that he appears only as a brier and a thorn, who is nigh unto cursing in the eyes of every experienced soul that hears him; and, like Abraham's ram in the thicket, he can never get out of the entanglement either with truth or honour, because he is nothing but an impostor; and both God and conscience rebuke him for taking the covenant in his mouth.

Some tell us that if the law is done away to the believer, the believer can never die, death being the sentence of the law.' In one sense this is true, for he that believes shall never die. But I think they have forgotten that Christ to this end died, rose again, and revived, that he might be the Lord both of the dead and of the living; and that no saint liveth to himself, or dieth to himself; but, whether he live or die, he is the Lord's. Death, as the sentence of the law, is a penal evil; but death in Christ is a new covenant gift. "All things are yours, whether life or death." To the sinner it is a cursed end, to the believer a blessed one; "the sinner, being an hundred years old, shall be accursed;" but, "Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord." Death, armed with guilt and the curse of the law, is the king of terrors; but, disarmed of its sting, a shadow. Death to the sinner is the beginning of judgment, but to the believer the end of his faith. Job longed for it, Jacob waited for it, and Simeon prayed for it; and no wonder, for "precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints."

Besides, Christ is the grand example, pattern, and forerunner, and the firstfruits, of them that slept; and it is needful that his followers should follow their head, and be conformable unto his death. He was the first to whom the path of life was shewn: for, though the widow's son, by Elijah; another, by Elisha; Lazarus, and many more, by Christ; were raised from the dead; yet it was only to a mortal life, they died again; and though Enoch and Elijah went to heaven without tasting death, yet they never went from the tomb; Christ was the first that ever trod the way to an immortal life from the grave. "Thou hast made known to me the way of life," &c. Furthermore, believers are to be planted together in the likeness of Christ's death, and in the likeness of his resurrection. If one died for all, then were all dead when he died; and, "with my dead body shall they arise." Instead of believers never dying, it is plain they die twice, and some have died daily. Their first death is by the application of the law's sentence, when the law comes with power, when sin revives and the sinnner dies; and their first resurrection is under the operation of the Spirit of God: and there is a dying again. But we should make a distinction between dying in faith, and dying in sin; between dying in the flesh, and in the Lord; between the flesh resting in hope, and perishing in its own corruption; and between falling asleep in Jesus, and going down to the grave with a lie in the right hand.

Others tell us, that the law is the legal covenant of grace;' which is as full of sense, and as pregnant with meaning, as to talk of black snow, or white charcoal; for it amounts to this, that God's free grace is the just wages of the sinner's dead works; which wages, or reward, if it be of grace, is no more of works; but, if of works, then it is no more of grace: one must give way to make room for the other; either works must be no more works, or grace must be no more grace. But we know that God gave it to Abraham, and his seed, by promise.

Others, who are more learned, tell us that what is said in this chapter to be done away and abolished is the glory of Moses' face: but this glory was done away long before Christ came. We do not read of his face shining, but only at the giving of the law, or while God abode upon the mount; for we can hardly think that Moses walked for eight and thirty years with a napkin on his face and, could this be proved, we know that the rays of his face must be done away at death. The face of Moses had been buried in

the country of Moab many hundred years before Christ came in the flesh: nor can we suppose that the Redeemer's errand into this world was only to wipe off the rays from the face of Moses. This is not the end spoken of in my text, to which the children of Israel could not stedfastly look. Christ is not called the end of Moses' face, but the end of the law; the magnifying, the honour

giving, the perfectly obeying, the punctually fulfilling, the doing away, and the abolishing end of the moral law for righteousness to every one that believeth, and to none else; for such, and only such, are justified freely from all things: and, if they are not justified from the galling yoke of the moral precept, which is do, and live; [which precept never was altered by Christ, nor shall be;] if they are still under the law as their rule of life, they are under the curse; for a precept without a sentence is no law; therefore, if this is the case, they are not justified from all things, nor from the worst thing, nor from any thing; for there is no separating the precept of the law from the sentence; Christ never did this, and I know he never will. He came not to divide the law, nor to alter the law; there is not a hint of this in all the Bible. He fulfilled every precept of it in behalf of his own elect; which obedience God accepted, and to every believer he imputes it: but to the reprobate the law is still, in the hand of God the Father, what it ever was, a covenant of works. God reckons the reward of such to be of debt. It is a dreadful rod in the hand of God, even to his own children, when he lays it on; and this Paul found when his sin revived and he died: and he would have died for ever if Christ had not appeared; but it pleased God to reveal his Son in him. And, if it is a dreadful rod in the Father's hand to the elect, what must it be in the hand of an angry God to the sinner?

Why it is a fiery law still; and that they shall find who set themselves against him and his Anointed. "Let us break their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh, he shall have them in derision; then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure: yet have I set my King upon my holy hill." Thus you see that God takes all those into his hand who reject his Anointed, and in all the wrath of the law he still speaks to them, and vexes them in his sore displeasure; yea, all that make a match with Christ, before their first husband be dead, God takes into his hands; every plant that he hath not planted he plucks up; and every branch in Christ that bears not fruit; all barren branches, apostates, and hypocrites, he takes away from Christ, who is the sinner's only refuge and hiding place, and such fall under all the storms of his wrath; and in the law, not in Christ, God appears to them, and in that law he is a consuming fire; and a terrible thing it is to be taken from the living vine and only refuge, and then to fall into the hands of the living God. Such wretches see not a God in Christ, but a consuming fire and a slighted Saviour. Hence the awful cry; "Hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb." They, who talk of the believer's being under the moral law in the hand of Christ, talk nonsense; the moral law is in the hand of an angry God to every sin