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demanding the obedience of faith from all who hear it.* Here it is that your lordship is fearfully at issue with the Apostles! They represent unbelief as a heinous offence against God, ascribing it to the depravity of the human heart, to culpable ignorance, to pride, and to aversion from God! Nor is this all: God has threatened the infliction of the most awful judgments on those who believe not in the Lord Jesus Christ! These are the true sayings of God, and it behoves both small and great to take heed how they permit the voice of a vain philosophy to seduce them from the path marked out by the apostles. Observe, my Lord, the consequences which flow from the doctrines laid down in these Scriptures. of all the earth do right ?" declare that the sin of unbelief will be visited with eternal perdition! But, if unbelief be thus punishable, must it not be culpable? If culpable, must it not be voluntary? Therefore, let the "Great Truth" go forth, and sound through all the halls of learning, all the seats of science, all the academic bowers of our land, that MAN SHALL HENCEFORTH REMEMBER THAT HE MUST RENDER AN ACCOUNT TO GOD FOR HIS BELIEF, Hence

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Shall not the Judge Now, these passages

OVER WHICH HE HAS ALL NEEDFUL CONTROL.

forward nothing shall prevail upon us to excuse or to pity that which he may as promptly change as his position or his garment." There are professed adherents of the Christian faith who take your lordship's view of man's moral impotence; but with them I have no sympathy. I appeal to the Apostles!" Man's inability, according to them, is his crime, not his misfortune. He cannot, because he will not!

* 2 Cor. v. 20; Rom. i. 5; vi. 17; x. 16.

† Rom. x. 3; 2 Cor. iv. 3, 4; Matt. xiii. 19; Luke viii. 12; Ps. x. 4; John v. 44; xii. 43; v. 40.

Mark xvi. 15, 16;

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John iii, 18; Luke xix. 27; 2 Thess. ii.

The source of unbelief is man's natural aversion to God, which alone renders Divine influence necessary in order to faith. Such influence, however, is necessary in order to faith only as it is necessary in order to evidence. Man believes the Gospel upon evidence, not from a Divine, irresistible impulse. The Divine influence which the Scriptures represent as exerted upon him, mainly consists in removing aversion of heart, the source of ignorance, the source of infidelity. This aversion the Spirit of God removes, by quickening and illumining the soul, and imparting a spiritual taste, by which the truth of the Gospel is discerned, and relished, and believed on evidence. But let it be distinctly understood, that the gift or influence of the Spirit of God is not the ground or condition of men's obligation to believe the Gospel. It is nothing more than the exciting cause of compliance with a previous obligation. The influences, therefore, of the Holy Spirit are to be viewed, not as matter of debt due to sinful man, but simply of pure mercy and favour-the gift of God's mercy through the work and mediation of Christ. The change or thing, called conversion, therefore, is entirely and exclusively the work of the Holy Spirit, in the fullest sense, without any reserve, exception, or qualification whatever, since "no man can call Jesus Lord but by the Spirit."

It has been long the practice of mere literary men to represent faith as a thing which had nothing practical about it-nothing affecting the heart or life. On no point have their folly and ignorance been more lamentably exemplified. But let such men know, that, in addition to its effects on the heart and the life, the belief of the Gospel serves an all-important purpose in respect to the justification of the sinner before God. The term Justification, in connection with the Gospel of Christ, refers to courts of justice, and stands opposed *Rom. viii. 7.

to condemnation.* Justification, however, in the Gospel sense, consists not in acquittal, but of pardon, and of righteousness. Pardon removes the curse due to sin; but righteousness is connected with the blessing of eternal life the first is the remission of sin; the second, the imputation of righteousness. But when does justification take place? When the sinner believes the Divine testimony. He remains under condemnation, from which nothing can deliver him, till he repent and believe; and from that moment he is justified. This great blessing is obtained solely through believing the Gospel. He who believes in Christ, is said to be united to him; and thus united, he is treated by God as one with him: Christ's obedience unto death is imputed to the believer, or reckoned as his; and he, for Christ's sake, is delivered from condemnation. The believer is considered and treated as innocent, and entitled to eternal life, as much as if, from first to last, he had been perfectly obedient to the law of God, in thought, word, and deed.‡ This is one of the important ends served by faith; but it is only one. Faith exerts an all-powerful influence on the heart in sanctification. Justification is a change concerning a sinner; sanctification is a change within him in justification, he obtains pardon of sin, and a title to heaven; in sanctification, purification from the pol- . lution of sin, and a meetness for heaven.

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If philosophers would read the Scriptures, my Lord, they would find, that so far from faith exerting no influence on the heart, its exertion of such influence is the principal proof of its existence. Sanctification always follows justification. The same faith which removes guilt, cleanses from pollution. The larger the measure of sanctification, the greater is the proof of justification.|| In strict speech, it is not mere belief

* Rom. v. 16.

Rom. vi. 23; John iii. 15, 36; vi. 54. Gal. iii. 28; John xvii. 21, 23; Isa. liii. 5, 6.

|| Isa. lxii. 12; 1 Pet. i. 2

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that sanctifies, but the TRUTH which is believed. How, then, is faith necessary ? Because truth-and

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error also can operate upon the soul only through belief.* The prayer of Christ demonstrates that Gospel Truth is the grand element of sanctification ; that prayer runs thus :-" Sanctify them through thy truth; thy Word is truth." That truth is applied to the soul through faith; hence the declaration of the Apostle, concerning the first family of Gentile converts; O God, which knoweth the hearts, bare them witness, giving them the Holy Ghost, even as he did unto us; and put no difference between us and them, purifying their hearts by faith." Thus, while, in the work of renovation, the Spirit of God is the proper agent, the Word of God is the proper means. The man in whom this work is fairly begun, is, in Scripture, said to be "a new creature,-old things are passed away, and all things are become new." This renovation consists, not in superadding to his soul new powers or faculties, but in his deliverance from ignorance, unrighteousness, and depravity; and in his restoration to the image of God "in knowledge, righteousness, and holiness." By this entire change of the soul, the whole man is turned from the love and practice of sin to the love and service of God and of Christ.

But what of Christian morality? Why, my Lord, the change of which I have just been speaking, is the source, the only source of it. The guilt of multitudes, when discoursing in relation to this subject, has been equalled only by their ignorance. How loud and bitter has been the invective of many a dignitary and Doctor in Divinity against the doctrine of Justification by faith! The pen of untaught Infidelity, too, has done its part, in helping on the misrepresentation. If such men be reckless of truth, let them at least have some

* 2 Thess. ii. 13; Heb. xi. 7, 17, 23—29, 32—38.

+ Acts xv. 8, 9.

Col. iii. 9, 10; Eph. iv. 23, 24.

regard to decency! The Gospel, as I have just been setting it forth, is no new thing in the earth; it is of some antiquity even in England. I appeal to the lives of its preachers, and of those who have received it. Let this be the test of the doctrine! Evangelical doctrine adverse to morality! What would philosophic men think of men religious rising up and telling the public that the cause was adverse to the effect? What would the agriculturists of England say, were the artizans of London to broach and blaze abroad the doctrine, that ploughing and trenching, drainage and manure, were destructive of fertility? Surely the answer in both cases, were the objectors sane and serious, would be a smile of contempt or of pity! Morality, my Lord, is the fruit, the crop of the Christian husbandman. Doctrine, discipline, ordinances, every thing connected with the Christian economy, is considered as only a means to an end, and that end morality! All other morality, as compared with that of the gospel, is but as the foulest chaff to the finest wheat! It extends to thoughts, words, and deeds, to all the duties which we owe to God, to our neighbours, and ourselves; and it therefore includes every virtue of life and godliness. It requires that the Christian character shall be one of universal rectitude, without reserve of one sin or exception of one branch of righteousness. Philosophy! What is philosophy as compared with Revelation? It is as guessing to certainty-as an artificial light to the sun! Whether I look at the motives, the rules, or the sanctions of Christianity, I find them altogether sui generis—it is trifling, it is a mockery to attempt to seek for any thing in systems strictly human to compare with it! What, my Lord, what is the one great principle of Christian morality ? It is love-supreme love to God, sincere love to our neighbour-and rational love to ourselves, which converts social and personal, as well * Eph. v. 9.

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