The light of nature teaches that sin is not the way to heaven; and seeing no word doth more condemn sin, than the words of the ten commandments, it must needs be therefore the most perfect rule for holiness.  Wherefore, says reason, the safest way to life and glory is to keep myself close to the law.  But though the law indeed be holy, yet the mistake as to the matter in hand is as wide as the east from the west; for therefore the law can do thee no good, because it is holy and just; for what can he that has sinned expect from a law that is holy and just?  Naught but condemnation.  “There is one that accuseth you, even.  Moses in whom ye trust.”

Here is the poison; to set this law in the. room of a Mediator, as those do who seek to stand just before God thereby.  And then nothing is so dishonorable to Christ, nor of so soul-destroying a nature as the law; for that, thus placed, has not only power when souls are deluded, but power to delude by its real holiness, the understanding, conscience, and reason of a man; and by giving the soul a semblance of heaven, to cause it to throw away Christ, grace, and faith.

Alas, he who boasteth himself in the works of the law, he doth not hear the law.  When that speaks, it shakes mount Sinai, and writeth death upon all faces, and makes the church itself cry out, A Mediator! else we die.

The law out of Christ is terrible as a lion; the law in him is meek as a lamb.

Faithful.  “So I went on my way up the hill.  Now when I had got about half-way up, I looked behind me and saw one coming after me swift as the wind; so he overtook me just about the place where the settle stands.

“So soon as the man overtook me, he was but a word and a blow; for down he knocked me, and laid me for dead.  But when I was a little come to myself again, I asked him wherefore he served me so.  He said, ‘Because of thy secret inclination to Adam the first;’ and with that he struck me another deadly blow on the breast, and beat me down backwards; so I lay at his foot as dead as before.  When I came to myself again, I cried to him for mercy; but he said, ’I know not how to show mercy;’ and with that knocked me down again.  He had doubtless made an end of me, but that one came by and bid him forbear.”

Christian.  “Who was it that bid him forbear?”

Faithful.  “I did not know him at first, but as he went by I perceived the holes in his hands and his side; then I concluded that he was our Lord.  So I went up the hill.”

Christian.  “The man that overtook you was Moses.  He spareth none, neither knoweth he how to show mercy to those that transgress his law.”

Faithful.  “I know it very well; it was not the first time that he has met with me.  It was he that came to me when I dwelt securely at home, and that told me he would burn my house over my head if I staid there.”