tempers, how bitter and obstinate! This pride, how stubborn! This love of the world, how bewitching !" None of you who feel with power these things, are thinking that you can be saved, while these lusts and these sins remain unmortified, and you continue at your ease. No, you have not so learned from the Spirit of Christ. Thank God, your eyes are thus far opened. This is more than the easy, careless souls have learnt, to whom I first addressed myself. Be hence encouraged, however, to press on for victory, lest your latter end be worse than the first. But mind the manner in which you are to press on for victory; for in the little that remains of this discourse, I shall carry you forward to complete everlasting victory; I mean so far as man can do it in word. And may the Holy Ghost do it with power for you and for me. You should be led, then, and if led by the Spirit of God, you will be led to bring the worth of the soul, and the worth of the world, each into opposite scales of the balance. And you will weigh them in the balance of God, that is, of truth. The soul will infinitely outweigh. To escape hell; eternal, remediless, pitiless hell, in the company of the Devil and his angels; to gain heaven, the fullness of joy, the likeness of God, and fellowship with Jesus Christ:-This will be your simple, infinitely weighty object. The world, its gains, pleasures, friendships, honours, all together, will kick the beam, light as air; as a shadow; as nothing. The most alluring lusts will lose their hold. You are called to give up, what? a nothing; that which is not worth keeping; what it is infinitely better to lose than to hold, whenever God pleases. You are called on to receive freely happiness itself. You will know, that the end of the love of the world is the second death in the lake of fire: you will see that the love of the world deserves the lake of fire; nay, that you deserve it for what is past already; how much more for the continuance of such a state of sin for the time to come. Does this conviction come hardly to you! Indeed it does; but, oh! Christ, thou canst do it, and the spiritual view of thee crucified and made a curse for us, shows it invincibly. Then pride receives its death wound: man fell by pride, and he must rise again by humility. Saved by grace alone you now feel you must be, if at all; and you will now hear Jesus inviting you so to be saved, and telling you he shed his blood, that you might live. You believe and are pardoned, sanctified and live new creatures. But how is this brought about? You find you must part with all, even your righteousness, for Christ. You have no strength for this. Into Christ's arms you fall as the clay, and there lie. He raises you by faith. He tells you his victory is yours. "These things have I spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer: I have overcome the world." : : ; SERMON III. THE INESTIMABLE VALUE OF FAITH IN THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF GOD AND OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST. 2 Peter, i. 1. Simon Peter, a servant and an apostle of Jesus Christ, to them that have obtained like precious faith with us, through the righteousness of God, and our Saviour Jesus Christ. THIS Epistle was written to christians, with a view to confirm them in the faith, and to build them up in the truth as it is in Jesus. The foundation of their character is set forth in this verse, and it is very descriptive of a christian spirit. He is a true christian, who, like those to whom St. Peter writes, has obtained the same precious faith which the apostles had, (for in this there is not the least difference between an apostle and the meanest real believer) the same precious faith, I say, in "the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ." I am aware that the text in our translation is rendered, " faith through the righteousness;" but the Greek is εν in the righteousness; and as no doubt can be made of this, I shall constantly prefer this rendering, though it is certain that both renderings will run up into the same meaning. If our translation has in this, and a very few other places, deviated a little from the original, the consequences are of no importance. The translation is, in general, as faithful, I apprehend, as can be expected from human infirmity; and blessed be God! "the righteousness of God and our Saviour," received by " precious faith," is a truth conveyed through the scriptures, and is, together with all its connections and consequences, too well established, to be at all affected by verbal criticisms on Greek particles. A chrristian then, according to St. Peter, is one who has " obtained precious faith in the righteousness of our Saviour Jesus Christ." What a christian then was, he is now. "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." The Saviour is the same, and a true faith in him is still the same. There will arise then three distinct questions, which will require to be distinctly handled. I will briefly speak to each. 1st. What is the righteousness of God and our Saviour here spoken of. 2d. What it is to have precious faith in it. 3d. Whence this precious faith is to be obtained. Nothing will need to be explained but these three things, in order to take in all that was meant by the apostle when he tells us, that a christian is one who has obtained precious faith in the righteousness of God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. 4 1st. The righteousness here meant deserves to be called the righteousness of God, because he who performed it for believers is God, and was manifest in the flesh. In the gospel the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, saith the apostle. All men are by nature under the covenant of works, which requires perfect obedience. By guilt, both original and actual, every soul of man is cut off from any pretension to the divine favour on the footing of this covenant, whose terms Moses thus describes: "The man which doeth those things shall live by them." There is but another covenant by which guilty men can live, and that is the covenant of grace; and " if by grace, then it is no more of works, otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace, otherwise work is no more work*." So that upon the whole there is no place found for a middle covenant; a way of acceptance made up of man's doings, and Christ's put together. Be they blended as they will, the word of God allows no such ways, and all whom death finds thus depending, will be tried according to the covenant of works, and by it will be condemned. Every man of this congregation, whenever death seizes him, will be tried either by the covenant of works, which requires perfect obedience, and for want of that obedience be sentenced to perish; or else by the covenant of grace, which will declare him pardoned, and eternally accepted of God. This all-important benefit of the covenant of grace results from the righteousness which it gives the believer, and not from any works of righteousness that he has done. For "blessed is the man to whom God imputeth righteousness without works." But it is a righteousness perfectly adequate to the demands of the law, being the righteousness of Jesus, who " is the end of the law for righteousness to every *Rom. xi. 6. |