with our crooked stick, but by the straightest rule that we can find. Thus St. Paul: The law is spiritual, I am carnal. Rom. vii. 14. He looks not how much he was more spiritual than other men, but how much less spiritual than the Law.

II. I am the LORD thy God.] That is the truest and most constant obedience, which flows jointly from reverence and love these two are the very wheels upon which obedience moves. And these first words of the Law, are most fit and powerful to work these two: Jehovah-sovereign Lord, to be feared and reverenced-thy God; and then, Who have brought thee out, &c., who hath wrought such a deliverance for thee. Therefore, in both these respects, most worthy of the highest love.

This preface cannot stand for a commandment, as some would have it; for expressly it commands nothing, though by inference it enforceth all the commandments, and is indeed so intended. Though it may be conceived to have a particular tie with the First Commandment which follows it immediately, yet, certainly, it is withal, a most fit preface to them all, and hath a persuasive influence into them all; commanding attention and obedience, not in the low way of human rhetoric, but stylo imperatorio, in a kingly phrase, becoming the majesty of the King of kings-I am Jehovah.

Here we have three motives to obedience: 1. His universal sovereignty, Jehovah. 2. His particular relation to His own people, Thy God. 3. The late singular mercy bestowed on them, Who have brought thee out of the land of Egypt. Each of them sufficient, and therefore, altogether most strongly concluding, for obedience to His commandments.

1. Jehovah. Not to insist on the ample consideration of this name of God, of which divines, both Jewish and Christian, have said so much, some more cabalistically and curiously, others more soberly and solidly; this they agree in, That it is the incommunicable name of the Divine Majesty, and signifies the primitiveness of His being, and His eternity; that His

VOL. IV.

I

being is not derived, but is in and from Himself; and that all other being is from Him; that He is from everlasting to everlasting in Himself, without any difference of time, but, as eternity is expressed to our conceiving, He who is, and who was, and who is to come, ALPHA and OMEGA.

Now, it is most reasonable, that seeing all things, mankind, and all the creatures that serve for his good, receive their being from Him, we should likewise receive laws from Him.

His majesty is alone absolute and independent: all the powers of the world, the greatest princes and kings, hold their crowns of Him, are His vassals, and owe obedience to His laws, as much as their meanest subjects, that I say not more, in regard to the particular obligation which their honour and eminency given them by Him, doth lay upon them.

Jehovah. What are the numerous styles wherein princes delight and glory so much, but a vain noise of nothing in comparison of His name, I AM? And in all their grandeur, they are low, petty majesties, when mention is made of this Jehovah, who stretched forth the heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth, and formed the spirit of man within him. Zech. xii. 1. What gives a man, when he gives all the obedience he can, and gives himself in obedience to God? What gives he Him, but what he hath first received from Him, and therefore owes it all, as soon as he begins to be?

This authority of the Lawgiver, is the very life of the Law. It is that we so readily forget, and this is the cause of all disobedience, and therefore, the Lord inculcates it often, Levit. xix. I am the Lord, ver. 31; and again repeated, ver. 37.

This is the apostle St. James's argument, by which he strongly proves his conclusion, That he that transgresseth in one, is guilty of all. He urges not the concatenation of virtues in themselves though there is truth and force in that: he that hath one hath all, and so, he that wants any one, hath none :→→→ but the sameness of the authority is his medium; For He who said, Thou shalt not commit adultery, said also, Thou shalt not kill, Jam. ii. The authority is the same, and equal in all.

The golden thread on which these pearls are stringed, if it be broken in any one part, it scatters them all. This name of God signifying His authority, keeps the whole frame of the Law together, and if that be stirred, it falls all asunder.

2. Thy God.] Necessity is a strong but a hard argument, if it go alone. The sovereignty of God ties all, either to obey His law, or to undergo the punishment. But love is both strong and sweet. Where there sounds love in the Command, and in the relation of the Commander, there it is received and cheerfully obeyed by love. Thus then, Thy God, in covenant with thee, cannot but move thee.

We see, then, the Gospel interwoven with the Law, in Thy God often repeated, which is by the New Covenant, and that by a Mediator. God expects obedience from His peculiar people. It is their glory and happiness, that they are His. It adds nothing to Him, but much every way to them. He is pleased to take it as glory done to Him, to take Him to be our God; and doth really exalt and honour those that do so, with the title and privileges of His people. If His own children break His law, He cannot but take that worse.

3. Who brought thee out of the land of Egypt.] By the remembrance of their late great deliverance, He mollifies their hearts to receive the impression of this Law.

But

Herein was the peculiar obligation of this people. ours, typified by this, is not less, but unspeakably greater; deliverance from the cruel servitude of sin, and the Prince of darkness. From these we are delivered, not to licentiousness and libertinism, but to true liberty, John viii. 36. If the Son make you free, you shall be free indeed. Luke i. 74. Delivered from the power of our enemies-To what end?—to serve Him without fear, that terror which we should be subject to, if we were not delivered; and, to serve Him all the days of our lives. And that all, if many hundred times longer than it iş, yet, were too little for Him. It is not such a servitude as that of Egypt, from which we are delivered: that ended to each one with his life; but the misery from which we are

redeemed, begins but in the fulness of it when life ends, and endures for ever.

The Gospel sets not men free to profaneness: no, it is a doctrine of holiness, We are not called to uncleanness, but to holiness, saith the Apostle. 1 Thes. iv. 7. He hath indeed taken off the hardness, the iron yoke, and now, His commandments are not grievous. 1 John v. 3. His yoke is easy, and His burden light. And they who are most sensible, and have most assurance of their deliverance, are ever the most active and fruitful in obedience: they feel themselves light and nimble, having the heavy chains and fetters taken off. Psal. cxvi. 16. Lord, I am Thy servant; Thou hast loosed my bonds. And the comfortable persuasion of their redemption, is that oil of gladness which supples and disposes them to run the way of God's commandments.

rest.

PRECEPT I.

Thou shalt have no other Gods but ME.

THE first thing in religion is, to state the Object of it right, and to acknowledge and receive it for such. This, I confess, is the intent of this First Precept of the Law, which is therefore the basis and foundation that bears the weight of all the And therefore, as we said before, though the preface looks to them all, yet, it looks first to this which is nearest it, and is knit with it, and through it, to all the rest. The preface asserted God's authority as the strength of His law, and this First Precept commands the acknowledgment and embracing of that His authority, and His alone, as God. And this is the spring of our obedience to all His commandments.

But before a particular explication of this, a word, first, of the division of this Law; secondly, of the style of it. 1. As to its division. That they were divided, first, into two tables, and then into ten words or commandments, none can question. We have the Lawgiver's own testimony clear for that. But

about the particular way of dividing them into ten, and the matching of these two divisions together, there hath been, and still is, some difference. But this I will not insist on. Though Josephus, and Philo the Jew, would (to make the number equal) have five precepts in each table, yet, the matter of them is more to be regarded, and persuades the contrary; that those which concern piety, our duty to God, be in the first table, and those together in the second, which concern equity, or our duty to man. And the summary which our Saviour gives of the two tables, is evidently in favour of this. And that those precepts of piety, those of the first table, are four, and they of the second, six, and so, that the first and the second, as we have them, are different, and make two, and the tenth but one, hath the voice both of antiquity and reason; as many divines on the decalogue do usually evince at large, which, therefore, were as easy as it is needless to do over again. The creed of the Romish Church to the contrary, is plainly impudent presumption and partiality, choosing rather to blot out the law, than reform their manifest breach of it.

2. What I would say of the style of the Commandments, is but in this one particular, briefly: We see the greatest part of them are prohibitive, or, as we usually call them, though somewhat improperly, negative. Thou shalt not &c. This, as is observed by Calvin and others, intimates our natural bent and inclinement to sin, that it suffices not to shew us what ought to be done, but we are to be held and bridled by countermands from the practices of ungodliness and unrighteousness.

Thou shalt not have, &c.] This order here-and so in the rest: I. The scope. II. The sense of the words. III. What it forbids. IV. What it commands. And these follow each upon other; for out of the scope, the sense is best gathered, and from that, the breach, and the observation.

I. The scope. As the Second Commandment concerns the solemn form of Divine worship, that it be not such as we devise, but such as Himself appoints; the Third, the qualification or manner of it, not vainly and profanely, but with