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sufficiency will not let you submit to be saved by it, and therefore you go about to establish your own righteousness. You may work for a time upon this plan, and think yourselves safe. You may lull conscience asleep, and deceive yourselves, and deceive others with your fair outside. But the cheat cannot last long. God sees your hearts, and the corruption in them is naked and open to him, although you study to hide it from yourselves. He has declared of you, although you will not believe him, that you are not righteous: for there is none righteous in himself, no not one. This is his sovereign decree. Oh! that your consciences may submit to it, and seek for a righteousness which God will accept at his bar. Dreadful will be the time, if you appear there without a complete and infinitely perfect righteousness. Such there is in Christ, and in none else, and it is offered freely, even to you, ye self-righteous Pharisees. You may receive the free gift of his righteousness, if you will renounce your own. And what is your own? What merit can there be in these duties, which are done out of pride, done in sin, and done in opposition to the word of God. If you can reject all dependence upon these, the gospel offers to you freely the righteousness of God for your justification. O that he may dispose you to accept of it, that being justified by faith, you may have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord, and may live in the comfortable sense and enjoyment of this peace, until you receive a crown of righteousness, which fadeth not away. Grant this, Holy Father, for the all-perfect righteousness sake of thy beloved Son Jesus Christ; to whom, with Thee and the Holy Spirit, three persons in one Jehovah, be equal praise and glory and dominion, and power, in time and in eternity. Amen and Amen.

UPON THE RIGHT

KNOWLEDGE OF GOD.

DISCOURSE VII.

UPON THE RIGHT

KNOWLEDGE OF GOD.

DISCOURSE VII.

MARK xii. 28, 29, 30, 31.

And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, which is the first commandment of all. And Jesus answered him, the first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: This is the first commandment. And the second is like, namely, this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself; there is none other commandment greater than these.

OUR blessed Saviour had been disputing with the chief priests, and elders, and the Scribes, and after he had silenced them, they left him and went their way. But they departed with enraged and malicious hearts, determined to take the first opportunity to destroy him, and they send certain of the Pharisees and of the Herc dians to catch him in his words; these hypocrites pretended to believe him to be a faithful teacher of the way of God, and to come to him with no other view than to desire his opinion upon a very difficult case, namely, Whether it was lawful to give tribute unto Cæsar, or not? Our Lord solved this difficult question

in a manner that astonished his very adversaries; for he knowing their wicked hearts, said unto them, Why tempt ye me? Bring me a penny; and when they brought it, he said, whose image and superscription is this upon it? And they answered, Caesar's. Then, said he, render therefore to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and to God the things that are God's. As soon as he had silenced them, certain of the Sudducees came with a case out of the law, which they thought he was not able to solve; but he presently shewed them, that their error arose from their ignorance of scripture, and he put them to silence. While he was confuting them with the authority of Moses, the Pharisees were gathered together against him, and one of them being a Scribe, learned in the law, having heard him reasoning with the chief priests, then with the Herodians, and afterwards with the Sadducees, and perceiving that he had answered them well, was willing to try him with a question out of the law. The scribe asked him, Which is the first commandment of all. And Jesus answered him, the first of all the commandments is, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God, &c. And the Scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God, and there is none other but he, and to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbour as himself is more than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God, and no man after that durst ask him any question.

In this passage we have the sum and substance of vital and practical religion. The first and greatest commandment is the love of God arising from the right knowledge of his essence and personality, and the second is like unto it, namely, the love of our neighbour founded upon the true love of God. There is none other commaudment greater than these: for upon these two hang

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