Testament church, that she had two covenants connected with her constitution-a covenant of grace, as well as of law; and that the covenant of law, as it came last, so it took for granted the provisions of the existing covenant of grace. It was grafted upon this, and grew out of it. Hence, in revealing the terms of the legal covenant, the Lord spake to the Israelites as already their God, from whom they had received life and freedom (Ex. xx. 2), -proclaimed himself as the God of mercy, as well as of holiness (v. 5, 6),—recognised their title to the inheritance as his own sovereign gift to them (v. 12),--thus making it clear to all, that the covenant of law raised itself on the ground of the previous covenant of grace, and sought to carry out this to its legitimate and fruitful results.1

That this also is the order of God's procedure with men under the Gospel, nothing but the most prejudiced mind can fail to perceive. Everywhere does God there present himself to his people as in the first instance a giver of life and blessing, and only afterwards as an exacter of obedience to his commands. Their obedience, so far from entitling to salvation, can never be acceptably rendered, till they have become partakers of the blessings of salvation. These blessings are altogether of grace, and are, therefore, received through faith. For what is faith, but the acceptance of heaven's grant of salvation, or a trusting in the record in which the grant is conveyed? So that, in the order of each man's experience, there must, as is fully brought out in the epistle to the

ing him away with an impression of the impossibility of obtaining life by perfecting himself in the law's requirments. So also, such expressions as that in Rom. vii. 10, of “the commandment being ordained to life," (lit. which was for, or unto life), cannot mean that it was given to confer life, or to shew the way of obtaining it, for this is denied of any law that ever could have been given to sinful men, Gal. iii. 21. It simply means, that the law was given to subserve or promote the purposes of God in respect to life. 1 The relation between the two covenants is briefly, but correctly stated by Sack in his Apologetik, p. 179: "The matter of the law is altogether grounded upon the covenant of promise made with Abraham. The law neither could nor would withdraw the exercise of faith from the covenant of promise, or render that superfluous, but merely formed an intermediate provision, until the fulfilment came." The relation is seldom correctly made out by writers of the class last referred to. For example, Boston would have the two covenants to have been revealed simultaneously from Sinai, making the Sinaitic covenant as much a covenant of grace as of law, (on the Marrow, p. 1, c. 2. Burgess (on Moral Law and Covenants, p. 224,) represents it as properly a covenant of

grace.

Romans, first be a participation in the mercies of God, and then growing out of this a felt and constraining obligation to run the way of God's commandments. How can it, indeed, be otherwise? How were it possible for men, laden with sin, and underlying the condemnation of heaven, to earn anything at God's hands, or do what might seem good in his sight, till they become partakers of grace? Can they work up so far, at least, against the stream of his displeasure, and begin of themselves the process of recovery, which they only require him to perfect? To imagine the possibility of this, were to betray an utter ignorance of the character of God in reference to his dealings with the guilty. He can, for his Son's sake, bestow eternal life and blessing on the most unworthy, but he cannot stoop to treat and bargain with men about their acquiring a title to it through their own imperfect services. They must first receive the gift through the channel of his own providing; and only when they have done this, are they in a condition to please and honour him. Not more certainly is faith without works dead, than all works are dead which do not spring from the living root of faith already implanted in the heart.

SECTION FIFTH.

THE PURPOSES FOR WHICH THE LAW WAS GIVEN, AND THE CONNECTION BETWEEN IT AND THE SYMBOLICAL INSTITUTIONS.

WE proceed now to advance a step farther, and to consider what the law was designed to do for Israel. That it did not come with a hostile intent, we have already seen. Its object was not to disannul the covenant of promise, or to found a new title to gifts and blessings already conferred. It was given rather as an handmaid to the covenant, to minister in an inferior, but still necessary place, to the higher ends and purposes which the covenant itself had in view. And hence, when considered as standing in that its proper place, it is fitly regarded as an additional proof of the goodness of God towards his people: "He made known his ways unto Moses, his statutes and his judgments unto Israel; he hath not dealt so with any people."

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1. The first and immediate purpose for which the law was given to Israel, was that it might serve as a revelation of the righteousness which God expected from them as his covenant-people in the land of their inheritance. It was for this inheritance they had been redeemed. They were God's own peculiar people, his children and heirs, proceeding, under the banner of his covenant, to occupy his land. And that they might know the high ends for which they were to be planted there, and how these ends were to be secured, the Lord took them aside by the way, and gave them this revelation of his righteousness. As the land of their inheritance was emphatically God's land, so the law, which was to reign paramount there, mist of necessity be his law, and that law itself the manifestation of his righteousness. With no other view, could God have stretched out his hand to redeem a people to himself, and with no other testimony set them as his witnesses before the

eye of the world, on a territory peculiarly his own. He must have acted here in the highest sense for his own glory; and as his glory, viewed in respect to his moral government, is essentially bound up with the interests of righteousness, so those whom he destined to be the chosen instruments for shewing forth his glory in the region prepared for them, must go thither with the revelation of his righteousness in their hand, as the law which they were to carry out into all the relations of public and private life.

The same thing might be said in this respect of the land as a whole, which the Psalmist declares in reference to its spiritual centre-the place on which the tabernacle was pitched: "Lord, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart." (Ps. xv.) And again in Psalm xxiv. "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord, and who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul to vanity, nor sworn deceitfully." There can be no doubt, that the character here meant to be delineated is, that of the true servants of God, as contradistinguished from hypocrites--the real denizens of his kingdom, whose high distinction it was to be dwellers and sojourners with him. The going up to the hill of God, standing in his holy place, or abiding in his tabernacle, is merely an image to express this spiritual idea. The land as a whole being God's land, the people as a whole should also have been found dwelling as guests, or sojourning with him. (Lev. xxv. 23.) But this they could only be in reality, the Psalmist means to say, if they possessed the righteous character he delineates. In both of the delineations he gives, it is impossible to overlook a reference to the precepts of the Decalogue. And that such delineations should have been given at a time when the tabernacle service was in the course of being set up anew with increased splendour, was plainly designed to sound a warning in the ears of the people, that whatever regard should be paid to the solemnities of worship, it was still the righteousness in thought, word, and deed, as required in the precepts of the Decalogue, which God pre-eminently sought. This was what peculiarly fitted them for the place they occupied, and the destiny they had to fill. Hence, not only the righteousness of the Decalogue in general, but that especially of the second

table, is made prominent in the description, because hypocrites have so many ways of counterfeiting the works of the first table." It makes no essential alteration on the law in this point of view, that it was made to assume the form of a covenant. For what sort of covenant was it? And with what object ratified? Not as an independent and separate revelation; but only, as already stated, an handmaid to the previously existing covenant of promise. On this last, as the divine root of all life and blessing, it was grafted; and rising from the ground which that former covenant provided, it proceeded to develope the requirements of righteousness, which the members of the covenant ought to have fulfilled. It was merely to impart greater solemnity to this revelation of righteousness-to give to its calls of duty a deeper impression and firmer hold upon the conscience-to render it clear and palpable, that the things required in it were not of loose and uncertain, but of most sure and indispensable obligation,-it was for such reasons alone that the law, after being proclaimed from Sinai, was solemnly ratified as a covenant. By this most sacred of religious transactions the Israelites were taken bound as a people to aim continually at the fulfilment of its precepts. But its having been turned into a covenant did not confer on it a different character from that which belonged to it as a rule of life and conduct, or materially affect the results that sprung either from obedience or disobedience to its demands; nor was any effect contemplated beyond that of adding to its moral weight and deepening its hold upon the conscience. And the very circumstance of its being ratified as a covenant, having God in the relation of a Redeemer for one of the contracting parties, was fraught with comfort and encouragement; since an assurance was thus virtually given, that what God in the one covenant of law required his people to do, he stood pledged in the other covenant of promise with his divine help to aid them in performing. The blood of the covenant as much bound God to confer the grace to obey, as it bound them to render the obedience. So that, while there was in this transaction something fitted to lighten, rather than to aggravate, the burden of the law's yoke, there was, at the same time, what involved the necessity of compliance with the tenor of its requirements, and took away all excuse from the wilfully disobedient. 'See Hengstenberg and Calvin on Ps. xv. 2.