persons who use the above
language, rely not so much on the merits of Christ, and on the agency of
Divine Grace, as on their own power of fulfilling the moderated
requisitions of Divine Justice. He will hence therefore discover in them
a disposition rather to extenuate the malignity of their disease, than
to magnify the excellence of the proffered remedy. He will find them apt
to palliate in themselves what they cannot fully justify, to enhance the
merit of what they believe to be their good qualities and commendable
actions, to set as it were in an account the good against the bad; and
if the result be not very unfavourable, they conceive that they shall be
entitled to claim the benefits of our Saviour's sufferings as a thing of
course. They have little idea, so little, that it might almost be
affirmed that they have no idea at all, of the importance or difficulty
of the duty of what the Scripture calls "submitting ourselves to the
righteousness of God;" or of our proneness rather to justify ourselves
in his sight, than in the language of imploring penitents to acknowledge
ourselves guilty and helpless sinners. They have never summoned
themselves to this entire and unqualified renunciation of their own
merits, and their own strength; and therefore they remain strangers to
the natural loftiness of the human heart, which such a call would have
awakened into action, and roused to resistance. ALL THESE THEIR SEVERAL
ERRORS NATURALLY RESULT FROM THE MISTAKEN CONCEPTION ENTERTAINED OF THE
FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIANITY. They consider not that
Christianity is a scheme for "justifying _the ungodly_[54]," by Christ's
dying for them "_when yet sinners_[55][56];" a scheme "for reconciling
us to God--_when enemies_;" and for making the fruits of holiness _the
effects[57], not the cause_, of our being justified and reconciled:
that, in short, it opens freely the door of mercy, to the greatest and
vilest of penitent sinners; that obeying the blessed impulse of the
grace of God, whereby they had been awakened from the sleep of death,
and moved to seek for pardon, they might enter in, and through the
regenerating influence of the Holy Spirit might be enabled to bring
forth the fruits of Righteousness. But they rather conceive of
Christianity as opening the door of mercy, that those who on the ground
of their own merits could not have hoped to justify themselves before
God, may yet be admitted for Christ's sake, on condition of t