nity offers, and their works are before me, I may possibly produce a few of their testimonies. In the mean time, I can mention a set of writers, whose attestation will, I imagine, carry as much weight with my friend, as the united voice of the Greek and Latin fathers. Ther. Who are they? Asp. Our venerable reformers. The Homilies composed by those excellent divines are as express to my purpose as they are unexceptionable in their evidence. This is their language: "The true understanding of this doctrine, We be justified freely by faith without works, is not, that this our act to believe, or this our faith in Christ, doth justify us; for that were to count ourselves to be justified by some act or virtue that is within ourselves. But the true meaning thereof is, that although we hear God's word, and believe it; although we have hope and faith, charity and repentance, and do never so many good works; yet we must renounce the merit of all our virtues and good deeds, as things that be far too weak and insufficient to deserve remission of sin, and our justification. We must trust only in God's mercy, and that sacrifice which our High-priest and Saviour Jesus Christ, the Son of God, offered for us upon the cross.” The Homily subjoins a very apposite illustration, which may conclude our discourse with perfect propriety, and I hope with equal efficacy. "So that as St. John the Baptist, although he were never so virtuous and godly a man, yet in the matter of forgiving sin, he did put the people from him, and appoint them unto Christ, saying thus unto them, "Behold!" yonder is "the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world;" even so, as great and as godly a virtue as the lively faith is, yet it putteth us from itself, and remitteth us unto Christ, for to have only by him remission of sins or justification. So that our faith in Christ, as it were, saith unto us thus, It is not I that take away your sins, but it is Christ only; and to him only I send you for that purpose, forsaking therein all your good words, thoughts, and works; and only putting your trust in Christ *.” Ther. If there be any tolerable sense of the notion under debate, I think it must be understood as follows:-Christ's performance of the law of his mediation, or, in other words, his unsinning obedience to the moral law, and the spotless sacrifice of himself to the vindictive justice of God; these are the only valuable considerations on account of which the gracious God restores guilty creatures to a state of acceptance with his divine Majesty. Asp. I am far from denying your proposition; I rejoice in the propriety of my Theron's sentiments. May his faith, which is thus far advanced, be carried on by grace, till it is completed in glory! That unsinning obedience, and that spotless sacrifice, are indeed the only valuable, they are also the truly, or rather the infinitely valuable consideration, which has fully merited for us the remission of sins and the enjoyment of life; and this not only from the gracious, but even from the just, the faithful, the righteous God. But then they must be imputed, in order to furnish us with a claim, and invest us with a right to the purchased privileges. Suppose them not imputed, and what becomes of our interest in them? They are like a medicine prepared, but not applied. Suppose them imputed; and they lay a firm, an See the second part of the Homily on Salvation. apparent, a rational foundation, for every pleasing hope, and for every heavenly blessing. Ther. I fear I have acknowledged too much.-My thoughts fluctuate. My mind is unsettled. I would not withstand the truth; I would not disbelieve any doctrine of the gospel. Yet what shall I say? While I listen to your reasoning, I am half a convert: when I recollect the objections, I revert to my first opinion. Of this, however, I am convinced-That human righteousness is insuffieient for our justification. Here your arguments have carried their point. I shall henceforth place my hopes of everlasting happiness, not upon any works of my own, but upon the free goodness and unbounded beneficence of the Supreme Being; pursuant to that maxim of Scripture, "The gift of God is eternal life." Asp. You do right, Theron, to expect eternal life as the gift of God, not as the wages of your own obediential service. But be pleased to remember, that all the gifts of grace, though perfectly free to sinners, are founded upon a grand and inestimable price paid by their Saviour.-Are they entirely absolved from guilt? It is because Christ gave his life for their ransom. Are they heard with acceptance when they pray? It is because their exalted Highpriest intercedes in their behalf. Are they completely justified, and instated in endless bliss? It is because their Redeemer's consummate obedience is the glorious equivalent for this and every other blessing. Therefore, when you mention eternal life as the gift of God, you should not forget to add with the holy apostle," through Jesus Christ our Lord," Rom. vi. 20.-Well, my Theron, what say you farther? Is your quiver emptied? Are your scruples satisfied? May I interpret this silence as an act of assent? Ther. Observe how the ranunculuses on yonder gay parterre have contracted their spreading tufts, and the tulips have closed their expanded cups, while all the neighbouring flowers have shut their ivory doors, or drawn their velvet curtains. Such is the state of my thoughts. They are all bent inwards, collected in themselves, and pondering upon your discourse, which has inclined me, before I was aware, to contemplate, rather than talk. You will excuse my thoughtfulness, Aspasio; or, if it wants an apology, you must blame yourself: for, had your reasons been less cogent, my attention had been more disengaged. Asp. My dear Theron, I shall only wish, in allusion to your own simile, and in the language of the best of books, that these truths may "distil as the dew" upon your mind, Deut. xxxii. 2. and "lie all night upon your branches," Job xxix. 19.-This, I am persuaded, is the only way to have all your comforts "green before the sun," and all your virtues "flourish as an herb:" whereas, under the influence of any other faith, I am afraid they will be as the garden that is visited with a drought, or as the leaves that are smitten with a blast. Ther. I shall attentively consider both your doctrine and your arguments; which, that I may execute with more ease, and to better purpose, be pleased to sum up, in a few words, the substance of what has passed. This done, it will be time to withdraw. The flowers, you see, are our monitors. They have folded up their robes, and veiled their beauties: a custom which they seldom use till the rising damps render it unsafe for their master to be among them, and the surrounding gloom renders it difficult for his eye to distinguish them. Asp. You could not oblige me more than by giving me such a command We trust for salvation, Not on our own external duties. This were to build our house upon the sand; which, when the rains descend, when the torrents pour, when the winds blow with tempestuous violence, will certainly fall, and bury the builder, with all his vain hopes, in irretrievable ruin. No Not on the sincerity of our hearts. This, if opposed to Christ, and made the rival of his merits, will be a "despised broken idol." Despised by the infinitely sublime and majestic Ruler of the world: Broken, with regard to the stress we lay, or the confidence we repose, on so deceitful a prop. more able to stand in the judgment of the great day, than Dagon was able to maintain his station before the ark of the Lord God of hosts, 1 Sam. v. 3, 4. Not upon our faith. This is often weak, as the rickety child; sometimes quite faint, like a person in a deep swoon; always imperfect, like every other performance of ours. Alas! to what afflicting fears, to what grievous despondency should I, for my part, be perpetually liable, if my own faith was the ground of my justification? Blessed be the Father of mercies! we have a surer support. Not upon faith, not upon faith, but upon its gracious Author, and glorious Object, is the hope of Israel founded. Yet, Not upon our Lord's righteousness, considered only as passive; but upon his active and passive obedience united: all that he did in conformity to the commands of the law, and all that he suffered in submission to its penalty. Both which, immensely dignified by his divine nature, are a basis for our faith which nothing can shake, are a foundation for our affiance which can never be removed. Nothing else, in any creature, or in all worlds, could expiate the least sin. This not only expiates all sin, but gives a title to every blessing to the blessings of grace and of glory, of evangelical holiness and everlasting happiness. DIALOGUE XI. Asp. I HAVE often purposed, and as often forgot, to ask my Theron what picture he was so attentively surveying, when I stole unperceived upon him in this favourite arbour? * Ther. I was indulging a pensive pleasure, in viewing the ruins and contemplating the fate of Babylon-that renowned and opulent city! once the residence of the Assyrian monarchs, and capital of one of the greatest empires in the world. The draught I held in my hand represented some of its remains. And indeed this was the very last subject which employed my thoughts. In the morning my son brought me his observations upon the scene, which I have just now been revising. For I frequently set him to exercise his judgment, or display his fancy, on remarkable passages which occur in history. He was lately commissioned to determine a controversy between the illustrious Leonidas and the less celebrated Pædaretus. This was the point in debate-Which of them discovered the truest generosity of spirit, and the most heroic love of their country? * See Dialogue V. The former, who willingly sacrificed his life in its defence? or the latter, who, when he was candidate for a seat among the three hundred, and lost his dection, instead of being chagrined or dissatisfied, went home unfeignedly rejoicing, "that there were found in Sparta three hundred men more worthy than himself?" The task of this day was, to give a descriptive picture of those wonderful ruins. Asp. Pray let me have the pleasure of hearing the young gentleman's per formance. Ther. It will be too long, and too puerile; tire your patience, and offend your taste. Asp. I do not use to make either of these complaints when I am entertained with Theron's compositions; and as the son has so much of his father's genius, I am not at all apprehensive of any such disappointment. We have A most agreeable situation, and more than an hour's leisure: I must therefore repeat my request. Ther. It is true, I have retouched the sketch, which may render it somewhat more tolerable. And since you persist in your demand, I will read the paper. Only desiring some allowance for a little luxuriancy of imagination, which in young writers it may be advisable to indulge rather than repress, as age and judgment will probably come with the pruning-knife, and make the proper retrenchments. I must farther observe, that, contrary to the custom which prevails in our schools, I generally choose to have him express his sentiments in English; because it is in this language he must communicate his own, and become acquainted with the ideas of others; because, to acquire some good degree of propriety and fluency in this his native tongue, will be incomparably more serviceable than to speak Latin with the Tarentine elegance, or to write it with the Ciceronian copiousness. Is this Babylon? the glory of kingdoms! the beauty of the Chaldean excellency! Where once the gorgeous east, with richest hand, How is she fallen! fallen from the height of magnificence into the abyss of confusion! What was once the object of universal admiration, is now a spectacle of astonishment and horror. The palace, where majesty sat enthroned like some terrestrial deity, is a heap of rubbish; no longer distinguished by an air of superior elegance, but by stronger and more melancholy marks of departed dignity *. Where the nobles of that sumptuous court trailed along the marble pavement their robes of purple and embroidery, there the crested snake hisses, or the fierce envenomed adder glides. How changed is the hospitable hall, and how disgraced the room of state! The first afforded a constant and cordial reception to the welcome guests; in the last, the great king gave audience to his cringing, his adoring vassals. Now, thorns overrun the circumference, and "desolation sits in the threshold of them both." Where are the roofs of ivory, painted with vermilion and adorned with sculpture? the radiant roofs, whose lamps of burnished silver, * Benjamin, a Jew of Tudela, in his Itinerary, written about the year of our Lord 1170, tells us, "That he was upon the place where this city formerly stood, and found it wholly desolated and destroyed. Only some ruins of Nebuchadnezzar's palace were still remaining; but men were afraid to go near them, by reason of the many serpents and scorpions that were then in the place." pendent in many a blazing row, yielded light as from another sky? Swep from their foundations, they lie clotted with defiling dirt, or clasped with tangling briers. Music no longer pours her harmony through the spaciou and extended apartment; but the night-owl, nestling in some cleft of th ruins, screams her harsh and portentous dissonance. Joy no longer leads u the sprightly dance amidst the lustre of that artificial day; but the solitary bat flits in silent circles, or flaps her sooty wings. All those gay delights, let the sons of sensuality hear the tale, and take warning from the catastrophe -all those gay delights are extinguished, like one of their feeblest tapers, which having illuminated for a while the festive assembly, shone itself to the edge of the exhausted socket, and in a moment flashed into stench and darkness! The walls, though cemented with bitumen*, and consolidated into the firmness of a flint, are become like the broken bubble. There was a tim when the inhabitants, confiding in the strength of their bulwarks and the multitude of their towers, looked down with fearless disdain on the army o besiegers. But now the prophet's threatening is most terribly fulfilled "The fortress of the high fort of thy walls hath he brought down, laid low and brought to the ground, even to the dust," Isa. xxv. 12.—Where are the gates, the grand and glittering gates +, which admitted the triumphant hosts. or poured forth their numerous legions against the day of battle? Not on trace remains to tell the inquisitive stranger, "Here the spacious avenues opened; here the massy portals rose." Commodious walks, in which the clustering merchants raised the busy hum, and planned the schemes of commerce; ample streets, in which industry drove the toiling car, or smote the sounding anvil, are shrouded with matted grass, or buried beneath the rankest weeds. Silence, in both places, a sullen silence reigns; and inactivity, a death-like inactivity, slumbers. What is become of those hanging gardens, which, for curious contrivance and stupendous workmanship, were never equalled in any nation under heaven? Terraces that overlooked the tallest houses! Parterres exalted to the clouds, and opening their flowery beauties in that strange region! Groves, whose very roots were higher than the tops of the loftiest trees! They are now smitten by a dreadful blast. Their beauty is decayed like a withered leaf. Their very being is gone, "like the chaff of the summer threshing-floors, which the wind carrieth away, and its place is nowhere found," Dan. ii. 35. What was once the favourite retreat of a queen, and the admiration of the whole world, is now a nest for poisonous reptiles, and a kennel for ravenous beasts. The traveller, instead of expatiating with delight where this pensile paradise flourished, is struck with horror, keeps at a trembling distance, and, surveying the rueful spot, cries out, "Righteous art thou, O Lord, and true are thy judgments!" Here stands an obelisk, maimed by the stroke of revolving years, like a mountain oak shattered by the flaming bolt. Another, all unhinged, and quite disjointed, seems to tremble before every blast that blows. There the pyramid ‡, firm as the solid rock, and stable, one would have thought, as the everlasting hills, wrenched from its mighty base, is tumbled headlong in enor The walls were built of brick, and cemented with a glutinous kind of slime, which binds more firmly than any mortar, and soon grows harder than the bricks or stones themselves. There were no less than a hundred gates, all of solid brass. |