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repentance, as of making an atonement. This important remark is so happily illustrated by an able theologian of our own day, that I cannot resist laying his remarks before the reader. “ When it is said,” remarks Mr. Dods," that God is willing to pardon us upon our repentance, without any atonement, it is taken for granted that we can repent when we please. For, if repentance be something entirely out of our power, then, it can afford us no comfort to tell us, even if it were true, that repentance will purchase our pardon. For, besides that it seems just as difficult to perceive the connection between repentance and pardon, as to perceive the connection between atonement and pardon, I know not that even the most determined rationalism has ever promulgated a tenet more clearly absurd, or more decidedly opposed to all experience, than the tenet that a man can repent of himself, without being led to do so, and enabled to do so, by the Holy Spirit. Many a sinner is no doubt soothing himself to peace by the promise of a future repentance. But he neither knows as yet what repentance is, nor his own need of repentance, else he would build himself up in no such foolish delusion. For what does the sinner do, when he promises himself a future repentance? He just says, to-day, nothing shall induce me to abstain from indulging every appetite and every desire, nothing shall lead me to think of God at all, or to think of him without dread and aversion; nothing can make me delight to contemplate his perfections, or find any pleasure in drawing near to him: to-morrow, I will sit down and mourn, in the utmost anguish of spirit, those indulgences from which nothing will induce me to-day to abstain, and wish a thousand times that I had never yielded to them ; nothing shall give me such delight as the contemplation of those glorious perfections which to-day I hate to think of; and I shall account nothing such a privilege as to draw near to that throne of grace before which nothing shall induce me to-day to bend the knee. This is exactly what the sinner says when he promises himself a future repentance. He promises that to-morrow he will hate with the most cordial detestation, that to which, to-day, he clings with the most ardent affection. Hé who says, to-day I am bowed down with all the weight of threescore years and ten, but to-morrow I am resolved that I shall flourish in all the vigor of unbroken youth, forms a resolution quite as rational, and quite as much within his power to accomplish, as he who says, to-morrow I will repent. He who says to himself, I will make to myself a new heaven and a new earth, makes a promise just as much within his power to accomplish, as he who says, I will make to myself a new heart and a new spirit. Repentance and renovation are not sacrifices which we give to God as the price of our justification ; but gifts which God bestows upon us, and which God only can bestow, in consequence of our having been freely justified. That man has surely little reason to lay claim to the appellation of rational, who goes so directly in the face of common sense and of all experience, as to teach the sinner that he is capable of repenting, and that repentance will purchase his pardon ; a tenet which, whether it be inore deplorably absurd, or more fearfully fatal, I shall not take upon me to determine."*

Not less inefficacious is the scheme of future amendment. Good works can as little secure the pardon of sin as repentance; yet by such as deny the atonement, the worth of man's own doings is unblushingly taught. As in the case of repentance, it is not our intention to deny the importance of good works in the scheme of man's salvation ; neither to dispute their connection with pardon. We are too well convinced of the “necessary uses” they are designed to subserve, with regard at once to believers themselves, to their fellow men and to God; and we are too well aware of their being the necessary fruits and indispensable evidences of a justified state, to let fall so much as a disparaging syllable respecting them. God forbid that we should for a moment forget or overlook, even in the heat of argumentation, the holy purpose and ten

soon told.

dency of the Gospel. But let good works be kept in their own place. We deny them the place of a cause in the salvation of man; their connection with pardon we hold to be not a connection with merit, as is supposed by those who maintain their efficacy to secure the pardon of sin. The reasons of this opinion are

In the first place, man can never do more at any one time than is his present duty, God having at all times a supreme right to all his services. He can never do more at any given time than it is his duty at that very time to fulfil

. Being under obligation to the full extent of his ability, and throughout the whole period of his being, present obedience can do no more than fulfil present obligation. It follows that nothing man can ever do, can have the effect of meriting his release from the punishment due to former demerit. If it has merit at all, its merit is confined to the present, it cannot possibly be either retrospective or prospective. It can neither make amends for a past offence, nor purchase an indulgence for the future. As soon might the man who pays a debt which he contracted to-day, plead such payment as liquidating a debt which he contracted yesterday, or entitling him to contract another to-morrow without the intention of paying To maintain that past offences may be pardoned on the score of future amendment, is to adopt the anti-christian absurdity of supererogation. Nay, it is every whit as reasonable to suppose that past obedience should atone for future sins, (which is the principle of the Popish indulgences,) as to suppose that present obedience should atone for past sins; that is to say, neither can be maintained with the least claim to rationality.

In the next place there can be no works good in the sight of God but what flow from, and are connected with, the atonement. Good works can be performed only by those who are united to Christ by faith, that is, are in a justified state. Without faith it is impossible to please God. We are accepted in the Beloved. As an honest action can only be performed by an honest man, so a good work can only proceed

from one who is himself good. The whole world is by nature guilty before God; there is none righteous, no, not one ; in our flesh dwelleth no good thing; our best righteousnesses are as filthy rags in God's sight. None but such as are in Christ can serve God in newness of spirit, can yield him the obedience of faith ; and to suppose any other kind of obedience to be acceptable, is to fancy that He who looks on the heart will be pleased with the performance without the principle, the shadow without the substance, the body without the spirit.

Moreover, the notion that good works are meritorious is expressly contradicted by scripture. On nothing is the Bible more full and explicit. The assertions are so express, that only the most inveterate prejudice can mistake their import or evade their force. Before the efficacy of good works to secure the pardon of sin can be held with any plausibility, its advocates would do well to have certain plain affirmations blotted from the records of divine truth. By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight. And if by grace, then is it no more of works; otherwise grace is no more grace; but if it be of works, then it is no more grace; otherwise work is no more work. As many as are of the works of the law are under the curse.

Not of works, lest any man should boast. * Such is the insufficiency of those other grounds of pardon which have been supposed to render atonement unnecessary, or, rather, have been proposed as substitutes for the atonement of Christ. If, by the previous remarks on this subject, we are warned against entertaining insulated views of the divine perfections, and defective notions of God's moral government, by that we have just been considering, are we put on our guard against trusting to repentance or future amendment of life, as a meritorious ground of forgiveness. What impious presumption do such thoughts imply! How perilous the state of those who rest their soul's eternal interests on the daring experi

ment of supplanting the righteousness of God's own Son by worth of their own! God grant that we may have deeper impressions of the evil of sin, and humbler views of ourselves than such presumption supposes ! The heathen themselves may well reprove such impiety; for the existence among them of expiatory sacrifices, indicates a universal sense of the inefficacy of other things to secure pardon to offenders, and of the necessity of something more than pardon and good works, to appease the anger of their divinities. The fact itself is highly instructive, and should put to shame those pretended Christians who would set aside altogether the plan of a propitiatory mediation.

IV. With the views already taken of the necessity of the atonement, agree the assertions of holy writ. The following are a specimen.

Luke xxiv. 26. " Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?” The sufferings of the Redeemer are here spoken of by himself as being necessary.

Such is the meaning of Ought not ;" ovxi ësel. The verb denotes necessity in the strict and proper sense of the term.

Necesse est, oportet, opus est, ita, ut vel necessitas absoluta vel relativa indicetur ?* The necessity is not absolute, but relative. It springs not from any personal sin on the part of Christ; but from God's sovereign and free determination to pardon the sins of those in whose room he stood, as well as from those scripture predictions in which his determination had been made known, and which required to be fulfilled.

Heb. ii. 10. 6 For it became him for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.” Here we have an object proposed, “ bringing many sons to glory," or the salvation of a number of the human family; the manner in which the object is accomplished, by “making the Captain of salvation perfect through sufferings," that