we have now seen, are to be traced up, not only to the sin of our first father, "who brought death into the world and all our woe," but are also to be brought home and laid at each man's own door; for so far from any one having lessened the barrier which Adam raised, and done anything to remove the cause of exclusion from the Divine presence, every man has added his "many offences" (Rom. v. 16) to the one sin by which death entered into the world, and has too good reason to cry out on his own account, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

CHAPTER III.

BUT it would be doing a very small service to prove that it is a fact that " man is very far gone from original righteousness," and merely to explain the cause of their misfortunes, unless at the same time we could point out a remedy for the evil, by showing how the barrier which man's sins had raised between him and his Maker has been removed, and the ample means for his recovery which has been provided. To bid a man be at ease and enjoy all the blessings of life around him, whilst he knew that the sentence against him as a sinner remained unrepealed, and whilst unforgiven sin rankled in his breast, would be like bidding the wounded man lie still and at his ease, when we had bathed his wound with an anodyne, and left the shaft sticking in it, or exhorting the good man of the house to be happy, and enjoy all the comforts of

his fireside, when he knew that the robber and the murderer were concealed on his premises, to rise up at midnight for his destruction. No; the cry, "I have sinned, O thou Preserver of man, what shall I do? is not so easily silenced; and if, like blind Bartimeus, we are urged to hold our peace by some who have healed our wounds slightly, "saying, peace, peace, when there was no peace," we shall cry so much the more, "Have mercy on me !" As the wound cannot heal round a thorn, no more can that which sin has inflicted on the heart be cured, till it has been probed by self-examination, discovered by confession, and the barbed arrow extracted by the hand of the good Physician of souls, who alone can restore ease to the mind by saying, "Thy sins are forgiven thee; go in peace." Sin, inwardly festering in the soul, forbids the possibility of peace; and even though we may for a time succeed in lulling the sense of it asleep, or in driving away the remembrance of it, and may say, 66 Soul, take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry," "be sure your sin shall find you out;" it shall wake that will bite you; will glare upon you in your hour of solitary retirement, or rise up suddenly before you at the social board, like Banquo's ghost; will unnerve the powers of your mind, and unstring the sinews of your body. If the Protestant religion does not give this peace, it gives us less than the Jew's reli

gion did, which unquestionably enabled its possessor to taste "the blessedness of those whose iniquities were forgiven, and their sin covered;" (Ps. xxxii. ;) and less than the apostate Romish church undertakes to give her disciples, who permits them to purchase it with the gold which perisheth, or to obtain it by meritorious service; if our religion, then, gave us not, at least as much as the former was able to give, and the latter pretends to give her children, we should be tempted to renounce Christianity and return to the Jewish persuasion, or to accept of Rome's fictitious counterfeit,* as even the amount of the one, or the unsubstantial idea of the other, would, to weak minds, be better than none at all! But, "blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all

* Indeed we have every reason to believe that for the relief of anxiety on this subject, and from impatience under the discomfort which the uncertainty men's minds are involved in by the present style of preaching, (which seems more intended to awaken men to a sense of want than a knowledge of the source whence all these wants are supplied,) many have taken refuge in Romanism, and many would do so were they not deterred by the fresh troubles in which such a step plunges them; indolence and timidity alone preserving them members of the Protestant body, while their minds pant after what they erroneously conceive Catholicism alone can bestow on them, peace of mind arising from a sense of the forgiveness of their sins and restoration to the favour of God.

spiritual blessings in Christ Jesus," we are not driven to either of these miserable expedients to obtain this "pearl of great price," peace of mind, through the pardon of our sins, which was only dimly revealed to the Jews, in its dark cabinet of type and figure, and which Rome stole from the world in all its disclosed and refulgent lustre in the Gospel, and replaced with the baubles of human corruptions and inventions; but we, in this our day, may know the things that belong to our peace, with no such dreadful sacrifices, having a ground of hope "upon the best and surest foundations," containing all that the most guilty require for their cleansing, all that the most helpless stand in need of for their support, and the most wretched could desire, to alleviate their distress, so placed within the reach of every creature that breathes, that he who does not know “ the exceeding riches of God's grace, in "His kindness towards us, through Christ Jesus," and consequently is not " rejoicing with a joy unspeakable and a hope full of immortality," is living below his privileges, and below that state of peace and joy in believing, his God has provided for him; and is thus depriving himself of his due heritage, and robbing God of the glory due to his most holy name, who has appointed so full a provision for his edification and comfort. Yes-without making light of sin, as some well-meaning writers do, to