authority of God's law should be maintained? The doctrine of justification-what else is it than a revelation of God's eternal decree that Christ's righteousness should be ours in such a sense as to render us actually blameless in his sight? And what else is faith in Christ than a belief of this absurd proposition? What is human depravity but a quality for which we are in no wise accountable? And what is efficacious grace, but the acting of Almighty Power upon a mere machine? Indeed there is not a doctrine of the Bible which does not well nigh lose its identity in becoming incorporated with the creed of the Antinomian.

And while Antinomianism sadly perverts the Christian system, it exhibits only a partial view of it. Admit that it teaches the doctrine of the grace of God that bringeth salvation, yet it leaves out of view the law of God requiring obedience. Admit that it teaches the doctrine of justification by the righteousness of Christ,—yet what provision does it make for the renovation of the heart? Admit that it inculcates the necessity of faith in the Redeemer-yet does it not virtually absolve from the obligation to good works, without which the Apostle declares faith to be dead? It not only separates things in the Christian system which God has joined together, but casts away an important part of divine truth, as if it were nothing better than the rubbish of an exploded theology.

2. We see in the review of our subject that Antinomianism is nearly related to some other dangerous systems of errour.

Take for instance the system of Pelagianism, which maintains the doctrine of justification by works,-though this system seems at first view to be the exact opposite of Antinomianism, yet a moment's reflection will satisfy

you that there is much ground that is common to both; and that their practical tendencies are, to a great extent, the same. They unite in the doctrine that faith makes void the law; though the uses which they make of this doctrine are far different; the Antinomian maintaining that the obligation of the law has ceased,-the Pelagian, that we are not justified by faith alone. Nevertheless there is, as I have intimated, a striking similarity in their ultimate results. The Antinomian will tell you that he earnestly wishes to be a good man, and that it is not his own fault if he is not so, as the work of his salvation is entirely of God; while the Pelagian will tell you of the native goodness of his heart, and the meritorious doings of his life. But do you not perceive that the wishes of the Antinomian to be good, and the actual goodness claimed by the Pelagian, indicate substantially the same spirit,—a spirit of pharisaic pride and self-righteousness? And then again, the Antinomian who considers himself justified, though he spurns at the idea of glorying in good works, yet actually glories in being one of the elect, as if that, after all, involved the idea of personal merit; while the Pelagian, rejecting with heart-felt reprobation the doctrine of election, glories not less in having made himself a favourite of HeaThus you see in each the heart of the Pharisee. By different and apparently opposite means they arrive at the same practical result.

ven.

Nor is the resemblance less striking between Antinomianism and one form of Universalism. The Antinomian believes that the death of Christ sustains such a relation to the law, that the law has no longer any demands upon the elect, and that no amount of ungodliness and crime can endanger their salvation. The Universalist of the kind to which I here refer, maintains that,

as the fall of Adam brought condemnation to all, so the death of Christ, being the literal payment of a debt due to divine justice from the whole human family, not only brings all into a salvable state but actually secures their salvation, independently of any agency of their own.→→ Neither Universalism nor Antinomianism leaves the sinner with any thing to do: the grand difference between them is, that the former secures salvation to all; the latter, only to the elect.

3. Our subject suggests the origin of Antinomian tendencies, and the means of counteracting them.

I had occasion to remark in the commencement of the discourse that, while bad men only can be thoroughly practical Antinomians, good men may evince, and frequently have evinced, in no small degree, Antinomian tendencies. Not that Antinomianism in any form, or in the least degree, is to be considered harmless; for the least that it does is to mar the proportion and diminish the efficiency of Christian character; but that good men may hold some views which, to say the least, legitimately result in Antinomianism, admits of no question. It is scarcely necessary to say that, so far as true Christians are led at all into this errour, it is from causes quite different from those in which the errour originates with the ungodly.

Wherever you find an individual who gives evidence of true piety exhibiting Antinomian tendencies, you will, if 1 mistake not, always find that he holds in peculiar abhorrence that system which would detract aught from the glory of the Redeemer's work by allowing a particle of merit to the creature. In opposing this system, and in defending the doctrine of sovereign grace the salvation of man, he surely has all Scripture on his side; but in his eagerness to keep clear of one species

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of errour, he gets, to say the least, too close upon the confines of another; and in his zeal to magnify God's grace, he uses sweeping expressions which would seem to imply that he had cut loose from the law; while yet, after all, his delight is in the law of the Lord after the inner man. And while such is the origin of this tendency in good men, it is no doubt greatly assisted in many cases by an inattentive perusal of Scripture; by neglecting to compare one portion of it with another, and especially by adhering to the literal meaning of certain terms, which were designed to have only a figurative application. It is a jealousy for God's truth and God's honour which betrays the good man, so far as he is betrayed, into this system of errour.

But such is not the reason why the careless and ungodly become Antinomians. The reason is that they have a "carnal mind' which is enmity against God; is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." The whole current of their inclinations contravenes the great designs of God's moral government; and hence they are predisposed to find apologies for their disobedience and rebellion. And the system of errour which we have now been contemplating supplies them with an apology, which, if it be admitted, supersedes the necessity of any other. And does not the history of human nature prove that it is easy to believe what we wish to believe? If then the sinner in his heart is opposed to the moral government of God, is not this the best possible preparation for the reception of the doctrine that the law has lost its authority in respect to the elect, and for believing that he is himself one of the privileged number?

Now how shall these tendencies to Antinomianism, whether in good or bad men, be successfully resisted?

I answer, by holding up before them the truths of the gospel in their proper connexions and practical bearings. Let no minister fear to set forth God's law in the extent of its claims and the majesty of its sanctions, lest he should thereby incur the odium of being a legal preacher. Let him show both to saint and sinner that every violation of the law is sin; and that each, as a moral agent, is accountable for every sin he commits to the great Lawgiver and Judge. Let him preach the doctrines of grace in all their fulness, and richness and glory; but let him preach them as doctrines designed and adapted to form in man a holy temper; and let him show from the very constitution of the gospel that any system which perverts them to a different end, is necessarily and essentially a system of errour. And finally, let him appeal to the different practical effects which these doctrines produce when preached in their proper connexions, and when exhibited in a divorced and insulated form, and show how, in the one case, the Christian character is either not formed at all or grows up to a dwarfish deformity;-how, in the other, it rises in beautiful proportions, exhibiting all the virtues and graces of the gospel. Far be it from me to assert that this instrumentality will of itself root out the Antinomian tendencies of the human heart :-nevertheless it is God's appointed means for accomplishing this end; and in the hands of his Spirit we may confidently expect that it will prove effectual.

4. Our subject teaches us that the spirit of Antinomianism is the spirit of the whole unrenewed world.

What is it that distinguishes man previous to his renovation, but a disrelish for God's commandments,—a reluctance to submit to his authority? And what is it that is accomplished for man in his renovation, but that