authority over us, than the husband when dead hath over his wife: _that we should serve him_ who died for us and rose again; _in newness of spirit_, in a new spiritual dispensation, _and not in the oldness of the letter_, ver. 6. with a bare outward service, according to the letter of the _Mosaic_ institution. 3. The apostle having gone thus far, in proving that the Christian had set aside the Jewish dispensation, and that the moral law itself, tho’ it could never pass away, yet stood on a different foundation from what it did before, now stops to propose and answer an objection. _What shall we say then? Is the law sin?_ So some might infer from a misapprehension of those words, _the motions of sin which were by the law. God forbid!_ saith the apostle, that we should say so. Nay, the law is an irreconcileable enemy to sin; searching it out wherever it is. _I had not known sin but by the law. I had not known lust_, evil desire to be sin, _except the law had said, thou shalt not covet_, ver. 7. After opening this farther in the four following verses, he subjoins this general conclusion, with regard more especially to the moral law, from which the preceding instance was taken: _Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy and just and good_. 4. In order to explain and inforce these deep words, so little regarded, because so little understood, I shall endeavour to shew, first, the original of this law, secondly, the nature thereof; thirdly, the properties, that it is _holy and just and good_, and fourthly, the uses of it. I. 1. I shall, first, endeavour to shew the original of the moral law, often called _the law_, by way of eminence. Now this is not, as some may possibly have imagined, of so late an institution as the time of _Moses_. _Noah_ declared it to men long before that time, and _Enoch_ before him. But we may trace its original higher still, even beyond the foundation of the world, to that period, unknown indeed to men, but doubtless inrolled in the annals of eternity, when _the morning stars_ first _sang together_, being newly called into existence. *It pleased the great Creator to make these his first born sons, intelligent beings, that they might know him that created them. For this end he endued them with understanding, to discern truth from falshood, good from evil: and as a necessary result of this, with liberty, a capacity of chusing the one and refusing the other. By this they were likewise enabled to offer him a free and willing service: a service rewardable in itself, as well as most acceptable to their gracious Master.