To hold out this general assurance, as an encouragement to pious habits and a consolation to the weak Christian under spiritual afflictions, is not only justifiable, but useful and apostolical. But to the question, whether the doctrine of final perseverance, in its usual acceptation, is preached by St. Paul, the passage I have cited must return an answer in the negative. He declares that "to our safety, our own sedulity is required,"* in as decisive terms, as if our safety depended upon our sedulity alone. And every discreet follower of St. Paul will be no less careful to prevent his flock from believing that they have " appre"hended or attained, or are already perfect," till they have reached the end of the race that is set before them.

*Hooker. If all who preach on "the certainty and perpetuity of faith in the elect," had judgment and wariness like his, there would be no danger lest the topic of Christian consolation should become the ground of unhallowed presumption.

THE point of immediate interest with mankind, after learning the humiliating truth of their condemnation, is, to be made acquainted with the means of their reconciliation in the sight of God. And this is the arrangement of St. Paul, as we shall observe, by referring once more to the course of his argument to the Romans. As, in the order of events, the atonement of Christ, though determined" before the foun"dation of the world," was consequent upon

Since divines have greatly differed in the sense they have attached to the word Justification, it may be necessary to define it, according to our Church in the Eleventh Article, as the being "accounted righteous before God." Those who speak of a present and final justification, introduce a needless perplexity; and those who identify it with salvation, though with some passages of Scripture on their side, differ from our Church; as is evident from the mere title of the Thirteenth Article, "Of Works done before Justification."

the fall of man; so, in his explanation of the divine dispensations, the Apostle uses the doctrine of human corruption, as an introduction to that of their acceptance through faith. Having, in the first instance, as was fully shown, brought all under conviction, that "their own works or deservings" could give them no claim to the favour of God, but that, on the contrary, they were justly subject to the "wrath, revealed from heaven against all "ungodliness and unrighteousness," i. 18; having stopped every mouth," and proved "all the world guilty before God," iii. 19: he sums up the argument, "Therefore by the "deeds of the law (the moral code, as is evi"dent from the context) there shall no flesh be

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justified in his sight." iii. 20. He then proceeds to declare that the mercy of the Creator had devised a mode by which he consented to pardon the sins of his repentant people, and to accept their imperfect obedience: "But now "the righteousness of God without the law is "manifested, being witnessed by the law and

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prophets (i. e. testified throughout the whole

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course of the Jewish Scriptures); even the "righteousness of God which is by faith of "Jesus Christ, unto all and upon all them "that believe; for there is no difference; for "all have sinned, and come short of the glory "of God: being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in (by) Christ Jesus: whom God has set forth to be "a propitiation through faith in his blood, to "declare his righteousness for (in) the remis

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sion of sins that are past, through the for"bearance of God. To declare, I say, at this "time his righteousness, that he might be "just, and the justifier of him which believeth "in Jesus. Where is boasting then? It is "excluded. By what law? of works? nay: "but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the "deeds of the law." iii. 21, &c.

This is the mysterious doctrine revealed in the Gospel, and insisted upon as the foundation-stone of his preaching throughout all the

Epistles of St. Paul.

Whatever objections

men may make, whatever argument they may deduce from speculations on the divine nature and attributes, might be important in natural religion but if we believe the New Testament to be revealed from God, we must repress these speculations, and receive what we find thus positively declared. St. Paul frequently insinuates that these doctrines are not only undiscoverable to natural reason, but even disagreeable to it. Perhaps it is on this account, that he is fuller upon them, more earnestly repeats them, and more frequently returns to them.

The fact, however, is certain, that he represents justification by faith in Christ, as the main pillar of the system, the removal of which would be the subversion of every other doctrine; with which, in short, the whole must stand or fall. To prove this is the principal object of some of the Epistles, where he saw that it was endangered by Jewish prejudices; but he wrote none in which it is not distinctly laid down as the character of the