6. Wherefore, whenever thou who believest in Jesus, dost hear the law in
its thundering and lightning fits, as if it would burn up heaven and
earth, then say thou, I am freed from this law, these thunderings have
nothing to do with my soul; nay, even this law, while it thus thunders
and roars, it doth both allow and approve of my righteousness. I know
that Hagar would sometimes be domineering and high, even in Sarah’s
house, and against her; but this she is not to be suffered to do, nay,
though Sarah herself be barren; wherefore, serve it also as Sarah served
her, and expel her out from thy house. My meaning is, when this law with
its thundering threatenings doth attempt to lay hold on thy conscience,
shut it out with a promise of grace; cry, The inn is taken up already;
the Lord Jesus is here entertained, and here is no room for the law.
Indeed, if it will be content with being my informer, and so lovingly
leave off to judge me, I will be content, it shall be in my sight, I will
also delight therein; but otherwise, I being now made upright without it,
and that too with that righteousness which this law speaks well of and
approveth, I may not, will not, cannot dare not make it my Saviour and
judge, nor suffer it to set up its government in my conscience; for by so
doing, I fall from grace, and Christ Jesus doth profit me nothing.
7. Thus, therefore, the soul that is married to him that is raised up
from the dead, both may and ought to deal with this law of God; yea, it
doth greatly dishonour its Lord and refuse its gospel privileges, if it
at any time otherwise doth, whatever it seeth or feels. “The law hath
power over the wife so long as her husband liveth, but if her husband be
dead she is freed from that law; so that she is no adulteress though she
be married to another man.” Indeed, so long as thou art alive to sin,
and to thy righteousness which is of the law, so long thou hast them for
thy husband, and they must reign over thee; but when once they are become
dead unto thee—as they then most certainly will when thou closest with
the Lord Jesus Christ—then, I say, thy former husbands have no more to
meddle with thee; thou art freed from their law. Set the case: A woman
be cast into prison for a debt of hundreds of pounds; if after this she
marry, yea, though while she is in the jailor’s hand, in the same day
that she is joined to her husband, her debt is all become his; yea, and
the law also that arrested and imprisoned this woman, as freely tells
her, go: she is freed, saith Paul, from that; and so saith the law of
this land.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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