[IVIany who profess to believe the Gospel, and to make it the ground of their hope towards God, yet feel no constraining influence from all its wonders of love and mercy. They prac- tically say, ' True, the Lord Jesus Christ came into the world, and " died the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to Godf^." But what has this to do with the regulation of our lives? We need not be " brovight to God" in this world : it will be quite sufficient to be brought to him in the w^orld to come : and we may be sure, even from this very mercy vouch- safed unto us, that God will accept us, even though no change shall have taken place in our hearts and lives. He has sent his Son indeed, as we are told, " to bless us, in turning every one of us from our iniquities^:" but we need not be anxious about experiencing any such effect of the Redeemer's mission : we may live to ourselves, and obtain his favour, as effectually and as certainly as if we lived to him.']
3. That the way of wickedness is preferable as it
respects this present world —
[Finding pleasure only in the things of time and sense himself, he encourages the same taste in others. For, for what end " has God given us all things richly to enjoy," if we are not to enjoy them ? As for a compliance with the precepts of the Law, it is obvious that it must require continual self-denial: and what happiness can there be in that ? It must detach us, also, from those who are most able and willing to administer to our happiness : and how can that operate, but to our disadvantage? As for repentance, and holy exercises of every kind, they may be very good in a dying hour ; but to a person in health they can be a source of nothing but gloom and melancholy. Thus he sanctions the ungodly in the whole of their conduct, and en- courages them in all the delusions by which they are misled.]
4. That no evil is to be apprehended from it in the world to come —
[This necessarily follows from all the rest : for, if he really thought that God would execute his threatenings against the violators of the Law, he would be more attentive to his own ways. But he persuades himself, that God is too merciful to punish any one in the eternal world, or, at all events, for such slight offences as he commits : and, by his open contempt of God's threatened judgments, he says to all around him, that they have nothing to fear, since " the Lord will do neither good nor evil'." The exact description of these persons is given by the Psalmist, when he says, " The wicked, through the pride of his countenance, will not seek after God : God is not in all his thoughts. His ways are always grievous : thy
B 1 Pet. iii. 18. ^ Acts iii. 26. * Zeph. i. 12.