In order to form a right judgment of this matter, we must place ourselves in proper situation and view it in an advantageous point of light. Is a blind, self-flattering sinner, who does not see the strictness of the law and justice of God, or who se cretly murmurs at it as too precise and rigid, who does not see the infinite evil of sin, but loves it, indulges it, and is expert in making excuses for it, and diminishing its aggravations, who forms his maxims of the divine government from the procedure of weak and partial mortals in human governments, who compares himself with his fellow-sinners, and not with the divine purity, and the holy law of God, whose conscience is secure, who places the tribunal of his supreme Judge far out of sight, and who forms his notions of his government not from his word, but from the flattering suggestions of his own deceitful heart: I say, is such a blind, partial, careless sinner a competent judge in this matter? Is he likely to form a just estimate of the evil of sin, and of that righteousness which will be sufficient for his acquittance before a just and righteous God? By no means. But it is easy for such a one to start objections against this method of justification, and offer many plausible arguments in favour of his own righteousness, and to extenuate his own guilt. But let him be awakened to see himself and his sins in a proper light, and let him see the purity and extent of the divine law, and make that the only test of his good works, let him realize the divine tribunal, and place himself in the immediate presence of his Judge, let him be put in this situation, and then the controversy will be soon at n end; then all his high thoughts of his own righteousness are mortified: all his excuses for his sins are silenced; and then he sees his absolute need of a perfect and divine righteousness, and the utter insufficiency of his own. O Sirs! if you have ever placed yourselves in this posture, you have done forever with all disputes on this po int. What could ease your consciences then but the complete righteousness of Jesus Christ? O!"none but Christ, none but Christ," then appeared sufficient.

Here I beg leave to translate a very animated and striking passage, written about 200 years ago, by that great and good man, Calvin, who had long groped for salvation among the doctrines of merit in the church of Rome, but could find no relief, till the gospel discovered this righteousness to him. "It is a very easy thing," says he, " to amuse ourselves with arguments for the suf

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ficiency of good works for justification, while we are ingeniously trifling in schools and colleges of learning; but when we come into the presence of God, we have done with all such amusements for there it is a very serious affair, and not a ludicrous logomachy, or an idle dispute about words. There, there we must place ourselves, if we would profitably inquire after the true righteousness, and how we shall answer our celestial Judge when he shall call us to an account. Let us represent this Judge to ourselves, and not such as our fancies would imagine him to be, but such as he is really represented in the scriptures; as one by whose brightness the stars are turned into darkness; by whose power the mountains are melted; at whose anger the earth trembles; by whose wisdom the wise are caught in their own craftiness; before whose purity all things are turned into pollution whose justice even angels are not sufficient to bear; who will by no means clear the guilty; whose vengeance, when once it is kindled, burns and penetrates to the lowest hell: let him, I say, sit Judge on the actions of men, and who can securely place himself before his throne of judgment?" Lord, if thou mark iniquity, who, O Lord, shall stand!" All must be condemned, and unavoidably perish." Shall mortal man be justified before God? or be purer than his Maker? Behold he putteth no trust in his servants; and his angels he chargeth with folly: how much less in them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before the moth! Job iv. 17, &c. Behold he putteth no trust in his saints; yea, the heavens are not clean in his sight; how much more abominable and filthy is man, who drinketh iniquity like water! Job xv. 15, &c. "Eliphaz is struck silent; for he sees that God cannot be appeased even with angelic holiness, if their works should be brought to the impartial scale of justice-And certainly if our lives should be compared to the standard of the divine law, we must be stupid indeed, unless we are struck with the terror of its curses, and particularly of that, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them. And all the disputes we may have about the method of justification, are vain and insipid, unless we place ourselves as guilty before our heavenly Judge, and, solicitous for a pardon, voluntarily prostrate and empty ourselves before him.

"To this great tribunal, sinners, you must lift your eyes, that, instead of vainly exalting yourselves, you may learn to tremble 59

VOL. IL.

before him. While the comparison is between man and man, it is easy for every man to think he has something which others should not despise; but when we place ourselves before God, all that confidence falls and perishes in an instant."

I might go on with my quotation from this excellent author; but this is sufficient to shew you a grand pre-requisite to the impartial determination of this point. And now, with a deep impression of this, with a deep sense of our sins, and of the strictness of the law and justice, and placing ourselves, as in the presence of our righteous Judge, let us inquire what righteousness is sufficient for our justification before him.

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It may be of service to observe, that there is something singular in the phraseology of scripture on this point, and different from what is used in other cases of the same general nature. receive a pardon is a very different thing, in common language, from being justified. When a man is pardoned, it supposes that he has broken the law, but that the law is dispensed with, and the threatened penalty not executed; but when he is justified, it supposes that he has a righteousness equal to the demands of the law, and therefore that he may be acquitted according to justice.These, you see, are very different things; but in the affair before us, they are happily united. The sinner is said to be pardoned and justified at once; and the reason of this unusual dialect is this The sinner has broken the divine law, and has no obedience to answer its demands; and therefore, his being freed from the guilt of sin and the threatened punishment, is, in this respect, a gracious, unmerited pardon. But by faith he has received the ! righteousness of Christ; and God imputes it to him, as though it were his own and this righteousness answers all the requisitions of the law, and it has no charges against him : so that, in this respect, he is justified, or pronounced righteous according to law and justice.

Hence it follows, from the very meaning of the terms used in this case, that no righteousness can justify us in the sight of God, but that which is equal to all the demands of the divine law. It must be perfect, and conformed throughout to that standard; for if it be not, we cannot be pronounced righteous in the eye of the law; but the law charges and condemns us as transgressors, and its sentence lies in full force against us. And now, if any of you have such a perfect righteousness, produce it, glory in it, and car

Calvin. Instit. Lib. iii.

ry it with you to the divine tribunal, and demand acquittance there. But if you have not, (as, if you know yourselves, you must own you have not) then fall down as guilty sinners before your righteous Judge, confess that you dare not appear in his presence in your own righteousness, but lay hold of and plead the righteousness of Jesus alone, otherwise the law thunders out its terrors against you, and justice will seize you as obnoxious criminals.

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It was from such premises as these, that the apostle reasoned, when he drew this conclusion, that by the deeds of the law no flesh shall be justified, Rom. iii. 20, 28. and that we are justified by faith, without the deeds of the law. He grants, that if any can produce a perfect righteousness of their own, they shall obtain life by the law the law, says he, is not of faith: but the man that doth these things, shall live in them. Gal. iii. 12. But then he proves, that all the sons of men, both Jews and Gentiles, have sinned, and consequently have no righteousness agreeable to the law: He stops every mouth, and brings in the whole world, as guilty, before God and hence, he infers the impossibility of justification by the works of the law and then he naturally introduces another righteousness equal to all the demands of the law. But now, says he, the righteousness of God, without the law, is manifested, even the righteousness of God, which is by the faith of" Jesus Christ unto all, and upon all them that believe :-being justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Christ, whom God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, for the remission of sins ;—that he might be just, and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus. Rom. iii. 21-26. O glori. ous scheme of salvation! O complete, divine righteousness! A righteousness by which Jew and Gentile, the greatest sinner as well as the least, may be made divinely righteous, and completely justified, even at the bar of a holy and just God.-Here, ye guilty sinners, ye condemned criminals, ye bleeding consciences, here is the only righteousness for you. Put forth the hand of faith, and humbly lay hold upon it. Here fix your trust, and renounce your own righteousness as filthy rags; for whatever you think of it now, this will be found the only defence at the tribunal of the supreme Judge.

It would be easy to collect a great variety of arguments to support this important truth; but if you carefully read over the apostolic writings, particularly this epistle to the Romans, and that to the Galatians, you cannot but be satisfied for yourselves. And

this brings me in mind of a frank declaration of that true freethinker, and impartial inquirer after truth, Dr. Watts. "IFI may be permitted to speak of myself," says he, " I might acquaint the world with my own experience. After some years spent in the perusal of controversial authors, and finding them insufficient to settle my judgment and conscience, I resolved to seek a determination of my doubts from the Epistles of St. Paul, especially in that weighty doctrine of Justification. I perused his letter to the Romans with the most fixed meditation, laborious study, and im2 portunate requests to God, for several months together. I very narrowly observed the daily motions of my own mind: I found it very hard to root out old prejudices, and to escape the danger of new ones. I met with some expressions of the apostle that swayed me to one opinion, and others, that inclined the balance of my thoughts another way; but I bless the Divine Goodness that ena bled me at last to surmount all these difficulties, and established my judgment and conscience in that glorious and forsaken doc trine of the justification of a sinner in the sight of God, by the imputation of a perfect righteousness, which is not originally his own.' "*. This was the practice of this excellent man; and you see the result of his search. Go you and do likewise; and I doubt not but you will make the same discovery.—I am,

III. and lastly, To shew that it is the gospel only that reveals such a righteousness as is sufficient for the justification of a sin

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er.

The Jewish religion, as I observed before, gave several intimations of this method of justification by the righteousness of anothThere were many prophecies and types of this import; and this was undoubtedly the original design of sacrifices; for it is quite unaccountable, that ever men should imagine that they could appease the wrath of God, and procure the pardon of sin, by offering to him sacrifices of brutes in their stead, unless we suppose that God did at first institute this method to signify that the way in which he would be reconciled to sinners was by the sufferings and death of another, as a sacrifice substituted in their room. This institution seems to have been immediately after the fall of man, when the first beam of gospel-light blessed our world in that promise, the seed of the woman, &c. for we are told that God made coats of skins, and with them covered our first parents. Gen. iii. 21. Now animal food was not allowed to man till after the flood; and

• Orthodoxy and Charity united. Essay vii. § 1.