nce; and
this faith would certainly beget much peace and quietness in his mind, and
also constrain him to love him, and live to him who loved him, and gave
him life and happiness out of love. Yet this holds true that the apostle
saith, "the law is not of faith," to wit, in a Mediator and Redeemer. It
was a bond of immediate friendship; there needed none to mediate between
God and man; there needed no reconciler where there was no odds nor
distance. But the gospel is of faith in a Mediator; it is the soul
plighting its hope upon Jesus Christ in its desperate necessity, and so
supposes man sinful and miserable in himself, and in his own sense too,
and so putting over his weight and burden upon one whom God hath made
mighty to save. The law is not of faith, but of perfect works,--a
watch-word brought in of purpose to bring men off their hankering after a
broken and desperate covenant. It admits no repentance, it speaks of no
pardon, it declares no cautioner or redeemer. There is nothing to be
expected, according to the tenor of that covenant, but wrath from heaven;
either personal obedience in all, or personal punishment for ever. That is
the very terms of it, and it knows no other thing. Either bring complete
righteousness and holiness to the promise of life, or expect nothing but
death.

This may be a sad meditation to us, to stand and look back to our former
estate, and compare it with that into which we are fallen. That image we
spoke of, is defaced and blotted out, which was the glory of the creation;
and now there is nothing so monstrous, so deformed in the world as man.
The corruption of the best things is always worst; the ruins of the most
noble creature are most ruinous; the spot of the soul most abominable. We
are nothing but a mass of darkness, ignorance, error, inordinate lust;
nothing but confusion, disorder, and distempers in the soul, and in the
conversation of men; and, in sum, that blessed bond of friendship with God
broken, discord and enmity entered upon our side and separated us from
God, and so we can expect nothing from that first covenant but the curse
and wrath threatened. "By one man's disobedience" sin entered upon all,
"and death by sin;" because in that agreement Adam was a common person
representing us, and thus are all men once subject to God's judgment, and
come short of the glory of God, fallen from life into a state of death,
and, for any thing that could be expected, irrecoverably. But it