hopes and expectations of an airy, mundane happiness, that did here bear him up in this life, shall be cut, will find it like a talent of lead weighing him down into the bottomless gulf of misery. If all were clear towards heaven, we should find sin raising up storms in our souls. We cannot carry fire in our own bosoms, and yet not be burnt. Though we could Though we could suppose the greatest serenity without us, though we could suppose ourselves here so much to be at truce with heaven, and all Divine displeasure laid asleep; yet would our own sins, if they continue unmortified, first or last, make an Ætna or Vesuvius within us. Nay; those sunbeams of eternal truth, that by us are detained in unrighteousness, would, at last, in those hellish vaults of vice and darkness that are within us, kindle into an unquenchable fire. It would be of small benefit to us, that Christ hath triumphed over the principalities and powers of darkness without us, while hell and death, strongly immured in a fort of our own sins and corruptions, should tyrannize within us; that His blood should speak peace in heaven, if, in the mean while, our own lusts were perpetually warring and fighting in and against our own souls; that He hath taken off our guilt and cancelled that handwriting that was against us, which bound us over to eternal condemnation; if, for all this, we continue fast sealed up in the hellish dungeon of our own filthy lusts. Indeed, we could not expect any relief from heaven, out of that misery under which we lie, were not God's displeasure against us first pacified, and our sins remitted: but, should the Divine clemency stoop no lower to us than to a mere pardon of our sins, and an abstract justification, we should never rise out of that misery under which we lie. This is the signal and transcendent benefit of our free justification through the blood of Christ, that God's offence justly conceived against us for our sins

(which would have been an eternal bar and restraint to the efflux of His grace upon us) being removed, the Divine grace and bounty may freely flow forth upon us. The fountain of the Divine grace and love is now unlocked and opened, which our sins had shut up; and now, the streams of holiness and true goodness from thence freely flow forth into all gasping souls that thirst after them. The warm sun of the Divine love, whenever it breaks through and scatters the thick cloud of our iniquities that had formerly separated between God and us, immediately breaks forth upon us with 'healing in its wings;' it exerciseth the mighty force of its own light and heat upon our dark and benumbed souls, begetting in them a lively sense of God, and kindling into sparks of Divine goodness within us. This love, when once it hath chased away the thick mist of our sins, will be 'as strong as death upon us, as potent as the grave: many waters will not quench it, nor the floods drown it'.' If we shut not the windows of our souls against it, it will at last enlighten all those regions of darkness that are within us, and lead our souls to the light of life, blessedness, and immortality. God pardons men's sins, out of an eternal design of destroying them; and whenever the sentence of death is taken off from a sinner, it is, at the same time, denounced against his sins. God does not bid us be warmed and be filled, and deny us those necessaries which our starving and hungry souls call for. Christ having made peace through the blood of His cross, the heavens shall be no more as iron above us; but we shall receive freely the vital dew of them, the former and the latter rain in their season-those influences from above, after which souls, truly sensible of their own misery and imperfection, incessantly gasp; that righteousness of God which drops from above, from

1 Cant. viii. 6, 7.

the unsealed spring of free goodness which makes glad the city of God. This is that free love and grace, in which the souls of good men so much triumph; this is that justification which begets in them lively hopes of a happy immortality, in the present anticipations thereof which spring forth from it in this life. And all this is that which we have sometimes called 'the righteousness of Christ;' sometimes, 'the righteousness of God;' and here, 'the righteousness which is of faith.' In heaven, it is a not imputing of sin; in the souls of men, it is a reconciliation of rebellious natures to truth and goodness. In heaven, it is the lifting up the light of God's countenance upon us, which begets a gladsome entertainment in the souls of men, holy and dear reflections and reciprocations of love: Divine love to us, as it were, by a natural emanation, begetting a reflex love in us towards God, which, like that epws and avтépws spoken of by the ancients, live and thrive together.

CHAPTER VI.

How the gospel-righteousness is conveyed to us by faith, made to appear from these two considerations. 1. The gospel lays a strong foundation of a cheerful dependence upon the grace and love of God, and affiance in it. This confirmed by several gospel expressions, containing plainly in them the most strong motives and encouragements to all ingenuous addresses to God, to all cheerful dependence on Him, and confident expectation of all assistance from Him. 2. A true, evangelical faith is no lazy or languid thing, but an ardent breathing and thirsting after Divine grace and righteousness: it looks beyond a mere pardon of sin, and mainly pursues after an inward participation of the Divine nature. The mighty power of a living faith in the love and goodness of God, discoursed of throughout the whole chapter.

E come now to the last part of our discourse, viz.

WE

To show the way by which this godlike and gospel

righteousness is conveyed to us: and that is, by faith. This is that powerful attractive which, by a strong and divine sympathy, draws down the virtue of heaven into the souls of men; which strongly and forcibly moves the souls of good men into a conjunction with that Divine goodness by which it lives and grows: this is that Divine impress that invincibly draws and sucks them in, by degrees, into the Divinity, and so unites them more and more to the Centre of life and love: it is something in the hearts of men which, feeling, by an occult and inward sensation, the mighty insinuations of the Divine goodness, immediately complies with it, and, with the greatest ardency that may be, is perpetually rising up into conjunction with it; and, being first begotten and enlivened by the warm beams of that goodness, always breathes and gasps after it for its constant growth and nourishment. It is then fullest of life and vivacity, when it partakes most freely of it; and perpetually languisheth when it is in any measure deprived of that sweet and pure nourishment it derives from it.

But that we may the more clearly unfold this business, how gospel-righteousness comes to be communicated through faith, we shall set it forth in two particulars.

First, The Gospel lays a strong foundation of a cheerful dependence upon the grace and love of God, and affiance in it. We have the greatest security and assurance that may be given us, of God's readiness to relieve such forlorn and desolate creatures as we are: that there are no such dreadful fates in heaven, as are continually thirsting after the blood of sinners, insatiably greedy after their prey, never satisfied till they have devoured the souls of men. Lest we should, by such dreadful apprehensions, be driven from God, we are told of the 'blood of sprinkling that speaks better things" for us; of a mighty

1 Heb. xii. 24.

Favourite soliciting our cause, with perpetual intercessions, in the court of heaven; of 'a new and living way' to the throne of grace, and to the holy of holies which our Saviour hath 'consecrated through His flesh':' we are told of a great and mighty Saviour, 'able to save to the utmost' all that come to God by Him: we hear of the most compassionate and tender promises that may be, from the Truth itself, that 'whosoever comes to Him He will in no wise cast out2;' that 'They that believe on Him, out of them should flow streams of living water3:' we hear of the most gracious invitations that heaven can make, to all 'weary and heavy laden" sinners to come to Christ, that they may find rest: the great secrets of heaven, and the arcana of Divine counsels, are revealed, whereby we are acquainted that 'Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good-will towards mens,' are sweetly joined together in heaven's harmony, and happily combined together in the composure of its ditties; that the glory of the Deity, and salvation of men, are not allayed by their union one with another, but both exalted together in the most transcendent way; that Divine love and bounty are the supreme rulers in heaven and earth; that there is no such thing as sour despite and envy lodged in the bosom of that ever blessed Being above, whose name is Love, and all whose dispensations to the sons of men are but the dispreadings and distended radiations of His Love, as freely flowing forth from it, through the whole orb and sphere of its creation, as the bright light from the sun in the firmament, of whose benign influences we are then only deprived, when we hide and withdraw ourselves from them. We are taught that the mild and

1 Ibid. x. 20.

2 John vi. 37.

3 Ibid. vii. 38.

4 Matt. xi. 28.

5 Luke ii. 14.

Ο φθόνος γὰρ ἔξω θείου χοροῦ ἵσταται. Plat. Phædr. 247 A.