all the empires the world ever saw, the Roman was the gi'eatest; and yet when the Roman eagle's wings were grown the largest, they conld not over- spread more than the third part of this lower world. And how vain and ridiculous had it heen for the emperor to have attempted to make a law for those nations, which neither knew him, nor he them. But in the Scripture we find such laws as concern all mankind, wherever they live, and which have been promulgated where the Bible was never seen. Their sound is gone into all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. Many of the laws in sacred writ, they are but a second, and that fairer, edition of what was found written in the consciences of men before the Scripture came forth. So that if those laws that are cut with so indelible a character in the consciences of all the sons of Adam, be of God, then the Scripture must be confessed to proceed from God also. Yet farther, as the Scripture takes all mankind to task, and lays its bonds on all, so its laws bind the whole man ; the heart, with its most inward thoughts, is laid in these chains, as well as the outward man. Indeed, the heart is the principal subject, whose loyalty is most provided for in the precepts of Scripture. Those conmiands that contain our duty to God, require that all be done with the heart and soul. If we pray, it must be in the spirit, or else we had as good do nothing ; for we transgress the law of prayer. If it be a law that respects our behaviour to man, still the heart is chiefly intended. ' Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart,' Levit. xix. 17. ' Curse not the king, no, not in thy thought,' Eccles. x. 20. And accordingly, the pro- mises and threatenings which attend the commands of Scripture, enforce them, and are suitable to the spiritual nature of those commands ; the rewards of the one, and punishments of the other, being such as respect the spii-itual per- formance or neglect of them. ' Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God,' Matt. v. 8. Not, blessed are they whose hands are clean, though their hearts be filthy. So Mai. i. 14, ' Cursed be the deceiver, that hath in his flock a male, and voweth and sacrificeth to the Lord a corrupt thing.' 'The deceiver;' there is the hypocrite, that gives God the skin for the sacrifice, the shape of a duty for the substance, the lean of an outside obedience, instead of the fat of the inward man, namely, the obedience of the heart. And as the principal object which these are levelled against, is the obedience or disobedience of the heart; so the subject or vessel into which the one emptieth its blessings, and the other its curses, is chiefly the soul and spirit. ' They shall praise the Lord that seek him; your heart shall live for ever,' Psa. xxii. 26. 'I will comfort you ; and your heart shall rejoice,' Isa. Ixvi. 13, 14. ' Give them sor- row of heart, thy curse, O God,' Lament, iii. 65. Now, I would fain know the man that ever went about to form such laws as should bind the hearts of men, or prepare such rewards as should reach the souls and consciences of men. Truly, if any mortal man should make a law that his subjects should love him with all their hearts and souls, and not dare, upon peril of his greatest indigna- tion, to entertain a traitorous thought against his royal person, but presently confess it to him, or else he would be avenged on him ; he would deserve to be more laughed at for his pride and folly, than Xerxes for casting his fetters into the Hellespont, to chain the waves into his obedience ; or Caligula, that threatened the air, if it durst rain when he was at his pastimes, who durst not himself so much as look into the air when it thundered. Certainly, a mad- house would be more fit for such a person than a throne, who should so far forfeit his reason, as to think that the thoughts and hearts of men were within his jurisdiction. Who need fear such a law, when none but the off'ender himself can bring in evidence of the fact? There have been, indeed, some who, in- tending to take away the life of their prince by a bloody, murderous knife, have been attacked by their own conscience, and forced by it to confess their own wicked thoughts, before any other could be their accuser, so sacred are the per- sons of God's anointed ones ; but not from the power of man or his law, making them do so, but the dread of God arresting their conscience for violating his law, which, indeed, not only binds up subjects' hands from killing, but hearts also from cursing kings in our very thoughts. This is the law which rules in the consciences of the worst of men ; a bit that God rides the fiercest sinners with, and so curbs them, that they can never shake it out of their mouths. Enough to prove the divinity thei^eof.
AND THE SWORD OF THE SPIRIT 559