save us from suffering but he obeyed not to save us from obeying but to bring us to Obedience Yet his Perfection of Obedience had this end that perfect Obedience might not be necessary in us to our Justification and Salvation 27. It was not we our selves who did perfectly obey or were perfectly holy or suffered for sin in the Person of Christ or by Him Nor did we Naturally or Morally merit our own Salvation by obeying in Christ nor did we satisfie Gods Justice for our sins nor purchase pardon of Salvation to our selves by our Suffering in and by Christ All such phrase and sence is contrary to Scripture But Christ did this for us 28. Therefore God doth not repute us to have done it seeing it is not true 29. It is impossible for the individual formal Righteousness of Christ to be our Formal personal Righteousness Because it is a Relation and Accident which cannot be translated from subject to subject and cannot be in divers subjects the same 30. Where the question is Whether Christs Material Righteousness that is his Habits Acts and Sufferings themselves be Ours we must consider how a man can have Propriety in Habits Acts and Passions who is the subject of them and in Actions who is the Agent of them To Give the same Individual Habit or Passion to another is an Impossibility that is to make him by Gift the subject of it For it is not the same if it be in another subject To make one man really or physically to have been the Agent of anothers Act even that Individual Act if he was not so is a contradiction and impossibility that is to make it true that I did that which I did not To be ours by Divine Imputation cannot be to be ours by a false Reputation or supposition that we did what we did not For God cannot err or lie There is therefore but one of these two ways left Either that we our selves in person truly had the habits which Christ had and did all that Christ did and suffered all that he suffered and so satisfied and merited Life in and by him as by an Instrument or Legal Representer of our persons in all this Which I am anon to Confute or else That Christs Satisfaction Righteousness and the Habits Acts and Sufferings in which it lay are imputed to us and made ours not rigidly in the very thing it self but in the Effects and Benefits In as much as we are as really Pardoned Justified Adopted by them as the Meritorious cause by the instrumentality of the Covenants Donation as if we our selves had done and suffered all that Christ did as a Mediator and Sponsor do and suffer for us I say As really and certainly and with a fuller demonstration of Gods Mercy and Wisdom and with a sufficient demonstration of his Justice But not that our propriety in the benefits is in all respects the same as it should have been if we had been done and suffered our selves what Christ did Thus Christs Righteousness is ours 31. Christ is truly The Lord our Righteousness in more respects than one or two 1. In that he is the meritorious Cause of the Pardon of all our sins and our full Justification Adoption and right to Glory and by his Satisfaction and Merits only our Justification by the Covenant of Grace against the Curse of the Law of Works is purchased 2. In that he is the Legislator Testator and Donor of our Pardon and Justification by this new-Testament or Covenant 3. In that he is the Head of Influx and King and Intercessor by and from whom the Spirit is given to sanctifie us to God and cause us sincerely to perform the Conditions of the Justifying and saving Covenant in Accepting and Improving the mercy then given 4. In that he is the Righteous Judge and Justifyer of Believers by sentence of Judgment In all these Respects he is The Lord our Righteousness 32. We are said to be made the Righteousness of God in him 1. In that as he was used like a sinner for us but not esteemed one by God so we are used like Innocent persons so far as to be saved by him 2. In that through his Merits and upon our union with him when we believe and consent to his Covenant we are pardoned and justified and so made Righteous really that is such as are not to be condemned but to be glorified 3. In that the Divine Nature and Inherent Righteousness to them that are in him by Faith are for his Merits given by the Holy Ghost 4. In that God's Justice and Holiness Truth Wisdom and Mercy are all wonderfully demonstrated in this way of pardoning and justifying sinners by Christ Thus are we made the Righteousness of God in him 31. For Righteousness to be imputed to us is all one as to be accounted Righteous Rom. 4.6 11. notwithstanding that we be not Righteous as fulfillers of the Law of Innocency 34. For Faith to be imputed to us for Righteousness Rom. 4.22 23 24. is plainly meant that God who under the Law of Innocency required perfect Obedience of us to our Justification and Glorification upon the satisfaction and merits of Christ hath freely given a full Pardon and Right to Life to all true Believers so that now by the Covenant of Grace nothing is required of us to our Justification but Faith all the rest being done by Christ And so Faith in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost is reputed truly to be the condition on our part on which Christ and Life by that Baptismal Covenant are made ours 35. Justification Adoption and Life eternal are considered 1. Quoad ipsam rem as to the thing it self in value 2. Quoad Ordinem Conferendi Recipiendi as to the order and manner of Conveyance and Participation In the first respect It is a meer free-gift to us purchased by Christ In the second respect It is a Reward to Believers who thankfully accept the free-Gift according to its nature and uses 36. It is an error contrary to the scope of the Gospel to say that the Law of Works or of Innocency doth justifie us as performed either by our selves or by Christ For that Law condemneth and curseth us And we are not efficiently justified by it but from or against it 37. Therefore we have no Righteousness in Reality or Reputation formally ours which consisteth in the first species that is in a Conformity to the Preceptive part of the Law of Innocency we are not reputed Innocent But only a Righteousness which consisteth in Pardon of all sin and right to life with sincere performance of the Condition of the Covenant of Grace that is True Faith 38. Our pardon puts not away our Guilt of Fact or Fault but our Guilt of or obligation to Punishment God doth not repute us such as never sinned or such as by our Innocency merited Heaven but such as are not to be damned but to be glorified because pardoned and adopted
as fulfilled or from the Reatus Gulpae in se but by Christ's whole Righteousness from the Reatus ut ad paenam 2. But if this be his sense he meaneth then that it is only the Terminus à quo that Justification is properly denominated from And why so 1. As Justitia and Justificatio passive sumpta vel ut effectus is Relatio it hath necessarily no Terminus à quo And certainly is in specie to be rather denominated from its own proper Terminus ad quem And as Justification is taken for the Justifiers Action why is it not as well to be denominated from the Terminus ad quem as à quo Justificatio efficiens sic dicitur quia Justum facit Justificatio apologetica quia Justum vindicat vel probat Justificatio per sententiam quia Justum aliquem esse Judicat Justificatio executiva quia ut Justum eum tractat But if we must needs denominate from the Terminus à quo how strange is it that he should know but of one sense of Justification 3. But yet perhaps he meaneth In satisfactione Legi praestitâ though he say praestandâ and so denominateth from the Terminus à quo But if so 1. Then it cannot be true For satisfacere Justificare are not the same thing nor is Justifying giving Satisfaction nor were we justified when Christ had satisfied but long after Nor are we justified eo nomine because Christ satisfied that is immediately but because he gave us that Jus ad impunitatem vitam spiritum sanctum which is the Fruit of his Satisfaction 2. And as is said if it be only in satisfactione then it is not in that Obedience which fulfileth the preceptive part as it bound us for to satisfie for not fulfilling is not to fulfil it 3. And then no Man is justified for no Man hath satisfied either the Preceptive or Penal Obligation of the Law by himself or another But Christ hath satisfied the Law-giver by Merit and Sacrifice for sin His Liberavit nos à Lege Mortis I before shewed impertinent to his use Is Liberare Justificare or Satisfacere all one And is à Lege Mortis either from all the Obligation to Obedience or from the sole malâ—diction There be other Acts of Liberation besides Satisfaction For it is The Law of the Spirit of Life that doth it And we are freed both from the power of indwelling-sin called a Law and from the Mosaical Yoak and from the Impossible Conditions of the Law of Innocency though not from its bare Obligation to future Duty § 7. He addeth a Third Ex parte Medii quod est Justitia Christi Legalis nobis per fidem Imputata Omnem itaque Justificationem proprie Legalem esse constat Answ 1. When I read that he will have but one sense or sort of Justification will yet have the Denomination to be ex termino and so justifieth my distinction of it according to the various Termini And here how he maketh the Righteousness of Christ to be but the MEDIVM of our Justification though he should have told us which sort of Medium he meaneth he seemeth to me a very favourable consenting Adversary And I doubt those Divines who maintain that Christ's Rigâ—teousness is the Causa Formalis of our Justification who are no small ones nor a few though other in answer to the Papists disclaim it yea and those that make it but Causa Materialis which may have a sound sense will think this Learned Man betrayeth their Cause by prevarication and seemeth to set fiercly against me that he may yeeld up the Cause with less suspicion But the truth is we all know but in part and therefore err in part and Error is inconsistent with it self And as we have conflicting Flesh and Spirit in the Will so have we conflicting Light and Darkness Spirit and Flesh in the Understanding And it is very perceptible throughout this Author's Book that in one line the Flesh and Darkness saith one thing and in the next oft the Spirit and Light saith the contrary and seeth not the inconsistency And so though the dark and fleshy part rise up in wrathful striving Zeal against the Concord and Peace of Christians on pretence that other Mens Errors wrong the Truth yet I doubt not but Love and Unity have some interest in his lucid and Spiritual part We do not only grant him that Christ's Righteousness is a Medium of our Justification for so also is Faith a Condition and Dispositio Receptiva being a Medium nor only some Cause for so also is the Covenant-Donation but that it is an efficient meritorious Cause and because if Righteousness had been that of our own Innocency would have been founded in Merit we may call Christ's Righteousness the material Cause of our Justification remotely as it is Materia Meriti the Matter of the Merit which procureth it 2. But for all this it followeth not that all Justification is only Legal as Legal noteth its respect to the Law of Innocency For 1. we are justified from or against che Accusation of being non-performers of the Condition of the Law of Grace 2. And of being therefore unpardoned and lyable to its sorer Penalty 3. Our particular subordinate Personal Righteousness consisting in the said performance of those Evangelical Conditions of Life is so denominated from its conformity to the Law of Grace as it instituteth its own Condition as the measure of it as Rectitudo ad Regulam 4. Our Jus ad impunitatem vitam resulteth from the Donative Act of the Law or Covenant of Grace as the Titulus qui est Fundamentum Juris or supposition of our Faith as the Condition 5. This Law of Grace is the Norma Judicis by which we shall be judged at the Last Day 6. The same Judg doth now per sententiam conceptam judg of us as he will then judg per sententiam prolatam 7. Therefore the Sentence being virtually in the Law this same Law of Grace which in primo instanti doth make us Righteous by Condonation and Donation of Right doth in secundo instanti virtually justifie us as containing that regulating use by which we are to be sententially justified And now judg Reader whether no Justification be Evangelical or by the Law of Grace and so to be denominated for it is lis de nomine that is by him managed 8. Besides that the whole frame of Causes in the Work of Redemption the Redeemer his Righteousness Merits Sacrifice Pardoning Act Intercession c. are sure rather to be called Matters of the Gospel than of the Law And yet we grant him easily 1. That Christ perfectly fulfilled the Law of Innocency and was justified thereby and that we are justified by that Righteousness of his as the meritorious Cause 2. That we being guilty of Sin and Death according to the tenor of that Law and that Guilt being remitted by Christ as aforesaid we are therefore justified
out all sin that he might confirm what he said both from the Faith of Abraham by which he was justified and from our Saviours Death by which we are delivered from sin But this is on the by 2. But saith Dr. T. The Orthodox abhor the contrary in sensu forensi Answ How easie is it to challenge the Titles of Orthodox Wise or good Men to ones self And who is not Orthodox himself being Judg But it seems with him no Man must pass for Orthodox that is not in so gross an error of his Mind if these words and not many better that are contrary must be the discovery of it viz. That will not say that in sensu forensi God esteemeth Men to have done that which they never did The best you can make of this is that you cover the same sense which I plainlier express with this illfavoured Phrase of Man's inventing But if indeed you mean any more than I by your sensus forensis viz. that such a suffering and meriting for us may in the lax improper way of some Lawyers speaking be called Our own Doing Meriting Suffering c. I have proved that the Doctrine denied by me subverteth the Gospel of Christ Reader I remember what Grotius then Orthodox thirty years before his Death in that excellent Letter of Church-Orders Predestination Perseverance and Magistrates animadverting on Molinaeus saith How great an injury those Divines who turn the Christian Doctrine into unintelligible Notions and Controversies do to Christian Magistrates because it is the duty of Magistrates to discern and preserve necessary sound Doctrine which these Men would make them unable to discern The same I must say of their injury to all Christians because all should hold fast that which is proved True and Good which this sort of Men would disable them to discern We justly blame the Papists for locking up the Scripture and performing their Worship in an unknown Tongue And alas what abundance of well-meaning Divines do the same thing by undigested Terms and Notions and unintelligible Distinctions not adapted to the Matter but customarily used from some Persons reverenced by them that led the way It is so in their Tractates both of Theology and other Sciences and the great and useful Rule Verba Rebus aptanda sunt is laid aside or rather Men that understand not Matter are like enough to be little skilful in the expressing of it And as Mr. Pemble saith A cloudy unintelligible stile usually signifieth a cloudy unintelligent Head to that sense And as Mr. J. Humfrey tells Dr. Fullwood in his unanswerable late Plea for the Conformists against the charge of Schism pag. 29. So overly are men ordinarily wont to speak at the first sight against that which others have long thought upon that some Men think that the very jingle of a distinction not understood is warrant enough for their reproaching that Doctrine as dangerous and unsound which hath cost another perhaps twenty times as many hard studies as the Reproachers ever bestowed on that Subject To deliver thee from those Learned Obscurities read but the Scripture impartially without their Spectacles and ill-devised Notions and all the Doctrine of Justification that is necessary will be plain to thee And I will venture again to fly so far from flattering those called Learned Men who expect it as to profess that I am perswaded the common sort of honest unlearned Christians even Plowmen and Women do better understand the Doctrine of Justification than many great Disputers will suffer themselves or others to understand it by reason of their forestalling ill-made Notions these unlearned Persons commonly conceive 1. That Christ in his own Person as a Mediator did by his perfect Righteousness and Sufferings merit for us the free pardon of all our sins and the Gift of his Spirit and Life Eternal and hath promised Pardon to all that are Penitent Believers and Heaven to all that so continue and sincerely obey him to the end and that all our after-failings as well as our former sins are freely pardoned by the Sacrifice Merits and Intercession of Christ who also giveth us his Grace for the performance of his imposed Conditions and will judg us as we have or have not performed them Believe but this plain Doctrine and you have a righter understanding of Justification than many would let you quietly enjoy who tell you That Faith is not imputed for Righteousness that it justifieth you only as an Instrumental Cause and only as it is the reception of Christ's Righteousness and that no other Act of Faith is justifying and that God esteemeth us to have been perfectly Holy and Righteous and fulfilled all the Law and died for our own sins in or by Christ and that he was politically the very Person of every Believing Sinner with more such like And as to this distinction which this Doctor will make a Test of the Orthodox that is Men of of his Size and Judgment you need but this plain explication of it 1. In Law-sense a Man is truly and fitly said himself to have done that which the Law or his Contract alloweth him to do either by himself or another as to do an Office or pay a Debt by a Substitute or Vicar For so I do it by my Instrument and the Law is fulfilled and not broken by me because I was at liberty which way to do it In this sense I deny that we ever fulfilled all the Law by Christ and that so to hold subverts all Religion as a pernicious Heresie 2. But in a tropical improper sense he may be said to be esteemed of God to have done what Christ did who shall have the benefits of Pardon Grace and Glory thereby merited in the manner and measure given by the free Mediator as certainly as if he had done it himself In this improper sense we agree to the Matter but are sorry that improper words should be used as a snare against sound Doctrine and the Churches Love and Concord And yet must we not be allowed Peace § 4. But my free Speech here maketh me remember how sharply the Doctor expounded and applyed one word in the retracted Aphorisms I said not of the Men but of the wrong Opinion opposed by me It fondly supposeth a Medium betwixt one that is just and one that is no sinner one that hath his sin or guilt taken away and one that hath his unrighteousness taken away It 's true in bruits and insensibles that are not subjects capable of Justice there is c. There is a Negative Injustice which denominateth the Subject non-justum but no◠injustum where Righteousness is not due But when there is the debitum habendi its privative The Doctor learnedly translateth first the word fondly by stolide and next he fondly though not stolidè would perswade the Reader that it is said of the Men though himself translate it Doctrina And next he bloweth his Trumpet to the War with this exclamation Stolide O
against and condemn one another away with them all 2. Because divers great Volumes and other sad Evidence tells me that by their invented sence of Imputation they have tempted many Learned men to deny Imputation of Christ's Righteousness absolutely and bitterly revile it as a most Libertine Irreligious Doctrine 3. But above all that they do so exceedingly confirm the Papists I must profess that besides carnal Interest and the snare of ill Education I do not think that there is any thing in the World that maketh or hardneth and confirmeth Papists more and hindreth their reception of the Truth than these same well-meaning people that are most zealous against them by two means 1. One by Divisions and unruliness in Church-respects by which they perswade men especially Rulers that without such a Center as the Papacy there will be no Union and without such Violence as theirs there will be no Rule and Order Thus one extreme doth breed and feed another 2. The other is by this unsound sence of the Doctrine of Imputation of Christs Righteousness with an unsound Description of Faith saying that every man is to believe it as Gods word or fide divinâ that his own sins are pardoned which when the Papists read that these men make it one of the chief Points of our difference from Rome doth occasion them to triumph and reproach us and confidently dissent from us in all the rest I find in my self that my full certainty that they err in Transubstantiation and some other points doth greatly resolve me to neglect them at least or suspect them in the rest which seem more dubious And when the Papists find men most grosly erring in the very point where they lay the main stress of the difference who can expect otherwise but that this should make them despise and cast away our Books and take us as men self-condemned and already vanquished and dispute with us with the prejudice as we do with an Arrian or Socinian They themselves that cast away our Books because they dissent from us may feel in themselves what the Papists are like to do on this temptation 4. And it is not to be disregarded that many private persons not studied in these points are led away by the Authority of these men for more than Papists believe as the Church believeth to speak evil of the Truth and sinfully to Backbite and Slander those Teachers whom they hear others slander and to speak evil of the things which they know not And to see Gods own Servants seduced into Disaffection and abuse and false Speeches against those Ministers that do most clearly tell them the truth is a thing not silently to be cherished by any that are valuers of Love and Concord among Christians and of the Truth and their Brethrens Souls and that are displeased with that which the Devil is most pleased and God displeased with These are my Reasons submitted to every Readers Censure which may be as various as their Capacities Interests or Prejudices My Arguments in the third Chapter I have but briefly and hastily mentioned as dealing with the lovers of naked Truth who will not refuse it when they see it in its self-evidence But they that desire larger proof may find enough in Mr. Gataker and Mr. Wotton de Reconcil and in John Goodwin of Justification If they can read him without prejudice From whom yet I differ in the Meritorious Cause of our Justification and take in the habitual and actual Holiness of Christ as well as his Sufferings and equal in Merits and think that pardon it self is merited by his Obedience as well as by his Satisfaction To say nothing of some of his too harsh expressions about the Imputation of Faith and non-imputation of Christs Obedience which yet in some explications he mollifyeth and sheweth that his sence is the same with theirs that place all our Righteousness in remission of Sin such as besides those after-mentioned are Musculus Chamier and abundance more And when one saith that Faith is taken properly and another that it is taken Relatively in Imputation they seem to mean the same thing For Faith properly taken is essentiated by its Object And what Christ's Office is and what Faith's Office is I find almost all Protestants are agreed in sence while they differ in the manner of expression except there be a real difference in this point of simple Personating us in his perfect Holiness and making the Person of a Mediator to contain essentially in sensu Civili the very Person of every elect sinner and every such one to have verily been and done in sensu civili what Christ was and did I much marvel to find that with most the Imputation of Satisfaction is said to be for Remission of the penalty and Imputation of perfect Holiness for the obtaining of the Reward Eternal Life and yet that the far greater part of them that go that way say that Imputation of all Christs Righteousness goeth first as the Cause and Remission of Sin followeth as the Effect So even Mr. Roborough pag. 55. and others Which seemeth to me to have this Sence as if God said to a Believer I do repute thee to have perfectly fulfilled the Law in Christ and so to be no sinner and therefore forgive thee all thy sin In our sence it is true and runs but thus I do repute Christ to have been perfectly just habitually and actually in the Person of a Mediator in the Nature of Man and to have suffered as if he had been a sinner in the Person of a Sponsor by his own Consent and that in the very place and stead of sinners and by this to have satisfyed my Justice and by both to have merited free Justification and Life to be given by the new Covenant to all Believers And thou being a Believer I do repute thee justified and adopted by this satisfactory and meritorious Righteousness of Christ and by this free Covenant-Gift as verily and surely as if thou hadst done it and suffered thy self For my own part I find by experience that almost all Christians that I talk with of it have just this very notion of our Justification which I have expressed till some particular Disputer by way of Controversie hath thrust the other notion into their mind And for peace-sake I will say again what I have elsewhere said that I cannot think but that almost all Protestants agree in the substance of this point of Justification though some having not Acuteness enough to form their Notions of it rightly nor Humility enough to suspect their Understandings wrangle about Words supposing it to be about the Matter Because I find that all are agreed 1. That no Elect Person is Justified or Righteous by Imputation while he is an Infidel or Ungodly except three or four that speak confusedly and support the Antinomians 2. That God doth not repute us to have done what Christ did in our individual natural Person 's Physically The
that is judged to have no sin is judged to deserve no punishment Unless they will say that to prevent the form and desert of sin is eminenter though not formaliter to forgive But it is another even Actual forgiveness which we hear of in the Gospel and pray for daily in the Lords prayer Of all which see the full Scripture-proof in Mr. Hotchkis of Forgiveness of sin CHAP. III. A further explication of the Controversie Yet I am afraid lest I have not made the state of the Controversie plain enough to the unexercised Reader and lest the very explicatory distinctions and propositions though needful and suitable to the matter should be unsuitable to his capacity I will therefore go over it again in a shorter way and make it as plain as possibly I can being fully perswaded that it is not so much Argumentation as help to understand the matter and our own and other mens ambiguous words that is needful to end our abominable Contentions § 1. THE Righteousness of a Person is formally a moral Relation of that Person § 2. This moral Relation is the Relation of that person to the Rule by which he is to be judged § 3. And it is his Relation to some Cause or supposed Accusation or Question to be decided by that judgment § 4. The Rule of Righteousness here is Gods Law naturally or supernaturally made known § 5. The Law hath a Preceptive part determining what shall be due from us and a Retributive part determining what shall be due to us § 6. The Precept instituting Duty our Actions and Dispositions which are the Matter of that duty are physically considered conform or disconform to the Precept § 7. Being Physically they are consequently so Morally considered we being Moral Agents and the Law a Rule of Morality § 8. If the Actions be righteous or unrighteous consequently the Person is so in reference to those Actions supposing that to be his Cause or the Question to be decided § 9. Unrighteousness as to this Cause is Guilt or Reatus Culpae and to be unrighteous is to be Sons or Guilty of sin § 10. The Retributive part of the Law is 1. Premiant for Obedience 2. Penal for Disobedience § 11. To be Guilty or Unrighteous as to the reward is to have no right to the reward that being supposed the Question in judgment And to be Righteous here is to have right to the reward § 12. To be Guilty as to the penalty is to be jure puniendus or Reus poenae or obligatus ad poenam And to be righteous here is to have Right to impunity quoad poenam damni sensus § 13. The first Law made personal perfect persevering Innocency both mans duty and the Condition of the Reward and Impunity and any sin the condition of punishment § 14. Man broke this Law and so lost his Innocency and so the Condition became naturally impossible to him de futuro § 15. Therefore that Law as a Covenant that is the Promissory part with its Condition ceased cessante capacitate subditi and so did the preceptive part 1. As it commanded absolute Innocency of act and habit 2. And as it commanded the seeking of the Reward on the Condition and by the means of personal Innocency The Condition thus passing into the nature of a sentence And punishment remaining due for the sin § 16. But the Law remained still an obliging Precept for future perfect Obedience and made punishment due for all future sin and these two parts of it as the Law of lapsed Nature remained in force between the first sin and the new-Covenant promise or Law of Grace § 17. The eternal Word interposing a Mediator is promised and Mercy maketh a Law of Grace and the Word becometh mans Redeemer by undertaking and by present actual reprieve pardon and initial deliverance and the fallen world the miserable sinners with the Law and obligations which they were under are now become the Redemers jure Redemptionis as before they were the Creator's jure Creationis § 18. The Redeemers Law then hath two parts 1. The said Law of lapsed nature binding to future perfect obedience or punishment which he found man under called vulgarly the Moral Law 2. And a pardoning Remedying Law of Grace § 19. Because man had dishonoured God and his Law by sin the Redeemer undertook to take mans nature without sin and by perfect Holiness and Obedience and by becoming a Sacrifice for sin to bring that Honour to God and his Law which we should have done and to attain the Ends of Law and Government instead of our Perfection or Punishment that for the Merit hereof we might be delivered and live § 20. This he did in the third person of a Mediator who as such had a Law or Covenant proper to himself the Conditions of which he performed by perfect keeping 1. The Law of Innocency 2. Of Moses 3. And that proper to himself alone and so merited all that was promised to him for Himself and Us. § 21. By his Law of Grace as our Lord-Redeemer he gave first to all mankind in Adam and after in Noah and by a second fuller edition at his Incarnation a free Pardon of the destructive punishment but not of all punishment with right to his Spirit of Grace Adoption and Glory in Union with Himself their Head on Condition initially of Faith and Repentance and progressively of sincere Obedience to the end to be performed by his Help or Grace § 22. By this Law of Grace supposing the Law of lapsed nature aforesaid inclusively all the World is ruled and shall be judged according to that edition of it to Adam or by Christ which they are under And by it they shall be Justified or Condemned § 23. If the question then be Have you kept or not kept the Conditions of the Law of Grace Personal Performance or nothing must so far be our Righteousness and not Christs keeping them for us or Satisfaction for our not keeping them And this is the great Case so oft by Christ described Mat. 7. 25. c. to be decided in judgment and therefore the word Righteous and Righteousness are used for what is thus personal hundreds of times in Scripture § 24. But as to the question Have we kept the Law of Innocency we must confess guilt and say No neither Immediately by our selves nor Mediately by another or Instrument for Personal Obedience only is the performance required by that Law Therefore we have no Righteousness consisting in such Performance or Innocency but must confess sin and plead a pardon § 25. Therefore no man hath a proper Vniversal Righteousness excluding all kind of Guilt whatsoever § 26. Therefore no man is justified by the Law of Innocency nor the Law Mosaical as of works either by the Preceptive or Retributive part for we broke the Precept and are by the Threatning heirs of death § 27. That Law doth not justifie us because Christ fulfilled
of Justification to be the Remission of Sin Original and Actual or the Imputation of Christs Righteousness which he maketh to be all one or the Imputation of Faith for Righteousness Saith Bishop Downame of Justif p. 305. To be Formally Righteous by Christs Righteousness imputed never any of us for ought I know affirmed The like saith Dr. Prideâ—aux when yet very many Protestants affirm it Should I here set together forty or sixty Definitions of Protestants verbatim and shew you how much they differ it would be unpleasant and tedious and unnecessary And as to those same Divines that Dr. Tully nameth as agreed Dr. Davenants and Dr. Fields words I have cited at large in my Confes saying the same in substance as I do as also Mr. Scudders and an hundred more as is before said And let any sober Reader decide this Controversie between us upon these two further Considerations 1. Peruse all the Corpus Confessionum and see whether all the Reformed Churches give us a Definition of Justification and agree in that Definition Yea whether the Church of England in its Catechism or its Articles have any proper Definition Or if you will call their words a Definition I am sure it 's none but what I do consent to And if a Logical Definition were by the Church of England and other Churches held necessary to Salvation it would be in their Catechisms if not in the Creed Or if it were held necessary to Church-Concord and Peace and Love it would be in their Articles of Religion which they subscribe 2. How can all Protestants agree of the Logical Definition of Justification when 1. They agree not of the sense of the word Justifie and of the species of that Justification which Paul and James speak of Some make Justification to include Pardon and Sanctification see their words in G. Forbes and Le Blank many say otherwise Most say that Paul speaketh most usually of Justification in sensu forensi but whether it include Making just as some say or only Judging just as others or Nolle punire be the act as Dr. Twisse they agree not And some hold that in James Justification is that which is eoram hominibus when said to be by Works but others truly say it is thay coram Deo 2. They are not agreed in their very Logical Rules and Notions to which their Definitions are reduced no not so much as of the number and nature of Causes nor of Definitions as is aforesaid And as I will not undertake to prove that all the Apostles Evangelists and Primitive Pastours knew how to define Efficient Material Formal and Final Causes in general so I am sure that all good Christians do not 3. And when Justification is defined by Divines is either the Actus Justificantis and this being in the predicament of Action what wonder if they disagree about the Material and Formal Causes of it Nay it being an Act of God there are few Divines that tell us what that Act is Deus operatur per essentiam And Ex parte agentis his Acts are his Essence and all but one And who will thus dispute of the Definition and Causes of them Efficient Material Formal Final when I presumed to declare that this Act of Justifying is not an immanent Act in God nor without a Medium but Gods Act by the Instrumentality of his Gospel-Covenant or Promise many read it as a new thing and if that hold true that the First Justification by Faith is that which Gods Gospel-Donation is the Instrument of as the Titulus seu Fundamentum Juris being but a Virtual and not an Actual Sentence then the Definition of it as to the Causes must differ much from the most common Definitions But most Protestants say that Justification is Sententia Judicis And no doubt but there are three several sorts or Acts called Justification 1. Constitutive by the Donative Covenant 2. Sentential 3. Executive And here they are greatly at a loss for the decision of the Case what Act of God this Sententia Jucis is What it will be after death we do not much disagree But what it is immediately upon our believing It must be an Act as in patiente or the Divine essence denominated from such an effect And what Judgment and Sentence God hath upon our believing few open and fewer agreee Mr. Tombes saith it is a Sentence in Heaven notifying it to the Angels But that is not all or the chief some run back to an Immanent Act most leave it undetermined And sure the Name of Sentence in general signifieth no true Conception of it at all in him that knoweth not what that Sentence is seeing Universals are Nothing out of us but as they exist in individuals Mr. Lawson hath said that wihch would reconcile Protestants and some Papists as to the Name viz. that Gods Execution is his Sentence He Judgeth by Executing And so as the chief punishment is the Privation of the Spirit so the Justifying Act is the executive donation of the Spirit Thus are we disagreed about Active Justification which I have oft endeavoured Conciliatorily fullier to open And as to Passive Justification or as it is Status Justificati which is indeed that which it concerneth us in this Controversie to open I have told you how grosly some describe it here before And all agree not what Predicament it is in some take it to be in that of Action ut recipitur in passo and some in that of Quality and Relation Conjunct But most place it in Relation And will you wonder if all Christian Women yea or Divines cannot define that Relation aright And if they agree not in the notions of the Efficient Material Formal and Final Causes of that which must be defined as it is capable by its subjectum fundamentum and terminus I would not wish that the Salvation of any Friend of mine or any one should be laid on the true Logical Definition of Justification Active or Passive Constitutive Sentential or Executive And now the Judicious will see whether the Church and Souls of Men be well used by this pretence that all Protestants are agreed in the Nature Causes and Definition of Justification and that to depart from that one Definition where is it is so dangerous as the Doctor pretendeth because the Definition and the Definitum are the same § XX. P. 34. You say You tremble not in the audience of God and Man to suggest again that hard-fronted Calumny viz. that I prefer a Majority of Ignorants before a Learned man in his own profession Answ I laid it down as a Rule that They are not to be preferred You assault that Rule with bitter accusations as if it were unsound or else to this day I understand you not Is it then a hard-fronted Calumny to defend it and to tell you what is contained in the denying of it The audience of God must be so dreadful to you and me that without calling you to
earnestly presseth me with his Quem quibus who is the Man I profess I dreamed not of any particular Man But I will again tell you whom my Judgment magnifies in this Controversie above all others and who truly tell you how far Papists and Protestants agree viz. Vinc. le Blank and Guil. Forbes I meddle not with his other Subjects Placeus in Thes Salmur Davenant Dr. Field Mr. Scudder his daily Walk fit for all families Mr. Wotton Mr. Bradshaw and Mr. Gataker Dr. Preston Dr. Hammond Pract. Cat. and Mr. Lawson in the main Abundance of the French and Breme Divines are also very clear And though I must not provoke him again by naming some late English men to reproach them by calling them my disciples I will venture to tell the plain man that loveth not our wrangling tediousness that Mr. Trumans Great Propit and Mr. Gibbons serm of Justif may serve him well without any more And while this worthy Doctor and I do both concord with such as Davenant and Field as to Justification by Faith or Works judg whether we differ between our selves as far as he would perswade the World who agree in tertio And whether as he hath angrily profest his concord in the two other Controversies which he raised our Guilt of nearer Parents sin and our preferring the judgment of the wisest c. it be not likely that he will do so also in this when he hath leisure to read and know what it is that I say and hold and when we both understand our selves and one another And whether it be a work worthy of Good and Learned men to allarm Christians against one another for the sake of arbitrary words and notions which one partly useth less aptly and skilfully than the other in matters wherein they really agree 2 Tim. 2. 14. Charging them before the Lord that they strive not about words to no profit but to the subverting of the Hearers yet study to shew thy self approved unto God a workman that need not be ashamed rightly dividing the word of Truth Two Sparks more quenched which fled after the rest from the Forge of Dr. Tho. Tully § 1. DId I not find that some Mens Ignorance and factious Jealousie is great enough to make them combustible Recipients of such Wild-fire as those Strictures are and did not Charity oblige me to do what I have here done to save the assaulted Charity of such Persons more than to save any Reputation of my own I should repent that I had written one Line in answer to such Writings as I have here had to do with I have been so wearied with the haunts of the like Spirit in Mr. Crandon Mr. Bagshaw Mr. Danvers and others that it is a work I have not patience to be much longer in unless it were more necessary Two sheets more tell us that the Doctor is yet angry And little that 's better that I can find In the first he saith again that I am busie in smoothing my way where none can stumble in a thing never questioned by him nor by any Man else he thinks who owns the Authority of the second Commandment And have I not then good Company and Encouragement not to change my Mind But 1. He feigneth a Case stated between him and me who never had to do with him before but as with others in my Writings where I state my Case my self 2. He never so much as toucheth either of my Disputations of Original Sin in which I state my Case and defend it 3. And he falsly feigneth the Case stated in words and he supposeth in a sense that I never had do do with Saying I charge you with a new secondary Original Sin whose Pedegree is not from Adam I engage not a syllable further And pag. 8. You have asserted that this Novel Original Sin is not derived from our Original Father no line of Communication between them a sin besides that which is derived from Adam as you plainly and possitively affirm I never said that it had no Pedegree no line of Communication no kind of derivation from Adam 4. Yea if he would not touch the Disputation where I state my Case he should have noted it as stated in the very Preface which he writeth against and yet there also he totally overlooketh it though opened in divers Propositions 5. And the words in an Epistle to another Mans Book which he fasteneth still on were these Over-looking the Interest of Children in the Actions of their nearer Parents and think that they participate of no Guilt and suffer for no Original Sin but Adams only And after They had more Original Sin than what they had from Adam 6. He tells me that I seem not to understand my own Question nor to know well how to set about my Work and he will teach me how to manage the Business that I have undertaken and so he tells me how I MUST state the Question hereafter see his words Reader some Reasons may put a better Title on this Learned Doctors actions but if ever I write at this rate I heartily desire thee to cast it away as utter DISHONESTY and IMPUDENCE It troubleth me to trouble thee with Repetitions I hold 1. That Adams Sin is imputed as I opened to his Posterity 2. That the degree of Pravity which Cains nature received from Adam was the dispositive enclining Cause of all his Actual Sin 3. But not a necessitating Cause of all those Acts for he might possibly have done less evil and more good than he did 4. Therefore not the Total principal Cause for Cains free-will was part of that 5 Cains actual sin increased the pravity of his nature 6. And Cains Posterity were as I opened it guilty of Cains actual sin and their Natures were the more depraved by his additional pravity than they would have been by Adams sin alone unless Grace preserved or healed any of them The Doctor in this Paper would make his Reader believe that he is for no meer Logomachies and that the difference is not in words only but the thing And do you think that he differeth from me in any of these Propositions or how this sin is derived from Adam Yet this now must be the Controversie de re Do you think for I must go by thinking that he holdeth any other Derivation than this Or did I ever deny any of this But it is vain to state the Case to him He will over look it and tell me what I should have held that he may not be thought to make all this Noise for nothing He saith pag. 8. If it derive in a direct line from the first Transgression and have its whole Root fastened there what then why then some words which he sets together are not the best sense that can be spoken It is then but words and yet it is the thing What he may mean by a direct Line and what by whole Root fastened I know not but I have told the World
about the Imputation of Adam's Sin Dr. Gell Mr. Thorndike c. vehemently accusing the doctrine of Imputed Righteousness The Consent of all Christians especially Protestants about the sense of Imputed Righteousness 1. The form of Baptism 2. The Apostles Creed 3. The Nicene and Constantinopolitan Creed 4. Athanasius's Creed 5. The Fathers sense Laurentius his Collections Damasus his Creed 6. The Augustan Confession 7. The English Articles Homilies and Confession 8. The Saxon Confession 9. The Wittenberg Confession 10. The Bohemian Confession 11. The Palatinate Confession 12. The Polonian Confessions 13. The Helvetian Confession 14. The Basil Confession 15. The Argentine Confession of the four Cities 16. The Synod of Dort and the Belgick Confession 17. The Scottish Confession 18. The French Confession Whether Imputation of Passion and Satisfaction or of meritorious Perfection go first How Christ's Righteousness is called the formal Cause c. That it is confessed that Christ's Righteousness is imputed to us as our sin was to him Molinaeus Maresius Vasseur Bellarmine is constrained to agree with us A recommendation of some brief most clear and sufficient Treatises on this subject viz. 1. Mr. Bradshaw 2. Mr. Gibbon's Sermon 3. Mr. Truman's Great Propitiation 4. Placeus his Disput in Thes Salmur 5. Le Blank 's Theses And those that will read larger Mr. Watton John Goodwin and Dr. Stillingfleet Chap. 2. The opening of the Case by some Distinctions and many Propositions Joh. Crocius Concessions premised Mr. Lawson's Judgment Chap. 3. A further Explication of the Controversie Chap. 4. My Reasons against the denied sense of Imputation and personating The denied sense repeated plainly Forty three Reasons briefly named Chap. 5. Some Objections answered Chap. 6 7 8. Replies to Dr. Tully and a Defence of the Concord of Protestants against his Military Alarm and false pretence of greater discord than there is Of the Imputation of Christs Righteousness Material or Formal to Believers Whether we are Reputed personally to have suffered on the Cross and to have satisfied God's Justice for our own sins and to have been habitually perfectly Holy and Actually perfectly Obedient in Christ or by Christ and so to have merited our own Justification and Salvation And whether Christ's Righteousness Habitual Active and Passive be strictly made our own Righteousness in the very thing it self simply Imputed to us or only be made ours in the effects and Righteousness Imputed to us when we believe because Christ hath satisfied and fulfilled the Law and thereby merited it for us The last is affirmed and the two first Questions denied I Have said so much of this subject already in my Confession but especially in my Disputations of Justification and in my Life of Faith that I thought not to have meddled with it any more But some occasions tell me that it is not yet needless though those that have most need will not read it But while some of them hold that nothing which they account a Truth about the Form and Manner of Worship is to be silenced for the Churches peace they should grant to me that Real Truth so near the Foundation in their own account is not to be silenced when it tendeth unto Peace In opening my thoughts on this subject I shall reduce all to these Heads 1. I shall give the brief History of this Controversie 2. I shall open the true state of it and assert what is to be asserted and deny what is to be denied 3. I shall give you the Reasons of my Denials 4. I shall answer some Objections CHAP. I. The History of the Controversie § 1. IN the Gospel it self we have first Christ's Doctrine delivered by his own mouth And in that there is so little said of this Subject that I find few that will pretend thence to resolve the Controversie for Imputation in the rigorous sence The same I say of the Acts of the Apostles and all the rest of the New Testament except Pauls Epistles The Apostle Paul having to do with the Jews who could not digest the equalizing of the Gentiles with them and specially with the factious Jewish Christians who thought the Gentiles must become Proselytes to Moses as well as to Christ if they would be Justified and Saved at large confuteth this opinion and freeth the Consciences of the Gentile Christians from the Imposition of this yoke as also did all the Apostles Act. 15. And in his arguing proveth that the Mosaical Law is so far from being necessary to the Justification of the Gentiles that Abraham and the Godly Jews themselves were not Justified by it but by Faith And that by the works of it and consequently not by the works of the Law or Covenant of Innocency which no man ever kept no man could ever be justified And therefore that they were to look for Justification by Christ alone and by Faith in him or by meer Christianity which the Gentiles might have as well as the Jews the Partition-wall being taken down This briefly is the true scope of Paul in these Controversies § 2. But in Paul's own days there were somethings in his Epistles which the unlearned and unstable did wrest as they did the other Scriptures to their own destruction as Peter tells us 2 Pet. 2. And it seemeth by the Epistle of James that this was part of it For he is fain there earnestly to dispute against some who thought that Faith without Christian works themselves would justifie and flatly affirmeth that we are Justified by Works and not by Faith only that is as it is a Practical Faith in which is contained a Consent or Covenant to obey which first putteth us into a justified state so it is that Practical Faith actually working by Love and the actual performance of our Covenant which by way of Condition is necessary to our Justification as Continued and as Consummate by the Sentence of Judgment Against which sentence of James there is not a syllable to be found in Paul But all the Scripture agreeth that all men shall be Judged that is Justified or Condemned according to their works But it is not this Controversie between Faith and Works which I am now to speak to having done it enough heretofore § 3. From the days of the Apostles till Pelagius and Augustine this Controversie was little meddled with For the truth is the Pastors and Doctors took not Christianity in those days for a matter of Shcolastick subtilty but of plain Faith and Piety And contented themselves to say that Christ dyed for our sins and that we are Justified by Faith and that Christ was made unto us Righteousness as he was made to us Wisdom Sanctification and Redemption § 4. But withal those three first Ages were so intent upon Holiness of Life as that they addicted their Doctrine their Zeal and their constant endeavours to it And particularly to great austerities to their Bodies in great Fastings and great contemp◠of the World and exercises of Mortification to kill their fleshly
any Work and Merit of man And his death and blood alone is sufficient to abolish expiate all the sins of all men All must come to Christ for pardon and Remission of Sin Salvation and every thing All our trust and hope is to be fastened on him alone Through him only and his merits God is appeas'd and propitious Loveth us and giveth us Life eternal XI The Palatinate Confession ib. pag. 149. I believe that God the Father for the most full Satisfaction of Christ doth never remember any of my sins and that pravity which I must strive against while I live but contrarily will rather of grace give me the righteousness of Christ so that I have no need to fear the judgment of God And pag. 155. If he merited and obtained Remission of all our sins by the only and bitter passion and death of the Cross so be it we embracing it by true Faith as the satisfaction for our sins apply it to our selves I find no more of this XII The Polonian Churches of Lutherans and Bohemians agreed in the Augustane and Bohemian Confession before recited XIII The Helvetian Confession To Justifie signifieth to the Apostle in the dispute of Justification To Remit sins to Absolve from the fault and punishment to Receive into favour and to Pronounce just For Christ took on himself and took away the sins of the World and satisfied Gods Justice God therefore for the sake of Christ alone suffering and raised again is propitious to our sins and imputeth them not to us but imputeth the righteousness of Christ for ours so that now we are not only cleansed and purged from sins or Holy but also endowed with the Righteousness of Christ and so absolved from sins Death and Condemnation and are righteous and heirs of life eternal Speaking properly God only justifieth us and justifieth only for Christ not imputing to us sins but imputing to us his Righteousness This Confession speaketh in terms neerest the opposed opinion But indeed saith no more than we all say Christs Righteousness being given and imputed to us as the Meritorious Cause of our pardon and right to life XIV The Basil Confession Art 9. We confess Remission of sins by Faith in Jesus Christ crucified And though this Faith work continually by Love yet Righteousness and Satisfaction for our Sins we do not attribute to works which are fruits of Faith but only to true affiance faith in the blood shed of the Lamb of God We ingenuously profess that in Christ who is our Righteousness Holiness Redemption Way Truth Wisdom Life all things are freely given us The works therefore of the faithful are done not that they may satisfie for their sins but only that by them they may declare that they are thankful to God for so great benefits given us in Christ XV. The Argentine Confession of the four Cities Cap. 3. ib. pag. 179. hath but this hereof When heretofore they delivered that a mans own proper Works are required to his Justification we teach that this is to be acknowledged wholly received of God's benevolence and Christ's Merit and perceived only by Faith C. 4. We are sure that no man can be made Righteous or saved unless he love God above all and most studiously imitate him We can no otherwise be Justified that is become both Righteous and Saved for our Righteousness is our very Salvation than if we being first indued with Faith by which believing the Gospel and perswaded that God hath adopted us as Sons and will for ever give us his fatherly benevolence we wholly depend on his beck or will XVI The Synod of Dort mentioneth only Christs death for the pardon of sin and Justification The Belgick Confession § 22. having mentioned Christ and his merits made ours § 23. addeth We believe that our blessedness consisteth in Remission of our sins for Jesus Christ and that our Righteousness before God is therein contained as David and Paul teach We are justified freely or by Grace through the Redemption that is in Christ Jesus We hold this Foundation firm and give all the Glory to God presuming nothing of our selves and our merits but we rest on the sole Obedience of a Crucified Christ which is ours when we believe in him Here you see in what sence they hold that Christs merits are ours Not to justifie us by the Law that saith Obey perfectly and Live but as the merit of our pardon which they here take for their whole Righteousness XVII The Scottish Confession Corp. Conf. pag. 125. hath but that true Believers receive in this life Remission of Sins and that by Faith alone in Christs blood So that though sin remain yet it is not Imputed to us but is remitted and covered by Christs Righteousness This is plain and past all question XVIII The French Confession is more plain § 18. ib. pag. 81. We believe that our whole Righteousness lyeth in the pardon of our sins which is also as David witnesseth our only blessedness Therefore all other reasons by which men think to be justified before God we plainly reject and all opinion of Merit being cast away we rest only in the Obedience of Christ which is Imputed to us both that all our sins may be covered and that we may get Grace before God So that Imputation of Obedience they think is but for pardon of sin and acceptance Concerning Protestants Judgment of Imputation it is further to be noted 1. That they are not agreed whether Imputation of Christ's perfect Holiness and Obedience be before or after the Imputation of his Passion in order of nature Some think that our sins are first in order of nature done away by the Imputation of his sufferings that we may be free from punishment and next that his perfection is Imputed to us to merit the Reward of life eternal But the most learned Confuters of the Papists hold that Imputation of Christs Obedience and Suffering together are in order of nature before our Remission of sin and Acceptance as the meritorious cause And these can mean it in no other sence than that which I maintain So doth Davenant de Just hab et act Pet. Molinaeus Thes Sedan Vol. 1. pag. 625. Imputatio justitiae Christi propter quam peccata remittuntur censemur justi coram Deo Maresius Thes Sedan Vol. 2. pag. 770 771. § 6 10. maketh the material cause of our Justification to be the Merits and Satisfaction of Christ yea the Merit of his Satisfaction and so maketh the formal Cause of Justification to be the Imputation of Christs Righteousness or which is the same the solemn Remission of all sins and our free Acceptance with God Note that he maketh Imputation to be the same thing with Remission and Acceptance which is more than the former said 2. Note that when they say that Imputation is the Form of Justification they mean not of Justification Passively as it is ours but Actively as it is Gods Justifying
through the Satisfaction and Merits of Christ 39. Yet the Reatus Culpae is remitted to us Relatively as to the punishment though not in it self that is It shall not procure our Damnation Even as Christ's Righteousness is though not in it self yet respectively as to the Benefits said to be made ours in as much as we shall have those benefits by it 40. Thus both the Material and the Formal Righteousness of Christ are made ours that is Both the Holy Habits and Acts and his Sufferings with the Relative formal Righteousness of his own Person because these are altogether one Meritorious cause of our Justification commonly called the Material Cause Obj. But though Forma Denominat yet if Christs Righteousness in Matter and Form be the Meritorious Cause of ours and that be the same with the Material Cause it is a very tolerable speech to say that His Righteousness is Ours in it self while it is the very matter of ours Ans 1. When any man is Righteous Immediately by any action that action is called the Matter of his Righteousness in such an Analogical sense as Action an Accident may be called Matter because the Relation of Righteous is founded or subjected first or partly in that Action And so when Christ perfectly obeyed it was the Matter of his Righteousness But to be Righteous and to Merit are not all one notion Merit is adventitious to meer Righteousness Now it is not Christs Actions in themselves that our Righteousness resulteth from immediately as his own did But there is first his Action then his formal Righteousness thereby and thirdly his Merit by that Righteousness which goes to procure the Covenant-Donation of Righteousnass to us by which Covenant we are efficiently made Righteous So that the name of a Material Cause is much more properly given to Christs Actions as to his own formal Righteousness than as to ours But yet this is but de nomine 2. Above all consider what that Righteousness is which Christ merited for us which is the heart of the Controversie It is not of the same species or sort with his own His Righteousness was a perfect sinless Innocency and Conformity to the preceptive part of the Law of Innocency in Holiness Ours is not such The dissenters think it is such by Imputation and here is the difference Ours is but in respect to the second or retributive part of the Law a Right to Impunity and Life and a Justification not at all by that Law but from its curse or condemnation The Law that saith Obey perfectly and live sin and die doth not justifie us as persons that have perfectly obeyed it really or imputatively But its obligation to punishment is dissolved not by it self but by the Law of Grace It is then by the Law of Grace that we are judged and justified According to it 1. We are not really or reputatively such as have perfectly fulfilled all its Precepts 2. But we are such as by Grace do sincerely perform the Condition of its promise 3. By which promise of Gift we are such as have right to Christs own person in the Relation and Union of a Head and Saviour and with him the pardon of all our sins and the right of Adoption to the Spirit and the Heavenly Inheritance as purchased by Christ So that besides our Inherent or Adherent Righteousness of sincere Faith Repentance and Obedience as the performed condition of the Law of Grace we have no other Righteousness our selves but Right to Impunity and to Life and not any imputed sinless Innocency at all God pardoneth our sins and adopteth us for the sake of Christ's sufferings and perfect Holiness But he doth not account us perfectly Holy for it nor perfectly Obedient So that how-ever you will call it whether a Material Cause or a Meritorious the thing is plain Obj. He is made of God Righteousness to us Ans True But that 's none of the question But how is he so made 1. As he is made Wisdom Sanctification and Redemption as aforesaid 2. By Merit Satisfaction Direction Prescription and Donation He is the Meritorious Cause of our Pardon of our Adoption of our Right to Heaven of that new Covenant which is the Instrumental Deed of Gift confirming all these And he is also our Righteousness in the sense that Austin so much standeth on as all our Holiness and Righteousness of Heart and Life is not of our natural endeavour but his gift and operation by his Spirit causing us to obey his Holy precepts and Example All these ways he is made of God our Righteousness Besides the Objective way of sense as he is Objectively made our Wisdom because it is the truest wisdom to know him So he is objectively made our Righteousness in that it is that Gospel-Righteousness which is required of our selves by his grace to believe in him and obey him 41. Though Christ fulfilled not the Law by Habitual Holiness and Actual Obedience strictly in the Individual person of each particular sinner yet he did it in the nature of Man And so humane nature considered in specie and in Christ personally though not considered as a totum or as personally in each man did satisfie and fullfil the Law and Merit As Humane Nature sinned in Adam actually in specie and in his individual person and all our Persons were seminally and virtually in him and accordingly sinned or are reputed sinners as having no nature but what he conveyed who could convey no better than he had either as to Relation or Real quality But not that God reputed us to have been actually existent as really distinct persons in Adam which is not true Even so Christ obeyed and suffered in our Nature and in our nature as it was in him and humane sinful nature in specie was Universally pardoned by him and Eternal life freely given to all men for his merits thus far imputed to them their sins being not imputed to hinder this Gift which is made in and by the Covenant of Grace Only the Gift hath the Condition of mans Acceptance of it according to its nature 2 Cor. 5.19 20. And all the individuals that shall in time by Faith accept the Gift are there and thereby made such as the Covenant for his merits doth justifie by that General Gift 42. As Adam was a Head by Nature and therefore conveyed Guilt by natural Generation so Christ is a Head not by nature but by Sacred Contract and therefore conveyeth Right to Pardon Adoption and Salvation not by Generation but by Contract or Donation So that what it was to be naturally in Adam seminally and virtually though not personlly in existence even that it is in order to our benefit by him to be in Christ by Contract or the new Covenant virtually though not in personal existence when the Covenant was made 43. They therefore that look upon Justification or Righteousness as coming to us immediately by Imputation of Christs Righteousness to us without the
Instrumental Intervention and Conveyance or Collation by this Deed of Gift or Covenant do confound themselves by confounding and overlooking the Causes of our Justification That which Christ did by his merits was to procure the new Covenant The new Covenant is a free Gift of pardon and life with Christ himself for his merits and satisfaction sake 44. Though the Person of the Mediator be not really or reputatively the very person of each sinner nor so many persons as there are sinners or believers yet it doth belong to the Person of the Mediator so far limitedly to bear the person of a sinner and to stand in the place of the Persons of all Sinners as to bear the punishment they deserved and to suffer for their sins 45. Scripture speaking of moral matters usually speaketh rather in Moral than meer Physical phrase And in strict Physical sence Christs very personal Righteousness Material or Formal is not so given to us as that we are proprietors of the very thing it self but only of the effects Pardon Righteousness and Life yet in a larger Moral phrase that very thing is oft said to be given to us which is given to another or done or suffered for our benefit He that ransometh a Captive from a Conquerer Physically giveth the Money to the Conquerer not to the Captive giveth the Captive only the Liberty purchased But morally and reputatively he is said to give the Money to the Captive because he gave it for him And it redeemeth him as well as if he had given it himself He that giveth ten thousand pounds to purchase Lands freely giveth that land to another physically giveth the Money to the Seller only and the Land only to the other But morally and reputatively we content our selves with the metonymical phrase and say he gave the other ten thousand pound So morally it may be said that Christs Righteousness Merits and Satisfaction was given to us in that the thing purchased by it was given to us when the Satisfaction was given or made to God Yea when we said it was made to God we mean only that he was passively the Terminus of active Satisfaction being the party satisfyed but not that he himself was made the Subject and Agent of Habits and Acts and Righteousness of Christ as in his humane nature except as the Divine Nature acted it or by Communication of Attributes 46. Because the words Person and Personating and Representing are ambiguous as all humane language is while some use them in a stricter sense than others do we must try by other explicatory terms whether we agree in the matter and not lay the stress of our Controversy upon the bare words So some Divines say that Christ suffered in the Person of a sinner when they mean not that he represented the Natural person of any one particular sinner but that his own Person was reputed the Sponsor of sinners by God and that he was judged a real sinner by his persecuters and so suffered as if he had been a sinner 47. As Christ is less improperly said to have Represented our Persons in his satisfactory Sufferings than in his personal perfect Holiness and Obedience so he is less improperly said to have Represented all mankind as newly fallen in Adam in a General sense for the purchasing of the universal Gift of Pardon and Life called The new Covenant than to have Represented in his perfect Holiness and his Sufferings every Believer considered as from his first being to his Death Though it is certain that he dyed for all their sins from first to last For it is most true 1. That Christ is as a second Adam the Root of the Redeemed And as we derive sin from Adam so we derive life from Christ allowing the difference between a Natural and a Voluntary way of derivation And though no mans Person as a Person was actually existent and offended in Adam nor was by God reputed to have been and done yet all mens Persons were Virtually and Seminally in Adam as is aforesaid and when they are existent persons they are no better either by Relative Innocency or by Physical Disposition than he could propagate and are truly and justly reputed by God to be Persons Guilty of Adams fact so far as they were by nature seminally and virtually in him And Christ the second Adam is in a sort the root of Man as Man though not by propagation of us yet as he is the Redeemer of Nature it self from destruction but more notably the Root of Saints as Saints who are to have no real sanctity but what shall be derived from him by Regeneration as Nature and Sin is from Adam by Generation But Adam did not represent all his posterity as to all the Actions which they should do themselves from their Birth to their Death so that they should all have been taken for perfectly obedient to the death if Adam had not sinned at that time yea or during his Life For if any of them under that Covenant had ever sinned afterward in their own person they should have died for it But for the time past they were Guiltless or Guilty in Adam as he was Guiltless or Guilty himself so far as they were in Adam And though that was but in Causâ non extra causam Yet a Generating Cause which propagateth essence from essence by self-multiplication of form much differeth from an Arbitrary facient Cause in this If Adam had obeyed yet all his posterity had been nevertheless bound to perfect personal persevering Obedience on pain of Death And Christ the second Adam so far bore the person of fallen Adam and suffered in the nature and room of Mankind in General as without any condition on their part at all to give man by an act of Oblivion or new Covenant a pardon of Adams sin yea and of all sin past at the time of their consent though not disobliging them from all future Obedience And by his perfect Holiness and Obedience and Sufferings he hath merited that new Covenant which Accepteth of sincere though imperfect Obedience and maketh no more in us necessary to Salvation When I say he did this without any Condition on mans part I mean He absolutely without Condition merited and gave us the Justifying Testament or Covenant Though that Covenant give us not Justification absolutely but on Condition of believing fiducial Consent 2. And so as this Vniversal Gift of Justification upon Acceptance is actually given to all fallen mankind as such so Christ might be said to suffer instead of all yea and merit too so far as to procure them this Covenant-gift 48. The sum of all lyeth in applying the distinction of giving Christs Righteousness as such in it self and as a cause of our Righteousness or in the Causality of it As our sin is not reputed Christs sin in it self and in the culpability of it for then it must needs make Christ odious to God but in its
by degrees Many sins may be said to be Remissible by vertue of this Sacrifice which never shall be remitted So far Mr. Lawson Here I would add only these Animadversions 1. That whereas he explaineth Christs personating us in suffering by the similitude of a Debtor and his Surety who are the same person in Law I note 1. That the case of Debt much differeth from the case of Punishment 2. That a Surety of Debt is either antecedently such or consequently Antecedently either first one that is bound equally with the Debtor 2. or one that promiseth to pay if he do not I think the Law accounteth neither of these to be the Person of the principal Debtor as it doth a Servant by whom he sends the Debt But Christ was neither of these For the Law did not beforehand oblige him with us nor did he in Law-sence undertake to pay the Debt if we failed Though God decreed that he should do so yet that was no part of the sence of the Law But consequently if a friend of the Debtor when he is in Jayl will without his request or knowledg say to the Creditor I will pay you all the Debt but so that he shall be in my power and not have present liberty lest he abuse it but on the terms that I shall please yea not at all if he ungratefully reject it This Consequent Satisfyer or Sponsor or Paymaster is not in Law-sence the same Person with the Debtor But if any will call him so I will not contend about a word while we agree of the thing the terms of deliverance And this is as near the Case between Christ and us as the similitude of a Debtor will allow 2. I do differ from Mr. Lawson and Paraeus and Vrsine and Olevian and Scultetus and all that sort of worthy Divines in this that whereas they make Christs Holiness and perfect Obedience to be but Justitia personae necessary to make his Sacrifice spotless and so effectual I think that of it self it is as directly the cause of our Pardon Justification and Life as Christs Passion is The Passion being satisfactory and so meritorious and the personal Holiness Meritorious and so Satisfactory For the truth is The Law that condemned us was not fulfilled by Christs suffering for us but the Lawgiver satisfied instead of the fulfilling of it And that Satisfaction lyeth in the substitution of that which as fully or more attaineth the ends of the Law as our own suffering would have done Now the ends of the Law may be attained by immediate Merit of Perfection as well as by Suffering but best by both For 1. By the perfect Holiness and Obedience of Christ the Holy and perfect will of God is pleased whence This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased 2. In order to the ends of Government Holiness and perfect Obedience is honoured and freed from the contempt which sin would cast upon it and the holiness of the Law in its Precepts is publickly honoured in this grand Exemplar In whom only the will of God was done on Earth as it is done in Heaven And such a Specimen to the World is greatly conducible to the ends of Government So that Christ voluntarily taking humane nature which as such is obliged to this Perfection He first highly merited of God the Father hereby and this with his Suffering went to attain the ends that our suffering should have attained much better So that at least as Meritorious if not secondarily as satisfactory I see not but Christs Holiness procureth the Justifying Covenant for us equally with his Death A Prince may pardon a Traitor for some noble service of his Friend as well as for his suffering much more for both This way go Grotius de satisf Mr. Bradshaw and others 3. When Mr Lawson saith that the Law binds not to Obedience and Punishment both he meaneth as to the same Act which contradicts not what Nigrinus and others say that it binds a sinner to punishment for sin past and yet to Obedience for the time to come which cannot be entire and perfect So pag. 311. Cap. 22. Qu. 2. Whether there be two parts of Justification Remission and Imputation of Christs Righteousness 1. He referreth us to what is aforecited against Imputation of Christs Active Righteousness separated or abstracted for Reward from the Passive 2. He sheweth that Paul taketh Remission of sin and Imputation of Righteousness for the same thing So say many of ours In conclusion I will mind the Reader that by reading some Authors for Imputation I am brought to doubt whether some deny not all true Remission of sin that is Remission of the deserved punishment Because I find that by Remission they mean A non-Imputation of sin under the formal notion of sin that God taketh it not to be our sin but Christs and Christs Righteousness and perfection to be so ours as that God accounteth us not as truly sinners And so they think that the Reatus Culpae as well as Poenae simply in it self is done away Which if it be so then the Reatus Poenae the obligation to punishment or the dueness of punishment cannot be said to be dissolved or remitted because it was never contracted Where I hold that it is the Reatus ad Poenam the Dueness of punishment only that is remitted and the guilt of sin not as in it self but in its Causality of punishment And so in all common language we say we forgive a man his fault when we forgive him all the penalty positive and privative Not esteeming him 1. Never to have done the fact 2. Or that fact not to have been a fault and his fault 3. but that punishment for that fault is forgiven him and the fault so far as it is a cause of punishment We must not feign God to judg falsly This maketh me think of a saying of Bp. Vshers to me when I mentioned the Papists placing Justification and Remission of sin conjunct he told me that the Papists ordinarily acknowledg no Remission And on search I find that Aquinas and the most of them place no true Remission of sin in Justification For by Remission which they make part of Justification they mean Mortification or destroying sin it self in the act or habit But that the pardon of the punishment is a thing that we all need is not denyable nor do they deny it though they deny it to be part of our Justification For it 's strange if they deny Christ the pardoning power which they give the Pope And as Joh. Crocius de Justif oft tells them They should for shame grant that Christs Righteousness may be as far imputed to us as they say a Saints or Martyrs redundant merits and supererogations are But if the Guilt of Fact and Guilt of Fault in it self considered be not both imputed first to us that is If we be not judged sinners I cannot see how we can be judged Pardoned sinners For he
to be such a Person and another thing to have the Act Passion Merit c. Accepted for that other Person And this latter signifieth either 1. That it was done by the other person mediately as being a cheif Cause acting by his Instrument 2. Or that it was done for that other Person by another The first is our denyed sence and the second our affirmed sence Among us Sureties and Sponsors are of several sorts Grotius de Jure Belli tells you of another sense of Sponsion in the Civil Law than is pertinent to the objectors use And in Baptism the same word hath had divers senses as used by persons of different intentions The time was when the Sponsor was not at all taken for the Political Person as you call it of Parent or Child nor spake as their Instrument in their name But was a Third person who because many parents Apostatized and more Died in the Childs minority did pass his word 1. That the Parent was a credible Person 2. That if he Dyed so soon or Apostatized he himself would undertake the Christian Education of the Child But the Parent himself was Sponsor for the Child in a stricter sense as also Adopting Pro-parents were as some take God-fathers to be now that is they were taken for such whose Reason will and word we authorised to dispose of the Child as obligingly as if it had been done by his own reason will and word so be it it were but For his good and the Child did own it when he came to age And so they were to speak as in the Childs name as if Nature or Charity made them his Representers in the Judgment of many Though others rather think that they were to speak as in their own persons e. g. I dedicate this Child to God and enter him into the Covenant as obliged by my Consent But this sense of Sponsion is nothing to the present Case They that lay all upon the very Name of a Surety as if the word had but one signification and all Sureties properly represented the person of the Principal obliged person do deal very deceitfully There are Sureties or Sponsors 1. For some Duty 2. For Debt 3. For Punishment 1. It is one thing to undertake that another shall do a Commanded duty 2. It 's another thing to undertake that else I will do it for him 3. It 's another thing to be Surety that he shall pay a Debt or else I will pay it for him 4. It 's another thing to undertake that he shall suffer a penalty or else to suffer for him or make a Valuable Compensation 1. And it 's one kind of Surety that becometh a second party in the bond and so maketh himself a debtor 2. And it s another sort of Surety that undertaketh only the Debt afterward voluntarily as a Friend who may pay it on such Conditions as he and the Creditor think meet without the Debtors knowledg Every Novice that will but open Calvin may see that Fidejussor and Sponsor are words of very various signification and that they seldom or never signifie the Person Natural or Political as you call it of the Principal Sponsor est qui sponte non rogatus pro alio promittit ut Accurs vel quicunque spondet maximè pro aliis Fidejubere est suo periculo fore id de quo agitur recipere Vel fidem suam pro alio obligare He is called Adpromissor and he is Debtor but not the same person with the Principal but his promise is accessoria obligatio non principalis Therefore Fidejussor sive Intercessor non est conveniendus nisi prius debitore principali convento Fidejussores a correis ita differunt quod hi suo proprio morbo laborant illi vero alieno tenentur Quare fideijussori magis succurrendum censent Veniâ namque digni sunt qui alienâ tenentur Culpâ cujusmodi sunt fidejussores pro alieno debito obligati inquit Calv. There must be somewhat more than the bare name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 once used of Christ as Mediator of Gods Covenant or the name of a Surety as now used among men that must go to prove that the Mediator and the several sinners are the same Legal Persons in Gods account But seeing Legal-Personality is but a Relation of our Natural person to another Natural person that we may not quarrel and tear the Church when really we differ not 1. Let our agreement be noted 2. Our difference intelligibly stated 1. It is granted not only by Dr. Tullie but others that accurately handle the Controversie 1. That Christ and the Believer never were nor are our Natural person and that no union with him maketh us to be Christ or God nor him to be Peter John or Paul c. That we know of no third sort of Natural person which is neither Jesus nor Peter John c. But composed of both united which is constituted by our Union For though it be agreed on that the same Spirit that is in Christ is operatively also in all his Members and that therefore our Communion with him is more than Relative and that from this Real-Communion the name of a Real-Vnion may be used yet here the Real-Vnion is not Personal as the same Sun quickeneth and illuminateth a Bird and a Frog and a Plant and yet maketh them not our person Therefore he that will say we are Physically one with Christ and not only Relatively but tell us ONE What and make his words Intelligible and must deny that we are ONE PERSON and that by that time we are not like to be found differing But remember that while Physical Communion is confessed by all what VNION we shall from thence be said to have this Foundation being agreed on is like to prove but a question de realitione nomine 2. Yea all the world must acknowledg that the whole Creation is quoad praesentiam derivationem more dependant on God than the fruit is on the Tree or the Tree on the Earth and that God is the inseperate Cause of our Being Station and Life And yet this natural intimateness and influx and causality maketh not GOD and every Creature absolutely or personally One 3. It is agreed therefore that Christ's Righteousness is neither materially nor formally any Accident of our natural Persons and an Accident it is unless it can be reduced to that of Relation 1. The Habits of our Person cannot possibly be the habits of another inherently 2. The actions of one cannot possibly be the actions of another as the Agent unless as that other as a principal Cause acteth by the other as his Instrument or second Cause 3. The same fundamentum relationis inherent in One Person is not inherent in another if it be a personal Relation And so the same individual Relation that is one Mans cannot numerically be another Mans by the same sort of in-being propriety or adherence Two Brothers have a Relation in kind
to Christ in Union to the Spirit to Impunity and to Glory And 2. The Grace of the Spirit by which we are made Holy and fulfil the Conditions of the Law of Grace We are the Subjects of these and he is the Minister and the meritorious Cause of our Life is well called Our Righteousness and by many the material Cause as our own perfect Obedience would have been because it is the Matter of that Merit 4. And also Christ's Intercession with the Father still procureth all this as the Fruit of his Merits 5. And we are Related as his Members though not parts of his Person as such to him that thus merited for us 6. And we have the Spirit from him as our Head 7. And he is our Advocate and will justifie us as our Judg. 8. And all this is God's Righteousness designed for us and thus far given us by him 9. And the perfect Justice and Holiness of God is thus glorified in us through Christ And are not all these set together enough to prove that we justly own all asserted by these Texts But if you think that you have a better sense of them you must better prove it than by a bare naming of the words Object 3. If Christ's Righteousness be Ours then we are Righteous by it as Ours and so God reputeth it but as it is But it is Ours 1. By our Vnion with him 2. And by his Gift and so consequently by God's Imputation Answ 1. I have told you before that it is confessed to be Ours but that this syllable OVRS hath many senses and I have told you in what sense and how far it is OVRS and in that sense we are justified by it and it is truly imputed to us or reputed or reckoned as OVRS But not in their sense that claim a strict Propriety in the same numerical Habits Acts Sufferings Merits Satisfaction which was in Christ or done by him as if they did become Subjects of the same Accidents or as if they did it by an instrumental second Cause But it is OVRS as being done by a Mediator instead of what we should have done and as the Meritorious Cause of all our Righteousness and Benefits which are freely given us for the sake hereof 2. He that is made Righteousness to us is also made Wisdom Sanctification and Redemption to us but that sub genere Causae Efficientis non autem Causae Constitutivae We are the Subjects of the same numerical Wisdom and Holiness which is in Christ Plainly the Question is Whether Christ or his Righteousness Holiness Merits and Satisfaction be Our Righteousness Constitutively or only Efficiently The Matter and Form of Christ's Personal Righteousness is OVRS as an Efficient Cause but it is neither the nearest Matter or the Form of that Righteousness which is OVRS as the Subjects of it that is It is not a Constitutive Cause nextly material or formal of it 3. If our Union with Christ were Personal making us the same Person then doubtless the Accidents of his Person would be the Accidents of ours and so not only Christ's Righteousness but every Christians would be each of Ours But that is not so Nor is it so given us by him Object 4. You do seem to suppose that we have none of that kind of Righteousness at all which consisteth in perfect Obedience and Holiness but only a Right to Impunity and Life with an imperfect Inherent Righteousness in our selves The Papists are forced to confess that a Righteousness we must have which consisteth in a conformity to the preceptive part of the Law and not only the Retributive part But they say It is in our selves and we say it is Christ's imputed to us Answ 1. The Papists e. g. Learned Vasqueâ— in Rom. 5. talk so ignorantly of the differences of the Two Covenants or the Law of Innocency and of Grace as if they never understood it And hence they 1. seem to take no notice of the Law of Innocency or of Nature now commanding our perfect Obedience but only of the Law of Grace 2. Therefore they use to call those Duties but Perfections and the Commands that require them but Counsels where they are not made Conditions of Life and sins not bringing Damnation some call Venial a name not unfit and some expound that as properly no sin but analogically 3. And hence they take little notice when they treat of Justification of the Remitting of Punishment but by remitting Sin they usually mean the destroying the Habits As if they forgot all actual sin past or thought that it deserved no Punishment or needed no Pardon For a past Act in it self is now nothing and is capable of no Remission but Forgiveness 4. Or when they do talk of Guilâ— of Punishment they lay so much of the Remedy on Man's Satisfaction as if Christ's Satisfaction and Merits had procured no pardon or at least of no temporal part of Punishment 5. And hence they ignorantly revile the Protestants as if we denied all Personal Inherent Righteousness and trusted only to the Imputation of Christ's Righteousness as justifying wicked unconverted Men The Papists therefore say not that we are innocent or sinless really or imputatively no not when they dream of Perfection and Supererrogation unless when they denominate Sin and Perfection only from the Condition of the Law of Grace and not that of Innocency 2. But if any of them do as you say no wonder if they and you contend If one say We are Innocent or Sinless in reality and the other we are so by Imputation when we are so no way at all but sinners really and so reputed what Reconciliation is there to be expected till both lay by their Errour Object 5. How can God accept him as just who is really and reputedly a Sinner This dishonoureth his Holiness and Justice Answ Not so Cannot God pardon sin upon a valuable Merit and Satisfaction of a Mediator And though he judg us not perfect now and accept us not as such yet 1. now he judgeth us Holy 2. and the Members of a perfect Saviour 3. and will make us perfect and spotless and then so judg us having washed us from our sins in the Blood of the Lamb. Object 6. Thus you make the Reatus Culpae not pardoned at all but only the Reatus Poenae Answ 1. If by Reatus Culpae be meant the Relation of a Sinner as he is Revera Peccator and so to be Reus is to be Revera ipse qui peccavit then we must consider what you mean by Pardon For if you mean the nullifying of such a Guilt or Reality it is impossible because necessiate existentiae he that hath once sinned will be still the Person that sinned while he is a Person and the Relation of one that sinned will cleave to him It will eternally be a true Proposition Peter and Paul did sin But if by Pardon you mean the pardoning of all the penalty which for that sin is due damni
vel sensus so it is pardoned and this is indeed the Reatus poenae Not only the Penalty but the Dueness of that Penalty or the Obligation to it is remitted and nullified 2. Therefore if by Reatus Culpae you mean an Obligation to Punishment for that Fault this being indeed the Reatus poenae as is said is done away So that we are I think all agreed de re And de nomine you may say that the Reatus Culpae is done away or remitted or not in several senses In se it is not nullified nor can be But as Dueness of Punishment followeth that is pardoned Object 7. You have said That though we were not personally but seminally in Adam when he sinned yet when we are Persons we are Persons guilty of his actual sin And so we must be Persons that are Partakers of Christ's Actual Righteousness and not only of its Effects as soon as we are Believers For Christ being the Second Adam and publick Person we have our part in his Righteousness as truly and as much as in Adam's sin Answ 1. We must first understand how far Adam's sin is ours And first I have elsewhere proved that our Covenant-Vnion and Interest supposeth our Natural Vnion and Interest and that it is an adding to God's Word and Covenant to say That he covenanted that Adam should personate each one of his Posterity in God's imputation or account any further than they were naturally in him and so that his innocency or sin should be reputed theirs as far as if they had been personally the Subjects and Agents The Person of Peter never was in Reality or God's Reputation the Person of Adam Nor Adam's Person the Person of Peter But Peter being virtually and seminally in Adam when he sinned his Person is derived from Adam's Person And so Peter's Guilt is not numerically the same with Adams but the Accident of another Subject and therefore another Accident derived with the Person from Adam and from nearer Parents The Fundamentum of that Relation of Guilt is the Natural Relation of the Person to Adam and so it is Relatio in Relatione fundata The Fundamentum of that natural Relation is Generation yea a series of Generations from Adam to that Person And Adam's Generation being the Communication of a Guilty Nature with personality to his Sons and Daughters is the fundamentum next following his personal Fault and Guilt charged on him by the Law So that here is a long series of efficient Causes bringing down from Adam's Person and Guilt a distinct numerical Person and Guilt of every one of his later Posterity 2. And it is not the same sort of Guilt or so plenary which is on us for Adam's Act as was on him but a Guilt Analogical or of another sort that is He was guilty of being the wilful sinning Person and so are not we but only of being Persons whose Being is derived by Generation from the wilful sinning Persons besides the guilt of our own inherent pravity That is The Relation is such which our Persons have to Adam ' s Person as make it just with God to desert us and to punish us for that and our pravity together This is our Guilt of Original sin 3. And this Guilt cometh to us by Natural Propagation and resultancy from our very Nature so propagated And now let us consider of our contrary Interest in Christ And 1. Our Persons are not the same as Christ's Person nor Christ's as ours nor ever so judged or accounted of God 2. Our Persons were not naturally seminally and virtually in Christ's Person any further than he is Creator and Cause of all things as they were in Adams 3. Therefore we derive not Righteousness from him by Generation but by his voluntary Donation or Contract 4. As he became not our Natural Parent so our Persons not being in Christ when he obeyed are not reputed to have been in him naturally or to have obeyed in and by him 5. If Christ and we are reputed one Person either he obeyed in our Person or we in his or both If he obeyed as a Reputed Sinner in the Person of each Sinner his Obedience could not be meritorious according to the Law of Innocency which required sinless Perfection And he being supposed to have broken the Law in our Persons could not so be supposed to keept it If we obeyed in his Person we obeyed as Mediators or Christ's of which before 6. But as is oft said Christ our Mediator undertook in a middle Person to reconcile God and Man not by bringing God erroneously to judg that he or we were what we are not or did what we did not but by being doing and suffering for us that in his own Person which should better answer God's Ends and Honour than if we had done and suffered in our Persons that hereby he might merit a free Gift of Pardon and Life with himself to be given by a Law of Grace to believing penitent Accepters And so our Righteousness as is oft opened is a Relation resulting at once from all these Causes as fundamental to it viz. Christ's Meritorious Righteousness his free Gift thereupon and our Relation to him as Covenanters or United Believers And this is agreed on Object 8. As Christ is a Sinner by imputation of our sin so we are Righteous by the imputation of his Righteousness But it is our sin it self that is imputed to Christ Therefore it is his Righteousness it self that is imputed to us Answ 1. Christ's Person was not the Subject of our personal Relative Guilt much less of our Habits or Acts. 2. God did not judg him to have been so 3. Nay Christ had no Guilt of the same kind reckoned to be on him else those unmeet Speeches used rashly by some would be true viz. That Christ was the greatest Murderer Adulterer Idolater Blasphemer Thief c. in all the World and consequently more hated of God for God must needs hate a sinner as such To be guilty of sin as we are is to be reputed truly to be the Person that committed it But so was not Christ and therefore not so to be reputed Christ was but the Mediator that undertook to suffer for our sins that we might be forgiven and not for his own sin real or justly reputed Expositors commonly say that to be made sin for us is but to be made a Sacrifice for sin So that Christ took upon him neither our numerical guilt of sin it self nor any of the same species but only our Reatum Poenae or Debt of Punishment or lest the Wrangler make a verbal quarrel of it our Reatum Culpae non qua talem in se sed quatenus est fundamentum Reatus poenae And so his Righteousness is ours not numerically the same Relation that he was the Subject of made that Relation to us nor yet a Righteousness of the same Species as Christ's is given us at all for his was a Mediators
Righteousness consisting in 1. perfect Innocency 2. And that in the Works of the Jewish Law which bind us not 3. And in doing his peculiar Works as Miracles Resurrection c. which were all His Righteousness as a conformity to that Law and performance of that Covenant which was made with and to him as Mediator But his Righteousness is the Meritorious Cause and Reason of another Righteousness or Justification distinct from his freely given us by the Father and himself by his Covenant So that here indeed the Similitude much cleareth the Matter And they that will not blaspheme Christ by making guilt of sin it self in its formal Relation to be his own and so Christ to be formally as great a sinner as all the Redeemed set together and they that will not overthrow the Gospel by making us formally as Righteous as Christ in kind and measure must needs be agreed with us in this part of the Controversie Object 9. When you infer That if we are reckoned to have perfectly obeyed in and by Christ we cannot be again bound to obey our selves afterward nor be guilty of any sin you must know that it 's true That we cannot be bound to obey to the same ends as Christ did which is to redeem us or to fulfil the Law of Works But yet we must obey to other ends viz. Ingratitude and to live to God and to do good and other such like Answ 1. This is very true That we are not bound to obey to all the same ends that Christ did as to redeem the World nor to fulfil the Law of Innocency But hence it clearly followeth that Christ obeyed not in each of our Persons legally but in the Person of a Mediator seeing his due Obedience and ours have so different Ends and a different formal Relation his being a conformity proximately to the Law given him as Mediator that they are not so much as of the same species much less numerically the same 2. And this fully proveth that we are not reckoned to have perfectly obeyed in and by him For else we could not be yet obliged to obey though to other ends than he was For either this Obedience of Gratitude is a Duty or not If not it is not truly Obedience nor the omission sin If yea then that Duty was made a Duty by some Law And if by a Law we are now bound to obey in gratitude or for what ends soever either we do all that we are so bound to do or not If we do it or any of it then to say that we did it twice once by Christ and once by our selves is to say that we were bound to do it twice and then Christ did not all that we were bound to but half But what Man is he that sinneth not Therefore seeing it is certain that no Man doth all that he is bound to do by the Gospel in the time and measure of his Faith Hope Love Fruitfulness c. it followeth that he is a sinner and that he is not supposed to have done all that by Christ which he failed in both because he was bound to do it himself and because he is a sinner for not doing it 3. Yea the Gospel binds us to that which Christ could not do for us it being a Contradiction Our great Duties are 1. To believe in a Saviour 2. To improve all the parts of his Mediation by a Life of Faith 3. To repent of our sins 4. To mortifie sinful Lusts in our selves 5. To fight by the Spirit against our flesh 6. To confess our selves sinners 7. To pray for pardon 8. To pray for that Grace which we culpably want 9. To love God for redeeming us 10. Sacramentally to covenant with Christ and to receive him and his Gifts with many such like which Christ was not capable of doing in and on his own Person for us though as Mediator he give us Grace to do them and pray for the pardon of our sins as in our selves 4. But the Truth which this Objection intimateth we all agree in viz. That the Mediator perfectly kept the Law of Innocency that the keeping of that Law might not be necessary to our Salvation and so such Righteousness necessary in our selves but that we might be pardoned for want of perfect Innocency and be saved upon our sincere keeping of the Law of Grace because the Law of Innocency was kept by our Mediator and thereby the Grace of the New-Covenant merited and by it Christ Pardon Spirit and Life by him freely given to Believers Object 10. The same Person may be really a sinner in himself and yet perfectly innocent in Christ and by imputation Answ Remember that you suppose here the Person and Subject to be the same Man And then that the two contrary Relations of perfect Innocency or guiltlesness and guilt of any yea much sin can be consistent in him is a gross contradiction Indeed he may be guilty and not guilty in several partial respects but a perfection of guiltlesness excludeth all guilt But we are guilty of many a sin after Conversion and need a Pardon All that you should say is this We are sinners our selves but we have a Mediator that sinned not who merited Pardon and Heaven for sinners 2. But if you mean that God reputeth us to be perfectly innocent when we are not because that Christ was so it is to impute Error to God He reputeth no Man to be otherwise than he is But he doth indeed first give and then impute a Righteousness Evangelical to us instead of perfect Innocency which shall as certainly bring us to Glory and that is He giveth us both the Renovation of his Spirit to Evangelical Obedience and a Right by free gift to Pardon and Glory for the Righteousness of Christ that merited it And this thus given us he reputeth to be an acceptable Righteousness in us CHAP. VI. Animadversions on some of Dr. T. Tullies Strictures § 1. I Suppose the Reader desireth not to be wearied with an examination of all Dr. Tullies words which are defective in point of Truth Justice Charity Ingenuity or Pertinency to the Matter but to see an answer to those that by appearance of pertinent truth do require it to disabuse the incautelous Readers Though somewhat by the way may be briefly said for my own Vindication And this Tractate being conciliatory I think meet here to leave out most of the words and personal part of his contendings and also to leave that which concerneth the interest of Works as they are pleased to call Man's performance of the Conditions of the Covenant of Grace in our Justification to a fitter place viz. To annex what I think needful to my friendly Conference with Mr. Christopher Cartwright on the Subject which Dr. Tullies Assault perswadeth me to publish § 2. pag. 71. Justif Paulin. This Learned Doctor saith The Scripture mentioneth no Justification in foro Dei at all but that One which is Absolution from
a congruous way of disputing for Truth and Righteousness nor indeed is it tolerably ingenuous or modest If not then why doth he all along carry his professed agreement with me in a militant strain perswading his Reader that I savour of Socinianism or Popery or some dangerous Error by saying the very same that he saith O what thanks doth God's Church owe such contentious Disputers for supposed Orthodoxness that like noctambuli will rise in their sleep and cry Fire Fire or beat an Allarm on their Drums and cry out The Enemy The Enemy and will not let their Neighbours rest I have wearied my Readers with so oft repeating in my Writings upon such repeated importunities of others these following Assertions about Works 1. That we are never justified first or last by Works of Innocency 2. Nor by the Works of the Jewish Law which Paul pleadeth against 3. Nor by any Works of Merit in point of Commutative Justice or of distributive Governing Justice according to either of those Laws of Innocency or Jewish 4. Nor by any Works or Acts of Man which are set against or instead of the least part of God's Acts Christ's Merits or any of his part or honour 5. Nor are we at first justified by any Evangelical Works of Love Gratitude or Obedience to Christ as Works are distinguished from our first Faith and Repentance 6. Nor are we justified by Repentance as by an instrumental efficient Cause or as of the same receiving Nature with Faith except as Repentance signifieth our change from Vnbelief to Faith and so is Faith it self 7. Nor are we justified by Faith as by a mere Act or moral good Work 8. Nor yet as by a proper efficient Instrument of our Justification 9. Much less by such Works of Charity to Men as are without true love to God 10. And least of all by Popish bad Works called Good as Pilgrimages hurtful Austerities c. But if any Church-troubling Men will first call all Acts of Man's Soul by the name of WORKS and next will call no Act by the name of Justifying Faith but the belief of the Promise as some or the accepting of Christ's Righteousness given or imputed to us as in se our own as others or the Recumbency on this Righteousness as others or all these three Acts as others and if next they will say that this Faith justifieth us only as the proper Instrumental Cause And next that to look for Justification by any other Act of Man's Soul or by this Faith in any other respect is to trust to that Justification by Works which Paul confuteth and to fall from Grace I do detest such corrupting and abusing of the Scriptures and the Church of Christ And I assert as followeth 1. That the Faith which we are justified by doth as essentially contain our belief of the Truth of Christ's Person Office Death Resurrection Intercession c. as of the Promise of Imputation 2. And also our consent to Christ's Teaching Government Intercession as to Imputation 3. And our Acceptance of Pardon Spirit and promised Glory as well as Imputed Righteousness of Christ 4. Yea that it is essentially a Faith in God the Father and the Holy Ghost 5. That it hath in it essentially somewhat of Initial Love to God to Christ to Recovery to Glory that is of Volition and so of Desire 6. That it containeth all that Faith which is necessarily requisite at Baptism to that Covenant even a consenting-practical-belief in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost and is our Christianity it self 7. That we are justified by this Faith as it is A moral Act of Man adapted to its proper Office made by our Redeemer the Condition of his Gift of Justification and so is the moral receptive aptitude of the Subject or the Dispositio materiae vel subjecti Recipientis Where the Matter of it is An adapted moral Act of Man by Grace The Ratio formalis of its Interest in our Justification is Conditio praestita speaking politically and Aptitudo vel Dispositio moralis Receptiva speaking logically which Dr. Twiss still calleth Causa dispositiva 8. That Repentance as it is a change of the Mind from Unbelief to Faith in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost is this Faith denominated from its Terminus à quo principally 9. That we are continually justified by this Faith as continued as well as initially justified by its first Act. 10. That as this Faith includeth a consent to future Obedience that is Subjection so the performance of that consent in sincere Obedience is the Condition of our Justification as continued Secondarily as well as Faith or consent it self primarily And that thus James meaneth that we are Justified by Works 11. That God judging of all things truly as they are now judgeth Men just or unjust on these Terms 12. And his Law being Norma judicii now vertually judgeth us just on these terms 13. And that the Law of Grace being that which we are to be judged by we shall at the last Judgment also be judged and so justified thus far by or according to our sincere Love Obedience or Evangelical Works as the Condition of the Law or Covenant of free Grace which justifieth and glorifieth freely all that are thus Evangelically qualified by and for the Merits perfect Righteousness and Sacrifice of Christ which procured the Covenant or free Gift of Universal Conditional Justification and Adoption before and without any Works or Conditions done by Man whatsoever Reader Forgive me this troublesom oft repeating the state of the Controversie I meddle with no other If this be Justification by Works I am for it If this Doctor be against it he is against much of the Gospel If he be not he had better have kept his Bed than to have call'd us to Arms in his Dream when we have sadly warred so many Ages already about mere words For my part I think that such a short explication of our sense and rejection of ambiguities is fitter to end these quarrels than the long disputations of Confounders 4. But when be saith Works make not a Man just and yet we are at last justified according to them it is a contradiction or unsound For if he mean Works in the sence excluded by Paul we are not justified according to them viz. such as make or are thought to make the Reward to be not of Grace but of Debt But if he take Works in the sense intended by James sincere Obedience is a secondary constitutive part of that inherent or adherent personal Righteousness required by the Law of Grace in subordination to Christ's Meritorious Righteousness And what Christian can deny this So far it maketh us Righteous as Faith doth initially And what is it to be justified according to our Works but to be judged so far as they are sincerely done to be such as have performed the secondary part of the Conditions of free-given Life 5. His According but not ex operibus at the
Last Judgment is but a Logomachie According signifieth as much as I assert But ex is no unapt Preposition when it is but the subordinate part of Righteousness and Justification of which we speak and signifieth with me the same as According 6. His Tropical Phrase that Works pronouce us just is another ambiguity That the Judg will pronounce us just according to them as the foresaid second part of the Constitutive Cause or Matter of our Subordinate Righteousness is certain from Matth. 25. and the scope of Scripture But that they are only notifying Signs and no part of the Cause of the day to be tryed is not true which too many assert § 9. He proceedeth If there be an Evangelical Justification at God's Bar distinct from the legal one there will then also be in each an absolution of divers sins For if the Gospel forgive the same sins as the Law the same thing will be done and a double Justification will be unprofitable and idle If from divers sins then the Law forbids not the same things as the Gospel c. Answ It 's pitty such things should need any Answer 1. It 's a false Supposition That all Justification is Absolution from sin To justifie the sincerity of our Faith and Holiness is one act or part of our Justification against all possible or actual false Accusation 2. The Law of Innocency commanded not the Believing Acceptance of Christ's Righteousness and Pardon and so the Remnants of that Law in the hand of Christ which is the Precept of perfect Obedience de futuro commandeth it only consequently supposing the Gospel-Promise and Institution to have gone before and selected this as the terms of Life so that as a Law in genere existent only in speciebus commandeth Obedience and the Law of Innocency in specie commanded personal perfect perpetual Obedience as the Condition of Life so the Gospel commandeth Faith in our Redeemer as the new Condition of Life on which supposition even the Law of lapsed Nature further obligeth us thereto And as the Commands differ so do the Prohibitions There is a certain sort of sin excepted from pardon by the pardoning Law viz. Final non-performance of its Conditions And to judg a Man not guilty of this sin is part of our Justification as is aforesaid § 10. He addeth If Legal and Evangelical Justification are specie distinct then so are the Courts in which we are justified If distinct and subordinate and so he that is justified by the law is justified by the Gospel c. Answ 1. No Man is justified by the Law of Innocency or Works but Christ Did I ever say that That Law justifieth us who have voluminously wrote against it If he would have his Reader think so his unrighteousness is such as civility forbids me to give its proper Epithets to If not against what or whom is all this arguing 2. I call it Legal as it is that perfect Righteousness of Christ our Surety conform to the Law of Innocency by which he was justified though not absolved and pardoned I call it pro Legalis justitia because that Law doth not justifie us for it but Christ only but by it given us ad effecta by the New-Covenant we are saved and justified from the Curse of that Law or from Damnation is certainly as if we had done it our selves I call Faith our Evangelical Righteousness on the Reasons too oft mentioned Now these may be called Two Justifications or rather two parts of one in several respects as pleaseth the Speaker And all such Word-Souldiers shall have their liberty without my Contradiction 3. And when will he prove that these two Sorts or Parts or Acts may not be at once transacted at the same Bar Must there needs be one Court to try whether I am a true Believer or an Infidel or Hypocrite and another to judg that being such I am to be justified against all Guilt and Curse by vertue of Christ's Merits and Intercession Why may not these two parts of one Man's Cause be judged at the same Bar And why must your Pupils be taught so to conceive of so great a business in it self so plain § 11. He proceedeth The Vse of this Evangelical Justification is made to be that we may be made partakers of the Legal Justification out of us in Christ And so our Justification applyeth another Justification and our Remission of sins another Answ No Sir but our particular subordinate sort of Righteousness consisting in the performance of the Conditions of the free Gift viz. a believing suitable Acceptance is really our Dispositio receptiva being the Condition of our Title to that Pardon and Glory which for Christ's Righteousness if freely given us And our personal Faith and Sincerity must be justified and we in tantum before our Right to Christ Pardon and Life can be justified in foro 2. And to justifie us as sincere Believers when others are condemned as Hypocrites and Unbelievers and Impenitent is not Pardon of Sin These Matters should have been put into your excellent Catechism and not made strange much less obscured and opposed when laying by the quarrels about mere words I am confident you deny none of this § 12. He addeth Then Legal Justification is nothing but a bare word seeing unapplyed as to the Matter it is nothing as it is not called Healing by a Medicine not applyed nor was it ever heard that one Healing did apply another Answ Alas alas for the poor Church if this be the Academies best sorrow must excuse my Complaint If it be an Argument it must run thus If Legal or pro-legal Righteousness that is our part in Christ's Righteousness be none to us or none of our Justification when not-applyed than it is none also when it is applyed But c. Answ It is none till applyed Christ's Merits or Legal Righteousness justifie himself but not us till applyed Do you think otherwise or do you wrangle against your self But I deny your Consequence How prove you that it is none when applyed therefore Or the Cure is none when the Medicine is applyed Perhaps you 'l say That then our Personal Righteousness and subordinate Justification is ours before Christ's Righteousness and so the greater dependeth on and followeth the less Answ 1. Christ's own Righteousness is before ours 2. His Condition Pardon to fallen Mankind is before ours 3. This Gift being Conditional excepteth the non-performance of the Condition And the nature of a Condition is to suspend the effect of the Donation till performed 4. Therefore the performance goeth before the said Effect and our Title 5. But it is not therefore any cause of it but a removal of the suspension nor hath the Donation any other dependance on it And is not all this beyond denial with Persons not studiously and learnedly misled But you say It was never heard that one Healing applyed another Answ And see you not that this is a lis de nomine and
an injury to be reported to think otherwise herein than I do yea and add Which neither I nor any Body else I know of denies as to the thing though in the extent and other circumstances all are not agreed and you may in that enjoy your Opinion for me This is too kind I am loth to tell you how many that I know and have read deny it lest I tempt you to repent of your Agreement But doth the World yet need a fuller evidence that some Men are de materiâ agreed with them whom they raise the Country against by their Accusations and Suspicions But surely what passion or spatling soever it hath occasioned from you I reckon that my labour is not lost I may tell your Juniors that I have sped extraordinary well when I have procured the published consent of such a Doctor Either you were of this mind before or not If not it 's well you are brought to confess the Truth though not to confess a former Error If yea then it 's well that so loud and wide a seeming disagreement is confessed to be none that your Juniors may take warning and not be frightned from Love and Concord by every melancholy Allarm Yea you declare your conformity to the Litany Remember not our Offences nor the Offences of our Fore fathers and many words of indignation you use for my questioning it All this I like very well as to the Cause And I matter it not much how it looks at me If you agree more angrily than others disagree the Cause hath some advantage by the Agreement Though me-thinks it argueth somewhat unusual that seeming Dissenters should close by so vehement a Collision But yet you will not agree when you cannot chuse but agree and you carry it still as if your Allarm had not been given without cause Must we agree and not agree What yet is the Matter Why it is a new original sin My ordinary expressions of it may be fully seen in the Disputation The phrase you laid hold on in a Preface is cited before That we participate of no guilt and suffer for no original sin but Adam ' s only I denied And what 's the dangerous Errour here That our nearer Parents sin was Adams I may presume that you hold not That we are guilty of such you deny not That it is sin I find you not denying sure then all the difference must be in the word ORIGINAL And if so you that so hardly believe your loud-noised disagreements to be but verbal must patiently give me leave here to try it Is it any more than the Name ORIGINAL that you are so heinously offended at Sure it is not Else in this Letter purposely written about it you would have told your Reader what it is Suffer me then to summon your Allarm'd Juniors to come and see what a Spectrum it is that must affright them and what a Poppet-Play or dreaming War it is that the Church is to be engaged in as if it were a matter of Life and Death Audite juvenes I took the word ORIGINAL in this business to have several significations First That is called ORIGINAL Sin which was the ORIGO of all other sins in the Humane World And that was not Adam's sin but Eves 2. That which was the ORIGO of sin to all the World save Adam and Eve communicated by the way of Generation And that was Adams and Eves conjunct viz. 1. Their first sinful Acts 2. Their Guilt 3. And their habitual pravity making it full though in Nature following the Act This Sin Fact Guilt and Habit as Accidents of the Persons of Adam and Eve are not Accidents of our Persons 3. Our personal participation 1. In the guilt of the sin of Adam and Eve 2. And of a vicious privation and habit from them as soon as we are Persons Which is called Original sin on three accounts conjunct 1. Because it is a participation of their Original Act that we are guilty of 2. Because it is in us ab Origine from our first Being 3. And because it is the Origo of all our Actual Sins 4. I call that also ORIGINAL or part of Original Sin which hath but the two later only viz. 1. Which is in us AB ORIGINE from our first personal being 2. Which is the Root or ORIGO in our selves of all our Actual Sins And thus our Guilt and Vice derived from our nearer Parents and not from Adam is our Original Sin That is 1. Both Guilt and Habit are in us from our Original or first Being 2. And all our Actual Sin springeth from it as a partial Cause For I may presume that this Reverend Doctor doth not hold that Adam's sin derived to us is in one part of the Soul which is not partible and our nearer Parent 's in another but will grant that it is one vitiosity that is derived from both the latter being a Degree added to the former though the Reatus having more than one fundamentum may be called diverse That Origo Active passive dicitur I suppose we are agreed Now I call the vicious Habits contracted from our nearer Parents by special reason of their own sins superadded to the degree which else we should have derived from Adam a part of our original sinful Pravity even a secondary part And I call our guilt of the sins of our nearer Parents not Adam's which you will either a secondary Original Guilt or Sin or a secondary part of our Original Guilt See then our dangerous disagreement I call that ORIGINAL which is in us ab Origine when we are first Persons and is partly the Root or Origo in us of all our following Actual Sin though it was not the Original Sin of Mankind or the first of Sins The Doctor thinks this an Expression which all Juniors must be warned to take heed of and to take heed of the Doctrine of him that useth it The Allarm is against this dangerous word ORIGINAL And let a Man awake tell us what is the danger But I would bring him yet to agreement even de nomine though it anger him 1. Let him read the Artic. 9. of the Church of England and seeing there Original Sin is said to be that corruption of Nature whereby we are far gone from Original Righteousness and are of our own Nature inclined to evil so that the flesh lusteth against the Spirit The lust of the flesh called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which some do expound the Wisdom some Sensuality some the Affection some the desire of the Flesh not subject to the Law of God Seing a degree of all this same Lust is in Men from the special sins of their Fore-fathers as well as from Adam's Is not this Degree here called Original Sin why the Church omitted the Imputed Guilt aforesaid I enquire not 2. If this will not serve if he will find me any Text of Scripture which useth the Phrase ORIGINAL Sin I will promise
liberal Dictates The Reformed Divines are all I think before you agreed about the nature of Justification its Causes c. and consequently cannot differ about the Definition Answ 1. But what if all Divines were so agreed So are not all honest Men and Women that must have Communion with us Therefore make not Definitions more necessary than they are nor as necessary as the Thing 2. You must be constrained for the defending of these words to come off by saying that you meant That though they agree not in the Words or Logical terms of the Definition but one saith This is the Genus and this is the Differentia and another that it is not this but that one saith this and another that is the Formal or Material Cause c. yet de re they mean the same thing were they so happy as to agree in their Logical defining terms and notions And if you will do in this as you have done in your other Quarrels come off by saying as I say and shewing Men the power of Truth though you do it with never so much anger that you must agree I shall be satisfied that the Reader is delivered from your snare and that Truth prevaileth what ever you think or say of me 3. But because I must now answer what you say and not what I foresee you will or must say I must add that this passage seemeth to suppose that your Reader liveth in the dark and hath read very little of Justification 1. Do all those great Divines who deny the Imputation of Christs active Righteousness and take it to be but Justitia Personae non Meriti and that we are Justified by the Passive only agree with their Adversaries who have written against them about the Definition and Causes of Justification Will any Man believe you who hath read Olevian Vrsine Paraeus Scultetus Piscator Carolus Molinaeus Wendeline Beckman Alstedius Camero with his followers in France Forbes with abundance more who are for the Imputation of the Passive Righteousness only Were Mr. Anth. Wotton and Mr. Balmford and his other Adversaries of the same Opinion in this Was Mr. Bradshaw so sottish as to write his Reconciling Treatise of Justification in Latine and English to reduce Men of differing minds to Concord while he knew that there was no difference so much as in the Definition Was he mistaken in reciting the great differences about their Senses of Imputation of Christs Righteousness if there were none at all Did Mr. Gataker agree with Lucius and Piscator when he wrote against both as the extreams Did Mr. Wotton and John Goodwin agree with Mr. G. Walker and Mr. Roborough Doth Mr. Lawson in his Theopolitica agree with you and such others Doth not Mr. Cartwright here differ from those that hold the Imputation of the Active Righteousness What abundance of Protestants do place Justification only in Fogiveness of Sins And yet as many I know not which is the greater side do make that Forgiveness but one part and Imputation of Righteousness another And how many make Forgiveness no part of Justification but a Concomitant And many instead of Imputation of Righteousness put Accepting us as Righteous for the sake or merit of Christs Righteousness imputed viz. as the Meritorious Cause And Paraeus tells us that they are of four Opinions who are for Christs Righteousness imputed some for the Passive only some for the Passive and Active some for the Passive Active and Habitual some for these three and the Divine And who knoweth not that some here so distinguish Causes and Effects as that our Original Sin or Habitual say some is pardoned for Christs Original and Habitual Holiness Our Omissions for Christs Active Obedience and our Commissions for His Passive Or as more say that Christs Passive Righteousness as Satisfaction saveth us from Hell or Punishment and His Active as meritorious procureth Life as the reward When many others rejecting that Division say That both freedom from Punishment and right to Glory are the conjunct effects of His Habitual Active and Passive Righteousness as an entire Cause in its kind as Guil. Forbes Grotius Bradshaw and others truly say Besides that many conclude with Gataker that these are indeed but one thing and effect to be Glorified and not to be Damned or Punished seeing not to be Glorified is the Paena damni and that the remitting of the whole Penalty damni sensus and so of all Sin of Omission and Commission is our whole Justification And I need not tell any Man that hath read such Writers that they ordinarily distinguish of Justification and give not the same Definition of one sort as of another nor of the Name in one Sense as in another Many confess whom you may read in Guil. Forbes and Vinc. le Blanck that the word Justifie is divers times taken in Scripture as the Papists do as including Sanctification And so saith Beza against Illyricus pag. 218. as cited by G. Forbes Si Justificationem generaliter accipias ut interdum usurpatur ab Apostolo Sanctificatio non erit ejus effectus sed pars aut species And as I find him mihi pag. 179. Quamvis Justificationis nomen interdum generaliter accipiatur pro omni illius Justitiae dono quam a patre in Christo accipimus c. And how little are we agreed whether Reconciliation be a part of Justification or not Yea or Adoption either Saith Illyricus Hoc affirmo recte posse dici Justificationem esse Causam omnium beneficiorum sequentium Nam justificatio est plena Reconciliatio cum Deo quae nos facit ex hostibus filios Dei To which Beza ibid. saith distinguishing of Reconciliation Neutro modo idem est Reconciliatio ac Justificatio Si Remissio peccatorum est Justificationis Definitio quod negare non ausis c. Of the three sorts or parts of Christs Righteousness imputed to make up three parts of our Justification see him de Predest pag. 405. Col. 2. which Perkins and some others also follow Olevian as all others that grosly mistake not herein did hold that God did not judg us to have fulfilled all the Law in Christ and that our righteousness consisteth only in the Remission of Sin and right to Life as freely given us for anothers Merits But Beza insisteth still on the contrary and in his Epistle to Olevian pag. 248. Epist 35. saith Quid vanius est quam Justum arbitrari qui Legem non impleverit Atqui lex non tantum prohibet fieri quod vetat verum praecipit quod jubet Ergo qui pro non peccatore censetur in Christo mortem quidem effugerit sed quo jure vitam praeterea petet nisi omnem justitiam Legis in eodem Christo impleverit This is the Doctrine which Wotton and Gataker in divers Books largely and Bradshaw after many others do Confute Yet saith he Nâ—que vero id obstat quominus nostra Justificatio Remissione peccatorum apte recte
oft enough what I mean and what he meaneth I have little to do with But if he think 1. That Adams Person did commit the sin of Cain and of all that ever were since committed and that Judas his act was Adams personal act 2. Or that Adams sin was a total or necessitating Cause of all the evil since committed so do not I nor doth he I doubt not And now I am cast by him on the strait either to accuse him of differing de re and so of Doctrinal errour or else that he knoweth not when the difference is de re and when de nomine but is so used to confusion that Names and Things do come promiscuously into the Question with him And which of these to chuse I know not The Reader may see that I mentioned Actual Sin and Guilt And I think few will doubt but Adams Actual sin and Cains were divers and that therefore the Guilt that Cains Children had of Adams sin and of Cains was not the same But that Causa causae is Causa causati and so that all following Sin was partly but partly caused by Adam's we shall soon agree He addeth that I must make good that new Original Sin for he can make use of the word New and therefore made it doth mutare naturam as the Old doth Ans And how far it changeth it I told him and he taketh no notice of it The first sin changed Nature from Innocent into Nocent the Second changeth it from Nocent into more Nocent Doth he deny this Or why must I prove any more Or doth nothing but Confusion please him 3. He saith I must prove that the Derivation of Progenitors sins is constant and necessary not uncertain and contingent Ans Of this also I fully said what I held and he dissembleth it all as if I had never done it And why must I prove more By what Law can he impose on me what to hold But really doth he deny that the Reatus culpae yea and ad Poenam the Guilt of nearer Parents sins is necessarily and certainly the Childs though Grace may pardon it If he do not why doth he call on me to prove it If he do confess the Guilt and deny it necessary when will he tell us what is the Contingent uncertain Cause For we take a Relation such as Guilt is necessarily to result a posito fundamento § 2. He next cavilleth at my Citations about which I only say either the Reader will peruse the cited words and my words which shew to what end I cited them to prove our Guilt of our nearer Parents sins or he will not If he will not I cannot expect that he will read a further Vindication If he will he needeth not § 3. His second Spark is Animadversions on a sheet of mine before mentioned which are such as I am not willing to meddle with seeing I cannot either handle them or name them as the nature of them doth require without offending him And if what is here said of Imputation and Representation be not enough I will add no more nor write over and over still the same things because a Man that will take no notice of the many Volumns which answer all his Objections long ago will call for more and will write his Animadversions upon a single Sheet that was written on another particular occasion and pretend to his discoveries of my Deceits from the Silence of that Sheet and from my naming the Antinomians I only say 1. If this Mans way of Disputing were the common way I would abhor Disputing and be ashamed of the Name 2. I do friendly desire the Author of the Friendly Debate Mr. Sherlock and all others that would fasten such Doctrines on the Non-Conformists as a Character of the Party to observe that this Doctor sufficiently confuteth their partiality and that their Academical Church-Doctors are as Confused as Vehement maintainers of such expressions as they account most unsavoury as any even of the Independants cited by them Yea that this Doctor would make us question whether there be now any Antinomians among us and so whether all the Conformists that have charged the Conformists yea or the Sectaries with having among them Men of such unsound Principles have not wronged them it being indeed the Doctrine of the Church of England which they maintain whom I and others call Antinomians and Libertines And I hope at least the sober and sound Non-Conformists are Orthodox when the vehementest Sectaries that calumniated my Sermon at Pinners Hall are vindicated by such a Doctor of the Church 3. I yet conclude that if this One Mans Writings do not convince the Reader of the Sin and Danger of Allarming Christians against one another as Adversaries to great and necessary Doctrines on the account of meer Words not understood for want of accurateness and skill in the expressive Art I take him to be utterly unexcusable Pemble Vind. Gra◠p. 25. It were somewhat if it were in Learning as it is in bearing of a Burthen where many weak Men may bear that which One or few cannot But in the search of Knowledg it fares as in discrying a thing afar off where one quick-sight will see further than a thousand clear Eyes FINIS I had not time to gather the Errata of any but the First Book Correct these Greater or you will misunderstand the Matter PAge 27. Line 2. Read self the Act. p. 54. l. 30. r. as obliging p. 58. l. 20. for of r. or p. 59. l. 1 and 2. r. who is not p. 86. l. 32. for OURS r. OUR Righteousness p. 88. l. 7. for Covenanted r. Connoted p. 97. l. 31. r. and suffering p. 103. l. 9 10. for have us Holy r. leave us unholy p. 110. l. 10. for we r. were p. 111. l. penult and p. 112. l. 5. and 10. for our r. one l. 21. for but r. must p. 115. l. 25. for raze out r. rake up p. 117. l. 18. r. personating Representation p. 118. l. 2. for Minister r. Meriter p. 119. l. 16. for are r. are not p. 140. l. 23. for if r. that p. 126. l. 23. for arrive r. arm p. 149. l. 19. r. and the. p. 153. l. 23. r. and will p. 154. l. 26. r. our own-innocency it p. 157. l. 29. r. Private but. p. 169. l. 2. r. conditional p. 177. l. 9. r. sufficiency p. 181. l. 27. for argument r. agreement The Lesser Errata PReface p. 3. l. 16. r. eternal Contents p. 2. l. 21. r. Wotton p. 11. l. 4. for no r. in l. 17. r. praetendit l. 27. r. sufficere p. 12. l. 1. r. ficantur l. 16. r. impetrando l. antipen r. Credimus p. 13. l. 2. r. praecedit p. 16. l. 26. r. Schlussel Burgius p. 22. l. 9. for that r. the p. 36. l. antipen dele by p. 55. l. 10. for no r. not p. 60. l. 15. for then r. there p. 64. l. 5. for of r. or p. 68. l. 28. r.
definiatur Which is a contradiction Yet was he for Love and Gentleness in these differences ibid. Yet Qu. Resp Christ pag. 670. He leaveth out Christs Original Habitual Righteousness Non illa essentialis quae Deitatis est nec illa Habitualis ut ita loquar Puritas Carnis Christi Quae quum non distingueret Osiander faedissime est hallucinatus And ibid. 670. he giveth us this description of Justification Qu. Quid Justificationem vocat Paulus hoc loco R. Illud quo Justi fimus id est eousque perfecti integri 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ut plenissime non tantum aboleatur quicquid in nobis totis in est turpitudinis qua Deus summe purus offendi ullo modo possit verum etiam in nos comperiatur quicquid in haâ— humana naturae usque adeo potest eum delectare ut illud vita aeterna pro bona sua voluntate coronet Yet as in his Annot. in Rom. 8.30 alibi he confesseth that Justification in Scripture sometime is taken for Sanctification or as including it so he taketh our Sanctification to contain the Imputation of Christs Sanctity to us Qu. Resp pag. 671. 1. Dico nostras Personas imputata ipsius perfecta sanctitate integritate plene sanctas integras ac proinde Patri acceptas non in nobis sed in Christo censemur 2. And next the Spirits Sanctification and thus Christ is made Sanctification to us Dr. Twisse and Mr. Pemble Vind. Grat. distinguish of Justification as an Immanent Act in God from Eternity and as it is the notice of the former in our Consciences But doubtless the commonest Definitions of Justification agree with neither of these And Pemble of Justification otherwise defineth it as Mr. Jessop saith Dr. Twisse did Lud. Crocius Syntag. pag. 1219. thus defineth it Justificatio Evangelica est actus Divinae gratiae qua Deus adoptat peccatorem per approbationem obedientiae Legis in sponsore atque intercessore Christo per Remissionem peccatorum ac Justitiae imputationem in eo qui per fidem Christo est insitus And saith pag. 1223. Fides sola justificat quatenus notat Obedientiam quandam expectantem promissionem ut donum gratuitum apponitur illi Obedientiae quae non expectat promissionem ut donum omnino gratuitum sed ut mercedem propositam sub Conditione operis alicuâ—us praeter acceptationem gratitudinem debitam quae sua Natura in omni donatione quamvis gratuita requiri solet Et ejusmodi Obedientia peculiariter opus ab Apostolo Latinis proprie Meritum dicitur qui sub hac conditione obediunt Operantes vocantur Rom. 4.4 11.6 This is the truth which I assert Conrad Bergius Prax. Cathol dis 7. pag. 983. tells us that the Breme Catâ—chism thus openeth the Matter Qu. Quomodo Justificatur Homo coram Deo R. Accipit Homo Remissionem peccatorum Justificatur hoc est Gratus fit coram Deo in vera Conversione persolam fidem per Christum sine proprio Merito dignitate Cocceius disp de via salut de Just pag. 189. Originalis Christi Justitia correspondet nostro Originali peccato c. vid. coet plura vid. de foeder Macovius Colleg. de Justif distinguisheth Justification into Active and Passive and saith Justificatio Activa significat absoluâ—ionem Dei que Hominem reum a reatu absolvit And he would prove this to be before Faith and citeth for it abusively Paraeus and Tessanus and thinketh that we were absolved from Guilt from Christs undertaking our Debt Thes 12. thus arguing Cujus debita apud Creditorem aliquis recepit exsolvenda Creditor istius sponsionem ita acceptat ut in ea acquiescat ille jam ex parte Creditoris liber est a debitis Atque Electorum omnium in singulari debita apud Deum Patrem Christus ex quo factus est Mediator recepit exolvenda Deus Pater illam sponsionem acceptavit c. Passive Justification which he supposeth to be our application of Christs Righteousness to our daily as oft as we offend Th. 5. And part 4. disp 22. he maintaineth that There are no Dispositions to Regeneration Others of his mind I pass by Spanhemius Disput de Justif saith that The Form of Passive Justification consisteth in the apprehension and sense of Remission of Sin and Imputation of Christs Righteousness in capable Subjects grosly Whereas Active Justification Justificantis ever immediately causeth Passive Justificationem justificati which is nothing but the effect of the Active or as most call it Actio ut in patiente And if this were the Apprehension and Sense as aforesaid of Pardon and imputed Righteousness then a Man in his sleep were unjustified and so of Infants c. For he that is not Passively justified is not at all justified I told you else-where that the Synops Leidens de Justif pag. 413. Th. 23. saith That Christs Righteousness is both the Meritorious Material and Formal Cause of our Justification What Fayus and Davenant and others say of the Formal Cause viz. Christs Righteousness imputed I there shewed And how Paraeus Joh. Crocius and many others deny Christs Righteousness to be the Formal Cause Wendeline defineth Justification thus Theol. Lib. 1. c. 25. p. 603. Justificatio est actio Dei gratuita qua peccatores Electi maledictioni legis obnoxii propter justitiam seu satisfactionem Christi fide applicatam a Deo imputatam coram tribunali Divino remssis peccatis a maledictione Legis absolvuntur justi censentur And pag. 615 616. He maintaineth that Obedientia activa si proprie accurate loquamur non est materia nostrae Justificationis nec imputatur nobis ita ut nostra censeatur nobis propter eam peccata remittantur debitum legis pro nobis solvatur quemadmodum Passiva per imputationem censetur nostra c. Et post Si dicus Christum factum esse hominem pro nobis hoc est nostro bono conceditur Si pro nobis hoc est nostro loco negatur Quod enim Christus nostro loco fecit factus est id nos non tenemur facere fieri c. Rob. Abbot approveth of Thompsons Definition of Evangelical Justification pag. 153. that it is Qua poenitenti Credenti remittuntur peccata jus vitae aeternae conceditur per propter Christi obedientiam illi imputatam Which is sound taking Imputatam soundly as he doth Joh. Crâ—cius Disp 1. p. 5. thus defineth it Actio Dei qua ex gratia propter satisfactionem Christi peccatoribus in Christum totius Mundi redemptorem unicum vere credentibus gratis sine operibus aut meritis propriis omnia peccata remittit justitiam Christi imputat ad sui nominis gloriam illorum salutem aeternam And he maketh only Christs full satisfaction for Sin to be the Impulsive-External Meritorious and Material Cause as being that which is imputed to us and the Form