"I assert that we are free by the gospel from the condemnation of the law." "But where do you find that we are free from the obligation of obeying it? For my own part, I do not combine the doctrine of grace, to which I most cordially assent, with any doctrine which practically denies the voluntary agency of man. Nor, in my adoption of the belief of that voluntary agency, do I, in the remotest degree, presume to abridge the sovereignty of God. I adopt none of the metaphysical subtilties, none of the abstruse niceties of any party, nor do I imitate either in the reprobation of the other, firmly believing that heaven is peopled with the humble and the conscientious out of every class of real Christians." "Still I insist that if Christ has delivered me from sin, sin can do me no harm." "My dear Mr. Tyrrel, if the king of your country were a mighty general, and had delivered the land from some powerful enemy, would it show your sense of the obligation, or your allegiance as a subject, if you were to join the enemy he had defeated? By so doing, though the country might be saved, you would ruin yourself. Let us not then live in confederacy with sin, the power of which, indeed, our Redeemer has broken, but both the power and guilt of which the individual is still at liberty to incur." "Stanley, I remember when you thought the gospel was all in all." "I think so still; but I am now, as I was then, for a sober consistent gospel, a Christianity which must evidence itself by its fruits. The first words of the apostle after his conversion were, 'Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?' When he says, 'so run that ye may obtain,' he could never mean that we could obtain by sitting still, nor would he have talked of 'laboring _in vain_,' if he meant that we should not labor at all. We dare not persist in any thing that is wrong, or neglect any thing that is right, from an erroneous notion that we have such an interest in Christ as will excuse us from doing the one, or persisting in the other." "I fancy you think that a man's salvation depends on the number of good actions he can muster together." "No, it is the very spirit of Christianity not to build on this or that actual work, but sedulously to strive for that temper and those dispositions which are the seminal principles of all virtues; and where the heart struggles and prays for the attainment of this state, though the man should be placed in such circumstances as to be able to do little to promote the welfare of mankind, or the glory of God, in the eyes of the world; this very habitual aim and bent of the mind, with humble sorrow at its low attainments, is in my opinion no slight degree of obedience. "But you will allow that the Scriptures affirm that Christ is not only a sacrifice but a refuge, a consolation, a rest."