Vindiciæ legis

More places of Scripture are brought against this, but they will come in more fitly under the notion of the Law as a covenant. Thus therefore I shall conclude this point, acknowledging that many learned and orthodox men speak otherwise, and that there is a difficulty in clearing every particular about this Question: but as yet that which I have delivered, carrieth the more probability with me; and I will give one text more, which I have not yet mentioned, and that is Act. 7. 38. where the Moral Law that Moses is said to receive, that he might give the Israelites, is called [Greek or Hebrew], the lively Oracles; that is, not verba vitae, but verba, viva & vivificantia, so that [Greek or Hebrew] is as much as [Greek or Hebrew], giving life: not that we could have life by virtue of any obedience to them; but when we by grace are enabled to obey them, God, out of his mercy, bestoweth eternal life. Let me also add this, that I the rather incline to this opinion, because I see the Socinians, urging these places, or the like, where justification and faith is said to be by Christ, and the Gospel, that they wholly deny that any such thing as grace and justification was under the Law, and wonder how any should be so blind as not to see, that these privileges were revealed first by Christ in the Gospel under the new Covenant; whereas it is plain, that the Apostle instanceth in Abraham and David, (who lived under the Law as a school-master,) for the same kind of justification as ours is.

More places of Scripture are brought against this, but they will come in more fitly under the notion of the Law as a covenant. Thus therefore I shall conclude this point, acknowledgeing that many learned and orthodoxe men speak otherwise, and that there is a difficulty in clearing every particular about this Question: but as yet that which I have delivered, carrieth the more probability with me; and I will give one text more, which I have not yet mentioned, and that is Act. 7. 38. where the Morall Law that Moses is said to receive, that he might give the Israelites, is called 〈non-Latin alphabet〉, the lively Oracles; that is, not verba vitae, but verba, viva & vivificantia, so that 〈non-Latin alphabet〉 is as much as 〈non-Latin alphabet〉, giving life: not that we could have life by vertue of any obedience to them; but when we by grace are inabled to obey them, God, out of his mercy, bestoweth eternall life. Let me also adde this, that I the rather incline to this opinion, because I see the Socinians, urging these places, or the like, where justification and faith is said to be by Christ, and the Gospel, that they wholly deny that any such thing as grace and justification was under the Law, and wonder how any should be so blind as not to see, that these priviledges were revealed first by Christ in the Gospel under the new Covenant; whereas it is plain, that the Apostle instanceth in Abraham and David, (who lived under the Law as a schoole-master,) for the same kinde of justification as ours is.