Richard Baxter's Catholic theology plain, pure, peaceable, for pacification of the dogmatical word-warriors who,…Richard Baxter's Catholick theologie plain, pure, peaceable, for pacification of the dogmatical word-warriours who,…

189. When we tell them, that, If we had fulfilled all the Law reputatively ¹by Christ as our Legal person, we could not be bound to further obedience to it, They answer, that we are not bound to obey to the same ends as Christ, that is for Righteousness, or Justification or merit, but in Gratitude. But this is but to give us the cause, and ignorantly to destroy ²their own. For, 1. This is but to say, that when a man is reputed to have fulfilled all the Law, yet it is to be reputed unfulfilled as to certain ends. As if he fulfilled all the Law that fulfilled it not to all due ends: 2. Or as if the Law obliged one man to fulfil it twice over for the same life's time; once simply and in all its obligations, and another time for other ends. 3. Or as if the Law required any more than absolute perfection. 4. Or that absolute perfection had not been in Christ's holy ³obedience. 5. Or as if there were any obedience whose end is not Righteousness and Justification, against the change of the contrary disobedience. Do not these men obey that they may be so far righteous? Or is not every man so far Righteous as he doth Righteousness? Is not every man ⟨p. 76⟩that loveth God justifiable as a Lover of him for so far as he loveth him? 6. And is not Gratitude an end, and a thing commanded by the Law? If we obeyed perfectly in Christ, we were perfectly thankful in Christ. 7. But if they say that Christ fulfilled only the Law made to Adam for us, and not his own Law of Grace, and therefore that he obeyed for us, only to the ends of that Law; I answer, 1. If the ends and matter of that Law be fulfilled by us in him, our obedience to any other must be needless: For he that is supposed never to have sinned, need not use any means for pardon or remedy. 2. By this rule Christ only fulfilled the Law for Adam, and Eve, and for us only as we were in them, which is only Virtually and not Actually at all; but not at all for us according to any obligation that ever fell upon our persons. For, 1. We were never personally bound to perfect personal perpetual obedience as the Condition of life; For that Covenant as to the promise and condition ceased before any man was born. 2. And all the duty in the world which are bound to, is to be done for Evangelical ends; for recovering Grace, and unto Gratitude, &c.