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

§. 22. And one thing more I desire you to note, which Grotius de satisf. hath minded us of, viz. The great difference that there is between the case of a Rector and a Creditor, and between a Subject and a Debtor, or a Debt of Obedience or Punishment and a Debt of Money: For the name of Debt occasioneth some men to run the similitude of a Creditor and Debtor beyond the bounds. The Law requireth not a Debitor pecuniae, 1. To pay the very same individual money which he borrowed, but the same sum. 2. Nor to pay it by his own hands. But the Law of God obligeth every Subject to every individual act which it commandeth. 2. And obligeth every man to do it all in his own person and not disjunctively by himself or a Vicar. That Christ is limitedly and only to certain ends and uses a Vicarius poenae in the person of a Mediator, is not because the Law as made to Adam required or accepted it, but the Lawgiver as above his Law. The Law that bound Christ is fulfilled; but the Law that bound Adam and every ⟨p. 115⟩man is not fulfilled unless that same man do himself all the same things which it commanded him.

§ 23. I conclude all with these professions of my opinion of all these Controversies.

I. I believe that the Libertines (commonly called Antinomians) whose Doctrines I have in many Books opposed, do use those ill Notions, and Methods which on pretence of magnifying Christ and free grace, do by plain consequence wrong Christ and Grace, and Subvert the Gospel, and should rather be thence denominated, than from their denying the Law. (The Law of Innocency as a Covenant, and of Moses as Jewish being truly ceased.)