loose notions of the rule of right. They conceive nothing but imperfection can be expected or required of fallen creatures. Hence the man who has ever been, what the world calls moral, supposes he hath kept all the commandments from his youth up, and is ready to say, What lack I yet? Such were the apprehensions of St. Paul before his conversion. I was alive, says he, without the law once. Without the knowledge of the law, and supposing all it did or could require, was only such obedience as is consistent with the moral depravity of fallen men, he imagined he had kept it very perfectly, and that he was justified by it, and in no danger of its curse. But when the commandment came, says he, sin revived, and I died. When he found that the law was as perfect as if we were not at all depraved; when he saw that it required him to be perfectly holy in heart and life, and most justly so required; sin revived. It appeared alive in him, and in every thing that he did All his supposed religious affections, and all his most specious moral duties, were seen to be full of sin. And he died. He felt himself not only condemned, but spiritually dead; utterly unable to do any thing but dead works, till quickened by renewing grace. Such knowledge of sin, and of ourselves, is by the law; and such knowledge of sin and of ourselves is necessary in order to a sound conversion. I may add,

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It is by the law, that the soul is actually converted, as well as brought to those convictions which are prerequisite. Saving conversion consists in repentance toward God, and in faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ: and in effecting both these, the law of perfect righte ousness is of great and necessary use.

Repentance toward God, is from a sight of the glorious holiness, justice and goodness of the divine law;

and can never be produced by all the grace of the gos pel, while the law is not thus seen. I am sensible it hath been common, and is still, to distinguish two kinds of repentance, by the names of legal and evangelical repentance: and to consider the former as hypocritical and false: the latter only as repentance unto salvation. But perhaps, what might properly enough be called by either of these names may be true repentance; though as they have often been explained, I apprehend both are false. According to some, the former is the effect of fear; the latter the effect of hope; but neither of them the fruit of love, except self-love. The legal penitent is supposed to repent, because he is afraid he shall go to hell; the evangelical penitent, because he hopes he shall go to heaven; but neither the one nor the other because he hates sin, or has any concern for the glory of God, ultimately considered. All antinomians make their legal, and their evangelical repentance, equally selfish, and equally void of virtue; unless it be more virtuous to be actuated by mercenary hopes, than by slavish fears.Many, it is true, who, in conformity to long established custom, make use of these distinguishing epithets, explain them in a manner that does not imply antinomianism. By evangelical repentance they mean, that which implies sorrow for sin, and a hearty turning from it, because it is against God: by legal repentance, only being sorry for our sins, and purposing to forsake them, because they are seen to be of dangerous consequence to ourselves. I have no objection to this as a just account of true and false repentance; but the propriety of calling one legal, and the other evangelical, I do not readily comprehend. The difference in repentance, as being selfish or ingenuous, hypo

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critical or sincere, I conceive, is not owing to the different representations of God and sin, in law and gospel; but to the different dispositions of the men to whose minds these representations are made. The man who has the pious feeling heart of the psalmist David, will repent truly, when he sees his sins in the light of God's holy law. The man who has the hard selfish heart of the traitor Judas, will not repent truly, when he sees his sins in all the additional light reflected on them by the cross of Christ, and the grace of the gospel. Before genuine repentance can be produced, by any means, the heart must be changed by the renewing of the Holy Ghost. When the law finds a soul thus prepared, it will work in it godly sorrow, and repentance not to be repented of. When the commandment comes, and is seen to be perfectly good, holy, and just, unless we have perfect hearts of stone, we shall abhor ourselves, and repent in dust and ashes. When we think on our ways, and see how contrary they have been to the reasonable requisitions of our most rightful sovereign, if we have the least spark of godly sensibility, we shall mourn and be in bitterness for the dishonour we have done to Him; and not merely on account of the evils to which we have exposed ourselves. Apprehensions of the mercy of God in Christ, will quicken and increase true repentance; but can never begin it, without a previous true discovery and cordial approbation of the divine law.

The other part of a sound and saving conversion, namely, faith towards Jesus Christ, is also in consequence of right views of the divine law; and cannot take place without them. The law was our schoolmaster, says the Apostle, to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. The humiliating lessons concerning God's righteousness, and our own unrighte

ousness, which are taught in the school of the law, must be thoroughly learned and have their effect on the heart, in the first place; and then a sinner will be easily reconciled to the way of life and peace. To think of persuading men to embrace the gospel, before ever they have understood and submitted to the law, is absurd and impossible. It is reading the book wrong end upward. It is beginning at the last end of the line.

Lastly; it is by the law of perfection that good men are made better. They are hereby turned still more and more from darkness to light, and from sin to holiness by being converted, is not always meant in scripture, the first conversion of a sinner. Our Saviour said to Peter, When thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren. The godly, when they have fallen into great sins, are recovered again by repentance; and in order to this, a new law-work is necessary. Such a law-work David repeatedly experienced, long after he had been eminently pious, as appears by many passages in his psalms. In the xxxii. he says, When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. And in the xxxviii. For thine arrows stick fast in me, and thy hand presseth me sore. There is no soundness in my flesh, because of thine anger: neither is there any rest in my bones, because of my sin. Nor is it only after grievous back-slidings that good men. feel the powerful influence of the holy law, converting their souls. They experience its bumbling and sanctifying efficacy, turning them from the errors of their ways, in a gradual progression, all their lives. Through God's precepts they get understanding; therefore they hate every false way. The commandment is a lamp,

and the law is light-Hence, The path of the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day.

All that remains is the improvement, and in this there is time only for one or two particulars. We may hence infer,

First. The exceeding unreasonableness of imagining that the divine law is abated; or that Christ hath redeemed us, in any measure, from the moral law, as a rule of duty. What has been said, both of the perfection, and of the salutary use of this law, shows the extreme absurdity of such an imagination.

Can it be supposed that an all-perfect Being should, on any consideration, disannul a law which was and always will be, holy, just, and good, in perfection; and enact another, not so holy, not so just, nor so good? Can it be supposed that the Son of God, the brightness of the Father's glory, and express image of his person, should come down from heaven, and bleed and die, to procure an alteration in an all-perfect· law? an alteration which could not be for the better, but must be for the worse! It is true, Christ hath open. ed a glorious way for the gracious pardon and acceptance of penitent believers, though very imperfect.But certainly he hath not liberated, either believers or unbelievers, from the obligation they were under to observe and obey the original perfect law of his heavenly Father. At his first entrance on the execution of his prophetic mission, he gave a solemn caveat to the great congregation in which he preached righteousness, not to think that inculcating such licentious doc. trine, or opening a door for it, was any part of his design. He assured the multitude, in his sermon on the mount, that to alter one tittle of the moral law, was