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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A95352	None but Christ, or A sermon upon Acts 4. 12. Preached at St. Maries in Cambridge, on the commencement Sabbath, July 4. 1652. To which is annexed, an enquiry after what hope may be had of the salvation of [brace] 1. Heathens. 2. Those of the old world, the Jews and others before Christ. 3. Such as die infants, and idiots, &c. now under the Gospel. / By Anthony Tuckney, D.D. and Master of St. Johns Colledge in Cambridge.	Tuckney, Anthony, 1599-1670.	1654 (1654)	Wing T3217; Thomason E1523_3; ESTC R208588	57,811	146

behalf of man in general should imply and contain the knowledge and belief of this particular Providence of his saving man by a Messiah It will take in all the men that have ever been in the world except some few Atheists and Epicureans that denyed a Deity and a Providence nor it may be would they be excepted if they had been rightly understood and reported of who perhaps were taken to deny a Deity when they only denied the false Deities which were then adored by others and so possibly were lesse Atheists than many then were and now are and so by this means quae coelo ducit semita facta via est the way and gate to Heaven which our Saviour saith is narrow and strait and which Mat. 7. 14. few finde will bee made farre wider then either they or any will finde it 4. And for what was said that by Gods patience in continuing the world they may infer that hee is pacified I onely say two things First if they might possibly from thence infer a Mediatour yet for all that they would be still to seek who that Mediatour should be and so they would only erect an Altar to an Acts 17. ●3 unknown God but mean while have no knowledge or thought that this Mediatour is Jesus Christ but the Jewes may think it is their long-looked-for Messiah and the Turk may put in for his Mahomet both which and their salvation by either will come together And if the Heathen stay till they both get in he may come to be kept out for ever Secondly I adde that although a true believer by light from the word may from Gods patience inferre Christs mediation yet others from these mens principles cannot necessarily conclude so much but onely might inferre that God is gracious and merciful and so without the intervention of a Mediatour to pacifie his anger doth of himself either for some time forbear or wholly forgive as the Socinians positively affirm that he hath done and many both Papists and others say but for his purpose and decree he might have done So that if this be all the Dowry of the Heathens neither true faith nor salvation may be entailed upon it and will be but the Concubines childrens gifts but will fall short of the free-womans heirs inheritance It was of old Faith in a Messiah to come and in Jesus Christ now that he is come that ever did doth or will bring any to salvation And although they who are otherwise minded may seem the more candid and charitable yet I must account it not pity but folly and pride to make our selves more merciful and wise then God and that therefore S. Austin was more Gredendum est neminem ullâ unquam at ate ad spiritualem Jerusalem pervenisse nisi cui divinitùs revelatus fuerit unus Mediator Dei hominum c De Civitat Dei l. 18. cap. 47 sound in the faith who makes this one Article of it That it is to be believed that none ever belonged to the spiritual Jerusalem to whom Christ was not revealed as Mediatour which he looks at as so Fundamental a truth and which he was so fully possessed with that he is not affraid to speak a very great word and if I tell you it I hope you will not be offended at it It is this Qui dicit hominem servari posse sine Christo dubito an ipse per Christum servari potest He doubteth whether that man can be saved by Christ who believes and maintain's that any man can be faved without Christ But notwithstanding all this Satan and Antichrist are deadly enemies to Christ would have him robbed of his glory either in whole or in part and therefore would have us either not as beholden to him or at least as little as may be And our proud hearts too self-full are loath to go out of themselves to Christ His imputed righteousnesse is to us a riddle and something inherent in us we make our idol Something in us some way our own The Pharisees and Jewes of old and Rom. 10. 〈◊〉 Pelagius with all his heirs and allies in their several shapes to this day they would have some way or other to commend us to God And so out of an over-weening of a selfmoral righteousnesse which they adore and out of a fond pity of Philosophers and others whom they admire they cannot be perswaded but that many such might be saved without faith in our only Savior The more full clearing of wh●ch point I must in the following Enquiry refer to another place and for the present close all with some Application Vse 1. If no salvation but by Christ then Calvins inference is Ergo patres veteris Testamenti ejusdem Redemptioris Incarnatione Passione salvati sunt Augustin Ep. 157. good that Believers under the Old Testament and the New have one and the same common Saviour they all drank of the same spiritual rock that followed them and that Rock was Christ 1 Cor. 10. 3 4. Our Christ was their Messiah the precious foundation corner stone which did unite both sides of the building and uphold both as it was the same brazen serpent which from contrary quarters of the Camp they looked at for healing They looked forward at him as to come we backward as already come but both their faith and ours meet in the same Jesus yesterday and to day and for ever Heb. 13 8. who being lifted up on the Crosse and by faith looked upon heal's and saves all that ever were or shall be saved for besides him no salvation And in this let us admire and adore the vast exten● and unvaluable worth of our Saviours merit that reacheth to so many and operateth at such a distance How ductile and precious is this finest gold that spreadeth so farre and purchaseth the Redemption of so many Of them in the beginning of the world by a price that was paid four thousand years after According to mens ordinary rates its little that they would part with for the present for a payment to be made or a purchase to be enjoyed a thousand years after That price therefore must be of infinite value which at a far greater distance pu●chased the salvation of so many precious souls one of which a whole world could not redeem For this you shall once and again in the Revelation have the whole Chorus Rev. 5. 9. Rev. 7 9 10. singing Amen Hallelujah Vse 2. With the like humble awfulness let us adore and tremble at the most dreadful and yet most just Judgement of God upon the Heathen the farre greater part of the world then whom yet he over-looked Acts 14. 16. 17. 30. and left in darknesse without the true knowledge of a Saviour and so without means and hopes of salvation and i 〈…〉 ead of flattering them and thereby hardning others by cutting out new ways invented by our selves besides the King of Heavens high-way to life and not

according to them there was in them some positive and wilful if not malicious neglect and not a bare negative infidelity Calvin Instit l. 1. c. 4 whilest they damped and corrupted that light which they had which not only our Divines assert but even the Papists also freely grant and amongst others Ambicatharinus enquiring after the reason why the Philosophers who acknowledged God as Creator and in his infinite Providence Goodness and other perfections to be worshipped should yet fall short of his grace resolveth it thus Supernaturalis gratiae donis ditandos eos etiam fuisse ni terrenae scientiae superbi â elati hoc ipsum coelestis gratiae donum haud disperissent That they had also been blessed with saving grace but that being puft up with conceit of their earthly wisdome and knowledge they despised that which was saving and celestial as is evident and manifest in many of them in whom not so much ignorance and negative infidelity as positive malice and pride and prepossession of false and wicked principles and practises were the obex which kept them off from saving knowledg and grace and although for many of them they had not as we have seen before sufficient means of it yet they might have advanced farther and come nearer to it then they did For Jerusalem and the Church of God was even then as a Beacon or City on the top of an hill and what God did there was not done in a corner so that Andradius his ad quam nullus patebat aditus was an overlasted Hyperbole For they might have done more then they did and might have gained so much knowledge as that although it might not have made them wise to salvation yet the careless and wilful and in some malicious neglect of it may justly render them inexcusable and fully clear Gods righteousnesse in their just condemnation And thus I have endeavoured to clear it from this threefold blasphemous imputation in which not only Papists but also many of our own are extreamly bold and presumptuous so as cannot but make any good heart tremble to read and hear what too often in this kind is written and spoken it would be well therefore that they would be more wary for if vera de Deo loqui periculosum sit if to speak truth of God in some cases may be dangerous to speak blasphemies of him will bee desperate and therefore that they would sadly think and repent of it and lay their hands on their mouths and never open them this way any more lest at last when God will be able to declare the holiness and righteousness of his decrees and proceedings to them above what they can or will now see they be not left altogether speechlesse when after all their presumptuous querying of his Matth. 22. 12. counsels he shall ask them this question like that of Zebul to Gaal Judg. 9. 38 Where is now thy mouth wherewith thou saidst c. There now remain's but a Plea or two more for the salvation of those Gentiles which fell or do fall short of the knowledge of God in Christ and they are taken from the two other fore-mentioned Instances And the first of them is of the men of the old world before the Floud Of the other Patriarchs after it and of the Jews under the Law before Christ Many of whom we must believe were certainly saved and yet for the most part they knew no more of a Christ or a Messiah then the very Heathon the faith of Christ Mediatour being no where if you will believe Stapleton written or made Nec fidem Mediatoris Christi usquàm scribi in toto V. T. mention of in the Old Testament To which I answer 1. That this bold assertion is very injurious to the Jews the then people of God in putting them and the Heathens into the same condition Nay Lud Vives as before was shown makes the Heathens condition the better of the two as he is the more expert traveller who knoweth his way of himself then he that look's for it in his Map but the Apostle is of a far other minde who makes the priviledge and advantage of the Jews much more every way and especially in this that unto Rom 3. 1 2 3 c. cap. 9. 4 5. them were committed the Oracles of God Which the Psalmist before in the Old Testament had fully declared when he said That God had not so dealt with any other Nation and as for his judgements they had not known them Psal 147. 20. which the Jews had v. 19. and therefore our Saviour himself faith that salvation was of the Jews John 4. 22. An happy priviledge of them as on the contrary if well considered a very heavy word expressing the woful estate of the Gentiles 2. I confidently avouch that all Augustin de Civit. Dei l. 10. cap. 25. the Jews and others both before and under the Law that were saved were saved by the same faith in a Messiah to come that we are now that he is come as the Apostle sheweth at large Heb. 11. where having in the last verse of the tenth Chapter spoken of our now believing to the saving of the soul in the eleventh Chapter he sheweth the same faith to have been in the believers of the Old Testament to their salvation And he beginneth with Abel who by faith offered his sacrifice v. 4. as in it by faith looking at the all-sufficient sacrifice which our blessed high Priest should afterwards offer up for all Believers and so he goeth on to Enoch Noah Abraham and other of the Patriarchs who lived and died in faith not having indeed received the promises but yet saw them afar off and were perswaded of them and embraced them v. 13. according to that of Austin Christi saluberrimâ fide etiam illi justi salvi facti sunt qui priusquam veniret in carne crediderunt in carnem venturam which also Lombard averreth to be the joint sentence of all the holy Fathers Sine fide Mediatoris nullum hominem vel ante vel post fuisse s●lvum sanctoru● authoritates Lib 3. dist 25. contestantur I acknowledge indeed that the eye of their faith in general was more dim or that the Types and Veils and Shadows which they then looked through were more dark so that a lesse measure of faith and of the S. Sinensis distinctness and clearness of it might save them which now will not save us as Chrysostome himself asserteth Hom 37. in Matth. who although he required of them no knowledge of Christ as necessary to their salvation or as some favourably interpret him no explicite Casaub ex●rcit 1. knowledge yet he addeth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 God expecting that we now should see more in the Sun-shine then they could in the Twi-light in which as many Articles of the Christian Religion were more obscurely delivered so they were more imperfectly apprehended and believed But