The True Bounds of Christian Freedom

But it may be all these are of no authority, ¹they are of no power with them, and indeed if these things be not Evinced out of the word of God, they shall be of no power with us; we reverence them and their writings, but we must not Jurare in verba, build our faith upon them as a sure foundation; this is against our Christian liberty, to be enslaved to the judgements of any. To the Laws and to the Testimonies if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them: We will therefore give you some proofs out of the word, and then draw them into Arguments, or draw Arguments from them. Matth. 5.17.18. Think not that I am come to destroy the Law, or the Prophets. I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil; ²for verily I say unto you, ^atill heaven and earth shall pass away * one jot or one tittle shall not pass from the Law till all be fulfilled. The place seems to be very ⟨p. 81⟩full and very plain, for the continuance of and obligation to the Law, and yet there are ^bcorrupt readings of these words, and as sinister interpretations, some would have it to be understood that Christ would not abolish till he had fulfilled it. Indeed he was the end of the Law, as the Apostle speaks, Rom. 7.14. But finis perficiens, non interficiens, the perfecting and consummating end, not the destroying and abolishing end thereof; the Law had an end of perfection and consummation in Christ, not an end of destruction and abolition. You see here ^cChrist gives a stricter exposition of the Law, and vindicates it from the corrupt glosses of the Pharisees, which surely speaks the continuance, not the Abrogation of it. And agreeable to this place is that of the ⟨p. 82⟩