1. As to the first in the general he puts forth his power in and by the doing of the main work, viz. the Converting of the Soul: He comes and turns it from Sin to God, brings about the new Creature in it, forms Christ therein, translates it out of one state into another; and herein you have the Law or mighty power of the Spirit exerted. I say the mighty power of the Spirit, for this is a work which calls for such power, without which it would never be done: ô 'tis no easie thing to convert a Sinner! indeed there's no∣thing more difficult than that is. Though all things are alike easie to an Almighty Agent (as God and his Spirit are), yet as things are considered in themselves and as we conceive of them, so some are more easie or hard than others are: as here, 'tis easier to create a World than to convert a Soul, the new Creation is more difficult than the old; for in the latter there was nothing to oppose or make resi∣stance, but in the former there's Sin, Satan, a wicked heart within, a cursed World without, all uniting and combining in all their strength to oppose to their utmost the work of Conversion: there the matter was indispos'd and unfit to be cast into such a form and that was all, but here 'tis not onely unfitness but renitency, reluctancy, the highest opposition that is imaginable; it being so, it follows that that must be a mighty power by which the work is done notwithstanding all this resistance. The Spirit therefore puts forth such a power, whereby he makes mountains to become plains, cuts his way through the very rock, conquers all that vast hoast which is mustered up against him, in spite of all opposition converts the Sinner; here's the Law of the Spirit. Now upon and by this he frees from the Law of Sin, for upon Conversion Sin is as much depos'd and pull'd off from the throne as Athaliah once was, then its Reign expires, from that time forward it must not any more lord it as before it did; (but this hath been already spoken to). Observe it, 'tis the Law of the Spirit of Life which frees from the Law of Sin, 'tis not absolute or meer power that doth it but 'tis power as regenerating, as changing the heart, as implanting the divine Nature by which Sin is brought under.
But more particularly in freeing from the Law of Sin this is the way of the Spirit; 1. He effectually works upon the Ʋnderstanding; that being the leading faculty, and there being in it several things by which in special Sins dominion is kept up, and he working upon reasonable Creatures in that way which best agrees with them as such, therefore there the Spirit of God begins and first exerts his power upon that faculty. And whereas he finds it under darkness, blindness,