SERMON XLIX. 85 *very transgression of it so heinous an evil ? Then let " us take a survey how wretched and deplorable is the state of mankind by nature. We have all broken the law of our God, which we have been all bound to obey ; we are still bound to obey it and are still breakers of it. Our daily thoughts, our words and our deeds sufficiently shew us that we are transgressors, and there is in our nature a perpetual propensity to trangress. Where is the mortal that has lived according to the purityand perfection of this law ? There is none righteous; no, not one; Rom. iii. 10, 12. Where is the son, or daughter of Adam, that is not pronounced guilty and condemned by it ? Every mouth is stopped, and all the world is guilty before God. What a miserable region is this earth, overspread with sinful inhabitants, criminal creatures, who are all transgressors against the law of the God thatt made them, and by the sentence of that law standcondemned to death, con- sidered in their natural state ? II. Is the moral law ofsuch constant obligation, and is death the due recompence of every transgression of it ; " Then it is necessary forministers to preach this law, and it is necessary for hearers to learn it." We should all know ..our duty and our dan- ger. Not the best of christians are arrived at a dispensation above the knowledge and the practice of this law. There is no honour done to the gospel by explaining it in such amanner as to release us from the duties of the moral law ; for it is one great design of the gospel to restore us again to a chearful and regular obedience to it. To release christians from the precepts of the law is to make Christ the minister of sin, and to turn the graceof our God into wantonness, which the apostles Paul and Jude speak of with detestation and abhorrence ; Gal. ii. 17. Jude verse 4. To pretend that obedience to the moral law is needless for chris- tianswho believe the gospel, is to deny and destroy, as much as in us lies, the great end for whichChrist and the gospel came into the world ; which is to redeem us from all iniquity that we might be zealous of good works ; 'fit. ii. 14. To deliver us from the curse of the law, and the condemnation of it, that we might have the precepts of the law, and practise them withdelight and newness of heart. It is not therefore our preaching of the law to promote the gospel, that deserves the reproach of a legal sermon ; but to preach the law instead of the gospel, or to preach the gospel as a law of works. Christ and St. Paul well understood the gos- pel, and yet they both preached the law in the commands and< terrors of it. We must learn the law if we would be acquainted with our own guilt and danger, or if we would know our duty anti practise religion and virtue. By the law is the knowledgeof sin, and by the law ow feet are guided into the paths of righteous.,
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