A53678:1346
A continuation of the exposition of the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the…
A continuation of the exposition of the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews viz, on the sixth, seventh, eight, ninth, and tenth chapters : wherein together with the explication of the text and context, the priesthood of Christ ... are declared, explained and confirmed : as also, the pleas of the Jews for the continuance and perpetuity of their legal worship, with the doctrine of the principal writers of the Socinians about these things, are examined and disproved / by J. Owen ...
London: printed for Nathaniel Ponder, 1680
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.
3. Divine Institutions cease not without an express Divine Abrogation. Where they are once granted and erected by the Authority of God, they can never cease without an express Act of the same Authority taking of them away. So was it with the Institutions of the Aaronical Priesthood, as the Apostle declares. And this one consideration is enough to confirm the grant of the initial Seal of the Covenant unto the present Seed of Believers, which was once given by God himself, in the way of an Institution, and never by him revoked.
4. God will never abrogate or take away any Institution or Ordinance of Worship unto the loss or disadvantage of the Church. He would not remove or abolish the Priesthood of Levi, until that which was incomparably more Excellent was introduced and established.
5. God in his Wisdom so Ordered all things, that the taking away of the Priesthood of the Law, gave it its greatest Glory. For it ceased not before it had fully and absolutely accomplished the End whereunto it was designed, which is the Glory and Perfection of any Ordinance: even the Mediation of Christ himself shall cease, when all the Ends of it are fulfilled. And this End of the Priesthood was most Glorious; namely, the bringing in that of Christ, and therein of the Eternal Salvation of the Church. And what more Honourable Issue could it come unto? The Jews by their pretended Adherence unto it, are they which cast the highest dishonour upon it; for they own that it is laid aside, at least that it hath been so for 1600 Years, and yet neither the End of it effected, nor any thing brought in by it, unto the greater advantage of the Church.