Next I say, that our obedience to the law was a most important end, for which we are liberated from the lata as a covenant of works. This is repeatedly asserted by St. Paul. In the eighth chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, he says, " The law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death :" (that is, the Gospel hath freed me from the law :) " for what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, send- ing his own Son, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, hath condemned sin in the flesh :" (and now observe for what end) — " that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit11." The law could neither justify nor sanctify us : the Gospel does both : and the very end for which Christ has liberated us from the law, was, that both these ends might be accom- plished in us.
To this I will add a passage, which needs no expla- nation : it is so clear, so precise, so full to the point, that it leaves no doubt upon the subject. St. Paul, speaking of his own experience, says, " I, through the law, am dead to the law, that I might live unto God1." Here you perceive that it was the law itself which made him dead to the law. It was so rigo- rous in its demands, and so awful in its sanctions, that he utterly despaired of obtaining salvation by it ; and, in this viezv, became wholly dead to it. But did he therefore neglect it as a rule of life ? Quite the reverse : " Through the law, he was dead to the law, that he might live unto God," and serve him in new- ness of life.
But there is an illustration of this matter given us by the Apostle, which places it in a still clearer point of view ; in a view at once peculiarly beautiful, and unquestionably just. In the seventh chapter of the Epistle to the Romans he compares the law to a man to whom the Church is united, as it were, in the bonds of marriage. He then observes, that, as a wife is bound to her husband by the nuptial contract as long
h Rom. viii. 2—4. s Gal. ii. 19.