t we do wisely in so interpreting them?

With regard to our Liturgy I need not follow up the question now; but
with regard to St. Paul, it is certain that he, in many parts of his
Epistles, chooses to represent that which ought to be as that which
actually was: he chooses to regard those to whom he is writing as being
in all respects true Christians, as being worthy of their privileges, as
answering to what God had done to them, as forming a church really
inhabited by the Holy Spirit, and therefore being a true and living body
of due proportions to Christ its Divine head. Nor does he trust
exclusively to the common sense and conscience of those to whom he was
writing to interpret his language correctly. He might Lave thought
indeed that if he wrote to them as redeemed, justified, sanctified, as
having all things new, as being the children of God, and the heirs of
God, and the temples of the Holy Ghost, any individual who felt that he
was none of these things, that sin was still mighty within him, and that
he was sin's slave, would neither deny his own conscience, nor yet call
St. Paul a deceiver; but would read in the difference between St. Paul's
description of him and the reality, the exact measure of his own sin,
and need of repentance and watchfulness. But he does not rely on this
only: he notices sins as actually existing; he mingles the language of
reproof and of anxiety, so as to make it quite clear that he did not
mean his descriptions of their holiness and blessedness to apply to them
all necessarily; he knew full well that they did not: but yet he knew
also that, considering what God had done for them, it was monstrous that
they should not be truly applicable.

But why then, you will say, did he use such language? why did he call
men forgiven, redeemed, saved, justified, sanctified?--he uses all these
terms often as applicable generally to those to whom he was
writing;--why did he call them so, when in fact they were not so? He
called them so for the same reason which, made prophecy foretell
blessings upon Israel of old, and on the Christian church afterwards,
which were fulfilled on neither:--in order to declare, and keep ever
before us, what God has done and is willing to do for us: what he fain
would do for us, if we would but suffer him; what divine powers are
offered to us, and we will not use them; what divine happiness is
designed for us, and we will not enter into it. Let us ponder all the
magnificenc