THE ORIGINAL, NATURE, PROPERTY AND USE OF THE LAW. ROM. vii. 12.
_Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good._
1. PERHAPS there are few subjects within the whole compass of religion, so little understood as this. The reader of this epistle is usually told, by _the law_, St. _Paul_ means _Jewish law_: and so apprehending himself to have no concern therewith, passes on without farther thought about it. Indeed some are not satisfied with this account: but observing the epistle is directed to the _Romans_, thence infer, that the apostle in the beginning of this chapter, alludes to the old _Roman law_. But as they have no more concern with this, than with the _ceremonial law_ of _Moses_, so they spend not much thought, on what they suppose is occasionally mentioned, barely to illustrate another thing.
2. But a careful observer of the apostle’s discourse, will not be content with these slight explications of it. And the more he weighs the words, the more convinced he will be that St. _Paul_ by _the law_ mentioned in this chapter, does not mean either the ancient law of _Rome_, or the ceremonial law of _Moses_. This will clearly appear to all who attentively consider the tenor of his discourse. He begins the chapter, _Know ye not, brethren (for I speak to them that know the law_, to them who have been instructed therein from their youth) _That the law hath dominion over a man, as long as he liveth_? ver. 1. (What the law of _Rome_ only, or the _ceremonial_ law? No surely; but the _moral_ law) _For_, to give a plain instance, _the woman that hath an husband, is bound by the_ (moral) _law to her husband as long as he liveth. But if her husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband_, ver. 2. _So then, if while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, tho’ she be married to another man._ ver 3. From this particular instance the apostle proceeds to draw that general conclusion. _Wherefore, my brethren_, by a plain parity of reason, _ye also are become dead to the law_, the whole _Mosaic_ institution, _by the body of Christ_ offered for you, and bringing you under a new dispensation: _that ye should_ without any blame _be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead_, and hath thereby given proof of his authority to make the change, _that ye should bring forth fruit unto God_. ver. 4. And this we can do now, whereas before we could not: _For when we were in the flesh_, under the power of the flesh, that is, of corrupt nature, (which was necessarily the case till we knew the power of Christ’s resurrection) _the motions of sin, which were by the law_, which were shewn and inflamed by the _Mosaic_ law, not conquered, _did work in our members_, broke out various ways, _to bring forth fruit unto death_. ver. 5. _But now we are delivered from the law_, from that whole moral as well as ceremonial œconomy; _that being dead whereby we were held_: that intire institution being now as it were dead, and having no more authority over us, than the husband when dead hath over his wife: _that we should serve him_ who died for us and rose again; _in newness of spirit_, in a new spiritual dispensation, _and not in the oldness of the letter_, ver. 6. with a bare outward service, according to the letter of the _Mosaic_ institution.
3. The apostle having gone thus far, in proving that the Christian had set aside the Jewish dispensation, and that the moral law itself, tho’ it could never pass away, yet stood on a different foundation from what it did before, now stops to propose and answer an objection. _What shall we say then? Is the law sin?_ So some might infer from a misapprehension of those words, _the motions of sin which were by the law. God forbid!_ saith the apostle, that we should say so. Nay, the law is an irreconcileable enemy to sin; searching it out wherever it is. _I had not known sin but by the law. I had not known lust_, evil desire to be sin, _except the law had said, thou shalt not covet_, ver. 7. After opening this farther in the four following verses, he subjoins this general conclusion, with regard more especially to the moral law, from which the preceding instance was taken: _Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good_.
4. In order to explain and inforce these deep words, so little regarded, because so little understood, I shall endeavour to shew, first, the original of this law, secondly, the nature thereof; thirdly, the properties, that it is _holy and just and good_, and fourthly, the uses of it.