arguments are false. How can you commend them to the word of God's grace, when it is neither a rule of life, nor a standard of right and wrong? And the contenders for it, you say, are in love with their own lusts. How can this word of grace be able to build them up, if personal holiness, good works, and sanctification, come by enforcing the legal rule? And, if they are to receive an inheritance by the word of God's grace, how can enforcing the grace of God involve people in such complicated guilt, as you affirm it does? And, if this sanctification is in Christ Jesus, why is the believer driven to seek it in Ezekiel's roll? Faith, purity, and good works, Sir, always go together. He who enforces faith, will soon perceive the fruits; he who possesses faith, will shew it by his works. God purifies our hearts by faith, and faith produces good works; on which account they are called Faith's works, in contradistinction to the Legalist's dead works; which appear to me to be the only works you contend for. Enforcing the law's requirements from the purpose of God, the covenant of promise, the fulness of Christ, the hand of the Spirit, and the experience of the just, shall never be excluding the law, setting aside the law, or making the law void. The good-will of purpose and promise secures the demands of the law to the chosen vessel's mind and heart by an irrevocable decree, which cannot be called excluding it. The righteousness of the law is fulfilled in them who walk after the Spirit, which cannot

be called setting the law aside; and preaching the faith establishes the law, which cannot make it void. This good-will of God in Christ Jesus secures not only salvation and glory, but is the grand cause of all the usefulness and faithfulness, good words and good works, that have ever been wrought or brought forth in the world, either in the saints or by the saints. They shall be willing in the day of my power, Psalm. cx. 3. “I will put my laws within them." "They shall keep my commandments, and do them." "They shall not depart from me." "I will direct their work in truth." "I will do them good with my whole heart and whole soul." "They shall love me, that they may live." "Thou shalt call me, My Father, [and My God,] and shalt not turn away from me." "The righteous shall hold on his way." From the belly will I bear you; to old age and hoary hairs will I carry you, Isaiah. xlvi. 4. This is the doctrine that wounds the devil in his interest, and shakes the sandy foundation of the hypocrite: it brings glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace; which Satan cannot endure. Therefore the Pharisees were stirred up to traduce Christ, as paying no regard to the law in not keeping the Sabbath-day; and Paul, as affirming, “Let us do evil, that good may come." And, in our day, enforcing this irrevocable decree in Christ, and the branches of it, which are productive of every good. fruit, is called licentious principles; and the maintainers of them are styled Heretics, Antinomians,

and lovers of their own lusts; and all this under a mask of holiness and good works; which the devil knows none but Christ can give. Nor can my accusers shew any more power, knowledge, experience, holiness, or good works, by ocular demonstration, than I can, unless it be in word: "All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes, but the Lord weigheth the spirits." The time will come when the heretic and the sound divine will be weighed in an even balance; and, whatever advantage a disciple of Moses may have in the balance of human judgment, sure I am that the believer shall never be found wanting in this. Therefore" talk no more so exceeding proudly; for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed."

We live in a time when things are upside down. In the Apostles' days, the work of an Evangelist was much insisted on, and a Christian sound in the faith was highly esteemed; but, since men have set up the trade of heaping to themselves teachers, matters are much altered. A man may be sound in the faith; sound in spirit, practice, and principle; be born again of the Holy Ghost; live in the fear of God, and in union with Christ; be circumspect in his life, and useful in his day; be owned and honoured of God as a preacher, and have a thousand seals to his commission; and yet be nothing but an Antinomian: he may walk in faith and love, as Christ hath loved him; which is walking in the command

ments of God blameless; and yet set aside the law, and make it void, by a life of faith. The question is not, now, Whether a man be found in the faith? nor, Whether he handles the law lawfully? But, Whether he can say, and will maintain, that the law of Moses is the only rule of life for Christ's disciples? A man who can frequent a playhouse, play at trapball, be a gamester, a musician, or a mere impostor, may keep the pulpit, receive the right-hand of fellowship, and be deemed orthodox, if he can but enforce and maintain this point; and throw out the word Antinomian against those enthusiasts who contend for the Spirit's work; though, at the same time, he himself knows no more of the law than he does of the Gospel. Nor has any one that has written against me ever set the law forth in its proper light, handled it lawfully, or done justice to it; and, I may add, they never will, unless God establish their hearts with grace, and guide them by his Spirit.

Almost every week produces something new on this subject. It hath been lately advanced in public, that the evangelized law is the believer's only rule of life. A multitude of opinions, though widely different, by the slight and cunning of their authors, have produced a strange phenomenon, like Israel's jewels consolidated into Aaron's calf: An evangelized law is brought forth; that is, they have evangelized the ministration of death; and, by the sovereign influence of human wisdom, the nature of it is quite altered: it is now

attended with a gospel power, to influence, quicken, enlarge, and evangelize, the human mind. So that this, as the better covenant, has the pre-eminence over the law of faith; and the works of this law shall reign, through this human transubstantiation of substances, or transmigration of powers, to life eternal! This is another branch of vain jangling.

While one thus legalizes the gospel to evangelize the law, others are nibbling at Providence, allowing faith to lay no warrantable hold there. Some have preached, and others published, that the believer has no right to ask, or pray, for temporal things. These things are promised; but they must not be prayed for; nor must God be inquired of to fulfil his promise, or to do these things for us. For a poor saint to say, Give us, this day, our daily bread, is declarative of an earthly mind. To cleave to God, as one's only overseer and provider; and say, "If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then shall the Lord be my God," this is not acting like the saint. If God sent a famine, we must make no inquiry, like David; nor once ask the Gibeonites, either to pray, or bless the people of the Lord, that the famine may be removed; nor ask God to deliver us from strange children; and that our sons may be as plants grown up, and our daughters as the corner-stones of a palace: "That our garners may