A37046:92
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
AN EXPOSITION OF THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, Delivered in several LECTURES. › Preface
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. When we speak of things Moral, we are to distinguish between things Naturally Moral, that is▪ such (as love to God and our Neighbour, and such-like) which have an innate rectitude and holiness in them, which cannot be separate from them, and things positively Moral, that have their obligation by a special positive superadded Sanction, so that their rectitude flows not from the nature of the things themselves, as in the former: As for instance, in the fourth Commandment it is naturally Moral that God should be worshipped, Nature teacheth it; but that he is to be worshipped on such a day particularly, that comes to pass by virtue of his positive Command; the first cannot be altered, the second by the Lord may; but till he alter it, the Authority lies still on all, and it is equally sin to sin against any of them, though without the positive Sanction, there is no obligation naturally requiring obedience in some of them.
5. When we speak of things Moral, we are to distinguish between things Naturally Moral, that is▪ such (as love to God and our Neighbour, and such-like) which have an innate rectitude and holiness in them, which cannot be separate from them, and things positively Moral, that have their obligation by a special positive superadded Sanction, sothat their rectitude flows not from the nature of the things themselves, as in the former: As for instance, in the fourth Commandment it is naturally Moral that God should be woshipped, Nature teacheth it; but that he is to be worshipped on such a day particularly, that comes to pass by vertue of his positive Command; the first cannot be altered, the second by the Lord may; but till he alter it, the Authority lies still on all, and it is equally sin to sin against any of them, though without the positive Sanction, there is no obligation naturaly requiring obedience in some of them.
6. The sixth distinction is of the Moral Law in two Tables, first and second; The first contains our immediate worship, and service and obedience to God himself, and is comprehended in the first four Commandments; the second contains our mediate obedience to God in all the duties we owe to other, in the last six they were at first so divided by the Lord himself, for there are Ten in all, Dent. 4. 13 From this distinction take notice: 1. That all the Commandments of the second Table are of like Authority with the first, God spake all these words; yea, as it appears from