other hand, ver. 27. _When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness_; that is, they who have been guilty of these abominations shall reform their lives, or turn from their idolatry, murders, adulteries, oppressions, and other vile crimes, that the people in general were charged with, by the prophet, which are assigned as the reason of God’s sending this dreadful judgment of the captivity; I say, if there be such an instance of reformation, _he shall save his soul alive_; that is, either he shall be delivered from the captivity, or shall be preserved from those temporal judgments that either went before or followed after it. This reformation, and deliverance from these judgments, includes in it something less than saving grace, and a right to eternal life, which is inseparably connected with it, so that if nothing else be intended by the _righteous_ and _wicked man_; and if the judgments threatened, or their deliverance from them, in case of reformation, includes no more than this, it is evident, that it does not in the least suppose, that any true believer shall apostatize or fall from a state of grace. As we may distinguish between eternal death and temporal judgments; so we must distinguish between a person’s abstaining from the vilest abominations, as a means to escape these judgments; and his exercising those graces that accompany salvation. There may be an external reformation in those who have no special grace, if nothing farther be regarded than a person’s moral character, or inoffensive behaviour in the eye of the world. If we only consider him as abstaining from those sins which are universally reckoned disreputable among those who make any pretensions to religion, and in this respect he be denominated a righteous man, such an one may turn away from his righteousness and become immoral and profligate, and so be reckoned among the number of apostates: nevertheless he cannot be said to apostatize or fall from the grace of God, since moral virtue or the exercise of righteousness in our dealings with men is as much inferior to saving grace, as a form of godliness is to the power thereof. 2. As to the other scripture, mentioned in the objection, it is generally urged against us as an unanswerable argument, taken from the express words thereof, to prove the possibility of the saints’ apostacy; and our translation is charged with a wilful mistake, to serve a turn, and make the text speak what it never intended, since all who understand the original must allow that it ought to be rendered, _If he draw back_, which supposes that the just man may apostatize, or draw back unto perdition. To which it may be replied,