Selected quad for the lemma: duty_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
duty_n	bind_v	law_n	moral_a	1,736	5	9.5201	5	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A33723	A discourse of regeneration, faith and repentance preached at the Merchants-Lecture in Broad-Street by Thomas Cole ...	Cole, Thomas, 1627?-1697.	1689 (1689)	Wing C5030; ESTC R35626	125,718	304

to us and shew us its meaning I wish we could a little better understand the actings of our Faith understand the reason the sense of it the importance the intent of an act of Faith what a thing Faith is Thirdly They suppose a double Justification and a double Justifying Righteousness the first to justifie us from the accusations of the Law the other to justifie the sincerity of our Faith and Holiness and here comes in all our inherent Righteousness This is specious too But I would not have men coyn new heads of Divinity to make good their own notions We know but of one Justification I say the second Justification which they talk of it is implyed in the first and therefore needless and unscriptural For since the Revelation of the Gospel infidelity and unbelief is a sin against the Moral Law and Faith in Christ is injoyned as a duty by the Moral Law by which we take God to be our God and consequently do bind our selves over to believe whatsoever he had or hereafter should reveal to be his Will. This we are bound to by the Moral Law therefore if we are as they themselves affirm freed by Justification from the Law of Works upon the condition of Faith then we are on our first Justification absolutely freed from infidelity and our Faith is sufficiently approved to be true and what then need a second Justification unless we will suppose an error in the first Judgment which is impious to suppose as if God should acquit us from the accusation of the Law of Works upon the condition of Faith which upon after examination Christ discovers to be false and unsound So that these things do not hang together Fourthly They say that Faith and Holiness are conditions and evidences of our title to Christ and all that comes by him and therefore part of our Justifying Righteousness It is hard to understand the strength of some mens reasoning but grant all this it amounts to no more but Christ and a title to Christ so far we are agreed for we desire no more But how they will make Faith which is our title to Christ and unto which Christ and all his benefits are by the Gospel granted promised and made over how they will make this title never so well evidenced to be part of our Justifying Righteousness I see not A title adds nothing to the inheritance makes it neither more nor less but conveys it down to us according to the intrinsick value of the thing be it more or less A title to Land is no part of the Land only we are invested in it as it is by vertue of our title Now therefore if the Righteousness of Christ be not of it self sufficient to justifie us I see not how a good title mends the matter for if the Estate be never so great and we have no good title to it it is worth nothing to us and if our title be never so good we can have no more then is and belongs to the title So that after all this stir about conditions and evidences of our title to Christ the result of all is this we have a title a good title are under all the conditions and evidences of a good title but to what To an Inheritance that is not sufficient to maintain us to a Righteousness that is not sufficient of it self alone to justifie us and where are we now with our conditions and evidences of our title For ever destitute of a compleat Justifying Righteousness Is this to Preach Christ To Preach the glad Tidings of the Gospel Is this the way to quiet and settle the Consciences of poor distressed sinners surely no. Fifthly They urge the literal sense of some few Scriptures that seem to speak for them especially two and I do not know of more in the whole Bible as to the literal signification if there were we should hear enough of it I know they quote many others which add no weight at all to the Argument they would ground upon them Therefore I shall not speak to them Those two are Mat. 12. 37. By thy words thou shalt be justified and by thy words thou shalt be condemned and that in Iames where it is said Abraham was justified by works Iam. 2. 23. For that in Matthew Calvin charges the Papists with very great weakness in offering to draw an Argument from that Text for Justification by Works Maldonate a Learned Jesuite on the other hand is very angry with Calvin for supposing any of the Roman Church to be so weak and injudicious as to argue so from that Scripture for saith he we very well understand that this Text doth not speak De justificatione qua justi efficimur sed de judicis sententia qua sumpto ex verbis nostris argumento justi declaramur So saith the Jesuite we know this Text doth not speak of that which is the cause of our Justification of the thing for which and by virtue of which we become just and righteous only here is the appearance of our Righteousness by our words and we are declared to be Righteous So that this doth not touch this cause of Justification and yet this is the main Text brought for it the main proof repeated again and again to prove inherent righteousness to have an influence into our Justification I say let them take the answer from the Papists or Protestants which they please they are both against them in this thing As for the other Scripture They will take it in no other sense but what implyes a contradiction to all other Texts of Scripture in the case The whole current of Scripture is against Works in Justification and leads us to a fair construction of that in Iames that it is to be understood of a justification before men and not of a justification before God. Protestant Writers have sufficiently cleared up this to the Conviction of all but such who are resolved not to be Convinced Certainly they should have a care how they abound too much in their own sense The Learned Lord Bacon saith that a little Phylosophy makes men Atheists but a great deal will convince them of a Deity Some mens Logick and School Learning overthrows Reason which duely improved and well managed would teach them to argue otherwise Certainly in our reasoning about Divine things we should be careful not to abound too much in our own sense It is better for us to leave the Mystery of the Gospel in its Mystery where we found it than to seek to draw it out and so to explain it as to force it into the mould of Humane Reason shaping it on every side to an exact conformity to the thoughts and conceptions of our weak imperfect Understanding I say no Gospel Truth will bear this After all our Faith and Knowledge and Experience we know but in part and there is at the end of every Gospel Truth a Mystery something that is passing our Understanding that calls for