instrumentall cause also But this Mr. Baxter will answer anon and I shall wait on him to hear how satisfactory his answer is 2. Whether in his answer to the Question as he puts it when he makes a mans lease or deed of gift and a Kings pardon to have their force from the hand and seal annexed to it is it not much more implyed that the grant of the Gospell without hand and seal put to it is not a sufficient instrument to the justifying of any man For the grant of the Gospell is made to the world indefinitely but when faith as the impression of Gods hand upon the soul and the Spirit witnessing and sealing to the conscience thou art the person to whom the justification generally proposed in the Gospell doth particularly belong and so are applyed by God as true accessary evidences to the grant of the Gospell to terminate justification upon the soul of man can Mr. Baxter deny these being acts of God distinct from the word of promise to be instrumentall to justification as properly and fully as the said promise and grant 3. To his Procatarctick causes which in the Thesis he giveth viz. so far as God may be said to be moved by any thing out of himself speaking after the manner of men saith he I aske 1 Whether God may be moved in his will by any thing out of himself If so whether then something out of God do not give magis minus increase and diminution to God For every change of Gods will is a change of God himself and what shall it avail any to be justifyed by a mutable God that to day will justifie to morrow unjustifie againe being apt to take impression of change from things without him yea if a God mutable then in truth no God but one of the Pagans Idols or Puppets Or how little doth his additionall cause help him to speake after the manner of mâ—n he ought not to speak a lie for God to please men much lesse to lie against God to fashion himself to the manners of men foolish or wicked men If he say God cannot be moved by any thing out of himself how can he excuse himself from being a slanderer of the most high God by devising and asserting here 4. causes out of God moving him to justifie us having before wilfully suppressed in darknesse the riches of Gods grace within himself alsufficient without any auxiliary strength from the creature to move him How preposterous is he herein to the order of nature making the fruit to bear the tree and not the tree the fruit What lesse doth he in making Christs satisfaction and intercession the sinners supplication and desire of supply and the opportunity or advantage for the glorifying of his justice and mercie the causes of Gods will and gracious willings when contrariwise Gods gracious will is the cause of all these 2 Whether he jears at the invaluable means of our salvation or else that he thinks himself matching cocks for the game that he counterpoiseth the highest perfections of Christs mediatorship with mans vanity how unsufferable is it to see him putting into the one scale a precious pearl into the other a peppercorn or cherry stone To match Christs intercession with the sinners supplication To make the feeblenesse of man a collaterall and concause in the same order and degree of efficacy to justification with the vertue of Christ glorifyed It is to be acknowledged that the nothingnesse of the one is of as full validity as the omnipotency if I may so terme it of the other to beget new love new purposes new acts in Gods will This is that which God himself cannot do not because it is a work above his power but beneath his nature and perfection to work or to be capable of the working of any new impressions or changes in his will Neverthelesse this excuseth not Mr. Baxters vilifying of Christ in mating his intercession with the sinners supplication as if the former were a star of the same magnitude with the latter like that profane fellow that twisted together Religion and Cheese 3 Not to trifle away time upon every trifling word of Mr. Baxter I demand of him why seeing in the Explication pa. 215. he acknowledgeth that Procatarcticall or outwardly impulsive causes have properly no place with God he doth yet in his Thesis here fetch about again his four impulsive causes to marke them with severall names in their foreheads in Aristotles print is it not a testimony under his own hand that he will rather play and dance about God as if he were a meer may-pole then lose the ostentation of one least peece of his wit and art 4 Though I mean not to contend about the meritorious causality of Christs satisfaction because in this he hath as well many orthodox writers as Papists speaking in the same tone with him neverthelesse I should deny his assertion unlesse he he will grant me these 4. or 5. suppositions 1. That so far as justification is an act eternall and immamanent in God Christs satisfaction is not the meritorious cause of it 2. If in some other respect it be the meritorious cause that God doth therein merit from himself For the satisfaction made to him is of his own proper money himselfe paid the price in delivering his Sonne for our sinnes the body which Christ offered for us was given him by the Father to offer in our behalf 3. That this merit must in no wise hinder but that the entire benefit of justification must come to us freely without money and without price 4. That it is but unproperly termed merit even then when it respecteth the discharge which God giveth into a mans conscience it being so called metaphorically as our state in sin is considered as a state of debt which when Christ our surety hath paid for us he hath so far merited only as the payment of our debt may be said to deserve that we should receive a full acquittance from the debt In which Mr. Baxter goeth yet further that it was so paid that the Creditour might have chosen to accept it for satisfaction much more to have given us a full acquittance and discharge So that in relation to him and his principles it is lesse properly merit then to another 5. That Christs satisfaction is more properly to be called Gods foundation of this our new relation of justifyed persons upon which he hath inabled himself to justifie us in mercie without any seeming diminution of his justice and truth These things granted me I dismisse Mr. Baxter with his meriâ—orlous cause 5 When he cals Christs intercâ—ssion and the sinners supplication the morall perswading cause c. I demand whether there were such a totall deficiency or so great a scarcity of morall reason in God that it needed a begetting or quickning by perswasions from without him or whether he were so flinty aâ— that without strong perswasive reasons he could not be induced
and to make his authority the greater to deceive 6. Whether he offends not here and elsewhere against the rule of the Apostle who enjoyneth upon all to take heed of high thoughts of themselves and to be wise to sobriety Rom. 12. 3. i. e. not to mount above their reach and measure And what shall be accounted a wisedom without and against sobriety if not that which intrudeth it self into the things of God which it hath pleased him not to reveal pretending an ability with the key of secular learning to unlock the Cabinet of â—ods Counsells to which the most glorious Angels never dared to approach The Christian Spirit is the meek and modest Spirit where the Scripture is not the instructor contents it self to be ignorant concluding with Tertullian Quis revelabit Tert. lib. de Anima fere in Principio quod Deus texit unde sciseitandum est unde ignorare tutissimum est Praestat per Deum nescire quia non Revelaverit quam per hominem scire quia ipse presumpserit i. e. Who shall reveal what God hath covered whence in such case shall we make enquiry â—ea hence to be ignorant is most fafe It is better not to know by the will of God because he hath not revealed it than to seem to know by man because he hath presumed 7. Whether he doth not cross another precept of the Apostle 1 Tim. 6. 20. peculiarly appropriated to all Ministers under the name and person of Timothy O Timothy keep that which is committed to thy trust avoyding prophane and vain bablings and oppositions of science falsly so called He cannot none can deny the thing committed to Timothies trust to be the Gospel in its verity purity and simplicity This therefore he is charged to keep to make it his business to preserve it alive and inviolated within him to keep and hold himself closely to it without deviating to any other studies as helpfull to salvation Therefore to avoid vain bablings and oppositions of science falsly so called Neither will Mr. Baxter deny and all Commentators affirm the thing to be avoyded here to be sophisticall and philosophical disputes which if intermixed with the Doctrine of the Gospel are here termed prophane and vain babling which hath the name and opinion of science or wisdom in the opinion of men but is falsly so called and reputed Doth not Mr. Baxter here see himself set aside by the Holy Ghost for a prophane and vain babler and his learning and wisdom exploded as shady and false having nothing of substance and truth in it 8. Whether he doth not by this way of disputing as much as in him is uncanonize and make void the word For if he hold with the Apostle that the holy Scripture is sufficient and able to make men wise to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus 2 Tim. 3. 15. why doth he not stick to it what els doth his so oft and foul digressions from it to fetch ayd from his sophistry but argue that he holds the Scripture to be invalid to save and that there is either an equall or greater power in his sophistry to make men wise and perfect to salvation 9. Whether it doth not bewray his Cause to be naught that he knows it to be naught therfore seeks to bear it up with such slights feats as a good Cause needeth not When we see a house propped up on every side at every end with posts stakes and pillars who concludes not surely it is a ruinous and rotten building that needs so many supporters It is not for the maintenance of the Aphorism or Doctrine which Mr. Baxter doth here pretendedly explicate that he doth tye knots and unty them bind and loose with such a hurry of questions and distinctions This doctrine stands firm enough upon its own bottom Conscious he is therefore of a rotten building which he means in the following part of this Treatise to erect and therefore furnisheth himself with so many posts and stakes to under-prop it It is well observed by Mr. Pemble out of Erasmus Malè res agitur ubi opus est tot remedijs It is a certain Pemb. of Justis Sect. 2. Cap. 1 p. 37. sign of an untrue opinion when it must be bolstered up with so many distinctions And if the Cause be naught and the defender know it yet persists to defend it then are the Cause and the man both alike 10. Whether this kind of Argumentation doth not declare Mr. Baxter to be of another spirit from Christ and his Apostles Christ came into the world to preach the Gospel to the poor Lu. 4. 18. to give sight to the blind that they which see not might see Joh. 9. 39. And Paul discended low nurslike with flattering speech unto the weak as to babes in Christ feeding them with milk and not with meat untill they became capable to digest it 1 Cor. 2. 1. 4 3. 1 2. likewise also the rest of the Apostles But this man soareth on high unto the upmost region of the Airy element above the kenn and reach of weak Christians such as he acknowledgeth them for the greatest part to be for whose sake chiefly he wrote this speaking not to the comprehension of any save of such windy ones as himself at least to the delight of no other so elevated seems he with the vain-glory of his own excellencies And do not these contrary operations somwhat argue a contrary spirit moving him I mean contrary to that which moved in Christ and his Apostles 11. Whether it tends not to the quenching of the comfort and hazzarding of the salvation of weak Christians 1 to the quenching of their comfort For when from the pure word of God not sophisticated with the intermixture of mans wisedom and inventions they have attained to believe and joy in believing and living by faith in Christ rejoyce in the grace and light of Gods countenance shining upon them thorow him meeting with Mr. Baxters work and finding therein so holy so incomparable a man for learning and piety scattering so many doubts and puzling questions about the very beginning foundation of our redemption that himself cannot answer himself otherwise than by conjectures peradventure it may be thus and it may be it is so The poor souls are apt to fall foul upon themselves for that they have been so audacious to believe any thing seeing now so many doubts and uncertainties and to account all their former joyes in Christ to be a delusion and being unable to make out the mystery of their redemption to themselves in his sophisticall way they lye down and sink under the burthen of their sorrow as hopeless It tends to the hazzarding of their salvation also For while he goes about to make them philosophicall Christians Popish and Socinian Christians to live not by faith but by sense not by the word of Gods mouth but by reason so far only to believe as they see reasons
2. 15 is the Originall though our Translation hath it and not by childbearing if shee continue in faith and charity and holines with sobriety The meaning is notwithstanding the Popish false glosse given it that although sorrow in Childbearing was first inflicted upon that sexe as a part of Gods Curse for sin yet as many as beleeve shall finde the Curse removed and a blessing in the place thereof It shall be made a happy furtherance to their salvation putting them in minde of their sin that first brought the sorrow and so filling them with self-deniall and self-abhorring that they shall cleave the faster to Christ for salvation by Faith as knowing themselves forlorn in themselves and stand the more fixed and stedfast in charity holines and sobriety The like is to be concluded of the rest of the sufferings which he particularizeth God so dispenseth them that they may be furtherances of salvation to beleevers by working in them humblednes and self-denyall bearing up themselves by faith in Christ alone both for salvation and increase of their sanctification The very pravity of our nature of which he speaketh is left in us not as a curse in wrath but as a means in Gods wisdome and love more to humble us to make us more to cleave unto Christ and an Antagonist against which fighting in the power and spirit of Christ we may overcome and having overcome may obtein the Crown So that these two Arguments are impertinent and nothing to the question To the third I answer that there is nothing els in it but a wresting of Scriptures from their proper sense that they may be subservient to Mr. Baxters ends First that of 1 Cor. 15. 21 22. maketh nothing to his purpose It onely testifieth that as by man came death i. e. by Adam so by man i. e. by Christ came the resurrection But how far both of the members of this proposition reach is manifest by the following words For as in Adam all dye i. e. all that live and die in Adam perish hopelesly and everlastingly So in Christ all shall be made alive i. e. All that are translated out of Adam into Christ The one man being the root of death to himself and all that are in him the other the root of life to himself and to all that by faith shall be ingraffed into him That this is the genuine meaning of the words is evident by the next verse which amplifieth what th'apostle had said in this viz. who are these all that shall be made alive in Christ First Christ saith the Apostle as the first fruits then they that are Christs at his coming Here is no mention of the resurrection of them that are not in Christ Not that these shall not also be raised by Christ but that the Apostle speaketh here not of resurrection in generall but of resurrection to life whereof those that are in Christ do alone partake Even as of those which dye in Adam he speakes of an everlasting death whereof the unregenerate alone partake So that there is not any mention here expressed of the death of beleevers much lesse of the curse and wrath in their death Touching the second Scripture which he quoteth and citeth Rom. 6. 23. The wages of sin is death who doubts but it is so to them that are under the guilt and dominion of sin But what is this to beleevers And the third Scripture is as pat as the two former For this caus many of you are sick many weak many sleep The Apostle here writes to a visible Church in which it appears there were some true and some but formall and temporary beleevers Christ is in the midst of this Church dispensing his discipline The true beleevers by the contagion of the formall professors had somewhat prophaned the Lords Table by resorting to it somewhat disorderly The other had totally violated it by coming to it drunken and so were worse than beasts from their own Tables here now had Christ inflicted chastisements of sicknes and weaknes for the humbling and amending of those that were his but death and vengeance upon them that while they professed faith in him yet were indeed despisers of him and his ordinances What is this to the Curse of the Law upon beleevers Therefore I shall add to Mr. Baxters And if so my and if so if so that wresting of Scriptures will serve the turn Mr. Baxter will surely have the water run in his ground and his fancy stand though Gods truth thereby fall to the earth To the fourth That his phrase is ambiguous and it is not easily understood what so cunning a sophister meaneth by evills Untill therefore he hath discharged his bushell of distinctions putting a difference after his manner between a naturall and a metaphysicall good whereof this evill is a privation between an evill physicall and an evill morall and an evill in a theologicall sense between the evill of sense and the evill of loss and a whole bundle more of evills that he can distinguish into their kinds we know not what he meaneth when he saith that sufferings are in their own nature evills to us If I should answer in one sense he hath the slight quickly to evade to another and to study out all his evills would cost more labor than a hundred such Arguments and all his evills to boot are worthy of As for that which he addeth Doubtles so far as it is the effect of sin it is evill and the effect of the Law also It is as much as if he had said doubtles so far as the Sun is made or is the effect of a thunder cloud it is black and dark and the effect of the Thunderbolt also We deny it to be the effect of sin as the meritorious cause thereof so that the suffering of a beleever should be the curse or revenging punishment of his sin Christ hath born that and so it shall not be in this respect evill nor the effect of the law neither We grant a beleevers sin to be oft the occasion never the proper cause of a beleevers sufferings To the fifth We deny not the sufferings of beleevers to be oft in Scripture ascribed to Gods Anger But it is so ascribed 1 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to set forth Gods dealings to mans dull understanding by a similitude of mans passions that they might be the more easily comprehended Because man in his anger and wrath doth correct most severely therefore the sufferings of the Saints when they are great and grievous are said to come from Gods anger and therefore said to be from his anger to speak out that they are great afflictions such as children receive from their parents when they are most hot in their passion Not that there is indeed any such passion in God 2 In respect of the sufferers apprehension who being weak in faith and too much prejudiced by sense is apt for a season sometimes in great tryalls to conclude himself
Christ and not by the works of the law for by the works of the law no flesh is justified Why then do we draw the poor Gentiles to seek any furtherance to their justification by the observation of the Law by which our selves who were most privileged with it could not be justified but by Christ onely without the law So here Even they that had the law and were not a little zealous for and active in the righteousness of the law had need of a redeemer were justified and saved not at all by the lawes righteousness but onely by Christs redeeming of them What madnes is it then in you O foolish Galathians that are not of the holy stock of Israel but sinners of the Gentiles to seek any help to your justification by the works of the law which could not justifie the very Israelites that were born and brought up in it and not to repose your selves upon Christ alone If Mr. Baxter will pretend any other meaning of the Text besides he shall therein wound and not strengthen his Cause For he speaks of the same persons here to be under the law onely in the hand of a Mediator not under the Curse of the law but under such an administration thereof that even before they actually beleeved in Christ the very person of Christ are affirmed ver 1. to be Lords of all all the inheritance which is by Christ ergo not under the wrath of God before they embraced the Faith of Christ As for the other Scriptures which he annexeth yet further to prove that the very elect before and untill they beleeve are under the Law in the sense so oft manifested let him once shew how he will argue and what he will conclude and upon what grounds from them we shall be ready to answer him In the interim I profess I see not any thing in them more prevalent to his purpose than a nights lodging in a bed of snow and ice to cure the Cough Yet from all these wrested Scriptures he Concludes at last that the deliverance which beleevers have by Christ from the Curse of the Law is a conditionall deliverance viz. if they will obey the Gospel i. e. when they beleeve if they will beleeve not onely while they live but also when they are dead and buried For as we say that a conditionall proposition doth nihil ponere so it is true in the sense of Mr Bax. here that this conditionall promise doth nihil promittere The Condition as long as this world lasteth being still in performing not performed and so nothing obteined Yet will he have this new nothing together with the abrogation of the ceremoniall Law to which we never were none but the Israelites ever have been subject to be the great privilege of beleevers and effect of Christs bloud When we poor souls with our dull eyes can see no more privilege that we have herein by Christs bloud than the worst of infidells and reprobates have for they also â—ave this conditionall deliverance from the curse and freedom from the ceremoniall law And this deliverance saith he is yet more full when we perform the conditions of our freedom And then we are said to dead to the Law Rom. 7. 4. and the obligation to punishment dead as to us ver 6. This is indeed a full and perfect deliverance But what doth he mean in saying when we perform c. either when we are performing the conditions That were a contradiction to himself in what he saith p. 74. that we are not perfectly freed till the day of resurrection and judgement And so also it will be hard for another save Mr. Br. to make sense of the words That the deliverance of beleevers is yet more full when they perform the Conditions are performing the conditions of their freedom i. e. more full when they beleeve than when they do beleeve For if we should grant to Mr. Br Faith to be a condition and not rather a mean or instrument of our justification yet would we grant him no other condition thereof Or doth he mean it is full when they have performed the Conditions it seems then that some of the Conditions are left to be performed in the next world because untill then he tells us we can have no such perfect freedom This is the free Grace of God which Mr. Br boasteth himself so much to extoll p. 79. let him that delights in it be his disciple That which he speaks in the upshott for the mitigation of his harsh doctrine aforegoing that he knoweth this Covenant of works continueth not to the same ends and uses as before c. is but a trick of the Jesuits to give sugar after the poyson which was before gone down to destroy Neither can he make out how beleevers are under the law of nature as a Covenant of works and yet not bound to seek life according to the tenor and condition of that Covenant If any marvell that Mr. Baxter should so waste his spirits in abusing both divine and humane learning to prove the Saints to be still under the Curse under the law as a Covenant of works he will cease to wonder if he take notice of a further aim that he hath therein He would not out of doubt have so much insisted on it had he not looked to a further end in it If the beleevers are still under a Covenant of works as to the Curse wrath and Condemnation much more are they under a Covenant of works as unto life and Justification If the former be once granted he accounts the game wonn as to the latter Therefore doth he so much stirr in the former that he may with the more facility and less contradiction bring in afterwards the latter Justification by works which is his very busines in Compiling this book CHAP. XI Whether as the Covenant of Works was made with all mankind in Adam their representative so the Covenant of Grace was made with all the elect in Christ their Representer What relation the Covenants made with Adam Abraham the Israelites and lastly with us under the Gospel have to that Covenant made with Christ B. Thesis 14. p. 89. THe Tenor of the New Covenant is this that Christ having made sufficient satisfaction to the Law whosoever will repent and beleeve in him to the end shall be justified through that satisfaction from all that the Law did charge upon them and be moreover advanced to far greater privileges and glory then they fell from But whosoever fullfilleth not these conditions shall have no more benefit by the bloud of Christ than what they here received and abused but must answer the charge of the Law themselves And for their neglect of Christ must also suffer a far greater condemnation Or briâ—fly whosoever beleeveth in Christ shall not perish but have everlasting life but he that beleeveth not shall not see life but the wrath of God abideth on him Mar. 16. 16. Jo. 3. 15 16 17 18. 36.