The New Law and the Old Law Compared

The New Law and the Old Law are at one in their effort to bring man into proper order with God. But the Laws are otherwise distinct. The Old Law stands to the New Law as imperfect to perfect, as promise to fulfillment, as childhood to perfectmanhood.

The Old Law could not move man to righteousness(justification, grace), but it could prepare man for righteousness,could foreshadow it, and promise it. The New Law fulfills the promise by making men righteous in the grace of Christ. The New Law brings the substance of Christ to take the place of the shadow of prophecy and prefiguring set forth in the Old Law. Even the moralprecepts of the Old Law, though eternal in value, were perfected inthe New; these precepts were made more definite and clear by our Lord’s teaching, and had the counsels of perfection added to them.

The New Law is the flowering and fruitage of what was,in the Old Law, the seed. Thus, the New Law was contained in the Old, not formally or as such, but virtually as a plant is contained in the seed from which it springs.

The New Law imposes a lighter burden than the Old Law,in the sense that it has not so many ceremonies to be performed with painful accuracy and bothersome frequency. Yet the New Lawimposes a heavier burden than the Old, inasmuch as it demands theunceasing practice of virtue in the spirit of promptitude and joy. And hence St. Augustine (In John v 3) says that Christ’s commandments “are not heavy to the man thatloveth, but they are a burden to him that loveth not.”