A37046:483
The law unsealed
The law unsealed: or, A practical exposition of the Ten Commandments With a resolution of several momentous questions and cases of conscience. By the learned, laborious, faithful servant of Jesus Christ, Mr. James Durham, late minister of the Gospel at Glasgow.
Glasgow: printed by Robert Sanders, 1676
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
5. A good end is to be proposed▪ namely on of these three, God▪s Hono•• the good of others, or our own necessary vindication in something, that so it be not taken to no purpose.
There is this difference betwixt this Command and others, in other Commands, God expresseth the highest degree of every kind of sin, to scare men from the breaches of these Commands; here he mentioneth not Forswearing or Blasphemy, but taking the Lord's Name in vain which is the lowest degree of that kind; that by this God may teach us what reverence we owe to Him, and of what •arge extent the Command is, and how careful he would have us to be, lest we should come upon the borders of any thing that seemeth to be a breach of it.
There is this difference betwixt this Command and others, in other Commands, God expresseth the highest degree of every kind of sin, to scare men from the breaches of these Commands; here he mentioneth not Forswearing or Blasphemy, but taking the Lord's Name in vain which is the lowest degree of that kind; that by this God may teach us what reverence we owe to Him, and of what •arge extent the Command is, and how careful he would have us to be, lest we should come upon the borders of any thing that seemeth to be a breache of it.
If it be asked, Why the Lord is so peremptory in urging this Command, and in pressing the thing here commanded in the very least?