An end of doctrinal controversies which have lately troubled the churches

§. 3. Therefore God did enter into Judgment with fallen Man, and did sentence him absolutely to some degree of Punishment, even to Labour, Pain, the penalty of the Cursed Earth, and finally to Death; which Temporal Punishment God would not remit, nor give him a Saviour to procure the pardon of it; but only to the Faithful, to turn all this unto their Benefit, and to deliver them from the greater everlasting Sufferings.

§. 4. And their own sinful pravity and privation of Holiness, and communion with God, which also was their greatest punishment by Consequence, God would not at once, nor in this Life perfectly save them from; and therefore accordingly pardoned them their punishment, but by the forementioned degrees. For he is not perfectly pardoned or saved, who is yet left under so much penalty.

§. 5. Some thinking it hard, that for 4000 Years the World should have no Existent Mediator, and that an Existent Faith in the future Mediator, should be more necessary than an Existent Mediator ⟨p. 89⟩and his Work, and thinking withal that it would solve many Textual Difficulties objected by the Arians, and explain the Appearances of Christ to the Patriarchs, have conceived that Christ hath a threefold Nature, viz. The Divine Nature, a created Super-Angelical Nature to which the Divine Nature was united before the Incarnation, and the Humane Nature assumed at the Incarnation; and that so we had an Existent Mediator from the time of the Fall. But whatever conveniences this Opinion may seem to have, I find no satisfactory proof of it in Scripture, nor that the Christian Church did ever hold it. And it is overmuch boldness to take up so great a Doctrine as a third Nature in Christ, which the Church of Christ was never acquainted with. And the Texts that seem to be for it, are capable of the common Exposition.