body, as it is infinitely worse to have our connection with the fpiritual world, that is, with God, by whom only spirits can live, diffolved, than to have all our connections with the prefent world destroyed; which is all that we can mean by natural death, where not one atom of the body is deftroyed, tho' the animal fabrick be diffolved; nor can fuch a spirit be reunited, or raised up to fuch an union with the great Father of fpirits as fhall communicate to them the fpirit of life, which no mortal either can expect, or have the remoteft hope of, but by what we have fo often had occafion to glance at, viz. the gift of grace in Christ Jefus. They who are joined to him are one fpirit;" and that carries in it one life, and one way of living with him; which must be carefully obferved, because it is on this ground that we are so often told of being quickened together with Christ, and raised from the dead, in the virtue of his obedience unto the death, his great facrifice and powerful interceffion, to partake in his fpirit and life. Hence the Chriftian's life is faid to be "hid with God in him;" and, what carries it as far as words can be found to exprefs it, Christ is faid to be“ their "life,"

"life," and "to live in them," as we fhall fee by and by.

It may poffibly be faid, What is all this to the prefent purpofe, where the Apostle fays, that through the law he was dead to the law? Let the Apostle himself answer it. Let us firft obferve how the man is brought under death, and held under it. He had faid it was by the law; and he thus defcribes the progrefs of it, 1 Cor. xv. 56. "the fting of death;" that by which it kills the man, "is fin." And if we want to know how fin comes by tells us it is by the law:

this power, he "The strength

"of fin is the law." It was that which armed it with its killing power; it drives and rivets the sting so, that it comes to be the very death of the finner, as it puts an end to life in all the views we can take of it. And thence it follows of course, that fo long as the finner continues under the law, he muft ftand bound under death. And by what we have already obferved, there is only one way in which a finner can poffibly escape, viz. that which the Apoftle here mentions, by becoming dead to the law, as he fays he was through the law itself.

Those who maintain, that nothing more than the ritual or ceremonial part of the

law of Mofes was fulfilled, by Chrift,

tinues in full force,

abrogated, or rather while the moral conare forced to fay, that the deliverance of the believer from this law, arifes from its very nature, being altogether figurative and typical, a fhadow or faint delineation of the good things that were to come; and when Christ, the fubftance of them all, came, the law, in this view, expired of course. But had this been the Apoftle's intention, as no man ever knew better how to exprefs himfelf properly, he must have said, The law was dead to him, and not he to the law. But neither could that have answered his views, nor what he had been faying but juft before, that the law bound all who were under it, at the fame time under the curfe; which cannot be removed until it has brought the finner to death, and put a full end to all that life we derive from Adam. It had done one principal part of this its office, when mankind were, in the virtue of the original curse, brought under the power of the spiritual death. And in this fituation they are taken up by

the

the merciful Saviour, and quickened by the conveyance of the Spirit of life; by the fame power which first breathed or inspired the breath or spirit of life into the firft man. But the animal or merely rational life, the only one Adam could convey, is still in being, and must be destroyed ere one can enter upon the full poffeffion of fpiritual and eternal life; for we are affured, that "flesh and blood can

not inherit the kingdom of heaven;" and we are only saved in hope, waiting for the redemption of the body. It is true, what the Apostle fays, that Christ has redeemed us from the curfe of the law; but he does not fay, he has taken away the curfe from the law, for then we fhould not have died. But this we shall meet with in its proper place. And thus the Apostle's fentiments are clear and confiftent: the law had flain him, Rom. vii. 11. and thus done its utmost against him; and had nothing further to fay to him. Death cancels all obligations.

The whole of this affair we have laid down by this fame apostle, Rom. vii. 1.—4. and which renders it the more proper to be taken notice of, he here takes it up precife

1

ly in the fame light. The law, he says, and he says it as a thing known to all, "The law hath dominion over a man as

long as he lives." And because there was no cafe known in this world of one living after he was dead, he takes a wellknown example; whereby it appears fully, that death diffolves the law's obligation, viz. the cafe of a wife at liberty upon her hufband's death. On which he concludes, that all Christians are become “dead to the "law, by the body of Chrift;" the very fame which he fays here, that he was crucified with Chrift, and yet lived; but lived in a very different manner from what he had done formerly, while the law held him under the dominion of fin and death, and to a very different end and purpose. As it is upon this one great point that the Apostle makes the whole of the Christian religion depend, it must merit the most diligent and ferious confideration; and the rather, that it has been either overlooked, or explained amifs, by many who bear the title of learned divines.

We have feen how certainly the law brings all who are under it to death; that is, it certainly destroys all the life they e