and because none but such who do so shall by the Tenor of the Gospel suffer eternal Punishment therefore it is no Objection against the Merit of our Saviour's Death to say that his temporal Death cannot expiate an eternal Punishment because he did not suffer Death for any such Purpose and he did not do so because he did not suffer Death for those who alone shall suffer eternal Punishment that is he did not suffer Death for those who shall refuse and reject the only Means of Salvation which he purchased for Mankind by his Death Much more might be offered upon this Occasion but this being sufficient in this Place I shall therefore here add no more In the mean while I do not question but that the Value of our Saviour's Sufferings sâ—fficient to expiate the Guilt of any Sins for whose Expiation such Sufferings were designed tho' such Guilt should be supposed or allowed to deserve eternal Punishment of it self And from the Whole that has been spoken on this Subject we do at last conclude That a Release from the Vengeance due to Sin by the Law and purchased for Man by his Saviour the Lord Jesus Christ who for Man's sake made his Soul a Sacrifice for Sin is a just and legal Pardon and agreeable to the Measures of Right Reason and to the Laws of Justice For because the Pardon of Sin does imply in it a Desert of Punishment in the Party forgiven and because the laying the Punishment which he deserves upon another is in effect a Remission of that Punishment to him and because lastly a Remission of Punishment to the Party which deserves such Punishment may be truly accounted a Pardon of his Sin For Pardon of Sin to any Party whomsoever is neither more nor less than the Releasing or Freeing him from the Punishment due to his Sin Therefore if by what has been spoken it has appeared that the Punishment due to our Sins was without any Injustice translated upon another and that upon such Translation it cannot justly be exaâ—â—ed of us then it will follow that so far forth as our Sin was pardoned so far forth the Pardon was just And therefore so far as we have hitherto gone we may truly and rationally conclude That that Method in which the Gospel discovers our Salvation to be brought to pass does exactly square to the Rules of Right Reason and Justice For so we have seen that it does in the first thing which a Gospel-Forgiveness does imply and contain in it and that is the Pardon of Sin CHAP. VIII Bare Pardon of Sin not sufficient for a Gospel-Salvation Some Reasons offered for it They who are entitled to the Reward of the Law must be entitled to the Obedience paid to the Law Such Obedience must be perfect Some Practical Reflections THo' we have hitherto asserted the Sufficiency of our Saviour's Sacrifice for the Expiation and Pardon of Sin yet it must be confessed that bare Pardon of Sin upon any Considerations whatsoever be those Considerations never so valuable yet can never in Reason or Justice make out a Gospel-Salvation And therefore we laid it down at the Beginning that as in order to a Gospel-Salvation there was first required an Expiation and in consideration of such Expiation a Pardon of Sin so there is also required a Restitution to Holiness and the Gift of Eternal Happiness For because God's Law as every good Law besides does consist of Two Parts First the Directive or what it requires to be obey'd and Secondly the Vindictive or what upon Disobedience it requires to be suffered And because Sin is the Disobedience to or Transgression of the Law Therefore so far as we have discoursed of the Justice of the Pardon of Sin so far we have only discoursed of that Justice which concerns the Vindictive Part of the Law But by doing that we have not at all discoursed of that Justice which concerns the Directive Part of the Law And if upon our neglect to follow such Directions God does for any Reasons whatsoever forgive us the Penalty which we incur by such our Neglect and nothing more it must be confessed that by such a way of Proceeding all Care of the Directive which is indeed the principal Part of the Law is thrown away For because all Men are Sinners that is because none do obey the Law tho' God upon valuable Considerations do remit the Punishment to some or all of those Sinners yet still it is certain that the Duty enjoined by the Law remains undone by all And I therefore say it is certain because it will notoriously appear by what follows that the Pardon of Sin that is the Pardon of the Transgressionof the Law tho' such Pardon be granted by God and obtained by us in Consideration of our Saviour's Suffering in our stead can never pass for the Performance of the Directions of the Law that is can never pass for that Righteousness which consists in an Obedience to such Directions and therefore as we shall see more fully hereafter can never be sufficient for our obtaining a Gospel-Salvation which includes in it an eternal Holiness and an eternal Happiness as well as the Pardon of Sin Now that the Pardon of our Transgression of the Law can neither in Reason nor Justice pass for our Performance of the Directions of the Law will appear notorious from these following Considerations 1. Because Forgiveness does imply in the very Notion of it a Desert of Punishment and a Desert of Punishment does imply in it the Transgression of the Directions of the Law For no Man can be truly forgiven who does not justly deserve to be punished and no Man can justly deserve to be punished who does not transgress the Directions of the Law Now for the same Reason and upon the same Account to esteem a Man Innocent and yet a Criminal must needs be absurd because it is a Contradiction And then because in Contradictions only one Part can be true therefore so sure as we are that he who is truly forgiven must be a Sinner so sure we are also that he neither is nor can be truly supposed to be Innocent And therefore when God forgives as it is supposed in Reason and Common Sense that he does forgive Sins and is so expressed in general in the Scriptures so it is supposed in the same Reason and the same Common Sense that he does forgive those Sins to Sinners And therefore we cannot be supposed to have obeyed the Directions of the Law upon the Account that God does forgive us the Punishment threatned in the Law 2. Nor can we be so secondly Because should we undergo the Punishment which the Law threatens yet we could not by so doing ever fulfil the Directions of the Law For it is notorious in it self that the suffering what the Law threatens is not the doing what the Law commands Now it is certain that the Forgiveness of that Punishment which we have deserved can give us no
Reason of Man's Tenure and Subjection Sixthly As we may suppose the Forbidden Tree to have stood in the midst of the Garden from the Ninth Verse of the Second Chapter of Genesis so a Tree so placed was by its very Situation a very fit and proper Thing to be made use of for such a purpose because being in some measure at least equidistant from the Boundaries of the general Grant it must for that Reason be most likely to present it self to Adam's View to whatever Part of the Garden he moved and by so doing must constantly or at least frequently put him in mind of the Nature of his Tenure viz. that he held it of him who had setled him in the Possession and Use of all the rest So that as the Law is Positive if we only look upon the express Words of it so it is Moral if we consider what is implied in it And therefore as the immediate and direct Transgression of the Law was the eating the forbidden Fruit so the couched Immorality of such Transgression was an Usurpation upon God's Prerogative in this lower World and an Encroachment upon the reserved Rights and Demeans of the Supreme Lord. The Transgression of the express Law then was a Sin against God's Command But the Transgression of the implied Law was a Sin against his Natural and Supreme Right The first was a Sin because it did what God had expresly forbid The last was implicitly forbid because it was a Sin and therefore was a Sin tho' God did not expresly forbid it The first was therefore only unlawful because forbidden The last was unlawful in it self To sum up all in a few Words Tho' the Designation of the particular Thing viz. the Tree in the midst of the Garden was Arbitrary and therefore Positive yet the Designation of Something was as Just and Wise so I may add Moral and Necessary too at least so far as it is so that God's Supreme Right ought to be asserted and owned For so far forth the Prohibition given to Man of eating of the Fruit of any Tree marked out or of medling with any Thing else is grounded upon the Antecedent and Eternal Rules of Reason and Justice that is of Morality And therefore tho' the express Prohibition of the Law be only Positive yet the Reason of the Prohibition is at least so far Moral as it is so That Man by some Means or other should acknowledge God to be his Supreme Lord and that he receives from him whatsoever he enjoys and that if God do expresly appoint the Way and Means of his so doing he ought to do it by the Way and Means so appointed And I therefore say expresly because so far as the Words of the Law under our present Consideration do go it is notorious that what is expresly prohibited by it is only Arbitrary and Positive But that the Morality of the Prohibition is not expressed but at the most but couched and implied By what has been spoken we may learn 1. That the Sin expresly prohibited by the Law may therefore truly be esteemed a lesser Sin because it is only a Sin against a Positive Law For such a Sin is a Sin only against God's Authority Whereas a Sin that contains a Natural Immorality in it if I may so speak is a Sin both against God's Authority and against his Purity and Holiness too 2. That the express Penalty of the Law is only a Punishment threatned against the Transgression of the express Prohibition of the Law For it does not look like Justice to assign an express Punishment in the Law for the Transgression of any Thing which is not expresly contained in the Law 3. Such Punishment so threatned against the Transgression of the express Law is express absolute and peremtory Adam then did therefore fatally suffer the Penalty of the Law because he sinned against an express Prohibition which was ratified by an absolute peremptory and express Threat For God may therefore be thought to be obliged by his Truth to punish Adam's Transgression according to the express Threat of the Law because he had passed his more solemn Word that he would do so And as he was obliged by his Truth to punish it as the Law had threatned so he was obliged to punish it because it was a Sin For so undoubtedly is the Transgression of any of God's Laws From hence it may be concluded that we all die a temporal Death for Adam's Sin For as we were in the Loins of him in the day of his Transgression so God has not by any other Law assigned an Universal Mortality as the Punishment of Sin And so speaks the Scripture In Adam all died 4. As the Moral Law couched in the Positive Law is not express so neither is there any express Punishment threatned to the Transgression of such couched Law For while Man was in a State of Innocence as there was no need that God should prescribe him any express Law to guide him in such Things which were in their own Nature good because the dictates of his own reason were of themselves sufficient for such his guidance for Moral Goodness is nothing else but the Dictates of right Reason employed about the Actions of Rational Creatures So for the same Reason there was no occasion to threaten him in that Case with any express Penalty because the threatning of an express Penalty antecedent to the Commission of the Crime can only be proper there where there is an express Law commanding a Duty Whereas Man had never by his Reason known that it had been a Sin to eat of any Fruit which kindly offer'd it self to his View and natural Inclinations if such Fruit had not been forbidden by some express Law And therefore for the same Reason that it was necessary that such Law should be express it was necessary that the Penalty of such Law should be express too 5. As the Sin against the Moral Duty which is only implied in the Law were that Duty supposed to be express Law is greater than the Sin against the express but Positive Law so were there a Punishment to be expresly assigned to such Sin it must in Justice be greater than the Punishment assigned to the less Sin that is to the Transgression of the Positive Law The Punishment therefore assigned by the express Law to the Transgression of it being only Death and that too as appears from the Nineteenth Verse of the Third Chapter of Genesis a temporal Death our Reason and that natural Sense we have of the Proportions of Justice will assure us that the Law which forbids a greater Sin than this Law does must in Reason and Equity assign an heavier Punishment to such greater Sin 6. Such heavier Punishment must suppose a Resurrection For a greater Punishment than Death cannot therefore be inflicted upon a dead Man without a Resurrection because no Punishment at all can be so inflicted upon him For where there is no Sensation
of Sin Let us first hear what the Spirit saith who in the Fourth to the Ephesians the Fourth and Fifth Verses tells us That when the Fulness of Time was come God sent forth his Son made of a Woman made under the Law that is his Son was Incarnate and was under the Law and therefore made so as to be obliged to be obedient to it to redeem them that were under the Law that we might receive the Adoption of Sons And when we are told in one place That the Son of God was manifested for this very purpose that he might destroy the Works of the Devil and in another That he was manifest to take away Sin And when to answer to and explain the Meaning of these Places we are assured from other Places that at least one Way of his taking away Sins was by the Sacrifice of himself as in the Twenty sixth Verse of the Ninth to the Hebrews and that he appeared for that very purpose in the same Place And when we add to all this what we find in the Fifth Verse of the following Chapter that God had prepared him a Body and in the Tenth Verse that we are sanctified that is our Sins are put away through the offering of the Body of Jesus Christ once for all who as St. Peter speaks his own self bare our Sins in his own Body on a Tree I say when the Spirit of God does all along in the Scriptures expresly and categorically tell us That our Saviour suffered in his Body shed his Blood lost his Humane Life for our Sins for the Remission of Sin for the Redemption of Sinners when it does in several Places compare his Death to the Expiatory Sacrifices under the Law when it calls him the Lamb of God alluding to the Paschal Lamb that taketh away the Sins of the World when it tells us that he is the Propitiation for our Sins and the like It does by these and such like Expressions as much as Words can do it acquaint us at the same time that he suffered in his Body and died to atone for and to expiate our Sins And therefore all the uncouth and forced Interpretations of these and such like Texts which yet are a multitude that attempt to evacuate their plain Meaning may as soon persuade an honest and sincere Man that the Scriptures both of the Old and New Testament are a Book full of Collusion and Prevarication as they may that Jesus Christ our Saviour did not die to expiate the Sins of Mankind And were I not assured of God's Providence I should be apt to fear that the Devil might in time so bring Things about that if he could upon Pretences of Reason wipe away that Part of the Bible that concerns our Saviour's Incarnation and the Relation which that has to Man's Redemption that he might at last raise his Hopes of blotting out the whole Christian Religion For to tell us that our Saviour is only such a Man as other Men are but only conceived in a different and therefore more wonderful manner to tell us that he died patiently tho' wrongfully only that he might give us an Example of an exact Patience and of an entire Submission to God's Providence to tell us that he was slain a Sacrifice only to confirm the Covenant of Grace but that there was no such Design in his Death as to suffer for or to expiate our Sins as it is a notorious Contradiction to and not an Exposition of the Scriptures so for that very Reason it will appear to have a direct Tendency towards the overthrowing the Grand Design of the whole Book of God All which to them who shall scan the Scriptures exactly is directed to and does center in the Saviour and that Redemption which he purchased for Mankind by his Death and Merits Having therefore thus in short taken notice of what the Scripture tells us concerning the Expiation of Sin by the Susserings of our Saviour and having already made it out 1. That no Creature can by any means expiate the Sin of Mankind and 2. That our Saviour is God Incarnate or God and Man united in One Person we do in pursuit of our main Design lay it down in the 3. Third place That the Way and Method of Man's Salvation as it is expresly and frequently laid down in the Scriptures which is by the Sufferings and Death of the Son of God manifested in the Flesh is agreeable to right Reason and exactly congruous to the Measures of Truth and to the Rules of Justice And in order to our making this plain and clear we take notice 1. That that Law about the Transgression of which and the Release from the Penalty of such Transgression the Gospel-Forgiveness is only concerned was given to Man For the Scriptures give us no Account of the Forgiveness of the Breach of any other Law but only of that Law which God had prescribed to Mankind And therefore tho' in the Scriptures we have several broad Hints of the Fall of the Angels and tho' our Reason tells us that that which put them under the Displeasure of God must needs be Sin in the general yet we are therefore ignorant what their Sin was because we are ignorant what that Law was against which they sinned 2. We take notice That as that Law about which alone the Gospel-Forgiveness is concerned was the Law given by God to Man so the Gospel takes no other or farther notice of the Transgression of that Law than as that Law is broke by Man From whence we infer in the 3. Third place That that Punishment which the Law threatens against those who transgress it can only in Justice belong to those to whom the Law was given and directed For they can never transgress a Law who have no Law assigned them and they can never be justly punished for the Transgression of the Law who can never transgress the Law The Law therefore about which alone a Gospel-Forgiveness is concerned being the Law given to Man and transgressed by Man Man alone can justly suffer the Penalty of such Transgression From whence we infer in the 4. Fourth place That if any Penalty can ever justly expiate that Guilt which is contracted by the Breach of the Law that Penalty that must make such Expiation must be a Penalty laid upon Man And therefore our Common Sense of Justice will not allow us to think that either Angels which are ranked above Mankind nor Beasts which are ranked below them can by any Sufferings whatsoever expiate or atone for the Breach of such Law which being given by God to Man does so far forth concern Man alone And tho' we have before made it out that neither Angels on the one Hand nor brute Beasts on the other can expiate the Sin of Mankind as both the one and the other are Creatures yet what we now say is that they cannot do it as they are different Creatures For it seems necessary and that
World is restored to that Holiness which was lost by the Transgression of the Law and because no Man shall be compleatly and actually justified till he be so restored 2. Because the Expiation of our Sin by our Saviour and by consequence the Pardon of Sin by God is not Absolute but Conditional and because some of those Conditions upon which such Pardon does depend are to be performed by us such are our Repentance Conversion and the like and because lastly our Condition in this World is such that there will of necessity be required Time for our Performance of such Conditions Therefore we do conclude that as our Saviour has purchased for us such Conditions in order to our Redemption so has he also purchased for us a longer Term in which we may perform such Conditions For it is evident that the Denunciation of the Law upon the Transgression of it is In the Day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die And in strict Justice and Reason the Punishment is then to be inflicted when it becomes due and it then becomes due so soon as the Law is broken For were it not due then it would never become due at all Now because we find and that too by Experience that notwithstanding not only Adam's Sin but our own Sins too we do not presently die but that God waits our Return that he may be gracious to us and because we know that such his Patience and Forbearance is therefore extended to us that we may by our Repentance qualifie our selves to be made Partakers of that Expiation which is made by our Saviour for there is not Salvation in any other therefore we do at last conclude that the Grant of a Space for Repentance is the Purchase of our Saviour For it would have been the same thing for our Saviour to have made no Purchase for us at all if such his Purchase had been clogged with such Conditions on our Part which it was utterly impossible for us to perform And it had been utterly impossible for us to make out our Repentance and Amendment if we had not been allowed a competent Time to make them out in And what we have said concerning God's allowing of a competent Time in which Sinners may perform the Conditions of the Covenant purchased by the Saviour that we say also concerning the Means which are necessary for such their Performance Such are his Word the Succours and Assistance of his Spirit his Sacraments and whatever else does usually come under the Title of Means of Grace For it is not conceivable that our Saviour should purchase for us the End and yet leave us without the Means which are necessary for the bringing about such End But yet because the Means to enable us to perform the Conditions required of us in order to our Salvation are not nor indeed can possibly be that very Salvation for which they are designed or employed as means and because while we live in this World we are required and it is necessary in it self that we always have and also employ such Means to the purpose of our Justification and lastly because it is so far from being necessary that it is neither proper no nor wise to employ any Means for any End already attained therefore what we observed under our last Head will still remain true and that is That no Man is actually justified in this Life 3. From what has been said we take notice That tho' Afflictions in this Life are undoubtedly the Executions of Justice yet which is owing to our Saviour's Purchase there are always couched in such Afflictions Designs of Mercy For tho' as they look backward they have an Eye to our Sins yet as they look forward they have an Eye to our Amendment or at least to our Restraint For had we died for our Sins according to the Law we had been both immediately punished for our Sins past and had by the same Means been prevented from ever sinning for the time to come For a Death without a Resurrection had proved a sure and everlasting Prevention But as we have seen our Life being continued in consideration of our Saviour's Purchase tho' Afflictions are laid upon us during the Reprieve and tho' such Afflictions do confessedly come from the Hand of Justice yet they are never laid on without a Design and Mixture of Mercy And therefore as they are the Punishments of Sins past so they are designed as Means of Grace for the time to come And by the wise Counsel of our merciful and gracious God are employed chiefly indeed for our future Reformation but at least for our future Restraint and so are one and a great Branch too of what we call Restraining Grace As therefore we took notice under our last Head that the Reprieve of Man from the immediate Execution of the Sentence of the Law was the Purchase of our Saviour and that so Man's Life came to be continued notwithstanding his Transgression so under this Head we may observe that tho' Sin during such Continuance of Life cannot be restrained by Death yet the Just Merciful and All-wise God has not even in such Circumstances left it without all Restraint but has by Afflictions fitted such a Curb for it which notwithstanding the Saviour's Purchase is an irrefragable Proof of his Justice But tho' it be so does in no wise encroach upon such Purchase but rather promotes the Design of it For a Life continued in order to the Performance of those Conditions by the Performance of which Man in and through his Saviour may obtain Salvation A Life I say continued to such a Purpose is more likely to answer to such Purpose if its Attempts after sinful Commissions be restrained than it could be were such Attempts left free and at large For which Reason such Restraint tho' it be caused by Afflictions does rather fall in with than controul the Design of our Saviour's Purchase And tho' it be confessed that such Restraint is not so efficacious for the Prevention of future Sins as Death without any Reprieve had been for in the last Case the Prevention had been necessary whereas in the first it is at the most but possible yet it must be confessed also that it is most wisely suited to the Circumstances of those about whom it is employed and that for this Reason Because all Restraint being designed either to keep or to make them Good it is necessary in order to either that it be left to their own Choice whether they will improve it to either or both Designs or no For there can be no Goodness at all without such Freedom By all which we may at last understand that tho' Afflictions as well as Death are the Wages of Sin and tho' God does not let the reprieved Life of a Sinner pass on without the Tokens of his Displeasure that is in the present Case without Afflictions yet that it is owing to our Saviour that all such Afflictions are employed
better a Title to Obedience than our suffering such Punishment could have done had that Punishment not been forgiven And it looks absurd at first view that Guilt should consist in the neglect of Obedience and that Punishment should be the Desert and therefore in Justice the Effect of our Guilt and yet that Obedience should be the Effect of our Punishment That is that Guilt after one Remove should be the proper and in a manner natural because just Cause of Duty But we may be therefore sure that it is no such matter because we are told by God himself that there is a Punishment after this Life which shall be Eternal which yet would be impossible if the suffering of Punishment were equivalent to a perfect Obedience to the Directions of the Law Which because for the Reason alledged and for more that might be alledged it cannot be therefore neither can the Forgiveness of such Punishment be so For it is evident that the Forgiveness of our Punishment can do no more towards the making us obedient than the Punishment it self could do should we undergo it And therefore the Pardon of our Sins for the Sake of our Saviour's having suffered in our stead does not of it self suppose us to have fulfilled the Directions of the Law 3. The Forgiveness of our Sins does imply nothing more in it than our Freedom from that Vengeance which the Law has threatned and which we have deserved by our Transgression of the Directions of it and so does only free us from the vindictive Part of the Law But does not for that Reason entitle us to those Rewards which the Law promises to those who obey its Directions Now it is a very different Thing to be barely freed from the Vengeance of the Law and to be entitled to the Promises of the Law because the Case may really so be put as that a Man may obtain a Release in the First Case and yet never be entitled to or possess the Promise in the Last And in all Cases let them be what they will yet still we are certain that the First can only in Reason nay in Nature belong to those who have transgressed the Law and that the Last can only in strictness of Law belong to those who have obeyed the Law And therefore that the First can be only Matter of Favour whereas the Last may be Matter of Right Now if there be any Difference in the Two Cases then let that Difference be lodged where it will yet we are from thence assured that the Cases are not the same and therefore neither can the Forgiveness of our Sins upon the Account of our Saviour's suffering the Vengeance of the Law in our stead be any Argument that we have fulfilled the Directions of the Law And therefore tho' it be affirmed by several Learned Men that we are sufficiently entitled to Eternal Happiness by the bare Pardon of our Sins in Consideration of our Saviour's Sufferings and that for this Reason because when we are treated by God with Impunity we are at the same time treated as Innocents and that he who is treated as an Innocent by God himself who cannot be mistaken in the Case must therefore needs be so Yet these Men as they do not sufficiently distinguish between an Innocent and a Saint so neither do they between Impunity and a Reward For tho' our Saviour's Sufferings are meritorious of a Reward to himself and so the Scriptures tell us yet they are only expiatory to us and that too in the Nature of the Thing For the utmost Design the natural Tendency and the only Business of an Expiation is to obtain an Impunity for such who have deserved and therefore must in Justice without such an Expiation suffer Punishment But neither Scripture Reason or Justice will tell us that a Purchase of Impunity from the Vengeance due to the Transgressors of the Law can be a Purchase of that Reward that is only due to Obedience to the Law In one Word Reward and Punishment derive not only from different but from contrary Principles And Impunity has and that too in the Nature of the Thing a Respect or Relation only to Punishment but none at all to Reward And for that Reason the meritorious Cause of Impunity can have no Concern with Reward neither Since then the Death of our Saviour is the meritorious Cause of Pardon to those who have transgressed the Law it is absurd in Nature and Reason to make it also the meritorious Cause of that Reward which as it supposes no need of Pardon so does by the Law only belong to those who have obeyed the Law So that an Expiation does at the most but make a Man Innocent but does nothing to make him a Saint For it only cancels his Neglect of Duty but does not do that Duty for him which he has neglected By all which it appears 1. That Reward does in Propriety and Justice only belong to Obedience to the Law 2. That Punishment does in Propriety and Justice only belong to the Transgression of the Law 3. That Expiation has no Relation to the Reward of Obedience but that it only concerns that Punishment which without such Expiation is in Justice due to Disobedience Now because God has taught us not only that our Sins shall be forgiven in and through our Saviour but that also in and through the same Saviour we shall obtain a glorious Reward And because as has appeared in general Reward does in Reason and Justice as properly belong to Duty and Obedience as Forgiveness does to Expiation Therefore our next Enquiry must be upon what Obedience such Reward is grounded For we are very sure that because the Distribution of such Reward is lodged in God's Hand therefore the Reward will be bestowed justly and because we are sure of that therefore we are farther assured that it will be conferr'd upon Duty and Obedience And indeed having in what went before seen what Provision God has made for the fulfilling the Vindictive Part of the Law in order to the Possibility and Justice of Man's Salvation and being satisfied that that Provision which he has made for that purpose will not also fulfil the Directive Part of the Law it must be our next Business to enquire what Provision he has made for the fulfilling of such Directive Part. For 1. In the first place We may therefore be certain that it shall be fulfilled one way or other because the Law being God's is in it self Holy Just and Good And we know and that too by the Light of Nature that it cannot be an indifferent Thing to the Ever-wise and most Holy Law-giver whether a Law which is so be obeyed or not For that would be in effect to cast off all Regard to Duty Holiness and Righteousness Nay which is yet more because every just Law must for that Reason even because it is just design the Obedience of them for whom it is made I say because it
must principally and in the first place design their Obedience and not their Punishment and therefore not their Forgiveness neither it would be in effect to contradict his own Design in giving forth his Law For the Design of his Law being the Holiness of his Creatures resulting from their Conformity to the Directions of such Law if he should so pardon their Neglect of such Conformity that is the Neglect of their Obedience as to make no Provision for such Obedience it is evident that by so doing he would have no more Regard to the Directive Part of his own Law than they have had and so the Manner of Forgiving the Transgression of the Law would unravel the main and principal Design of making the Law But we know very well that such a Way of Proceeding is neither agreeable to Wisdom nor to Holiness and therefore much less to Infinite Holiness and Wisdom And therefore if the Ever-Holy and Wise God gave up his beloved and only begotten Son to Death for the accomplishing the vindictive Part of the Law and if for the same purpose he punishes all Mankind not only with many Miseries in this World but also with Death in their going out of it I say if he does all this which yet he himself tells us is his strange Work that so the vindictive Part of the Law may not fall to the Ground shall we think that he will do less or indeed shall we think that he will not rather do more to make good the main and grand and I may add the more natural Design of his Law which is the Holiness of his Creatures No! we are sure that no Word of God shall return empty and that therefore his more solemn and express Declarations and such are his Laws shall be sure to have their Accomplishment and shall be fulfilled in their due time notwithstanding the counter-Endeavours of Hell and Wickedness For it shall not be in the Power of any Enemy to defeat the Counsels or evacuate the main Design of that Law which proceeds from Eternal and Essential Holiness and which moreover is backed with Omnipotence We may therefore very well be satisfied that God has made Provision for the Performance and fulfilling of the Directions of the Law as well as of the Vengeance of the Law 2. And we may be satisfied in the second place that such his Provision does and must extend it self to Man to whom the Law was given For it would be unreasonable to imagine the Design of any Law to be fulfilled when such Law is not obeyed by any of those for whom it was proclaimed and to whom it was given And therefore because the Law was given to Man and requires Obedience from Man we cannot say that the Design of the Law is fulfilled unless Men do obey it 3. We may be satisfied in the third place that no Man in this World except our Saviour alone has obeyed the Directions of the Law from the Days of Adam's Transgression to this very Day And we may be satisfied moreover from so long an Experience of the Thing and from Reason grounded upon such Experience but if both will not do we may be satisfied from Scripture that no Man ever will or shall pay a perfect Obedience to such Directions Nay it is notorious that no Man does so because we know that every Man in this World is under the Curse of the Law and we know that every Man is so because we are assured that every Man in his going out of the World shall undergo such Curse that is that every Man shall die Now Death being the Penalty expresly assigned by the Law to the Transgression of the Law we may be sure that those who are not only liable to such Penalty but who shall also certainly undergo it are Transgressors of the Law And then because that is the Case of all Men in this World we may from hence also conclude that all Men in this World are Transgressors of the Directive Part of the Law 4. We may be satisfied in the fourth place both because it is the Object of each good Christian's Faith and Hope in particular and because it is an express Revelation of the Will of God in general that some Men shall be saved that is shall obtain an Eternal Happiness in another World tho' we know most assuredly that all Men do transgress the Law in this World Now because it is impossible in Justice and absurd in Reason that Vengeance and Salvation should both be the Recompence of the Transgression of the Law and because tho' all Men are Transgressors and some of those Transgressors shall be pursued with Vengeance yet others upon the Account of their sincere tho' imperfect Obedience shall be rewarded with Salvation Therefore we do infer in the 5. Fifth place That those who shall be so rewarded shall in order to such their Reward be then entitled to a perfect Obedience when such Reward shall come to be bestowed That this is a Truth laid down in the Covenant of Grace the Covenant by which alone Men shall obtain Salvation That Reason and Justice do fall in with such Covenant in asserting and maintaining the same Truth and that therefore it is every way firm and good For it sounds harsh to our natural Sense of Justice that without a perfect Obedience a Man should obtain that Reward which in Justice and Reason can only be allotted to such Obedience For an Obedience that falls short of Perfection is in truth and reality whatever it is called a Transgression And so is so far from deserving a Reward that it does indeed stand in need of a Pardon For the Defect of such Obedience is Sin and Sin mixed with any thing corrupts the whole and makes it unclean and impure and we know that nothing that is so can enter into the Kingdom of God And therefore in order to his Salvation St. Paul renounces his own Righteousness which is of the Law in the Third to the Philippians and the Ninth Verse Alas the very best of us in this World have our Failings and Imperfections and not only sinful Weaknesses but sinful Wilfulnesses also Nay our very Righteousnesses are but filthy Rags And then we may be satisfied that we shall never in those Rags be admitted to the Marriage-Supper of the Lamb. When the Prodigal Son returned to his Father the Father not only provided the Feast but the Robe and the Ring too to qualifie his Son to be a fit Guest for such a Feast Now from these Propositions so laid down and confirmed it may seem no very remote Consequence that that Righteousness to which those who shall be saved shall be entitled in order to such their Salvation shall be the Righteousness of that Person whom the New Testament sets forth to be the Saviour of Mankind For their Salvation must in Justice and Reason depend upon their Obedience to the Law otherwise such Salvation can in no Sense be truly
carnal and profane Creatures A Pride hateful to God and Man and such which has constantly betrayed it self to come from that proud Spirit which is the great Deceiver by the detected Falsities Forgeries and Villanies of its most celebrated Pretenders Let us therefore have a care that we be sober and humble Let us not be high-minded but fear And seeing there remaineth a Rest for the People of God let us labour to enter into that Rest lest any of us fall short by reason not only of our Unbelief but of our Confidence also CHAP. IX Whos 's that Perfect Obedience is in Consideration of which Eternal Happiness is given to Man That it is our Saviour's Some Objections answered and the Doctrine of the Imputation asserted 1. Against those who acknowledge the Expiation 2. Against those who deny it This Doctrine agreeable to the Scriptures HAving laid it down in the former Chapter that those who shall be rewarded with Eternal Happiness shall be entitled to a Perfect Obedience in order to such their Reward Our next Business is to enquire Whos 's that Perfect Obedience is to which they shall be so entitled and whether they can obtain such Title according to the Rules of Reason and the Laws of Justice 1. And to satisfie this Enquiry we lay it down first That as the Obedience of our Saviour to the Law while he was in the Flesh and so under the Law does alone in Justice deserve that Eternal Happiness which is promised in the Gospel so the Imputation of such his Righteousness to Believers is the only true and just Reason why they shall be made Partakers of such Eternal Happiness When the Apostle tells us in the Fourth to the Galatians the Fourth and Fifth Verses That God sent forth his Son made of a Woman made under the Law to redeem them that were under the Law he seems to insinuate at least that our Saviour's being under the Law was in such Saviour a requisite Condition in order to his working out of Man's Salvation Now had our Saviour been such a Man as other Men are the Reward it is confessed had only concerned his own Obedience But because by taking upon him the Nature of Man he obliged himself to obey that Law which God had given to Man and because he took upon himself the Nature of Man when he might have refused so to do and lastly because he took it upon himself for Man's sake alone and not for his own therefore for Man's sake alone and not for his own he put himself under an Obligation of obeying the Law From all which the least that can be inferred is that Man was to reap some considerable Benefit and Advantage from such his Obedience It is usually alledged in this Place That had he not obeyed the Law himself he could not have been qualified to make an Expiation by his Death for the Transgression of others And we may take notice that they who offer this Allegation do in effect tell us that his persect Obedience to the Law was nothing more in order to Man's Salvation than a previous Condition to sit and capacitate him to make such Expiation 2. And therefore we offer it to Consideration in the second place That the Reward promised in a Saviour to those who do confessedly pay but an imperfect Obedience to the Law is greater than that Reward which was promised to Adam's perfect Obedience without a Saviour It is true there is not in the Law given to Adam any express Promise at all But then it is as true that there is an implied Promise For when the Law does threaten his Transgression with Death it does as good as promise Life to his Obedience And indeed there was no Occasion much less any Necessity that the Promise of the Reward which was Life should be express because the Law being given to Man in his Innocence that is while he was in actual Possession of the Reward he was by the Tenor of the Law secure of such Possession if he did not forfeit it by his Transgression Now we therefore say that the Reward promised in a Saviour to those who do confessedly pay but an imperfect Obedience to the Law is greater than that Reward which was promised to Adam's perfect Innocence because we are assured by the Gospel that Eye hath not seen nor Ear heard nor can it enter into the Heart of Man to conceive the Reward which God has prepared for those who in a Saviour shall be saved But we are sure that no such Things can be truly said of the Reward promised to Man in his Innocence For he knew his Reward experimentally and therefore it could not be to him Inconceivable Put we the Question then How comes the Reward promised in the New Covenant so far to differ from and to exceed the Reward promised in the Old For no doubt there is therefore a good Reason for such Difference because all God's Words and Actions proceed if I may be allowed so to speak from Essential Reason And it is as certain that they all proceed from Justice Now neither Justice nor Reason do tell us that an Immense and Inconceivable Reward can be assigned to a broken and imperfect Obedience and in the mean while a less Reward be assigned to a perfect Obedience Since therefore a less Reward was proposed to Adam's Obedience had such his Obedience been perfect than what in a Saviour is proposed to a Christians imperfect Obedience it is notorious that such different Rewards can neither in Justice nor Reason be assigned to the different Obediences as such but that the Reward to the Christian must derive from his Saviour's Merits as the Reward of Adam must have derived from his own If therefore it be demanded upon what Grounds the Christian's Reward does derive from his Saviour the only Answer that can be given is That it must derive either from his Saviour's Sufferings in his stead or from his Saviour's Obedience in his stead And then because we have already made it out that it cannot either in Justice or Reason or indeed in Common Sense derive from his Saviour's Sufferings which do and can and that too in Nature only relate to his Punishment but not at all to his Reward therefore we do at last conclude that that immense Reward which the Gospel assigns to the believing Christian it does assign to him only in Consideration of his Saviour's Obedience Before we go any farther we may from what has been said observe That the immense Value of our Saviour's Person and Dignity does shew forth it self as well in the immense Value of his Obedience as in the immense Value of his Death and Sufferings For as it is evident that the Reward of his Obedience is inconceivably greater than the Reward of Adam's had been had Adam been obedient so for the same Reason it is infinitely greater than the Obedience of any other Man were that other only such a Man as Adam was
the Law had promised to such Obedience 1. Now in order to our making good our first Proposition we must examine what Qualifications are absolutely necessary in order to fit any one to make such Purchase and then enquire farther Whether such Qualifications either do or can belong to any other besides our Saviour alone 1. Now the first and leading Qualification in him who shall be fitted for the Purchase of a Release from the Penalty of the Law which they have incurred who transgress the Law is that he who makes such a Purchase must be one of the same Kind with them to whom the Law was given that is in the present Case must be a Man For the Law was given to Man was broke by Man and therefore also the Breach of it in the Congruity of Things and by the Laws of Common Sense and Justice is to be punished in Man Now tho' our Saviour was not the only Person in the World who had this Qualification for every Man besides is as real a Man as he was yet he was the only Man among all Mankind who by this Qualification was fitted for the effectual enterprising and bring to pass those other Things which are absolutely necessary for the Purchase of the Release spoken of 2. For secondly The next Qualification of him who is fitted for the Purchase of a Release from the Penalty of the Law is that he must be an Innocent Man He was to be a Lamb without Spot or Blemish and to answer to the Paschal Lamb which in this as in several other Things was a Type of that Lamb of God which should take away the Sins of the World For he who is qualified to suffer for others in order to release those others from the Penalty of Sin must not therefore be a Sinner himself because if he be so then he must by the Laws of Justice and even according to the Tenor of that Law which assigns such Penalty suffer the Penalty for his own Sin And he who suffers the Penalty of the Law for his own Sin cannot therefore suffer the Penalty of the Law for the Sin of others at least in the present Case he cannot because the Penalty of the Law upon the Transgression of it being the loss of Life his own Penalty exhausts the whole Stock or Possibility of his so suffering For he who has but one Life and no Man has more can pay that Life but once And therefore if he lays it down for his own Sin he must for that Reason have nothing remaining to lay down for the Sin of others 3. He who is duely qualified to purchase for Mankind a Release from the Penalty of their Sins must be a Man whose Life is of more value than the Lives of all the rest And the Reason for it is plain and obvious because we know that the Lives of all the rest can make no such Purchase And the Lives of all the rest cannot therefore make any such Purchase because the Death of no single Man can make such a Purchase for himself For what no single Man's Death can do for himself that the Death of all Men cannot do for all For there is just the same Proportion between all Men and the Death of all that there is between one Man and the Death of one Besides supposing a Man to be a Transgressor of the Law it looks very absurd to affirm that the Death of such a Man which is the Punishment of his Transgression can be the Purchase of his Release from such Punishment For then the self-same Thing and that is his Death will bear a quite contrary Character for it will be both the Wages of his Sin and the Purchase of his Ransom that is it will be the Vengeance of the Law and the meritorious Cause of his Freedom from the same Vengeance Every Sinner therefore against the Law must be a Sufferer under the Vengeance of the Law and that Law which adjudges those who transgress it to Death does not by so doing design to return them to Life For if it did then by inflicting its Sentence it must design to revoke that Sentence and by making the Punishment a Release from the Punishment must look like Trifling and not like Justice The Loss of no Sinner's Life then is of Value sufficient to put a Period to the Execution of that Sentence which the Law pronounces against those who do transgress it And every Man's Death in the Course of the Law had been eternal were there nothing else to remove it but his own Strength that is in the present Case but his own Death For if the Death of a dead Man can do nothing for him we are sure that no other of his Powers or Merits can For in the Case before us he can have no other Merits of his own to restore him to Life but the Merits of his Death and the Merits of his Death as we have seen are none at all And to expect any Relief from a dead Man's Powers is to expect Relief from no Powers at all for Death crushes all the Powers of all Men whom it seizes Now this being the Condition of all Men who die because they are Sinners we may from hence safely conclude That if any Man who is not a Sinner shall undertake by his own Death to make good the Ransom of all the rest from Death and after that shall make good his Undertaking I say if any Man shall do this we may be sure that his Death or his Life which you will is therefore of more Value than the Life or Death of all the rest because he does by it make that Purchase which all the rest could not do by theirs For in the present Case the Value of the Thing may be truly and justly estimated by the Possibility of the Purchase it can make because the Possibility of the Purchase depends upon the Allowance of the Great and Just God And then when God is willing to release Man from Death in Consideration of the Death of his Innocent Saviour and when he is not so in Consideration of sinful Man 's own Death and when he does professedly declare such his Will in many Places of his Word and by the repeated Attestations of Matter of Fact whereby several People have been raised from the Dead in the Name and by the professed Power of the Saviour I say when we find all these Things to be so as we do or at least easily may find them so to be we may from the Whole conclude That the Death of our Saviour is of more Value than the Death of all Mankind because it can do that which the Death of all the rest cannot do and that too by the Allowance of God himself Now from these Propositions so laid down we may therefore conclude That there is not Salvation in any other but only in our Saviour set forth in the Gospel 1. Because it was absolutely necessary in Justice that the
Law being broken by Man the Punishment threatned by the Law should be inflicted upon Man For the Threatning of the Law has the same Eye and the same necessary Relation to the Transgression of the Law that the Reward has to the Obedience of the Law and either the same necessary Relation to each that it has to God's Holiness and Justice And therefore so necessary as it is that God should be holy and just and so necessary as it is that he should in his Laws be serious and true so necessary also it is that the Vengeance threatned by his Law should there take place where the Duty commanded by the Law is not observed Now because no Man except our Saviour could so undergo the Vengeance of the Law as without such Saviour's Help to be ever freed from such Vengeance therefore we do from hence conclude in the first place That there is not Salvation in any other but in our Saviour alone as Salvation is taken for our Redemption from the Vengeance and Penalty of the Law 2. Because no Man is qualified to suffer the Penalty of the Law so as by such his Suffering to redeem others that are Sinners against the Law from their suffering for their Sin unless he be Innocent himself and because no Man except our Saviour was ever Innocent that is no Man except him alone did ever fulfil the Law therefore no Sinner can be saved as Salvation is taken for a Release from the Vengeance of the Law but only by the Death of our Saviour that is by the Death of him who was the only Innocent Person of all Mankind 3. Since the Death of all Mankind because it is the Punishment threatned by the Law against the Transgressors of it is not of Value sufficient to expiate the Sin of Mankind whether we consider their Punishment and their Guilt in the Gross or Lump or whether we consider it in Parcels and Particulars and since Death is the necessary Punishment of the Law and since lastly if there be any Redemption purchased from such Penalty it must for the Reasons alledged be made by a Death of more Value than all the Deaths of all Men I say from these Reasons in conjunction we do conclude That such a Death is necessary for Man's Redemption from the Curse of the Law And then whose Death that Death was the Scriptures do sufficiently acquaint us for they expresly and frequently tell us that it was the Death of him whom they set forth to us as our Saviour And from the Whole we do infer in the first place that no other but our Saviour alone could so suffer for Sin as to obtain a Release from the Penalty which the Law had threatned against it and that therefore there is no Salvation in any other and that there is no other Name given under Heaven among Men whereby we must be saved as Salvation is taken for our Redemption from that Vengeance which the Law threatens and executes upon the Transgressors of it 2. The second Proposition therefore laid down at the Beginning comes next in order to be made good and that is That no one but our Saviour alone could by an exact Obedience to the Law purchase that Reward Eternal Life which the Law has promised to such Obedience And to make this good in a few Words we take notice in the first place That as the Law by the same Tenor of Justice does engage the promised Reward to the Obedience as it does the threatned Vengeance to the Transgression of the Law so we may from thence infer under this Head That every Man who will be Partaker of such Reward must pay such Obedience as we did under the last That every Man who was guilty of such Transgression must suffer such Vengeance He therefore who does not obey the Law does lose his Reward as certainly as he who transgresses it does pull upon himself his own Punishment Now because among all the Race of Mankind no one except our Saviour has obeyed the Law therefore every Man besides him when left to the Purchase of his own Obedience has forfeited his Reward No Man therefore does upon his own Account deserve such Reward And then because we know that Justice does deal with Men according to their Deserts therefore the Reward being Eternal Life or Happiness every Man when left to himself has lost such Happiness That Part therefore of a Gospel-Salvation which consists in Eternal Life is not to be expected by any Man but by the Saviour alone Now that our Saviour obtained it for himself is not questioned And that it was the Gift of God to others in Consideration of his Obedience to that Law to which others as well as himself stood obliged we have already and at large made good If therefore all other Mens obtaining Eternal Life does not proceed from their own Obedience but from their Saviour's then we may now begin to perceive that there is not Salvation in any other but in our Saviour alone and that too as Salvation is taken in the Gospel for the Gift of Eternal Life The Socinians we know who deny the Salvation of Man to be our Saviour's Purchase do attempt to elude the Force and Evinence of that Text which is the Subject of our present Discourse and of several other express Places of Scripture which assert the same Thing with it by starting the Question Whether or no God might not by some other Means have saved Mankind had it pleased him so to do And by that Means have as we observed at the Beginning endeavour'd to alter the Controversie from Matter of Fact to Matter of Possibility and to engage others in that sawcy Dispute of what God can do and of what God cannot do Whereas it is sufficient for us to know what God has done and abundantly sufficient when he himself does furnish us with such Knowledge by his own express Word And if what that Word tells us in the Case be agreeable to our rational Sentiments to that Light which he has afforded us to judge Things by if moreover it be agreeable to the Common Sense that all Men have of Justice and Justice and Reason in this Case are the same if that our Light which confirms to us the Reasonableness and Justice of his Proceedings in the present Case does by the same Measures guide all Governments not only Christian but others and if it be more than a shrewd Sign that because Mankind do and that too in their Laws and Judicial Proceedings treat one another for the most part as God in the present Case does treat Mankind that they are guided so to do by that Light which he himself has afforded them I say if all these Things are so then it may besides all that has hitherto been offered make out the Conclusion at least very plausible That his Dealings with Mankind in and through a Saviour as we have out of the Scriptures laid it down are just and
there can be no Punishment and a dead Man can have no Sensation unless we could suppose him to be alive and dead at the same time This Head may meet with Objections but I shall wave them and any Answer to them at present and that too so much the rather because it is notorious that the Scriptures do lay the greater Punishment that is the Punishment greater than Death not only beyond the Resurrection but also beyond the last Judgment it-self 7. Lastly In such Places of Scripture where the greater Punishment is threatned it is not as the Punishment of the Transgression of the Positive Law was absolute and peremptory but only conditional And therefore if we except first the Sin against the Holy Ghost whatever that be for it does not concern us to enquire at present and secondly The Refusing the Conditions of Salvation offered in a Saviour that grand and comprehensive Sin which either neglects or renounces the only Means appointed for Man's Salvation from all his other Sins I say if we except these Two Cases if yet they be Two not only the future Punishment threatned against the Breach of this or that Law but of any or all may as far as the Gospel-discoveries go be remitted Which may teach us to think that the Punishment threatned in the Law given to Adam was not a Punishment after a Resurrection but a Punishment without a Resurrection And that not only because at that Time when the Law was given to him there was not only no Resurrection promised but no Saviour neither by whom alone a Resurrection was to be brought to pass To which we may add That the Death threatned to Adam by the Law given to him was as we have seen upon his Transgression of such Law absolute and peremptory and that the Execution of such Threat is as the Scripture and our Experience tells us absolute and universal Whereas the Threat of an eternal Death as we are well assured is upon the Breach of God's Laws only conditional Now it looks hard to our Reason that when only Death is threatned in the Law and that Death at the very most but indefinite to say that the Death so threatned does imply a double Death that is both a Temporal and Eternal Death And it looks harder yet to say that the Threat and Execution of one of the Deaths is absolute and universal but that the Threat and Execution of the other is only partial and conditional For our Reason tells us that neither any Threat nor Execution of Death can be both Absolute and Conditional both Universal and Particular too From the Whole we take notice That tho God was obliged both by his Truth and Justice to execute the Threatning against the Transgression of the first Law because that Law being given to Man in his Innocence that is before he stood in need of a Saviour and therefore before God had promised one the Threat of Punishment upon the Breach of the Law was as we have seen absolute and peremptory Yet because the Revelation of a future and everlasting Punishment in the New Covenant is rather made by way of Information than by way of peremptory Threat and absolute Denunciation therefore God is obliged to the Execution of such Penalty only by his Justice but not at all by his Veracity If then there be a Means provided to satisfie such his Justice without the rigorous Execution of such declared and without such Means certain Penalty it will well enough follow That such Penalty may be remitted without any Prejudice either to his Justice or to his Truth And therefore in what is to follow we trust to make it good That our Lord and Saviour JESUS CHRIST may and will justly save us from the Punishment peremptorily threatned to Adam viz. the Loss of Life executed upon him and all Mankind by releasing us from it after we have suffer'd it and from a future and eternal Punishment expresly revealed in the New Testament to Christians and probably also after the Fall of Adam and the Promise of the Seed of the Woman believed by the Patriarchs and by God's Church among the Jews by preventing it CHAP. I. The Scriptures do most expresly assert That Mankind are redeemed by the Blood of JESUS CHRIST It is not agreeable to the Divine Wisdom or to the Method of his Proceedings in the like Cases to employ greater Means to bring his Purposes to pass where less may be sufficient Punishment is the necessary Wages of Sin An Objection to this Position answered AND as we have grounded what we have said in the Introduction upon the Revelations of God which have acquainted us how Sin and the Punishment of it Death entred into the World So in what is to follow concerning the Redemption of Mankind both from Sin and Punishment we shall take our Rise from Revelation likewise Not only because we had known nothing of the Matter but by Revelation but also because in the present Case Revelation is undoubtedly the best Guide of our Reason For Reason must of necessity be guided best by that without the Guidance of which Reason it self is confessedly blind And we are very sure that it becomes all those who acknowledge the Scriptures to be the Revelations of God I say it becomes them in modesty and deference to the Author and in prudence for their own more certain Conduct rather to endeavour to bring their Reason to comply with the Revelation than to bring the Revelation to comply with their Reason And therefore that we our selves may practise what we cannot but judge to be best in the Practice of others we shall lay the Ground-work of all that is to follow upon the Words of St. Peter in the Fourth of the Acts and the Twelfth Verse Neither is there Salvation in any other For there is no other Name under Heaven given among Men whereby we must be saved In which Words the Apostle and he too at that time filled with the Holy-Ghost as appears by the Eighth Verse does expresly tell us for the Words do import so much That Men must be saved by JESUS CHRIST of Nazareth consult the Tenth Verse and by no other For it is evident that by Name in the Text is meant Jesus Christ himself because what he calls Name in one Part of the Verse is opposed to any other in the other Part of the Verse As in the Tenth Verse he tells us that the impotent Man was made whole by the Name of Jesus Christ in the beginning and that he was made whole by Him that is by Jesus Christ in the latter end of the Verse Those who professedly and avowedly make it their Business to evacuate the Purchase of Our Saviour's Merits and Blood do to that purpose start if not an impertinent yet a very sawcie Question which is Whether or no God could not have saved sinful Man by some other Means than by the Death of his Son And by that means would alter
if the Punishment of Sin be absolutely just and necessary then how came it to pass that God did in his Counsel design and in his Wisdom appoint a Saviour in order to the Paâ—don of Sin For in Order of Nature the Design of Pardon must be antecedent to thâ— Design of sending a Saviour And therefore if the Punishment of Sin be as it is laâ— down both just and necessary God's Design of Pardon going counter to this Law should seem to be unjust For how could he justâ— design to pardon That which in Justice anâ— Necessity he stood obliged to punish Now to this several Things may be answered As 1. First That God did never design 〈◊〉 pardon Sin but only in and through a Savâ—our And how far such his Design undeâ— such a Restriction and Limitation is juâ—â— is very much the Business of that part of thâ— Discourse which in its Place is to follow anâ— therefore must not be forestalled here 2. That notwithstanding a Saviour yeâ— God did never pardon any sinful Creature All the Sinners that we know are the falâ— Angels and Men. What the Scriptures acquaint us with concerning the first we know well enough And among such Things 〈◊〉 know also that it gives us an Account 〈◊〉 the Punishment of their Sin And as foâ— Men those of them that shall be saved aâ— last in consideration of their Saviour's Merits do yet in this World suffer Losses anâ— Crosses and Pains and Diseases and Death All which are undoubted Punishments of Sinâ— And for the rest who shall by a final Impenitence reject the Benefit of the Saviour's Purchase besides the Calamities which they suffer in common with the Good in this World the Scriptures do acquaint us sufficiently with their Doom in the next So that if it may be an Argument that Punishment is the necessary Reward of Sin because all Sinners have do and shall suffer Punishment then God's designing of a Saviour for Mankind in order to their Pardon does not take off the Force of such Argument because notwithstanding such his Design and such Saviour no Sinner whatsoever did or ever will go unpunished 3. But then thirdly It is a Mistake that the Salvation of Man from Punishment was the immediate and direct Design in God's Counsel of sending a Saviour For as we shall see hereafter See Chap. 12. the Business of our Saviour's Coming was to bring back Mankind to his Father's Kingdom who had been drawn into a Revolt from his Dominion and Jurisdiction by the Sollicitations of the Devil and had thereby put a Slight upon the Authority of the King of all the World and so in some sense lesned the Extent of his Kingdom Now those whom our Saviour shall so bring back to their Allegiance by restoring them to their lost Holiness shall indeed be saved But then their Salvation is a Consequence of their Return to Holiness and so was not properly the Design of God's sending a Saviour but the Consequence of the Success of such Design CHAP. II. The Gospel holds forth no such thing as an Absolute or Unconditional Pardon no nor yet an Arbitrary Pardon THe next and Second Proposition offered to be made good in order to our main Design is this That the Gospel holds out no such thing to us as an absolute Forgiveness of Sin Which Proposition I therefore lay down here not only because it is introductive to some Things which are to follow but also to obviate the Conceit of those Men who think they do sufficiently wipe away the Merits of our Saviour in reference to the Pardon of our Sins by telling us that God may without any more ado pardon such our Sins by his Free Grace 1. But in the first place we cannot but take notice that what God may do and what he has declared he will do are Two very different and distinct Things Though therefore it be supposed that God may grant us an absolute Pardon yet if in those very Revelations in which he has discovered to us his Intention of pardoning us he does expresly tell us that he will not do so it will be proper and modest in us to acquiesce in what he so tells us rather than to raise in our Imaginations conceited Possibilities which do directly contradict such his Declarations 2. But secondly He who brought us the Gospel-Dispensation in order to the Pardon of our Sins does in that Dispensation require our Repentance in order to such our Pardon Now if Repentance be a Condition of the Pardon then for that Reason alone the Pardon cannot be Absolute because an Absolute Pardon is an Inconditional Pardon and it is impossible that the same Pardon should be a Conditional and an Inconditional Pardon too 3. An Absolute Pardon of Sin fights directly against all that we have said under our last Head concerning the Necessary Justice of Punishment And therefore till all that be wiped away we may upon those Grounds deny that there is any such sort of Pardon For it looks a little too harsh and that too to Natural Reason to tell us that God will be reconciled to the Enemy of his Nature and that upon the account of mere Mercy and Compassion and that in order to his being so he will throw away all Considerations of his Justice which in this Case we may adventure to call his Natural Displeasure 4. If we should suppose or allow such a thing as an Absolute Forgiveness then we must also allow that it may be the same thing whether a man has been the best or the worst Man in the whole World For an Absolute Forgiveness in the Reason and Nature of it may as well be extended to the one as to the other For let what Reason soever be assigned why it may not and that very Reason be it what it will will prove the Forgiveness not to be absolute For that Forgiveness cannot be so that is limited or restrained by any Reason whatsoever 5. An Absolute Pardon does throw a Slur upon God's Wisdom no less than it does so upon his Justice For the Law being his against which we have transgressed and he having in that very Law threatned Vengeance upon such as shall transgress it if after the Transgression he should grant an absolute Pardon to such Transgression he would by such a Pardon as much void and annul the Law as he had by his Threatning established and confirmed it And so it might come to the same pass as to the final Event whether he had made any Law or no. For what is the Difference not to make a Law and not to execute it And therefore St. Paul point-blank to our purpose tells us in the Third to the Romans the Fifth and Sixth Verses That if God should not execute Vengeance he would not only be unrighteous but that also he could not judge the World And we may add that he would not only be unrighteous but considering the Contrariety that would be between his Practice
too in the Nature of the Thing it self that Creatures so different should be under different Laws and that therefore neither their Obedience to nor their Transgression of those several Laws under which they are should have any such Concern or Relation to one another as that one sort of Creature should in any Case undergo the Penalty of the Transgressions of the other sort of Creature And therefore for the same Reason that we should look upon it as absurd and unjust that a Man should suffer for the Sin of an Angel I say for the same Reason we should think it no less absurd and unjust that an Angel should suffer for the Sin of a Man The Thing might be made out in more Words But it needs not Now these few Remarks being left by the way to give Perspicuity and Strength to those Things which are to follow the Wisdom Justice Reasonableness and Congruity of the Redemption of Mankind by the Sufferings and Death of our Saviour as that Redemption is expresly laid down in the Scriptures will appear from these following Considerations 1. And first Our Saviour who by his Death and Sufferings undertook the Purchase of Man's Redemption was as really and verily a Man himself as were those whom he undertook to redeem This is evident because he is all along in the New Testament called Man the Son of Man and the like as we have made it out already And this so far accommodates the Scripture-Account of the Purchase of Man's Salvation to the Law that 1. As the Law threatned the Punishment to Man alone and to no other Creature so in the Purchase of the Redemption Man alone suffered such Punishment and no Creature besides 2. And secondly As it accommodates the Scripture-Account of the Purchase of Man's Redemption to the Law because our Saviour who suffered in order to such Purchase was a Man So it accommodates the Scripture-Account of the Purchase of Man's Redemption to the Rules of Justice because our Saviour who suffered in order to such Purchase was an Innocent Man It may perhaps at first sight look strange when I say that the Purchase of Redemption by the Death of an Innocent Man is accommodated to the Rules of Justice But the Wonder will then vanish when I shall come to make it out that tho' an Innocent Man cannot without his own Consent be justly punished yet that with such his Consent he may be so punished But because That belongs to another Place therefore in this I pass it by For that that I design at present is only to shew that it is not agreeable to the Laws of Justice that a Criminal against the Law should expiate another Man's Sin by suffering the Penalty of the Law Because the Penalty which he suffers being the just Demerit and Wages of his own Sin he cannot by undergoing the Punishment of his own Sin add any such Desert to such his Punishment as to make it meritorious of Impunity to any other Sinner As therefore under the last Head we learnt that he who by his Punishment expiates the Sin of another Man must in Reason and Congruity be a Man himself so under this Head we may learn that he must be an Innocent Man likewise And so the Sufferings and Death of our Saviour for the Redemption of Mankind will afford us a further Congruity to the Rules of Reason and Justice in that that Saviour is exhibited to us in the Gospel not only to be a Man but also to be an Innocent Man 3. The Wisdom Justice and Reasonableness of the Redemption of Mankind by the Sufferings and Death of our Saviour as that Saviour was a Man will yet farther and more notoriously appear if we consider the first Rise and Formation of Mankind according to that Account which the Scriptures give us of it For there we are told in general that God did of one Blood make all Nations of Men for to dwell on the Face of the whole Earth in the Seventeenth Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles And then if we look back to the original Creation of Mankind and there enquire more particularly how this was done we shall from thence be informed that God first made Adam out of the Earth and that after that he made Eve out of Adam both of them extraordinary and miraculous Productions and that then through all succeeding Generations he formed all the rest of Mankind out of both or such succeeding Pairs which proceeded from both to an understanding Man as miraculous tho' a more ordinary Production than that of the first Man and Woman So that all Mankind are by the Scripture-Account of the Thing a continued Propagation of the Blood of Adam branched out through the several Disseminations of all succeeding Men and Women from his Days to this present Time Now our Saviour as he was Man took part of this Flesh and Blood so the Scripture and by doing so became a Part of that Common Blood out of which all the particular Men in the World are and always have been made as well as he he stands therefore in as near a Relation to all Mankind as can possibly be made by the same Flesh and Blood and that Relation may well be granted to be very near because it is that very Relation which the several Parts of a Thing by continued derivation the same have to one another And so far the Relation of our Saviour to the rest of Mankind is in all Circumstances exactly the same with that Relation which every other Man has to every other But yet there is something peculiar to our Saviour in his becoming Man which does not belong to any other Man whomsoever And that is that as the first Woman was formed only out of the Man so our Saviour was formed only out of the Woman And accordingly the first Promise of Redemption that God gave to Adam after he had sinned was Prophetically worded when he told him that the Seed of the Woman should break the Serpent's Head And therefore as Adam is in the Scriptures called the first Man because he was formed out of the Earth so our Saviour is called the second Man in the same Scriptures because he was formed out of the Woman that is he was the first Man after his Kind as Adam was in his To our present Purpose and Design then As we cannot but take notice that God's Counsel and merciful Purpose for the Redemption of Mankind was very early for that Counsel must needs be so that was in a manner Cotemporary to Man's first Sin as the immediate Discovery of that Counsel to Man upon the Commission of that Sin does make it appear so some Glimpses of that Counsel do to me seem to shew forth themselves in the Scripture-Account of Man's Creation For when God tells us in his Word that he has so ordered the Creation Propagation and Dissemination of Mankind that tho' their Numbers are to us Innumerable yet we do for all
that know that they all came from one single Fountain that is from one single Man and so that they are all but so many Rivulets from that Fountain And when moreover we are assured that our Saviour is One of those Rivulets For tho' our Saviour was only to be made of the Woman yet because the Woman was made out of the Man therefore our Saviour did by the Woman derive from the same one single Person with the rest of Mankind I say when we consider all this methinks it is no hard matter to conceive that God himself does in his Word lay the Ground-work of Man's Redemption by a Saviour if I may be allowed so to word my self in that near and intimate Relation which our Saviour by becoming Man has to all Mankind besides and that the Intimacy of such Relation consists in this that the Saviour and all Mankind do derive from one single and common Fountain And hence we are told in one Place that as by Man came Death there is the Sin of Adam and the Wages of such Sin by Man came also the Resurrection of the Dead there is the Redemption of our Saviour and his Purchase And more expresly still to our present Purpose speaks the same Apostle in the same Chapter the Fifteenth of the First to the Corinthians For as in Adam all died so in Christ shall all be made alive And to the same purpose again in the Fifth to the Romans and the Eighteenth Verse Therefore as by the Offence of one Judgment came upon all Men to Condemnation even so by the Righteousness of one the Free-gift came upon all Men unto Justification of Life In all which Texts and several others that might be named it is notorious that the Redemption of Mankind is so ascribed to the second Adam the Man Christ Jesus as the Sin and Death of Mankind is ascribed to the first Man Adam And I do not at all question but that those Hints which the Scriptures do frequently offer to us of our Saviour's taking the Humane Nature in order to our Redemption of his taking Part of the same Flesh and Blood with us of his being our Brother and the like I say I do not at all question but that when seriously considered they may mightily assist and facilitate both our Conceptions and Belief of the Wisdom Justice Reasonableness and Congruity of our Saviour's Incarnation Death Resurrection in one Word of that Redemption which he by being made one with Mankind by taking their Nature upon himself has purchased form them And may mightily conduce to the Removing of those Difficulties which the Enemies of the Cross of Christ have thrown as so many Stumbling-blocks in the Way of plain and honest Christians 4. The Wisdom Justice Reasonableness and Congruity of our Saviour's Incarnation in order to his Purchase of Man's Redemption does yet farther appear in that by becoming Man he put himself into a Capacity of suffering Death that is of suffering that Punishment which the Law had denounced against those that should transgress it For it is a gross Mistake and does indeed bring a Scandal upon God's Veracity to affirm That he threatens greater Vengeance in any Law before the Transgression of it than he will execute after the Transgression that so he may the more effectually prevent such Transgression For God never yet threatned any peremptory and unconditional Punishment in any Law which he has not or when the Time comes he will not as certainly execute In the Day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die says God The Threatning we see is peremptory and the Execution we find is so too and therefore all Sinners die And I cannot in the least doubt but that for the same Reason an eternal Punishment will be the certain Vengeance upon a final Impenitence But that is not so direct to my present purpose and therefore here I pass it by But to confirm what I am now upon I say that God does not pardon the Death threatned in his Law against Sin no not in Consideration of the Death of our Saviour and therefore notwithstanding his Death and that too in our stead we see that all Men and even those who hope for Salvation by such his Death do yet die What therefore our Saviour in this Case has puchased for us is not a Freedom but a Release from Death And therefore that Redemption from Death which is the Purchase of his Blood is to be accomplished after we have been dead by a Resurrection A Resurrection then is to make good the Purchase of his Death and therefore his Death purchased for us not a Freedom but a Release from our Death by such Resurrection Now as his Death was necessary for such a Purchase so his Incarnation was necessary in order to such his Death And he was therefore made of the same Blood with all Mankind that by shedding that Blood for Mankind he might after his own Resurrection restore the Lives of all Men which had been forfeited by Adam's Transgression So that as his Death was the meritorious Expiation of Sin and as a Resurrection is the Fruit and Effect of such his Expiation So his Incarnation was a necessary Forerunner of such his Death and therefore before he could possibly die for Man and so purchase a Redemption of Man from Death it was agreeable to the Laws of Wisdom Justice and Reason that he should become Man himself But then how his Death came to be of so valuable a Price as to make so glorious a Purchase we must leave to farther Enquiry For by that it will appear that as it was necessary that he should die the Death of a Man so it was necessary that such his Humanity should be united to the Divinity And by both it will appear that God was manifested in the Flesh to destroy the Works of the Devil and that therefore when the Scriptures tell us so much they tell us no more than what is agreeable to Wisdom Justice and Reason CHAP. VI. The Divinity of the Son of God necessary for the Expitation of Man's Sin as well as his Humanity Some Doctrinal Inferences A general Proof That as our Saviour did actually die so that he might justly die for the Expiation of Sin HAving therefore seen that our Lord Jesus Christ was qualified by his Incarnation to make an Expiation for Sin by the Sacrifice of himself and that such his Qualification is agreeable to the Laws of Justice and to the Rules of Reason and Wisdom Our next Enquiry must be How such his Sacrifice came to be of such a Value as to be justly sufficient to make good such an Expiation For because the Death of an Innocent Man if he be no more than a mere Man is but the Death of a Creature and because no Creature can by its Punishment in another Creature 's stead expiate the Sin of that other Creature for if it could then a Creature might by its own Punishment
expiate its own Sin both which we have already shewed to be impossible Therefore it was necessary that as our Saviour in order to his undertaking the Expiation of Sin should be a real Man a Creature so that he should be more than a Creature in order to the accomplishing of such his Undertaking For tho' by becoming Man he did accommodate his Condition to his Design of undertaking an Expiation as we have just now seen yet for all that his Humanity had sunk under but but had not taken away the Burden had it not been supported by his Divinity For that that crushes both Angels and Men and that too while they cope against it only with their own Strength beyond the possibility of a Recovery must for the same Reason have crushed him also when once he had put himself in Man's stead and by consequence into Man's Condition had he not been endowed with a Power superiour to both to enable him to subdue and conquer it And what Power but that of God can we think sufficient to conquer Sin and Death and that too when they had got to such an heighth as to have infected and over-run the whole Race of Mankind Can we think that when the Contagion and Mischief had spread it self so wide that even the best of Men and those whose Graces are chiefly celebrated by the Spirit of God himself could not preserve themselves from the overflowing Inundation I say can we think that in such a Case any one single Man were he no more than a Man could have saved himself from the universal Mischief by the Strength of his own Resolution or Vertue And if in Reason we must think that he could not then how can we in Reason think that his Strength should be sufficient to rescue and save all the Rest No! Such Salvation belongs only to the Arm of God and He who can save from Sin Death and Hell and can over and above extend such Salvation over all the Earth and that too through all the successive Generations of Mankind that ever did or ever shall live upon the Earth must be God and God alone The Extensive Merit therefore of the Death and Sufferings of the Man Christ Jesus derives it self from the Infinite Dignity of Jesus the Son of God For had not this Jesus been the Son of God as well as the Son of Man he had never been the Saviour of Man And if there be not Salvation in any other as in effect the whole Book of God does tell us it may seem inconceivable how this Seed of the Woman should extend this Salvation and so break the Serpent's Head from the Days of Adam to the Consummation of all Things unless all Things were in his Disposal that is unless he were God No! He who considers the Thing seriously and wisely may be satisfied not only by the Scriptures but by his own Reason also that there is the same Mercy and the same Power required to redeem sinful Man that was required to make Man and that He only who did the first can do the last And therefore as we are taught by God that all Things were made by his Word so are we also that this Word was made Flesh and that by being so made he became to us after we were dead in Trespasses and Sins the Word of Life From all which and a great deal more that might be offered both from Reason and from Revelation some of which Things we have already spoken to and some of which we shall have occasion to speak to hereafter we may be not only informed but assured That the great Merit of our Saviour's Expiation made for Sin by his Death and Passion did arise from hence that his Divinity was personally united to that Body which underwent such Death or that nothing less than the Death of the Son of God could expiate that Death which the Law had denounced against the Sin of Man But because these Thing will appear in a more full and clear Light in the farther Prosecution of our Design therefore we here leave them for a while and proceed For it having appeared as to Matter of Fact and that too by most express Declarations of Scripture that our Saviour was made an Expiatory Sacrifice for Sin and it having also appeared that he did by his Incarnation accommodate his Condition to the making good of such Expiation and that too in a Way very agreeable to our Natural Sense and Reason The next Thing to be spoken to is the Matter of Right or whether or no he could make such Expiation in Justice But before we proceed to speak to That it will be proper that we make some Inferences of weight and moment from what has been already spoken And 1. By what has been said it appears plainly That tho' our Saviour made good the Purchase of our Redemption by his Death and Resurrection yet that such his Purchase shall not be fully made over to us till our own Resurrection That he made good the Purchase his Resurrection is a Demonstration For because the Wages of Sin is Death and because he died for our Sins and not for his own and because after such his Death he rose again and because such his Resurrection was a Discharge from the Penalty of those Sins for which he died I say from all these Things it is evident that he accomplished his designed Purchase that is he made good his Expiation by his Death and Resurrection But then on the other side because it is most certain that we are not redeemed from the Curse or Penalty of the Law till we are redeemed from Death and because we are not redeemed from Death till we rise from the Dead that is till our own Resurrection therefore it is as evident that till such our Resurrection we are not put into the Possession of such his Purchase And therefore strictly speaking no Man be he who he will is â—actually justified in this Life For because every Man that lives shall certainly die and because Death is the Penalty threatned to Sin by the Law it therefore grates too hard upon our common Sense to tell us that any Man is then justified when he is not only liable to the Vengeance of the Law but when he is also sure in a little time to undergo such Vengeance If therefore any Man be according to a Gospel-estimate of Righteousness a righteous or good Man we may upon that Account say and we shall say true that he is in a justifiable Condition but we cannot truly say that he is a justified Person Justification then in the Execution belongs to a future Life and not to this And when we shall come to discourse on the second Thing contained in a Gospel-Salvation which is a Restitution to Holiness and the Consequent of it the Gift of Eternal Life we shall then be more fully satisfied that Justification cannot belong to any Man in this World because no Man in this
it then let the Punishment be what it will yet still it will be just Now where a Person does willingly freely and oâ— his own accord submit to a Punishment there the Punishment tho' he did not by his Crimes deserve it cannot therefore be thought unjust because it would be an odd and unheard-of kind of Injustice to any Person to injure him by sulfilling his own Desires and by gratifying his Choice If then we apply this to our Saviour's Sufferings which he underwent in our stead we may be informed by him himself that he laid down his Life and that no Man took it from him that is he laid it down willingly And because he did so therefore tho' God laid upon him and accepted from him the Vengeance due to our Sins in order to our Acquittance yet he did him no Injury by so doing because he was willing as our Surety and Proxy to undergo and suffer such Vengeance Indeed it is not to dissembled that because the Sin was Ours and not His that God therefore might and that justly too have refused the Punishment to be his and not ours But then withal we must take notice that tho' God might have done so yet that there was no Law of Justice that either did or could oblige him so to do And therefore to clear that or any other Doubt that may arise from what has been spoken upon this Head we add 3. In the third place That where that Person who willingly suffers for another's Crime has an undoubted Right and Title in all those Things and an uncontroulable Power to dispose of all those Things which are either damnified or lost by such his Sufferings In such a Case as there is no Injury done to his Person by reason of his willingness to suffer so neither is there any Violence offered to any Law of Justice by reason of such his undoubted Right and absolute Power Now at once to clear this Matter and to bring it up to the Point we aim at we must take notice that our Saviour tells us himself in the Tenth of St. John and the Eighteenth Verse I have power to lay down my Life and I have power to take it again And Reason tells us the same Thing For because he made the Worlds and because all things were created by him and for him and because for these Reasons alone he is the Almighty God therefore there can be no question but that he may justly challenge to himself that Power which the Supreme God claims as his most undoubted Prerogative I kill and I make alive To which we may likewise add that he is to be Judge both of Quick and Dead as even that Creed which goes by the Name of the Apostles and even our Adversaries too in the present Case do allow Now it cannot in the least seem reasonable that he should have the Power of Damning and Saving who has not the Power of Life and Death For it must needs sound harsh to our Reason to grant him the greater Power and in the mean time to deny him the less Taking it therefore for granted that he had an absolute and uncontroulable Power to dispose of his Life as it seemed best to his own Wisdom if he was pleased so to dispose of such his Life as to lay it down in our stead and for our sakes there could not possibly lie any Obligation of Justice upon God to bind him up from accepting the Offer of such his Sacrifice because such a Power does in it self suppose that there neither is nor can be any Injury that should forbid such an Offering And we know well enough that any thing may be lawfully done against the doing of which there is no just Law And therefore the Case of our Saviour in the present Instance does so far forth differ from all the Cases of all other imaginary Innocents in the World For tho' another Man be supposed to be Innocent yet he has no such Power over his own Life as to dispose of it as he himself shall please And if he should by any Means destroy it without his own Demerit it would be in him Self-murder and that too tho' he should offer it for a Criminal But if he should so order his Life as to deserve Death then that very Crime that forfeits his Life would spoil his Innocence too And therefore should a Magistrate who is invested with the lawful Power of the Sword accept the Life of an Innocent in lieu of the forfeited Life of a Criminal he would therefore become a Criminal himself because in such a Commutation he allows the Innocent Man to become a Criminal by usurping upon the Prerogative of God himself Which may serve to shew the Fraud and Deceit of that way of Arguing which will not therefore allow it to be just that our Saviour should offer his Life as a Sacrifice for Sinners because it cannot be justly allowed that other Innocent Persons should do so Whereas the Life which our Saviour offered in the present Case was entirely his own and absolutely at his own disposal which yet cannot be truly affirmed of the Life of any other Innocent Person in the World if yet we should suppose such a Person from the Days of the Creation to the Consummation of all Things As therefore we learned by the last Head that God might have refused to accept our Saviour's Death in our stead because the Life offered was not the same that was forfeited but another So by what has been spoken under that Head and this we may now perceive that there is no Reason in Law or Justice why he might not accept it For if our Saviour might have become Surety for the Discharge of that Debt which by the Tenor of the Law we owed to Justice by our Transgression of the Law and if upon our Inability to pay such Debt so as to obtain our Acquittance he was willing and fully impowered to lay down his Life in order to our Release and Discharge and if God might in Justice accept the Offering of such his Life for so gracious and merciful a Purpose Then the whole Objection against the Justice of his Suffering in our stead and for our sake vanishes and comes to nothing These Things I have pursued thus far to put the whole Matter in a true Light and to lay it down just as it is Tho' I do frankly confess that I do not think the Objection against our Saviour's Sufferings taken from the Injustice of such Sufferings to be of any force at all no not upon those very Principles upon which they go who make it For they themselves allow our Saviour to be Innocent and by consequence tho' they make Death a Natural Thing which by the way is but an Heathen-Notion of it for it does not in the least agree with what the Scriptures teach us about it But I say they themselves allow our Saviour to be innocent and therefore they must allow that
given to Man Now if we add to what has been spoken that our Saviour will only assign over the Reward of his Obedience to those who tho' they neither did nor could obey the Law yet however were willing and did testifie the Sincerity of their Willingness by their hearty Endeavours to have obeyed it and who moreover were heartily grieved and troubled that they could not make good their Endeavours which yet is really the Case between our Saviour and all those who shall be rewarded for his Righteousness I say if we add this Consideration to all the former it may perhaps help to give us a more rational Satisfaction in the Case and may convince us that his Assignment of the Reward of his own Obedience to such People is an Act of Justice as well as Pity because God by putting his Creatures into Being has and with all Reverence I desire to speak it instated them in a Right to such Things without which they must needs be miserable and which tho' they heartily endeavour it yet they cannot by their own utmost Powers supply themselves with From the Whole we may rest satisfied that the making over of that Happiness which was the Reward of our Saviour's Obedience to other Men is no such absurd or unjust Thing as it is but too generally taken to be And I am pretty well assured that some even of those Men who have stiffly opposed it in the Case of Man's Salvation by our Saviour yet both have and will allow it in other Cases that run parallel with it and that therefore in order to their taxing such a Way of Proceeding of Injustice they do even contradict themselves It may perhaps be objected That our Saviour by assigning the Reward of his Obedience to any others does by so doing dispossess himself of such Reward because by making it over to them he does in effect make it away from himself Which seeming Difficulty for so I shall only call it in this Place may be easily removed if we do reflect back upon what has been said in this Chapter concerning the Inconceivable Value of the Purchase made by our Saviour's Obedience and the Inconceivable Dignity of his Person And when we have made such Reflection shall go on farther to compare it with what has been spoken to and made good concerning the extensive Merit of his Expiation in the beginning of the Sixth and upon the Second Objection of the Seventh Chapters For by comparing what has been said in those two Places with the Case now before us and by applying the one to the other it will be no hard matter so to resolve this seeming Difficulty as that it shall not any longer appear to be any such Thing But to return As it has appeared that Men may obtain the Reward promised by the Law in virtue of their Saviour's Obedience to the Law whereas yet they have not obeyed the Law themselves so if the Reward due to their Saviour's Obedience can therefore only be justly transferred upon them because their Saviour did obey the Law in their stead Then the next Conclusion will be 2. That his Obedience to the Law must in order to their receiving such Reward be accounted as theirs that is in other Words his Obedience to the Law must be first imputed to them as theirs before they can have a just Title to that Happiness which is only the legal and just Reward of his Obedience For if one Man performs that which it was another Man's Duty to do but yet does not do it or which is more professes that he does not do it for that other in such Case that other can never in Justice either claim or receive the Reward belonging to such Performance because that Performance can never be made his till it be made over by him who was the Author of it And on the other side it is no easie Matter to conceive how one Man should make over the Reward due by Law to his own Obedience to another if such his Obedience to which alone such Reward is by the Law inseparably annexed be not some way or other made over also And if such Obedience in such a Case must some way or other be made over the least that can be supposed will be that it must be made over by Imputation For the Merit of the Reward consisting in the Goodness or Holiness which you will of the Obedience and the just Gift of the Reward according to the Law depending upon the Merit of that Reward it is obvious to infer that the Reward can only there be justly given where the Merit is lodged and that the Merit is only lodged there where the Holiness or Goodness of the Obedience is lodged For the Promise of the Reward is only made to the Obedience If therefore Eternal Happiness the Reward of Obedience to the Law may be justly transferr'd to any Man in Consideration of his Saviour's Obedience it will follow that the Merit of such Reward must at least Imputatively be transferr'd also And if the Merit of the Reward be transferr'd then that in which that Merit does alone consist and that is the Obedience must be transferred likewise And upon the whole Matter we do conclude that that Part of the Gospel-Salvation which consists in Eternal Happiness which is the Reward of the Saviour's Obedience alone in rigour of Law may by that Saviour be justly assigned over to Man which was the First Thing which we undertook to make good And secondly That to make good the Justice of such Assignment that Obedience to which alone such Reward does in Law belong must at least imputatively be assigned over also It may be objected here That I talk of the Law when I should talk of the Gospel For tho' it be true that the Reward promised by the Law to Obedience does only belong and therefore can in Justice be only bestowed upon a perfect Obedience yet it is not true that the Reward promised by the Gospel is so clogged or limited but that by the Tenor of such Gospel it may belong to an Obedience that is not perfect provided such Obedience be attended with Sincerity and followed with Repentance Now in answer to this Objection it is freely granted 1. That the Promise of the Reward in the Gospel-Covenant is as it is said to be that is it stands engaged to Sincerity and Repentance and that therefore those Believers that are sincere in their Obedience and penitent for their Failings tho' neither their Obedience nor their Repentance be absolutely perfect yet shall inherit such Promise 2. But then in the second place it must be also acknowledged that God has made and established that Promise of the New-Covenant in our Saviour and in our Saviour alone Now the Business of our present Enquiry is not what is the Promise of the Gospel for in that we are agreed but upon what just and rational Consideration such Promise is founded And since it is agreed in
general that it is founded in our Saviour all the Debate at present is Whether the Promise of the Gospel-Reward be founded in that Saviour's Obedience or in his Death or in other Words Whether the Promise of the Reward be not so grounded upon our Saviour's Obedience as the Promise of Pardon is upon his Expiatory Sacrifice And if those Reasons which we have already or shall hereafter offer do prove that in Justice and Reason it is so then the Objection vanishes I may add That the Objection only speaks to the Matter of Fact that there is a Promise made in the Gospel to an Imperfect Obedience which no one so far as I know denies But it does not speak as to the Matter of Right and Justice how such a Promise can be justly and reasonably made without any Violence offered to the Law of Works which is God's Law as well as the Gospel is so And we may be sure that God's Laws do not either contradict each other or controul any the Laws or Rules of true Justice or Reason That then which is the only Thing which is at present maintained is That the Promise of the Reward in the Gospel to an Imperfect Obedience had never been made to Man at all because it could not have been made justly if the Law of Works given to Man had never been fulfilled by Man and that the Gospel-Promise was granted in Consideration that our Saviour fulfilled that Law And to this the Objection so called is really no Objection at all It is confessed indeed that the Eternal Life promised to Believers in the Gospel will be attended with an Happiness inconceivably greater than the Eternal Life promised in the Law to Adam and it may be thereupon surmised that the Reward promised in the Gospel has no Eye to the Obedience required in the Law and if it has not that then the Eternal Happiness of Believers cannot be the Purchase of our Saviour's Obedience to the Law To which I shall say no more at present than this viz. That it is agreed that our Saviour by his Death took away Death the Curse of the Law and made good such his Atchievement by a Resurrection Now the Life after the Resurrection is a Life in a Spiritual Body not in a Natural I speak the Apostle's Words And our Natural Reason tells us that a Life in a Spiritual Body is a more refined and exalted Life than a Life in a Natural Body and that in multitudes of Circumstances it must needs differ from it perhaps in so many that it may be as inconceivable to us now as the future Happiness of the Saints And yet this refined and exalted Life is no good Argument that it was not purchased by our Saviour's Death nor that such his Death had no Eye to the Law of Works in such Purchase And so say we Tho' the Happiness of the Blessed be greater vastly greater than what was by the Law of Works promised to Adam upon his Obedience yet that can never make it out that such Happiness is not the Purchase of our Saviour's Obedience or that such his Obedience was not an Obedience to the Law of Works It may indeed convince us of the super-eminent Dignity of his Person and of the inconceivable Value of that Reward which by being purchased by him derives such its Value from such his Dignity as we observed before and which is directly to our present purpose it may furthermore convince us that the Reward of Believers is the Reward of their Saviour's Obedience made over to them but not a Reward that does or can belong to their own at the very best Imperfect Righteousness I know very well that this Doctrine is denied by many Divines and other Learned Men and those too not only such who do utterly deny that God bestows Salvation upon Men in consideration of their Saviour's Merit and Purchase but even by the generality of those who yet do ascribe the Salvation of Man to such Purchase and Merits What Reasons they offer for such their Denial we shall speak to hereafter But in the mean time we shall go on to make good the Imputation against each Party that denies it and after that shall shew that the Reasons of such their Denial have not that weight which they seem to have 1. And first we shall speak to them who do not barely acknowledge but even contend that the Salvation of Man is obtained in Consideration of the Merits that is in Consideration of the Death of our Saviour And the Men of whom we now speak do maintain That in order to Man's Redemption our Saviour died for Man's Sin and that by such his Death he puchased for Man a Freedom from that Vengeance which is the just Wages of such Sin Now what they so maintain we believe to be true and are ready to join Hands with them to make it good against all the Adversaries of the Cross of Christ So far therefore we are agreed But then it may be demanded How our Saviour can possibly suffer for Man's Sin if the Sin of Man be not imputed to him For in order to his suffering for Man's Sin he must take upon him such Sin and the taking upon him Man's Sin is the having Man's Sin accounted as his own that is in effect and in other Words the having Man's Sin imputed to him And then on the other Side how can Man have any Pretence of Benefit from his Saviour's Sufferings if the Merit of such Sufferings be not imputed to Man For without such Imputation the Merit be it what it will can only belong to the Saviour himself It is evident therefore by what has been said in short but might be made out in more Words that they who assert the Expiation of Sin by our Saviour's suffering in Man's stead do therefore entitle Man to the Benefit of such Expiation because Man's Sin was imputed to his Saviour and the Merit of his Saviour's Sufferings at least imputed to Man Things therefore standing thus in the Case of the Expiation it may be reasonably and further demanded Why our Saviour's Righteousness or Obedience may not as warrantably be imputed to Man as Man's Sin may be imputed to his Saviour or Why the Eternal Happiness which is assigned as the Reward of Obedience by the Law may not be bestowed upon Man in Consideration that the Merit of his Saviour's Obedience is imputed to Man as well as a Release from Punishment may be granted to Man in Consideration that the Merits of his Saviour's Punishment are imputed to Man For there is the very self-same Reason why the Obedience of our Saviour should be imputed to Man in order to Man's Salvation that there is that the Sin of Man should be imputed to our Saviour in order to such Saviour's Condemnation And there is the self-same Reason why the Merit of our Saviour's Obedience should be imputed to Man in order to Man's obtaining Eternal Life as there is
that so he may be entitled to Eternal Happiness And because no Man can warrantably say how he shall not be unless he do assign some Way how he shall be so entitled therefore they who in this Case deny all Imputation whatsoever do tell us that a perfect Holiness shall be bestowed by God upon Believers by Infusion that is for so they must mean God shall by his Mercy and Free-Grace bestow such a Stock of Holiness upon Believers as shall cleanse and fill all their Capacities and so make them perfectly holy and by consequence capable of Eternal Happiness 1. Now tho' it be freely granted that God will in the next World bestow such an holy God-like and eternally-durable Frame of Spirit upon all those who shall be saved as we shall discourse more fully hereafter yet it is not in Consideration of such Holiness that Believers do obtain that Eternal Happiness which is the promised Reward of the Gospel For by what is to follow it will we presume appear that Salvation obtained in Consideration of our Saviour's Obedience imputed is First Better accommodated to the Rules of Reason and the Laws of Justice than Salvation obtained in Consideration of an Holiness infused after a Resurrection And Secondly That as it is better accommodated to the Rules of Reason and to the Laws of Justice so that it is so also to that Account which the Scripture gives us of this Matter 1. For the Obedience by which Believers are to be judged at the last Day is that Obedience which was required of them in this World And accordingly as Men have behaved themself here so they shall receive the Reward of such their Behaviour there So St. Paul in the Second to the Corinthians chap. 5. ver 10. We shall all appear before the Judgment-seat of Christ that every one may receive the Things done in his Body according to that he hath done whether it be good or bad By which we may understand that the Distributions to be made by Justice upon a Resurrection have an Eye to the Lives of Men before their Death And from thence we may infer that they are not to be guided by an infused Holiness which does even by those who plead for it not take place till after the Resurrection For it is agreed on all Hands that no Man's Holiness is perfect in this Life Now it does not look altogether so rational nor so agreeable to the Measures of Justice or the Revelations of Scripture that a Man should be judged according to what he has done in the Body before his Death and yet that he shall by the last Judicial Sentence be everlastingly rewarded for an Holiness infused by God after his Resurrection And therefore if we will adhere to Reason Justice and Revelation we must conclude that Believers do not after this Life obtain an everlasting Happiness in consideration of such an infused Holiness 2. And secondly we may do well to take notice that the Obedience of our Saviour to the Law was the Obedience which was required of Man and which was also paid by Man in this Life and that because such his Obedience was perfect therefore the Reward assigned by the Law to Obedience was in strictness of Law and Justice due to such his Obedience If therefore his Obedience while he was in the Flesh may by any Means be so made over to Believers as to be justly accounted theirs then there can be no doubt but that their Right to the Reward appointed to such Obedience will be just and good too And that it may be justly accounted theirs we have as we believe made it good already But an Holiness infused by God after a Resurrection can in no Sense nor in any Congruity be accounted and much less can it be an Obedience paid by Man while in the Body to the Law and therefore it cannot in any Sense or in any Congruity be such an Holiness to which the Reward allotted only to Obedience can belong And therefore neither can Eternal Happiness be bestowed upon Believers in consideration of such an infused Holiness In one Word Infused Holiness in order to Man's Salvation does in no wise agree to that Account which the Scriptures give us of the Last Judgment and tho' it pretends to magnifie God's Mercy yet it takes no care in the mean while to assert and vindicate his Justice but makes the whole Process of that great Assize to be arbitrary and illegal whilst it opens a Way to Man's Happiness by an Holiness which has nothing to do with the Cause upon which alone his Trial depends For a Reward conferr'd in another World upon an Holiness infused in another World does in no wise look back to or pass a Judgment upon the Life that was led in this World But because we know assuredly and that by many express Testimonies of Scripture that that will be the Work of the Last Day therefore for that Reason alone if yet there were no other we cannot ascribe a future Happiness the happy just and final Sentence of that Day to such an infused Holiness No! the Holiness for which we are to be rewarded in a future Life must be an Obedience practised in this Life The Duty is laid upon Man by the Law here and the Reward stands engaged to the Performance of such Duty And if the Righteousness of Man at the Resurrection be not an Obedience paid to the Law then when the Law required such Obedience the Reward promised by the Law can in no wise belong to such Righteousness And therefore to fansie a Reward for an Holiness in which the Law is not at all concerned as it is not in an infused Holiness is to have no regard to the Law at all For Happiness bestowed in consideration of an infused Holiness may as well be granted without the Law as with it nay indeed much better Because had there been no Law at all then such a Management had not affronted the Law Whereas the Law having been once setled to bestow the Reward promised by the Law upon an Holiness which has no Eye to the Law as an infused Holiness has not is to slight and overlook the Law for it allows the Law to have nothing to do in the Allotment of such a Reward It may be plausibly objected in this Place That while I vindicate the Cause which I undertake against one Adversary I give it up to another Because while I assert That every Man shall at the last Day be judged according to his Behaviour in this World I do in effect refer the Reward that shall then be adjudged to Believers to such their Behaviour that is in the present Case to their Obedience in this World And that because I do so I therefore pull down with one Hand that which before I had set up with another viz. the Imputation of their Saviour's Righteousness in order to their Salvation 1. But this Objection is grounded upon a Mistake which Mistake is
other sort of Natural Philosophy they had been very well satisfied and contented without that new and uncouth Article of their Christian Faith Other Instances might be produced to shew that gross Fooleries and Corruptions have crept into Religion at this Door Whereas a due Consideration that the Christian Religion is a Covenant and the treating of it as such would acquaint us much better with the Nature and engage us more effectually to the Duties of it But this useful Remark being left in this place we proceed 2. The second Objection therefore against the Imputation of our Saviour's Obedience to Believers in order to their obtaining the promised Reward of the Covenant stands thus That supposing that our Saviour did provide for the Directive Part of the Law by his Obedience and that he did also fulfil the Vindictive Part by his Death In such Case there does therefore seem to be a Superfluity in his Provision because should his Obedience alone be imputed to us we should by that Means be entitled to a perfect Righteousness and then there had been no need of his Death to expiate our Sins because then we should have had no Sins to be expiated And that which may add some Strength to what is thus alledged is this That our Saviour paying that Obedience to the Law while he was in the Flesh the Obedience so paid was paid before his Death and therefore in the Course of Things it should seem that it might be imputed before his Death and in the Course of Justice without it For when by such Imputation we were once entitled to his Righteousness the Plea of his Death in order to qualifie us for Happiness must needs be useless and superfluous Now tho' it may seem indeed that Things might have gone so if we only have a Regard to the Order of Time yet if we look to the Order of Reason and Justice we shall easily perceive that they could not For we cannot by any Estimation of Justice whatsoever be reckoned Righteous so long as our Guilt lies upon us and when once by our Sins we have made our selves guilty such Guilt must needs lie upon us till it be one way or other expiated Now because we have already and fully made it out that it neither is nor can be expiated any other way than by the Death of our Saviour therefore the Death of such Saviour must in the Order of Justice first expiate such our Guilt before we can possibly be entitled to a perfect Righteousness For who can put a clean thing into an unclean It is neither agreeable to the Methods of Wisdom or Justice so to do And therefore we may be sure that it cannot be the Practice of the most Wise and Just God No! we know well enough because we are told so by the Spirit of God that our Saviour first died for our Sins and after that rose again for our Justification And we know moreover that when God had once given forth his Law tho' had an exact Obedience been paid to it the Vengeance of it which was only Conditionally threatned had never been executed for the Justice and Execution of such Vengeance does entirely depend upon our Transgression yet after we had transgressed the Law the Execution of such Vengeance was as necessary as was the Happiness promised if we had not transgressed it For Vengeance does by the Tenor of the Law stand in the same Relation to Sin as Happiness does to Obedience The first becomes our Due in case we neglect our Duty the last in case we perform it And the Distribution both of the one and the other must as necessarily follow upon our Performance or Non-performance of those Conditions to which each of them do stand respectively engaged as it is necessary for God to love Holiness and hate Wickedness One Part of the Law therefore is in Justice to be provided for as well as the other And then if neither the Punishment of Man could fulfil the Law on the one Hand nor the imperfect Obedience of Man on the other and if our Saviour undertook for Man's sake to supply Man's Defects then there was the same Necessity in Justice that he should fulfil the Vindictive Part of it by his Death that there was that he should fulfil the Directive Part of it by his Obedience And therefore as neither his Obedience not his Death had been necessary no nor his Incarnation neither upon which such his Death and such his Obedience do depend But I say as neither his Obedience nor his Death had been necessary if Man had obeyed the Law himself so upon Man's Transgression of the Law they both became necessary Because as we have already seen Man's Punishment is in Justice as necessary upon his Breach of the Law as his Obedience was upon God's Promulgation of the Law And therefore when our Saviour undertook to save sinful Man that is Man who had transgressed the Directions of the Law and Man who lay exposed to the Vengeance of the Law it was necessary in order to his doing so justly that he should have a Regard to one Part of the Law as well as to the other that is that he should fulfil the Vindictive by his Death and the Directive by his Obedience And had he not done both one Part of the Law at least had been neglected and so the Redemption had not been just By which we may by this time understand that there is no Superfluity in his providing for Man's Salvation both by the Obedience of his Life and by the Sufferings of his Death For that cannot in Reason be accounted Superfluous in the doing of any Thing whatsoever without which such Thing cannot be done justly Now as in our Answer to the former Objection we made good not only the Possibility but the Legality too of the Imputation of our Saviour's Righteousness so in our Answer to this we have shewed the conjunct Necessity both of the Imputation and of his Death in order to Man's Salvation By all which we may at last come to understand that God in his Counsel for Man's Salvation as he consulted his Mercy so did not lay aside the Care of his Justice For the whole Transaction as we have largely seen was in him Justice as it was to us Mercy Justice as it fulfilled the whole Law Mercy as it redeemed us from the Curse and invested us in the Promise of the Law A strange Mixture and had it not been discovered to us by Revelation by our Natural Reason not to be fathomed But as it is revealed agreeable as we have seen to such Reason so assisted 1. By which we may in the first place understand That tho' Christ crucified be to the Jews a Stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolishness yet to us he is and that notoriously the Wisdom of God and the Power of God For his Wisdom and his Power can we see bring Things to pass beyond the reach of Angels and
Devils and therefore much more beyond the reach of short-sighted Man And yet by his Light he can because he has instructed us that such Things are not only the Effects of an Almighty Power but of an Almighty Wisdom of an Almighty Justice and of an Almighty Mercy too For in the Business of Man's Salvation as in all Things else he does so display his Attributes as that they never clash nor interfere His Mercy does not fight against his Justice nor his Justice against his Mercy and neither fights against his Wisdom By the Revelation therefore of the Christian Religion God has admitted us to a nearer View of his Dealings with the Children of Men and has at least communicated so much of his Counsel to us as may assist us if we be not wanting to our selves to provide for our own everlasting Happiness and Security and to vindicate and assert his Justice and Mercy Let us therefore thankfully receive the Mercy as it is graciously offered and not pretend to regulate his Revelations by our feeble Reason but guide our Reason by his Revelations For we know that he can do more than we can and therefore also we may know that he can guide us better than we can guide our selves And because he has vouchsafed in Mercy so to do it will but very ill sort with that Deference we owe him to do as too many now-a-days do that is to return from Revealed to Natural Religion and so to walk in Paths not only of our own chusing but many times of our own making too For since the Day-Star from on High hath visited us it is our Duty as to guide our Lives so to guide our Faith by that Light which it affords us 2. Since we can only be saved in Consideration of our Obedience to the Law and since none of us have paid such Obedience and so if we stand the Award of our own Deserts we must needs fall short of Salvation I say since Things are so we ought with Heart and Voice to praise our Saviour who by an Infinite Condescension both obliged himself to obey the Law and so intimately united us to himself as to entitle us to his Obedience by which we may be saved For as there is no other way of obtaining Salvation but by Obedience so there is no other Name given but his whereby we must be saved and therefore we may safely conclude that that Obedience by which we must be saved is his His Love to Righteousness then made his Obedience perfect and his Love to us made his Obedience ours and Both if we be not wanting to our selves will make our Condition happy and secure And then surely our Security and Happiness as they do very well deserve so they do require a Thanksgiving For we therefore stand bound to be grateful to and to love the Author of our Happiness because we find that we cannot but love our selves 3. As we cannot be saved without our Saviour's Righteousness so as we desire our own Safety we should heartily endeavour to qualifie our selves to be made Partakers of such his Righteousness And we may be sure that our Desire at least after Righteousness and our Good-will to entertain it are necessary even for our obtaining the Imputation of it because it cannot in any Sense be ours if we be not willing that it should be so We must be therefore disabled to receive it if we be unwilling to entertain it So much Righteousness God requires of us in order to our being entitled to a perfect Righteousness I know that some Divines do speak of Irresistible Grace and that some few do defend it That is in a few Words they make God by the arbitrary Determinations of his own Pleasure to bestow Grace upon some Men whether they will or no and even against their Inclinations And to make good what they so maintain they instance in the Conversion of St. Paul and such like Cases But tho' St. Paul and some others have been converted by Miracle yet we know well enough that Miracles wrought for the self-same purpose have not always been attended with Success and that the Miracles even of our Saviour himself and those too wrought before their Eyes did fail of their designed Effect and that in a manner upon the whole Nation of the Jews And we know not the Hearts of Men nor the inward but real Preparations of Soul that may duely qualifie them to admit God's Grace But we do know that St. Paul thought verily that he ought to do as he did And then tho' he was defective in his Knowledge yet because he acted according to such Knowledge he was therefore honest and sincere in his Practice And then if God in pity to his Ignorance and in approbation of his Sincerity did reward that Sincerity with an extraordinary Direction for the guidance of his Practice we may from thence be taught that his Grace was suited to St. Paul's Will For he willed that after the Miracle which he willed before it that is he willed that which he took to be good And indeed we may as well think any other Creature to be capable of Righteousness as we may think Man to be so without his own Will and Consent Let us therefore take care that we will and endeavour to obey God's Law that is to be righteous if we design that God our Saviour should make us so For we cannot be like him unless we are willing to be so He therefore who would appear at the Wedding Supper of the Lamb must take care to wash and cleanse himself from all Filthiness of Flesh and Spirit in order to his putting on the Wedding-Garment For as they only shall be pronounced Blessed who shall be found Righteous so they only shall be found so who do sincerely desire and endeavour to be so CHAP. XI The First and General Proposition asserted from all that has been said That the whole Doctrine of a Gospel-Salvation as laid down in the Scriptures is agreeable to the allowed Practices of Mankind in their Legal or Judicial Proceedings and is worded in the Scriptures accordingly AND now having gone so far before we proceed any farther we shall bring all that we have hitherto spoken to our Design at the Beginning and by so doing shall endeavour to make it out That there is not Salvation in any other but in Jesus Christ alone and That there is no other Name under Heaven given among Men whereby we must be saved 1. And to do this we shall first shew That no other but our Saviour alone could so suffer for Sin as to obtain a Release from the Penalty which the Law had threatned against it Or which is much one and the same Thing That no one but our Saviour alone could make an Expiation for the Sin of Man 2. And secondly That no one but our Saviour alone could by an exact Obedience to the Law purchase that Reward the Gift of Eternal Life which
reasonable Let us try the Matter in a sew Instances which will direct our Meditations to a great many more and see whether the Business be so or no. The Merits of our Saviour's Death we say and so do the Scriptures are made over to us We may add but we need not that they are so made over by his last Will and Testament And if we do add it the Scriptures will bear us out in it The Merits of his Obedience also are as we with the Scriptures say made over to us By the first we obtain Redemption from the Curse of the Law By the last an Inheritance with the Saints in Light Now what says the Light of Nature when it discovers it self in the Practices of Mankind in the like Cases 1. Why in the first place The Father has served and obliged his Prince by a due Regard to his Laws and to himself and by a Defence of both from the disobedient Attempts and rebellious or hostile Outrages of all others In such Defence he has been a great Sufferer has lost his Estate his Limb perhaps his Life The Son of this very Man guided more by his own vicious Inclinations than by his Father's Example dips his Hand in Treason and thereby forfeits his Life to the Law and to his Prince Suppose we now that the Prince grants this Son his Life in Consideration of the Father's Services and Merits and so cancels the Demerits of the Son by putting the Deserts of the Father in the Scale against them which especially if the Father died in the Prince's Cause is the ascribing or imputing which you will the good Deserts of one Man to another who is utterly destitute of such Deserts Now such a Case as this being supposed will any Man accuse the Prince of Injustice for the Grant of such a Pardon Was not the Injury done to himself And may he not remit such an Injury by esteeming the great Services of the Father and the Benefits that he himself received and the Mischiefs which the Father sustained by such his Services a sufficient Counterpoise to the Injury of the Son And may he not be satisfied that the near Relation and dear Affection of the Father to the Son may make the Son's Pardon a Gratification and Requital to him for all his own Services and Sufferings Surely these Things may be allowed among Men And I do not at all question but that these or such like Things have been practised in all Governments and yet that their Justice has not been taxed for such their Practice And yet I do assert and maintain That the Pardon of Man's Sin in Consideration of his Saviour's Sufferings does much more critically and nicely come up to the Rules of an exact Justice than the Pardon of the Rebel in the present Instance does and I am well enough satisfied that what has been already offered will abundantly make good such an Assertion But sawcie Man will not allow what his God says or does to be true and just tho' at the same time he will allow and approve the same or the like Practices in his Fellow-Creature 2. But to proceed Secondly The Father by his Labour and Toil of his Body or by that of his Brains purchases to himself an Estate His Son enjoys his Share in it while the Father lives and the whole of it after his Death How comes the Father's Purchase to derive to the Son You will answer By the Law But the Question returns By what Act does the Law make the Father's Purchase to become the Son's Why it may be replied that as the Son descended from the Father so it is but fit that his Estate should do so too Well! be it so or any thing else for more may be said in the Case But still in the Case the Father's Right being extinct by his Death moves that is is transferr'd upon another So that he comes rightfully to possess the Estate who yet did not purchase it nor earn it nor perhaps do any one Act for the obtaining the Possession of it Not only the Estate then but the Right and Title to the Estate which is undoubtedly lodged in the Purchase and must be made good by it is transferr'd from one Man to another and that too not by or for any Action of Desert in the Man who enters but by an Act of Law call it Imputation Translation or what you please And which is more such a Translation both of Estate and Title is accounted just by all Mankind generally speaking For it is not material in the Case that some arbitrary and despotical Governments do in some few Instances vary from it because not only the rest of Mankind but even they themselves do by their contrary Practice in other and more Cases condemn their own Practice in this Now to our Purpose Shall the transferring not only of one Man's Estate to another but even of the Right and Title in that Estate be thought just between Men among themselves and that too by that Light of Reason which is confessedly given them by God And shall it at the same time be unlawful and unjust for God so to make over his Purchase his Right and Title to any Thing as he thinks fit to Mankind as one Man may do to another Certainly he has as good a Right and as full Power of disposing of what is his own as any Man or any Law of Man whatsoever And therefore when he tells us that he does so in the Case under our present Consideration it would become us in Modesty in Reason and because the Case does very much import our Welfare in Interest likewise to believe his Word and to approve his Doings And that too more especially because in those very Writings in which the Conveyance is contained he seems all along to word such his Conveyance in Law-Terms thereby giving us at least an Hint that in the Transaction of Man's Salvation by our Saviour he did in a great measure condescend to those Methods and Ways of Judicial Proceedings that Men by that Light of Reason which they received from him had instituted among themselves And therefore when we had forsaken his Family by revolting from that Duty which we owed him as his Natural Children as he calls himself our Father in Christ Jesus so he calls us his Adopted Sons upon his restoring us to such his Family and in order to the Renovation of our lost Title he does esteem us to be Regenerate that so by becoming again the Children of God we may inherit the Kingdom of him our Father So he calls us the Heirs of Salvation and makes us a Title to the Purchase of our Saviour by calling us his Brethren He reckons us as Joint-Heirs with him and discourses in several Places of our Inheritance Now when we are assured by Multitudes of other Places of Scripture that all these Appellations and Titles are given to us not only in Terms in the like Cases made
use of at that Time by the most celebrated Laws but also in Consideration of our Saviour's Purchase I say when we find Things so and that too in the Book of God wrote professedly on this Subject does it become us to think that the Holy Ghost the Indicter of these Things did only word himself at random Or ought we not rather to think that in so doing he had a Regard to those Legal Ways of Conveyances which were established by Man's Reason and Sense of Justice in those Laws which were then most current in the World We cannot I am sure we cannot rationally think so For why are we told that we are bought with a Price Why are we told that our Saviour purchased us with his Blood Why are we told that we are redeemed not with corruptible Things as Silver and Gold but with the precious Blood of Christ but that our Redemption and Salvation did as to the Justice and Equity of it answer to those Legal Ways of transferring of Rights from Man to Man For our Redemption was purchased by our Saviour so it is expresly worded and by him therefore conveyed and made over to us because otherwise it could in no Sense be called our Redemption Indeed a Purchase does in the very import of the Word imply the Acquisition of a Thing in a Legal way and by so doing does in the Nature of the Thing imply also a Legal Power of making over such Thing to another For he can only legally sell or otherwise give or convey who has a Legal Right in the Thing sold given or conveyed And he can only legally purchase who pays a Legal Price When therefore the Holy Ghost in the Scriptures does so word the Manner of God's bestowing and our receiving Salvation in and by our Saviour as to do it in such Terms which were at that time Terms of the most celebrated Law next to his own that ever yet was or perhaps ever will be in the World and when he does so frequently and almost constantly it would become us to believe and think that he designed and that too even by his manner of expressing the Thing to insinuate to us that the Salvation he all along speaks of was bestowed in a way of Conveyance at that time familiar among Mankind in such a way as was established both by their own Laws and by their own Practice in such a way that their best Reason granted to them by himself had set on foot And that upon this Account his way of doing it so as is by him expressed and that too all along in that very Book where he affords us the Discoveries of it is just equitable and legal I do but run over these Things and in a manner glance at them because I rather design to give an Hint to others more able so to do than to pursue them my self For if a Man well-studied in the Civil Law a Law that will weigh with Mankind so long as good and sound Reason has a free Passage in the World But I say would such a Man so throughly acquaint himself with the New-Covenant the Covenant of Grace in Jesus Christ as to be able exactly to compare it with that Law which is the Business of his Profession I do not at all question but that such a Comparison judiciously managed would go a great way in removing those Doubts which have been started by People of all Parties concerning Man's Redemption And because several Learned Men I know are very well versed in both those Laws I do the rather hope that God will put it into the Heart of some of them to bless the World with such a Christian and beneficial Piece of Learning But this by the by In the mean time from what has been said in short we may learn thus much That the Salvation of Man is the Purchase of the Son of God that the Benefit at least of such Purchase is by the Purchaser made over to Man that in Consideration of that Intimate Union that is between him and Man by his taking upon him the same Flesh and Blood with Man and by affording to Man the Communications of his Spirit a Way is opened as for the more congruous and equitable Way of such Conveyanee on the one Side so on the other Side for the more congruous and equitable Way of Man's entring upon the Possession of such Purchase and that when the whole Thing is strictly sifted and examined it will be found to be agreeable to the just and equitable Rules of Law as well as to the express and plain Revelations of the Gospel But I desist Only I would offer an Inference or two that may relate to our Practice before I do so 1. And first If God spared not his own Son when he had put himself into the Place of Sinners we may from thence conclude that neither will he spare us when we our selves are Sinners and that too by our own default For besides that he was and was so proclaimed by God himself his only Son in whom he was well pleased I say besides that the Generosity Charity and Candor of such an Undertaking as our Saviour's was by which he shewed more Tenderness to others than to himself may be thought to be a very considerable Motive even to Justice it self so far as is possible to remit to him a great deal of that Rigour and Severity which Sin does deserve And then if notwithstanding such his Undertaking yet he was fain to pay the uttermost Farthing that is to die how can we hope to escape if we the Original and therefore also the Principal Sinners come under the Severity of so exact a Justice We may be sure that the Portion of Vengeance allotted to us in such a Case will not be less severe For if God so treated his Beloved because interposing Son how do we think he will treat avowed and professed Rebels Or as our Saviour himself speaks in the like Case If these things are done in the green Tree what shall be done in the dry 2. And as this Consideration may serve us for Caution so the next that is the second may serve us for Consolation And I shall give it in the Words of the Apostle in the Eighth to the Romans ver 32. He that spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all how shall he not with him also freely give us all Things For his delivering up his Son for our sakes to become Man to lead an hard and uncomfortable Life and to die a miserable and scandalous Death that both by his Life and Death he might work out our Salvation is such an exalted Evidence of God's Love to us that Imagination it self can hardly conceive that any thing can extinguish it but our Ingratitude for it And our Natural Reason and Common Sense may easily instruct us that he whosoever he be that is ready and willing and that too even to Performance to do us the
greatest Kindness will not for that very Reason refuse us in a less It concerns us therefore as we would not reject the Kindness already offered and as we would not exclude our selves from all future Love and Kindness to make good our Gratitude by receiving our Saviour and that Salvation which he brings along with him with a due Acknowledgment and Respect and to make good such our Respect and such our Acknowledgment by receiving him upon any but more especially upon his own Terms Let us therefore cast away our Sins that we may receive him Let us by loving each other practice our selves to love and receive him Let us receive him by receiving the Pledges of his Love exhibited to us in the Sacrament of his most Blessed Body and Blood And let us not think that Christ crucified will profit us any thing if we do not so receive him as he requires and therefore also so receive him as we ought For he does in effect refuse the Gift who refuses the Instrument of Conveyance by which such Gift is to be signed and made over to him And it is irrational and imprudent to expect the Love of him the Pledges of whose Love we do reject Let us cast off therefore every evil Work every Sin that does beset us and gird up the Loins of our Mind as the Scripture speaks and do the Work of Christians in all Cases whatsoever that so at last we may receive the blessed Wages of such Work through Jesus Christ our Lord and only Saviour CHAP. XII That besides the Saviour's Righteousness imputed God will after their Resurrection endow Believers with a perfect inherent and eternal Holiness How the Saviour did fit and prepare Men for such an Holiness BY what has been hitherto discoursed we have seen 1. That God in a Saviour has made Provision for the Expiation of Man's Sin in order to save him from the Vengeance of the Law the just Wages of such Sin 2. We have seen that he has not barely provided for Man's Escape from the Vengeance of the Law by the Merits of his Saviour's Death but that he has also provided for his positive and future Happiness by the Merit of his Saviour's Obedience 3. But yet in what is now to follow we shall find that his Mercy has not stopped here because in the third place he will in and through our Saviour endow Man with a perfect and inherent Holiness By which I mean such an holy Angelical and withal durable Frame of Spirit that shall for ever secure him from all possible Sin and shall for ever engage him in a vigorous and chearful Discharge of all holy Duties and in so doing shall both accompany and secure his Happiness to all Eternity For tho' it be confessed that Believers do by the Communications and Assistances of the Spirit arrive to a Degree of such an Holiness in this Life yet it must be confessed also that it is but an imperfect Degree For it is not vigorous nor uniform nor constant but irresolute and weak and therefore has its frequent Intermissions and Failings But as we shall see more fully in what is to follow the Holiness of the Saints in Glory is like their Happiness firm lasting and immutable and therefore will be found to be a Gift of God in Christ that does vastly if not infinitely exceed the most refined Holiness of the very best Man in this Vale of Sin and Misery It shall be the Business then of our present Undertaking to make it good that besides that Title which Believers in another World shall have to their Saviour's Righteousness in order to their future Happiness that they themselves shall be endowed with a perfect inherent and indefectible Holiness in order to the secure Eternity of such their Happiness Now to put this Matter into a clear Light that so we may be the more rationally satisfied in all that is to follow we lay it down First That God by his Almighty Power having made the World and all particular Beings in it has by virtue of such his Creation an undoubted Right and Title to the Dominion over all Things so by him created And that therefore all his Creatures ought to be in Subjection to him and to act according to the Determinations of his Will And it is hardly to be doubted but that all those Creatures which by the Boundaries of their Creation are devoid of Understanding and Free-will do constantly act according to those Impresses and Powers that God in their Formation has stamped upon them in a regular Subordination to such his Will And the Scriptures do give us not only frequent Hints but also express Declarations that so they do Now as God created those lower Creatures so did he the higher and those which are endowed with more noble Faculties And because among such Creatures upon whom he has bestowed an Understanding to enable them to know his Will and with a Will to enable them to chuse Obedience to such his Will we are not acquainted with any other but Angels and Men and because our Design is only concerned about them and chiefly about the latter therefore directly to our present Purpose we take notice That some of the Angels first and by their Instigation the first Man and because all Men ever since do derive from him in a Lineal Propagation therefore also all Mankind by transgressing God's Will made known to them in his Laws have revolted from their Allegiance to him and have by so doing in effect renounced and disclaimed that their Subjection to his Dominion which was if I may so speak his natural and essential Right For Wickedness is a professed and avowed Renunciation of that Subjection which Rational Creatures owe to their Holy and Rightful Lord and King even the God that made them And for that Reason it is an Encroachment upon his Anthority for it does lessen and contract the Extent of his Kingdom For because a Scepter of Righteousness is the Scepter of his Kingdom and because all those Laws by which its Administration is executed are in themselves Holy Just and Good it is upon that Account very obvious to conceive that Wickedness so far as it goes does defeat such Administration and overturn such Laws and by so doing does diminish the Authority and encroach upon the Jurisdiction and Dominion of the Rightful and Supreme Lord. Now from what has been thus spoken in short we may easily understand that the faln Angels having first revolted themselves and by their Sin withdrawn their Allegiance and Subjection to their most Holy and Supreme Lord did what other Rebels after their Example and perhaps by their Instigation have done to weak and short-sighted People by false Colours and taking Delusions invite Mankind into the same Revolt and Rebellion with themselves and by so doing draw away a Part of God's Kingdom and Dominion and in opposition to his Holiness that is in opposition to God himself set up a Kingdom of
their own a Kingdom of Darkness and Wickedness in plain English a Kingdom made up of such Creatures who by their Sin and Wickedness did rebel against and revolt from their Holy and Rightful Lord and King All this being Matter of Fact is expresly discovered to us by the Revelations of God And the History of Man's Fall recorded in his Word with the Account that we there meet with of the Devils Kingdom of his Servants and Subjects of his Slaves and Captives of his Wars against the Holy Angels the faithful Subjects of the True and Everliving King do afford us a very lively Description of the Thing And because no Christian who is but tolerably acquainted with the Revelations of God in his Holy Word can possibly be a Stranger to it therefore we have thought it less necessary to quote the several Texts which by being put regularly together will give us an exact and Historical Account of it And indeed we have so much the less need to do so because we shall be farther and more fully satisfied in it by those Things which are to follow Well then Things standing in this State God was pleased to send his Son his Beloved Son made of a Woman made under the Law made Man to be a Saviour a Redeemer a Light to Mankind that is he sent him in Man's Nature to guide and direct to save and redeem Man from that Condition into which he was brought by his Sin and Rebellion What that Saviour did in order to the obtaining of such Salvation we have seen already and what is to be done in order to the everlasting Continuance of such Salvation is to be enquired now As therefore it was one Part of God's Counsel in sending his Son to Mankind to expiate their Sins so it was another and indeed the main and grand Design of such his Message to rescue them from their Slavery to Sin and from their Subjection to Satan and so to bring them back to his own Kingdom and to resettle them under the Jurisdiction of his own most holy Dominion For it is a very great Mistake which I am apt to believe has proceeded chiefly from our oversondness of our selves to think that God's chief Design in sending our Saviour was to free us from the Vengeance due to our Sins thereby vainly imagining that God has a greater Concern for our Impunity than he has for our Holiness and that he had rather we should be safe than that we should be good Whereas our Reason will tell us that God must needs love Holiness as he loves himself because he himself is if I may so speak Essential Holiness And then the same Reason will tell us that he must needs love himself better than he loves our Safety and that more especially when we our selves by slighting and neglecting of Holiness had betrayed such our Safety As therefore Man did by his Compliance with the Devil that is by his Sin expose himself to the Prosecutions of God's Vengeance and as he did by the same Means so far forth revolt from his Dominion and withdraw himself from his Jurisdiction as to become the Subject of Satan and Slave of Sin by which Means God was ousted of his Natural and Original Right to Man's Obedience and his Subjects so far forth drawn of from their Allegiance to him as to slight his Authority by slighting his Laws and to fight against him by opposing his Holiness so when the Hostilities were come to this pass that Man did fight against God by his Sins and that God did fight against Man by his Justice tho' God in order to a Reconcilation sent his Son into the World and by him a Proclamation of Pardon to all who should return to their Duty yet our Reason nay our Common Sense will tell us that the Restoration of God's just Right and Dominion by Man's Return to Holiness and Duty is in it self a Point of greater moment than Man's Pardon And therefore by the Tenor of that very Covenant in which the Articles of Reconciliation are contained it is stipulated that Man shall first be obliged to repent and return before God shall be obliged to forgive And we know that our Saviour himself in that Prayer which he taught his Disciples and in them all Christians does put that Petition Thy Kingdom come before that by which we pray that God would forgive our Trespasses Why all the Nations of the Earth are before him but as the Drop of the Bucket or the small Dust of the Balance And then can we think that his Honour and Natural Right is not to be consulted before Man's Safety It cannot be and because it cannot therefore we do conclude that tho' God did design the Pardon of Man's Sin by a Saviour yet for all that the grand and principal Design of sending him who was to be that Saviour was the bringing Man from a State of Sin to a State of Holiness the purchasing to himself a peculiar People zealous of good Works or as it is in the Fifth to the Ephesians ver 27. a glorious Church not having Spot or Wrinkle or any such Thing and thereby restoring to God so much of that Part of his Dominion which by the Temptation of the Devil and by Man's Revolt had been broke off from his Kingdom and which was willing upon the Gospel-Conditions the Proclamation of Pardon to be restored again to it Now from what has been spoken I would infer That it is a great Mistake to make the Sending of our Saviour in its first principal and grand Design to be the Pardon of Sin For as Obedience to the Law is the first and principal Design of the Law and as Punishment is but a secondary Design of the Law and is only grounded upon the Defeat of its grand and principal Design So Pardon of Sin in the very Nature of the Thing it self depending only upon the Desert of Punishment can therefore rise no higher than its Fountain and therefore can at the most be but a secondary Cause of our Saviour's Coming And therefore should we suppose God to pardon Sin tho' in and through our Saviour without any Regard had to the fulfilling of the Directive that is of the grand and principal Part of the Law we should by that means suppose him to break the Directive Part of the Law in order to his contradicting the Vindictive Part that is we should suppose him to break both Parts of the Law in order to such a Pardon For Veracity is one Branch of Holiness and when God tells Man in his Law that upon his Transgression he should surely die as we may perceive by the manner of the Delivery that the Denunciation is serious and solemn not only because it is backed with an Asseveration but because also it is incorporated into the Law so to tell us that God may by a Pardon that has no Regard to the Directive Part of the Law revoke such his solemn Threat
whereof we are capable does so too And we are moreover sure in Reason that God will more freely bestow his best Gift there where it is most heartily desired and therefore also most kindly received And we are the more sure that he will do so in the present Case because the Will of Man must in this Case concur with the Grace of God or else it is impossible that the Holiness to be bestowed should ever become his own For no Man can in Reason or Nature be holy against his own Will He then who by the Means of Grace has advanced so far as to hunger and thirst after Righteousness shall be sure to be filled We have his Promise for it who is able to make it good and we have his Promise for it whose Promise cannot fail And then we cannot but be sensible that he who is filled with Righteousness cannot want that Holiness which accompanies Salvation And truly when I consider how these lower good Things the Blessings of Nature which are confessedly the Bounties of the God of Nature do freely flow in upon all his Creatures where their natural Appetites or Wants do desire or require them and where their Powers and Faculties are such in pursuit of such their Desires they endeavour to obtain them it mightily inclines me to think that his Blessing of Holiness will also there flow in where the moral Appetites of his Rational Creatures do sincerely desire it and where they are so sensible of their Want of it as to endeavour after it 4. We proceed and add in the fourth place That we are instructed both by God's Word and by our own Experience that tho' a perfect Holiness may be heartily desired and sincerely endeavoured after yet that it is never attained by any Man in this Life and therefore so neither is a perfect Happiness The Evidence for the first is because all Men in this World are Sinners and the Evidence for the last is because all Men in this World are Mortal Now as Sin is an infallible Confutation of a perfect Holiness so Mortality is an infallible Confutation of a perfect Happiness We are therefore at last arrived thus far that no Man shall arrive at a perfect Holiness till he is translated to another World And because it is difficult if not impossible to conceive how any Man should arrive at a perfect Holiness in the Grave therefore we may go one Step farther and add that no Man shall attain to such an Holiness till the Resurrection And we may very fairly and rationally conjecture I may say infer That then the Faithful shall For we know that by the Resurrection we shall be released from the Curse of the Law on the one Hand and shall enter upon the Reward of Obedience and Holiness on the other 5. And then lastly Because that Happiness which our Saviour has purchased for Believers is an eternal Happiness and because as we have seen it is impossible that there should be any such Thing as an eternal Happiness without an eternal Holiness and because to pretend to bestow an everlasting Happiness upon Man and not an everlasting Holiness without which such an Happiness is impossible is to mock Man and not to save him and because lastly we cannot without Blasphemy and Absurdity tax the Counsels and Purposes of our Saviour in the Business of Man's Salvation of such gross Prevarication therefore we do at last conclude That God in our Saviour will endow Believers at or upon their Resurrection with an Inherent Immutable and Eternal Holiness Now we have observed before That the Punishment threatned by the Gospel against those who shall refuse their Salvation by the Neglect of the Conditions of the Gospel is greater than what was threatned against the Breach of the Law of Works the Law given to Adam And that the Reward proposed by the Gospel to those who shall admit the Conditions of it is greater than what was by the Law proposed to Adam upon his Obedience And we have observed in this Chapter That that Inherent and Indefectible Holiness which is a Part of such Reward is greater and nobler than Adam's Holiness before the Fall because it is more lasting than that of him or indeed of the faln Angels Now it is certain that the Degrees of the Punishments are by Justice proportioned to the Degrees of the several Sinners own Deserts And it is certain that the Rewards of eternal Life and of an Indefectible Holiness do in Justice exceed the Deserts of all that are saved for they have been all Sinners And then what Grounds these Considerations may afford for the magnifying of God's Grace and the Merits and Dignity of our Saviour's Purchase and Person may be a Matter worthy our Meditations But I shall not pursue it here because tho' there be an Occasion for me to enlarge what has been said already yet I am unwilling to repeat CHAP. XIII By what Means Men shall be put into the Actual Possession of Eternal Life HAving thus far discoursed First Concerning the Pardon of Sin and Secondly Concerning the Gift of an Happy and Eternal Life the Two Things in which a Gospel Salvation does consist And having made it good That Believers do obtain both the one and the other only in Consideration of our Saviour's Merits and that their so doing is agreeable to Reason and Justice Two Things do still remain to be examined 1. By what Way or Means they shall be put into the Possession of such Eternal Life And 2. Wherein the Happiness of such Life does consist 1. And in order to the Resolution of the first Thing we lay it down as a certain Truth in the first place That Man in order to his entring upon the Possession of Eternal Life must first rise from the Dead For all Men die because all Men are Sinners And because it is absurd so much as to imagine that Man can enter upon the Possession of Eternal Life while he remains under the Power of Death therefore without any more ado we shall take it for granted that Man must be freed from that Death which is brought upon him by his Sin before he can obtain that Eternal Life which is purchased for him by his Saviour 2. We lay it down in the second place as a certain Truth That because our Saviour underwent Death himself for the Expiation of Man's Sin and because our Saviour could not in Nature or Possibility be qualified to bestow upon Man the Purchase of such his Death till he himself should rise from the Dead That therefore in order to Man's entring upon the Possession of an Eternal Life it was necessary that our Saviour himself as well as Man should first rise from the Dead 3. We lay it down in the Third place That if the Merits of our Saviour's Death were of Value sufficient to make good the Expiation of Man's Sin that then in Reason and Justice he ought to rise again from the Dead For
because in the Case so put he could have no Concern with Justice but what was his own and because he himself had paid an exact Obedience to the Law and because Life is the Reward of such Obedience as Death is the Wages of Disobedience Therefore if we do allow him to have unloaded himself of the Sin of Man which he had taken upon himself by his Death we must and do by so doing reinstate him in his own Right that is we must allow that he had a Right to be and therefore in Justice ought to be restored to Life again And therefore it is not at all to be questioned but that our Saviour had never died at all if he had never taken upon himself the Sins of other Men. But of this more by and by In the mean while these Things being laid down we proceed and 1. Observe in the first place That our Saviour's Resurrection is almost constantly by the Scriptures of the New Testament ascribed to God the Father And Multitudes of Texts might be quoted for it as the Second of the Acts ver 24 30. The Fifth Chapter of the same ver 26 30. The Tenth ver 40. The Seventeenth ver 31. The Tenth to the Romans ver 9. The First to the Corinthians chap. 6. ver 14 c. We know well enough that they who make it their Business to degrade our Saviour below his most exalted Dignity and Station do make use of these Texts for such their Purpose But we know withal that there are other Texts tho' indeed not so many and some of them when compared with their Context not so Categorical which yet ascribe his Resurrection to himself Such is that in the Second Chapter of St. John v. 19. Destroy this Temple and in three Days I will raise it up And so again in the Tenth of St. John v. 18. No Man taketh it from me but I lay it down of my self I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again Now as we made it out just now that after the Expiation finished he had a Right to rise from the Dead so we do not at all question but that he had a Power to raise himself too But tho' it should be allowed as we do not at all question and that too from several Things already laid down and made good but that it may be proved But I say tho' it should be allowed that he had both a Right and a Power to raise himself from the Dead yet notwithstanding that it was not altogether so congruous or agreeable to the equitable Proceedings of Justice that he should exercise such his Power or put himself into the possession of such his Right in the present Case For because he had submitted to offer his Life an Expiatory Sacrifice to the Divine Justice for the Sin of Man he had by such his Submission so far resigned such his Right and Power into the Hand of God as that both by the Laws of Reason and Justice as well as by the Rules of Decency and Congruity God was now become the sole Judge of the Validity of such his Sacrifice for the Accomplishment of the designed Expiation And if God was the sole Judge of the Validity of his Sacrifice he had by the same Means the rightful and I may add the sole Power of declaring such Validity And because the Resurrection of our Saviour from the Dead was in effect such a Declaration therefore we may now be satisfied why the Holy Ghost does so very frequently and in a manner constantly ascribe the Resurrection of our Saviour in the Scriptures to God alone To which we may add That the High-Priest under the Law who in this very Case was a Type of our Saviour was obliged once a Year to enter into the Holy of Holies but as the Author to the Hebrews words it not without Blood which he offered for himself and for the Errors of the People In which Case it must be confessed that the offering of the Blood to God was in order to his acceptance and that God's acceptance of the Blood that is of the Life of the Sacrifice was the Ratification of that Expiation that was made by such Sacrifice And in deed and truth our Saviour in the Business now before us being both the Priest and the Sacrifice to God for the Sins of Man and his Resurrection being the first Testimony or Declaration of the Acceptance of such his Sacrifice We cannot in any Congruity suppose that such Testimony or Declaration should be ascribed to any other but to God alone And therefore as all those Texts which ascribe our Saviour's Resurrection to God do in this Case speak strictly and properly so we may now by what has been said perceive that they are no Prejudice to his Divinity because he having obliged himself to offer that Body to which his Deity was united a Sacrifice for Sin he had by the same Act obliged himself to expect from God the Approbation and Allowance of such his Sacrifice and therefore also to receive from him his Resurrection which was an effectual Declaration of such Allowance And therefore 2. I do offer it to Consideration That the Resurrection of our Saviour from the Dead was an undoubted Argument that he had finished and compleated that Expiation which he had undertaken to make by his Death for the Sins of Men. For as we are assured by the Scriptures that he was crucified dead and buried and so that he died the Death of a Criminal So we are assured by the same Scriptures that he did not die for his own Crimes For it is utterly impossible and that too in the Nature of the Thing that he should die for his own Sins who yet did no Sin neither was Guile found in his Mouth that is who had no Sins of his own to die for Now because we are taught by the Scriptures and as we have already made it out because our Reason guided by them does fall in with them and so both do tell us that the Wages of Sin is Death that is that there is a Natural Justice in the Case that Death should be inflicted as the Punishment of Sin And because we are assured by the same Natural Reason that it must needs be unjust to inflict the same Punishment upon an Innocent Person which is the just Punishment of a Criminal I say for this Reason we may be satisfied that our Saviour tho' he was in himself a Lamb without Spot yet did die for some Sins or others be those Sins whose they will at present And therefore because the Spirit of God has by his express Word told us that he died for our Sins we may upon his Testimony rest satisfied that so he did Thus far therefore we have advanced towards our present Purpose and Argument That Death was what the Law threatned for our Sins and that we being Sinners and so having incurred the Vengeance threatned
in any degree Pious to be extraordinary good and not a few of us put such a Value upon our good Deeds that we spoil that little Goodness that is in them by our over-valuing them and our spiritual Pride like the Fly in the Box of Ointment robs them of their good Smell and Savour But it must be confessed that in so doing we do not imitate our Lord and Master who was meek and lowly and by his Self-denial ascribed such his Good Works which could not be hid entirely to God's Glory Why what Graces we have do confessedly come from God the Author and Giver of every good thing and therefore to ascribe the Goodness of any thing we have or of any thing we do to our selves is Usurpation and Robbery For we may as well ascribe to our selves our Natural as we may our Spiritual Life Both the one and the other derive from an higher Spring and from a nobler Fountain And he who has taught us by his Word to account our selves when we have done all we can but unprofitable Servants has taught us by his Example to do more For He did exactly fulfil the Law and his Obedience was perfect and yet for all that his Humility was great And then in Reason because our Performances are less our Humility ought to be greater For as Modesty should make us humble when we do well so our Defect in so doing should make us more so And therefore our Saviour's Example which shewed forth the greatest Humility in the Archievement of the greatest and noblest Performances should oblige us poor impotent defective Creatures to a greater were that possible Humility 5. Lastly Did our Saviour come down in our Flesh to save Sinners both from the Slavery and Filth of Sin and from the Wages of Sin too Then this should engage our Endeavours to rescue Sinners from the Errour of their Ways and to do as he did that is to bring them to God by the Ways of Holiness This is a noble Lesson and has our Saviour's Love and Good-will as well as his Holiness for its Pattern For a Man may be good and holy himself and yet Self-interest I mean an allowable Self-interest may be at the bottom of it He may fear God's Vengeance should he be wicked and so his Goodness may have an Eye to his Security But he who endeavours to reclaim another Sinner from the Errour of his Ways mixes Charity with his Piety by making anothers Welfare his Aim and by making more People happy besides himself Indeed the Grand Business of our Saviour's coming into the World was to redeem us from the Slavery and Dominion of Sin for if we be not redeemed from our Sins it is utterly impossible that we should be redeemed from the Vengeance of them And therefore he who endeavours the Conversion of Sinners imitates his Saviour in That that was his chiefest and noblest Design He endeavours to bring Rebel-Subjects under the Dominion of their first and rightful Lord He endeavours to defeat the Designs of the Devil for their utter Destruction He endeavours as far as his little Sphere reaches to restore the Creation to that Order and Harmony that God gave it when he first made it And in all this he does that which is his greatest Glory for he copies out the gracious and merciful Work of the Lord of Glory CHAP. V. The Son of God by his Incarnation accommodated his Condition for the making good the Expiation of Man's Sin IN order to our Vindication of the Counsel of God for the Salvation of sinful Man so far forth as he has been pleased to make manifest such his Counsel by the Revelations of his Word we have made it out that we had brought our selves into so forlorn a Condition by our Sins that so far as Reason guided by Revelation can discover there was no possible Way left for our Redemption but only by the Incarnation of the Son of God And in pursuit of such our Design we have in our last Chapter made it good That the Son of God was very God and very Man God and Man united in one Person or God Incarnate That this is a Truth professedly and expresly declared in the Scriptures and that too in such Words that it is impossible to express any thing whatsoever more plainly or more fully That what the Spirit so declares in the Scriptures is in no wise disagreeable to our Natural Reason and that upon both Accounts in Conjunction it is to be admitted into our Christian Belief For undoubtedly whatever God speaks that is not disagreeable to our Reason ought by us so to be admitted Now because in order to a Gospel-Salvation a Gospel-Forgiveness is required and because in order to a Gospel-Forgiveness an Expiation is required and because we have already made it good That no mere Creature can by any Means whatsoever make out such an Expiation Therefore we shall in what is now to follow make it our Business to shew That the Incarnation of the Son of God is as by the Scriptures so also by Natural Reason the most congruous Means and the best accommodated for the making good of such an Expiation For we may be very sure that the All-wise God always makes use of the most proper Means to bring about the Designs of his Counsels And we may be sure also that where he himself tells us that he makes use of any Means for the bringing any such his Designs to pass that what in such a Case he tells us is Truth If therefore he tells us that he employed the Incarnation of his Son for the Expiation of Sin or that his Son was Incarnate in order to such Expiation we may for that Reason alone if yet there were no other be rationally satisfied that such his Son's Incarnation was a proper Means of bringing to pass such an Expiation For the Methods of God's Proceedings in any Case whatsoever are therefore Wise because they are his And if at any time we cannot discover the Wisdom of such Methods it would be both modest and wise in us to impute the Want of such Discovery not to the Impossibility of the Thing but to the Short-sightedness of our own feeble and impotent Capacities Now all this I therefore speak not that I think that the Wisdom and Congruity of the Incarnation in order to the Expiation of Sin cannot be rationally accounted for for I hope we shall by and by find it otherwise but only to check the Confidence of some who make great Pretences to Reason even such Pretences that they do laboriously and industriously endeavour to bring down the most express Revelations of God to the Standard of such their Reason but seem to take no care to bring their Reason to an Accommodation with such Revelations But to return to our Design which is to make it out That the Incarnation of the Son of God is a Means wisely as well as mercifully ordained for making good the Expiation