mistakes of our reason; and keep all the graces and all the relations of that New Creature, in their true position with reference to him, to each other, to the Godhead, and to each Person of the adorable Trinity.

3. To illustrate this, in a few words. We have found this child of God a fallen, depraved, and ruined enemy of his Creator. We have seen his Creator, in infinite grace, become his Saviour, and proclaim his eternal purpose to save him-and reveal the plan by which he would accomplish this. We have traced the development of this plan, till it fell with equal power and mercy upon this sinner. We have seen him awakened, penitent, believing-united to Christ: and, examining more closely, we have seen him effectually called by God, regenerated by the Holy Ghost-justified by the Father-and now adopted as a son and heir of God: and what further of grace and glory is in store for him, remains for us to trace. But it is all the while the same soul: all the while the things we have been considering are either the vital manifestations of this soul, first in its state of sin, and then in its state of grace; or else the counsel, purpose, acts, and works, of God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, concerning, towards, upon, or in, this same soul in its two estates of sin and grace. Point by point, every thing may be made clear: but even this is a method exacted by our weakness -as I have pointed out--with its best remedy, namely, a true spiritual insight. And, moreover, every separate point may be made clear, merely as a separate point, and not as an essential element of the great whole; which latter office of each truth is indispensable to all adequate and secure possession of the momentous subject; and I have pointed out that the security against this second danger from our weakness, lies in the habit of considering divine things in the concrete and in the whole, as they affect us. Let us be humble under the manifold proof of the damage which sin has wrought to our understanding, even while we take comfort in the proof afforded by the very discovery of our weakness, that divine grace has, in some degree, restored us, even in knowledge, to the lost image of God.

CHAPTER XI.

SANCTIFICATION: RELATION TO THE PLAN OF SALVATION; NATURE: MEANS: RELATION TO THE GODHEAD.

I. 1. The mutual Love of God and his Children.-2. Relation of Righteousness to Life Sanctification: Consummation of Love.-3. The Life of God in the Soul nourished and advanced to Perfection.-4. Sanctification compared with Adoption: with Regeneration: with Effectual Calling: with Justification.-5. Sanctification itself described.-II. 1. Sanctification a Benefit of the Covenant of Redemption: Effects and Objects of it.—2. A great Work of Divine Grace, pervading the whole Man.—3. Unequal in different Persons: Gradual: Imperfect in this Life: Finally Complete and Sure.-4. Relation of Sanctification to Repentance, Faith, and Love.-5. Efforts of the Renewed Soul after Deliverance from Pollution, and Perfection in Holiness.-III. 1. Means of Grace in our Sanctification.— 2. The Word is the great Means: Divine Truth the Effectual Instrument.-3. All the Ordinances of God: the Sacraments-the Sabbath-Day-Religious WorshipPreaching the Word-Prayer-Praise-Alms-Fasting-Vows-Discipline.-IV. 1. God the Author of Sanctification: Its Peculiar Relation to the Godhead.2. The Power exerted therein exceeds and is opposite to all Power, except that of God.-3. Its Exercise ascribed to Jehovah, to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost: Explication of this.-4. This Work of the Godhead, and the Persons thereof, in Sanctification, accords with the Administration of each, in the Economy of the Covenant of Redemption.-5. We are Sanctified through the Virtue of the Death and Resurrection of Christ.-6. Definition of Sanctification.

1.-1. WHEN the Scriptures would distinctly express, or systematically explain, the sum and result of the inward dealings of God with the souls of the redeemed; the emphatic characteristic which is usually marked in them is, that they love God. It is for them who Love God, that all things work together for good; for it is they only who, having been called according to his purpose, thus love him. The divine method as explicated by God himself, begins by pointing out the fact of their love for him—and closes by declaring his unalterable and eternal love for them. Between these two points the whole scheme of salvation is expounded in one of the most remarkable passages contained in the word of God.' There is the loving child of God: and there is God's infinite care 1 Rom., viii. 28-39.

over him. Would we understand this? Then understand and accept the eternal purpose of God-his eternal foreknowledge of his children, his eternal predestination of their conformity to the image of his Son. Understand, moreover, and accept, their divine calling in Christ, and their divine justification by the Father, during their mortal pilgrimage; and their assured glorification, begun in time, and to be consummated in eternity. After this is told to us, it is easy to believe the conclusion of the matter, namely, that God's love for them will surmount all things, and survive for ever.

2. Righteousness alone can give us no title that will endure any longer than it endures itself. While it lasts, it may secure life to us if it would secure eternal life to us, it must be a righteousness eternally continued. If it were otherwise—which in the nature of the case it could not be-righteous Adam had a perfect title to eternal life before he fell and so perhaps had Satan; and then there was no need of the everlasting righteousness brought in by the divine Mediator for the salvation of fallen men. It has been plainly shown that it is by our adoption as sons and heirs of God, that we are put in possession of an indefeasible title to his boundless inheritance; and as a part of it, the everlasting righteousness of our brother and joint heir, the Son of God, made flesh. The very way in which he became the first born among many brethren, was that God did predestinate them to be conformed to the image of his Son.' So that they were predestinated to the righteousness itself, no less assuredly than to all the fruits which flow from its possession. Being, for the sake of that righteousness of Christ, effectually called of God, and born again of the Spirit; that righteousness is imputed to us for our justification, and received by us only through Faith. And now, being sons of God by Adoption, our Sanctification is the gradual consummation of that righteousness in the renewed soul. Throughout all this divine process of Sanctification, Repentance toward God is a kind of perpetual revulsion of our new nature against our former estate, and the remains of pollution still lurking in it; a perpetual yearning of our new nature after fuller participation of this Righteousness. And Faith, the primeval vital act of our new nature, becomes the great internal means through which every other part of the wonderful trans1 Rom., viii. 29.

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formation, is carried on and perfected. Until, at last, those eternal results of which Faith is, to us here below, at once the substance and the evidence,' are fully reached; and Faith itself is swallowed up in the perfect vision of him who is at once its author and its finisher. For when mortality is swallowed up of life, and death is swallowed up in victory: what shall abide, will be, that undying love of God for his children, and of his children for him, out of which all salvation comes, and in which all salvation will be consummated !4

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3. By the Fall of man, our whole race contracted, not only guilt, but pollution.* It lost also its original righteousness. But it is expressly written, that without holiness no man shall see the Lord. God himself is most holy; and the restoration of man to the lost image of his Creator and the predestinated conformity of the elect to the image of the Son of God-can mean no less, how much soever more they may mean-than their recovery, not only of the knowledge, but of the righteousness and true holiness of creatures having the image and likeness of God, and conformity to the image of his Son. It is not enough that actual punishment for sin should be remitted; nor even that its blameworthiness should be overlooked. Its impurity must be removed; and our personal holiness must be restored.† The sum of all this, as a divine work toward, and in man,—the Apostle in the brief summary so often alluded to, expresses by three words, namely, Calling, Justification, and Glorification. As a help to our weakness, the Church of God, in all ages, and expositors of the divine word of all shades of opinion, have brought from other portions of the Scriptures other terms interposed by the same or some other inspired writer, to enlarge this brief description. I have, in like manner, followed the chapter on Effectual Calling with one on Regeneration, which appertains to it; and followed the chapter on Justification with one on Adoption, which results, in a manner, from it; and now, postponing the separate treatment of Glorification till we have considered all that precedes it, this chapter on Sanctification is added to point out how the children of God, after being Effectually Called, Regenerated, Justified, and Adopted, find

the life of God sustained and advanced in the soul unto perfection.

4. Sanctification is different from Adoption, though both of them relate to the inheritance of the redeemed: the former concerning our fitness to possess and enjoy every thing to which title is given by the latter. God having brought us so far as to adopt us as his sons and heirs, now proceeds to train us in a manner that makes us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.1 Sanctification is also different from Regeneration; for it is not a new creation, which Regeneration is, but it is the nurture and perfection of that new creation, so far as that is accomplished during our mortal existence. It is different also from Effectual Calling: for that relates to the method of our renewal in the image of God, while this relates to the gradual progress of the divine life within us, unto the total completeness of that renewal of man in the divine image. It is different from Justification, with which it is most frequently confounded, and with the least reason of all. For Justification is an act of God's grace outward as to us, while Sanctification is a work of God's grace within us: the former, moreover, relating to our state, the latter to our nature; the one consummated by the Father in a single judicial sentence, the other involving a work of the whole Godhead, and especially of the Holy Ghost, uninterruptedly to the end of our mortal existence, to be manifested afterwards in glory for ever. With regard to sin, it is pardoned in Justification; but the object of Sanctification is to purge it out, destroy it, and supplant it with holiness and as touching holiness, Justification is, by means of the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, while Sanctification is the result of that righteousness received into the soul itself, as a living and transforming power.

5. Sanctification, considered of itself as a work of divine grace, must not be confounded with sanctity, or personal holiness, considered as a quality in us. Personal holiness in us, sanctity, is the habit of doing only what is both true and good—that is, what is right: that state of the new man in which, by a divine creation, not only righteousness in its broadest sense, but especially true holiness-the holiness of truth, is the habit of the soul. But man, so far from having any such sanctity as this by nature, 1 Col., i. 12. * Δίκαιοσυνη και όσιοτητι της αληθείας. Eph., iv. 24.