[It greatly magnifies the grace of God in the salvation of fallen man. It sets forth that grace, in all its freeness, and in all its fulness. It offers salvation freely, " without money and without price." It offers salvation through the righteousness of another, even the righteousness of our incarnate God and Saviour. It offers salvation by faith alone, without works; saying, " To him that ivorketh not, but believeth in him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness V Nor does it make its offers to the most righteous only ; but to all, not excepting even the vilest of mankind ; saying, " Where sin hath abounded, grace shall much more abound ; that as sin hath reigned unto death, so shall grace reign, through righteous- ness, unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lordc."]
Hence men in every age have characterized it as
licentious —
[In St. Paul's day, many drew from his statements this inference, that, supposing his statements to be true, men might very safely " continue in sin, that so the grace of God," in pardoning it, " might be the more abundantly displayed." At this day also, wherever the Gospel is faithfully delivered, men bring the same objections against it. Because we offer salva- tion to the chief of sinners, saying, " All that believe shall be justified from all things'1," we appear to them to make light of sin. And because we declare, that the good works of men make no part of a man's justifying righteousness ; and that the best work that ever we performed would, if relied upon in ever so small a degree, not only not add any thing to the work of Christ, but would invalidate and render void all that he ever did and suffered for us; we seem to make light of holiness; since we declare, that the evil we have committed shall never condemn, nor shall the good that we may do ever justify, the believing soul. Men cannot imagine what inducement we can have to practise good works, if they are not to justify us ; or to abstain from sin, if it may so easily be blotted out by one simple exercise of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Hence the whole Gospel appears to them a strange, unintelligible, and licentious doctrine ; calculated only to mislead the simple, and palatable only to hypocrites and fanatics.]
But, in answer to all such objections, I will shew,
II. The security it gives for the practice of universal holiness — Doubtless, nothing but divine grace can secure the practice of holiness : and, to a man destitute of that
b Rom. iv. 5. c Rom. v. 20, 21. d Acts xiii. 39.