Prayer and its Answer-Justification-Sanctification. 12mo. London Collingridge.

WE recur to these three tracts again, as we had not last month sufficient space left us to particularize the several discrepencies to which we referred. We should not perhaps give them so much attention, was it not that we have been led to believe them to be the early numbers of a projected series, and written by one of the Editors of the Gospel Magazine. And as such, when upon reading them we find them to be full of incoherent expressions, confused amalgamations, and unscriptural errors, we think ourselves called upon to warn the church of God against adopting them for distribution. The author may entertain high notions of his own capabilities, and, by a puffing annunciation of each tract previous to its appearance, may wish to invest the minds of the Lord's children with similar notions; but as Editors we find it safest to abide by that old-fashioned axiom, "To the word and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this rule, it is because there is no light in them."

tracts alone, we should conceive them to be the production of some speculating theorist in the truths of God.

For instance: at the commencement of the second paragraph in the tract on Prayer, it is said to be "a covenant privilege, imparted to the heirs of salvation when they are quickened by sovereign grace." Now this is inconsistent. Prayer is truly a covenant privilege as allowed of God; but the act of prayer, the breath of devotion, is not a covenant privilege, but a holy inspiration-the soul's converse with God by the Holy Ghost. Nor would it be possible for a covenant privilege to be imparted, it could only be granted or allowed; whereas the spirit of prayer is imparted or infused.

There are other disparagements in this tract equally contradictory. The very incident narrated to illustrate the prefatory remarks is condemnatory of them: for while in the one the author repudiates all prayer but those by partakers of grace, the other gives a case in which the Lord answered Graaffe's prayers before he was apparently such a character. We however very much disapprove of the attempted limitation which this author desires to put on the privilege of prayer. We could easily point out many instances, in which the sincere prayers of unregenerate men have been answered, but the case of Nineveh will suffice. All such in

the accountability of the creature, and unwarrantably inculcate the God-dishonouring dogma of fatality, which reducing mankind to mere machines, would implicate the Most High God as the author of evil.

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The tract on Justification is the best of the three, but not wholly exempt from incongruities. On page 2, the author tells us that it is "those who have been taught this lesson that are called to repentance;" just as if he would fain put a limitation here. But in this we suppose he confounds legal and evangelical repentance, for the scripture he quotes in support of it refers to the latter.

Lower down on the same page, in speaking of a sinner learning the deceitfulness of his own heart, he says, that they hear and learn of the Father, and immediately refers to a passage in John. But as an able divine, deducing his doctrine from the analogy of faith, he would have attributed divine teaching to the Holy Spirit, whose peculiar office it is to instruct the church; and he would have known that this expression, which referred it to God the Father, was designed to show us the close unity of the Godhead, and the tender sympathy which each and all of the Divine Persons feel in the welfare of the church, so much so, that in acquiescence, if not in operation, the several office-characters of the Holy Trinity might virtually be attributed each to other.

In the last paragraph of this tract we find this remark: 66 yet they need a renewal of this justification in their hearts." But how unscriptural is such a statement. A soul once tried and acquitted in the court of conscience, and his justification sealed home by the Holy Spirit, he never wants a renewal of it. Guilt may cloud his evidences, but he does not lose the pure white stone of adoption, which was given him when he was released a justified man at his trial in the court of conscience, and which is deposited and sacredly kept in the fastnesses of the hidden man of grace, whose preserver is the Eternal God himself. No, no, we need no renewal of justification,

when once cleared; but with Paul we may warrantably challenge,"Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? it is God that justifieth," &c. The Saviour never takes away the justifying robe of his righteousness, when once we have put it on by faith. Our justification stands not in our frames and feelings, but in our union to Christ.

We now come to the third tract, which is on Sanctification. And the author at its commencement says, "There is often the greatest confusion in the way this doctrine is expressed, and that arises chiefly from the want of consideration of what the word sanctification really means. Sanctification and holiness are the same word in the original Greek, and therefore to sanctify and make holy mean the same thing." To which we would say, that if others are confused upon this doctrine, we do not think any body could possibly exceed the present author in the confused way in which he has set it forth, confounding the several stages of it, and mis-stating the several parts which the Holy Trinity are pleased to take in it. But we must also say, that the statement respecting the meaning of the word in the original Greek is quite incorrect. The word does not always mean holiness, or sanctified in a good sense on the contrary, the primitive form from which it is derived, which is agos, may signify a crime; and agios, may be rendered either accursed, requiring purification, or dedicated to religious uses: we state this, simply to shew how preferable it is to gather the sense of scripture words from their application, according to the analogy of faith, comparing scripture with scripture, rather than presume to gather arbitrary meanings from the original. The simplest signification to be attached to the word sanctify, is set apart, which may then be used either in a good or bad sense.

We

think the passage the author quotes from Isaiah xiii., respecting the Persians, is a full proof of the term being used otherwise than as signifying "made holy."

At the very commencement the author seems to us to confound sanctification with adoption. He writes thus: "What most persons call sanctification, we should call fruits of sanctification. To be a child, and to walk as becometh a child, are two very different things." Why we are not made children by sanctification; but rather, God sanctifies, and did eternally sanctify us, because he had adopted us.

On the first two branches of the subject, the author scarcely states any thing definitely. There are however in this short paragraph, one or two gross errors. On page 2, we find it thus stated, "Then it was the church rose in him a new creation," &c. And if such a statement is not confused, we know not what is. We who are believers, rose in Christ virtually, as members of our glorious covenant Head; but that has nothing to do with being made a new creation by the energy of the Lord the Spirit: they are quite distinct realities, and the one is now effected hundreds of years after the other, according to that set time, of old ordained of God, when his spiritually dead children shall be individually born of the Spirit. But in the same paragraph there is this remark also: "One with Him in his death, we died unto sin once. One with him also in his resurrec⚫ tion (Eph. ii. 1, 6), we live unto God," &c. Now this is a dreadful amalgamation of two glorious truths, but which are as distinct in scripture as possible. The very verses in Ephesians which the writer refers to, distinctly speak of a personal work wrought upon the believer, when the Holy Spirit by the condemnatory power of the law, and by the communication of spiritual life,

In the last place we would observe, for we have already been too lengthened, that the author has very erroneous views of the sanctification of the elect by the Eternal Spirit. He speaks of it as continual and progressive, and dependant upon a knowledge of truth; and which he endeavours to support by that passage of holy writ, " Sanctify them through thy truth-thy word is truth." But this scripture refers to the instrumentality of divine truth, which the blessed Spirit is pleased to use as his medium by which he communicates the "incorruptible seed, that liveth and abideth for ever:" and this incorruptible seed is the divine nature, the spiritual life from Christ, the habit of grace, as divines call it, and which is emphatically said to be "holiness to the Lord." Nor can this divine nature ever be advanced in holiness: it is perfect in all its parts; and its growth can only be in the expansion and development of its spiritual perfections. Therefore this work of sanctification by the Holy Spirit, is the act of a moment: "The wind bloweth where it listeth; thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." The further development of the latent graces, divines commonly call Growth in Grace. The writer of this tract never once alludes to the new birth as the primary basement of the elect's sanctification by the Holy Ghost; but calls that sanctification itself, which we should rather,

Again. Our Lord Jesus Christ came into the world to accomplish the will of his Father, and to bear away sin; if however sin was the formation of God, the Saviour came not to accomplish the Father's will, but to destroy it, He saith, however, John vi. 38, "I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him who sent me;" and in 1 John iii. 8, we see what that will was: "For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil." And what are the works of the devil? to lead astray the children of men, as it is written, "He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning," 1 John iii. 8. This then clearly proves, not only that the Almighty never created sin, but that he sent his only begotten Son into the world, to make an atonement for the sins of his people, who had been "taken captive by Satan at his will."

But, to proceed, as though our God was determined that no one should be able, justly, to accuse him of creating that which " came not into his heart" to create, and which was "the abominable thing that he hated," he says by his prophet Jeremiah, "Will ye steal, murder, swear falsely, and burn incense unto other gods, and come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my

name, and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations? therefore will I do unto this house as I have done to Shiloh, and I will cast you out of my sight, &c. Therefore, pray not thou (my prophet) for this people, neither lift up cry nor prayer for them, neither make intercession to me for I will not hear thee," Jer. vii. 9-16. Though this passage may apply more immediately to those practical Antinomians who attribute to the predetermination of God every sinful thought and action of man, yet it must be considered as bearing heavily on those who would accuse the Almighty of originating that which would fain overturn his own throne, and has, by its pestiferous breath spread a mildew over the works of his hands. That sin came into being unpermitted of God we do not believe, but then we would be as backward to assert that the Lord created it. If it came unpermitted of God, it must be more powerful than God; and if more powerful than God, then no child of Adam can ever be saved; but, all praise to our God, he took sin and vanquished it, in the person of his beloved Son, "who made an end of sin, and brought in everlasting righteousness." We would therefore say, that sin was permitted of God to enter into the world, that he might more manifestly shew forth his glory in the redemption of the people of his choice. Much error is formed by the collision of Bible truths in an unharmonious manner, and may we not, therefore, very justly and consistently suppose, that sin, instead of being the creation of God, is the perversion of good things, allowed of God to his own glory.

We cordially recommend these tracts to our readers, as very suitable for distribution in a day when the error therein exposed is so very prevalent.

S.