Christ's cords are of an

hold him, much less us. other nature, he gives grace for obedience to the faith; and works in us both to will and to do of his own good pleasure; and this obedience is acceptable to him: but all that is extorted by the law, or that springs from nature, or any other principle but that of his own implanted grace is rejected, as service in the oldness of the letter, or as the eye-service of a hypocrite, or the drudgery of a slave. Christ will not be served in the chains of a galley, but with the wings of a dove.

Quot. What can be more evident, than that every creature is under a natural obligation to obey the commands of its Creator?

Answ. But it should be considered that nature has lost the use of her limbs; is wholly corrupt; and, the more she stirs, the more mischief she does. Hence a divine nature is given to keep her in subjection. Self must be denied; flesh and blood are not to be conferred with; natural reason is opposite to faith, and they that are in the flesh cannot please God, nor are they the children of God.

Quot. Secondly, A moral obligation; as they are not only creatures, but creatures possessed with rationality, grand, reasoning, thinking faculties.

Answ. The Jewish pharisees abode by this moral obligation, and exerted their strongest faculties both in reasoning and thinking; but they always reasoned wrong, nor did they ever think

right; and therefore God hid his mysteries from them. Besides, the carnal mind is enmity, and the law worketh wrath: so that no business can go on to purpose while these two are contending; until sovereign grace subdues the latter, and delivers us from the former, in order that we may serve God in newness of the Spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter; and worship God in the beauty of holiness, and not with an hypocritical worship, enforced by legal threatening, or extorted by servile fear. As for depraved rationality, she very often loses herself in divine mysteries. She must look before she leaps, and comprehend the end before she begins the work. A divine warrant is not sufficient for her. I have read, in Dr. Priestley's works, of his propagating a rational Christianity; but it is visible that incomprehensible mysteries, which are the heights of heaven, and deeper than hell, Job xi. 8, have quite drowned the doctor and all his rationality together. Strong reasons are often brought forth against the King of Jacob, Isa. xli. 21. Faith must reason, if any good be done by reasoning. Faith, like a good servant, goes when she is bid, and comes when she is called. By faith Abraham obeyed, and went out, not knowing whither he went, which to depraved rationality is a wild-goose chase, and to carnal reason foolishness. All our thoughts must be brought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, or else we shall never think soberly, as we ought to think. Rationality, with

her grand reasonings and thinkings, must be kept within bounds, like a restive horse; and that not by a moral precept, but by restraining grace, if ever the sinner be admitted to fellowship with Christ. The gospel is calculated and published to stain the pride of all glory, to take the wise in their own craftiness, to bring into contempt all the honourable of the earth, and to puzzle the wise and prudent; and, though it is the wisdom of God in a mystery, yet it is to them that perish foolishness. This wisdom is to display the riches of divine grace, to the glory of God and the humiliation of the sinner; and not to aggrandize rationality, with her train of vain reasonings and freethinking; but to put her at the footstool, as altogether incapable of the chair in these matters: "If any man will be wise, let him become a fool, that he may be wise,” which to the carnal reasoner and free-thinker is a contradiction in terms, and an irrational speech. My reader must take these treble obligations together, and then he will see what the wise man's threefold cord, which is not quickly broken, means; which in this book is called the bands and cords of Zion's King, which the pharisees broke asunder, and cast from them, Psal. ii. 2, 3. But surely, if it had been the threefold cord of the wise man, they would not have broken it so easily. Fallen nature, however, furnishes out the main band; the broken law the next; and, as for grace, that only brings up the rear. Fallen nature, in her low estate, contributes

her cord towards the support of this kingdom, which is not of this world: the law, which is weak through the flesh, affords great assistance to the kingdom of grace, which is not of works, either in whole or in part; nor in word, much less in a killing letter; and, though the spiritual obligation is brought in last, yet the dominion of grace is not of this world, nor is the first obligation from men: nor is the moral law any band of it, for the kingdom is spiritual, not legal: it is not in word, but in power; in righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost; neither of which is from flesh and blood, nor from Sinai, but from sovereign grace in Christ.

Quot. And, thirdly, a spiritual obligation.

Answ. The first, the grand, and the most noble tie of the kingdom of grace, is here represented to be a natural obligation; our being creatures formed out of the dust. This is the law of heathens; who are a law to themselves, and who sin without the moral law, and shall perish without law: and those heathens who cleaved to this law were the greatest enemies to the gospel. The second is the law of Moses, which the bond. woman and her children are under, who sin in the law, and shall be judged by the law. The pharisees, who cleaved to this obligation, were the people that imagined a vain thing, who broke Zion's bands asunder, and cast her cords from them. The third is a spiritual obligation. This is of grace and truth, which came by Jesus Christ

And I believe that the bond of the covenant of grace and perfect liberty by the law of truth, will produce more good fruits, in one saint, to the glory of God, than ten thousand volumes of such doctrines as these will in the whole bulk of Maria's gentle readers. The covenant of grace makes a minister fruitful in good works, and fruitful in spiritual converts; as is declared by the testimony of God: "My covenant was with him of life and peace; and I gave them tohim, for the fear wherewith he feared me, and was afraid before my name. The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips. He walked with me in peace and equity, and did turn many away from iniquity," Mal. ii. 5, 6. Hence it appears that the covenant of life and peace, and the law of truth, did not lead him to licentiousness, but made him a good and useful man. Neither the law of heathens, nor the law of Moses, is the rod of Christ's strength, which was sent out of Zion, and by which he rules in the midst of Jerusalem. Neither of these obligations make his subjects a willing people, but the power of grace displayed.

Quot. As for me, says Paul, I am determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ. God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of my Lord Jesus Christ. But he also adds, "I am not without law to God, but under the law to Christ."

Answ. But what law was that which Paul had to God? Was it the law of works? No, saith