held by the Church as the most natural, the sense seeming to require it; since, as St. Thomas argues, the second part of the first commandment is comprised under the prohibition of having no other gods but God. But the ninth commandment, not to covet our neighbour's wife, forbids one particular species of coveting; and to covet our neighbour's goods is another altogether different species of coveting, and not contained under the first.

We may classify the Commandments in two or three different ways. First, as they prohibit sins of thought, word, or action; or again, according as the vices they forbid may be classed under one or another of the seven capital sins; or again, as they are commands or prohibitions. But the most useful and ordinary division is into the first and second tables, the first comprising, in three commands, our duty to God, and the second, in seven, our duty to our neighbour. We may, moreover, observe that they have a regular order of succession, according to the importance of the matter. The first commandment of the first table enjoins the paramount duty of acknowledging and honouring God as God, and letting no person or thing take that which belongs to Him. Next, in the second, comes the duty of not acting with irreverence to any thing belonging to God, or called after Him. And in the third we are reminded of the duty of upholding the external worship of God by means of religious observances, as the Sabbath.

In the second table, containing our duty to our neighbour, we come first to that class of duties which we owe to our parents and other superiors. As they are the natural authors of our being, and the representatives of God, our highest duties, next to God, are to them; and so we are to honour and obey them, whenever our doing so does not clash with the higher duty we owe to God. Then, as to our neighbours in general or the world at large, our first duty to them is not to injure them in their life, either natural or spiritual (fifth commandment); secondly, not to do an injury to our neighbour in that which, next to life, is most valuable, namely, the honour and chastity of his family (sixth commandment); thirdly, not to injure him

in his property, which is next in order of importance; and fourthly, not to injure him in his character. Last in order, we come to a class of sins which may exist in our minds, without having gone as yet far enough to injure our neighbour, though tending towards it, but far enough to injure ourselves. We have the ninth commandment forbidding inordinate desires of the flesh, and the tenth, inordinate desires of others' goods and profits.

It may be observed that, in general, the Commandments forbid by name the greatest sin of each kind, and by implication lesser sins of the same species, as well as those acts and occasions which lead up to that sin.

CHAP. XLIV. Of the Obligations of the Commandments. HERE there comes in an important question for consideration,-How far and why we are bound by these commandments? For since they were given to the children of Israel, and formed part of the old law, what have we to do with them, we who are not under the law, but under grace" (Rom. vi. 14). For Christ came to make the new covenant with man that was prophesied of by Jeremias (ch. xxxi.), and to establish that new law which St. Paul teaches us was to differ from the old law, because it was to be written not on tables of stone, but on the fleshly tables of the heart (Heb. viii. 10).

To understand the explanation of this question, we must recollect that the Jewish law consisted of three different parts, the moral law, the ceremonial, and the politi-cal or judicial. Each part was given by God, and each part was to fulfil its own end. Our Lord, in establishing the Christian Church, did not come to repeal or to destroy the old law, but to fulfil it (St. Matt. v. 17). But each part was to be fulfilled in that way which its nature required. The political or judicial part regarded the present state of the Israelites in their passage through the Desert, and their settlement in the promised land. This part of the law had been fulfilled while the Jewish people were under their own government; but now that the sceptre had passed from Judah, because the Messias was

come, its fulfilment was completed, and so it passed away. Though indeed this too was in a measure typical of the Christian Church, inasmuch as the temporal government of God's chosen people foreshadowed the government of Christ's kingdóm upon earth, and the temporal rewards and punishments which hold so prominent a place in the Mosaic dispensation adumbrated the eternal ones which are put before Christians (Matt. v. 21).

The second part of the law was the ceremonial. Now the very nature and end of this part was to be "a shadow of good things to come" (Heb. x. 1). There could, therefore, be no more complete way in which this part of the law could be fulfilled than by the coming of those things that were foreshadowed. St. Paul, speaking of the law, says that it was our pedagogue, to bring us to Christ (Gal. iii. 24), and teaches us that, having done this, it has fulfilled the work in God's scheme for which it was ordained. And so our Lord said that He had come to fulfil the law, there being no other way in which this part of the law could be fulfilled, than by the giving of those spiritual blessings which were typified by the ceremonies of the law.

But while these two parts of the law have passed away, because they have been fulfilled, the moral law still remains. For while some things are only wrong because they are forbidden, and so long as they are forbidden, other things, on the contrary, are forbidden because they are in their own nature wrong. Now as the moral law consists of rules respecting what is in itself right and wrong, it could not, like the other parts, have a temporary object, which it was to fulfil and then pass away. And so our Lord came to fulfil this part, by explaining its meaning, by teaching men how it was to be kept, and giving them grace to keep it in its fulness, in a way that before, and by their own strength, they could not do. This part, then, having no temporary object to fulfil, but consisting in obedience to a law that is as eternal as God, was not merely given by God in the old law, but Christ confirmed it in the new law. Yet it is not because it was part of the old law that Christ confirmed it, or that we have to observe it, but because it is part of the eternal law, and is equivalent to what is called the natural law.

CHAP. XLV. On the Law of God.

AND here will be the place to explain what is meant precisely by the Law of God. The word 'Law' means a rule by which human actions are to be measured. As every

thing is made for some end, so God in making man made him for a particular end. He gave him a nature fitted for that end. And that design of God, made known to man, became the rule or measure of man's actions, or the law which he was under. It is called 'Eternal' because

it proceeds from the very nature of God, and is therefore unalterable. God being infinitely good in Himself, could not but have made man for goodness, and laid it on him as a command. This command or law, as proceeding from the very nature of God, is that which makes the eternal difference between right and wrong, and can never alter or be done away with.

Now this law of right and wrong, which is thus based upon the nature of God, and is therefore eternal, may be made known to us by direct revelation, or by our seeing it imprinted on the constitution of the world. And so far as it is discoverable by us in the very nature of things, it is called the natural law. For as all animals possess the faculty of sight, so God has given to every man the power of reason, sometimes called the light of nature, by which he is able to discover what he was designed for. Thus it is that no man is left in utter ignorance of God and His will. Man can obtain from his own reason some insight into God's will. God has not, left Himself without testimony' (Acts xiv.) even among the heathen, who, if they do not possess full light and knowledge, may yet, as St. Paul reminded the Athenians, "feel after Him, or find Him" (Acts xvii. 27). "For when the Gentiles," he says again (Rom. ii. 14, 15), "who have not the law, do by nature those things that are of the law; these not having the law, are a law unto themselves: who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness to them." This same light of nature, or participation of the eternal law in the mind of man, is referred to in the passage of the Psalms which says, "The light

of Thy countenance, O Lord, is signed upon us" (Ps. iv.). It is because we in this way possess, each of us, some light to guide us to what is right, that no man can plead entire ignorance of right and wrong. And so we find, that for the most part the obligations of the natural law are respected even in heathen countries.

Yet though this law may be discovered by the light of nature, God has never actually left the world with only the light of nature to guide it. On the contrary, He not only revealed it to the first man, from whom it was handed down to his descendants, but as it became hidden and obscured by the corruption and wickedness of mankind, He again and again renewed it. The Patriarchs had special revelations to themselves, and it was renewed to the Israelites with circumstances of special solemnity, in order to move them to the more careful observance of it. And even after this, when the Prophets were sent by God to His rebellious people, it was to renew and enforce for the most part the obligations of the moral law. So that, while it is clear that we are bound by this part of the law, it is also most certain, as the Roman Catechism says, that we are not therefore bound to obey it because it was given by Moses, but because it has been imprinted on the minds of all men, and has been confirmed and explained by Christ our Lord.

CHAP. XLVI. Of Conscience.

As it is the very notion of a law that it binds and obliges, from this it follows that when we know a law we are bound to obey it, so far as applicable to ourselves. And in order practically to enforce our obedience to His laws, God has furnished us with the power of judging in what cases it is applicable to ourselves. And this is what we mean by conscience, which is an act of our judgment, dictating in each particular case what we ought or ought not to do in order to conform ourselves to God's law.

This is the proper meaning of conscience, but it is some