9. *Now do thou hunger and thirst, not for the meat that perisheth, but for that which endureth unto everlasting life. Trample under foot the world and the things of the world: all these riches, honours, pleasures. What is the world to thee? Let the dead bury their dead: but follow thou after the image of God. And beware of quenching that blessed thirst, if it is already excited in thy soul, by what is vulgarly called religion, a poor, dull farce, a religion of form, of outside show, which leaves the heart still cleaving to the dust, as earthly and sensual as ever. Let nothing satisfy thee but the power of godliness, but a religion that is spirit and life; the dwelling in God and God in thee; the being an inhabitant of eternity; the entering in by the blood of sprinkling within the veil, and sitting in heavenly places with Christ Jesus.
10. Now, seeing thou canst do all things thro’ Christ strengthening thee, be merciful as thy Father in heaven is merciful. Love thy neighbour as thyself. Love friends and enemies as thy own soul. And let thy love be long-suffering, and patient towards all men. Let it be kind, soft, benign: inspiring thee with the most amiable sweetness, and the most fervent and tender affection. Let it rejoice in the truth, wheresoever it is found, the truth that is after godliness. Enjoy whatsoever brings glory to God, and promotes peace and good-will among men. In love cover all things; of the dead and the absent speaking nothing but good: believe all things, which may any way tend to clear your neighbour’s character: hope all things, in his favour, and endure all things, triumphing over all opposition. For true love never faileth, in time or in eternity.
11. Now be thou pure in heart; purified thro’ faith from every unholy affection, cleansing thyself from all filthiness of flesh and spirit, and perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Being thro’ the power of his grace, purified from pride by deep poverty of spirit, from anger, from every unkind or turbulent passion, by meekness and mercifulness, from every desire but to please and enjoy God, by hunger and thirst after righteousness; now love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy strength.
12. In a word. Let thy religion be the religion of the heart. Let it lie deep in thy inmost soul. Be thou little and base, and mean and vile, (beyond what words can express) in thy own eyes; amazed and humbled to the dust, by the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Be serious. Let the whole stream of thy thoughts, words and actions flow from the deepest conviction, that thou standest on the edge of the great gulph, thou and all the children of men, just ready to drop in, either into everlasting glory or everlasting burnings. Let thy soul be filled with mildness, gentleness, patience, long-suffering towards all men: at the same time that all which is in thee is athirst for God, the living God; longing to awake up after his likeness, and to be satisfied with it. Be thou a lover of God and of all mankind. In this Spirit do and suffer all things. Thus shew thy faith by thy works: thus do the will of thy Father which is in heaven. And as sure as thou now walkest with God on earth, thou shalt also reign with him in glory.
SERMON XXXIV.
THE ORIGINAL, NATURE, PROPERTY AND USE OF THE LAW.
Rom. vii. 12.
Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.
1.PERHAPS there are few subjects within the whole compass of religion, so little understood as this. The reader of this epistle is usually told, by the law, St. Paul means Jewish law: and so apprehending himself to have no concern therewith, passes on without farther thought about it. Indeed some are not satisfied with this account: but observing the epistle is directed to the Romans, thence infer, that the apostle in the beginning of this chapter, alludes to the old Roman law. But as they have no more concern with this, than with the ceremonial law of Moses, so they spend not much thought, on what they suppose is occasionally mentioned, barely to illustrate another thing.
2. But a careful observer of the apostle’s discourse, will not be content with these slight explications of it. And the more he weighs the words, the more convinced he will be that St. Paul by the law mentioned in this chapter, does not mean either the ancient law of Rome, or the ceremonial law of Moses. This will clearly appear to all who attentively consider the tenor of his discourse. He begins the chapter, Know ye not, brethren (for I speak to them that know the law, to them who have been instructed therein from their youth) That the law hath dominion over a man, as long as he liveth? ver. 1. (What the law of Rome only, or the ceremonial law? No surely; but the moral law) For, to give a plain instance, the woman that hath an husband, is bound by the (moral) law to her husband as long as he liveth. But if her husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband, ver. 2. So then, if while her husband liveth, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law, so that she is no adulteress, tho’ she be married to another man. ver 3. From this particular instance the apostle proceeds to draw that general conclusion. Wherefore, my brethren, by a plain parity of reason, ye also are become dead to the law, the whole Mosaic institution, by the body of Christ offered for you, and bringing you under a new dispensation: that ye should without any blame be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, and hath thereby given proof of his authority to make the change, that ye should bring forth fruit unto God. ver. 4. And this we can do now, whereas before we could not: For when we were in the flesh, under the power of the flesh, that is, of corrupt nature, (which was necessarily the case till we knew the power of Christ’s resurrection) the motions of sin, which were by the law, which were shewn and inflamed by the Mosaic law, not conquered, did work in our members, broke out various ways, to bring forth fruit unto death. ver. 5. But now we are delivered from the law, from that whole moral as well as ceremonial œconomy; that being dead whereby we were held: that intire institution being now as it were dead, and having no more authority over us, than the husband when dead hath over his wife: that we should serve him who died for us and rose again; in newness of spirit, in a new spiritual dispensation, and not in the oldness of the letter, ver. 6. with a bare outward service, according to the letter of the Mosaic institution.
3. The apostle having gone thus far, in proving that the Christian had set aside the Jewish dispensation, and that the moral law itself, tho’ it could never pass away, yet stood on a different foundation from what it did before, now stops to propose and answer an objection. What shall we say then? Is the law sin? So some might infer from a misapprehension of those words, the motions of sin which were by the law. God forbid! saith the apostle, that we should say so. Nay, the law is an irreconcileable enemy to sin; searching it out wherever it is. I had not known sin but by the law. I had not known lust, evil desire to be sin, except the law had said, thou shalt not covet, ver. 7. After opening this farther in the four following verses, he subjoins this general conclusion, with regard more especially to the moral law, from which the preceding instance was taken: Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good.