It is a hard matter, yea, an impossible thing for thy human strength, whosoever thou art (without God's assistance), at such a time when Moses setteth on thee with the Law (see Aphorism XII.),--when the holy Law written in thy heart accuseth and condemneth thee, forcing thee to a comparison of thy heart therewith, and convicting thee of the incompatibleness of thy will and nature with Heaven and holiness and an immediate God--that then thou shouldest be able to be of such a mind as if no Law nor sin had ever been! I say it is in a manner impossible that a human creature, when he feeleth himself assaulted with trials and temptations, and the conscience hath to do with God, and the tempted man knoweth that the root of temptation is within him, should obtain such mastery over his thoughts as then to think no otherwise than that from everlasting nothing hath been but only and alone Christ, altogether Grace and Deliverance!
In irrational agents, namely, the brute animals, the will is hidden or absorbed in the law. The law is their _nature_. In the original purity of a rational agent the uncorrupted will is identical with the law. Nay, inasmuch as a Will perfectly identical with the Law is one with the _divine_ Will, we may say, that in the unfallen rational agent the Will _constitutes_ the Law.[122] But it is evident that the holy and spiritual power and light, which by a _prolepsis_ or anticipation we have _named_ law, is a grace, an inward perfection, and without the commanding, binding and menacing character which belongs to a law, acting as a master or sovereign distinct from, and existing, as it were, externally for, the agent who is bound to obey it. Now this is St. Paul's sense of the word; and on this he grounds his whole reasoning. And hence too arises the obscurity and apparent paradoxy of several texts. That the Law is a _Law_ for you; that it acts _on_ the Will not _in_ it; that it exercises an agency _from without_, by fear and coercion; proves the corruption of your Will, and presupposes it. Sin in this sense came by the law: for it has its essence, as sin, in that counter-position of the holy principle to the will, which occasions this principle to be a LAW. Exactly (as in all other points) consonant with the Pauline doctrine is the assertion of John, when speaking of the re-adoption of the redeemed to be sons of God, and the consequent resumption (I had almost said re-absorption) of the Law into the Will (νομον τελειον τον της ελευθεριας, James i. 25.,)--he says--_For the law was given by Moses, but Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ_. That by the Law St. Paul meant only the _ceremonial_ law, is a notion that could originate only in utter inattention to the whole strain and bent of the Apostle's argument.