Happy the true believer, who is made impartial by divine grace! It is a recovery to God and holiness that he is after: a confidence that his sins are pardoned, without this, would be but a poor thing. If he obtain this, he gets what he wants; and if not, he feels himself undone: nor can he flatter himself that he has obtained it, when he has not: and this he makes his only evidence of God's eternal love, and of his title to eternal glory; and believes his state to be good, no further than this goes. Mat. vii. 21-27. Thus I have gone through the first use, the use of instruction: and thus we see how a right understanding of the law will set many of the important doctrines of religion in a clear and easy, in a scriptural and rational light. By the law we ınay learn the primitive state of man, and how low we are fallen, and to what we must be recovered; and so, by consequence, how averse we are to a recovery: what grace we need to recover us; and so, by consequence, that we must be saved by sovereign grace, or not at all: whence the reasonableness of the saints' perseverance appears; and, from the whole, the nature of the christian conflict and the attainableness of assurance are discovered. And I will conclude this use with two remarks : REMARK 1. If the law requires what, I think, I have proved it does, and a conformity to it consists in what I have before described, then all the other particulars do necessarily and most inevitably follow. Such was the image of God in which Adam was created, and such is our natural depravity, and such are the best duties of the unregenerate, and such is the nature of conversion, and our aversion to it, &c. so that, if my first principles are true, then the whole scheme is, beyond dispute, true also. And what are my first principles? Why, that to love God with all our hearts, and our neighbours as ourselves, is originally the very essence of religion; and that the grounds upon which God requires us so to do, are to be the motives of our obedience. He requires us to love him supremely, &c. because he is supremely, glorious and amiable, and because our additional obligations to him are what they are. He requires us to love our neighbours as ourselves, because they are what they are, and stand in such relations to us. With a perfect moral rectitude of temper, influenced and governed by truth; by the reason and fitness of things, he would have us love and glorify him as God, i. e. as being what he is; and love and treat our neighbours as being what And is not this evidently the meaning of the di they are. vine law? REMARK 2. If the law, as a rule of life, be so abated and altered, as that now it only requires us, merely from a principle of self-love and for self-ends, sincerely to endeavour to love God and keep his commands, and aim at his glory; and if the law, as a covenant, be disannulled, and such an obedience be substituted in the room of perfection, as a condition of eternal life, or as a condition of our interest in Christ, then the contrary to all that I have laid down is most true and certain. For let the primitive state of man be what it would, it is plain we are not entirely destitute of a conformity to this new law, much less diametrically opposite to it in the natural temper of our minds: nor are our best duties, while unregenerate, sin; it is plain, conversion is another and a much easier thing, and that we are not so entirely averse to it, and do not need irresistible grace, nor lie at God's sovereign mercy, &c. All these things, and many more such-like, are plain, if the good old law is thus altered and abated, and thus disannulled; if the new law requires no more, and this be the condition of eternal life, or of an interest in Christ. So that, if any are disposed to disbelieve what have been laid down as consequences, and to build upon another fabric; if they will be consistent with themselves, they can lay no other foundation than this, viz. To destroy the law; which I have before proved to be as impossible as to destroy the nature of God; because the moral law necessarily results from the divine perfections, and our obligations to conform to it are infinite, èternal, and unchangeable, as the nature and perfections of God himself. And, therefore, I think, we may conclude, with the greatest certainty, that this foundation, viz. that the law is thus abated and altered, is but sand; and that the fabric built upon it will not stand. If the law had required us to love ourselves supremely, and live to ourselves ultimately, and to have endeavoured to love God and our neighbours only to answer our own ends; then this sort of religion would have been right. Did I say right? No; it would not be right, being unalterably contrary to the very reason and nature of things; nor could such a law have been possibly made by a God, who loves righteousness, and hates iniquity. But if this was right; if this was religion, it is plain mankind have the root of the matter in them; for they are all naturally inclined to love themselves supremely, and live to themselves ultimately; and so would not need to be born again, to have a new nature, the old nature would be sufficient; they would only need to be convinced that it is for their interest to endeavour to love God and do their duty, and merely self-love would make them religious, in order to answer their own ends. But if the law never has been thus abated and altered, then this religion is really no religion at all; nothing but mere hypocrisy, and of a nature diametrically opposite to true holiness. Only let it be clearly determined what the nature of the moral law is, and there will be a final end put to a hundred controversies. Here is a man, he reforms his life a little, and joins with the church; he prays in his family, and sometimes in his closet: and, for the most part, it may be, he is honest in his dealings, and civil and sober in his behaviour; and this is his conversion; this is his religion. And now he pleads that conversion is a gradual thing, because his was such; and that a man cannot know when he was converted, because that is the case with him; that there is no need of irresistible grace, because he knows that it is a pretty easy thing to convert as he has done; and he hates the doctrine of divine sovereignty, because he never felt any need of a sovereign grace to save him; and he holds falling from grace, because his religion is as easily lost as gotten. But does he know that he has any grace, after all? No, no, that is a thing, (says he,) none can know. He believes the Holy Spirit assists him; but he is not sensible of his influences, or of any help from him, any more than if he had none. He believes he loves God, and is a true saint at heart; but he does not feel any more love to God, or grace in his heart, than if there was none there; and the reason is, be cause there is none. But being secure in sin, and it being for his worldly interest to make a profession of religion, he now sets up for a good man. For without the law sin is dead, and so he is alive without the law. Rom. vii. 8, 9. And now those doctrines and that preaching which are calculated to detect his hypocrisy, and awaken him out of his security, he hates and cries out against. And if any seem to experience any thing further in religion than he has, for that very reason he condemns it all for delusion. But he pretends mightily to plead up for morality and good works, though in truth, he is an enemy to all real holiness. This is the course of many; but some are more sincere, and strict, and conscientious in their way. But let men be ever so sincere, strict, and conscientious in their religion, if all results merely from self-love, the slavish fears of hell, and mercenary hopes of heaven, there is not, in all their religion, the least real, genuine conformity to the moral law; it is all but an hypocritical, feigned show of love and obedience; it is not the thing which the law requires, but something of a quite different nature; unless we lay aside God's old and everlasting law, and invent a new, abated altered law, which shall declare that to be right, which, in the nature of things, is unalterably wrong; and by such a law, such a religion will pass for genuine. But it is sad, when we are driven to invent a new law, to vindicate our religion and our hopes of heaven, since, at the day of judgment, we shall find the old law to be in full force. I am sensible that old objection will be always rising : "But it is not just that God should require of us more than we can do, and then threaten to damn us for not doing of it." Just as if God may not require us to love him with all our hearts, merely because we are not suited with him; and just as if we were not to blame for being of such a bad temper and disposition, merely because we are thoroughly settled in it, and have no heart to be otherwise; just as if the worse any one is, the less he is to blame; than which nothing can be more absurd. Truly, I cannot but think, that, by this, we are so far from being excused, that, even merely for this we deserve eternal damnation. For what can be much worse than to be so tho roughly settled and fixed in such a bad temper of mind? But, notwithstanding all that I have offered to clear this point heretofore, I will add, that if it is not just for God to require any more of us than we can do, i, e. any more than we have, not only a natural, but a moral power to perform*-then these things will necessarily follow : 1 [* It has been questioned by some whether the Author has expressed himself on this part of his subject with his usual perspicuity and correctness. If by requiring "more than we have natural or moral power to perform," he meant only that more was required, or was necessary to procure the divine favour, than we have natural strength or moral dispositions to perform, and that God might justly suspend. hiş faveur until this was in some way accomplished, his reasoning may perhaps be correct. But if he meant, as his words seem to import, that God might justly require of us, as a condition of his favour, what we have neither natural nor moral power to perform, and, by requiring this, lay us under an obligation to perform a natural impossibility, then his reasoning is evidently unsound and inconclusive. For must not God's law be founded in the reason and nature of things, and his demands, in every instance, be proportioned, not indeed to the moral, but to the natural power and capacity of his creatures? The author is himself a strenuous advocate for this principle, throughout the greater part of this work. In page 144, he remarks that "all the perfection which God requires of any of his creatures, angels, or men, is a measure of knowledge and love bearing an exact proportion to their natural powers."-But why in exact proportion to their natural powers, if, in the nature of the case, it was not impossible that their obligations should ever transcend these powers? The author appears to have been led into this mistake by supposing that whatever was necessary to our salvation, God might justly propose to us, and require of us, as a condition of our salvation: But is not this wholly to overlook the circumstances of the case? Could an offer of salvation, upon any conditions, have been made to fallen man, without the intervention of a Saviour? The language which God must necessarily have held to him, in these circumstances, was that of a righteous Judge, condemning him to everlasting death. A law which could give life, or even propose life, was not admissible; and it was not admissible for this plain reason, that no terms could be named which would be proper for God to accept, and which at the same time the sinner was naturally able to perform. It is believed, therefore, that we should need both a Redeemer and Sanctifier, although it were not just for God to require of us more than we have natural power to fulfil. We should need a Redeemer to make an atonement for us; a work which we could never accomplish, nor be required to accomplish ourselves. We should need a Sanctifier, to renew our hearts, and restore us to the Image of God; not indeed because we have no natural power to perform this work; for we have this power, and God requires us to exercise it; but because we are totally depraved, and shall never employ our natural faculties in returning unto God, until moved to it by the operations of his Holy Spirit. It will be seen that the exceptions taken against the Author's reasoning in this place, apply so far only as the question of natural power is concerned.] |