SS OBLIGATION OF TIIE MORAL LAW. and hands to yield obedience to all the pósitive laws God has given to men : Some of those rites and ceremonies so far as we can discover, seem not to be of any great importance in them-. selves; but a wilful neglectof the least of them is a disobedience to the great God, and a violation of this law; and I think we may say that if this law were abolished no other could bind us : for it is one of the first and strongest requirements of this law, that a creature must obey his Maker in all things: And for this reason, it was that our blessed Saviour who had no need to be washed from sin, yet submitted to baptism under the ministry of John his forerunner, even when John seemed to dissuade him from it ; Mat. iii. 15. Suffer it to be so now said he, for thus it becomes us tofulfil all righteousness, that is, to obey whatever God commands. V. I would add in the last place, that scripture asserts the perpetuity and everlasting obligation of the moral law ; Luke xvi. 17, it is easierfor heaven and earth to pass away, thanfor the least tittleof the law to fail; and óur blessed Saviour declares; Mat. '17. 17. that he came not to destroy the laic but to fulfil it ; by whichhe cannot mean the Jewish ritualwhich was soon abol- ished, but he means eminently the moral law, for it is the precepts of that law he proceeds to explain. And it is in conformity to this doctrine, the apostle Paul makes use of this law to convince Jew and Gentile, and all mankind in all ages; that they are sin- ners and guilty before God, in the second and third chapters tò the Romans. By the law is the knowledge, of sin, whether the natural law of the heathensor the written laws of the Jews : All have broken this moral law of God, every month is stopped and all the world lies guilty before God. I know that there are some contrary. opinions rising up in the heart of man against this doctrine. Some have objected here, that since the fall of Adamno mere man is able perfectly to comply with the demands of it, for it requires universal obedience in thought word and action, and a perfect abstinence from every sin; but since noman isable to yield this obedience, it can never be supposed that a righteous and gracious God can continue to require it. To this 1 answer,first, Answer I.That man has not losthis natural power to obey this law; he is bound then as far as his natural powers will reach : I own his faculties are greatly corrupted by vicious in- clinations or sinful propensities, which has been happily calledby our divinesa moral inability to fulfil the law, rather than a natural impossibility of it. But though the powers of than be vitiated, and his inclinations to evil are so strong that they will never be effectually subdued without divine grace, yet the great and holy God condones still to demand a perfection of obedience ; he can-
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=