Meditations on the holy sacrament of the Lords last Supper Written many years sinceMeditations on the holy sacrament of the Lords last Supper Written many yeares since

Lastly, I conclude, that the temporal evils which do befall the godly are not formally or properly punishments, nor effects of divine malediction or vengeance towards the persons of the godly, who having obtained in Christ a plenary reconciliation with the Father, can be by him respected with no other affection (however in manner of appearance it may seem otherwise) than with an affection of love and free grace.

Lastly, I conclude, that the temporall evils which doe befall the godly are not formally or properly punishments, nor effects of divine malediction or vengeance towards the persons of the godly, who having obtained in Christ a plenary reconciliation with the Father, can be by him respected with no other affection (however in manner of appearance it may seeme otherwise) than with an affection of love and free grace.

The reasons for this position are these: first, Punishment, with what mitigation soever qualified is in suo formally, in the nature of it a thing ⟨p. 138⟩Legal, namely the execution of the Law, for divine Law is ever the square and rule of that Justice of which punishment is the effect and work. Now all those on whom the execution of the Law doth take any effect, may truly be said to be so far under the Law in regard of the sting and curse thereof, (for the curse of the Law is nothing else but the evil which the Law pronounceth to be inflicted, so that every branch and sprig of that evil, must needs bear in it some part of the nature of a Curse, even as every part of water hath in it the nature of water) but all the godly are wholly delivered from all the sting and malediction of the Law, Christ^b is unto us the end of the Law, abolishing the shadows of the Ceremonial, the the Curses of the Moral;^c we are no more under the Law, but under Grace, under the precepts, but not under the Covenant, under the