36 IMPUTED SANCTIFICATION. Whena man, with more ingenuity than sober judgment, wishes to introduce a novel error ; in order to work success- fully, and prevent the suspicion of his design, he commonly seizes on some acknowledged truth for his basis. On this truth he raises his own fanciful super- structure, but with little departure, at first, from the avowed design ; so that his gradual deviation from it makes the error continue still to look so much like truth, that ordinary observers will not easily detect where the old truth ends, or where the new fabrication begins, and totally changes the character of the ori- ginal edifice. The great and glorious doctrine of the New Testament was to exalt the Saviour and to humble the sinner ; the new doe- trine is to exalt the sinner also, and in that proportion to establish and secure him in sin. For if the Saviour's righte- ousness, by transfer, becomes so far the believer's righteousness, as to become, in the new language, his own personal
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