The Doctrine of Justification by Faith

2. It is true, that he who is once a sinner, if he should afterwards yield all that perfect Obedience unto God that the Law requires, he could not thereby obtain the Benefit of the Promise of the Covenant. But the sole Reason of it is, because he is antecedently a sinner, and so obnoxious unto the Curse of the Law. And no man can be obnoxious unto its Curse, and have a right unto its Promise at the same time. But so to lay the supposition, that the same person is by any means free from the Curse due unto sin, and then to deny that upon the performance of that perfect sinless Obedience which the Law requires, that he should not have right unto the Promise of Life thereby, is to deny the Truth of God, and to reflect the highest dishonour upon his Justice. Jesus Christ himself was justified by this Law. And it is immutably true, that he who doth the things of it shall live therein.

3. It is granted, that man continued not in the Observation of this Law, as it was the Rule of the Covenant between God and him. The Covenant it was not, but the Rule of it, which that it should be was superadded unto its Being as a Law. For the Covenant comprised things that were not any part of a Result from the necessary Relation of God and Man. Wherefore man by his sin as unto Demerit, may be said to break this Covenant, and as unto any Benefit unto themselves to disannul it. It is also true, that God did never formally and absolutely renew or give again this Law as a Covenant a second time. Nor was there any need that so he should do, unless it were declaratively only, for so it was renewed at Sinai. For the whole of it being an Emanation of Eternal Right and Truth, it abides and must abide in full force for ever. Wherefore it is only thus far broke as a Covenant, that ⟨p. 346⟩all Mankind having sinned against the Commands of it, and so by Guilt, with the Impotency unto Obedience which ensued thereon, defeated themselves of any Interest in its Promise, and possibility of attaining any such interest, they cannot have any Benefit by it. But as unto its power to oblige all mankind unto Obedience, and the unchangeable Truth of its Promises and Threatenings, it abideth the same as it was from the Beginning.