will pretend to have kept it? or who will build his hopes of salvation on his obedience to it ? It is manifest, that there is not a man upon earth who has not, in numberless instances, violated it; and who therefore must not shut his mouth with conscious shame, and acknowledge himself " guilty before Goda."]
2. By the inexorableness of its threatenings —
[For every violation of its commands it denounces a curse, saying, " Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law, to do themV We must not merely wish to do them, but actually do them ; and not only some, but all ; and that not for a season only, but continually, without interruption from first to last : and in default of this, every one, even every child of Adam, is cursed, even with an everlasting curse. As for any lighter penalty than this, it knows of none : it admits of no relaxation of it, no mitigation whatever : so that, of all that are under the law, there is not so much as one that is not under the curse and wrath of God. To hope for salvation, therefore, from such a law as this, is quite out of the question. A man in the contemplation of these threatenings can do nothing but lie down in despair, even as Paul himself did : for though, previously to his understanding the true tenour of the law, he supposed himself to be alive, he no sooner saw the extent of its commands, and the awfulness of its sanctions, than " he died," and became sensible that he was nothing but a dead, condemned sinner before Godc.]
3. By its incapacity to afford us any remedy what- ever—
[When it requires obedience, it does not offer us any strength for the performance of it : nor, when we have vio- lated it in any respect, does it speak one word about repent- ance : nor does it make known to us any way whereby pardon may be obtained. The only thing which it says to any man is, " Do this, and live : offend, and die." What hope, then, can any man entertain of salvation by such a law as this? It precludes a possibility of hope to any child of man : so that we must be dead to the law, not merely because the Gospel requires it, but because it is the very intent of the law itself to make us so : " Through the law itself we must become dead to the law."]
We must not, however, imagine that all observance of the law is unnecessary : for the very reverse will appear, whilst we consider the law,
a Rom. iii. 19. b Gal. iii. 10. c Rom. vii. 9.