Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations derived from the nature of things.
Law, meaning obedience to a holy God, passes by a natural transition into the gospel; that is, reverential duty to a person, to the obedience of love at last, which obeys, because the beautifulness of obedience is perceived.
The law showed what man ought to be. Christ showed what man is, and what God is.
The law discovers the disease. The gospel gives the remedy.
The law is what we must do; the gospel what God will give.
The law sends us to Christ to be justified, and Christ sends us to the law to be regulated.
Though the moral law has ceased as a covenant, it remains as a rule of life. It will forever continue as the standard of holiness.
The moral law is to be viewed not only as the rule of our obedience, but also as the reason of it. We must not only do what is commanded, and avoid what is forbidden in the law; but we must also do good, for this very reason, that God requires it, and avoid evil, because He forbids it.
