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than the labours of those, who, having discovered a vein of silver or gold, dig deeply into the bowels of the enriching mine." Thus far I have extracted from my sermon on Heb. v. 12-14, to show the importance of system: In my next I shall endeavour to show the importance of the true system. Meanwhile

I am

Affectionately yours,

A. F.

LETTER II,

My dear Brother,

In my last, as I intimated at the close, I endeavoured to show the importance of system: in this I shall attempt to show the importance of a true system; and to prove that truth itself, by being displaced from those connexions which it occupies in the scriptures, may be perverted, and prove injurious to those that hold it. No system can be supposed to be wholly erroneous; but if a considerable part of it be false, the whole will be vitiated, and that which is true will be divested of its salutary influence. If ye be circumcised, said the Apostle to the Galatians, Christ shall profit you nothing. As one truth thoroughly imbibed, will lead to a hundred more, so will one error. False doctrine will eat as doth a gangrene; which, though it may seem to be confined to one part of the body, infects the whole mass, and, if not extracted, must issue in death.

If one put on the profession of Christianity without cordially believing it, it will not sit easy upon him; his heart will not be in it and if, at the same time, he live in the indulgence of secret vice, he will soon feel it necessary to new model his religious opinions. It degrades him, even in his own esteem, to be a hypocrite; avowing one thing and practising another. In order to be easy, therefore it becomes necessary for him to have a new creed, that he may answer the reproaches of his conscience, and it may be those of his acquaintance, by the assumption that his ideas are changed. He begins by doubting; and, having, by criminal indulgence, effaced all sense of the holiness of God from his mind, he thinks of him only in respect of what he calls his goodness, which he hopes will induce him to connive at his frailties. With thoughts like these, of God and of sin, he will soon find himself in possession of a system. A new field of thought opens to his mind,

in which he finds very little need of Christ, and becomes, in his own eyes, a being of consequence. Such, or nearly such, was the process of those who perished, because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. And for this cause God sent them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all wight be damned, who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. But passing these delusive systems, truth itself, if viewed out of its scriptural connexions, is vitiated and injurious. The members of our bodies are no otherwise beneficial, than as they occupy the places in which the Creator has fixed them. If the foot were in the place of the hand, or the ear of the eye, instead of being useful they would each be injurious: and the same is true of a preposterous view of scripture doctrines. The Jews in the time of our saviour, professed the same creed, in the main, as their forefathers: they reckoned themselves to believe Moses; but holding with Moses to the exclusion of Christ, their faith was rendered void. If ye believed Moses, said our Lord, ye would believe me; for he wrote of me. Thus it is with us: if we hold the law of Moses to the exclusion of Christ, or any otherwise than as subservient to the gospel; or Christ and the gospel to the exclusion of the law of Moses; neither the one or the other will profit us.

To illustrate and confirm these observations, I shall select, for examples, three of the leading doctrines of the gospel; namely, election, the atonement, and the influence of the Holy Spirit.

If the doctrine of election be viewed in those connexions in which it stands in the scriptures, it will be of great importance in the Christian life. The whole difference between the saved and the lost being ascribed to sovereign grace, the pride of man is abased. The believer is taught to feel and acknowledge, that by the grace of God he is what he is; and the sinner to apply for mercy, not as being on terms with his Maker, but absolutely at his discretion. It is frequently the last point which a sinner yields to God. To relinquish every claim and ground of hope from his own good endeavours, and fall at the feet of sovereign mercy, requires that he be born of God. If we take our views of this great subject in its connexion with others, I need not say we shall not consider it

as founded on any thing good foreseen in us, whether it be faith or good works this were to exclude the idea of an election of grace; and to admit, if not to establish boasting. Neither shall we look at the end in such a way as to lose sight of the means. We shall consider it as we do other divine appointments, not as revealed to ús to be a rule of conduct, but to teach us our entire dependence upon God. We are given to believe that whatever good or evil befals us we are thereunto appointed.* The time of our continuance in the world is as much an object of divine purpose as our eternal destiny; but we do not imagine, on this account, that we shall live though we neither eat nor drink; nor presume that though we leap headlong from a precipice, no danger will befal us. Neither does it hinder us from exhorting or persuading others to pursue the way of safety, and to flee from danger. In these things, we act the same as if there were no divine appointments, or as if we believed nothing concerning them; but when we have done all that can be done, the sentiment of an all-disposing providence recurs to mind, and teaches us that we are still in the hands of God Such were the views of good men, as recorded in scripture. They believed the days of man to be appointed, and that he could not pass his bounds; yet, in time of famine, the patriarch Jacob, sent to Egypt to buy corn, that they might live and not die. Elisha knew of a certainty that Benhadad would die ; yet, speaking of him in respect of his disease, he did not scruple to say, He may recover. The Lord assured Paul in his perilous voyage, that there should be no loss of any man's life; yet, when he saw the ship-men making their escape, he said to the centurion, Except these abide in the ship, ye cannot be saved.

A fleshly mind may ask, How can these things be? How can divine predestination accord with human agency and accountableness? But a truly humble Christian, finding both in his Bible, will believe both, though he may be unable fully to understand their consistency; and will find in the one a motive to depend entirely on God, and in the other a caution against slothfulness and presumptuous neglect of duty. And thus a Christian minister, if he view the doctrine in its proper connexions, will find nothing in it to hinder the free use of warnings, invitations, and persuasions, * 1 Thes. iii. 3.

either to the converted or the unconverted. Yet he will nof ground his hopes of success on the pliability of the human mind, but on the promised grace of God; who, (while he prophesies to the dry bones, as he is commanded,) is known to inspire them with the breath of life.

Thus it was, that the Apostle, while, in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters of his Epistle to the Romans, he traces the sovereignty of God in calling some from among the Jews, and leaving others to perish in unbelief, never thought of excusing that unbelief, nor felt any scruples in exhorting and warning the subjects of it, nor in praying for their salvation. Even in his preaching to the Gentiles, he kept his eye on them, if by any, means he might provoke to emulation those who were his flesh and might save some of them.

But, whatever this doctrine is in itself, yet, if viewed out of its connexions, or in connexions which do not belong to it, it will become another thing. God's election of the posterity of Abraham was of sovereign favour, and not on account of any excellence in them, natural or moral; in which view it was humbling, and no doubt had a good effect on the godly Israelites. But the Jews in our Saviour's time, turned this, their national election, into another kind of doctrine, full of flattery towards themselves, and of the most intolerable contempt and malignity towards others. And thus the doctrine of eternal and personal election, viewed in a similar light, becomes a source of pride, bitterness, sloth, and presumption. Conceive of the love of God as capricious fondness; imagine, because it had no inducement from the goodness of the creature, that therefore it was without reason, only so it was and so it must be; view it, not as a mean by which God would assert the sovereignty of his grace, but as an end to which every thing must become subservient; conceive of yourself as a darling of heaven, a favourite of providence, for whom divine interpositions, next to miracles, are continually occurring; and, instead of being humbled before God, as a poor sinner, you will feel like a person who, in a dream, or a reverie, imagines himself a king, takes state to himself, and treats every one about him with distant contempt. If the doctrine of atonement be viewed in the connexions in

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