One evening, which Mr. Tyrrel happened to spend with us, after Mr. Stanley had performed the family devotions, Mr. Tyrrel said to him: "Stanley, I don't much like the prayer you read. It seems, by the great stress it lays on holiness, to imply that a man has something in his own power. You did indeed mention the necessity of faith and the power of grace, but there was too much about making the life holy as if that were all in all. You seem to be putting us so much upon working and doing that you leave nothing to do for the Saviour."

"I wish," replied Mr. Stanley, "as I am no deep theologian, that you had started this objection before Dr. Barlow went away, for I know no man more able or more willing for serious discussion."

"No," replied Mr. Tyrrel, "I see clearly by some things he dropped in conversation, as well as by the whole tenor of his sermons, that Barlow and I should never agree. He means well, but knows little. He sees something, but feels nothing. More argument than unction. Too much reasoning, and too little religion; a little light, and no heat. He seems to me so to 'overload the ship with duties' that it will sink by the very means he takes to keep it afloat. I thank God my own eyes are opened, and I at last feel comfortable in my mind."

"Religious comfort," said Mr. Stanley, "is a high attainment. Only it is incumbent on every Christian to be assured that if he is happy it is on safe grounds."

"I have taken care of that," replied Mr. Tyrrel. "For some years after I had quitted my loose habits, I attended occasionally at church, but found no comfort in it, because I perceived so much was to be done and so much was to be sacrificed. But the great doctrines of faith, as opened to me by Mr. H—n, have at last given me peace, and liberty, and I rest myself without solicitude on the mercy so freely offered in the gospel. No mistakes or sins of mine can ever make me forfeit the divine favor."

"Let us hear, however," replied Mr. Stanley, "what the Bible says; for as that is the only rule by which we shall be judged hereafter, it may be prudent to be guided by it here. God says by the prophet, 'I will put my Spirit within you;' but he does this for some purpose, for he says in the very next words, 'I will cause you to walk in my statutes.' And for fear this should not plainly enough inculcate holiness, he goes on to say, 'And ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.' Show me, if you can, a single promise made to an impenitent, unholy man."

"Why," said Tyrrel, "is not the mercy of God promised to the wicked in every part of the Bible?"

"It is," said Mr. Stanley; "but that is, 'if he forsake his way.'"

"This fondness for works is, in my opinion, nothing else but setting aside the free grace of God."

"Quite the contrary: so far from setting it aside, it is the way to glorify it, for it is by that grace alone that we are enabled to perform right actions. For myself, I always find it difficult to answer persons, who, in flying to one extreme, think they can not too much degrade the opposite. If we give faith its due prominence, the mere moralist reprobates our principles as if we were depreciating works. If we magnify the beauty of holiness, the advocate for exclusive faith accuses us of being its enemy."

"For my own part, I am persuaded that unqualified trust is the only ground of safety."

"He who can not lie has indeed told us so. But trust in God is humble dependence, not presumptuous security. The Bible does not say, trust in the Lord and sin on, but 'trust in the Lord, and be doing good.' We are elsewhere told that, 'God works in us to will and to do.' There is no getting over that little word to do. I suppose you allow the necessity of prayer."

"Certainly I do."

"But there are conditions to our prayers also: 'if I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me.'"

"The Scriptures affirm that we must live on the promises."

"They are indeed the very aliment of the Christian life. But what are the promises?"

"Free pardon and eternal life to them that are in Christ Jesus."

"True. But who are they that are in Christ Jesus? The apostle tells us, 'they who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit.' Besides, is not holiness promised as well as pardon? 'A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.'"

"Surely, Stanley, you abuse the grace of the gospel, by pretending that man is saved by his own righteousness."

"No, no, my dear Tyrrel, it is you who abuse it, by making God's mercy set aside man's duty. Allow me to observe, that he who exalts the grace of God with a view to indulge himself in any sin, is deceiving no one but himself; and he who trusts in Christ, with a view to spare himself the necessity of watchfulness, humility, and self-denial, that man depends upon Christ for more than he has promised."

"Well, Mr. Stanley, it appears to me that you want to patch up a convenient accommodating religion, as if Christ were to do a little, and we were to do the rest; a sort of partnership salvation, and in which man has the larger share."

"This, I fear, is indeed the dangerous creed of many worldly Christians. No; God may be said to do all, because he gives power for all, strength for all, grace for all. But this grace, is a principle, a vital energy, a life-giving spirit to quicken us, to make us abound in holiness. He does not make his grace abound, that we may securely live in sin, but that we may subdue it, renounce it, live above it."

"When our Saviour was upon earth, there was no one quality he so uniformly commended in those who came to be healed by him, as faith."

"It is most true. But we do not meet in any of them with such a presumptuous faith as led them to rush into diseases on purpose to show their confidence in his power of healing them, neither are we to 'continue in sin that grace may abound.' You can not but observe, that the faith of the persons you mention was always accompanied with an earnest desire to get rid of their diseases. And it is worth remarking, that to the words, 'thy faith has made thee whole,' is added, 'sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.'"

"You can not persuade me that any neglect, or even sin of mine, can make void the covenant of God."

"Nothing can set side the covenant of God, which is sure and steadfast. But as for him who lives in the allowed practice of any sin, it is clear that he has no part nor lot in the matter. It is clear that he is not one of those whom God has taken into the covenant. That God will keep his word is most certain, but such a one does not appear to be the person to whom that word is addressed. God as much designed that you should apply the faculties, the power, and the will he has given you, to a life of holiness, as he meant when he gave you legs, hands, and eyes, that you should walk, work, and see. His grace is not intended to exclude the use of his gifts but to perfect, exalt, and ennoble them."

"I can produce a multitude of texts to prove that Christ has done every thing, and of course has left nothing for me to do, but to believe on him."

"Let us take the general tenor and spirit of Scripture, and neither pack single texts together, detached from the connection in which they stand; nor be so unreasonable as to squeeze all the doctrines of Christianity out of every single text, which perhaps, was only meant to inculcate one individual principle. How consistently are the great leading doctrines of faith and holiness balanced and reconciled in every part of the Bible! If ever I have been in danger of resting on a mere dead faith, by one of those texts on which you exclusively build; in the very next sentence, perhaps, I am aroused to active virtue, by some lively example, or absolute command. If again I am ever in danger, as you say, of sinking the ship with my proud duties, the next passage calls me to order, by some powerful injunction to renounce all confidence in my miserable defective virtues, and to put my whole trust in Christ. By thus assimilating the Creed with the Commandment, the Bible becomes its own interpreter, and perfect harmony is the result. Allow me also to remark, that this invariable rule of exhibiting the doctrines of Scripture in their due proportion, order, and relative connection, is one of the leading excellences in the service of our Church. While no doctrine is neglected or undervalued, none is disproportionately magnified, at the expense of the others. There is neither omission, undue prominence, nor exaggeration. There is complete symmetry and correct proportion."

"I assert that we are free by the gospel from the condemnation of the law."

"But where do you find that we are free from the obligation of obeying it? For my own part, I do not combine the doctrine of grace, to which I most cordially assent, with any doctrine which practically denies the voluntary agency of man. Nor, in my adoption of the belief of that voluntary agency, do I, in the remotest degree, presume to abridge the sovereignty of God. I adopt none of the metaphysical subtilties, none of the abstruse niceties of any party, nor do I imitate either in the reprobation of the other, firmly believing that heaven is peopled with the humble and the conscientious out of every class of real Christians."

"Still I insist that if Christ has delivered me from sin, sin can do me no harm."

"My dear Mr. Tyrrel, if the king of your country were a mighty general, and had delivered the land from some powerful enemy, would it show your sense of the obligation, or your allegiance as a subject, if you were to join the enemy he had defeated? By so doing, though the country might be saved, you would ruin yourself. Let us not then live in confederacy with sin, the power of which, indeed, our Redeemer has broken, but both the power and guilt of which the individual is still at liberty to incur."

"Stanley, I remember when you thought the gospel was all in all."

"I think so still; but I am now, as I was then, for a sober consistent gospel, a Christianity which must evidence itself by its fruits. The first words of the apostle after his conversion were, 'Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?' When he says, 'so run that ye may obtain,' he could never mean that we could obtain by sitting still, nor would he have talked of 'laboring in vain,' if he meant that we should not labor at all. We dare not persist in any thing that is wrong, or neglect any thing that is right, from an erroneous notion that we have such an interest in Christ as will excuse us from doing the one, or persisting in the other."

"I fancy you think that a man's salvation depends on the number of good actions he can muster together."

"No, it is the very spirit of Christianity not to build on this or that actual work, but sedulously to strive for that temper and those dispositions which are the seminal principles of all virtues; and where the heart struggles and prays for the attainment of this state, though the man should be placed in such circumstances as to be able to do little to promote the welfare of mankind, or the glory of God, in the eyes of the world; this very habitual aim and bent of the mind, with humble sorrow at its low attainments, is in my opinion no slight degree of obedience.

"But you will allow that the Scriptures affirm that Christ is not only a sacrifice but a refuge, a consolation, a rest."

"Blessed be God, he is indeed all these. But he is a consolation only to the heavy laden, a refuge to those alone who forsake sin. The rest he promises, is not a rest from labor but from evil. It is a rest from the drudgery of the world, but not from the service of God. It is not inactivity, but quietness of spirit; not sloth, but peace. He draws men indeed from slavery to freedom, but not a freedom to do evil, or to do nothing. He makes his service easy, but not by lowering the rule of duty, not by adapting his commands to the corrupt inclinations of our nature. He communicates his grace, gives fresh and higher motives to obedience, and imparts peace and comfort, not by any abatement in his demands, but by this infusion of his own grace, and this communication of his own Spirit."

"You are a strange fellow. According to you, we can neither be saved by good works, nor without them."

"Come, Mr. Tyrrel, you are nearer the truth than you intended. We can not be saved by the merit of our good works, without setting at naught the merits and death of Christ; and we can not be saved without them, unless we set at naught God's holiness, and make him a favorer of sin. Now to this the doctrine of the atonement, properly understood, is most completely hostile. That this doctrine favors sin, is one of the false charges which worldly men bring against vital Christianity, because they do not understand the principle, nor inquire into the grounds, on which it is adopted."

"Still, I think you limit the grace of God, as if people must be very good first, in order to deserve it, and then he will come and add his grace to their goodness. Whereas grace has been most conspicuous in the most notorious sinners."

"I allow that the grace of God has never manifested itself more gloriously than in the conversion of notorious sinners. But it is worth remarking, that all such, with St. Paul at their head, have ever after been eminently more afraid than other men of falling again into sin; they have prayed with the greater earnestness to be delivered from the power of it, and have continued to lament most deeply the remaining corruption of their hearts."

In the course of the conversation Mr. Tyrrel said, "he should be inclined to entertain doubts of that man's state who could not give an accurate account of the time, and the manner, in which he was first awakened, and who had had no sensible manifestations of the divine favor."

"I believe," replied Mr. Stanley, "that my notions of the evidence of being in the favor of God differ materially from yours. If a man feel in himself a hatred of all sin, without sparing his favorite corruption; if he rest for salvation on the promise of the gospel alone; if he maintain in his mind such a sense of the nearness and immeasurable importance of eternal things, as shall enable him to use temporal things with moderation, and anticipate their end without dismay; if he delight in the worship of God, is zealous for his service, making his glory the end and aim of all his actions; if he labor to fulfill his allotted duties conscientiously; if he love his fellow-creatures as the children of the same common Father, and partakers of the same common hope; if he feel the same compassion for the immortal interests, as for the worldly distresses of the unfortunate; forgiving others, as he hopes to be forgiven; if he endeavor according to his measure and ability, to diminish the vice and misery with which the world abounds, that man has a solid ground of peace and hope, though he may not have those sensible evidences which afford triumph and exultation. In the mean while, the man of a heated imagination, who boasts of mysterious communications within, is perhaps exhibiting outwardly unfavorable marks of his real state, and holding out by his low practice discouragements unfriendly to that religion of which he professes himself a shining instance.

"The sober Christian is as fully convinced that only he who made the heart can renew it, as the enthusiast. He is as fully persuaded that his natural dispositions can not be changed, nor his affections purified but by the agency of the divine Spirit, as the fanatic. And though he presume not to limit omnipotence to a sudden or a gradual change, yet he does not think it necessary to ascertain the day, and the hour, and the moment, contented to be assured that whereas he was once blind he now sees. If he does not presume in his own case to fix the chronology of conversion, he is not less certain as to its effects. If he can not enumerate dates, and recapitulate feelings, he can and does produce such evidence of his improvement, as virtuous habits, a devout temper, an humble and charitable spirit, repentance toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ; and this gives an evidence less equivocal, as existing more in the heart than on the lips, and more in the life than in the discourse. Surely, if a plant be flourishing, the branches green, and the fruit fair and abundant, we may venture to pronounce these to be indications of health and vigor, though we can not ascertain the moment when the seed was sown, or the manner in which it sprung up."

Sir John, who had been an attentive listener, but had not yet spoken a word, now said, smiling, "Mr. Stanley, you steer most happily between the two extremes. This exclusive cry of grace in one party of religionists, which drives the opposite side into as unreasonable a clamor against it, reminds me of the Queen of Louis Quatorze. When the Jesuits, who were of the court-party, made so violent an outcry against the Jasenists, for no reason but because they had more piety than themselves, her majesty was so fearful of being thought to favor the oppressed side, that in the excess of her party zeal, she vehemently exclaimed, 'Oh, fie upon grace! fie upon grace!'"

"Party violence," continued Mr. Stanley, "thinks it can never recede far enough from the side it opposes!"

"But how then," replied Mr. Tyrrel, "is our religion to be known, except by our making a profession of truths which the irreligious are either ignorant of, or oppose?"

"There is," rejoined Mr. Stanley, "as I have already observed, a more infallible criterion. It is best known by the effects it produces on the heart and on the temper. A religion which consists in opinions only, will not advance us in our progress to heaven: it is apt to inflate the mind with the pride of disputation; and victory is so commonly the object of debate, that eternity slides out of sight. The two cardinal points of our religion, justification and sanctification, are, if I may be allowed the term, correlatives; they imply a reciprocal relation, nor do I call that state Christianity, in which either is separately and exclusively maintained. The union of these manifests the dominion of religion in the heart, by increasing its humility, by purifying its affections, by setting it above the contamination of the maxims and habits of the world, by detaching it from the vanities of time, and elevating it to a desire for the riches of eternity."

"All the exhortations to duties," returned Mr. Tyrrel, "with which so many sermons abound, are only an infringement on the liberty of a Christian. A true believer knows of no duty but faith, no rule but love."

"Love is indeed," said Mr. Stanley, "the fountain and principle of all practical virtue. But love itself requires some regulations to direct its exertion; some law to guide its motions; some rule to prevent its aberrations; some guard to hinder that which is vigorous from becoming eccentric. With such a regulation, such a law, such a guard, the divine ethics of the gospel have furnished us. The word of God is as much our rule, as his Spirit is our guide, or his Son our 'way.' This unerring rule alone secures Christian liberty from disorder, from danger, from irregularity, from excess. Conformity to the precepts of the Redeemer is the most infallible proof of having an interest in his death."

We afterward insensibly slid into other subjects, when Mr. Tyrrel, like a combatant who thought himself victorious, seemed inclined to return to the charge. The love of money having been mentioned by Sir John with extreme severity, Mr. Tyrrel seemed to consider it as a venial failing, and said that both avarice and charity might be constitutional.

"They may be so," said Mr. Stanley, "but Christianity, sir, has a constitution of its own; a superinduced constitution. A real Christian 'confers not with flesh and blood,' with his constitution, whether he shall give or forbear to give, when it is a clear duty, and the will of God requires it. If we believe in the principles, we must adopt the conclusions. Religion is not an unproductive theory, nor charity an unnecessary, an incidental consequence, nor a contingent left to our own choice. You are a classic, Mr. Tyrrel, and can not have forgotten that in your mythological poets, the three Pagan graces were always knit together hand in hand; the three Christian graces are equally inseparable, and that the greatest of these is charity; that grand principle of love, of which almsgiving is only one branch."

Mr. Tyrrel endeavored to evade the subject, and seemed to intimate that true Christianity might be known without any such evidences as Mr. Stanley thought necessary. This led the latter to insist warmly on the vast stress which every part of Scripture laid on the duty of charity. "Its doctrines," said he, "its precepts, its promises, and its examples all inculcate it. 'The new commandment' of John; 'the pure and undefiled religion' of James; 'ye shall be recompensed at the resurrection of the just' of Luke; the daily and hourly practice of him, who not only taught to do good, but who went about doing it; 'the store for a good foundation against the time to come' of Paul—nay, in the only full, solemn, and express representation of the last day, which the gospel exhibits, charity is not only brought forward as a predominant, a distinguishing feature of the righteous, but a specific recompense seems to be assigned to it, when practiced on true Christian grounds. And it is not a little observable, that the only posthumous quotation from the sayings of our divine Saviour which the Scripture has recorded, is an encouragement to charity: 'Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.'"