A57966:126
The covenant of life opened, or, A treatise of the covenant of grace
The covenant of life opened, or, A treatise of the covenant of grace containing something of the nature of the covenant of works, the sovereignty of God, the extent of the death of Christ ... the covenant of grace ... of surety or redemption between the by Samuel Rutherford ...The covenant of life opened, or, A treatise of the covenant of grace containing something of the nature of the covenant of works, the soveraignty of God, the extent of the death of Christ ... the covenant of grace ... of surety or redemption between the by Samuel Rutherford ...
Edinburgh: printed by Andro Anderson for Robert Brown, 1655
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.
And if there be such a connexion objective ex naturâ rei, between sin and punishment, it must be between punishment and the very person and none other, but the same that sinned: For among men this is justice. Noxa sequitur caput, so that by necessity of nature, God shall not be God, nor essentially just, if he punish not eternally Adam and all mankind in their own persons, and so by necessity of justice, he cannot punish Christ; And it cannot be denied but there is a dispensation of free Grace, and that it is no act of Justice but of Grace, that God make Christ sin, i. e. a sacrifice for sin for us, 2 Cor. 5.21. And that the Lord laid upon him the iniquities of us all, Isa. 53.6. and made him our surety. Nor let any man object, how could God make Christ a propitiation for sin to declare his righteousness? Or how could such justice, by that action be debarred? since justice did not exact such an action: If without violation of justice it might have been omitted, if God should have been infinitely just from Eternity, if he had done no such thing? Shall a Prince get himself glory in the name of justice, by doing that which, by his absolute Sovereignty, he may leave undone without hurt of justice. 1It is Answered, this is to measure God by mortal men: Shall an earthly father freely for no real good to himself beget hundreds of children, when he needs not, and yet he foresees the largest number of them shall perish eternally, and the eldest must die and be made a curse, to save the rest. The Lord punished Christ for us to declare the glory of his Justice in punishing sin in his own Son, who was the sinner by imputation, for out of the depth of infinite wisdom, the Lord freely imposes a law upon his creatures: He might have imposed no such law under such a punishment. By no necessity of nature did the Lord threaten death, for the eating the fruit of that tree, prove, that God should not have been God, except he had threatened death for the eating of that fruit, and except he had punished ⟨p. 33⟩that eating with death, either to be inflicted upon the eater or his surety. Quid haeres? Prove that by the Word of God, it is sin to eat, when God forbids; but the Lords soul hates sin.