In the fifth place, the condition on which our participation of the benefits of redemption is suspended, is inconsistent with any form of the doctrine of subjective justification. We are never said to be justified on account of faith, considered either as an act or as a principle, as an exercise or as a permanent state of the mind Faith is never said to be the ground of justification. .Nor are we saved by faith as the source of holiness or of spiritual L lif - e in the soul, or as the organ of receiving the infused life of God. We are saved simply " by " faith, by receiving and resting upon Christ alone for salvation. The thing received is something out of ourselves. It is Christ, his righteousness, his obedience, the merit of his blood or death. We look to Him. We flee to Him. We lay hold on Him. We hide ourselves in Him. We are clothed in his righteousness. The Romanist indeed says, that an Ethiopian in a white robe does not become white. True, but a suit of armor gives security from the sword or spear, and that is what we need before attending to the state of our complexion. We need protection from the wrath of God in the first instance. The inward transformation of the soul into his likeness is pro- vided for by other means.
In the sixth place and finally, the fact that we are saved by grace proves that the ground of salvation is not in ourselves. The grace of God, his love for the unlovely, for the guilty and pol- luted, is represented in the Bible as the most mysterious of the divine perfections. It was hidden in God. It could not be dis- covered by reason, neither was it revealed prior to the redemption of man. The specific object of the plan of salvation is the mani- festation of this most wonderful, most attractive, and most glorious attribute of the divine nature. Everything connected with our salvation, says the Apostle, is intended for the " praise^ of the glory of his grace " (Eph. i. 6.) God hath quickened us, he says, and raised us up, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, in order " that in the ages to come, he might show the exceeding riches of his grace, in his kindness toward us, through Christ Jesus."
From their nature, grace and works are antithetical. The one excludes the other. What is of grace, is not of works. And by works in Scripture, in relation to this subject, is meant not individual acts only, but states of mind, anything and everything internal of which moral character can be predicated. When, therefore, it is said that salvation is of grace and not of works, it is thereby said that it is not founded upon anything in the be-