18. Is there any need, is there any possibility of saying more? Let us only abide by this declaration, and all the contention about this or that _particular phrase_ is torn up by the roots. Keep to this: “All who are humbled as repenting criminals at Christ’s feet, and rely as devoted pensioners on his merits, are in the way to a blessed immortality:” and what room for dispute? Who denies this? Do we not all meet on this ground? What then shall we wrangle about? A man of peace here proposes terms of accommodation to all the contending parties. We desire no better. We accept of the terms. We subscribe to them with heart and hand. Whoever refuses so to do, set a mark upon that man! He is an enemy of peace, a troubler of Israel, a disturber of the church of God. 19. In the mean time, what we are afraid of is this; lest any should use the phrase, “The righteousness of Christ,” or, “The righteousness of Christ is _imputed to me_,” as a cover for his unrighteousness. We have known this done a thousand times. A man has been reproved, suppose, for drunkenness. “O, said he, I pretend to no righteousness of _my own_: Christ is _my righteousness_.” Another has been told, that the extortioner, the unjust, shall not inherit the kingdom of God. He replies with all assurance, “I am unjust in myself, but I have a spotless righteousness in Christ.” And thus though a man be as far from the practice as from the tempers of a Christian, though he neither has the mind which was in Christ, nor in any respect walks as he walked, yet he has armour of proof against all conviction, in what he calls the _righteousness of Christ_. 20. It is the seeing so many deplorable instances of this kind, which makes us sparing in the use of these expressions. And I cannot but call upon all of you, who use them frequently, and beseech you in the name of God our Saviour, whose you are and whom you serve, earnestly to guard all that hear you, against this accursed abuse of them. O warn them (it may be they will hear _your_ voice) against _continuing in sin that grace may abound_! Warn them against making _Christ the minister of sin_! Against making void that solemn decree of God, _Without holiness no man shall see the Lord_, by a vain imagination of being _holy in Christ_. O warn them, that if they remain unrighteous, the righteousness of Christ will profit them nothing! Cry aloud, (Is there not a cause?) that for this very end the righteousness of Christ is imputed to us, that _the righteousness of the law may be fulfilled in us_, and that we may _live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world_.