We remark that the obedience of Christ has a twofold efficacy, satisfactory and meritorious; the former by which we are freed from the punishments incurred by sin; the latter by which (through the remission of sin) a right to eternal life and salvation is acquired for us. For as sin has brought upon us two evils—the loss of life and exposure to death—so redemption must procure the two opposite benefits—deliverance from death and a right to life, escape from hell and an entrance into heaven… Now although these two benefits flowing from the obedience of Christ are indissolubly connected in the covenant of grace so that no one can obtain the remission of sin without acquiring a right to life, they are not on that account to be confounded as if they were one and the same thing. Rather they are to be distinguished because it is one thing to free from death, another to introduce into life; one thing to deliver from hell, another to bear into heaven; to free from punishment and to bestow a reward. If no one can be freed from death without also being made a partaker of life, it does not follow that a deliverance from the death we deserve is not to be distinguished from the acquisition of glory. There are many degrees of life as well as of holiness. The possession of life does indeed follow liberation from death; but not at once the possession of a happy and glorious life.
Francis Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology, ed. James T. Dennison Jr., trans. George Musgrave Giger, 3 vol. (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 1992–1997), 2.447–48.
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