has lost his original righteousness; and has, besides, contracted a defilement, and reduced his nature to a state and habit of sin, precisely opposite to the holiness his nature needs. The process of restoring that original righteousness, and perfecting that true holiness-meantime healing and extirpating that inward state and habit of sin; is that work of grace whereby both the quality and the habit of human actions are changed, by acting radically and divinely upon the human soul itself. This vital progress and steady mutation of the renewed soul, is what we call Sanctification; that work of God's grace in regenerate, justified, and adopted believers, whereby the spiritual acts and habits of their nature are changed from sin and the fruits thereof, to true holiness and the fruits thereof. Considered as a great work of divine grace within the renewed soul, it is the method whereby God renews us completely in his lost image, and conforms us entirely to the image of his Son, restoring us to the perfect knowledge and love of his truth, and the complete fruition of his holiness." For if we have learned Christ aright, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus; we put off, concerning the former conversation, the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and are renewed in the spirit of our mind; and put on the new man; which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.2

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II.-1. The prophet Jeremiah, after distinctly foretelling the captivity of God's ancient people, and their return from Babylon, adds, as a glorious event to occur afterwards, and speaking in the name of God-I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from me. In another place he calls that everlasting covenant new, as compared with the special and peculiar administration of his grace under the Jewish dispensation; and describes clearly but briefly the Gospel state of the Covenant of Grace, in contrast with the Mosaic state of it. Behold the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers, in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they broke, although I was a husband unto them, saith the 1 1 Cor., i. 30; vi. 11. Eph., iv. 24; vi. 10–20. 3 Jer., xxxii. 40.

Lord. But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord; and I will remember their sin no more. Supposing these remarkable statements to have an application to the Jewish people far more exact than has yet been realized; that, so far from weakening, increases the light they throw on the manner of God's gracious dealings, under the Gospel aspect of his everlasting covenant, with the souls of his people. The very thing which happens, as God's children are more and more conformed to him in their progressive sanctification is, that God becomes more manifestly their God, and they become more manifestly his people; they know him better continually, and love him more as they know him better; and all this occurs by God putting his law in their inward parts, and writing it in their hearts. And so, out of the bosom of the Christian Church, in the earliest practical manifestation of these ancient promises, the Apostle Peter proclaims the realization of God's declarations to Jeremiah. For exhorting the elect scattered through the nations, to desire, as new-born babes, the sincere milk of the word that they might grow thereby beseeching them, if they had tasted that the Lord was gracious, to come to him as unto a living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God and precious: he asserts that to all believers he is precious, and that it was in order to show forth the praises of him who had called them out of darkness, into his marvellous light, that they who had been no people, had become the people of God, and were now a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people. And with all these things agree innumerable statements of the word of God. We are not, therefore, allowed to doubt, that our Sanctification is one of the chief benefits of God's eternal Covenant of Redemption; and that it is no illusion, but a great and inevitable reality concerning the true life of God in the soul of man; the result of a peculiar, gradual, and sustained work of divine grace in the elect of God-completing the inward transformation which commenced in their 1 Jer., xxxi. 31-34. 2 1 Peter, ii. 1–10.

Effectual Calling, and which was established in their Regeneration; completing too their fitness for that vast inheritance to which, partly in their Justification, and fully in their Adoption, they were declared by God to be in possession of a complete and irrevocable title.

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2. Concerning the nature of this great work of grace, the most obvious peculiarity is, its absolute totality with reference. to the whole nature of man. The very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit, soul and body, be preserved blameless unto the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.' A Sanctification extending to the whole man-and to every element of his being: yea, so extending, that his spirit—his soul— and his very body may be preserved blameless; so that when Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall we also appear with him in glory. For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily, and we are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power. The Spirit which is the essence of our being, and the very condition of our existence in the image and after the likeness of God; the soul concerning which it is said that God breathed into the nostrils of Adam the breath of life, and man became a living soul: the vile body, frail, sinful, dying-yet awaiting a glorious resurrection, and which may be so used by God's children, as that even it may be preserved blameless, perfecting holiness in the fear of God: concerning all, the exhortation to us is to cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit. And while we are thus clearly taught the all-pervading nature of this stedfast transformation from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God; we are as distinctly taught, on the other hand, that there can be no such thing in the divine life in man, as a partial existence of vitality -one part pure, and another impure-some sins mortified and strangled while others are allowed and cherished. Much less is there any rule of compensation by which one excess which we persuade ourselves is good, can be set against another excess which we fear may be evil; and least of all can we compensate by outward acts-even the giving of our body to be burned-for inward defilement, which nothing but an inward work of divine grace can reach. Along with such deep and obvious truths, the divine standard of holiness is exalted before us to the very 1 Thess., v. 23. 2 Col., iii. 4. 3 Col., ii. 9, 10. * Gen., ii. 7. 5 2 Cor., vii. 1.

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heavens, and promises of divine aid in our endeavours after it are mingled with divine exhortations and commands to us, to make the most earnest efforts after complete conformity to God. Nay, when every thing else fails to stimulate the renewed soul to that earnestness which God requires in our pursuit of the infinite prize set before us; he hides his face from us, that we may realize more adequately that he is the only satisfying portion of the soul. And so in every form in which a subject so immense, and interests so transcendent, can be presented to the heirs of eternal life; the one great conception of total conformity to God-absolute consecration to his service-engrossing love for his cause-his namie-himself, pervades the divine word, and pervades the sanctified heart, as the sum of all true blessedness on earth, and the real preparation for eternal felicity and glory.

3. A work of this sort must needs be unspeakably various-we may say unequal-when one Christian heart is compared with another-in the boundless diversities of spiritual experience, and spiritual attainments. It must, of necessity, also, be gradual; and cannot, in this life, ever be absolutely perfect, in the sense that no further attainment can be made, or in the sense that no remains of sin are left to be subdued. All these conditions have a certain mutual dependence on each other. If absolute perfection in our conformity to God were attainable in our present state; it is not easy to see how any diversity of experience could exist, either in the process of reaching the one absolute type of the immaculate holiness of the one living and true God, or in the result after it was reached; any more than how any thing could be left, after that, for heaven itself to add to us. The case is far otherwise. There are endless diversities in the endowments of the creature-in the operations of the Spirit--in the gifts of God-in the administration of the Lord-in the manifestations of the Spirit given to men to profit withal.' Under all these diverse conditions, each soul incurs a threefold operation; one to put off the old man-one to be renewed in the spirit of the mind -one to put on the new man. Every soul must be planted together with Christ in the likeness of his death, and must be planted also in the likeness of his resurrection; we must die with Christ, and we must live with him. Our nature has indeed been renewed-or else it is idle to say a word about Sanctification. 1 1 Cor., xii. 4-12.

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2 Eph., iv. 22, 24.

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9 Rom., vi. 5, 8.

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But with that very renewal, the great spiritual warfare commenced-the spirit lusting against the flesh, and the flesh lusting against the spirit; and these contrary the one to the other ; so that we cannot do the things that we would. Between the putting off the old man, and the putting on the new man, the Apostle, as we have just seen, expressly locates the necessity of being renewed in the spirit of our mind. The work of stripping the soul of its polluted habiliments; the work of clothing the soul in its heavenly vestments; the work of making the spirit of the mind-the habit of the soul-recoil from its old and conform to its new life. In all this work wrought in the name and for the sake of Christ-the divine Spirit respects God's work of creation—and deals with us as rational, moral, free creatures. And so by his sanctifying work, he more and more subdues our wills, enlightens our understandings, purifies our hearts, enables and inclines us to love and to enjoy God-performing, until the day of Jesus Christ, the good work which he hath begun in us. And yet when we consider that in our flesh dwelleth no good thing, and that even when to will is present with us, we see another law in our members warring against the law of our mind, and bringing us into captivity to the law of sin which is in our members;4 we can easily understand the nature of the peril that our progress in holiness may be slow, interrupted, and marked by many backslidings and the reason why it can never be perfectly achieved until this mortal shall have put on immortality-this corruptible shall have put on incorruption. And this is the very method of God, in all his works. One degree after another, whether of grace or glory; one exaltation after another in endless dispensations--cycle after cycle-higher and higher for evermore. Though we must say of all our righteousnesses, that they are but as filthy rags, and though we must feel that sin doth so easily beset us; yet we run with patience the race set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. Nor can we, without denying the faith and outraging the unchangeable love of God, distrust his promise-nay, his covenant-nay, his oath-to prepare his children for their infinite inheritance, and bring them to its eternal enjoyment."

1 Gal., v. 17.

2 Eph., iv. 23.

4 Rom., vii. 18, 23.

5 1 Cor., xv. 54.

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3 Phil., i. 6; Psal. li. 10; Ezek., xxxvi. 26

6 Isa., Ixiv. 6; Heb., xii. 1, 2. 7 Jer., xxxi. 3; Heb., vi. 17, 20; xiii. 20, 21; John, x. 28.