SERMON V.

1

The Infufficiency of former Revelations, and the Delay of the Christian confidered.

ROMANS viii. 3.

For what the Law could not do, in that it

was weak through the flesh, God fending his

own Son in the likeness of finful flesh, and for

fin, condemned fin in the flesh.

SERMON VI.

P. 143.

The Death of Christ an expiatory Sacrifice.

HEBREWS ix. 26.

--He appeared, to put away fin by the facrifice

of himself.

P. 175.

SERMON VII.

The Influence of the Gospel on the Chriftian

Life.

JOHN XV. 3.

Now ye are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.

SERMON

VIII.

The Effects of Christ's Interceffion.

HEBREWS vii. 25.

Wherefore he is able also to save them to the

uttermost, that come unto God by him, See-

ing he ever liveth to make interceffion for

them.

P. 245-

SERMONI.

ROMANS vii. 24, 25.

O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

AINT Paul in this part of his Epistle, addreffing himself to the Jews at Rome, vindicates the Law of Mofes from any unjust imputation, on account of the ceremonial usages which it recommended, and which are abolished by the purity of the Gospel. Is the Law Sin, which directed these observances ? God forbid! Nay, some moral duties are enforced by the legal rites and the fuperadded precepts in so convincing a manner, that in a comparative sense at least, the Sin, or tranfgreffion of them, without the Law, would have been considered as dead. Hence those who were ignorant of the Law, or the Jews in their pristine state, so far as they were unacquainted with it, may be prefumed to have lived without it. And to these the Apoftle seems to allude, when he speaks thus in his own person; I was alive without the Law once, that is, before it was given by Mofes; but when the commandment came, Sin revived, and I died.

Yet the Law, which introduced this sense of things, was in itself perfectly right and holy; and it was Sin only that made it productive of mischief. It was Sin which perverted the institutions of Heaven, the perfect will of God, and thereby wrought death in men. And that Sin should thus gain the afcendancy over us, and render us obnoxious to death, cannot appear strange in this fallen state of our nature, if we reflect on the oppofition which is between the natural man and the Law. For we know, that the Law is spiritual, are fully convinced that it is pure,

b Ver. 9.

and

and quite averse to all iniquity; but I am carnal, fold under fin: such is the nature of the merely natural or carnal man, that he is an habitual flave to his corrupt affections and finful inclinations, even against the dictates of the Law, and the better suggestions of his own mind.

Sin is evidently the malignant poison, whose pernicious influence is traced in this whole chapter; a contagion with which the human race, even from our primeval state, has ever been sadly infested. It will be unnecessary to follow the Apostle's argumentation farther, or to pursue the conflict, which he so minutely marks, between the power of fin, and the checks of confcience, or the remonftrances of the better principle in the mind. It may be more to our purpose to observe, that his reasoning has by some interpreters been understood literally, and as meant chiefly of himself; by others, though spoken of himself, yet applicable to another description of men. Some refer it altogether to the carnal state;