In like manner he proceeds to put in his exceptions unto
what I discoursed about the laws that an innocent man is liable unto. For
I said, that God never gave any other law to an innocent person, but only
the law of his creation, with such symbolical precepts as might be
instances of his obedience thereunto. Something he would find fault with,
but knows not well what; and therefore turmoils himself to give countenance
unto a putid cavil. He tells us, “That it is a great favour that I
acknowledge, p. 310, that God might add what symbols he pleased unto the
law of creation.” But the childishness of these impertinencies is
shameful. To whom, I pray, is it a favour, or what doth the man intend by
such a senseless scoff? Is there any word in my whole
discourse intimating that God might not in a state of innocence give what
positive laws he pleased unto innocent persons, as means and ways to
express that obedience which they owed into the law of creation? The task
wherein I am engaged is so fruitless, so barren of any good use, in
contending with such impertinent effects of malice and ignorance, that I am
weary of every word I am forced to add in the pursuit of it; but he will
yet have it, that “an innocent person, such as Christ was absolutely, may
be obliged for his own sake to the observation of such laws and
institutions as were introduced by the occasion of sin, and respected all
of them the personal sins of them that were obliged by them;” which if he
can believe, he is at liberty, for me, to persuade as many as he can to be
of his mind, whilst I may be left unto my own liberty and choice, yea, to
the necessity of my mind, in not believing contradictions. And for what he
adds, that I “know those who conceit themselves above all forms of external
worship,” I must say to him that at present personally I know none that do
so, but fear that some such there are; as also others who, despising not
only the ways of external worship appointed by God himself, but also the
laws of internal faith and grace, do satisfy themselves in a customary
observance of forms of worship of their own devising.