LETTER VI.

ON BARCLAY'S VIEWS OF JUSTIFICATION.

RESPECTED Friends,

HAVING laid before you in my last letter, copious citations from the " APOLOGY," on the all-important subject of the Bible doctrine of justification, I concluded it with a charge, which I admitted to be a heavy one, but which I could not then consent to modify;-namely, that, while the statement given by Barclay is "distinguished by a "most extraordinary confusion of ideas," it appears to me also, "so far as its principles can be distinctly "ascertained, to be subversive, materially if not ut"terly, of the apostolic gospel."-This heavy charge I cannot now, any more than formerly, consent to modify.—Leaving, then, for subsequent notice the source of the confusion and the error, which it is not difficult to detect in the leading principles of ancient Quakerism, observe, in the meanwhile :

1. In Barclay's statement, explicitly and by pervading implication, justification and sanctification are

strangely identified. The distinction between the two is, in the Scriptures, as clearly defined, as if it had been traced with a pencil of light; and it is well maintained in the statements of Mr Gurney. The distinction, indeed, is so plain, that one should have thought the weakest mind could not miss perceiving it; which renders the perverting influence of an erroneous principle, in the case of a mind such as Barclay's, the more remarkable. Justification relates to state; sanctification to character. In justification, the sinner is pardoned and accepted; that is, he is absolved from guilt and condemnation, and, though a sinner, is graciously treated as righteous; on what ground, we shall see immediately:—in sanctification, those principles of personal holiness are infused into his heart, which extend their purifying influence to his life. The difference between the two may be simply illustrated by the case of a prisoner at a human tribunal. He may be proved guilty, but pardoned: the pardon of his crimes may be officially and solemnly announced to him; and he may be dismissed from the bar, free of charge in the eye of law. But though his state is thus changed, his character may remain the same: he may carry with him from the bar, an unaltered and unmitigated disposition to evil,-a heart as wicked as ever. He is pardoned, and, in the eye of law, reputed and treated as innocent; but he is unpurified from his

pollution. I am aware that what may, and frequently does, take place, under human governments, has no parallel in the government of God; that under his administration, there is no pardon without purity, no change of state without a change of character, no justification without sanctification; that the two are invariably found together; no sinner, since the fall, having ever been justified without being sanctified, or sanctified without being justified. But this does not warrant their being confounded; any more than we should be warranted to call justice mercy, and mercy justice, as they subsist in the divine nature, because the two are never found there in separation from each other. Nor can they be confounded, without the most pernicious results to the simplicity and consistency of gospel truth. That Barclay does confound them, no attentive reader of the preceding extracts can hesitate for a moment to admit. takes justification, according to its literal etymological import (justum facere,) to signify making righteous; and represents sinners as "made the righteousness of God in Christ," not when they are pardoned and accepted on account of his perfect righteousness, but when the principles of personal righteousness are produced in them "by the workings of his grace:"—and indeed, what can be more explicit than the assertion, (an assertion which cannot but surprise Mr Gurney and many more amongst you,

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as much as it does myself)—that "justification is "both more properly and more frequently, in Scrip"ture, taken in its proper signification, for making one just, and not reputing one merely as such, and "is all one with sanctification!"

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2. This leads me to notice, the denial by Barclay of the doctrine of justification by imputed righteousness. Nothing can be more weak, than discarding a doctrine, merely because the special phrase by which theologians may, for brevity's sake, have chosen to express it, does not occur in the Scriptures. Even were the phrase ever so objectionable, the doctrine may "stand sure," when human terms are rejected. You will perceive that Mr Gurney adopts the phra seology which Barclay disowns; and shows, in the clearest manner, that the truth expressed by it is one of the essential elementary principles of the Gospel. I have no objection to take my stand, for this doctrine, on one text alone; although I conceive the principle to pervade the New Testament. The text to which I refer is 2 Cor. v. 21. "For he hath made him who knew no sin to be sin for us; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."-There is in the words a double antithesis:-Jesus "knew no sin," but he was "made sin:"-and he was "made sin," that we might be "made righteousness." On account of this second antithesis, which was evidently and pointedly intended by the apostle,

I prefer our own translation to that of those who would render the words " he hath made him a sinoffering;" besides that it is not desirable, when it can be avoided, to understand the same word in different senses in the same clause of a short sentence. There is no more impropriety in speaking of Christ's being "made sin," than in speaking of our being "made righteousness;" and, the antithesis being evident and pointed, it follows, that we are "made righteousness in a sense corresponding to that in which Christ was "made sin." How, then, was Christ "made sin ?" I grant Mr Barclay, as readily and as strongly as he could have wished, the absurdity of the supposition that Christ was made a sinner,—as if there could be any thing in the case of the nature of actual transference of our sinfulness to his personal character ;—a conception nowhere to be found but in the ravings of antinomian insanity. How, then, setting aside this folly, does Mr Barclay himself interpret the phrase? By his "being made sin for us," says he, "must be understood his suffering for

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our sins." Well: this surely implies that our sins were imputed to him, or laid to his charge; for how otherwise could he bear the suffering due to them? I know of no possible way in which he could be "made sin," or, in other words, in which our sins could become his, but by imputation. And if so; then, to make the antithesis fair, we must be "made