A discourse of the true nature of the Gospel demonstrating that it is no…

Thus God from Heaven, and some of the best Men who ever lived upon Earth, do plainly tell us that the Gospel is no Law, but a pure Act of Grace. And as God sent these Men into the World to restore his Truth, to recover it out of the Darkness of Popery, in which the Nations of the Earth had for so many Ages lost themselves, and been wretchedly deluded by the worst of Errors, dressed up in the faint Resemblance of Truth; they were answerably faithful to the performance of that Work which God had sent them to do. They were careful to distinguish the Gospel from a Law, and would by no means suffer Works, tho insinuating themselves under never so specious pretences, to invade the Prerogative of Grace. They very well knew (as both ^aChemnitius and^b Beza inform us) that playing with the Ambiguity of the word Law, confounded Law and Gospel, laid the Root of the most pernicious Errors to spring up and overspread the Church with nothing but Tares, or worser Weeds, in the room of nourishing Corn. They were aware that the perplexed Thoughts of Law and Gospel chained together, by ⟨p. 36⟩the unnatural Mixture gave Birth to that monstrous Metamorphosis by which the Monks transformed the Gospel into a Law; and as they were not at all ignorant that the proper Remedy to cure these distempered Thoughts, was exactly to distinguish between the one and the other, they suitably made a good and successful use of it: They would give every thing its proper Name suitable to its Nature. If they spoke of Works, they meant a Law prescribing them, and commanding Obedience under severe Penalties; but then in thus thinking, speaking, or writing, the Gospel never came into their Minds, nor was formed in their Voice, nor dropped from their Pens. But whenever an Idea or Notion of Grace arose in their Minds, then indeed the next following Thought was the Gospel of Christ. By thus reducing these two Notions into due Rank and Order, they baffled all the sophistical Cavils of the Monks, and afterward of the more cunning Jesuits, and made War against Antichrist with Success and Victory: for to drive that Man of Sin out of his dark Corners, and hiding-Places, is indeed to conquer him. In pursuing such a Conquest, these famed Divines of the first Reformation, once too much adored, and now as much despised, wrote and preached the pure sincere Grace of the Gospel to the People.