Hence, prompted now with gratitude and love,
Her chearful feet in swift obedience move.
More strong the cords of love to duty draw,
Than hell and all the curses of the law.
When with feraphic love the breast's inspir'd,
By that are all the other grace's fir'd;
These kindling round, the burning heart and frame
In life and walk fend forth a holy flame.

***

CHAP.

IV.

*******

A CAUTION to all against a legal spirit; especially to these that have a profession without power, and learning without grace.

WIIY, fays the haughty heart of legalifts,

Bound to the law of works by nat'ral twifts, Why fuch ado about a law-divorce; "Men's lives are bad, and would you have 'em worfe? "Such Antinomian stuff, with labour'd toil, "Would human beauty's native luftre spoil. "What wickedness beneath the cov'ring lurks, "That lewdly would divorce us from all works? Why fuch a ftir about the law and grace? "We know that merit cannot now take place,

And what need more?" Well, to let slander drop,

Be merit for a little here the scope.

Ah! many learn to lifp in gofpel-terms,
Who yet embrace the law with legal arms.
By wholefome education fome are taught
To own that human merit now is naught;
Who faintly but renounce proud merit's name,
And cleave refin'dly to the Popish scheme.
For graceful works expecting divine bliss;
And, when they fail, traft Chrift for what's amiss.
Thus to his righteousness profess to flee;
Yet by it ftill would their own faviours be.
They seem to works of merit bloody foes;
Yet seck falvation, as it were*, by those.

.:

Blind Gentiles found, who did not feek nor know;
But Ifra'l loft it whole, who fought it so *.

Let all that love to wear the gofpel-dress,

:

Know that as fin, fo daftard righteousness
Has flain its thousands; who, in tow'ring pride,
The righteousness of Jesus Chrift deride:
A robe divinely wrought, divinely won,
Yet calt by men for rags that are their own.
But fome to legal works feem whole deny'd,
Yet would by gospel-works be justify'd,
By faith, repentance, love, and other fuch:
These dreamers being righteous overmuch †,
Like Uzza give the the ark a wrongful touch.
By legal deeds, however gofpeliz'd,
Can e'er tremenduous justice be appeas'd?
Or finners jufstify'd before that God,
Whose law is perfect and exceeding broad ‡?
Nay, faith itself, that leading gofpel-grace,
Holds, as a work, no justifying.place.
Just Heav'n to man for righteousness imputes
Not faith itself, or in its acts or fruits;
But Jefus' meritorious life and death,
Faith's proper object, all the honour hath.
From this doth faith dérive its glorious same,
Its great renown and justifying name;
Receiving all things, but deserving nought;
By faith all's begg'd and taken, nothing bought.
Its highest name is from the wedding-vote,
So instrumental in the marriage-knot.
JEHOVAH lends the bride, in that blest hour,
Th' exceeding greatness of his mighty pow'r +;
Which sweetly does her heart-confent command
To reach the wealthy Prince her naked hand.
For close to his embrace she'd never stir,

:

If first his loving arms embrac'd not her :
But this he does by kindly gradual chase,
Of roufing, reaching, teaching, drawing grace.
He shews her, in his sweetest love-address,
His glory, as the Sun of righteousness;

}

At which all dying glories earth adorn
Shrink like the fick moon at the wholesome morn.

This glorious Sun arifing with a grace,

Dark thades of creature-righteousness to chase,

Faith now difclaims itself, and all the train

Of virtues formerly accounted gain;

And counts them dung*, with holy, meek disdain. For now appears the height, the depth immenfe

Of divine bounty and benevolence;

Amazing mercy, ignorant of bounds!
Which most enlarged faculties confounds.
How vain, how void now seem the vulgar charms,
The monarch's pomp of courts, and pride of arms?
The boasted beauties of the human kind,
The pow'rs of body, and the gifts of mind?
Lo! in the grandeur of IMMANUEL's train,
All's fwallow'd up, as rivers in the main.
He's seen, when gospel light and fight is giv'n,
Encompass'd round with all the pomp of heaven.

The foul, now taught of God, fees human schools
Make Christless Rabbi's only lit'rate fools;
And that, till divine teaching pow'rful draw,
No learning will divorce then from the law.
Mere argument may clear the head, and force
A verbal, not a cordial clean divorce.
Hence many, taught the wholesome terms of art,
Have gofpel-heads, but still a legal heart.
'Till fov'reign grace and pow'r the finner catch,
He takes not Jefus for his only match,
Nay, works compete! Ah! true, however odd,
Dead works are rival with the living God.
'Till Heav'n's preventing mercy clear the fight,
Confound the pride with fupernat'ral light;
No haughty foul of human kind is brought
To mortify her self-exalting thought.

Yet holiest creatures in clay-tents that lodge, Be but their lives scann'd by the dreadful Judge: How shall they e'er his awful search endure, Before whose purest eyes heav'n is not pure?

How must their black indictment be enlarg'd,
When by him angels are with folly charg'd?
What human worth shall stand, when he shall scan?
O may his glory stain the pride of man.

How wondrous are the tracts of divine grace?
How fearchless are his ways, how vast th' abyss?
Let haughty reason stop, and fear to leap;
Angelic plummets cannot found the deep.
With scorn he turns his eyes from haughty kings,
With pleasure looks on low and worthless things;
Deep are his judgments, sov'reign is his will,

! Let ev'ry mortal worm be dumb, be still.
In vain proud reason swells beyond its bound;
God and his counsels are a gulf profound,
An ocean wherein all our thoughts are drown'd.

}

Arguments and Encouragements to Gofpel-ministers to avoid a legal strain of doctrine, and endeavour the finner's match with Christ by gospel-means.

SECT. І.

A legal Spirit the root of damnable errors.

VE heralds great, that blow in name of God,
The filver trump of gofpel-grace abroad;
And found, by warrant from the great I AM,
The nuptial treaty with the worthy Lamb:
Might ye but stoop the unpolish'd muse to brook,
And from a shrub an wholesome berry pluck;
Ye'd take encouragement from what is faid,
By gospel-means to make the marriage-bed,
And to your glorious Lord a virgin chaste to wed.

The more proud nature bears a legal sway,
The more should preachers bend the gofpel-way:
Oft in the church arlse destructive schifms

From anti-evangelic aphorifms;
A legal fpirit may be jusily nam'd

The fertile womb of ev'ry error damn'd.

:

}

1

Hence Pop'ry, so connat'ral fince the fall,
Makes legal works like faviours merit all;
Yea, more than merit on their shoulder loads,
To fupererogate like demi-gods.

Hence proud Socinians fet their reason high,
'Bove ev'ry precious gofpel-mystery,
Its divine author stab, and without fear
The purple covert of his chariot tear.

With these run Arian monsters in a line,
All gofpel truth at once to undermine';
To darken and delete, like hellith foes,
The brightest colour of the Sharon Rofe.
At best its human red they but decry,
That blot the divine white, the native dye.

Hence dare Arminians too, with brazen face,
Give man's free-will the throne of God's free grace;
Whose self-exalting tenets clearly shew
Great ignorance of law and gofpel too.

Hence Neonomians spring, as fundry call
The new law-makers, to redress our fall.
The law of works into repentance, faith,
Is chang'd, as their Baxterian Bible faith.
Shaping the gospel to an easy law,
They build their tott'ring house with hay and straw;
Yet hide, like Rachel's idols in the stuff,
Their legal hands within a gofpel-muff.

Yea, hence fpring Antinomian vile refufe,
Whose grofs abettors gofpel-grace abufe;
Uofkill'd how grace's filken latchet binds
Her captives to the law with willing minds.

SECT. II.

A legal Strain of Doctrine discovered and discarded.

TO wonder Paul the legal fpirit curse,

Of fatal errors fuch a feeding nurse.
He, in JEHOVAH's great tremenduous name,
Condemus perverters of the gospel-fcheme.
He damn'd the fophift rude, the babbling priest
Would venture to corrupt it in the least;