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season which He has allotted for repentance, into a season of more secure and presumptuous transgression-thus, upon every delay of vengeance with which He favours us, the more to strengthen ourselves in hard and haughty defiance against Him-this indeed is a highway of guilt, which, if you be not arrested therein, will lead to a sorer judgment and a deadlier consummation. Turn then all of you at the call of repentance, or it is the very highway on which you are treading. It is because He is rich in goodness, that we have been spared to this present moment of our history; and now hear Him in the very language of His own revelation bid you turn and turn, for why will you die. But if you will not draw from the treasures of His forbearance, there is treasure of another kind that is heaping by every day of your neglected salvation, in a storehouse of vengeance; and which, on the great day when God shall ease Him of all His adversaries, will all be poured forth upon you. And thus it is, that if you despise the riches of His goodness and forbearance and longsuffering, and suffer not them to lead you to repentance, you will by your hardness and impenitency, treasure up unto yourselves wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgments of God.

Let us therefore, in plain urgency, bid you repent; and, untramelled by system, set before you, as the apostle does, both the coming wrath and the coming glory; and tell you that the one is to

him who doeth evil, and that the other is to him who doeth well; and we may be sure that there is nothing in faith, or in any of its mysteries, which will supersede the day of judgment as it is recorded in the passage here before us. The apostle is not only describing what would have happened under the first covenant, but what will happen under the second. For though justified by faith, we shall be judged by works; and let not the one of these articles be so contrasted with the other, as to throw a shade either of neglect or insignificance over it. When rightly understood, they reflect upon each other a mutual lustre, and lend to each other a mutual confirmation. Faith is the high road to repentance. Our acceptance of the righteousness of Christ as our title for an entrance into heaven, is an essential stepping-stone to our own personal righteousness as our preparation for the joys and the exercises of heaven; and if there be a stirring of conscience and an agitation of alarm in any of your hearts, under the sense of your not being what you ought to be-we can do nothing more offectual, than to propose the blood of Christ to your faith, in order that under the transforming and sanctifying influence of such a belief, you both be what you ought and do what you ought.

The great object of the apostle's demonstration is, that men should make their escape from the penalties of the law, to the hiding-place provided for them in the gospel. And though he here intimates the rewards which it holds out to obedience,

and the fearful vengeance which it holds out against transgression-yet he does not intimate that any individual ever earned the one, or ever secured by his own righteousness an exemption from the other. His object is to make known to us the constitution or the economy of God's government, that, should any of its subjects fulfil all its requisitions, they should be rewarded; but without saying that they actually did so-or, that, should any of its subjects fail in those requisitions they would be punished; but without telling us whether any or some or all come under this condemnation. How it was that they actually did conduct themselves under this administration, he tells us afterwards-when he says of all, both Jews and Gentiles, that they were under sin; and that by the deeds of the law no flesh can be justified, for that all had sinned and come short of the glory of God.

And yet after all there will be a judgment; and this judgment will proceed upon each individual according to the deeds done in his body; and it those who bring forth fruit with patience, or who maintain a patient continuance in welldoing, that these accents of invitation will descend

is upon

"Well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord;" and it is also upon those who are contentious and obey not the truth but obey unrighteousness, that the awful bidding away to the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels will be pronounced, by Him who conducts the solemnities of that great

occasion. But then, as we read afterwards, it will be Jesus Christ to whom this judgment will be committed; and the judgment will be according to my gospel,' or the gospel which the apostle proclaims to his hearers. The judgment of condemnation will be upon those who have withstood its overtures; or who, if these overtures had never reached them, have withstood the instigations of their own conscience, which ought to have been a law unto them. And the judgment of acquittal will be upon those who have obeyed the truth, or who have rendered obedience unto the faith-those whose persons and whose works are accepted for the sake of a better righteousness than their own-those who, after they believed, were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, and were made the workmanship of God in Christ Jesus, and were created anew unto good works. So that, after the first covenant has been superseded by the second-after man has become dead unto the law and made alive unto Christ-after all its demands have been satisfied, and it has no more power to challenge or to condemn him who truly believes in Jesus, Jesus himself takes up the judgment of him, and tries him on the question whether he is actually a believer; and the deeds done in the body are the evidences of this question, and make it manifest on that day that the faith which he professed was no counterfeit, being fruitful in all those works of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ unto the praise and glory of God.

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LECTURE VII.

ROMANS ii, 12—29.

"For as many as have sinned without law, shall also perish without law; and as many as have sinned in the law, shall be judged by the law, (for not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: which show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another,) in the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ, according to my gospel. Behold, thou art called a Jew, and restest in the law, and makest thy boast of God, and knowest his will, and approvest the things that are more excellent, being instructed out of the law; and art confident that thou thyself art a guide of the blind, a light of them which are in darkness, an instructor of the foolish, a teacher of babes, which hast the form of knowledge and of the truth in the law. Thou therefore that teachest another, teachest thou not thyself? thou that preachest a man should not steal, dost thou steal? thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege? thou that makest thy boast of the law, through breaking the law dishonourest thou God? for the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles through you, as it is written. For circumcision verily profiteth, if thou keep the law; but if thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision. Therefore, if the uncircumcision keep the righteousness of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision? and shall not uncircumcision, which is by nature, if it fulfil the law, judge thee, who by the letter and circumcision dost

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