CHAPTER VI. 333 VII. St. Paul himself in his writings make use of these Mosaic representations of the law of works, sometimes for this very purpose. See Rom. iii. 20. By the law is the knowledge of sin, whether it be the Jewish law of Sinai, or the original law of innocency. Again, Rom. v. 20. The law entered that sin might abound ; which at least must have this sense, that the Jewish law was introduced in the multitude of its precepts, in the perfection of its requirements, and its repetitions of the moral law, or law of innocency, that sin might evidently appear to abound among men, and that by the law they might be so deeply convinced of sin, as to become dead to the law, as St. Paul was ; Gal. ii. 19. that is, that they might be dead to all hopes of eternal life by the lawof works, when they saw the number of its precepts, and perfection of its demands. VIII. Thus by the law the Jews might gain, not only the knowledge of sin, but also of the curse of death that was due to it. Rom: vi. 23. For the wages ofevery sin is there pronounced to be death; and Gal. iii. 10. cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the law to do them. And thus Paul argues, that they might be excited to fly to the grace of God to obtain pardon, or justification, or a justifying righteousness by faith, or dependence on grace through Jesus Christ. Gal. iii. 24. The lawwas our school-master, strict in its precepts, and severe in its threatenings and punishments, to bring us to Christ, that we might be justified by faith. He that diligently reads St. Paul's epistles to the Romans and Galatians will find much of this sort of reasoning about the Jewish law ; supposing it to contain in it, or at least to repre- sent and figure out, the first covenant or original law of works, by which we sinful creatures can never be justified, and accord.. ing to which many of theJews were ever ready to hope for jus- tification by their own works. And probably, when the ten commands of this law, were pronounced frommount Sinai, it was called by Moses ; Dent. xxxiii. 2. a fiery law, because it was attended with such lightning and thunder, storm and terror, with a design to represent the curses of God, which attended every sinner, who had broken his general original moral law, as well as those who wilfully should break any particular law of God's making ; Heb. xii. 18. IX. Thus, though the word "law," in some scriptures re- presents the covenant of works, yet in some other places of St. Paul's writings, the law of Moses, or the law and the prophets, including the whole Jewish dispensation, is brought in by the same apostle, as exhibiting the gospel, though, not in its full clearness, and as witnessing to the covenant of grace, or the way of obtainingrighteousness or justification by faith ; by which Abraham the patriarch, and David the Jew, and all theJewish VOL. III. Z
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