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the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long suffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance??

The covenant of the new dispensation is a covenant of love founded upon the free gift of salvation;-but, at the same time, it is a covenant of indispensable holiness. The tenderness of its author is shown in the forgiveness of repented and forsaken sin, but not in permitting a continuance in transgression. There is nothing like connivance at crime in the principles of the Gospel. Through its medium, on the contrary, mercy and truth have met togther, righteousness and peace have kissed each other.' For, the very restoration of man to the favour of the Father, implies a restoration to the image of his likeness,—a restoration to a capacity of increasing in heavenly wisdom,—a restoration to a state from which spirituality and holiness are inseparable; and redemption, by the evident analogy of the metaphor, presupposes a right to

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Rom. ii. 4.

the services of those who have been bought with

a price.

The tenderness of our High Priest, therefore, is a sufficient motive for appealing to his compassion for the remission of sins, and the gift of eternal life; but will neither authorize us to entertain any reasonable hope while we remain alienated from him in affection and pursuits, nor warrant our continuing in sin, that grace may abound.

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CHAPTER VIII.

The Prudence of Christ's Ministry.

THE Gospels ascribe to our Lord several express directions on the subject of the prudence which ought to be observed in the discharge of ministerial duties. Of this nature are the following passages.

'Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you.' 'Beware of men. . When they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another.' 'Be ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves.' Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his Lord hath made ruler over his household to give them meat in due season?"

! Matt. vii. 6. x. 16, 17, 23. xxiv. 45.

Now the moral to be inferred from these texts, is the importance of such a cautious observance of characters and times and places, as may prevent any unnecessary offence being reflected on the Christian ministry by an imprudent zeal not sufficiently tempered by circumspection and judgement.

Such a spirit was eminently needed by our Lord, as the prophet of a new dispensation. With every man's hand against him, with the brethren even of his own household for his foes, without a friend with whom he could take sweet counsel in his difficulties, deprived of the ordinary sources of human sympathy, which sustain and strengthen the mind in its moments of dejection, surrounded by men of different sects, who, though they differed in every other particular, conspired together in seeming harmony, and dissembled their personal animosities, for the purpose of indulging their common hatred against Christ, it was necessary for him to weigh every act and word with no common attention, and to sit as it were in previous judge

ment on every thing which would fall under the observation of his adversaries. That he stood the test of such an ordeal, is a strong internal evidence of his divine mission. Subject a teacher, whose pretensions are merely human, to the same trial, and his incompetency to support it will be at once apparent.

With regard to our Lord, however, thus much is certain on the authority of witnesses who were never contradicted during their lifetime, and whose credit has remained unimpaired in spite of the attacks of the enemies of Christianity in succeeding ages. After the most diligent inquiry which malice could suggest, a ministry of three years duration could furnish to its determined opponents no plausible ground of complaint, on which an accusation could be founded with any tolerable hope of success. Had there been a single ebullition of intemperate zeal, it would have marked out its author as an enthusiast and fanatic, who required to be put down by the strong arm of the law out of regard to the security of the public. On

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