Notes: Sect. 10. — The distinction of the Law of Works, and Law of Christ, applied to six paradoxes.
Notes: Sect. 10. — The distinction of the Law of Works, and Law of Christ, applied to six paradoxes.
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The Antinomian sense of all these positions is, no doubt, erroneous and detestable, and it is opposed and disproved by our author. The positions themselves are paradoxes bearing a precious gospel truth, which he maintains against the legalist; but I doubt it is too much to call them all Antinomian paradoxes. But to call them simply, and by the lump, Antinomian errors, is shocking: one might as well say it is a Popish or Lutheran error, “That the bread in the sacrament is Christ’s body;” and that it is a Socinian, Arminian, or Baxterian error, “That a sinner is justified by faith;” for the first four of the paradoxes are as directly scriptural as these are; though the Antinomian sense of the former is anti-scriptural, as is the Popish, Lutheran, Socinian, Arminian, and Baxterian sense of the latter, respectively. At this rate, one might subvert the very foundations of Christianity, as might easily be instructed, if there were sufficient cause to exemplify it here. How few doctrines of the Bible there are that have not been wrested to an erroneous sense by some corrupt men or other! Yet their corrupt glosses will not warrant condemning the scriptural positions themselves as erroneous.
The first four of these paradoxes are found in the following texts of Scripture:
1st. Rom. 6.14, “You are not under the law, but under grace.” — Chap. 7.6, “Now we are delivered from the law.”
2d. 1John 3.6, “Whoever abides in him does not sin.” — Verse 9, “Whoever is born of God, does not commit sin, and he cannot sin.”
3d. Numb, 23.21, “He has not beheld iniquity in Jacob, nor has he seen perverseness in Israel.” — Song 4.7, “you are all fair, my love, there is no spot in you.”
4th. Isa. 54.9, “So have I sworn, that I would not be angry with you nor rebuke you.”
The case stands thus: these paradoxes must be sensed, one way or another, as agreeable to the analogy of faith, and so be defended by all who own the divine authority of the holy Scripture. And as an orthodox divine would not condemn the two propositions mentioned above, brought in to illustrate this matter, but clarify it by giving a sound sense of them, and rejecting the unsound sense — such as, it is true that the bread is Christ’s body sacramentally; it is false that it is his body by transubstantiation, or consubstantiation; it is true that sinners are justified by faith as an instrument, apprehending and applying Christ’s righteousness; it is false that they are justified by it as a work, fulfilling the pretended new proper gospel law. So our author gives a safe and sound sense of these scriptural paradoxes, and rejects the unsound sense put on them by Antinomians; and he does this by applying to them the distinction of the law, as it is the Law of Works, i.e., the Covenant of Works, and as it is the Law of Christ, i.e., a rule of life to believers, in the hand of a Mediator. Now, if this distinction is not admitted here — neither in these nor in equivalent terms, but the Law of Christ, and Law of Works must be reckoned one and the same thing — then believers in Christ, whom none but Antinomians will deny are under the law, as it is the Law of Christ, or a rule of life, are evidently still staked down under the covenant works; because, in the sense of the holy Scripture, as well as in the sense of our author, the Law of Works is the Covenant of Works. And since it is plain from the holy Scripture, and from the Westminster Confession, that believers are not under the law as a Covenant of Works — a way which, by this distinction, our author had blocked up — by rejecting it and confounding the Law of Works and Law of Christ, a way is opened for Antinomians to cast off the law for good and all.
The last two of these paradoxes are consequently scriptural, as necessarily following upon the former, being understood in the same sense as they are, and as our author explains them.
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“True believers are not under the law as a Covenant of Works.” Westm. Confess., chap. 19, sect. 6. — “The Law of Works,” says our author, “is as much as to say, the Covenant of Works.”
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“As the world is altogether set upon sin, and can do nothing but sin, so those who are born of God do not sin; not that their sins of themselves are not deadly, but because their persons are so lively in Christ, that the deadliness of sin cannot prevail against them.” Mr. John Davidson’s Cat. p. 32. What he means by the deadliness of sin, appears from these words a little after: “However, the condemnation of sin is removed from the faithful altogether,” etc. The penalty which the Law of Works threatens, says our author to Neophytus (page 222) is “condemnation and eternal death; and you have no cause at all to fear this.”
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Mr. James Melvil to the same purpose expresses it thus: —
But God into his daughter dear sees none iniquity,
Nor in his chosen Israel will spy enormity:
Not looking in her [heart], which is with [sins] replete
But ever into Christ her face, whom pleasant is and sweet.
Morning Vision, dedicated to James VI. p. 85.
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Such anger is revenging wrath, and such chastisement is proper punishment inflicted for satisfying offended justice; in which sense it is said in Isa. 53.5, “The chastisement of our peace was upon him,” namely, on Jesus Christ; and therefore it cannot be on believers themselves.
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Our author does not indeed refute here the Antinomian error, that the believer ought not to mourn for his sins; he does that effectually in the next paragraph. But here he refutes the legalist, who needs to have the believer still under the law, as it is the Covenant of Works — and therefore to confess and mourn, etc. for his sins, as still committed against the Covenant of Works. But it is evident as the light, that believers are not under the Covenant of Works, or in other words, under the law, as that covenant; and once that principle is fixed, the whole chain of consequences, which our author has made here, necessarily follow from it. It is strange that nothing can be allowed in believers to mourn for sin, unless they mourn for it as unbelievers, as persons under the Covenant of Works, who doubtless are under the curse and condemnation for their sin. Gal. 3.10. But “as our obedience now is not the performance, so our sinning is not the violation of the condition of the old covenant. Believers’ sins now, though transgressions of’ the law, are not counted violations of the conditions of the Covenant of Works, under which they are not.” Brown on Justification, chap. 15. p. 224. — We would agree with Antinomian, “if the sense of sin is the unbeliever’s feeling of, and judging himself cast out of God’s sight and condemned; yet I am in Christ, and ‘it is God that justifies me; who then shall condemn?’ Rom. 8.33, 34; s. This is indeed the “hasty” sense of unbelief described in Psalm 31.22, and John 2.4. Hence let those be rebuked who do not say that Christ in his gospel has taken away this sense of sin.” Rutherford on the Covenant, p. 222.
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Thus our author has solidly refuted in this paragraph the Antinomian sense of all six positions mentioned above.