be loft to us. In Christ, and in him alone, the love of God is manifefted and commended to us; and just so far as we know him, and believe the testimony the Father has given concerning him, so far, and no farther, we know and believe the love that God hath to us; and just so far as we know and believe the love of God to us, will our hearts be formed into the fame image. For the Apostle affures us, that "we love "God, because he first loved us," 1 John

iv. 19.

This fure foundation of the Chriftian faith and hope in God the Apostle fets forth, vers. 4. very shortly indeed, but very fully and the whole he comprehends in two general views: He gave himself for our fins; and he gave himself for this important purpose, that he might deliver us from a prefent evil world.

No body, fure, will need to be told, that the particle rendered for in our translation, does not bear the fame meaning in these two propofitions, which yet exprefs the fame thing, only in different views; viz. Christ gave himself for us; and, Chrift gave himfelf for our fins. The firft fets him forth as the ranfom, the price or means of our redemption

demption and deliverance from the power of death; and in this view he is very juftly faid to have purchased for himself a peculiar people, who are no more their own, being bought with a price; redeemed, not with filver or gold, or fuch corruptible things, but with the precious blood of the Son of God. And the right is indisputably good, as raifing the dead man is very nearly the same with creating the man who is thus raised. Again, when he is faid to have given himself for our fins, this expreffion sets him forth directly under the notion of a facrifice appointed for the putting away of fin, which fubjected all mankind to death, and holds them under it, until it be destroyed. That the death or diffolution of the body is the effect of fin, is generally acknowledged. But by the view this fame Apoftle gives of it, Eph. ii. 1. 2. 3. fin itself is really the death of the foul, which is the principal and most noble part of the man. It feparates, and thereby cuts off the foul from God, the father of fpirits, and the only fountain of life, the very fubftance of the fpiritual world; and thus renders it utterly incapable of living as pure fpirits do, with re

spect

spect either to the business and employment, or to the enjoyments and gratifications of the spiritual life. It is easy to fee how both thefe expreffions, viz. Christ giving himself for us, and giving himself for our fins, concur in furnishing us with a complete representation of the Chriftian ftate, as all the parts of it, both privileges and duties, arise as naturally and neceffarily out of this new creation, as the original duties did out of the first.

For, in the first place, it is evident, That all who are thus redeemed from fin and death by Jefus Chrift, must be his abfolute property, whom he has a just and perfect right to dispose of, and employ in what manner his perfect wifdom fees fit and proper. He is their fovereign Lord, as we see the Apostle calls him, vers. 3.; nor is there any room left them to dispute or put in remonftrances or exceptions to any of his orders. Perfect fubmiffion to his fupreme authority is all that is left for them. The least alteration, either by adding or diminishing in the order he has established, is fo far renouncing his authority, and fetting up our own wisdom,

which is too generally regulated by our ill-governed wills, in oppofition to his.

What the Apostle here adds, of our Lord's further intention, in giving himself for our fins, completes the view of the Christian's ftate, very properly called a State of grace; which the Apostle calls the grace wherein believers ftand; which we find him always oppofing to the state of those who are under law; and particularly the Jews, who were under that of Mofes, Rom. vi. 14. This completing view of grace the Apostle expreffes by Christ's delivering his people from this present evil world. Literally, it is taking them out of it. The word the Apostle uses here is that by which the different states of mankind, before and after our Lord's coming in the flesh, are denoted. So the Apostle calls the time of Christ's kingdom, the world to come, Heb. ii. 5.; where he uses a different word. Hence, fome have thought, that the Apostle had the Jewish state under the Mofaic law in his eye; and that he means to tell those who wanted fo much to be under that difpenfation, that when Chrift gave himself for fin, there was an end put to that dispenfation,

fation, and that it was his defign to take his people out of that ftate, and bring them into that which in thofe times was called the world to come.

That this was one part of our Lord's design in giving himself, every Christian will readily allow, and that it very well anfwers the Apostle's views in this epiftle. But befides that, however the institutions of the Mofaic law, on which the Jewish ftate was founded, are called weak and unprofitable, and really were fo; on which account they were removed to make way for a better conftitution and church state, established on better promises; yet it neither was, nor ever was called, evil in itfelf; but became fo only by the mifapplication and abuse of it. And though it should be allowed, that the Old-Testament ftate might be called evil, thofe whom the Apostle was writing to were Gentiles, who never had any concern with the Jewish state; and therefore could never, with any propriety of speech, be faid. to be delivered from, or taken out of, a world which they never were in.

When we confider further, that the word here rendered world, is often and almost always