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Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
cause_n	justification_n	justify_v	work_n	8,142	5	6.6831	4	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A52291	An answer to an heretical book called The naked Gospel which was condemned and ordered to be publickly burnt by the convocation of the University of Oxford, Aug. 19, 1690 : with some reflections on Dr. Bury's new edition of that book : to which is added a short history of Socinianism / by William Nicholls.	Nicholls, William, 1664-1712.; Bury, Arthur, 1624-1713. Naked Gospel.	1691 (1691)	Wing N1091; ESTC R28145	124,983	144

our Church speaks spring out necessarily of a true and lively Faith in so much that a true and lively Faith may be known by them as a Tree is discerned by its Fruit. But still it is Faith not works that do justifie for they having no intrinsick value of their own cannot conferr it on any but Faith alone which takes hold as some speak of the all-sufficient merits of our Blessed Saviour Or as our Church speaks sends us directly to Christ for the remission of our Sins and by which we embrace the Promise of God's Mercy and of the remission of our Sins which thing none other of our Vertues or Works properly doth therefore the Scripture useth to say That Faith without Works doth justifie Not that even Faith it self is a proper and necessary cause of Justification but that it has pleased God to accept it as a cause or means by embracing or taking hold of the merits of Christ which are the true proper meritorious cause of Justification Which justification or righteousness which we so receive of God's mercy and Christ's merits embraced by Faith is taken accepted and allowed of by God as our perfect and full Justification And this is the reason that the Gentlemen of the Authour's persuasion are so unwilling to have Faith onely to justifie Secondly This ought to be an Orthodox Faith in all Fundamentals at least All the admirable Effects which the Scripture does attribute to Faith must be understood of a true Faith such as is agreeable to God's word which is to be the rule of our Faith and not of a false or Heterodox Faith which any one takes up from a Party of Men or from his own Imagination A Heterodox Faith is no more Faith than a dead man or a painted man is a Man they agree in one common equivocal Name 't is true and in nothing else So that an Heterodox Faith can no more pretend to those supernatural Effects which a true Faith by God's grace does produce than a dead Man can pretend to all the Properties and Operations of a live one There is but one Faith as well as one Baptism so that to hope to be justified by a false or another Faith is as unreasonable as to expect to come into the Church by another Baptism So that they that teach a Justification by works or any other Faith than an Orthodox one do themselves for ought as I see teach another Gospel Thirdly The reason why Faith is so pleasing to God as that he should make this the great Means of Justification And here I hope to give an Answer to the Authour's Dilemma and to shew that our Faith in Christ is not irrational and then we are no Fools and as for our merit by Faith we are far from pretending to it we acknowledge it as an infinite mercy of our gracious God that he will accept our Faith in Christ's blood for our Justification and do not go about to argue the worth of it which is none And as for the grounds of our Faith in Christ for Justification I know not what can be more reasonable than to expect only to have our weak Performances accepted for the sake of his all-sufficient Merits And of all our Actions that we can perform I know not what can be more pleasing and acceptable in the sight of God than for an humble and desponding Christian considering his own unworthiness and the insufficiency of his Repentance it self and all other Vertues to incline God to mercy so far as for their sakes to accept him for just and innocent he as the last refuge he hath quitteth all worth and merit in himself and fleeth with a full and undoubting Faith in all God's revelations and a firm confidence in all his promises unto the free grace of God revealed in Christ Jesus and hopes for the sake of his Righteousness alone that he will justifie his imperfect Performances This certainly when we have done the utmost of our Endeavours is more pleasing to God than any action we can do more For if we could be justified by our works it would tempt us to reflect with Pride upon our vertuous Actions but this teaches us a pious despondency in our selves and to cast all our hopes upon our blessed Saviour And this is the summ of the Apostles Arguments Eph. 2. 8. For by Grace ye are saved through Faith not of your selves nor of works least any one should boast And the learned Cassander though a Papist says thus much in favour of this Doctrine of the Protestants that in this Question by the word Faith they mean only the grace of God which is correspondent to faith quae fidei ex adverso respondet and to be justified by faith alone signifies the same as by grace alone in opposition to all kind of works CHAP. III. What figure Faith made in natural Religion OUR Authour in the beginning of this Chapter lays down Faith as a duty in natural Religion that it is a branch of Justice by which we pay to God what is due to his Veracity that this was before all positive Law and that upon this the Gospel is built because the Faith of Abraham which is recommended for our pattern Rom. 4. was nothing else but this Justice that the lack of this Faith was reproved by the Angel in Sarah and was punished in Lot's Wife Gen. 18. and in the incredulous Lord 2 King 7. And that this is the Faith lastly which is commended in the Worthies mentioned Heb. 11. And last of all he endeavours to shew the excellency of Abraham's Faith to consist in believing God against so many difficulties from this natural notion of his Veracity Any one that understands the nature of the Authour's Book will easily see into his design here which is to bring down all Faith to be a meer Creature of Reason to be no longer that which the Schools call an infused Habit or the inspiration of God but only a bare rational belief upon divine Testimony Now as to his notion of Faith its being a branch of Justice and that by the light of nature we are taught to believe God upon his Testimony this is in some measure most certainly true as appears by the practice of the Heathens themselves who had nothing but the light of nature to walk by in their believing their Oracles Auguries Prophesies c. and in suiting their actions according to them So that 't is plain that natural Religion tells us God is to be believed upon his Testimony so that when a Man under natural Religion does believe any thing upon God's Testimony our Authour may if he pleases call this Faith But Theological Faith or Faith under the Gospel is quite of another kind this is not only an assent of the understanding but a divine Grace or Habit infused though our Authour would have them the same by saying the Gospel is built upon this and moreover That Faith in Abraham

which the Scripture does recommend for our Pattern was not this bare rational assent but an inspired Vertue that was founded and excited in him by the preventing and co-operating Grace of God 1. For first Faith under the Gospel is a spiritual Grace or an inspired Habit 't is a true and stedfast belief in and reliance upon God through the merits of Jesus Christ and the sanctification of the holy Spirit not by the bare assent only of our reason but by the co-operating Grace of God I know not for my part any truth in all our Religion more expresly revealed than that Faith is a Grace inspired by God It is said to be the gift of God Eph. 2. 8. And again for unto you is given in the behalf of Christ not only to believe on him but to suffer for him Eph. 1. 29. Upon Peter's confessing our Saviour's Divinity Christ tells him flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee but my Father which is in Heaven Matth. 16. 17. We are not sufficient of our selves to think any thing as of our selves but our sufficiency is of God 2 Cor. 3. 5. It is God that worketh in us both to will and to do Phil. 2. 13. No man can come unto me except the Father which sent me draw him Joh. 6. 4. And so Gal. 5. 22. Faith is reckoned among the gifts of the Spirit And the Father of the Demoniack Mark 9. 24. cries out Lord I believe help my unbelief Now if all our Vertues and good thoughts are the effects of God's Grace most certainly this eminent Vertue of Faith must if the Inspiration of God be requisite even for St. Peter's Faith it must surely likewise be so for ours if we are to be drawn to the belief of the Gospel by God we cannot come then upon our own pure accord if the belief of one that was an Eye-witness of our Saviour's Miracles did lack help and improvement from God ours likewise cannot stand in need of less I do not say that God inspires this belief into us without any concurrence of our own judgments that he moves our Assents as if we were meer Machines but his preventing Grace does first excite our belief and his assisting Grace does still further it by giving a blessing and effectualness to the word and without this divine assistance according to the present measures of God's dispensations it is impossible we should ever attain it For the certainty of this divine truth we have Scripture Councils Fathers and Learned Men in all Ages the Doctrine of our own Church and all sober Christians but only a few Socinians and Remonstrants that are for levelling all Scripture and Revelations to their own sense and humour Nay I am apt to think that this Doctrine will be look'd upon as too Calvinistical by some since the Systems of the Remonstrants which condemn this Doctrine are so admired in the world but 't is not Systems but God's word we are to be governed by and from hence we have proof enough to maintain this Doctrine against all the Remonstrants and Socinians in the World 2. Now as to his making the Faith of Abraham by which he is said in Scripture to be justified to be only a natural Faith I answer First Though we should not allow this Faith of Abraham to be the true Christian Justifying Faith or a Faith in Christ Jesus yet we cannot allow it to be only a plain moral Act or Habit for if it were only a bare credence out of Justice to God's Veracity that too must be allowed to come from God because without him we are not able to think a good thought much less to do a good action Though by the light of Natural Religion a man might be covinced that it was his duty to believe God in all his promises yet when these promises by their difficulties seem strangely incredible Flesh and Blood will be apt to shrink and give way and rather to fall a disputing the possibility of them than readily upon God's Authority to believe unless their Faith be strengthned by the assisting Grace of of God's holy Spirit And so Philo the Jew says in this case of Abraham That 't is not so easie a matter to believe in God alone by reason of that cognation we have with that Mortal part we are yoked to which is the cause that we trust in Money and Glory in Honours and Friends and the like but to be purged from all these and to distrust all created things which are unfaithful in themselves and to trust in God alone who is always faithful 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is the work of a great and heavenly Mind that is an inspired one Secondly But besides this Faith of Abraham was a formal Christian justifying Faith or a Faith in Christ Jesus It was the opinion of the Ancients That all the Patriarchs and all other Good Men both before and under the Law were saved by an express Faith in Christ Eusebius tell us That all the Fathers before Abraham were Christians though not in Name yet in reality and that they followed the Faith of him whom we now follow And St. Hierom That the Saints that were of old were justified by Faith in Christ And St. Gregory That as we are saved by Faith in the past Passion of our Saviour so the ancient Fathers by Faith in his Passion which was then to come Nay Cyril goes farther and makes Abraham from the seeing of the three Angels to have believed in the Consubstantial Trinity And if we look into Scripture we shall find that these great Men had reasons enough to ground them in this Opinion for our Saviour tells the Jews Joh. 8. 56. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and was glad Now what should all this gladness and rejoicing be for but that from the Promise which God had made him Gen. 11. 35. that in his seed all the nations of the earth should be blessed he was fully persuaded That God in his good time would send such a Person as Christ into the world that should save the People from their Sins that should die for the Sins of the whole world to reconcile them to God now the consideration of this was matter of the greatest Joy to him then as it is now to all good Christians so that as St. Gregory says there is little difference in this between his Faith and ours but that ours is after and his before Christ's Passion So likewise St. Peter tells the Jews Act. 4. 12. Neither is there Salvation in any other but Christ for there is no other Name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved Now whereas 't is certain by Scripture that these good Patriarchs were saved as appears by God's declaring himself to be their God and by making a lying down with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob to be an expression for Everlasting Happiness