A brief discourse of justification. Wherein this doctrine is plainly laid down according to…

4. Consider, By what Law or Rule you •hall when be judged: that there must be some Rule upon which that affair shall proceed, is necessary, how else can there be any justice then administered: for Justice in Trials is nothing else but a proceeding with men according to that Law or Rule under which they lived: where there is no Law to command, there can be neither transgression nor righteousness; and if so, there can follow neither Condemnation nor Justification; for all these things have a necessary reference to some-Law. Now it is of great use for us ⟨p. 124⟩to be well informed in this point, viz. what Law it is that men must be tried by in the great day: it hath been already hinted in the Explication of the Doctrine, that it was the Moral Law, or that Law which was given to Adam in the first Covenant, with promises and threatenings, that shall be the highest Rule of that days proceedings, or that unto which the judgment which shall then pass shall ultimately refer; that being the Rule of proceedings between God and Man, which was at first fixed by God himself, and is of perpetual force and must never be baulked. But that I may preven•• misunderstanding of this Assertion, give me leave here a little more to explain it: my meaning then in this point is this ([…] it is nor other but according unto the Scriptures of God) That no man shall stand acquitted by the Judge in the day of Judgment, but only he who hath answered all the demands of the Law, either in Himself or in his Surety. Now because the oringing in of a Surety to stand in the place of the man himself, is the proper Foundation on which the Gospel Covenant is built; hence it is also a truth, that some men shall be judged by the Gospel, i. e. according as they are found in Christ related to him, and entitled to his satisfaction, ⟨p. 125⟩but still, the enquiry concerning such as these also will be, whether or no the Law hath been answered by them or for them; whether the command of it hath been perfectly fulfilled, or whether the sin that hath been committed against it, hath been satisfied for, and the due deserved punishment hath been born for it? and therefore Christ faith, that be come not to destroy the Law but fulfil it; and though Heaven and Earth shall pass, yet the law shall stand, Mat 5. 17, 18. yea when the heavens are past as a scroll, & folded up as a Garment, this Word of God shall endure.