And still less do the terrors of the law come first in God's kingdom of
grace, which is the Church. They did not come first to you or to me, or
to any one in His Church who has been taught, as churchmen should be,
their Catechism. If any have been, unhappily for them, brought up to
learn Catechisms and hymns which do not belong to the Church, and which
terrify little children with horrible notions of God's wrath, and the
torments prepared not merely for wicked men, but for unconverted
children, and then teach them to say,--
"Can such a wretch as I
Escape this dreadful end?"
so much the worse for them. We, who are Church people, are bound to
believe that God speaks to us through the Church books, and that it was
His will that we should have been brought up to believe the Catechism.
And in that Catechism we heard not one word of these terrors of the law
or of God's wrath hanging over us. We were taught that before we even
knew right from wrong, God adopted us freely as His children, freely
forgave us our original sin for the sake of Christ's blood, freely
renewed us by His Holy Spirit, freely placed us in His Church;--that we
might love Him, because He first loved us; trust Him because He has done
all that even God could do to win our trust; and obey Him, because we are
boundlessly in debt to Him for boundless mercies.
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