ner of analysing the law of God, considered in itself and in the great relations of it which have been suggested, and to accomplish this in a manner as exhaustive as our faculties allow; without continually arriving, by one process after another, at those clear and grand results, which Christ has declared to us, and which I have endeavoured to state and estimate. Thus, if we consider the law under its successive aspects of preceptive on the one side, and penal on the other; it is only as Christ, in our nature and in our stead, has perfectly kept every precept of it, that we in him can be considered and treated as if we had kept those precepts; and only as he, in our nature and in our stead, has paid its penalty and endured its curse, that we in him can escape the wrath to come. While all this involves the whole mediatorial office and work of Christ, and our union and communion with him; it involves, at the same time, the complete recognition of the law as being the holy, just, and unalterable law of God; it involves the complete recognition of the sacred Scriptures as the repository of that law and as the infallible rule both of our faith in Christ and our obedience to the law; and it involves the complete recognition of the infinite righteousness and grace of God, as the giver both of the law and the Saviour. The result is still the same if we endeavour so to analyze the law, as to consider separately, what duty it requires of us towards God, what towards ourselves, and what towards others; and then, passing farther, consider under the last of these three divisions, the multiplied subdivisions which the order and progress of nature and society beget-the relative duties of parents and children, husbands and wives, masters and servants, children of the same family, citizens of the same commonwealthnay even members of the same fallen race. Passing by all but the last and most universal relation-how immeasurable in its influence upon that, is the idea of a divine Redeemer for lost men, when added to the idea of a divine law for them, which he comes, in their common nature, to obey, to satisfy, and magnify for them! Taken as a race, under the law, with and without the idea of their brotherhood in Christ Jesus, with and without a common Saviour and a common salvation-how immeasurably different in the two cases, is their condition and their destiny! We must never permit ourselves to forget that lawlessness, everywhere and in every estate, signifies ruin, to every

dependent creature: and that law means death as well as lifelife and death being the only alternatives that are possible, when God, and man, and a moral law, are the elements from which a conclusion must flow. Under the law, we are already lost sinners. To alter, to abolish, to evade, or to keep the law—are all impossible. A Saviour is the sole remedy-the sole alternative against perdition. Therefore it is, that Faith, Repentance, New Obedience, Good Works, Spiritual Warfare-have such immense significance and the Infallible Rule of them all such boundless importance.

10. Such is the relation of the sacred Scriptures to the human race, and more especially to the Messianic Kingdom, from the point of view occupied in the present inquiry. The truth contained in them is the only truth whereby we can be made wise unto salvation-the duties revealed in them are the only duties which a soul thus made wise admits-the Saviour who is their centre and sum is the only Mediator between God and man, the only Redeemer of God's Elect. They are, therefore, the revealed, the unalterable, and the universal Rule of Faith, and of Morality; and in them, being divinely taught what we ought to believe concerning God, and what duty God requires of us, we are plainly, powerfully, and completely guided by the Holy Ghost to the chief end of our existence, in glorifying God and enjoying him for ever.

THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD,

SUBJECTIVELY CONSIDERED.

ARGUMENT OF THE FOURTH BOOK.

WHAT may be called the purely individual and personal aspect of the Religion of God, in its influence upon the soul and life of each particular Christian, was concluded in the preceding Book. The fundamental conditions of what may be called the purely social and organic effects of that Religion, with regard to those whose separate experience has been traced to the end, are disclosed in this Fourth Book. Our relations are direct with the Lord Jesus, in our Union and Communion with him; they are also direct with all our brethren in Christ, in the sense that all of them have communion with each other, by reason of their mutual union with Christ. That union with Christ, is the immediate basis of grace and salvation, personally considered: communion with each other, the immediate basis of organized Christianity--the Church.-Christ is equally the head, supreme and exclusive, of every particular Christian having communion with him; and of every organic union of Christians, having communion with each other, in consequence of the previous union of all of them with him; and this is equally true, in every conceivable state of the developement of this Christian brotherhood. The extent to which these truths are used in producing an organism, is different under different dispensations. The Kingdom of God is exhibited to us in the Scriptures in such a manner as to involve perpetually a threefold aspect; namely, from its head Christ, it is exhibited as the Kingdom of Messiah-from its author the Holy Spirit, as the New Creation--and from its members the Children of God, as the Body, the Bride, the Fulness, the Church of Christ. It is this last aspect of the Kingdom of God, now militant in its gospel state, which is the direct effect of those dealings of God with men in the matter of salvation, which is now to be discussed, in tracing the Subjective Knowledge of God into, and afterwards through, that divine organism. In the Nineteenth Chapter, therefore, which is the First of this Fourth Book, it is shown that the fundamental conception of the Church of Christ, considered as the Kingdom of God, is that it is the body organized of those, whom the Mediator redeems as their Priest, teaches as their Prophet, and rules over as their King; and that the supreme and exclusive Headship of Christ, and the Communion of Saints, are the two elemental principles of the divine Organization thus conceived; this being a

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Peculiar Kingdom, not commensurate with the human race, but created by the Holy Ghost out of those chosen out of all kingdoms, by God's free and sovereign Grace: and the divine procedure, in the gradual and permanent organization of the Visible Church, is traced through all past Dispensations-the effects of every successive act of God are stated—the result reached and the principles yielded to us in the Gospel Church are demonstrated-and the great conception and elemental principles pervading all, are shown to be unchangeable, in all future, as in all past dispensations. The Twentieth Chapter, which is the Second of this Book, is devoted to the disclosure of the Nature and Ends of this Kingdom of God, and the exposition of the means of estimating the one and the other: these means being supremely, the word of God, in its historical, its prophetical, and its ethical teachings, with direct reference to the special matter; in illustration of which, is the actual Church, since the Canon of Scripture closed, historic and present: the nature of this Kingdom being, that it is spiritual, everlasting, and universal-witnessing for God in time, and through eternity: the immediate object of its divine organization being its own Perfection and Extension—therein saving sinners, perfecting saints, illustrating its own nature and end-and the nature of God's Being and Grace: the obligatory force of its divine organism-its own relation to Faith and Duty-and the resources given to it by God, being all complete. The Twenty-first Chapter, which is the Third of this Book, is occupied with an attempt to deduce and to explicate this Kingdom of God, in its intimate Nature and fundamental Principles, considered as the Visible Church of the Lord Jesus Christ: wherein the gracious Interposition of God, and the Probation of the human race, are considered in their actual, their theoretical, and their revealed results; and God's manifold dealings with the human race-responsive to these manifold results, and the concatenation of his Providence and his Grace, are traced to the separate and visible organization of his Kingdom, and the simultaneous visible rejection of the world: the relation between the Nature of Man, the Nature of Society, and the Nature of the Church Visible of Christ, is carefully traced—the fundamental principles common to all are disclosed-the relevancy of all to God, and to each other, pointed out-the peculiar and divine distinction between the Church and the Body Politic is explicated—and the strict definition of the Church, thus demonstrated, is given. The Twenty-second Chapter, which is the Fourth of this Book, is devoted to the Demonstration of the Freedom of the Church of the living God; which is shown to consist outwardly, in its total separation from the Civil State, and inwardly in its absolute consecration to Christ: to the establishment of the first element of this Freedom, it is shown that the Household, the State, and the Church, are all equally ordained of God—that they alone are ordained of him—that unitedly they exhaust the social susceptibilities of man-that the sphere of each, where all exist, is both naturally and divinely incompatible with that of both the others—that all tendency to the union of the Civil State and the Church, is destructive alike of the freedom of Nations and of the Nature of the Church—and contrary to the Will of God; most especially in that any such union obscures the Visibility of the True Church, by confounding it with the world whose rejection by God, is an elemental part of that Visibility: to the

establishment of the second element of the Freedom of the Church, the relation of the Glorified Redeemer to his Church and that of his Church to him, and her Blessedness in his infinite Dominion over her, are disclosed; and her true inward Freedom, without which she can have no outward Freedom, nor be his Church at all, is shown to result from her union and communion with him, and to be expressed and exercised in her absolute consecration to him, as the true and highest expression of her Spiritual Freedom. The Twenty-Third Chapter, which is the Fifth of this Book, starts from an advanced point in the enquiry; the fundamental Idea of the Church and its elemental Principles-the Nature and End of it--the deduction and solution of its great Problem-and the Spiritual Freedom of it in Christ, having been disclosed, and a fixed and complete conception of it obtained. This Chapter, therefore, proceeds to settle the principles upon which, at the end of so many centuries and vicissitudes, we may practically and infallibly determine the True Church Visible of the Lord Jesus Christ, amongst innumerable religions and sects. It discusses the elements of the Question of the Church, showing that there are three of them, to wit, the Historical, the Logical, the Supernatural-explicating all three, demonstrating their use and relative importance, and the supremacy of the Supernatural element over both the others —and that of the Logical element over the Historical: all possible forms of religion are then reduced to three, which are stated, discussed, and the only true one demonstrated; and then the principles upon which the infallible Marks of the True Church are to be settled, are demonstrated with reference to the only true form that is possible to Religion. The three remaining Chapters are devoted to the discussion of the three divine Marks by which the true, visible, universal Church of God is infallibly determined-one Chapter to each infallible Mark. The Twenty-Fourth Chapter, which is the Sixth of this Book, is occupied with the demonstration that Purity of Faith is the first of those infallible Marks. The causes of the alleged difficulties in ascertaining the True Church, are designated ——and the nature and design of the impostures resorted to are disclosed :—:-the state of the renewed soul--the nature of revealed salvation—and the religion of the True Church, are shown to be absolutely correlates of each other—the fundamental characteristic of the whole being Faith in the divine Mediator, through whom is all Grace: the divine word which reveals the Saviour, the Faith, and the Church-is shown to be the infallible Rule of Faith in that Saviour; and the infallible Arbiter of every Church that can be his-and the question of salvation being settled, no matter how, the questions of the Church-of the Rule of Faith —and of the Judge of Controversies follow, as necessary Corollaries, the nature of the salvation-the whole of which are discussed: the relation of true Faith to all Christian graces is explained-and the saving work of the Holy Ghost is shown to be the vital fact with reference to Faith, and by consequence to the life of God in every believer, and in the Church-which is the Body of Christ: and in the end, the nature and ground of our judgments concerning true Faith and the True Church-the nature and force of the symbolical statements of the True Church—and the hatred of God towards corrupt and apostate churches— are pointed out. The Twenty-Fifth Chapter, which is the Seventh of this Book, is devoted to the explication of the Idea of the true and spiritual Worship of