* This is the unalterable difference between a life of _faith_, and a life of _reasoning_ in the things of God; the former is from God, works with God, and therefore all things are possible to it; the latter is from the serpent, and therefore vain opinions, false judgments, errors and delusions are inseparable from it.
Every scholar, every disputer of this world, nay every man, has been where _Eve_ was, and has done what she did, when she sought for _wisdom_ that did _not come_ from God. All libraries are a full proof of the remaining power of the first sinful thirst after it: they are full of a knowledge that comes not from God, but from the first foundation of subtlety that opened her eyes. For as there cannot be any goodness in man, but so far as the divine goodness works in him, so there cannot be any divine truth, or knowledge in man, but so far as God’s truth and knowledge works in him?
Indeed nothing but the one Spirit of Christ, living and working in man, from the beginning to the end of the world, can possibly be the source of any goodness, holiness, or redemption of man.
The scriptures abound with proof of this. What can be more decisive than the following words? _If any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. If Christ be not in you, ye are reprobates._ And must not this be equally true of every man in the world? As true of all men in the patriarchal as in the gospel ages? _If any man_, says the apostle; therefore no regard is had to time or place, but where there is _any man_, there this truth is affirmed of him by the apostle, that unless he hath the Spirit of Christ he is none of his, but is a reprobate. But if none can be Christ’s, but because they have his Spirit living in them, and none can be God’s, but because they are Christ’s, it follows that if Christ was not the Spirit and power of _that_ first, universal covenant made by God with fallen _Adam_, if he was not that which was meant by the _seed of the woman_, if his Spirit was not from that time the real bruiser of the serpent’s head, both _Adam_, and all his posterity, for much more than three thousand years lived and died mere reprobates, and that, by an unavoidable necessity, because they had not the Spirit of Christ living in them.
And now, my Lord, I think I have sufficiently proved not only my two propositions, but also that the first covenant with _Adam_, by the seed of the woman, was the one Christian means of salvation, so wonderfully manifested by the whole process of Christ revealed in the gospel. Therefore it is a truth of the utmost certainty, that from the beginning of the world to the end of it, there never was, nor ever will be any more, or any other, but one and the same true religion of the gospel, which began with _Adam_ and _Eve_ thro’ Jesus Christ, the one mediator and reconciler of God to man, who was as certainly the life, strength, and salvation of the faithful in the old world, as he was in after-times, when the Son of the Virgin _Mary, the way, the truth, and the life_, to all that have faith in him.
And indeed a plurality of religions, or means of salvation, is as gross an imagination as a plurality of gods, and can subsist upon no other foundation.
A better religion necessarily supposes a better God, and a change in religion a change in that God that makes it. A partial God, with-holding the _one true power_ of salvation, till the last ages of the world, is as atheistical as _Epicurus_’s god.
In sundry times, and in divers manners, it may please the wisdom of God, to vary that which is only an outward help to the truth of religion; but the inward spirit and truth of salvation, is as unvariable as God himself.
The law therefore of _Moses_, as consisting of carnal ordinances, not only _makes nothing perfect_, but brings nothing new into the one covenant of redemption, but was only a temporary, provisional help, _added because of transgressions, till the promised seed should come_; that is, till the whole process of Christ, should in its last and highest degree of evidence manifest itself in all its parts.
* _This law_ then no more belonged to the _true religion_ of the Old Testament, than of the New, neither did it ever stand _between_ these two dispensations, as in their stead. No: it was merely on the _outside_ of both, had only a temporary relation to the true religion, either before or after Christ, but was no more a _part_, or _instead_ of them _for a time_, than the hand that stands by the road, directing the traveller, is itself a part of the road, or instead of it.
Now, tho’ the reason of man ought not to pretend to fathom all the depths of divine wisdom, in the whole of this _additional covenant_, yet two ends of it are apparent.