Chrift as a Saviour; or as a caufe or condition of our title to falvation; or a ground of our full poffeffion of it,-tends to prevent the glorious gospel. I am,

Yours, &c.

LETTER II.

On the Exemplary Behaviour of Minifters.

FROM the preceding hints it is plainly manifest, that the doctrines and promises of the gospel can be preached in a legal manner, and the precepts of the law in a truly evangelical manner. It is no lefs evident, that an evangelical preacher ought to have a deep infight into the mystery of Chrift, that he may clearly perceive how his perfon God-man is connected with, and influenceth all his offices, ftates, and works, and how it is connected with all the parts of the covenant of grace, and all the privileges and duties of believers; how he, in his perfon, offices, and fulness, pervades, furnisheth, and confirms all the promises, and fuits all the conditions and neceffities of finful men. He ought clearly to understand the difference and connection between the covenants of works and grace, and between the law and the gofpel; the difference and harmony between the law as a covenant, and the law as a rule of life; between the gospel strictly taken, and the difpenfation of it; and between the making and administration of the covenant of grace. He ought to have a diftinct knowledge of the order, harmony, and difference of Christ's

offices,

J

offices, general and particular; of the difference, harmo ny, and connection of our juftification and fanctification; not only a real, but even a deep experience of these truths is neceffary to make one clearly apprehend them. None can rightly understand the power of mens indwelling corruption, unless he have favingly felt his own: None can truly understand how the law is the strength of fin, till it be closely applied to his own conscience: None can thoroughly understand why the gofpel-offer of Christ as a Saviour must be abfolutely free and directed to finners as fuch, until he hath had to struggle with sharp and extensive convictions: None can rightly apprehend how the affured belief of a full and free falvation through Christ constrains to univerfal obedience to God's commandments, unless himself have had God's redeeming love shed abroad in his heart. Nor can aný perceive how much mens doubting and staggering at the promises of eternal life, or how much their legal difpofition to recommend themselves to God's favour by their good works tends to hinder their cheerful progress in grace and true virtue, unless he himself hath distinctly experienced the hurt of it.

To obtain fuch knowledge and experience requires fo much care and diligence, and is fo contrary to the proud and corrupt inclination of the most of preachers, that they rather content themselves with a few pitiful scraps of heathen morality, or a few disjointed and wrong-placed fragments of divine truth. Nor, when one has ac◄ quired this knowledge, is his care and labour at an end. As the wrong placing of one fmall wheel, or even a pin in a watch or clock, may stop or render irregular the

whole motion, fo the misplacing of a fingle hint may pervert a whole fermon, and render it unevangelical. Though the gospel preacher make the free grace of God, the imputed righteousness of Christ, and the free and full falvation of men from fin and mifery through him, the principal scope and centre of all his difcourfes, as he hath known and felt that it is not by the works of the law, but by the hearing of faith that the Spirit of God is received into mens hearts; yet he doth not entertain his hearers merely with these, but attempts to declare the whole counsel of God in its proper connection. On the one hand, he exhibits and urgeth home the moral law as a covenant binding on unregenerate finners, that they may be driven from under it to Jefus Chrift, as the end of the law for righteousness, and as the all-fufficient and only refuge and Saviour. On the other, he explains and inculcates the law as a rule of perfect holinefs binding on believers, and directing them to walk in Christ, and walk worthy of him unto all well-pleafing.

In preaching the law as a broken covenant, the aim of the evangelical preacher is not to perfuade finners to attempt the obfervance of its precepts in any degree, but to convince them of their guilt, mifery, and inability to fave themselves, and to drive them from it, as diftinguished and inwardly irreformable tranfgreffors, to Jefus Chrift, as the end of the law for righteoufnefs to every one that believeth, that the righteoufnefs of it may be fulfilled in them; and to perfuade believers to beware of inclining or attempting any return to their Egyptian bondage, or of looking back to the flaming Sodom from which the Lord hath mercifully delivered them, but, fafe under

under Jesus' fhadow, his purple covering of perfect righteousness, imputed and applied to them, to admire what he undertook and fulfilled for finful men, and for them in particular; and, all influenced by this, to labour to their utmost in yielding a grateful obedience to his easy yoke, the law as a rule of life. Regulating every fentence of difcourfe by this deep fixed aim, the preacher ought to exhibit the original making, contents, and breach of the law as a covenant of works; and how, in confequence of that breach, it fixeth on every man for himself. The holiness, equity, goodness, fpirituality, and exceeding breadth of its precepts ought to be earnestly and clearly displayed, that, by the knowledge of their fins, as tranfgreffors of it in their nature, number, and aggravations, every mouth may be stopped, and all the world be convicted as guilty before God, and filled with fhame and confusion of face. The terrible nature, the juftness, certainty, and eternity of the punifhment annexed by the penalty of this law to the very smallest tranfgreffion, must be plainly and feelingly represented, that mens hearts may be pricked, and fee nothing to be expected from this broken law but fiery indignation to devour them, as adversaries of an infinitely good, holy, and omnipotent God. Under the deepeft impreffion of his own finfulness, he must explain to his hearers the astonishing corruption of their natures; how they are naturally dead in trespasses and fins, and under the reigning power of indwelling lufts; how, while they are in the flesh, in their corrupt state, they cannot please God, but their carnal mind is enmity against him, and is not fubject to his law, neither indeed can be,-their heart

deceitful above all things and defperately wicked, from which proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, falfe witnefs, blafphemies, and which not only difqualifies them for every thing spiritually good, but renders them incapable to cease from fin, fpeaking and doing evil things to the utmost of their power. Affected with the terror of the Lord, he must clearly represent how the law as a broken covenant is the ftrength of fin, not merely as finners' outrageous hearts are, by the view and impreffion of its strict precepts and fearful curfes, irritated and provoked more exceedingly to hate God the law-giver, and to work wickedness with redoubled rage, despair, and greediness; but chiefly as the curfe or condemnatory fentence of it, by an almighty influence, lays its finful fubjects under the reigning power and force of fin, as a principal ingredient in that fpiritual and eternal death threatened against every tranfgreffor; how this curfe lying on men renders it infinitely impoffible for them to fhift the dominion of fin while they continue under the law, not under grace,impoffible for them to live to God, or bring forth fruit of holiness or virtue, till they be dead to the law by the body of Chrift; and how abfurd it is, in the highest degree, to attempt any reformation of heart or life, before God, in a state and way of subjection to that law, which is the ftrength of fin; nay, how even God's almighty grace cannot change our nature, or bless us with any spiritual bieffing, but in first translating us from under that law, through the application of Chrift's furety and law-magnifying righteoufnefs to our perfon and confcience.

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