shall not become a ground of decision, either against us or in our favour, as much as any other work. It is as much " a command from God, that we believe in his Son, as that we should love one another*1:" and our compliance with it must equally be made a subject of inquiry at that day. We may think it strange, perhaps, that God should take such matters into account in the final judgment: but, whatever opinion we may form respecting it, God will then say, " Cast out the bond-woman and her son : for the son of the bond-woman shall not be heir with the son of the free-woman." It will not be found a matter of such indifference, then, whether we believed in Christ or not, and whether we embraced the cove- nant of grace. No : this new covenant contains all the wonders of Divine wisdom, and love, and mercy : and, if we flee not to it from the terrors of the broken law, and from the fallacious hopes which are engendered by pride, his sentence will come forth against us, to our irreparable and eternal ruin. Take ye care then, beloved, that ye deceive not your own souls. Examine diligently whose children ye are, and to which family ye belong. Renounce all dependence on your own works, and lay hold on the promises of God in Christ Jesus. So shall "you, like Isaac, be the children of promise r;" and with him be partakers of an everlasting inheritance.]
i 1 John iii. 23. r ver. 28.