Watts - Houston-Packer Collection BX5207.W3 S4x 1805 v.3

DISC. Tv.] LAW AND THE GOSPEL. 179 them guilty and condemned, or pardoned, justified, and accepted of God, unto eternal life. This is a veryplain and easy doctrine to beapprehended by such weakcrea- tures as we are. Observ. V, Man who is condemned by the law, may be saved by the promise i. e. by the promise of grace and reconciliation to God, which was given first to Adam, then to Abraham, and made further known to the people of God by Moses, and David, and the prophets, according to the different revelations of God to man; but completed by the gospel of Christ, and the ministry of his apostles. A promise to Adam, of the destruction of the "works of the devil, by the. seed of the woman ;" as it is ex- plained ; 1 John iii. 8. A promise that God would be " our God," and give us " an inheritance," made to Abraham, &c. Gen. xvii. .7, b. A promise. confirmed bymany types of the Jewish law. A promise ofall the blessings of the new covenant, ex- pressed, Ileb. viii. 10; 1I. cited' from the several pro - phets Jeremiah and Zechariah. This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; Iwill put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts : And Iwill be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people. ForI will be znercif ztl to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more. It is the same promise, more particularly and fully set before us, by Jesus Christ the Son of God, in his gospel, and by his blessed apostles in their writings, which, in plain and express language, includes in it, not only pardon of sin and reconciliation to God, but the sanctification of our natures, and our preservation to eternal life, in a state of happiness, which shall never end. Observ. VI. The way ofobtaining an interest in these promised blessings, is through faith. It is to all that trust in the grace of the gospel, so far as it was mani- fested in the several ages of the wòrld, i. e. to Adam, Abraham, and llavid; and as it is more fully manifested in and by Jesus Christ. It is obtained by a renouncingall claim by one's own works and trusting in grace entirely. If Adam was saved, it is in a way of grace and for- }

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