from God; and, seeing none shall be justified in glory but the doers of the law, they hastily concluded there is but one justification, namely, the being made inherently just; or, the being sanctified, and then declared holy. Admit our doctrine, and you have both parts of the truth, -that which the antinomians hold against the quakers, and that which the quakers maintain against the antinomians. Each alone is dangerous; both together mutually defend each other, and make up the scriptural doctrine of justification, which is invincibly guarded, on the one hand by faith against pharisees, and on the other by works against antinomians. Reader, may both be thy portion! so shalt thou be eternally reinstated both in the favour and image of God.

VI. But while I enumerate the benefits which the church will reap from a practical knowledge of our second justification by works, an honest protestant, who has more zeal for, than acquaintance with, the truth, advances with his heart full of holy indignation, and his mouth of objections, which he says are unanswerable. Let us consider them one by one.

FIRST OBJECTION.-"Your popish, anti-Christian doctrine I abhor, and could even burn at a stake as a witness against it. Away with your new-fangled Arminian tenets! I am for old Christianity; and, with St. Paul, determined to know nothing' for justification but Christ, and him crucified.""

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ANSWER.-Do you indeed? Then I am sure you will not deny both Jesus Christ and St. Paul in this old Christian doctrine; for Christ says, "By thy words shalt thou be justified;" and St. Paul declares, "Not the hearers, but the doers of the law" of Christ "shall be justified." Alas! how often are those who say they will know and have nothing but Christ the first to "set him at nought" as a Prophet, by railing at his holy doctrine; or to reject him as a King, by trampling upon his royal proclamations! But "I wot that through ignorance they do it, as do also their rulers."

SECOND OBJECTION.-"This legal doctrine robs God's dear children of their comforts and gospel liberty, binds

Moses's intolerable burden upon their free shoulders, and entangles them again in the galling yoke of bondage.""

ANSWER.—If God's dear children have got into a false liberty of doing the devil's works, either by not going into the vineyard when they have said, "Lord, I go," or by beating their fellow-servants there instead of working with them, the sooner they are robbed of it the better; for if they continue thus free, they will ere long be "bound hand and foot, and cast into outer darkness." It is the very spirit of antinomianism to represent God's commandments as grievous, and the keeping of his law as bondage. Not so the dutiful children of God: their heart is never so much at liberty as when they "run" best "the way of his commandments, and so fulfil the law of Christ." Keep them from obedience, and you keep them "in the snare of the devil, promising liberty to others while they themselves are the servants of corruption."

Again: you confound the heavy yoke of the circumcision and ceremonial bondage, with which the Galatians once entangled themselves, with the easy yoke of Jesus Christ. The former was intolerable; the latter is so light a burden, that the only way to "find rest unto our souls is to take it upon us. St. Paul calls a dear brother his "yokefellow;" you know the word Belial, in the original, signifies "without yoke;" they are sons of Belial who shake off the Lord's yoke; and though they should boast of their election, as much as the Jews did, Christ himself will say concerning them, "Those mine enemies that" refuse my yoke, and "will not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me." So inexpressibly dreadful is the end of lawless liberty!

THIRD OBJECTION.-"Your doctrine is the damnable error of the Galatians, who madly left mount Sion for mount Sinai, made 'Christ the alpha and' not the '

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'omega,' and, after having begun in the spirit, would be made. perfect by the flesh.' This is the other gospel which St. Paul thought so diametrically contrary to his own, that he wished the teachers of it, though they were 'angels of God,' might be even accursed' and 'cut off."'

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ANSWER. You are under a capital mistake: St. Paul

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could never be so wild as to curse himself, anathematize St. James, and wish the Messiah to be again "cut off: for he himself taught the Romans that the "doers of the law shall be justified;" St. James evidently maintains "a justification by works ;" and our Lord expressly says, "By thy words thou shalt be justified.' Again: the apostle, as if he had foreseen how his epistle to the Galatians would be abused to antinomian purposes, gives us in it the most powerful antidotes against that poison. Take two or three instances: 1. He exhorts his fallen converts to the fulfilling of all the law. Love one another," says he; "for all the law is fulfilled in this one word, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," because none can love his neighbour as himself, but he that loves God with all his heart. How different is this doctrine from the bold antinomian cry, "We have nothing to do with the law! 2. He enumerates the works of the flesh, adultery, hatred, variance, wrath, strife, heresies, envyings," &c., "of which," says he, "I tell you before, as I have told you in time past, that they who do such things" shall not be justified in the day of judgment, or, which is the same thing, “shall not inherit the kingdom of God." How different a gospel is this, from that which insinuates impenitent adulterers may be dear children of God, even while such, in a very safe state, and quite sure of glory!" And, 3. As if this awful warning was not enough, he point-blank cautions his readers against the Crispian error. "Be not deceived," says he, "whatever a man" (not whatever Christ) soweth, that shall he also reap: he that soweth to the flesh shall reap corruption, and he that soweth to the Spirit shall reap life everlasting." How amazingly strong therefore must your prejudice be, which makes you produce this epistle to thrust love and good works out of the important place allotted them in all the word of God! and no where more than in this very epistle.

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FOURTH OBJECTION." Notwithstanding all you say, I am persuaded you are in the dreadful heresy of the Galatians, for they were, like you, for 'justification by the works of the law' and St. Paul resolutely maintained

against them the fundamental doctrine of 'justification by faith.'"

ANSWER.-If you once read over the epistle to the Galatians without prejudice, and without comment, you will see that, 1. They had "returned to the beggarly elements of this world" by superstitiously "observing days, months, times, and years." 2. Imagining they" could not be saved except they were circumcised," they submitted even to that grievous and bloody injunction. 3. Exact in their useless ceremonies, and fondly hoping to be justified by their partial observance of Moses's law, they well-nigh forgot the merits of Christ, and openly trampled upon his law, and "walked after the flesh." Stirred up to contentious zeal by their new teachers, they despised the old apostle's ministry, hated his person, and devoured one another. In short, they trusted partly in the merit of their superstitious performances, and partly in Christ's merits; and on this preposterous foundation they "built the hay" of Jewish ceremonies, and "the stubble" of fleshly lusts. With great propriety, therefore, the apostle called them back, with sharpness, to the only sure foundation, the merits of Jesus Christ; and wanted them to "build upon it gold and precious stones," all the works of piety and mercy, that spring from "faith working by love."

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Now which of these errors do we hold ? Do we not preach present justification by faith, and justification at the bar of God according to what a man soweth,—the very doctrine of this epistle? And do we not secure the foundation" by insisting that both these justifications are equally by the alone" merits of Christ?" though the second, as our church intimates in her twelfth article, is by the evidence of works.

Will you bear with me if I tell you my thoughts? We are all in general condemned by the epistle to the Galatians; for we have too much dependence on our forms of piety, speculative knowledge, or past experience; and too little heart-felt confidence in the merits of Christ: we sow too little to the Spirit, and too much to the flesh. But those, in the next place, are peculiarly reproved by it, who "return to the beggarly elements," the idle ways and vain

fashions, "of this world:" those who make as much ado about the beggarly elements of water, about baptizing infants and dipping adults, as "the troublers" of the church of Galatia did about circumcising their converts, "that they might glory in their flesh" those who "zealously affect" others, "but not well:" those who now despise their spiritual fathers, "whom they" once received as angels of God:" those who "turn our enemies when we tell them the truth," who heap to themselves teachers, smoother than the evangelically legal apostle, and would call us blind if we said as he does, "Let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone and not in another:' Gal. vi. 4: those who plead for spiritual bondage while they talk of gospel liberty, and affirm that "the son of the bond-woman" shall always live" with the son of the free," that sin can never be cast out of the heart of believers, and that Christ and corruption shall always dwell together in this world: and, lastly, those who say there is no falling away from grace," when they are already fillen, like the Galatians, and boast of their stability chiefly because they are ignorant of their fall.

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FIFTH OBJECTION.- "However, your pharisaic doctrine flatly contradicts the gospel summed up by our Lord in these words, 'He that believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned.' Here is not one word about works; all turns upon faith."

ANSWER. Instead of throwing such hints, you might as well speak out at once, and say that Christ, in Mark xvi. 16, "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned," flatly contradicts what he had said, Matthew xii. 37, "By thy words thou shalt be justified, or by thy words thou shalt be condemned." But drop your prejudices, and you will see that the contradiction is only in your own ideas. We steadily assert, as our Lord, that "he who believeth," or "endureth unto the end believing," for the word implies both the reality and continuance of the action, shall infallibly be saved; because faith, which continues living, works to the last by love and good works, which will