the power, the veracity and seeingness of the law-giver, in whom I here
comprise the legislative, judicial and executive functions; and
secondly, self-interest, desire, hope and fear. Now from this view, it
is evident that the deeds or works of the Law are themselves null and
dead, deriving their whole significance from their attachment or
alligation to the rewards and punishments, even as this diversely shaped
and ink colored paper has its value wholly from the words or meanings,
which have been arbitrarily connected therewith; or as a ladder, or
flight of stairs, of a provision-loft, or treasury. If the architect or
master of the house had chosen to place the store-room or treasury on
the ground floor, the ladder or steps would have been useless. The life
is divided between the rewards and punishments on the one hand, and the
hope and fear on the other: namely, the active life or excitancy belongs
to the former, the passive life or excitability to the latter. Call the
former the afficients, the latter the affections, the deeds being merely
the signs or impresses of the former, as the seal, on the latter as the
wax. Equally evident is it, that the affections are wholly formed by the
deeds, which are themselves but the lifeless unsubstantial shapes of the
actual forms ('formæ formantes'), namely, the rewards and punishments.
Now contrast with this the process of the Gospel. There the affections
are formed in the first instance, not by any reference to works or
deeds, but by an unmerited rescue from death, liberation from slavish
task-work; by faith, gratitude, love, and affectionate contemplation of
the exceeding goodness and loveliness of the Saviour, Redeemer,
Benefactor: from the affections flow the deeds, or rather the affections
overflow in the deeds, and the rewards are but a continuance and
continued increase of the free grace in the state of the soul and in the
growth and gradual perfecting of that state, which are themselves gifts
of the same free grace, and one with the rewards; for in the kingdom of
Christ which is the realm of love and inter-community, the joy and grace