2. The _foundation_ of religion. This foundation the scriptures have expressly laid in the life and death of him who was the Mediator of the new covenant, having been made, as a _surety_, responsible for the performance of its grand and awful stipulations. “Behold,” says Jehovah, “I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation.” Isa. xxviii. 16. 1 Pet. ii. 6. “Other foundation can no man lay,” says St. Paul, “than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” 1 Cor. iii. 11. This foundation, when it is laid in the heart by FAITH, which produces a dependence on the salvation of the Son of God, becomes the only basis of the sinner’s hopes, and forms within him a living and permanent principle of real godliness. Convinced of the evil of sin, and justly apprehensive of suffering its awful penalty, as a transgressor of the law, he looks for relief from his fears, and pardon for his offences, to “the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world.” Whatever is not built on this foundation may satisfy the conscience and comport with the religion of that man, who never saw his guilt in the mirror of God’s law; but every hope not founded on the Redeemer’s righteousness will prove infinitely presumptuous and dangerous, and nothing give peace to the conscience, but what secures the honour of the broken law, and provides an adequate satisfaction for the inflexible justice of Heaven; and nothing can do either, but the atoning blood of Jesus Christ applied by faith in that gospel testimony, which declares, that he who shed it, thought it no robbery to be equal with God, and presented himself on the cross a sin-atoning victim to Almighty God. However, therefore, we may admit the dictates of candour respecting some points of “doubtful disputation,” and embrace in Christian love the differing parties respectively; we can never give up the doctrine of the atonement, without yielding up to our adversaries, at the same time, the very essence of truth, the glory of the gospel, and the only foundation of our hopes and prospects for ever. Nay, we may boldly affirm, that the scheme of religion that is not formed upon this plan, wants every thing essential to the glory of the divine perfections, and every thing that can consistently secure the peace and salvation of man, as a sinner. All the opponents of this truth, who choose to discriminate themselves by names flattering to their pride, or declarative of their attachment to some stale and long-exploded heresy, are in the same predicament with Jews and Greeks; the basis of whose religion was pride and self-righteousness. What men call natural religion, rational religion, or New Jerusalem doctrine—those pompous schemes of human contrivance, emblazoned with glittering epithets to catch the unwary, and only suited to the wild fancy of visionaries and deists—I say, what men thus call religion, if not founded on the