"his voice which then

Yet God did not only

ses, and with their fathers in the mount Sinai," according to the des claration of Stephen, Acts vii. 38. It was shook the earth," as Paul saith, Heb. xii. 26. speak these words, but he also wrote them on two tables of stone, not with outstanding, but with incarved and engraven letters, "on both sides the tables were the work of God, the writing was also the writing of God, graven upon the tables," Exod. xxxii. 15, 16. This represented the everlasting duration of the law, the stony hearts of the Israelites, and the manner in which God himself would write his law in them, according to the covenant, Jer. xxxi. 33. 2 Cor. iii. 2, 3. But after Israel had committed idolatry with the golden calf, and had broken the covenant of God, Moses broke the tables also, Exod. xxxii. 19. But the Lord, turning from the fierceness of his anger, and being reconciled to the people, restored the broken law, not by making other tables himself; but, that there might remain a testimony of the abominable action of the Israelites for their humiliation, he ordered Moses to hew two other tables, like the first, and he wrote himself the former words in them, Exod. xxxiv. I.

Before the Lord delivers his commandments, he prefixes his preface to them, in order that he may teach the Israelites their obligation to keep the commandments of the Lord. He saith to them, "I am the Lord," Jehovah, the selfexisting, the alone-existing, the everlasting, unchangeable, faithful God, who will now fulfil my promises, which I made to your fathers, and show that I am the Jehovah. See Exod. vi. 2, who am also with this my name "the Most High over all the earth," Psalm lxxxiii. 18, to whom ye are therefore obligated in the strongest manner. They are obligated to him so much the more, as he had declared that he was their God, “I am the Lord thy God," saith he. The Lord was their God by virtue of the covenant made with Abraham and his seed, Gen. xviii. 7. He had nothing greater than himself, he could not therefore bestow a greater good upon them than himself; whatever he was, had, and did, was theirs. It was therefore just that they should conduct themselves as his people, according to his law; it was for this that he was become their God, and they his people, as Moses declares, Deut. xxvii. 17, 18. The Lord had also manifested himself as their God, when he led them out of the land of Egypt." They had suffered grievously in the land of Egypt, it had been a house of bondage to them, an iron furnace: but the Lord had delivered them, and had led them out of Egypt with great power, and with an outstretched arm, with many mighty tokens and wonders, and he was

:

now about to lead them into Canaan, as the pledge of the covenant, and in order to prove that he was their God, according to the promise of the covenant, made to Abraham, Gen. xv. 18. xvii. 8. Did it not then behoove them to acknowledge this, and, as the people, whom the Lord owned, to conform themselves in every respect to his law? It is silly to infer hence with the Antinomians and others, that the Jaw of Moses doth not relate to us, because we have not been led out of Egypt, like the Israelites; for it is the law which floweth from the supremacy of God, as Jehovah is he now less the God of his people than he was in the time of Mozes ? hath not the Lord now also brought his people out of the spiritual Egypt, the house of Satan and of Antichrist? are not all the commandments moral do they not require love to God and to our neighbour ? "Jesus came not to destroy the law: not one jot nor tittle may pass from the law." See Matt. xv. 17-20. The fifth commandment hath respect to Canaan, but Paul shows that it relates to us also, Eph. vi. 1, 2, 3. If the law pertain not to us, because we were not brought out of the land of Egypt, then it also relates to them only, who were personally brought out, and not to the following generations. We will not attempt to refute their objections; we have done this on the thirty-second Lord's day.

2. The great Lawgiver hath proposed the duty of his people in a few words: but Paul exhibits by the Spirit of the Lord, the sum of the law, in still fewer, when he comprehends it in one word, "love," Rom. xiii. 9, 10. The law is nevertheless, not on this account defective, but the more perfect, because it must be taken in its whole extent: "I have seen an end of all perfection: but thy commandment is exceeding broad," saith David, Psalm cxix. 96. It must therefore be explained (a) spiritually; for "the law is spiritual," as Paul speaks, Rom. vii. 14. When it forbids open murder and adultery, then it forbids also the hatred of the heart, and the adulterous eye, according to 1 John iii. 15. Matt. v. 28. (b) Whenever aught is forbidden, we must consider that then also something is commanded. Doth the first commandment forbid having other gods before God, it doth then also command us to hold and acknowledge him only to be God. And when any thing is commanded, we must know that something is then also forbidden, as in the fourth and fifth commandments, (c) When any sins are forbidden, or any virtue commanded, then also the causes and consequences of such a sin or virtue are forbidden or commanded. "Thou shalt not steal," saith the Lawgiver: but he forbids with this also covetousness and wasting our goods.

Therefore the law is perfect, and it doth not need any amendment nor addition, as the Socinians imagine, that they may represent Christ as a new lawgiver, and may seek justification by the law of Christ. But do they not show hereby, that they are self-condemned, since they are unable to maintain their opinion without reproaching the law of God, and saying that it is not perfect, contrary to so many testimonies of the word of God? See Psalm xix. and Psalm cxix. And what should the Lord Jesus forsooth have added to the law of God? the command of self-denial, of taking up our cross and following him? Might men then, before the coming of Christ, neglect self-denial? might his people indulge fretfulness, when he subjected them to adversity? and was he not then also a pattern for their imitation? See how the Levites denied themselves, according to the commandment of God, Exod. xxxii 26-29. Deut. xxxiii. 9, how the afflicted people bowed patiently under the burthen, Lam. iii. 26-30. Micha vii. 9, and how the Lord requireth that Israel should imitate him in his holiness, Lev. xix. 2. When Christ said repeatedly, "ye have heard that it was said by them of old; but I say unto you," Matt. v. 21-48, he doth not speak thus in order to amend the law, but to rescue it from the false glosses of the elders, who imagined that none other than outward actions were forbidden or commanded: in opposition to which Christ declares the spiritual and true meaning of the law. The Papists trifle, when they speak of evangelical counsels, as the monastic vows of a single life, implicit obedience, and voluntary poverty: these things they imagine, are not commanded, but only advised, as means of obtaining a greater reward. Truly mere fictions beside the word of God, and condemned in that word, as will-worship. We cannot busy ourselves with them here.

3. But what is the design of the law, and for what purpose hath God given it? Some suppose that the Lord gave it to be a form, a scheme, a transcript or prescript of the covenant of grace, and that it is therefore nothing else but the covenant of grace itself, requiring and teaching faith in Christ, and that it is therefore called " the law of faith," Rom. iii. 7. But that when Moses had broken the first two tables, on account of the sin committed with the golden calf, and had afterwards brought other tables to the Lord, who wrote the former law on them again, that then the law assumed, as a punishment of that sin, the form of the covenant of works, with the addition of the demand and curse of the covenant of works, "do this and live, and cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them," Lev. xvii. 5. Deut. xxvii. 26,

See Rom. x. 5. Gal. iii. 10. But we cannot accede to this opinion, because this law contains only commandments, and no promises of affording strength and ability for enabling us to keep it, as the cove nant of grace doth, Exod. xxxvi. 26, 27. The same words cannot exhibit such different forms, now of a covenant of grace, and then of a covenant of works. The second giving of the law was not a punishment of the sin with the golden calf, but it proceeded from "special kindness, as well as the first giving; for after the first tables of the law were broken, God did not give his law the second time, until he was reconciled to the people, upon the intercession of Moses. See Exod. xxxii. xxxiii. xxxiv. Is there a sentence and a promise of the covenant of grace in the preface, and in the second commandment of the law, the law is not therefore the covenant of grace itself; for that sentence and promise is also in the law, which was given the second time. There is a threatening of the covenant of works in the second commandment, "that God will visit the iniquities of the fathers upon the children," &c. but none may therefore say that the law is nothing else but a covenant of works. The Son of God, the Mediator of the covenant of grace, did indeed publish the law, but that doth not make it a covenant of grace; for he published the law upon other occasions, yea, as the demand of the covenant of works, although he was already revealed, as the Mediator of the covenant of grace. See Matt. xix. 16-20. Luke x. 25-28. It is true, the law is sometimes called the covenant of God, but who doth not know that the word covenant hath various significations? the steadfast order of nature is called God's covenant of the day and of the night," Jer. xxxiii. 20. So also God's steadfast promise is called a covenant, Exod. xxxiv. 17. Circumcision and the sabbath are styled God's covenant, Gen. xvii. 10. Exod. xxxi. 16. Thus also a command of the civil law, Jer. xxxiv. 13, 14. But none will look upon these things, each considered separately, as the covenant itself. In the same manner is the law also called the covenant of God, because it pertained to the covenant of God, established at Horeb, as a part of it, and so the law was, "the covenant of God, which he commanded them to perform," Deut. iv. 13. It was "after the tenor of these words." as the demand of the covenant, that "the Lord made the covenant with Israel,” Exod. xxxiv. 17. Therefore we cannot call the law of the ten commandments "the law of faith;" for by," the law of faith," Rom. iii. 27, we must understand the gospel, which is also called " a law," Isaiah ii. 3, and is opposed by Paul to the law of works, Rom. iii. 27.

That we may apprehend the matter rightly, and perceive clearly what we must judge concerning this law, we must know that God established a covenant with Israel on Sinai by the ministry of Moses, and what kind of a covenant that was. It is abundantly evident from Exod. xix. that God established a covenant with all Israel upon sinai; for God commands Moses, vrs. 5, 6, to propose the demand and promise of the covenant to Israel, when he saith, "If ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure to me above all people; for all the earth is mine. And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto the children of Israel." Moses reports these words to the people, vrs. 7, and they' consent to the proposal of God, when they say, vrs. &, "All that the Lord hath spoken will we do." Behold here a solemn covenanting. Hereupon the people are prepared to receive the law of the covenant, and the Lord descends with the tokens of his awful majesty on the mountain to pronounce that law of his in the hearing of the people, Exod. xix. 9-25. He delivers in the first place the moral law, Exod. xx. and then the civil law, Exod. xxi. xxii. xxiii. although he inserts also in the civil law certain moral and ceremonial or ecclesiastical commands. Hereupon the people consent again to the covenant with all its laws, which Moses writes in a book, and confirms with burnt sacrifices and the sprinkling of blood, Exod. xxiv. And finally, the God of the covenant delivers to his covenant people the ceremonial or church-law; all which was concluded with the delivery of the two tables of stone of the covenant, in which the moral law, as the chief and fundamental part of all the laws, was engraven, Exod. xxv.-xxxi. But after the people had broken the covenant of God by their sin with the golden calf, Moses also broke the tables of the covenant, and God would destroy the people but upon the intercession of Moses, he received them again into his favour, and into his covenant, Exod. xxxii. xxxiii. xxxiv. and he began to give his ecclesiastical laws again, which he had left off giving on account of the sin of his people.

From all this we may see clearly that the moral law was not a transcript nor prescript of any covenant, nor the other laws neither: but the moral law was with the other laws a rule for the covenant people, who were already in the covenant, that they might conduct themselves as God's covenant people, according to that rule, worthily of God and of his covenant.

If we will form a right idea of the proper nature of the law of that Mosaical covenant, we must then also rightly understand the