9. It is impossible indeed to have too high an esteem for _the faith of_ God’s _elect_. And we must all declare, _By grace ye are saved through faith:――not of works, lest any man should boast_. We must cry aloud to every penitent sinner, _Believe in the_ Lord Jesus Christ, _and thou shalt be saved_. But at the same time we must take care to let all men know, we esteem no faith but that _which worketh by love_: and that we are not _saved by faith_, unless so far as we are delivered from the power as well as the guilt of sin. And when we say, _Believe and thou shalt be saved_; we do not mean, “Believe and thou shalt step from sin to heaven; without any holiness coming between; faith supplying the place of holiness:” but, believe and thou shalt be holy: believe in the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt have peace and power together. Thou shalt have power from him in whom thou believest, to trample sin under thy feet; power to love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and to serve him with all thy strength. Thou shalt have power, _by patient continuance in well-doing_, to _seek for glory and honour and immortality_. Thou shalt both _do and teach_ all the commandments of God, from the least even to the greatest. Thou shalt teach them by thy life as well as thy words, and so _be called great in the kingdom of heaven_. IV. 1. Whatever other way we teach to the kingdom of heaven, to glory, honour and immortality, be it called the way of faith, or by any other name, it is in truth, the way to destruction. It will not bring a man peace at the last. For thus saith the Lord, _Verily I say unto you, except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven_. _The Scribes_, mentioned so often in the New Testament as some of the most constant and vehement opposers of our Lord, were not secretaries, or men, employed in writing only, as that term might incline us to believe. Neither were they _lawyers_, in our common sense of the word (altho’ the word νομικοί is so ♦rendered in our translation.) Their employment had no affinity at all, to that of a lawyer among us. They were conversant with the laws of God, and not with the laws of man. These were their study: it was their proper and peculiar business, to read and expound the law and the prophets; particularly in the synagogues. They were the ordinary, stated preachers among the _Jews_. So that if the sense of the original word was attended to, we might render it, the divines. For these were the men who made divinity their profession; and they were generally (as their name literally imports) men of letters; men of the greatest account for learning that were then in the Jewish nation.