namely, the enjoyment of himself, the light of his countenance, the smiles of his open face, which make the heaven of heavens."

6. God says to Abraham, and in him to all believers, "I am thy exceeding great reward." Hence it follows, that the higher we rise in holiness and obedience, the nearer we shall be admitted to the eternal throne; and the fuller enjoyment we shall have of our God and Saviour, our reward and Rewarder. Therefore, to overlook divine rewards, is to overlook God himself, who is our great reward; and to slight the life to come, of which godliness has the promise.

7. The error I oppose can be put in a still stronger light. Not to strive to obtain our great reward in full, amounts to saying, "Lord, thou art beneath my aim and pursuit; I can do without thee, or without so much of thee. I will not bestir myself, and do one thing to obtain either the fruition, or a fuller enjoyment, of thy adorable self." An illustration or two, short as they fall of the thing illustrated, may help us to see the great impropriety of such a conduct. If the king offered to give all officers who would distinguish themselves in the field, his hand to kiss, and a commission in the guards, that he might have them near his person; would not military gentlemen defeat the intention of this gracious offer, and betray a peculiar degree of indifference for his majesty, if in the day of battle they would not strike one blow the more, on account of the royal promise?

Again: when David asked, "What shall be done to him that killeth the giant ?" and when he was informed that Saul would give him his daughter in marriage; would the young shepherd have showed his regard for the princess, or respect for the monarch, if he had said, "I am above minding rewards: what I do, I do freely: I scorn acting from so base a motive as a desire to secure the hand of the princess, and the honour of being the king's son-inlaw?" Could any thing have been ruder, and more haughty, than such a speech? And yet, O see what evangelical refinements have done for us! We, who are infinitely less before God than David was before king Saul; we, VOL. II.

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worms of a day, are so blinded by prejudice, as to think it beneath us to mind the offers of the King of kings, or to strive for the rewards of the Lord of lords!

"Wo to him that striveth" in generosity "with his Maker! Let the potsherd strive" thus "with the potsherds of the earth :" but let not the clay say to him that fashioneth it, 'What doest thou' when thou stirrest me up to good works by the promise of thy rewards? Surely, Lord, thou forgettest that the nobleness of my mind, and my doctrine of finished salvation, make me above running for a reward, though it should be for a life of glory, and thyself. Whatever I do at thy command, I am determined not to demean myself; I will do it as Araunah, like a king." What depths of antinomian pride may be hid under the covering of our voluntary humility!

8. The Calvinists of the last century, in their lucid intervals, saw the absolute necessity of working for heaven and heavenly rewards. We have a good practical discourse of John Bunyan upon these words: "So run that ye may obtain." The burden of it is, "If you will have heaven, you must run for it ;" whence he calls his sermon, "the Heavenly Footman." And Matthew Mead, * stanch Calvinist, in his treatise on the Good of early Obedience," p. 429, says with great truth, "Maintain an holy, filial fear of God; this is an excellent preservative against apostasy. By the fear of the Lord men depart

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As a proof of his being sound in the doctrines of Calvinistic grace and confusion, I present the reader with the following passage taken from the same book, printed in London, 1683, p. 307 :-" A believer is under the law for conduct, but not for judgment, &c. It is the guide of his path, but not the judge of his state. The believer is bound to obey it, but not to stand or fall by it." That is, in plain English, he should obey, but his disobedience will never bring him under condemnation, and hinder him to stand in judgment. "It is a rule of life, &c.; and therefore it obliges believers as much as others, though upon other motives, &c. For they are not to expect life or favour from it, nor fear the death and rigour that comes by it. The law has no power to justify a believer, or condemn him; and therefore can be no rule to try his state by." In flat opposition to the general tenor of the scriptures, thus summed up by St. John, "In this," namely, committing or not committing sin," the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil." What this author says is true, if it is understood of the Adamic law of innocence; but if it is extended to St. Paul's "law of Christ," and to St. James's "law of liberty," it is one of the dangerous tenets that support the chair of the antinomian man of sin.

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from evil,' says Solomon; and he tells you, 'The fear of the Lord is the fountain of life, whereby men depart from the snares of death;' and backsliding from Christ is one of the great snares of death. Think much of the day of recompence, and of the glorious reward of perseverance in that day. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life.' It is not those that begin well, but those who end well, that receive the crown. It is not mercenary service to quicken ourselves to obedience by the hope of a recompence. Omnis amor mercedis non est mercenarius, &c. David said, 'I have hoped for thy salvation, and done thy commandments.' He encouraged himself to duty by the hope of glory, &c. Hope of that glorious recompence is of great service to quicken us to perseverance. And to the same end does the apostle urge it: 'Be unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord; forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.""

9. When voluntary humility has made us wise above what is written by the apostles, and by our forefathers, it will make us look down with contempt from the top of our fancied orthodoxy upon the motives by which the prophets took up their cross, to serve God and their generation. When St. Paul enumerates the works of Moses, he traces them back to their noble principle, faith working by a well-ordered self-love: a love, this, which is inseparable from the love of God and man; the law of liberty binding us to love our neighbour as ourselves, and God above ourselves. "He chose," says the apostle, "to suffer affliction with the people of God, rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin," &c. But why? Because he was above looking at the prize? Just the reverse : because "he had respect to the recompence of reward.” Heb. xi. 26.

10. In the next chapter the apostle bids us take Christ imself for our pattern in the very thing, which our gospelrefiners call mercenary and base: "Looking to Jesus," says he, "who, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God:" the noble reward, this,

with which his mediatorial obedience was crowned, as appears from these words: "He became obedient unto death; wherefore God also hath highly exalted him." If the scheme of those who refine the ancient gospel appears to me in a peculiarly unfavourable light, it is when I see them impose upon the injudicious admirers of unscriptural humility, and make the simple believe that they do God service when they indirectly represent Christ's obedience unto death as imperfect, and him as mercenary, actuated by a motive unworthy of a child of God. He says, "Every one that is perfect shall be as his Master;' but we, (such is our consistency!) loudly decry perfection, and yet pretend to an higher degree of it than our Lord and Master; for he was not above enduring the cross for the joy of sitting down at the right hand of the throne of God; but we are so exquisitely perfect, that we will work gratis. It is mercenary, it is beneath us, to work for glory!

11. I fear this contempt is by some indirectly poured upon the Lord of glory, to extol the spurious free grace who is sister to free wrath; and to persuade the simple that "works have nothing to do with our final justification and eternal salvation before God:" a dogma this, which is as contrary to reason, as it is to scripture and morality; it being a monstrous imposition upon the credulity of protestants, to assert that works, which God himself will reward with final justification and eternal salvation, have nothing to do with that justification and that salvation before Him: just as if the thing rewarded had nothing to do with its reward before the rewarder!

12. The most rigid Calvinists allow that St. Paul is truly evangelical; but which of the sacred writers ever spoke greater things of the rewardableness of works than he? What can be plainer, what stronger, than these words, which I must quote till they are minded? "Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord," &c.; "knowing" (that is, considering) "that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance. But he that doeth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done: for there

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is no respect of persons." Col. iii. 23, &c. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap for he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap perdition; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap everlasting life." Gal. vi. 7, 8.

From those scriptures it is evident, that doing good or bad works is like sowing good or bad seed; and that going to heaven or to hell, is like gathering what we have sown. Now, as it is the madness of unbelievers to sow wickedness, and to expect a crop of happiness and glory; so it is the wisdom of believers to sow righteousness, expecting to "reap in due time if they faint not." Nor do we act reasonably, if we do not sow more or less with an eye to reaping; for if reaping is quite out of the question with protestants, they may as wisely sow chaff on a fallow, as corn in a ploughed, field. Hence I conclude, that a believer may obey, and that, if he is judicious, he will obey, looking both to Jesus and to the rewards of obedience; and that the more he can fix the eye of his faith upon his exceeding great reward, and his great recompence of reward, the more he will abound in the work of faith, the patience of hope, and the labour of love.

13. St. Paul's conduct, with respect to rewards, was perfectly consistent with his doctrine. I have already observed, he wrote to the Corinthians, that he so ran and so fought, as to obtain an incorruptible crown; and it is well known, that in the Olympic games, to which he alludes, all ran or fought with an eye to a prize, a reward, or a crown. But in his epistle to the Philippians, he goes still farther; for he represents his running for a crown of life, his pressing after rewards of grace and glory,

as the whole of his business. His words are remarkable : "This one thing I do: forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press towards the mark, for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." And when he had just run his race out, he wrote to Timothy, "I have finished my course: henceforth there is laid up for me," as for a conqueror, a crown of righteousness, which the