schooling, weapons, and hornbook, all together. Timothy's Christian goes forth into the field of battle, which requires some scientific knowledge, and then returns to learn his alphabet.

Quot. Those who have frequently experienced help in difficulty, may, like Samuel, set up these stones of Ebenezer.

Answ. That wants a note. Ebenezer signifies the stone of help. To set up stones, of stones of help, is such nonsense as ill becomes a commentator on the Bible.

Quot. Carnal and unregenerate men will no more plead nor live upon the word of God, than the dead in their tombs.

Answ. Carnal, and unregenerate, are synonimous terms; pleading, and banquetting, are badly matched.

Quot. The Christian finds, by experience, that those are very unsuitable companions for him, whose hardness and ignorance may be known by their spirit, and even felt in their words.

Answ. Timothy knows the fruit by the tree, and not the tree by it's fruit. The hardness and ignorance of a man may be known by his spirit, instead of his spirit being known by his hardness and ignorance; and may be felt in his words: it should have been by his words: I think the above hardy, ignorant person, has ere now dealt some reproof to our author, which has been attended with some sharpness; for it sticks in his stomach to this day.

Quot. Those only are wise who are jealous over their own hearts.

Answ. They are wiser by far, who know the pardon of their own sins. The former are wise to suspicion, the latter are wise to salvation.

Quot. That knowledge which the believer has of the impossibility of his standing in his own strength, is not mere theory, but a real sense of his weakness, and that frequently dearly bought, by ignorantly attempting to go in his own strength.

Answ. And he must have a sense of God's power as well as of his own weakness, or else Satan will hold him captive. I wish our friend Timothy's sense of feeling were but as keen as my eyesight; for I am sure that I can see his weakness, but I doubt he never felt it; if he did, I think he would never attempt to preach or write again. However, as yet he has come forth in his own strength, to all intents and purposes; for there is not the least weight of God's power, either in truth or argument, nor any description of it, as ever felt or experienced by Timothy. His doctrine runs one way, and he another: he is enforcing divine power, by arguments that are preg nant with nothing but human weakness; and, while he is debasing human frailty in his Christians, he exhibits nothing but human frailty in himself.

Quot. This is not to be wondered at, if we consider, that such men are wholly ignorant of the

spirituality of God's law, by which the believer judges of himself.

Answ. The chief work of a believer lies in working out his own salvation, in proving himself whether he be in the faith, and in making his calling and election sure; and, if he goes to the law to judge of himself in these matters, he is likely to come away with his matters undecided; for election and calling, faith and salvation, are not of the law, nor is the law a proper touchstone to try the Christian's faith in Christ by. The phrase, Judge of himself,' wants a note.

Quot. The longer the Christian is spared, the more he feels the necessity he stands in of that perfect robe which covers all his defects, and that righteousness in which he sees he magnifies the law, and makes it honourable.

Answ. This robe, and this righteousness, like Pharaoh's dream, is one and the same thing, therefore the copulative, and, should be left out; but the believer, by putting this robe on, or by wearing it, does not magnify the law, nor make it honourable. This was done already to his hand. This work was completed by the Saviour, and the glory of it he will never give to another. Besides, putting Christ's righteousness on, and walking in it, is not a work of the law, but a work of faith; and therefore must be tried, not by the rule of works, but by the rule of faith. If an eminent master tailor was to make a handsome coat, with the best of workmanship, and give it to our friend

Timothy; his putting it on, and wearing it, can never be called making it: it would be falsehood in him, and ingratitude to his benefactor, to assert any such thing; and so it is here. Christ alone magnified the law, and made it honourable, by which a righteousness was wrought out that God accepted, and to us God imputes it; the Spirit shews it to us; and faith puts it on; by which the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in us: but it never was, nor can be, magnified by us.

Quot. It is highly agreeable to God, for Christians to speak freely of those things to their fellow-travellers. David, the man after God's own heart, could say, "Come, ye that fear the Lord, and I will tell you what he hath done for my soul."

Answ. I wish our friend Timothy would set the example, and tell us what the Lord hath done for him but there is not one hint dropped of this throughout both his volumes; and no wonder, for where nothing is done or said, nothing can be told without telling lies.

Quot. When those who are advanced in life, and grown in grace, freely mention their difficulties, and especially those which they have met with from their own hearts, it has been of the greatest encouragement to others.

Answ. Our friend is more fond of hearing mourning and weeping, than he is of piping and dancing. John's ministry suits him better than that of the Saviour: but the lively Christian will

not imitate him; for he had rather speak of the goodness of God to his soul, than tell of the difficulties he has met with from his own heart; he had rather have the physician uppermost in his thoughts, than his stinking wounds.

Quot. But this is far from being the case, when a man boasts of his experience, to gain applause, and to make the ignorant wonder, and even to make the timorous look upon themselves as nothing, when compared with such highlyfavoured beings as they imagine themselves to be.

Answ. Our friend can never touch upon experience, without being, like Daniel's he-goat, moved with choler: and no wonder, for a graceless preacher can never love nor like a gracious professor; for these are the only people that can see through them, discover them, and expose them to others. But this experience, Tim. says, is all imagined. However, a man's own experience is his testimony. Paul's experience of receiving Christ at his conversion, was his qualification for the ministry, the basis of his doctrine, and his witness for Jesus in every court of judicature; and he that is destitute of it, is without Christ in the world, and has no other witness than what is given by fools.

Quot. How often do we see such blazing stars fall from a station, which appeared by far the most lofty in the religious horizon, down into the dreadful quagmire of sin; and, in that state, both live and die.