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exhortation, St. Jude marks out as persons ordained to condemnation-not ordained, be it observed, to the ungodliness which provoked it-those who had adopted a belief subversive of morality, and tending to licentiousness. For," he adds, "there are certain men crept in unawares who were before of old ordained to this condemnation; ungodly men, turning the grace of God to lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ." The men who had "crept in unawares" were not, it seems evident, those who, under the bias of corrupt propensities, had rejected the Gospel altogether; but those who, under the same bias in a worse degree, had wrested from its doctrines an apology for vice and ungodliness; and when we consider, that in the whole Epistle of St. Jude there is no distinct allusion to any other heresy than that of "turning the grace of our God to lasciviousness," we can hardly be accused of straining our argument in alleging that it was that particular heresy-that of rejecting the obligation to personal holiness, or of denying the authority of divine commandments inculcated by our Saviour, as well as by Moses the prophet who foretold and prefigured himwhich St. Jude pointed at, and only more emphatically reprobated, in the words, "denying

the only Lord God and our Lord Jesus Christ." But even if this be disputed, it is obvious from his language, that a conceit had infested the church that the Gospel did not enforce or necessitate the fulfilment of moral duties; and that this was an error which was held by St. Jude to be wholly incompatible with " the faith which was once delivered to the saints." It will be remembered, moreover, that this perversion of the Christian doctrine-this strange and most detestable shape of evil crossed the path of St. Paul, was vehemently resisted by him, and repelled with the utmost abhorrence.

We shall farther adduce the much-controverted language of St. James, as furnishing an exact and incontestable proof of the position which it was proposed to establish; and shall thereby offer, it is conceived, a simple and conclusive exposition of his doctrine. But deferring this additional argument, it may surely be already concluded that a persuasion of the obligation, necessity, and reward of personal holiness, or the discharge of our religious and moral duties as inculcated in the New Testament, is strictly and essentially comprehended in the faith by which we are justified and saved.

It then inevitably follows, and this inference,

however obvious, is frequently overlooked or evaded, that a large portion of the immorality of Christendom in past ages adverted to at the commencement of this discourse, is not an example of incongruity between the belief and practice of the Gospel; but a proof rather of absolute ignorance, or enormous error concerning it. Large bodies of men, for example, have so interpreted the religion of Christ as to derive from it a warrant for invading the territories, afflicting the persons, coercing the liberty, and even destroying the lives of their fellow-creatures, in the endeavour to convert them to their own belief and profession. In this persuasion they were no more, intellectually or speculatively, Christians, than an army of Mahometans are Christians, or a troop of banditti, or a horde of savages. To identify or connect such a persuasion with faith in Jesus Christ, were just as intelligent or upright, as to hold up and stigmatize Jesus Christ himself as a teacher of injustice and cruelty,-an abettor of invasion, pillage, oppression, and murder. Individuals and communities, we say, have understood the divine command to extend the knowledge of the Gospel as superseding or neutralizing the ordinary duties of justice and benevolence, and have "thought" they

were "doing God service" by acting on this construction of his word. Others have wrapped about them an imaginary faith in the Son of God, as a cloak for malice, cupidity, or licentiousness, and have covered and cherished the conscience in its folds. How far such fallacious impressions are the work of the mind itself, "loving and making a lie,”*the effect of corrupt passions perverting the intellect, turning the eye of the understanding from the light of truth, and detaining it in darkness till the very faculty of moral vision. is destroyed,—and how far they are the consequence of false instruction and unavoidable ignorance, is a question which the Omniscient Being only can determine. But to represent such conclusions as appertaining to a belief of Christianity, is an abuse of speech which it were hard to describe in qualified terms. No system of religion or philosophy can, with any propriety, be said to be believed wherein it is wholly misunderstood, and so far virtually unknown: yet we meet with writers who seem willing to shut their eyes to the glaring certainty of this position; and inclined to make the Gospel responsible, not merely for the immorality of its intelligent professors, but even for crimes which were the product of a

* Rev. xxii. 15.

faith as foreign to a belief in Christ as the grossest, wildest superstition that ever degraded the intellect, and overlaid the virtues of mankind. For, assuredly, no superstition ever engendered in Egypt or Hindostan could be more alien from a belief in the Messiah, than such opinions as tend to subvert the authority, or excuse the violation, of the law of universal charity albeit such opinions have, to an extent most humiliating, and at certain periods almost universally, disfigured the Christian character, and polluted the church of God.

The defective practice of religion and morality, so often and so lamentably apparent among well-instructed and, in a speculative sense, rightly judging Christians, is, we confess, an inconsistency between the belief and conduct of professors of the Gospel. But we have yet to consider the important fact, that the Scripture distinguishes between a merely speculative faith, and a faith which regulates the passions, and moulds the character; and, moreover, that in making this distinction, it points to a conviction of moral obligation in the mind of the believer. Taking this for granted at present, the only circumstance demanding explanation is the frequent usage of the term faith in the Holy Scriptures as signifying, not only a belief of the truths made