Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 2.djvu/377

Rh a test of our holiness, not of 's goodness. The passage of St. John is more difficult; nor do those who quote it seem to be aware of its difficulty. For taken thus loosely, it were in direct contradiction with that other truth, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us ;" and, therefore, we are of necessity forced to look more closely into it. Since, also, we know by sad experience, that all commit sin, then it would follow, that none were regenerate; and, as an old Predestinarian writer well said, "if this objection were of force against infants, it would be much more against persons of yeares actually converted. For it would prove that they have not the constantly abiding in them, because it doth not in great falls evidently show itself at all." And not in great falls only, but in lesser cases of human infirmity; for St. John saith peremptorily and absolutely, "doth not commit sin;" and to substitute for this, "is not guilty of deliberate and habitual sin," or "gross sin," or any other qualifying expression, is clearly tampering with 's words, and lowering His teaching. Glosses, such as these, in plain statements of Holy Scripture, cannot be too