gospel represented, on the contrary, as a cheering and protecting patron. Now, the law of God is good," can be no man's enemy; but sin, by drawing men from the law, is indeed their enemy; and, the gospel is their friend, by reconciling them to the law; not only putting them in possession of eternal life on account of the Saviour's obedience, when they believe in his name, but inducing them to love the law which he obeyed, because he obeyed it for them, and, in the apostle's expressive phrase, to "delight in it, after the inward man."

The design of the Saviour's mediation is not, exclusively, to justify them that believe in him from the imputation of guilt. This is indeed of infinite consequence; "for we are justified freely by his grace, through the redemption. that is in Christ Jesus;" but this is introductory to something else. To purify us, to save us from our sins, to bring us nigh to God, to perfect us in all the will of God,thus establishing his law in our consciences, our affections, and our doings,-these are the ulterior designs which, when completed, unite to produce that "glory," in which the work of redemption is to terminate. What is conviction of sin? a practical acknowledgment, in the sinner's mind, of the authority and perfection of the law. What is conversion? the turning of the heart to the statutes of the law. What is justification? imputing to him that believes in Jesus, the righteousness which fulfilled the law. What is holiness? spontaneous and grateful obedience to the law. What are the precepts of the gospel but amplifications and enforcements of the law? What is heaven? the eternal and perfect conformity of the soul to the law of God, the satisfaction of being in his likeness.

My brother, are you not hourly violating the spirit of the divine law? The Bible tells you, that you have forfeited heaven, and that you have already merited hell. By deeds of law, therefore, you are not now justified, and you never can be. You have

broken the law, and having broken it, you are miserable; however you may for a season banish the sense of that misery. You cannot undo what you have done. You cannot render, at any future moment, more obedience than will be required at that moment. You can never, by repentance, do more than your duty to repent, nor will you ever repent thoroughly, till your heart is affected by those conceptions of the purity of God, of the evil of sin, of the justice and grace that harmonize in the atonement, which the Spirit of God produces through the discoveries of the gospel.

It is with a view, if possible, to awaken your interest in these great concerns, that we venture, in the following discourses, to set before you the commandments of God.

Perhaps you are living in the total neglect of serious practical religion. Are you not conscious, whatever be your excuse for this, that the reason is a secret and cherished disaffection to the authority, the purity, the strictness of the law of God? Have you not often wished that this law were, in some respects, different from what it is? Have you never attempted to argue yourself into a disbelief of its authority over all the motions of your inward man? or, having failed in this, have you never exercised your ingenuity in softening the tone of its requirements, paring down its demands, making a thousand allowances for heedlessness, for temper, or for temptation, or for habits; substituting palliative epithets for those homely and humbling descriptions of your feelings, which startled or offended you, in the simplicity of divine truth?

We are persuaded, that in this disaffection to the requirements of God's just and holy government, originates your indifference or your dislike to the communications of the gospel. You are not sensible of the value of these communications to you, because you are not contemplating your character and destiny in the light of these commandments, by which

that character is to be judged, and that destiny fixed.

Did you really consider the truth, as it respects your present condition, you would feel your danger; you would be urged to seek relief; you would gladly embrace the gospel, as coming from him who is the giver of the law; you would rejoice to discover the adaptation of the gospel, its substance, its design, its very tone of address, to your own particular emergency. You would be awed, indeed, by the characters of grandeur, and inflexibility, and rigour, with which the gospel invests the commandments you have broken; but your awe would be mingled with delight, as you beheld their demands fulfilled, and their honour vindicated, in the obedience unto death of the Son of God: and, surely, under such impressions, you would kindle with the sanctified ambition of an apostle, and you would "suffer the loss of all things, and count them dung, that you might win Christ, and be found in him, not having your own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith." And you would prove that you were abiding in Him, by "walking as He also walked."

But why are you not considering ?-comparing yourself, as you are, with what, you are assured, God most strictly requires that you should be?

The commandments are before you; their meaning is powerfully illustrated in the general tenor, and in many particular passages, of the divine revelation; their dreadful sanctions are made known, and they are irreversible. You have capacity, you have opportunity, you have inducements, you have helps, for considering. The helps now afforded you, if neglected, may soon be withdrawn. The inducements, whether terrible or tender, which surround you, if longer resisted, may lose their power to affect you. The opportunity which now awaits you, of attending to the "things that belong to your peace,"

may soon be thrown away, and these things may then be "hidden from your eyes." Your capacity for considering, if not now employed in this inconceivably momentous business, is becoming feebler and still feebler every day; and when the " convenient season" you anticipate, in the dark future, shall have come, every power you have may be absorbed in business, or may be palsied with disease, or may be withering in "extreme old age," may be distracted with delirium, may be tortured with remorse, or may be steeped in the poison of despair, or may be shrinking from the first sensations of the anguish which is to endure and to increase for ever!

Immortal man, rouse yourself! Dare to explore the recesses of the world within you by the light of these commandments. Sit in judgment on your own spirit. Determine to know the truth; it must be known: you cannot always be deceived, nor always deceive yourself.

Be warned, we entreat you, against a habit of speculating on this subject. You have, perhaps, come to the illustrations and enforcements now presented to you, merely for the sake of eliciting truth, or of detecting error; whilst you would dread the idea of having your conscience impressed with the authority of God, and would earnestly repel every effort to apply the principles of these commandments as the tests of your spiritual condition. You may be able to perceive the foundations of equity which support the law of God; you may admire the divine simplicity, and comprehensiveness, and complete harmony of its decisions; you may acknowledge the reasonableness of obedience, and may even weep, with genuine philanthropy, over the blindness, and folly, and stupidity of men, in refusing to obey; and you may be induced to patronize and to assist every attempt, by raising the morals, to meliorate the condition of society; yet, after all, are you remembering that the Most High God has issued these command

ments? that they are addressed to you as solemnly and as specifically, as though you had trembled, all alone, at the foot of Horeb? that to you they must constitute the standard of your own thoughts and dispositions, the monitor of your retirement, the regulator of your whole conduct? The short and simple declarations of the decalogue are not maxims founded in the wisdom of human experience; nor are they the peculiarities of the Jewish code; neither are they to be considered barely as the fundamental principles of enlightened legislation; nor even as the mitigated requirements of the divine government, suited to the fallen state of man: they are God's positive and authoritative commandments, addressed to you, and that, not that you may speculate, but that you may obey; not that you may know what to think of others, but that you may judge yourself; to make you, not critical and penetrating, but humble and holy.

The present volume may fall into the hands of some who suppose that they are keeping the commandments, and who are resting on this supposition their interests for eternity. To you there is no value, nor even meaning, in those repeated statements of the scriptures, which respect the ground of hope the gospel provides for sinners in the righte ousness of Jesus Christ. You do not see the glory of divine grace streaming forth from the discoveries and dispensations of God to his church. You do not feel the importance to your personal salvation of being "freely justified by faith." You are unconscious of your own condition being that of a perishing sinner. You look with jealousy at those parts of scriptural instruction, in which the necessity of faith in Christ is urged, in which the worthlessness of human working, to secure the favour of God, is asserted, in which the salvation of the soul is represented as a "gift," to be received without merit on the part of him who obtains it, "without money and without price." You think you see in such