A47599:158
The marrow of true justification, or, Justification without works containing the substance of two…
The marrow of true justification, or, Justification without works containing the substance of two sermons lately preached on Rom. 4:5 ... : wherein the nature of justification is opened, as it hath been formerly asserted by all sound Protestants, and the present prevailing errors against the said doctrine detected / by Benjamin Keach ...
London: printed for Dorman Newman, 1692
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
Could not Man keep the Law of Works then? it seems the first Law was too strict. This reflecteth upon the Wisdom and Justice of God: It must be granted that perfect Man could observe a perfect Law, had God pleased to give him Grace and Assistance sufficient to his State and Necessity; and so there was no need the Law should be altered, and the Obedience, the Condition of it, changed from perfect to imperfect: For if perfect Man could not keep the Law of perfect Obedience, with sufficient Grace. How should sinful Man perform the Law of sincere Obedience, having no more than sufficient Grace to assist him? Did not God foreknow that Man would break the Law of Works, and so was necessitated to make a New and more easy Law? Or, did not God both foreknow and permit the Fall of Man? Or, could he not have hindered it? Why then should he give way to the abrogating the Command of perfect Obedience, to bring in that of imperfect? Surely (as Augustine saith) God is so Just that he can allow no Evil, and so Good that he can permit no Evil, except it be with design to bring greater Good out of it. If God permitted the First Covenant to be broken, that thereby he might abase Man and magnify his own Grace, and his Son, in bestowing Heaven freely on him, and in bringing him thither by the continued Power of pardoning and sanctifying Grace; hereby indeed God doth […] advance his own Glory, by the change of the Covenants.
Could not Man keep the Law of Works then? it seems the first Law was too strict. This reflecteth upon the Wisdom and Justice of God: It must be granted that perfect Man could observe a perfect Law, had God pleased to give him Grace and Assistance sufficient to his State and Necessity; and so there was no need the Law should be altered, and the Obedience, the Condition of it, changed from perfect to imperfect: For if perfect Man could not keep the Law of perfect Obedience, with sufficient Grace. How should sinful Man perform the Law of sincere Obedience, having no more than sufficient Grace to assist him? Did not God foreknow that Man would break the Law of Works, and so was necessitated to make a New and more easie Law? Or, did not God both foreknow and permit the Fall of Man? Or, could he not have hindred it? Why then should he give way to the abrogating the Command of perfect Obedience, to bring in that of imperfect? Surely (as Augustine saith) God is so Just that he can allow no Evil, and so Good that he can permit no Evil, except it be with design to bring greater Good out of it. If God permitted the First Covenant to be broken, that thereby he might abase Man and magnifie his own Grace, and his Son, in bestowing Heaven freely on him, and in bringing him thither by the continued Power of pardoning and sanctifying Grace; hereby indeed God doth advance his own Glory, by the change of the Covenants.