but to throw ourselves upon His mercy.' If He pardon us, it will be such an act of grace, as none but God could bestow.

We must utterly despair, when a discovery is made to us of our fallen, guilty, polluted, and helpless state, were not that discovery accompanied by a revelation of God's mercy in Jesus Christ. But this encourages us to hope, and excites us to cry, spare Thou them, O God, which confess their faults! To a criminal, who has great favor, if that life

6

forfeited his life, it is a be spared how much greater to a sinner, who perceives that he has merited the damnation of hell, to be plucked as a brand from the everlasting burnings! But such are the riches of the grace of God in Christ, that we are emboldened to ask for more than mere exemption from punishment. The Gospel affords us reason to believe that we do not conceive too largely of Divine mercy, when we add, restore thou them that are peni

tent! A restoration to the Divine favor and the Divine image is essential to the happiness of the awakened mind. The language of Absalom is also that of the penitent sinner, let me see the

King's face!"* The first dawn of hope in God's mercy through Christ begets love; and love can be contented with nothing short of an entire reconciliation. The deeper we search into

* 2 Sam. xiv. 32.

this unfathomable mine, the riches of the grace of God; the firmer the foundation appears, on which we build our hopes. For what we ask is according to God's promises declared unto mankind in Christ Jesus our Lord.' Christ has purchased for us all that we want; and for 'His sake' God has promised to bestow it

on us.

Every one, who has heartily joined in the preceding confession of sin, and deprecation of the anger of God, at the same time that he desires deliverance from guilt and punishment, will feel a strong solicitude to be saved from the dominion of those sins, which have hitherto reigned over him, and are now become his plague and torment. Our confessions are insincere, and our supplications are a mockery of God, unless accompanied with an anxious desire after Divine grace to enable us to conform our future lives to His holy law. If this desire really prevail in our minds, we feel likewise our own imbecility to do the will of God and then, filled with this ardent longing after holiness, and possessed at the same time with a full conviction that we must be indebted to Almighty power for our sanctification, as well as to Divine grace for our justification; we shall come before the throne and say, Grant, O most 'merciful Father, for Christ's sake, that we may •hereafter live a godly, righteous, and so

ber life to the glory of Thy holy name. A:

'men.'

The description of a Christian's life, which our church here exhibits to our view, is quoted from the lively oracles of God. St. Paul informs us, that the grace of God, which bringeth sal•vation, hath appeared to all men; teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world."* It has been said, that the doctrines of grace lead to licentiousness of conduct. This objection to the truth is as old as the days of the Apostles: for even in the course of the ministry of St. Paul, he found some unhappy persons, who drew a perverse conclusion from the evangelic premises he laid down; which occasioned his asking with holy indignation, shall "we continue in sin that grace may abound ? • God forbid.'† And again, Do we then make God forbid; yea

void the law through faith? "we establish the law,' our doctrines make full provision for its honor. If such an objection was started in the days of primitive Christianity, when a practice eminently holy usually attended a profession of these doctrines; it is no wonder that it should still continue to be made in our own day, when a profession of the true faith is attended with none of those painful consequences, to

which the friends of the gospel, during the first centuries of its promulgation, were sure to expose themselves. "The grace of God," however, continues the same; and the effects it produces, so far as the belief of it prevails in the heart, are also the same. Objectors to the scripture scheme of salvation usually overthrow their own batteries, spike up their own cannon, and save its friends the trouble of defending themselves. For, on the one hand, the advocates for justification by faith are charged with being "righteous overmuch,”* and unnecessarily precise, which is accounted for on the score of pride; and, on the other, the principles they hold are represented as naturally leading to a careless and irreligious life. If two

Eccles. vii.16. That this abused text cannot be a prohibition of earnestness, in seeking after conformity to the law of God, is very clear: for the scripture frequently sets forth the impossibility of attaining to the perfection, which the law requires, (see Ps.liii. 1. and Rom. iii. 9, 10.) "And our Lord assureth us that, after we have done all (if possible) that is commanded us, it becomes us to consider ourselves as unprofitable servants. Luke xvii. 10. With this the 14th article of our church directly coincides. The sense of the passage will be easily settled, if it be considered, that verbs in Hithpael often denote to pretend to be or do that, which the verb signifies. The misapplied words of the wise man in Eccles. vii. 16. may be therefore thus rendered and paraphrased: "Do. 'not pretend to great righteousness; neither do thou pretend to C superior wisdom: why shouldst thou destroy thyself?" Do not make pretensions to that, which is unattainable, even righteousness by the law, nor justify thyself: take heed also that thou dost not exalt thine own wisdom; for "the wisdom of men is foolishness with God," lest thereby thou shouldest deceive, and so destroy both body and soul in Hell.

persons, intending to overthrow a wall, were on opposite sides and with equal strength, to exert themselves, they would defeat their own design. Thus it fares with the enemies of revealed truth, who do nothing by the opposition they make to it, but prove their own prejudices, and the enmity of the carnal mind against God.

The grace of God is His free and undeserved kindness in the redemption of man. The very word implies its independence on any worthiness in the objects of it; for a thing ceases to be a favor, so far as it is deserved. The payment of the wages of an hireling is not an act of grace, but of debt. We had sinned, and thereby had incurred the curse of the righteous law. God might justly have left us to perish; for He was under no obligation to provide a vicarious sacrifice. He has shewn the severity of his justice in leaving the fallen angels without a remedy, re'served in chains of darkness to the judgment of 'the great day." But glory be to His holy name, respecting sinners of mankind He has said, Deliver them from going down into the pit, I have found a ransom."* This grace then is the sole and all-sufficient cause of our salvation. By it we are pardoned ;t by it we are justified ; by it we are called to the knowledge of the truth ;§ by this grace we are sanctified; thereby we are

* Job. xxxiii. 24. + Eph. i. 7. Rom. iii. 24. § 2 Tim. i. 9. 1 Cor. vi. 11.