Gospel-conversation

Yet still remembering this, we cannot in this life attain to such a Conversation as to be without mixture of evil, but we should be more spiritual and heavenly in our ways, we have more cause to be so than Adam had in his innocency, and we do not walk answerable to the Gospel except our hearts do rise in a more spiritual and heavenly way than his heart could rise when it came new out of the hand of his Creator. That's the first consideration of the Law as it was a Covenant of life to him and all ⟨p. 47⟩man-kind in him. Oh that as we go along we would but consider what cause we have of humiliation then; Oh how far are our Conversations short of that that becomes the Gospel if it should rise to so high a pitch as this is that hath been mentioned.

Yet still remembring this, we cannot in this life attain to such a Conversation as to be without mixture of evil, but we should be more spiritual and heavenly in our waies, we have more cause to be so than Adam had in his innocency, and we do not walk answerable to the Gospel except our hearts do rise in a more spiritual and heavenly way than his heart could rise when it came new out of the hand of his Creator. That's the first consideration of the Law as it was a Covenant of life to him and al ⟨p. 47⟩man-kind in him. Oh that as we go along we would but consider what cause we have of humiliation then; Oh how far are our Conversations short of that that becomes the Gospel if it should rise to so high a pitch as this is that hath been mentioned.

Secondly, Consider we the Law as in the administration of it to Moses, and so to the people of the Jews: The administration of the Law to them it was under another notion, it was to bring them to Christ, and that they might come to see their inability of keeping of that Covenant, and come to understand Christ so much the more, and to be driven unto Christ by having the Law presented to them, God did never intend by giving of the Law to the people of the Jews that it should be a Covenant of eternal life to them; indeed there was this in the administration of it somewhat different from us, some special Covenant about their living in Canaan, and about mercies in that promised Land, beyond that that we have in the Law, as we find in the new Testament, they (I say) had this annexed to it. The Law that was first given unto Adam and written in his heart, afterwards even obliterated, then it was transcribed by the same hand in tables of stone and given unto them chiefly to show them their misery, and their need of Christ; to be a preparation for Christs coming into the world; and with this one addition beyond what we have in the new Testament, that there was a temporal Covenant annexed unto it, that concerned their living prosperously in the Land of Canaan, (& so far we are delivered even from the Law as it was given by Moses, that is, from the connection of the Covenant that was added unto the delivering of the Law) concerning their happy and comfortable condition in the Land of Canaan upon the keeping of their Law; but now (how ever it was) certainly that Conversation that becomes the Gospel should be beyond what could be even from godly men in the time of the Law.