A57966:615
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.
It is said by Christs dying for all, God hath now a conditional will of saving all and every one, Elect and Reprobate, if they shall believe, which conditional will was not in God, before Christs dying for all. Yea without Christs dying for all, salvation upon condition of believing had been impossible. But not to say that it is unworthy of the Holy Lord, that new wills and new decrees should arise in him, upon any thing that falls out in time, such as the crucifying of the Lord Jesus. Such Doctrine we condemn in Vorstius, and in Arminians, as is well observed by D. Twice, such a decree as this, that God should say (I decree, will, and intend remission and life purchased by the death of Christ, to all Pagans ⟨p. 241⟩that never hear the Gospel, to all Reprobates, so they shall believe in Christ: And yet I never decree they shall believe nor have grace to believe) saith no more then there is a connection between faith as the condition, and remission and life eternal as the thing promised; as when God had decreed that Jerusalem should be burnt, and deny grace to obey;1 Yet saith Jeremiah from the Lord, Jer. 38.17. If thou wilt assuredly go forth to the King of Babylons Princes, then thy soul shall live, and this City shall not be burnt with fire, and thou shall live and thine house. And the Lord says to Cain, Gen. 4.7. If thou dost well (and shall savingly believe as Abel) thou shalt be accepted. Then was that connection decreed of God, it containing a most just condition of life, and a condition to which Zedekiah and Cain were obliged, but that the death of Christ made the Lord to intend and decree conditionally and in any terms either acceptation to life or remission to Cain, as the end, and well doing as the means, or intended to purchase the grace either of the one or the other, is not warranted by Scripture, for both the one and the other, are the fruits of the merits of Christ; Show 1. how God can will and decree such a thing to the Reprobate: for its as if a father would say, I purpose to sell such a plot of ground to my son, so he pay me an hundred Crowns, When 1. the son, by no possibility, hath, or can have the hundred Crowns, but only from his father. 2. When the father of his free pleasure hath decreed never to give him the hundred Crowns or the plot of ground. 2.