price paid ye are bought with a price 1 Cor. 6.20 a purchase that by which the purchase was bought and paid for purchased with his own blood A ransom that which is satisfactory to God as being content to release and discharge the ransomed upon that account provided they continue not in their rebellion He gave himself a ransom for all 1 Tim. 2.6 These metaphors being borrowed phrases from what is customary among men still signifie a valuable consideration given for what is obtained thereby When we consider that all Nations are but as the drop of the bucket or small dust of the balance in comparison of God and that that person who hath given himself a ransom for us is God blessed for evermore as well as man we must needs conclude that the dignity of his person must needs add an infinite value to his suffering for us and be in the sight of God of great price 2. The other reason of the aptness of our Saviours suffering for us to reconcile God unto us is taken from the congruity analogy or proportion that is in our Saviour's sufferings to answer the end of God's punishing sinners themselves His suffering for us answers Gods end in punishing sinners as well yea better than if we our selves had suffered the demerit of our sins who come to be pardoned thereby We are not to think I conceive that when God makes sinners bear their iniquity themselves in suffering according to their demerits that it is for their suffering-sake that he does it as if he were pleased or gratified with their suffering meerly as such as revengeful men use to be in the suffering of them on whom they revenge themselves or as the Devil is in the destruction of men for destruction sake no certainly God is only pleased with such sufferings of sinners themselves as they serve to worthy ends and purposes He hath plainly told us that he hath no pleasure in the death of him that dies Ezek. 18.32 nay hath sworn as he lives that he hath no pleasure no not in the death of the wicked but that he turn from his way and live Ezek. 33.11 If he had taken pleasure in the suffering as such of the sinners themselves we cannot imagine that ever he would have given a command to his dear Son as he hath done to suffer death to redeem guilty sinners themselves from eternal death when they were all justly obnoxious to the judgment of God God seeks reconciliation with us 2 Cor. 5.19 which is an argument that revenge dwells not in him only as governor of the universe he renders vengeance where the ends of Government call for it Otherwise God saith Fury is not in me Isa 27. God doubtless is only pleased with the suffering of wicked men themselves as those sufferings tend to worthy ends and a publick good For God as a wise and good governour of his whole Creation of rational beings designs the good of the whole by those punishments which he inflicts upon some that are contumacious To punish such is as necessary no doubt for the good of the Creation in general as the cutting off delinquents by the hand of publick Justice is necessary to good order and government in a Commonwealth Now the ends of punishments in reference to the publick good of Gods Creation in general are such as these 1. To awaken and beget a sense in Gods Creation of the turpitude of sin how contrary it is to the holy nature of God how hateful and displeasing to him and of how malignant a nature in reference to his creatures that wherever it fastens it causes great disorders and disturbances setting men against God their maker and one man against another yea every sinner against himself and that it is it which hath brought in all the misery and confusion that is in the visible and invisible world 2. To maintain and keep up the Authority of God and the honour of his Laws by which he governs his Creatures For punishments are the sanction of Divine as well as they are of Humane Laws If it were not for them the Laws of God would lose much of their strength and of that awe and reverence which by means of them is kept up in the minds of intelligent beings to whom they are made known 3. Another end of punishing some offenders for the good of the whole is to deter others from falling into such a hardened state of rebellion against God as for which final execution of Divine Justice passeth upon them One great use of Gods visible Judgments here in this world upon notorious offenders is for caution to the rest Thus Gods Judgments upon the Israelites thousands of years before were for examples unto us and for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come 1 Cor. 10.6 11. Sodom and Gomorrah in what befel them are set forth for examples to the rest of the world suffering the vengeance of eternal fire Jude 7. And we do not know of what use to the invisible world of Gods Creation the execution of Divine Justice upon incorrigible offenders is now or will be hereafter amongst them We see what is befallen the Apostate Angels in the invisible world is made use of for admonition to those of this visible 2 Pet. 2.4 Jude 6. And it 's evident that the wise method of Gods proceeding in the matter of our Redemption was designed as of good use to the invisible world it was to the intent that now unto principalities and powers in heavenly places might be known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God Eph. 3.10 And it is not incredible but that on the other hand the punishment of obstinate transgressors in another world for what they have done in this may be of good use among them of the invisible world 4. This punishing of sinners in another world for impenitency in sin in this is when it is made known as it is now of great use to bring men to repentance when hope is given them as there is that they shall escape the like punishment upon their repentance and not otherwise These and such like being the reason and ends of Gods inflicting punishment upon sinners themselves that are impenitent I am now to shew that these ends are as well yea in some respect much better provided for and secured by the sufferings of our Saviour for us though we that are saved by his sufferings do not suffer than they would have been in case every sinner without redemption had born his own iniquity and suffered for himself the desert of his sin For in that first God would not spare his own Son when he espoused the cause of sinful men not to justifie or defend them in it but to suffer for them rather than they should have no terms granted them of escaping suffering themselves what they had deserved I say when in this case God would not spare his own dear Son notwithstanding the dignity and
in his word To say God did give such men power in Adam will not salve the business For we cannot say that any such power was given to Adam himself before his fall much less that all his Posterity had such a power in him We cannot say that Adam had power to do more than what was necessary to continue him in that state in which God created him and consequently we cannot say that God gave him power to repent when he had no occasion for it or power to believe the Gospel when there was no Revelation of it nor occasion for such a Revelation No this power depends upon an after-work of Grace through our Blessed Redeemer Nor is this doctrine touching the power which God hath given unto men of acting towards their own believing at all contrary to that where men are said to have believed through grace Acts 18.27 or to that where Faith is said to be the gift of God For it is through the preventive and antecedent Grace of God as I have said that they are enabled to act towards their believing For though what they do towards their own believing is by a free use of their natural faculties yet it is by means of the preventive and antecedent Grace of God to wit the Gospel that those faculties act any thing towards their believing the Gospel For without such an object of Faith as the Gospel is mens faculties could act nothing towards the believing of it And then further though men do exercise their natural faculties upon the objective Grace of God and thereby act somthing towards their own believing Yet in that hereupon more power is given them to believe hâ—â—â—lie effectually and fully to Righteousness and Salvation this power is from the subsequent Grace of God So that the whole business of believing from the beginning to the end of it is of Grace first of Grace antecedent and then of Grace subsequent There is only so much of man in raising Faith in him as belongs to the free use of his natural powers and faculties The Grace of God in working Faith does not put new faculties into man nor destroy that freedom which is proper to the will as such It only rectifies and regulates the motions and operations of the will in reference to its objects So that the change is not natural but moral And this moral change in rectifying and regulating the acts and motions of the will is made partly by opening the understanding and enlightening the mind better to discern the nature of things and whereto they tend And this is done partly by holding the thoughts more frequenâ—â—y and more intently upon things that concern the soul and another life and partly by assisting and strengthening the understanding in making a right judgment of things And then the will is prevailed upon to chuse the right end and the way to it by having the great motives of the Gospel kept upon it by a more frequent and constant consideration For by that more frequent consideration and by the illumination of the mind about the great motives of the Gospel the power and force of those motives is better felt by the Will So that as a man comes to have other apprehensions of things by illumination of the mind so he comes to have other affections for them in the acts and motions of his will This change thus made in the mnid and will is called the renewing of the Holy Ghost because it is his work upon and by both Tit. 3.5 and a being renewed in the spirit of the mind Eph. 4.23 It is a restoring the natural faculties that were depraved in their operations to their right use and exercise for which they were made which was to act for the honor of their maker and for their own happiness and not contrarywise as they do when perverted by the power of sin This renovation in the natural faculties therefore tends to the perfecting of our nature For which cause perhaps men thus renewed are in Scripture stiled perfect in the favourable sense of Grace This one thing is further to be noted That whatever is done upon the natural faculties of mind and will by the Gospel or by the Spirit of God to change and renew them is also done by those faculties Men are not made to understand or believe the Gospel which they did not before otherwise than by exercising their mind and will about it By all this then it appears I hope that what is ascribed unto man in acting towards his own believing is no ways contrary to Grace unless you will say an effect cannot be of Grace if the natural faculties have any thing to do in the producing of it as they must if it be mans act I might shew how that the Gospel by the giving of which God hath been aforehand with us and prevented all endeavours of ours is of it self and in the very nature of it so apt to work upon the human faculties and to incline men to embrace it if they would but a little attend to it and consider it which one would think they might easily do if they would before their natures are debauched by a custom of sinning I say it is so apt to gain upon them that it hardly fails to do so more or less but where it meets with such as wilfully call off their natural faculties from attending to it and the things it treats of and that imploy them about objects of another nature as those did who in the Parable of our Saviour are said to be invited to the Supper which a King made for his Son when they made their several excuses This is well represented by our Saviour when he says of such that they closed their eyes lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears and should understand with their hearts and should be converted and I should heal them Mat. 13.15 These are words which seem to signifie more than a bare omission or neglect and denote a kind of opposition a striving with themselves not to think upon or to be affected with things of that nature as those of a spiritual concern are And such people do not only not incline their ears to hear nor give ear to hear as the Scripture speaks but they turn away their ear from hearing they reject the word of the Lord and the counsel of God against themselves We do not therefore attribute any such great matter unto men when we say that they by the advantage of the Gospel may do so much towards their own believing if they will as would through the help of Gods Holy Spirit who is always ready to assist mens honest and good endeavours issue and end in an effectual believing Nay there is so much of the Grace of God vouchsafed towards the calling of men by the very sending of the Gospel to them as will in all probability prevail upon them if they do not much oppose resist and
I might further shew how that our title to the heavenly inheritance ariseth out of our adoption to it as joint-heirs with Christ and from Gods free and bounteous donation as eternal Life is the gift of God through Jesus Christ our Lord and from our performance of the condition on which it is promised Blessed are they that do his Commandments that they may have right to the Tree of Life From all which Remission of sin differs and is another thing 5. Our right and title to Remission of sin it self depends upon the same terms as our right to glory does and yet that depends upon our Justification For God first Justifies whom he after glorifies Rom. 8.30 And if our right to Remission of sin depends upon the same terms as right to glory does then Remission of sin can be no more the same thing with Justification than glorification is but depends upon it as an effect upon a cause without which none can receive it Our right to Remission of sin depends upon our believing as the condition on which God hath promised it as well as our right to glory does To him give all the Prophets witness that through his name whosoever believes in him shall receive Remission of sins Acts 10.43 And this right to Remission of sins depends as much also upon Gods adjudging us to have performed the condition on which he hath promised Pardon as our right to glory does For God does no more actually Pardon any then he glorifies them until he first adjudgeth them to have performed the condition on which he promised Pardon which dijudication of his is his Justifying of them And therefore Remission of sin does as really differ from Justification as Glorification does and is as certainly subsequent to it as Glorification is and therefore cannot be the same thing properly and strictly considered 6. God does not forgive all a mans sins at once nor before they are committed and repented of but multiplies Pardons as his servants multiply sins of infirmity and their repentances and petitions for Pardon And if so and if God do not multiply as many Justifications as he does Pardons to the same person then here is another difference between Justification and Remission of sin 7. Justification is Gods imputing Righteousness to us or our Faith for Righteousness But Pardon of sin is his non-imputation of sin to us God by not imputing sin to us does not reckon us not to have sinned nor not to have deserved eternal destruction but he then does not impute sin when he does not inflict the punishment deserved by and due for sin But when he imputes Righteousness or Faith for Righteousness to us he adjudgeth us to have answered the terms of his new Law of Grace by believing by which Law that Faith becomes our Righteousness Now there is a great difference between Gods adjudging us to have answered the terms of his new Law and his not inflicting the deserved penalty of the Old between his awarding us a recompence of our sincere conformity to the one and his not exacting of us what we had deserved to suffer for transgressing the other And yet so much difference there is between Justification and Remission of sin As for those who place Justification in Gods pardoning of sin they may please to consider that the benefit of Remission of sin does not signifie the less by being called only by its proper name Pardon or Forgiveness and not Justification if by Justification be meant only Remission of sin as they hold it is who limit Justification only to that And if Remission of sin signifie no more when we call it Justification then it does when we call it Pardon or Forgiveness I see little reason why two or three or some small number of Texts of Scripture which speak of Justification fomwhat obscurely should be so much strained as they are to make them seem to mean only Remission of sin when they may be fairly understood in another sense and that too perhaps with more congruity to the signification of the word Justification and to the nature of the thing and to the Scriptures themselves elsewhere Nor can I discern what would be gained by it if it should be granted that Remission of sin were Justification and Justification Remission of sin For yet then the same thing the same benefit would signifie no more when we call it Justification than it does when we call it only Remission of sins as we all agree the Scriptures doe Nor does the placing of Justification in Gods Judicial act in approving and adjudging men to be Righteous in a Gospel sense who have performed the condition on which Pardon of sin and eternal Life are promised make the priviledg of having our sins forgiven the less beneficial to us or the less of Grace from God and our Lord Jesus Christ For Gods approving us to be Righteous in a Gospel sence does not suppose or imply that we stand in no need of Pardon nor of that mercy of God and merit of Christ from which Pardon flows it only supposeth us to be Righteous with such a Righteousness of Faith on condition of which the promise of Pardon of all our sins is made through the blood of Christ But Gods Justifying of us or his approving of us to be Righteous in such a sence does not make our sins to become no sins nor is it I conceive Gods Pardoning act but yet it is that which doth judicially qualifie us for Pardon and which as it were opens the door and lets us into the possession of it For Pardon is the next and immediate act that in order follows Gods adjudging us to have performed the condition on which he promised us Pardon Having said this much of the difference between judicial Justification and Remission of sin it seems requisite to make some enquiry into the sense and meaning of those Scriptures on which some ground an assertion limiting Justification to Remission of sin only And those Scriptures which above all others seem most to countenance such an assertion and which are most relyed on by those of that persuasion are Acts 13.39 Rom. 5.16 and 4.6 7. To an enquiry into the meaning of which I will only premise this That if we should find cause to think that it may be proved from these or any other Scriptures That we are pardoned by being Justified yet we can have no good reason thence to conclude that we are Justified only by being Pardoned no nor yet in the properest sense neither when we consider how express the Scriptures are elsewhere for a judicial Justification to wit Gods Justifying us by Faith and by accounting or adjudging Faith to us for Righteousness or for a performance of the terms of the Gospel our conformity whereto is as truly our Evangelical Righteousness as our conformity to the terms of the Law would have been a legal Righteousness if it had been found in us To begin now with Acts 13.39
alledged by St. Paul by way of confirmation of his aforesaid doctrine and to prove out of one of the sacred Books owned by his adversaries that their worthy Ancestors such as David whom they could not deny to be Justified men acknowledged themselves sinners such as stood in need of Pardon and such as counted it their great happiness to be Pardoned and that therefore they could not be looked upon as receiving the reward of Debt but of Grace For when he says even as David also describeth the blessedness of the man to whom God imputeth Righteousness without Works saying blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven c. it thereby appears that he looked upon those words of David to be fully agreeable to his own doctrine asserted in Verse 5. in opposition to his adversaries conceit and opinion touching the rewards being reckoned of Debt and not of Grace And indeed how could St. Paul think better to convince them of their error and to shame them out of their conceit of meriting the reward by observing the Law of Moses then by shewing them that their famous Ancestors who observed the Law of Moses as well as any were yet so far from claiming the reward of their obedience as a Debt by way of Merit that they acknowledged themselves sinners and therefore undeserving and counted it their great felicity to be Pardoned through the great mercy and favour of God We will yet consider this matter a little more particularly and distinctly The thing St. Paul asserts against his misbelieving adversaries is as I have said that the reward is of Grace and not of Debt which he makes out two ways 1. From the nature of that Righteousness which is rewarded 2. From the nature of that reward it self First from the nature of the Righteousness that is rewarded and this is described by the condition or quality of the person in whom this Righteousness is found he that worketh not that is though it be one that hath not observed the Law of Moses in being Circumcised and the like And that he means such an one by him that worketh not and yet may be Righteous appears by the instance he gives in Abrahams case who was Righteous with the Righteousness of Faith before ever he was Circumcised Verse 9 10. 2. It is described by the nature and property of that Faith which is the Christians Righteousness it is a believing in him that Justifieth the ungodly upon his repentance and belief in the Lord Jesus Which very belief contains in the nature of it a firm persuasion that Gods Justifying of such a person must needs be of Grace and not of Debt 3. It is described by that act of God by which such a Faith becomes a mans Righteousness and that is by way of imputation or account his Faith is counted to him for Righteousness which argues it to be of Grace and Favour because he to whom it is so imputed is otherwise a sinner ungodly and upon that account cannot merit it Now then if the Righteousness it self which is rewarded be of Grace then the reward of that Righteousness must needs be of Grace This we see is one way by which St. Paul makes out the reward to be of Grace and not of Debt Secondly the other way is from the nature of the reward of that Righteousness And this I call another way of proving the reward to be of Grace and not of Debt For when St. Paul saith Verse 6. even as David also describeth c. that word also seems to signifie an addition of proof of his assertion by another medium And this medium is taken from the nature of the reward of that Righteousness which God imputes to men in Justifying them as his former was from the nature of the Righteousness it self And the Apostles argument or proof is to this effect The reward of that Righteousness by which God Justifies men must needs be of Grace and not of Debt because in great part it consists in Remission of sins and Remission of sin is an act of Grace in the natural notion of it and in the common sense of mankind And that St. Pauls design in alledging this saying of David was not to shew that Remission of sin is the Righteousness by which men are Justified but the reward of it appears by the very tenor and purport of his words For he doth not say that David describeth the Righteousness or Justification of the man to whom God imputeth Righteousness as we have cause to think he would have done if he had known or thought that Remission of sin had been mens Righteousness or Justification but he says he describes the blessedness of that man to whom God imputeth Righteousness Now what doth blessedness in Scripture import when applied to men but some happiness vouchsafed them as an effect of Gods Grace yet so as by way of reward also of the performance of their duty Thus Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord. Blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it Blessed are they that do his Commandments that they may have right to the Tree of Life and the like So here the blessedness of that man to whom God imputeth Faith for Righteousness seems to signifie the happiness that does accrue to such a man as a reward of that Faith which is imputed for Righteousness or of that Righteousness which is imputed and the happiness here specified which does accrue to such a man is the having his sins Pardoned Now to understand St. Paul here in this sense does fully agree with his scope and design in hand which was to prove the reward to be of Grace and not of Debt After he had opposed the Righteousness of Faith to the Pharisaical Jews Righteousness by works of the Law then he shews the reward of this Righteousness to be of Grace and not of Debt because it stands in Remission of sin And whereas he does not use the word reward here but the word blessedness which yet signifies the same thing it was probably but to accommodate his speech to Davids dialect whose words he recites And as the sense I have insisted on corresponds fully with the Apostles scope and design here So it does also with the tenor of the Covenant of Grace and the Scriptures elsewhere which promise Pardon of sin on condition of that Faith which is imputed for Righteousness as a reward of it and motive to it And if this sense now represented be the sense of St. Paul in these Verses or much what the same and you see what reason there is to think it is then his intent here was not to shew that we are Justified by being Pardoned he does not say it is Pardon of sin which is imputed for Righteousness but Faith Nor does he say that David describes the Righteousness of the Justified man in saying Blessed are they whose iniquities are Forgiven but the blessedness of that man or the reward of his