variableness nor shadow of turning. Besides, it is in virtue of his holiness that sin is sin; for if you take away the holiness of God, all distinction is for ever confounded: and seeing the sinning creature is the evidence and token of his holiness, if that sinning creature were to be pardoned by a single act of love, love would have strangled holiness; or there would be a reign, now of holiness, then of love, and no one could say when there might be another shift from love to holiness: and therefore, such an arbitrary redemption, even if possible, would be no redemption to be depended on.

Wherefore, in the love, the holiness must shine forth, as the light of the sun shineth forth in company with his heat. The new manifestation of Jehovah's being must illustrate the old, not cast it into the shade. The new knowledge must be the old waxed more clear and manifest; no extinction nor obliteration thereof. And therefore I observe,

Secondly, That seeing, not to drive all order within the universe into confusion, and all integrity into distraction, and put all righteousness to shame, there must be with the Divine Power a faculty of preserving holiness, and of forgiving sin, I am at my wit's-end to know how: here I stand nonplussed, my faculty of reason serving me not a jot. If I could conceive of sin as an accidental thing, which an accidental punishment could remove out of the way, I were in no strait nor dilemma; for in that case, after we have suffered a while God may remain satisfied. But what a base notion of God this is; as if there were any proportion between the guilt of sin, and so much pain and punishment, in the mind of the Most Holy! That notion of the Universalists would dethrone my God

at once from all my reverence, and set him lower than myself; forasmuch as I would despise myself for wreaking out so much punishment upon him who had offended me, and, without more ado, taking him by the hand as if he were cleansed. Not but that pain and penalty will and must ever attend on sin, but that an age and an age of ages of pain and punishment will never, never wipe away sin. Sin is an alienation of the will; it is a spiritual act against a Spirit, against the good and gracious Father of spirits; and the root of its punishment is in the will; the strength of its bondage, the yoke of its thraldom, is upon the will; and it is only the recovery and restoration of the will, in its own act, which can put us again even on good terms with ourselves, much more with the gracious God whom we had offended. But what is to bring back the will of a spirit which of its own accord hath swerved away, which did not choose to stand when all was in its favour? what, I say, is to bring it back again when its whole bent is gone the other way, with all the malicious powers of darkness overloading and overbearing it? Tell me how this is to come to pass, and you shall be my prophet and priest and king. For verily to do this pertaineth only to Him who is my Prophet, and Priest, and King.

Conceiving thus of sin as an eternal and unchangeable, an original, condition of the will, which no punishment can alter, which all the accidents within the coasts of time cannot alter, I stand at that pass over which nothing can carry me but Almighty Power; and I may say, with reverence, that not even power almighty of itself can deliver me. Almighty power cannot reconcile this contradiction, that holiness should be preserved, and the creatures

who have offended holiness, be, by a bare act of will reinstated. We stand here upon the brink of a chasm, over which, with reverence be it spoken, even Almighty power cannot convey us without some further revelation than that of his omnipotence. The unity of the Godhead availeth us not here, where our reason refuseth to move forward without the revelation of more persons than one in the Godhead; from which the revelation of the mystery cometh.

Therefore the divine evangelist beginneth by declaring the eternal Divinity of the Word, saying, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God;" and, after dilating upon his uncreated essence, upon his divine works in the times of old, when the heavens and the earth were created by him, and life and light were bestowed by him and of him, he addeth, "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath revealed him." John comprehended the mystery at which I declared, a little ago, that human reason must stand for ever nonplussed, and which no knowledge of God's unity can ever resolve. Therefore, after declaring the eternal Godhead of the Word, and at the same time intimating the mystery of his personal distinctness, by saying, not merely that he was God, but also that he was with God, he proceeds to declare his incarnation, "He became flesh;" and the end of it,-for the purpose of revealing to us that grace of God to

the sinful, and truth to those with whom he had entered into covenant, which could never have been known if we had not fallen, and would never have been known had the Son not been willing and free to take upon himself the remedy of our condition. Oh, what volumes are contained in these words, "Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ!" Grace; that is, the knowledge of the love and mercy which is in God, of the whole mystery of good-will and peace which is in the Gospel; the condescension of the holiest to the most unholy, his holiness unsullied by the condescension, yea, made infinitely more bright; the condescension of the Almighty to the weakest; all that is included in the word Father, Redeemer, Saviour; a mystery into which the angels desire to look, and which the Apostle who had profited the largest therein, could only admire with silent admiration, saying, "Oh, the height and the depth and the length and the breadth of the love of God in Christ Jesus! it passeth knowledge." Truth; that is, the fulfilment of all promise, the keeping of all covenant, the answer of all expectation, which had been given since the world began, and the assurance of all faith, which might be rested thereon until the world should end. This grace and truth came, not by the word but by the Word Incarnate, by Jesus Christ; that is, Jah the Saviour and anointed one. For it was in the act of becoming flesh that all grace and all truth was embodied. His name, Jesus Christ, importeth it. His name, The Word, importeth only his Divine essence and separate personality from all eternity.

Now, brethren, from this separate personality of the Word is derived the resolution of the great

mystery, "how God can be just and the justifier of the ungodly;" and from this point we must begin to speak in the language of the Trinity: for no one can speak of the redemption but in that language, as may be seen in the eighteenth verse, which, after having spoken of the grace and truth that is in Jesus Christ, the Evangelist thus begins, "No one hath seen God at any time;" but he cannot conclude it in the language of Unity, and is forced to add, "the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath revealed him." The Father's holiness of will remaineth unaltered; he remaineth the unchangeable enemy and implacable destroyer of sin. His holiness continueth, like a fire, to consume the transgressor now as when sin first entered into the world. But man's transgression did not reach to, or in any way affect, the relation between the Father and the Son, between whom no creature intermeddleth, or can in any wise intermeddle. This is secret, deep, and unsearchable; and the joys of it are not to be apprehended by created minds, nor discoursed of by human tongues; therefore was it possible, within the depths of the Divine nature, for the Father to forego the delight which he had with his Son in his own bosom, and to permit him to come forth on the ministry of redemption, in order that, after suffering for a while, he might return again with the honour of redemption added to the honour of creation and providence. In this, I say, there is no impeachment of the holiness of God, while there is a great manifestation of his love, in not sparing his only begotten Son, but giving him up to the death for us all. Nay, but there is a great manifestation and illustration of his holiness