Works and Grace

In general, we may observe, first, the main difference between the Covenant of Works, made with all mankind: and the Covenant of Grace made with Abraham and his seed, the heirs of promise.

1.) In the former, the Lord requires perfect obedience to the performed by our selves to our justification, and salvation and denounces his fearful curse against those, that do not continue in a total and perfect obedience.

2.) In the latter, the Lord, instead of requiring perfect obedience to be performed of us to our justification and salvation; promises to those, which believe, redemption and justification without works: and being redeemed and justified by faith, he promises to give them grace to walk in new obedience, as being an inseparable fruit of our redemption and justification, and as the highway wherein we are to walk towards our glorification. - George Downame

Downame was an interesting fellow. He was an Anglican bishop of the kind they don't make anymore. While not a Puritan, he was Calvinistic enough that Archbishop Laud ordered the book I'm quoting from seized.

Another highlight of Downame's career was that he took a post in Ireland and, while there, wrote another book, defending the doctrine of Papal Antichrist. @Presbyterianism

The Dispensationalist, The Poet and Their Paramours

While we were all distracted by the collapse of a dispensationalist celebrity, Steve Lawson, news of a bigger, more historically significant scandal broke:

T. S. Eliot had a secret girlfriend during his difficult first marriage to Vivienne Haigh-Wood. The woman, Emily Hale, was immortalized, secretly, as the Hyacinth Girl in The Waste Land. Now that all those involved are safely dead, the story can be told — and it was in a recent book called The Silenced Muse by Sara Fitzgerald. (See the movie Tom and Viv for more about that marriage.)

Eliot will be remembered for generations while Lawson is already erased from church history. Yet the nonentity's scandal is the one that attracted publicity. Even comparing the two men seems awkward.

Ask yourself why.

It all has to do with the high/low church split in the English-speaking world. If your church has a guy in a suit who talks a lot, you are low and presumed to be both serious about your faith and working class.

If your church has a man in a funny costume doing magic tricks on an altar, your religion is treated as a cultural quirk — and you are seen as too high-status and educated to be too religious.

This is why Lawson's acts are considered shocking while Eliot's personal life is trivia for literature buffs: There are weird sociological quirks to denominational affiliation that no one wants to discuss.

Everyone expects a Baptist to present strict morals and no one does about Anglicans or ordinary Catholics. Jimmy Carter is a leftist yet considered pious because of his church affiliation. By comparison, C. S. Lewis, the world's all-time favorite Anglican, lived with a woman named Janie Moore for decades and no one cares.

I still respect Lewis and admire Eliot as cultural figures. But I am under no illusions that they lived in the same ethical universe as @Presbyterianism

Whosoever For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. (J,n. 3:16-18)

The words (“that whosoever believeth in him”) are not exceptive or restrictive of the object (as if from that world beloved by God believers alone are declared to be those actually to be saved).

Rather they are exegetical or designative of the means and condition by the intervention of which salvation is promised and will be conferred (to intimate that no one can be a partaker of so great a benefit except through faith). Thus it pertains to all believers and them alone, not eventually but definitely (to wit, as many as would believe from the decree of God).

Thus Christ in one verse embraces the whole structure of salvation: the leading (proegoumenen) cause—the love of God; the object—the world; the means acquiring—Christ; applying—faith; and the end—salvation and eternal life. Turretin, Institutes, vol. 1

Here's how to ruin a Christian family before it even starts: Teach husbands to see sex as consideration for supplicating favors given to the wife. @Presbyterianism

Two Thoughts

1. Christian divinity is the doctrine of the knowledge and worship of God, to his glory, and our salvation.

(This definition of theology is useful. It emphasizes the objective nature of theology without neglecting its practical aspects.)

2.) *Two forms of hatred toward men are approved must be known in [connection to the sixth commandment].

The first is that we hate those who are enemies of God, to whatever extent they are his enemies. 'Do I not hate them, O Jehovah, who hate thee?' (Ps. 139:21)

The second is that we hate those who would lead us away from Christ, or from the constant confession of him: 'If anyone comes to me, and does not hate his father, and mother, and wife... he cannot be my disciple' (Lk. 14:26).*'

(We should approach this topic with care. Such hatred is not mere personal enmity or desire for revenge. It focuses on those who actively work against God and His people.)

Wollebius, Christianae theologiae compendium @Presbyterianism

What is [the extra Calvinisticum]? The extra is the view that, in the incarnation, the Son not only retained his divine attributes but also continued to exercise them in Trinitarian relation. It also insists that, since the Son now subsists in two natures, he is not completely circumscribed by the limits of his human nature; the Son is able to live a divine life outside (extra) his human nature while simultaneously living a fully human life in his human nature. From the moment of conception, the Son humbled himself. In so doing, he did not override the limitations of his human nature. The Son, in his human nature, lived like we do and accepted the limitations of that nature as our representative, covenant head, and mediator. Yet, in order to account for the incarnate Son’s continual, cosmic exercise of his divine attributes (e.g., Col. 1:17), the church insisted that the Son’s exercise of his deity is “outside” his human nature and life. Thus, from conception onward, the Son lived his life totus in carne et totus extra carne, that is, totally in the flesh and totally outside or apart from the flesh.

Stephen J. Wellum, God the Son Incarnate. Crossway. 2016. @Presbyterianism

We receive “grace for grace;” — for that grace lost in Adam, better grace in Christ. Confessedly, this is a depth of wisdom indeed. And of the love of Christ to his church, and his union with it, to carry on this business, “This is a great mystery,” says the apostle (Eph 5:32); great wisdom lies herein.

So, then, this also is hid in Christ — the great and unspeakable riches of the wisdom of God, in pardoning sin, saving sinners, satisfying justice, fulfilling the law, repairing his own honor, and providing for us a more exceeding weight of glory; and all this out of such a condition as wherein it was impossible that it should enter into the hearts of angels or men however the glory of God should be repaired, and one sinning creature delivered from everlasting ruin.

Hence it is said, that at the last day God “shall be glorified in his saints, and admired in all them that believe,” (2 Thes. 1:10.) It shall be an admirable thing, and God shall be forever glorious in it, even in the bringing of believers to himself.

To save sinners through believing, shall be found to be a far more admirable work than to create the world of nothing. -John Owen x.gd/tkpyj @Presbyterianism

Mary is rightly called the Mother of God (theotokos) in the concrete and specifically because she brought forth him who is also God, but not in the abstract and reduplicatively as God. Although this is not expressly stated in the Scriptures, still it is sufficiently intimated when she is called the mother of the Lord (Lk. 1:43) and the mother of Immanuel. If the blessed virgin brought nothing to the person of the Logos absolutely considered, still she can be said to have brought something to the person of the incarnate Logos economically considered, inasmuch as she gave the human nature which he took into the unity of person.

The title Mother of God given to the virgin was perverted by superstitious men into an occasion of idolatry, as Paul Sarpi observes. “Because the impiety of Nestorius divided Christ, constituting two sons and denying that he, who was born of the virgin Mary, is God; the church, in order to implant the catholic truth in the minds of believers, decided that the words, Mary, the Mother of God (Maria theotokos), should be more frequently inculcated in the churches of the East as well as of the West. This, instituted indeed solely for the honor of Christ, by degrees began to be shared with the mother and at length was referred entirely to her alone” (History of the Council of Trent). Although, I say, this most gross error either arose from or was increased by this occasion, it derogates nothing from the truth because the abuse and error of the papists ought not to take away the lawful use of this name. -Turretin (Institutes, vol. 2) @Presbyterianism

Social historians should research how pastors' daughters got a reputation for having loose morals.

One reason, to be honest, is that religion is just a job for many ministers. They may not believe anything—and liberals and moderates generally don't—yet they put on a mask of piety for work. How they behave at home is something different. The kids get fed up with the scam and rebel, as do more than a few wives.

The pietists are right to complain about the crisis of unconverted ministry. So it is better to let men go over seemingly minor issues of moral character than deal with major scandals later.
@Presbyterianism

When it is said that the Word was made flesh, we must not understand it as if he were either changed into flesh, or confusedly intermingled with flesh, but that he made choice of the Virgin's womb as a temple in which he might dwell. He who was the Son of God became the Son of man, not by confusion of substance, but by unity of person. For we maintain, that the divinity was so conjoined and united with the humanity, that the entire properties of each nature remain entire, and yet the two natures constitute only one Christ. -Calvin x.gd/fhdpT @Presbyterianism