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…

Is the Law hereby rejected? what is the meaning of these words: For the sins of my people? Is not this the sense of them: Because my people have sinned against my law, and not kept the same? Or can it be imaginable, that there should be any sin, where there is no law? Whosoever abrogates the law▪ must of necessity abrogate sin also. ^(b)If he must suffer sin to be; he must much more suffer the being of the law. For the Apostle saith: Rom: 5: Where no law is, there is no sin. If there be no sin, then Christ is nothing. For why died he, if there were no law nor sin, for which he ought to die? Hence you may see, that the Devil intends, by this Ghostly Gambol to take away, not so much the law, as Christ, the fulfiller of the law. For he knows too well; that Christ may quickly & lightly be forgotten: but the law being engraven in the bottom of the heart, it is impossible to raze it out, as you may observe in the complaints, which are uttered by the blessed Saints of God in the Psalms, that are not able to undergo the wrath of God: which can be nothing else but the lively preaching of the law in their consciences.² And the Devil also is not ignorant of this, that it is impossible the law should be taken out of the hearts of men, as the Apostle proves in his second chap▪ to the Rom. v. 14:15. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law (In the German Copy: which received not the law by Moses) do by nature the things contained in the Law they having not the Law, are a Law to themselves: which show the work of the Law written in their hearts &c. His main plot therefore is, to make people secure, and to ⟨p. 73⟩teach them, to slight both law & sin, that when they are once suddenly overtaken, either by death, or in an evil conscience, they might without any remedy sink into hell; as having bin• accustomed to all manner of sensuality, and taught nothing else in Christ but a sweet security; soe that when terrors of conscience seize on them, they take it for a certain sign, that Christ (who can be nothing but sweetness it self) had reprobated and forsaken them. This the Devil seeks and would fain compass. But it appears to me, that these fanatic spirits are of opinion, that all those, which attend the preaching of the word,