N00347:112
A brief discourse of justification. Wherein this doctrine is plainly laid down according to…
A brief discourse of justification. Wherein this doctrine is plainly laid down according to the Scriptures. : As it was delivered in several sermons on this subject. / By Samuel Willard, teacher of a church in Boston. ; [Ten lines of quotations]
Boston: printed by S for Samuel Phillips, 1686
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
2. That God having entered into a Covenant with man when he first made him, be hath therein engaged his Justice to the confirmation and fulfilment of his part of the Covenant. It is one thing to say what God might have done by virtue of his absolute Lordship, and unconfined prerogative, if he had not voluntarily obliged himself in the threatening annexed to his own Command; and […] in positively threatened man with death if he should disobey it; and another thing, what he will do when he hath so bound himself to the terms of a Covenant: Gods word is now past, he positively said, Gen. 2. […] In the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely dye. And his truth engageth him to see to the performance of his Word. Eve greatly mist it when she interpreted it to be only […] as if God had only said, left ye died the fall did not barely expose man to the hazard, but brought him under a necessity of dying; it not only made him obnoxious to Gods displeasure, if he should see meet to sue the forfeiture, but it brought him under a full, firm, and engaged Sentence of death: and God must be true and faithful to his threatenings as well as his promises; […] this the Prophet confirms the Sentence denounced against Saul, 1 Sam. 15. 29. The ⟨p. 48⟩strength of Israel will not lie, nor repent, for he is not a man that he should repent. There is then no hope of mans escaping the righteous Judgment of God: he fell under the Law, and this great rock will grind him to powder if there be no way to remove it off from him.
2. That God having entred into a Covenant with man when he first made him, be hath therein engaged his Justice to the confirmation and fulfilment of his part of the Covenant. It is one thing to say what God might have done by vertue of his absolute Lordship, and unconfined prerogative, if he had not voluntarily obliged himself in the threatning annexed to his own Command; and 〈…〉 in pos•itively threatned man with death if he should disobey it; and another thing, what he will do when he hath so bound himself to the terms of a Covenant: Gods word is now past, he positively said,