Selected quad for the lemma: duty_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
duty_n	law_n	obedience_n	require_v	3,312	5	7.2188	4	true

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A23656	Animadversions on that part of Mr. Robert Ferguson's book entituled The interest of reason in religion which treats of justification in a letter to a friend.	Allen, William, d. 1686.	1676 (1676)	Wing A1054; ESTC R5034	44,339	112

Holiness of God to justifie us upon an imperfect obedience the Law which requireth a perfect remaining still in force and denouncing wrath in case of every failure By all which you will perceive I suppose that Mr. F. holds that the Law remains still in force requiring a perfect obedience unto justification and for want thereof and in case of every failure denounceth wrath And that therefore unles the satisfaction of Christ's death and the righteousness of his life were formally imputed to us ie as I suppose he meanes so as that we may be said to have made satisfaction in and by him and perfectly kept the Law in and by him by having his obedience and satisfaction imputed to us it would be repugnant to the immutability and essentiall Holiness of God to justifie upon an imperfect Obedience In which assertions of his there seem to me to be two grand mistakes besides that of a formal imputation he speaks of The first is in holding the law to be still in force not only in requiring obedience to it self by way of Duty which is true but in requiring perfection of Obedience as a Condition of Justification and in its Rigor and severity in denouncing wrath in case of every failure Secondly In that he holds that though we should answer all that the Gospel requires both in respect of a righteousness of inherent Grace and of a personal sincere obedience yet we could not be justified without the formal imputation of a perfect legal righteousness as aforesaid and that these two are grand mistakes indeed I shall endeavor to demonstrate to you In opposition to the first of them I conceive the Scripture will warrant me to affirm That God by founding a new Covenant a Covenant of Grace with the world in his Son Jesus Christ and his Mediatory undertaking hath Rescinded or Superseded the Rigour and severity of the original Law in two things First as a legal perfection of obedience was by it required as the Condition of Justification and life And Secondly as it did denounce wrath and Condemnation in case of every failure Although the original Law of nature the moral Law be eternal and unchangeable in requiring obedience by way of Duty yet it is not so in the foresaid Rigour and severity of its Sanction To establish the Law again in this sense after the Covenant of Promise is made would be according to the Apostle's reasoning to make faith void and the Promise of none effect Rom. 4.14 Gal. 3.18 For the old and new terms of Justification cannot consist together without the one evacuating the other If by Grace saith the Apostle then is it no more of works otherwise Grace would be no more Grace But if of works then it is no more Grace otherwise work is no more work Ro. 11.6 And again whosoever of you are justified by the law ye are fallen from Grace Gal. 5.4 By the interposition of Christ we are redeemed from the Sanction or Curse of the Law which curseth every one that continueth not in all things which it requireth and that for this very end that the blessing of Abraham viz. of being Justified by faith according to the terms of the new Covenant might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ Gal. 3.13 14. Intimating that this blessing of the new Covenant could not have taken place if the Curse of the old had still remained When St. Paul saith that the Ministration of Death written engraven in stones is done away 2 Cor. 3 7. Compared with v. 11. I pray you what of this was done away by the Introduction of the Evangelical ministration if not the Rigour of the Condition of escaping the Curse of it For from that it is that it is denominated the Ministration of Death and Condemnation and it is done away as such a Ministration For otherwise the Law engraven in stones as it is a Rule of and obligation to Duty is not done away In this sense indeed Christ did not come to destroy the Law Mat. 5.17 This benefit by Christ in God's making a new Covenant and granting new terms upon account of his undertaking is not limited to some men only but extended to all In this sense Christ died for all men without exception And it is not unlikely but that one reason at least why God in his wisdome and goodness thought it meet to vouchsafe unto the whole race of Adam these new and gracious terms of recovery after the fall when no such thing is granted the lapsed Angels was this because the Condemnation into which the Angels fell was by their own personal actuall rebellion without Temptation from another whereas the Condemnation into which all the posterity of Adam fell proceeded originally from his and his wives transgression and that from the temptation of the Devil and not from the personal act of their Progeny And that the benefit of freeing men from the Rigorous Sanction of the Law by the active and passive obedience of Christ in which the new Covenant is founded is as extensive as ever the effect of Adam's disobedience was in subjecting all men to condemnation according to the Rigorous terms of the Law is I conceive plainly asserted by the Apostle when he saith in Rom. 5.18 as by the Offence of One Judgement came upon all men to Condemnation even so by the Righteousness of One the free gift came upon all men unto Justification of life By the free gift which comes by the Righteousnes of Christ upon all men unto Justification of life I understand the New Covenant For this free gift can neither be the righteousness of the One here spoken of but that which is procured by it Nor yet justification it self for that is the effect of it So that we cannot in reason understand it otherwise than of some middle thing and that in all probability can be none other than the Grace contained in the New Covenant which Covenant God by a most gracious graunt and free gift hath vouchsafed to all men for the Righteousness sake of Christ here spoken of in which remission of Sin and eternal life are promised upon condition of faith And this exactly agrees with what the same Apostle saith Eph. 2.8 when he saith that by Grace we are saved through faith and that not of our selves it is the gift of God that is it is the Grace and gift of God that now we may be saved by faith a favour which the Law never afforded for the Law is not of faith but the man that doth them shall live in them And when the Apostle saith this free gift came upon all men unto justification of life we are not to understand it I conceive as if Justification in act came upon all men universally by the righteousness of Christ and this free gift but that for the sake of the one and in the other such gracious terms are granted and offered to all men without exception as by which they may attain

it selfe is oft to be understood then indeed it includes pardon of sin and then in this sense to be pardoned is to be justified and to be justified is to be pardoned In which sense or respect it may be it is that many renowned both Persons and Churches have made little or no difference between Justification and remission of sin And now Sir if what I have suggested have any weight in it which I submit to tryal then you may see that there is a Justification of believers properly so called plainly and without figure asserted in Scripture and yet not consisting in that imputation of Righteousness neither which Mr. F. so much contends for nor yet in Remission of Sin neither the necessity of which he would inferr in case the other be denyed but in the imputation of that believing and obeying the Gospel for Righteousness to which Mr. S. saith pardon is promised And if so then Mr. F. hath only shewed us what he had a mind to do but not at all performed what he undertook But when Mr. F. asserts That unless we are justified by the Imputation of Christ's Righteousness in his sense of Imputation we cannot be said to be justified properly but only to be pardoned and that to be pardoned is not to be justified properly he proceeds therein upon a mistaken ground and confounds the terms and conditions of the original Law and Gospel Covenant together For he supposeth that in order to our Justification in a proper sense we must one way or other have such a Righteousness as will answer the demands of the Law in point of perfect obedience and of the Gospel otherwise and which will justifie us against all accusations to the contrary And that therefore we having no such Righteousness of our own we cannot be justified but by having the Righteousness of Christ made ours by Imputation that we may therewith answer the demands and accusations of the Law Or in case we should not be justified by the Imputation of the Righteousness of Christ to answer the demands of the Law yet that then we must be justified by being pardoned and Pardon is not Justification properly so called But while he argues at this rate he overlooks what God hath done to supersede and relax the rigorous terms of the primitive Law by a new Law of Grace established in Christ with all Mankind and according to which he will now proceed with us and not according to the rigorous demands of the primitive Law By reason of this to wit God's relaxing the old and introducing new terms of Justification and Life it follows that neither a perfect Legal Righteousness is now necessary to Justification nor yet that Justification must consist only in pardon of Sin though we have no such Righteousness inherent or imputed in Mr. F's sense of Imputation as will answer the demands of the Law in point of perfection Such a Righteousness is not now necessary to Justification First because that which once made it necessary to that end is now relaxed by a new Law this I have shewed before * This new Law doth not relax the duty due by the old hut alter the condition onwhich the divine favour was at first enjoyable and hath now made sincere obedience to it and to the Gospel the condition of it instead of sinless perfection And it grants pardon of all past offences against both to such as are justified against the accusation of not having performed the Condition and of all after-offences also that are consistent with godly sincerity By reason whereof an answering the old demands of the Law absolute perfection is not now necessary to justification neither as inherent in us nor as imputed to us otherwise than as Christ's perfect righteousness is imputed to us in the fruits and benefits of it which is quite another thing than the imputation of his righteousness it self to us differing as much as the ects of his mediation differ from the benefits received thereby Secondly because by this new Law the Righteousness which consisteth in a penetential regenerating obediential Faith is made the condition upon which Pardon and Life are promised And because likewise the performance of this Condition is by God counted to us for Righteousness like as a fulfilling of the Legal Condition would have been counted our Legal Righteousness had we never sinned Although the Righteousness of Christ's Active and Passive Obedience is that Righteousness by which the Covenant it self and the benefits of it were conditionally obtained for us and granted to us And although it is of God's mercy and by vertue of Christ's Merits and the Promise and Ordination of God that we come to have any title to Pardon and Life when we have performed the Condition and not by vertue of any merit or desert in the performance it self yet this Righteousness of Christ does not entitle us to Pardon and Life until we have performed the Condition on our part required thereto which is such a believing as aforesaid And in the last issue we are accounted by God Righteous or Unrighteous according as we have or have not perform'd the Condition God's design towards us is to restore us to happiness and in order thereto to recover and bring again into our Nature those Vertues in which our likeness to God at first did consist by the loss of which we became miserable and without a recovery of which we cannot be happy And as most suitable to this design God hath made such a Faith the Condition of Pardon and Life as by which the renovation of our Nature is gradually wrought and without which we have no ground to expect those benefits how desirable soever they are to us and notwithstanding all that Christ hath done and suffered to obtain them for us To suppose that God accounts us Righteous and so confers a title to Pardon and Life only by the Righteousness of Christ imputed without respect to our being renewed in the Spirit of our minds and sanctified by Faith is to suppose him acting disagreably to his own design and method of Grace in recovering us from our undone condition To think we are made Righteous only by what our Saviour hath done without us without being renewed by a work of Faith within us To suppose we are by the Imputation of Christ's Righteousness delivered from the danger of the Hell without us without being at all freed from the Hell within us which consists in unnatural Lusts and the uneasie effects of them To imagine that God should restore us to a participation of the priviledges of his Children by the Imputation of Christ's Righteousness without restoring us at all to a participation in the Divine and New Nature of his Children is absurd and that which is opposed by the constant tenour of Divine Doctrine in the holy Scriptures And yet these are but the natural consequences of the Doctrine of being justified by the imputation of Christ's Righteousness alone and of