[5] An interesting expression of this sort of feeling is to be found in George Crabbe's poem, _The Library_. On the whole we must have improved since his day in our perception of the connexion of Christian doctrine with Christian practice. {178} DIVISION II. Sec. 1. CHAPTER IV. 17-24. _Christianity a new life._ [Sidenote: _New life in Christ_] The characteristic words of St. Paul's gospel--grace, forgiveness, mercy, liberty, justification by faith not by works--may naturally, when taken by themselves and isolated from their context, lead to a false thought of God as morally 'easy going,' and to a corrupt laxity of conduct. Such a result has shown itself within the area of modern history in the antinomianism of some Protestant bodies. But long before the Reformation St. Paul's words were 'wrested by the ignorant and unstedfast to their own destruction[1].' It was probably a misunderstanding of St. Paul's doctrine of justification by faith which called forth the protest of St. James' epistle. And indeed the traces of this tendency to pervert the gospel are apparent enough in {179} St. Paul's own epistles. Divine grace, it was even argued, can better show its largeness if we afford it an opportunity by the abundance of our sin. 'Let us continue in sin that grace may abound.' To this monstrous suggestion St. Paul replies, in his epistle to the Romans[2], that it rests on a complete misconception. Christian faith is an introduction into Christ. Believing we are baptized into Him. This means that we are to live as He lived towards the world of sin and towards God. It means that we surrender ourselves in a spirit of glad obedience to be moulded after His pattern. If our believing does not lead to this new living, beyond all question it is a spurious thing, and none of the Christian privileges attach to it. With a similar purpose St. Paul writes here to the Asiatics--newly-made Christians, who lived in the midst of an appallingly corrupt society, and whose inherited traditions of conduct were altogether lacking in self-restraint--to warn them against possible abuses of their Christian privileges and Christian liberty. To be a Christian is to be committed to a new life different utterly from the old life.