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A45142 The middle-way in one paper of the covenants, law and gospel : with indifferency between the legalist & antinomian / by J.H. Humfrey, John, 1621-1719. 1674 (1674) Wing H3693; ESTC R16428 27,351 35

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pleased to keep up among them Nevertheless that does not hinder but God Almighty might make use thereof farther for types and representations of other things that is to say Spiritual and so the Law be a Paedagogy under a temporal dispensation leading many to Heaven This is certain that the Covenants of Nature Grace being made with Man-kind are not matters of concernment only to the Jews but to the whole world as well as to them for everlasting life and death and it is not to be conceived therefore that either of them should receive any detriment by the Covenant made with that particular Nation This I say that the Covenant confirmed before of God in Christ the Law which was four hundred and thirty years after cannot disannul that it should make the Promise of no effect The Covenant of God in Christ is the covenant of grace and that we see a-foot in the world before the Law and before Abraham for when it was confirmed to Abraham it must be in being before on necessity and ever was since the Fall or else none after could be saved And if this be not disannul'd then cannot that whatsoever it be which is given by this covenant come to the Jews by the Law For as the Apostle argues If there had been a Law given that could have given life verily Righteousness should have been by the Law If the Law of Nature could be kept by man there would be no need of a covenant of Grace by Christ So do I argue if Righteousness unto justification of life was to come by the Law the Promise or Covenant of Grace as soon as that was given might be spared But for-as-much as eternal life and justification does come only by the covenant of grace it follows that the covenant made with the Jews must needs be a covenant which concern'd their outward state or political welfare as I have said and that neither Salvation nor Condemnation as to the life to come was the primary intention or the direct and proper effect of it If Salvation or Condemnation was the proper issue of the Law then could neither any of those holy men as the Patriarchs nor any of the wicked world who were before the Law as the men of Sodom and Gomorah be condemned at the day of Judgment For where no Law is there is no Transgression and so no Condemnation And indeed if this covenant was conceived any other than some such thing as I make it how could it be that the most substantial part or body of the Jews Nation should be Sadduces in Christ's time The Covenant of Nature is that which lays all the world guilty before God so that He who believes not is Condemned already he is condemned by the Law of his Creation writ in his heart he needs no outward Law to condemne him Whatsoever things the Law saith it saith to them who are under the Law If there were no Curse nor Death but that which the Jews Law doth speak then were there none but the Jew should suffer Condemnation If a man on the contrary side does believe and repent he needs no other Law than that of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus to set him free from this Law of Sin and Death So long as he does not believe he abides under that Wrath and it is not for want of Faith as the cause of his Condemnation to justify God in not giving all men that alike but for want of it N B as that which should be the remedy that he perishes Salvation then and Condemnation which is Eternall does proceed from the covenants of grace and works and it is not to be imagined that God should deal otherwise with the Jews than with the rest of the world as to the terms of a future life I have set before you Life and Death says Moses And Cursed be he that continueth not in all the Law to do it But what this Life and Death these Blessings and Curses are we see express in Deuteronomy and in the fifth Commandement The Laws which God did give the Jews were about Religion and about Civil matters Religion concern'd their Eternal civil things their Temporal good Yet whether they are commanded the observation of the one or the other the sanction of both does lye in the threats and promises of Temporal blessings and judgments Even as in the Laws of our Realm Rellgion and the Service of God is required under a civil forfeiture when it is the Gospel it self must threaten farther Vengeance to the Transgressor In short herein will lye the mistery and sum of all The Law as it was in the hand of Moses and given to the peculiar Nation of the Jews must be no other than a temporal covenant yet did this temporal covenant contain in it patterns of things as the Apostle speaks in the Heavens And as the ten Commandements particularly written in stone are a transcript of the Moral Law written by Nature in our hearts I do take the Law to represent the covenant of works and by vertue of that representation alone or of that it represents does it operate to future judgment and is the ministration of condemnation The Law indeed taken at large for all that is contained in the whole books of the Old Testament may be supposed to hold forth whatsoever is in the covenant of works and grace but the Law taken separately from both as a third covenant cannot hold forth any other than the external government of God with propriety over the Jews and that consisting in these two things to wit a hard task of burdensome dutyes under the danger of temporal judgments and a redress from them by Sacrifices the one typifying our estate according to the Law of works and the other the grace which comes to us by Christ Jesus What use may be made of this I leave to minds which are searching I am never out of my way I count so long as I meet with any such Only there is one in a late Book who seems to fall a little too hard on a grave Preacher for making the dispensation of the Old Testament in some Sermons of his to be more terrible than ours under the New For doing which he hath thus much the more reason indeed if as I say that life and death which is Eternal comes not from the Law but from the Covenants of Works and Grace which were before it and cannot be made voyd by it There is therefore the Believing Penitent Sinner and the Vnbelieving and Impenitent For the man that sins and repents not it is true that he hath no less reason to fear under the Gospel than under the Law but rather the more in regard that the threatnings of the Law were directly I take it only of temporal punishments but the Gospel does manifestly threaten Eternal Of how much sorer punnishment says the Scripture worthy he is But for the Penitent and Believing the case is otherwise and the