and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart," Heb. iv. 12. The apostle here describes the first entrance of the Lord's voice into him; and he says, the word of the Lord is quick; it quickens, and gives life; it is a sword to wound; and life made him feel the wound which the sword gave him. Now, though it was not a sentence of the law that was pronounced in the ears of Paul, yet what he felt within him was law. He found at once that sin revived; and he tells us, it is by the law we have the knowledge of sin; it stirred up all his corruptions, and set all his crimes before him; it condemned him to death, and he died: "Sin revived," says he, "and I died."

But I will for once presume to dive à little into the apostle's heart and shew you how matters. were with him, and how he found these things

out.

First, then, he tells us, that the commandment came to him; "I was alive without the law once, but, when the commandment came, sin revived and I died," Rom. vii. 9. But it may be asked, what does he mean by the commandment? the law has many commandments; why does he call it the commandment, in the singular number? The reason of it, according to his own explanation, is, because the whole law is fulfilled in one word, namely love; "Love," says Paul, is the fulfilling of the law." Love in the heart, is one love; and the commandment requires only love;

this includes all things: yet this love has two objects set before it, namely, God and the neighbour; and therefore the commandments are called two; "On these two commandments," saith the Saviour, "hang all the law and the prophets." Yea, our Lord himself makes it one and the same thing as our great apostle does. Take it as he speaks it. A pharisee, who was a lawyer, put this question to our Lord, tempting him; "Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind; this is the first and great commandment: and the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Matt. xxii. 36-40. Here our Lord says, the second is like unto the first. And so much like it, says Paul, that love in the heart fulfils the whole; "Love is the fulfilling of the law," the whole ten commandments; and this the apostle takes from the Psalms; "I have seen an end of all perfection, but thy commandment is exceeding broad," Psalm cxix. 96. From hence Paul takes it; and David says, it is the commandment, and it is exceeding broad: for it reaches to God in the highest heaven, and calls for love, with every power of the soul, to him; and it extends to all the human race, according to Christ's explanation, whether friends or foes; whatever others, in old time, may have said to the contrary;

as it is written, "It was said in old time, &c. But I say unto you, love your enemies," &c. In this Paul agrees with David, in calling this the commandment. David says, in, this matter, "I have seen an end of all perfection." Paul follows him, and says, "Now the end of the commandment is charity, out of a pure heart, a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned." This, says David, is all perfection; so says Paul; "And, above all things, put on charity, which is the bond of all perfectness." And to this agrees John; "He that feareth is not made perfect in love; but he that loveth dwelleth in God, and God in him: and herein is our love made perfect." Love is what the law calls for, and demands; and this commandment is exceeding broad, it reaches both friends and foes; and it was this commandment that came to the apostle; and when it came it found him as full of desperate rage, malice, and enmity, against God, as the devil himself; he was persecuting, opposing, and doing all that he could against Christ; he had blasphemed him, that is, he had cursed him; and, in wasting the church, he had made others recant, and give up their profession of Christ, and he compelled them to blaspheme or anathematise the Saviour, in order to bind or confirm their recantation, or to establish their apostacy; "I," says Paul, compelled them to blaspheme," Acts xxvi. 11. After Paul's conversion his enemies threw this in his teeth. But what Paul had done was in real blindness and

"

unbelief, and, as he thought, was doing God service; but the Spirit had taught him better; "Wherefore," says he, "I give you to understand, that no man, speaking by the Spirit, calleth Jesus accursed; and that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord [with an application to himself] but by the Holy Ghost," 1 Cor. xii. 3. And this awful work goes on among the Jews to this day; they can find no better name than this for the Son of God. This was all the love to God which the moral law found in the heart of Paul; and it found no more love in Paul to his neighbour than it did to God.

For some of them he had beaten often, in every synagogue, others he had shut up in prison; some he had driven to strange cities, others he had compelled to blaspheme their great Creator; against some he had given his voice as a witness, others he had killed, and had even held the clothes of some who were stripped to stone others to death; and all this not out of love to his neighbours, but being exceedingly mad against them. And I bear some record among us, who are sworn enemies to Antinomians, and very great sticklers for the law, and who call it, and make it, their only rule of life, that they are as much filled with exceeding madness against some of their neighbours as ever Paul was against his; one of whom has been honest enough to confess that he hates me worse than he hates the devil; and I believe him, for all that are in the flesh do find that the

motions of sins, which are by the law, do work in their members to bring forth fruit unto death, Rom. vii. 5. "The law worketh wrath:" and that good man's confession of his hatred to me confirms it. Thus I have shewed you what Paul means by the commandment which came to him; and at the entrance of which, instead of finding any love, either to God or man, it found him. hating and persecuting both. And now his enmity was stirred up and discovered to him; and all his wrath, hatred, blasphemy, and murder, was set before his eyes; and all the vanity of his birth, privileges, pharisaical righteousness, and zeal for human traditions, this whole baseless fabric tumbled down about his ears; and down he went also, for he could not stand in the judgment: "Sin revived, and I died.”

Nor did Paul get rid of this schoolmaster in a hurry. Hence, when he tells the Ephesians to be watchful, he adds, "Therefore watch, and remember that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one of you night and day with tears," Acts xx. 31. It was an awful alarm in his own heart that kept him at this three years' warning. If it be asked what that alarm was, he tells us himself: "Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men," 2 Cor. v. 11. But, when he got rid of his chains of bondage, he laboured under a better influence, as he owns: "For the love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were