when he tells them that Christ had made them free, and cautions them to stand fast in the liberty which they never had. But these children and old women, who are our teachers and rulers, tell us that Paul stood in doubt of these Galatians. And he had cause enough for it, seeing the whole lump was fermented with this leaven. He might justly doubt whether they would not submit to circumcision, especially as their minds were so prejudiced against him as to count him their enemy for telling them the truth. Paul knew that, if they went to the law, their eyes and their dependance would soon. be taken from the fulness of Christ; that they would thereby fall from grace; and that Christ would not leave mount Zion, and meet them at Sinai, to communicate his grace to them there; therefore tells them that Christ shall profit them nothing. Moreover, Paul knew that, if the Saviour's easy yoke was slighted, God would soon handle the fair neck of these Galatians, as he did the neck of Ephraim, and bring a heavier yoke upon them. They that are not satisfied with Christ, in whom God is well pleased, shall feel his sore displeasure from another quarter; and they that turn from him that speaks from heaven shall hear another voice that once shook the earth. God will not have Christ, the darling of his soul, slighted; he has not only a purging furnace for a fruitful branch in Christ, but he keeps a yoke for the heifer's neck, a rod for the fool's back, and he has his their way. stocks for the feet of those that pervert If his children abuse, slight, or misuse their glorious liberty, he will bow their necks, scourge their backs, and lay them by the heels, till they know the worth of their liberty, how to use it, and how to prize it; as others have done, who with the most piteous moan have cried out, "Bring my soul. out of prison, that I may praise thy name; restore unto me the joys of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit." That believers are often influenced with a spirit of legal bondage, is what I never yet heard any believer, of long standing in the church, deny, till the devil set up a prating fool, called Mr. Hacker. Though he himself once, if report be true, felt such an horrible sensation, for a few minutes, as quite surprised him; and he may call it Gad, for behold a troop cometh! Doctor Watts seems to understand something of this spirit of bondage again to fear, when he says, His name forbids my slavish fear, His grace removes my sins. And Mr. Hart was not ignorant of it. If thou, celestial Dove, Thine influence withdraw, What easy victims soon we fall To conscience, wrath, and law. Mr. Bunyan's treatise upon the two covenants was chiefly intended to remove the spirit of legal bondage, though he himself was not a little influenced by it when he wrote that book, nor is he clear in it. And I know that a spirit of antinomianism on the one hand, and legal bondage on the other, have been communicated to weak believers by reading that very book which is written against it. I come now to treat of this spirit of bondage, and the workings of it; and, when I have so done, shall appeal to the experience of all real believers; and I verily think that, where the redoubtable Mr. Hacker has one believer's voice against it, I shall have an hundred for it, because I know that God's saints are in the path of tribulation, where Hacker never was. In discoursing on the operations of this spirit of bondage, I shall 1. Treat of the darkness that attends it. 2. Of servile or slavish fear. 3. Of narrowness and contradiction. 9. Of backwardness and reluctance to all good. tion. 10. Of legal striving against sin and corrup 11. And of the miserable success of such labour. First, of darkness. There is a darkness upon all mankind that may be felt, which man by sin has brought upon himself. "Darkness hath covered the earth, and gross darkness the people." Under this dismal gloom Satan carries on his cursed works, and supports his infernal kingdom in the hearts of the children of men. He rules in the hearts of the disobedient. And mankind, being habituated to this darkness, and loving the works of it, hate the light, and will not come to it, because it discovers and brings to light their evil deeds; flashes convictions of sin, and gives cutting reproofs and rebukes for it. "All things that are reproved are made manifest by the light which doth appear, for whatsover doth make manifest is light." Hence it is that men love darkness rather than light, because their deeds are evil. And Satan, the enemy both of God and man, labours hard to blind the minds of them that believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them, and they should be saved. Hence all mankind are blinded by sin, and utterly in the dark about the things that make for their peace. There is a covering spread over the heart, mind, and understanding, of all mankind, and a vail upon all nations; which vail is one of the dreadful effects of Adam's fall, and which he himself soon felt after his dreadful apostacy. It is plain that a glorious light of knowledge was upon him in his primeval innocence: which appears by his knowledge of things, by the suitable names that he gave them, and by the knowledge he had of Eve, of her origin, and by the name that he gave her, and the reason he assigned for it. But this figure of him that was to come; this man thus made upright, sought out many inventions; this man in honour abideth not; he sinned; and his light and knowledge of God, and of good, left him; and a sad knowledge of evil found him. The vail of ignorance soon gathered upon him, insomuch that he thought he could hide his sin in his bosom, and his shame from God by a leaf, and himself from his approaching Judge by getting behind a tree. This vail hides the soul from God; and God's just displeasure at sin has hid his blessed face from man. There is, and Adam felt it, a dreadful lower, a dark, an awful, a dismal cloud of just displeasure and holy indignation to be found and felt in the broken law; it worketh wrath still. Just judgment, which came upon all men to condemnation; death, that reigned from Adam to Moses; Adam's expulsion from Eden; the flaming sword; his labour and toil in the sweat of his brow; the curse that fell upon the earth for man's sin, and the dismal effects of it; the sufferings threatened to child-bearing women; the sad calamities that befel Adam's family by Cain; are all sad proofs of the just displeasure and wrath of God at sin, who hides his face, and who can behold him. And this God let Israel know when he came to revive, to promulge; and to set before them, this covenant or law that Adam, and all in him, had violated and |