A25294:143
The substance of Christian religion, or, A plain and easy draught of the Christian…The substance of Christian religion, or, A plain and easie draught of the Christian…
The substance of Christian religion, or, A plain and easy draught of the Christian catechism in LII lectures on chosen texts of Scripture, for each Lords-day of the year, learnedly and perspicuously illustrated with doctrines, reasons, and uses / by that reverend and worthy labourer in the Lord's vineyard, William Ames ...The substance of Christian religion, or, A plain and easie draught of the Christian catechisme in LII lectures on chosen texts of Scripture, for each Lords-day of the year, learnedly and perspicuously illustrated with doctrines, reasons, and uses / by that reverend and worthy laborer in the Lord's vineyard, William Ames ...
London: printed by T. Mabb for Thomas Davies, 1659
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
The Fifth Lords-day.
Rom. 8. 3. For what the Law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.
Rom. 8. 3. For what the Law could not doe, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likenesse of sinfull flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.
The Apostle in this place expounds, why the faithful may be freed from sin and death by Christ: The reason is given as it were from the cause moving God to this giving of Christ. ⟨p. 31⟩And this moving cause was the neediness of our want, which appears in the defect of power in any other means to produce such an effect, as if the Apostle had said; because it was needful for us, to be delivered from sin and death; and yet this could be effected by no other means, therefore God performed it by Christ. The strength and necessity of this consequence depends upon the will of God, which tacitly supposeth, that God would not have mankind fall, utterly to perish, but to be restored again. The whole syllogism or reason is this. If by no other means fallen men could be restored, but by Christ, then that way was to be taken, because God would that some way it should be done: but the first is true; and therefore also the latter. The assumption is proved, to wit, that man could be restored by no other means; by the most likely instance of the law, which once had been of great power, and of force sufficient to bring man to happiness: For except Christ and the Gospel, never any thing was given of God to man, that was more perfect and divine than the Law. That therefore which the Apostle says here of the law, hath the force of such an argument as this: If by virtue of the Law man could not be restored, than by no other means could he be but by Christ; but the first is true, and therefore the latter also. The Apostle both proves and expounds the Assumption at once, from the reason or cause of this defect or weakness of the law, to restore man; that it is not properly inherent in the law it self, but in our flesh or corruption, whereby it is, that we cannot fulfil the law, that so it might save us; much less by the Law rise up again from Death to life.