apostle was widely mistaken when he laid down this axiom, that "it is God who of his own good pleasure worketh in us both to will and to do." According to our church, God's election leads the van; sanctification forms the centre; and glory brings up the rear:* "Wherefore, they that be endued with so excellent a benefit of God be called, according to God's purpose, by his Spirit working in due season; they, through grace, obey the calling; they be justified freely; they be made the sons of God by adoption." Hitherto good works are not so much as mentioned. Why so? Because our reformers were Antimonians, and exploded or despised moral performances? by no means. Those holy persons were themselves living confutations of so vile a suggestion. The tenor of their lives was as blameless as their doctrine. But they had learned to distinguish ideas, and were too judicious, both as logicians and divines, to represent effects as prior to the causes that produce them. They were not ashamed to betake themselves to the scriptures for information, and to deliver out the living water of sound doctrine pure and unmingled as they had drawn it from the fountains of truth. Hence, election, calling, justification, and adoption, are set forth, not as caused by, but as the real and leading causes of that moral change, which sooner or later takes place in the children of God. For thus the article goes on; เ They be made like the image of his only begotten Son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works; and at length, by God's mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity.' This then is the order: 1. Election: 2. Ef fectual Calling: 3. Apprehensive Justification : * Art. xvii. 4. Manifestative Adoption: 5. Sanctification: 6. Religious walking in good works: 7. Continuance in these to the end which last blessing must of necessity be included, because the article adds, that these elect, regenerate persons, attain at length to everlasting felicity; which they could not do without final perseverance, any more than you or I, upon our departure from this church, could arrive at our respective homes, if we finally stop short of them by the way.such, therefore, being the chain and process of salvation, how impious and how fruitless must any attempt be, either to transpose or put asunder what God has so wisely and inseparably joined together! Unless we take absolute election into the account, we must either suppose that God saves no man whatever, or that those he saves are saved at random, and without design. But his goodness forbids the first, and his wisdom excludes the latter. Absolute election therefore must be taken into the account, or you at once ipso facto, strike off either goodness or wisdom from the list of divine perfections.-That scheme of doctrine must necessarily be untrue, which represents the Deity as observing no regular order, no determinate plan, in an affair of such consequence as the everlasting salvation of his people. I cannot acquit of blasphemy, that system which likens the Deity to a careless ostrich, which having deposited her eggs, leaves them in the sand to be hatched or crushed, just as chance happens. Surely he who numbers the very hairs of his people's heads, does not consign their souls, and their eternal interests to precarious hazard! the blessings of grace and glory are too valuable and important to be shuffled and dealt out by the hand of chance. Besides, if one thing comes to pass either without or contrary to the will of God; another thing, nay, all things may come to pass in the same manner; and then, good by to providence entirely. When Lysander the Spartan paid a visit to king Cyrus (at Corinth, if I mistake not,) he was particularly struck with the elegance and order, the variety and magnificence of Cyrus's gardens. Cyrus, no less charmed with the taste and judgment of his guest, told him with visible emotions of pleasure, "These lovely walks with all their beauty of disposition and vastness of extent, were planned by myself; and almost every tree, shrub, and flower, which you behold, was planted by my own hand."-Now, when we take a view of the church, which is at once the house and garden of the living God; that church which the Father loved-for which the Son became a man of sorrows-and which the Holy Spirit descends from heaven in all his plentitude of converting power, to cultivate and build anew; when we survey this living paradise, and this mystic edifice, of which such glorious things are spoken,* and on which such glorious privileges are conferred, must we not acknowledge, Thy sovereign hand, O uncreated love, drew the plan of this spiritual Eden! Thy hand, almighty power, set every living tree, every true believer, in the courts of the Lord's house. Thy converted people are all righteous; they shall inherit the land for ever, even the branches of thy planting, the work of thy hands, that thou mayest be glorified!t Admitting election to be thus a complete, eternal, immanent act in the divine mind, and consequently irrespective of any thing in the persons • Psalm lxxxv. 2. † Isai. lx. 21 chosen; then (may some say)" Farewell to gospel obedience; all good works are destroyed." If; by destroying good works, you mean that the doctrine of unconditional election destroys the merit of good works, and represents man as incapable of earning or deserving the favour and kingdom of God, I acknowledge the force of the objection. Predestination does, most certainly destroy the merit of our works and obedience, but not the performance of them: since holiness is itself one end of election,* and the elect are as much chosen to intermediate sanctification on their way as they are to that ultimate glory which crowns their journey's end: and there is no coming at the one but through the other. So that neither the value, nor the necessity, nor the practice of good works is superseded by this glorious truth: our acts of evangelical obedience are no more than marshalled, and consigned to their due place: restrained from usurping that praise which is due to the alone grace of God; and from arrogating that office, which only the Son of God was qualified to discharge. * Eph. 1. 4. "Because we deny salvation by our own deeds," says one of our good old divines, "the Papists charge us with being enemies to good works. But am I an enemy to a nobleman because I will not attribute to him those honours, which are due only to the king? If I say to a common sol-. dier in an army, You cannot lead that army against the enemy, will he therefore say, Then I may be gone; there is no need of me? or if I see a man at his day labour, and say to him, You will never be able to purchase an estate of 10,0007. per annum by working in that manner; will he therefore give over his work, and say he is discouraged." Mr. Park's Comm. on Romans, p. 177. sanc That election as taught by the scriptures (and from thence by our reformers,) not only carries a favourable aspect on universal piety and holiness, but even ensures the practice of both, is evident among many other passages, from that of the apostle, 2 Thess. ii. 13. "We are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren, be- . loved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning," i. e. from everlasting, "chosen you to salvation through" [not for, but through] tification of the Spirit, and belief of the truth." How very opposite were St. Paul's views of the tendency of this doctrine, from those of the Pelagian and Arminian objectors to it? They are perpetually crying out that it "ruins morality, and opens a ready door to licentiousness." He, on the contrary, represents the believing consideration of it as a grand incentive to the exercise of our graces, and to the observance of moral duty. Let us, says he, who are of the day, who are enlightened into the knowledge of this blessed privilege, and can read our names in the book of life; "Let us, who are thus of the day, be sober; putting on the breast-plate of faith and love, and for an helmet, the hope of salvation for God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Thess. v. 8, 9. Now, if election secures the performance of good works, and upon its own plan, renders them indispensably necessary, I should be glad to know how good works can suffer by the doctrine of election? You may as well say that the sun, which now shines into this church, is the parent of frost and darkness. No, it is the source of light and warmth. And you and I want nothing more than a sense of God's peculiar, discriminating favour, "shed abroad |