Be as

careful? Cast all your care upon him. Set the Lord always before your eyes, for he is on your right side that you shall not be then moved. Behold the goodness of God towards me. I am careless, being fast closed in a pair of stocks, which pinch me for very straitness; and will you be careful? I will not have that unseemly addition to your name. your name pretendeth, for doubtless you have no other cause but so to be. Pray, I beseech you, that I may be still careless in my careful estate, as you have cause to be careless in your easier condition. Be thankful, and put away all care, and then I shall be joyful in my strait present care.

to

Commend me to all our brethren, and desire them pray for me, that I may overcome my temptations: for the devil rageth against me. I am put in the stocks in a place alone, because I would not answer to such articles, as they would charge me withal in a corner at the Bishop's appointment, and because I did not come to mass when the Bishop sent for me, I will lie all the days of my life in the stocks, by God's grace, rather than I will consent to the wicked generation. Praise God, and be joyful, that it hath pleased him to make us worthy to suffer somewhat for his name sake. The devil must rage for ten days. Commend me to Master F. and thank him for his law books; but neither law nor equity will take any place among these bloodthirsty ones. I would for your sake their unjust dealings were noted unto the Parliament-house, if it might avail. God shorten these evil days! I have answered the Bishop meetly plain already; and I said unto him, if he will call me in open judgment, I will answer him as plainly as he

will require: otherwise I have refused, because I fear they will condemn me in hugger-mugger. The peace of God be with you, my dear brother. I can write no more for lack of light, and that I have written I cannot read myself, and God knoweth it is written uneasily. I pray God you may pick out some understanding of my mind towards you. Written in a coal-house of darkness, out of a pair of painful stocks, by thine own in Christ,

To be Continued.

JONH PHLIPOT.

ON JUSTIFICATION.

(From the unpublished works of Lavington,)

'Justification is an act of God's free grace, whereby he pardoneth all our sins, and accepteth us as righteous in his sight, only for the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, and received by faith alone.'

By this account of it, you see that to be justified is not to be made inherently, or inwardly, righteous or holy, for that rather belongs to sanctification; but it signifies a person's being acquitted or discharged, as is done in common courts of justice. Thus you read, Deut. xxv. 1, "If there be a controversy between men, and they come into judgment that the judges may judge them, then they shall justify the righteous and

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condemn the wicked." They shall justify, that is, they shall acquit him, pronounce him not guilty, and set him at liberty. So when a sinner, who had been charged with a violation of God's law, is absolved and set at liberty, he is said to be justified; not because be was innocent and the law could find no sufficient cause of condemnation in him, (for there is proof enough of his guilt,) but because Christ undertook, as the sinner's surety, to suffer the penalty which the law had denounced against the offender. But this will be further explained.

As sin brought with it a twofold misery, namely, loss of God's favour, and a liability to wrath, so grace introduces us into a twofold blessedness, a freedom from condemnation by the forgiveness of our sins, and a return to the favour of God by the acceptance of our persons as righteous. The forgiveness of sins stands first, as that is the grand cause of our distance from God, and offensiveness to him. Though sin be found in the believer, and the cry of it for vengeance comes up to heaven, yet God will not hear it so as to condemn him for it. Indeed the justified person will see as much evil in sin, and as much reason to condemn himself, as if he had never been forgiven; but then he is freed from all terrifying fears of eternal condemnation. What a blessing that is, I hope your experience will soon tell you. Suppose now you owed a considerable sum, and had nothing to pay, and were threatened with a gaol, and were ready to die with the thoughts of how long you might lie, and what you might suffer there; and suppose some friend, hearingof your poverty and distress, should go unknown to you and pay your whole debt, and bring you a dis

charge signed by your creditor, how careful would you be of your receipt, and how thankful to him that procured it for you! But forgiveness is not all.—

Justification includes also our being accepted as righteous. This is considerably more than the other; for a criminal may have his life spared, he may be forgiven his offences, and yet not be taken into favour again as formerly. In that case a justified person hath been compared to Absalom, when he fled for his life for a capital crime, and upon Joab's intercession with David was so far pardoned as to have leave to return: he would hardly accept of such an imperfect pardon: he looked on his return to Jerusalem as an insignificant privilege unless he was permitted to see the king's face, and enjoy his former favour. Therefore this also is included in the account which the Scripture gives us of this gracious transaction, Rom. v. 19; "For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous:" and 2 Cor. v. 21, “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."

There is nothing in man to merit his justification. Alas, alas! man merit the favour of God! as well might a beggar with a handful of dirt think to purchase a kingdom. Pride hath put many on the attempt, and various have been the methods which carnal reason hath invented to support it, but when they came to be weighed in the balance of the sanctuary, they are all found wanting. Job well knew what little cause the best had for boasting, when he said, "How should man be just with God?

If he will contend with him he cannot answer him one of a thousand: if I wash me with snow water, and make my hands never so clean yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and my own clothes would abhor me; for he is not a man that I should answer him, or that we should come together in judgment:" and yet you know Job was 66 a perfect man, and an upright, oue

that feared God and eschewed evil."

Justification, then, inherent is not for righteousness, but by the righteousness of Christ imputed to us. Christ offered, and God consented, that since we were utterly incapable of satisfying the demands of the law ourselves, what he did and suffered should be reckoned to us, and should be accepted by God as if it were actually and properly our own. God, in justifying sinners, though mercy shines so gloriously throughout the whole of it, yet proceeds according to law. That which satisfies the law will satisfy him. Now our righteousness doth not satisfy the law; we do not, we cannot, satisfy the curse of the law by suffering, nor the precept of the law by obeying; but Christ hath done both; he hath fulfilled all righteousness; he hath magnified the law, and made it honourable; " for what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin condemned sin in the flesh; that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit," Romans viii. 8. And this is enough to put an end to the dispute about justification, whether it be by works or by faith. If our works do fully answer God's law by all means let them have the power of our salvation; but if not, if