Ohs. 2. That such a possibility of salvation, or, at the utmost, a velleity or willing of it, upon an uncertain condition, to be by us ful- filled, should be the full, proper, and only immediate end of the death of Christ, will yet scarcely down with tender spirits.
Ohs. o. The expression, of procuring to hrniseM ahility to save, upon a condition to be prescribed, seems not to answer that certain purpose of our Saviour in laying down his life, which the Scripture saith was to " save his sheep," and to " bring many sons to glory," as before; nor hath it any ground in Scripture.
Fifthly, " Chriht, therefore, obtained for all and every one reconci- liation with God, remission of sins, life and salvation; not that they should actually be partakers of these things, but that God (his justice now not hindering) might and would prescribe a condition to be by
THE PKOPEE, END OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST ASSERTED. 229
tliem fulfilled, whereupon lie would actually apply it, and make tliem partake of all those good things purchased by Christ/' And here comes their distinction of impetration and application, which we before intimated ; and thereabout, in the explication of this assertion, they are wondrously divided.
Some say that this ' proceeds so far, that all men are thereb}^ re- ceived into a new covenant, in which redemption Adam was a com- mon person as well as in his fall from the old, and all we again restored in him ; so that none shall be damned that do not sin actually against the condition wherein they are born, and fall from the state whereinto all men are assumed through the death of Christ. So Borseus, Corvinus; and one of late, in plain terms, that all are re- conciled, redeemed, saved, and justified in Christ; though how he could not understand (More, p. 10). But others, more warily, deny this, and assert that hy nature we are all children of ivratli, and that until we come to Christ the wrath of God abideth on all, so that it is not actually removed from any: so the assertors of the efiicacy of grace in France.
Again, some say that Christ by this satisfaction removed original sin in all, and, by consequent, that only; so that all infants, though of Turks and Pagans, out of the covenant, dying before they come to the use of reason, must undoubtedly be saved, that being removed in all, even the calamity, guilt, and alienation contracted by our first fall, whereby God may save all upon a new condition. But others of them, more warily, observing that the blood of Christ is said to "cleanse from all sin," (1 John i. 7; 1 Pet. i. 18, 19; Isa. liii. 6), say he died for all sinners alike ; absolutely for none, but conditionall}^ for all. Farther, some of them affirm that after the satisfaction of Christ, or the consideration of it in God's prescience, it was absolutely undetermined what condition should be prescribed, so that the Lord might have reduced all again to the law and covenant of works; so Corvinus: others, that a procuring of a new way of salvation by faith was a part of the fruit of the death of Christ ; so More, p. 35.
Again, some of them, that the condition prescribed is by our own strength, with the help of such means as God at all times, and in all places, and unto all, is ready to afford, to be performed ; others deny this, and affirm that effectual grace flowing peculiarly from election is necessary to believing: the first establishing the idol oi free-iuill to maintain their own assertion ; others overthrowing their own asser- tion for the establishment of grace. So Amyraldus, Camero, etc.
Moreover, some say that the love of God in the sendiug of Christ is equal to all : others go a strain higher, and maintain an inequality in the love of God, although he send his Son to die for all, and though greater love there cannot be than that whereby the Lord sent his Son to die for us, as Rom. viii. 32 ; and so they say that
230 THE DEATH OF DEATH. [BOOK II.
Christ purchased a greater good for some, and less for others. And here they put themselves upon innumerable uncouth distinctions, or rather (as one calleth them), extinctions, blotting out all sense, and reason, and true meaning of the Scripture. Witness Testardus, Amyraldus, and, as every one may see that can but read English, in T. M[ore.] Hence that multiplicity of the several ends of the death of Christ, — some that are the fruits of his ransom and satisfaction, and some that are I know not what; besides his dying for some so and so, for others so and so, this way and that way; — hiding themselves in innumerable unintelligible expressions, that it is a most difficult thing to know what they mean, and harder to find out their mind than to answer their reasons.
In one particular they agTee well enough, — namely, in denying that faith is procured or merited for us by the death of Christ. So far they are all of them constant to their own principles, for once to grant it would overturn the whole fabric of universal redemption; but in assigning the cause of faith they go asunder again.