SECT. VI.

The INSUFFICIENCY of legal obedience to the Juftification of a Sinner.

ROм. iii. 20.

By the deeds of the law, there fhall no flesh be juftified in his fight.

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ND now, to fhew the impoffibility of a finner's being juftified before God, by the works of the law, or by his own obedience to the law, I shall take a little notice, what it is that God, by his law, requires of man; and alfo, for what end the law was given. And,

First, God, by his law, requires of every man perfect obedience; which is his duty to perform, although he cannot do it. As all men are creatures of God's making, and were all at once made reprefentatively, in their natural head Adam fo in him, as their covenant head, they

were creatures of God's governing; when he gave him the fundamental law of nature, commanding him to eat of the trees of the garden, with a particular prohibition of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Gen. ii. 16, 17. And the LORD God commanded the man, faying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayst freely eat: But of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, thou Shalt not eat of it; for in the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt furely die. And it was meet that God fhould govern the creature he had made both for his own glory, and the creature's good: for, as God's manifeftative glory was concerned in his creature's obedience; fo it was the happiness of the creature to ferve its Creator, and in this way to enjoy him. God is fo great, fo good, and fo glorious a Being, that it is the happiness of the angels in heaven to be fubject to his commands; and fo it was of man in paradife, to be fubject to this law given him: in which, though the threatening of dead, upon his difobedience, be only expressed; yet the promife of life, or the continuation of that blissful ftate he was then in poffeffion of, for himself and his feed, upon his o

bedience, was implied.-And this original law did fummarily contain all the tẹn words given at mount Sinai, or the fubstance of the moral law, delivered in the ten commandments, by the LORD's audible voice from heaven; and wrote by him, in the two tables of flone, when he gave his law, in this peculiar manner unto Ifrael. And when this moral law, in the original form of it, was firft given to Adam, and in him to all mankind, his heart was perfectly conformed thereto; and he, and fo they in him, had power to have kept it; and it would have been his, and their happiness, fo to have done.

But he, being a mutable creature, and left to the freedom of his own will, foon hearkened to the temptations of Satan, caft off his loyalty to his Maker and Sovereign Lord, and yielded subjection to the prince of darkness, in obeying his dictates, and eating of the forbidden fruit. In doing which, he for himself, and his whole pofterity, broke the whole law at once. From whence, the penalty, or threatening, became righteoufly due to him and them, as the juft reward of his difobedience, where

by many were made finners: and fo death paffed upon all men in him, in whom all had finned, Rom. v. 12, 19.

And as foon as Adam had finned, and we in him, there was thenceforth no.life to be had for a fallen creature, by its own obedience to the law: because the law being once broken, Adam and every one of his race, were locked upon in the eye of the law, as tranfgreffors;, and, therefore the righteous law, could do nothing to juftify a finner; it became weak, in this regard, through our flesh, or corrupt nature, Rom. viii. 3. But all the power it had, confidered as broken, was to thunder out curfe and wrath, against every foul of man that had done evil.

And befides the guilt of the first transgreffion, on which account Adam, and all his pofterity, were at once laid under the curfe; from which they could never deliver themselves, and fo no life for them by a broken law, which bound them over to punishment; befides this, I fay, there was an univerfal pollution of nature, that overspread the foul of Adam, the curfe taking hold upon him in the very inftant of his difobedience. The threa

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tening was, In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt furely die; or, in dying thou shalt die. In which was contained death fpiritual, temporal, and eternal, as the just wages of fin. And the first of thefe was inftantly executed upon him: in that very day, hour, and moment, in which he finned, he died, in his foul, or fpirit, with regard to that life of holinefs, and perfect conformity to the law, which before he was poffeffed of: and thereby he loft all his power to fulfil the law, or to yield fuch an obedience as the holy law of God requires, or can accept. The law requires perfect obedience, and can accept of no lefs; and Adam having loft all his moral rectitude, he was utterly incapable to fulfil the law. And as it was with Adam in this regard, on account of his first fin, fo it is with every one of his defcendants, that proceed from him by ordinary generation: as they became guilty in his firft tranfgreffion, fo coming into the world, in union to him, as their covenant-head, ftanding together with him, under the fame broken law, they become filthy likewife; the contagion of fin overfpreads the whole foul, as foon as ever it informs the body.

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