Marshall - BT765 M37 1788

Direa. VIII. Of Sandi `cation. 139 guilty confciences, and corrupt dead natures, will certainly defeat and fruftrate all your enterprizes and attempts to love God, and ferve him in love, and you will but ftir up finful lufts inftead of ftirring up yourfelves to true obedience; or at belt, you will but attain to fome flavifh and hypocritical performances. Oh! that people would be perfuaded to confider the due place ofholinefs in the myftery of falvation, and to feek it only there where theyhave all the advan- tage of gofpel -grace to find it. Many mifearry in their zealous enterprizes for godlinefs ; and, after they have fpent much labour in vain, God maketh a breach upon them,_even to their everlafting deftruc- tion, as he did upon Uzza, to a temporal deftruaion; 6' becaufe they fought him not after a due order,' d Chron. xiii. to. Secondly, We are to look upon holinefs as a very aecefláry part of that falvation that is received by faith in Chrift. Some are fo drenched in a covenant of works, that theyaccufe us for making good work tteedlefa to falvation, if we will not acknowledge them to be neceffary, either as conditions to procure n intereft in Chrift, or as preparatives to fit us for the receiving him by faith. And others, when they are taught by the Scriptures, that we are faved by faith, through faith, without works, do begin to dif- regard all obedience to the law, as not at all necef- fary to falvatidn, arid do account themfelves obliged to it only in point of gratitude: if it be wholly ne- gle ted, they doubt not but free grace will fave there harmlefs. Yea, fore are given up to ftrong Anti. notnian delu6oia_s, that they account it a part of the liberty from the bondageOf the law purchafed by the blood of Chrilt, to make no confcience ofbreaking the law in their convérfatión. One` caufe of there er- rors, that are fo contrary one to the other, is, that many are prone to imagine nothing elfe to be meatit by falvation, but to be delivered from hell,, and to en. S x

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=