Samuel Rutherford on salvation on account of law-keeping, an insult to Christ

[Reformed Covenanter]

It was fitting that free love, in the bowels of Christ, should contrive the way to heaven through free love: we should never in heaven, cast down our crowns at the feet of him that sits on the throne, with such sense and admiration, if we had come to the crown by law-doing, and not gospel confiding on a rich ransom-player. O that eternal banquet of the honey-comb of the love-debt of the Lamb, that redeemed us for nothing! All the shoulders in heaven are for eternity on an act of lifting up, and heightening Christ’s free love, who has redeemed them with so free a redemption; but they are not all able, though’ angels help them, to lift it up high enough: it is so weighty a crown that is upon the head of the Prince-Redeemer, that in a manner it wearies them, and they cannot over-extol it.

Samuel Rutherford, Christ dying and drawing sinners to himself (London, 1647), pp 8-9.