What would you say, if I were to affirm, that the life of faith, resembles the very hfe which the Lord Jesus Christ lived when on earth ; and that the Believer has the same depen- dence on the Lord Jesus Christ, as Christ himself, during his incarnate state, had on the Father ; and the same security in him too ; would you not be almost ready to shut your ears, and to accuse the Preacher of blasphemy? Yet is this what we are authorized by Christ himself to declare. Hear his own words : " He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him. As the living Father hath sent me, and I live hij the Father, even so he that eateth me, even he shall live hy vicK' Say, Beloved, Is not here a ground of glorying ? and, if the Behever did not glory in this privilege, would not the very stones cry out against him?]
Whilst with confidence we affirm these to be the Christian's principles, we with no less confidence proceed to declare,
IL His practice —
It is thought by many that a life of faith is un- friendly to morality ; since if all our righteousness is in him, what need have we of any of our own? and, if he be engaged to keep us, what need have we of any care or watchfulness to keep ourselves? But this reasoning is altogether fallacious: since every one who by faith abides in Christ acknowledges it his bounden duty to " walk as he walked."
He acknowledges it, I say, as his bounden duty — [He does not conceive of Christ as liberating him from the obligations of morality : for though he is free from the law as n covenant, he is not free from it, nor would wish to be freed from it, as a rule of life. He considers himself as " not without law, but under the law to Christ." Were he permitted to violate the commands of God, he would account it a curse rather than a privilege. Such a liberty would ap- pear to him only like a permission to drink poison, which, however sweet to the taste, would prove " the gall of asps within him." So far from imagining himself freed from the restraints of the law, he considers all that Christ has done for him as laying him under ten-fold obligations to holiness both of heart and life. His motives to obedience are changed in- deed : but his obligations to it are not a whit diminished, yea, rather, are greatly heightened ; because he well knows, that
the
5 John vi. 56,57.