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failed ; which is as good a causative connection as that between the death of Christ and this suspension. Had not he undertaken the work of redemption, it had not been. If by a rigorous execution you intend the penalty of the law, inflicted in that way which hath pleased the will of the Law-giver, — Ijy several parts and de- grees, from conception, through birth, life, death, to eternity, the curse of it being wholly incumbent in respect of desert, and making out itself according to God's appointment, — then the suspension thereof is not the immediate effect of the death of Christ ; which (supposing the first arguments to the former acceptation) I farther prove: If those for whom Christ died do lie under this rigorous execution of the law (that is, the curse of it) until some other effect of Christ's death be wi'ought upon them, then that is not the first effect of the death of Christ; but that supposal is true, John iii. 3G, Eph. ii. 3: therefore, so also the in- ference.
In a word: Take the suspending of the rigorous execution of the law for the purpose of God, and his acting accordingly, not to leave his elect under the actual curse of it ; so it is no fruit of the death of Christ, but an issue of the same grace from whence also the death of Christ proceeds.
Take it foi* an actual freeing of their persons from the breach of it and its curse, and so it difitVrs not from justification, and is not the immediate effect of Christ's death, in Mr Baxter's judgment.
Take it for the not immediate executing of the law upon the first offence, and I can as well say, Christ died because the law was suspended, as you, that the law was suspended because Christ died; had not either been, the other had not been.
Take it for the actual forbearance of God towards all the world, and so it falls under my first two arguments.
Take it thus, That God, for the death of Christ, will deal with all men upon a new law, freeing all from the guilt of the fii-st broken law and covenant; so it is non ens.
If you mean by it God's entering into a new way of salvation with those for whom Christ died, this, on the part of God, is antecedaneous to the consideration of the death of Christ, and of the same free gi'ace with itself.
For the question itself, as I said before, I shall not here in terms take it up; the following discourse will give light into it, I have also spoken largely to it in another place, and that distinctly.
The sum is: I conceive that all the intermediate effects of the death of Christ, tending to its ultimate procurement of the glory of God, are all, in respect of his death, immediate ; that is, with such an immediation as attends moral causes. Now, these concerning them for whom he died, as they are not immediately bestowed on them, the ultimate attingency of the cause and the first rise of the effect lying in an intervening compact, so not simul, at once neither, though siiiiid and alike procured ; the cause of this being that relation, coherence, and causality which the Lord hath appointed between the several effects, or rather parts of the same effect, of the death of Christ, in reference to the main and ultimate end to be thereby attained, as at large I have discussed, hb. ii. cap. 1, pp. 52, 53, etc. ; — in one word, the first effect of the death of Christ, in this sense, is the first fruit of election ; for, for the procuring and purchasing of the fruits thereof, and them alone, did Christ die.
If I mistake not, Mr Baxter himself is not settled fully in this persuasion, that the suspension of the rigorous execution of the law is the most immediate effect of the death of Christ ; for, p. 52, these words which he useth, " God the Father doth accept the suffering and merits of his Son as a full satisfaction to his violated law, and as a valuable consideration, upon which he will wholly acquit and forgive the offenders themselves, and receive them again into favour, so that they will but re- ceive his Son upon the terms expressed in the gospel," seem to place the ultimate
462 OF THE DEATH OF CHRIST.
efficacy of the death of Christ in God's acceptation of it, as to our good, on the condition of faith and obedience.
Which, first, makes the suspension of the law to be so far from being the first effect of the death of Christ, that the last reacheth not so far ; and, secondly, the fond absurdity of tliis conditional acceptation I have before declared.
Neither am I clear to which of those assertions, that of p. 92, where he affirms that some benefit by Christ the condemned did receive, is most accommodate. Neither can I easily receive what is here asserted, if by "benefit" you understand that which, in respect of them, is intentionally so ; for, —
1. Condemned persons, as condemned persons, surely receive no benefit by Christ, for they are condemned.
2. The delay of the condemnation of reprobates is no part of the purchase of Christ. The Scripture .says nor more nor less of any such thing, but peculiarly assigns it to another cause, Rom. ix. 22.