liberated from obedience to it : on the contrary, they engaged, that, whatever God should speak to them by the Mediator, they would listen to it readily, and obey it unreservedly. This was right; and God both approved of it in them, and will approve of it in every child of man.
We are afraid of perplexing the subject, if we dwell any longer on this branch of it ; because it would divert your attention from the main body of the discourse : we will therefore content ourselves with citing one passage, wherein the whole is set forth in the precise point of view in which we have endeavoured to place it. We have shewn that the transactions at Mount Sinai were intended to shadow forth the nature of the two dispensations (that of the Law and that of the Gospel) in a contrasted view ; that the terrific nature of the one made the Israelites desirous to obtain an interest in the other ; and that the appointment of Moses to be their Mediator, and to communicate to them the further knowledge of his will with a view to their future obedience, was alto- gether illustrative of the Gospel ; which, whilst it teaches us to flee to Christ from the curses of the broken law, requires us afterwards to obey that law: in a word, we have shewn, that though, as St. Paul expresses it, we are " without law," (con- sidered as a covenant,) we are nevertheless " not without law to God, but under the law to Christ1:" and all this is set forth in the twelfth chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in the following words : " Ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto black- ness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words ; which voice they that heard, entreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more : (for they could not endure that which was commanded : and so terrible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake :) but ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to
> 1 Cor. ix. 21.