A57980:1293
A survey of the spiritual antichrist opening the secrets of familism and antinomianism in…A survey of the spirituall antichrist opening the secrets of familisme and antinomianisme in…
A survey of the spiritual antichrist opening the secrets of familism and antinomianism in the antichristian doctrine of John Saltmarsh and Will. Del, the present preachers of the army now in England, and of Robert Town, by Samuel Rutherfurd ...A survey of the spirituall antichrist opening the secrets of familisme and antinomianisme in the antichristian doctrine of John Saltmarsh and Will. Del, the present preachers of the army now in England, and of Robert Town, by Samuel Rutherfurd ...
London: printed by J.D. & R.I. for Andrew Crooke, 1648
Part 1 › Chapter 35: Of communion with God, and serving him in the Spirit.
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.
1. The higher and larger measure of willingness, or the more superlatively the will be bended, the light of a divine Law shining on the mind and will, the more of the Spirit, (because the Spirit is essentially free, Ps. 51.12. 2 Cor. 3.17.) the more freeness: and the more freeness, the more renewed will in the obedience: and the more renewed will the less constraint, because freeness exhausteth constraint, and especially when constraint looketh toward eternal punishment, and the Law compelleth, under pain of eternal death, those that are under Law-obligation,1 to obey. Now fear of eternal wrath is wholly swallowed up, where a free spirit of love and strong delight to obey, intervenes between obedience and such fear, as is clear in the man Christ in the days of his flesh, and the confirmed Angels: and though I doubt nothing, but fear of the second death was in its way, and so far as was congruous and convenient for a state of sinless innocency, to work upon the will of the first Adam and Eve to debtor them from sinning; otherwise that threatening of God (In the day thou eatest thou shalt dye) had no intrinsical end, nor was it rational, which cannot be said: yet Law-threatenings had no influence on the will of ⟨p. 319⟩the confirmed Angels, much less on the perfect and holy will of the second Adam, which was so filled with God, so ballasted with so many talent weights of sweet delight and free love, Ps. 40.7, 8. Joh. 4.34. as Angels and Christ obeyed, without any eye-look or glance of their thoughts to Law-threatening. And the justified beleever• now obeying as a Son, not as a bond-slave, yieldeth willing obedience, from a free leading Spirit, the Spirit of adoption proper to sons, who obey their father, out of an instinct of love, not out of a principle of commanding awing and terrifying Law, as slaves under bondage do obey their masters, Rom 8.14, 15, 16, 17. And the Law of the Spirit of life cometh in into the place of the compelling and cursing Law (not that the directing and obliging power thereof is removed) and acteth a believer to obey, as if there were no Law over him at all, and freeth him from the Law of sin, from the dominion of the Law in binding him over to a curse,