actually does work. The order is thus: First, God loved us; secondly, thence we obtain faith to trust him; thirdly, we are thus saved; fourthly, we therefore love him who first loved us; fifthly, this love produces good thoughts, words, and works, as the fruits, not the root, of our salvation. Thus is He the author and finisher of our faith, and the author of salvation to all them that obey him. He has promised to all, as well as to David, to perfect the thing which concerneth his people: Whom he loveth, he loveth unto the end; trust him, therefore, evermore. Such is the Christian's doctrinal, practical, and experimental creed."-(Memoirs of the Rev. Legh Richmond, p. 429, 430.)

Here then is the result of the Rev. Legh Richmond's investigation of revealed truth, and of his own personal experiences-" Salvation is wholly of faith, from first to last: "The soul is saved by faith through grace without works." What then, we naturally ask, is Faith? We are told that it is a belief in the Lord Jesus Christ; and, by the same Apostle, that it is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. It seems, then, to be some process of the

reasoning faculties united with the affections of the heart, by which we believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and by which belief the mind acquires the power of giving a reality to ideal objects, a substantial existence to what is invisible to the eye, and imperceptible to the senses of man, in this his tabernacle of clay. To say, then, we are saved by this faith, under the grace or favour of God, is to assert that we are saved by some act of our own; to make our faith the efficient cause of our salvation, which seems as unscriptural as to say we are saved by our good works. But the next assertion is much more startling, for we are told not only that we are saved by faith, but by faith without works. Now, is this the doctrine of Scripture? The single text which this eminently zealous and pious man himself produces in proof of it is this: "What must I do to be saved,' cried the gaoler: Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,' was Paul's reply." But, though St. Paul bids him believe in Jesus Christ, does he declare that, by this single intellectual process of mind, which we call believing, he could be at once saved, without any operation of that belief upon the

heart, making itself visible in the conduct? Of works nothing indeed is here said; and why? Because the internal principle and source of all good works was first to be secured, and because good works have nothing to do with a sinner's flying to the Saviour for reconciliation and pardon. To say nothing, however, about good works, where all mention of them would have been quite out of place, and positively to declare that the soul is saved without works, is a very palpable and a very important distinction. But are there not other texts that justify this assertion in its utmost latitude? The strongest texts I can find are the following: "For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast;" Eph. ii. 8, 9. The declaration of the Apostle is this; that through our faith, not by our faith (for our faith no more than our works is the meritorious cause of our salvation), by the grace of God we are saved; a salvation that is to be considered a free and undeserved gift of God, not due to ourselves nor to our own works; and the reason is given, "lest any man should boast," should vaunt himself on

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his merits; should, instead of throwing himself on his knees in the dust, dare to stand up and barter, with his Creator, good works for salvation -the merits of a life defiled, in the best of men, by infirmities and sins, for the holiness and happiness of eternity. But here again the distinction is surely sufficiently broad between the assertion that we are saved without works, and that our salvation is not of works.

The next strongest text I can discover is from the same apostle; Tit. iii. 5: "Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost." But to say that the kindness or love of God hath saved us, not by works of righteousness which we have done, is a very different thing from saying that he hath saved us without any works of righteousness; could not possibly be the case, if, after our baptismal regeneration, we had obtained, as is here. supposed, the renewing of the Holy Ghost, which the Apostle says was shed, on those he alludes to, abundantly through Jesus Christ our Lord.

which

But are there no texts to sanction the use of the very strong expression WITHOUT Works? There are two which may be quoted for this purpose. Rom. iii. 28: "Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law." The apostle's argument is this: As all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God, they cannot be justified; i. e. absolved and acquitted from the guilt and punishment of their past sins by the deeds of the law; for this law they have often broken; but freely by the grace of God, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Therefore, says he, we conclude, that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law; or, as the word in the original Greek may signify, independent of the deeds of the law; such imperfect obedience to the deeds of the law making no part of that redemption which was purchased by the merits and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The proposition seems to be, that our justification, or the forgiveness of our sins, is not partly by the redemption of Christ and partly by our own imperfect obedience, but wholly and entirely by the merits and atonement of Christ; for the