Selected quad for the lemma: reason_n
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A27584
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A brief view of the state of mankind in the first Adam and the second Adam being the sum of many larger discourses upon that great context of the redemption and mediation of Jesus Christ / by T. Beverley.
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Beverley, Thomas.
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1690
(1690)
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Wing B2125; ESTC R15745
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14,528
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60
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A BRIEF VIEW OF THE STATE OF Mankind IN THE First ADAM and in the Second ADAM Being the Sum of many larger Discourses upon that Great Context of the Redemption and Mediation of Jesus Christ Rom. 5. 12. to the end By T Beverley Rom. c. 5. v. 12. to the End To you my Honoured and Truly Loved Hearers I propose to present the Mediatorship and Redemption of Jesus Christ in this Context in a Summary view of each particular whereof I have discoursed at large that you may have it always in Remembrance NOW the Apostle had in his foregoing Discourse set out the absolute Necessity All Mankind have of a Mediator of Righteousness and Acceptance with God to Eternal Life by way of Reconciliation Propitiation Attonement and Redemption to Reprize and Recover them For All have sinned and fallen short of that Glory of God and are run into Sin Judgment Death and Condemnation so as to have their Mouths stop'd and to become Guilty before God He had with all express'd at large the absolutely perfect and sufficient Mediation of Jesus Christ to all those purposes of Life and shewn that the best of men such as Abraham and David had trusted wholly to it And upon good Reason for therein Conscience may forever sit down in Peace with God and rest in hope of his Glory and by no other way can they so do In this Context He doth both remove an Objection incident to what He had said and exceedingly amplifies the Mediatorship of Christ The Objection He removes is That it may seem strange to be justified before God and accepted with Him by the Righteousness of Another To this the Apostle supplies an Answer That it was always so intended by God to justifie and accept Humane Nature by a Common Head or Mediator of it standing Righteous before Him while it is always to be understood that an Inward Real and Inherent Righteousness and Active Obedience should be conveyed from the Righteousness of that Common Head or Mediator This the Apostle proves by strong interwoven Assertions that Adam was at first such a Common Head and Mediator in whose Continuance to stand Righteous before God this whole Posterity of Humane Nature should have also stood Righteous and in Grace and Favour with God and have maintained an inward Righteousness and active Obedience to Him to Eternal Life And therefore when by Sin He fell He became by the force of that Constitution an unhappy Mediator of Sin Judgment Condemnation and Death and also of inward Vnrighteousness and Disobedience to an innumerable Train of actual Transgressions Therefore it follows the Conveyance of Righteousness to Justification and of the Power of Sanctification to the Reign of and in Eternal Life by Jesus Christ is much stronger then the Conveyance of Righteousness by Adam as if he had stood was intended or of Sin and Death by his Fall of which there is so long and sad Experience But then further the Apostle Aggrandizes and Amplifieâ— the Redemption Headship and Communication of Christ above that of Adam in that He calls Adam but a Type or Figure of Him that was to come or more significantly of Him that was to be viz. the Common Head or Mediator whom God design'd in the foresight at least of Adams Fall to be that Common Head or Mediator of Righteousness though by way of Rescue and Recovery to Humane Nature and that unchangeably and irreversably As therefore the Antitype or Person Figured excells the Type or Person Figuring so Christ excells Adam as a Head or Mediator of Righteousness And when Adam came to be a Head of Sin and of Apostacy the Communication of Life and Righteousness from Christ surmounts not only in the Quality and Dignity of Things communicated viz. Of Grace Righteousness and Life above Sin Wrath Death and Condemnation but in the Abundancy and Efficacy of the Communication as is by the Apostle most magnificently display'd both in the Grand Proposition v. 18. and in the attending Parallels or Comparisons double on each side of the Proposition as shall be seen in their just Order and Places The only Limitation and Restraint for the Right Understanding of the whole is That those to whom Christ is a Head of Communication of what is in Him must be in Him as All Mankind was and is descendingly from Adam else there can be no Communication And yet Though All men are universally none excepted in Adam and none but the truly Regenerate or Born again are in Christ which are alas in Comparison but the Few of Mankind Yet this does not prejudice or lessen the Headship of Christ or make it run lower in its surmount of Communicativeness above the Communicativeness of Adams Sin and Guilt and Death and Condemnation upon it This is the prospect of the whole to which every particular shall answer in its due Time and Place Proposit 1. The First point I begin with is upon the Center of the Comparison betwixt Adam and Christ viz. That the First Adam is the Figure or Type of Him who is to be the Second and Last Adam for beyond Him there can be none The First Adam Created by God in a Righteous and Holy Estate and in a direct Line to Life was ordain'd by God a Common Head and Mediator of Humane Nature and was if He had stood to have Remained so and to have conveyed indefeisably his Excellent State to his Posterity But because of his Fall fore-seen by God He was but a Figure or Type of Jesus Christ the onely perfect Adam For in that He is the Second and the Last It argues He is the onely perfect For if the First had not been Found Fault with There had been no place Found for a Second and if there could any Fault have been Found with the Second He might not have been the Last The Great Proof of this Proposition and of the whole Train that here Follows upon it Lyes in the Word of God It is True indeed we must by the Line of Reason Ascend to some First Father of Mankind who will in the very Nature of the Thing be a Trustee or Common Person for his Posterity and when we must needs Believe That First Parent came perfect out of the Creatours Hand and when we find the Remains and mentions of such a Perfection in our selves in the Law written in our Hearts we must therefore conclude He by his Transgression lost that Perfection into a State of Sin and Death wherein we Find our selves so far ingulph'd And when so Great a Second Adam as the Son of God in our Nature is Reveal'd to us by the Gospel Reason must needs Assent that It is a Recovery of Humane Nature both most proper and most Illustrious of which Grace of God Nature hath some Light But the Greatest Proof I say is the Word of God which we have strongest Reason to Believe seeing we find those most Intimate Principles ingraven on our Hearts so Fairly written in
Psal 51. 5. Ephes 2. 〈◊〉 c. 4. 22. conveys by Natural Generation and so especially by the Body as all evidence of Scripture assure us too many to need pointing to Hence Children of Wrath by Nature by Conception in Sin the Natural States call'd the Old Man a Body and Members of Sin The Soul coming with a Law of Righteousness engraven upon it immediately by Gods Creation into such a Body and sinking into its Corruption as descending from Adam and not keeping up to its Law of Creation sinks into Sin and Death But Christs Regeneration by his Spirit dwells as a higher 1 Cor. 6. 19. Rom. 8. 10 11. Spirit in the Regenerated Spirit and from thence making a Temple of the Body gives present Life to that Spirit by Righteousness when ever it separates from the Body and a Resurrection to the Body after Death 3. The Law of conveyance of Sin and Death is unrepealable upon All that is of Apostate Adam The Spirit or highest Soul of all the Children of Adam cemented with the Body is till recover'd by Christ under Condemnation notwithstanding It was given by Creation from God It cannot be renewed perfectly so as to be Life till separated from the Body by the Death of the Body The Body till it be a Body of the Resurrection is under Death and All this by vertue of that Decree upon Adam the Head But in Christ the head of recovery All is in its own order recovered into the Reign of Life the Spirit beginningly now perfectly at Death becomes Life The Body as the Temple of the Holy Ghost dwelling in the Soul shall be certainly rais'd by the Spirit of Christ dwelling in the Soul and by it in the Body also Vse All which teaches us to look to this that we be found in the Second Adam out of whom there is in from the First Adam as a Common Head nothing but Sin Death and Condemnation Proposition 3. Adam by his Fall and Observe the whole Context from verse to verse Conveyance of a Law of Holiness and of a Nature not agreeable to that Law of Holiness hath been a Head Common Person or Mediator of abundance of Sin Disobedience Offence Transgression Condemnation Death and the Reign of Death to the Posterity of Mankind The Law of Righteousness published in a fairer fuller clearer Edition in Scripture then as it is in the Heart of Man since the Fall hath made the Offence and the Death upon it much more to abound and Reign by the clearer Knowledge and more manifest Discoveries of them 1. Adam notwithstanding his Fall ceased not to be the prolifick and fruitful Head of millions of Mankind that have been and are yet to be 2. To All these He conveys the Nature of Men in all its vigour of Thoughts Words and Actions according to the variety of Degrees of Action whereunto the several Tempers Educations Stations and Ages of Men give them Opportunity 3. He hath no less conveyed that Law of Righteousness to be the Rule of the numberless Persons of Mankind and their far more numerous Actions of which the Fiery Law of God in Scripture now gives the clearest Beams 4. Hereupon by Reason of the unanswerableness of their Natures and Powers of Action and so of their Actions themselves to this Law a kind of Infinity of Actual Sin hath flown in upon the World much more discovered and aggravated by that Fiery Law 5. From thence Death in all its various shapes in this present World and the unsheathing Rev. 20. 14 15. of Death in the Second and Eternal Death of which the present Death is but the sheath or Scabbard hath had and must have a wonderful and triumphant Reign on the World of which all the Threats in the Word of God are a notorious Evidence 6. Besides the Evidence of the Word of God all the Experience all the Laws all the Writings all the common and ordinary Discourse in the World are the most known and familiar Assurances of the Abundance of Sin and Death 7. The close Attendance of Reason and its Enquiries will necessarily lead us to the First man as the original of both but the unquestionable Demonstration of it is this Word of God which best knows how Mankind began which hath given the most convictive Accounts of Sin and Death and which our own Sentiments of Mind most conspire with and so is most to be believ'd in the Original of them 8. In all this so abundant Communication of Sin and Death of which Adam by the accident of his own Sin is become a Head He is by that accident also yet the Figure of him who is to be the Second Adam in regard of the Exuberancies of Communication though not in regard of the Things Communicated as contrary and opposite one to another as Sin and Death are contrary to Righteousness and Life But to All that are in Christ Observe the much more along the Context Christ is a Mediator as much excelling Adam in the Power and Triumph of Communication of Righteousness Life and the Reign of it as the Antitype excells the Type as was before said and that not only in the Excellency of the Things Communicated but in the Richness and Plenty of the Communication Vse How Necessary is it we should All behold our selves in the First Adam in whom we certainly are by Natural Generation and that thereupon we should be filled with the Shame Horror Sorrow and Humiliation flowing from such a lost Nature and our innumerable Actual Transgressions upon it And that thereupon we should hasten into the Second Adam by Faith and Regeneration who is the Head of Life and Recovery Proposition 4. Jesus Christ is brought in One Man One Jesus Christ is oppos'd to One Man Adam throughout the Context by God the Second Last perfect Adam the most Excellent One Man the Common Head and Mediator of Humane Nature the Antitype to the Type the First Adam The First man Adam was before his Fall a Person of Great Value of Great Sufficiency when He was appointed a Mediator by God But by his own Sin He sunk and Fell and is become to all his Posterity a Head of Ruine Christ therefore comes as a Person of infinitely Greater value into the Humane Nature and into Adams Station to Raise Recover and Boy it up He came into the Nature so as to embrace the whole Nature in Himself without a Humane Person and so was more perfectly a Man then Adam not a Great Man but The Man 1 Tim. 2. 5. Christ Jesus As the Son of God He was Creator and Lord of the Nature and so had Right to Recover it as his own As the Phil. 2. v. 6. 8. Son of Man He bore the abstracted Humane Nature not limited to a Humane but united to the Divine Person and so was incomparably beyond Adam fit to be the Common Head because he had all the Nature so abstracted not bounded as in