into perdition millions who were caught in its whirl, he solemnly assures us that our own deeds and dispositions, however important or holy we may imagine them, have not the least influence, directly or indirectly, in procuring our acceptance with God. By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified; for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But, to kill despair and quicken hope, he accompanies this alarming doctrine with the reviving intelligence that the righteousness of God without the law is manifested; and that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth. Deeply impressed with the magnitude of this truth, and thoroughly aware of the deceitfulness and power of a legal propensity by which men are inclined to connect with the work of the Savfour, some work of their own, he cautions us against the danger of yielding to its suggestions; he not only urges the caution by the weight of his apostolic authority, but by arguments the most pointed and forceful, he demonstrates that if ever we be saved, our salvation must be of free grace. This precious doctrine the preceding parts of the epistle before us exhibit in a variety of lights; but nowhere is it asserted in terms more downright and unequivocal than in the words of our text; By

grace are ye saved, through faith, and that not of yourselves: It is the gift of God.

To facilitate the discussion of this subject, it may be proper to state the meaning of the words, grace, salvation, faith. Grace, evidently denotes free favor. It is often confounded with mercy, but it conveys an idea more strong and impressive. Mercy, is kindness shown to the miserable: grace, is mercy shown to the worthless.

Salvation, contemplates it objects as laboring under evil, and exposed to danger. The salvation of the gospel contemplates its objects as sinners; as ruined by their own transgression; as condemned by the sentence of a righteous law, and liable to the tremendous penalty which the sentence includes. Faith, in its general acceptation, is reliance upon testimony. The faith of a Christian; that faith from which he obtains the honorable denomination of a believer, is the cordial reception of the record which God hath given of his Son, upon the credit of his own veracity. The doctrine then of our text is briefly this, that we receive, by faith of divine operation, the salvation which is provided by grace.

You will not deem a few minutes unprofitably spent in meditating upon the blessing which is here exhibited; upon the source

from which it originates; and upon the instrument by which we are instated in the possession of it.

I. The blessing is salvation: a blessing of large and joyous extent; implying deliverance from guilt-reconciliation with God, the restoration of our nature, and a right, an unalienable right, to eternal life.

1. Salvation confers deliverance from guilt. The punishment to which our fallen nature is liable, is commonly styled the penalty of the law--is death, in the widest signification of the word and is the just award of sin; for the wages of sin is death. With this death Adam was threatened in case of disobedience, when God enjoined abstinence from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, as the pledge of his fidelity. Now since he stood in a federative character, and neither the precept nor its sanction was confined to the person of Adam, but embraced, in him, those who should spring from him, it follows, that "all his posterity, descending from him by ordinary generation, sinned in him, and fell with him, in his first transgression." So saith the scripture: In Adam all die.--By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned; and by one offense judgment is come upon all men to con

our woe.

demnation. Therefore, our deplorable condition is, that we are, by nature, children of wrath. Born under a broken law, eternal justice attaches our persons, and binds us over to all the evils which the curse of that law contains. And till we become the sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus, the actions of every day augment our guilt, and in the same proportion But the salvation of the gospel delivers from the curse. It dissolves forever our connection with the law as a rule of life: it dissolves this connection by bestowing upon us a justifying righteousness: a righteousness in which we are complete; a righteousness, which Jehovah himself will pronounce unblemished; a righteousness not wrought out indeed by ourselves, but by our surety. Our rejoicing is that Messiah has magnified the law, and made it honorable, and, therefore, that "Jehovah is well pleased for his righteousness' sake." The Father made him to be sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him and in accomplishing this work, the amazing work, which was given him to do, he has redeemed from the curse of the law, and forever perfected them who are sanctified.

God is angry with men, not because they are finite, but because they are wicked. It is sin which renders them the objects of his

abhorrence. If, then, a righteousness which provides at once for the safety of the criminal and for the glory of the Lawgiver; which pays to justice her full demand; which repairs the indignity done to the law, blots out every aspersion upon God's character, and vindicates the rights of his government: if such a righteousness can be imparted to the sinner, and can be pleaded by him, his guilt is removed, and with it must be removed the Lord's holy displeasure. The gospel-salvation, therefore, in procuring for sinners a justifying righteousness, procures,

2. Reconciliation with an offended God. The necessity of such a reconciliation has been felt by the consciences, and owned by the practice of men in every age. This invaluable blessing was typified by all the expiatory sacrifices, and by all the sacerdotal employment of the Levitical economy. This enviable blessing, Christ, the apostle and high priest of our profession-Christ, the author of eternal redemption, has obtained: he has made peace by the blood of his cross: he has made reconciliation for iniquity: and God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. It is in Christ, that the Father considers the heirs of salvation. Accounting the work of Christ as theirs,