SECTION III. 119 Saviour. But when he heard the vain enquirer justify himselfas a righteous man, and say, All these commands have I kept front my youth ; Mat. ix. 16. then our Saviour put him to a fresh and more painful trial of his sincerity and obedience to God, and that partly for his conviction, instead of saying, repent and believe ; he did not proceed so far as to preach repentance to him, be- cause he saw him so much unconvinced of sin ; and he tells us that he came not to call these righteous men but sinners to repen- tance ; Mat. ix. 13. that is, those who own themselves to be sinners. This leads me to the fifth or last reason, to prove that this answer was not designed by Christ as a direction to the querist how to obtain salvation, viz. It is a quite different answer to the like questions that is given by Christ, and by the apostles, when they designed to preach the gospel in plain, direct andexpress language. Mark i. 15. Christ saith, Repent and believe the gospel. John vi. 40. " This is the will of hirn that sent me, that every one that seeth the Son and believeth on him, may have everlast- ing life." And again, This is the work of God, that is, the great work which God now requires, that ye believe on hint, whom he sent ; John vi. 28, 29. So preaches St. Peter, Acts ii. 38. Re- pent andbe baptised in the name of Jesus Christ: So Paul, Acts xvi. 31. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt besaved: And so John speaks; This is his commandment, that ye believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ ; 1 John iii. 23. These are the plain and direct advices of Christ and his apostles to sinful men, in order to obtain the favour of God and eternal life. To sup- pose therefore that Christ did in this place, and in these words, direct the enquirer into'the properway of salvation by the gospel, is to suppose that Christ differed greatly from himself, in the directions he gave, how men might be saved ; and that he and his apostles, and particularly St. Paul, taught very different doc- trines ; that Christ taught the way to salvation by the works of the law, and the gospel taught it by faith and repentance, with- out the works of the law. But this would set Christ and his apos- tlesso much at variance with themselves, that it is not to be ad- mitted. SECT. III.AnAnswer to some Objections. I come now to answer some objections against my sense of this text, and the chief of them are taken from Doctor Whitby, a most ingenious writer on that side. Objection I. Doth not Christ say, that " to love the Lord our God is the way to life ;" Luke x. 27, 28. Is not this the same thing ineffect, as when he directs the young man to eternal life, by keeping the commandments, and that in the same lan- guage? For when the lawyer enquires, " 14 hat shall I do to inherit eternal life ? ", Jesus gives him this advice, Love
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