It is in con

offend in all my holy mountain. formity to this, that death is inflicted upon the sinner; and this death is neither more nor less than his expulsion from the family of holiness. Through Jesus Christ, we come again unto mount Zion, which is the heavenly Jerusalem; and it is as fresh as ever in the verdure of a perpetual holiness. How shall we who were found unfit for residence in this place because of sin, continue in sin after our readmittance therein? How shall we, recovered from so awful a catastrophe, continue that which first involved us in it? or again take on that disease which has already evinced itself to be of such virulence, as to be a disease unto death.

66

LECTURE XXX.

ROMANS, vi, 3-7.

"Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin."

V. 3, 4. THE original meaning of the word baptism is immersion, and though we regard it as a point of indifferency, whether the ordinance so named be performed in this way or by sprinkling -yet we doubt not, that the prevalent style of the administration in the apostle's days, was by an actual submerging of the whole body under water. We advert to this, for the purpose of throwing light on the analogy that is instituted in these Jesus Christ by death underwent this sort of baptism-even immersion under the surface of the ground, whence He soon emerged again by His resurrection. We by being baptized into His death, are conceived to have made a similar translation. In the act of descending under the water of baptism to have resigned an old life, and in the act of ascending to emerge into a second or a new

verses.

life-along the course of which it is our part to maintain a strenuous avoidance of that sin, which as good as expunged the being that we had formerly; and a strenuous prosecution of that holiness, which should begin with the first moment that we were ushered into our present being, and be perpetuated and make progress toward the perfection of full and ripened immortality.

66

Baptized into His death"-or regarding ourselves as if like Him we had actually been slain and buried, and like Him brought forth anew and made alive again, before that God who for our sins had swept us beyond the circle of His favoured creation. This would have been had not Christ died; and though He by pouring out His soul for us, has kept us in the favour that else would have been forfeited and that for ever-yet the argument is the same, if prevented from going down into the pit, as if after being cast headlong into it for our sins we had again been extricated therefrom. How shall we whom sin had at that time blotted out from the family of life, now that we are readmitted, again indulge in it? How shall we run counter to those holy antipathies of the divine nature, of the strength and irreconcilableness of which we already in our own persons have had so fell a manifestation? How shall we, rescued from destruction, again welcome to our embraces the destroyer ?—or, living anew under the eye of that God who could not endure the presence of sin and so consigned it to the exile of death everlasting, shall we live again

in that very course which made our former existence so offensive to Him and so incompatible with the whole spirit and design of His government? Has He changed His taste or His character? or makes it any difference to the argument, that a mediator interposed and took upon Himself the whole weight of that avenging arm, which was lifted up for our extermination? Is not the exhibition of God's hatred and hostility to sin just as impressive, that the stroke of jealousy fell upon the head of His own Son, as it would have been, had it fallen on the guilty millions, whom this mighty Captain shielded from the vindictive discharge that else would have overwhelmed us? And whether these billows of wrath have all been broken on the Rock of our Salvation; or first made to pass over us, we had again been summoned from the depth and caused to emerge anew into the sunshine of God's reconciled countenance-does it not equally prove that He, the everlasting enemy of sin, will, in any new economy that He may institute, still evince it to be that hateful thing for which He has no taste, and can have no toleration ?

So much for the application of the phrase "dead unto sin," when understood forensically. We trust that however imperfectly we may have illustrated this part of the argument, you have been made to perceive that there is in it the force and the power of a most impressive consideration; and, whether you have seized upon it or not, be at least very sure of this-that, such is the fact of the mat

ter, there is no indulgence for sin under the dispensation of the gospel. It is a restorative dispensation, by which you are alike kept from the penalty of sin and cured of its polluting virulence. It restores you to the favour of God, but it restores you not to the liberty of sinning; and the argument wherewith we would arm and fortify the principles of all who now feel themselves alive in Christ Jesus is-shall we continue in that hateful thing which would have brought me to the death, had not my Saviour, for my deliverance and preservation, bowed down His head unto the sacrifice?

We have already tried to set forth in your hearing the forensic interpretation, that might be given of the phrase "dead unto sin"-dead for sin—not that the sentence was inflicted, but that the sentence was pronounced; and the argument why they should not continue in sin, is as strongly applicable to those who are delivered from a doom that was impending, as to those who are recalled from a doom that was actually executed. There were a most direct force in the considerationshould a revived criminal press it upon his moral feelings-how can I recur to that which is so odious in the sight of my country's government, that I had to suffer a death for it, from which I, by a miracle perhaps of mercy, have been restored? And it ought to be as powerful a consideration with a reprieved criminal, whose sentence has been suspended, and perhaps by the intercession of a Mediator been finally withdrawn. The recurrence