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LECTURES ON THE SHORTER CATECHISM OF THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY OF DIVINES-ADDRESSED TO YOUTH.

LECTURE LXIII.

3. The nature and acts of saving faith-receiving and resting on Christ alone for salvation-now call for your most serious and engaged attention. The essential nature, as well as one of the principal acts of saving faith, is very happily described by the phrase, receiving him, as he is offered in the gospel. By this, faith is discriminated from the other cardinal graces. In hope, we pleasingly anticipate the possession of a future good. In love, our affections delightfully fix and exercise themselves on an amiable object. But in neither of these do we receive an object, and appropriate it to ourselves. To do this, is exclusively the province and function of faith. Its object has already been described-Christ in the gospel offer. This object, when about to be received in an act of justifying and saving faith, is most distinctly perceived by the mind, aided, as it always then is, by the Spirit of all grace. The soul looks alternately at its unspeakable wants and necessities, and at the complete provision which is made for them all, in the infinite fulness of Christ. It is seen that there is not, and cannot be, a necessity or a deVOL. X.-Ch. Adv.

mand, for the supply of which a provision, exactly suited to it, is not most wisely and amply made. The offer, too, is seen to be made freely; not only demanding no price or recommendation, but forbidding all attempts to bring any. -It is seen that the full salvation tendered, not only may, but must be accepted simply and purely as a free gift. The anxious soul, it may be, hesitates. Here is something perfectly new-of a kind like nothing else. The greatest of all possible blessings is presented to the most undeserving; requiring nothing in the recipient, but a sense of guilt, and hopeless inability to help or recommend himself, and a willingness to receive all that he needs from an Almighty, all-sufficient, Saviour. Wonder and admiration fill his soul. He asks, perhaps, have I indeed nothing to bring? A single glance at his state gives a decisive negative answer. He sees himself destitute of every thing but guilt, and misery, and want. Then, he thinks, this offer exactly suits my case. It requires nothing, it admits of nothing meritorious in me; and truly, I have nothing-nothing but demerit, and pollution, and desert of eternal death. "Oh blessed Saviour! can it be true that thou dost stand ready to impute to me thy righteousness; to account as mine, and to make over fo me, all A

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