new man is in close alliance with the Spirit of God. The strong man armed must, therefore, overcome him that is stronger than he, and regain his lost possession, before this new man, this principle of grace, which is to reign through righteousness, can be conquered by the prevailing power of sin, so as to be taken captive. The distinction here between the believer, and the seed of God in him, is this

the believer is delivered from the power of sin, but grace is taken captive by sin. To speak without irony, and without lightness, I do believe in my conscience, that persons who learn notions, and a wild cant, from the letter of the scriptures, and from the people of God; who darken and confound every thing they learn, being ignorant, and destitute of the power of God; and who get into a profession of religion, and publish such strange gibberish as this, and blend the sacred names of sanctification and the Holy Ghost with their own subtle inventions, are guilty of spiritual wickedness; and their sin, in the great day, will be found to be more dreadful than that of the openly profane cursers and swearers, who never once troubled themselves or interfered with religion. And sure I am, that the aim and end of such people can be nothing but seeking honour from the blind and ignorant, and a livelihood in idleness; to perplex and puzzle seeking sinners, and to oppose and blacken those whom God has sent to lead them,

Quot. The next thing I mean to consider is that grand Antinomian tenet, that the moral law

has ceased to be the rule of a believer's conduct as much as it has ceased to be a covenant of works.

Answ. My reader will observe here, that the only rule of life is now termed the rule of conduct. Pray, does the author, or do the authors, of this book make the moral law the rule of their conduct? Do they labour six days, and do all they have to do? Do they keep holy every saturday, not doing their own works, nor finding their own pleasure, nor speaking their own words, on that day? Do they teach them diligently? Do they talk about this law when they sit in their house, when they walk by the way, when they sit down, and when they rise up? Do they bind them for a sign upon their hands, and wear them as frontlets between their eyes? Do they write them upon the posts of their house, and upon their gates? Deut. vi. Do they love God, whom they have not seen, when they knowingly endeavour to injure his children, in his own work, whom they have seen? Or, is loving in word instead of deed the love that the law requires? Do they not take the name of God in vain when they pretend to the operations of the Holy Ghost, and tell us that a partaker of grace is delivered from the power of sin, but that the grace of God is prevailed over and taken captive by sin? Do they not kill when they bear enmity against the just without cause, and begin and practise hypocrisy against those that never meddled with them; and shoot in secret at those whom God has called

commissioned, owned, and blessed; and whose life and conduct exceed that of their own, conscience and themselves being judges? And, if they themselves are so holy, so filled with overcoming faith, so infallible in judgment, and so sanctified in life, how is it that they do no good in their day and generation? What fruits, or effects, appear by ocular demonstration, either in themselves or their pupils? Do they ever return in the power of the Spirit? or, is their fame ever spread abroad in any other way but by the sound of their own trumpet? Do they not commit adultery while they pretend to an union with the bridegroom of the church, though they can give no account of the death of their first husband? Do they not steal away the name of a minister of the Spirit, in whom the righteousness of the law is fulfilled, and palm him with the name of Antinomian, because he does not say what the word of God never declared to be any one part of the confession of his faith? Do they not bear false witness when they artfully represent those as ministers of sin whom God has made ministers of righteousness? Do they stand clear in any of these things? Do they love their neighbour as themselves, when they speak fair to his face, wish him success, express their love to him and readiness to assist him; while, at the same time, they are working under ground to blow up all his usefulness?

Quot. That, to the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, the moral law has ceased to exist as a co

venant of works, is a grand and glorious truth; and is granted on both sides of the question.

Answ. If the law has ceased to exist as a covenant of works to the believer in Christ, then it can have no power over him, either to command or condemn him, seeing it hath lost its

very existence. But has the law ceased to exist as a covenant of works? Pray when did it expire? When was it, with respect to its binding and killing power, repealed, or divested of its divine sanction? If it has lost its commanding power to do for life, and its power to condemn to death in case of disobedience, it has lost all the power it now has, or ever had. And, if the Saviour came to deprive the law of this power, he came to destroy it; for what is a law without commanding and condemning power? This is making void the law through faith; for divesting the law of its authority can never be called establishing it. The Galatians found it no less than a yoke of bondage when they turned their back on the grace of God, in order to make the law the perfecting end of Christ for sanctification; which is all that this book aims at. And, for my own part, I still find that, if I lose sight of Jesus, and begin to live and conduct myself by that letter, instead of walking by faith, it soon becomes a yoke of bondage to me. And, although, as some say, the law is in the hand of Christ; yet, as many as are of the works of it are still under the curse of it; and as many as will be found under it, even in the great day, will be judged by it;

and receive the dreadful sentence of it, even from the mouth of him who magnified it, and made it honourable. It will be a fiery law in the hand of Jesus, as well as in the hand of Moses; and the fire of wrath that is kindled in it will burn to the lowest hell.

Quot. Because the Lord Jesus is become the end of the law, both moral and ceremonial, for righteousness, to every one that believeth.

Answ. If Christ is the end of the law for righteousness, he is not the destroying, but the fulfilling end. The law is still a yoke for the servant, and a trap for the hypocrite: that which should have been for his welfare, by driving him to Christ, becomes a trap, by his trusting in it; and the way that seems so right to a man is, in the end, the way of death, because life is sought by the ministration of death.

Quot. I shall not, therefore, take up any time or employ any pains, to prove that here, because we are already agreed upon that subject. But that the moral law ought still to be considered as the rule of a believer's conduct, is as great a truth. It is the eternal rule of righteousness, and is incapable of any variations.

Answ. I believe the law to be the only rule of righteousness, and life too, to every one that is under it. And as such Christ always used it; "What shall I do to inherit eternal life? What is written in the law? how readest thou? This do and thou shalt live." "If thou wilt enter into