2. The law veils and blinds by that guilt and horror for sin that seize the soul by the law; for guilt, when charged close upon the conscience, is attended with such aggravations, and that with such power and evidence, that the conscience cannot hear, nor see, nor feel anything else but that. When David’s guilt for murder and blood did roar by the law in his conscience, notwithstanding he knew much of the grace of the gospel, he could hear nothing else but terror, the sound of blood; the murder of Uriah was the only noise that he heard; wherefore he cried to God that he would make him hear the gospel. ‘Make me hear joy and gladness, that the bones which you have broken may rejoice’ (Psa 51:8). And as he could not hear, neither could he see; the law had struck him deaf and blind. ‘I am,’ saith he, ‘not able to look up’; not up to Christ for mercy. As if David had said, O Lord, the guilt of sin, which is by the law, makes such a noise and horror in my conscience, that I can neither hear nor see the word of peace unless it is spoken with a voice from heaven! The serpents that bit the people in the days of old were types of guilt and sin (Num 21:6). Now, these were fiery serpents, and such as, I think, could fly (Isa 14:29). Wherefore, in my judgment, they stung the people about their faces. They so swelled up their eyes, which made it more difficult for them to look up to the brazen serpent, which was the type of Christ (John 3:14). Just so doth sin by the law do now. It stings the soul, the very face of the soul, which is the cause that looking up to Jesus or believing in him, is so difficult a task in times of terror of conscience.
3. This is not only so at present, but so long as guilt is on the conscience, so long remains the blindness; for guilt standing before the soul, the grace of God is intercepted, even as the sun is hidden from the sight of mine eyes by the cloud that cometh between. ‘My sin,’ said David, ‘is ever before me,’ and so kept other things out of his sight; sin, I say, when applied by the law (Psa 51:3). When the law came to Paul, he remained without sight until the good man came unto him with the word of forgiveness of sins (Acts 9).
4. Again; where the law comes with power, there it begets many doubts against the grace of God; for it is only a revealer of sin, and the ministration of death; that is, a doctrine that shows sin, and condemned for the same; hence, therefore, as was hinted before, the law being the revealer of sin, where that is embraced, there sin must needs be discovered and condemned, and the soul for the sake of that. Further, it is not only a revealer of sin, but that which makes it abound; so that the closer any man sticks to the law for life, the faster sin cleaves to him. ‘That law,’ saith Paul, ‘which was ordained to be unto life, I found to be unto death,’ for by the law I became a notorious sinner; I thought to have obtained life by obeying the law, ‘but sin taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me’ (Rom 7:10-14). A strange way of deceivableness, and it is hidden from most of men; but, as I have already told you, you see how it comes to pass. (1.) Man by nature is carnal, and the law itself is spiritual: now betwixt these two arises great difference; the law is exceeding good, the heart exceeding bad; these two opposites, therefore, the heart so abiding, can by no means agree. (2.) Therefore, at every approach of the law to the heart with the intent to impose a duty, or to condemn for the neglect thereof; at every such approach the heart starts back, especially when the law comes home indeed, and is heard in his own language. This being thus, the conscience perceiving this is a fault, begins to tremble at the sense of judgment; the law still continues to command to duty and to condemn for the neglect thereof. From this struggling of these two opposites arises, I say, those doubts and fears that drive the heart into unbelief, and that make it blind to the word of the gospel, that it can neither see nor understand anything but that it is a sinner, and that the law must be fulfilled by it, if ever it be saved.
