A26862:196
Aphorisms of justification, with their explication annexed wherein also is opened the nature of…Aphorismes of justification, with their explication annexed wherein also is opened the nature of…
Aphorisms of justification, with their explication annexed wherein also is opened the nature of the covenants, satisfaction, righteousness, faith, works, &c. : published especially for the use of the church of Kidderminster in Worcestershire / by their unworthy teacher Ri. Baxter.Aphorismes of justification, with their explication annexed wherein also is opened the nature of the covenants, satisfaction, righteousnesse, faith, works, &c. : published especially for the use of the church of Kederminster in Worcestershire / by their unworthy teacher Ri. Baxter.
Hague: printed by Abraham Brown, 1655
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.
EXPLICATION.
(1) Whether Man were only the meritorious Cause of this his disability, or also the Efficient, is a great dispute, but of no great moment; as long as we are agreed that Man is the only faulty cause. Whether he cast away Gods image? or whether God took it from him for sin? whether God only could annihilate it? Or whether Man may annihilate a Quality, though not a Substance? I will not meddle with. But too sure it is, that we are naturally deprived of it, and so disabled to fulfil the Law. If Christ therefore should have pardoned all that was past, and renewed the first violated Covenant again; and set Man in the same estate that he fell from, in point of guilt, yet would he have fallen as desperately the next temptation: yea though he had restored to him his primitive strength and holiness, yet experience hath showed on how slippery and uncertain a ground his happiness would have stood, and how soon he was likely to play the Prodigal again with his stock.
(1) WHether Man were only the meritorious Cause of this his disability, or also the Efficient, is a great dispute, but of no great moment; as long as we are agreed that Man is the only faulty cause. Whether he cast away Gods image? or whether God took it from him for sin? whether God only could annihilate it? Or whether Man may annihilate a Quality, though not a Substance? I will not meddle with. But too sure it is, that we are naturally deprived of it, and so disabled to fulfill the Law. If Christ therefore should have pardoned all that was past, and renewed the first violated Covenant again; and set Man in the same estate that he fell from, in poynt of guilt, yet would he have fallen as desperately the next temptation: yea though he had restored to him his primitive strength and holinesse, yet experience hath shewed on how slippery and uncertain a ground his happiness would have stood, and how soon he was likely to play the Prodigal again with his stock.