Select Sermons Author:Thomas Chalmers Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 77 8EHMON !!. THE USE OF THE LAW. " The law is good, if a man use it lawfully."—1 Tim. i. 8. It would appear from this text that there is a way in wh... more »ich the law may be used lawfully, or rightly, from which we infer that there is also a way in which it may be used unlawfully, or unrightly—it may be put to a right use or to a wrong one. And there is a real distinction between this right and this wrong use of the law, which, if steadily kept in view, would be a perfect safeguard, both against the error of legality and the equally pernicious one of Antinomianism. The subject is one of great importance; for we reckon that the whole economy of the Gospel is pervaded by it; nor can we think of a likelier expedient for the illustration of the evangelical system, than just to lay hold of the statement we have now announced, and then to follow it out to its legitimate application. First, then, we use the law unlawfully when we try to make out a legal right to the kingdom of heaven. We make a wrong use of the law when we try to make out, by our obedience to its precepts, a legal right to the kingdom of heaven. When this is our object we are actuated by the presumption that we can render, by our obedience, Tieaclicd in St. John's Chapel, Glasgow. an adequate price for that glorious inheritance ; and that the value given, and the worth of our performances, arc equal to the value received, and to the worth of that eternal blessedness which we labour to realize. We proceed on the imagination of a contract between God and man— a fulfilment of the law's requisitions on the one side, and a bcstowment of the law's rewards on the other,—the ono, the purchase-money, the other the payment,—obedience is the allotted task—heaven is the stipulated hire. When this is the conception pr...« less