enant of Grace--"in their natures, ends, bounds, together with the
state and condition of them that are under the one, and of them that are
under the other." Dr. Brown describes the book as "marked by a firm
grasp of faith and a strong view of the reality of Christ's person and
work as the one Priest and Mediator for a sinful world." To quote a
passage, "Is there righteousness in Christ? that is mine. Is there
perfection in that righteousness? that is mine. Did He bleed for sin? It
was for mine. Hath He overcome the law, the devil, and hell? The
victory is mine, and I am come forth conqueror, nay, more than a
conqueror through Him that hath loved me. . . Lord, show me continually
in the light of Thy Spirit, through Thy word, that Jesus that was born in
the days of Caesar Augustus, when Mary, a daughter of Judah, went with
Joseph to be taxed in Bethlehem, that He is the very Christ. Let me not
rest contented without such a faith that is so wrought even by the
discovery of His Birth, Crucifying Death, Blood, Resurrection, Ascension,
and Second--which is His Personal--Coming again, that the very faith of
it may fill my soul with comfort and holiness." Up and down its pages we
meet with vivid reminiscences of his own career, of which he can only
speak with wonder and thankfulness. In the "Epistle to the Reader,"
which introduces it, occurs the passage already referred to describing
his education. "I never went to school to Aristotle or Plato, but was
brought up at my father's house in a very mean condition, among a company
of poor countrymen." Of his own religious state before his conversion he
thus speaks: "When it pleased the Lord to begin to instruct my soul, He
found me one of the black sinners of the world. He found me making a
sport of oaths, and also of lies; and many a soul-poisoning meal did I
make out of divers lusts, such as drinking, dancing, playing, pleasure
with the wicked ones of the world; and so wedded was I to my sins, that
thought I to myself, 'I will have them though I lose my soul.'" And
then, after narrating the struggles he had had with his conscience, the
alternations of hope and fear which he passed through, which are more
fully described in his "Grace Abounding," he thus vividly depicts the
full assurance of faith he had attained to: "I saw through grace that it
was the Blood shed on Mount Calvary that did save and redeem sinners, as
clearly and as really with the eyes of my soul as eve