as the fear of his wrath and dread severity; but all is to flow only from the principle of love and the sweet temper of a grateful and ingenuous spirit. This is a most pestilent doctrine, which plucks down the fence of the law, and opens a gap for all manner of licentiousness and libertinism to rush in upon the Christian world."

Leighton: "The gospel sets not men free to profaneness: no, it is a doctrine of holiness. We are not called unto uncleanness, but unto holiness." Thess. iv. 7. He hath indeed taken off the hardness,

1

the iron yoke, and now, his commandments are not grievous. 1 John v. 3. His yoke is easy, and his burden light. They who are most sensible, and have most assurance of their deliverance, are ever the most active and fruitful in obedience: they feel themselves light and nimble, having the heavy chains and fetters taken off. 'Lord, I am thy servant; thou hast loosed my bonds.'" Ps. cxvi. 16.

Flavel: "God preserve all his people from the gross and vile opinions of Antinomian libertines, who cry up grace, and decry obedience: who under specious pretences of exalting a naked Christ upon the throne, do indeed strip him naked of a great part of his glory, and vilely dethrone him. My pen shall not English what mine eyes have read. Tell it not in Gath."

Charnock: "Libertinism and licentiousness find no encouragement in the gospel. It was made known to all nations for the obedience of faith. The goodness of God is published, that our enmity to him may be parted with. Christ's righteousness is not offered to us to be put on, that we may roll the more

warmly in our sins.

The doctrine of grace commands

us to give up ourselves to Christ to be accepted through him, and to be ruled by him.

Obedience is and it is due

in the gos

due to God, as a sovereign in his law; out of gratitude, as he is a God of grace pel The gospel frees us from the curse, but not from the duty and service. We are delivered from the hands of our enemies, that we might serve God in holiness and righteousness.' Luke i. 74, 75. This is the will of God in the gospel, even our sanctification. When a prince strikes off a malefactor's chains, though he deliver him from the punishment of his crime, he frees him not from the duty of a subject Christ's righteousness gives us a title to heaven; but there must be holiness to give us a fitness for heaven."

T. Watson: "They who cast God's law behind their backs, God will cast their prayers behind his back; they who will not have the law to rule over them shall have the law to judge them If God spake all these words, then we must hear all these words. As we would have God hear all our words when we pray, so we must hear all his words when he speaks. He that stops his ears when God cries, shall cry himself and not be heard."

Boston: "All men are obliged to keep these commandments, for God is Lord of all; but the saints especially for besides being their Lord, he is their God and Redeemer too. So far is the state of the saints from being one of sinful liberty that there are none so strongly bound to obedience as they, and that by the strongest of all bonds, those of love and gratitude.

Nor have modern divines of high character been

more slow or less sweeping in expressing their abhorrence of this corrupt system of faith and practice. May it not rather be called a system of unbelief and of want of practice? John Newton: "It is an unlawful use of the law, that is an abuse of it, an abuse both of law and gospel, to pretend that its accomplishment by Christ releases believers from any obligation to it as a rule. Such an assertion is not only wicked, but absurd and impossible in the highest degree for the law is founded in the relation between the Creator and the creature, and must unavoidably remain in force so long as that relation subsists."

In his lectures in divinity, George Hill speaks of Antinomianism as "this horrible doctrine," and guards his readers against the impression "that the disrepute into which Antinomian preaching has begun to fall is owing to a departure from Calvinism;" and declares that there is 66 no room to suppose that Calvinism is inconsistent with rational, practical preaching.' Dr. Dwight well says: "Why is the law no longer a rule of righteousness to Christians? Is it because they are no longer under its condemning sentence? For this very reason they are under increased obligations to obey its precepts. Is it because they are placed under a better rule or a worse one? A better rule cannot exist: a worse, God would not prescribe."

Robert Hall: "The principles which compose the Antinomian heresy, are as much opposed to the grace, as to the authority of the great head of the church."

CHAPTER XII.

THE GOSPEL DOES NOT SUPERSEDE THE MORAL

LAW.

GREAT desire of the adversary of souls in every uge LAT desire the a of souls in

age has been to effect a divorce between doctrine and practice. Probably in no other way has more harm been done. Owen: "There is no way whereby the whole rule of duty can be rendered more vain and useless unto the souls of men than by the separation of the duties of the law from the grace of the gospel." If men can be brought to believe that morality will save them without piety, the gospel is at once rendered of none effect. On the other hand, if men believe that any species of piety towards God renders unnecessary the great principles of morality towards men, they will of course turn the grace of God into lasciviousness. That the apostles saw a happy harmony existing between our duties to God and our duties to man, and that in their view doctrine and practice were not hostile is evident from their writings. The epistle to the Romans makes a near approach to a systematic body of evangelical doctrine. It consists of sixteen chapters. The first eleven assert the highest doctrines of grace. The last five contain a better code of morals than can be

found in the writings of the whole heathen and infidel world. The epistle to the Ephesians is one of the sublimest ever written. It contains six chapters. One can hardly imagine how an apostle standing at the gate of heaven could utter sublimer doctrine than is found in the first three. Yet the last three give directions for the guidance of our conduct before men, which, if honestly carried out, would make a heaven upon earth.

It would indeed be very remarkable if the Son of God should have done anything against the law of which he himself was the author. This matter is made entirely clear by Stephen, in his last address to the Jews. Speaking of the great prophet promised to them like unto Moses, he says of Christ, "This is he, that was in the church in the wilderness, with the angel which spake to him in the Mount Sina, and with our fathers: who receive the lively oracles to give unto us." Acts vii. 38. See also Heb. xii. 24-26.

That the gospel does not supersede the law is explicitly taught in the word of God. Having stated. the doctrine of a gratuitous justification for Jew and Gentile, Paul says, "Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law." Rom. iii. 31. That this is so will appear if we but remember that no one, not even an angel of heaven, ever magnified the law and made it honourable, as Christ has done in his life of obedience and suffering, and that all his genuine followers make it their great concern to walk in his footsteps. That Jesus Christ taught nothing contrary to a perfect obedience to the moral law, and made no war upon it, he