full of impurity and baseness, that it frets them
to the heart. Meanwhile the poor sinner, Magdalene, is pardoned because
she loves much, and her faith and love are accepted as righteousness.
The inspired Paul, who so well understood these great truths and so
fully investigated them, assures us that "the faith of Abraham was
imputed to him for righteousness." This is truly beautiful for it is
certain that all of that holy patriarch's actions were strictly
righteous; yet, not seeing them as such, and being devoid of the love
of them, and divested of selfishness, his faith was founded on the
coming Christ. He hoped in Him even against hope itself, and this was
imputed to him for righteousness, (Rom. 41: 18, 22,) a pure, simple and
genuine righteousness, wrought by Christ, and not a righteousness
wrought by himself, and regarded as of himself.

You may imagine this a digression wide of the subject, but it leads
insensibly to it. It shows that God accomplishes His work either in
converted sinners, whose past iniquities serve as a counterpoise to
their elevation, or in persons whose self-righteousness He destroys, by
totally overthrowing the proud building they had reared on a sandy
foundation, instead of the Rock--CHRIST.

The establishment of all these ends, which He proposed in coming into
the world, is effected by the apparent overthrow of that very structure
which in reality He would erect. By means which seem to destroy His
Church, He establishes it. How strangely does He found the new
dispensation and give it His sanction! The legislator Himself is
condemned by the learned and great, as a malefactor, and dies an
ignominious death. Oh, that we fully understood how very opposite our
self-righteousness is to the designs of God--it would be a subject for
endless humiliation, and we should have an utter distrust in that which
at present constitutes the whole of our dependence.

From a just love of His supreme power, and a righteous jealousy of
mankind, who attribute to each other the gifts He Himself bestows upon
them, it pleased Him to take one of the most unworthy of the creation,
to make known the fact that His graces are the effects of His will, not
the fruits of our merits. It is the property of His wisdom to destroy
what is proudly built, and to build what is destroyed; to make use of
weak things to confound the mighty and to employ in His service such as
appear vile and contemptible.

This He does in a manner s