A53678:690
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
Exegesis of chapter 6 › Exegesis of verses 13, 14, 15, 16: Verse 13, 14, 15, 16.
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.
We have need of every thing that any way evidenceth the stability of Gods Promises to 1be represented unto us, for the encouragement and confirmation of our Faith. As God redoubled the word at the first giving out of the Promise unto Abraham for the strengthening of his Faith, so is the same here expressed by the Apostle that it might have the same effect upon us. And two things especially God seems to impress upon our minds in this vehemency of expression. (1) The sincerity of his Intentions without reserve. (2) The stability of his Purposes without alteration and change. It is to signify both these, that such emphatical vehement expressions are used even among men, and both these Unbelief is apt to question in God. He that believeth not maketh God a liar, 1 Joh. 5. 10. He is a liar who in his Promises intendeth not what his words signify, but hath other reserves in his mind; and he who having promised changeth without cause. Both these doth Unbelief impute to God, which makes it a sin of so heinous a nature. The first time God used this kind of Reduplication it was in his threatening of Death unto the Transgression of the Command, Gen. 2. 17. In the day thou eatest thereof dying thou shalt dye. And that which Satan deluded our first Parents by, was in persuading them that there was not sincerity in what God had said, but that he had reserved to himself, that it should be otherwise. The Serpent said unto the woman [Greek or Hebrew] dying ye shall not dye, Gen. 3. 4. But this being directly contrary unto what God had expressly affirmed, how could Satan imagine that the Woman would immediately consent unto him against the express words of God? Wherefore he useth this Artifice to prevail with her, that although God had spoken those words, yet he had a Reserve to himself that it should not be unto them indeed as he had spoken, ver. 5. By these means Unbelief entered into the world, and hath ever since wrought effectually in the same kind. There is no Promise of God so plainly expressed but Unbelief is ready to suggest innumerable exceptions why it should have such reserves accompanying of it, as that it doth not belong unto us. Most of these exceptions we gather from our selves, and were it not for them we suppose we could believe the Promise well enough.