Quote on The Law

"[The Law's] cognizance of every thought, imagination, desire, word, and work, and its uncompromising demand of absolute and uninterrupted obedience, upon pain of its everlasting penalty - convince the heart of its guilt, defilement, and wretchedness, and leave the sinner without excuse and without help; under the frown of a holy and angry God; prepared to welcome a Saviour, and lost forever without Him. Thus is the prayer - "God be merciful to me a sinner" - forced even from him, whose external deportment had been, "touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless". He now sees in himself the very character of sinfulness and misery to which the Gospel addresses itself; and, stretching out the hand of desire and faith, he receives the free gift of Christ. And now he feels the advantage of the law too well, to be willing, with the Antinomian, to cast it off, because it has lost its justifying power. For its covenant form enlarges his apprehension of the necessity, character, and excellency of the gospel!" --Charles Bridges, The Christian Ministry