Chapter XXXIII.
Of keeping the commandments of God, and of perfection of obedience — How attainable in this life.
The title of the sixteenth chapter in our catechist is, “Of keeping the commandments and having an eye to the reward; of perfection in virtue and godliness to be attained; and of departing from righteousness and faith.” What the man hath to offer on these several heads shall be considered in order. His first question is, —
Ques. Are the commandments possible to be kept?
Ans. 1 John v. 3, “His commandments are not grievous.” Matt. xi. 30, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
1. I presume it is evident to every one at the first view that there is very little relation between the question and the answer thereunto suggested. The inquiry is of our strength and power; the answer speaks to the nature of the commands of God. It never came, sure, into the mind of any living that the meaning of this question, “Are the commandments possible to be kept?” is, “Is there an absolute impossibility, from the nature of the commands of God themselves, that they can be kept by any?” nor did ever any man say so, or can, without the greatest blasphemy against God. But the question is, what power there is in man to keep those commandments of God; which certainly the texts insisted on by Mr Biddle do not in the least give an answer unto.
2. He tells us not in what state or condition he supposes that person to be concerning whom the inquiry is made whether he can possibly keep the commandments of God or no, — whether he speaks of all men in general, or any man indefinitely, or restrainedly of believers. Nor, —
3. Doth he inform us what he intends by keeping the commands of God; whether an exact, perfect, and every way complete keeping of them, up to the highest degree of all things, in all things, circumstances, and concernments of them, or whether the keeping of them in a universal sincerity, accepted before God, according to the tenor of the covenant of grace, be intended. Nor, —
4. What commandments they are which he chiefly respects, and under what consideration, — whether all the commands of the law of God as such, or whether the gospel commands of faith and love, which the places from whence he answers do respect. Nor, —
5. What he means by the impossibility of keeping God’s commands, which he intends to deny, — that which is absolutely so from the nature of the thing itself, or that which is so only in some respect, with reference to some certain state and condition of man.
When we know in what sense the question is proposed, we shall be enabled to return an answer thereunto; which he that hath proposed it here knew not how to do. In the meantime, to the thing itself intended, according to the light of the premised distinctions, we say, 1. That all the commandments of God, the whole law, is excellent, precious, not grievous in itself or its own nature, but admirably expressing the goodness, and kindness, and holiness of him that gave it, in relation to them to whom it was given, and can by no means be said, as from itself and upon its own account, to be impossible to be kept. Yet., —
2. No unregenerate man can possibly keep, that is, hath in himself a power to keep, any one of all the commandments of God, as to the matter required and the manner wherein it is required. This impossibility is not in the least relating to the nature of the law, but to the impotency and corruption of the person lying under it.
3. No man, though regenerate, can fulfil the law of God perfectly, or keep all the commandments of God, according to the original tenor of the law, in all the parts and degrees of it, nor did ever any man do so since sin entered into the world; for it is impossible that any regenerate man should keep the commandments of God as they are the tenor of the covenant of works. If this were otherwise, the law would not have been made weak by sin that it should not justify.
4. That it is impossible that any man, though regenerate, should by his own strength fulfil any one of the commands of God, seeing “without Christ we can do nothing,” and it is “God which worketh in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”
5. That to keep the commandments of God, not as [to] the tenor of the covenant of works, or in an absolute perfection of obedience and correspondency to the law, but sincerely and uprightly unto acceptation, according to the tenor of the covenant of grace and the obedience it requires, through the assistance of the Spirit and grace of God, is not only a thing possible, but easy, pleasant, and delightful.