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

2. The Elect Angels next to Christ gave obedience in their Law course, but not so properly of their own as Christ, for some ⟨p. 196⟩[…] ⟨p. 197⟩[…] ⟨p. 198⟩discriminating and strengthening grace they had from Christ Mediator their head,¹ Col. 2.10. that they should not fall, and something from the Election of Grace, which do not necessarily agree to the Covenant of Works, which they performed without sin, and the more extrinsical help from grace, the less merit, so far is grace from being, as Jesuits say, the essential requisite of merit, that the work is less ours, and so the less meritorious, that it hath grace. Let not any say then Christs obedience that came from the fullness of the Spirit without measure [Greek or Hebrew], must so be less meritorious,² which is absurd, for the reason why grace in Angels, and men who are mere creatures diminishes the nature of merit, is, because grace is not their own, nor their proper due, but supernatural or preternatural, and so hurts the nature of the merit, but to the meriting person Christ-God-Man nothing is supernatural, nothing extrinsical, nothing not his own: Grace is his own as it were by a sort of personal dominion, not to say that the Man Christ as man did not merit, yet as man he was born sinless and with the full Image of God.

2. The Elect Angels next to Christ gave obedience in their Law course, but not so properly of their own as Christ, for some ⟨p. 196⟩〈…〉 ⟨p. 197⟩〈…〉 ⟨p. 198⟩