ward crucifixion as a brand or stamp causes sharp pain, or the cure of a bodily ailment consists in a sharp operation. For instance, writing to the Galatians, he says, "God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ 1;"-what Cross? He goes on to tell us;" by whom," or, rather, by which “the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world,"the Cross on Calvary, that is, issuing and completed in its reflection on his own soul. An inward crucifixion was the attendant process of justification. This passage is the more remarkable, because St. Paul is alluding to certain bodily wounds and sufferings, as being actually the mode, in his case, in which the Cross had been applied. He says to his converts, "the Jews compel you to be circumcised, but we Christians glory in another kind of circumcision, painful indeed, but more profitable. Our circumcision consists in the marks, the brands, of the Lord Jesus; which effect for us, what circumcision can but typify, which interest us in His life while interesting us in His passion. The saving Cross crucifies us in saving. Again; in a previous passage of the same Epistle, "A man is not justified by the Law, but by the faith of Christ"." Is this a light and pleasant doctrine? is then justification given without pain and discomfort on our part? so freely given as to be easily 1 Gal. vi. 4. 2 Gal. ii. 16. 20. so fully as to be lavishly? fully and freely doubtless, yet conferring fully what man does not take freely. He proceeds;—"I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” O easy and indulgent doctrine, to have the bloody Cross reared within us, and our heart transfixed, and our arms stretched out upon it, and the sin of our nature slaughtered and cast out. Again; in the same Epistle, "They that are Christ's, have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts'." It is remarkable that these three passages are from that Epistle in which the Apostle peculiarly insists on justification being through faith, not through the Law. It is plain he never thought of faith as the direct and absolute instrument of it. It should be observed how coincident this doctrine is with our Saviour's command to His disciples to "take up their Cross and follow Him." Our crosses are the lengthened shadow of the Cross on Calvary. To the same purport are the following texts:"We are buried with Him by baptism into death our old man is crucified with Him."-" Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof." 66 Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body; for we which live 1 Gal. V. are alway delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh "" The Cross, then, in which St. Paul gloried was not (what the word will literally mean, and which the Romanists sometimes seem to make it mean), the material cross on which Christ suffered,-as little is it (what persons among ourselves would take it to be, without even the plea of being literal), the actual Sacrifice on the cross, but it is that Sacrifice coming in power to him who has faith in it, and converting body and soul into a sacrifice. It is the Cross, realised, present, living in him, sealing him, separating him from the world, sanctifying him, afflicting him. Thus the great Apostle clasped it to his heart, though it pierced it through like a sword; held it fast in his hands, though it cut them; reared it aloft, preached it, exulted in it. And thus we in our turn are allowed to hold it, commemorating and renewing individually by the ministry of the Holy Ghost, the death and resurrection of our Lord. But enough has been said on the matter in hand. On the whole, then, I conclude as follows: that though the Gift which justifies us is, as we have seen, a something distinct from us and lodged in us, yet it involves in its idea its own work 1 Rom. vi. 4; Kiii. 14. 2 Cor. iv. 10, 11. in us, and (as it were) takes up into it that renovation of the soul, those holy deeds and sufferings, which are as if a radiance streaming from it. LECTURE VIII. RIGHTEOUSNESS VIEWED AS A GIFT AND AS GAL. ii. 20. "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” I Now propose to contrast the view of justification which has been drawn out in the last Lectures with that to which Romanists seem to be committed from the wording of the Tridentine Decree, to which they would fain confine the Fathers, into which some of our own writers have virtually fallen, and which, moreover, is unfairly imputed to many of our standard divines. As to the Protestant doctrine, on the other hand, which was a third in the discussion, I cannot go more deeply into what seems to me a system of words without ideas, and of distinctions without arguments. If I am told, in reply, that such a view of it arises from want of spiritual perception, such persons as discern not heavenly |