words are fpirit and life, he cannot surely mean that his words are the Holy Spirit and the Life of God; but rather that they treat of fpiritual and living realities, and are adapted to nourish and invigorate grace, which is a spiritual and living principle. Some have compared the entrance of truth into the mind, to a candle entering a room, when the candle and the light enter together; to the exclufion of all other illumination. But this is an erroneous representation; and the error confifts in making the word, (though compared to a light, a lamp, &c. because of the glorious truths it ftates, and their ufe to us in the prefent fate of things) to be the work of the Spirit, and in thus making the Spirit enter the mind in the manner of objective truth. It reprefents the Spirit's light as coming into the foul from without, either blended with or accompanying the word, rather than as created in the foul. The facred oracles are indeed a light fhining in a dark place;" and this light" fhines into the hearts" of fome: but this could never take place without another influence proceeding from the Spirit of God capacitating the heart to understand the glorious gospel, which is only objective truth. Let us give to the fcriptures the things that are theirs, and to the bleffed Spirit the things that are his. "The fpirit of man is the candle (or lamp) of the Lord;" (Prov. xx. 27.) but the Spirit of the Lord muft light it, for fpiritual purposes. And in this refpect, the words of the Pfalmift, (Pfa. xviii. 28.) are ftrictly appli cable; "Thou wilt light my candle, the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness."

as

CON

CONCLUSION.

§ 1. Introduction. Advantage of these principles, § 2. (I.) In reference to moral science. Liberty and Neceffity. § 3. The origin of moral evil. § 4. Prefcience and free Will. § 5. The exiftence of fin and the perfections of Deity. § 6. The real nature of virtue and vice. § 7. A moral fyftem. § 8. The doctrine of motives. § 9. The abfurdity of two eternal principles, one good and the other evil. § 10-13. The doctrine of moral obligation. § 14. (II.) In reference to scriptural theology. The principles of this work are calculated to expofe other fyftems and points in divinity, befide Arminianifm. Antinomian tenets ftated. § 15-17. Expofed. § 18. Sandemanian tenets. § 19. Pelagianifm. § 20. Wrong notions of the Kingdom of Christ. § 21. Propriely of calls and invitations to finners. § 22. The law as a covenant and a rule. § 23. Difputes about grace and merit. § 24. Extent of redemption. § 25-29. Juftification. § 30. Regeneration. § 31-34. The American controverfy respecting the way of falvation. § 35—40. (III.) In reference to perfonal religion.

I.

§1. SENTIMENTS are valuable in proportion as they are applicable to useful purposes; that is, according to their tendency to facilitate the acquifition of important knowledge, or to roufe the dormant energies of our nature to practise

practise those things which we know to be right. In all controversy there is at least a feeming oppofition; but often, among good men at leaft, who must be confcious of the beft intentions or stand self-condemned, the jar of fentiments and the contrariety of conclufions are owing to the want of a clear understanding of each other. And that misunderstanding may long continue for want of a middle term by which both claims may be meafured. All difcrepancy of opinion must be owing either to false reasoning on true data, or to falfe data, be the reasoning what it may. Those principles therefore must be of prime importance which have a genuine tendency to detect the fophifms of a fyftem, or to afcertain the line of truth, amidst the intricacies of adverfe parties. From the preceding reprefentations of Equity and Sovereignty, deduced from the holy fcriptures, we may derive many important advantages, if I mistake not, in reference to moral science, scriptural theology, and perfonal religion.

§ 2. (I.) In reference to MORAL SCIENCE. Few fubjects have been more acutely debated, by moral philofophers, than the doctrines of Liberty and Neceffity. But most of the mistakes and perpetual clashings between these writers, feem to have arifen from a common gratuitous affumption, that the truth must lie exclufively on the one fide or the other of the seeming oppofite fyftems; that is, that man must be free to the exclufion of neceffity, or neceffitated in his actions, to the exclufion of all freedom properly fo called. Whereas we may fee

from the representations of Equity and Sovereignty contained in this work, that every man is at once both free and neceffitated in different respects. He is free to evil, in the most proper sense of freedom, to the exclufion of all neceffitating influence from the First Cause; but yet neceffitated to good, without infringing his liberty of choice in the morality of his acts. While the will is left perfectly free in its acts of choofing, according to the greatest apparent good; the difpofition itself, by which the choice is directed, is the refult either of paffive power or of fovereign benevolence. If Liberty, therefore, be viewed as connected with Equity, and Neceffity as connected with Sovereignty, and man be regarded at once as equitably free and fovereignly (that is benevolently) neceffitated, the perplexity is unravelled, and the feeming inconfiftency difpelled. The divine nature is the standard and fource of all truth; it might therefore be reasonably expected that the true key for opening fo intricate a lock must be just views of the divine character, in reference to free agents. Equity, in the fenfe defined, will teach us, that man is free, and must be so, from principles the most firm and irrefragable; principles founded in the respective natures and effential properties of GOD and Man. If man be not free, abfolutely free, from all decretive neceffitation, in the obliquity of his moral acts, moral government is but an illufion, and retribution but a deceptive name. But divine Sovereignty, in the fenfe explained, fhews that man, in another view, is the subject of neceffity; a neceffity founded on the nature, properties, and prerogative of GOD,

and

and the inevitable condition of man confidered as a creature, and not merely as a finner. Here, and here alone, can we behold the full evidence of these axioms, however univerfally acknowledged; ALL EVIL IS FROM OURSELVES, because the fubjects of paffive power and free will; and ALL GOOD IS FROM GOD, because he alone is good, and the diftribution of goodness can proceed from no other fource than fovereign pleasure. The fame person then, is, in different refpects, the subject both of proper liberty and of néceflity. As the subject of moral government, accountable for his wrong choice, he is free; but as the subject of a gracious fovereignty, he is neceffitated.

§ 3. Nearly allied to the preceding fubject, and not lefs perplexing, though less has been written upon it, is the origin of moral evil. While fome have contended, that we ought to despair, at least in this life, of obtaining clear evidence on the subject; others have boldly affirmed, that moral evil is of pofitive ordination. This is almost the universal sentiment of the modern advocates for philofophical neceffitation, who reject the Calvinistic system of Theology. They are therefore obliged to infer, that there is no real evil in fin; that it is only accidental and relative, after the manner of natural evils. According to them, all the evil is confined to the feeling of the fubject, rather than a deviation from effential rectitude; and if the fufferer faw vice and fin as GOD fees them, he would inftantly be happy. If this be not the direct way to obtain a feared confcience and felf-complacency in tranfgreffion, it is difficult