happiness. I saw, by degrees, that the change of heart I was solicitous for, could not be brought about by any merely moral or philosophical contemplation of God; but that I must obtain a lively, spiritual apprehension of God manifest in the flesh; such as would effectually bow my heart to the selfdenying yoke of Christ, and make me actually partake of his unworldly, unselfish, divinely pure spirit and temper. For this faith in Christ, this vital principle of the life hid with Christ in God, I more and more sought; and, when it is sought as the one thing needful, it cannot be sought in vain. From the simplicity of this pursuit, therefore, I have never found any reason to depart: the fulfilment of such desires, in any substantial degree, implies, in the most satisfactory way possible, that God's anger is turned away, and that he comforts us. He evinces, most conclusively, that he is our Father, when he makes us "partakers of the Divine nature."

Now, whatever may be the precise meaning of the scriptural term justification, I conceive its substance cannot be missed in such a course as I have ventured to describe. It is allowed to be one of the exclusive privileges of God's children by adoption and grace, and to be inseparable from that high relation; consequently, he who seeks to be a child of God, seeks, in the surest method, to be justified. But it is by spiritual regeneration we are made children of God. Our Saviour tells us so most distinctly when he says, "That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." It follows, then, that to seek

spiritual regeneration is to pursue, compendiously, and at once, all the privileges and blessings which belong to the adopted sons of God.

But it may be said, that justification is a blessing distinct from regeneration, as the latter means the spiritual change which is wrought in our nature; and the former, the alteration which takes place in our circumstances, when we pass from a state of condemnation into a state of favour. I fully grant that there is this difference of meaning in the terms, as generally used by divines: whether the New Testament supports them throughout, I will not now inquire. But, allowing the difference in the terms, it does not therefore follow that there is any distinctness in the thing signified. "He," says St. Paul, "who is led by the Spirit of God, is the son of God." And, "Ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you; but if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his." Here, and in numberless other passages-indeed, throughout the Scripture-the inward influence and inhabitation of the Spirit of God is that which constitutes a child of God; but a child of God is, as such, justified. The one idea is essentially involved in the other; or, rather, justification is contained in sonship, as a lesser blessing is contained in a greater, or a negative one in an opposite positive one. Thus, he who regains perfect health, is thereby necessarily freed from sickness and he who rises to opulence, is, by inevitable consequence, no longer poor. Precisely, in like manner, he who is regenerated, and made a child

of God by a communication of the Divine nature, is of course, and a fortiori, no longer under guilt and condemnation. The simplest statement of the one state is, of itself, sufficient to shut out every idea of the other; and, consequently, to attain regeneration is to possess justification, whether we do or do not advert to this distinction of terms.

But it may be asked, Does not St. Paul dwell upon justification as if the thing itself had a distinctness in it beyond what I am allowing to it? To this I answer, that an unprejudiced attention to St. Paul's views of justification would shew that he considers it exactly as I have just endeavoured to represent it: I mean, as one of the points of view in which the blessedness of a state of grace may be contemplated, or one of the circumstances by which it might be popularly illustrated. Nothing, we know, is more common, in discoursing on any subject, than to use distinctions for the sake of elucidation, where there are no such distinctions in the nature of the thing.

St. Paul, for elucidation's sake, speaks of the change in a true believer's state, as to guilt and condemnation, as if it were a distinct result of the grace of the Gospel. But that he really meant no other distinction than that of language, or of ideal abstraction, and that justification, in his mind, differed not from regeneration, is evident from this simple fact, that he does not, even in language, always adhere to his own distinction. To be justified in St. Paul's sense, is, by most Protestant Divines, supposed equivalent to being liberated,

or absolved; so says Calvin, as quoted by the "Christian Observer," vol. ii. p. 135. Yet St. Paul himself uses this selfsame term, where it must be explained in a quite different manner. For example, in Rom. vi. 6th and 7th verses, "Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin for he that is dead (i. e. with Christ) is justified from sin.” You will observe our translators render it, "freed from sin." But the original (as the margin of our common English Bibles shews) is as I have rendered it. The inevitable inference from this passage, I conceive, is, that St. Paul did not restrict justification to deliverance from divine condemnation, but included in it, also, deliverance from reigning corruption, inasmuch as he here applies the term, not to the former (except by implication), but to the latter. It must, then, be granted, that St. Paul did not feel the same solicitude that many Protestant divines feel, to maintain a distinction between justification and regeneration. Nor can we easily suppose that he would have sanctioned the assertion of Mr. Cooper, quoted by the "Christian Observer," vol. iii. p. 288, that "justification has respect to the state of the sinner solely as he is guilty;" the text above implying the reverse.

But it is not on the mere application of a term (forcible as this argument really is) that I mean to rely. In that very Epistle which is supposed to teach most clearly the distinctness of justification from every thing moral and inherent (I mean that to the Galatians), St. Paul uses expressions which

I humbly conceive ought for ever to put an end to that theory of which he has been deemed the author. "The law," says the Apostle, "was our schoolmaster, unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But, after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster; for ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ, have put on Christ." Now, let the connexion between these verses be attended to; and let it be fairly pronounced, whether, in the Apostle's view, to be justified by faith, in the 24th verse, to be children of God by faith in Christ Jesus, in the 26th, and to put on Christ, in the 27th, can be other than different representations of the selfsame thing? In the first of these verses, a certain end is stated, to which a preliminary process, there described, is asserted to have been subservient; in the verse immediately following, that process is declared to have ceased; and, in the next two verses, the reason of its ceasing is assigned, in the end being answered. In such a consecutive representation, then, as this obviously is, can the end, as proposed, be one thing, and the end, as accomplished, be another thing? Does not every rational principle demand, that if a course be pursued in order to an end, the only natural termination of that course must be the attainment of that end? Consequently, when the law was our schoolmaster unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith; and when we are no longer under that schoolmaster, because we are the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus; it follows, by every