tifiable state of self-will, and
lawlessness, and forgetfulness of who and of what they were, and of
what God was to them; in one word, into a sinful state, which is not
a righteous, or just, or good, or proper state for any man, but an
utterly unrighteous, unjust, wrong, improper, mistaken, diseased
state, which is certain to breed unrighteous, unjust, improper
actions in a man, as a limb is certain to corrupt if it be cut off
from the body, as a little child is certain to come to harm if it
runs away from its parents, and does just what it likes, and eats
whatsoever pleases its fancy. So these old divines, being practical
men, said to themselves, 'These children are justified and right in
being what they are, therefore our business is to keep them what
they are, and we can only do that as long as they have faith in God
and in His Christ.'

Now, if they had been mere men of books, they would have said to
themselves, 'Then we must teach the children very exactly what faith
is, that they may know how to tell true faith from false, and may be
able to judge every day and hour whether they have the right sort of
faith which will justify them, or some wrong sort which will not.'
And many wise and good men in those times did say so, and tormented
their own minds, and the minds of weak brethren, with long arguments
and dry doctrines about faith, till, in their eagerness to make out
what sort of thing faith ought to be, they seemed quite to forget
that it must be faith in God, and so seemed to forget too who God
was, and what He was like. Therefore, they ended by making people
believe (as too many, I fear, do now-a-days) not that they were
justified freely by the grace of God, shown forth in the life, and
death, and resurrection of his Son Jesus Christ; no: but that they
were justified by believing in justification by faith, and that
their salvation depended not on being faithful to God and trusting
in Him, but in standing up fiercely for the doctrine of
justification by faith. And so they destroyed the doctrine of free
grace, while they thought they were fighting for it; for they taught
men not to look to God for salvation, so much as to their own faith,
their own frames, and feelings, and experiences; and these, as
common sense will show you, are just as much something in a man, as
acts of his own, and part of him, as his good works would be; and so
by making people fancy that it was having the right sort of feelings
wh