III. 1. There is yet another way of _making void the law thro’ faith_, which is more common than either of the former. And that is, the doing it practically: the making it void in _fact_, tho’ not in _principle_: the _living_, as if faith was designed to excuse us from holiness. How earnestly does the Apostle guard us against this, in those well known words: _What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace?_ God _forbid_! Rom. vi. 15. A caution which it is needful throughly to consider, because it is of the last importance. 2. The being _under the law_ may here mean, 1. The being obliged to observe the ceremonial law. 2. The being obliged to conform to the whole _Mosaic_ institution. 3. The being obliged to keep the whole moral law, as the condition of our acceptance with God: and, 4. The being under the wrath and curse of God, under sentence of eternal death; under a sense of guilt and condemnation, full of horror and slavish fear. 3. Now altho’ a believer is _not without law to_ God, _but under the law to Christ_, yet from the moment he believes, he is not _under the law_, in any of the preceding senses. On the contrary, he is _under grace_, under a more benign, gracious dispensation. As he is no longer under the ceremonial law, nor under the _Mosaic_ institution; as he is not obliged to keep even the moral law, as the condition of his acceptance: so he is delivered from the wrath and the curse of God, from all sense of guilt and condemnation, and from all that horror and fear of death and hell, whereby he was _all his life_ before _subject to bondage_. And he now performs (which while _under the law_ he could not do) a willing and universal obedience. He obeys not from the motive of slavish fear, but on a nobler principle, namely, The grace of God ruling in his heart, and causing all his works to be wrought in love. 4. What then? Shall this evangelical principle of action, be less powerful than the legal? Shall we be less obedient to God from filial love, than we were from servile fear? ’Tis well, if this is not a common case: if this practical Antinomianism, this unobserved way of _making void the law thro’ faith_, has not infected thousands of believers. *Has it not infected you? Examine yourself honestly and closely. Do you not do now, what you durst not have done when you was _under the law_, or (as we commonly call it) _under conviction_? For instance. You durst not then indulge yourself in food. You took just what was needful, and that of the cheapest kind. Do you not allow yourself more latitude now? Do you not indulge yourself a _little_ more than you did? O beware, lest you _sin, because you are not under the law, but under grace_!