Exercitations on the Epistle to the Hebrews

§ 19 That all mankind was cast into the condition we have described by and upon the the sin of Adam, we have before sufficiently confirmed. Other just Reason, or Occasion of it, no man can assign. It hath been also evinced that God would, and consequently did prepare a Remedy for them, or a Way of Deliverance to be proposed unto them. If this were only the Law of Moses and the Observance thereof, as the Jews pretend, I desire to know what became of them, what was their Estate and Condition who lived and dyed before the giving of that Law? Not only the Patriarchs before the Flood, who some of them had this Testimony, that they pleased God, and one of whom was taken alive into Heaven, but Abraham also himself who received the Promises, must on this Supposition be excluded from a participation in the Deliverance enquired after. For they observed not the Law of Moses. What they dream about the making of their Law before the Foundation of the World, and the study of God therein, and that night and day, by day in the Written Law, and by night in the Oral Cabal, is not to be mentioned where matters of importance unto the souls of men are under consideration.

But yet I may add by the way, that neither this, nor the like monstrous figments are invented or broached by them, without some especial design, In the Eighth Chapter of the Proverbs, there is mention of the Wisdom of God, and such a description given of it, as allows not an Essential Property of his nature to be thereby intended. This is there said to be with God before the foundation of the world his delight and companion. Whence it appears that nothing but the Eternal Word, Wisdom and Son of God can possibly be intended thereby. To avoid this Testimony given unto his Eternal subsistence, the Jews first invented this Fable, that the Law was created before the world, and that the Wisdom of it, was that which God conversed with, and delighted in. And I have often wondered at the Censure of a learned Christian Annotator upon the place; Haec, saith he, de ea sapientia quae in Lege apparet exponunt Hebraei; & sane ei, si non soli at praecipue haec attributa conveniunt, contrary to the Faith of the Church in all Ages. ⟨p. 83⟩It is true on v. 22. and those that follow, He affirms they may be expounded by that of Philo de Coloniis. [Greek or Hebrew]. But whether this Platonical Declaration of the Nature, and Work of the Word of God, employed by him as an Instrument in the Making and Government of the World, would have been accepted in the Primitive Church, when this Place was vexed by the Arians, and studiously vindicated by the Orthodox Fathers, I much question. But to return; If the Law and the observance of it, be the only Remedy provided of God against the sin and misery of man, the only means of Reconciliation with him, all that dyed before the giving of it, must perish, and that eternally. But the contrary appears from this very consideration, and is undeniably proved by our Apostle in the Instance of Abraham,