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application; for every new-born babe in the audience might have replied, Thou art the man. But applying it to private believers instead of public preachers; and using it as their only rule of life, instead of using it as a charge to vain janglers, who have swerved from the faith, was the only method you could adopt in order to expose your antagonist to contempt; and it is a method that shall one day or other expose you to it.

"The end of the commandment is charity, out of a pure heart, a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned." He who is blessed with this mystery, holds it fast, enjoys it, and preaches it; is the real saint, and true servant of Christ; and such a servant is to charge suspected persons, that they preach no other doctrine; and they who swerve, or aim not at this, are those that turn aside to vain jangling; novices, who desire to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say nor whereof they affirm.

"The Law is good if a man use it lawfully." Let us see the lawful use that you have made of it. 'The unbeliever,' you say, 'cannot use it lawfully.' True: but, if had made a lawful use of it, you you should have levelled all its contents at his head, for to him it belongs; "Knowing," says Paul, that the law is made for the lawless and disobedient." But you levelled all the weighty matters that you brought from it at me, who am a believer; for I can shew you my faith by my works, and the law is not made for a righteous man. If the unbe

liever cannot make a lawful use of it, ergo, are you not that unbeliever, and, through ignorance, have handled it unlawfully? And, if so, ergo, Who set such a novice at it? But, if malice led you thus to pervert the text knowingly, your sin is the greater; and such walking in craftiness will make sad work for conscience another day. If to do as we would be done by, be the law and the prophets; perverting the Scriptures, to injure the just in the work of the Lord, can be no branch of that law. Ergo, Who, then, is the Antinomian? I, who have levelled the law's force at the sinner; or you, who have used it to slander the righteous?

'The believer having no more to do with the 'law than a woman with a dead husband, is black 'Antinomianism.' If it be, I think my own experience and the Bible furnished me with it.

"Know you not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law) how that the law hath dominion over a man as long as he liveth? For the woman which hath an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he liveth; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. 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, though she be married to another man. Wherefore, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ [ye were crucified with him, and died in him,] that ye should be married to another,

even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God."

The apostle here compares the Elect, before called, to a woman bound by the law to a husband; which is binding, and cannot be dissolved as long as either of the parties live. Secondly, That, if her husband be dead, she is free from that law, and may be married to another man: so the elect sinner, who reckoned himself alive without the law in a state of nature, finds that, when the commandment comes, sin revives, and he dies. And, as soon as he is killed by the letter, or finds the law to be ordained unto death, Rom. vii. 10, he is become dead to the law; and the law is a killing letter, or death, unto him, for it cannot give life. He may then be married to Christ; not that he may live a loose, licentious life, for none but the devil himself could ever father such things upon a spiritual union with the Lord Jesus Christ, but that we should bring forth fruit unto God; which the killing power of the law could not enable us to do, because it could not give life: "For, when we were in the flesh, the motions of sin, which were by the law, did work in our members, to bring forth fruit unto death." The apostle tells us that we are dead to the law, loosed from the law, and delivered from it, and that by the body of Christ; for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus makes us free from the law of sin and death.

If all this be true, that the believer is dead to

the law, as a widow is to the charms of a dead husband; that the law can give him no more life than a dead husband's corpse can to a surviving widow; that, from this death, the widow is free from the law of her husband, as the believer is from the law of Moses; and that she may be married to another man, as the believer may to Christ; and bear fruit to the second husband, as the believer does to God; and be under the law of wedlock to the second husband, as the believer is under the law of eternal wedlock to Christ, who has made him free from the law of sin and death by the law of the Spirit of life, and brought him under grace, having espoused him to him for ever in righteousness, in faithfulness, in lovingkindness, and in great mercy, that he may know his Lord and Husband; I say, such souls can have no husband but Christ, nor be under any law but to him: and he gives us a sweet account of his easy yoke in various terms, such as his word, his law, his sayings, his commandments, &c. which all amount to one and the same thing, as we shall shew presently.

God's laws, which are his new covenant, are written in the believer's heart by the Spirit of the living God, which makes him a living epistle, not a dead formalist. It is a fountain of life, not a killing letter; and it makes him fruitful to God, not barren in the knowledge of him. The law, magnified and made honourable, is in the heart of Christ; and it is the law of the Spirit of life in him

that makes the saint free; and he is under that law to Christ, whose word is life. "He that re

jecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is life everlasting." "He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me." If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him." "Verily, verily, I say unto you, if a man keep my saying, he shall never see death."

"He

that loveth me not, keepeth not my sayings," John xiv. 24. This is the law of the Spirit of life, that the believer is under.

If ever my own lust should entice me to a loose and licentious way of living, the right horse shall wear the saddle: the devil and William Huntington shall bear the scandal; for I will never palm it upon this doctrine, which has brought me from the drudgery of devils and the pains of hell, and has kept my soul in hope of heaven for now these twenty-five years: and, for my own part, I wish every one that calls me an Antinomian had got the same hope. I think the devil would have more cause to complain than he has now; and that less licentiousness, and more good works, would appear, than do at present, except in the talking part; for a fool is known by a multitude

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