132 MORAL LAW UNDER THE GOSPEL. for the pure in heart : Mat. v. 8. Sanctification is the beginning of our salvation, and it is eternally necessary to continue it. We can never be happy in the presence of God till we are like him in holiness. Nor can we be fit company for the holy angels, or the spirits of the just made perfect, unlesswe are conformable to their temper. And it should be observed also, that this pre- paration or fitness for heaven, may be sometimes represented as a right to the blessedness of it, because the promises of heaven are sometimes made to those who are thus qualified and pre- pared, and these promises give them a right to it*. Mat. v. 3- 12. Blessed are the pure in heartfor they shall see God, 35e. Rev. xxii. 14. Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of l'áfe, and may enter through thegates into the city. Yet it mayhe remembered what I said before, that these commandments do not signify directly the ten command- ments of the law, but rather the commands of Jesus Christ, or of God in the gospel, which indeed include a sincere obedience to the moral law, and somethingmore, viz. Repentance and faith in Christ. VII. I might add, in the last place, that holiness of life or obedience to the commands of God, is necessary in order to make the process of the last judgment appear equitable and righteous in the eyes of' all mankind ; for Christ the judge shall render to every onè according to their works ; Rev. xxii. 12. Rom. ii. 5, 6. 1 Cor. xv. 58. And indeed this is one chief design of God's appointing such a solemn and public transaction as the last judg- ment, that all the creation'may see the equity or righteousness of the dealings of God withmen, that he awards the eternal recom- pence to saints and sinners, according to their different characters of vice and virtue, sin and holiness. The vessels of wrath are by their own rebellion and impenitencefitted to destruction, and the vessels of mercy are by sanctifying grace and holinessbefore pre- pared unto glory ; Rom. ix. 22, 23. Though our own works are by no means sufficient to atone for sin ; or to procure the favour of God or eternal life, for such guilty creatures as we are, yet there is, as Doctor Owen, I think in his Book of Justifica- tion, calls it, a rewardable condecency in the works of holiness, and there is many a promise of heavenly rewards made to them in the New Testament : Now when, Christ shall adjudge the wicked to hell, and the saints to heaven, the whole creation must approve the equity of his dealings withmen. In'the mean time S, Some divines have here distinguished, as I have elsewhere shewn, between a " Jus ha;reditatis." or a right of heirship through faith in Christ, whereby we become the sons of God, and have a title to heaven, and a " J us aptitudims,' that is, a right of fitness, wherebywe are actually prepared, by sanctification and holiness, for the possession of this heavenly inheritance. He that is a heir by birth or by adoption, has a title to an estate or a crown; but he acquires a right to the actual possession, by being trained up for a fitness for It, at the time ap- pointed, by him who is his natural father or his adopter.
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