e gospel. But
oftentimes we make the law the end of all God's speaking to us, and so
conclude desperate resolutions from it, (Rom vii. 9). "When the law came,
sin revived, and I died." Here the man is slain by the commandment, and
not yet come to the healing Physician at Gilead. We use to gather
desperation of the command, when it presses so perfect and exact
obedience, such as we cannot yield. When it craves the whole sum, without
the abatement of a farthing, we sit down under the sense of an
impossibility to obey, and will not so much as mint(469) at obedience.
Because we cannot do as we ought, we will not do as we can. Because we
cannot do in ourselves we conclude nothing can be done at all. This is to
make the command the last word, and the end of God's speaking. Doth not
the child of God frequently sit down and droop over his duty, while he
looks upon the Egyptian taskmaster, the command, charging the whole work
and portion of brick, and giving no straw to work upon? So are many in
duties. While the aim and eye is upon some measure according to the
perfect rule, the hands fall down feeble, and none is wrought at all, and
they do not look if there be another word from God posterior to the
command, a word of promise. We use also to gather desperate conclusions of
the curse, and make the law according to which we examine ourselves, the
end of God's manifesting his mind unto us, and do not look upon it as a
way leading to some other thing. When ye have tried yourselves, and
applied your own ways and state unto the perfect rule, God's verdict of
all men's condition is true in you, "all have sinned, and come short of
the glory of God," "there is none righteous, no, not one," and so if
necessitated to apply the dreadful sentence of the judgment to yourselves,
ye stay there, and sit down to lodge with the sentence of condemnation, as
if that were God's last word to sinners. Is not this to make the law the
end, which is but appointed for another end? The curse is not
irrepealable. Why then do ye pass peremptory conclusions, as if there was
no more hope, but it were perished from the Lord?

II. To discover unto us the right end and use of the law, the great design
and purpose of God in making such a glorious promulgation of the law on
mount Sinai, and delivering it by the ministry of angels, in the hands of
a mediator. The end which God hath been driving at these six thousand
years, is this only, that men may come to Jesus Ch