as dreadful as those of Judas; they differed little in this world, though they may in the world to come, it being more tolerable for Sodom than for a gospel despiser. But this is not God's teaching, but God's sentence. The law is not a schoolmaster to such, but a stream of brimstone, Isai. xxx, 33. When God puts his laws into the heart, he promises a new spirit also; and the Spirit searches the heart, like a candle lighted up in the soul, Zeph. i. 12. What he searches out he enlightens us to see; and what he enlightens us to see he quickens us to feel. Where the Holy Spirit

Not one

comes not, the law is no schoolmaster. of these were ever taught of God. No soul knows the spirituality of the law but those whom God quickens; nor is one grain of the morality of the law to be found in any but those who are born again. And even these apostates have no more than the sentence, and an earnest of future vengeance; for they are said to be in a fearful looking for of judgment. They are not yet in full possession of their fears, but, "The fear of the wicked it shall come upon him." And what is this looking for of judgment, but looking for the execution of the sentence? And the fiery indignation looked for is endless death, under the wrath of God, in a fiery law. These expect the wrath and curse of God, and so do other sorts of sinners as well as they, "For the expectation of the wicked is wrath." All sinners are children of wrath; and, "As many as are of the works of

the law are under the curse," Gal. iii. 10; and those who believe not in Christ, are condemned already, and the wrath of God abideth on them, John iii. 36. Yet all do not know it alike. Those given up to a fearful looking for of judgment do not feel as the elect of God do when he teaches them. Cain sets off with the curse of God on him, and goes to work to build a city. But the psalmist, when the law was working in him, was not capable of laying a plan, much less of executing it, in building a city. "I am afflicted and ready to die from my youth up; while I suffer thy terrors I am distracted," Psal. lxxxviii. 15.

Esau could soon set off to farming and hunting, although the blessing, and all hope of it, was gone for ever; while David, under the operation of the law, forgot to eat his bread, Psal. cii. 4. Reprobates and apostates have not half the keenness in their terrible sensations as the elect of God; for though such persons are alarmed, roused, awakened, and raised up, yet they have no spiritual life. But, when God takes his children in hand to teach them out of his law, he breathes the breath of life into them, which makes them feel their need of his blessed provision. It makes them hunger and thirst for the bread and water of life, and brings them into a starving condition; and such only shall come who are ready to perish. "The full soul loathes the honeycomb; but to the hungry every bitter thing is sweet." The law makes us feel our poverty, and it is the poor

only that shall be fed. "I will abundantly bless her provision; I will satisfy her poor with bread." Until the law is applied, and the sentence passed upon us, we cannot be proper objects of Christ's clemency. One of the characters of God's elect is that of dead men, and they are expressly called his dead men. "Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise," Isai. xxvi. 19. Upon this passage our Lord seems to have fixed his eyes when he said, "The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live," John v. 25. As soon as God sent the law home to Paul he became one of these dead men. "Sin revived and I died." "The God of our fathers hath chosen thee, that thou shouldest know his will, and see that just One, and shouldest hear the voice of his mouth," Acts xxii. 14. And he owns that he was quickened, and lived; or rather that Christ lived in him. Now, if the law be our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ, and one of our characters is that of dead men, because appointed to be slain in time by the law; (and Paul tells us that the law was sent home to him that he might be found among the Lord's dead ones; "I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God);" what can these ministers of the letter have to do with this law, who instead of being one of Christ's dead men, are alive without the law, sin being dead? And surely such will never come to Christ, that they might

have life, John v. 40. Not one of those before described ever had any law of God applied to him, not even my antagonist himself. If he has ever learnt one lesson of God out of his law, let him send me an account of it, of his feelings under it, and what a spirit of bondage to fear is, together with an account of the different ingredients that compose a spirit of bondage; which if he cannot do, he is, as I have affirmed, and his own book confirms, dead in sin, and sin is dead in him; and he is alive without the law: nor is there any law that ever came from God applied to him, or to be found in his heart. And until this is the case the appointment and commission of Christ doth not extend to him; nor is he, or are such, included in it. They tell us they are drawn by love, but I know they are rather led by Satan. Christ was not sent to heal the whole, but the sick; nor to feed the full, but the hungry; not to call the righteous, but sinners; nor to save the found, but the lost! not to bring back those that stay at home, but those that went astray. His appointment is to preach the gospel to the poor in spirit, not the rich in self; and good tidings to the meek, not the impenitent: to speak a word in due season to them that are weary; to comfort all that mourn: to bind up the brokenhearted; to forgive them that have nothing to pay; to feed the poor of the flock, and such as were ready to perish; to set at liberty them that were bruised, and to comfort all that mourn in

Zion; to open the prison to them that are bound, and by the blood of his covenant to bring them forth out of the pit in which is no water; to guide the meek in judgment; to unstop deaf ears; to open blind eyes; to make the doubting soul that stammers through unbelief, speak plainly; to give sinners beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garments of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may be trees of righteousness, the right-hand planting of God, that he may be glorified. But, as for the fat and the strong, he says he will not feed them, unless it be with judgment. Now these law-men, or ministers of the letter, who are alive without the law, and in whom sin is dead, neither want light nor life; wherefore their case is not described in all Christ's commission, nor once included in it, and therefore his anointing and appointment doth not extend itself to them. They make the law a refuge of lies, and by the help of God I will beat them out of it.

Having proved, by the word of God, that the law is a schoolmaster to his elect, to bring them to Christ, of course it cannot be the schoolmaster of the reprobates, because they never come to Christ.

2. That none but God's elect are chastened by him, and taught out of his law; and that all who have heard, and have learned of the Father, come to Christ: but, as the reprobates never come to the Saviour, it is plain that the rod of