms from Divine bounty. Accordingly they affirm,” That happiness, by way of re ward, is far greater and much more magnificent than that which is by way of mercy.”

CHAP. 3:

The second Ground of the Jewish Notion of a legal Righteousness, viz. That the Law delivered to them on Mount Sinai was a -sufficient Dispensation from God, and all that needed to be done by Wim to bring them to Perfection and Happiness. And that the Scope of their Law was nothing but to afford then several Ways and Means of Merit.

THE second ground of that Jewish notion of legal righteousness is this; ”That the law, delivered to them upon Mount Sinai, was a sufficient dispensation from God, and all that needed to be done by him for the advancing of them to a state of perfection and blessedness; and that the proper end of their law was nothing but to afford them several ways and means of merit.” Which is expressly delivered in the Mishnah, that therefore the precepts of the law were so many in number, that they might single out where they pleased, and in exercising themselves therein, procure eternal life: so Obadias de Bartenora expounds it; “Whosoever shall perform any one of the six hundred and thirteen precepts of the law (so many they make in number), without any worldly respects, for love of the precepts, behold this man shall merit thereby everlasting life.” For they judged a reward due to the performance of every precept, which reward they supposed to be increased according to the secret estimation which God himself bath of any precept.

This was a great matter of debate among the Jews_, which precepts they were that had the greatest reward due to the performance of them; which controversy Maimonides in his comment upon this place thus resolves” That the measure of the reward annexed to the negative precepts might be collected from the measure of the punishments that were consequent upon the breach of them.” But this knot could not be so well solved in reference to the affirmative precepts, because the punishments annexed to the breach of them were more rarely defined in the law; accordingly he expresses himself to this sense; ”As for the affirmative precepts, it is not expressed what reward is due to every one of them; and for this end, that we may not know which precept is most necessary to be observed, and which precept is of less necessity.” And a little after he tells us,” that for this reason their wise men said, whosoever shall exercise himself about any one precept, ought, without hesitation, to continue in the performance of it, as being in the mean time freed from minding any other: For if God had declared which precept himself had most valued and settled the greatest revenue of happiness upon, then other precepts would not have been minded; and any one that should have busied himself in a precept of a lower nature, would presently have left that, when opportunity should have been offered of performing a higher.” Arid hence we have also another Talmudical canon for the performing of precepts, of the same nature with the former, quoted by our foresaid author,” It is not lawful to skip over precepts, that is, as he expounds it, when a man is about to observe one precept, he may. not skip over and relinquish that, that so he might apply himself to the observation of another.” And thus, as the performance of any precept bath a certain reward annexed to it; so the measure of the reward, they suppose to be increased according to the number of those precepts which they observe, as it is defined by R. Tarphon, in the foresaid Mishnah, c. 2.” If thou hast been much in the study of the law, thou shall be rewarded much; for faithful is the Lord thy master, who will render to thee a reward proportional to thy work.” And lest they should not yet be liberal enough of God's cost, they are also pleased to distribute rewards to any Israelite that shall abstain from the breach of a precept: for so we find it in the Mishnah,” Whosoever keeps himself from the breach of a precept, shall receive the reward as if he had kept the precept.

But this which bath been said concerning the performance of any one precept, must be understood with this caution, that the performance of such a precept be a continued thing, so as that it may collect the performance of many good works into itself; otherwise, the single performance of any one precept is only available, according to the sense of the Talmudical masters, to cast the scale, when a man's good works and evil works equally balance one another, as Maimonides tells us in his comment upon the forenamed Mishnah.

For the better understanding whereof we must know, that the Jewish doctors are wont to distinguish three sorts of men, which are thus ranked by them, Men perfectly righteous, men perfectly wicked, and a middle sort of men betwixt them. Those they are wont to call perfectly righteous, who had no transgression or demerits that might be counted fit to be put into the balance against their merits; and those they called simply righteous; whose merits out-weighed their demerits; whereas, on the other side, the perfectly wicked in their sense were such as had no merits at all; and those simply wicked, whose demerits made the weightiest scale; and the middle sort were such as their good deeds and evil deeds equally balanced one another. Of this first sort of men, viz. the perfectly righteous, they supposed there might be many; and such the Pharisees seem to have been in their own esteem, in our Savior's time. And according to this notion, our Savior may seem to have shaped his answer to that young man in the gospel, who asked him,” What shall I do to inherit eternal life” To which our Savior propounds to him in so great a latitude, as thereby to take him off from his self-conceit, and that he might be convinced upon reflection, that he had fallen short of eternal life, in failing of a due performance of the Divine law. But he, insisting upon his own merit in this respect, inquires of our Savior whether there be yet any thing wanting to make him one perfectly righteous. To this our Savior replies,” If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast.” The meaning of which reply may, as I conceive, be this;-to convince him of his imperfect obedience to the law of God, from his over-eager love of this world. But, secondly, for those that were in the middle rank of men, the Jewish doctors had divers rules; as, 1. In case a man's evil works and good were equal, the addition of one either way might determine them to eternal life or misery. 2. That in case a man's evil works should preponderate and weigh down his good, yet he might cast the scale by repentance, if he would; or, in the other world, by chastisements and punishments he might make expiation for them. These and the like ways they found out, lest any of their fraternity should miscarry. To all which we must take in this caution, which they were pleased to deliver, viz. that men's works have their different weight, some good works being so weighty that they may weigh in the balance against many evil works, and vice versa.

All which we shall find largely set down by R. Albo, 1: ,*, and partly by R. Saadia; but especially by Maimonides, in his Treatise of Repentance, chap. 3: who also tells us of other expedients provided by their law for the securing of merit and happiness. And, in fine, they have found out so many artifices to entail a legal righteousness and eternal happiness upon all the Israelites, that, if it be possible, none might be left out of heaven; as may partly appear by that question captiously proposed to our Savior; ”Master, are there few that shall be saved” Whereby they expected to ensnare him, themselves holding a general salvation of all the Jews by virtue of the law, however their wickedness might abound. Which we expressly find set down by Maimonides in the fore-named place;” All wicked ones, whose evil deeds exceed their good deeds, shall be judged according to the measure of their evil deeds so exceeding; and afterwards they shall have a portion in the world to come; for that all Israelites have a portion in the world to come, and this notwithstanding their sins.” That maxim, a All Israelites have a portion in the world to come,” is taken out of the Mishnah 1. Sanhedr. c. 11, where it is put down as the most authentic opinion of the Jewish doctors, only some -few are there recited who are excepted from this happiness: otherwise their greatest malefactors are not excepted from it: for so Obadias de Bartenora unfoldeth their meaning;” Even such as are judged by the great Synedrirn worthy of death for their

wickedness, these have a portion in the world to come. By the way, we may observe what a lean and spiritless religion this of the Jews was; it was nothing but a lifeless form of external performances, which did not reach the inward man, being a mere bodily kind of drudgery and servility. And therefore our Savior, when he models out religion to them, Matt. 5: points them to something fuller of inward life and spirit, and such as might make them perfect, as their Father in heaven was perfect.

But before I leave this argument, it may not be amiss to examine what the Cabalistical Jews thought concerning this matter in hand, which in sum is this; That the law, delivered upon Mount Sinai, was a device God had to knit and unite the Jews and the Shechinah, or Divine presence, together.” Arid to this purpose R. Simeon Ben Jochai says, “Whosoever doth exercise himself in the law, doth merit the possession of the upper inheritance which is in the holy kingdom above; and doth also merit the possession of an inheritance here below in this world.” Where we may take notice that the ancient Jews looked upon the land of Canaan as being typical and significative of a higher inheritance in the kingdom of heaven.; both which they supposed to be the due rewards of men's works. And therefore they talk so much in the same place of guardian angels which are continually passing to and fro between heaven and earth, as the heralds and messengers of men's good works to God in heaven. And further upon these words in Levit. 18: 5,” Ye shall keep my statutes and judgments; which, if a man do, he shall live in them;” he tells us, “That the portion of Israel is meritorious, because that the Holy Blessed One delighted in them above all nations; and out of his favor and goodness to them gave the laws of truth, and planted amongst them the tree of life. Now what doth all this signify That since the Israelites are signed with the holy seal in their flesh, they are thereby acknowledged for. the sons of God. As on the contrary, they that are

not sealed with this mark in their flesh, are not the sons of God, but are the children of uncleanness; wherefore it is not lawful to contract familiarity with them, or to teach them the words of the law.” Which afterwards is urged further by another of their masters; ec Whosoever instructs any uncircumcised person, though but in the least precepts of the law, doth the same as if he should destroy the world, and deny the Name of the Holy Blessed One.

ALL which plainly amounts to thus much: That the law was given to the Israelites for this purpose, to enrich them with good works, and to augment. their merits, and so to establish the foundations of-life and blessedness amongst them; and to make it a medium of the union betwixt God and men, as R. Eliezer speaks of the near union between these three, the Holy Blessed One, the Law, and Israel.

There is one passage more in our fore-named author, R. Simeon Ben Jochai, at the end of Parashah Jethro, which may be worth our observing, as more fully-hinting the perfection of the law, and setting that forth as an absolute and complete medium of rendering a man perfect;” When the Israelites stood upon Mount Sinai, they saw God eye to eye, and understood all secrets of the law, and the same day all uncleanness passed away from them, and all their bodies did shine in brightness like to the angels of heaven when they put on their bright shining robes to fit themselves for the embassy upon which they are sent by God their Lord.” And a little after, thus: “And when their uncleanness passed away from them, the bodies of the Israelites became shining and clear without any defilement; and their bodies did shine as the brightness of the firmament.” He concludes,” When the Israelites received the law upon Mount Sinai, the world was then perfumed with a most aromatic smell, and heaven and earth were established, and the Holy Blessed One was known above and below, and he ascended in his glory above all things.” By all which expressions our author seems to aim at this, viz. To set forth the law as that which of itself was sufficient, without any other dispensation from God, for the perfecting of those to whom it was dispensed; and to make them possessors of all righteousness here, and glory hereafter.

Thus we have endeavored to make good that which we first propounded, namely, that the grand opinion of the Jews concerning the way to life and happiness was this:” That the law of God externally dispensed, and only furnished out to them on tables of stone, joined with the power of their own free-will, was sufficient both to procure them acceptance with God, and to acquire merit enough to carry them with spread sails to eternal blessedness.”

So that we may see those disputes which St. Paul and other apostles maintained against the Jews touching the law and faith, were not merely about that one question,” Whether justification formally and precisely respects faith alone;” but were of a much greater latitude.

CHAP. 4:

Concerning the Evangelical Righteousness, or the Righteousness of Faith, and the true -Difference between the Law and the Gospel, the old and the new Covenant.

HAVING done with the first inquiry, we now come to the second, which was this, ”What the evangelical righteousness, or the righteousness of faith is, which the apostle sets up against that of the law, and in what notion the law is considered by the apostle.” Which in sum was this, that the law was the ministry of death, and in itself an external and lifeless thing, neither could it procurer beget that Divine life in the souls of men, which God expects from all the heirs of glory, nor that glory which is only consequent upon a true, Divine life. Whereas, on the other side, the gospel is set forth as 'a mighty efflux and emanation of life and spirit freely issuing forth from an omnipotent source of race and love, as that true God-like vital influence whereby the Divinity derives itself into the souls of men, enlivening and transforming them into its own likeness, and strongly imprinting upon them a copy of its own beauty and goodness. Briefly,” It is that whereby God comes to dwell in us, and we in him.”

But that we may the more distinctly unfold the difference between ”that righteousness which is of the law,” and” that righteousness which is of faith,” and so the better show how the apostle undermines that fabric of happiness which. the Jews had built up for themselves; we shall observe, first in general, that the main thing which the apostle endeavors to beat down was, that proud and arrogant conceit which they had of merit, and to advance against it the notion of the Divine grace and bounty as the only fountain of all righteousness and happiness. For indeed that which all those Jewish notions aimed principally at, was the advancing of the powers of nature to such an height of perfection as might render them capable of meriting at God's hands. And that perfection, which they speak so much of, was nothing but a mere sublimation of their own natural powers, performed by the strength of their own fancies. And therefore these contractors with heaven were so pleased to look upon eternal life as a fair purchase which they might make for themselves at their own charge; as if the spring of all were in themselves. Their eyes were so much dazzled with those foolish fires of merit and reward kindled in their own fancies, that they could not see that light of Divine grace and bounty which shone about them.

And this swelling pride of theirs is that which St. Paul principally endeavors to chastise, in advancing faith so much as he doth in opposition to the works of the law. For which purpose he spends the first and second chapters of his epistle to the Romans in drawing up a charge of such a nature against Gentiles and Jews, but principally against the Jews, who were the grand justiciaries, that might make them bethink themselves of imploring mercy, and of, laying aside all plea of law and justice; and so chap. 3: 27, he shuts up all with a severe check to such presumptuous arrogance,” Where then is boasting” This seems, then, to be the main end which St. Paul every where aims at in opposing faith to the works of the law, namely, to establish the foundation of righteousness and happiness upon the free mercy and grace of God. The magnifying of which, in the real manifestations of it, he holds forth upon all occasions, as the design of the gospel-administration; seeing it is impossible for men, by any works they can perform, to satisfy God's justice for those sins which they have committed against hire, or truly to comply with his Divine will, without his Divine assistance. So that the method of reconciling men to God, and reducing straying souls back again to him, was to be attributed wholly to another original than that which the Jews imagined. But,

Secondly, that righteousness of faith which the apostle sets up against the law, and compares with it, is indeed in its own nature a vital and spiritual administration, wherein God converseth with man; whereas the law was merely an external or dead thing in itself, not able to beget any true Divine life in the souls of men. All that legal righteousness which the Jews boasted of, was but from the earth earthly; consisting merely in external performances, and so falling extremely short of that internal and God-like frame of spirit which is necessary for a true union of the souls of men with God, and for making them capable of true blessedness.

But that we may the more distinctly handle this argument, we shall endeavor to unfold the true difference between the law and the gospel, as it seems evidently to be laid down every where by St. Paul in his epistles. And the difference between them is clearly this, viz. That the law was merely an external thing, consisting in such precepts as had only an outward administration; but the gospel is an internal thing, a vital principle seating itself in the minds of men. And this is the proper difference between the law and the gospel, that the one is only an external administration, the other an internal. And therefore the apostle, 2 Cor. 3: 6, 7, calls the law,” the ministration of the letter” and” of death,” it being in itself but a dead letter; as all that which is without a man's soul must needs be. But on the other side he calls the gospel (because of the intrinsical and vital administration thereof in living impressions upon the souls of men)” the ministration of the Spirit,” and” the ministration of righteousness.” By which he cannot mean the history of the gospel; for that would make the gospel itself as much an external thing as the law, and, according to the external administration, as much a killing or dead letter as the law was: and so we see that the preaching of Christ crucified was” to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness.” But indeed he means a vital efflux from God upon the souls of men, whereby they are” made partakers of life and strength” from him and therefore (ver. 7,) he thus expounds his own meaning of that short description of the law, namely, *, I think, may be fitly thus translated,” it was a dead (or lifeless) administration,” (for so sometimes by an hebraism the genitive case in regimine is put for the adjective) or else” an administration of death exhibited in letters, and engraven in tables of stone:” and therefore he tells us (ver. 6,) what the effect of it was in those words,” The letter killeth,” as indeed all external precepts which have not a proper vital root in the souls of men, whereby they are able to secure them from the transgression of them, must needs do. Now to this dead or killing letter he opposes (ver. 8,) a quickening Spirit, or the ministration of the Spirit, which afterwards he expounds by the ministration of righteousness, that is, the evangelical administration. So that the gospel or evangelical administration must be an internal impression, a vivacious and energetical spirit and principle of righteousness in the souls of men, whereby they are inwardly enabled to express a real conformity Thereto. Upon this ground the apostle further pursues the effects of both these from the 14th verse to the end.

By all which the apostle means to shew us, how vast a difference there is between the external manifestations of God in a law of commandments, and those internal appearances of God, whereby he discovers the mighty power of his goodness to the souls of men.

Though the history and outward communication of the gospel to us, is to be always acknowledged as a special mercy and advantage, and certainly no less privilege to Christians than it was to the Jews to be intrusted with the oracles of God: yet it is plain that the apostle, where he compares the law and the gospel, doth by the gospel mean something which is more than an historical narration of the free love of God in the several contrivances of it for the redemption of mankind. For if this were all that is meant properly by the gospel, I see no reason why it should not be counted as weak and impotent a thing, as dead a letter as the. law was, and so there would be no such vast difference between them as the apostle asserts there is. But in truth, the one is” an external declaration of God's will,” the other”an internal manifestation of Divine life in men's souls.” And therefore, Gal. 3: 21, he so distinguisheth between this double dispensation of God, that this evangelical dispensation is a quickening thing, able to beget Divine goodness in the souls of men; which because the law could not do, it was laid aside, as being insufficient to restore man to the favour of God, or to make him partaker of his righteousness.” If there had been a law which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law;” where by righteousness he seems to mean the, same thing which he meant by it when in his epistle to the Corinthians he calls the economy of the gospel,” the administration of righteousness,” or, as it is taken among Jewish writers, for acceptance with God, and that internal righteousness that qualifies the soul for eternal life.. And so he takes it in a far more ample sense than that external righteousness of justification. And indeed it seems to express the just state of those who are renewed by the Spirit of God, and made partakers of that Divine life which is emphatically called the seed of God. For this righteousness is the proper result of an enlivening law, which is this new law of the gospel in opposition to that old law which was administered only in writing: and therefore this new law is called, in the epistle to the Hebrews, chap. viii. 6, &c. the better covenant, whereas the old was faulty. In which place this is put down as the formal difference between the legal and evangelical administration, or the old and new covenant, that the old covenant was not only externally promulged and wrapt up as it were in ink and parchment, or, at best,” engraven upon tables of stone;” whereas this new covenant is set forth” in living characters imprinted upon the vital powers of men's souls.” So ver. 10, 11,” This is the covenant that I will make, I will put my laws into their minds, and write them in their hearts:” and therefore the old covenant is (ver. 7,) said not to be an unblamable or faultless thing, because it was not able to keep off transgressions, or hinder the violation of itself, no more than an inscription upon some pillar or monument is able to inspire life into those that read it: the old law or covenant being, in this respect, no other than all other civil constitutions are, which receive their efficacy merely from the willing compliance of men's minds with them, so that they must be enlivened by the subject that receives them, being dead things in themselves. But the evangelical or new law is such a thing as is an efflux of life and power from God himself, the original thereof, and produces life wheresoever it comes. And to this double dispensation, viz. of law and gospel, doth St. Paul clearly refer, 2,Cor. 3: 3,” You are the epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of fhe living God, not in tables of stone:” which last words are a plain comment upon that kind of administering the law in a mere external way, to which he opppseth the gospel. And this argument he further pursues in the 7th and Sth chapters of the epistle to the Romans, in which last chapter, ver. 2, he styles the gospel” the law of the spirit of life,” which was able to destroy the power of sin, and to introduce a spiritual and heavenly frame of soul into men, whereby they' might be enabled to express a cheerful compliance with the law of God, and demonstrate a true, heavenly conversation and God-like life in this world.

It peculiarly belongs to God to write the laws of goodness in the tables of men's hearts. All the outward teachings of men are but dead things in themselves. But God's imprinting his mind and will upon men's hearts is properly that which is called the teaching of God, and then they become living laws written in the living tables of men's hearts fitted to receive and retain Divine impressions.

That we may come a little nearer to these words upon which this present discourse is built, this seems to be the scope of his argument in this place, where this law of righteousness may fairly be, paralleled with that which before he called” the law of the Spirit,” and which he therefore calls” the righteousness of faith,” because it is received from God in a way of believing. For I cannot easily think that he should mean nothing else in this place but merely the righteousness of justification, as some would persuade us, but rather that his sense is much more comprehensive, so as to include the state of the gospel dispensation, which includes not only pardon of sins, but an inward spirit”-of love, power, and of a sound mind,” as he expresses it, 2 Tim. 1: 7. And this he thus opposes to the law, Rom. 10: 6,” But the righteousness of faith speaks on this wise; Say not in thy heart, who shall ascend into heaven” &c. or,” Who shall descend into the deep But what says it The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that is, the word of faith which we preach.” The Jewish writers generally, commenting upon that place in Deuteronomy wholly refer it to the times of the Messiah, making it parallel with that place of Jeremiah which defines the new covenant to be”a writing of the law of God in men's hearts.” And thus that life and salvation that result from the righteousness of faith is all, as faith itself is, derived from God graciously dispensing himself to the minds of men. Whereas if life could have been by the law, its original must have been resolved into men themselves who must have acted that” dead matter without them,” and have produced that virtue and energy in it, by their exercising themselves therein, which of itself it had not; as the observance of any law enables that law itself to dispense that reward which is due to the observance of it. And therefore the righteousness of the law was so defined,” that he that did those things should live in them.” And thus the New Testament every where seems to present to us this two-fold dispensation; the one consisting in an external and written law of precepts, the other in inward life and power.

Now from all this we may easily apprehend how much the righteousness of the gospel transcends that of the law, in that it has a true command over the inward man, which it acts and informs; whereas the law, by all its menaces and punishments could only compel men to an external observance of it in the outward man.

And herein St. Paul every where magnifies this dispensation of the free mercy and grace of God, as being the only sovereign remedy against all the inward rooted maladies of sin and corruption, as that panacea, or balsam, which is the universal restorative of decayed and impotent nature. So he tells us, Rom. 6: “Sin shall not have dominion, because we are not under the law, but under grace.” And this is that which made him so much extol his acquaintance with Christ in the dispensation of grace, and to despise all things as loss, Philip. 3: where, among his other Jewish privileges, having reckoned up his blamelessness in all points touching the law, he undervalues - them all, and counts all but loss,” for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus.” In which place the apostle doth not mean to disparage” a real inward righteousness,” and the strict observance of the law; but his meaning is to shew how poor and worthless a thing all outward observances of the law are in comparison of a true internal conformity to Christ in the renovation of the mind and soul according to his image and likeness; as is manifest from ver. 9, 10, &c. in which he thus delivers his own meaning of that knowledge of Christ which he so much extolled, “That I may be found in him, not having mine own righteousness which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.” Where, by the way, we may further take notice what this righteousness of faith and the righteousness of God are, according to his own true meaning, as he expounds himself, via. a Christ-like nature in a man's soul, or Christ appearing in the minds of men by the mighty power of his Divine Spirit, and thereby deriving a. true participation of himself to them: so we have it ver. 18,”That I may know the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.” And thus Christ and Moses are opposed, as Christ is the dispenser of grace and truth, of God's free bounty, of life and substance: whereas Moses was but the minister of the law, of rites and shadows.

But it may perhaps be questioned whether the same internal dispensation of God was not as well under the law as since our Savior's coming. I reply, First, That this dispensation of grace was then a more mystical thing, and not so manifested to the world as it bath been since our Savior’s coming. Secondly, This dispensation of free grace was not that which properly belonged to the nation of the Jews; what properly belonged to them was only a type and shadow of it.

Before our Savior’s coming, the great mysteries of religion being wrapped up in symbolical rites, (the unfolding of which was reserved for him who is the great interpreter of heaven and master of truth,) God was pleased to draw forth a scheme or copy of all that Divine economy and method of his commerce with mankind, and to make a draught of the whole artifice thereof in external matter. And therefore he singled out a company of men of the same common extraction, marked out from all other sorts of men by a character of genealogical sanctity, (for so circumcision was,) collected and united together by a common band of brotherhood; and this he set up as an emblem of a Divine and holy seed or society of men, which are all, by way of spiritual generation, descended from himself. And hence it is that the Jews, (the whole Jewish nation universally considered,) who were but mere representatives of this spiritual fraternity, are called the holy seed, or the holy people. Afterwards amongst these he erects a government and polity, and rules over them in the, way of a political prince, as bath been long since well observed by Josephus, who therefore properly calls the Jewish government, a theocracy, or the government of God himself.

And thus, in a scheme or figure, he shadows forth that spiritual kingdom which he would establish amongst that Divine society of men, in reference to which we have-so much mention made of the kingdom of heaven in the gospel, which is not generally meant of the state of glory, much less of any outward church-rites, but mainly of that exemplar of which the Jewish theocracy was an imitation. Lastly, as a political prince, God draws forth a body of laws as the political constitutions and rules of this government which he had -set up, choosing mount Sinai for the theatre whereon he would promulge those laws, by which all his subjects should he governed. And so I doubt not but that preface by which the law is ushered in, Exod. 20: which speaks of God's mercy in delivering them from the Egyptian thralldom, may very well be allegorized and mystically expounded. And all this was to signify that law which was to go forth from mount Sion, the promulgation whereof was to be in a vital and spiritual way among the subjects of this spiritual kingdom. To all which we may add those temporal inheritances which he distributed to the Jewish families, in imitation of those immortal inheritances which he shares out amongst his spiritual sons and subjects in heaven. And this I the rather add, because the Jews are much perplexed about untying this knot, what the reason should be that their law speaks so sparingly of any eternal reward, but runs out generally in promises of earthly blessings. By this we see the true reason of that which the apostle speaks concerning them, 2 Cor. 3: 14,” Until this day the same veil in the reading of the Old Testament remaineth untaken away.” That veil, which was on Moses's face, was an emblem of all this great mystery. And this veil was upon the faces of the Jews in reading the Old Testament; they dwelling so much in a carnal converse with these symbols, which were offered them in reading the law, that they could not see through them into the thing signified thereby, and so embraced shadows instead of substance. Whereas this law should have been their school-master to have led them to Christ, whose law it prefigured; which, that it might do the more effectually, God had annexed to the breach of any one part of it such severe curses, that they might from thence perceive how much need they had of some further dispensation. And therefore this state of theirs is set forth by a state of bondage. For all. external precepts carry perpetually an aspect of rigor to those minds that taste not the internal sweetness of them. And this is it which makes the gospel, or the new law, to be a free, noble, and generous thing, because it is seated in the souls of -men. This I the rather observe, because the true meaning of that spirit of bondage, which the

apostle speaks of, is frequently mistaken. We might further, (if need were,) for a confirmation of this which we have spoken concerning the typicalness of the whole Jewish economy, appeal to the third and fourth chapters of the epistle to the Galatians, which cannot well be understood without this notion, where we have the Jewish church as a type of the true evangelical church, brought in as a child in its minority in servitude under tutors and governors, shut up under the law till the time of that emphatically revelation of the great mystery of God should come, till the day should break, and all the shadows of the night flee away.

That I may return from this digression, this briefly may be added, that under the old covenant there were amongst the Jews some that were evangelized; as under the gospel there are many that do Judaize, are of as legal and servile spirits as the Jews, children of the bondwoman, resting in mere external observances, in a form of godliness, as did the Scribes and Pharisees of old.

From what has been discoursed, I hope the difference between both covenants clearly appears, and that the gospel was not brought in only to hold forth a new platform and model of religion; it was not brought in only to refine some notions of truth, that might seem disfigured by a multitude of legal rites and ceremonies; it was not to cast our opinions concerning the way of life and happiness only into a new mould. It is not so much a system of saving divinity, but the spirit and vital influx of it spreading itself over all the powers of men's souls. It is not so properly a doctrine that is wrapped upon ink and paper, as it is a living impression made up in the soul and spirit. We may in a true sense be as legal as ever the Jews were, if we converse with the gospel as a thing only without us; and be as far short of the righteousness of God as they were, if we make the righteousness which is of Christ by faith to serve us only as an outward covering, and endeavor not after an internal transformation of our minds and souls into it. The evangelical dispensation doth not therefore please God so much more than the legal, because, as a finer contrivance of his infinite understanding, it more clearly discovers the way of salvation to men 1 but chiefly because it is a more powerful efflux of his Divine goodness upon them, as being the true seed of a happy immortality continually thriving and growing on to perfection. I shall add, the gospel does not hold forth such a transcendent advantage above what the law did, only because it acquaints us that Christ, our true High Priest, is ascended up into the holy of holies, and there, instead of the blood of bulls and goats, bath sprinkled the ark and mercy-seat above with his own blood; but also because it conveys that blood of sprinkling into our defiled consciences, to purge them, from dead works. Far be it from me to disparage in the least the merit of Christ's blood, his becoming obedient unto death, whereby we are justified. But I doubt, sometimes, some of our notions about justification may puff us up in far higher conceits of ourselves than God bath of us; and that we profanely make the unspotted righteousness of Christ serve only as a covering to wrap our filthy vices in; and when we have done, think ourselves in as good credit with God as we are with ourselves, and that we are become heaven's darlings as much as we are our own. I doubt not that the merit and obedience of our Savior gain us favour with God, and bring down the benign influences of heaven upon us: but yet I think we may sometimes be too lavish and wanton in our imaginations, in fondly conceiting a greater change in the esteem which God bath of us than becomes us, and too little reckon upon the real and vital emanations of his favor upon us.

Therefore, for the further clearing of what bath been already said, and laying a ground upon which the next part of our discourse, (viz. concerning the conveyance of this God-like righteousness to us by faith,) is to proceed, we shall here speak something more to the business of justification and Divine acceptance.

1st Prop. That the Divine Estimation of every Thing is according to Truth; and God's Acceptance or Disacceptance of Things is suitable to his Judgment. On what Account St. James does attribute, a kind of Justification to good Works. 2d Prop. God's justifying of Sinners in pardoning their Sins carries in it a necessary Reference to the sanctifying of their Natures.

OUR first proposition is this; The Divine judgment and estimation of every thing is, according to the truth of the thing; and God's acceptance or dissacceptance of things is suitable to his judgment.” Thus St. Peter plainly tells us, Acts 10:” God is no respecter of persons; but every one that works righteousness is accepted of him.” And God himself posed Cain (who had entertained those ungrounded suspicions of his partiality,) with that question,” If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted” Wheresoever God finds any impressions of goodness, he likes and approves them, knowing them well to be his own image and superscription. Wherever he sees his own image shining in the souls of men, and a conformity of life to that eternal goodness, which is himself, he loves it and takes a complacency in it, as that which is from himself, and is a true imitation of him. And as his own unbounded being and goodness is the primary and original object of his immense and almighty love; so every thing that partakes of him, partakes proportional of his love; all imitations of him, and participations of his love and goodness, are perpetually adequate the one to the other. By so “much the more acceptable any one is to God, by how much the more he resembles God. -That Divine light and goodness which flows forth from God, the original of all, upon the souls of men, never goes solitary and destitute of love, complacency, and acceptation, which is always lodged together with it in the Divine essence. And as the Divine complacency thus dearly and tenderly entertains all those which bear a similitude of true goodness upon them; so it always abandons from its embraces all evil, which never doth nor can mix with it. The Holy Spirit can never suffer any unhallowed or defiled thing to unite itself with it. Therefore, in a sober sense, I hope I may truly say, there is no perfect reconciliation wrought between God and the souls of men, while any impure thing dwells within the soul, which cannot truly close with God, nor God with that. The Divine love, according, to those degrees by which it works upon the souls of men in transforming them into its own likeness, renders them more acceptable to itself, mingles itself with and unites itself to them: as the spirit of any thing mixes itself more or less with any matter it acts upon, according as it works itself into it, and so makes a passage open for itself.

Upon this account I suppose it may be that St. James attributes a kind of justification to good works, which unquestionably are things that God approves and accepts, and all those in whom he finds them, as seeing there a true conformity to his own goodness and holiness. Whereas, on the other side, he disparageth that barren, sluggish, and drowsy belief, that lazy lethargy in religion, in reference to acceptation with God. I suppose I may fairly thus comment on his whole discourse upon this argument: God respects not a bold, confident, and audacious faith, that is big with nothing but its own presumption. It is not because our brains swim with a strong conceit of God's eternal love to us, or because we grow big and swell into a mighty bulk with airy fancies of our acceptance with God, that makes us any the more acceptable to him. It is not all our strong dreams of being in favor with heaven that fill our hungry souls the more with it. It is not a pertinacious imagination of our names being enrolled in the book of life, or of the debt-books of heaven being crossed, or of Christ being ours, while we find him not living within us, or of the washing away of our sins in his blood, while the filthy stains thereof are deeply sunk in our own souls it is not, I say, a pertinacious imagination of any of these that can make us in any degree better. And a mere conceit or opinion, as it makes us never the better in reality within ourselves; so it cannot render us ever the more acceptable to God, who judges of all things as they are. No, it -must be a true compliance with the Divine will which must render us such as the Divinity may take pleasure in.” In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails any thing,” (nor any fancy built upon any other external privilege,) a but the keeping of the commandments of God.” No, but” if any man do the will of God, him will both the Father and the Son love; they will come in to him, and make their abode with him.” This is the scope and mark which a true heaven-born faith aims at; and when it has attained this end, then is it indeed perfect and complete in its last accomplishment. And the more ardently faith levels at this mark of inward goodness and Divine activity, the more perfect and sincere it is. This is that which God justifies, it being just and correspondent to his own good pleasure. And in whomsoever he finds this, both it and they are accepted of him. And so I come to the second particular.

God's justifying of sinners, in pardoning and remitting their sins, carries in it a necessary reference to the sanctifying of their natures; without which justification would rather be a glorious name than a real privilege to the souls of men. While men continue in their wickedness, they do but vainly dream of a device to tie the hands of an almighty vengeance from seizing on them. No, their own sins, like so many armed giants, will, first or last, set upon them, and rend them with inward torment. There needs no angry cherub with a flaming sword drawn out every way to keep their unhallowed hands off front the tree of life. No, their prodigious lusts, like so many arrows in their sides, would chase them; their own hellish natures would sink them low enough into eternal death, and chain them up fast enough in fetters of darkness among the fiends of hell. Sin will always be miserable, and the sinner at last, when the empty bladders of all those hopes of ail airy worldly happiness, that did bear him up in this life, shall be cut, will find it like a talent of lead weighing him down into the bottomless gulf of misery. If all were clear towards heaven, we should find sin raising storms in our own souls. We cannot carry fire in our bosoms, and yet not be burnt.

Though we could suppose the greatest serenity without us, if we could suppose ourselves never so much to be at truce with heaven, and all Divine displeasure laid asleep; yet would our own sins, if they continue unmortified, first or last, make an Aetna or Vesuvius within us. Nay, those sun-beams of eternal truth, that by us are detained in unrighteousness, would at last in those hellish vaults of vice and darkness that are within us, kindle into an unquenchable fire. It would be of small benefit to us that Christ has triumphed over the principalities and powers of darkness without us, while hell and death, strongly immured in a fort of our own sins and corruption-, should tyrannize within us: that his blood should speak peace in heaven, if, in the mean while, our own lusts were perpetually warring and fighting in and against our souls: that he has taken off our guilt, and cancelled that hand-writing that was against us, which bound us over to eternal condemnation; if for all this we continue fast sealed up in the hellish dungeon of our own filthy lusts. Indeed we could not expect any relief from heaven out of that misery under which we lie, were not God's displeasure against us first pacified, and our sins remitted. But should the Divine clemency stoop no lower to us than to a mere pardon of our sins and an abstract justification, we should never rise out of that misery under which we lie. This is the signal and transcendent benefit of our free justification through the blood of Christ, that God's offence justly conceived against us for our sins (which would have been an eternal bar to the efflux of his grace upon us,) being taken off, the Divine grace and bounty may freely flow forth upon us. The fountain of the Divine: grace and love is now unlocked and opened, which our sins had shut up; and now the streams of holiness from thence freely flow forth into all gasping souls. The warm sun of the Divine love, whenever it breaks through and, scatters the thick clouds of our iniquities that had separated between God and us, immediately breaks forth upon us with healing in its wings; it exercises the mighty force of its own light and heat upon our dark and benumbed souls, begetting in them a lively sense of God, and kindling into sparks of Divine goodness within us.. This love, when once it has chased away the thick mist of our sins, will be a strong as death upon us, potent as the grave: many waters will not quench it, nor the floods drown it.” If we shut not the windows of our souls against it, it will at last enlighten all those regions of darkness that are within us, and lead our souls to the light of life, blessedness, and immortality. God pardons men's sins out of an eternal design of destroying them; and whenever the sentence of death is taken off from a sinner, it is at the same time denounced against his sins. God does not bid us be warmed and be filled, and deny us those necessaries which our poor starving souls call for. Christ having made peace through the blood of his cross, the heavens shall be no more as iron above us: but we shall receive, freely the vital dew of them, the former and the latter rain in their season; those influences from above, which souls truly sensible of their own misery and imperfection incessantly gasp after, that righteousness of God which drops from above, from the unsealed spring of free goodness, which makes glad the city of God. This is that free love and grace which the souls of goad men so much triumph in: this is that justification which begets in them lively hopes of a happy immortality in the present anticipations thereof which spring forth from it in this life. And all this is that which we have called sometimes,” the righteousness of Christ,” sometimes” the righteousness of God;” and here,” the righteousness which is of faith.” In heaven it is a not imputing of sin to the souls of men; it is a reconciliation of rebellious natures to truth and goodness. In earth it is the lifting up of the light of God's countenance upon us, which begets a gladsome entertainment in the souls of men, holy and dear reflections, and returns of love; Divine love to us, as it were by a natural emanation, begetting a reflex love in us towards God, which live and thrive together.

CHAP. 6:

How the Gospel Righteousness is conveyed to us by Faith, made to appear from these two Considerations: 1. The Gospel lays a strong Foundation of a cheerful, dependance upon the Grace and Love of God in it. 2. 4 true evangelical Faith is no lazy or languid Thing, but implies an ardent thirsting after Divine Grace and Righteousness, ”The mighty Power of a living Faith in the Love and Goodness of God.”

WE come now to spew the way by which this gospel righteousness is conveyed to us; and that is by faith. This is that powerful attractive, which, by a strong and Divine sympathy, draws down the virtue of heaven into the souls of men, which strongly and forcibly moves the souls of good men into a conjunction with that Divine goodness by which it lives and grows. This is that Divine impress that invincibly draws and sucks them in by degrees into the Divinity, and so unites them more and more to the center of life and love. It is something in the hearts of men, which feeling, by an, inward sensation, the mighty insinuations of Divine goodness, immediately complies with it, and with the greatest ardency is perpetually rising up into conjunction with it; being first begotten and enlivened by the warm beams of that goodness, it always breathes and gasps after it for its constant growth and nourishment. It is then fullest of life when it partakes most freely of it, and perpetually languishes when it is in any measure deprived of that sweet and pure nourishment it derives from it.

But that we may the more clearly unfold how gospel righteousness comes to be communicated through faith, we shall lay it forth in two particulars. First, The gospel lays a strong foundation of a cheerful dependence upon the grace and love of God. We have the greatest security that may be given us of God's readiness to relieve such forlorn creatures as we are; that there are no such dreadful fates in heaven as are continually thirsting after the blood of sinners, insatiably greedy after their prey, never satisfied till they have devoured the souls of men. Lest we should by such dreadful apprehensions be driven from God, we are told of that” blood of sprinkling that speaks better things for us; of a mighty Favorite soliciting our cause with perpetual intercessions in the court of heaven; of” a new and living way” to the throne of grace, and to the holy of holies, which our Savior has ”consecrated through his flesh.” We are told of a great and mighty Savior,” able to save to the utmost all that come to God by him.” We hear of the most compassionate and tender promises from the truth itself, that,” Whosoever comes to him he will in no wise cast out:” that” They that believe on him, out of them shall flow streams of living water.” We hear of the most gracious invitations that heaven can make to “all weary and heavy laden sinners” to come to Christ, that they may find rest. The great secrets of heaven and of Divine counsels are revealed, whereby we are acquainted that “glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will towards men,” are sweetly joined together, in heaven's harmony, and happily combined together in the composure of its ditties;, that the glory of the Deity and salvation of men are not allayed by their union one with another, but both exalted together in the., most transcendent way, that Divine love and bounty are the supreme rules in heaven and earth. There is no such thing as sour despite and envy lodged in the bosom of that ever-blessed Being above, whose name is Love, and all whose dispensations to the sons of men are but the dispreadings and distended radiations of his love, as freely flowing forth from it, through the whole sphere of creation as the bright light from the sun in the firmament, of whose benign influences we are then only deprived when we hide and withdraw ourselves from them. We are taught the mild and gentle breathings. of the Divine Spirit are moving up and' down in the world to produce life, and to revive and quicken the souls of men into a feeling sense of a: blessed immortality. This is that mighty Spirit that will, if we comply with it, “teach us all things,” even the hidden things of God;.; mortify all the lusts of rebellions flesh,. and “seal us to the day of redemption.”

We are taught that with all holy boldness the may” in all places lift up holy hands to God, without wrath or doubting,.” without any sour thought of God, or fretful jealousies, or harsh surmises. We can never enough distrust ourselves, nor ever trust too much in God. This is that full confidence which the gospel every whereseems to promote. And should I run through all the arguments and solicitations that are there laid down, to provoke us to it, I should, run quite through it fom, one end to another, it containing almost nothing else but strong and forcible motives to, all ingenuous addresses to God, and the most effectual: encouragement that may be to all cheerful dependence on him, and confident expectation of all assistance from him, to carry on our poor endeavors to the achievement of blessedness, and that in the most plain and simple way that may be, *, without-any double mind, or mental reservation; heaven is not acquainted: so feelingly with our wicked arts and devices. But it is very strange that where God writes life so plainly in fair capital letters, we are so apt to read death; that when he tells us, over and over, that hell and destruction arise from our selves, that they are the workmanship of our own hands, we will needs understand their pedigreeto be from heaven, and that they were conceived in the womb of life and blessedness. No; but the gospel tells us we are not come to” mounts of burning, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, &c. Heb. 12: 18. Certainly a lively faith in this love of God, and a sober converse with his goodness by 4 cordial entertainment and thorough persuasion of it, would warm our benumbed minds, and thane our hearts frozen with self-love; it would make us melt and dissolve out of all self-confidence, and by a free and noble sympathy with the Divine love, yield up ourselves to it, and dilate and spread ourselves more fully in it. This would banish all atheism and slavish superstition; it would cast down every high thought and proud imagination that swells within us, and exalts itself against this sovereign Deity; it would free as from all those poor, pinching, and particular loves that enthral the soul to vanity and baseness; it would lead us into the true liberty of the sons of God, filling our hearts with a more generous and universal love, as unbounded as true goodness itself. Thus, Moses-like, conversing with God in the mount, and there beholding his glory shining upon us in the face of Christ, we should be deriving a copy of that eternal beauty upon our own souls, and our thirsty and hungry spirits would be perpetually sucking in a true participation and image of his glory. A true Divine love would wing our souls, and make them take their flight swiftly towards heaven and immortality.

Could we once be thoroughly possessed and mastered with, a full confidence of the Divine love, and God's readiness to assist such feeble, languishing creatures as we are, in our assay after heaven and blessedness, we should then, tending ourselves borne up by an Almighty strength, adventure courageously and confidently upon the highest designs of happiness,, to assail the kingdom of heaven with a holy violence, to pursue a course of well-doing without weariness; knowing that our labor would not be in vain in the Lord, and that we should receive our reward, if we faint not. We should work out our salvation in the most industrious manner, trusting' in God as one ready to instill strength and power into all the faculties of our souls we should “press towards the mark, for the prize of the high calling of God. In Christ, that we might apprehend that for which also we are apprehended of Christ Jesus.” If we suffer not ourselves to be robbed of this confidence in God as ready to accomplish the desires of those that seek after him, we may then walk on strongly in the way- to heaven and not be weary we may run and not faint. And, the more the souls of men grow in this blissful persuasion; the more they shall mount up-like eagles into a clear heaven,, finding themselves- rising higher and higher above all those filthy mists, those clouds and tempests of a, slavish fear, despair,, fretfullness against God, pale jealousies, wrathful and embittered thoughts of him, or any strugglings or contests to get from within the verge of his power and omniscience, which would mantle up the souls in black and horrid night.

I mean not all this while by this holy boldness and confidence in a believer's converse with the Deity, that. high pitch of assurance that wafts the souls of good men over the lake of death, and brings them to the borders of life; that here puts them into an actual possession of bliss, and re-instates and re-establishes them in paradise. No; that more general acquaintance which we may have with God's philanthropy and bounty, ready to relieve with the bowels of his tender compassions all those starving souls that call upon him,. for surely he will never do less for fainting and drooping souls, than he does for the young ravens that cry unto him; that converse which we are provoked by the gospel to maintain with God's unconfined love, if we understand it aright,. will awaken us out of our drowsy lethargy, and make us” ask of him the way to Sion, with our faces thitherward.” This will be digging up fresh fountains for us while we go through the valley of Baca, whereby refreshing our weary souls, we shall” go on from strength to-strength,” until we see the face of our loving and ever-to-be-loved God in Sion. And so I come to the next particular wherein we shall further unfold how this God-like righteousness, we have spoken of, is, conveyed to us by faith; and that is this:-

A true gospel faith is no lazy or languid thing, but implies a strong ardent breathing for, and thirsting after, Divine grace and righteousness. It does not only pursue an ambitious project of raising the soul immaturely to the condition of a darling favorite with heaven, while it is unripe for it, by procuring a mere empty pardon for sin; it desires not only to stand: upon clear terms with heaven by procuring the crossing of all the debt-books of our sin is there; but it rather pursues after “an internal participation of the Divine nature.”

We often hear of a saving_ faith; and that, where it is, is not content to wait for salvation till the world to come; it is not patient of being an expectant probationer for it until this earthly body resigns its worldly interest, that so the soul might then come into its room. No; but it is here perpetually gasping after it, and effecting it in a way of serious mortification and self-denial. It enlarges and dilates itself as, much as maybe, according to: the vast dimensions of the Divine love, that it may comprehend “the height and depth, the length and breadth” thereof, and fill the soul where it is seated,” with all the fullness of God.” It breeds a strong and insatiable appetite, where it comes, after true goodness. Were I to describe it, I should do it no otherwise than in the language of the apostle: It is that whereby “we live in Christ, and” whereby “he lives in us;” or, in the dialect of our Savior himself, something so powerfully sucking in the precious influences of the Divine Spirit, that the soul where it is, is continually flowing with living waters issuing out of itself.

A truly believing soul, by an ingenuous affiance in God, and an eager thirst after him, is always sucking from the full breasts of the Divine love; thence it will not part; for there, and there only, is its life and nourishment; it starves and faints away with grief and hunger whensoever it is pulled away from thence it is perpetually hanging upon the arms of immortal goodness, for there it finds its great strength lies; and as much as may be arms itself with the mighty power of God, by which it goes forth like a giant refreshed with wine, to run that race of grace and holiness that leads to that heavenly Canaan. And whensoever it finds itself enfeebled in its difficult conflict with those fierce and furious corruptions, those tall sons of Anak, which, arising from our sensual affections, encounter it in the wilderness of this world; then, turning itself to God, and putting itself under the conduct of the angel of his presence, it finds itself presently out of weakness to become strong, enabled from above to put to flight those mighty armies of the aliens. True faith (if you would know its rise and pedigree,) is begotten of the Divine bounty and fullness manifesting itself to the spirits of men, and is conceived and brought forth by a deep sense of self-indigency and poverty. Faith arises out of self-inanition, placing itself in view of the Divine all-sufficiency; and thus (that I- may borrow those words of St. Paul,)”we receive the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in him.” The more this sensual, brutish, and selfcentral life thrives and prospers, the more Divine faith languishes; and the more that decays, and all self-love and self-sufficiency pine away, the more is true faith fed and nourished, it grows more vigorous. And as carnal life wastes and consumes, so does faith suck in a true Divine and spiritual life from him who has life in himself, and freely bestows it to all those that heartily seek it. When the Divinity united itself to human nature in the person of our Savior, lie then gave mankind a pledge and earnest of what he would further do therein, in-assuming into as near a conjunction as might be with himself, and in communicating himself to man in a way as far correspondent and agreeable as might be to that first Copy. And therefore we are told of Christ being formed in us,” and 06 the Spirit of Christ dwelling in us.; of our being made conformable to him; of having fellowship with him; of being as he was in this world.; of living in him, and his living in us.; of dying and rising again, and ascending with him into heaven,” and the like. Because the same Spirit that dwelt in him, derives itself in: its mighty energy through all believing souls, shaping then more and more into a just resemblance and conformity to him as the first copy and pattern. Whence it is that we have so many ways of unfolding the union between Christ and all believers set forth in the gospel.

And all this is done for us by degrees, through the efficacy of the eternal Spirit, when by a true faith we deny ourselves and our own wills; submit, ourselves, in: a deep sense of our own -folly and weakness, to his wisdom and power, when, we comply with his will, and by a holy affiance in hire subordinate ourselves to his, pleasure.: for these: are the -vital acts of a gospel faith.

According to this which has been said, I suppose we may fairly understand St. Paul's discourses, which so much prefer faith above works. We must not think, in a giant-like pride, to scale the walls of heaven by our own works, and by force thereof to take the strong fort of blessedness, and wrest the crown of glory out of God's hands, whether he will or not. We must not think to commence a suit in heaven for happiness upon such a poor plea as our external compliance with the old law. We must not think to deal with God in the method of commutative justice, and to challenge eternal life as the just reward of our merits, and the hire due to us for our labor and toil in God's - vineyard. No; “God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” It must be an humble and self-denying address of a soul dissolved into a deep and piercing sense of its own nothingness and unprofitableness, that can be capable of the Divine bounty.” He fills the hungry with good things, but the rich he sends empty away.”

They are the hungry and thirsty souls, always gasping after the living springs of Divine grace, as the parched ground in the desert does for the dew of heaven, ready to drink them in by a constant dependences upon God; souls that by a living, watchful, and diligent faith, spreading forth themselves in all obsequious reverence and love of him, wait on him as the eyes of a handmaid wait on. the hand of her mistress. These are they that he delights to satiate with his goodness. Those that, being mastered by a strong sense of their own indigency, their pressing poverty and his all-sufficient fullness, trust in him as an almighty Savior, and in the most ardent manner pursue after that perfection which his grace is leading them to; those that cannot satisfy themselves in a bare performance of external acts of righteousness, or an external observance of a law without them; but with the most fervent ambition pursue after such an acquaintance with his Divine Spirit as may breathe an inward life through all the powers of their souls. These are the spiritual seed of faithful Abraham, the sons of the free-woman, and heirs of the promises, to whom all are made “yea and amen in Christ Jesus.” These are they which shall abide in the house for ever, when the sons of the bond-woman shall be cast out.

CHAP. 8:

How the whole Undertaking of Christ is eminently available both to give full Ease to our Hearts, and also to encourage us to Godliness, or a God-like Righteousness. For the further illustration of some things in the latter part of this discourse, it may not be amiss, in some particulars (which might be easily enlarged,) to show how the undertaking of Christ (that great object of faith,) is greatly advantageous, and available to the giving full relief and ease to our hearts, and also to the encouraging us to godliness, or a true God-like righteousness.

In the general, therefore, we may consider “that full and evident assurance is given hereby to the world,” That God cloth indeed seek the saving of that which is lost;” and men are no longer to make any doubt or scruple of it. Now what can we imagine more available to carry on a design of godliness, and to rouse dull and languid souls to an effectual minding of their own salvation, than to have this news sounding in their ears by men that, (at the first promulgation thereof,) durst tell them roundly, in the name of God, That God required them every where to repent, for that his kingdom of grace was now apparent; and that he was not only willing, but it was his gracious design to save lost sinners, who had forsaken his goodness

Particularly, that the whole business of Christ is very advantageous for this purpose, may appear thus

1. We are fully assured that God has this design upon lost men, because here is one, (viz. Christ,) that partakes every way of human nature, whom the Divinity magnifies itself in, and carries through this world in human infirmities and sufferings to eternal glory: a clear manifestation to the world that God had not cast off human nature, but had a real mind to exalt and dignify it again.

2. The way into the holy of holies, or to eternal happiness, is laid as open as may be by Christ, in his doctrine, life, and death: in all which we may see with open face what human nature may attain to, and how it may, by humility, self-denial, and Divine love, a Christ-like life, rise up above all visible heavens into a state of immortal glory.

3. Here is a manifestation of love given, enough to thaw all the iciness of men's hearts, which. self-love had frozen up. For here is One who in human nature, every where denying himself, is ready to do any thing for the good of mankind, and at last gives up his life for the same purpose; and that according to the good-will and pleasure of that eternal love which “so loved the world, that he gave this his beloved and only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

4. Whereas every penitent sinner, that carries a sense of guilt upon his own conscience, is apt to shrink with' cold chill fears of offended Majesty, and to dread the’ thoughts of violated justice: he is assured that Christ’ hath laid down his life, and thereby made atonement for sin; that he has laid down his life for the redemption of him; and so “in Christ we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sin.” Thus may the hearts of all penitents troubled with a sense of -their own guilt, be quieted, and fully established in a living faith, in an eternal goodness; seeing their sins are remitted through the blood of Jesus, that came to die for them and save them, and through his blood they may have free access unto God.

5. Seeing sin and guilt are apt continually to beget a jealousy of God's majesty and greatness, from whom the sinner finds himself at a vast distance, he is made acquainted with a Mediator, through whom he may address himself to God without this jealousy or -doubting; for that this Mediator likewise is one of human nature, that is highly beloved of God, he having so highly pleased God by performing his will in all things. Certainly it is much for the ease of a penitent's mind, that our addresses to God should be through a Mediator. Seeing between the pure Divinity and impure sinners as they is no union, so no communion; it is very agreeable, upon all accounts, that they, who in themselves are altogether unworthy, should come to God by a Mediator.

Thus the Scriptures every where represent Christ in the fore-named particulars, (without descending into niceties and subtleties, such as the school-men and others from them have troubled the world with,) in a very full and ample manner, that so the minds of true believers (that are willing to comply with the purpose of God for their own eternal peace,) might in all cases find something in Christ for their relief, and make use of him as much as may be to encourage and help on godliness. For by this whole undertaking of Christ manifested in the gospel, God would have to be understood” full relief of mind and ease of conscience,” as also “all encouragement to Godliness;”-and “disparagement of sin.” And, indeed, the whole business of Christ is the greatest blow to sin that may be: for the world is taught hereby, that there is no sinning upon easy terms. Men may see that God will not return so easily into favor with sinners; but he will have his righteousness acknowledged, and likewise their own demerit. And this acknowledgment lie is once indeed pleased to accept of in the person of our Savior; yet if men will not now turn to him, and accept his favor, they must know that there is no other sacrifice for sin.

By these particulars (to name no more,) it may appear, That when we look into the gospel, we are taught to believe that Christ has done, according to the good pleasure of God, every thing for us that may truly relieve our minds, and encourage us to godliness; a God-like righteousness far exceeding the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees.