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 swallowed up as rivers in the main.
He's seen when gospel-light and sight is giv'n,
Encompass'd round with all the pomp of heav'n.

The soul now, taught of God, sees human schools
Make Christless Rabbi's only lit'rate fools;
And that, 'till divine teaching pow'rful draw,
No learning will divorce them 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 gospel-heads, but still a legal heart.
"Till sov'reign grace and pow'r the sinner catch,
He takes not Jesus for his only match.
Nay, works compete! ah! true, however odd,
Dead works are rivals with the living God.
'Till heav'n's preventing mercy clear the sight,
Confound the pride with supernat'ral light;
No haughty soul 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 charged?
What human worth shall stand when he shall scan?
O may his glory stain the pride of man.

How wonderous are the tracts of divine grace, How searchless are his ways, how vast the abyss ? Let haughty reason stop, and fear to leap; Angelic plummets cannot sound 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.

CHAPTER V.

Arguments and encouragements to gospelministers to avoid a legal strain of doctrine, and endeavour the sinner's match with Christ by gospel-means.

SECTION I.

A legal Spirit the root of damnable errors.

YE here silver trump of gospel-grace abroad;

E heralds great, that blow in name of God

And sound, by warrant from the great I AM,
The nuptial treaty with the worthy Lamb:
Might ye but stoop th' unpolish'd muse to brook,
And from a shrub an wholesome berry pluck;
Ye'd take encouragement from what is said,
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 gospel-way :
Oft in the church arise destructive schisms
From anti-evangelic aphorisms;

A legal spirit may be justly nam'd

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

Hence Popery, so connat'ral since the fall, Makes legal works like saviours merit all; Yea more than merit on their shoulder load, To supererogate like demi-gods.

Hence proud Socinians seat their reason high, 'Bove every precious gospel-mystery,

Its divine author stab, and without fear
The purple covert of his chariot tear.
With these run Arian monsters in a line,
All gospel-truth at once to undermine;
To darken and delete, like hellish foes,
The brighest colour of the Sharon Rose.
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 gospel too.

Hence Neonomians spring, as sundry 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 gospel muff.

Yea, hence springs Antimonian vile refuse,
Whose gross abettors gospel-grace abuse;
Unskill'd how grace's silken latchet binds
Her captives to the law with willing minds.

A legal strain of doctrine discovered and discarded.

No wonder Paul the legal spirit curse,

N°

Of fatal errors such a feeding nurse.

He, in Jehovah's great tremendous name,
Condemns perverters of the gospel-scheme.
He damn'd the sophist rude, the babling priest
Would venture to corrupt it in the least;
Yea, curst the heav'nly angel down to hell,
That daring would another gospel tell.*
Which crime is charg'd on these that dare dispense
The self-same gospel in another sense.

Christ is not preach'd in truth, but in disguise,
If his bright glory half absconded lies.
When gospel soldiers, that divide the word,
Scarce brandish any but the legal sword.
While Christ the author of the law they press,
More than the end of it for righteousness;
Christ as a seeker of our service trace,
More than a giver of enabling grace.
The King commanding holiness they show,
More than the Prince exalted to bestow;
Yea, more on Christ the sin-revenger dwell,
Than Christ redeemer both from sin and hell.

With legal spade the gospel-field he delves,
Who thus drives sinners in unto themselves;
Halving the truth that should be all reveal'd,
The sweetest part of Christ is oft conceal'd.
We bid men turn from sin, but seldom say,
Behold the Lamb that takes all sin away!
Christ, by the gospel rightly understood,
Not only treats a peace, but makes it good.
Those suitors therefore of the bride, who hope
By force to drag her by the legal rope,
Nor use the drawing cord of conq'ring grace,
Pursue with flaming zeal a fruitless chase;
In vain lame doings urge, with solemn awe,
To bribe the fury of the fiery law :
With equal success to the fool that aims

*Gal. i. 7. 8.

By paper walls to bound devouring flames.
The law's but mock'd by their most graceful deed,
That wed not first the law-fulfilling Head;
It values neither how they wrought nor wept,
That flight the ark wherein alone 'tis kept.
Yet legalists, DO, DO, with ardour press,
And with prepost'rous zeal and warm address,
Would seem the greatest friends to holiness:
But vainly (could such opposites accord)
Respect the law, and yet reject the Lord.
They shew not Jesus as the way to bliss,
But Judas-like betray him with a kiss
Of boasted works, or mere profession puft,
Law-boasters proving but law-breakers oft.

The hurtfulness of not preaching Christ, and distinguishing duly between law and gospel.

H

ELL cares not how crude holiness be preach'd,

If sinners match with Christ be never reach'd ; Knowing their holiness is but a sham,

Who ne'er are marry'd to the holy Lamb.
Let words have never such a pious shew,
And blaze aloft in rude professor's view,
With sacred aromatics richly spic'd,

If they but drown in silence glorious Christ;
Or, if he may some vacant room supply,
Make him a subject only by the by;
They mar true holiness with tickling chat,
To breed a bastard Pharisaic brat.
They wofully the gospel-message broke,
Make fearful havock of the Master's flock;
Yet please themselves and the blind multitude,
By whom the gospel's little understood.