PRACTICAL DISCOURSES ON REGENERATION, AND ON THE SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE OF SALVATION BY FAITH. BY P. DODDRIDGE, D.D. WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY, BY RALPH WARDLAW, D. D. GLASGOW. GLASGOW: PRINTED FOR WILLIAM COLLINS? WILLIAM WHYTE & CO. AND WILLIAM OLIPHANT, EDINBURGH; MDCCCXXIX. INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. THE word SALVATION necessarily suggests the idea of some existing evil, from which deliverance has either been effected, or is required. In its simple primary meaning, it has no exclusive reference to one description of evil or of deliverance more than to another. But in general use, it has become so very much appropriated to the deliverance revealed by the gospel, that we are apt to feel as if it were desecrated when we hear it applied to any preservation or rescue, whether personal or national, of a merely secular and temporary nature. But, even when it is understood to be used in its highest acceptation, the conceptions associated with it by multitudes are exceedingly partial and unworthy. The idea which it most immediately, and often, it is to be feared, exclusively, suggests, is that of deliverance from suffering,-from the penal consequences of sin,-from hell. That this is included in salvation, and a part of it which no considerate mind, properly impressed with the deserts of transgression, will lightly estimate,-we freely and thankfully admit. But there is a sadly prevailing dispo sition to dwell upon it, to give it an undue prominence, so as to throw into the back ground, and almost out of view, another part of the blessing incomparably more elevated and excellent. The source of this disposition is to be found in the selfish corruption of our nature. As depraved creatures, we are naturally fond of sin; but we are naturally no less unfond of its punishment. We need not the grace of God, that we may be taught to dislike and deprecate suffering. The nature which we possess in common, not only with all intelligent, but with all sensitive existence, teaches us this with irresistible energy. It has all the force of an instinctive principle. The salvation which our fallen nature would choose for itself, would be, deliverance from the punishment, and from all apprehension of it, along with a plenary indulgence to the commission of the sin. There is no indigenous desire in our nature of deliverance from sin itself. An eternity of unpunished sin, is the salvation it would like; a salvation unworthy of the name, and which it is a moral impossibility that God should bestow. To the mind of an angel,-of one of those spirits of light who retain the blessedness of sinless intimacy with the uncreated purity of the Godhead, and draw their untainted joy from the fountain of divine love, -who feel that their glory and their happiness lie in their likeness to that infinite Being whose nature is the archetype of all that is excellent and lovely in the moral universe,-to the mind of an angel, the word salvation, we cannot doubt, would primarily and instantly suggest the thought of deliverance from sin. This would hold the first place. Con |