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fear. Calmly acquiesce in whatsoever is the will of God. Learn in every state wherein you are, therewith to be content. Be mild to the good: be gentle towards all men; but especially towards the evil and the unthankful. Beware, not only of outward expressions of anger, such as calling thy brother, Raca, or Thou fool; but of every inward emotion contrary to love, though it go no farther than the heart. Be angry at sin, as an affront offered to the Majesty of heaven; but love the sinner still: like our Lord, who "looked round about upon the Pharisees with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts." He was grieved at the sinners, angry at the sin. Thus be thou "angry, and sin not!"

9. Now do thou hunger and thirst, not for "the meat that perisheth, but for that which endureth unto everlasting life." Trample under foot the world, and the things of the world; all these riches, honours, pleasures. What is the world to thee? Let the dead bury their dead; but follow thou after the image of God. And beware of quenching that blessed thirst, if it is already excited in thy soul, by what is vulgarly called religion; a poor, dull farce, a religion of form, of outside show, which leaves the heart still cleaving to the dust, as earthly and sensual as ever. Let nothing satisfy thee but the power of godliness, but a religion that is spirit and life; the dwelling in God and God in thee; the being an inhabitant of eternity; the entering in by the blood of sprinkling" within the veil," and "sitting in heavenly places with Christ Jesus!'

10. Now, seeing thou canst do all things through Christ strengthening thee, be merciful as thy Father in heaven is merciful! Love thy neighbour as thyself! Love friends and enemies as thy own soul! And let thy love be long suffering and patient to all men. Let it Le kind, soft, benign; inspiring thee with the most amiable sweetness, and the most fervent and tender affection. Let it rejoice in the truth, wheresoever it is found; the truth that is after godliness. Enjoy whatsoever brings glory to God, and promotes peace and good will among men. In love, cover all things, of the dead and the absent speaking nothing but good; believe all things which may any way tend to clear your neighbour's character; hope all things, in his favour; and endure all things, triumphing over all opposition: for true love never faileth, in time or in eternity.

11. Now be thou pure in heart; purified through faith from every unholy affection; "cleansing thyself from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, and perfecting holiness in the fear of God." Being, through the power of his grace, purified from pride, by deep poverty of spirit ; from anger, from every unkind or turbulent passion, by meekness and mercifulness; from every desire but to please and enjoy God, by hunger and thirst after righteousness; now love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy strength!

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12. In a word: let thy religion be the religion of the heart. Let it lie deep in thy inmost soul. Be thou little, and base, and mean, and vile (beyond what words can express) in thy own eyes; amazed and humbled to the dust, by the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. serious. Let the whole stream of thy thoughts, words, and actions, flow from the deepest conviction that thou standest on the edge of the great gulf, thou and all the children of men, just ready to drop in, either into everlasting glory or everlasting burnings! Let thy soul be filled VOL. I.

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with mildness, gentleness, patience, long suffering towards all men ;→→ at the same time that all which is in thee is athirst for God, the living God; longing to awake up after his likeness, and to be satisfied with it! Be thou a lover of God, and of all mankind! In this spirit, do and suffer all things! Thus show thy faith by thy works; thus" do the will of thy Father which is in heaven!" And, as sure as thou now walkest with God on earth, thou shalt also reign with him in glory!

SERMON XXXIV.-The Original, Nature, Properties, and Use of the Law.

"Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good," Romans vii, 12.

1. PERHAPS there are few subjects within the whole compass of religion, so little understood as this. The reader of this epistle is usually told, by the law St. Paul means the Jewish law; and so apprehending himself to have no concern therewith, passes on without farther thought about it. Indeed some are not satisfied with this account; but observing the epistle is directed to the Romans, thence infer, that the apostle in the beginning of this chapter alludes to the old Roman law. But as they have no more concern with this, than with the ceremonial law of Moses, so they spend not much thought on what they suppose is occasionally mentioned, barely to illustrate another thing.

2. But a careful observer of the apostle's discourse, will not be content with these slight explications of it. And the more he weighs the words, the more convinced he will be, that St. Paul by the law mentioned in this chapter, does not mean either the ancient law of Rome, or the ceremonial law of Moses. This will clearly appear to all who attentively consider the tenor of his discourse. He begins the chapter, "Know ye not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) [to them who have been instructed therein from their youth,] that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth?" (What, the law of Rome only, or the ceremonial law? No surely; but the moral law.) "For," to give a plain instance, "the woman which hath a husband is bound by the [moral] law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress : but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress though she be married to another man." From this particular instance the apostle proceeds to draw that general conclusion: "Wherefore, my brethren," by a plain parity of reason, "ye also are become dead to the law," the whole Mosaic institution, " by the body of Christ," offered for you, and bringing you under a new dispensation: "That ye should [without any blame] be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead;" and hath thereby given proof of his authority to make the change; "that we should bring forth fruit unto God." And this we can do now, whereas before we could not: "For when we were in the flesh," under the power of the flesh, that is, of corrupt nature, [which was necessarily the case till we knew the power of Christ's resurrection,]" the motions

of sins, which were by the law,"—-which were shown and inflamed by the Mosaic law, not conquered,-" did work in our members,"-broke out various ways," to bring forth fruit unto death." "But now we are delivered from the law;"-from that whole moral, as well as ceremonial economy; "that being dead whereby we were held;"-that entire institution being now as it were dead, and having no more authority over us, than the husband, when dead, hath over his wife: "That we should serve him," who died for us and rose again," in newness of spirit ;" —in a new spiritual dispensation; "and not in the oldness of the letter;" —with a bare outward service, according to the letter of the Mosaic institution, ver. 1–6.

3. The apostle, having gone thus far in proving that the Christian had set aside the Jewish dispensation, and that the moral law itself, though it could never pass away, yet stood on a different foundation from what it did before,-now stops to propose and answer an objection: "What shall we say then? Is the law sin?" So some might infer from a misapprehension of those words, "the motions of sins which were by the law." "God forbid!" saith the apostle, that we should say so. Nay, the law is an irreconcilable enemy to sin; searching it out wherever it is. "I had not known sin but by the law: for I had not known lust," evil desire, to be sin, "except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet," verse 7. After opening this farther, in the four following verses, he subjoins this general conclusion, with regard more especially to the moral law, from which the preceding instance was taken: "Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good.'

4. In order to explain and enforce these deep words, so little regarded, because so little understood, I shall endeavour to show, first, the original of this law: secondly, the nature thereof: thirdly, the properties; that it is holy, and just, and good: and, fourthly, the uses of it.

I. 1. I shall first endeavour to show the original of the moral law, often called "The law," by way of eminence. Now this is not, as some may have possibly imagined, of so late an institution as the time of Moses. Noah declared it to men long before that time, and Enoch before him. But we may trace its original higher still, even beyond the foundation of the world, to that period, unknown indeed to men, but doubtless enrolled in the annals of eternity, when "the morning stars [first] sang together," being newly called into existence. It pleased the great Creator to make these, his first-born sons, intelligent beings, that they might know him that created them. For this end he endued them with understanding, to discern truth from falsehood, good from evil; and, as a necessary result of this, with liberty,—a capacity of choosing the one and refusing the other. By this they were, likewise, enabled to offer him a free and willing service; a service reward able in itself, as well as most acceptable to their gracious Master.

2. To employ all the faculties which he had given them, particularly their understanding and liberty, he gave them a law, a complete model of all truth, so far as is intelligible to a finite being; and of all good, so far as angelic minds were capable of embracing it. It was also the design of their beneficent Governor herein to make way for a continual increase of their happiness; seeing every instance of obedience to that law, would both add to the perfection of their nature, and 'entitle

them to a higher reward, which the righteous Judge would give in its season.

3. In like manner, when God, in his appointed time, had created a new order of intelligent beings, when he had raised man from the dust of the earth, breathed into him the breath of life, and caused him to become a living soul, endued with power to choose good or evil; he gave to this free, intelligent creature, the same law as to his first-born children;—not wrote indeed upon tables of stone, or any corruptible substance, but engraven on his heart by the finger of God; wrote in the inmost spirit both of men and of angels, to the intent it might never be far off, never hard to be understood, but always at hand, and always shining with clear light, even as the sun in the midst of heaven.

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4. Such was the original of the law of God. With regard to man it was coeval with his nature; but with regard to the elder sons of God, it shone in its full splendour, " or ever the mountains were brought forth, or the earth and the round world were made." But it was not long before man rebelled against God, and, by breaking this glorious law, well nigh effaced it out of his heart; the eyes of his understanding being darkened, in the same measure as his soul was alienated from the life of God." And yet God did not despise the work of his own hands; but being reconciled to man through the Son of his love, he, in some measure, reinscribed the law on the heart of his dark, sinful creature. "He [again] showed thee, oh man, what is good, [although not as in the beginning,] even to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God."

5. And this he showed, not only to our first parents, but likewise to all their posterity, by "that true light which enlightens every man that cometh into the world." But notwithstanding this light, all flesh had, in process of time, "corrupted their way before him;" till he chose out of mankind a peculiar people, to whom he gave a more perfect knowledge of his law: and the heads of this, because they were slow of understanding, he wrote on two tables of stone; which he commanded the fathers to teach their children, through all succeeding generations.

6. And thus it is, that the law of God is now made known to them that know not God. They hear, with the hearing of the ear, the things that were written aforetime for our instruction. But this does not suffice: they cannot, by this means, comprehend the height, and depth, and length, and breadth thereof. God alone can reveal this by his Spirit. And so he does to all that truly believe, in consequence of that gracious promise made to all the Israel of God: " Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel. And this shall be the covenant that I will make; I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people," Jer. xxxi, 31, &c.

II. 1. The nature of that law which was originally given to angels in heaven and man in paradise, and which God has so mercifully promised to write afresh in the hearts of all true believers, was the second thing I proposed to show. In order to which I would first observe, that although the "law" and the "commandment" are sometimes differently taken, (the commandment meaning but a part of the law,) yet, in the text, they are used as equivalent terms, implying one and the same

thing. But we cannot understand here, either by one or the other, the ceremonial law. It is not the ceremonial law, whereof the apostle says, in the words above recited, "I had not known sin but by the law:" this is too plain to need a proof. Neither is it the ceremonial law which saith, in the words immediately subjoined, "Thou shalt not covet.' Therefore the ceremonial law has no place in the present question.

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2. Neither can we understand by the law mentioned in the text, the Mosaic dispensation. It is true, the word is sometimes so understood: as when the apostle says, speaking to the Galatians, chap. iii, 17, "The covenant that was confirmed before;" namely, with Abraham, the father of the faithful; "the law," i. e. the Mosaic dispensation,-" which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot disannul." But it cannot be so understood in the text; for the apostle never bestows so high commendations as these upon that imperfect and shadowy dispensation. He no where affirms the Mosaic to be a spiritual law; or, that it is holy, and just, and good. Neither is it true, that God will write that law in the hearts of them whose iniquities he remembers no more. It remains, that the law, eminently so termed, is no other than the moral law.

3. Now this law is an incorruptible picture of the high and holy ONE that inhabiteth eternity. It is he, whom, in his essence, no man hath seen or can see, made visible to men and angels. It is the face of God unveiled; God manifested to his creatures as they are able to bear it; manifested to give, and not to destroy life,—that they may see God and live. It is the heart of God disclosed to man. Yea, in some sense, we may apply to this law, what the apostle says of his Son, it is awavyaoua της δόξης, και χαρακτηρ της υποςάσεως αυτ8,—the streaming forth [or out-beaming] of his glory, the express image of his person.

4. "If virtue," said the ancient heathen, "could assume such a shape as that we could behold her with our eyes, what wonderful love would she excite in us!" If virtue could do this! It is done already. The law of God is all virtues in one, in such a shape, as to be beheld with open face, by all those whose eyes God hath enlightened. What is the law but divine virtue and wisdom, assuming a visible form? What is it but the original ideas of truth and good, which were lodged in the uncreated mind from eternity, now drawn forth and clothed with such a vehicle, as to appear even to human understanding?

5. If we survey the law of God in another point of view, it is supreme, unchangeable reason; it is unalterable rectitude; it is the everlasting fitness of all things that are or ever were created. I am sensible, what a shortness, and even impropriety, there is, in these and all other human expressions, when we endeavour by these faint pictures to shadow out the deep things of God. Nevertheless, we have no better, indeed no other way, during this, our infant state of existence. As we now know but "in part," so we are constrained to "prophesy," i. e. speak of the things of God, "in part" also. "We cannot order our speech by reason of darkness," while we are in this house of clay. While I am a child, I must "speak as a child:" but I shall soon put away childish things: for "when that which is perfect is come, that which is in part shall be done away."

6. But to return. The law of God, (speaking after the manner of men,) is a copy of the eternal mind, a transcript of the divine nature:

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