them in our discourses a prominence and importance which they do not hold in the inspired volume. But we equally disapprove of keeping out of view any doctrine which is clearly taught in the Holy Scriptures: and we must say, that the doctrine of " righteousness imputed to us without works," is more clearly taught here, than if it had been maintained in a long and elaborate course of argument ; because it is intro- duced so incidentally, and because the Apostle goes, if we may so speak, so much out of his way on purpose to introduce it. To introduce it, he represents David as saying, what (in words) he did not say ; and he omits some very important words which he actually did say. It is observable, that St. Paul stops short in his quotation, and leaves out those words of David, " and in whose spirit there is no guile." And why did he omit them ? We apprehend, for this reason. If he had inserted them, he might have been supposed to countenance the idea, that, though we are justified by faith, yet it is not by faith only, but by faith either as connected with a guileless spirit, or as productive of a guileless spirit: whereas we are justified by it, not as united with holy dispositions, nor as an operative prin- ciple in the soul, but simply and solely as apprehending Christ, in and through whom we are justified. Thus by a remarkable addition, and by a no less remarkable omission, he brings the words of David to bear upon his point, and to prove what is of incalculable importance to every soul of man.
We would earnestly wish these words of David to be under- stood in their full import, as declaring explicitly, that we are to be justified by a righteousness not our own, nor obtained by any works of ours ; but by a righteousness imputed to us, and apprehended entirely by faith, even by the " righteousness of Christ, which is unto all, and upon all them that believe1."]
From hence then we may see, how incontrovertibly the doctrine of justification by faith alone is established ; and,
1. How far it is from being a new doctrine —
[Wherever this doctrine is preached, a clamour is raised against it, just as it was in the Apostle's days"1, as a "new doc- trine :" but let any one look into our Articles and Homilies, and see, whether it be not the docti'ine of our Church. It is that very doctrine which constituted the basis of the Reforma- tion Then let us go back to the apostolic age : Can
any one read the epistles to the Romans and the Galatians, and doubt what St. Paul thought of it? If we go farther back, to David and to Abraham, we see that they sought
1 Rom. iii. 22. m Acts xvii. 19.