258 A RATIONAL DEFENCE- OF .THE GOSPEL. ,ÇSERM. XP. veries of it made to mankind, ever since Adam first sinned, and God, visited biin,with the first pròmise of grace before he turnedhim out of paradise. But the last and most complete revelation of this gospel was made by the personal ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ, and more especially by bis apostles, when his own death, resurrection, and exaltation had laid the complete foundation for it. From the books of the New Testament therefore we mayderive this larger description of the gospel of Christ. It is a wise, a holy, and gracious constitution of God for the recoveryof sinful man, by sending his own Son Jesus Christ into the flesh, to obey his laws which man bad broken, to make a proper: atonernent for sin by his death, and thus to procure the favour of God, and eter- nal happiness for all that believe.and repent,, and receive the offered salvation ; together with ,a promise of the Holy Spirit to work this faith and repentance in their hearts, to, renew their sinful natures . unto holiness, to form them on earth fit for this happiness, , and to bring them to the full possession of it in heaven. It might bd proved that this is the sense and substance of the gospel of Christ from many of the prophecies of the Old Testament,, and the ceremonies' and figures of the Jewish church, as well as from a variety ofcitations from the writings of the evangelists and apostles : Yet there have arisen some persons, I mean;the Socinians and their disciples, in the last age and in this also, who call themselves christians, but they so curtail and diminish the gospel of Christ, as to make it signify very little more than the dictates and hopes of the light of nature, .`f ,That if we repent of our sins past, and obey the commands of God as well as we can for the future, Christ as a great prophet, has made a full declaration that there is pardon for such sinners, and they shall be accepted unto eternal life :" and all this without any de- pençlance on his death as a proper sacrifice, and with little regard to the operations of his Holy Spirit Now I need use no other, argument to refute this mis- taken notion of the gospel, than what may be derived from, the words of myxext, viz. that ,St. Paul expresses it with a sort of emphasis, and as a matter of import» anee, that he was not ásharaed of the gospel of Chi ist,-
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=