Selected quad for the lemma: cause_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	punishment_n	sin_n	suffering_n	1,654	5	9.6213	5	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A41173	The interest of reason in religion with the import & use of scripture-metaphors, and the nature of the union betwixt Christ & believers : (with reflections on several late writings, especially Mr. Sherlocks Discourse concerning the knowledg of Jesus Christ, &c.) modestly enquired into and stated / by Robert Ferguson.	Ferguson, Robert, d. 1714.	1675 (1675)	Wing F740; ESTC R20488	279,521	698

the cause ground motive with relation to which the things interceded for are procured Christs interposure as Mediator between God and Man took its rise from and bore upon a compact between the Father and Him that he should be Incarnate and give his Life a Ransom for many This the Holy Ghost doth most emphatically instruct us in 1 Tim. 2.6 Heb. 8.6.9.15 12.24 which are all the places where he is in express Terms so styled Now had not the susception of our sins preceded as the Antecedent impulsive cause of Christs sufferings he could neither be said to be made Sin for us nor to bear them nor to have them laid upon him nor to dye for our Offences nor to be our Ransom Nor could the inflicting of sufferings upon him have been either good in it self or an act of Rectoral Justice in God or have had any tendency to his glory or to the honour of his Law or to deterr Sinners from offending yea preclude once the consideration of sin as the meritorious cause of the Agonies which Christ underwent and the Love Wisedom Justice and Rectorship of God are obnoxious to reflexions and stand lyable to be impeached And if it be once obtain'd that our sins are the Meritorious impulsive cause of Christs Death his susception of our Guilt will necessarily follow For Guilt being nothing but an Obligation to punishment it being impossible to conceive such a habitude betwixt a person and sin that it should be the meritorious impulsive cause of his punishment and yet he not be under an obligation to punishment it plainly follows that guilt must be supposed antecedent to a demerit of punishment Guilt and punishment being Relates he that is obnoxious to the latter must be previously under the imputation of the former as Bishop Andrews expresseth it Christ was first made sin in respect of the Guilt and then a Curse in respect of the punishment Serm. of Justification on Jer. 23.6 Where Sin is so charged as to expose a person to a demerit of punishment there is an obligation to it where there is such an obligation to it there is in some sense or other Guilt Those very arguments whereby we overthrow the Popish Dogm of Believers being discharged from the Guilt of Sin but not the punishment do equally disprove Christs undergoing the punishment of Sin without susception of the Guilt In brief 1. Through a convention betwixt the Father and Son our sins are so charged upon and transfered to Christ as to be exacted of him and he hath submitted to the Demerit of them so as to undergoe the penalty in the substance and kind of it though not in the Adjuncts and Consequential accidents which would have accompanied it upon such weak finite depraved subjects as we are that we should have undergone 2. Through Christs interposing as Surety and Mediator by suffering in our stead God hath so vindicated his own Honour asserted the Authority of his Commands and satisfied the ends of Law and Government that he accepts of what Christ hath done and suffered as full satisfaction to his Law and in consideration thereof without any reflexion upon his Attributes or subversion of his Rectorship he makes a tender of pardon to us 3. God having admitted the interposure of Christ on our behalf having inflicted sufferings upon him as a punishment for our sins and having accepted those sufferings as a Sacrifice of Atonement for the expiation of our Guilt and having also agreed with his Son and declared in the Covenant of Grace the Terms on which we are made partakers of the benefits thereof we upon a performance of these conditions come to have all that Christ did and suffered as our Mediator imputed to us in a Law-sence That is the Law owns that Christ intervening in our room hath answered all its demands so that God in consistency with its exactions may be both just in himself and yet be our Justifier And this being all that we intend by a Legal Union with Christ namely that by the Covenant of Redemption Christ so becomes our Surrogate as to have our sins in a Law-sence imputed to Him and that we through fulfilling the Terms of the Covenant of Grace have all that which He as substituted in our place and stead did and suffered imputed in a Law-sense to us He must not only disclaim Christs being Mediator in any proper sense but renounce the whole Gospel that denys it Having not only declared but justified that there is a Legal Union between Christ and Believers and having also stated and defined what it is and wherein it consists all that remains incumbent upon me relating to this Head is to shew that the whole of a Christians Union with the Lord Jesus is not comprehended in this nor hereby expressed And 1st There are many Scripture Texts manifestative of an Oneness that the Saints have with Christ which a Legal Union doth not come up to the heighth and grandeur of As there is not any one thing in the Gospel which the Holy Ghost hath judged meet to express in greater variety of phrase than the mystery of our cohesion with Jesus Christ so this Legal Union can no ways sustain the weight of most of them 'T is not consistent with the Wisdom and Goodness of God to entertain us with pompous words or to treat us with Hyperbolical expressions when he is declaring to us the Mysteries of Faith to which he not only requires our assent but hath made much of our comfort and duty dependent upon them Who can think that a Legal Union is all that the Holy Ghost intends by our being one Spirit with the Lord and being ingraffed into Him as Branches are into a stock or root cemented to Him as the building is to the Foundation incorporated with him as our Aliment and Food is with our fleshly substance ligu'd and connected to him as the Bodily Members are to their Natural and Vital Head I know all these expressions are Metaphorical yet I also know that they must be declarative of something that is not only real but whose greatness it is not easy to conceive As the variety of Metaphors which the Spirit makes use of to decipher it by declare its importance so the quality of them serves to intimate that it is not meerly a Legal Union If there be no other Oneness between Christ and sincere Christians but that which we have been discoursing of there could not be a Symbole worse chosen to express it by there being no Analogy between what the phrases originally signifie and that which they are designed and brought to illustrate 2dly Those things being distinct and different whose ideas are so the formal Conception of our Legal Union with Christ being hugely different from the Notion which we have of our Spiritual Union with Him it plainly follows that our Mystical coherence to Him imports some thing besides a Legal Oneness Now that the Idea which we have