A09339:1480
A Golden Chain
A golden chain: or The description of theology containing the order of the causes of salvation and damnation, according to Gods word. A view whereof is to be seen in the table annexed. Hereunto is adjoined the order which M. Theodore Beza used in comforting afflicted consciences.A golden chaine: or The description of theologie containing the order of the causes of saluation and damnation, according to Gods word. A view whereof is to be seene in the table annexed. Hereunto is adioyned the order which M. Theodore Beza vsed in comforting afflicted consciences.
Cambridge: printed by John Legat, 1600Cambridge: printed by Iohn Legat, 1600
AN EXPOSITION OF THE CREED. I believe in God. &c.AN EXPOSITION OF THE CREED. I beleeue in God. &c.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
In the Covenant I will consider two things; the parties reconciled between whom the Covenant is made, and the foundation thereof. The parties are God and man. God is the principal, and he promiseth righteousness and life eternal in Christ: Man again binds himself by Gods grace to believe and to rest upon the promise. Here it may be demanded why man is more in the covenant then angels. Ans. The will of God in this point, is not revealed unless it be because angels fell of themselves, not moved by any other: but man did fall by them. Again it may be asked, whether all mankind were ever in the covenant or no? Ans. We can not say that all and every man hath bin and now is in the covenant, but only that little part of mankind which in all ages hath bin the Church of God, and hath by faith embraced the covenant: as Paul plainly avoucheth,1 The scripture (saith he) hath concluded all under sin: that the promise of the saith of Jesus Christ should be given [not unto all men] but to them that believe. Without faith no man can please God;2 and therefore God makes no covenant of reconciliation without faith. Again since the beginning of the world there hath bin always a distinction between man and man. This appears in the very tenor of the words of the covenant made with our first parents, where God saith he will put difference between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent: meaning by the seed of the woman, Christ with all the elect whom the father hath given unto him, who shall bruise the serpents head, and tread Satan under their feet.3 And by the seed of the serpent he meaneth wicked men that live & die in their sins, as S. John saith,4 he that committeth sin is of the devil. And according to this distinction in times following was Abel received into the covenant, and Cain rejected: some were the sons of God in the days of Noah, some the sons of men: In Abraham's family, Ismael is cast out, and the covenant established in Isaac:5 Jacob is loved, Esau is hated. And this distinction in the families of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Paul approveth when he maketh some to be the children of the flesh, and some other the children of the promise. And again, the Jews a people of God in the covenant, the Gentiles no people.