simply considered is good, yet take the acts in their measure and dimensions, and the manner in which they are exerted, and they are corrupt acts; that is, they are defectively corrupt, or sinfully defective; there is that defect in them that may well be called the corruption of them. That defect is proper ly sin, an expression of a vile sinfulness of heart, and what tends to provoke the just anger of God; not because the exercise of love and other grace is not equal to God's loveliness; for it is impossible the love of creatures (men or angels) should be so; but because the act is so very disproportionate to the occasion given for love or other grace, considering God's loveliness, and the manifestation that is made of it, and the exercises of kindness, and the capacity of human nature, and our advantages (and the like) together. A negative expression of corruption may be as truly sin, and as just cause of provocation, as a positive. Thus if a man, a worthy and excellent person, should, from mere generosity and goodness, exceedingly lay out himself, and should, with great expense and suffering, save another's life or redeem him from some extreme calamity; and when he had done all, that other person should never thank him for it, or express the least grati tude any way; this would be a negative expression of his ingratitude, and baseness; but is equivalent to an act of ingratitude or positive exercise of a base, unworthy spirit; and is truly an expression of it, and brings as much blame, as if he, by some positive act, had much injured another person. And so it would be, (only in a less degree) if the gratitude was but very small, bearing no proportion to the benefit and obligation; as if, for so great and extraordinary a kindness, he should express no more gratitude than would have been becoming to wards a person that had only given him a cup of water when thirsty, or shewn him the way in a journey when at a loss, or had done him some such small kindness: If he should come to his benefactor to express his gratitude, and should do after this manner, he might truly be said to act unworthily and odiously; he would show a most ungrateful spirit: And his doing after such a manner might justly be abhorred by all: And yet the gratitude, that little there is of it, most simply consid

eved, and so far as it goes is good. And so it is with respect to our exercise of love, and gratitude, and other graces, to wards God: They are defectively corrupt and sinful, and take them as they are, in their manner and measure, might justly be odious and provoking to God, and would necessarily be so, were we beheld out of Christ: For in that this defect is sin, it is infinitely hateful; and so the hatefulness of the very act infinitely outweighs the loveliness of it; because all sin has infinite hatefulness and heinousness; but our holiness has but little value and loveliness, as has been elsewhere demonstrated,

Hence, though it be true that the saints are rewarded for their good works yet it is for Christ's sake only, and not for the excellency of their works in themselves considered, or beheld separately from Christ; for so they have no excellency in God's sight, or acceptableness to him, as has now been shewn. It is acknowledged that God, in rewarding the holiness and good works of believers, does in some respect, give them happiness as a testimony of his respect to the loveliness of their holiness and good works in his sight; for that is the very notion of a reward: But in a very different sense from what would have been, if man had not fallen; which would have been to bestow eternal life on man, as a testimony of God's respect to the loveliness of what man did, considered as in itself, and as in man, separately by himself, and not beheld as a member of Christ: In which sense also, the scheme of justification we are opposing necessarily supposes the excellency of our virtue to be respected and rewarded; for it supposes a saving interest in Christ itself to be given as a reward of it.

Two things come to pass, relating to the saints' reward of their inherent righteousness, by virtue of their relation to Christ. 1. The guilt of their persons is all done away, and the pollution and hatefulness that attend their good works are hid. 2. Their relation to Christ adds a positive value and dignity to their good works in God's sight. That little holiness, and those faint and feeble acts of love, and other grace, receive an exceeding value in the sight of God, by virtue'

of God's beholding them as in Christ, and as it were members of one so infinitely worthy in his eyes; and that because God looks upon their persons as persons of greater dignity on this account. Isa. xliii. 4. "Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honorable." God for Christ's sake, and because they are members of his own righteous and dear Son, sets an exceeding value upon their persons; and hence it follows, that he also sets a great value upon their good acts and offerings. The same love and obedience in a person of greater dignity and value in God's sight is more valuable in his eyes than in one of less dignity. Love and respect (as has been before observed) are valuable in proportion to the dignity of the person whose love it is; because, so far as any one gives his love to another, he gives himself, in that he gives his heart But this is a more excellent offering, in proportion as the person whose self is offered is more worthy. Believers are become immensely more honorable in God's esteem by virtue of their relation to Christ, than man would have been, considered as by himself, though he had been free from sin; as a mean person becomes more honorable when married to a king. Hence God will probably reward the little weak, love, and poor and exceedingly imperfect obedience of believers in Christ, with a more glorious reward than he would have done Adam's perfect obedience. According to the tenor of the first covenant, the person was to be accepted and rewarded, only for the work's sake; but by the covenant of grace, the work is accepted and rewarded, only for the person's sake; the person being beheld antecedently as a member of Christ, and clothed with his righteousness. So that though the saints' inherent holiness is rewarded, yet this very reward is indeed not the less founded on the worthiness and righteousness of Christ: None of the value that their works have in his sight, nor any of the acceptance they have with him, is out of Christ, and out of his righteousness; but his worthiness as Mediator is the prime and only foundation on which all is built, and the universal source whence all arises. God indeed doth great things out of regard to the saints' loveliness, but it is only as a secondary and derivative loveliness, as it were. When I

speak of a derivative loveliness, I do not mean only, that the qualifications themselves that are accepted as lovely, are derived from Christ, and are from his power and purchase; but that the acceptance of them as a loveliness, and all the value that is set upon them, and all their connexion with the reward, is founded in, and derived from Christ's righteousness and worthiness.

If we suppose that not only higher degrees of glory in heaven, but heaven itself, is in some respect given in reward for the holiness and good works of the saints, in this secondary and derivative sense, it will not prejudice the doctrine we have maintained. It is no way impossible that God may bestow heaven's glory wholly out of respect to Christ's righteousness, and yet in reward for man's inherent holiness, in different respects, and different ways. It may be only Christ's righteousness that God has respect to, for his own sake, the independent acceptableness and dignity of it, being sufficient of itself to recommend all that believe in Christ to a title to this glory; and so it may be only by this, that persons enter into a title to heaven, or have their prime right to it: And yet God may also have respect to the saints' own holiness, for Christ's sake, and as deriving a value from Christ's merit, which he may testify in bestowing heaven upon them. The saints being beheld as members of Christ, their obedience is looked upon by God as something of Christ's, it being the obedience of the members of Christ, and their sufferings are looked upon, in some respect, as the sufferings of Christ. Hence the apostle, speaking of his sufferings, says, Col. i. 24. "Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh." To the same purpose is Matth. xxv. 35. &c. I was an hungred, naked, sick, and in prison, &c. And so that in Rev. xi. 8. "And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified."

By the merit and righteousness of Christ, such favor of God towards believers, may be obtained as that God, may hereby be already, as it were, disposed to make them

perfectly and eternally happy. But yet this does not hine der, but that God in his wisdom may choose to bestow this perfect and eternal happiness in this way, viz. in some respect as a reward of their holiness and obedience: It is not impossible but that the blessedness may be bestowed as a reward for that which is done, after that an interest is already obtained in that favor which (to speak of God after the manner of men) disposes God to bestow the blessedness. Our heavenly Father may already have that favor for achild, whereby he may be thoroughly ready to give the child an inheritance, because he is his child; which he is by the purchase of Christ's righteousness: And yet that does not hinder but that it should be possible, that the Father may choose to bestow the inheritance on the child, in a way of reward for his dutifulness, and behaving as becoming a child. And so great and exceeding a reward may not be judged more than a meet reward for his dutifulness; but that so great a reward is judged meet, does not arise from the excellency of the obedience absolutely considered, but from his standing in so near and honorable a relation to God, as that of a child, which is obtained only by the righteousness of Christ. And thus the reward, arises properly from the righteousness of Christ; though it be indeed in some sort the reward of their obedience. As a father might justly esteem the inheritance no more than a meet reward for the obedience of his child, and yet esteem it more than a meet reward for the obedience of a servant. The favor whence a believer's heavenly Father bestows the eternal inheritance, and his title as an heir, are founded in that relation he stands in to him as a child, purchased by Christ's righteousness; though he in wisdom chooses to bestow it in such a way, as therein to testify his acceptance of the amiableness of his own obedience in Christ.

Believers having a title to heaven by faith, antecedent to their obedience, or its being absolutely promised to them before, does not hinder but that the actual bestowment of heaven may also be a testimony of God's regard to their obedience, though performed afterwards. Thus it was with Abraham, the father and pattern of all believers: God bestowed upon