righteousness is the only righteousness, and Christ’s righteousness is the only pattern of it), and teach men that God does not merely require of men to do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with their God, but requires of them something more.  But by this they deny the righteousness of God; for they make out that he has not behaved righteously and justly to men, nor showed them what is good, but has left them to find it out or invent it for themselves.  For is it not establishing a righteousness of one’s own, to tell people that God only requires these Ten Commandments of Christians in general, but that if any one chooses to go further, and do certain things which are not contained in the Ten Commandments, ‘counsels of perfection,’ as they are called, and ‘good works’ (as if there were no other good works in the world), and so do more than it is one’s duty to do, and lead a sort of life which is called (I know not why) ‘saintly’ and ‘angelic,’ then one will obtain a ‘peculiar crown,’ and a higher place in Heaven than poor commonplace Christian people, who only do justly, and love mercy, and walk humbly with their God?

And is it not, on the other hand, establishing a righteousness of one’s own, to say that God requires of us belief in certain doctrines about election, and ‘forensic justification,’ and ‘sensible conversion,’ and certain ’frames and feelings and experiences;’ and that without all these a man has no right to expect anything but endless torture; and all the while to say little or nothing about God’s requiring of men the Ten Commandments?  For my part, I am equally shocked and astonished at the doctrine which I have heard round us here—­openly from some few, and in practice from more than a few—­that because the Ten Commandments are part of the Law, they are done away with, because we are not now under the Law but under Grace.  What do they mean?  Is it not written, that not one jot or tittle of the Law shall fail; and that Christ came, not to destroy the Law, but to fulfil it?  What do they mean?  That it was harm to break the Ten Commandments before Christ came, but no harm to break them now?  Do they mean that Jews were forbid to murder, steal, and commit adultery, but that Christians are not forbidden?  One thing I am afraid they do mean, for I see them act up to it steadily enough.  That Jews were forbidden to covet, but that Christians are not; that Jews might not commit fornication, but Christians may; that Jews might not lie, but Christians may; that Jews might not use false weights and measures, or adulterate goods for sale, but that Christians may.  My friends, if I am asked the reason of the hypocrisy which seems the besetting sin of England, in this day;—­if I am asked why rich men, even high religious professors, dare speak untruths at public meetings, bribe at elections, and go into parliament each man with a lie in his right hand, to serve neither God nor his country, but his political party and his