been under the penalty; the latter is entirely subsidiary to the former; till he was under the precept of the law, he could no more owe it satisfaction for past violation, than obedience, and if he was under it all, he must owe it both. And so it commonly fares with system-mongers. Happier is the man, and safer by far, who governs himself by a few ascertained truths, though they should be as detached, and unsystematiz, ed, as the proverbs of Solomon, or the proverbs of Sancho Panza, than the man who rashly makes a system without materials.

Now it is salvation by this righteousness of Jesus Christ, this perfect fulfilment of the law which God originally gave to man, which is proclaimed in the the gospel. Rom. i. 16, &c. "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation, to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For therein is the righteousness of God, revealed from faith to faith, as it is written the just shall live by faith." I had marked for quotation a great many passages of Scripture on this subject, in order to shew that the covenant of grace is essentially the covenant of works-that it is the most philosophical thing in the world, a philosophy of which no man need be ashamed, to assert, that in the gospel a righteousness of God's own-which righteousness is neither less nor more than a complete fulfilment of the original law-is revealed to man-and

that every subject of that law, who possesses this righteousness shall be, and must be justified by it. But the work swells under my hand, and I am pinched for time. I therefore proceed directly to the fatal spot where the battle must be decided one way or other.

SECTION V.

The question then is this. Does the merit and imputability of Christ's righteousness depend on his representative character ?

Reader, put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground! A sacred horror chills my blood through all my veins-Horresco referens. On this sacred central spot, chiefs of mighty armies and high renown have fallen: here the fiend has ten thousand times triumphed. From this spot branch off in all directions these human systems of theology, which have injured the beauty of the gospel; and been the cause of so much schism, strife, and controversy, and malignant passion in the church of God. Systems around which theologians as uxor, engage, nor quit the grinning hold, vitamque in vulnere ponunt. Let us therefore pause on this spot, and invoking the spirit of all truth to guide our every step, let us advance with sacred awe and sacred caution.

And since it cannot be denied that Adam's guilt is ours, because he represented us-that God visits the iniquities of the father's on their children, because those fathers represented them-that nations are punished for the sins of their rulers, because those rulers were their representatives; let us suppose that the imputa

bility of Christ's righteousness depends on his representative character—that is, his righteousness is meritorious of human salvation, and capable of being imputed to men, because he represented them in the covenant of grace. Adopting this idea, let us try whither, in conjunction with undoubted truths, it will earry us and let us mark every step of our progress.

I. ROAD.

1. Eternal salvation, or in other words, the righteousness of Jesus Christ, the procuring cause of that salvation, is offered to all mankind by God himself in the gospel.

2. Therefore the righteousness of Jesus Christ is meritorious of the salvation of all mankind, and is capable of being imputed to every one of them.

3. But the righteousness of Jesus is meritorious and imputable to men, because he is their representative. 4. Therefore Jesus Christ represented all mankind, and every man of them, in the covenant of grace.

5. Consequently all mankind and every man, will eventually be saved. Though worlds should perish, though ages of torment should hold on their incalculable round, though system should succeed to system, till the human imagination becomes incapable of grasping the vast idea-still the son of God will conduct to glory all that he represented.

Here then we have the system of the redemptional universalists. The deistical universalists are a different breed, and closely allied to the family of atheists.

The reader is requested to put the above train of argument to the severest test. Let it be tortured, to confess if it has a single secret error about it; with the

exception of the third step, which I have put in italic, merely to mark it as suspicious, for even the guilty shall not be condemned till the jury are satisfied with evidence, and agreed to a man in their verdict. But admitting this step to be legitimate, I pronounce the whole system invulnerable.

II. ROAD.

1. Eternal life is offered to all men by God, and they are commanded by God to accept it.

2. It is therefore equally capable of becoming the property of all.

3. But the reason Jesus can impart life to all, is because he gave his life for all, or represented all men, in the covenant of grace.

4. Therefore Jesus Christ made a universal atonement for all mankind.

5. But as it is impossible to imagine that he should atone for the sins of all men, and withhold from some of them the grace requisite to make the atonement profitable; universal grace is given to all men to be saved by the atonement.

6. And as some men are saved and others not, it follows, that those who are saved, are not saved by the atonement of Jesus Christ, nor by the grace originally given them; for these were equally the possession of those who are not saved; consequently they who are saved must be saved by their own personal faith and righteousness, which are the only circumstances in which they differ from the others.

7. Therefore Jesus Christ did not save men; but placed them in a saveable state; and by his universal

redemption and universal grace, put them in a condition to save themselves.

8. Since the atonement and grace are universal, and some believe and others do not believe, it follows that the grace is not necessarily efficacious; and since no other cause can be assigned of its efficacy in any, we must ascribe it to the free-will of man.

9. And since the grace of the Lord Jesus is not necessarily efficacious, on this free-will, it follows that a saint's standing in grace is not infallibly secured, he may therefore fall away and be lost.

This is the Arminian system; and let the reader be conjured to put it to the torture, and try its metal. With the exception of the third step, now become doubly suspicious, I do believe that it will stand the most rigorous investigation that can be given. I can only speak for myself, and must say this system appears to me, with the single exception mentioned, to be one of the most gigantic efforts of human genius. Neither St. Paul's at London, nor St. Peter's at Rome, nor any other basilic, ancient or modern, exhibits such grandeur of design, such proportion of parts, such powerful combinations, such totality, as this system. I do not believe the system to be true; and therefore I wonder at it the more; what painful researches ; what troublesome objections; what searching of the Scriptures; what textual difficulties; what verbal niceties; and yet after all the structure is finished off, and covered in with so bold and awful a dome, that we gaze with wonder and with terror, and ask if the architect was a man! But wonder at what we may, it is no wonder at all that the heads which put this system together should hitherto have double distanced all competitors on the field of moral science. I speak of it