A57966:732
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.
3. He might have kept all the sons of men, and all the Angels, in a sinless condition,1 to be courtiers to proclaim the glory of Law-goodness, and of the never broken Covenant of Works, but then there should never have been such a thing known to the generations to come, as that Ark of glory, that huge and boundless all fullness of the indwelling Godhead in the Man Christ. Sure, had there been none sick, such a suffering Physician to heal us had never been, none lost would have said there is no Saviour, none dead in sin, would say, there is no need of such a Lord and Prince of life, by whose swelling wounds we are healed, Isa. 53.
3. He might have keeped all the sons of men, and all the Angels, in a sinlesse condition,1 to be courteours to proclaim the glory of Law-goodnesse, and of the never broken Covenant of Works, but then there should never have been such a thing known to the generations to come, as that Ark of glory, that huge and boundlesse all fulnesse of the indwelling Godhead in the Man Christ. Sure, had there been none sick, such a suffering Physician to heal us had never been, none lost would have said there is no Saviour, none dead in sin, would say, there is no need of such a Lord and Prince of life, by whose swelling wounds we are healed, Isa. 53.
- 1God might have hol•en up the law•dispensation for ever, but then there should have been no place for the Ark of glory. J. Ch.
4. Nor was it fit that this should never be known to Angels and men, that the Lord honours so many redeemed sinners with a grant and licence to love so high, so precious a Redeemer, and as it were to mar and black his fairness and desirable excellency with our feeble and sinfully weak love, he being so far above our love or faith or praises.