Of justification four disputations clearing and amicably defending the truth against the unnecessary oppositions…

4. Your fourth also is one of those which you have in the Beginning, where I have answered it. The Covenant you say, is an Act past; and so not continued, and so the Justification by it past, and not continued, &c.] Answer. The Physical Act of Legislation or Covenant granting is past but this only makes it an Instrument, able and fit to produce such and such effects, and not actually to produce them at that present, when it is conditional. But the Moral action of this Law or Covenant is not past, but continued. The Law or Covenant is not ⟨p. 387⟩out of Date. And therefore it continueth still to justify. The making of our Laws, are Acts past by Parliaments long ago, and so not continued. Will you therefore conclude that the Moral Agency or Efficiency of these Laws is past, and therefore they do not condemn or justify? I know no ground that can bear your conclusions, except with Rishworth (Dialog) and such other of the more impudent Papists, one should vilify the Scripture, and say, that they were only Miscellaneous occasional writings, and never intended to be Gods Law, or our Rule of Faith and Life: but I believe you will never come to that. Surely David frequently stileth the old Scriptures that were in his Times Gods Law: And why many Divines should strike in with some Lutheran• Error in denying the Gospel or New Scripture to be properly [Christs Law,] and so inveigh against those that call it the New Law, I know no Reason: but that the ignis fatuus of contention and prejudice misleadeth them. O happy Disputers that are not carried head-long into extremes by the spirit of Contradiction! What more proper to the reformed Religion, as such, then to honour the Scriptures? And how do these men vilify them, and rob them of their highest honour, that deny them to be the Laws of God? yea deny this to the Gospel it self? Is not Christ the Law-giver? Isa. 33.22. Psal. 60.7. and 108.8. and the King? Must not the Law go out of Zion, Isa. 2.3. And is not that the Law and Testimony to which we must seek? Multitudes of Scriptures, and most of the Fathers (that ever I read) do call the Gospel Christs Law or the [new law.]