except the Socinians, and, perhaps, some Quakers, the last sections in Christendom with which high churchmen would claim Christian fellowship. What can be a more complete schism?

If, then, the testimony of the Christian world can avail any thing, it must confirm the docrine of Justification by faith. It may be doubted whether this truth was ever condemned, till Trent, for party purposes and hatred to Luther, took that step. Nor was this accomplished without a struggle, or without pouring into the council a tide, both of hungry Italian bishops, who, depending on the Pope, gave their votes to him whose bread they ate; and also of Jesuits, who avowedly laid their mighty talents at the Pope's feet.

From this council England was excluded; against it a great part of Europe protested; in it the Greek and Syrian churches were not represented; and to call it an Ecumenical or General Council is to say what all the world knows to be false. It was a Conciliabulum, or conventicle.

Protestant churches, Lutheran and Reformed, German, Swiss, French, Dutch, Danish, Scotch, and English, all agree in bearing witness to Justification by faith. The various bodies of dissenters, English, Scotch, Irish, and Welsh, with the exception of Socinians, unite in declaring that man is justified, not by any thing in himself, but by the righteousness of Christ, received by faith alone.

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CONCLUSION.

We have now been put on our defence in a contest which some will, not without a shadow of reason, call interminable; for, as the error we oppose was the first that broke the peace of the virgin church, so it will probably be the last that shall expire, when Christ "shall put all enemies under his feet." The opposite truth, however hateful to the pride, not the reason, of man, believers will ever hold too dear to be sacrificed, even to peace, which would then be the peace of the grave; and therefore they will never cease, in the face of an opposing world, to say to our Redeemer, "I will make mention of thy righteousness, even of thine only.” We are bringing to a close, then, but one of the many battles in that war which will be maintained, till Christ shall bring forth victory to truth.

As our earth seems to have been intended for the battle-field between good and evil, sin and grace; so the great question of righteousness, human or Divine, is here to be contested. For all things being created by Christ, and for him, this world was formed to be an abode in which he should perform a work worthy of an incarnate and crucified God, opposed to the apostacy

of earth and hell. Our first parent therefore was, by being constituted our federal head, made a type of Him that was to come, as a "second Adam, the Lord from heaven." The righteousness of man soon proving evanescent, was exchanged for disobedience and death; and instantly the seed of the woman was announced as the only conqueror of the serpent. For the catastrophe was foreseen, and the remedy that was already provided in the counsels of eternity, was shadowed forth by clothing those who had lost their robe of righteousness, with the skins of the sacrifices that were immediately appointed as the medium of worship, to exhibit Him whose righteousness should be "upon all that believe," he having died for their iniquity. 'By faith, Abel, offering a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gift," the firstling of his flock, the emblem of the atoning Lamb; while Cain, rejected, as all who present to God any other righteousness but that of Christ will be, showed the true nature of his own righteousness, by slaying his brother at the foot of God's altar. But Abel, "being dead, yet speaketh," the blood of the martyr proclaiming aloud that blood which speaketh better things, and the suretyship of Him who gave to martyrs admission into heaven, ages before its price was paid.

The race of men, propagated amidst proofs of a fall and tokens of grace, was soon swept away by a flood, except the family of one "who by faith prepared an ark to the saving of his house, by which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which

is by faith. The like figure doth now save us, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience towards God, by the resurrection of Jesus Christ for our Justification."

When the world showed the genius of its own religion by setting up idols, Abraham by faith obeyed the call to quit country and kindred, for God and truth. Righteousness being imputed to him without works, he became the father of all them that believe, and was called the friend of God, though a stranger and pilgrim on the earth. To his seed was given the honour of becoming the sacred line in which Messiah should take flesh; and circumcision was appointed to show forth the putting away of the carnal mind by the Spirit of Christ. Separated from the world, to preserve the knowledge of the true God and his promised salvation, this people, persecuted in Egypt, escaped from thence and from the avenging sword, when "by faith they kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood" that prefigured "Christ, our passover, sacrificed for us.”

For Moses, who by faith "preferred the reproach of Christ to the treasures of Egypt," led forth the people, to whom, when serpent bitten, he exhibited a healing serpent on the pole, to show that "so should the Son of man be lifted up on the cursed tree, that whosoever looketh to him by faith should not perish, but have eternal life." From God's right hand went forth, on Sinai, a fiery law, that they who "could not endure what was commanded," might fly to that which was shadowed forth by the law of ceremonies-"Christ, the end of the law for righteousness to every one that

believeth." But Moses put a veil on his face, and the veil of unbelief was on the hearts of the people, who, not able to look to Christ, the end of that which is abolished, set up a golden calf and perished in the wilderness.

Joshua, who bore our Saviour's name, brought a believing generation into the promised land, the destined birth-place of Immanuel, where was set up the tabernacle that exhibited the lowly form in which "the Word should be made flesh, to tabernacle among us," and the temple that was to set forth the temple of his body, who now dwells in glory. Of him spake prophets, priests, and kings; but David, the royal conquering shepherd, was selected to be the progenitor of Christ, who was to be born in Jesse's town of Bethlehem. "The sweet psalmist of Israel" taught the church to sing of One "fairer than the children of men," and to laud "the blessedness of the man to whom the Lord imputeth righteousness without works."

After the inspired prophets had given, by anticipation, the portraiture and history of Messiah, as the Lord our righteousness, by faith in whom men should become just; and after the shadows of him had given symptoms of being "ready to vanish away;" in the fulness of time "God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons."

But the Rock of salvation was to Israel a stumbling stone. "Wherefore? Because they sought not righteousness by faith, but as it were by works of law." When they crucified the Lord our righteousness, they