The Scripture Gospel defended, and Christ, grace, and free justification vindicated against the libertines…

§. 2. I begin with your own Notes: And 1. I hope that few are so ignorant (that meddle in these matters) as to doubt of what you say, that no one term much less one Metaphor or similitude can adequately express any of the Mysteries of Grace, and no one Metaphor must be carried too far; Omne simile est etiam dissimile: And all set together so far as they are thereto intended must instruct us.

§. 3. I know none but the Socinians that think a Mediator and a Sponsor inconsistent; or deny Christ to be a Sponsor. And methinks your words ⟨p. 76⟩for their consistency, import a greater difference between them than there is. It is part of Christs Mediation to be a Sponsor: These terms therefore express no difference but between the whole and the part.

But what a Sponsor Christ is, is all the doubt which I a little opened, and you pass by. It is not agreed by expositors what the word [Greek or Hebrew] meaneth in that one only place of Scripture where it is used. Very learned expositors think that as Moses was called Gods Mediator or Sponsor to the people as being his Spokesman and in his name assuring them that this was Gods Covenant which he would perform, and returning the peoples answer to God, and praying for them but not undertaking for them, and personating them; so Christ is here likened to him, and called the Mediator and Sponsor of the new and better Covenant, not as he personateth or undertaketh for Covenanting Subjects, but only as he representeth God the Father to man, and is his Sponsor to us.

But what a Sponsor Christ is, is all the doubt which I a little opened, and you pass by. It is not agreed by expositors what the word 〈non-Latin alphabet〉 meaneth in that one only place of Scripture where it is used. Very learned expositors think that as Moses was called Gods Mediator or Sponsor to the people as being his Spokesman and in his name assuring them that this was Gods Covenant which he would perform, and returning the peoples answer to God, and praying for them but not undertaking for them, and personating them; so Christ is here likened to him, and called the Mediator and Sponsor of the new and better Covenant, not as he personateth or undertaketh for Covenanting Subjects, but only as he representeth God the Father to man, and is his Sponsor to us.