which they express for the supposed ignorance and legality of others, give sad cause to suspect that their imaginary knowledge and orthodoxy are the righteousness on which their hearts are resting.

Those Jews who maintained that there was no necessity for looking at the brazen serpent, and that if they would only believe that it had already cured them, they would find that they were all perfectly well, might be considered as the exemplars of the modern Bereans. The Berean hypothesis was originally intended to be an antidote to the Sandemanian scheme. Of late, however, the two systems, in the most important articles, have been brought to exact agreement.

The substance of this multifarious system may be comprehended in the following propositions. God, for Christ's sake, loves every human creature, and has redeemed all by the death of his Son. As it is only for the sake of the atonement that any iniquity is forgiven, and the atonement was complete on the day that Jesus died, the sins of the whole world were all pardoned then, and every child of Adam succeeds by birth to an interest in Christ, and all the blessings of his salvation. Saving faith is the knowledge or belief of the truth, that Christ is the propitiation for sin, that he died for the ungodly, that God loves us, has redeemed and pardoned us. Justification is the knowledge or belief that we are redeemed and

pardoned. Since all men are born with an interest in Christ, and the sins of the whole world were forgiven when Jesus died, it is as absurd to pray for mercy, pardon, an interest in Christ and similar blessings, as to pray for our creation, the formation of the sun and moon, or the communication of gravity to matter.

The assurance of salvation is absolutely inseparable from the existence of faith, and is derived entirely from the direct testimony of God, that Christ is the propitiation for sin, that he died for the ungodly, and that God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have everlasting life. This testimony contains not only a warrant to believe, but also an assurance of our interest in Christ, and of our personal salvation. If a man assents to this testimony, and yet doubts his own salvation, he not only acts an absurd and irrational part, but actually makes God a liar. If the direct testimony of God, in his word, is insufficient to give full personal assurance of salvation, then the gospel cannot be good tidings of great joy to all people. A man wishes to have peace to his mind in the knowledge that his sins are forgiven, and that he is accepted before God. But if instead of being delivered from his agitation and perplexity by the gospel record, he must examine his frames and feelings, his graces and virtues; then the gospel fails of its design. It is not the message which he needs: for he is labour

ing under a distress from which it is unable to relieve him. But this is a supposition dishonourable to the all-sufficiency of the gospel.

To set a believer a searching for evidence of his interest in Christ, is a most mischievous practice. It withdraws the mind from the simple truth. It introduces legality; unsettles the Christian's confidence; destroys his comfort; and places his peace upon an unstable and shifting foundation of sand, instead of leaving it to rest upon the direct testimony of God, which would fix his feet upon the Rock of ages.

It is to the examination of these assertions that the following pages are principally devoted.

CHAPTER II.

ON THE FREENESS OF THE GOSPEL AND ON THE
LOVE OF GOD.

In the camp of Israel the opticians were wrong, who itinerated with their instruments, to aid the vision of those who were bitten; and the physicians were as far from being right, who discouraged the wounded from looking to the brasen serpent, till they were thoroughly bled or blistered, and properly dressed and bandaged. Those men could not be too much commended, who endeav

oured to prevent every addition to the Divine injunction; who laboured to strip it of all ambiguity and misapprehension; and who exhorted their suffering brethren to comply with the directions exactly as God had given them, and to look at once, and just as they were, to the serpent lifted up on the pole.

And after the scriptures are replenished with the most bright and overbearing attestations to the precious and soul-saving truth, that Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth, and appointed for salvation to the ends of the earth, every man is entitled to our warmest gratitude, who exerts himself to secure the purity of revealed truth; and clear the gospel call from every restraint impediment and clog, with which some, in their well-meant, but mistaken zeal to promote its safety, and ensure its success, have unhappily loaded it. This seems to be the design of the Bereans. Tenderly alive to the glory of Divine grace, and terrified lest, if the vestige of a condition of salvation were left in the christian system, it would bring back the reign of legal toil and terror; in order to vindicate the absolute gratuitousness of this dispensation of mercy, they have thought it necessary to reject the idea, that faith is a condition of pardon and acceptance, and to maintain, that by the death of Christ every sin is forgiven; and the whole world restored to the favour of God.

Here it must be observed, that no man, who

knows his bible, will venture to affirm that faith is possessed of the slightest merit, or an equivalent for the smallest spiritual blessing. But from the unvarying language of revelation, it is equally undeniable that faith is the beginning of religion; that it is by faith that the soul is united to Christ, and interested in his salvation. Faith is the line which separates a state of nature from a state of grace. The man who is without faith, has no union to Christ, no enjoyment of the gospel, no right to heaven, no meetness for everlasting happiness; and, if he die in that condition, he must be eternally undone. This faith is the gift of God, and wrought in the heart by the Holy Spirit. Labour is the meritorious condition for the hireling's receiving his wages; and the price, which the buyer pays down, is the meritorious condition of obtaining the article which he purchases. But it is difficult to conceive how the patient's taking the physician's prescripton, can be denominated the meritorious condition of his cure; the beggar's accepting alms can be called the condition of the donation; or the heirs' entering on his father's estate, can be styled the meritorious condition of his inheritance. And when it is by faith that the diseased soul submits to the treatment of the Almighty Physician, the perishing sinner accepts the unspeakable gift of God, and the indigent and starving children of Adam take possession of the unsearchable riches of Christ; it is impossible to see the propriety of representing