The Infufficiency of former Revelations, and the Delay of the Chriftian 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 P. 143. VI. The Death of Chrift an expiatory Sacrifice. HEBREWS ix. 26. --He appeared, to put away fin by the facrifice SERMON I. ROMANS vii. 24, 25. O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jefus Christ our Lord. AINT Paul in this part of his Epistle, SAL addreffing himself to the Jews at Rome, vindicates the Law of Mofes from any unjuft imputation, on account of the ceremonial ufages which it recommended, and which are abolished by the purity of the Gofpel. Is the Law Sin, which directed thefe obfervances ? God forbid! Nay, fome moral duties are enforced by the legal rites and the fuperadded precepts in fo convincing a manner, that in a comparative fenfe at least, the Sin, or tranfgreffion of them, without the Law, would have been confidered 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 Apostle seems to allude, when he speaks thus in his own perfon; 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 fenfe 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 fhould thus gain the afcendancy over us, and render us obnoxious to death, cannot appear ftrange in this fallen ftate 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 fpiritual, are fully convinced that it is pure, b Ver. 9. and and quite averfe 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 slave to his corrupt affections and finful inclinations, even against the dictates of the Law, and the better fuggeftions of his own mind. Sin is evidently the malignant poifon, whose pernicious influence is traced in this whole chapter; a contagion with which the human race, even from our primeval state, has ever been fadly infefted. It will be unneceffary to follow the Apostle's argumentation farther, cr to pursue the conflict, which he fo 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 purpofe to obferve, that his reafoning has by fome interpreters been understood literally, and as meant chiefly of himfelf; by others, though spoken of himself, yet applicable to another defcription of men. Some refer it altogether to the carnal state; |