nyan saw all around him in the England of his day, and which, had he
been alive in the England and Scotland of our day, he would have painted
again in colours we have neither the boldness nor the skill to mix nor to
put on the canvas. But let all ministers put it every day to themselves
to what descent and succession they belong. Let those even who believe
that they have within themselves the best seal and evidence attainable
here that they have been ordained of Emmanuel, let them all the more look
well every day and every Sabbath day how much of another master's
doctrine and discipline, motives, and manners still mixes up with their
best ministry. And the surest seal that, with all our insufficiency, we
are still the ministers of Christ will be set on us by this, that the
harder we work and the more in secret we pray, the more and ever the more
shall we discover and confess our shameful insufficiency, and the more
shall we, till the day of our death, every day still begin our ministry
of labour and of prayer anew. Let us do that, for the devil, with all
his boldness and all his subtilty, never threw a card first or last like
that.

6. After offering a sufficient ministry to Mansoul, and that, too, at
his own proper cost and charge, Diabolus undertook also to see that the
absolute necessity of a reformation should be preached and pressed from
the pulpit he set up. Now, reformation is all good and necessary, in its
own time and place and order, but God sent His Son not to be a Reformer
but to be a Redeemer. John came to preach reformation, but Jesus came to
preach regeneration. Except a man be born again, Jesus persistently
preached to Nicodemus. 'Did it begin with regeneration?' was Dr.
Duncan's reply when a sermon on sanctification was praised in his
hearing. And like so much else that the learned and profound Dr. John
Duncan said on theology and philosophy, that question went at once to the
root of the matter. For sanctification, that is to say, salvation, is no
mere reformation of morals or refinement of manners. It is a maxim in
sound morals that the morality of the man must precede the morality of
his actions. And much more is it the evangelical law of Jesus Christ.
Make the tree good, our Lawgiver aphoristically said. Reformation and
sanctification differ, says Dr. Hodge, as clean clothes differ from a
clean heart. Now, Diabolus was all for clean clothes when he saw that
Mansoul was slipping out of h