SECTION L. M1 is not so ? Mas, replied Paulinos with a little warmth, what can be said toa man who will not believe his own eyes and ears ? "A man who hears and reads so many glorious expressions scattered throughout the gospels and epistles, which dictate to him the special and peculiar lessons of christianity, and yet will not re- ceive them ? Does not the New Testament speak in most ex- press language, and that very frequently of the propitiation of Christ for our sins? Must this blessed doctrine of grace be entirely left out of the last and most perfect edition of a gospel made for sinners, though it was put into all the foregoing edi- tions of it in emblem, and was foretold and prefigured by all former dispensations ? Is it not held forth to a guilty world by the sacrifices which attended every dispensation of grace till Christ came ? And is not the .Lord's-supper an appointed me- morial ofit under the dispensation of Christ ? And must Agrippa make 'a new religion for us, by banishing this important article, which has been exhibited and continued in every religion that God has made ? Where is the doctrine of justification by in the name of Christ, orforgiveness throughfaith in his blood, to be found in Agrippa's creed ? Must this be all construed into justification by those good works which the law of nature required'us to per- form, and which the Son of God came from heaven only to set in a fairer light, and which St. Paul often assures us, can never justify us before God ? Must the regeneration, renovation and sanctification of our souls, by the Holy Spirit, signify nothing else than the change of our inclinations from vice to virtue, by our own mere consideration of those truths in which Christ in- structs us as a great Restorer of natural religion, and which were confirmed by the miraculous powers of the Holy Spirit ? Is this all the meaning of those plain expressions, justified by the blood of Christ and sanctified by the Spirit ? Do we be- lieve the New Testament is from God ? Why then do we not believe the articles which this divine book teaches us in such plain and express words ? Why do we strain and torture the sacred language to eiake it speak thingsso different from its own sense ? Is it worth while for our ministers to beat all this pains in the pulpit and the study, by the printing-press and byprivate conversation, to defend the New Testament from the insults, the cavils and clamours of infidels, if it teaches us so little beyond what the light of nature teaches ? Or have we so much to ex- pect, or so much to fear from the deists, that some of us, who arecalled christians, should be at so much labour to pervert the glorious truths of the New Testament to their taste, and to drop those which they do not like ? Havewe any good and sufficient reason to subdue the words of Christ and his apostles down to the meaning and sense of infidels, or to he so solicitous to
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