most fatal delusion. The means and the end are indissolubly connected in the councils of heavenh : and to hope that they shall ever be separated, is to deceive and ruin our own souls. If we are not careful to maintain good works, we entirely counteract all the purposes of God in his Gospel, and cut our- selves off from all hope of salvation1.]
2. That God has prepared and fitted his people to walk in themk —
[He has given to his people a new nature, and infused into their souls a new and heavenly principle, by which they " have passed from death unto life." They have received from Christ " that living water, which is in them as a well of water springing up unto everlasting life1." They can no more sin in the way they did before m. Under the influence of the Holy Ghost, they move in a new direction, affecting the things of the Spirit, as formerly they affected the things of the flesh". They are created in Christ Jesus unto good works; and the impulse given them in this new creation they obey. The metaphor here used, may, if not pressed too far, illustrate the matter, and set it in a clear point of view. God, when he created the heavenly bodies, appointed them their respective paths in the regions of space. To each he gave its proper impulse, having previously fitted it for the performance of the revolutions assigned it : and in their respective orbits he has ever since upheld them, so that they all without exception fulfil the ends for which they were created. Thus in the new creation, God has appointed to all their destined course through the vast expanse of moral and religious duty. He has also, at the time of its new creation, given to each soul the impulse necessary for it, together with all the qualities and dispositions proper for the regulation of its motions according to his will : and he yet further, by his continual, though in- visible, agency, preserves them in their appointed way0. But further than this the metaphor must not be pressed : for the heavenly bodies have neither consciousness nor volition ; but we have both : they too carry with them nothing that can cause an aberration from their destined course; whereas we have innumerable impediments, both within and without :
h 2 Thess. ii. 13,
1 Tit. ii. 4 — 8. Mark the eighth verse especially.
k This perhaps is, of the two, the more exact sense of the original.
I John iv. 14. m 1 John iii. 9.
II Rom. viii. 1 — 5. and Gal, v. 17.
° Men fit themselves for perdition : but it is God alone who fits any for glory. See Rom. ix. 2,3. where the same word is used as in the text. See also Isai. xxvi. 12.