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V

ENGLISH OXFORD

LIBRARY

THE

DIVINE LEGATION OF MOSES

DEMONSTRATED.

BOOK VI.

CONTINUED.

BUT

SECT. V.

UT though it appear that a future state of Rewards and Punishments made no part of the Mosaic Dispensation, yet the LAW had certainly a SPIRITUAL meaning, to be understood when the fulness of time should come: And hence it received the nature, and afforded the efficacy, of PROPHECY. In the interim, the MYSTERY OF THE GOSPEL was occasionally revealed by GOD to his chosen Servants, the Fathers and Leaders of the Jewish Nation; and the dawning of it was gradually opened by the Prophets, to the People.

And which is exactly agreeable to what our excellent Church in its SEVENTH ARTICLE of Religion teacheth concerning this matter.

ARTICLE VII.

The Old Testament is not contrary to the New: for both in the Old and New Testament, everlasting Life is offered to Mankind by Ehrist, who is the only Mediator between God and Man. Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the Old Fathers did look only for transitory Promises,

VOL. VI.

B

The

The Old Testament is not contrary to the New, is a proposition directed against the Manichean error, to which the opinions of some Sectaries of these later times seemed to approach. The Manicheans fancied there was a Good and an Evil Principle; that the Old Dispensation was under the Evil, and that the New was the work of the Good. Now it hath been proved, that the Old Testament is so far from being contrary to the New, that it was the Foundation, Rudiments, and Preparation for it.

-For both in the Old and New Testament, everlasting life is offered to mankind by CHRIST, who is the only Mediator between God and Man. That the Church could not mean by these words, that everlasting life was offered to mankind by CHRIST in the Old Testament in the SAME MANNER in which it is offered by the New, is evident from these considerations:

1. The Church, in the preceding words, only says, the Old Testament is NOT CONTRARY to the New; but did she mean that everlasting life was offered by both, in the same manner, she would certainly have said, The Old Testament is THE SAME with the New. This farther appears from the inference drawn from the proposition concerning everlasting life-WHEREFORE they are not to be heard, which feign that the old FATHERS did look only for transitory promises. But was this pretended sense the true, then the inference had been, That ALL THE ISRAELITES were instructed to look for more than transitory promises.

2. The Church could not mean, that everlasting life is offered in the Old and New Testament in the same manner, because we learn from St. Austin, that this was one of the old Pelagian heresies, condemned by the Catholics in the Synod of Diospolis,-QUOD LEX SIC MITTAT AD REGNUM [COCLORUM] QUEMADMODUM ET EVANGELIUM*.

* De Gestis Pelagii, c. xi. § 24.

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