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works and ways. This therefore is the method He hath taken, and which it is to be supposed, He will forever pursue. By works of power, He shows that He is omnipotent: By doing good, He shows that He is good; and by awful judgments on the workers of iniquity, He shows that He is, beyond comparison, glorious in holiness. It may reasonably be presumed, that, for the sake of His declarative glory, in which He so much delights, and which is so essential to the good of created intelligences, it is necessary that these, His seve ral perfections, should be thus eternally displayed.This seems to be the account which we have in the scriptures, of the wise and good ends both of temporal and eternal punishments.

When Pharoah was drowned in the red sea, there was this good end to be answered by it, that God's name might be declared throughout all the earth.And the Apostle says, What if God, willing to shew His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath, fitted to destruction: and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had afore prepared unto glory? We are sufficiently let into the reasons and ends of the wrath to come, to have rational grounds to believe that the law which punishes sin with eternal death, on the larger and universal scale, is perfectly good. Certainly it must argue great arrogance, rather than superior penetration, in any man to be confident of the contrary. Who but one who knows how to govern the universe, in the wisest and best manner, can safely pretend to say, that endless punishments, though just, cannot be necessary, nor answer any sufficiently important purposes? But it is time we proceed to consider as was proposed :

II. The subserviency of the perfect law of God, to the conversion of the souls of men.

There is such a thing as giving a new heart, or renewing a sinner in the spirit of his mind, which I conceive is by the supernatural power of the Holy Ghost; and in which the power of means can do nothing, more than in other supernatural works. But by converting the soul, I suppose, is here meant, correcting the errors of the understanding, and causing the heart actively to turn from evil and false ways; to the ways of truth and righteousness. This is by morar suasion, or by the moral power of the word; not indeed, independently of divine power, for thus no ordinary effects are produced. In this active conversion, this turning men from darkness to light, and from the power of satan unto God, I conceive the divine law has an essential instrumentality from first to last; and that it is as necessary for thus converting souls under the present dispensation of grace, as it was in the days of David.

It is by the law, that a sensible man will most likely be converted from infidelity. As long as men are ignorant of the law of perfection, or do not believe that they are under any such law, they will naturally, if rational and free thinkers, reject the grace of God which bringeth salvation. They see no need of it, and are therefore ready to look upon it as a cunningly, or rather, perhaps, a foolishly devised fable. But let them once be convinced, by sound reasoning, that they are bound by the law of nature, to sinless perfection; let them once see themselves shut up under perfect law, to the faith of Christ, as the only certain door of hope, and they will no longer make light of the Christian revelation, and discard it as a needless, trifling affair.

It is by the law, that men must be converted from any gross heresy. All essential errors, respecting the doctrines and design of the gospel, begin in loose notions of the law; and the most effectual way to cor◄ rect them, is by bringing men back to this original standard of right, between God and man. Here the ideas are most plain and simple. Here the truth most readily commends itself to every man's conscience. And the law, rightly understood, is the only easy, the only possible key, to all the grace and truth which come by Jesus Christ. Had no learned doctors in divinity been without law, some other elaborate and very curious keys to the apostolic writings, would probably never have been invented. Viewing the law, as not requiring us to be any other than imperfect creatures, just such depraved creatures as we actually are, it is really necessary to have recourse to very subtle criticisms, and to dig deep for unknown Greek and Hebrew roots, in order to make the Gospel at all consistent with our natural notions of bare justice. Whereas let the law be understood, as requiring sinless perfection, and that most justly, and the New Testament, in its obvious plain English, immediately opens to view, as full of glorious grace.

It is by the law, that orthodox unbelievers are converted from stupidity and self-righteousness. How many are there in all our congregations who make light of a preached gospel, and pay little attention to it, though in speculative sentiments they are not infidels, nor gross heretics? They do not believe enough to make them tremble, They have no sense of their sins. However much they may hear of the wrath of God, yet they inwardly say, Because we are innocent, surely his anger shall turn from us! Every way of a man is right in his own eyes. The reason is, men have

loose notions of the rule of right. They conceive nothing but imperfection can be expected or required of fallen creatures. Hence the man who has ever been, what the world calls moral, supposes he hath kept all the commandments from his youth up, and is ready to say, What lack I yet? Such were the apprehensions of St. Paul before his conversion. I was alive, says he, without the law once. Without the knowledge of the law, and supposing all it did or could require, was only such obedience as is consistent with the moral depravity of fallen men, he imagined he had kept it very perfectly, and that he was justified by it, and in no danger of its curse. But when the commandment came, says he, sin revived, and I died. When he found that the law was as perfect as if we were not at all depraved; when he saw that it required him to be perfectly holy in heart and life, and most justly so required; sin revived. It appeared alive in him, and in every thing that he did. All his supposed religious affections, and all his most specious moral duties, were seen to be full of sin. And he died. He felt himself not only condemned, but spiritually dead; utterly unable to do any thing but dead works, till quickened by renewing grace. Such knowledge of sin, and of ourselves, is by the law; and such knowledge of sin and of • ourselves is necessary in order to a sound conversion. I may add,

It is by the law, that the soul is actually converted, as well as brought to those convictions which are prerequisite. Saving conversion consists in repentance toward God, and in faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ: and in effecting both these, the law of perfect righteousness is of great and necessary use.

Repentance toward God, is from a sight of the glorious holiness, justice and goodness of the divine law;

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and can never be produced by all the grace of the gospel, while the law is not thus séen. I am sensible it hath been common, and is still, to distinguish two kinds of repentance, by the names of legal and evangelical repentance: and to consider the former as hypocritical and false : the latter only as repentance unto salvation. But perhaps, what might properly enough be called by either of these names may be true repentance; though as they have often been explained, I apprehend both are false. According to some, the former is the effect of fear; the latter the effect of hope; but neither of them the fruit of love, except self-love. The legal penitent is supposed to repent, because he is afraid he shall go to hell; the evangelical penitent, because he hopes he shall go to heaven; but neither the one nor the other because he hates sin, or has any concern for the glory of God, ultimately considered. All antinomians make their legal, and their evangelical repentance, equally selfish, and equally void of virtue ; unless it be more virtuous to be actuated by mercenary hopes, than by slavish fears.Many, it is true, who, in conformity to long established custom, make use of these distinguishing epithets, explain them in a manner that does not imply antinomianism. By evangelical repentance they mean, that which implies sorrow for sin, and a hearty turning from it, because it is against God: by legal repentance, only being sorry for our sins, and purposing to forsake them, because they are seen to be of dangerous consequence to ourselves. I have no objection to this as a just account of true and false repentance; but the propriety of calling one legal, and the other evan gelical, I do not readily comprehend. The difference in repentance, as being selfish or ingenuous, hypo

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