A vindication of the faithful rebuke to a false report against the rude cavils of the pretended defence

LETTER III. Of Christ's being our Surety.

SIR, You come a little too quick upon me; other and better Work engaged my Thoughts and Time, that I lost the last Post; and 'twas with some Difficulty that I saved this: I will not dispute with you, why you cau∣sed me to break the Thread of my Discourse about Commutation of Persons, &c. and are now urgent to give you my Opinion about Christ's Suretiship; however I will comply.

I had but little concern with the Reporter in this Matter; only I offered my humble Advice, Reb. p. 46. Not to insist so strictly upon the Terms of Debt and Debtor; because if he supposed sin to be only a Pecuniary Debt, and the sinner to stand obnoxious only as such a Debtor to God, as the Creditor; he has betray'd the Cause he seems so Zealous to defend to the Socinians: And because I thought he might give some Deference to the Learning and Authority of the Bishop of Worcester, I seconded my Advice with a Caution from him: The true state of the Controversie (says he) has been rendered more obscure by the Mistakes of some, who have managed it with more Zeal than Iudgment:—That Christ paid a proper and rigid satisfaction for the Sins of Men, under the Notion of a Debt: This was the Caution the Bishop gave, and that was the Counsel which I gave, to both which the Defen∣der was too proud to hearken: But the same Learned Person has in a late Letter to Mr. D. W. superadded weighty Reasons to his Caution, p. 60. This (Christ's putting on the Person, and standing in the place of a

Debtor) I have shewed long since to be a very wrong No∣tion of Christ's Satisfaction, which in effect gives up the Cause to the Socinians: For if Sins be considered as Debts, God may freely forgive them, (without disparagement of his Wisdom and Iustice) without Satisfaction. And the Right of Punishment then depends on God's absolute Dominion, and satisfaction must be by way of Compensation; but I cannot but wonder at the Author of the M. S. that he doth at the same time assert our Sins considered as Debts, and (yet) the Necessity of Vindicative Iustice; for what Vindicative Iustice belongs to a Creditor? May not a Creditor part with his own Right, and forgive what, and whom he pleases, with∣out any violation of Iustice? I can hardly think that those who write so rudely and inconsistently, ever penetrated into these Matters in their Thoughts, but only take up with a set of Phrases and common Expressions among those they converse with, which they look on as the Standard and Mea∣sure of Truth about these Matters.

From this Day forward I give up the B—as a lost Man among all the Antinomians: but tho they can easily despise his Authority, they cannot so readily answer his Reasons.

And yet there is one Argument against their Notion of a Money-Surety, which will probably prevail more with them, because it's drawn from the Prejudice it does their own Interest, than twenty drawn from the mis∣chief it does to the Cause and Concern of God, or Christ.

There is a Notion that obtains among the Antinomi∣ans; That God in that black and sorrowful juncture when our Saviour bore the Punishment of our sins, hated his Son, as a Man hates a Toad: Now if Christ paid the uttermost Farthing of that Debt, whereof all the Sons of Adam were non-solvent, not able to pay the least Far∣thing, what reason can be assigned why God should hate him, or be angry with him? I am well assured of our Author's good Nature in this case, that if any one

would pay him the desperate Debt of a sorry hundred Pounds, on the behalf of a Decocted Bankrupt that was not worth a Groat, he would love him (so far as ill Nature is capable of love) as long as he lived.

Yet still the Defence adheres to the Good Old Cause, p. 16. That Satisfaction taken strictly and properly, is so∣lutio Debiti; the Payment of a Debt wherein I take the li∣berty to differ from him, and that Satisfaction and So∣lution are two things, and differ as much as the giving the idem and the Tantundem do; but in this unnecessary Quarrel, I have no call to engage; and yet after all, the Defence seems to stagger and totter, as if he had no ple∣rophory in the Case, but that this very Solutio Debiti, is nothing but a suffering the Punishment due to our Sins.

It may be seasonable to hearken to the Reverend and Learned Dr. Owen upon this Subject in his Appendix to the Doctrine of Satisfaction, p. 221. It is otherwise in Personal guilt, than in Pecuniary Debts; In these the Debt it self is only intended, the Person only obliged with reference thereunto: In the other, the Person is firstly and principally under the Obligation: And therefore when a Pe∣cuniary Debt is paid, by whomsoever it be paid, the Obli∣gation of the Person himself unto Payment ceaseth ipso facto.

Let the Reader hence see the true Reason why all our Antinomians contend so earnestly that sin must be consi∣dered as a Pecuniary Debt, because then upon Christ's Satisfaction, which they call the Payment of the Debt, all the Elect must be discharged; and then indeed there's no need of Faith or Repentance in order to the Pardon of sins; but the Doctor goes on: But in things criminal, the guilty Person himself being firstly, immediately and in∣tentionally under the Obligation to Punishment, when there is introduced by Compact, a vicarious Solution, in the substi∣tution of another to suffer, tho he suffer the same absolute∣ly, which those should have done, for whom he suffers, yet

because of the Acceptation of his Person to suffer, which might have been refused, and could not be admitted without some Relaxation of the Law: Deliverance of the guilty Persons cannot ensue ipso facto, but by the intervention of the Terms fixed on in the Covenant or Agreement, for an admittance of the Substitution. It appears from what hath been spoken, that in this matter of Satisfaction God is not considered as a Creditor, and Sin as a Debt, and the Law as an Ob∣ligation to the Payment of the Debt, and the Lord Christ as paying it, &c.

To subjoyn any thing of my own to the Reason of two such great Men, would be but to light a Candle to the Sun, and yet it may be permitted to observe a few things about Christ's Suretiship.

• 1. The Term Surety is Sacred, Canonical, not to be violated with profanc and unwasht Hands: We there∣fore give that Reverence to it, which we owe to Divine Revelation; and if those other Terms and Phrases, a∣bout which the Quarrel has been so scalding-hot, could plead the same priviledge that they had the Stamp of Ius Divinum upon them, it had prevented, or soon si∣lenced the Debates about Words: tho some diversity of Thought might have arisen about the extent of the Signification.
• 2. The Apostle is express Heb. 7. 22. Iesus was made a Surety of a better Covenant, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, And yet the same Apostle continuing to intreat of the same Subject in the next Chapter, Heb. 8. 6. stiles the same Jesus, the Mediatour of a better Covenant, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉; which would tempt one that is used to search out the Mind of God, by comparing one Scripture with another, to think that a Mediatour of a better Covenant, and the Surety of a better Covenant, are Expressions of the same Latitude, and exactly equiva∣lent one to the other.
• 3. This better Covenant, whereof Christ is Mediator or Surety, being a Mutual Covenant, wherein God enga∣ges

• to be our God, and engages us, as we engage our selves to be his People: Christ undertakes on the behalf of both; for Gal. 3. 20. A Mediator is not a Mediator of one; He therefore undertakes with both, and for both; nor can any be meet to bring God and Man into one Co∣venant, and preserve them both inviolably in that one Covenant, but he who is God and Man in one Person.
• 4. The word 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, which is but once found in the New Testament, as applied to Christ, receives no pre∣judice thence, as to its Divine Authority, (as to what∣ever Truth is contained therein) for even the 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 are of Divine Inspiration.
• 5. Yet that it is but once used, is some inconvenience to our understanding the just and adequate import of it; for when we meet with a word frequently used, it stands in divers References to the Antecedents and Conse∣quents, which by a due comparing them may reflect much useful light into its signification.
• 6. We have not much relief from its Etymology; only that he that is our Surety, must be one near, or near of Kin to us: for seeing that Sin was committed in the Humane Nature, it seems reasonable, that if God will so far Relax the Law, as to admit a Surety or Mediator, yet that he must be of the same Nature with the Offenders, for whom he is so, Heb. 2. 14, 16. For as much as the Children were partakers of Flesh and Blood, he also took part of the same—For he took not on him the Nature of Angels, but the Seed of Abraham he took: And the Hebrew word 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, which is parallel to the Greek 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, denotes one near of Kin, who thereby had a Right to Redeem, Ruth 3. 13.
• 7. It is a most perilous Course which some have ta∣ken; who when they meet with a Word or Term that carries Allusion or Metaphor in it, spin out the Meta∣phor as far as ever it will run, and sometimes so far and sine, that the Thread breaks▪ and force the Allusion as far as ever a fruitful Fancy can carry it; and hence they

• raise Doctrines, build up Observations, and wring out Consequences and Conclusions till the Bloud comes; and then intitle all those Doctrines to Divine Reve∣lation, and lay the Brats of their own begetting at the Door of the Scripture: Thus has it fared with many sacred Terms, especially with this of a Surety; a Po∣pular way of Tickling the Humours of People, but of no small prejudice to the Truth; where Men gather what God never sowed, and believe what he never re∣vealed.
• 8. Tho Surety and Mediatour are Terms belonging to the same Person, yet that of a Surety, is commonly restrained to the Sacerdotal Office of Christ, as he made Satisfaction to Divine Justice, and stood in our Place and Stead for that great End; yet whether Justice be the Essential or Rectoral Iustice, or rather the Rectoral Iu∣stice of God, as grounded upon his Essential Iustice, I dare not determine, nor is it so material, for both the one and the other are Vindicative, and that is enough to exclude for ever the Notion of a Money-Surety.
• 9. Lastly, Those Expressions of some Learned and Godly Divines, who have mentioned a certain Bond, wherein Christ and the Elect are said to be jointly bound to God; may for ought I know, intend no more than a Recognizance to Divine Iustice in a Criminal Cause, not a Money-bond to a Creditor: However that be, I could never yet see, or get a sight of that Bond; no more than of our Original Contract, or the Pacta Con∣venta in a Remoter Kingdom, where our Author ha∣ving greater Acquaintance, may possibly have better Intelligence.

But Sir! as I intimated, I have little concern with the Defender in this matter, and therefore this shall be all the trouble you shall receive from me in this Af∣fair. Only I am

Your humble Servant, &c.