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ry. And therefore he has a just title to the homage and obedience of all his creatures.

5. Because he is our good and gracious Benefactor, from whose bountiful hand all our mercies do flow. It is in him that we live, move, and have our being. Our health, ftrength, time, and all blessings spiritual or temporal, that we enjoy, are the fruits of his good. ness and providential care. Now, this lays strong ob. ligations upon us to serve and obey him. We find the Lord aggravating the rebellion of the Jews from the care he had taken in bringing them up, and their miraculous deliverance from Egypt, If. i. 2. I have nourished and brought up children, but they have rebelled against me. Which clearly implies, that the benefits he had bestowed upon them were strong obligations to an ingenuous observance of him; and we find him threatening to deprive them of the blessings he had bestowed upon them, and to bring great distress upon them for the neglect of this duty, Deut. xxviii. 47.

6. Lastly, Because he is our Governor and fupreme Lawgiver. He is a Lawgiver to all, to irrational as well as rational creatures. The heavens have their ordinances, Job xxxviii. 33. All the creatures have a law imprinted on their beings, but rational creatures have divine statutes inscribed on their hearts, as Rom.ii. 14. 15. When the Gentiles which have not the [written] law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law, are a law unto themselves : which shew the work of the law written in their hearts. And they have laws more clearly and fully set before them in the word, The fole power of making laws does originally refide in God, Jam. iv. 12. There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy. He only hath power to bind the confcience. And therefore to him obedience is due from all to whom he has prescribed laws.

I come now to deduce fome inferences.

Inf 1. Does God require from men obedience to his revealed will? Then in whatsoever state a man is, he owes obedience to the will of God; and therefore in the saddest of fufferings, even in hell, men properly fin against God. For this obedience is founded on the natural dependence of the creature on its Creator, and the creature can no more be free of it than it can be a God to itself. Much more God's exalting men in the world gives them no allowance to be vile. Whatever mens state be, God requires of them obedience to his will therein; and they are rebels if they with-hold it, and shall be dealt with as fuch accordingly.

2. The doing of what God does not command can be no acceptable service or obedience to God. Our duty to God is not to be measured by our imaginations, but by the revealed will of God. Therefore when men make those things to be duties which no revelation from the Lord makes to be so, the Lord may well say, Who hath required these things at your hand? Nothing but what is commanded of God can lawfully be the object of our duty.

3. Those who never heard the gospel, will not be condemned for their not believing it; for the revelation of God's will must go before our actual obligation to do it, Rom. ii. 12. As many as have finned without law [that is, the written or revealed law of God] shall also perish without law. This ought to stir up all who bear the Christian name, to be vigorous and lively in obeying God, particularly the great com mand of believing in the name of his Son: as confidering, that whosoever doth not so obey and believe the gospel, shall be damned, Mark xvi. 16.

4. All men are allowed for themselves to examine the will of their superiors, whether in church or state, to fee whether it be not against the will of God; and if it be so, not to obey it, I Cor. x. 15. The Bereans were commended for to doing, Acts xvii. 11. There is a difference betwixt subjection and obedience. These VOL. II, 3 B

two may be separated in our dealings with men that are our fuperiors; we may and must refuse obedience to them in evil actions, while fubjection to them remains in other things. Thus the apostles shewed fubjection to the Jewish rulers, while they refused to obey their unlawful commands, Acts iv. 8. 9. 19. God alone is Lord of the confcience, and hath left it free from the doctrines and commandments of men, when they in any respect clash with his written word. To obey mens unlawful commands, is to fin against God. But in our relation to God, we owe him both fubjection and obedience in all things.

5. Let us remember then that we owe a duty to God, and that is, that we obey his will. Let us therefore lay out ourselves to do his will, and give that fincere, conftant, tender, ready, universal, and perfect obedience to him in all things, which he requires, looking for acceptance with God through the merits and mediation of Chrift; praying to him, that he may graciously forgive all our acts of disobedience, and cover our very imperfect and finful obedience with the perfect and complete obedience of his Son, who fulfilled all righteousness in the room of his people.

6. Lastly, Let believers be excited to yield this obe. dience to the will of God, as they have the most noble encouragement thereto, namely, That whatever God requires of them as an article of duty, there is a promise of ability and strength for the performance thereof contained in his word. Thus he says, Ezek. xxxvi. 27. I will cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgements, and do them. The Lord puts no piece of service in the hands of his people, but he will afford them fufficient supplies of grace for the doing thereof. Let them not then decline any duty he lays before them.

For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves; which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conScience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another.

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HE apostle here shews three things. 1. That the Gentiles have not the law, that is, the law of Mofes, or written law. They want the scriptures, 2. That yet they have a law within them, they are a law to themselves; they have the natural law, which for substance is all one with the moral law. Only it is less clear and distinct, and wants the perfection of the moral law written; several points thereof being, through the corruption of nature, obliterated in it. 3. How they have it. It is not of their own making, nor by tradition, but they have it by nature derived from Adam: The work of that law is written in their hearts; it is deeply intcribed there, and cannot be erased; it is such a work as tells them what is right and what wrong; so their confciences by virtue thereof excuse their good actions, and accuse the evil,

Now, this natural law is nothing else but the rubbish of the moral law left in the heart of corrupt man: from whence we gather, that the moral law in its perfection was given to Adam in innocence, while we see the remains of it yet with those of his poiterity, who have not the advantage of the written law. The doctrine arising from the words is,

Doct. " The rule which God at first revealed to 'man for his obedience, was the moral law."

First, It is here supposed, that man always was and is under a law: for being a rational creature, capable of obeying the will of God, and owing obedience to his Creator by virtue of his natural dependence upon

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him, he behoved to be under a law. The beasts are not capable of government by a law, because of the imperfection of their nature: fo those that will be lawless, feeing they cannot lift up themselves to the throne of God, who has no fuperior, they do in effect cast down themselves to the condition of beasts, whose appetite is all their rule. Indeed all the creatures are fubjected to laws fuitable to their various natures. Every thing has a law imprinted upon its being. The inanimate creatures, fun, moon, and flars, are under the law of providence, and under a covenant of night and day. Hence it is faid, Pfal. cxlviii. 6. He hath established them for ever and ever, be hath made a decree which shall not pass. They have their courses and appointed motions, and keep to the just points of their compass. Even the fea, which is one of the most raging and tumultuous creatures, is subjected to a law. God hedges it in as it were with a girdle of fand, faying to it, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further: and here shall thy proud waves be stayed, Job xxxviii. 11, But much more are rational creatures subject to a law, seeing they are capable of election and choice. Man especially, being a rational creature, is capable of and fitted for government by a law; and feeing he is an accountable creature to God, he must needs be under a law,

Quest. How could man be under a law, before the law was given by Mofes, for we are told, that the law was given by Mofes, but grace and truth came by Jesus Chrift, John i. 17.?

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Anf. Before the law was given at Sinai, all the race of Adam had a law written in their hearts, even the light of reason, and the dictates of natural confcience, which contained those moral principles concerning good and evil which have an effential equity in them, and the measures of his duty to God, to himself, and to his fellow-creatures. This was published by the voice of reason, and, as the apofile says, Rom. vii. 12. was holy, just, and good: Holy, as it enjoins things