CHAPTER XIII. 373 persons or nations, any who fear God and work righteousness, who repent of sin, and hope in a merciful God, we believe they shall be accepted of him, through an unknown Mediator as Cor- nelius was : For this fear of God, repentance andhope is God's own work in their hearts, and he will not condemn the penitent soul i Acts x. 35. Prov. xxviii. 13. Nor will he destroy his own good work in the heart of man, nor shall any penitent and pious creature perish for not knowing and believing those revel- ations of grace, which he never heard of, and which he could never know or believe. CHAP. XIII.The Last Judgment. I. When all the dispensations of grace are finishedthen comes the great day of. judgment. Then all mankind, who have acted their parts on the stage of the world, in the sevé- ral successive ages, shall appear together ; those who are gone down to death, shall arise from the dead at the call or sum- mons of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is appointed Judge of the quick and dead: That is, of those who shall then be found living at his appearance, as well as of those who shall be raised from the grave. II. In that great and solemn day, every man shall bejudged according to that dispensation of grace, under which he lived, whether it were that of Adam or Noah, Abraham, Moses or Christ : And sentence shall be passed upon every man according to his works, that is, according to his compliance or non-com- pliance with the rules of that dispensation. III. Those who have refused to repent of sin, and to trust in divine mercy, so far as it was revealed in the dispensation, under which they lived, they stand already condemned by the original moral law of God, or the law of innocence, which they have broken ; and they shall have that condemnation, as it were doubly sealed upon them, for refusing to accept of offered grace. John iii. 18, 36. lie that believeth not, is condemned already: And the wrath ofGod abideth on him, because he hath not be. lieved on the Son of God. But those who have repented ofsin and trusted in grace, and lived according to the dispensation under which they were placed, they may hope the condemning sentence of the broken law is reversed, and that they shall be publicly acquitted and absolved from their guilt, they shall have all their imperfections publicly forgiven for the sake of what Christ has done and suftbred, they shall be accepted and their good works approved, they shall be acknowledged as the chil- drenof God, and beadjudged to eternal life, Come ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdompreparedforyoufrom thefou ationof the world ; Mat. xxv. 34. "` IV. Here let it he observed, that in the sense of the gos., A a3
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