"And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall "And we desire that every one of you do shew the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the "The Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumbling block, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but THE WAY OF PEACE. SERMON I. MAN'S LOST ESTATE. LEVITICUS XIII. 45, 46. And the leper in whom the plague is, his clothes shall be rent, and his head bare, and he shall put a covering upon his upper lip, and shall cry "Unclean, unclean." All the days wherein the plague shall be in him he shall be defiled; he is unclean: he shall dwell alone; without the camp shall his habitation be. DOCTRINAL error is well nigh the most deadly, because it is the most insidious, weapon in the armoury of hell. It were a needless trespass upon your time elaborately to prove a truth so evident. But this I will say, that false doctrine hath slain its thousands and its tens of thousands, even B amongst those who have (till they fell) thought themselves to be the most safely guarded in the citadel of truth. Such have perhaps been champions of orthodoxy as it raised its indignant protest against the soul-destroying tenets of Arius, or of Socinus, or the scarcely less deadly traditions of Papal Rome, that "Man of sin, that Son of Perdition; "1 and yet all the while there has been a lie in their right hand, by which their subtile foe hath wrought their certain destruction. For instance, how unscriptural are the replies full often given to that most weighty question, "How shall man be just with God?" I. Some exalt the mercy of Jehovah at the expense of his justice and his holiness. They know (if that can be called knowledge of sin which hath never made their heart to bleed) that they are sinners; they know that sinful man, as repugnant to the holiness of God, is excluded from heaven; that guilty man, as offending against the justice of God, is condemned to hell. And yet they give no diligence 1 2 Thess. ii. 3. that their guilt may be pardoned, their corruption removed; for they fondly say, "God is merciful;" and they vainly imagine that he will at the last (to his own great dishonour) acquit them easily. Brethren, it is indispensable that God's justice should be satisfied, it is indispensable that God's holiness should be vindicated, before God's mercy can admit any one son or daughter of Adam into the mansions of bliss. Scripture knows of no such thing as uncovenanted mercies. They are, to use the language of inspiration, "a refuge of lies." 2 II. But where these certain truths of God's word are conceded, even there the devil's lie doth creep in. How is God's justice to be satisfied? Faith and works are made a joint ground of our justification before Jehovah. It is written, "therefore we conclude, that a man is justified by faith, without the deeds of the law."3 It is written again, "he that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me, hath,"not may have, not shall have-but "hath ever2 Isaiah xxviii. 17. 3 Rom. iii. 28. |