VII–IX. Mode of mercy: amplitude in gift, demand, and promise
VII. The mode of the grace of mercy consists in its amplitude and determination. VIII. Its amplitude is set in the gift, in what is demanded, and in the promise.
IX. First, Gods overflowing love toward us is made plain by the gift. For He did not love us because of any merit of ours, as if we had first given Him something He should repay (Romans 11:35), or because we loved Him first (1 John 4:19), but much more because when we had deserved sheer wrath and indignation, and had as far as in us lay destroyed the image we had received from Him at the beginning — yes, and overturned what we owed Him, fear, honor, love, obedience, even our soul and body — when from servants we had become enemies, and when He could have given us the wages of sins, death and hell: He gave us the image of His substance, His only-begotten Son. It was grace to Israel to be given the servant Moses and David: how much greater the grace that we are given not a servant but the Son of God, and Him only-begotten — and not merely as prophet and teacher of salvation, as the Socinians invent, or as an earthly savior, as the Jews, but as eternal Savior, High Priest, and King, who offered Himself as a true propitiatory sacrifice unto death for us, not to lead us from Egypt into Canaan but from death and hell into heaven.
Second, the grace of divine mercy is plain from what He demands of us. For God does not exact Levitical sacrifices and gifts, nor servile and forced obedience to the Mosaic law, but the filial obedience of faith — and He demands this in such a way that He also wills to work it in us by His Spirit.
Third, and most of all, it shines from the promise made to us in the Son of God: that all who believe in Him should not perish but have eternal life.
Latin
VII. Modus gratiae miserationis consistit in illius amplitudine ac determinatione. VIII. Amplitudo eius posita est in dono, in postulato & in promisso. IX. Primum dono superabundans Dei erga nos dilectio manifesta fit. Nam non dilexit nos propter meritum aliquod nostrum, quod ipsi priores aliquid dederimus quod nobis retribueret, Rom. 11:35, aut quod eum dilexerimus priores, 1 Ioh. 4:19, sed multo magis quod cum meram iram & indignationem commeriti eramus, & quod in principio ab ipso acceperamus, nempe imaginem ipsius, quantum in nobis erat, perdideramus; imo & illud quod ipsi debebamus, nempe timorem, honorem, dilectionem, obedientiam, imo & animam corpusque nostrum interverteramus: cum e servis inimici facti eramus, cumque nobis mercedem peccatorum, mortem & infernum, dare potuisset: nobis imaginem substantiae suae, Filium suum unigenitum dedit. Singulis gratia fuit Israeli dari servum Mosen & Davidem: quanto maior gratia est nobis dari non servum, sed Filium Dei, eumque unigenitum? Et quidem non ut tantum sit propheta & doctor salutis, ut fingunt Socinistae, aut servator terrenus, ut Iudaei: sed ut sit aeternus Servator, Pontifex & Rex, qui se ipsum, tanquam verum sacrificium propitiatorium, in mortem obtulit pro nobis, non ut nos ex Aegypto in Chananaeam, sed e morte & inferno in caelum traduceret. Secundo patet gratia divinae miserationis ex eo quod a nobis postulat. Nam Deus non exigit a nobis sacrificia & dona Levitica, non servilem & coactam obedientiam legis Mosaicae, sed filialem obedientiam fidei. Atque hoc ita a nobis postulat, ut illud simul per Spiritum suum in nobis velit operari. Tertio vero omnium maxime elucet e promisso nobis in Filio Dei facto: ut omnes qui in ipsum credunt non pereant, sed vitam aeternam habeant.