in carrying us with safety through the world; and therefore every wise man will observe them.

Q. Why will they not save us?

A. Because we are to be saved by faith. Q. But are the virtues then unnecessary? A. By no means: they are as necessary to Christians as to other men: but we are saved, not by what we do, but by that faith in the promises, and that love to God with which we do it.

Q. Where is the propriety, wisdom, and justice, of our being saved by faith and not by works?

A. Because all good works of every kind may be practised in hypocrisy, and proceed from some evil or vain motive, to deceive men: but in faith there can be no hypocrisy. Q. Why so?

A. Because faith is between God and man only; not between man and man: and to God no man can be an hypocrite: therefore no virtue is certain and universal but that of faith.

Q. What is the farther excellencé of faith? A. It subdues and extinguishes the pride of reason, and gives to God all the glory of our salvation. Reason raises questions against

the

the word of God; as Sarah laughed at the promise; but faith receives it, as Abraham believed the promise, and it was accounted to him for righteousness*.

Q. Are the moral virtues commanded in the gospel?

- A. Faith does not make void the moral law, but establishes moral obedience, and far exalts the nature of it, and gives us the only true and powerful motives to the performance of it. They are therefore all of them particularly commanded-Owe no man any thing— He that striveth for the mastery is temperaté in all things-Take heed to yourselves that ye be not deceived-Speak the truth with boldness -Add to your faith virtue, that is fortitude.

Q. What encouragement have we to practise the virtues thus commanded?

A. An assurance that a crown of victory is laid up for him, who by adding virtue to his faith, demonstrates its reality, by overcoming the temptations of the world and the flesh. Q. What is deism?

* Divines, in the early days of the Reformation, spoke very differently of human reason, from what we have heard in later times-Pietas conculcat rationem, oblatrantem canem— "Piety trampleth upon reason, that barking dog." Commenii orbis pietas. Ch. Religio.

A. It is the affectation of morality, without Christian piety.

Q. Who are deists?

A. They call themselves, as the moral heathens did, philosophers, and set up natural religion against the Bible.

Q. And is not natural religion a good thing? A. The testimony of nature to religious truth, so far as it will go, is good but natural religion hath been vended as a thing which man can find out for himself by the light of nature and reason only.

Q. Does it agree

with the gospel?

A. Not at all: it has neither Father, Son, nor Holy Ghost: no fall of man; no atonement for sin; no grace; no sanctification; no sacraments; no devil; no church; no cominunion of saints; no resurrection; no life everlasting.

Q. When did it first arise among Christians?

A. It was brought into fashion by some philosophising divines of the last century, of whom the chief was Bishop Wilkins, a person who had conceived the project of flying up to the moon, and sat very loose as to all the discriminations between the Church and the conventicle. At first it was a sort of neutral, - between Christianity and heathenism, and was

accom

accommodated to the former; but of late, it hath been severed from Christianity, and is now much more nearly allied to heathenism.

Q. What effect hath it had?

in

A. It has given great advantage to unbelievers; who have more securely attacked the doctrines of the Christian faith, as absolutely false, or at best superfluous and unnecessary. It has banished Christianity from many of our pulpits; and introduced many corrupt terpretations of the Scripture, and it has given occasion to the Methodists, to set up their tabernacles for the preservation of that faith, which seemed to be departing from the Church.

Q. What religion had the heathens?

A. Not natural religion, but traditionary: idolatry; whose rites of worship agreed in many articles with the divine law. The heathens never depended for acceptance on any of their moral works; but always had recourse to rites, sacrifices, supplications, and other acts of what is called devotion, for the pardon of sin, and the averting of divine vengeance. See the 11th, 12th, and 13th Articles of Religion.

END OF THE ELEVENTH VOLUME.

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