moment fit and ripe for hell. O what a monument of infinite patience and long-suffering-spared from day to day, and at last called to the saving knowledge of Jesus! O what exceeding riches of grace are these that the Father would choose me in the Beloved, and give him to save me from sin and misery! that he would send his Spirit to quicken me, and to enable me to believe, that there was mercy in Jesus for me, even for me, and plenteous redemption! What sinner can be more indebted than I am, for such miracles of grace? Glory be to God in the highest! My Lord Jesus, the great God and my Saviour, gave himself for me, that he might redeem me from all iniquity, and might cleanse me from all sin trusting to his atonement, and to his righteousness, I am led to admire the Father's full absolution: "Thy sins and thine iniquities I will remember no more." Thanks be to him for this unspeakable gift. He has pronounced them blessed, and he has caused me to feel some of their blessedness, whose iniquities he has forgiven, and whose sin he has covered: and therefore I look forward with thankfulness to the great day of redemption, when Jesus will present me to himself holy and without blemish, as if I had never sinned. In this hope of salvation I triumph before God. Now I see the felicity of thy chosen-I rejoice in the gladness of thy people-and I glory with thine inheritance. Unto him who chose me in his Sonunto him who loved me, and washed me from my sins in his own blood-unto him who gave me this faith, and keeps me in it; for this fellowship with the Eternal Three,-be eternal praise. Amen. CHAPTER VI. The Believer's Victory over the dominion of Sin. WE have heard from Scripture some of the victories of faith over sin in its pollution and in its guilt; but there is still a hard warfare to be maintained against its dominion; for it reigneth absolutely in the children of disobedience, and it never ceaseth to strive for mastery in the children of God; who have an evil nature still- —an old man, who is corrupt, according to the deceitful lusts, and who is to be put off every day-denied in his desires, mortified in his affections, and crucified in his appetites. Thus the commandment runs-" Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth." And the new man, who is called to this warfare, is ordered to make use of Christ's fulness for promised courage, and strength, and victory: for without Christ he can do nothing. Sin is himself—he is a body of sin; and he has not only to fight against himself, but also against principalities and powers, hosts of foes, united under the banner of the god of this world, trying all their cunning, and all their force, to bring the believer back into the bondage of corruption: and what he has of his own is on their side. His worst foe is his indwelling sin, which has a complete body, with all its members and lusts, always enticing to something unlawful, and tempting to the commission of it. Every faculty is ready to become an instrument of unrighteousness unto sin. It is an absolute ty rant, who rules his slaves with the most cruel rigour, keeping them captive to his will, although nothing but destruction and misery be in their ways. Thus original sin is described in the ninth Article of our church-It is the fault and corruption of every man born of Adam; and, notwithstanding it still remaineth in the regenerate, yet there is a promise of daily and of complete victory over the tyrant. Thus it is written: "Sin shall not have dominion over you; because ye are not under the law, but under grace." Once sin had full dominion, but it is taken away by the Spirit of Christ; not entirely destroyed as to its being, but as to its ruling powerDethroned in the judgment: there seen as it is, exceedingly sinful, exceeding dangerous-Dethroned in the conscience: the believer no longer under the law, but under grace, is freed from condemnationDethroned in the will: "Not my will, Lord, but thine be done"-Dethroned in the heart: "I hate all evil thoughts, but thy law do I love: O what love have I unto thy law !"-Dethroned in the life: crucified with its affections and lusts, by the power of the cross of Jesus. It is not quite dead, but it is put to a lingering death, kept upon the cross, dying daily. And thus the sin, which is pardoned through the blood of Christ, is conquered by the arm of Christ; as it is written, "He will subdue our iniquities:" and faith in his promised help keeps them under, subdues them effectually, so that they do not reign in the mortal body to obey them in the lusts thereof. Take an instance of this triumphant faith. Whatever the natural man can set his heart upon, or seek his happiness in the lust of the eyes, or the pride What of life-Moses was enabled by the Spirit of Christ to overcome: "By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt: for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward.” but almighty grace could have given him such a complete victory? He gained entire dominion over sin, even when it came to tempt him with all the pleasures, and riches, and honours of the world. He was made strong in faith; Christ ruling in his heart brought every high thought into subjection to himself: so that Moses not only resigned all his temporal advantages for Christ's sake, but, what natural men account a great paradox, he chose reproach, poverty, misery, rather than give up his interest in Christ. This is the victory which still overcometh the world, even our faith: for the New Testament furnishes us with such another instance of Christian heroism in the apostle of the Gentiles. He is giving an account of his own experience, and by what means he was now no longer under the law, but under gracea sinner saved from the sentence of the broken law, and from all hope of being made righteous by his own personal keeping of it-" I through the law," says he, "am dead to the law, that I might live unto God," &c. Once he was alive without the law, when he thought proudly of his own good life, that concerning the law he was blameless; but when the commandment came in the power of the Spirit, then it slew him, and killed all his former legal hopes. What he had trusted in before for life, he now found to be unto death. And Christ, faith in Christ, was the only means by which he saw he could live unto God, by his grace and to his glory. By this faith he then experienced the power of the crucified and risen Jesus: I am in Christ, says he, crucified with him, truly and spiritually dead to sin, to self, to the world, by the virtue of his cross. Nevertheless, by the same faith in the same Jesus, I live: the Spirit of life in him has quickened my spirit: he has given me a new birth into the spiritual world, and has brought me to live upon the fulness of Jesus, as really now by faith, as I hope to live upon him by sense in heaven: "Yet not I;" I neither had it of myself, nor do I continue it by any act of my own, "but Christ liveth in me;" and although I seem to live outwardly like other men, yet "the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God," depending upon him every moment for fresh supplies of his Spirit, to keep me in union and communion with the Father and the Son; and thereby he gives me to feel in my heart some of the blessings of that love of God in Christ, which surpasseth knowledge. It is this that purifies my soul, and sanctifies my life; blessed, for ever blessed be his name, who thus loved me, and gave himself for me. They Such were the heroes of Christianity. fought the Lord's battles, and in the power of his might they subdued sin: they obtained dominion over it through faith in Jesus. And the same faith in the same Jesus is still mighty, through him, to obtain as great victories. The truth of his promise, |