The covenant of life opened, or, A treatise of the covenant of grace

we could not have obtained life eternal that way, for our stock of time-working should have dried up.¹ The virtue of justice stands in the equality of that which is given and received. Now there is a two-fold equality, one rei ad rem between thing and thing, an Arithmetic justice, so many ounces of natural actings, and the same number of ounces of grace and glory: This commutative justice is not in God, as the soundest and learnedest School men teach. There is another justice of proportion duarum rerum ad duas alias res, of two things proportionally answering to two things, distributive justice is this, and it keeps a Geometrical proportion, Augustine with Scripture saith, God is become our debtor ⟨p. 43⟩not by receiving any thing from us, ²but by promising what he pleaseth.

we could not have obtained life eternall that way, for our stock of time-working should have dryed up.¹ The vertue of justice stands in the equality of that which is given and received. Now there is a two-fold equality, one rei ad rem between thing and thing, ane Arithmetick justice, so many ounces of naturall actings, and the same number of ounces of grace and glory: This commutative justice is not in God, as the soundest and learned'st School men teach. There is another justice of proportion duarum rerum ad duas alias res, of two things proportionally answering to two things, distributive justice is this, and it keeps a Geometricall proportion, Augustine with Scripture saith, God is become our debter ⟨p. 43⟩not by receiving any thing from us, ²but by promising what he pleaseth.

1. 1There is a commutative and a distributive justice, between God & us, the former hath no place in the absolute Lord.