our wants, and all-fufficient for our relief; of ftanding credit with the Father, and of everlafting avail. Shall we not then receive it with utmost thankfulness, and bid it welcome, the Redeemer and his righteousness welcome? Reft all our dependance upon it; and living and dying defire to be found in it. "Thofe whose happiness is bound up in Chrift's righteouf"nefs and falvation, will have the comfort of "it, when time and days fhall be no more *" Henry on Ifaiah li.

SERMON

SERMON V.

ISAIAH xlv. former part of the 24th Verfe.

Surely, Shall one fay, in the Lord have I·

WE

righteousness.

have hitherto been engaged in two neneceffary and important enquiries; what that righteousness is which we have in Chrift; and how this righteousnefs which is originally and fubjectively without us, comes to be made ours for our actual and perfonal juftification, Let us now proceed,

Thirdly, To trace out that tendency and dif pofition of foul which believer's exprefs and difcover towards this righteoufnefs, copying them from the fentiments and language of the church in this remarkable paffage; Surely fball one fay, every one fay that is taught of God, and according to the different degrees of light in which this truth is fet to view- In the Lord have I righteousness; there I feek and hope

to

to find it, and there only only and exclu. fively of all other perfons and things whatever *. And,

1. This language muft include fome know. ledge of it, what it is, and the purposes for which it ferves: In the Lord have I righteousness; then, that Lord whose this righteousness is, and who was appointed of God to work it out, and hath wrought it out, together with the excellency and advantages of this righteousness, and the way in which it may be made ours; these are things that muft, in fome degree or other, be known, as they lie at the root of all faving faith, and without which it cannot discharge fome of its moft effential operations. Hence faith in Chrift is defcribed by the knowledge of him, Ifa. liii. 11. To believe in an unknown Chrift, to reft our fouls for pardon and life upon one whom we know not who, nor whence he is, nor what his work, what can be more monftrous and abfurd? As the Apostle puts the question, Rom. x. 14. How fball they believe in him of whom they have not heard? A building may as well ftand without a foundation to

support

* Pertinet huc emphafis Phrafios, qua dicit, effe il lam juftitiam in Jehovah: h.e. effe bonum ejus, bonum proprium, ab ipfo quæfitum & paratum; in ipfo quærendum, quod extra ipfo non invenitur. Non itaque effe in homine, quippe qui hoc jure per peccatum excidit; aut in operibus legis, ad cujus jus poftulatumque explendum caro inepta eft; neque etiam in victimis & facrificiis legalibus, aut in fuperftitiofis exo@pnoxeías commentis. Vitringa in locum.

fupport it, as faith in Chrift fubfift, and be acted without fome knowledge of him.

When therefore this righteousness is defired and fought after, the eye of the foul is opened to fee Chrift working it out. This is what he had in view, when fulfilling all obedience in his life; this is the great defign he was carrying on, when completing his obedience in his death; as it was with this view, that the Father charged him with the fins of his people, and poured upon him all that wrath that was due to them. thus did the Son by the will and appointment of the Father, engage in this bleffed defign, and do and. fuffer all that was neceffary to make him the Saviour of finners, and their righteousness before God. And these are some of the great things which the Spirit reveals, and, with fome measure of evidence, represents to the foul, when he comes to convince of righteousnels, and lead the finner into a faving knowledge of Chrift and his righteousness.

It is, indeed, impoffible to make that the object of our attention and efteem which we have no knowledge of; and though the revelation of this righteousness was not alike clear and explicit through all the periods of the church, yet we have plentiful evidence, that the Old Teftament faints were far from being without fome notices of it, and fuch as were fufficient to found their faith in it. The first promise that was made to Adam immediately after the fall, carried in it fome intimations hereof, Gen. iii. 15. It is indeed, impoffible for us to fay what meafure of light might go along with this promife; but as it was defigned of God as a proper relief

for

for our firft parents, under a fenfe of that mifery, in which they had involved themselves, and their pofterity, by the guilt of the fall, it muft point them forward to fome future atonement, or method of reftorátion, to be effected by the feed of the woman, as in his fufferings, and being bruised, they were affured of a noble victory over Satan, the great inftrument and author of their ruin *. By faith Abel offered

unto

As it is generally fuppofed with a great deal of reafon, that the skins of those beats, with which God clothed Adam and Eve after the fall, were the ikins of beafts that were flain by his appointment, to be offered in facrifice; it is exceeding probable, that by means hereof our firft parents might have fome notion given them, that that restoration, which they were to expect by the feed of the woman, was to be effected by fome future facrifice in his death. And as the nakednefs of our first parents was thus recovered by garments made of the skins of facrificed beafts, might not this give them fome (however dark and imperfect, yet fome) intimation of the neceffity of having their guilt, their moral nakedness, covered by a righteoufnefs that Thould arife from the death of that facrifice, of which thefe facrifices were but types. An admirable writer has given a hint that looks this way. "Ex fpoliis *mortalitatis, & exuviis mactatarum animantium teguntur corpora protoplaftorum. Veftis gratiæ, qua corpus peccati tegitur, ex ipfa morte Chrifti eft; neque fine illius mortis interventu conftare poteft juf"titia illa, quæ acceptos nos facit Deo." Or if this fhould be thought carrying the matter too far, I conclude at leaft, that Dr. Lightfoot's obfervation is as juft as it is beautiful, That God taught Adam the

rite of facrifice, to lay Chrift dying before his eyes in "a vifible figure: And with the fkins of the facrificed "beafts God teacheth him and his wife to cloath their "bodies. And thus the firft thing that dieth in the * world is Chrift in a figure." Vol. I. page 692.