inne. iv,] LAW AiQU O6+P$L. 185 able state of guilt and misery are we fallen, that no law, which God can make in our circurnstances, can save us, God cannot make a law which Both not réquire perfect holiness, in thought, word, and deed : He cannot make a lawwhich allows sin and imperfection : For'this would be, as it were, to establish iniquity by a law, which the holy God cannot do, The holy nature of God, as go- vernor ofhis creatures, cannot but command them to be perfectly holy, under whatsoever gracious dispensations he may place them, for the relief of their guilt, and weakness, and distress. His law still commands what fallen impotent creatures cannot fully obey ; and there- fore we are miserable. What a hideous ruin bath the first man brought into human nature, and spread over all this lower creation ? It bath weakened all our powers, bath turned our hearts away fromGod, bath debased our inclinations to sense and flesh, and vanity, and made God's own rational creatures, incapable of being made .happy, by any law that he should give them, when taken in the strict and proper sense of a law. Remark S. Even the gospel of Christ, considered as a mere law, as requiring duty, and promising a reward , upon full performance, cannot give life to sinful man : For whether you take it in a large sense, and consider it as including the moral law, taken into the hand of Christ the Mediator, still it diminishes not its commandments ; it requires perfect holiness, and abates nothing in its de- mands. Or whether you take it in a more limited sense, as requiring faith and new obedience, sincere diligence and watchfulness, yet, considered as a law, it requires the practice of these duties in greater perfection, than the best of saints or christians ever practised them ; otherwise they would not sin in coming short of what the gospel requires ; and therefore they cannot. give life, if God should strictly judge us, according to these gen. tie commands of the gospel. And therefore you find, when the apostle speaks of justification, according to the gospel, he is positive; peremptory, and universal, in his exclusion of all works of the law, from justifying us ; as in Born. iit. and Gal. iii. He calls the gospel therefore a promise, the grace of God, the new covenant, &c. that he may not be sup.
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