does come, not only will all that you are now doomed to bear, receive from him a gracious and a glorious recompence, but your reward will be enhanced by mingling with those spirits of the just made perfect, to whose faith, and comfort, and attainments, you had here been honoured to contribute, even when you were forsaken of all earthly joys, and borne down by the weight of accumulated and unrelieved adversities.

APPENDIX.

Note A, p. 138.

A FULL assurance of faith may respect the testimony of God to Christ, or it may refer to Christ as received and trusted in for salvation, or it may mean that the believer has an unfaultering conviction and feeling of his own personal safety as a child of God. This last mentioned assurance, it appears to me, follows our reception of Christ as an all sufficient Saviour, just as our reception of Christ follows the credit that we give to God's testimony respecting him. It is an inference from saving faith, and not to be identified with saving faith itself. I am told in Scripture, that whosoever believeth in the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved; but I am not told in Scripture-it is no part of revelation, that I am to be saved. The offer of salvation is made to me, as it is made to every sinner. Neither I nor any one else, however, can appropriate the salvation, unless there be faith in him by whom the salvation has been wrought out, and to believers in whom alone, it is promised or can be conveyed. All this is to my understanding as clear as any proposition in Christianity. And, therefore, I cannot but regard the mixing up of the full assurance of a personal interest in Christ's redemption with the faith which takes and relies upon Christ as he is presented in the gospel, to be a violation of sound reasoning and a misinterpretation of Scripture doctrine.

I do not say that a man may not have full assurance of faith, as to his personal safety, the very moment after he is satisfied in his own mind that he believes in Christ; and I do not say that even then his assurance may not be united with the faith to which eternal life is annexed, so that were he to die immediately, his admission

into heaven would take place, and prove that his assurance had been justified in fact. But he cannot warrantably have any certain feelings as to his safety unless he be conscious of believing-though the mind is so accustomed to processes of this kind, that it is not necessary for him to sit down and set the case before his own observation in the form of a regular syllogism-deliberately weighing the truth of the premises, and then as deliberately studying the legitimacy of the connection between the premises and the conclusion. And considering that saving faith in Christ is inseparably connected with the process of regeneration, and is itself the master principle of holiness, I should deem it altogether absurd to maintain that he was as much entitled to cherish a full assurance at the period alluded to as he is entitled to do so after such an experience as will demonstrate evidentially to himself and to all around him, that a moral change had actually taken place, and that divine grace had brought him " from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God." Could I bring myself to admit this, I should be obliged to set at nought the most approved maxims and the best established deductions that have a place in the philosophy of human character, and to discard all those declarations and precepts of the Bible which speak of the necessity of self-examination as to our own spiritual state, and of the test by which we are to judge of the spiritual state of others, and which are both numerous and explicit.

Were I visiting an impenitent sinner on his deathbed, I should in faithfulness and compassion offer Christ to him, in the name of God, as a mighty and a willing Redeemer to all who believe in him. And I should feel myself called upon to represent the necessity of his believing in Christ for his own deliverance, both from the curse of the law and from the bondage of corruption; and were I to see his mind, even at the last hour, giving way to the message which I had taught him, and were I to hear him renouncing the refuges of lies in which he had hitherto trusted, and declaring his implicit reliance on God's revealed mercy, and on Christ's meritorious obedience, and casting himself entirely upon the finished work of the Saviour, and expressing in strong language his assurance and his comfort and his glad anticipations of heaven, I should not feel myself at liberty to put a negative either on his confidence or his joy. I see nothing here inconsistent with the truths of the Gospel, or beyond the achievement of that power to which every instance of

salvation must be ascribed. I may have been privileged to witness a signal and striking triumph of divine grace, and I cannot discourage the hope which rises within me, that a soul has been snatched from destruction and translated into glory.

But am I therefore to forget, that the individual whose case I have been supposing, has had no time and no opportunity for manifesting that renewal of the heart without which he could not go into God's celestial presence, or for proving the reality and genuineness of that faith which, while it was the necessary instrument of his justification, was equally essential as the spring and principle of all acceptable submission to the divine will,-am I to forget all this in the consideration of every other case of conversion, apparent or real, and to treat all to whom I deliver the message of reconciliation, as if it were the same thing whether they were on the brink of eternity, or were to be favoured with a prolonged residence in this scene of trial, and of duty, and of preparation? Am I to leave them satisfied with an assurance, however full and strong, of their being in a state of salvation, and to be continually inculcating upon them the encouragement of that feeling as the grand secret both of holiness and of consolation, and to neglect those practical tests of an inward spiritual change, which reason itself would dictate as highly expedient at least, if not absolutely requisite, and to throw away as useless all the Scriptures, which teach us to be anxious about the well-being of our souls and the possession of saving graces, while they prescribe the means by which these are to be satisfactorily ascertained? I can conceive nothing more foolish or more dangerous. There is not only no authority given to us to say to any one, "If you have no doubt of your personal salvation then you are a child of God," but were I to hold such language I might be a minister of sin, of delusion, and of death. My warrant bids me say, " If you truly believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have the divine word for it that you shall never perish but have everlasting life; and having true faith in Christ, you may be fully assured that the salvation which he proffers is yours, and therefore you may be glad in the Lord. But this is a matter of the deepest concern; the deceitfulness of your heart is one reason why a Redeemer is so necessary for you; you are subject to many deceptive influences from within and from without; you cannot be too careful and assiduous in ascertaining the truth of your spiritual condition, and therefore submit yourselves to the guidance and di

rection of that same Spirit who leads the sinner to Christ and works faith in him, and fills him with the peace of believing. You be lieve: Examine yourselves whether you be in the faith.'_' Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.' Now are you born of God?-Remember that whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world;' Have you overcome the world?— Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin;' Do you commit sin?— Whosoever is born of God doeth righteousness;' Are you righteous?—If you are a child of God, you will love God, you will honour him, you will obey him, you will delight to hold communion with him. Are you characterized by these graces and attainments? &c. &c. &c."

It has always occurred to me as somewhat strange that the First Epistle of John should be the strong hold of those on whose opinions I am animadverting. For it seems to be the great object of the Apostle to guard his readers against the delusion of making a speculative belief and a religious profession the ground of confidence and hope. He does, indeed, speak of an unwavering faith as a privilege of the true Christian. But at the same time it is abundantly plain, that the principal design of what he says is to enforce the necessity of practical godliness and purity, and to hold out these as the surest attestations to our being "God's children by faith in Christ," and as our safest, though not our only warrants, for entertaining confidence, as standing in that happy relation to him.

Does it never occur to the advocates for unqualified assurance, that those who possess that feeling may be guilty of backsliding, while the feeling remains entire? Or have they never met with instances of this, even among the persons whom they regarded as the best examples of the truth and efficacy of the doctrine? Or have they never witnessed cases where that doctrine, though fully realized, was accompanied with much ignorance and many imperfections, which in all probability would not have long existed excepting for its paralysing and self-satisfying influence? And who does not see that the grand remedy for such evils is a habitual inspection and examination of those moral evidences, which alone can demonstrate and put beyond doubt the reality of faith and the operations of grace, a method of treating the subject which reason would prescribe, even while admitting the doctrine of full assurance, and which our Saviour and his Apostles uniformly adopted, not only by direct exhortation and explicit maxims to that purpose, but by minute de