self righteousness, and the licentious pleas of Antinomianism. And, by this arrangement, the truth is so guarded on all sides, that Christ, and faith, and works, have their respective place, without any injury or dishonor to one or the other. For, though Christ hath, and will have in all things the pre-eminence, and both faith and works act in subordination, and lay all their honors at the Redeemer’s feet; yet both are indispensably necessary, since without faith there is no pleasing God, and that faith which hath not works can save no man. This distinction, and the truths which arise from it, you will find vindicated in the 11th, 12th, and 13th articles of the Church of England. 6. As to faith and repentance, if men, when they call them the conditions of salvation, only mean, that we cannot be saved without them, in this point of view we perfectly agree. But if, under these terms, is conveyed an insinuation, either that they are performed by any power of the creature, or possess such a degree of merit, as to be intrinsically conditional of salvation, which I fear is often intended, we then enter our protest against not only the inaccuracy, but the dangerous error, couched under the expression. Both repentance and faith are the gifts of God. What is given, cannot be a condition of the love of the giver; but must be the effect of it. It is the greatest solecism in divinity and common sense, to say, that the favors bestowed are the conditions of antecedent affection. As well might we argue, that the effects produced in the earth by the sun’s rays, are the condition of his existence as the source of light and heat. Whereas the very reverse is true. The light of the universe, and the fertility of the earth, depend upon the influence of that great luminary; without which, the world would be a dungeon, and all creation a blank. Thus the Lord Jesus Christ shines in the firmament of his church as the Sun of Righteousness. The light of faith and the renovating influence of repentance, are those beneficial rays which he emits, as tokens of his love and power. The effects produced prove to individuals that this Sun shineth; but they do not make him shine. His glory is independent, as his goodness is undeserved. Besides, as the power to believe and repent, is from God, Acts, v. 31, John, vi. 29, these acts of the mind can possess no merit or proper conditionally, unless it can be supposed that a sinner has a right to expect heaven for what is not his own. And when so much is attributed to faith and repentance, the great object of both is forgotten. And that object is the Lord our righteousness; whose obedience and death were the great conditions of reconciliation; without which, one sinner could not have been saved. When we talk of the conditions of salvation, we should, therefore, remember, that “to do the will of the Father,” which implies the performance of these conditions, is represented in Psal. xl. 6, and Heb. x.