IN THE SANCTIFICATION OF BELIEVERS. confess, requires of us the obedience which is due to. wards God by the law of our creation, and according to the covenant of works materially and formally. But what is this unto evangelical holiness and obedience?. Why, it is alleged, that religion, before the entrance ofsin, and under the gospel, is one and the same; and therefore there is no difference between the duties of obedience required in the one and the other. And, it is true, that they are so far the same, as that they have the same author, the same object, and so also had the religion under the law, which was therefore so far the same with them. But that they are the same as to all the acts of out obedience, and the manner oftheir per- formance, is a vain imagination. Is there no alteration made in religion by the interposition of the person of Christ to be incarnate, and his mediation? No augmen- tation of the object of faith? No change in the abolish- ing of the old covenant, and the establishment of the new, the covenant between God and man being that which gives the especial form and kind unto religion, the measure and denomination of it? No alteration in the principles, aids, and assistances, and whole na- ture of ourobedience unto God? The whole mystery of godliness most be renounced, if we intend to give way unto such imaginations. Be it so, then, that this moral virtue, and the practice of it, do contain and express all that obedience materially considered, which was requir- ed by the law of nature in the covenant of works; yet, I deny it to be our holiness or evangelical obedience; and that, as for many other reasons, so, principally, be- cause,it bath not that respect unto Jesus Christwhich our sanctification bath. Sect. 82. (5.) If it be said, that, by this moral vir- tue, they intend no exclusion of Jesus Christ, but include a respect unto him, I desireonly toask, whether they de- sign by it such an habit of mind, and such acts thence proceeding, as have the properties before described, as to their causes, rise, effects, use, and relation unto Christ and the covenant, as are expressly and plainly in the 4I 311 scripture assigned unto evangelical holiness? Isthis moral virtue, that which God bath predestinated or chosenus untobefore the foundation of the world? Is it that which he worketh in us in the pursuit of electing love? Is it that which gives us a new heart, with the lawof Godwritten in it? Or, is it a principle of spiritual life, disposing, inclining, enabling us to live to God according to the gospel, produced in us by the effectual operation of the Holy Ghost, not educed outof the natural powers of our own souls by the mere applications of external means? Is it that which is purchased and procured for us by Je- sus Christ, and the increase whereof in us he continuetb to intercede for? Is it the image of God in us, and doth our conformity unto the Lord Christ consist therein? If it be so, if moral virtue answer all these properties and adjuncts of holiness, then the whole contest in this mat- ter is, whether the Holy Spirit or these men be wisest, and know best how to express the things of God ration- ally and significantly. But if the moral virtue they speak of, be unconcerned in these things, if none of them belong unto it, if it may and doth consist without it, it will appear, at length, to be no more as to our ac- ceptance before God, than what one of the greatest mo- ralists in the world complained that he found it when he was dying, a mere empty name. But this fulsome Pe- lagian figment, of an holiness or evangelical righteous- ness, whose principle should be natural reason, and whose rule is the law of nature, as explained in the scrip- ture, whose use and end is acceptation with God, and justification beforehim, whereof those, who plead for it, the most of them, seem to understand no more but outward acts of honesty, nor do practise so much, being absolutely opposite unto and destructive of the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, being the mere doctrine of the Quakers, by whom it is better and more intelligibly ex- pressed, than by some new patrons of it amongst us; will not, in the examination of it, create any great teen; ble, unto such as look upon the scripture to be a reve- lation of the mind of God in these things. 80
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