John Eachard
Remission of Sin by the Blood of Christ
Do not think that I go about to persuade you to hold any phrases but those found in Holy Scripture, for I intend it not, but to hold the substance of that you have professed to your faithful friends that you know are in Christ Jesus, but you shall come to clip the Lord’s Righteousness if you assert that God sees all our enemies, therefore our sins, and that the Spirit sees sin, {in those whose sins have been put away by Christ.} This will prove leaven at the least. It seems these have forgotten the two grounds: First that God doth not behold his children under the Law, but under Grace, therefore their sins are all drowned in the Red Sea of Christ’s blood, like the Egyptians in the bottom of the Red Sea. Secondly: God doth behold men in Adam or in Christ, who were once darkness, but now light in the Lord; once the children of wrath, now sons and heirs risen with Christ and seated with Him in heavenly places; once in their sins, now a glorious Church by Christ, except you will make mongrel Christians between Adam and Christ that should stand before God sometimes in Christ, and sometimes out of Christ; sometimes in Adam or half in him, and half in Christ; half darkness and half light; half a new creature and half an old creature, which the Scriptures will not allow. So for any to say that God sees all our sins is to deny the first and second part of Free Justification, and to say namely that Christ hath not loved us, nor washed us from our sins before his heavenly Father, and that his Righteousness hath not covered us, and made us kings and priests unto his Father. And to deny the perfect Remission of Sins and to bring them under the Law before God, and then who shall not lay anything to the charge of God’s elect, contrary to the Scriptures. And to say that the Spirit sees sin because we by the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the flesh is to affirm that the Spirit sees us who belong to Christ in darkness, or sees not how Christ preserves his whole Church without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, or that the Spirit doth not see the Blood of Christ or the Wedding Garment of Christ’s Righteousness upon us. For though we by that Spirit do mortify our members upon the earth, that is to be understood to manward, therefore called members upon earth, not in heaven for we are dead to sin already before our Father in heaven, and buried too, as the Apostle saith, “ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God,” and how should we that are dead to sin live any longer therein before God? Therefore reckon yourselves dead; believe yourselves to be dead to sin before, for thus he who would have you believe, and that you are so, and alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord; for he would not have you count that which is not, therefore you believers are dead to sin before God and buried also, for you are buried with him by baptism into death. And as men do not mortify him that is dead and buried already, so believers do not take away their sins out of God’s sight by mortification, because they are dead and buried unto sin before God in Christ already. So that though you by virtue of the Spirit do mortify your members upon earth, yet the Spirit of God doth know that their sin is pardoned, washed away and put out of God’s sight, covered and not imputed, which all signify the same thing; that is, the perfect remission of sins. And though sin do now lay upon thy conscience and thou art mortifying it by the Spirit, yet we know that sin is forgiven us for His Names sake; and that we have Redemption through his Blood, the Forgiveness of our Sins. And the Spirit witnesseth to that which Christ hath made us; therefore we are to believe, that the Lord sees us such as he would have us to believe that we are made before God by the blood of Christ; so it is one thing that we see and feel, when as by the virtue of the Spirit of God we do mortify our members on the earth, before ourselves and the world, and it is another thing what we are to believe in regards to what we are made before God in Christ. Therefore I believe the Spirit of God seeth every believer in the Wedding Garment of Christ’s Righteousness at all times. John Eachard {Letter written by Eachard, Vicar of Darsham, Suffolk, concerning the London minister Samuel Prettie, a young London preacher who was at this time imprisoned and awaiting trial before the High Commission, 1631}