12 MORAL LAW UNDER THE GOSPEL. well as he imagined, and which hard trial probably would never have been put upen him, if he had not been so conceited of his ownrighteousness. It must be observed also, to vindicate the honour, faithfuI- ness and goodness of Christ, that if the young man had followed these directions of Christ at the end of the 'conference, he had been saved : Our blessed Lord gave him sufficient advice for eternal life, if he would have taken it. Come, sell what thou hast, andgive it to the poor, andfollow me, and be my disciple ; and then it would follow, " Thou shalt learn of me the way to heaven more perfectly, and I will teach thee the way of repentance and faith, and holiness unto complete salvation." But the young man loved his money, and went away sorrowful that he could not keep all his riches and obtain eternal life too. Objection III. Doth net God all along in the writings of the Old Testament, in successive ages, promise life in this same sort of language to those that Observe and do his commandments, and that both by Moses and by the prophets ? And did not the saints, under the Old Testament, obtain life this way ? Lev. xviii. 5. He that loth them, that is, the commands of God, shall live in them ; Ezek. xx. 11. this promise is repeated : And in Ezek. xxx. 15. If' the wicked walk in the statutes of,life, without committing iniquity, he shall surely live, he shall not die : Now this dying cannot mean a natural death, for they knew they must die naturally ; therefore it must mean a deliverance from eternal death, and assurance of eternal life. as It is therefore certain, that all pious persons, under the Old Tes- tament, obtained a right to life eternal, by this observance of the moral precepts of the law." These are Doctor Whitby's own words. Answer 1. This life which is here promised in these texts to the Jews, in a literal sense, chiefly means long life in their own land, and peace and freedom from sorrows and miseries in in this world : And though the freedom or preservation from death, which is promised byMoses to those who keep the statutes, laws and ordinances enjoined to Israel,. does not mean an entire preservation from temporal death ; so neither in the obvious and literal sense does it mean, a security from eternal death, but ra- ther a freedom fromdeath, as it is a general term used to include all temporal and painful evils, and particularly from sudden and violent death, from cruel, lingering and shameful death, from death in foreign countries, and untimely death in themidst of their years. This is very evident, if you read those ex- pressions of Moses; Dent. vi. 24, 25. and Deut. xxx. 15 -30. Ezek. xxxiii. 10 -15; So Solomon, in his prayer ; I , Kings viii. 31-50. Nehemiah, in his prayer; Neh. ix. 29$1. teach us to explain it. Life isput for all that is good, and death
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=