free, the other wholly conditional : and though these two be, in their own natures, inconsistent and destructive of each other, yet so it was, that all the saints, for many ages, were absolutely under the one, and yet purely under the other: shall I then be censured for saying he speaks pure contradiction ?
Possibly my reader will be tempted to think I abuse him, and that no man of common sense can be guilty of such an horrid ab- surdity ; I must, whatever respect I ha^ e for Mr. C. once more tell him, before the world, that this is not only his own doctrine, but that very doctrine upon which he hath adventured the whole cause and controversy of infants baptism, which I therefore say is hereby become a desperate cause.
And this brings me to my first general head, viz.
1. First, That Mr. Cary hath not been able to free his thesis from this horrid absurdity ; but by struggling to do it, hath (according to the nature of errors) entangled himself in more and greater ones,
Mr. Cary, in p. 174, 175. of his Solemn Call, was by me reduced to this absurdity, which he there owns, in express words, * That ' Moses, and the whole body of the children of Israel, were abso- ' lutely under (without the exception of any) the severest penalties
* of a dreadful curse ; and that the Sinai covenant could be no ' other than a covenant of works, a ministration of death and con- ' demnation, and yet, at the same time, both Moses and all the ' elect, were under a pure covenant of gospel-grace : and if these
* were two contrary covenants in themselves, and just opposite the ' one to the other, as, indeed, they were, we have nothing to say,
* but, with the apostle, 0 the depth\ S;c.
This reader, is the position which must be made good by Mr. Cary, or his cause is lost ; deformed issues do not look as if they had beautiful truth for their mother; no false or absurd conclusion can regularly follow from true premises. But hence naturally and necessarily follows this.
Absurdity 1. That Abraham, Moses, and all the believers under tlie Old Testament, by standing absolutely under Adam's covenant of works, as a ministration of death and condemnation ; and, at the same time, purely under the covenant of grace, (as Mr. C. af- firms they did) must necessarily during their lives, hang in the midway between life and death, justification and condemnation ; and after death, in the midway between heaven and hell. During life, they could neither be justified nor condemned ; justified they could not be, for justification is the soul's passing from death to life, 1 John iii. 14. John v. 24. Upon a man's justification his covenant, and state are changed : but the covenant and state of no man can be so changed, as long as he remains absolutely under the
VI^DlCIAllUM VINTDEX. 499
?ftevcvest penalties'' and condemnation of the law, as Mr. C. affirms they did.
Again, condemned they could not be, seeing all that are under the pure covenant of grace (as he saith they were at the same time) are certainly in Christ, and to such there is no condemnation, Rom. viii. 1. nor ever shall be. John v. 24'. " He that believcth, ** shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto " life."^ What remains then, but that during life they could neither be perfectly justified, nor perfectly condemned ; and yet, being ab- solutely imder the severest penalties of Adam's covenant, they were perfectly condemned ; and again, being under the pure covenant of grace, they must be perfectly justified.''
And then, after death, they must neither go to heaven nor hell; but either be annihilated, or stick midway in Limbo Patrurriy (as the Papists fancy) betwixt both. No condemned person goes to heaven, nor any justified person to hell. His position, therefore, which necessarily infers this gross absurdity, is justly renounced and detested by learned and orthodox divines.
The learned and accute * Turretine, the late famous professor of divinity at Geneva, proving that the Sinai law could not be a pure covenant of works ; brings this very medium to prove it, as a known truth, allowed by all men : ' The Israelites (saith he) with ' whom God covenanted, were already under Abraham's cove- ' nant, which was a covenant of grace, and were saved in Christ
* by it ; therefore they could not be under the legal covenant. ' Nemo cnim simul iioteat duohus fiederihus tota specie distinctu ' suhesse : because no man can be under two covenants, specifically ' different, at the same time, as these two are.'
That great and renowned divine, Mr. William Strong f, gives four irrefragable arguments to prove that no man can stand under both these covenants at the same time, which in co-ordination, actually destroy and make void each other. 'If the first covenant ' stand, there is no place for the second ; and if the second stand,
* the first is made void. And this, saith he, will fully appear, if ' we consider the direct contrariety in the terms of those two co«
* venants. For, (1.) Tlie righteousness of the first covenant is
* in ourselves, but the righteousness of the second is the righ- ' teousness of another, 1 John r. 11, 12. (2.) In the covenant
* of works, acceptation is first of the work, and afterwards of the ' person. Gen. iv. 7. but in the covenant of grace, the acceptation
* is first of the person, and then of the work, Gen. iv. 4. (3.) The ' first covenant was a covenant without a priest, but the second is
• Turret, part 2. p. 290.
f Mr. Strong on the Covenant, p. 66. 67.
oOO % IN Die I ARUM VINDEX.
* a covenant with a priest. (4.) In the first covenant there is mat- ^ ter of glorying, but in the second there is none, Rom. iii. 27, ' So that these two can never consist, except you can compound, ' or reconcile these four opposites in the justification of the same •^ person."'
To the same purpose, saith the excellent Mr. Samuel Bolton *.
* If the law were a covenant of works, then were the Jews under ' a different covenant from us, and so none of them were saved, ' which the apostle gainsays. Acts xv. 11. or else they were both ' under a covenant of works, and a covenant of grace; but that ' they could not be ; they are utterly inconsistent,' Ergo. And thus all sound divines speak. I may therefore say of Mr. Gary's position^ as Ruveus before me did ; ortinem ahsurditatem excedere videtitr, it seemeth to exceed all absurdities. A man may more rationally suppose two natures, and essential forms, in one body, and place the same thing under divers species, in the predicament of substance ; yea, it were more tolerable to affirm, that ex duobus en- tibus per se fit unum ens per se, than to place any (as Mr. C. places all) of God's people under two opposite covenants. If Mr. C. were absolutely under the condemnation of the law, would he not be purely justified, think you? Yet he places Abraham, Moses, and ail believers with them, absolutely under the severest condemnation of the law, and the pure gospel-covenant at once.