if it please God to accompany his word with power to your souls, you will have reason to bless God for every wound that has been inflicted ; and will enter fully into our next discourse, with a determination, through grace, that, whilst you flee from the law as a covenant, you will not neglect it as a rule of life ; but will rather " delight in it in your inward man," and aspire after the most perfect conformity to it in the whole of your deportment.
Gal. iii. 19. Wherefore then serveth the law ?
THE last use of the law being now to be contem- plated, we shall set before you the law as a rule to govern us, zvhen we have embraced the new covenant. And it is with peculiar pleasure that I enter upon this subject, because there exists at this day, precisely as there did in the apostolic age, a jealousy upon the subject of good works, and a fear lest the free salvation of the Gospel should render men indifferent to them. You will remember, that St. Paul's state- ments gave occasion to men to ask, " Shall we, then, continue in sin, that grace may abounda?" And the same thoughts may possibly have arisen in your minds, whilst I have with all the clearness in my power, shewn, that we are not, in any degree what- ever, to seek justification by the works of the law, but solely and exclusively by faith in Christ. I did, indeed, endeavour to guard against such thoughts, by intimating, in the very first instance, that there was a third end and use of the law, namely, to be a rule of life to the believer : but had I been less guarded in this respect, and left this point to be de- veloped afterwards, without any previous intimation of my purpose, I fear that the same objections, as
a Rom. vi. 1.