But I think this opinion to be wrong, for these two reasons. First: It is contrary to all that we know of the apostle and his history. When was he ever in this state of bondage to sin? Before conversion he was a pharisce, and one of the strictest sort: he was not only in his own opinion free from this miserable bondage to sin of which he here speaks, but he imagined that he was able to keep all the law of God, and even to do more than God required. He was flushed with false hope, and alive to a vain confidence, up to the very moment of his being on the way to Damascus, when, at the voice of Christ, or rather at his appearance, he fell down dead as a pharisee, and rose up a disciple of Jesus. Therefore it cannot be of himself in an unconverted state that he here speaks.

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Again we think the language employed in this chapter of willingness to good, and unwillingness to evil, far too strong for any man in an unconverted state. Can any such man say of all the evil that he does, that he "would not?" Can such a man say, "I delight in the law of God after the inward man ?" What! does he then delight in all the parts of the law of God; in those parts which accuse, and condemn, and curse him? Is his mind so thoroughly conformed to that of God as to approve all that He loves, and to hate all that He hates; and that in a spiritual manner, "after the inward man?" In spite of Moses Stuart himself I cannot subscribe to this opinion.

But there is another opinion totally adverse to this-that the apostle is here speaking in his state as a Christian at the time he wrote this epistle; that is, in the character of a matured and confirmed Christian. This has been the opinion of the generality of commentators and divines of the Calvinistic school, from the time of Augustan nearly down to the present day. They contend, in support of it, that the conflict with sin is always the same in the Christian; and some have gone so far as to assert that "the old man" in the Christian is as strong at the last moment of his life as it was the first moment of his conversion. This opinion, however, I conceive to be equally wrong with the other, for the following reasons.

It does not agree with the design of the apostle in this chapter, and in the whole of this epistle: for the epistle is argumentative, and every separate part must have a bearing on the general design. The design of the apostle in this epistle, was to convince, especially the Jews at Rome, that the law of God was neither an instrument of justification nor of sanctification; but the gospel of both. He has

shown in the previous chapters, that it was not an instrument of justification, for it could only convince and condemn; and, therefore, all who were justified, were justified by "faith in the Lord Jesus Christ without the deeds of the law." In this chapter he begins to show, that neither was the law an instrument of sanctification, in that it was "weak through the flesh;" that it could only stir and goad sin by being used to oppose it; that, therefore, we must look out for something else; and that this was, the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Now how would it have accorded with this design, to have shown that the Christian, in his mature and confirmed state, would not be able to keep the law, nor to become sanctified? That would be proving too much; that would be proving, not only that the law, but the Gospel also, could not be the instrument of sanctification, and would be quite foreign to his design. Therefore, we conclude, he could not be referring to the matured and confirmed Christian.

And as it does not conform to his design, so neither does it agree with the progressive representations of this and the following chapters. The seventh chapter of the Romans should never have been separated from the eighth if it stops at the close of that, it stops in the midst of a consecutive and progressive representation. And who does not see that the man in the eighth chapter is in a very different state from the man in the seventh, though the same man? In the seventh, he says, "The good that I would I do not; and how to perform that which is good I find not:" "I am carnal, sold under sin:" "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?" But towards the end, he exclaims, "I thank God, Jesus Christ my Lord." Then he goes on in the eighth chapter to say, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." Now to say that the apostle in the seventh chapter had been describing a Christian in his high state, is to say that he might get much higher in the present life, for the eighth chapter evidently places him so: and therefore I conclude, that in the seventh chapter he could not be describing the Christian in his confirmed and matured condition.

For, thirdly, it is not agreeable to truth and experience. It is not true of confirmed and matured Christians that they always do the evil they would not, and that they always fail to do the good that they would. It may be true of some half-hearted and sluggish Christians: they may be "carnal, sold under sin ;" their "old man"

may be as strong in them at the last as it is at the first. But it is not true of such Christians as Paul, who tells us, that he "kept under his body," and "brought it into subjection," and that he had " a conscience void of offence towards God and towards men." It is not true of such Christians as the apostle John describes, when he says, "Whoso is born of God, doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God." Nay, what does David say of the working of the principle of regeneration in the elect of God under the former economy? He says, “They also do no iniquity; they walk in thy way :" and of himself, he says, "I was also upright before him, and I kept myself from mine iniquity." Look at these portraits, and then look at the portrait in the seventh of the Romans, and say whether that can be the portrait of a confirmed and matured Christian.

Then what is the alternative? Look at the person which I described in the commencement, in the incipient stages of formation of the Christian character. See if his case does not agree with every part of the representation in the chapter before us, and with the design of the apostle in writing this epistle. So exactly does it agree that such persons unconsciously have made use of the language of the apostle to describe their diversified feelings. They "consent to the law that it is good;" they "delight in it;" from the working of the new principle which is formed within their breast: they strive to keep it, but they fail, they faint, they fall, and that rapidly, as we have already stated, until in a fit of desperation they cry, "Whowhere is he that shall deliver me?" Then they catch a glimpse of the mode of deliverance revealed in the Gospel; they enter into "the liberty wherewith Christ has made his people free;" and the eighth chapter is descriptive of their experience" the righteousness of the law is fulfilled in them who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."

There is one formidable objection to this view, which it would not be fair in me to pass over. It may be asked, At what period can the apostle be thought to represent himself as having this precise experience? Was he not a Pharisee up to the time of his conversion? And did not his miraculous conversion in one instant change him into a decided disciple of Jesus Christ? How then can the representations of this chapter be true of him in this point of view?

I conceive the objection may be disposed of in two ways. First: the apostle is speaking of what is common to converted persons at

large. If, therefore, his miraculous and extraordinary conversion. had not allowed him to go through that precise experience, he would not be prevented from speaking of himself in this manner, as that which belongs to all converted persons. Such a mode of speaking is by no means uncommon in the Scriptures. To allude but to one instance: the apostle puts himself among those persons who will be alive on the earth when Jesus Christ shall come to judge the world. He says, "We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye."

But, secondly: it is not improbable that the apostle did go through something of this kind during the interval which elapsed between his saying to Christ on the way to Damascus, "What wilt thou have me to do?" and Ananias coming to him at Damascus, to give him sight along with the gift of the Holy Spirit. During those three days and nights that elapsed, we know that he was marvellously and miraculously taught of God; and he might learn in those three days and nights all that about sin, about the excellence of the law, about human imbecility, and about the mode of divine deliverance which he here describes, and which many often do not learn in as many years.

Thus I have detailed to you our reasons for believing that the apostle in the seventh chapter is speaking of himself and Christians, not in their confirmed and matured state, but in the introductory stages, and during the process of the formation of their Christian character. If I am anxious for you to embrace this view, it is not because it is mine, but because I hold it to be correct, and to be of the greatest importance, and because I conceive the other view to be most pernicious. It came in, as I have already hinted, by Augustan. Before his time, the early Christians never supposed the apostle in this chapter to be speaking of the confirmed and advanced Christian; neither did Augustan himself till he had a controversy with Pelagius. Pelagius contended that man had not fallen altogether from good; that there is a principle left in him which inclined him to approve of that which is good, and to seek after it: and he quoted this very chapter in support of his opinion. Augustan, finding himself hard pressed, went to the other extreme, and denied that the apostle was speaking here as an unconverted man, and contended that he was speaking as a confirmed and mature Christian: and that has been the notion of many divines since that time, and I cannot help thinking, with a very fatal influence upon cha

racter. My conviction is, that many a Christian has submitted to a defeat from temptation, and yielded many a victory to inbred sin, from thinking that such was the case with the great apostle, who, but for that thought, would have been incapable, and properly so, of such pitiful succumbency. If we mistake our rule we shall go wrong with greater obstinacy than if we had no rule to go by. If the advanced Christian goes by the experience of Paul when he was only a noviciate, how can he ever make any proficiency? Whether this and other causes have not operated to prevent Christians from growing in holiness, and gaining the victory over sin, let the melancholy confessions of their diaries declare.

Is it asked, Why dwell on such minute parts of Christian experience? We account them, my brethren, of the greatest importance. We think them of importance to correct false views of religion. How many are apt to suppose that religion consists in a few feelings and sentiments of a religious nature, and in a superficial change of the mind and of the behaviour! How many suppose, that having undergone these feelings, they are safe for eternity! There may be individuals here, who on that ground are imagining that they are in the way to heaven. to heaven. You have experienced some feelings and sentiments of a religious nature, and some superficial change has been wrought in you; and do you not hope that you will go to heaven? Do you not expect you will be found in heaven? And yet you are well persuaded that it would be almost a burlesque to talk of your having"crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts"-of your having been "delivered from the law of sin" in your minds—of the law of God being fulfilled in you as "walking not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." But, my friends, religion is a change of character; it is the death of sin in the soul, commencing with a painful conflict, but proceeding to an habitual and a general victory: and nothing short of this will warrant the hope of a state of salvation. It may be feared, that some persons, out of sympathy to individuals in dying circumstances, or to their relatives, allow them to suppose, that their feelings of contrition in those moments of sorrow for sin are real repentance, and warrant the conclusion of a state of salvation. I wish that such excessive pity for their fellow-creatures may not be found chargeable with the delusions of men's souls, and the denial of the sacred Scriptures. There is alway a great uncertainty about the character of a death-bed repentance-whether it be from nature or from grace-whether it be sorrow for sin on account of its consequences, or as an insult to the Majesty of heaven, and