←906
←906
Rom. 7.7-9. Comp. his general assertion, 3.20. Again—he informs us (v. 20.) that “the law entered, that the offence might abound”—not in the transgression of the heart (as the direct fruit of the law) but in the conviction of the conscience, awakened by a strong display of the spirituality of the law, and of the denunciations of its righteous curse. If “sin be the transgression of the law” (1John 3.4. Comp. 4.15.) a just apprehension of the law must be the medium of conviction of sin. Nor indeed can we conceive of conviction without it; since obliquity is only discovered by a reference to a given standard. Even the cross of Christ, as a means of conviction, ultimately resojves itself into the law, the breach of which constituted the sin—the cause of his death”. The law therefore is of standing and indispensable use, bringing us to Christ—not always with terror, but always with conviction.