Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	dead_a	sin_n	spirit_n	5,831	5	5.3807	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A61251	A vindication of the divine perfections illustrating the glory of God in them, by reason and revelation: methodically digested into several meditations. By a person of honour.	Stair, James Dalrymple, Viscount of, 1619-1695.	1695 (1695)	Wing S5181; ESTC R221836	207,616	368

if they continued sinless during the time of their Trial But tho innocent Adam was capable of Merit by improving the Holiness God gave him yet so great a Reward as God promised him upon his Persistance was not a Reward of meer Debt but of Grace so that only the Covenant of Grace is of meer Grace without any thing of Merit in the Elect. Therefore as Faith in the Covenant of Grace is only the Manner freely chosen of God so Persistance in Obedience was the Manner freely chosen of God in the Covenant of Works So then the clearest way of taking up the Covenant of Grace is that Christ by his Humiliation and Suffering did so fully vindicate the Purity of God and his Justice that thereupon God might have forgiven the Sins of the whole World and of every individual Man and he did exclude none from Mercy but malicious and obstinate Sinners that rejected the Motions of Conversion and the Offers of Grace but did even include some of these and that he advanced the Elect to Celestial Glory upon Christ's entire fulfilling of his Law being also as the Manner freely chosen for the Covenant of Grace as Adam's Performance was for the Covenant of Works and so not only Christ's Passive Obedience is imputed to Believers but his Active Obedience as the Terms of the Covenant and so the exceeding superabundant Grace of the Goodness of God is manifested not only in accepting the Expiation of Sin by a Mediator but in giving to the Elect Glory freely as a Reward by Grace and not of Debt whereby the Difficulties on both Hands in the forementioned Controversy do evanish If Christ's Sufferings had been properly a Payment of the Debt of Sin it could have had no effect in relation to the Reprobate nor could they have been restored to a possibility of Salvation nor could God complain of the Hardness of their Hearts For if Christ had suffered as to pay the Debt of Sin he could not have paid the Debt of those that were to perish or else God had exacted that Debt of them which Christ had paid nor should Christ have suffered more than what were sufficient to pay the Debt of the Elect only whereas all agree that his Sufferings were sufficient for the Sins of the whole World but being conceived as the Vindication of God's Aversion from Sin he not only saved the Elect but stopt the Mouths of the Reprobate and Damned and made them inexcusable so that their own Conscience will condemn them and be their perpetual Tormentor that they have thrown themselves into Hell when they might have escaped if it had not been their own deserving fault This way doth far more illustrate to my Soul the infinitely amiable Representation of God both in his Grace and his Justice than any other way that I can apprehend in which I am exceedingly confirmed by that excellent Parallel of the first and second Adam held so clearly forth to the Romans by the blessed Apostle of the Gentiles saying Death reigned from Adam to Moses even in them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's Transgression who is the Figure or Type of him that was to come that is of Christ. Where the similitude of Adam's Transgression distinguishing it from others is that by it the whole Benefit of the Covenant was lost not only to himself but to all his Posterity For if through the Offence of one Man many be dead much more the Grace of God and the Gift by Grace which is by one Man Jesus Christ bath abounded unto many If then Adam was a Type of Christ certainly it was not in that he sinned and lost his Posterity but in this that as if he had continued obedient to God he had brought himself and his Posterity to Glory and as his bringing them to Glory were not by Merit but by fulfilling the Terms of the Covenant of Works so Christ's bringing the Elect to Glory is by fulfilling the whole Will of God as his part of the Terms of the Covenant of Grace The same Apostle to the Corintbians makes the Type and Parallel yet more clear For since by Man came Death by Man came also the Resurrection of the dead And so it is written the first Man Adam was made a living Soul the last Man Adam was made a quickning Spirit But seeing the second Adam not only performed the Terms of Salvation by Obedience but hath expiated Sin by his Suffering therefore it is said For this cause he is the Mediator of the New Testament that by the means of Death for the Redemption of the Transgressions that were under the first Covenant they which are called might receive the Promise of Eternal Inheritance Here the Transgressions that were under the first Covenant must be meant of the accumulated Sins in the Fall which were redeemed repaired and restored by Christ the second Adam's fulfilling all Righteousness and purging the Sins of the Elect. And again it is said Not as the Offence so also is the free Gift Not as it was by one that sinned so was the Gift for the Judgment was by one to Condemnation but the free Gift is of many Offences to Justification where the Gift to Adam is said to be to Condemnation not by the Intent but by the Event through his failing whereas the second Adam could not fail in performing his Undertaking By this Explication of the Covenant of Grace I find my Mind cleared and eased of these perplexing Difficulties about God's Decrees and Dispensations in the Salvation and Reprobation of his Rational Creatures and about the Terms and Tenor both of the Covenant of Works and of the Covenant of Grace The most learned and most accurate in all Churches and all Ways have been perplexed in thinking how God would decree to reject damn and eternally torment a great part of his Rational Creatures for that which was never in their Power to perform much more without any cause on the Creatures part but only by his meer Soveraignty or that they were never in a possibility to have escaped eternal Misery Or that Christ the second Adam had not so far exceeded the first Adam that as the first Adam might have preserved all his Posterity in a Capacity to be saved if he had not fallen so the second Adam should not at least have put all Manking in a Capacity to be saved and escape eternal Misery by the Covenant of Grace And yet on the other hand the Scripture is so plain and positive that it is not in Man's Power to believe by a saving Faith to be holy or how it could consist with the Veracity and Sincerity of God to exhort and expostulate with Men to repent believe and be holy tho it were neither in the Power of the Elect or Reprobate to perform the same Whereupon some found no Outgate but by recurring to that Freedom that once was in Adam and that a Creditor might press his Debitor to pay his Debt