If I can merit, salvation may be partly of debt, and I may earn it as wages. If I cannot merit, salvation must be wholly of grace, and I must receive it as a gift. And thus every dispute upon justification by faith, every debate in reference to works as a procuring cause of acceptance, would virtually be settled by the settlement of the impossibility of creature-merit. Questions such as these are best determined by reference to first principles. And if you had once demonstrated that merit is inconsistent with creatureship, you would have equally demonstrated that neither faith, nor works, can procure man's salvation in the way of desert; but that, whatever the instrumentality through which justification is effected, justification itself must be wholly of grace.

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