SERMON XLIX. gg not "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, demandi the best service that our natural powers can per- form : Our understanding 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 pf sin where we fall short of perfection ; that is, if we loved God in part, if we serve him in part, though it was not with all our mind, with, allour soul, with all our hearty and with all our strength, yet we should not be transgressors but this I think is avery absurd supposition. I answer inthe second place, 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 scrip- ture and which runs through every dispensation since the fall of Adam, has not abated the demands of the law, though it has provided a relief for us under our failings. And though'we do not fulfil what God requires in this law, yet he condescends in this gospel to pardon and to accept the humble, the sincere, the penitent sinner, -on the account of the perfect obedienceand atoning sacrifice of his own Son. It is granted indeed that all menwho have been saved in the way of the gospel have yielded but a very imperfect anddefective obedience to this law, yet ,still the lawof God demands a perfection of holiness according to our utmost natural powers and capacities ; the law demands that we sin not at all; but the gospel says, Ifwe sinwe have an Advocate with the Pat /ter, even Jesus Christ the righteous, who is apropitia- tionfor the sins of. the world; 1 John ii. 2*. * There is also another objection against this doctrine which some raise from thewords of scripture. Does not'the apostle. tell Timothy that the law is not made for a righteous man, butfor the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sin- ners a &c, 1 Tim. i. 9. But this is readily answered by considering what is the apostle's meaning here. It is only to skew that disobedient and ungodly menhave need of particular and express laws or precepts, with threatenings and terrors an- nexed to them, in order to restrain them from iniquity ; but the righteous man bath a sanctified nature, and an inward aversion within himself to all evil prac- tices ; and therefore though hisconscience acknowledge-him to be under the com- mand's of this law, yethe does nst so much need the express and public proclama- tion of it in order to secure him in the practice of duty. It has been objected again that St. Paul confirms theChristians and encourages them to holiness by telling them they are become dead to the law, and they are deli - veredfrom the law, that being dead, wherein theywere held; Rom. vii. 4 -6. To this 1 answer that the apostle allows that Christians are delivered also from the law as to its cursing and condemning power by their pardon and justification inChrist Jesus ; they are delivered also from the unhappy effect which the law may some- times have upon thehearts of sinners to irritate awaken and provoke sin in them by lusting for things forbidden ; but he does not allow even himself or the best of Christians to be delivered or released from the commands of the law; for in this very place lie is persuading Christians to holinessor obedience to the precepts of
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