Wherefore believe the doctrine of the law, concerning the curse, and the misery of sinners under it; believe it with application to yourselves. Believe it upon the testimony of God, who is truth itself; believe it, because God has said it, though perhaps you do not feel it; so shall you come to be duly affected with it, and by that means be stirred up to a concern to be saved from it, which would be a promising step towards a recovery.

3. Be convinced, that your case is desperately sinful while you are under that covenant. While sin remains, the root of misery remains, which will spring up; the fountain abides, which will cast forth waters of bitterness; and it must and will remain in its strength while ye are under that covenant; because, being under that covenant, ye are under the curse. Hence says the apostle, 1 Cor. xv. 56, "The strength of sin is the law." While the law, as the covenant of works, then, hath power over a man, sin will have its strength in him, which he can by no means break. While ye are under that covenant, and so under the curse,

(1.) The guilt of your sin lies on you, the guilt of eternal wrath; and it cannot be removed. The curse stakes you down under that guilt, it binds it upon you as with bands of iron and brass, that it is not possible you should ever get up your head, while the curse is on it; and the curse will be upon it as long as ye are under that covenant, Gal. iii. 10. The covenant in the threatening of it said, If man sin, he shall die; and so sinning he contracted the guilt of death, he came under debt to vindictive justice. The curse of the covenant says, The sinner must die, he must pay his debt to the utmost farthing, he cannot be freed from it without full payment. This you cannot do. The justice and truth of God confirm the curse of the law on the sinner, that it cannot be balked without an imputation of dishonour on them. And since it is not posssible for you to make full satisfaction, and so to exhaust the curse, no, not through the ages of eternity; it is evident, that the curse does inviolably bind the guilt of your sin on you, so that while the former remains on you, the latter is immoveable.

Now consider that ye were born sinners under this covenant, and so born under the curse of it; and that the law is most extensive, both as to parts and degrees of obedience, and so condemns everything you do, because you do nothing in the perfection which it requires. Hence your sins are innumerable, your several pieces of guilt are past reckoning, and you are every day adding to the account; but in the meantime the account never suffers any diminution. The state of a sinner under the curse is an unfathomable gulf, into which the waters are continually running, but not the least VOL. XI.

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drop goes out from it again. New guilt is still added, but nothing of the old or new guilt is removed; the curse lets in more, but it lets none out; all is sealed up under the curse, from your sin in the womb, till your sin of this minute.

Ye will say, God forbid! Surely he is a merciful God. I have been troubled about my sins, and I have repented of them, and begged forgiveness, and I hope he has pardoned me; and I hope to do the same for the time to come, and he will pardon me still. ANSWER. Not to speak here of what repentance can be found in one lying under the curse of the first covenant, ye should take notice, that you being still under the covenant of works, God deals with you in the way of that covenant, and that covenant admits of no pardon to them who are under it, Acts xiii. 39. For a pardon under that covenant would render the threatening and curse of it vain, and of no effect; and so fasten a blot and stain on the truth and justice of God, and would indeed quite overturn that covenant, and leave it as little regarded by God himself, as it has been by the sinner. Indeed, if you can bear the curse, so as, by your suffering what it binds on you, to exhaust it, and fully satisfy justice; then your crime is expiated, and even in the way of that covenant God and you are friends again; but that is as impossible for you, as to lift the whole fabric of heaven and earth out of its place. The truth is, nothing can procure you the pardon of one sin, but what can remove the curse; while you are under that covenant, you have no saving interest in the blood of Christ, so the curse is not taken off you thereby; and certain it is, that your repentance and begging forgiveness can never remove the curse from off you, for they can never be a full satisfaction to offended justice. And therefore, notwithstanding your pretended repenting and begging pardon, your guilt still remains; there is no pardon in the case; though your guilt is forgotten by you, it is remembered of God still, and is written before him as with a pen of iron, and the point of a diamond.

(2.) Sin has a reigning power over you; and it neither is nor can be broken, you continuing under that covenant, Rom. vi. 14, where the apostle plainly teaches, that they who are under the law are under the dominion of sin. Man, innocent and holy, entered into that covenant; but once turning a sinner under it, he could never turn a saint again under it. It furnished strength to man being clean to keep himself clean, but provided no laver for him once defiled, to wash himself clean again. I know that the men of that covenant do not make, all of them, an alike black appearance in their lives and conversations; some of them bear the devil's mark on their foreheads; others have it in the hollow of their hand, which

But the whole of them reigning power of sin,

they can keep from the view of the world. are an unsanctified company, and under the which is in them entire and unbroken, Rom. iii. 10-12. So that I say your case is desperately sinful as to the reigning power of sin, while under that covenant; ye neither are nor can be holy under it. And think not this strange. For,

[1.] Since you are sinners under that covenant, you must needs be dead men; for so runs the threatening; Gen. ii. 17, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt die." Your natural life is yet preserved, therefore your spiritual life then must be gone, Eph. ii. 1. So all the men of that covenant are dead and buried in trespasses and sins. Death preys on their souls, and bears full sway there. Hence it is called "the law of sin and death," Rom, viii. 3, sin and death reigning over all that are under its dominion. And therefore Christ, the head of the second covenant, was made a quickening spirit, death reigning under the first.

What though you perform religious duties under this covenant? They are all but dead works, but the carcases of duties, without life and spirit. They have the matter of duty, but they are not done in a right manner; they are not from a right principle, nor are they directed to the right end; they are all selfish, slavish, and mercenary, and can never be acceptable to God.

[2.] Being under the curse, there is a separation betwixt God and your soul, and so the course of sanctifying influences is blocked up, Isa. lvii. 2. While the curse thus stands as a partition-wall of God's own making, in the course of justice, betwixt God and you, how can there be any saving communion with him? and without that how can ye be made holy? Our Lord Jesus Christ, by his death and sufferings, purchased the Spirit of sanctification for those that are his; plainly importing, that there was no access for the Spirit of sanctification to the unholy creature by the first covenant.

You may possibly find an enlargement of heart in duty under that covenant; but mistake it not for communion with God, there is no communion with him but by Jesus Christ the head of the second covenant, Eph. ii. 18. And for an evidence hereof, you shall observe, that whereas communion with God has a sanctifying and humbling efficacy where it is; these enlargements have no such effect, but on the contrary fill the heart with pride and self-esteem, and so render the soul more unholy, 1 John i. 6.

(3.) That covenant is no channel of sanctification to the unholy creature. To a sinner it is "the ministration of death," 2 Cor. iii. 7, and of "condemnation," ver. 9, a "killing letter," exacting obedience to be performed on the strength given at first, but now quite

spent; but promising no new strength for duty, but laying on the curse for non-performance. It is the gospel, or covenant of grace, that is the "ministration of the Spirit," ver. 8. And for this the apostle appeals to the experience of those who have received the Spirit, Gal. iii. 2, "Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?"

It is true, that under that covenant you may have been influenced to reformation of life, and prompted to the performing of duty; but all this amounts to no more in that case, but a change of life, and reaches never to a change of one's nature. Fear of punishment and hope of reward, are here the springs of all; not the love of God; and so the result of it is a form of godliness, without the power of it.

4.] That covenant, instead of having a sanctifying influence on sinners, has an irritating power on their corruptions. The more close it comes upon their consciences, the more their lusts are provoked, as was before explained, Rom. vii. 7. I may herein appeal to sinners' experience. Have ye not sometimes found sleeping corruptions awakened by the law's forbidding of them? and weak lusts gather strength by the very sight of the hedge which the law has set betwixt you and them? And have not your hearts, on some particular occasions, finding how their inclinations were crossed by its commands, awed and frightened by its threatenings and curses, even risen against it secretly, and against the God that made it ?—Thus under that covenant your case is desperately sinful.

4. Be convinced, that while ye remain under that covenant, ye remain under the curse; and there is no deliverance from the curse without deliverance from the covenant. "For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse.' It is vain to think one can be under that covenant, being a sinner, and not be under the curse; for the curse will be found to take place in the dominion of the law, wherever sin is found. So as long as ye live under the broken covenant of works, so long ye live under the curse; and if ye die under that covenant, ye die under the curse. When innocent Adam entered into that covenant, it did not curse, nor could it curse him or his, while as yet there was no command of it broken; but when once sin entered, the curse immediately took place, and seized on him and all his posterity; and under it they lie, as long as they remain under that covenant, and are not delivered from that original contract.

This is a weighty consideration, and may pierce the hearts of all who have not got their discharge as to that covenant, who have not got that hand-writing that is so much against them, blotted out with respect to them. Whatever ye do, whatever ye suffer, whatever change be in your conversation, or in the temper and dis

position of your spirits, while ye remain under that covenant, the yoke of the curse remains still wreathed about your necks. And, to fasten this conviction the more on you, consider,

(1.) Ye being under that covenant were born under the curse, "by nature the children of wrath," Eph. ii. 3. Adam's sin laid all men under it; and as soon as we are Adam's children we are cursed children, bound over to death by the sentence of the broken law or covenant, Rom. v. 18. Now, there are only two ways how that curse may be supposed to be removed and taken off you, viz., either by your own bearing it for yourselves so as to bear it off, or by another's bearing it for you imputed to you; for that it should be taken off you in a way of mere mercy, without any bearing it to the satisfaction of justice, is inconsistent with God's justice, truth, and covenant, as you heard before. But the former way, it cannot be that ye are or shall be delivered from it; for whatever ye have suffered in your souls, bodies, or any other way, or whatever ye may suffer is still but the sufferings of a finite being, which can never compensate the wrong done to the honour of an infinite God by your sin; and therefore the sufferings of the damned have no end. The breach made by the creature's sin in the honour of an infinite God, is a gulf which swallows up all sufferings of the creature, but can never be thereby filled up. As to the latter, it cannot take place, but in the way of the second covenant, which is inconsistent with your continuing under this covenant. The imputation of Christ's satisfaction, and the delivery from the curse thereby are consequents of the soul's union with Christ, Rom. viii. 1, which is by one's entering into the covenant of grace, whereby they part with the covenant of works which they naturally cleave to, Rom. vii. 4. Therefore it necessarily follows, that while ye remain under the covenant of works, ye remain under the curse, the curse laid on for Adam's sin.

(2.) Suppose that curse were removed, and no curse were lying on you now for the first breach of the covenant; yet ye cannot refuse but that however watchfully you have behaved yourselves, endeavouring to keep the law you have been guilty of some sins in your own persons; you have, sometimes at least, thought evil, spoken evil, and done evil; some duties ye have omitted, some crimes against God and his law ye have committed. Now these lay you under the curse, since you are under the covenant which curseth the sinner; for it is written "Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." It is not enough to do some things of the law; if all be not done, one is by this covenant staked down under the curse.

(3.) When you have done the best that possibly you can do to