A26923:627
An end of doctrinal controversies which have lately troubled the churches
An end of doctrinal controversies which have lately troubled the churches by reconciling explication without much disputing. Written by Richard Baxter.
London: printed for John Salusbury, 1691
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.
§. 14. By all this it appeareth, that it is a most unfavoury thing for men called Divines to dispute hotly, That Christ did or did not die and merit for all, and bitterly revile their Adversaries in the Controversy, without ever explaining that one ambiguous syllable [FOR], or telling men what they mean. And when it is well explained, we scarce know how to differ.
§. 14. By all this it appeareth, that it is a most unfavoury thing for men called Divines to dispute hotly, That Christ did or did not die and merit for all, and bitterly revile their Adversaries in the Controversie, without ever explaining that one ambiguous syllable [FOR], or telling men what they mean. And when it is well explained, we scarce know how to differ.
§. 15. For few will deny but that Christ suffered, not immediately because Man sinned (as if Suffering were due to him merely because we sinned) but because he undertook so to do, and was obliged so to do by the Law of Mediation: But remotely he suffered, not only because the Elect had sinned, but because all Mankind had sinned. That is, The Conditional Pardon and Mercies given to all Mankind, are such as Christ's Sacrifice and Merits must be congruously the Causes of, as well as the actual Pardon of Believers.
§. 15. For few will deny but that Christ suffered, not immediately because Man sinned (as if Suffering were due to him meerly because we sinned) but because he undertook so to do, and was obliged so to do by the Law of Mediation: But remotely he suffered, not only because the Elect had sinned, but because all Mankind had sinned. That is, The Conditional Pardon and Mercies given to all Mankind, are such as Christ's Sacrifice and Merits must be congruously the Causes of, as well as the actual Pardon of Believers.
§. 16. But if the stress of the Controversy be laid on Christ's personating or representing this man or that, by that time this (humane, invented, ambiguous, unscriptural) Phrase is explained, either we shall be ound to be all of a mind, or else some will run into an intolerable error about [Christ's dying and meriting in our civil person, and our dying and meriting by his natural person]; or else they will dispute themselves into a Wood of Uncertainties, and be lost about the sense of a word that cannot be sufficiently explained.