you will find that every religion, 'except one', puts you upon 'doing
something', in order to recommend yourself to God. A Mahometan * * A
Papist * * * It is only the religion of Jesus Christ that runs counter
to all the rest, by affirming--that we are 'saved' and called with a
holy calling, 'not' according to our works, but according to the
Father's own purpose and grace, which was 'not' sold to us 'on certain
conditions to be fulfilled by ourselves', but was given us in Christ
before the world began." Toplady's Works: Sermon on James ii. 18.

'Si sic omnia'! All this is just and forcible; and surely nothing can be
easier than to confute the Methodist by shewing that his very
'no-doing', when he comes to explain it, is not only an act, a work, but
even a very severe and perseverant energy of the will. He is therefore
to be arraigned of nonsense and abuse of words rather than of immoral
doctrines.

Ib. p. 84.

The sacred volume of Holy Writ declares that 'true' (pure?) 'religion
and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the
fatherless and widow in their affliction, and to keep himself
unspotted from the world'. James i. 27

This is now at least, whatever might have been the meaning of the word
'religion' in the time of the Translators, a false version. St. James is
speaking of persons eminently zealous in those public or private acts of
worship, which we call divine service, [Greek: thraeskeia]. It should be
rendered, 'True worship', &c. The passage is a fine burst of rhetoric,
and not a mere truism; just as when we say;--"A cheerful heart is a
perpetual thanksgiving, and a state of love and resignation the truest
utterance of the Lord's Prayer." St. James opposes Christianity to the
outward signs and ceremonial observances of the Jewish and Pagan
religions. But these are the only sure signs, these are the most
significant ceremonial observances by which your Christianity is to be
made known,--'to visit the fatherless', &c. True religion does not
consist 'quoad essentiam' in these acts, but in that habitual state of
the whole moral being, which manifests itself by these acts--and which
acts are to the religion of Christ that which ablutions, sacrifices and
Temple-going were to the Mosaic religion, namely, its genuine [Greek:
thraeskeia]. That which was the religion of Moses is the ceremonial or
cult of the religion of Christ. Moses commanded all good works, even
those stated b