PROGRESSIVE SANCTIFICATION. 367 it leaves us nothing to implore, but merely temporal advantages ; nothing to ask, but things only which will end when this life ends. It would abolish the neces- sity of every petition in the Lord's prayer, except that for our daily bread. Why will not those who profess to make the Bible the only rule of their faith and practice, learn from that Bible, that diffidence and reverential awe, that frank avowal of their own ignorance, that humble withholding from intruding into unrevealed things, and that devout gra- titude for the glorious things which are revealed, which best become blind, lg.: norant, and dependent creatures ? If this newly invented doctrine were true, what would become of the useless interval of life ? Useless, as to all possi- bility of improvement, which is the great end of life. What of the interval between the decisive moment of complete sancti- fication and our closing scene ? The unanswerable argument in favour of progressive holiness, is the progress 114
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