Chapter II
In which it is proved that to convince us of sm, and to humble us in the sense
of it, is the ivork of the Holy Ghost in converting us to God.
It is granted that in the humiliation of a sinner the vision and knowledge of Christ and his glorious righteousness strikes the greatest, the last, and most complete stroke. But whether the first and single sight of it, without
any work of the law before Christ revealed as a ground-colour to make this
362 THE WOKE OF THE HOLY GHOST [BOOK VIII.
take upon the heart, is sufficient, this is the question between us, and those of the contrary opinion, of which the great and main ground is, that because the vision of Christ doth by reflection and comparison discover a man s
sinfulness, that therefore there seems to be no need of any use of the law
to do it. But if this were so, then by the like reason also, because Christ s
example is a complete rule fully directory to a Christian ; therefore there needs no direction from the law, and so you wholly abolish the use of the law. But that there should be a foregoing discovery of sin by the
law, before faith and the revelation of Christ, and that it is an ordinance of
God to this end, and a way of God s so to work, and so to that end that the law should be preached, is clearly evinced.
1. By that instance of the first work of conversion, and of the first ser mon that ever was made in the world, by God the Father, who first gave the promise of the Son unto our first parents. Yea, although Adam s natural conscience was already made sensible of his misery, so far as the light of
that conscience left in him could work, Gen. iii. 7, 8 (for Adam confesseth
to God his being afraid, and his sense of his own nakedness, ver. 10), yet God, ere he preacheth the gospel, and lets fall the promise of the seed, ver. 15, spends the first part of his sermon in a further convincing him of
his sin by that law which he had given him, and which he had transgressed, thereby to convey the Spirit of bondage, to work a further conviction than
natural conscience had wrought, expressly putting him in mind of the command which he had broken, ver. 11 ; and though he doth not terrify him with the curse annexed, because his natural conscience was already made sensible of it (for that was it which he feared), yet because this humiliation preparatory is mainly to be for sin as sin, and as a transgres sion of the law, which natural conscience, without a further work of the
Spirit, is not apprehensive of; therefore that which God intends his con
viction in, is the heinousness of his sin, by setting before his eyes himself
* which I commanded and the law itself commanded and broken, which discovery is the main and proper end of the law in its work. If therefore a man, whose natural conscience was already awakened, needed yet a further distinct and more spiritual conviction of sin by the law ere it was fit to preach Christ unto him, then much more if we were
as the commander
to preach to Turks or pagans, who are past feeling, as the apostle says, should we first awaken them ere we speak to them of Christ. And God himself being the preacher to Adam, and appearing to him, if the vision of
his glory alone would have done it, without a distinct discovery by the law
first wrought, then surely God might have spared this legal discovery, rather than all the preachers that succeed him.
2. When Christ himself, the promised seed, came to preach the gospel, the first sermon Luke records, preached at his own town, was upon that
text, Isa. Ixii. 2, I am sent to preach the gospel unto the captives, and in
prison (* shut up under the law, as Paul says), to heal the broken-hearted, &c. ; for to such only does the gospel belong. And therefore he sent John before him, to prepare his way, even to make way for the entertainment of his ministry, to break, and bruise, and shut up such as Christ might heal and enlarge ; whose ministry, though it had gospel in it (for, Acts xix. 4, he bids the people believe, &c.), yet so as that came in but in the close and
up-shut of his ministry, as the thing which his preaching made way for. But still the eminent impression of his ministry upon men s hearts was a sense of their sins, which legal humiliation still left. Though a seed of
faith was in the bud, and by his ministry begun, yet was it not blossomed,
CHAP. II.] IN OUR SALVATION.
but to be raised up to victory by him who breaketh not the bruised reed, and Christ s ministry was to raise assurance in them upon whom John had
wrought ; and therefore John is said to have come mourning, and to have
preached repentance, and his baptism is called the baptism of repentance. And these titles his ministry had given it, to shew what were the eminent
effects which it was ordained to work. And accordingly, though it sowed a seed of faith by his pointing to the Messiah, yet it left his hearers and converts a greater impression of legal terrors still remaining upon their
consciences, for Christ s ministry to take off from them by a more clear
preaching the gospel. And in this respect John was said to prepare the way of the Lord ; and that by casting down mountains, filling valleys, and
removing discouragements, so to make Christ s way level, and by causing men to see the vanity of all flesh, Isa. xl. 1-6. And in some of those sermons recorded of his, you shall observe his method to answer this, and so discern the better what was the scope of his ministry ; for he first falls upon them and threatens them, and convinceth them of their estates, Luke
iii. 7 ; he tells them of God s wrath, and takes away those false conceits which had kept them from being sensible of their estates, as if they were Abraham s seed, ver. 8. And further, to convince men of their particular
sins, he tells them each of their especial bosom lusts (which is the distinct and special way to humble, observed also by Christ to the woman of Samaria, and by Paul to Felix) ; so, ver. 11, he tells the people of their want of charity, the publicans of their oppression, ver. 13, and the soldiers of their violence and rapine, ver. 14 ; and preacheth Christ, as it were, but by occasion of men s wondering whether he were the Christ, and that too after all these other passages in his ministry premised, ver. 15, 16.
3. God the Holy Ghost, who is to work with and second our sermons, and to deal with men s hearts, hath a peculiar office assigned him, which
therefore must needs be necessary, as appears by that title given him, Bom.
viii. 15, the Spirit of bondage ; and as such he is received ere he becomes a
* Spirit of adoption. Which Spirit of bondage hath not relation to the
bondage under the law, for he speaks it to the Romans, who were Gentiles,
and not nurtured up under the law Ye have not received nor to the
bondage of natural conscience ; for it is a Spirit received, and a^ Spirit that returns no more to work fear, which in them that are converted natural conscience still doth, yea, even in many believers. But the Holy Ghost is a Spirit of bondage in conversion only ; and in that it is said
* to
fear again, it implies it was once received. The office of which Spirit ap pears by the opposite effect of the same Spirit as he is called
* the Spirit of adoption, which is to witness adoption and sonship, as the other is to witness our slavery and bondage to sin and death.
4. As the Spirit hath an office designed him for such a work, so God hath
* engender bondage
appointed a word in the hand of this Spirit to work and
by, as the phrase is, Gal. iv. 23, 24. And that the law was revealed to the world to this end, and that this is as proper a use of it as any other now
since the fall, I will take that which the Epistle to the Bomans affords for the proof of it.
I come to the more direct proofs out of that epistle ; the very method the
apostle takes up to promulge and lay open the gospel (which is the subject of that epistle) offers something to me clearly to evince this,^which by the hand will bring me to what I aim at.
The epistle, you know, is an exact system or form of wholesome words, such as Paul would have Timothy keep by him. After salutations, from
364 THE WORK OF THE HOLY GHOST [BOOK VIII.
verse 1st to the 15th, he propounds the general subject and argument of his epistle, the gospel, ver. 15, 16, and the main argument of that gospel, ver. 17. Now, after he had declared the argument and drift of the whole, he enters upon this system and method of handling and revealing it. And to clear the way for it, he convinceth the Gentiles that they are under sin and wrath, chap. i. from verse 18 to the 9th verse of chap, ii., and then he convinceth the Jews that they also are under sin ; and this he doth by taking away their false props, chap. ii. from verse 9 to the 9th verse of
chap. iii. And then he enters into a proof that all, both Jew and Gentile, and all mankind, are wholly corrupted, from verse 10 to the 19th, where, ver. 19 and 20, he shews, that as the gospel was appointed to reveal Christ s righteousness, chap. i. 17, so the law to give the knowledge of
sin. True, you will say; but unto whom? Verse 19 answers us : To them that are under the law. And therefore it is most properly given to discover to men unregenerate whilst under the law their sins : It saith, that is, it preacheth to them. And to what end ? To humble them, that
* every one (in their own apprehen sions) become guilty before God. And
every mouth may be stopped, and so
* By this law, says he,
* is the
knowledge of sin. And to what end is this knowledge of sin but to make way for the conviction of that righteousness which the gospel holds forth, and unto which all this tended? Verse 20, and so on to chap, v., where, at verse 12, he again proceeding to the discovery of the source of all that
sinfulness, viz., Adam s sin, and of all that righteousness, viz., Christ s
righteousness, he at the 13th verse shews that the end why God gave the law was to discover sin : Sin indeed was in the world before Moses, but was not imputed till the law came, tha^ is, not charged on men s con sciences. And verse 20 more expressly says, The law entered that the offence might abound, that is, in men s apprehensions. For though the law stirred up sin, as he shews, chap, vii., yet that was but an occasional and accidental end (as it is in the 8th verse of that 7th chapter), not the primary end of God s revealing it. And it entered not that sin might be more, but that it might be imputed ; and so that the guilt which was al
ready contracted might be charged upon men s consciences, and that the
guilt imputed might abound, or appear above measure sinful ; and this to the end to set up and to illustrate grace, and Christ s righteousness in their hearts who should be partakers of that grace : Where sin abounded, there
grace abounded much more.
If you will yet make question, whether that the first knowledge of sin is to come in by the law, so to make way for the abounding of grace, consider what is said in the 7th chapter, wherein the apostle (having proved that both justification and sanctification were from Christ alone, in the 3d, 4th, 5th, and 6th chapters, and having before professed, chap. iii. 31, that he did not make void the law, but established it ) undertakes to shew the ends whereto the law now serveth unto men. And this to remove that great objection, that the law was made void by him. Whereof one primary and direct end unto which it serves is, to give in conversion the first knowledge of sin. So ver. 7 of that chapter, I had not known sin but by the law. And what knowledge speaks he of, but that which humbled himself at his
first conversion ? For, ver. 9, he says, he was once alive without the
law, that is, without the knowledge of it ; as the Gentiles are said to be without God in the world. Now, Paul being a Pharisee, was never without the law, and some knowledge of it, he being educated in the law from a child ; and therefore he must needs speak of that knowledge which
CHAP. II.] IN OUR SALVATION. 365
he began to have when he was first converted, differencing it from his former pharisaical knowledge of it, in that he was alive notwithstanding that knowledge of it. Nay, he calls that knowledge no knowledge in com
* without the commandment when a
parison of this, for he says he was
Pharisee. And that he speaks of his knowledge in or after conversion is
evident by this, that he knew not original sin nor lust until then. The
Pharisees, as appears by Christ s sermon, Mat. v., thought it no sin. But now Paul was humbled for it ; he saw that in his state of unregeneracy the law had occasionally wrought all concupiscence, ver. 8. And that he
speaks of his knowledge not after conversion, but in the work of humilia
tion, appears by this, that sin revived, and he died, who in his own ap prehension was once alive, and thought himself a living man and an heir
of life, thinking to be justified by the law. And so the law not only really put him into a state of death by occasioning sin, ver. 11, but stirred up in him apprehensions of his bondage unto death, ver. 13, by discovering it unto him ; he finding himself deceived in thinking to attain life by the
law, whenas it wrought death in him. In all which sin every way appeared to him above measure sinful. And this effect of the law in his first con
version he brings to shew the proper use of the law, confirming it by his own example (as he doth the other ends of the law also), which he shews
in that whole chapter, in three things, according to a threefold condition wherein men may be supposed to be :
First, Of an unregenerate man, having a common knowledge of the law, such as himself had whilst in the flesh, ver. 5, which knowledge did then enrage his lusts ; which yet (to excuse the law) he shews, ver. 8, to have been but occasional. And this condition he sets down from verses 5th to the 7th. The second condition he mentions is, when men come to have a spiritual conviction of their sin by the law, to bring them out of that estate by being humbled. To which end the law serveth more directly to give them the
knowledge of sin ; not such as stirs up lust, as afore, but such as humbles
them, and lays them for dead. And this also he shews by the effect it had
in himself, verses 7, 9, 10, and 13, his purpose being to confirm all by his
own example throughout the chapter.
And, thirdly, after his conversion he shews the use of the law to a man
regenerate, to discover sin and his captivity under it, by the spiritualness of it, from verse 14th to the 24th, so as to drive them to Christ for help ; verses 24, 25.
All which I take to be the true analysis of the chapter. For all which uses he brings his own example, speaking in his own person as a pattern herein. Now if his own particular instance before conversion and after, be brought as a common example to shew the use of the law in common, and after conversion, then also in conversion it must be taken as a common
pattern also. Whose conversion thus by the law, had it not been extraor
dinary, it had not been a fit instance to vindicate and clear the law, that it hath still its use subservient to the gospel, and particularly in this, to dis
cover men s sinfulness when first converted.
And I will add but this, that if the vision and conviction that Christ was the Messiah and Saviour of sinners, be ordained to humble alone at
first without the law, then of all other Paul needed not to have had this
revelation by the law added. For who ever had such a conviction and
vision of Christ upon the first moment of his conversion as Paul had from heaven ? If, therefore, he was notwithstanding by a legal humiliation
366 THE WOKK OF THE HOLY GHOST [BOOK VIII.
* had not known sin, but by the law.
converted, how much more then we ? Yea, he plainly says, that he