I answer you as before: 1. I look upon no punishment as deserved, in sensu forensi, in the sense of the Law, but what is threatened by that Law: Now you may easily resolve the Question your self, Whether the new Covenant do threaten damnation to that their unbelief? If they believe not at all before death, it pronounceth them condemned, otherwise not. 2. Yet might they in this following sense be said to deserve the great condemnation before they obeyed the Gospel, viz. as their unbelief is that sin for which the Gospel condemneth men, wanting nothing but the circumstance of finality or continuance to have made them the proper subjects of the curse; and it was no thanks to them that it proved not final; for God did make them no promise of one hour of time and patience, and therefore it was merely his mercy in not cutting them off, which made their unbelief not to be final and damning: Many a man that lived not half so long in rebellion, did yet prove a final condemned rebel; so that they did deserve, that God in the time of their infidelity should have cut off their lives, and so have let their infidelity be their destruction. But supposing that God would not so cut them off, and so their unbelief should not be final, (which is the case,) and so they are condemned or threatened by none but the first Law or Covenant ⟨p. 232⟩which Christ did satisfy: But as for the second Law or Covenant it condemneth them not, so that Christ need not bear the condemnation of that Covenant for them; for He doth not fetch any man from under the condemning sentence of it, but only in rich mercy to his chosen: He doth prevent their running into that condemnation, partly by bearing with them in patience, and continuing their lives, (for into the hands of the purchaser are they wholly committed,) and partly by prevailing with them to come in to him by the efficacy of his Word and Spirit; so that considering them as unbelievers who were to be converted, and so they were neither the proper subjects of the Promise of the new Covenant, nor of the threatening and condemnation of it: Promise they had none, but conditional, such as they had not received, and so were never the better for; and so they were without the covenant, and without hope, and without God, and strangers to all the privileges of the Saints:
I answer you as before: 1. I look upon no punishment as deserved, in sensu forensi, in the sense of the Law, but what is threatened by that Law: Now you may easily resolve the Question your self, Whether the new Covenant do threaten damnation to that their unbelief? If they believe not at all before death, it pronounceth them condemned, otherwise not. 2. Yet might they in this following sense be said to deserve the great condemnation before they obeyed the Gospell, viz. as their unbelief is that sin for which the Gospell condemneth men, wanting nothing but the circumstance of finality or continuance to have made them the proper subjects of the curse; and it was no thanks to them that it proved not finall; for God did make them no promise of one hour of time and patience, and therefore it was meerly his mercy in not cutting them off, which made their unbelief not to be finall and damning: Many a man that lived not half so long in rebellion, did yet prove a finall condemned rebell; so that they did deserve, that God in the time of their infidelity should have cut off their lives, and so have let their infidelity be their destruction. But supposing that God would not so cut them off, and so their unbelief should not be finall, (which is the case,) and so they are condemned or threatened by none but the first Law or Covenant ⟨p. 232⟩which Christ did satisfie: But as for the second Law or Covenant it condemneth them not, so that Christ need not bear the condemnation of that Covenant for them; for He doth not fetch any man from under the condemning sentence of it, but only in rich mercy to his chosen: He doth prevent their running into that condemnation, partly by bearing with them in patience, and continuing their lives, (for into the hands of the purchaser are they wholly committed,) and partly by prevailing with them to come in to him by the efficacy of his Word and Spirit; so that considering them as unbelievers who were to be converted, and so they were neither the proper subjects of the Promise of the new Covenant, nor of the threatening and condemnation of it: Promise they had none, but conditionall, such as they had not received, and so were never the better for; and so they were without the covenant, and without hope, and without God, and strangers to all the priviledges of the Saints:
