Law and Gospel

“For if all the curses of the law lighting and abiding upon a man, will prove a man an accursed man — then the man who has no sincere love to Christ, must be that man!”

“It is a greater sign of servitude to do what one doth by the direction of another, than to be under authority that shall punish him if he do amiss.”

“In fine, the law of nature itself was not without a threatening, and that of eternal death.”

“This is the death in the pot of the Roman religion, that they confound the two covenants, and it deadens the comfort of drooping ones that they cannot distinguish them.”

“The sinning soul behoved to die; and imperfect righteousness could not be accepted in part, more than it could be in whole, because such righteousness is not righteousness indeed, but sinful want of conformity to the law.”

“The apostle simply, without any limitation, pronounceth, That circumcision profiteth nothing, if a man be a breaker of the law.”

“The law says, 'Give me unsullied love', and points to your defects.”

“There is no sin in the law; but the knowledge of sin by the law, is the knowledge of a contrary by its contrary.”

“No Israelite was ever justified by works, but the nation had to keep the conditions of the law in order to remain in possession of the earthly type of the heavenly rest.”

“Now that is no righteousness, which doth not fully answer the law which is the rule of it: for the least defect destroys its nature, and turns it into unrighteousness.”

“There are two errors in the world about the law; one is, when men think to enter in at the strait gate by the righteousness of the law; the other is, when men think they may enter into heaven without the leave of the law.”

“It is in the region of the law that we all draw our first breath.”

“When the work of the Spirit by means of the law and the gospel leads to true conversion, in this conversion the longing for this lost ideal of the covenant appears as an essential part.”

“Ere it could come fully out into view, the ritual must be disannulled; ere the glorious building can be seen, the scaffolding must be taken down.”

“The ten commandments are like a ten-stringed instrument, and we must touch every string, obey every commandment, or we cannot make sweet melody in religion.”

“And, being a sinner, he cannot yield perfect, actual obedience to God's law.”

“True, this ancient priesthood had only to do with the flesh; it pertained but to the outward person of the sinner, and the mere visible courts of God.”

“And there can be no transgression of a positive precept, without the violation of that eternal law that is written in his heart.”

“Now God and the law are to be considered in a distinct rank from sin and death, from Satan and the world.”

“Reader, perchance you fondly reason, The law is broken, but the Curse will not fall on me.”

“It was, indeed, the part of the law to justify in man’s primitive state, and to that it was ordained; but Christ only attained the accomplishment of this design.”

“Or it is as if one should ride a tired horse; there is a bridle to direct, and a spur to put him on, but the rider giveth no strength for the horse to travel with.”

“Lord, at the beginning of thy dealing with me, by thy law and my works I die, therefore do not so much as enter into judgment with me, O Lord.”

“But our Lawgiver, God over all, has cast into the shade every such act of homage to law by the infinitude of suffering he in our nature endured, to honour the law of heaven and save the doomed transgressors.”

“He not only forbids the addition of what one would deem to be the laws of God, but he forbids all additions by whatever name they may be called, the reason for this prohibition being that the law of God is perfect.”

“Theoretically God could have justly and righteously imposed an obligation on his creatures to obey his law without any promise of reward whatsoever.”

“Covenant in both Old and New Testaments, so we have argued, is a broad term encompassing a variety of arrangements—most notably, con­ ditional covenants of law and unconditional covenants of promise.”

“What penalty came upon mankind because of the breach of God's moral law?”

“The law is perfectly holy; but this strict rule discovers the crookedness that is in man's heart.”

“The stubborn son must be stoned till he dies; and the prodigal must be famished out of all; nothing else, I say, will do.”