N03467:88
Discourses on various important subjects, nearly concerning the great affair of the soul's eternal…
Discourses on various important subjects, nearly concerning the great affair of the soul's eternal salvation, viz. I. Justification by faith alone. II. Pressing into the Kingdom of God. III. Ruth's resolution. IV. The justice of God in the damnation of sinners. V. The excellency of Jesus Christ. : Delivered at Northampton, chiefly at the time of the late wonderful pouring out of the spirit of God there. / By Jonathan Edwards, A.M. Pastor of the Church of Christ in Northampton. ; [Three lines from Deuteronomy]
Boston: printed by S. Kneeland and T. Green, 1738
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.
Another Thing that is alleged as an Evidence that the Apostle means the ceremonial Law, when he says we can not be justified by the Works of the Law, is that he uses that Argument to prove it, viz. that this Law that he speaks of was given so long after the Covenant with Abraham, in Gal 3▪ 17. And this I say that the Covenant that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the ⟨p. 32⟩Law that was four hundred and thirty years after cannot disannul. But say they, it was only the Mosaic Administration, and not the Covenant of Works that was given so long after.—But the Apostle's Argument seems manifestly to be mistaken by them. The Apostle don't speak of a Law that began first to have being four hundred and thirty Years after; if he did, there would be some force in their Objection; But he has respect to a certain solemn Transaction, well known among the Jews, by the Phrase of the giving of the Law, which was that great Transaction at Mount Sinai, that we have Account of in the 19, and 20 Chapters of Exodus, consisting especially in God's giving the ten Commandments, which is the moral Law, with that terrible Voice, which Law he afterwards gave in Tables of Stone. This Transaction the Jews in the Apostles Time misinterpreted, they looked upon it as God's establishing that Law as a Rule of Justification. This conceit of theirs the Apostle brings this invincible Argument against, viz. That God would never go about to disannul his Covenant with Abraham, which was plainly a Covenant of Grace, by a Transaction with his Posterity, that was so long after it, and was plainly built upon it: He would not overthrow a Covenant of Grace that he had long before established with Abraham, for him, and his Seed, (which is often mentioned as the Ground of God's making them his People,) by now establishing a Covenant of Works with them at Mount Sinai, as the Jews and judaizing Christians supposed.
Another Thing that is alledged as an Evidence that the Apostle means the ceremonial Law, when he says we can not be justified by the Works of the Law, is that he uses that Argument to prove it, viz. that this Law that he speaks of was given so long after the Covenant with Abraham, in Gal 3▪ 17. And this I say that the Covenant that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the ⟨p. 32⟩