"without hope," or buoyed up in presumptuous confidence. According to Peter, the believer's obedience results from "the sanctification of the Spirit ;" and he says, "Seeing ye have purified your souls, in obeying the "truth through the Spirit, unto unfeigned love of the "brethren." ""* Surely these are duties of Christianity peculiar to no age or place; and the assistance of the Spirit must be as needful to the performance of them at present, as when inspired apostles were the teachers of the church. "The kingdom of God is-in righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." How then can we rejoice in the Lord always without his blessed influences? But this subject is most copiously discussed in the eighth of Romans, which brevity forbids me to enlarge upon. Let it suffice in general to observe, that the apostle as cribes the believer's "deliverance from the law of sin "and death," to "the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus ;" and derives the "spiritual mind, which is life and 66 peace," from the same source. They, in whom the "Spirit of God dwells," are "not in the flesh, but in "the spirit;" but "if any man have not the Spirit of "Christ, he is none of his." They, who "through the "Spirit mortify the deeds of the body, shall live;" they "that are led," or willingly guided and influenced by the Spirit," are the children of God." He dwells in them, not as a "spirit of bondage," to induce them to "obey God from servile motives; but " as a Spirit of "adoption, by whom they cry, Abba, Father ;" and thus producing all filial dispositions and affections in their hearts," he witnesses with their spirits, that they are "the children and heirs of God." They have therefore the first fruits of the Spirit;" called also the "seal of the Spirit," being the renewal of the divine image on their souls; and the "earnest of the Spirit," or the beginning and sure pledge of heavenly felicity.§ But who can deny, that these things are essential to genuine Christianity, at all times, and in all places? Finally, we are directed "to pray in" or by "the "Holy Ghost," who "also helpeth our infirmities ;" *1 Pet. i. 2, 22. † Rom. xiv. 17. § 2 Cor. i. 22. Eph. i. 13, 14. iv. 30. 2 Cor. iii. 17, 18. and whatever words we use, his influences alone can render our worship spiritual. Our holy tempers, affections, and actions are called "the fruits of the Spirit," to distinguish them from mere moral conduct, on worldly or legal principles. We are said to "live in the "Spirit," and "to walk in the Spirit," and to “be filled with the Spirit ;" and all our heavenly wisdom, knowledge, strength, holiness, joy; all things relative to our repentance, faith, hope, love, worship, obedi ence, meetness for heaven, and foretastes of it, are constantly ascribed to his influences; nor can we escape fatal delusions, resist temptations, overcome the world, or glorify God; except as we are taught, sinctified, strengthened, and comforted by the Holy Spirit, who dwells in all believers, "as a well of water springing up "unto everlasting life.” We need not then wonder at the low ebb, to which vital Christianity is fallen; when we consider how many nominal Christians utterly disclaim all dependence on the Spirit, as enthusiasm; and how greatly this part of the gospel is overlooked by numbers, who are zealous for other doctrines of it! The subject therefore suggests to us the vast importance of owning the divine person and whole work of the Spirit, in all our services; of praying for, that we may pray by, the Spirit ;t of applying to and depending on him in all things; of cautiously distinguishing his genuine influences from every counterfeit, by scriptural rules; of avoiding those worldly cares, and that indolence which "quench," and all those evil tempers, which "grieve the Spirit of God ;" and of giving the glory of all the good, wrought in or by us, to him, as its original Source and Author. Thus, depending on the mercy of the Father, the atonement of the Son, and the grace of the Spirit; we shall be prepared to give glory to the Triune God and Saviour, both now and forevermore. * Gal. v. 22, 23. Eph. v. 9. + Luke, xi. 13. ESSAY XV. On the uses of the moral law, in subserviency to the gospel of Christ. WHEN we have duly considered our situation, as fallen creatures, and those things which relate to our recovery by the mercy of the Father, the redemption and mediation of the Son, and the sanctification of the Holy Spirit; we must be convinced, that "we are saved by "grace, through faith; and that not of ourselves, it is "the gift of God; not of works, lest any man should "boast;"* and under this conviction it is natural for us to inquire," wherefore then serveth the law?" The apostle indeed introduces this question, as the objection of a Judaizing teacher to the doctrines of grace; but in the present endeavour to state the uses of the law, as subservient to the gospel, it is necessary to premise, that neither the ritual law, nor the legal dispensation, is meant; the former typified, and the latter introduced, the clear revelation of the gospel; and they were both superseded and antiquated by the coming of Christ. The moral ław alone is intended, which was originally written in the heart of man, as created in the image of God; was afterwards delivered with awful solemnity from Mount Sinai, in ten commandments; is elsewhere summed up, in the two great commandments of loving God with all our hearts, and our neighbour as ourselves; and is explained and enlarged upon in a great variety of particular precepts, throughout the whole scripture. This law, besides what it more directly enjoins, implicitly re Eph. ii. 3-10. † Gal. iii. 19. quires us to love, admire, and adore every discovery, that God shall please at any time to make to us of his glorious perfections; cordially to believe every truth he shall reveal and authenticate; and willingly to obey every positive appointment, which he shall at any time be pleased to institute.* This law is immutable in its own nature; for it could not be abrogated, or altered, without an apparent intimation, that God was not so glorious, lovely, and excellent; or so worthy of all possible honour, admiration, gratitude, credit, adoration, submission, and obedience, as the law had represented him to be; or without seeming to allow, that man had at length ceased to be under those obligations to God, or to stand in those relations to him and to his neighbour, from which the requirements of the law at first resulted. The moral law, I say, could not be changed, in any essential point; unless we could cease to be under infinite obligations to our great Creator; unless he could allow us in some degree to be alienated from him, and despisers of him; or to love worldly objects, and our own temporal advantage or pleasure, more than his infinite excellency, and to prefer them to his glory, and the enjoyment of his favour; unless he could allow us to be ungrateful for his benefits, to discredit his veracity, to dispute his authority, to reject the appointments of his wisdom; and to injure, neglect, corrupt, or hate one another, to the confusion and ruin of his fair creation. Such absurd and dreadful consequences may unanswerably be deduced, from the supposition of the moral law of God being repealed or altered; and they are the bane of all antinomianism; and of every system formed on the absurd notion of a new and milder law promulgated by Jesus Christ, however ingeniously it may be arranged, or however such schemes may be diversified. The Lord may, consistently with the immutable perfections of his nature, and the righteousness of his government, reveal truths before unknown; he may abrogate positive institutions, or appoint others; he may arrange various circumstances relative to the law in a new manner, ac * Essay iv. cording to the different situations, in which rational agents are placed; but the love of God with all the pawers of the soul, and the equal love of each other, must continue the indispensable duty of all reasonable creatures, however circumstanced, through all the ages of eternity. This law is the foundation of the covenant of works; and it is the wisdom of every holy creature in a state of probation to seek justification by obeying it. But for fallen men, who are continually transgressing, to waste their labour in vainly attempting to justify themselves before God by their own obedience, is absurd and arrogant in the greatest conceivable degree. This attempt is generally called self-righteousness; and all the preachers of Christianity are bound most decidedly to warn men against it, as a fatal rock, on which multitudes are continually perishing. But what purposes then does the moral law answer, under a dispensation of mercy, and in subserviency to the doctrines and the covenant of grace? And what use should the ministers of the New Testament make of it?. The following statement may perhaps contain a sufficient reply to these questions; and likewise make way for some observations on the bad effects, which follow from ignorance, inattention, or confused apprehensions respecting the moral law, in the ministers and professors of the gospel. I. The apostle says, "I, through the law, am dead "to the law, that I might live unto God." He doubt. less meant, by being dead to the law, that he had entirely given up all hope and every thought of justification by the law, or of obtaining eternal life as the reward of his own obedience; and, having fled to Christ for justification, he was also delivered from fear of final condemnation by it. He had therefore no more to hope or fear from the law, than a man after his death hath to hope or fear from his friends or enemies. When he was a proud pharisee," he was alive without the law; but "when the commandment came, sin revived, and he * Gal. ii. 19. |