period to his life here-a life so every way beneficial to those who had the happiness to converse with him. Sic multis ille bonis flebilis occidit. Thus he who designed to speak of God's communication of Himself to mankind through Christ, was taken up by God into a more inward and immediate participation of Himself in blessedness. Had he lived, and had health to have finished the remaining part of his designed method, the reader may easily conceive what a valuable piece that discourse would have been. Yet that he may not altogether want the author's labours upon such an argument, I thought good, in the next place, to adjoin a discourse of the like importance and nature, delivered heretofore by the author in some chapel exercises, from which I shall not detain the reader by any more Preface.

Α

DISCOURSE

TREATING OF

LEGAL RIGHTEOUSNESS; EVANGELICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS,

OR, THE

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF FAITH;

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE

LAW AND THE GOSPEL; THE OLD AND THE NEW COVENANT ;

JUSTIFICATION AND DIVINE ACCEPTANCE;

THE CONVEYANCE OF THE EVANGELICAL RIGHTEOUSNESS TO US BY FAITH.

Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven. Matt. v. 20. Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. 2 Tim. iii. 5. For the law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did. Heb. vii. 19.

Όσοι υἱοί εἰσι τοῦ φωτὸς καὶ τῆς διακονίας τῆς καινῆς διαθήκης ἐν τῷ πνεύματι τῷ ἁγίῳ, οὗτοι παρὰ ἀνθρώπων οὐδὲν μανθάνουσι· θεοδίδακτοι γάρ εἰσιν· αὐτὴ γὰρ ἡ χάρις ἐπιγράφει ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις αὐτῶν τοὺς νόμους τοῦ πνεύματος. Οὐκ ὀφείλουσιν οὖν εἰς τὰς γραφὰς μόνον τὰς διὰ μέλανος γεγραμμένας πληροφορεῖσθαι, ἀλλὰ καὶ εἰς τὰς πλάκας τῆς καρδίας ἡ χάρις τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐγγράφει τοὺς νόμους τοῦ πνεύματος καὶ τὰ ἐπουράνια μυστήρια. S. MACARIUS, Homil. XV.

A

DISCOURSE

ON

LEGAL RIGHTEOUSNESS;

AND ON THE

RIGHTEOUSNESS OF FAITH,

&c.

But Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness: Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith, but, as it were, by the works of the law. Rom. ix. 31, 32.

CHAPTER I.

The introduction, showing what it is to have a right knowledge of divine truth, and what it is that is either available or prejudicial to the true Christian knowledge and life.

THE

HE doctrine of the Christian religion propounded to us by our Saviour and His apostles, is set forth with so much simplicity, and yet with so much repugnancy to that degenerate genius and spirit that rules in the hearts and lives of men, that we may truly say of it, it is both the easiest and the hardest thing: it is a revelation wrapt up in a complication of mysteries, like that book of the Apocalypse, which both unfolds and hides those great arcana that it treats of; or, as Plato sometimes chose so to explain the secrets of his metaphysical or theological philosophy, ὥστε ὁ ἀναγνοὺς μὴ γνῷ—that he that read