nature" or custom, that is, according to the matter and manner of all that manifested will of God which they have access to know naturally, or without becoming Jews, even in their natural state of uncircumcision, whether that will of God be handed down from father to son by tradition, or given by immediate revelation, as God appeared to Laban, Abimelech, and Balaam, or in whatever other fashion discovered by infinite wisdom in every tongue, kindred, nation, and language, in the world; if they are obedient to that which is manifested, and required at their hands and so DO, upon the matter, "the things contained in the law," even the works of universal obedience according to the spirit and extent of that particular law or rule delivered to them; for obedience is the whole end and fulfilment of every law whatsoever; and the peculiar circumstances of obedience, after the manner thereof enjoined, to the Jews, for example, are all enjoined only for the purpose of determining and fixing of the required obedience according to God's good pleasure. So, if those Gentiles, without your Jewish law, fulfil that obedience which is demanded of them in their own circumstances, as they are situated by nature, though God has made their natural circumstances as heathens, and your natural circumstances as Jews, to differ, and accordingly has in like manner accommodated his ways to you and to them, yet they are nothing behind you, if they have done what naswers to their law: they are surely on an equal footing with every Jew keeping the Jewish law, for acceptance and justification with God; and are infinitely before every Jew that does not come up to the perfection of his law, whom they condemn. For these supposed obedient and perfect Gentiles having not the Jewish law, are not without having a law or rule of what they are to believe and do, absolutely and altogether, which were absurd on the present supposition of their yielding obedience, or doing the things of the law; for what is obedience but conformity to a law? And how could they do by nature, or custom, or education, or any other

way, what they did not know as contained in a law or rule of doing? or would that supposed doing of theirs be reckoned obedience, if they had no law to be the rule or standard of that same doing or obedience? But in such a case they are, or serve, for a law unto themselves: not that every man is left to do what seemeth right in his own eyes, or that the doing of this would be obedience to God, as the supposition of our adversaries on this place says, leaving every man in his doings to be guided by his own reason, natural opinion, inclination, mind, understanding, conscience, lust, or will, and calling the result of the whole a doing of the things contained in the law; which, instead of obedience to God, would be downright lawlessness and rebellion against God-or it were hard to say, what lawlessness and rebellion against God were. But they are to observe that law which is given to themselves, who are Gentiles by nature, and to educate their children in the same selfdenial and submission to the revealed will of God, in whatever manner be may have been pleased to favour them with the knowledge thereof among themselves, without having any trouble or incumbrance given them from that, which they have not by reason of their natural birth and circumstances as heathens, made known to them, even the particularly circumstanced Jewish law.

Find out such persons among the Gentiles, as have been just now described, who are blameless according to the duty required of them in their own natural circumstances, who are called Gentiles by nature, on account of their original birth and education among the Gentiles, even as the Jews are called Jews by nature, on account of their original birth and education in the Jewish line and manner.

Find out such patterns of perfect obedience according to their rule among the Gentiles—and, if you do so, no doubt but you will find them as blessed as any Jew, who shall be found blameless and perfect according to his Jewish law-For what do such perfect Gentiles lack of the glory of God—which shew the work of the law,

the power, love, and obedience, or righteousness of the law, written on their hearts, as God wrote upon the tables of stone, with his own finger, the law delivered at Sinai; which law was not in the nature of the stone, nor upon the stone in any shape, till the Lord God spake the ten words, and then engraved them for everlasting remembrance upon the stone.

Thus obedient Gentiles, by our supposition, would be in a condition, as well as obedient Jews, to shew, by their obedience, the law, their own law, written, or, as the meaning is, revealed, believed, loved, and obeyed, not in shew and profession only, but in deed and in truth, even in their hearts, their conscience also, in such a case as we have supposed for argument's sake, bearing witness, or rather, as the margin reads, witnessing with or unto them, and their thoughts the mean-while, or rather, with the margin here also, between themselves, namely, the thoughts, exercised under the prescribed rule, standard, or law of conduct and behaviour, mutually disapproving, hating, and rejecting those evil things which are forbidden; or, on the other hand, approving, loving, embracing, pursuing, and perfecting those good things which are required; as it is expressed in the text, accusing or else excusing one another; not one another's persons or actions, as some perhaps may imagine ;-for Mr. Glas, with his party, explain it by "heartily scolding one another:"but it is the very thoughts themselves (κατηγορύντων) condemning, according to the law, on whose side the man of righteousness will always stand, not only evil words, and other outward acts of wickedness, but also the very conceptions, buds, and beginnings of sin, evil thoughts, motions, propensities, and temptations to sin; or (añoλoysμévwv) pleading for, vindicating and justifying, contending and insisting for, not only external good words and actions, but also good, perfectly good thoughts, motions, and steadfast purposes and desires, constantly, without intermission or failure in the least iota, as being essentially and indispensibly necessary to

obedience, according to the spirit and demands of the law.

Here earnestly observe, that the above case of Gentiles fulfilling the law, or doing by nature, or any way, the things contained in the law, is merely, as before-hinted, a case supposed for the sake of the argument-which is to convince the Jews of sin by their own law, and to obviate and remove their mistakes about their state and condition under it, even to stop their vain-glorious mouths, and shew them, that they were not to be accepted, justified, and saved by having and hearing, and extolling their law with the breath of their mouth, but by the doing of the works required.

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Thus John the Baptist, in like manner, makes his address to the Pharisees, people of the same spirit and condition, who gloried in being Abraham's children"O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth fruits, therefore, meet for repentance; for now also the axe is laid at the root of the tree; every tree, that bringeth not forth good fruit, shall be hewed down, and cast into the fire-and think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham for our father; for I say unto you, that God is able even of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham:" not that God meant to turn stones into men; but only, that God would rather do so, than admit those same Jews to Abraham's privileges, without Abraham's faith.

The case there, of turning stones into children for Abraham, rather than that a generation of vipers, without repentance, and fruits meet for repentance, should be admitted into heaven, is most assuredly a case formed for illustration of the doctrine of the kingdom, to shew the absurdity of Jews expecting salvation by any other way, besides that whereby the Gentiles might have the same ground of expectation: for "is God the God of the Jews only, and not of the Gentiles also?"

Even so here, the supposition is evidently framed on the same design, and by no means a real case, that ever

happened, or possibly can happen in human nature, in this corrupted fallen state

Otherwise, the Gentiles should be allowed better, and in better circumstances than the Jews, which were absurd, (for the Jew hath much advantage every way,) and would utterly destroy the apostle's argument for convincing the Gentiles of sin; which is by shewing them their transgressions of that law which they had received, and not their obedience to it—a point this, which the advocates of natural religion would do well to consider, when they gloss upon the text in hand.

The Jews indeed are proved to be no better, nor in better circumstances, by reason of their disobedience, than the Gentiles: whatever advantages the Jews had, or might have had, by having the oracles of God committed to them, these were all lost, and their sin moreover highly aggravated, by their continuing in the breach of such a manifest law, wherein they boasted.

But still at the same time it must be granted, that the Gentiles are set forth as the very monsters of wickedness, arrived at the most flagrant and crying pitch of corruption-so far are they from being recommended, and held out, even any one of them, for examples of holiness and perfection.

Moreover, if the Gentiles really did by nature the things contained in the law, Jehovah hath sworn by himself, and pawned his life for theirs, that they should by their own doings be saved, and live eternally-for no man has any more in the world to do, that he may enter into life, but to keep the commandments-if the Teacher come from God, the good Master, know any thing about the matter-for "the man" (Jew or Gentile makes no odds) "that doth those things, shall even live by them"-Yea, and the Gospel of grace, declaring justfication and salvation only by the righteousness of God, were all a fable-the coming of Jesus for a light to lighten the Gentiles, as well as the glory of his people Israel with the whole testimony of God, concerning the fall, universal corruption and enmity of the