God's Word Scriptures besides the former Declaration 1 Joh. 2.29 Every one which doth Righteousness is born of God 3.7 10. He that doth Righteousness is Righteous even as he is Righteous Whosoever doth not righteousness is not of God 2 Tim. 4.8 He hath laid up for us a Crown of Righteousness Heb. 11.23 Through Faith they wrought Righteousness Heb. 12. The peaceable fruit of Righteousness Jam. 3.18 The fruit of Righteousness is sown in Peace 1 Pet. 2.24 That we being dead to sin should live unto righteousness Mat 5.20 Except your Righteousness exceed the Righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees c. Luk. 1.71 In Holiness and Righteousness before him all the days of our Life Act. 10.35 He that feareth God and worketh Righteousness is accepted of him Rom. 6.13 16 18 19 20. Whether of sin unto death or of Obedience unto Righteousness 1 Cor. 15.34 Awake to Righteousness and sin not Eph. 5.9 The fruit of the Spirit is in all Goodness and Righteousness Dan. 12.3 They shall turn many to Righteousness Dan. 4.27 Break off thy sins by Righteousness Eph. 4.24 The new-man which after God is created in Righteousness Gen. 7.1 Thee have I seen Righteous before me Gen. 18.23 24 25 26. Far be it from thee to destroy the Righteous with the Wicked Prov. 24.24 He that saith to the Wicked thou art Righteous him shall the people Curse Nations shall abhor him Isa 3.10 Say to the Righteous it shall be well with him Isa 5.23 That take away the Righteousness from the Righteous Mat. 25.37 46. Then shall the Righteous answer The Righteous into life eternal Luk. 1.6 They were both Righteous before God Heb. 11.4 7. By Faith Abel offered to God a more excellent Sacrifice than Cain by which he obtained witness that he was righteous God testifying of his Gifts By Faith Noah being warned of God of things not seen as yet moved with fear prepared an Ark by which he became heir of the Righteousness by Faith 1 Pet. 4.18 If the Righteous be scarcely saved Math. 10.41 He that receiveth a Righteous man in the name of a Righteous man shall have a Righteous mans reward 1 Tim. 1.9 The Law is not made for a Righteous man but for Many score of texts more mention a Righteousness distinct from that of Christ imputed to us Judg now Whether he that believeth God should believe that he Imputeth Christs Obedience and Suffering to us for our Sole Righteousness That which is not our sole Righteousness is not so Reputed by God nor Imputed But Christs Obedience and Suffering is not our sole Righteousness See Davenant's many arguments to prove that we have an Inherent Righteousness Obj. But they mean our Sole Righteousness by which we are Justified Answ 1. We can tell no mans meaning but by his words especially not contrary to them especially in an accurate Declaration of Faith 2. Suppose it had been so said we maintain on the contrary 1. That we are Justified by more sorts of Righteousness than one in several respects We are justified only by Christs Righteousness as the Purchasing and Meritorious Cause of our Justification freely given by that new Covenant We are Justified by the Righteousness of God the Father as performing his Covenant with Christ and us efficiently We are justified efficiently by the Righteousness of Christ as our Judg passing a just sentence according to his Covenant These last are neither Ours nor Imputed to us But we are justified also against the Accusation of being finally Impenitent Unbelievers or unholy by the personal particular Righteousness of our own Repentance Faith and Holiness For 2. We say that there is an universal Justification or Righteousness and there is a particular one And this particular one may be the Condition and Evidence of our Title to all the rest And this is our case The Day of Judgment is not to try and Judg Christ or his Merits but us He will judg us himself by his new Law or Covenant the sum of which is Except ye Repent ye shall all perish and He that believeth shall be saved and he that believeth not shall be condemned If we be not accused of Impenitence or Vnbelief but only of not-fulfilling the Law of Innocency that will suppose that we are to be tryed only by that Law which is not true And then we refer the Accuser only to Christ's Righteousness and to the Pardoning Law of Grace and to nothing in our selves to answer that charge And so it would be Christ's part only that would be judged But Matth. 25. and all the Scripture assureth us of the contrary that it 's Our part that it is to be tryed and judged and that we shall be all judged according to what we have done And no man is in danger there of any other accusation but that he did not truly Repent and Believe and live a holy life to Christ And shall the Penitent Believer say I did never Repent and Believe but Christ did it for me and so use two Lyes one of Christ and another of himself that he may be justified Or shall the Vnholy Impenitent Infidel say It 's true I was never a Penitent Believer or holy but Christ was for me or Christs Righteousness is my sole Righteousness that is a fashood For Christs Righteousness is none of his So that there is a particular personal Righteousness consisting in Faith and Repentance which by way of Condition and Evidence of our title to Christ and his Gift of Pardon and Life is of absolute necessity in our Justification Therefore Imputed Righteousness is not the sole Righteousness which must justifie us I cited abundance of plain Texts to this purpose in my Confession pag. 57. c. Of which book I add that when it was in the press I procured those three persons whom I most highly valued for judgment Mr. Gataker whose last work it was in this World Mr. Vines and lastly Arch-Bishop Vsher to read it over except the Epistles Mr. Gataker read only to pag. 163. and no one of them advised me to alter one word nor signified their dissent to any word of it But I have been long on this to proceed in the History The same year that I wrote that book that most Judicious excellent man Joshua Placaeus of Saumours in France was exercised in a Controversie conjunct with this How far Adams sin is imputed to us And to speak truth at first in the Theses Salmuriens Vol. 1. he seemed plainly to dispute against the Imputation of Adam's actual sin and his arguments I elsewhere answer And Andr. Rivet wrote a Collection of the Judgment of all sorts of Divines for the contrary But after he vindicated himself shewed that his Doctrine was that Adam's fact is not immediately imputed to each of us as if our persons as persons had been all fully represented in Adam's person by an arbitrary Law or Will of God or reputed so to be But that our Persons being
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
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
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
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
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
it for us For it said not in words or sense Thou or one for thee shall Perfectly Obey or Suffer It mentioned no Substitute But it is the Law-giver and not that Law that justifieth us by other means § 28. But we have another Righteousness imputed to us instead of that Perfect Legal Innocency and Rewardableness by which we shall be accepted of God and glorified at last as surely and fully at least as if we had never sinned or had perfectly kept that Law which therefore may be called our Pro-legal Righteousness § 29. But this Righteousness is not yet either OURS by such a propriety as a Personal performance would have bin nor OURS to all the same ends and purposes It saveth us not from all pain death or penal desertion nor constituteth our Relation just the same § 30. It is the Law of Grace that Justifieth us both as giving us Righteousness and as Virtually judging us Righteous when it hath made us so and it is Christ as Judg according to that Law and God by Christ that will sentence us just and executively so use us § 31. The Grace of Christ first giveth us Faith and Repentance by effectual Vocation And then the Law of Grace by its Donative part or Act doth give us a Right to Vnion with Christ as the Churches Head and so to his Body and with him a right to Pardon of past sin and to the Spirit to dwell and act in us for the future and to the Love of God and Life eternal to be ours in possession if we sincerely obey and persevere § 32. The total Righteousness then which we have as an Accident of which we are the Subjects is 1. A right to Impunity by the free Pardon of all our sins and a right to Gods Favour and Glory as a free gift quoad valorem but as a Reward of our Obedience quoad Ordinem conferendi rationem Comparativam why one rather than another is judged meet for that free gift 2. And the Relation of one that hath by grace performed the Condition of that free Gift without which we had been no capable recipients which is initially Faith and Repentance the Condition of our Right begun and consequently sincere Obedience and Perseverance the Condition of continued right § 33. Christs personal Righteousness is no one of these and so is not our Constitutive Righteousness formally and strictly so called For Formally our Righteousness is a Relation of right and it is the Relation of our own Persons And a Relation is an accident And the numerical Relation or Right of one person cannot be the same numerical Accident of another person as the subject § 34. There are but three sorts of Causes Efficient Constitutive and Final 1. Christ is the efficient cause of all our Righteousness 1. Of our Right to Pardon and Life 2. And of our Gospel-Obedience And that many waies 1. He is the Meritorious Cause 2. He is the Donor by his Covenant 3. And the Donor or Operator of our Inherent Righteousness by his Spirit 4. And the moral efficient by his Word Promise Example c. 2. And Christ is partly the final cause 3. But all the doubt is whether his personal Righteousness be the Constitutive Cause § 35. The Constitutive Cause of natural bodily substances consisteth of Matter disposed and Form Relations have no Matter but instead of Matter a Subject and that is Our own persons here and not Christ and a terminus and fundamentum § 36. The Fundamentum may be called both the Efficient Cause of the Relation as commonly it is and the Matter from which it resulteth And so Christs Righteousness is undoubtedly the Meritorious efficient Cause and undoubtedly not the Formal Cause of our personal Relation of Righteousness Therefore all the doubt is of the Material Cause § 37. So that all the Controversie is come up to a bare name and Logical term of which Logicians agree not as to the aptitude All confess that Relations have no proper Matter besides the subject all confess that the Fundamentum is loco efficientis but whether it be a fit name to call it the Constitutive Matter of a Relation there is no agreement § 38. And if there were it would not decide this Verbal Controversie For 1. Titulus est fundamentum Juris The fundamentum of our Right to Impunity and Life in and with Christ is the Donative act of our Saviour in and by his Law or Covenant of Grace that is our Title And from that our Relation resulteth the Conditio tituli vel juris being found in our selves 2. And our Relation of Performers of that Condition of the Law of Grace resulteth from our own performance as the fundamentum compared to the Rule So that both these parts of our Righteousness have a nearer fundamentum than Christs personal Righteousness § 39. But the Right given us by the Covenant and the Spirit and Grace being a Right merited first by Christs personal Righteousness this is a Causa Causae id est fundamenti seu Donationis And while this much is certain whether it shall be called a Remote fundamentum viz. Causa fundamenti and so a Remote Constitutive Material Cause or only properly a Meritorious Cause may well be left to the arbitrary Logician that useeth such notions as he pleases but verily is a Controversie unfit to tear the Church for or destroy Love and Concord by § 40. Quest 1. Is Christs Righteousness OVRS Ans Yes In some sense and in another not § 41. Quest 2. Is Christs Righteousness OVRS Ans Yes In the sense before opened For all things are ours and his righteousness more than lower Causes § 42. Quest 3. Is Christs Righteousness OVRS as it was or is His own with the same sort of propriety Ans No. § 43. Quest 4. Is the formal Relation of Righteous as an accident of our persons numerically the same Righteousness Ans No It is impossible Unless we are the same person § 44. Quest 5. Is Christ and each Believer one political person Ans A political person is an equivocal word If you take it for an Office as the King or Judg is a political person I say No If for a Society Yea But noxia noxa caput sequuntur True Guilt is an accident of natural persons and of Societies only as constituted of such and so is Righteousness Though Physically Good or Evil may for society-sake befal us without personal desert or consent But if by Person you mean a certain State or Condition as to be a subject of God or one that is to suffer for sin so Christ may be said to be the same person with us in specie but not numerically because that Accident whence his Personality is named is not in the same subject § 45. Quest 6. Is Christs Righteousness imputed to us Ans Yes If by imputing you mean reckoning or reputing it ours so far as is aforesaid that is such a Cause of ours §
46. Quest 7. Are we reputed our selves to have fulfilled all that Law of Innocency in and by Christ as representing our persons as obeying by him Ans No. § 47. Quest 8. Is it Christs Divine Habitual Active or Passive Righteousness which Justifieth us Ans All viz the Habitual Active and Passive exalted in Meritoriousness by Union with the Divine § 48. Quest 9. Is it Christs Righteousness or our Faith which is said to be imputed to us for Righteousness Rom. 4. Ans 1. The text speaketh of imputing Faith and by Faith is meant Faith and not Christs Righteousness in the word But that Faith is Faith in Christ and his Righteousness and the Object is quasi materia actus and covenanted 2. De re both are Imputed that is 1. Christs Righteousness is reputed the meritorious Cause 2. The free-gift by the Covenant is reputed the fundamentum juris both opposed to our Legal Merit 3. And our Faith is reputed the Conditio tituli and all that is required in us to our Justification as making us Qualified Recipients of the free-Gift merited by Christ § 49. Quest 10. Are we any way Justified by our own performed Righteousness Ans Yes Against the charge of non-performance as Infidels Impenitent Unholy and so as being uncapable of the free-gift of Pardon and Life in Christ CHAP. IV. The Reasons of our denying the fore-described rigid sence of Imputation Though it were most accurate to reduce what we deny to several Propositions and to confute each one argumentatively by it self yet I shall now choose to avoid such prolixity and for brevity and the satisfaction of such as look more at the force of a Reason than the form of the Argument I shall thrust together our denyed Sence with the manifold Reasons of our denyal WE deny that God doth so Impute Christs Righteousness to us as to repute or account us to have been Holy with all that Habitual Holiness which was in Christ or to have done all that he did in obedience to his Father or in fulfilling the Law or to have suffered all that he suffered and to have made God satisfaction for our own sins and merited our own Salvation and Justification in and by Christ or that he was did and suffered and merited all this strictly in the person of every sinner that is saved Or that Christs very individual Righteousness Material or Formal is so made ours in a strict sense as that we are Proprietors Subjects or Agents of the very thing it self simply and absolutely as it is distinct from the effects or that Christs Individual Formal Righteousness is made our Formal Personal Righteousness or that as to the effects we have any such Righteousness Imputed to us as formally ours which consisteth in a perfect Habitual and Actual Conformity to the Law of Innocency that is that we are reputed perfectly Holy and sinless and such as shall be Justified by the Law of Innocency which saith Perfectly Obey and Live or sin and die All this we deny Let him that will answer me keep to my words and not alter the sense by leaving any out And that he may the better understand me I add 1. I take it for granted that the Law requireth Habitual Holiness as well as Actual Obedience and is not fulfilled without both 2. That Christ loved God and man with a perfect constant Love and never sinned by Omission or Commission 3. That Christ died not only for our Original sin or sin before Conversion but for all our sin to our lives end 4. That he who is supposed to have no sin of Omission is supposed to have done all his duty 5. That he that hath done all his duty is not condemnable by that Law yea hath right to all the Reward promised on Condition of that duty 6. By Christs Material Righteousness I mean those Habits Acts and Sufferings in which his Righteousness did consist or was founded 7. By his and our Formal Righteousness I mean the Relation it self of being Righteous 8. And I hold that Christs Righteousness did not only Numerically as aforesaid but also thus totâ specie in kind differ from ours that his was a perfect Habitual and Actual Conformity to the Law of Innocency together with the peculiar Laws of Mediator-ship by which he merited Redemption for us and Glory for himself and us But ours is the Pardon of sin and Right of Life Purchased Merited and freely given us by Christ in and by a new Covenant whose condition is Faith with Repentance as to the gift of our Justification now and sincere Holiness Obedience Victory and Perseverance as to our possession of Glory Now our Reasons against the denyed sence of Imputation are these 1. In general this opinion setteth up and introduceth all Antinomianism or Libertinism and Ungodliness and subverteth the Gospel and all true Religion and Morality I do not mean that all that hold it have such effects in themselves but only that this is the tendency and consequence of the opinion For I know that many see not the nature and consequences of their own opinions and the abundance that hold damnable errors hold them but notionally in a peevish faction and therefore not dammingly but hold practically and effectually the contrary saving truth And if the Papists shall perswade Men that our doctrine yea their 's that here mistake cannot consist with a godly life let but the lives of Papists and Protestants be compared Yea in one of the Instances before given Though some of the Congregational-party hold what was recited yet so far are they from ungodly lives that the greatest thing in which I differ from them is the overmuch unscriptural strictness of some of them in their Church-admissions and Communion while they fly further from such as they think not godly than I think God would have them do being generally persons fearing God themselves Excepting the sinful alienation from others and easiness to receive and carry false reports of Dissenters which is common to all that fall into sidings But the errors of any men are never the better if they be found in the hands of godly men For if they be practised they will make them ungodly 2. It confoundeth the Person of the Mediator and of the Sinner As if the Mediator who was proclaimed the Beloved of the Father and therefore capable of reconciling us to him because he was still well-pleased in him had not only suffered in the room of the sinner by voluntary Sponsion but also in suffering and doing been Civilly the very person of the sinner himself that sinner I say who was an enemy to God and so esteemed 3. It maketh Christ to have been Civilly as many persons as there be elect sinners in the World which is both beside and contrary to Scripture 4. It introduceth a false sence and supposition of our sin imputed to Christ as if Imputatively it were his as it is ours even the sinful Habits the sinful Acts and
person And if any will improperly call that the Personating and Representing of the sinner let them limit it and confess that it is not simply but in tantum so far and to such uses and no other and that yet sinners did it not in and by Christ but only Christ for them to convey the benefits as he pleased And then we delight not to quarrel about mere words though we like the phrase of Scripture better than theirs 21. If Christ was perfectly Holy and Obedient in our persons and we in him then it was either in the Person of Innocent man before we sinned or of sinful man The first cannot be pretended For man as Innocent had not a Redeemer If of sinful man then his perfect Obedience could not be meritorious of our Salvation For it supposeth him to do it in the person of a sinner and he that hath once sinned according to that Law is the Child of death and uncapable of ever fulfilling a Law which is fulfilled with nothing but sinless perfect perpetual Obedience Obj. He first suffered in our stead and persons as sinners and then our sin being pardoned he after in our persons fulfilled the Law instead of our after-Obedience to it Ans 1. Christs Obedience to the Law was before his Death 2. The sins which he suffered for were not only before Conversion but endure as long as our lives Therefore if he fulfilled the Law in our persons after we have done sinning it is in the persons only of the dead 3. We are still obliged to Obedience our selves Obj. But yet though there be no such difference in Time God doth first Impute his sufferings to us for pardon of all our sins to the death and in order of nature his Obedience after it as the Merit of our Salvation Ans 1. God doth Impute or Repute his sufferings the satisfying cause of our Pardon and his Merits of Suffering and the rest of his Holiness and Obedience as the meritorious cause of our Pardon and our Justification and Glory without dividing them But 2. that implyeth that we did not our selves reputatively do all this in Christ As shall be further proved 22. Their way of Imputation of the Satisfaction of Christ overthroweth their own doctrine of the Imputation of his Holiness and Righteousness For if all sin be fully pardoned by the Imputed Satisfaction then sins of Omission and of habitual Privation and Corruption are pardoned and then the whole punishment both of Sense and Loss is remitted And he that hath no sin of Omission or Privation is a perfect doer of his duty and holy and he that hath no punishment of Loss hath title to Life according to that Covenant which he is reputed to have perfectly obeyed And so he is an heir of life without any Imputed Obedience upon the pardon of all his Disobedience Obj. But Adam must have obeyed to the Death if he would have Life eternal Therefore the bare pardon of his sins did not procure his right to life Ans True if you suppose that only his first sin was pardoned But 1. Adam had right to heaven as long as he was sinless 2. Christ dyed for all Adams sins to the last breath and not for the first only And so he did for all ours And if all the sins of omission to the death be pardoned Life is due to us as righteous Obj. A Stone may be sinless and yet not righteous nor have Right to life Ans True because it is not a capable subject But a man cannot be sinless but he is Righteous and hath right to life by Covenant Obj. But not to punish is one thing and to Reward is another Ans They are distinct formal Relations and Notions But where felicity is a Gift and called a Reward only for the terms and order of Collation and where Innocency is the same with perfect Duty and is the title-Condition there to be punished is to be denyed the Gift and to be Rewarded is to have that Gift as qualified persons and not to Reward is materially to punish and to be reputed innocent is to be reputed a Meriter And it is impossible that the most Innocent man can have any thing from God but by way of free-Gift as to the Thing in Value however it may be merited in point of Governing Paternal Justice as to the Order of donation Obj. But there is a greater Glory merited by Christ than the Covenant of works promised to man Ans 1. That 's another matter and belongeth not to Justification but to Adoption 2. Christs Sufferings as well as his Obedience considered as meritorious did purchase that greater Glory 3. We did not purchase or merit it in Christ but Christ for us 23. Their way of Imputation seemeth to me to leave no place or possibility for Pardon of sin or at least of no sin after Conversion I mean that according to their opinion who think that we fulfilled the Law in Christ as we are elect from eternity it leaveth no place for any pardon And according to their opinion who say that we fulfilled it in him as Believers it leaveth no place for pardon of any sin after Faith For where the Law is reputed perfectly fulfilled in Habit Act there it is reputed that the person hath no sin We had no sin before we had a Being and if we are reputed to have perfectly obeyed in Christ from our first Being we are reputed sinless But if we are reputed to have obeyed in him only since our believing then we are reputed to have no sin since our Believing Nothing excludeth sin if perfect Habitual and Actual Holiness and Obedience do not 24. And consequently Christs blood shed and Satisfaction is made vain either as to all our lives or to all after our 〈◊〉 believing 25. And then no believer must confess his sin nor his desert of punishment nor repent of it or be humbled for it 26. And then all prayer for the pardon of such sin is vain and goeth upon a false supposition that we have sin to pardon 27. And then no man is to be a partaker of the Sacrament as a Conveyance or Seal of such pardon nor to believe the promise for it 28. Nor is it a duty to give thanks to God or Christ for any such pardon 29. Nor can we expect Justification from such guilt here or at Judgment 30. And then those in Heaven praise Christ in errour when they magnifie him that washed them from such sins in his blood 31. And it would be no lie to say that we have no sin at least since believing 32. Then no believer should fear sinning because it is Impossible and a Contradiction for the same person to be perfectly innocent to the death and yet a sinner 33. Then the Consciences of believers have no work to do or at least no examining convincing self-accusing and self-judging work 34. This chargeth God by Consequence of wronging all believers whom he layeth
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
Take your selves to be neither of Roman or any other Church as Vniversal which is less than the Vniversality of all Christians headed by Christ alone 9. Make this Love of all Christians the second part of your Religion and the Love of God of Christ of Holiness and Heaven the first and live thus in the serious practice of your Covenant even of Simple Christianity For it 's this that will be your Peace in Life and at Death 10. And if Men of various degrees of Learning or Speaking-skill and of various degrees of Holiness Humility and Love shall quarrel about Words and forms of Speech and shall hereticate and revile and damn each other while the Essentials are held fast and practised discern Right from Wrong as well as you can but take heed that none of them make Words a snare to draw you injuriously to think hatefully of your Brother or to divide the Churches or Servants of Christ And suspect such a Snare because of the great ambiguity of Words and imperfection of Mans Skill and Honesty in all Matters of debate And never dispute seriously without first agreeing of the Sense of every doubtful term with him that you Dispute with Dr. Tully's Allarm and other Mens militant Course perswaded me as a Preservative to commend this Counsel to you § XI Pag. 19. You next very justly commend Method ordering and expressing our Conceptions of which you say I seem to make little account in Comparison Answ 1. Had you said that I had been unhappy in my Endeavours your Authority might have gone for Proof with many But you could scarce have spoken a more incredible word of me than that I seem to make little account of Method I look for no sharper Censure from the Theological Tribe than that I Over-do in my Endeavours after Method You shall not tempt me here unseasonably to anticipate what Evidence I have to produce for my acquittance from this Accusation 2. But yet I will still say that it is not so necessary either to Salvation or to the Churches Peace that we all agree in Methods and Expressions as that we agree in the hearty reception of Christ and obedience to His Commands So much Method all must know as to know the Beginning and the End from the Effects and Means God from the Creature and as our true consent to the Baptismal Covenant doth require and I will thankfully use all the help which you give me to go further But I never yet saw that Scheme of Theologie or of any of its Heads which was any whit large and I have seen many which was so exact in Order as that it was dangerous in any thing to forsake it But I cannot think meet to talk much of Method with a Man that talketh as you do of Distinguishing and handleth the Doctrine of Justification no more Methodically than you do § XII But pag. 19. you instance in the difference between Protestants and Papists about the Necessity of Good works which is wide in respect of the placing or ranking of them viz. The one stretching it to the first Justification the other not but confining it to its proper rank and province of Inherent Holiness where it ought to keep Answ Wonderful Have you that have so loudly called to me to tell how I differ about Justification brought your own and as you say the Protestants difference to this Will none of your Readers see now who cometh nearer them you or I 1. Is this distinction our proof of your accurateness in Method and Order and Expression What meaneth a distinction between First-Justification and Inherent Holiness Do you difference them Quoad ordinem as First and Second But here is no Second mentioned Is it in the nature of the things Justification and Inherent Holiness What signifieth the First then But Sir how many Readers do you expect who know not 1. That it is not to the First Justification at all but to that which they call the Second or Increase that the Church of Rome asserteth the necessity or use of Mans meritorious Works See what I have fully cited out of them for this Cath. Theol. Lib. 2. Confer 13. pag. 267. c. saving that some of them are for such Preparatives as some call Merit of Congruity and as our English Divines do constantly preach for and the Synod of Dort at large assert though they disown the name of Merit as many of the Papists do They ordinarily say with Austine Bona opera sequuntur Justificatum non praecedunt Justificandum 2. But I hope the word First here overslipt your your Pen instead of Second But suppose it did so What 's the difference between the Papists first or second Justification and the Protestants Inherent Holiness None that ever I heard or read of Who knoweth not that the Papists take Justification for Inherent Holiness And is this the great difference between Papists and Protestants which I am so loudly accused for not acknowledging viz. The Papists place Good-Works before Justification that is Inherent Holiness and the Protestants more rightly place them before Inherent Holiness Are you serious or do you prevaricate The Papists and Protestants hold that there are some Duties and common Grace usually preparatory to Conversion or Sanctification which some Papists de nomine call Merit of Congruity and some will not The Papists and Protestants say that Faith is in order of nature at least before that Habitual Love which is called Holiness and before the Works thereof The Papists and Protestants say that Works of Love and Obedience follow our First Sanctification and make up but the Second part of it which consisteth in the Works of Holiness If you speak not of Works in the same sense in each part of your Assignation the Equivocation would be too gross viz. If you should mean Papists rank the necessity of preparatory Common Works or the Internal act of Faith or Love stretching it to the First Justification and Protestants rank other Works viz. The fruits of Faith and Love with Inherent Holiness All agree 1. That Common Works go before Sanctification 2. That Internal Love and other Grace do constitute Sanctification in the First part of it 3. That Special Works proceeding from Inward Grace are the effects of the First Part and the constitutive Causes of the Second Part of Sanctification as the word extendeth also to Holiness of Life And whilst Papists take Justâ—fication for Sanctification in all this there is De re no difference But your accurate Explications by such terms as Stretching Confirming Province c. are fitter for Tully than for Aristotle And is this it in the Application that your Zeal will warn Men of that we must in this take heed of joyning with the Papists Do you mean Rank Good-Works with Inherent Holiness and not with the First Sanctification and you then do widely differ from the Papists Will not your Reader say 1. What doth Inherent Holiness differ from the First
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
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