VINDICIARUM VINDEX. OR, A REFUTATION of the weak and impertinent Rejoinder of Mr. PHILIP CARY. Wherein he vainly attempts the Defence of his absurd THESIS, to the great abuse and injury of the Laws and Covenants of God. AND must I be dipt, once more, in the water-controverfy? It is time for me to think of undressing myself, and making ready for my approaching rest, and employ those few minutes I have to spend, in more practical and beneficial studies, for my own, and the church's greater advantage. And it is time for Mr. Cary to reflect upon his past follies, which have confumed too much of his own, and others time, without any advantage; yea, to the apparent loss and injury of the cause he undertakes to defend. When I received these sheets from him, in vindication of his Salemn Call, I was at a stand, in my own resolutions, whether to let it pass (without any animadversions upon it) as a passionate clamour for a desperate cause; or give a short, and full answer to his confused and impertinent rejoinder. But confidering that I had under hand, at the same time, the foregoing Treatise of The Causes and Cures of Mental Errors, and that though my honest neighbour discovers much weakness in his way of argumentation, yet it was like to meet with fome interested readers, to whom, for that reason, it would be the more suitable; and how apt such persons are to glory in the last word; but especially confidering, that a little time and pains would fuffice (as the cafe stands) to end the unseasonable controversy betwixt us, and both clear and confirm many great and weighty points of religion : I was, upon these confiderations, prevailed with, against my own inclination, to cast in these few sheets, as a Mantissa, to the former seasonable, and necessary discourse of errors, resolving to fill them with what should be worth the reader's time and pains. VOL. IV. Mm As for the rude insults, uncomely reflections, and passionate expressions of my discontented friend, I shall not throw back the dert upon him, when I wipe it off from myself; I can ea fily forgive, and forget them too: The best men have their paf fions, Jam. v. 17. even sweet-briars, and holy thistles, have their offenfive prickles. I confider my honest neighbour under the strength of a temptation; it disquiets him to see the labours of many years, and the raised expectations of fo great a con quest, and triumph over men of renown, all trustrated by his friend and neighbour, who had done his utmost to prevent it, and often foretold him of the folly, and vanity of his attempt. Every thing will live as long as it can, and natura vexata prodit feipfam. But, certainly, it had been more for truth's ho. nour, and Mr. C-'s comfort, to have confeffed his follies humbly to God, and have laid his hand upon his mouth. The things in controversy betwixt us, are great and weighty, viz. the true nature of the Sinai laws, in their complex body: the quality of God's Covenant with Abraham; and the dispensation of the New Covenant we are now under. These are things of great weight in themselves, and their due resolutions are, at this time, fomewhat the more weighty, because my Antagonist hath adventured the whole controversy of infants baptifm upon them. I have, in my Vindicia Legis, &c. stated the several questions clearly, and distinctly; shewn Mr. C. what is no part of the controverfy, and what is the very hinge upon which it turns; defired him, if he made any reply, to keep close to the just and necessary rules of difputation, by diftinguishing, limiting, or denying any of my propositions; that the matters in controversy might be put to a fair, and speedy issue. But, instead of that, I meet with a flood of words rolling sometimes to this part, and then to another part of my answer, and fo back again, without the steddy direction of art, or reason. There may, for ought I know, be some things of weight, in Mt. Cary's reply, if a man could fee them for words; but, without scoff, or vanity, I must say of the rational part of it, as the poet said of the over-dressed woman, - Pars minima eft ipfa puella jui, it is the least part of it. To follow him in his irregular, and extravagant way of writing, were to make myself guilty of the fame folly I blame him for: I am therefore neceffitated to per. ftringe them, and reduce all I have to say, under three general heads. 1 I. I shall clearly evince to the world, that Mr. Cary hath not been able to discharge, and free his own thesis from the こ : 鳳 horrid consequents, and gross abfurdities, which I have laid II. That he hath left my arguments standing in their full III. And then I shall confirm, and strengthen my three pofiti- But, before I touch the particulars, two things must be pre- 1. That the controverfy about the true nature of the Sinai laws, both moral and ceremonial, complexly confidered, is not that very hinge upon which the right of belivers infants to baptifm depends; that stands as it did before, be the Sinai laws what they will: we do not derive the right of infants from any other law or covenant, but that gracious covenant which God made with Abraham, which was in being 430 years before Mofes's law; and was no way injured, much less difannulled, by the addition of it, Gal. iii. 17. If Abraham's covenant be the fame covenant of grace we are now under, the right of believers infants to baptism is secured, whatever the Sinai covenant prove to be which I speak not out of the leaft jealousy that Mr. Cary hath, or ever shall be able to prove it to be a pure Adam's covenant of works; but to prevent miAakes in the reader. 2. It must be heedfully observed, also, that how free, gra. cious, and absolute soever the New Covenant be, (for God for bid that I should go about to eclipse the glory of free grace, on which my foul depends for falvation) yet that will never prove Abraham's covenant to be an abolished Adam's covenant of works, unless two things more be proved, which I never expect to fee, viz. First, That Abraham, and his believing pofterity, were bound, by the very nature, and act of circumcifion, to keep the whole law in their own perfons, in order to their juftification and falvation, as perfectly and perpetually, and under the same penalty for the least failure, as Adam was to keep the law in paradise. Secondly, It must be further proved, That Abraham, and all his believing offspring, who stood with him under that covenant, whereof circumcifion was the initiating fign, were all 1 saved in a different way from that in which believers are now saved under the gospel; for so it must be, if the addition of circumcifion made it unto them an Adam's covenant of works. But this would be a direct contradiction to the words of the apostle, speaking of them who were under the covenant of circumcifion, Acts xv. 11. "But we believe, that through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved, even as "they." If he say, they stood, indeed, under that covenant, as a pure covenant of works, but were saved by another covenant; and fo for many ages, the church of God stood absolutely under the covenant of works, and, at the fame time, under the pure covenant of grace; the one altogether absolute and 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 faints, for many ages, were abfolutely under the one, and yet purely under the other: shall I be then cenfured for faying 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 fuch an horrid absurdity: I muft, whatever respect I have 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 baptifm, which I therefore say is hereby become a desperate caufe. And this brings me to my first general head, viz. I. First, That Mr. Cary hath not been able to free his thesis from this horrid abfurdity; but by struggling to do it, bath (according to the nature of errors) entangled himself in more, and greater ones. Mr. Cary, in p. 174, 175. of his folemn call, was by me reduced to this absurdity, which he there owns, in express words, • That Mofes, and the whole body of the people of Ifrael, were • absolutely 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 miniftration * of death, and condemnation, and yet, at the same time, both • Moses, and all the elect, were under a pure covenant of gofpel-grace: and if these were two contrary covenants in them• selves, and just opposite the one to the other, as, indeed, they were, we have nothing to say, but, with the apostle, Q the depth, &c. This, reader, is the position which must be made good by Mr. Cary, or his cause is loft; deformed issues do not look as If they had beautiful truth for their mother: no falfe or abfurd conclufion can regularly follow from true premises. But hence naturally and necessarily follows this. Abfurdity 1. That Abraham, Moses, and all the believers under the 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. affirms they did) must necessarily, during their lives, hang in the midway between life and death, juftification 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 fo changed, as long as he remains absolutely under the feverest 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 faith 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 believeth, shall not come into condemnation, but is paf" fed from death unto life." What remains, then, but that during life they could neither be perfectly justified, nor perfectly condemned; and yet, being absolutely under the severest penalties of Adam's covenant, they were perfectly condemned; and, again, being under the pure covenant of grace, they must be perfectly juttified ? And then, after death, they must neither go to heaven, nor hell; but either be annihilated, or stick midway in Limbo Patrum (as the Papists fancy) betwixt both. No condemned perfon goes to heaven, nor any justified person to hell. His pofition, therefore, which neceffarily infers this gross absurdity, is justly renounced, and detested, by learned, and orthodox divines. The learned and acute Turretine, the late famous profeffor 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 Ifraelites • (laith he) with whom God covenanted, were already under • Abraham's covenant, which was a covenant of grace, and were faved, in Christ, by it; therefore they could not be un * Turret, part 2d, p. 290.. |