74 OF THE MORAL LAW, AND THE EVIL OF SIN. [SEAM. V. Having proved the perpetual obligation of the moral law, I proceed to the third part of my discourse, and that is, briefly to represent the evil nature of sin. Our text informs us wherein it consists. " Sin is the transgression of, the l,.w." When a creature transgresses any command that God bath given, he commits sin; but this chiefly refers to the moral law, because it is this law upon which all others are founded, and which givesforce and autho- rity to them all. Now there is a heinous evil contained in the nature of sin, if we consider the following charac- ters of it. I. " It is an affront to the authority and government of a wise and holy God, a God who has sovereign right to make laws for his creatures, and has formed all his commands and prohibitions according to infinite wisdom. Every act of wilful sin does as it were deny the sove- reignty of God over us and the property that God has in us, according to the expression of profane sinners ; Ps. xii. 4. " Our lips are our own, who is Lord over us." Wilful sin against God renounces his right to govern us and therefore though his conscience acknowledge him to be under the commands of this law, yet he does not so much need the express and pub- lic proclamation of it in order to secure him in the practice of duty. It has beep objected again, that St. Paul confirms the christians and encourages them to holiness by telling them they " are become dead to the law, and they are delivered from the law, that being dead, wherein theywere held ;" Rom. vii. 4, 6. To this I answer, that the apostle allows that christians are delivered also from the law as to its cursing and con- demning power by their pardon and justification in Christ Jesus ; they are delivered also from the unhappy effect which the law may sometimes have upon the hearts ofsinners to irritate, awaken, and provoke sin in them, by lusting for things forbidden; but he does not allow even himself or the best ofchristians to be deliveredor released from the commands of thelaw; for in this very place, he is persuading christians to holiness or obedience to the precepts of the law ; and in 1 Cor. ix. 21. he declares he is " not without law to God, hut he is under the law, as it is in the hands of Christ." Not an apostle nor an angel from heaven can release creatures from the demands of duty to their Creator, for while we are the work of the hand of God, and continue to be creatures, this law never ceases to command perfect obedience to the God that madeus, viz. " that we must love himwith all our soul, and with all our strength." Nor do all the lessening expressions which the apostle uses in his epistle to the Hebrews against the law, giveus a release from the moral law, for his design is only to shew the weakness and unprofitableness of the Jewish law or covenant of Sinai tin comparison of the glorious state of the gospel, and the new covenant, when the moral law shall be written on the hearts of men. lieb. viii. 8. and viii. 10, 13. This is the law that must stand, for ever, when the Jewish covenant vanishes and is abolisd.
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