SECTION III. 05 and of fitness to be joined in that text ; Heb: vi. 12. Who through,faith and patience inherit the promises. Through faith they are,made heirs at first, and through continuance in faith andpatience they are become actual inheritors. Nor is that text Rom. x. 10. much unlike, " With the heart man believed' unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto sal- vation." Here justification is attributed to faith, and salvation to the outward profession of christianity, including all the proper effects and evidences of faith in a holy life. And though salva- tion in many places of scripture is put for justification, because justification is salvation begun; yet when they are more accurate- ly distinguished, the one is attributed to faith, the other to works, or to faith and works together. Now, whatever other sorts ofjustification may be mentioned in scripture, yetthis justification of a sinner through faith, requires such a righteousness as must secure us from all the charges and penalties of all the guilt ofevery sin bothoriginal and actual, from all the charges of God's most holy and broken law, from all the charges of the jmperfection of our faith, repentance, and our best works, and must set a sinner right and make him righteous, and and give him a right to life in the court of that God, whojusti- fied Abraham and David without works, by imputing righte- ousness to them, andcontinues under the gospel the same way to justify the ungodly; Rom. iv. 5, O. that is, all that we do in a way of duty or godliness, is not respected in this court, but we are looked úpon as ungodly, and without all righteousness in ourselves, and as such have a righteousness, or a right to life 'bestowed on us; or are justified of mere grace. And though here and there, for wise purposes, an ex- pression may be dropped occasionally in scripture, that may favour another way of speaking, yet in the descriptions of the gospel, the way of a sinner's justifcatión in the sight of God at his conversion, is never put upon fulfilling of the gospel- duties, as the matter of his justifying righteousness ; and there- fore the gospel is not a proper law : And whatsoever forms of speech some persons may fancy agreeable tothe nature and reason of things, yet this which I have described is the most common way wherein the penmen of scripture represent those things, when they seem to aim at an accurate and distinct description of the law and gospel : Now scripture is our surest rule of speaking in matters of pure revelation. To sum up all in short : The Word law is taken in va- rious senses in the bible : In some placés it means inward principles of action, as the law of kindness, the law of sin: sometimes it signifies only directions and rules of life, as Prov. xüi. 14. The law of the wise, that is, rule of wisdom. In other places it includes all the orders and injunctions that re-
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