as having no place in our justification. But if there be now a greater tendency to boast of moral observations, now is the righteousness of the moral law most pointedly the object of his attack, as out of propriety and of place in the matter of our justification. In a word, this verse has the same power and force of conclusion still, that it had then. It then reduced the boastful Jew to the same ground of nothingness before God, with the Gentile whom he despised. And it now reduces the eloquent expounder of human virtue to the same ground, with that drivelling slave of rites and punctualities whom he so tastefully, and from the throne of his mental superiority, so thoroughly despises-shutting in fact every mouth, and making the righteousness of all before God, not a claim to be challenged, but a gift to be humbly and thankfully accepted of from His hands.

This is far from the only passage, however, which excludes the moral as well as the ceremonial law from any standing in the province of our justification. In many places it is said, that our justification is not of works in the general, and without any addition of the term law at all, to raise the question whether it be the moral or ceremonial law that is intended. And in the preceding part of the epistle, they are moral violations which are chiefly instanced, for the purpose of making it out, that by the deeds of the law no flesh shall be justified. In the theft and adultery and sacrilege of the second chapter, and in the impiety and deceit and

slander and cruelty of the third, we see that it was the moral law, and the offence of a guilty world against it, which the apostle chiefly had in his eye; and when, as the end of all this demonstration, he comes to the conclusion of the world's guilt-why should we restrict the apostle, as if he only meant to exclude the ceremonial from the office of justifying? When he says that by the law is the knowledge of sin, is it the ceremonial law only that is intended-when in fact they were moral sins that he had all along been specifying? Or is it the sole purpose of the apostle, to humble those who made their boast of the ceremonial law-when he instances how the law administered to himself the conviction of his sinfulness, by fastening upon the tenth commandment, and telling us that he had not been criminal, except the law had said, thou shalt not covet? What do you make of the passage where it is said, that we are saved-not by works of righteousness, which we have done? Does not this include all doings, be they of a moral or be they of a ceremonial character? And in the verses which immediately precede this quotation from Titus, whether think you was the moral or the ceremonial law most in the apostle's head -when, in alleging the worthlessness of all the previous doings of his own converts, he charged them with serving divers lusts and pleasures, and with living in malice and envy-hateful and hating one another? This distinction between the moral and ceremonial, is, in fact, a mere device, for

warding off a doctrine, by which alienated nature feels herself to be pained and humbled and revolted, in all ages of the world. It is an opiate, by which she would fain regale the lingering sense that she so fondly retains of her own sufficiency. It is laying hold of a twig, by which she may bear herself up, in her own favourite attitude of independence upon God; and gladly would she secure the reservation of some merit to herself, and of some contributions out of her own treasury, to the achievement of her own justification. But this is a propensity, to which the apostle grants no quarter, and no indulgence whatever. Wherever it appears, he is sure to appear in unsparing hostility against it; and never will your mind and the mind of the inspired teacher be at one, till, reduced to a sense of your own nothingness, and leaning your whole weight on the sufficiency of another-you receive justification as wholly of grace, and feel on this ground that every plea of boasting is overthrown.

We may here notice another shift, by which nature tries to ease herself of a conclusion so mortifying. She will at times allow justification to be of faith wholly; but then she will make a virtue of her faith. All the glorying that she would have associated with her obedience to the law, she would now transfer to her acquiescence in the gospel. The docility, and the attention, and the love of truth, and the preference of light to that darkness which they only choose whose deeds are evil-these confer, in her fond estimation, a merit

upon believing; and here therefore would she make a last and a desperate stand, for the credit of a share in her own salvation.

If the verse under consideration be true, there must be an error in this imagination also. It leaves the sinner nothing to boast of at all; and should he continue to associate any glorying with his faith, then is he turning this faith to a purpose directly the reverse of that which the apostle intends by it.

There is no glory, you will allow, to yourself, in seeing with your eyes open that sun which stands visibly before you-whatever glory may accrue to Him, who arrayed this luminary in his brightness, and endowed you with that wondrous mechanism, which conveys the perception of it. There is no part of the glory of a gift, ascribed to the mendicant, who simply looks to it-whatever praise of generosity may be rendered to Him who is the giver; or still more to Him who hath conferred upon the hand its moving power, and upon the eye its seeing faculty. And even though the beggar should be told to wait another day, and then to walk to some place of assignation, and there to obtain the princely donation that was at length to elevate his family to a state of independence-in awarding the renown that was due upon such a transaction, would it not be the munificence of the dispenser that was held, to be all in all; and who would ever think of lavishing one fraction of acknowledgment, either upon the patience, or

upon the exertion, or upon the faith of him who was the subject of all this liberality? And be assured that in every way, there is just as little to boast of on the part of him, who sees the truth of the gospel, or who labours to come within sight of it, or who relies on its promises after he perceives them to be true. His faith, which has been aptly termed the hand of the mind, may ap prehend the offered gift and may appropriate it; but there is just as little of moral praise to be rendered on that account, as to the beggar for laying hold of the offered alms. It is with the man whom the gospel has relieved of his debt, as it is with the man whom the gold of a generous benefactor has relieved of his. There is nothing in the shape of glory that is due at all to the receiver; and nothing could ever have conjured up such an imagination, but the delusive feeling that cleaves to nature of her own sufficiency. There is not one particle of honour due to the sinner in this affair; and all the blessing and honour and glory of it must be rendered Him, who, in the face of His manifold provocations, and when He might have illustrated both the power of His anger and the triumphs of His justice, gave way to the movements of a compassion that is infinite; and had with wisdom unsearchable, to find out a channel of conveyance-by which, in consistency with the glory of such attributes and with the principle of such a government as are unchangeable, He might call His strayed children back again to the arms