is declared in the Epistle to the Hebrews c The very
distinction is there made between the Jewish covenant that was made on Mount Sinai, and the covenant of grace which was made four hundred and thirty years before with Abraham : and the knowledge of the Lord will be universally diffused, not in theory only, but in the experience of every individual : "for," says God, " I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more." This then is the promise which we now make known to you ; that however you may have alienated your affections from God in times past, if you will but now return to him, your former iniquities shall no more be remembered, but God will be your God for ever and ever. O hear the very invitations of God
himself*1 and implore help from God to comply with
them !]
But is not this a dangerous doctrine ? Surely not, if we consider,
III. The effect of this grace upon every soul of man —
It is thought by those who have never experienced this grace themselves, that it must of necessity puff up with pride and conceit all who receive it. But,
This is contrary to reason —
[If we maintain that man by nature is in the situation of this outcast child ; that God, purely of his own mercy and grace, " looks upon us" in that situation, and " bids us live ;" if, after all our innumerable transgressions, he invites us to repent of our iniquities, and to embrace his holy covenant; we should think that there is no possible scope for pride and self-conceit ; since the very mercy which God exercises towards us is not founded in any actual, or foreseen, goodness in us, but wholly in the free and sovereign exercise of God's holy will. It is the man that arrogates some goodness to himself, and makes the superior worth of the individual to be the ground of God's peculiar favour to him, this is the man that is proud, and that puts the very crown of Jehovah upon his own head. Even in heaven itself, if such a man were ever to reach that blessed place, he would be robbing God of his glory, and ascribing his salvation, in part at least, to his own superior goodness, which was the first moving cause of God's mercy towards him.]
It is contrary to fact also —
c Heb. viii. 8—12. d Jer. iii. 1, 12.