ESSAY I.

I BELIEVE that there are many persons who oppose the doctrine of justification by faith, from the honest conviction that it opposes the interests of practical holiness, or Christian morals. Such persons deserve at least the respect of those who value holiness. They acknowledge the excellency and the obligation of the precepts which describe the Christian character-they are persuaded that any view of Christian doctrine which does not agree with the tendency of these precepts must be incorrect ; and as they do not perceive that the doctrine of justification by faith without works has this agreement, they conceive them

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selves warranted to reject it, as a misrepresentation of the language of Scripture. Now, I do not think that this class of objectors have been often either kindly or fairly answered. Their case certainly at first sight appears a strong one, and they are at all events entitled to have their statement of it candidly received and discussed. Let us endeavour to do so.

1st, In the first place, say they, by making pardon a free gift irrespective of character, you take away a powerful motive to obedience; and you give the strange and pernicious impression, that God is indifferent to right and wrong in his intelligent creatures.

2dly, We object, they continue, to the propriety of the title which you give to your system. You call it a system of free salvation, and you say that it attributes all to God; and yet it is in fact as much embarrassed with conditions, and contains as much of human effort, as our own. is in your system what obedience is in ours-and they are both of them acts of the human mind. You blame us for resting our hopes on the obedience which we

Faith

can discover in our lives, whilst, at the same time, you avowedly rest your hopes on the faith which you can discover in your hearts. But you defend yourselves by saying, that faith is the gift of God. Well, we also say that obedience is the gift of God. In point of gratuitousness, then, the two systems are thus nearly on a par; that is to say, neither of them is gratuitous except in name. And, in point of moral influence, we would ask, whether a system which rests salvation on the belief of any facts whatsoever, can be compared with one which rests it on faithful exertion and holy obedience.

3dly, You depreciate practical holiness by all possible means; for, even when you are compelled to admit, that "without holiness no man shall see the Lord," you do what you can to weaken the force of the admission, by saying that the value of holiness arises simply from its being an evidence of the reality of faith, and not from any intrinsic quality of its own.

4thly, You do not seem at all agreed as to what is the meaning of faith. Sometimes you make it to consist in trust and

confidence in Christ, sometimes in an intelligent assent to the propositions of Chris tian doctrines, and sometimes in a mere prostration of reason before divine autho rity, or a gulping down of unintelligible obscurities. Now,really you ought to make out to our fullest satisfaction what faith is, before you call us to rest on it any thing so important as our eternal in terests. But, whichever of these various kinds of faith you prefer, and we give you your choice, it must be allowed to be but a meagre substitute for universal obedience. If you take the first definition, and make faith to consist in trust in Christ, we acknowledge that it is a most necessary feature of the Christian character; but it cannot fill the place of all duties. It is one duty; and we do not exclude it from our system: on the contrary, we inculcate it as a part of that universal obedience-of which we consider salvation to be the recompense. As for the other descriptions of faith, we really think that a man might as reasonably rest his hopes before God on his mathematical science, or on his stupid credulity. Po terol to ti donlw consil

5thly, Although we acknowledge that there are passages of Scripture which ap pear to support your view of the question, yet we maintain that there are also many most unequivocally on our side, and that the general tendency of the whole Bible, as well as the common sense and the common feeling of man, is decidedly with us; and we therefore think that we do not speak without good reason, when we say that your system is founded on misconstruction or misinterpretation of the language of Scripture. 57 BEN

These are some of the objections which are usually made to the doctrine of justifi cation by faith. And I cannot help think. ing that they are borne out to a considerable extent by the way in which that doctrine is very commonly stated. |

It is true that faith is often spoken of, by those who profess this doctrine, as if it were the substitute of universal obedience; and thus the gratuitousness of the gospel is as much infringed on as by the avowed system of justification by works: whilst, at the same time, the importance of obedience, which is at least nominally main