for he “is made unto us wisdom and righteousness, and sanctification and redemption.”[98] Christ therefore justifies no one whom he does not also sanctify. For these benefits are perpetually and indissolubly connected, so that whom he illuminates with his wisdom, them he redeems; whom he redeems, he justifies; whom he justifies, he sanctifies. But as the present question relates only to righteousness and sanctification, let us insist upon them. We may distinguish between them, but Christ contains both inseparably in himself. Do you wish, then, to obtain righteousness in Christ? You must first possess Christ; but you cannot possess him without becoming a partaker of his sanctification; for he cannot be divided. Since, then, the Lord affords us the enjoyment of these blessings only in the bestowment of himself, he gives them both together, and never one without the other. Thus we see how true it is that we are justified, not without works, yet not by works; since union with Christ, by which we are justified, contains sanctification as well as righteousness. II. It is also exceedingly false, that the minds of men are seduced from an inclination to virtue, by our divesting them of all ideas of merit. Here the reader must just be informed, that they impertinently argue from reward to merit, as I shall afterwards more fully explain; because, in fact, they are ignorant of this principle, that God is equally liberal in assigning a reward to good works, as in imparting an ability to perform them. But this I would rather defer to its proper place. It will suffice, at present, to show the weakness of their objection, which shall be done two ways. For, first, when they say that there will be no concern about the proper regulation of our life without a hope of reward being proposed, they altogether deceive themselves. If they only mean that men serve God in expectation of a reward, and hire or sell their services to him, they gain but little; for he will be freely worshipped and freely loved, and he approves of that worshipper who, after being deprived of all hope of receiving any reward, still ceases not to worship him. Besides, if men require to be stimulated, it is impossible to urge more forcible arguments than those which arise from the end of our redemption and calling; such as the word of God adduces, when it inculcates, that it is the greatest and most impious ingratitude not reciprocally to “love him who first loved us;”[99] that “by the blood of Christ our consciences are purged from dead works, to serve the living God;”[100] that it is a horrible sacrilege, after having been once purged, to defile ourselves with new pollutions, and to profane that sacred blood;[101] that we have been “delivered out of the hand of our enemies,” that we “might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him, all the days of our life;”[102] that we are made “free from sin,” that with a free spirit we might “become the