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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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is pardon To have righteousness imputed to a man without works is all one as to have faith imputed to him for righteousness so repentance or evangelical obedience and that is not pardon though these are never divided from the same subject I will conclude therefore with that I have said once before will say it again at my parting with the point that it is strange to me our Protestant Divines should be so offward to this cleer Determination To wit God judges and will judge all men according to the Gospel Those who perform the condition of it he accounts or pronounces righteous They whom he accounts righteous are justified I will add That the righteousness of Christ which is the meritorious cause of our justification without dispute on all hands that is the impulsive procatartick cause which alwayes comes under the Efficient cannot for the same reason be the Formal or Material cause of it It is not the infusion of Righteousness with the Papist which is our sanctification nor the imputation of Christs righteousness with the Protestant which is not to be understood but in genere causae Efficientis nor remission of Sin with Protestant and Papist which I have now bin disproving but the imputing to a person his performance of the new covenant for righteousness or the accounting or pronouncing him righteous according to that covenant is the form formal Cause or formal Reason of his justification Do not think this strange Justification I will grant virtually or Eminenter as unum aggregatione containes in it many things and so remission among others for we must find line to speak as Divines use but Justification Formaliter as unum simplex I say is only Gods pronouncing us Just or sincere penitent believers and remission is a benefit which in order of Nature does follow the performance of that condition And so I proceed to my third Paper Of the Covenants Of the Law and Gospel For the Doctrin of the Covenants There is the Covenant of Works say Divines and the Covenant of Grace The Covenant of works say they was made with Adam in his integrity being that Law which is written in all mens hearts and so requires perfection and for the least transgression threatens Death The Covenant of grace is made with man in his Estate fallen or with Christ in his behalf and requires only our Faith repentance and sincerity unto Life which being held forth under the Title of the Promise to Adam Abraham David and all during the Law was ratified by the death and blood of Christ the Redeemer under the Gospel and so promulgated to the world to continue still on force and in that as in one regard called new as long as that lasts Behold the dayes come saith the Lord when I will make a new Covenant not according to the Covenant I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt Here is the Old Covenant and the New Covenant The Old is that which God made with the Jews when Moses lead them in the wilderness The New is that which we have under the Gospel The old Covenant then is not the Covenant of works for that was made with all in Adam and as written in our hearts must be eternally obligatory But the old Covenant was made with the Jews in opposition to other Nations and as peculiar to them is vanished and binds not Neither is it the Covenant of grace for the same reason as also because the covenant of grace is the new covenant but the New is not the Old The Old and New covenants say Divines indeed ordinarily are both the covenant of grace in opposition to that of works the same in substance but differing in the Administration But this with me is not so easy to be received without the distinction of an A and The in the case The Old covenant may be a covenant of grace or covenant of works or both but not the covenant of works or the covenant of grace There are some plead it is a subservient covenant as Camero Some that it is a mixt covenant as Ball. Some that it is a covenant of works as the Loyden Divines The most of our own late Divines do make it a covenant of grace Whereof one voluminous Authour denying the other three opinions does yet say it was so dispensed as to tender life both upon the condition of Faith and works But if it proposed life on condition of perfect doing it was a covenant of works If on believing too a Covenant mixt both of Works and Grace And as perfect doing was urged only in tendency to believing a Covenant-Subservient and so all say true as to the main and yet none so distinctly true as to leave any enquiring man without confusion in what they say There is one thing then I apprehend will serve much for the enodation of many difficulties in theis matter and that is to conceive aright what the Old Covenant is And there is another like it to the same purpose to know what kind of Covenant it was As for the former we have hitherto been seeing but what it is not only now to understand what it is Let us separate what Moses did deliver to the Israelites from that which was before in promise to the Patriarks as single by it self and this is the Old Covenant Or take that and all that whatsoever and in what manner soever that was added to the Covenant of Grace which Abraham and the Patriarks were under and that abstracted therefrom is I count the Old Covenant Let me yet speak more fully Take Abraham before he was ninety years old when he at first Believed and that Faith was imputed to him for Righteousness upon which he became the Father of the faithful while as yet he was in his Uncircumcision for the Law of Circumcision which was after given in peculiar reference to his natural Seed the Jews in pursuance of the temporal Benediction is to be reckoned as Preambulatory to the Law and belonging to it and when you have pared away Circumcision and all that which Moses commanded the Jews afterwards from Walk before me only and be perfect all this rest this pared away from that whatsoever it be is I say the Old Covenant or the Law strictly taken From this in the first place we have light to distinguish between the Law taken strictly and largely In regard whereof we shall find the Apostles somtimes proving the Righteousness of Faith from the Law being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets and another time setting the Law and Gospel at the widest distance and opposition As the Law is taken comprehensively for the promise to Abraham as well as the Covenant made with the Jews that is for the whole state they stood in who were under the Law by vertue of the Covenant confirm'd to their fore Fathers as by vertue of that given by Moses the Law and Gospel are