and especially to hide its own malignant wickedness under the smoothing titles of human frailty and imperfection. To this day no man knows sin to be sin till the law shows it him and if after many ages God saw fit to collect into two tables the sum of man's duty, and to give it out in a most awful manner, it was but doing that in a more express way, with a special view to the approaching appearance of Christ in the world, which he had before found necessary to do by direct revelations, and the maintenance of his law upon men's consciences by tradition. Sin doth not appear to be sin without the law.

Thirdly. The giving out of the law implies also that the consequences of sin are not regarded. The love of sin in men's hearts, and the prevalency of its practice in the world, make it look like a harmless thing, which may be meddled with without danger. With the ten commandments in our hands, and the curse against transgression of the least of them in our ears, how easy do we sit down about the fearful consequences of sin in judgment and eternity! And how little then should we have thought of these consequences, had sin been left in the quiet possession of us, and we never been told by divine authority that the wages of it is death.

And, Fourthly, By the giving out of the law is evidently implied the purpose of mercy through Jesus Christ. Had there been no design of mercy, there could have been no end answered by giving out a law, which in that case we could not in any sort keep, when also our misery as sinners was determined before. But when the divine Majesty has a scheme of mercy in hand, which cannot effectually take place unless our sins be known, and the consequences of them apprehended, to give out the law by which both sin, and its consequence, death, are plainly set forth to view, is to declare in the very doing it the design of mercy, because it is taking the only method that could be taken of bringing us to it.

Yet, Fifthly, As the design of mercy is implied in giving out the law, so also this further design, that they who are brought to partake of this mercy, through the discovery of their sin and danger by the law, might find in the very same law a perfect rule after which to square their hearts and lives. Indeed the main end of all is conformity to the law, to which both the

knowledge of sin and its danger by the law, and the purpose of mercy in Christ, are subservient; the law sending us to Christ for mercy, that being encouraged and enabled by him we may walk in conformity to God's commandments, imperfectly here, and wholly hereafter.

From these observations the use we are to make of the commandments appears to be this::

First. That we learn our guilt and misery by them.

Secondly. That the sense of our guilt and misery by them do bring us unto Christ.

And, Thirdly.—That, being brought unto Christ, we do diligently walk in them.

First. Therefore, as you intend to profit by the commandments, you must learn your guilt and misery by them. What I mean by your misery is plainly this, that if you have disobeyed God by breaking any of God's commandments, there is a curse lying against you for it. For the curse threatened against Adam, In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die,'* lies against you as well as him, not only for his transgression, but every personal one of your own. 'Thou shalt surely die,' a temporal death speedily, and, if not prevented by mercy, an eternal death in the world to come. You do not doubt of Adam's misery after his transgression, unless relieved by God's pardoning mercy; and you have no reason to doubt of your own without the same mercy. You see Adam, after eating the forbidden fruit, a poor condemned criminal, trembling before his Judge, and expecting nothing else but the execution of his sentence, without the least hope or remedy in himself. If God had resolved to strike him dead that moment, and put in force against him all the further terrors implied in that word, Thou shalt surely die, he had nothing to gainsay to it, he could not prevent it. And if you have sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, put forth your hand and done that which God charged you you should not do, why is not your case as remediless as his? Has not God pronounced the sentence of death for it against you as well as him? And what can you do more than he could to prevent it? More than he could, can you prevent present death? Adam is dead,

Gen. ii. 17.

and so shall you also soon be. And what power have you, more than had Adam, to prevent death eternal? If therefore you have sinned, the sentence of death is gone out against you already, which you have no power to reverse in the whole extent of it; no more power to prevent eternal than present death. And, that you may know you have transgressed, God has given out his law. Your business is to prove and try yourself by it. To help you in doing which, the whole of it has been explained; and you have continually found yourself guilty, commandment after commandment. But, to assist you in fixing on your heart the whole extent of your guilt, it may not be amiss to lay all the charge of the law before you in a few words, and in such manner as to help your inquiries after your sins. Take therefore a summary of the ten commandments; but in an order different from that in which they stand, for the better ascertaining the whole extent of your sins, and the connexion which they have one with another.

Let us begin with the fourth commandment. Have you not been wanting in the public honour you are required to pay to God by a religious observance of the sabbath-day? If you have,

Let us pass to the third commandment. Have you not also been wanting in paying honour to God in the whole of your conduct, by acting in everything as became your dependence upon him, and his government over you? If here also you are guilty,

Let us pass to the second commandment, and ask, if you have put no slight upon his honour in respect of the worship due to him, either by neglecting it, or behaving irreverently in it? Now you cannot but be sensible that it was your duty publicly to honour God; and that you could do so no other way than by worshipping him, acting always in such a manner as became your dependence upon him, and solemnly observing that day which he has purposely separated for the maintenance and manifestation of his honour and name in the world. But here you have been wanting. Why? Surely because you had not a right disposition of heart towards God.

This leads to the first commandment; you had not that belief of God's being and glorious perfections, that reverence of

him, that love towards him, that trust in him, which this first commandment requires, and which, had they been in the entire possession of your heart, would have unavoidably and uninterruptedly caused you to worship him to his honour, to act for his glory, and to bear your testimony to his name by the most religious observance of his day. But what excluded from your heart these dispositions towards God? It was sin, concupiscence or lust, dwelling in you; which, with all its motions or desires, is condemned by the tenth commandment. And here the sins of commission have their foundation, and the reason is shown why you have been without the love of God and man in your heart, and acted so much to the dishonour of the one, and the hinderance of the other, as you have done. The root of all lies in your sinful nature, for which, as well as for all and every of its desires and motions, you are charged with guilt by the last commandment. But, besides this, you have actually consented to the evil desires and motions of your sinful nature, and more or less they have formed the habits of your soul, and influenced the actions of your life; insomuch, that, because your nature is sensual, you have consented to the sensual desires of it, and put them into practice; for which you are condemned by the seventh commandment, which enjoins upon you temperance, soberness, and chastity: because your nature is earthly, you have consented to and acted upon the worldly motions of it, contrary to the eighth commandment: and, finally, because your nature is devilish, you have consented to and followed the self-willed motions of it, in opposition to the fifth commandment; its envious, revengeful, and cruel motions, in contradiction to the sixth commandment; and the purely malicious motions thereof in censoriousness, contrary to the ninth commandment; and all this in full and evident breach of the duty you owe to God and your neighbour.-Now such an inquiry will not leave any of us free from guilt; nor shall we be able to allege that in any of these things we have not sinned. And it has appeared that we pass over one design of giving out the law, if we are not brought to find our sins by it. The law comes out because we are sinners, and to show us that we are so, as well as to alarm us with our misery because of sin. And this work it must do, as we mean to seek for mercy and to obtain it. The whole need not

the physician and none are so dangerously sick as they that are so and do not know it. Wherefore let us lay God's law to our conduct, that we may certainly see what it has been; and then let us lay the curse of the law to the transgression of it. And thus, by the grace of God, we shall lay the good foundation of making a right use of God's merciful design towards us in giving out the law. And hereupon,

Secondly. The sense of our guilt and misery through the law must bring us unto Christ for mercy. It was shown above that the sentence against sin is already gone forth, In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die;' and it was observed that a part of this sentence is already executed, and daily executing in present death. The point is, can we do anything to prevent the remaining and more fearful part of it, death eternal ? If we can, God will be found a liar, who hath declared,The day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die; and that the wages of sin is death," not only present, but most evidently everlasting, because that everlasting life, which it immediately follows in that passage is the gift of God, is set in opposition to this death. We can do nothing that will prevent eternal death: if you think you can, you will by that very means effectually bring it upon you. The truth is, that the business of the judgment-day will be only to put in execution the sentence of eternal death on all of us who have not fled for refuge to Christ, and to give possession of eternal life to all of us that have: then the truth of that word shall appear, He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.' If there had been such a thing as jus† tification by our own righteousness, there had been no such thing as a law given out, for there had been no need of it; we should have been a law unto, and have had the perfection of the law in ourselves: and therefore no one can have made a right use of the law who has not learnt by it the need of a Saviour, and to apply for mercy through that Redeemer who hath comé into the world. Such an one has not learnt the first use of the law, which is to give the knowledge of sin; and must be sent † John iii. 36.

*Rom. vi. 23.