I. We are here instructed concerning

THE ORIGINAL SOURCE, THE INSTRUMENTAL MEAN, AND THE DIVINE AUTHOR

OF THE SALVATION OF MAN.

1. The original source of salvation is declared by St. Paul to be the grace of God: "By grace are ye saved." The whole of salvation generally, and each part of it in particular, is attributable to grace as its highest source and only origin. It originated entirely with God, in a voluntary act of his own mere mercy. There could be no moral necessity that man should be saved, or why were rebel angels permitted to sink into irremediable ruin? why do any of the guilty race of Adam, even under a dispensation of mercy, perish in their sins? By the term grace, therefore, as it is here employed by the Apostle, we may understand the display of God's free favour and love in the recovery and salvation of perishing sinners; and this grace is particularly exercised in pardoning, justifying, sanctifying, and eternally saving each truly penitent, believing soul.

To the free grace of God are to be ascribed our pardon and justification. "Blessed

be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ," saith St. Paul, "who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: according as he hath chosen us in him... that we should be holy, and without blame before him in love having predestinated us unto the adoption of children... to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the Beloved in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace." "* He explicitly declares, that God hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose, and [the] grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.”† And, again, he speaks of being "justified freely by his grace."‡

In the same language are our renewal and sanctification described; and from the same source are they said to proceed. In a passage just cited, St. Paul declares, that we are "called with an holy calling," or, in other words, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, and thus rendered holy in * Eph. i. 3-7. + 2 Tim. i. 9. Rom. iii. 24.

our hearts and lives," according to ... the grace which was given us in Christ." And when any man effectually learns to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world, we may conclude that the grace of God has taught and enabled him so to do, even that grace which bringeth salvation from the power and practice of not less than from its guilt and punish

men.

The work which divine grace commences when it calls any sinner out of nature's darkness into marvellous light, is progressively carried forward, until by the same grace it is finally perfected in glory. Conviction of sin, conversion from sin, repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation with God, and full acceptance with him, are but so many parts of the same plan, so many steps and advances leading to the same end. They constitute the way by which the wanderer is brought back, and the prodigal conducted again to his father's house in peace, that highway of holiness whereby the ransomed of the Lord return and come to Zion with songs of everlasting

joy. Of the final completion of the work of grace, St. Peter speaks, and with the certain prospect of this, animates and encourages us in our Christian course, in the beginning of his first epistle: "Wherefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and hope to the end for the grace that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ." To the same To the same purpose, the Apostle, in the verse preceding our text, declares the great end proposed in the plan of redeeming mercy; and the consummation of that plan, in the glorification of each believer in Jesus, he designates by the very term grace; intimating that to this and to this only, in its final completion, not less than in its earliest commencement, and in every intermediate stage of it, the great work of our salvation is to be attributed

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That in the ages to come" (even throughout a never-ending eternity) "he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus; for by grace are ye saved." Wherein, therefore, will the happiness of the heavenly state consist, but in a ceaseless display of the Father's love, the purchased

blessings of the Saviour's death, and the precious fruits and everlasting blessed consequences of the Spirit's influence? so that eternity itself will be one continuous development of the mystery of redeeming grace. “What,” says the apostolical Leighton, "are preventing grace, assisting grace, working and co-working grace, as we may admit these differences in a sound sense, but divers names of the same effectual saving grace in relation to our different estate? as the same sea receives different names from the different parts of the shore it beats upon."* They are, in fact, so many streams issuing from the same fountain-the rich, superabounding grace of Jehovah, which displays itself towards sinners in a great variety of ways, and adapts itself to all the circumstances and exigences of our fallen nature.

2. But that which is ascribed to grace in one sense, is attributed to faith in another; “by grace are ye saved, through faith"-that is, by grace originally and meritoriously, through faith intermediately and instrumentally. Salvation, which oriLeighton on St. Peter, ch. i. v. 2.

*