SEEM. v.) OF THE MORAL LAW, AND THE EVIL OF SIN. 73 and holy God continues still to demand a perfection of obedience ; he cannot give an imperfect law, or a law that requires but an imperfect obedience to it. His title, as the Creator and the God of nature, demands the best service that our natural powers can .perform : Our un- derstanding and will, our heart, and hand, and tongue, owe him their utmost obedience. Besides, if the law did not continue to require our best and highest obedience, we should not be guilty of sin where we fall short,of perfection ; that is, if we loved God in part, if we served him in part, though it was not " with,all our mind, with all our soul, with all our heart, and with all our strength," yet we should not be trans- gressors ; but this I think is a very absurd supposition. I answer in the second place, answer II. That the moral law may continue still to demand perfect obedience of all men, though since the fall they cannot perfectly fulfil it ; for the grace of the gospel which is revealed in scripture, and which runs Through every dispensation since the fall of Adam, lias not abated the demands of the law, though it ' has pro- vided a relief for us under our failings. And though we donot fulfil what God requires in this law, yet he con - descends in this gospel to pardon and to accept the hum- ble, the sincere, the penitent sinner, on the account of the perfect obedience and atoning sacrifice of his own Son. It is granted indeed that all men who have been saved in the way Of the gospel have yielded buta very imperfect and defective obedience to this law, yet still the law of God demands a perfection of holiness according to our utmost natural powers and capacities; the law demands that we sin not at all; bùt the gospel says, " I-f we sin we have'an Advocate with the Father, even Jesus Christ the righteous, who is a propitiation for the sins of the world ;" 1 John ii. E.* ' There is also another objection against this doctrine which some raise from the words ofscripture. Doesnot the apostle tell Timothy that " the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodlyand for sinners ?" &c. I Tint. i. 9. But this is readily an4 swered, by consideringwhat is the apostle's meaning here. It is only to shew, that'lisobedient and ungodlymen have need of particular and ex, press laws or precepts, with threatenings and terrors annexed to them, in order to restrain them from iniquity; but the righteous man bath a saw:- Bled nature, and ;i} inward aversion within himself, to all evil practices »
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