DISCOVERY OF FORGIVENESS. 79 horrence than ever, upon more and more glorious ac- counts than formerly; but it is also made to see an in- terposition between these sins and the person of the sinner who bath committed them; which is no small or ordinary work. 2. The law lies against this discovery of forgiveness. The law is a beam of the holiness of God himself; what it speaks to us, it speaks in the name and authori- ty of God. It is certain that the law knows neither mercy norfor- giveness. Its very sanction lies wholly against forgive- ness: "The soul that sinneth shall die. Cursed is he that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them." Ezek. 18 : 4 ; Deut. 27 : 26. Hence the apostle pronounces universally, without ex- ception, that they who are " under the law are under the curse," Gal. 3: 10 ; and, saith he, verse 12, " The law is not of faith." There is an inconsistency between the law and believing; they cannot have their abode in power together. Do this, and live ; fail, and die ; is the constant immutable voice of the law. This it speaks in general to all, and this in particular to every one. And further, the sinner seems to have manifold and weighty reasons to attend to the voice of this law, and to acquiesce in its sentence. For, The law is connatural to him; his domestic, his old acquaintance : it came into the world with him, and bath grown up with him from his infancy; it was im- planted in his heart by nature ; he can never shake it off, or part with it. It is his familiar, his friend, that cleaves to him as the flesh to the bone ; so that they who have not the law written, cannot but " show forth the work of the law," Rom. 2: 14, 15, and that because the law itself is inbred in them, and all the faculties of the soul are at peace with it, in subjection to it. It is the bond of their union, harmony and correspondence
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