232 FORGIVENESS OF SIN. don than such persons : all their righteousness is from the law, and their sin in a great measure from the Gospel. VIII. They that truly believe forgiveness, believe it for the ends andpurposes for which it is revealed of God. If God reveals any thing for one end and purpose, and men use it quite to another, they do not receive the word of God, nor believe the thing revealed; but delude their own souls. Let us then weigh to what ends and purposes this for- giveness was first revealed by God; for which also its manifestation is still continued in the Gospel. We have showed who it was to whom this revelation was first made, and what condition he was in when it was somade to him. A lost, wretched creature, without hope or help ; how he should come to obtain acceptance with God he knew not. God reveals forgiveness to him by Christ to be his all. The intention of God in it was, that a sin- ner's all should be of grace. Rom. 11 : 6. If any thing be added to it for the same end and purpose, then grace is no more grace. Again, God intended it as a new foundation of obedience, of love and thankfulness. That men should love because forgiven, and be holy because pardoned, as I have showed before, that it might be the righteousness of a sinner, and a spring of new obedi- ence in him, all to the praise of grace, were God's ends in its revelation. Our inquiry then is, whether men receive this reve- lation and use it for- these purposes, and these only. I might evince the contrary, by passing through the gene- ral abuses of the doctrine of grace, which are mentioned in Scripture, and common in the world ; but it will not be needful. Instead of believing, most men seem to put a studied despite on the Gospel. They either proclaim it to be an unholy way, by turning its grace into lasci- viousness, or a weak and insufficient way, by striving
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=