cannot be condemned." The sincerity, therefore, or soundness, or enduring purity, of which St. Paul is speaking, would so far appear, in all probability, to be a quality of the doctrine, not of the believer's mind; or rather, perhaps, of both together. "Grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ in incorruption; with that sound, enduring love, which, being grounded on the truth of His Nature, will be able to withstand all things, as uncorrupt and glorified bodies will withstand the fires of the last day; grace be with all those who love Jesus Christ as they will love Him in Heaven, i.e. as truly God of God, made Man for our salvation."
Next, observe that this anathema is not the only one pronounced by St. Paul in the New Testament. There is one passage more, in which he distinctly threatens the same penalty: and, in all reason, the two must be compared together. Let it be well considered, then, by such as imagine that sincerity of heart is every thing, and doctrine nothing, or very little, what they can make of the awful anathema at the beginning of the Epistle to the Galatians: "Though we, or an angel from Heaven, preach any other Gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed."
The two verses, compared with each other, lead inevitably to the following result, startling as it may sound to those imbued with the notions of the day: that part of the measure of a Christian teacher's sincerity in the love of Jesus Christ, is his agreement in the substance of his doctrine with the system first preached by the Apostles. It is not his amiable meaning towards those around him, no, nor yet what may seem his devout meaning towards God, which will shelter him from the Apostolic censure, if he swerve from the platform of Apostolical doctrine. And it is clear that the verse speaks of the whole Creed as a whole, which the Galatians had received of St. Paul. It does not leave them at liberty to choose out which articles they would consider as important according to their notion and experience of practical good, edifying effect, arising out of one more than another. But it supposes them to have received a certain "form of sound words," which no abstract reasoning or theory of their own—nay, more, no miracles or other marks of heavenly authority, would warrant their adding to, or diminishing.
Further, it is plain from the general tenor of the Epistle,
