II. 1. A second way of _making void the law thro’ faith_, is, the teaching that faith supersedes the necessity of holiness. This divides itself into a thousand smaller paths: and many there are that walk therein. Indeed there are few that wholly escape it: few who are convinced, we _are saved by faith_, but are sooner or later, more or less, drawn aside into this by-way.
2. *All those are drawn into this by-way, who if it be not their settled judgment, that faith in Christ intirely sets aside the necessity of keeping his law, yet suppose either, 1. That holiness is less necessary now than it was before Christ came: or, 2. That a less degree of it is necessary; or, 3. That it is less necessary to believers than to others. Yea, and so are all those, who altho’ their judgment be right in the general, yet think they may take more liberty in particular cases, than they could have done before they believed. Indeed the using the term _liberty_, in such a manner, for “Liberty from obedience or holiness,” shews at once, that their judgment is perverted, and that they are guilty of what they imagined to be far from them, namely of _making void the law thro’ faith_, by supposing faith to supersede holiness.
3. The first plea of those who teach this expresly, is, that “we are now under the covenant of grace, not works: and therefore we are no longer under the necessity of performing the works of the law.”
And whoever was under the covenant of works? None but _Adam_ before the fall. He was fully and properly under that covenant, which required perfect, universal obedience, as the one condition of acceptance; and left no place for pardon, upon the very least transgression. But no man else was ever under this, neither Jew nor Gentile, neither before Christ nor since. All his sons were and are under the covenant of grace; the manner of their acceptance is this: the free grace of God thro’ the merits of Christ, gives pardon to them that believe, that believe with such a faith as working by love, produces all obedience and holiness.
4. The case is not therefore as you suppose, that men were _once_ more obliged to obey God, or to work the works of his law than they are _now_. This is a supposition you cannot make good. But, we should have been obliged, if we had been under the covenant of works, to have done those works antecedent to our acceptance. Whereas now all good works, tho’ as necessary as ever, are not antecedent to our acceptance but consequent upon it. Therefore the nature of the covenant of grace, gives you no ground, no encouragement at all, to set aside any instance or degree of obedience, any part or measure of holiness.