Twelve Difcourfes upon the Law and the Gospel. Preached at St. Dunstan's Church in the West, London. By W. Romaine, M. A. Lecturer of the faid Church. 8vo. 3 s. 9 d. fewed. Withers, &c.

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N the preface to thefe difcourfes, Mr. Romaine tells us, that of the many mistakes about religious matters, none are more deftructive than thofe, which concern the law and the gofpel. The generality of people, he fays, confound them, and put one in the place of the other. Some fuppofe they are to be accepted of God for their works, and that they can be juftified by the law in the fight of God. Others make the keeping of the law the condition of their receiving the bleflings of the gospel, as if these were to be the purchafe and reward of their partial obedience. Some are perfuaded they must do all they can, and keep the law with all their might, and wherein they come fhort of the perfect demands of the law, Chrift will out of his merits atone for their failings. And others again think that Christ has abated the rigour of the law, and that the gospel is nothing more than a new law-difpenfation, in which the Lord has been pleafed to declare that he will accept of fincere obedience inftead of perfect. Thefe and many more fuch like mistakes, we are told, prevail in our times, and they are exceedingly dangerous, tending to the utter ruin both of body and foul.

Now Mr. Romaine, in thefe difcourfes, endeavours to diftinguish, and precifely to fettle the difference between the law and the gospel. The leading principles, upon which he proceeds, are thefe :-the Almighty Creator of all things has an unalienable right to make laws for the government of his creatures; the law of the Lord is unalterable; his infinite wif dom and power ftand engaged to maintain its dignity, that it may be always an holy, just and good law, which he will not break or alter; the moral law, which God revealed to Adam in paradife, required of him perfect uninterrupted obedience, and this law is unalterable, and being unalterable, all the defcendents of Adam are bound to keep it, for they are all under the law, as God's creatures ;-all mankind have finned, and broken the moral law, which has made no provifion for the pardon of the leaft tranfgreffion, but requires perfect unfinning obedience in thought, word, and. deed: this is its juft demand, and in cafe of the leaft failing, it immediately pafies fentence and condemns: it will not accept of forrow

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or tears, of repentance or amendment, as any fatisfaction; but its language is, do this, or thou shalt die ;-it will not accept of fincere obedience, but will have abfolutely perfect obedience ;-there is not one word in it about fincerity, as if a man might be pardoned, who kept the law fincerely, although imperfectly.

From this it follows, that all men being finners, they cannot be faved by the moral law, which can neither altogether, nor in part, justify them, but shuts them up under guilt, and leaves them without remedy and without hope. As foon as man was fallen into this ftate, we are told, that it pleafed God to reveal that rich plan of grace and mercy, which is contained in the gospel, and of which Mr. Romaine, in his preface, gives a fhort sketch.

The gofpel, he fays, is falvation from the law, bringing glad tidings for poor convinced finners, difcovering to them how their fins may be pardoned, and they redeemed from the curfes of the broken law. It reveals to them what Chrift has done and fuffered to fatisfy the law, and how he endured the pains and penalties of it, dying the death, to which the law had fentenced them.-The gofpel offers to fave the convinced finner from guilt and punishment, by giving him freely as perfect a righteoufnefs as the law demands; inviting him to receive the righteoufnefs of Chrift, against which the utmoft rigour of the law can make no objection; because it is the righteousnefs of God, a divine, infinite, and abfolutely perfect righteousness. When this righteoufnets is imputed to the finner, he is pardoned, the law ceafes to accufe, conscience no longer condemns, he has peace with God, and the love of God reigns in his heart. In order to receive this righteoufnefs the gofpel requires no previous qualification. The finner is not regarded as fit and meet to receive Chrift's righteousness by any thing he himself can do. Chrift freely wrought it out, and he freely gives it. The works of the law have no merit to purchase it for it is written, we are juflified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in Chrift fefus. If it be afked, how Chrift's righteoufnefs is received, and the finner made righteous by it at God's bar; the answer is, by faith, and not by works.

With respect to the finner's acceptance and juftification bebore God, the law and the gofpel, Mr. Romaine fays, ought to be diftinguished in the following, as well as in other refpects. According to the law, falvation is by works, according to the gospel it is by grace; the law fays, do this, but

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the gospel fays, believe this, and thou fhalt be faved; the law threatens to punifh the finner for the firft offence, but the goipel offers him pardon for many offences; the law leaves him under guilt and condemnation, the gofpel invites him to receive pardon and falvation; the law fentences him to death, the gospel offers him juftification to life; by the law he is a guilty finner, by the gofpel he may be made a glorious faint; if he die under the guilt of the broken law, hell will be his everlasting portion; if he die a partaker of the grace of the gofpel, heaven will be his eternal inheritance.

But if the law and the gofpel are diftinct in thefe and feveral other respects, fome perfons may think the law is totally repealed by the gofpel: for they cannot fee to what purpofe it ferves, unlefs it be to juftify a finner.-The law is unalterable; it cannot change any more than God can change; it ftands in full force to this day, and is ftill the revelation of God's moft holy mind and will, concerning the obedience which he requires of his creatures. And if they difobey, the law immediately paffes fentence and condemns them to death. While they continue careless and fecure in fin, they confider not the law as the miniftration of death and condemnation; and none of them fee it in this light, until the holy Spirit awaken them. It is by his preaching of the law to their confciences, that they are alarmed with fearful apprehenfions of their guilt, and of their danger. He brings them to fee the exceeding finfulness of finning against the holy, just and good law of God, and convinces them that the broken law can never make them legally righteous. This puts them upon feeking fuch a righteoufnefs as the law requires, and difpofes them to receive gladly the righteoufnefs of the Lord Chrift; for he is now the end of the law for righteoufnels to every one that believeth.

Thus the holy Spirit convinces finners, that the law is not repealed by the gofpel, and when he gives them the righteoufnefs which is of God by faith, and they have juftification to life freely by grace, they delight in the law of God after the inward man, and keep it in their outward life and converfation. It is the rule of their holy walking. They are free from the law as to its condemning, killing power, but they are under the law to Chrift. They know that if the law had not been unalterable, and of indifpenfable obligation, Christ had lived and died in vain. And he did not come to give his people liberty to break the unalterable law; that would be a contradiation in terms. But he came to cftablish the law, be refloring it to its honour and dignity, by his obedience to

its precepts, and by his fuffering its pains and penalties, and then by making it honourable in the confeffion of convinced finners, and in the lives of his redeemed people.

Thefe are fome of the principal points treated of in the dif courfes now before us; as to the merit of which we fhall only fay, that they contain little that can recommend them to the perufal of rational inquirers after truth, neither juft notions of God, nor of the gospel of Chrift, but a great deal of unintelligible jargon, which, how agreeable foever to Mr. Romaine's implicit admirers, will be treated with contempt by every fober and judicious Chriftian.

Such of our Readers as are unacquainted with Mr. Romaine's character as a writer, may form fome judgment of him from the following fhort fpecimen, taken from his fermon on the right knowledge of God. In difcourfing upon these wordsAnd one of the Scribes came, &c. Mark xii. 28, 29, 30, 31, he fays How weak and groundlefs are the boaftings of our modern unbelievers, who pretend to difcover what God is by the mere dint of reafon? What have our Arians and Deifts difcovered of him? Do they know more of God than the philofophers of old did? No. They have indeed greater helps, but by rejecting them their pride is greater, and their ignorance appears more manifeft: for they have left revelation, and have invented to themfelves as empty an idol, as any heathen philofopher ever worfhipped. they reject the Godhead of Chrift, and of the holy Spirit; and have imagined to themfelves a God exifting in one perfon, infinitely extended, filling infinite fpace, with many other fuch-like chimerical attributes. And this idol, this nothing in the world, is become the fashionable divinity of our times; but its worshippers are all traitors. Every act of worship paid to this idol is high treafon; for by fuch acts men withdraw their allegiance from the true God, and it to what has no more divinity than flocks and ftones.The perfonality in Jehovah is defcribed in the text by the word Alehim, which is in the plural number, and acknowledged to be fo by the Jews as well as Chriftians, and if they had not owned it, yet the fenfe of the paffage would lead us to feek for a plural interpretation; because there was no need of a revelation to teach us, that Jehovah our one Alehim is one Jehovah, which is no more than that one is one. But the word Alehim being plural, the Father, Son, and holy Spirit being Alehim, it was neceffary to reveal to us the unity of the effence, and to teach us that these three perfons were one Jehovah, and therefore being of the felf

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• exiftent effence, none is before or after other, none is greater or less than another, but the whole three perfons are co-eternal together and co-equal.-Each of the perfons is called Alchim. The Father is fo called, 1 Chron. xxix. 10. The Son is Alehim, Ifaiah xlv. 21. The holy Spirit is Ale• him, Exodus xxxi. 3. Thefe Scriptures confirm the doctrine of the text, namely, that Jehovah is one, and that in the unity of Jehovah there are three Alchim, which word does not fignify their manner of existence. Jehovah denotes. that, but it is a relative word defcriptive of the gracious offices of the eternal three in the economy of man's redemption. And neither the perfonality expressed by its being plural, nor its meaning are retained by our tranflators in the fingular word God. God is no more the sense of Alehim, than Goodnefs is. And if the tranflators could not find a proper word in our language, they fhould have given a definition of it in the first place they met with it in the Bible, and then have retained the Hebrew name ever afterwards. By their neglect our people are kept in ignorance of this gracious name, under which Jehovah would have himself to be known. It belongs to the covenant of grace, and is defcriptive of the acts and offices of the eternal three in the glorious plan of man's falvation, and it fignifies the binding act of the covenant, the obligation entered into upon oath to fulfill it. This is the fenfe of Aleh, the root from whence Alehim is derived, and there is no other root from whence it can be derived without offering great violence to the established rules of the Hebrew tongue.-The Father undertook to demand full fatisfaction for fin, there'fore he is called a jealous God and a confuming fire. Chrift undertook to pay this fatisfaction, and is therefore called God the Saviour; and the holy Spirit covenanted to apply and to render effectual the merit of Christ's fatisfaction to believers, and therefore his conftant name is Spirit, which word fignifies the air that we breathe, on which our animal life depends, as our fpiritual life does on his infpiration. Now fince the divine Perfons have entered into a covenant, and do fuftain thofe diftinct offices in it, and fince our falvation depends upon the knowledge of thefe truths, was it not an act of infinite love and condefcenfion for the divine Perfons in Jehovah to take the gracious name of Alehim, and to reveal themfelves to us, as perfons bound by the obligation of an oath to carry the covenant of grace intą f execution,'

Principles