1 . Of the moral law —
[The law, when given to man in innocence, was intended to justify him, if he should continue to obey it to the termination of the period destined for his probation. But when once he had fallen, there was no possibility of his ever obtaining justi- fication by it. We, as partakers of his guilt and corruption, are in the same predicament with him: "in him we have died;" and, if ever we obtain life, we must seek it in the way pointed out to him, even in that " Seed of the woman that was in due time to bruise the serpent's head." St. Paul tells us, that, " if there had been a law given, which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law f." But this being impossible, (since man in his fallen state could not fulfil it, nor could God, consistently with his own holiness, relax its de- mands,) God re-published it from Mount Sinai, to shew unto men how greatly they had departed from it, and to drive them by its terrors to that Refuge which he had prepared for them. That these were the true ends for which the law was given, is expressly asserted : St. Paul puts the question, " Wherefore then serveth the law?" And he answers it by saying, that " it was added because of transgressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made." It was given to con- vince them of their transgressions, to stop their mouths with a sense of their guilt and misery*5; an(J to " shut them up unto the faith that should afterwards be revealed." In a word, instead of ever being given to afford a ground of hope to men by their obedience to it, it was intended " to be a schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faithh." How it effected this, may be seen in the Apostle Paul, whose hopes it utterly destroyed, and whom it constrained to seek acceptance through Christ alone1.]
2. Of the ceremonial law —
[This, it is true, was appointed to make an atonement for sins, so far as to screen the transgressor from the penalties that were to be inflicted by the civil magistrate. But it never really took away sin : " it was not possible for the blood of bulls and of goats to take away sinsk." The annual repetition of the same sacrifices shewed, that " they could not make a man perfect as pertaining to the conscience:" they were, in fact, only " remembrances of sins made every year," in order to direct men to that Great Sacrifice, which should in clue time be offered, and which alone could effect reconciliation for us with our offended God1. The very circumstance of the
f Gal. hi. 21. s Gal. iii. 19. with Rom. iii. 19, 20.
h Gal. iii. 22—24. i Rom. vii. 9. k Heb. x. 4.
1 Heb. ix. 9, 1 0. and x. 3, 4.