And that, till divine teaching pow'rful draw,
No learning will divorce them from the law.
Mere argument may clear the head, and force
A verbal, not a cordial clean divorce.

Hence many, taught the wholesome terms of art,
Have gospel heads, but still a legal heart.
Till sov'reign grace and pow'r the sinner catch,
He takes not Jesus for his only match.
Nay, works complete! ah! true, however odd,
Dead works are rivals with the living God.
Till Heav'n's preventing mercy clear the sight,
Confound the pride with supernatʼral light:
No haughty soul of human kind is brought
To mortify her self-exalting thought.

Yet holiest creatures in clay tents that lodge,
Be but their lives scann'd by the dreadful Judge,
How shall they e'er his awful search endure,
Before whose purest eyes heav'n is not pure?
How must their black indictment be enlarg'd,
When by him angels are with folly charg'd?
What human worth shall stand, when he shall scan?
O may his glory stain the pride of man.

How wond'rous are the tracks of divine grace! How searchless are his ways, how vast th' abyss!

Let haughty reason stoop, and fear to leap;
Angelic plummets cannot sound the deep.
With scorn he turns his eyes from haughty kings,
With pleasure looks on low and worthless things;
Deep are his judgments, sov'reign is his will,
Let ev'ry mortal worm be dumb, be still.

In vain proud reason swells beyond its bound;
God and his counsels are a gulf profound,

An ocean wherein all our thoughts are drown'd.

CHAPTER V.

ARGUMENTS AND ENCOURAGEMENTS TO GOSPEL MINISTERS TO AVOID A LEGAL STRAIN OF doctrine, anD ENDEAVOR THE SINNER'S MATCH WITH CHRIST BY GOSPEL MEANS.

SECTION I.

A LEGAL SPIRIT THE ROOT OF DAMNABLE ERRORS.

YE heralds great, that blow in name of God
The silver trump of gospel grace abroad;
And sound by warrant from the great I AM,
The nuptial treaty with the worthy Lamb:
Might ye but stoop th' unpolished muse to brook,
And from a shrub a wholesome berry pluck;
Ye'd take encouragement from what is said,
By gospel means to make the marriage bed.
And to your glorious Lord a virgin chaste to wed.
The more proud nature bears a legal sway,
The more should preachers bend the gospel way:
Oft in the church arise destructive schisms
From anti-evangelic aphorisms;

A legal spirit may be justly nam'd

The fertile womb of ev'ry error damn'd.

Hence Pop'ry, so connatʼral since the fall, Makes legal works like saviours merit all; Yea, more than merit on their shoulder loads, To supererogate like demi-gods.

Hence proud Socinians seat their reason high, 'Bove ev'ry precious gospel mystery,

Its divine Author stab, and without fear
The purple covert of his chariot tear.

With these run Arian monsters in a line,
All gospel truth at once to undermine!
To darken and delete, like hellish foes,
The brightest color of the Sharon Rose.
At best its human red they but decry,
That blot the divine white, the native dye.

Hence dare Arminians too, with brazen face,
Give man's free-will the throne of God's free grace;
Whose self-exalting tenets clearly show

Great ignorance of law and gospel too.

Hence Neonomians spring, as sundry call

The new law-makers, to redress our fall.
The law of works into repentance, faith,

Is chang'd, as their Baxterian Bible saith.
Shaping the gospel to an easy law,

They build their tott'ring house with hay and straw;

Yet hide, like Rachel's idols in the stuff,
Their legal hands within a gospel muff.

Yea, hence springs Antinomian vile refuse,
Whose gross abettors gospel grace abuse;
Unskill'd how grace's silken latchet binds
Her captives to the law with willing minds.

SECTION II.

A LEGAL STRAIN OF DOCTRINE DISCOVERED AND DISCARDED.

No wonder Paul the legal spirit curse,
Of fatal errors such a feeding nurse.
He, in JEHOVAH's great tremendous name,
Condemns perverters of the gospel scheme.
He damn'd the sophist rude, the babbling priest
Would venture to corrupt it in the least;
Yea, curs'd the heav'nly angel down to hell,

That daring would another gospel tell.*

Which crime is charg'd on these that dare dispense

The self-same gospel in another sense.

Christ is not preach'd in truth, but in disguise, If his bright glory half absconded lies.

* Gal. i. 7, 8.