Doctrine would be that we are not delivered from the guilt and punishment of our sins by the Death of Christ which the Scripture every where asserts but by the translation of our sins on him When our sins are transferred on Christ we are ipso facto innocent and his Death cannot deliver us who are freed already but must be only to deliver himself from this assumed guilt we are freed by the transferring of our guilt on Christ and Christ is freed by undergoing the punishment of sin As if any man should be so kind as to take my Debt absolutely upon himself if the Creditor accept of this exchange I am finally discharged and am not liable to any farther Arrest or Action at Law and whenever he pays the Debt he does not free me but himself from the Obligation So that now his Argument from Proportion falls to the ground That if our sins were imputed to Christ otherwise than meerly in the Effects of them so must likewise the Righteousness of his Life and the Sacrifice of his Death be otherwise imputed to us than meerly in the Benefits of them For as Christ was not accounted a Sinner by the imputation of our sins to him so neither shall we be accounted formally righteous by the imputation of his Personal Righteousness to us His next Argument is That seeluding not only the Righteousness of Christs Life but the Satisfaction of his Death as the matter and the imputation of it as the formal cause of Iustification it seems repugnant to the Immutability and Essential Holiness of God to justifie us upon an imperfect Obedience the Law which requireth a perfect remaining still in force and denouncing wrath in case of every failure The sum of which Argument is this That it is unjust for God to forgive us our sins though Christ hath died to make Atonement for them unless we be made formally righteous by the imputation of his Righteousness to us which in plain terms overthrows the Gospel of Christ and makes the Sacrifice of his Death of no value for if Christ have expiated our sins by his Death why may not God accept and reward our imperfect Services without being unjust in doing so But that Law which requireth perfect Obedience remains still in force and denounceth wrath against every failure But is there any Law which forbids God to pardon sin though his own Son make atonement for it by his Death Where is this Law And where is the Sanction of it And who gave it this Sanction Will nothing satisfie the Law but perfect and unsinning Obedience Then there can be no Gospel then God never can forgive sin and it is a vain thing to talk of it We may be Righteous by an imputed Righteousness were it possible for God to judge otherwise of things than they are but our sins can never be forgiven which is a direct contradiction to the whole Gospel A Law in force which will not admit of Pardon and Forgiveness upon any terms is inconsistent with Gospel-Grace and therefore had not Mr. Ferguson told us that the Socinians assert the abrogation of the Sanction of the Law upon the confirmation of the Gospel-Covenant I should have been inclined to have thought so too for I cannot understand how it is possible to reconcile a Law which requires unsinning Obedience under the pain of Damnation with the Gospel which promises Pardon of sin and eternal Life upon the condition of sincere Obedience which are at as great a distance as a necessity of Pardon and a necessity of Innocency And now I think of it there is no danger of Socinianism if we do but attribute such an abrogation of the Law if it may be so called as well as the Sanction of the Gospel to the Merits of Christs Death and Sufferings and therefore I boldly assert That there is no such Law now in force as requires unsinning Obedience under the penalty of Damnation Not that Christ hath in a proper sense abrogated the Law by his Death if by the Law we mean those Eternal Rules of Righteousness which necessarily result from the nature of things and their mutual relations and respects that is that he has not made that to be no sin which according to the Eternal Rules of Righteousness was a sin as Mr. Ferguson childishly argues That then it would follow that by being Believers we wholly cease to be Sinners and that the Gospel instead of only making provision for the remission of sins against the Law hath prevented the breaches of it from being so But the only abrogation of the Law is That we shall not be judged or condemned according to the Rules of a perfect and unsinning Obedience that Christ having made Atonement and Expiation for our sins God will now for the sake of Christ pardon the sins of true Penitents and reward their sincere though imperfect Obedience This is the Gospel-Covenant which was purchased and sealed with the blood of Christ which does not make that to be no sin which before was a sin but only absolves us from the condemnation due to sin and entitles us to those Rewards which an imperfect Obedience cannot merit Perfect Obedience is the Attainment at which we must aim but not the Rule by which we shall be judged There is no other Law now in force to Christians but the Gospel of our Saviour which is the Christian Law and is the Perfection and Advancement both of the Law of Nature and the Law of Moses and this Law requires a perfect but accepts and rewards a sincere Obedience it does not come short of any Law in the perfection of its Rules and it excells all other Laws as it is a Dispensation of Grace For though the Gospel requires both a perfect and sincere Obedience yet it requires them under very different Sanctions at least if Promises may be called the Sanction of a Law The Sanction of Sincerity is the Promise of Eternal Life nothing less than this will deliver us from the wrath of God or procure our admission into Heaven by this Rule we shall be judged as to our final state of Happiness or Misery But the Sanction of Perfection consists in the greater degrees of Glory He who is sincere though imperfect shall be saved according to the terms of the Gospel but our Reward shall be proportion'd to our different Attainments and the greatest Glory is reserved for the most perfect Saint And now I hope Mr. Ferguson will be satisfied that it is not repugnant to the Immutability and Essential Holiness of God to accept and reward a sincere though imperfect Obedience since he does not absolve his Creatures from any essential part of their Duty but is so merciful as for the sake of Christ to pardon and accept sincere Penitents and so holy as to encourage the most perfect Vertue with the promise of proportionable Rewards As for what Mr. Ferguson adds concerning Christs Surrogation in our room and stead
Christ and therefore tell us that St. Paul who had an excellent faculty this way observes what doth most effectually take with people to beguile their Spirits and with a kind of Craft to catch their Affections and that accordingly he meets with every thing that is most enamouring and taking with people Thus far Dr. Crispe and Dr. Owen very well agree in placing the great Mystery of Religion in winning and wooing People unto Christ though St. Paul tells us that the Ministers of the Gospel are Embassadors of Christ beseeching the People in Christs stead to be reconciled unto God So that Christ and his Embassadors woo for God but Antinomians woo altogether for Christ to win people to the Person of Christ. Let us then consider what course they take thus to woo and win people unto Christ Now if by this wooing people to Christ they understood no more than to persuade men to embrace the Faith and Religion of Christ the proper way to effect it were to prove the Truth and Certainty of the Revelation made by Christ to represent the Excellency of his Religion how easie and advantageous his Commands are how perfective of our Nature and how necessary to dispose and qualifie us for future Happiness to set before them those Rewards which Christ hath promised to those who obey him and those severe threatnings which he hath denounced against the Workers of Iniquity and to confirm them in the belief and expectation of all this by the consideration of the Incarnation Death and Sufferings of the Son of God who died to expiate our Sins and to purchase Pardon and Eternal life for all true Penitents and rose again from the dead and ascended into Heaven to intercede for us to dispence the influences of his Grace to raise us to a new and spiritual life here and at the last Day to raise our dead bodies out of the dust and to reward us with Immortality and Glory And then we may argue from the love of our Crucified Saviour to perswade men to live to him who died for them These and such like Arguments are very powerful to perswade men to be Christians but this is not the way of wooing for Christ You must with a holy guile catch peoples affections and make them fall in love with the Person of Christ and therefore you must describe his Personal Graces and Excellencies and consider what is most enamouring and taking with the People Thus for instance The World is mightily taken with Beauty with compleatness of Person Oh saith one let me have a beautiful person it is no matter how poor Well then Christ is a rare piece for such is the beauty of Christ that there is no beauty like his He is the Image of the invisible God the brightness of his Glory and the express Image of his Person And Mr. Watson could have furnished him with a great many other irrefragable proofs of Christ's beauty and loveliness though I think the Doctor had too much wit to have made use of them But besides Beauty some persons look for Linage what a Stock a person is of Well if this will take then there is no Stock like this of Christ he is of the greatest House in the world The First-begotten of all Creatures He comes of that great House of God himself He is not a Younger Brother in this House neither for he is the First-begotten of the House that is a great matter among persons to marry the Heir of the Family nay he is the Only-begotten of the House there is never another in all the Family and that is a great encouragement so that if men go all the World over to find a Match in the Noblest House they will never meet with such a one as this of the Son of God which exactly agrees with Mr. Vincent's reasoning to perswade young Women to chuse Christ for their Husband Well but if he be poor after all I shall live but poorly with him But Christ is rich in Treasure too it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell He hath the whole World to dispose of and therefore Gold and Silver are not to be compared to him which Notion Mr. Brooks hath excellently improved in his Riches of Christ. Thus to conclude You have a Proverb That Batchelours Wives and Maids Children must be rare Creatures that is their fancy will devise what kind of one they will have and what kinds of perfections they desire Let the fancy devise what kind of perfections it can to please sense Christ shall really out-strip in perfection all these fancies more than a Substance doth out-strip a shadow This is the great Mystery of Antinomianism which some of our Modern Divines call the Mystery of the Gospel and the only spiritual Preaching of Christ to attribute every thing immediately to the Person of Christ which is spoke of him either with respect to his Gospel and Revelations or his Propitiation and Sacrifice or his Mediation and Intercession for us as to give some few instances of it Thus it is a great Gospel truth That Christ is the way to the Father that he is the way the truth and the life both as he instructs us in the way to life and happiness how we may please God and save our Souls and as he is our Mediator and High Priest by whom we have access to God But then this requires that we study his will and live in obedience to his Laws that we may have an interest in his Mediation and may with a humble confidence put up our Prayers to God in his name Whereas the Antinomians agreeably enough with the Divinity of this last Age make Christ such a way as excludes every thing else even his Laws and Religion Evangelical Righteousness and Holiness from being the way Christ himself and nothing but Christ though in a subservency and subordination to him can be the way Thus Dr. Crisp tells us That Christ is the only way to free sinners from the guilt of sin which is true in a sober sense that Christ only makes attonement for our sins but in the Doctors Divinity Christ is so the only way that nothing else but Christ is required to this neither Repentance nor Evangelical Righteousness The Gospel holds forth the Lord Christ as freely tendring himself to people considering people only as ungodly persons receiving him that is taking him for their own to be justified and saved by him you have no sooner received him but you are instantly justified by him and in this Iustification you are discharged from all the faults that can be laid to your charge And his Argument to prove this is the same with Mr. Ferguson's He was made sin for us here you see plainly our sins are so translated to Christ that God doth reckon Christ the very Sinner nay God doth reckon all our sins to be his sins and makes him to be sin for us And what is
in the room and stead of those men and does and suffers what ever was required of them acting for them as a common person that God imputes all their Sins to Christ and imputes his Righteousness to them and reckons it as much theirs as if it had been personally performed by them Gods appointing of Christ to this work and his accepting of it puts him into the room and stead of the Elect and whatever is done by him as their Surety and Mediator is reckoned as done by them If this could be proved it were somewhat to the purpose but if no such thing appear as Christ's acting in the name and stead of any particular men this utterly subverts their notion of Suretiship For a Surety or Proxy or Surrogate or what ever you will call him who acts in the name and stead of others so that what he does is reckoned as done by those for whom he acts must do what he does in the name and as representing the persons of some certain particular men For to act in the name and stead of another in this sense and yet not to represent any certain person is a contradiction I do not deny but that Christ may properly be said to die in our stead loco nostro vice nostrâ in as much as his Death was a proper Expiatory Sacrifice for Sin or as Grotius explains that Phrase Vice nostra Christum esse mortuum hoc est nisi Christus esset mortuus nos fuisse morituros quia Christus mortuus est nos non morituros morte aeterna That Christ is said to die in our stead because unless Christ had died me must have died and since Christ hath died we shall not die an Eternal death De satisf Cap. 9. But then Christ did not so die in our stead much less fulfil Righteousness in our stead as to personate us as our Substitute Attorney or Proxy and the difference between these two is vastly wide for in the first Case Christ only so dies in our stead that in virtue of his Expiation and Sacrifice he procures confirms and ratifies a Universal Covenant of Grace with mankind upon certain terms and conditions to be performed by us hence his bloud is called the bloud of the Covenant and he the Surety of the Covenant But for Christ to act in our stead so as to represent and personate us gives us an immediate actual right to the purchase of Christ's Death and to the merit of his Righteousness for what is thus done in our stead is in Law and Justice reckoned as done by us and therefore can admit of no intervening condition to intitle us to it In the first sense Christ may die for all mankind and be a propitiation for the sins of the whole World and the Sacrifice and Expiation of his Death be very well reconciled with a conditional Covenant But in the second sense he can be said to die for none but those particular men whose persons he represented as their Surety and Proxy and who have an immediate right to what ever he has done and suffered for no other reason but because he acted in their name and stead Which resolves the whole Covenant of Grace between God and man into the Covenant of Redemption as they call it between God and Christ. Mr. Ferguson has a great mind to say something against this notion of Christ's being the Surety and Mediator of the Covenant and not such a Surety and Mediator for particular persons as acts in their name and stead and does for them what ever was required of them by any Law He first excepts against my Notion of a Surety of a Covenant that it signifies no more than to confirm and ratifie this Covenant and to undertake for the performance of it that all the Promises of the Covenant shall be made good upon such terms and conditions as are annexed to them And first he would fain insinuate the charge of Socinianism against it though he confesses that both Grotius and Dr. Hammond go this way but yet my Paraphrase hath more affinity to Schlichtingius's Gloss than to either of theirs which is said with the usual ingenuity of our Authour without any pretence or shew of reason For there is nothing in my Paraphrase like Schlichtingius's which I had never seen As he has set it down in the Margin Schlichtingius's Comment is this Sponsor foederis appellatur Iesus quod nomine Dei nobis sposponderit i. e. fidem fecerit Deum foederis promissiones servaturum esse non verò quasi pro nobis sposponderit Deo nostrorumve delictorum solutionem in se receperit That Iesus is therefore called the Surety of the Covenant because he hath promised us in Gods name that God shall keep and perform the Promises of the Covenant not that he undertook for us to God by taking upon himself the discharge of our debts or sins That is by making Atonement and satisfaction for sin Which is so far from being my sense that it is directly contrary to it For when I say that Christ's being the Surety of the Covenant signifies his confirming and ratifying the Covenant and undertaking for the performance of it under those Phrases of consirming and ratifying I include whatever Christ did in order to the full and complete ratification of the Covenant and had a principal regard to that Expiation and Atonement which he made for sin which was the procuring cause of the Covenant of Grace and the Seal and ratification of it For thus Covenants were confirmed by Sacrifices in the Eastern Countries Thus Moses confirmed the Covenant between God and the people of Israel by sprinkling the book and all the people with the bloud of the Sacrifice saying this is the bloud of the Testament which God hath ordained to you Heb 9. 19 20 21. Upon which account the bloud of Christ is called the bloud of sprinkling too because by his bloud God did seal and confirm the Covenant of Grace as the sprinkling the bloud of beasts did confirm the Mosaical Covenant as I expresly observed in my former Discourse from whence Mr. Ferguson might have learned what I meant by confirming and ratifying the Covenant Now this alone answers all Mr. Ferguson's Objections against my Notion of a Surety of a Covenant He tells us that the Surety of a better Testament and Mediator of a better Covenant are equipollent terms though he produces no other reason for it but that Christ is called a Surety in one place and Mediator in another whereas the notions seem to be somewhat different and that his being stiled a Surety hath respect not to his Prophetical but Sacerdotal Office and what follows from hence Why therefore Christ's being our Surety does not signifie his confirming and ratifying the Covenant which had been an unanswerable objection had I attributed the confirmation of the Covenant to Christ only as Prophet and not as Priest but now proves nothing but our Authors
patientem It becomes no man to be tame and gentle when he is charged with Heresie and therefore I did not think fit wholly to pass over this charge in silence nor yet shall I insist long on it since there is no other foundation for it but unchristian spight and malice I suppose it will signifie no great matter to vindicate my self nor those who suffer with me under the same Imputation by a publick abrenunciation of Socinianism for if this would do it our Subscription to the Articles of our Church our constant use of the Liturgy especially the Litany and Gloria Patri the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds the old and allowed Tests of Orthodox Christians which no Socinian will allow and is the true cause why they renounce our Communion would be a sufficient justification both of my self and them But they who have made such a familiar practice of it to dispense with the most Sacred Oaths and Promises are apt to suspect all men to be as faithless as they have proved themselves But however because the clamours of these men have abused some innocent persons and betrayed them to very unjust apprehensions of my self and many others I do heartily declare that I am no Socinian and that I do not know any Divine of the Church of England who can reasonably be suspected of that Heresie though it is notoriously evident that those Sectaries who are so ready to charge us with Socinianism have derived the greatest strength of their cause from Socinian Writers especially in the case of Anabaptism Liberty of Conscience and unlimited Toleration and rejecting the Authority of Civil Magistrates in the External Conduct of Religious Affairs as they have borrowed their other Principles of Rebellion and deposing Princes from the worst of Papists The reason why Socinus has so ill a Character in the Christian Church is his denial of the Eternal Godhead and satisfaction of our Saviour but both these I own and make them the foundation of my Religion I expresly call him the Eternal Son of God that Eternal Son of God by whom the worlds were made I acknowledge that Christ died as a Sacrifice and Expiation for sin that by his Death he made Atonement for sin That he purchased and procured and scaled the Covenant of Grace in his own bloud That Christ by his Death expiated our sins and confirmed an Everlasting Covenant and being ascended up into Heaven he there appears in the presence of God for us and perpetually intercedes in the vertue of his bloud once offered which is of infinite more value than the repeated Sacrifices of the Law At this rate I discoursed not once or twice but as often as occasion served and if this be Socinianism I acknowledge my self to be a Socinian and if it be not let others judge what my Adversaries are But let us consider what pretences they have for charging me with Socinianism And first Dr. Owen affirms that I maintain the Socinian Notion of Iustification And now I am very well contented to be a Socinian for I have very good company in it even the Church of England her self as I have made appear above For my notion of Justification is no other than what the Church of England does own and assert But what is this Socinian Notion of Justification That we are justified by believing and obeying the Gospel of Christ. This indeed the Socinians do assert and so do I and yet there is a vast difference between us because they reject the satisfaction of Christ as the meritorious cause of our Justification which I own Upon the same account Ravenspergerus such another zealous Bigot as my Adversaries charged Grotius with Socinianism even when he writ against Socinus at a better rate than these men are acquainted with because he attributed our Justification and pardon of sin to Faith in Christ and repentance from dead works as Socinus does and the answer which Vossius gives to him may serve my Adversaries Socinus â—t ipse censor agnoscit nullo alio medio interveniente hanc fidel attribuit securitatem id est liberationem a poena Grotius vero aliud statuit medium intervenire nempe perpessiones Christi habentes rationem poenae propter quas Deus nos à poenis velit liberare Grotio igitur prius est medium satisfactionis quam fidei at Socino solum medium est fides non satisfactio i. e. Socinus attributes our security from the wrath of God or our deliverance from punishment only to Faith without any other medium i. e. Without the intervention of the Death and Sacrifice of Christ But Grotius asserts another medium of our Pardon and Iustification viz. the sufferings of Christ under the notion of punishments for which God was pleased to deliver us from punishment And therefore Grotius first attributes our Iustification to the satisfaction of Christ as the meritorious cause of it and then to Faith as the Condition But Socinus acknowledges Faith but rejects Satisfaction And therefore Dr. Owen himself when he formerly charged Mr. Baxter with Socinianism upon the very same score and drew a parallel between that account which Mr. Baxter gave of justification and what is given by Slitchtingius and some other Socinians was so modest then as to confess that he was a Socinian in this point as far as any one could be who acknowledges satisfaction which is as much as to say that he was no Socinian Thus to proceed they almost every where charge me with transcribing my interpretations of Scripture out of the Socinian Expositors and therefore I must be a Socinian Now suppose this were true that I did make use of those Expositions which the Socinians give of many places of Scripture what hurt is there in it if there be no Socinianism in them For I have heard men who understand very well what belongs to expounding Scripture acknowledge the Socinians to be excellent Expositors where their own peculiar Notions are not concerned though no men play more tricks with Scripture where they are I do very often make use of Mr. Calvin's Expositions and why do not they hence conclude me to be a Calvinist And indeed in most of those places where they charge me with transcribing out of the Socinians they might as justly have charged me with transcribing out of Calvin and had they known all with greater reason too For Calvin I did consult upon all occasions but the Socinians I never did I have already taken notice of and vindicated most of those Expositions which my Adversaries charge with Socinianism as I have occasionally met with them but Mr. Ferguson has put together some Texts which he thinks I have so expounded as to destroy their evidence for the Godhead of Christ. I would not says our Author be thought to impeach Mr. Sherlock of opposing the God-head of Christ but this I affirm that if his glosses of Col. 1. 19. Col. 2. 3 8. Joh. 14. 20. Joh. 1. 14. which are
but commends that divine power and vertue which appeared in him and accounts this the best answer to the Arrians objection from these words That Christ was God participatione tantum gratiâ only by participation and by Grace On Ioh. 17. 21. That they all may be one as thou Father art in me and I in thee that they also may be one in us Mr. Calvin observes Tenendum est quoties unum se cum patre esse in hoc capite pronunciat Christus sermonem non habere simplicitèr de divinà ejus essentiâ sed unum vocari in personâ mediatoris quatenùs caput nostrum est That is we must acknowledge and own that as often as Christ calls himself one with the Father in this Chapter it does not simply and primarily refer to the unity of the Divine Essence but he is one with the Father considered as Mediator and head of the Church That is as he acts in Gods name and authority and does his will And he adds That many of the Fathers expound these words of Christs being one with the Father as he was Eternal God but this they were forced to by their contention with the Arrians longè autem aliud Christi consilium fuit quà m ad nudam arcanae suae divinit at is speculationem nos evehere But Christ had a quite different design in these words than to raise them to a naked contemplation of his secret and unsearchable divinity And now if Mr. Ferguson will be a just and impartial Judge he must accost Mr. Calvin as he has done me I would not be thought to impeach Mr. Calvin of opposing the Godhead of Christ but this I affirm that if his glosses of Col. 1. 19. Col. 2. 3. and 2. 8. Joh. 14. 20. Joh. 1. 14. and add Joh. 17. 21. which are as much the same as Mr. Sherlock's with those the Socinians impose upon those places be admitted we have some of the main proofs of it wrested out of our hands But to proceed Dr. Owen hath given in his charge against me very fully and emphatically He that shall consider what reflexions are cast in this discourse on the necessity of satisfaction to be made unto divine Iustice and from whom they are borrowed the miserable weak attempt that is made therein to reduce all Christ's mediatory actings to his Kingly Office and in particular his Intercession the faint mention that is made of the satisfaction of Christ clogged with the addition of ignorance of the Philosophy of it as it is called well enough complying with them who grant that the Lord Christ did what God was satisfied withal with sundry other things of the like nature will not be to seek whence these things come nor whither they are going nor to whom our Author is beholden for most of his rare notions which it is an easie thing at any time to acquaint him withal The Doctors chief skill lies in scandalous insinuations but he is just like other men when he comes to reason As for that attempt to reduce all Christ's Mediatory actings to his Kingly Office I have given a sufficient account of that in answer to Mr. Ferguson and suppose I shall hear no more of it As for my faint mention of the satisfaction of Christ clogged with an ignorance of the Philosophy of it what he calls a faint mention I cannot tell but I did more than once expresly assert it and that very heartily but I must beg his pardon that I dare not pretend to understand the strict Philosophy of that Atonement made by Christ so long as I assert that every Christian may easily learn all that is useful and necessary for him to know We may all know whatever the Scripture has revealed about it that Christ died for our sins that he died for us that he is a propitiation for the sins of the whole world that we are reconciled to God by the death of his Son that his bloud is the bloud of the Covenant that he has redeemed his Church with his own bloud and hath purchased and ratified the New Testament with his bloud which gives us the greatest assurance of the pardon of our sins and the promises of eternal life upon the conditions of a lively active faith which is made perfect by works But then there are some enquiries concerning this matter of a nicer speculation as wherein the proper nature of atonement and expiation consists in what sense the death of Christ may be said to satisfie the justice of God whether Christ died as the Surety of particular Persons or as the Surety of the Covenant whether Christ suffered the Idem or the tantundem what is the immediate effect of Christs death whether to give an actual right to those for whom he died to pardon and life or to seal the Covenant of grace with mankind and to put all men into a possibility of salvation I presume the Doctor knows that these and a great many more such questions are hotly disputed among those very men who do not use to make a very faint mention neither of the satisfaction of Christ and methinks the Doctor should for once have commended the young mans modesty that he would not peremptorily determine these matters rather than blame me for professing my ignorance And as for what the Doctor adds that this favours of a compliance with them who grant that the Lord Christ did what God was satisfied withal If I mistake not this is the utmost of what he himself can bring it to whether right or wrong I shall not now determine for he expresly affirms that Christ could not merit of God with that kind of merit which ariseth from an absolute proportion of things and gives this wise reason for it because Christ in respect of his humane nature though united to the Deity is a Creature and so could not absolutely satisfie nor merit any thing at the hand of God This merit from an absolute proportion can be found only among Creatures and the advancement of Christs humanity takes it not out of that number neither in this sense can any satisfaction be made to God for sin And therefore he founds the merit and satisfaction of Christ upon Gods constitution and determination predestinating Christ unto that work and appointing the work by him to be accomplished to be satisfactory equalling by that constitution the end and the means Which at most signifies no more but this that what Christ did was not in its own nature satisfactory but was only what God was satisfied with upon account of his own constitution and determination And therefore all the merit the Doctor ascribes to Christ is the accomplishment of that condition which God required to make way that the Obligation which he had freely put upon himself might be in actual force Which he says is no more than what Mr. Baxter assigns to our own works By which we may learn what a lame and conditional merit
it seems this Righteousness is not so properly Christs Righteousness as ours he had no need to fulfil all Righteousness for himself but for us as our Mediator and Surety So that here can be no comparison between the Righteousness of Christ inherent in him and imputed to us because it is not so much his Righteousness as ours But was not Christ personally righteous with this Righteousness Did he so fulfil Righteousness for us that he himself had no interest in it Can it be inherent in him and he not righteous by it And if Christ in his private capacity as a man subject to the Law were righteous with that very Righteousness which makes us righteous then we are righteous as Christ is and not only righteous with his Righteousness which he wrought for us and that completely but righteous with the very same Righteousness that makes him righteous which excludes indeed all comparison as the Doctor well observes because we cannot so properly compare a thing with it self but it demonstrates the Identity or Sameness of this Righteousness And here unless I will prove my self an arrant Coward I must accept that Challenge the Doctor has sent me to stand to that Resolution I gave in my former Discourse to that Question What Influence the Sacrifice of Christs Death and the Righteousness of his Life have upon our Acceptance with God Which signifies no more than what is meant by our being saved by the Merits and Righteousness of Christ and the Answer I gave to it is this That all I can find in Scripture about it is that to this we ow the Covenant of Grace that God being well pleased with the Obedience of Christs Life and with the Sacrifice of his Death for his sake entred into a new Covenant with Mankind wherein he promises Pardon of Sin and Eternal Life to those who believe and obey the Gospel Now I would desire the Doctor to take notice that I stand to this and accept his Challenge let him chuse what seconds or thirds or fourths he pleases This Assertion the Doctor says cannot be reconciled to common Sense or the fundamental Principles of Christian Religion And indeed he has discovered a great many Absurdities in it which are enough to put any man out of conceit with such a Doctrin for hence it follows if we will believe him for we have only his bare word for it That God entred into a new Covenant originally only for the sake of those things whereby that Covenant was ratified and confirmed But how does this follow Did I ever affirm that the Death of Christ did only ratifie and confirm the Covenant Do I not every where assert that Christs Death did procure and purchase as well as seal the Covenant of Grace And I hope God may be said to enter into Covenant for the sake of a meritorious Cause What he means by Gods originally entring into Covenant I cannot tell unless it be that this was the first moving cause of Gods entring into Covenant but this can not be attributed to the Death of Christ upon any account but to that free Grace which first contrived the way of our Recovery and sent Christ into the world to accomplish it But however does it not follow from this Assertion That Christ was so the Mediator of the new Covenant that he died not for the Redemption of Transgressions under the first Covenant whereby the whole Consideration of his Satisfaction and of Redemption properly so called is excluded that there is no consideration to be had of his Purchase of the Inheritance of Grace and Glory with many other things of the same importance I see unless the Doctor get a very good Second there is no great danger in accepting his Challenge for is there any appearance of consequence in this that because Christ by his Death purchased and sealed the new Covenant that therefore he did not die for the Redemption of sins under the first Covenant nor to purchase the Inheritance of Grace and Glory That which purchases a Covenant purchases every thing contained in it Now the new Covenant contains the Promise of Forgiveness of sin and therefore whatever sins are pardoned in the new Covenant were expiated by the Death of Christ without which there is no Remission and consequently could be no Promise of Remission The new Covenant contains the Promises of Grace and Glory and therefore Grace and Glory are as much the purchase of Christs Death as the new Covenant is The plain account of the matter is this That Christ hath expiated our sins by his meritorious Death and Sufferings and hath purchased the Pardon of sin and eternal Life and whatever Christ hath purchased by his Death God hath promised to bestow on us in the new Covenant So that the whole virtue of Christs Death is contained in the Covenant of Grace i. e. whatever he has purchased for us by his Death is there promised and we must expect no other benefit by the Death of Christ than to be saved according to the conditions of the new Covenant which signifies the same thing with being justified and saved by the Merits of Christ and convinces us of the necessity of inherent Holiness which is the condition of the Gospel Covenant The last Absurdity the Doctor has discovered in my Assertion argues him to be a man of a very deep reach That the Gospel or the Doctrin of the Gospel is the new Covenant which is only a perspicuous Declaration of it Now suppose this were never so great an Absurdity how am I concerned in it when I expresly say that the new Covenant let it be what it will is owing to the Merits and Righteousness of Christ Though it is a mighty subtil Distinction between the new Covenant and the perspicuous Declaration of it which is like distinguishing between a Law or Contract and the Words whereby it is expressed How easie is it for such nice Metaphysical Wits to find or make Absurdities in any thing But to proceed I observe thirdly that whereas our Church attributes our Justification to such a Faith as comprehends in its notion Repentance and the Love of God and all internal Graces and Virtues and a sincere purpose and resolution to reform our Lives and external Conversation and makes all this absolutely necessary to our Justification these men on the contrary attribute our Justification to a particular Act of Faith which they call a fiducial Reliance or Recumbency on Christ for Salvation abstracted from Repentance or the Love of God or any othe Grace or Virtue And this I confess is very agreeable to their notion of Justification by the Imputation of Christs personal Righteousness to us for if we are made righteous only by being clothed with the perfect Righteousness of Christ nothing more can be required of us in order to our Justification but to apply the Righteousness of Christ to our selves which they tell us is done by coming to Christ for
Son Redeem none but those who are holy and reject and reprobate all others Doth this Election and Redemption suppose holiness in us Or is it without any regard to it For if we be Elected and Redeemed without any regard to our being holy our Election and Redemption is secure whether we be holy or not And so this cannot make Holiness necessary on our parts though it may be necessary on Gods part to make us holy but that is not our care This last Clause wherein the strength of the Argument lay the Doctor omits as not knowing what to answer but as for the rest cries out Wonderful Divinity again Methinks he should consider whose property it is so much to wonder But what is the reason of this wonder Why We are Elected and Redeemed with regard unto our own Holiness that is Antecedently to our Election and Redemption for Holiness being the Effect and Fruit of them is that which he opposes But pray Sir where do I oppose this Or what occasion had I to oppose it in this place My enquiry is only whether Election and Redemption include any necessary condition on our part without the performance of which we cannot lay claim to the benefits of them and whether Holiness be that Condition if they do not then our Election and Redemption can be no Argument on our part to live holily though it may be a sufficient reason for God to make us holy If they do then indeed Election and Redemption are a very necessary reason why we should live holily but such a reason as the Doctor dares not own Another reason which he assigned for the necessity of Holiness is That it is for our peace by it we have Communion with God wherein peace alone is to be enjoyed This is a very good Argument also in it self considered for if Holiness be the only way to enjoy peace and Communion with God there is an absolute necessity for every man who consults the peace of his Mind and the safety of his Soul to be holy as God is But this is not reconcilable with his darling Notion of Justification by the Righteousness of Christ only without any regard to our Holiness and Obedience for if we may be Justified without any respect to Holiness our Personal Righteousness cannot be necessary to our peace with God any more than it is to our Justification for all justified persons are in a state of peace and reconciliation with God And besides this I made it appear by two large quotations out of his Book of Communion that at other times he rejected our own Righteousness and Obedience and founded our Peace with God and Communion with him wholly and entirely on Christ and Justification by his Righteousness Here he expresses some indignation that I would offer to frame the appearance of a contradiction between what he saies on the one hand that there is no Peace with God to be obtained by and for sinners but by the Atonement that is made for them in the Bloud of Iesus Christ with the Remission of Sin and Iustification by Faith which ensue thereon and the necessity of Holiness and Fruitfulness in Obedience to maintain in our own Souls a sense of that peace with God which we have being justified by Faith Now though we should to bring him into a good humour again put the Controversie upon this Issue that our Peace with God is only to be obtained by the Atonement made by Christ and Justification by the imputation of his Righteousness but that the sense of this Peace with God is owing to Holiness and fruitfulness in Obedience yet I cannot see how to reconcile them For if nothing more be necessary to put us into a state of Peace and Friendship with God but the Atonement and Righteousness of Christ and we know that this alone and nothing else can do it How can our own Obedience and Righteousness which we know can contribute nothing to our Peace with God be necessary to give us a sense that is the knowledge of our Peace with God And therefore the Antinomians very agreeably to their own Principles which are the very same with the Doctor 's do reject our own Righteousness as well from being the Signs and Evidences as the Cause and Matter of our Peace with God And the Doctor and his Friends make Sanctification such a lame and imperfect Sign that we had as good have none as I have largely shewed in my former Discourse And though we should suppose Holiness to be a very good Sign and Evidence of our Peace with God yet this only makes Holiness necessary as a Sign not as our Duty It may be necessary on our part to our present Comfort not to our future Happiness And yet after all the Doctors swaggering I cannot understand that his words will bear this sense For in the first place he brings in a man enquiring after such a Righteousness as may be a sure foundation of hope and comfort and may settle and compose his mind with respect to a future judgment and shews the various ways men take in order to this That some labour to correct their Lives amend their ways perform the Duties required and so follow after Righteousness according to the Prescript of the Law And in this Course do many men continue long with much perplexity sometimes hoping oftner fearing sometimes ready to give quite over sometimes vowing to continue their Consciences being no ways satisfied nor Righteousness in any measure attained all their days So that here he rejects Holiness and Obedience correcting our Lives amending our Ways performing Duties from being able to give us a comfortable sense of our Peace with God this can by no means allay our Fears and satisfie our Consciences and I think no man who is a Christian who ever heard of Christs dying for our sins can understand this in any other sense than that our Holiness and Obedience is wholly useless not only to expiate our sins which every Christian knows to be the work of Christ and the Effect of his Death and Sufferings but to maintain any comfortable sense of the Pardon of our sins and the Love of God in our Souls I am sure he says the very same thing and assigns the very same reason for it which Dr. Crispe does and therefore there is some cause to think that they were of the same mind The Reasons Dr. Owen assigns why there is no hope no satisfaction of Conscience in correcting our Lives and performing Duties are first That men have already sinned and therefore there is a score and a reckoning upon them already which they know not how to answer for by their after Obedience That is their Righteousness though never so perfect cannot expiate past Offences Thus Dr. Crispe to the same purpose tells us The Christ is he that saves the Soul Christ is our Peace-maker that is by his Expiation and Atonement And as Christ is this
not argue any change in God but in the Object and when the Object is changed the immutability of his love is the reason why he loves no longer As for what the Doctor adds In the mean time such a love of God towards Believers as shall always effectually preserve them meet Objects of his love and approbation is not to be baffled by such trifling impertinencies Whether what I have discoursed be a trifling impertinency let others judge but when he makes it a necessary effect of an immutable love effectually to preserve such Persons meet Objects of love and approbation he grants all that I have contended for that the immutability of Gods love in it self considered is no argument that he will always love the same Persons unless they continue meet objects of his love for if the love of God be so immutable as always to love the same Person be he what he will then such a man is a meet Object of love while he continues the same Person whatever his qualities are and there is no more required to this than that God should uphold him in being But if besides his being such a particular Person on whom God hath fixt his love there be any other qualifications required to make him and preserve him a meet Object of love then the Doctor must acknowledge that Gods immutable love requires an Object which does not change one who persists and perseveres in the practice of an Universal Righteousness which is all I contend for the immutable love of God to good men under that notion as good For supposing any change in the Object God must either continue to love an unmeet Object or else cease to love And let him chuse which side he pleases if the first he attributes such an immutability to God as is inconsistent with wisdom and holiness and savours more of the stubbornness and impotency of humane Passions than of a Divine Love If the latter then he makes the Love of God as mutable and Subject to changes as I do And as for that love of God to Believers which always preserves them meet objects of his love the Doctor mightily mistakes me if he thinks I designed to oppose it I acknowledge the perseverance of Believers to be the effect of the Divine Grace as well as their believing at first but if he designs this for a description of Gods electing love which is the immutable cause both of faith and perseverance as it is plain he does I wonder why he calls it Gods love to believers for Election in the Doctors judgment considers no qualifications in Persons and what he calls Gods love is more properly Gods Decree to Love when the Person is a fit object for it And it is necessary to distinguish between an immutable Decree to make and preserve a fit object of love and the immutability of the Divine Love The first depends upon an immutable Counsel The second upon the persevering meetness and fitness of the object to be Beloved I have already given several other instances of this way of reasoning from an acquaintance with Christs Person from his being our Surety and Mediator our Head and Husband and the like and intended to have added many more but this is sufficient to satisfie any impartial Reader what I mean by an acquaintance with Christ's Person and how far the Doctor and his Friends may be charged with it and therefore at present I shall only briefly consider this way of reasoning and put a conclusion to this Argument Now I readily agree with Mr. Ferguson that in many cases it is not only justifiable but necessary to Reason from Revelation and I must needs say that the instances he gives of it are unanswerable but whether they may be called deductions and consequences from Revelation let others judge As the application of general Precepts Promises and Comminations to single Individuals and universal directions to particular cases The application of ancient Prophesies to their Events whereby the Apostles proved Christ to be that Messias who was to come And the testimony of Miracles for the proof of a Revelation which are the principal instances Mr. Ferguson gives as will appear to any one who consults those Texts of Scripture which he alleadges in this behalf But this is nothing to our present Dispute the question is whether we may deduce any new Doctrinal Conclusions which are neither expresly taught in Scripture nor can be found out by meer Principles of Reason from their supposed connexion with some thing which is revealed And I think thus much we may safely say that we can know no more of matters of pure Revelation than what is revealed whatever wholly depends upon the free and Soveraign Will of God can be known no other way but by Revelation as no man can know the secret thoughts and counsels of a man but those who learn them from himself and by the same reason that we can know nothing of these matters without a Revelation we can know no more neither than what is revealed which consideration alone is sufficient to overthrow this way of reasoning from an Acquaintance with the Person of Christ. This Argument I have managed at large in my former Discourse and know not what I should add to it here unless it be a more particular application of it to our present case As for instance we learn from Revelation that Christ died for our sins to make Atonement and Expiation for them and to procure pardon and forgiveness for all true Penitents but because Christ died for our sins it does not hence follow that there is such a natural Vindictive Iustice in God as would not suffer him to pardon sin without a full satisfaction for Christ's Death being the effect of Gods free Counsel we can know no more of the cause and reason and motive of it than he has revealed there may be several other reasons assigned on Gods part why he should send Christ into the world to save sinners besides a natural Vindictive Justice and the Scripture has assigned several other reasons of Christ's Death but has never assigned this And indeed unless we will assert that the Death of Christ did necessarily result from the nature of God and was not the effect of his free choise and counsel this reasoning must be false For I hope they will acknowledge God to be as necessarily good as he is just for there is no reason why goodness should be thought the free act of Gods Will and Counsel and Justice the necessity of his Nature and if so then supposing the fall of man which brought sin and misery into the world the Death of Christ was as absolutely necessary as that God should be good and just The goodness of God according to this way of reasoning made it necessary to redeem Mankind from that state of misery and the Justice of God made it necessary for him to punish sin This punishment must fall either upon the
Sinner himself or some other in his stead the Sinner cannot suffer the just desert of sin without being Eternally miserable and none else could expiate our sins but only the Son of God incarnate who by being Man was capable of suffering and by being God gave an infinite value to his sufferings answerable to the infinite demerit of sin So that if God be as necessarily Good as he is Just his Goodness did as necessarily determine him to provide a ransom for sinners as his Justice did to punish sin and there being no other possible way of doing this but by the Incarnation and Sufferings of his own Son the Death of Christ is as necessary an effect of the Justice and Goodness of the Divine Nature as Light is of the Sun Thus though Christ died for our sins yet we cannot meerly from the Death of Christ certainly conclude that he died for all or only for some that he died for us absolutely or conditionally for the extent and efficacy of Christ's Death as well as his Death it self depends upon the Will and Counsel of God and therefore cannot be known without a Revelation Christ fulfilled all Righteousness but we cannot hence conclude that he fulfilled all Righteousness for us and that we are accounted righteous for the sake of his perfect Righteousness imputed to us for he might fulfil Righteousness for a great many other reasons and this is the most unlikely reason of all The same may be said of those choice Conclusions from Christ's being our Head and Husband our Surety and Mediator our Physician and Shepherd and Rock and Life c. Whatever Conclusions we draw from these which are not revealed in the Scripture are at best very uncertain and lubricous because all these Revelations and Offices of our Saviour with their extent and vertue and manner of their execution depend upon the free Counsel of God and therefore can be known only by Revelation Indeed those who argue and reason from an Acquaintance with the Person of Christ seem to be aware of this and therefore they endeavour to reduce the whole Mystery of our Redemption by Christ to necessary causes that God could not do otherwise and that Mankind could not be saved in any other way which is enough to prejudice all wise men against the whole Systeme of their Divinity and yet they can take no other course to uphold their cause for if it be once supposed that this may be otherwise all their Arguments will be found weak and unconcluding Thus for instance if we suppose that God may forgive true Penitents without exacting satisfaction this destroys their Notion of a natural Vindictive Justice and their wild conceit about the nature of Christ's satisfaction which is built on it as if it were only to gratifie an inexorable revenge If it be supposed that God may forgive our sins and accept and reward our sincere though imperfect services for the sake of Christ's Death and Sufferings and Righteousness without accounting us perfectly innocent and perfectly righteous with the Righteousness of Christ if God may for Christ's sake dispense with the rigour and severity of the Law and accept of sincerity instead of perfection than all their Arguments for the necessity of imputation in their notion of it fall to the ground If Christ may be our Surety and Mediator and yet not be obliged to fulfil all Righteousness in our stead if Christ may fulfil all Righteousness and yet this Righteousness not be imputed to us if the antecedent necessity of Repentance and a new Life may be reconciled with the Grace of God and the Merits of Christ than to be sure it is not necessary it should be otherwise and then all their Arguments are weak and fallacious for if they do not conclude necessarily then the contrary may be true And is it not strange presumption for any men to say that there is no other possible way for God to save Sinners than what they have described in their ill-digested Systemes and yet all their Arguments from an acquaintance with Christ's Person proceed upon this and can never be made good without it For if they be not necessarily true they may be false And if they may be false they are no good foundation for our Faith We have an excellent instance of this in Mr. Ferguson's way of proving the Mystery of the Trinity from its necessary connexion with the Doctrine of Original Sin For the Mystery of the Trinity hath a necessary Connexion with the Work of our Redemption by the Incarnation of the Son of God and the Work of our Redemption by the Incarnation of an infinite Person hath the like Connexion with the necessity of satisfying Divine Iustice in order to dispensing of Pardon to repenting Offenders and the necessity of satisfying Iustice for the end aforesaid hath a necessary Connexion with the Doctrine of the corruption of Mankind and the corruption of Humane Nature is both fully confessed and may be demonstrated by reason And thus the Mystery of the Trinity is at last demonstrated by reason that is from the wickedness and degeneracy of Mankind And thus they reason in other cases they prove the necessity of a Vindictive Justice and the necessity of Satisfaction and the necessity of the Incarnation and Sufferings of the Son of God and the necessity of his fulfilling Righteousness and the necessity of Imputation nay a necessity of the Divine Decrees themselves For the Arguments which they commonly alleadge in these cases if they have any force in them must prove all this to be necessary and without this can prove nothing else When we discourse of the free Counsels and Purposes of the Divine Will we must learn from Revelation what God has done and what he will do not argue what he must do Or we may confirm our Faith by considering how fit and becoming it is and how agreeable to the Divine Nature and Perfections or at most may argue probably from some collateral Circumstances to prove the thing likely and probable an instance of which I gave at large in my former discourse but we must pretend to know no more of matters of pure Revelation than what is revealed unless we can either comprehend the infinite Methods of the Divine Wisdom or discover a necessity of Nature in God that he could do no other than what we fancy or can pretend to a Spirit of Prophesie and Revelation to discover those hidden Mysteries to us which are either concealed or obscurely hinted in the External Revelation of the Letter And indeed sometimes they talk at this rate as if every particular man must have an immediate Revelation from Christ to enable him to expound the External Revelation which is but a dead Letter without it and I know no other secure refuge they have but to take Sanctuary in Enthusiasms and pretended Inspirations CHAP. V. Concerning the Union of Believers to Christ and the imputation of Pelagianism IT is time
though this holy Supper be not the first medium of our Union to the Church yet it represents the Union of the Christian Church and of all particular Christians in it in one body to Christ which was all I designed to prove by it In the second place he tells us That by the Lords Supper we ratifie our perseverance and renew our engagements of being the Lords And thirdly That it is a Symbol of our Union to Christ and to each other And so we are very well agreed and it is time to give over this Dispute Thus I have brought off my two first Propositions safe and sound but before I proceed to the rest I must remove a rub or two which Mr. Ferguson has thrown in my way For he charges me with denying our Union to the Person of Christ and our immediate Union to his Person and this indeed I do in some sense and if he had been either an honest man or a fair Disputant he ought to have declared in what sense I disowned it but instead of this he fills several Pages with long and senseless Harangues to prove that we must be united to the Person of Christ and that it would have been as consistent with my design to own as to deny it when indeed I never denied it but expresly owned it in that sense which he would now contend for And to give a plain demonstration of the honesty and ingenuity of this Author I shall transcribe one Page out of my former Discourse which concerns this matter The design of all these distinctions is to prove the Union of Persons between Christ and Believers and because I find this Author hath bewildred himself I will endeavour to help him out for it is a very plain case if Christ and Believers are united their Persons must be united too For the Person of Christ is Christ himself and the Persons of Believers are Believers themselves and I cannot understand how they can be united without their Persons that is without themselves But then they are united by mutual relations as the Person of a Prince and of his Subjects of a Husband and his Wife are united or by mutual affections or common interest not by a natural adhesion of Persons But because I find it does not satisfie these men that Christ and Believers are united unless their Persons be united too it makes me suspect that there is a greater Mystery in this Union of Persons than every one apprehends Upon this I considered what they meant by the Person of Christ and our Union to him So that I do not impeach them for not being satisfied that Christ and Believers are united unless their Persons be united too as Mr. Ferguson represents it but from their making such a difference between our Union to Christ and our Union to his Person I reasonably concluded that they meant something more by our Union to the Person of Christ than every one was aware of and so indeed I found it as appears from what I discoursed in that place And to give as short and perspicuous an account of it as possibly I can here I observe that by the Person of Christ to which we are united they mean such a Person as has done all for us and hath undertaken to do all in us And by an immediate Union to this Person they mean at most an immediate application of themselves to his Person by reliance and recumbency which gives them an interest in all that Christ has done and suffered by vertue of an Union to his Person First By the Person of Christ to which we are united they mean such a Person as has done all for us and has undertaken to do all in us As for the latter part of this that Christ hath undertaken to do all in us I shall reserve it to be considered under the head of Political Union and shall at present confine my Discourse to his having done all for us This is their notion of Christ's being our Surety and Mediator that in our stead he hath satisfied the justice of God and fulfilled all righteousness and that we are made righteous by his Personal Righteousness which he performed in his own Person but in our stead and as representing us And I should wonder that Mr. Ferguson denies this but that I now know him too well to wonder at any thing he says For Doctor Iacomb has industriously endeavoured to prove this notion of Christs being our Surety to do all in our stead and Dr. Owen hath with as great endeavours and with like success attempted to prove this from Christs being our Mediator But how far either the notion of a Surety or of a Mediator is from countenancing any such Doctrine I have made abundantly evident in my former Discourse to which Mr. Ferguson replies nothing but entertains and amuses his Readers with some School pedantry in the derivation of the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which he learnedly observes comes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 But to leave these little Criticisms to School-boys and to reduce the Controversie into a short compass the fundamental mistake is this that they represent Christ as a Surety and Mediator for some particular men not as the Surety and Mediator of the Covenant I made it appear that though we should grant that Christ is called a Surety and Mediator with respect to his undertaking for some particular persons yet they cannot reasonably argue from the notion of a Surety and Mediator to prove that Christ fulfilled all righteousness for those and in their stead whose Surety and Mediator he was and as I have observed above my Adversaries have been forced to quit this way of arguing from the general notion of a Surety and Mediator among men But indeed the foundation of this notion is false that Christ did undertake for particular persons to do all for them which was required of them by vertue of any Law as Dr. Owen represents it Christ by his death made a general Atonement and Expiation for Sin and with his Blood procured purchased and sealed the Covenant of Grace wherein God promises pardon of Sin and Eternal Life to those who believe and obey the Gospel and thus his bloud is the bloud of the Covenant and he is the Surety and Mediator of the Covenant But that what Christ did and suffered he should do in the name and stead only of some particular Persons as their Surety Proxy Surrogate or Substitute has not the least foundation in Scripture and is the first cause and the only support of the Antinomian Heresie Mr. Ferguson founds Christ's Suretiship on the Covenant of Redemption that is on that Covenant which some modern Divines so much talk of between God the Father and Christ concerning the Salvation of the Elect that God the Father gives so many persons by name to Christ to be saved by him and upon his voluntary undertaking that work he stands
and satisfaction he attributes to Christ Nay he is so far from attributing any merit and satisfaction to what Christ did that he affirms that the will of God is not moved thereby nor changed into any other respect towards those for whom Christ died than what it had before which I take to be complying with those who assert that God was not moved by the death of Christ to forgive sin and who those are I presume the Doctor knows since he has so often told me of them As for what he insinuates that I deny the necessity of satisfaction to be made unto divine Iustice I own the charge and have as good company in it as heart can wish for not to take notice of our modern Writers who whatever the Doctor may think of it have writ at a better rate against the Socinians than the necessity men Vossius gives us a particular account of the concurring judgment of the ancient Fathers in this point The Author of that Book de Cardinalibus Christi operibus Athanasius St. Austin Leo M. Gregorius M. together with several eminent Divines of the Reformed Churches and particularly a great man of our own the Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield who in his Letter to Grotius gives an account of the sense of this Church in this point of the necessity of satisfaction Nos in sententia Augustini acquiescimus non defuisse Deo pro sua omnipotentia sapientia alios modos possibiles sed hunc convenientissimum esse visum We rest satisfied in St. Austin ' s opinion that God who is infinitely wise and powerful did not want other possible ways for the Redemption of Mankind but judged this the most convenient of all And here I must once more take notice of that account the Doctor gives of the necessity of Satisfaction which he resolves into a natural vindictive Iustice which makes it impossible that Gods anger should be diverted from sinners without the interposing of a Propitiation Upon which account he tells us that whatever discoveries were made of the patience and lenity of God unto us yet if it were not withal revealed that the other Properties of God as his Iustice and Revenge for sin had their actings also assigned them to the full there could be little consolation gathered from the former This account as I then thought and think so still makes a very unworthy Representation of Almighty God as if he were so just that he is cruel and savage and irreconcilable till he has taken his fill of Revenge and represents the whole design of Christs Death to be only a satisfaction of Revenge without which God could not be appeased as if Divine Vengeance as I then expressed it out of a just indignation to such a horrid Doctrin did glut and satiate itself with the bloud of Christ instead of the bloud of the sinner This Dr. Owen makes very severe Reflexions on as blasphemous and prophane and I will not deny upon second thoughts but that it might have been more inoffensively expressed for there is an Euphemia due from us when we speak of sacred things and it is not fit always to represent such Doctrins in their true and proper colors But every one might easily perceive that I did not intend it as any disparagement to the satisfaction of our Saviour to which we owe all our present Mercies and future hopes but as the natural Interpretation and Language of the Doctors Argument I deny not that Anger and Fury and Vengeance are in Scripture attributed to God when it speaks after the manner of men to signifie the severity of those judgments which God will inflict upon obstinate sinners but to think that the Death of Christ who was his only and his beloved Son was a satisfaction of his natural and unappeasable Vengeance and Fury is such an account as the Scripture no where gives us of the Death of Christ as is incredible in it self and irreconcileable with the other Perfections of the Divine Nature But let us hear what the Doctor has to say for himself and he tells us That all he intended by that which he asserted is no more but this that such is the essential Holiness and Righteousness of the Nature of God that considering him as the supreme Governour and Ruler of Mankind it was inconsistent with the holiness and rectitude of his Rule and the glory of his Government to pass by Sin absolutely or to pardon it without Satisfaction Propitiation or Atonement That God being infinitely holy does perfectly hate all wickedness and that as he is the supreme Governour of the world he justly may and in some cases cannot consistently with his Holiness and Wisdom and the ends of his Government do any other than punish sin is denied by no body that I know But the Doctor proceeds farther that God as a holy and just Governour is under a necessity of Nature to punish every sin that is committed that though the sinner repent of his sins and humbly confess and bewail them and sincerely reform yet Justice must be satisfied either with the punishment of the sinner or some other in his stead Thus he states it in his Diatriba de Iustitiâ p. 2. Iustitiam peccati vindicatricem Deo esse naturalem contendo in exercitio necessariam i. e. I contend and earnestly assert that that Iustice which takes vengeance on sin is natural to God and necessary in the exercise of it Now this is a very different thing from the Justice of Government which allows the most just and righteous Judges to pardon Offences when the ends of Government may as well be attained by Indulgence as by Punishment And therefore the Doctor distinguishes between Ius Regiminis positivum naturale between a positive and natural Right of Government The Positive Right is such as Magistrates have over their Subjects and this he asserts they may recede from in some extraordinary cases when it is for the Publick Good and Benefit not to punish because the Safety of the People and the Publick Benefit is the supreme Law to such Governours But the Natural Right of Government is that which God has over his Creatures and this is immutable and therefore God cannot recede from it which as it is said without any reason for whether the Right be Positive or Natural it does not alter the Nature nor the prudent Rules and Methods of Government so it gives a plain account what the Doctor means by Gods Right of punishing as Governour which answers to what we call Revenge in private persons which immediately respects himself and not the publick ends of Government which is the true difference between private Revenge and publick Justice and though this be all the Doctor intends yet that all is enough in all reason and is the very all which I charged him with Well but I say as much as this comes to when I assert that God is an irreconcilable enemy to
his Death and cite Heb. ix 12. to that purpose which I am sure no Socinian can own The proper notion of an Advocate or Intercessor is one who offers up our Prayers and Petitions and procures an Answer which was represented by the High Priests offering Incense in the Holy of Holies which signified the Prayers of the Congregation and therefore we find that while the Priest offered Incense in the Holy Place the People used to pray without that their Prayers might ascend together with the Incense Luke i. 10. So that Christs Intercession is founded on the virtue of his Sacrifice but it is not the representation of his Meritorius Sacrifice as Mr. Ferguson imagines but the Recommendation of our Prayers and Persons to God by virtue of his meritorious Sacrifice and therefore the Intercession of Christ is described by his being able to save all those to the uttermost who come unto God by him Heb. vii 25. And since we have such an High Priest who intercedes for us and is sensible of our Infirmities we are exhorted to come boldly to the Throne of Grace that we may obtain mercy and find Grace to help in time of need Heb. iv 16. The death of Christ upon the Cross was a Sacrifice for Sin was an Act of his Aaronical Priesthood to make Atonement for Sin by the Sacrifice of himself but when he ascended into Heaven and had presented his Blood in the holy Place he was no longer then a Priest after the Order of Aaron but after the Order of Melchisedeck as the Apostle proves at large in the Epistle to the Hebrews his work is not to offer himself any more in Sacrifice for he hath by one offering for ever perfected them who are sanctified but his Office is to bless the People in Gods Name as Melchisedeck blessed Abraham God hath sent his Son to bless us in turning of us from our iniquities He hath exalted him to be a Prince and a Saviour to give repentance unto Israel and remission of sins So that now in virtue of his Death and Sacrifice Christ doth not intercede like some meaner Advocates by Prayers and Intreaties having all power both in Heaven and Earth committed to him but doth by his Power and Authority which he received from God as the Purchase and Reward of his Death and Sufferings bestow all those Blessings on us which we want and pray for in his Name For this Reason I asserted That Christs Intercession is the Power of a Regal Priest to expiate and forgive sins not to make atonement for them which he did by his Death and Sacrifice as Mr. Ferguson would pervert my words but to apply this Expiation and Atonement to us in the actual forgiveness of our sins And this is so plain and evident a Truth that Mr. Ferguson himself cannot deny it though he quarrels with me for asserting it being willing it seems to find fault if he knew how His Words are these Indeed his Intercession as upon the one hand it is founded on his Oblation and Sacrifice being nothing but the representation of his meritorious Passion and a continuation of his sacerdotal Function which as I observed before is a mistaken notion of Christs Intercession as confounding his Sacrifice with his Intercession which is indeed founded on his Sacrifice and receives all its virtue and efficacy from it but yet is of a distinct nature and consideration so on the other hand it hath its effects towards us by virtue of the interposition of some Acts of his Kingly Office For these Offices being all vested in the same Person and having all the same general End and belonging all to the Work of Mediation it cannot otherwise be but that their Acts must have a mutual respect to each other but yet the Priestly Office to which Intercession appertains is formally distinct from his Kingly In which words he acknowledges that Christs Intercession as it respects us and consists in bestowing those Blessings on us which we want and which he hath purchased is an Act of Kingly Power and Authority which is as much as I asserted or ever intended to assert And as for what he adds that still his Priestly Office is formally distinguish'd from his Kingly I readily grant it so far as it respects his Sacrifice and Expiation which is an Act of his Aaronical Priesthood but as it respects his Intercession which is an Act of his Melchisedechian Priesthood his Kingly and Priestly Offices are so closely united that he is rather to be considered as a Regal Priest than as either Priest or King because it is the exercise of that Power and Authority which is founded on his Sacrifice And by this time I hope every ordinary Reader will see what a vain and malicious attempt it was for this Author to endeavour to represent me as a Socinian of which Candor and Ingenuity I shall give several other Instances hereafter and that he might have spared his pains in proving that the Kingly and Priestly Offices in Christ are distinct and that Christ is not a Metaphorical but a proper Priest But to return to our Looking-Glass-Maker he quarrels still that I say That Christs preaching the Gospel was the exercise of his Regal Power in publishing his Laws Our Author can understand that to enact Laws is an exercise of a Regal Power but not to publish them which would make every inferior Herald a King This is a very wise Objection which shews his Skill in Laws and Government It is not indeed necessary for a King to publish his Laws in his own Person this was a peculiar condescension of our Saviour to come in Person to us to publish his Laws but yet the publication of Laws must be made by the same Authority which Enacts them for publication is of the very essence of a Law and by wiser men than our Author put into the definition of it and therefore is the proper exercise of Regal Power I doubt my Readers will be quite tired with my taking notice of such impertinent Cavils and therefore I shall add but one or two more which are very remarkable and dismiss our Author for the present I commend the Wisdom and Honesty of our Church for teaching her Children a Religion without Art or Subtilty Our Author disproves this by shewing that no Child can understand the Church-Catechism without great art and subtilty he cannot understand what it is to be a Member of Christ without understanding the various significations of the Name Christ and whether he must be made a Member of the Church or of the Person of Christ and then he must know what this Church is which requires great subtilty c. Now by the same argument I can prove that a Child cannot understand the easiest thing in Nature without unridling all the Mysteries of Philosophy as for instance at this rate a Child cannot understand what Bread is unless he first understand what Matter is and then he
whatever becomes of this Exposition of which more hereafter did ever any man before Mr. Ferguson imagine that the Fulness of Christ of which we receive Grace for Grace was a proper Expression without the least Trope or Figure Fulness properly belongs only to space as filled with matter and is a metaphorical Expression when applied to Spirits or spiritual things and therefore I thought that instead of turning a proper Expression into Tropes and Figures I had expounded a figurative Expression to the most proper sense when by the Fulness which is in Christ I understood the most perfect Knowledge of the Divine Will and by this Fulness communicated to us the most perfect Declarations of the Divine Will in the Gospel which is a Dispensation of Grace and Truth But let us consider what proper work Mr. Ferguson makes of it By that Fulness in Christ of which we all receive Grace for Grace he understands a participation of renewing sanctifying Grace according to the plain and proper import of the words So that Christ is in a proper sense full of renewing and sanctifying Grace that is according to Mr. Ferguson's notion of it of infused habits of Grace and we receive this renewing Grace out of Christ's Fulness as Water flows out of a Fountain And thus either Grace passes from one Subject to another which the Philosopher would have told him no Habit or Quality can do or the very Substance of Christ is communicated to Christians together with these infused Habits of Grace which is a more ridiculous conceit than the Popish Transubstantiation or the Lutheran Consubstantiation The inherent Grace of Christ according to this notion is of the same identical nature with the infused Habits of Grace in Christians and the Essential Holiness of Christ is separable from his Person and may be transmitted into another Subject and may there be capable of increase and diminution Mr. Ferguson must necessarily allow all this if he take these words in a proper sense for it is not sufficient to say that Christ is endowed with power to renew and sanctifie us to deliver this Expression from Tropes and Figures but the very same Grace which is in Christ must be infused into Believers which is an excellent way of expounding Scriptures to a proper sense by turning them into Nonsense But these are but some slight Skirmishes in pag. 387. he draws forth his whole strength and force to make good this Charge against me That I pervert the Scripture by turning Plain and Proper Expressions into a Metaphorical Sense Of this he gives two instances the first is concerning the Priestly Office of Christ which he says I confound with his Regal Office and consequently make Christ only a metaphorical Priest and then he tells us That there is not one Text in the Bible where Christ is called a Priest which can be understood in a proper sense but they must all of necessity be interpreted in a metaphorick as the Socinians expound them Now though I doubt it would puzzle Mr. Ferguson to give an intelligible account what he means by a proper and a a metaphorical Priest yet at least one might reasonably expect from him that in order to make good this Charge he should produce some express place where I make Christ a metaphorical Priest or some express Texts which I expound to such a metaphorical sense but he can do neither of these and therefore he first perverts my words as well as sense and then argues by consequence that I make Christ only a metaphorical Priest and then by as good consequence I must expound those Texts which concern the Priesthood of Christ in a metaphorick sense and thus by consequence our Author loses his labour For I have already made it sufficiently appear how childishly he has mistaken or maliciously perverted my words and sense whereon this Charge is grounded only I am very glad to find upon this occasion that he has so much alter'd his Judgment of Dr. Stillingfleet and his Discourse concerning the Reason of the Sufferings of Christ for time was when he charged that Learned Person with betraying the Cause for the same Reasons for which I am now charged with Socinianism But our Author never commends any one unless it be to insinuate some commendation of himself or to reflect some disparagement and odium upon his Adversary His next instance concerns that account which I give of the nature of Justification And here he first lays down my sense of it and then makes some few cavilling exceptions against it then admirably proves that I pervert plain and proper expressions of Scripture to a metaphorical sense As for the first I own my words but dislike that blundering method into which he has cast them and therefore I shall beg leave to represent my own Conceptions in such order and method as may more easily and naturally express my sense I assert That our Justification and Acceptance with God depends wholly upon the Gospel-Covenant which does not exact from us a perfect and sinless Obedience but promises Pardon of Sin and Eternal Life upon the Conditions of Faith and Repentance and new Obedience that this Gospel-Covenant is wholly owing to the Merits of Christ who by the Sacrifice of his Death hath expiated our Sins and both in his Life and Death hath given a Noble Demonstration of his entire Obedience and Submission to the Divine Will for God being well pleased with the Obedience of Christs Life and with the Sacrifice and Expiation of his Death entered into a New Covenant of Grace and Mercy with Mankind that the only way to partake of the blessings of this New Covenant is by believing and obeying the Gospel of Christ that is in other words by acknowledging the Divine Authority of our Saviour believing his Revelations obeying his Laws trusting to the Merits of his Sacrifice and the Power of his Intercession and depending on the supplies and influences of his Grace So that the Righteousness of Christ is not the formal cause of our Righteousness or Justification but the Righteousness of his Life and Death is the meritorious cause of that Covenant whereby we are declared righteous and rewarded as righteous Persons our Righteousness is wholly owing to the Righteousness of Christ which in this sense may be said to be imputed to us because without this Covenant of Grace which is founded on the Righteousness of Christ the best man living could lay no claim to Righteousness or future Glory The Righteousness of Christ is our Righteousness when we speak of the Foundation of the Covenant by which we are accepted but if we speak of the Terms of the Covenant i. e. What it is that will intitle us to all the Blessings of the Covenant then we must have a Righteousness of our own for the Righteousness of Christ will not serve the turn This is a plain and easie Account of my sense concerning the Doctrine of Justification by Faith in
Christ and to this I will stand Let us hear then what Mr. Ferguson has to object against it And first he can by no means understand how the Righteousness of Christs Life and Death can be the meritorious cause of Gods forgiving our sins and follies he should have said of that Covenant wherein God promises to forgive our sins upon certain Conditions for asmuch as according to what I express elsewhere his Essential Goodness obliged him to it The words which he cites to this purpose are these That the natural notions which men have of God assure them that he is very good and that it is not possible to understand what Goodness is without pardoning Grace Now I would know of Mr. Ferguson which of these three he will reject whether he will deny that the natural notion of a Deity includes infinite Goodness or that the notion of infinite Goodness includes Pardoning Grace when there is a just and honourable occasion for it or that the Merits of Christs Life and Death have purchas'd the Grace and Mercy of the Gospel If he believe all these he is as much concerned to answer this Objection as I am if he deny them he must either turn Atheist or Socinian But pray who told him that the Goodness of God did immediately oblige him to pardon Sinners or that the Goodness of God confers an antecedent title on Sinners to Grace and Pardon May not a good God consult the Reputation of his Holiness and of his Authority and Government and dispence his Pardons in such prudent Methods as his own Infinite Wisdom shall direct And may he not then require the intervention of a Sacrifice and of a very meritorious one too to purchase and seal his Pardon to Sincers The Essential Goodness of God only proves That he may pardon Sin without a Sacrifice but it does not prove that either he will or must The next Exception is very surprizing That because I elsewhere assert That the whole Mystery of the Recovery of Mankind consists only in repairing the Divine Image which was defaced by Sin that is in making all men truly good and vertuous c. He cannot imagine how the Covenant of Grace can be so much as necessary to the promising of Remession of Sins much less that the Death of Christ was needful to procure it to that end But pray why so Is not the Promise of Pardon purchas'd and sealed with the Blood of Christ absolutely necessary to encourage men to be good Does not the Gospel represent this to be the last and ultimate end of what Christ hath done and suffered to rescue Mankind from the Power of the Devil and Dominion of their Lusts and to renew them after the Image of God If Mr. Ferguson be ignorant in these matters I can direct him to a very good Book which will better instruct him But suppose he know no other end of Christs Death but to satisfie a natural vindictive inexorable Iustice yet if this must be done before any thing else can be done is it not absolutely necessary to the last and ultimate end which is to transform men into the Image of God and to bring them to the fruition of him For the satisfaction of Justice in what sense soever he pleases to understand it can only be a means in order to the Recovery of lost Man not the Recovery it self In the next place he tells us That it seems inconsistent with the Wisdom and Sapience of God to introduce a perfect Righteousness such as that of his Son was meerly to make way for his justifying us upon an imperfect Righteousness such as that of our Obedience is What force there may be in that phrase of introducing a perfect Righteousness I cannot tell but I can discover no inconsistency with the Wisdom of God to accept reward those who are sincerely but not perfectly righteous for the sake of one who is If God bestowed so many Blessings on the Posterity of Abraham for the sake of their Father who was not perfectly righteous I wonder our Author should think it any derogation to the Divine Wisdom to accept and reward our imperfect Obedience for the sake of the perfect Righteousness Obedience of Christ. Nay though we should suppose that God had sent Christ into the world upon no other design but to set a most perfect Example of Holiness Obedience to the Divine Will and to give a plain Demonstration how highly he is pleased with Obedience to his Laws should not only greatly reward him in his own Person but should promise for his sake to pardon and reward all those who imitate though imperfectly his Example which in our Authors Phrase is to introduce a perfect Righteousness meerly that he may justifie us upon an imperfect one this would be no greater blemish to the Wisdom of God than it is to chuse fit and proper ways of expressing his love to Holiness and encouraging the Obedience of his Creatures But our Author proceeds very Rhetorically Nor shall I â—â—gue how that the Righteousness of Christs Life and Sacrifice of his Death must be imputed to us for Iustification in proportion to our Sins having been imputed to him in order to his Expiatory Sufferings He may argue thus if he pleases and I shall perfectly agree with him in it Let us then consider how he manages this Argument Christs Sufferings must not be attributed meerly to Gods Dominion without any respect to Sin This I grant therefore our sins were imputed to him not only in the effects of them but in the guilt This I so far grant that the Sufferings of Christ had respect to the guilt of our Sins otherwise he could not have been a Sacrifice for Sin but whereas he adds That it is a thing utterly unintelligible I hope Mr. Ferguson thinks it never the less true for that how Christ could be made sin for us and have our punishment transferred to him without a previous imputation of sin and the derivation of its guilt upon him I am so far of another mind that I think it unintelligible how it should be so for besides that guilt cannot be transferred upon an innocent Person though punishment may I cannot understand how Christ should suffer for our sins if the guilt of our sins were transferred upon himself if he died for our sins it is plain that the guilt is accounted ours still though the punishment be transferred on him And this is essential to the nature of a Sacrifice that it dies not for it self but for another and therefore not for its own but for anothers guilt continuing anothers Christ was no Sinner in any sense but a Sacrifice for Sin which differ just as much as bearing the guilt and bearing the punishment of sin Were our sins transferred on Christ in Mr. Ferguson's way so that our sins become his and that he may be called a Sinner nay the greatest of Sinners the necessary consequence of this
Faith and Manners The Authority of Testimony is proper only to those Ages which immediately succeeded the Apostles for it may reasonably be presumed that those Persons who convers'd with the Apostles themselves or convers'd with those who convers'd with the Apostles who understood the Phrase and Dialect of that Age and those particular Controversies and Disputes which were then on foot may be able to give us a better account of the traditionary sense of Scripture and of the practice of the Apostles than those who lived in after-Ages and upon this account the Writings of those who lived in the first Centuries have always had a just Esteem and Authority in the Christian Church but still the more Ancient they are the greater is their Authority and the farther they are removed from the Fountain of Tradition so their Authority lessens The Authority of Discipline and Order is that Authority which every particular Church has over her own Members or which the Universal Church represented in General Councils has over particular Churches For while we live in Communion with any Church we oblige our selves to submit to its Government and at least so far to receive those Doctrines which she owns as not to disturb Publick Peace and Order by our Private Disputes But in all other cases he has the greatest Authority who has the best Reason and it is a childish thing to urge the bare Authority of any Man or Church when it hath neither Scripture nor Reason to support it So that I do not urge the consent of these Reformed Churches upon account of any inherent Authority but to make it appear how vainly Mr. Ferguson brags when he charges me with opposing the received Doctrines of Protestant Churches For indeed those Doctrines which I oppose are meer Novelties and were never publickly owned by any Reformed Church and never had any greater Authority than what an Assembly of Divines and an Ordinance of Parliament could give them He who understands what notion the first Reformers had of justifying Faith that it is fiducia misericordia propter Christum a firm and stedfast belief and hope that they should find mercy with God for Christs sake can never imagine that they once dreamt of such an Imputation of Christs Righteousness to them as should make them stand in no need of Mercy or of such a Iustification as is the Off-spring of Iustice and imports one transacting with us in a Iuridical way without the infringement of Law or Equity in opposition to Pardon and Remission which is the result of Mercy and the act of one exercising favour which is Mr. Ferguson's Account of it in his own words But thirdly As this Notion of Imputation has no Foundation in Scripture as I abundantly proved in my former Discourse of which our Author takes no notice and it was very wisely done of him for I am sure he cannot answer it so it overthrows the principal Doctrines of the Gospel and contradicts its main design I shall briefly name some few First Justification by a perfect Righteousness is inconsistent with pardon and forgiveness Mr. Ferguson acknowledges That to justifie and to pardon are wholly distinct in their Natures and Ideas and always separated in the cases of such as are arraigned at humane Tribunals and that thus it is in the actings of God too Now I wonder he did not consider that by the same reason the same subject is not capable of both He who is universally justified in our Authors notion that is who is acquitted and absolved in a Juridical way i. e. as perfectly innocent and righteous needs no pardon nor is he capable of it because he has no sins to be pardon'd and he who is pardon'd cannot be justified in this sense because Pardon supposes him a Sinner and Justification supposes him innocent which hath some little appearance of a Contradiction So that the Gospel-way of Justification which is by Pardon and Forgiveness is quite discarded and we are justified by a legal Righteousness or by the Works of the Law that is by a perfect and unsinning Obedience though the Apostle tells us That by the Works of the Law no flesh shall be justified for though this perfect Righteousness whereby we are justified be not our own but the Righteousness of Christ imputed to us yet it is the Works of the Law still which is an express Contradiction to the Apostles Doctrine And I wonder what our Author thinks of all those Promises of Pardon which are contained in the Gospel and which are the greatest support and comfort of Sinners when it is impossible to find any place for them in his New-Gospel Secondly This notion of Justification overthrows the Necessity and Merit of Christs Death and Sacrifice the vertue of a Sacrifice consists in the expiation and forgiveness of sin but now if Justification excludes Pardon there is no need of a Sacrifice if nothing will satisfie the demands of the Law but a perfect and unsinning Obedience then there can be no Sacrifice for sin or at best it is to no purpose for it cannot satisfie the Law and therefore not expiate our sin and if Christ have satisfied the Law by his perfect Obedience there is no reason why he should suffer the penalty for no Law can oblige us both to obey it perfectly and to endure the Penalties for the breach of it though we do perfectly obey it So that if Christ died for our sins and if remission of sins must be preached in his name then we are not perfectly righteous by the imputation of his Righteousness but must obtain the pardon of our sins through Faith in his Blood Thirdly This notion of Justification destroys the Grace and Mercy of God in the Justification of a Sinner This Mr. Ferguson expresly owns That Pardon indeed if there could be any such thing is the result of Mercy but Iustification is the Off-spring of Iustice and imports Gods transacting with us in a Iuridical way without the infringement of Law or Equity And I know not any assertion which more expresly destroys the Grace of the Gospel Whereas St. Paul attributes our Justification as well as Pardon to the Grace of God We are justified freely by his Grace through the Redemption that is in Christ Iesus Nor will it relieve him to say that our Justification is an Act of Grace because though we are justified in a proper Law-notion by a perfect Righteousness yet this Righteousness is not inherent but imputed which is an act of Grace for besides that this implies a contradiction to be justified in a proper Law-sense by an imputed that is an improper Righteousness and that God proceeds in a Iuridical way without the infringement of Law and yet admits of such a Righteousness as not the Law but only Grace can accept I say besides this we may for the very same Reason say that Pardon is an act of Justice because it is purchas'd by the Death of Christ.
And therefore if our Author would make good his notion he must shew how Pardon is more an act of Grace than Justification and how Justification is more the Off-spring of Justice than Pardon and if he dare stand to this notion there needs not many words to prove that he overthrows the whole Grace of the Gospel Fourthly There is another very ill consequence of this notion that it destroys the necessity of an inherent Righteousness or of a good Life For what necessity can there be that we should have a Righteousness of our own when we are perfectly righteous with the imputed Righteousness of Christ The Law demands a perfect and unsinning Righteousness and it is impossible it should demand any more we answer this Charge by the perfect Righteousness of Christ and when this is done we are innocent and righteous and have a title to the Rewards of a perfect Obedience and what can be desired more from us Mr. Ferguson indeed supposes that the Law requires a perfect Obedience and that the Gospel over and above this requires Faith and a sincere Obedience and that Christ was our Substitute to make Satisfaction to the Demands of the Law and not of the Gospel And that by his Death he hath only freed us from what we were obnoxious to upon failure of perfect Obedience but not at all from what we are liable to in case of Unbelief and want of sincere Obedience Now though this be true in some sense that is that Christ by his Death hath expiated our sins and thereby delivered us from the condemnation of the Law upon the failure of perfect Obedience and hath sealed the Covenant of Grace in his Blood which accepts and rewards a sincere though imperfect Obedience yet as it is applied by him it is down-right non-sense for if we perfectly answer the Demands of the Law by the imputation of Christs perfect Righteousness there is no need of the Gospel nor any place for it Perfection includes Sincerity as the greater includes the less and therefore if the Righteousness of Christ answers the Demands of the Law as to a perfect Obedience it shuts out any farther Demands of the Gospel He who is perfectly righteous is sincere too and he who can answer the Demands of Justice needs not the allowances of Grace and Mercy So that the Imputation of Christs perfect Righteousness does supercede our own Endeavours and makes our own Righteousness needless for this Reason I charged them before and do so still with setting up the Person of Christ in opposition to his Laws and Religion with magnifying his Personal Righteousness so as to evacuate all the Obligations of Duty And now methinks I can deal with any thing in Mr. Ferguson but his Brow and Confidence who is of the true breed and can stare the Sun in the face without blinking for after all this he declares That let me but once justifie my Charge of their making the Personal Righteousness of Christ our Personal Righteousness or that they maintain Christ to have fulfilled all Righteousness in our stead he does assure me that he will not only be ready to allow my severest Reproofs but to commend and second them Now unless by Personal he means inherent nothing in the World can be more plain then that he himself makes Christs Personal Righteousness our Personal Righteousness for we are Personally Righteous with the Righteousness of Christ and answer all the Demands of the Law with it and then I conceive it must be a Personal Righteousness not by inhesion indeed with which I never charged them but by imputation And as for Christs fulfilling Righteousness in our stead unless he has some secret quirk in that phrase our stead Doctor Owen does not only profess this but endeavours to prove it by several Arguments that Christ did not keep the Law for himself but for us and that not for our good only but that we might be righteous with his Righteousness and fulfil the Law in him He keeps the Law as our Mediator and Surety and Representative and I think that is so for us as to be in our stead this I have discours'd at large in my former Book and thither I shall refer my Reader Having thus justified my self in a proper Law-notion from the Accusations of this Author I shall farther consider how he justifies his dear Friends the Nonconformists from that Charge of toying with Scripture-Metaphors and Phrases and turning them into Burlesque And truly he is the most wretched Apologist that ever I saw sometimes he acknowledges the Charge with respect to particular Persons who through ignorance inadvertency or wantonness prevaricate in this matter but would not have the whole Party which was never done by me traduced for the folly of a few but if we should enquire how few those are who thus prevaricate in this matter and judge of it by their late Writings I doubt it would appear by computation that they never had so many Prevaricators at Cambridge since the first Institution of that Order and then let any one judge how well this agrees with what he asserts in the same breath that he knows none more observant of these Rules which he had before laid down in the sensing and applying of Metaphors than those who are stiled Nonconformists which proves nothing but that he has very little good Acquaintance But indeed Mr. Ferguson has taken the best course he could I had shewed in particular instances how they had abused Scripture-Phrases and Metaphors but he did not think fit to descend to particulars but instead of that collects a great many good Rules out of Glassius and Vossius and tells us how they ought to expound and use Metaphors and then without any farther proof concludes that they do so Whereas should we suppose that all the Nonconformists understood the Rules of Rhetorick as well as our Author though I fear many of them never read so much Rhetorick in their Lives before and I wish reading this may do them some good yet it is a very different Art to understand the Rules of Rhetorick to practise them whether they have any Skill in the first or no I know not but I am sure if they have they are as saving of it as ever men were as if they were afraid it would waste by too common a use Just after the same manner he vindicates the Nonconformists from those Aspersions lately cast upon them as if they were Defamers of Reason disclaiming it from all Concern in Religion c. To wipe off this Reproach which was not cast upon them but which they brought upon themselves by their perpetual Declamations against Reason our Author writes a large Chapter to shew the Use of Reason in Matters of Religion and this must pass for a Justification of the Nonconformists and now they will be thought the only Rational Divines Whereas in truth had he managed this Argument with as much accuracy as
that Homily which seem to favour that notion of our Justification by the Imputation of Christs Personal Righteousness though that phrase of the Imputation of Christs Righteousness is nowhere used throughout the whole Homily but if we will take that Explication which the Homily it self gives of them it will evidently appear that there was no such thing intended by them I shall produce these expressions in their proper places and in the management of this Argument shall First explain the sense of our Church concerning the Doctrine of Justification out of the Homilies of Salvation Faith Good Works and Repentance And Secondly Show you how the state of the Controversie is altered at this day and what a just reason this is for a more particular explication of those Expressions which occasioned the corruption of the wholsom Doctrine of our Church First I shall enquire what is the true sense of the Church of England concerning the Doctrine of Justification And first I observe that our Church places the nature and essence of Justification in the forgiveness of sins This is evident from the very first words of the Homily Because all men be Sinners and Offenders against God and Breakers of his Law Commandments therefore can no man by his own Acts Words and Deeds seem they never so good be justified and made righteous before God but every man of necessity is constrained to seek for another Righteousness or Iustification to be received at Gods own hands that is to say the forgiveness of his sins and trespasses in such things as he hath offended And this Iustification or Righteousness the forgiveness of sins which we so receive of Gods Mercy and Christs Merits embraced by Faith is taken accepted and allowed of God for our perfect and full Iustification So that our full and perfect Justification consists in the forgiveness of our sins whereby God over-looking what we have done amiss deals with us as with Righteous Persons that is bestows Eternal Life on us The Homily takes notice of two ways of Justification The first is by our own Works when we live so innocently and vertuously as to be acquitted and absolved by God according to the strict Rules of Law and Justice But in this way no Sinner can be justified for the Law justifies no man who is a Transgressor of the Law and therefore since we are all Sinners and can neither expiate our past sins nor perfectly keep the Law for the future it is impossible that we should be justified by our own Acts and Deeds It remains therefore that no Sinner can be justified or accounted Just and Righteous before God without the pardon and forgiveness of his Sins this is the Justification and Righteousness of a Sinner that God forgives his wilful sins and covers all the defects of his good Actions for when the sin is pardoned and covered the man is innocent and righteous Now this Account I am sure cannot please Dr. Owen and his Friends who look upon the forgiveness of sin but as one part of our Justification and that the most inconsiderable too which only makes us innocent and delivers us from the condemnation of the Law but cannot entitle us to future Happiness besides Innocency as they tell us there is required a perfect Righteousness the first is owing to the Death of Christ which expiates our sins the second to the Imputation of Christs perfect Righteousness to us which makes us perfectly just and righteous this is a down-right contradiction to the Doctrine of our Church which teaches us that God accepts and allows of this forgiveness of sin for our full and perfect Iustification And indeed forgiveness of sins is a true Evangelical way of Justification in opposition to a Legal Justification which consists in perfect and unsinning Obedience the first our Church requires but the Doctor and his Friends exact the latter a perfect Righteousness of Works for as the Doctor observes Life is not to be obtained unless all be done that the Law requires that is still true If thou wilt enter into life keep the Commandments they must be kept by us or by our Surety All the difference the Doctor knows between the Law and the Gospel is only this that the Law required a perfect Righteousness from every man in his own Person the Gospel accepts of a perfect Righteousness in the Person of our Mediator but still we are justified by a Legal not Evangelical Righteousness that is by a Righteousness of Works not by pardon and forgiveness And it has been before observed by some learned men that to place our Justification in the forgiveness of our sins as our Church doth and in the Imputation of Christs Personal Righteousness to us as others do are not very consistent For by the Imputation of Christs Righteousness to us we are Legally Righteous or have a perfect Righteousness of Works and Forgiveness of sins and a perfect Righteousness destroy each other for if we are perfectly Righteous whether in our own Persons or by Imputation we need no Forgiveness and if we need Forgiveness it is plain that God does not so much as impute a perfect Righteousness to us So that when our Church places the whole nature of our Justification in the Forgiveness of sins it is a good Argument that she never thought of a Legal Righteousness of Works of the Imputation of Christs perfect Righteousness and Obedience to make us righteous before God But for a fuller Explication of this Doctrine of Justification we are taught in that Homily that there are especially three things which must go together in our Iustification upon Gods part his great Mercy and Grace upon Christs part Iustice that is the Satisfaction of Gods Iustice or the price of our Redemption by the offering of his Body and sheddidg his Blood with fulfilling of the Law perfectly and throughly and upon our part true and lively Faith in the Merits of Iesus Christ which yet is not ours but by Gods working in us This is a much more intelligible way of explaining the Doctrine of Justification than by the Material Formal Efficient Instrumental Causes and such-like terms of Art which need more explication than the Doctrine it self and therefore I shall follow this method and reduce the Doctrine of the Homilies under these three Heads What is Gods part what is Christs part and what is required on Mans part in the business of Justification First Let us consider what is Gods part in the Justification of a Sinner and that is the Mercy and Grace of God which expresses it self first in providing a Ransom for us as it is expressed in the Homily That our Iustification doth come freely by the meer Mercy of God and of so great and free mercy that whereas all the World was not able of themselves to pay any part towards their Ransom it pleased our heavenly Father of his infinite mercy without any our Desert or Deserving to prepare for us the
faith in his Blood to shew his Righteousness And in the Tenth Chapter Christ is the end of the Law unto Righteousness to every man that believeth And in the Eighth Chapter That which was impossible by the Law in as much as it was weak by the flesh God sending his own Son in the similitude of sinful flesh by sin damned sin in the flesh that the Righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us which walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit Which Texts are alledged by our Modern Divines to prove the Imputation of Christs Righteousness to us as the formal cause of our Justification but our Church expresly tells us that she understands these Texts to signifie no more on Christs part but Iustice or the Satisfaction of Gods Iustice. And whereas these new Divines make such a difference between the Active and Passive Righteousness of Christ that by his Death and Sufferings he expiated our Sins and by his Active Obedience makes us righteous Our Church knows no difference in this matter but assures us that they both concur to the same effect to make satisfaction for our sins He made satisfaction to Gods Iustice by the offering of his Body and shedding his Blood with fulfilling the Law perfectly and throughly Which account I expresly gave of it in my former Discourse p. 330. Edit 2. p. 231. In this sense we are taught that Christ is now the Righteousness of all them that truly believe in him he for them paid their Ransom by his Death he for them fulfilled the Law in his Life So that now in him and by him every true Christian Man may be called a fulfiller of the Law for asmuch as that which their infirmity lacked Christs Iustice hath supplied Which last clause the Looking-Glass-Maker thought fit to leave out for he had so much wit in his anger as to see that it did not make to his purpose for the meaning of it is this that Christs active and passive Righteousness is imputed to us to procure the pardon of our sins thereby to supply the defects of our Righteousness not to make us formally righteous though our Righteousness be imperfect and defective yet Christ by his Righteousness having obtained the pardon of our sins we may be said in him to fulfil the Law in as much as that which our Infirmity lacked Christs Iustice his Merit and Satisfaction as it is before explained hath supplied And once for all our Church tells us what she means by being justified by Christ only We put our Faith in Christ that we be justified by him only that we be justified by Gods Mercy and the Merits of our Saviour Christ only and by no vertue and good works of our own that is in us or that we can be able to have or to do to deserve the same Christ himself being the only cause meritorious thereof So that the plain sense of our Church is that Christs part in our Justification is only to be the meritorious cause of it to merit Pardon and Justification for all those who heartily believe in him And who-ever of our Communion have affirmed any more they have in so doing plainly deserted the Doctrine of our Church And therefore Doctor Prideaux himself does expresly disown the Imputation of the Righteousness of Christ in any other sense than that of Merit Iustificamur per justitiam Christi non personae quâ ipse vestitus est sed meriti quâ suos vestit nobis imputatam that is We are justified by the Righteousness of Christ imputed to us not by his Personal Righteousness as Dr. Owen affirms with which he is cloathed himself but with the Righteousness of Merit with which he cloaths those who belong to him And in answer to a passage out of Bellarmine he adds Quis unquam è nostris nos per justitiam Christi imputatam formaliter justificari asseruit that is Who among us ever affirmed that we were formally justified by the imputed Righteousness of Christ. And as the learned Forbs observes it sounds very like a contradiction to assert that the Righteousness of Christ is both the meritorious and the formal cause of our Justification Nequit enim fieri ut eadem res simul fit causa efficiens ad quam meritum reducitur formalis ejusdem effecti quia sic simul de essentia effecti foret non foret cùm causa formalis interna sit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 efficiens autem externa tantum ut constat that is It cannot be that the same thing should be both the efficient as Merit is and the formal cause of the same effect for so it must both be of the essence and not of the essence of the effect for a formal cause is internal and belongs to the nature and essence of the thing but an efficient is an external cause as every one knows And therefore when the Learned Bishop Davenant asserts the Righteousness of Christ imputed to us to be the formal cause of our Justification and explains it by our being justified ex intuitu meritorum Christi propter Christum with respect to the Merits of Christ and for Christs sake though he uses a different phrase which too many since have abused to bad purposes yet he seems to mean no more by it than we do who say that the Righteousness of Christ is the meritorious cause of our Justification for that must be explained by the same phrases of being justified for Christs sake and with respect to the Merits of Christ and indeed the only difference the Bishop makes between the Righteousness of Christ being the meritorious and the formal cause of our Justification is no more but this that in the first case he considers the Merits of Christ absolutely as the price of our Redemption in the second he considers those same Merits of Christ applied to particular persons for the pardon of their particular sins which still makes it no more than a meritorious cause His words are these Eadem unica justitia Christi in se suo valore considerata est meritoria causa humanae justificationis considerata autem quatenus imputatur donatur applicatur tanquam sua singulis credentibus in Christum insitis subit vicem causae formalis And that he intends no more by a formal cause than what others express by a meritorious cause is plain in this that he acknowledges the imputation even of Christs active Righteousness only in the sense of Merit He expresses his agreement with Vasques in this matter who acknowledges the imputation of the Merit of Christs active Obedience Cùm dicimus Merita Christi nobis imputari idem de justitia sanctitate illius existimamus nam cùm Merita Christi ex sanctitate ejus dignitatem accipiant eodem sensu quo Merita nobis dicuntur imputari ipsa etiam Iustitia Christi imputari dicitur that is When we say that
the Merits of Christ are imputed to us we understand the same thing of his Holiness and active Righteousness for since his Purity and Holiness gave worth and dignity to his Merits in the same sense wherein his Merits are said to be imputed to us his active Righteousness and Obedience is imputed also So that the Bishop never thought that the Obedience and Righteousness of Christ is so made ours that we are accounted by God to have done the same things to have performed all that Righteousness which Christ performed which is the modern notion of Imputation but it is so imputed to us that upon account of the Merits of Christs Life and Death God forgives the Sins and accepts the Persons of those who heartily believe in him as the same Learned and Reverend Person excellently explains it soon after Where he tells us that we are delivered from the Law by Faith in Christ Whosoever believes in him shall not perish and shall not come into condemnation or into Iudgment as he reads it Iohn v. 24. and adds What Iudgment is this from which Believers are delivered by Christ Proculdubio strictum illud ubi juxta normam legis aliquis examinatur prout deprehenditur huic norme respondere justus aut injustus pronunciatur c. No doubt that strict Judgment where men are examined according to the Rule of the Law and are pronounced just or unjust as they are found to agree with that Rule Iustificatio igitur salus credentium non ex eo dependet quod habent in se qualitatem nova justitiae quam audent legali examini stricto Dei judicio subjicere sed quod per propter Merita Redemptoris non subituri sunt tale judicium sed perinde cum illis agetur ac si haberent in seipsis exactam justitiam legalem Therefore the Justification and Salvation of Believers does not depend on this that they have such an internal Righteousness as they dare submit to a legal Tryal and to the strict and rigorous Judgment of God but that by and for the Merits of their Redeemer hey shall never undergo such a Judgment but shall be dealt with as if they had an exact legal Righteousness of their own And this he tells us hemeans by the Merits of Christ being the formal cause of our Iustification and in this sense I heartily own it though the abuse of that Phrase is a sufficient Reason to alter it Let us now consider in the third place what is required on our part in order to our Justification by Gods Mercy and by Christs Merits and that is plainly expressed in the Homily And upon our part true and lively Faith in the Merits of Iesus Christ which yet is not ours but by Gods working in us That we may the better understand this we must enquire What is meant by this Faith in the Merits of Christ And what is meant by a true and lively Faith in Christs Merits And what our Church attributes to this Faith in the Work of Justification First What is meant by Faith in the Merits of Christ Now the general Notion of Faith is that it is a perswasion and belief in mans heart whereby he knoweth that there is a God and agreeth unto all Truth of Gods most holy Word contained in the holy Scripture This is such a Faith as Devils and wicked Men may have But then a Faith in Christs Merits or a true justifying Faith such as no wicked men can have is not only the common belief of the Articles of Faith but it is also a true trust and confidence of the Mercy of God through our Lord Jesus Christ and a sted fast hope of all good things to be received at Gods hand and that although we through infirmity or temptation of our ghostly Enemy do fall from him by sin yet if we return again to him by true Repentance that he will forgive and forget our offences for his Sons sake our Saviour Jesus Christ and will make us Inheritors with him of his everlasting Kingdom and that in the mean time till that Kingdom come he will be our Protector and Defender in all perils and dangers whatsoever do chance and that though sometimes he doth send us sharp adversity yet that evermore he will be a loving Father unto us if we trust in him and commit our selves wholly unto him hang only upon him and call upon him ready to obey and serve him That is a Faith in the Merits of Christ is a sure Hope and Confidence in God a certain Expectation of all temporal and spiritual good things from God for the Merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ upon the condition of Repentance and a new Life or as it is excellently expressed a little after in the same Homily For the very sure and lively Christian Faith is not only to believe all things of God contained in holy Scripture but also is an earnest trust and confidence in God that he doth regard us and that he is careful over us as the Father is over the Child whom he doth love and that he will be merciful to us for his only Sons sake and that we have our Saviour Christ our perpetual Advocate and Priest in whose only Merits Oblation and Suffering we do trust that our Offences be continually washed and purged whensoever we repenting truly do return to him with our whole heart sted fastly determining with our selves through his Grace to obey and serve him in keeping his Commandments and never to turn back again to sin So that Justifying Faith according to the sense of our Church is not a perswasion that our sins are actually pardoned or that God for Christs sake will forgive our sins without requiring any more of us than to believe that he will forgive them But it is a firm perswasion that God will forgive our sins for Christs sake if we repent of our sins and forsake them and determine through his gracious assistance never to return to them again But we shall understand this the better if we consider secondly what is meant by a true lively Faith in Christs Merits for our Church distinguishes between a dead and a lively Faith A dead Faith is by the holy Apostle St. James compared to the faith of Devils which believe God to be true and just and tremble for fear yet they do nothing well but all evil And such a manner of Faith have the wicked and naughty Christian People which confess God as St. Paul saith in their mouth but deny him in their deeds being abominable and without the right faith and to all good works reprovable And Forasmuch as Faith without Works is dead it is not now Faith as a dead Man is not a Man This dead Faith therefore is not the sure and substantial Faith which saveth Sinners Let us now consider what a lively Faith is and the description of that follows in these words Another Faith there is in
Homily by many Scripture-Promises and Examples and therefore we must consider what our Church means by Repentance and the explication of this is reduced to four principal Points From what we must return to whom we must return by whom we may be able to convert and the manner how to turn to God First From whence or from what things we must return and that is From all our sins not only grosser vices but the filthy lusts and inward concupiscences of the Flesh. All these things must they forsake that will truly turn unto the Lord and repent aright For sith for such things the wrath of God cometh upon the Children of Disobedience no end of punishment ought to be look'd for as long as we continue in such things But this must be done by Faith for sith that God is a Spirit he can by no other means be apprehended and taken hold upon That is God being a Spirit we cannot see him with bodily Eyes nor go to him on our Legs nor take hold of him with an Arm of Flesh and therefore this Metaphor of returning to God and going to him and taking hold of him must be expounded to a spiritual sense is the work of Faith which discovers him who is invisible and unites our Souls and Spirits to him And We have need of a Mediator for to bring and reconcile us unto him who for our sins is angry with us the same is Jesus Christ who being true and natural God c. took our nature upon him that so he might be a Mediator between God and us and pacifie his wrath In the second part of the Homily we have this general Description of Repentance That it is a true Returning unto God whereby men forsaking utterly their Idolatry and Wickedness do with a lively Faith embrace love and worship the true living GOD only and give themselves to all manner of good Works which by Gods Word they know to be acceptable unto him And we are there informed That there are four Parts of Repentance the first is Contrition of the Heart For we must be earnestly sorry for our sins and unfeignedly lament and bewail that we have by them so grievously offended our most bounteous and merciful God c. The second is an unfeigned Confession and acknowledging of our sins to God The third is Faith whereby we do apprehend and take hold upon the Promises of God touching the free pardon and forgiveness of our sins which Promises are sealed up unto us with the death and blood-shedding of the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Reason of this is because Contrition and Confession will avail us nothing unless we stedfastly believe and be fully perswaded that God for his Son Jesus Christs sake will forgive us all our sins for though we be never so earnestly sorry for our sins and acknowledge and confess them yet all these things shall be but means to bring us to utter desparation except we do stedfastly believe that God our heavenly Father will for his Son Jesus Christs sake pardon and forgive us our Offences and Trespasses and utterly put them out of remembrance in his sight therefore they that teach Repentance without Christ and a lively Faith in the Mercy of God do only teach Cains or Iudas Repentance That is they teach men to be sorry for their sins without any hopes of Pardon and Forgiveness which is only to be obtained through our Lord Jesus Christ. The fourth part of Repentance is an amendment of Life in bringing forth fruits worthy of Repentance for they that do truly repent must be clean alter'd and changed they must become New Creatures they must be no more the same that they were before As appears from Iohn the Baptists Exhortation to the Scribes and Pharisees whereby we do learn that if we will have the wrath of God to be pacified we must in no wise dissemble but turn unto him again with a true and sound Repentance which may be known and declared by good Fruits as by most sure and infallible signs thereof This I think is as plain as words can make it that Repentance which consists in a hearty sorrow for all our sins and in a humble Confession of them to Almighty God and in a sincere Faith and Trust in the Mercies of God through our Lord Jesus Christ together with an actual amendment of our lives is according to the sense of our Church absolutely necessary to obtain the pardon of our sins that is Iustification by the free Grace of God This has often made me wonder that any one should affix such a Doctrine as this to the Church of England That Repentance it self is not antecedently necessary to our Iustification I am sure the Learned Bishop Davenant was of another mind in this point for he expresly asserts that there are some Works sine quibus Iustificatio nunquam fuit ab ullo mortalium obtenta nunquam obtinebitur without which Justification never was and never shall be obtained by any mortal man among which he reckons true Repentance and Faith and the love of God and of our Neighbour Haec hujusmodi opera cordis interna sunt omnibus justificatis necessaria non quod contineant in se efficaciam seu meritum Iustificationis sed quod juxta ordinationem divinam vel requiruntur ut conditiones praeviae seu concurrentes sicuti poenitere credere vel ut effecta à fide justificante necessario manantia ut amare Deum c. i. e. These and such-like internal Works of the Heart are necessary to all that are justified not that they are meritorious Causes of Justification but because according to the Divine Appointment they are required either as previous or concurring conditions such as Repentance and Faith or as effects which necessarily flow from a justifying Faith such as to love God c. Where this Learned Prelate doth expresly assert that Repentance as well as Faith is a previous Condition of our Justification and I fear will hereafter be accounted one of our Innovators And that distinction which the Bishop makes between those Works which are required as previous Conditions of Justification as to repent and believe and those Works which are necessary Effects of justifying Faith which must always be present in the justified Person as to love God c. gives a plain and easie answer to the grand Exception against the antecedent necessity of Repentance to our Justification viz. Because then it must precede Faith it self I suppose because every true Believer is actually justified in the first instant of his being a true Believer whereas all good Works and therefore Repentance and Contrition which are certainly good Works are the Effects and Fruits of Faith and so consequently must follow our Justification by Faith unless we will place the Effects before their Cause But this is absolutely false that all good Works are the effects and fruits of justifying Faith for there are some good Works which
please especially if it be such a rule as will bend and comply with every mans fancy and thus it hath fared with the Doctor and his Friends as I have made appear by a whole Scheme of new Divinity which is wholly owing to this acquaintance with the Person of Christ but hath no solid foundation in the Gospel But though the Doctors words be too plain and express to be evaded yet I had a surer foundation for this Charge than some loose or unwary expressions for the design of that whole digression of the excellency of Christ Iesus will satisfie any impartial Reader that I did not either mistake or pervert his sense for there he gives us many examples of this way of reasoning from the knowledge of Christs Person to discover those other great Mysteries of Religion which however they may be revealed in the Gospel of Christ yet are clearly eminently savingly discovevered only in Iesus Christ. He reduces the sum of all true wisdom to three heads the knowledge of God and of our selves and skill to walk in Communion with God and adds That not any of them is to any purpose to be obtained or is manifested but only in and by the Lord Christ. Upon this I observed in my former Discourse that by is fallaciously added to include the Revelations Christ hath made whereas his first undertaking was to shew how impossible it is to understand these things savingly and clearly notwithstanding all those Revelations God hath made of himself and his will by Moses and the Prophets and by Christ himself without an acquaintance with his Person To this the Doctor answers The fallacy pretended is meerly of his own coyning The knowledge I mean is to be learned in Christ neither is any thing to be learned in him but what is learned by him I do say indeed now whatever I have said before that it is impossible to understand any sacred truth savingly and clearly without the knowledge of the Person of Christ but that in my so saying I exclude the consideration of the Revelations which Christ hath made or that God hath made of himself by Moses and the Prophets and Christ himself the principal whereof concerns his Person and whence alone we come to know him is an assertion becoming the modesty and ingenuity of this Author As for modesty and ingenuity the Doctor may take them to himself since no man deserves them better but I would willingly put in for a share of truth and honesty if he can spare any The Doctor says the fallacy is of my own coyning pray why so Because he does not exclude the Revelations which Christ hath made nor do I say he does in these words but the fallacy consists in not doing it which he ought to have done if he would have been true to his proposed design He who undertakes to prove that there are any sacred truths which cannot be clearly and savingly known by the Revelations of the Gospel without an acquaintance with the Person of Christ which was the Doctors task as appears from what I have already said though he need not wholly renounce Revelation yet he ought to consider the Revelations of Christ and the knowledge of his Person distinctly and shew that these truths are not clearly manifested by Revelation but are clearly and savingly discovered in the Person of Christ The first of these especially with reference to some new discoveries the Doctor has done pretty honestly for he has either alleadged no Scriptures for the proof of these grand Doctrines or such as every one may easily see do not clearly prove them I shall now consider how he acquits himself in the second whereby it will evidently appear that he sets up the knowledge of Christs Person as a way of learning Divine Truths distinct from the Revelations of the Gospel A few instances will be sufficient to clear this matter and that is all I at present design I shall begin with that terrible discovery of the naturalness of Gods righteousness vindictive justice unto him in that it was impossible that it should be diverted from sinners without the interposing of a Propitiation this the Doctor tells us is discovered in Christ that is in his Death and Sufferings for Sin what he means by a natural vindictive justice I shall consider in its proper place my present business is to examine how he proves a natural vindictive justice in God from the knowledge of Christ and the only Argument in that place is this Those who lay the necessity of satisfaction meerly upon the account of a free act and determination of the will of God leave to my apprehension no just and indispensable foundation for the Death of Christ but lay it upon a supposition of that which might have been otherwise but plainly God in that he spared not his only Son but made his soul an Offering for Sin and would admit of no Atonement but in his bloud hath abundantly manifested that it is of necessity to him his Holiness and Righteousness requiring it to render indignation wrath tribulation and anguish unto Sin To look upon it Vindictive Iustice as that which God may exercise or forbear makes his Iustice not a property of his Nature but a free act of his Will And a will to punish where one may do otherwise without injustice is rather ill will than justice If you resolve this Argument into its several Propositions it must proceed thus It is very plain in Scripture that Christ died for our sins so far Revelation goes Hence the Doctor infers That it was absolutely necessary that Christ should die for our sins from hence he infers That it was absolutely necessary that Sin should be punished and thence he infers That Punitive and Vindictive Justice is so absolutely necessary to God that it is not at the free choice of his Will whether he will punish sin or not but he must do it Now whether this Argument be good or bad I am not at present concerned to enquire but shall only ask whence the Doctor learns all this train of Consequences from which he at last concludes the naturalness and necessity of God's indictive Justice Are we any where told in Scripture that because Christ died for sin therefore it was absolutely necessary he should die for Sin and that it was absolutely necessary he should die for Sin because it is absolutely necessary that Sin should be punished and that it is absolutely necessary that Sin should be punished because God is so naturally just and righteous that he cannot do otherwise If we are no where taught in Scripture to argue at this rate then here is a plain example how we may learn something from the knowledge of Christ's Person which the Gospel has not expresly taught us how we may reason from what Christ hath done and suffered to draw such Conclusions as are either no where to be found in express terms in Scripture or at least which we are
justified in time as soon as they are capable of it that is as soon they are in being In his Book of Communion p. 204. he has ten Propositions much to the same purpose He there tells us That Christ in his undertaking of the work of our Redemption with God was constituted and considered as a common publick person in the stead of them for whose reconciliation to God he suffered And that being thus a common Person upon his undertaking as to merit and efficacy and upon his actual performance as to solemn declaration this is what Dr. Crisp calls Gods laying iniquity upon Christ by way of Obligation and by way of Execution was as such as a common person acquitted absolved justified and freed from all and every thing that on the behalf of the Elect as due to them was charged upon him or could so be So that he was from all Eternity upon his undertaking and in time upon his actual performance as a common Person that is in the name and as representing the persons of the Elect acquitted absolved and justified and therefore as it follows Christ received the general acquittance for them all and they are all acquitted in the Covenant of the Mediator whence they are said to be crucified with him to die with him to rise with him to sit with him in heavenly places namely in the Covenant of the Mediator This is what Dr. Crisp calls a secret application of Gods laying iniquity upon Christ to particular persons which is done before they know it and the only difference between him and Dr. Owen is that Dr. Owen will not allow this to be a discharge of the Elect in their own persons but only in the Person of the Mediator and Dr. Crisp thinks it more proper to say that this is a personal discharge of them since it is done in their names and persons but it is no great matter who speaks most properly when the thing is the same In another Discourse of the Death of Christ in answer to Mr. Baxter's Objections against his Treatise of Redemption p. 72. he asserts that the Elect have an actual right to all that was purchased by Christ's Death before believing and that is equivalent to their having a right from Eternity or from the first moment of their being And he offers it as his one opinion Whether absolution from the guilt of sin and obligation unto death though not as terminated in the conscience that is though it be not known to the Person which is Dr. Crisp's secret application for complete Iustification do not precede our actual believing and expounds the Justification of the ungodly Rom. 4. to this sense as Dr. Crisp expresly does And though he dare not assert complete Iustification to be before believing yet he affirms that absolution is as it is considered as the act of the Will of God that is secret and known only to God for a discharge from the effects of anger naturally precedes all collation of any fruits of love such as faith is And the difference between this absolution and complete Justification is no more but this That absolution wants that act of pardoning mercy which is to be terminated and completed in the conscience of a sinner That is though such a man be pardoned before believing yet he can have no sense of his Pardon before believing which is exactly Dr. Crisp's notion And absolution wants the hearts perswasion of the truth and goodness of the Promise and the mercy held out in the Promise And it wants the Souls rolling it self on Christ and receiving Christ as the Author and Finisher of that mercy an All-sufficient Saviour to them that believe All which signifies no more than that Absolution is before and without Faith for this apprehending the truth and goodness of the Promise and rolling it self on Christ according to the Doctors notion constitute the justifying Act of Faith And therefore when the Doctor elsewhere tells us that the Elect till the full time of their actual deliverance determined and appointed to them in their several Generations be accomplished are personally under the Curse of the Law and on that account are legally obnoxious to the wrath of God He only chuses to contradict himself to avoid the imputation of Antinomianism For by their actual deliverance I presume he must understand the time of their actual believing and if they are absolved before they actually believe how can they be under the Law or legally obnoxious to the wrath of God And therefore he immediately qualifies this that though they are obnoxious to the Law and the Curse thereof yet not at all with its primitive intention of execution upon them which is as much as to say that they are obnoxious to the Curse of the Law but not obnoxious to the execution of that Curse which I take to be non-sense How then are they obnoxious to the Curse of the Law Why as it is a means appointed to help forward their acquaintance with Christ and acceptance with God on his account By which I suppose he means that their Absolution being at present secret and not terminated and completed in the Conscience they are terrified and scared with the threatnings of the Law as fancying themselves to be under it when they are not and this makes them fly to Christ for refuge and sanctuary And though Dr. Crisp indeed do not like this way of affrighting men to Christ by the Law yet the difference is not great and makes no material alteration in the Scheme of their Religion And therefore when Dr. Owen adds That it was determined by Father Son and Holy Ghost that the way of the actual personal deliverance of the Elect from the Sentence and Curse of the Law should be in and by such a way and dispensation as might lead to the praise of the glorious grace of God and to glorifie the whole Trinity by ascending to the Fathers love through the works of the Spirit and Bloud of the Son All that he means by it is this that we shall have no sense of our Absolution by the Bloud of Christ till we actually believe nor be actually possessed of Eternal Life till we be renewed and sanctified all which Dr. Crisp will own and is consistent enough with our Justification or Absolution from Eternity since Faith and all other blessings are the effect of our antecedent Absolution in Christ as the Doctor confesses And this is all Mr. Ferguson means when he tells us That Christ's own discharge was an immediate consequent of his sufferings and they for whom he suffered had also immediately a fundamental right of being acquitted but their actual deliverance was to be in the way and order that he who had substituted himself in our room and he who had both admitted and been the Author of the substitution thought fit to appoint This is the necessary consequence of this Doctrine that if Christ acted as a Surety in the name
and stead of particular persons then those for whom he acted are absolved and justified by the undertaking or actual performance of Christ either from Eternity or from the first moment of their being I might add several other Consequences which necessarily result from this Doctrine and are the peculiar Principles of Antinomianism as that we must not pray for the forgiveness of sins because they are long since removed by the death of Christ but only for the sense of this forgiveness that God sees no sin in his people because their sins are laid on Christ and that therefore we must not lay sin upon our own Consciences neither unless we will make our Conscience a Christ But this is enough to shew how fruitful this Principle is of absurdities and what reason I have to reject our Union to the Person of Christ considered as one who hath done all for us in our name and stead And now I need not insist long on the second thing proposed viz. our immediate Union to the Person of Christ For though all Christians are in some sense immediately united to Christ as I have shewn above yet in the Antinomian sense of an immediate Union I do utterly reject it whereby they understand an Union to the Person of Christ without any intervening Conditions on our part And this they must necessarily do according to their notion of the Person of Christ. They explain this as I observed in my former Discourse by a Conjugal Relation and a Legal Union As for a Conjugal Relation which consists in such a Union of Persons as is between a Man and his Wife which intitles us to all the personal excellencies and perfections Beauty Comeliness Riches and Righteousness of Christ as Marriage intitles a Woman to her Husbands Estate and secures us from the Wrath of God and the Accusations of the Law as a woman under Covert is not liable to any Action or Arrest I perceive Mr. Ferguson gives it over as indefensible for among all the sorts of Unions which he reckons up he takes no notice of this which is the most charming and inviting Union and most acceptable to the Sisterhood the best Friends to Conventicles of any other But I suppose Mr. Vincent will not give it over so and therefore I observe that this must be an immediate Union which requires nothing else but an embracing and clasping Faith which unites their persons to each other This Faith is no condition of Union but only such a consent to have Christ as is necessary to make the Match or rather like joyning hands which is the Ceremony of Marriage Though indeed the Marriage was made before as they say all Marriages are in Heaven Eternal Election marries them to Christ and this consenting Faith gives them only a comfortable sense of their Matrimonial Union as will appear by considering the nature of Legal Union whereby we are united to Christ as to our Surety and Mediator who does all for us in our name and stead Now it is a plain demonstration that this Union to Christ as to our Surety and Mediator is immediate for it is entirely Gods act in electing some particular persons and giving them to Christ to do all for them in their name and stead And therefore Dr. Crisp truly argues that it is God and only God that can lay our sins upon Christ that our Repentance and Faith and new Obedience cannot do it For this work of laying sin on Christ in making him our Surety to do all for us was done long since and is not to be done now Christ hath already died for all that he will die for and if he did not die for us nothing that we can do now can lay our sins upon him For as the Doctor reasons if we could a fresh by our Repentance and Faith lay our sins on Christ as our Surety how should he get rid of them again For there is no getting rid of sin but by dying for it and Christ hath already done that and is not to die again If Christ's Suretiship consists in his dying and performing all righteousness for particular persons elected and chosen by God our Union to Christ as to our Surety must be from Eternity or at least from the time of his appearing in the world for if he did not act as our Surety then he cannot do so since unless we should suppose that he must come into the world again to act over the same part in the name and stead of those who were left out of the first Roll of Election and therefore I do not wonder that these men are so much blundered and talk backward and forward in those directions they give to their hearers how to get into Christ for the truth is if we are not in Christ already there is no getting into Christ now according to their Principles Election alone and Gods giving us to Christ unites us to him not any act of our own neither Faith Repentance or new Obedience these at best can only give us a comfortable sense of our Union to Christ but can contribute nothing at all to our Union it self And therefore Dr. Owen does roundly acknowledge that Christ is reckoned to us in order of nature before we believe and by Gods reckoning Christ to us he means the imputing of Christ unto ungodly unbelieving sinners for whom he died so far as to account him theirs to bestow Faith and Grace upon them for his sake And if God reckon Christ to men before Faith he must reckon him theirs from the time of his giving them to Christ for there can be no other reason of his reckoning Christ to them at all And to shew how free and absolute this gift of Christ is he tells us That there is no condition at all in this stipulation That God should engage upon the death of Christ to make out Grace and Glory Liberty and Beauty unto those for whom he died upon condition they do so or so leaves no proper place for the merit of Christ and is very improperly ascribed unto God And therefore though the Covenant of Grace seem to run conditionally that if we repent and believe we shall be saved yet the Covenant is indeed absolute because these very conditions are part of Christ's Purchase and are promised without any condition and though God will bring us to Heaven in such a way and method as he has thought fit to prescribe to himself for the Glory of the Trinity yet all this in all the parts of it is no less fully procured for us nor less freely bestowed on us for Christ's sake and on his account as part of his Purchase and Merits than if all of us immediately upon his death had been translated into heaven From all this it appears what they mean by an immediate Union to the Person of Christ such an Union to Christ as our Mediator and Surety as is founded only on Electing Grace without any