Leviathan eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 732 pages of information about Leviathan.

Leviathan eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 732 pages of information about Leviathan.

All That Is Necessary To Salvation Is Contained In Faith And Obedience All that is necessary to Salvation, is contained in two Vertues, Faith in Christ, and Obedience to Laws.  The latter of these, if it were perfect, were enough to us.  But because wee are all guilty of disobedience to Gods Law, not onely originally in Adam, but also actually by our own transgressions, there is required at our hands now, not onely Obedience for the rest of our time, but also a Remission of sins for the time past; which Remission is the reward of our Faith in Christ.  That nothing else is Necessarily required to Salvation, is manifest from this, that the Kingdome of Heaven, is shut to none but to Sinners; that is to say, to the disobedient, or transgressors of the Law; nor to them, in case they Repent, and Beleeve all the Articles of Christian Faith, Necessary to Salvation.

What Obedience Is Necessary; The Obedience required at our hands by God, that accepteth in all our actions the Will for the Deed, is a serious Endeavour to Obey him; and is called also by all such names as signifie that Endeavour.  And therefore Obedience, is sometimes called by the names of Charity, and Love, because they imply a Will to Obey; and our Saviour himself maketh our Love to God, and to one another, a Fulfilling of the whole Law:  and sometimes by the name of Righteousnesse; for Righteousnesse is but the will to give to every one his owne, that is to say, the will to obey the Laws:  and sometimes by the name of Repentance; because to Repent, implyeth a turning away from sinne, which is the same, with the return of the will to Obedience.  Whosoever therefore unfeignedly desireth to fulfill the Commandements of God, or repenteth him truely of his transgressions, or that loveth God with all his heart, and his neighbor as himself, hath all the Obedience Necessary to his Reception into the Kingdome of God:  For if God should require perfect Innocence, there could no flesh be saved.

And To What Laws But what Commandements are those that God hath given us?  Are all those Laws which were given to the Jews by the hand of Moses, the Commandements of God?  If they bee, why are not Christians taught to obey them?  If they be not, what others are so, besides the Law of Nature?  For our Saviour Christ hath not given us new Laws, but Counsell to observe those wee are subject to; that is to say, the Laws of Nature, and the Laws of our severall Soveraigns:  Nor did he make any new Law to the Jews in his Sermon on the Mount, but onely expounded the Laws of Moses, to which they were subject before.  The Laws of God therefore are none but the Laws of Nature, whereof the principall is, that we should not violate our Faith, that is, a commandement to obey our Civill Soveraigns, which wee constituted over us, by mutuall pact one with another.  And this Law of God, that commandeth Obedience to the Law Civill, commandeth by consequence Obedience to all the Precepts of the Bible, which (as I have proved in the precedent Chapter) is there onely Law, where the Civill Soveraign hath made it so; and in other places but Counsell; which a man at his own perill, may without injustice refuse to obey.

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Leviathan from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.