sinner under the gospel dispensation; and as sinners, once dead in trespasses and sins, this is the theme of our prayers, our gratitude, and our rejoicing. For we believe on the word and faithfulness of God, that the work he has begun he will complete; and having by his Spirit touched us into life, he will preserve the feeble breath within us till it grows into immortality. So long as the assurance of this first act of mercy abides within us, we feel, amid all the sins and dangers that surround us, no apprehension for the issue of our travail. Converted to Christ, changed from our natural enmity to love, we believe that we are saved. Being justified freely, we have confidence towards God; and God is more honoured by our confidence than he could be by our doubts, or any degree of mistrustful, anxious labour with which we might endeavour to relieve them. This is the foundation of Christian character, the living principle, without which the action of life cannot be carried on; and proportioned, I believe, to the vigour of this principle will be the action it produces.

But on this good foundation we perceive a disposition now abroad to build a structure totally at variance with the symmetry and beauty of the divine plan of salvation; a structure so awkward and ill proportioned, as at once to prove itself the fabrication of human weakness, which, driven from error on the one side, inclines immediately to error on the other. Dwelling continually on the divine doctrines above mentioned, men have come to consider pardon, and safety, and the hope, not very animated, of a future heaven, as the whole of salvation-all of it at least that is dispensed to us in this life-holiness and happiness, the blessed remainder, being to be waited for till we die. To the scriptural doctrine of imputed righteousness, by which we stand justified and sinless in the sight of God, has been joined, and in a manner confounded with it, an idea of imputed sanctification; by which, without any change wrought in us, we become holy and prepared for bliss at the same moment that we are pardoned and justified in Christ-nothing

more being to be done by us, or in us, until the day of our removal hence; thus denying altogether the idea of progressive sanctification, or any sanctification at all, except as imputed to us from the perfect merits of our blessed Lord. If any of my readers who have examined these doctrines by the light of Scripture, seriously believe them, there are not wanting more powerful writers than I should be, whose arguments doubtless they have weighed. Controversy is not my design; but I know that for one person who has received this notion as an examined tenet of their faith, there are many with whom it is the unexamined and unsuspected error of carelessness rather than of conviction. These I would persuade, if possible, to consider their opinions. For I have observed the consequences of this base contentedness with an unhallowed and unhappy safety; the half of what Christ has promised, and that not the better half, since if his mercy rested there, it would be unavailing to us; it would have remitted our misery without making us

blessed; it would have sent us from prison with our fetters on, and preferred us to a heaven that would not suit us when we come there: the little taste for that heaven evinced by persons in this condition, is a proof that it would not. From this low estimate of what salvation is, I have observed to result a life and conversation proportionately low; very little of enjoyment; a stupid expectation, that scarcely ever warms into desire. Heaven's banquet is vainly spread before an appetite that longs not for it, because it has never tasted of its sweetness; there is no desire for the Bridegroom's coming, because there is no assimilation of character to make the blest companionship delightful. Christians know not themselves the cause of this unreadiness, though they are conscious of feeling it. They say that the love of life is natural, or that they cannot presume to be in haste, while perhaps they are not fit. But if, on this, you advise them to become more fit, by a closer walk with God, they recur to first principles-their fitness is of God-He

has promised-justified in Christ, they know that they are saved. Most precious truths!

enough, one would think, to make us long after Him as the hart panteth for the water-brooks, and lose all care for what may intervene, in watchful expectation of his coming. But they have no such effect in this case: time loses little of its importance-earth but little of its influence. This is betrayed by a mode of talking which I think is not so good as it is common to good people--a sort of acquiescent self-reproach, which reconciles the mind to the shame it confesses and the falseness it laments, as if sin had lost its culpability and become a mere misfortune. I hear Christians themselves after this manner; "We express all forget God in the business of life-we prefer our own will to His-we fear man more than God—we covet too ardently this world's good," and so on as if there were no closer walk with God, no nearer resemblance to his image, than they have attained. And sometimes I have observed they are not pleased to