3. Nor could any after obedience to the law be a compensation for the
to justice, and then step in as conditions; and the one as an instrument apprehending and applying mercy obtained by some other means, not the efficient or meritorious cause, no more than the looking upon the brazen serpent was the efficient or meritorious cause of the cure, but only the means. But how can we think man after his fall should have either faith in the mercy of God, or repentance, which flows from a sense of mercy, when no mercy had been revealed to him? He found nothing of it in the law; and though he might apprehend such a perfection in God by the consideration of his own nature, yet since he had never seen any miserable object to draw out such a perfection, it is a question whether he knew any such quality to be in himself or no, and therefore could not conclude any such perfection to be in God, since there was not the least revelation of it, and therefore could have no footing for any such exercise of faith and repentance till the discovery of mercy in the promised seed.
3. Nor could any after obedience to the law be a compensation for the offence. For, (1.) Man had not power of himself after his fall to obey. He had by his revolt lost that original righteousness which enabled him to a conformity to the law: Gen. 3:10, 'I was afraid, because I was naked.'
His corporeal nakedness could be no more the cause of fear after, than it was before, his sin; but he was naked, i.e. stripped of the image of God, and his primitive integrity. Man cannot now do any work commensurate to the precepts of the law. In everything he comes short of his duty; and therefore, being defective in what he ought to do by the law of creation, cannot satisfy for the injury done to God in the state of corruption: 'How shall a man be just with God?
If he will contend with him, he cannot answer him one of a thousand,' Job 9:2, 3. God requires an obedience to the law, not according to our measure, but according to his own righteousness, which is perfect; and this no sinful creature can arise to of himself. If any man were able to offer God a spotless obedience, free from any defect the law could find in it; by whose strength would he do it? Not by his own; for since he was a sinner, he hath been without strength.
To be sinners, and to be without strength, are one and the same, Rom. 5:6, 8. From whom, then, should he have this strength? From the Creator? How can he then satisfy God by that which is God's already? It is as if when a man had wronged a prince, he should satisfy him for the injury by a sum taken out of the prince's exchequer. Indeed, man is not willing to obey any command of God; there is nothing in his nature but an enmity against God and his law,
Rom. 8:7, and therefore no complete will to give God any satisfaction, or pay him any obedience. The will is naturally enslaved to sin, and under the power of vicious habits, sins always, never obeys perfectly, but in the moment of a material obedience offends
God, comes short of what the law requires. Till the will of man be changed, he cannot be willing with a complete will to obey God; and the will cannot be changed before a satisfaction be made, because it is not reasonable that the punishment of sin, which was a spiritual as well as eternal death, and consisted in leaving the soul under the power of those ill habits it had contracted, which are indeed the death of the soul, as diseases are the death of the body, should be taken off till some satisfaction were made. Man can no more free himself from this spiritual death, than he can free himself from the death of the body; and we have no reason to think God would do it before a satisfaction, for then the law he had enacted would be wronged by himself. Well, then, man hath not power to obey God:
Job 14:4, 'Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one;' i.e. saith Cocceius, Who can change an unclean thing into a clean? Is there not one? Yea, and but one; Christ only can do it.
(2.) Supposing man had power to obey the law, and that perfectly, yet this was due to God before the sin of man, and therefore cannot be a compensation for the sin of man. After obedience will not make amends for past crimes; for obedience is a debt due of itself, and what is a debt of itself cannot be a compensation for another. What is a compensation, must be something that doth not fall under the notion or relation of a debt due before, but contracted by the injury done. Obedience was due from man if he had not sinned, and therefore is a debt as much due after sin as before it; but a new debt
cannot be satisfied by paying an old. As suppose you owe a man money upon a bond, and also abuse him in his reputation, or some other concern; is there not a new debt contracted upon that trespass, a debt of reparation of him in what you have wronged him? The paying him the money you owe him upon bond, is not an amends for the injury you did him otherwise. They both in law fall under a different consideration. Or when a man rebels against a prince of whom he holds some land, will the payment of his quit-rent be satisfactory for the crime of his rebellion? So obedience to the law in our whole course was a debt upon us by our creation; and this hath relation to the preceptive part of the law, and to God as a sovereign: but upon sin a new debt of punishment was contracted, and the penalty of the law was to be satisfied by suffering, as well as the precepts of the law satisfied by observing them. And this was a debt relating to the justice of God, as well as the other to the sovereignty of God. Now, how can it be imagined that man, by paying the debt he was obliged to before, should satisfy the debt he hath newly contracted? The debts are different: the one is a debt of observance, the other a debt of suffering, and contracted in two different states; the debt of obedience in the state of creation, the debt of suffering in the state of corruption; so that the payment of what was due from us as creatures, cannot satisfy for what was due from us as criminals.
All satisfaction is to be made in some way to which a person was not obliged before the offence was committed; as men wronged in their honour, are satisfied by some acts not due to them before they were injured. So that all men taken together, yea, the creatures of ten thousand worlds, cannot, by obedience to the preceptive part of the law, satisfy for one transgression of it; because, whatsoever they can do, is a debt due from themselves before. When men fell from God, and entered into league with the devil, they laid themselves at the foot of God's righteous wrath, and sunk themselves into the desert of eternal death, and so stood in another relation to God than as subjects; and God might require a reparation for the past disobedience, and security for obedience for the future; unless man could perform this, he must lie bound in chains of darkness. What compensation could man make for what was past, or what security
could he give for time to come? Some other, therefore, must interpose, whose suretyship God would accept; who could give a satisfaction to God, as pleasing to him as sin had been displeasing, and offer to God what was not due to him before; who was able to perform what he undertook, and whose security for what was due for the future, might be esteemed valid; and therefore it must be some divine person, that was not bound in his own nature to those terms of obedience, which were necessary to this satisfaction.
(3.) Supposing man had power after his fall to obey, and that obedience were not due before, yet could not his obedience be compensatory for the injury by sin. Because being a finite creature, whatsoever obedience he could pay could not be infinite, and so not proportioned to an infinite majesty. Since the sin of man is infinite, in regard of the person offended, who is an infinite and eternal
Being, and thereby debased below the meanest of his creatures, in the reflection that every sin casts upon him, as being not worthy to be beloved and obeyed; and that which doth satisfy must be as great as the demerit of the crime (for it must be proportionable to the disgrace and damage accruing to God by sin); this a finite creature cannot do: for though obedience is an honour paid to an infinite person, as well as sin a contempt of an infinite person, yet the offence is always aggravated by the person offended, as an injury done to a prince is by the dignity of his person and the greatness of his authority; but the satisfaction is measured from the capacity of the subject offending, which is finite, and not commensurate to the greatness of a wronged God. Nor can our obedience and holiness be counted infinite, because they are the fruits of an infinite Spirit in us;* for by the same reason all creatures should be accounted infinite, because they are the works of an infinite power. The Spirit infuseth the habits of obedience and holiness, and excites them; but the creature, and not the Spirit, exerciseth them, the soul doth obey and believe, &c., so that though they are the Spirit's efficiently, yet they are the creature's subjectively. Besides, though the Spirit dwells in believers, yet he is not hypostatically united to them, as the divine nature of the second person was to the human. The Holy Ghost and