220 TAE LAW AND 4PHE ooaPEL. this wouldbe, as it were, to establish iniquity by a law, which the holy God cannot do. The holy nature of God, as governor of his 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 therefore we are miserable. What a hideous ruin hath the first man brought into human nature, and spread over all this lower creation.? It hathweakened all our powers, hath turned oar hearts away from God, hath debased our inclinations to sense and flesh,and vanity, and made God's own rational creatures incapable of beingmade happy, by any law that he should give them, when taken in the strict andproper sense of a law. 3. 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 Land of Christ the Mediator, still it diminishes not its command- ments ; it requires perfect holiness, and abates nothing in its de- mands. Or whether you take it in a more limited sense, as re- quiring faith and new obedience, sincere diligence and watchful- ness, 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 gentle 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 Rom. iii. and Gal. iii. He callsthe gospel therefore " -a promise, the grace of God, the new covenant, &c." that he may not be supposed to speak of it as justifying us, under the notionof a law. He never callsthe gospel a Zarin, but in such a rhetorical or figurative sense, by way of catachresis, or a very strong metaphor, the law offaith ; as in Rom. iii. 27. It is as if he should say, if we must 'call it a law, it is a mere law of faith, or trusting in the mercy of God. Quest. 1. What is the gospel then ? and how doth it jus- tifyus andgive life ? Answ. Not as fulfillers ofa law, and there- by obtaining a claim to life, but as depending upon mere mercy. The gospel is a constitution of the blessed God, whereby he ac- cepts less obedience at our hands than the law requires ; and that not to make up a righteousness for our acceptance, but that God may receive us through grace, for the sake of his Son Jesus Christ, who wrought aperfect obedience, or complete righteous- ness, to answer that law ; and died to make atonement for our sins, and redeemed us from the curseof the law, which we had
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