Page:The works of the Rev. John Wesley, M.A., late fellow of Lincoln-College, Oxford (IA worksofrevjohnwe3wesl).pdf/61

 can do now, whereas before we could not: ''For when we were in the flesh'', under the power of the flesh, that is, of corrupt nature, (which was necessarily the case till we knew the power of Christ's resurrection) ''the motions of sin, which were by the law'', which were shewn and inflamed by the Mosaic law, not conquered, did work in our members, broke out various ways, ''to bring forth fruit unto death''. ver. 5. ''But now we are delivered from the law'', from that whole moral as well as ceremonial [oe]conomy; ''that being dead whereby we were held'': that intire institution being now as it were dead, and having no more authority over us, than the husband when dead hath over his wife: that we should serve him who died for us and rose again; in newness of spirit, in a new spiritual dispensation, ''and not in the oldness of the letter'', ver. 6. with a bare outward service, according to the letter of the Mosaic institution.

3. The apostle having gone thus far, in proving that the Christian had set aside the Jewish dispensation, and that the moral law itself, tho' it could never pass away, yet stood on a different foundation from what it did before, now stops to propose and answer an objection. ''What shall we say then? Is the law sin?'' So some might infer from a misapprehension of those words, ''the motions of sin which were by the law''. God forbid! saith the apostle, that we should say so. Nay, the law is an irreconcileable enemy to sin; search