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wrong. I make this observation: (1.) To shew that although my opponents come very near me in some things, and I go very near them in others, yet the difference between us is as essential as the difference between light and darkness, truth and error : And (2.) To remind them and myself, that we ought so much the more to exercise Christian forbearance towards each other, as we find it difficult, whenever we do not stand upon our guard, to do justice to every part of the truth, without seeming to dissent even from ourselves. However, our short-sightedness and twilight knowledge do not alter the nature of things. The truth of the Anti-Pharisaic and Anti-Crispian gospel is as immutable as its eternal Author; and whether I have marked out its boundaries with a tolerable degree of justness or not, I must say as the Heathen poet :

Est modus in rebus, sunt certi denique fines,
Quos ultra citraque nequit consistere rectum.

Truth is confined within her firm bounds, nay, there is a middle line equally distant from all extremes; on that line she stands, and to miss her, you need only step over it to the right hand or to the left.

A

SCRIPTURAL ESSAY

ON THE

ASTONISHING

Rewardableness of Works,

ACCORDING TO THE

COVENANT OF GRACE.

CONTAINING,

I. A variety of plain Scriptures, which shew that Heaven itself is the gracious Reward of the Works of Faith, and that Believers may lose that Reward by bad works.

II. An answer to the most plausible Objections of the Solifidians against this Doctrine.

III. Some Reflections upon the Unreasonableness of those who scorn to work with an Eye to the Reward, which God offers to excite us to Obedience.

To the Law and to the Testimony.

Is. viii. 8.

A

SCRIPTURAL ESSAY

ON THE ASTONISHING REWARDABLENESS OF WORKS
ACCORDING TO THE COVENANT OF GRACE.

PART FIRST.

HAVING particularly guarded, in the preceding discourse, the doctrine of Salvation by the covenant of grace, and having endeavoured to secure the foundation of the gospel against the unwearied attacks of the Pharisees; I shall now particularly guard the works of the covenant of grace, and by that mean I shall secure the superstructure against the perpetual assaults of the Antinomians; a part of my work this, which is so much the more important, as the use of a strong foundation is only to bear up an useful structure.

None but fools act without motive. To deprive a wise man of every motive to act, is to keep him in total inaction: And to rob him of some grand motive, is considerably to weaken his willingness to act, or his fervour in acting. The burning love of God is undoubtedly the most generous motive to obedience ; but alas! thousands of good men, like Cornelius, are yet stran→ gers to that powerful principle shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost: In thousands of weak believers, love is not yet properly kindled; it is rather a smoaking flax than a blazing fire; in thousands of Laodicean professors it is scarcely lukewarm; and in all apostates it is waxed cold. Therefore, in the sickly state of the church militant, it is as absurd in preachers

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