A26862:54
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.
THESIS. IIII.
The first Covenant made with Adam did promise life upon condition of perfect obedience, and threaten death upon the least disobedience.
THe first Covenant made with Adam did promise life upon condition of perfect obedience, and threaten death upon the least disobedience.
EXPLICATION.
The promise of life is not expressed, but plainly implied in the threatening of death. That this life promised was only the continuance of that state that Adam was then in in Paradise, is the judgement of most Divines: But what death it was that is there threatened, is a Question of very great difficulty, and some moment. The same damnation that followeth the breach of the New Covenant, it could not be: no more then the life then enjoyed is the same with that which the New Covenant promiseth. And I cannot yet assent to their judgement, who think it was only that death which consisteth in a ⟨p. 11⟩mere separation of soul and body: or also in the annihilation of both. Adams separated soul must have enjoyed happiness, or endured misery: For that our souls when separated are in one of these conditions, and not annihilated or insensible, I have proved by twenty Arguments from Scripture in another book. As Adams life in Paradise was, no doubt incomparably beyond ours in happiness; so the death threatened in that Covenant was a more terrible death then our temporal death. For though his loss by a temporal death would have bin greater then ours now; yet he would not have bin a Subject capable of privation, if annihilated; nor however capable of the sense of his loss. A great loss troubleth a dead man no more then the smallest. Therefore as the joy of Paradise would have bin a perpetual joy, so the sorrow and pain it is like would have bin perpetual, and we perpetuated capable Subjects. See Barlow exercit. utrum melius sit miserum esse quam non esse? I do not think that all the deliverance that Christs Death procured, was only from a temporal death or annihilation: or that the death which he suffered was equivalent to no more.