PRESUMPTIONS OF FOfiGIVENESS. 857 of the Gospel comes. It is not a real reception of the .Gospel, but is an opinion growing out of the report of it. Hence I shall briefly show the DIFFERENCES between this common prevailing apprehension of forgiveness and faith's discovery of it to the soul in its power. 1. The prevailing apprehension is loose and vague--a truth received speculatively, and not in its power. It wants fixedness and foundation; which defects accom- pany all notions of the mind that are only retained in the memory, not implanted in the judgment. They hear that God is merciful, and as such they intend to deal with him.. For the true foundation on which the pure and holy God, who will do no iniquity the righteous God, whose judgment it is, that they who commit sin are worthy of death should yet pardon iniquity, they weigh not, they consider not. They take it for granted that so it is; and never seriously inquire how it comes to be so; and that because they have no real concern about it. How many thousands may we meet, who take it for granted that forgiveness is to be had with God, and yet never had any serious exercise in their souls about the grounds cf it, and its consistency with his holiness and justice ! But those who know it by faith, have a sense of it fixed particularly and distinctly on their minds. They have ascertained the grounds of it in Christ; so that, on a good and unquestionable founda- tion, they can go to God and say, " There is forgive- ness with thee." They see how more glory comes to God by forgiveness than by punishing sin ; which is a matter that the other sort of men are not at all solicitous about. If they may escape punishment, whether God have any glory or not, for the most part they are indif- ferent. 2. Those who indulge this false apprehension, have not been brought by the power of their convictions and distress of conscience lo make the earnest inquiry whether
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