HEREIN DO I EXERCISE MYSELF, TO HAVE ALWAYS A CONSCIENCE VOID OF OFFENCE

TOWARD GOD, AND TOWARD MAN.

HOUGH every one who reads the Scrip

TH

tures, must confess, that our own righteoufness cannot fave us-that, imperfect as it is, and mixed with tranfgreffion, it can at beft only qualify us for obtaining the effects of Christ's atonement; yet, on the other hand, it seems agreeable to the whole tenor of Scripture, that we may do works pleafing to God, and that they may therefore have fome good in them.

present only deduce an argument, to pose, from the paffage before us.

I fhall at

this pur

A good

A good confcience can mean nothing, if it do not mean that pleasure which we feel from our own. endeavours to live uprightly, and please Godor, in other words, that complacence which we feel in our own good works. I do not mean, in the whole of our moral conduct, for, after all, we are unprofitable fervants, and have much to deplore; but in certain actions, wrought, as we conceive they are, on good motives.

As, therefore, we are encouraged by example and precept, to endeavour to obtain the happy feelings of a good confcience, we must suppose that good works, which are the foundation of these feelings, must have some kind of merit in the fight of God. I am cautious in ufing the word merit. But I mean it in a very restrained sense. We cannot furely be exhorted in Scripture to feel a fatisfaction in any thing which is not pleafing to our Almighty Father.-If a confcience void of offence towards God and man; that is, if good works were of no avail, why should the apoftle exercife himself in them? Faith was all he needed to have infifted on.-But, in fhort, the Scripture fuppofes both faith and good works fo neceffary, as to be equally insisted on. Faith as the meangood works as the end.

If it be faid, the apostle rejoiced in a good confcience, only as it was a test of faith, it is not eafy to fay, why he should leave the cause out of the question, and speak only of the effect, It would have been a more natural mode of expreffion, to fay, herein do I exercise myself to have always a found faith.

WHETH

HETHER the opening of the understanding, which is mentioned in the intercourse which our Saviour had with the two difciples at Emmaus, was fupernatural-or it confifted only in fhewing the prophecy and the completion together in fo ftrong a light, that the reason of the difciples could not but clofe with it-does not certainly appear. At any rate, however, the understanding must be taken for human reafon, as the medium through which the fenfe of Scripture, either naturally, or fupernaturally, was conveyed to them.

But

But whatever might have been the cafe of the apoftles, we have no ground to believe, that our reason will be fupernaturally affifted. The Holy Spirit of God, we conceive, affifts the pious Chriftian rather in his heart, than in his understanding.

N.B. This fubject might be confidered by examining, firft, a few rules, that may affist us in understanding Scripture: and, fecondly, by fhewing how greatly men have erred in all ages, by not attending to what St. Paul calls the fimplicity that is in Chrift.