not good, and judgments whereby they should not live, and I polluted them in their own gifts," Ezek. xx. 25, 26. Now we shall set off again.

These laws were for the happiness of man, 'for they stand inseparable. The law of God stands inseparable to the happiness of mankind.'

God did not say to fallen Adam, when he called him, that his happiness stood inseparable to these words, "in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." He pointed him to a seed that should destroy the devil, to a sacrifice also, and to a better covering than that of his own contriving. I will answer this by a simile: suppose a thief has met a gentleman on the road, and robbed him of a groat, by our law that thief is tried and condemned. By his own crime he has brought the sentence of death on himself, and therefore his destruction is owing to himself. This is the case with us sinners; God says, ye have robbed me, Mal. iii. 8. The groat shall represent the least sin; If thou keep the whole law, and offend in one point, thou art guilty of all, James ii. 10. And being out of Christ, thou art cast and condemned, both by law and conscience; "He that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him,” John iii. 36. Then the case stands thus: O man, thou hast destroyed thyself, Hos. xiii. 9.

Go thou to the cells of Newgate, and say to that condemned thief, under the sentence of death, as you have said to poor sinners here, that his

happiness stands inseparable to the law; and his answer will be this: the law is not made to condemn a righteous man, or a man that is obedient to the laws of his country, but I am a thief, I have broken the law, I have been fairly tried by it, and am justly condemned, and now lie under the sentence of it, and must die the death. This is just the sinner's case. The law is not made to condemn a righteous man, nor a soul that God has justified by faith; but God says, "there is none righteous [by nature], no not one," Rom. iii. 10. Then by the law every mouth is stopped, and the whole world become guilty before God, Rom. iii. 19; therefore telling the thief that his happiness stands inseparable to the law, will afford him but little comfort. He will tell you that the law is good, but that he is evil, and therefore the law hath wrought death in him, by that which is good, or by its own goodness, Rom. vii. 12, 13. He will own that the law was his adversary; it was that adversary, says he, that delivered me to the judge, and the judge passed the sentence of that law upon me, and then delivered me to the officer of Newgate, and he cast me into this prison, Luke xii. 58; where I am to lie till the day of execution, and then to hang by the neck till I am dead. Do you then tell the condemned thief, as you have told poor sinners in the beginning of this farrago, that you will smite the law, as Moses did the rock, and get him some refreshment from it? He will answer you, in the language of Paul, the law is the minis

tration of death and condemnation to me as a sinner; the judge has passed the sentence of the law on me, and it is not in the power of the law ever to take it off; that law can never be repealed. Therefore, sir, I can find no ground of hope in it, and by it a condemned criminal can never live; your pointing me therefore perpetually to the law is only rubbing fresh brine in my bleeding wounds, and sinking my burdened soul under that sentence, which I could wish might never enter my thoughts these few days that I have to live. And if he should add, sir, you know only the letter of the law; it never served its death warrant on you; you are alive without the law; a stranger to its spiritual meaning; a stranger to its intolerable sentence; you only expose your ignorance of the matter, and betray your foolishness; and when he has baffled your logic, exposed your ignorance, condemned you by your own arguments, and stopped your mouth, then tack about, and do the work of an evangelist.

Tell the condemned thief, that there is a Prince of peace at court, who is the king's own son, and has appeared for thousands as a surety, by obeying the law that they have broken, and by dying under the sentence that they have incurred, and is now a Mediator, an Advocate, and an Intercessor, and that every case he has in hand he has always carried with honour. Tell him, this is a new and living way; a way in which the king's pardon and

the gift of eternal life has been conveyed to millions, and that all who are thus pardoned are adopted into the royal family; and then labour to persuade him into the faith of this; and if faith comes on the thief by his hearing you, as God says it shall, Rom. x. 17, it will shortly lighten the weight of the sentence, burst the bands of slavish fear, and cause a lively hope to rise, superior to the sentence of death. He will then look to the Prince of peace for salvation, as he is commanded to do; "look to me and be ye saved;" and when he obtains his pardon, he will love the Lawgiver for his clemency; the Prince for his wonderful undertaking; and he will love the law because it is good, and because he knows it cannot condemn one that is adopted into the royal family, and united to the Prince of peace. Then tell the adopted thief, that he must look to the law as his only rule, and he will tell you, that the love of his Prince, shed abroad in his heart, the law of love and gratitude within him, constrains to obedience more than all the written rules in the world. This is logic, sir, that will baffle all the dog Latin, or gallipot Latin, that you are master of.

If you never felt the weight and terror of these things, you never was called to the ministry; and if you know not how to apply them, you have no more right to appear in a pulpit, than you have on the throne of Great Britain; and would cut a better figure with the pail of white

wash, the brush, and trowel, than you will at daub ing the minds and consciences of poor sinners with such untempered mortar as this.

'God has made man a law, by which he will govern his actions, and by which man is to be 6 accountable to him,'

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It is true, with respect to all sinners out of Christ, and wo be to that man that is under this government; and wo be to that man that is to be accountable to God for all his actions under that law; for "as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse;" and, "by the deeds of the law shall no flesh living be justified." But the saints' comfort is, that they " are not under the law, but under grace;" and that God has justified them freely by faith, and declares that the just man shall live by his faith, Hab. ii. 4. This is the saints' blessing; they are justified from all things from which they never could be justified by the law of Moses. All that cleave to the law are without God, and without hope in the world; and although your Ishmaelitish race is more numerous than the free-born sons of Zion, yet God styles them all desolate; your mother has no husband, your bond brethren have no father in heaven; you that feed on the law are but bastards at best, for your mother Hagar never was married; "more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord."

and

The law still stands as an obligation binding upon men, and by which he will be account