all tlie richest blessings of redemption, whilst those who cast off the fear of God shall be left inconsolably and for ever desolate^. What inducements are here to seek that holy disposition of mind inculcated in our text !]
2. His indignation against those who fear him not —
[God does not merely withhold his blessings from these persons, but actually becomes their enemy : he does not only turn his face from them, but sets his face against them: " he walks contrary to them who thus walk contrary to him." Hear how indignantly he speaks to those who profess to reverence him, but in fact dishonour him by their conduct : " Why call ye me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say *? " Yea, he declares that whatever profession of religion they may make, they shall never enter into his kingdom: " Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven^." He intimates, that in the day of judgment there will be many who will confidently claim heaven, as it were, on account of their zeal and success in his service : but that, for- asmuch as they were destitute of all these holy dispositions, he will not acknowledge them as his, but bid them to depart ac- cursed into everlasting fire^. In a word, he declares that by their fruits only shall they be known either in this world or the next".
It must however be remembered, that though the exercise of these holy dispositions is pleasing and acceptable to God, it is not meritorious in itself; nor can it found a claim for our justification before God. A reward, it is true, will be given us ; but it is " a reward of grace, and not of debt." It is in Christ only that we can have a justifying righteousness; never- theless our works wiU be regarded as the evidences of our faith : if our faith operate in the way above mentioned, we shall be acknowledged as Christ's redeemed people ; but if it do not, it will be considered as dead; and we shall be cast out as hypocrites and self-deceivers.]
Suffer now a word of exhortation. Two things we entreat of you ; 1. To labour for practical religion —
[There are many professors of religion who love to hear of the privileges of the Lord's people, but not to hear of their duties; and they call such- subjects as the foregoing, fe^a/; but they who do so, understand neither what legality is, nor what the Gospel is. Legality is a leaning, either in whole or in part, to the works of the law to justify us before God : and if we
^ ver. 21, 22. ' Luke vi. 46. ^ Matt. vii. 21.
1 Matt, vii. 22, 23. •« Matt. vii. 18—20.
i'48 PSALMS, XXXIV. 11—16. [553.
encouraged that, we might justly be regarded as abandoning and subverting the Gospel of Christ. But, when we teach persons to fear the Lord, and, from a desire of his favour in Christ, and from a dread of his displeasure, to approve them- selves to God in the whole of their life and conversation, we do only what the Apostles of our Lord also did : for St. Peter quotes the very words of our text in the precise way in which we have insisted upon them": and therefore we are sure that an attention to them becomes us under the Gospel. We fur- ther say, that the people who set themselves up for judges in this way, are ignorant also of the Gospel. The Gospel consists of two parts, doctrine and practice, just as a house consists of a foundation and a superstructure. But who would choose a place for his habitation that has a foundation indeed, but nei- ther walls nor roof? or who would call such a structure a house ? So doctrines, however sound, will not answer the ends of the Gospel, nor can they be properly called the Gospel, unless they stand connected with good works as issuing from them and built upon them. The doctrines are the foundation ; the good works are the superstructure : and then only are the doctrines available for our salvation, when they operate to the production of universal holiness. This is the accomit which our blessed Lord himself gives of his Gospel : and he alone is truly wise, who embraces and builds upon it in this view".]