will so renew them as to render them perfectly sinless ; for the flesh will continue to lust against the Spirit, as well as the Spirit against the flesh, to the latest hour of our lives'1: but he will so make the spiritual principle triumphant in the soul, as to leave in us no alloived sin, and so that he may present us to God as " Israelites indeed in whom there is no guile."]
In this, however, there must be the concurrence and co-operation of the believer himself; as will appear whilst I shew,
III. What is necessary to be done on our part, in order to secure the blessings which he has ob- tained for us —
Those who are addicted to system would alter the translation here, and read it, not, " if ye continue," but " since ye continue." But this is only one in- stance of many, wherein the advocates for human systems betray their determination to make every thing bend to their views. The translators of our Scriptures would indulge no such unhallowed par- tiality. They would in no case wrest the Scriptures to make them favour a party in the Church. They maintained a child-like simplicity ; and with scrupu- lous fidelity laboured to transmit to us the Scriptures in a perfect agreement with the inspired original. Of the propriety of the translation in this place I have no doubt : it is the very language of the Scriptures, in a thousand other places as well as this ; and it speaks to us a most important truth, namely, that we never can be presented blameless before God at last, unless we continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel.
1. It was by faith that we first obtained an interest
in Christ —
[It would have been to no purpose that Christ had died to reconcile us to God, if we had not on our part believed in him as our Mediator and Redeemer. The unbelieving world who die in their sins, are rather plunged the deeper into perdition, than delivered from it, by the intervention of Christ. Their rejection of him has aggravated their guilt exceedingly :
d Gal. v. 17.