II. CORINTHIANS 3, 6. 5-7

law considered as a covenant of works ; that is, presenting the promise of life on the condition of perfect obedience. He represents it as saying, Do this and Hve ; as requiring Avorks, and not faith, as the condition of acceptance. Rom. 10, 5-10. Gal. 3, 10-12. He calls it a ministration of death and con- demnation. He denies that it can give life. Gal. 3, 21. He tells those who are of the law (that is, Judaizers) that they had fallen from grace ; that is, had renounced the gratuitous method of salvation, and that Christ should profit them noth- ing. Gal. 5, 2. 4. In short, when he uses the word law, and says that by the law is the knowledge of sin, that it can only condemn, that by its works no flesh can be justified, he in- cludes the Mosaic law ; and in the epistle to the Galatians all these things are said with special reference to the law of Mo- ses. On the other hand, however, he teaches that the plan of salvation has been the same from the beginning; that Christ was the propitiation for the sins committed under the old covenant ; that men were saved then as now by faith in Christ ; that this mode of salvation was revealed to Abraham and understood by him, and taught by Moses and the prophets. This view is presented repeatedly in Paul's epistles, and is ar- gued out in due form in Rom. 3, 21-31. Rom. 4, and Gal. 3. To reconcile these apparently conflicting representations it must be remembered that the Mosaic economy was designed to accomplish difierent objects, and is therefore presented in Scripture under diflerent aspects. What, therefore, is true of it under one aspect, is not true under another. 1. The law of Moses was, in the first place, a re-enactment of the covenant of works. A covenant is simply a promise suspended upon a condition. The covenant of works, therefore, is nothing more than the promise of life suspended on the condition of perfect obedience. The phrase is used as a concise and convenient expression of the eternal principles of justice on which God deals with rational creatures, and which underlie all dispensa- tions, the Adamic, Abrahamic, Mosaic and Christian. Our Lord said to the lawyer who asked w^hat he should do to in- herit eternal life, " What is written in the law ? How readest thou ? And he answ^ering said. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God A\dth all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with afl thy mind ; and thy neighbour as thy- self And he said unto him, Thou hast answ^ered right, this do and thou shalt live," Luke 10, 26-28. This is the covenant of works. It is an immutable principle that where there is no