We acknowledge the greater consistency of those who affirm, that the whole moral law is swept away by the gospel; though we much regret that any true Christians, and those too, persons who are friendly to a proper observance of the Lord’s day, should hold notions which appear to us opposed to Scripture, and calculated to produce among the unthinking multitude, the most serious consequences. If indeed it were true, that the whole decalogue is abrogated by Christianity, no supposed immoral results would deter us from boldly proclaiming the fact. In that case, we should not shrink from telling men that our church is under a serious mistake, when she teaches her members to confess their guilt in breaking each of the ten commandments, to ask for pardon, and to implore grace to keep them in time to come. But it is because we believe in our heart that the decalogue is still in force, and that God’s honour and man’s happiness alike demand its observance, that we are not “bold enough” to proclaim as “liberty” what we are sure would lead to the greatest licentiousness. A theory of the kind may not seriously injure men of real piety and great spirituality of mind; but to others it would be productive of the most lamentable consequences. But if Christianity has freed us from the moral law, an announcement to that effect must be recorded in the New Testament, and recorded in no obscure or doubtful terms, such as can by any possibility be misunderstood, but in language as plain, as perspicuous, and as authoritative, as that employed in the original promulgation of the law. For here we are not called upon to give up merely some external observance, or to change the mode or the time of performing some appointed duty (for _that_ a less explicit intimation of the divine will would suffice); but we are told to renounce what in its very nature is essential to all acceptable obedience, and what above every other part of revelation bears marks of the divine impress. If the moral law is to be renounced as part of “the weak and beggarly elements” of the Mosaic religion, we must have the voice of God as distinctly abrogating the ten commandments as it was heard in their original promulgation. Nothing less will satisfy us, and nothing else, we venture to say, ought to satisfy any man who believes, that at the bar of God he must answer for the use he has made of the divine revelation contained in the Bible. {22}