himself in the Title of the book their unworthy Teacher not one of their Teachers so that his purpose is to deliver a general rule for all Churches His congragation to take upon trust from him and other Congregations from their Teachers what they themselves cannot reach to see in its own evidence i. e. such doctrines as they themselves by their own light and knowledg cannot tell whether they be white or black true or false from Heaven or from Hell And to do this is lesse absurd and more necessary then many imagin Mr. Baxter is scarce yet beginning to discover himself therefore we have yet Bona Verba from him we hear him speaking modestly afterward vires acquirit eundo we shall when once he is hot in his discourse hear him speak in the full of the mouth here only he saith less absurd and more necessary than some imagin But who knows not his meaning to be that for the people thus to pin their Faith to the sleeves of their Teachers specially to such profound Teachers as Mr. Baxter is so far from being absurd as that it is necessary I suppose he meaneth to salvation though some imbegin otherwise Here I would demand not of Mr. Baxter for I desire not familiarity with him while such an Aphorist but of any knowing man indulgent to him when he saith less absurd and more necessary than some imagine whom can he mean by those some but the Protestant Churches and Divines who at all times with one consent have cryed out against the absurdity of this doctrine in their disputations against the Papists And if so what doth he less therein than pronounce the Popish Doctrine herein necessary and the doctrine of all the Protestants in opposition to it a meer imagination But it may be objected that the Papists lay down this doctrine of Implicit Faith or believing upon the authority of the Church or their Teachers for a continual rule to the people But Mr. Baxter proposeth it but as a temporary rule useful only for a season Therefore the difference between him and them is considerable For so much may be gathered from Mr. Baxters words to take upon trust from your Teachers what you cannot Yet reach to see in its own Evidence It is but while they are yet weak while they cannot yet reach c. But when once they are strengthened and have attained to see truths in their own evidence thenceforth they are to take up such doctrines upon their own evidence not upon trust from their Teachers any longer I answer This difference is but supposed not reall For if we compare his words here with that which he hath written in the next Section of this Epistle before and with the whole frame and current of of his disputes throughout his whole book we shal find that he doth equally with the Papists labour to settle the people in an implicit faith to believe as the Church believeth still For in the former Sect he that knoweth best his own congregation acknowledgeth it to be in the number of those the greatest part whereof is uncapable af understanding such controverted points as are treated of in his book He saith not only that they understand them not but also denyeth them to be in a capacity to be brought to the understanding of them viz. in their own evidence therefore they must still hold them upon trust from their Teachers Besides if we look to the frame of his Disputes in this Treatise we shall find him concurring with the Papists in his indeavours to keep the people in a perpetuall incapacity to understand such Doctrines in their own evidence For what else can he mean by seeing a point of divine doctrine in its own evidence but one of these two things to see it in the evidence and cleer testimony of the word by which God hath set it forth or to see it in the evidence of Sophistical learning and disputes by which Mr. Baxter and the Sophisters whom he followeth pretend themselves to set it forth But by neither of these will Mr. Baxter or the Popish Sophisters if they can hinder it suffer the vulgar people to know any Evangelicall truth in its own evidence Not by the evidence of the Scriptures by which God hath cleered up and so plainly revealed the fundamental truths of salvation that even babes and sucklings may in good measure comprehend them Mat. 11. 25. 1 Cor. 1. 26. For here with his Masters the Romish Sophisters hee raiseth vain and distracting questions making difficulties where the wisedom of God hath left none and so puzling weak and tender consciences that even what before they had attained by the pure and simple light of the word seeing now such a thick fogg of doubts interposed they think themselves to have lost what light once they had and so sink into sadness and despair concluding it utterly unattainable What zeal Mr. Baxter hath thus not only to match but also to exceed all the locusts of Rome in darkning such truths as Christ hath in Scripture left cleer and open to all shining in the very Sun-beams of the Gospel we shall find in examining the following parts of his Treatise So that in this respect he hinders as much as in him lyeth his Kederminsterians from seeing the truth of Christ in its own evidence Nor by the latter Mr. Baxters sophistical way of quenching under a pretence of confirming Gospel-truth can the vulgar ever attain to know them in their own evidences not only because this humane Learning hath no power to search into them but also because it is not to be expected that illiterate men should ever attain any depth in this learning For if it be true what is generally held by Mr. Baxter and his side that without great acquaintance with school-learning the marrow of Divinity can never be effectually pierced into and what a great Scholler once told Erasmus that one of these School-Doctors John Scotus can in no wise be understood under nine years study at the least and what a 3d affirmeth that a man must have Aristotles Metaphysicks ad unguem before he can be capable of understanding one sentence of Scotus Farewell then all hope of saving knowledg ever to be attained by unscotified miserable idiots in its own evidence or by the Ministeriall help of such Teachers as have crept here below upon the Doctrine of Christ his Prophets and Apostles and not had so much time and patience as Mr. Baxter hath bestowed in the sublimated study of Aristotle Scotus and their fellows But what if Mr. Baxter herein speak the same things may some say with the Church of Rome and the same in opposition to the judgment of all the Reformed Churches yet this doth not certainly prove that it is savouring of error which he here delivereth except it be manifested that he speaketh against the Scriptures Doth the word any where forbid us to take up points of Faith on the credit of our Teachers though we
sinns against the Gospel as well as against the Law Though I have spoken of all these enough of each in its proper place within this Tractate yet somewhat for the fuller Clearing of my meaning may be said here also The first and second I shall for brevity join in one as of no small Cognation As farr as I hold and have declared my self to hold them 1 I have also manifested in due place how they are or seem at least to be grounded upon the Scriptures 2 They are expresly and boldly asserted by many of the most Conspicuous Divines in piety and Learning that any of the Protestant Churches have enjoyed ever since the Reformation 3. And that without the Contradiction or exception of any Church or Orthodox Writer for well nigh a hundred yeares made against it A great and probable Argument that it was the Common Judgement of all the Churches 4. Mr. Rhaeterfordt in his Exercit. Apolog holds it forth not as the private opinion of some particular men but as the Common Judgement of all the Churches And the Remonstrants take it as such For so I remember they oft argue in their Apol. and elswhere Justificatio est purus putus Actus in Deo immanens c. not that they express what Arminius his judgment and theirs after him is in this point but that from this as a conclusion which they knew common to and would not be denyed by any Protestant their Argument would stand firm against them Neither know I any one of the Protestants that hath written against them excepting against it 5 I never read any to make me dissent in judgement from these Worthies that hath given his reasons against it save Mr. Br. alone and he handles the question like a man spoyled with Philosophy and vain deceit as the Apostle termeth the use of exotick learning in purely Gospel matters after the traditions of men and Rudiments of the world not after Christ Col. 2. 8. And his nakedness in such his arguing is enough discovered by a learned Writer whose worth I shall still honour but have not so much as an Ambition ever to match * Mr. Kendal He tells us indeed that Dr Downham hath written against it as delivered by Mr. Pemble But I could not get the book to see his reasons nor know I any thing which he hath written but as I have heard from others Besides I have been told that some of the late Reverend Synod disrelished the doctrine but cannot finde that any one of them hath published his reasons for such a disrelish And Charity will not permit me to harbour the lightest imagination that any of those grave Divines culld and selected out of the whole Nation for their eminency in godliness and learning should without any means used for information and conviction exercise a Tyranny over the Consciences of their lesser brethren to force them into an implicit Faith to beleeve as themselves beleeve specially when doing it they shall put out that which they think at least to be the light of the word in their conscience and in consenting with them without hearing a reason they shall dissent from others whom their Modesty will confess to be of no less deservings in the Church who have given their reasons Yet still I hold 1 that those Scriptures which treat of Justification by Faith do all relate to the transient justification which no man partakes of till he beleeveth 2 That no man is personally justified but onely in Christ the publike person till he be by Faith united to Christ That righteousness and life so discend to us from the second Adam as sinn and condemnation from the first As by the offence of one judgement came upon all to condemnation so by the Righteousness of one the free gift came upon all to Justification of life Rom. 5. 18 19. In Adam the publike person we were all represented he was all and we all considered in him God saw us in all our individuall persâns in him though we through Adam saw it not so that Aâam sinning we all sinned in him and became dead in law and guilty of condemnation before God as if we had been then being and actually sinning Nevertheless as to our selves we were not personally sinners and guilty untill we had a personall being in and from Adam So in Christ satisfying Gods justce for sinn the Elect were all represented as in a publike person satisfying in him by him and so all in him and by him justified and absolved in all their individualls from sinn and condemnation before God Nevertheless we are not personally so justified untill we have a personall being and new being in Christ and from Christ 3. That this Transient Justification is a justifying or being justified before God passed at Gods Tribunall set up in mans Conscience from which he pronounceth absolution to a poore sinner denying himself and resting upon Christ alone for Mercy So that now and never untill now he hath boldness to pierce by Faith into the Holiest and plead his righteousness before him that sitteth on the Mercy-seat Thus our justification which was before in God and in Christ is not at all derogatory to the justification which is by Faith but onely prevents that this latter may not be derogatory to the praise of Gods Grace and Christs merits which have completed all without our subserviency for us and thus God is all seen to be all and our boasting excluded This hitherto is my judgement untill I shall be better instructed Tu si quid novisti rectius istis Candidus imperti And at length if it shall be granted to be an error yet it cannot be Antinomism being a deviation not from the doctrine of the Law but of the Gospel It was not the judgement but malice of Mr. Br that gave it this brand of ignominy 3 To the free absolute and unconditionall Justification I need not to Apologize for my self at all It is to the truly pious of the Ministery to whom my words are directed who among other have given this evidence of your godlinesse that ye have not forsaken your first Faith by declining to Popery or Arminianism what others judge of me is to me a small thing saith the Apostle of such I weigh it not But ye no doubt teach that the very promulgation of Justification runs upon no other condition but Faith alone and upon Faith not as a quality or vertue but instrumentall to apply the righteousnesse of Christ to Justification that works and the universall conditionall Justification which Mr. Br. hath learned of his Masters are to be excluded In this your doctrine is one and the same in sense and substance with theirs that affirm Justification to be unconditionall And it is indifferent to me to deliver the same truth in their words or yours Onely I find that they make use of both the former and this Conclusion as strong Fortresses against Popery and Arminianism which causeth Mr.
thing yet remaineth which I promised to premise viz. what my intention is in excepting against Mr. Baxters book This is not either to oppose him in all things which he hath written therein For sometimes he looks out thorow truths casement that we might take him so a sonn of truth and the less suspect him when he vends his false wares In this case I will not jangle with him whether he speaks truth of envy and subtlety or of good will and sincerity Or 2. in all that shal seem to my judgment Heterodox in his Treatise but only or mainly in those things wherein he joyneth with the Romish Synagogue to maintain their damning doctrine against the truth which is and hath been professed in all the Reformed Churches about Faith and Justification Or 3. in every particular passage wherein he discovers himself in this point to be for Antichrist against Christ for sometimes he delivers himself with such ambiguities and aequivocations like Apollo of old in his Oracles that in pretence of another sense of his words than the more Grammaticall and usuall he may leave a way of issue to himself in case he cannot maintain his words in that sense wherein he would be understood that he may deceive Let it not therefore be thought all granted that shall not be here excepted against and that I approve all whatsoever I do not oppugn For method I desire no other may be expected from me than to follow Master Baxter in order as he hath written and to take up his Paradoxes and most profound and learned mistakes as they fall from him examining them not by the rules of Sophistry but by the touch-stone of the sacred Word These things thus premised we are now to begin to examine the unsavory particulars occurring in the Book it self Mr. Baxters APHORISMS Exorized and Anthorized OR An Examination of and Answer to a Book written by Mr. Rich. Baxter Teacher of the Church at Kederminster in Worcestershire ENTITVLED Aphorisms of Justification THE FIRST PART CHAP. I. Arg. In which Mr. Baxters Popish Doctrine of Implicit Faith is examined and whether the people may admit Doctrine upon trust from their Teachers THE first passage wherein he sheweth himself to smel of Popery in the point of Faith and Justification is before the work it self in the farewell of his Epistle to the Reader pag. antepenult of the Epistle where he doth not obscurely manifest himself to like well enough the Papists doctrine of Implicit Faith and to wish it more favoured and taken up at home among us His words are these speaking to his Congregation Bax. Who I hope do understand that to take upon trust from your teachers what you cannot yet reach to see in its own evidence is less absurd and more necessary than many do imagine A very proper insinuation to a people whom he would have to swallow such Doctrines as in the following Treatise he offers to them to be swallowed As far as he prevails or prevails not with this insinuation so far he hath or hath not men his Disciples This is the very foundation of Antichrists kingdom the authority of men as the foundation of Christs kingdom is the authority of the Scriptures If Mr. Baxter can perswade men to admit and suck in this Doctrine his whole business is finished and all his ends attained If they take upon trust even fundamentall doctrines from their teachers Let Mr. Baxter bring what doctrines he will with him of men and Devils nothing shall be refused all shall be taken upon his Credit By this slight he knew the Pope had gathered and many hundred years held under his vassallage in blind obedience many nations of the earth therefore will not Mr. Baxter baulk it when hee goes about to propagate the Popes doctrine among us But let us see what the Popish implicit faith is and then compare Mr. Baxter with the Papists to see whether there be not in both one mind and spirit The Papists distinguish betwixt Faith and Faith telling us there is an Explicit and there is an Implicit Faith By the Explicit Faith they mean a cleer and distinct knowledg apprehension and believeng of all the Articles and Doctrines of faith which the holy Mother Church of Rome hath prescribed to be received to salvation and that not in a bunch only but in particulars also This Faith they hold needful and expedient in the Clergy as they term their Prelats and Priests who are to rule over more than to teach the people By the Implicite Faith they mean a generall and confused apprehension and believing of all that the Church hath commanded to be taught and believed that it is all good and true though they that so believe know not in particular what the Church hath commanded otherwise than they take it upon trust of their Priests which tell them such and such things are commanded by the Church to be believed This Faith they hold sufficient for the Laity to salvation to believe what the Church believeth and enjoyneth to be true though they neither know what it is nor are acquainted with one least parcell of the word by which they may know it to be true which they have so taken upon trust to believe By the Church they mean the Pope and his Clergy by the Laity the people So that by their Doctrine if the Popes decree things in religion successively never so contrary and contradictory either to other and the titular Clergy follow them and go to Hell for it yet the people have this one supereminent priviledg that their Implicit and Colliers faith saves them as being still the same and unchanged that they believe as the Church believeth though they know not either with the Church or what believing is or what the things are which the Church believeth Compare we now Mr. Baxters words with this popish doctrine and see we if there be any difference I hope saith he you understand When Mr. Baxter saith I hope we are not to doubt but a man of such rare parts hath good grounds for his hope He knew there was means used to make them understand else would he not say I hope you understand and what means but teaching and who should teach them but Mr. Baxter their Teacher But what is it he hopes they understand it followeth That to take upon the trust of your Teachers what you cannot yet see in its own evidence is not c. Here is the Implicit Faith not to ground their opinions and belief in matters of salvation upon the known word of God but upon trust from the Teachers to believe because their Teachers say they belive it And what are the Teachers but what in Popish phrase is termed the Church the Clergy which is in their account at least the Church representative And Mr. Baxter to decline envy useth the plurall number Teachers not as I conceive that the people of Kederminster have more Teachers in ordinary besides himself for he names
nothing c. When the Auâhor in the quoted place speaketh nothing of the New Covenant but of the Law of Christ by which hee there declareth himselfe to meane the Ten Commandements as they are now in the hand and disposing of Christ And this Law he understands also in relation not to the whole world but to them that are implanted into Christ his words being directed to Neophytus To such Christ having already borne the penalty of the Law in their stead temporall and fatherly chastisements onely for their purging and perfecting are threatned in case through infirmity they transgresse the Law In this I conceive hee alludeth to the priviledges of the Covenant made with David as the Type of Christ and his seed as the Type of Christs seed and so pertayning as a Gospel liberty no lesse fully to us than to them If his children forsake my Law breake my statutes c. Then will I visit their transgressions with the rod and their iniquity with stripes nevertheless my loving kindness will I not take utterly from him nor suffer my faithfulnes to fail my Covenant will I not break c. Ps 89. 31-34 And this is M. Brs. own doctrine when he teacheth that there is no deathly violation of the new Covenant besides final unbelief rebellion against Christ in and under Thes 32. 33. 34. and 37. But the Author whom Mr. Br. calls heer ad partes speaks not of finall unbeleefe or rebellion incident to the world but of some particular transgression of any of the Ten Commandements as hee expresseth himselfe through the infirmity incident to the Saints What fire and fury is there in this mans wrath that having made an Adversary will have him wounded vel per me though through his owne heart aniâamque in vulnere ponit If it be an intolerable errour in this man much more in Mr. Baxter who much more vehemently and upon sligââer and slenderer grounds asserts it The Scriptures which Mr. Baxter alleâdgeth as contraried by this doctrine speak eytherof such rebells as when the Grace of Christ is offered them persist in a finall refusall of it or of such hypocrites as having once seemingly tasted it Apostatize utterly from it And with these this Author hath nothing heere to doe Onely Mr. Baxter being heavily burthened with another Monster which hee had a purpose to have disburthened himselfe of in a Tractate of Universall Redemption being prevented by another must needs now and then case himselfe of it and speake out how hatefull to him the doctrine of the certaine perseverance of the Saints in grace is The other things which hee hints and but hints at as errours in this Author might bee taken into examination if Mr. Baxter would alleadge his words and shew what hee excepts against in them I see not but the passages are pure and cleare enough in the Booke if hee would forbeare the casting in of his salt-petre to corrupt them As he sayth it was not his businesse to have objected so neither was it my businesse to have defended had hâe not sought under a pretence of opposing this Booke to defame many truths of Christ CHAP. XI Whether according to Mr. Baxter the Doctrine of Justification by Faith without works tend to carnall Liberty and to the driving of Obedience out of the World IN prosecuting his second Quere Mr. Baxter hath lead us a long race In the rest he is more straight and short A third Quere which bears the force of another Argument to subvert Justification by Faith without works hee so proposeth as contayning another absurdity and evill likely to follow upon this doctrine His words are as followeth B. Aphor. pa. 325. Whether this Doctrine doth not tend to drive obedience out of the world For if mân doe once beleeve that it is not so much as a part of the Condition of their Justification will iâ not much tend to relax their diligence I know that Love and thankfulnesse should bee enough and so it will when all our ends are attained in our ultimate end Then wee shall Act for these ends no more wee shall have nothing to doâ but love and joy and prayse and beâ thankâfull But that is not yet Sure as God hath given us the affections of Feare Desire Hope and Care so he would have us use them for the attainment of our great ends Therefore he that taketh downâ but one of all our motives to obedience he helps to destroy obedience it selfe seeing we have need of every Motive that God hath left us I shall examine heere first the Quere it selfe then the amplification of it The Quere or Interrogation bears the force of a strong Affirmation That the doctrine of Justification by Grace without Workâ doth tend to drive obedience out of the world and to relax mens diligence to good works It must bee therefore a prodigious doctrine that produceth so cursed an effect First then I demand whom he censureth as the Authors of so direfull an evill God or men If the Holy Ghost hath not taught men this doctrine let the guilt of this evill bee upon such men as have entertayned it But the Holy Ghost hath taught it To him that worketh not but beleeveth on him that justifieth the ungodly his Faith is imputed to him for righteousnesse But hee that worketh or brings works to be justified by them is excluded Ro. 4. 4. â His is the blessedness to whom God imputeth Righteousness without works ver 6. Not of works but of him that calleth Ro. 9 11. If at works then not by Grace if by Grace then not of works Ro. 11. 7. By Grace through Faith not of works Eph. 2. 8. 9. Not our owne righteousnesse but the righteousnesse which is by the Faith of Christ Phil. 3. 9. Not by works of righteousnesse which wee have done but according to his mercy And many more testimonies before in a fitter place alleadged all in one harmony evincing the Holy Ghost to bee the Author of this Doctrine So that Mr. Baxter loadeth not man but God with this reproach of seeking to drive obedience out of the world 2. Whether hee hath not taken up this slander from the Monks and Jesuits Whether there bee any of them that having written against Justification by Faith which hath not aspersed it and our Churches that hold it with this scandall Or any one of the Protestant Divines which hath defended this Article of our Faith but hath spoken fully to the vindicating of this Doctrine from this so injurious a slander When Mr. Baxter is so much Popish that hee takes up every most frothy Objection of every shaveling of that side to adore it and so much an Anti-Protestant that hee scorns to mention what on our part hath beene regested in way of answer to it why takes he up his habitation among Protestants but to corrupt and seduce them 3. If hee meane by the World the unbeleevers of the World that are strangers to Christ and the Covenant
judgment nor to admit any thing what another hath introduced of his will and judgment Apostolos Domini habemus auctores qui nec ipse quicquam ex suo Tertul. l. de prescript advers Haereticos Arbitrio quod inducerunt elegerunt sed acceptam a Christo disciplinam fideliter nationibus adsignaverunt i. e. We have the Apostles of the Lord herein our authors or patterns who neither made choise of any thing from their owne invention to impose upon Christians but faithfully delivered to the Nations the discipline which they had received from Christ So that if an Angel from heaven shall preach any other doctrine let him be accursed And having mentioned some doctrines not of Christs prescribing pronounceth of all such Hae sunt doctrinae hominum Daemoniorum prurientibus auribus natae de ingenio sapientiae saeculi c. i. e. These are Doctrines of men and Devills sprung forth from itching ears of the nature of the wisdome of the world which the Lord calling foolishnesse hath chosen the foolish things of the world even to the confusion of Philosophy it self Ea est n. Materia sapientiae saecularis c. For this Philosophy is the matter of worldly wisdome a rash interpreter of the nature and dispensations of God from it Heresies are suborned And having particularizâd what severall heresies have been foysted into the Church from the severall sects of Philosophers and what from all conjoyned and inveighed against Aristotles Logick as an enemie to Christian Religion he thus breaks forth Quid ergo Athenis Hierosolymis Quid Academiae Ecclesiae Quid haereticis Christianis Nostra institutio de particu Solomonis est c. Viderint qui Stoicum platonicum Dialecticum Christianismum protulerunt c. i. e. what then hath Athens to do with Jerusalem the Academy with the Church Hereticks with Christians Our Institution in Religion is out of the porch of Solomon c. Let them look to it that have hatched out a Stoicall Platonicall and Logicall Christianity to us We have no need of curiosity after Christ nor of inquisitivenesse after the Gospel When we believe viz. Christ and his Gospel wee desire nothing beyond believing For this we believe first that there is not viz. in Philosophy or other Arts any thing that we ought to believe unto salvation beyond the Gospel of Christ And a little after he that is not satiâfied with the Scripture but seekes further authority from reason and Philosophy his curious inquisitivenesse argues him either not to believe or else to be vain-glorious in seeking after the praise of worldly wisdom therefore annexeth this counsell Cedat curiositas fidei cedat gloria saluti i. e. let curiosity give place to faith and vain-glory stoop to salvation So much and much more not unworthy the reading hath Tertullian in this Book And none will easily affirm that Tertullian condemns that learning which himselfe wanted to hide his own nakedness All his polemicall works or controversall writings declare the contrary specially his book against Hermogenes where having to deale with one that little regarded the Scriptures sets upon him in his own fortresse and assails him with his own weapons and philosophically convinceth the Philosophaster and dialectically the Sophister in his own arts and element confuting and confounding him But some may object that seeing he holds the use of these arts unnecessary and hurtfull to Christian Religion why doth himself make use of them Himself both moves and answers the question else-where and thus puts the question Whether ohere be not some Tertul. de Anima lib. truths to be found in philosophy and 2ly whether a Christian may not in some case make use of it in his disputations His answer is somewhat large the summ and brief of it runs in this tenor That it is not to be denyed but there are some truths delivered by Philosophers in the more common and open things of Divinity i. e. as I granted before in naturall and morall things and those we are to take up not for the authority of the Phylosophers who by the groping light of Nature have by a kind of blind happinesse found out and delivered the same but for the authority of God who by his undeceiving word hath manefested it to us and further that in our disputes with such to whom the prescripts of philosophy are more authoritative and authentick than the oracles of the word when it may be done without prejudice to the word we may retort upon the adversarie his own arguments and stop his mouth with testimonies of Philosophers which to him are most authentick Nevertheless it is the safest and most pious way when wee treat with Hereticks that professe Christians to hold them close to the Scriptures Aufer Haereticis quae cum Ethnicis Tertul. lib. de Resur carnis sapiunt saith he ut de solis scripturis questiones suas sistant stare non potuerint i. e. Take from the Heretieks those arguments which they draw from heathen learning that they may state their questions from the Scriptures alone and they will not be able to stand With Tertullian consented the judgment of the sound and orthodox Fathers which lived after him during the first six hundred years in the Christian Church and my purpose was to demonstrate it from the very words of such of them as I have read but finding the Preface swelling above its measure already and the little or no use which they make of these pieces of learning in their works enough declaring their judgments that they held the same useless and superflouâ at least in all their writings holding thewselves fast to the word not medling with prophane arts to help or back the Gospel of Christ saving when they were necessitated to disabuse the people in discovering the fallacies of the Manichees Arrians and other sophistical Hereticks I think it more pertinent to ease my self of this burthen By the way only noting that as Julian when he gave his mind once inordinately to the study of philosophy and coveted to be a learned and philosophical Christian did quickly declare himself to be an Apostat and no Christian So the like apostacy no doubt by the like means befell many others though not openly declared And this must needs follow in part upon all such as make not the word to be the whole foundation of their faith but so farr only as it hath reason and philosophy consenting with it But the word of the Gospel is transcendânt above the reach of Philosophy and natural reason they cannot comprehend it to give testimony to it so that to make reason the touch-stone of Gospel-doctrines and truths is the ready way to apostatize from Christ and his Gospel although the self-deceivers declare not their apostacy but profess Christianity still To be a Christian only so far as the very extracts and spirits of natural reason suggest cause so to be is to be a Christian only
understand not the points which they teach much less can produce any Scriptures surely and soundly to confirm them I answer that the Scriptures are very full and punctuall against taking upon trust of meer men any doctrine to be believed to salvation Be not ye called Masters for one is your Master even Christ Mat. 23. 10. q. d. Dare not any of you to suffer any to take up matters in Religion upon your trust or authority For there is but one unerring Mr. whose authority is authentick Christ Jesus If Paul or an Angell from heaven preach any other Gospel to you c. let him be accursed Gal. 1. 8. therefore not trusted Prove all things hold fast that which is good 1 Thes 5. 21. Believe not every Spirit but try the spirits whether they be of God For many false Prophets are gone forth into the world 1 Joh. 4. 1. When the Holy Ghost saith Prove all Try all he implyedly forbids to take up any thing on trust from men My sheep hear my voyce the voyce of a stranger they will not hear for they know not i. e. own not the voyce of strangers Joh. 10. 4 5 27. They know and own the voyce of Christ alone If any preach with another voyce another doctrine than that which is originally from Christ they fly from him explode him Here is nothing taken upon trust but from Christ himself They are built upon the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles Jesus Christ being the head corner-stone Eph. 2. 20. A more noble foundation than the trust and authority of men I might annex many like testimonies of divine Scripture to the same purpose but to what purpose They are Deceivers such as the Apostle numbreth among grievous wolves speakers of perverse things i. e. perverters of the Gospel of Christ that seeke to draw Disciples after them i. e. to settle men in a Faith upon the authority of their learning wisedom and holiness Acts 20. 29 30. But Mr Baxter and his peers are necessitated thus to do if in teaching such doctrines they will draw after them Disciples For being destitute of the authority of God and his word if they should not urge men to a credulity upon the authority of men their doctrine would be hissed at as having no authority To conclude then the doctrine which Mr. Baxter here more than obscurely holds forth is 1 Against Christ and all the Reformed Churches which condemn it borrowed of and owned by the apostatized Synagoue of Rome only 2 Against the Scripture as hath been manifested 3 It is a doctrine that brings with it an unsetledness and instability in Faith and Religion Whosoever takes it up from Mr. Baxters credit must be always learning and never know be whirled hither and thither with doubts and uncertainties without any firm station never attaining rest For he that taketh upon trust from his Teachers what to believe and do to be saved will one day be of Paul another of Apollo and a third of Cephas as his fancy tels him this or that Teacher is most worthy to be trusted In great probability Mr. Baxters predecessor taught not the same Justification with Mr. Baxter and he that shall succeed him will hold out the same grounds and way of justification with Christ and his Apostles which Mr. Baxter declineth And I know not but either of them may be as worthy of Trust as himself In what a maze must that people then be led by what turnings and returnings must they be dragged forward and backward who are taught to take up doctrines on the trust of their Teachers what joy in believing can they ever have whose rule in believing is to be never setled in their faith but to be still wavering His Disciples must needs be meer weather-cocks tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine by the slight of men and cunning crafâinesse whereby they lay in wait to deceive Eph. 4. 14. 4 It is a doctrine that makes way for all Heresie Blasphemy and Impiety into the hearts of the people For when Religion is taken upon trust from the Teachers Satan will transform himself into an Angel of light and his Ministers themselves into Ministers of Righteousness to gain credit and opinion of wisdom and holiness above others among the people that upon their trust at last the people may swallow all falshoods under the name of Truth whatsoever they shall commend to them 2 Cor. 11. 13-15 See whither the Galathians were carryed by taking upon trust from their seemingly Angelical Teachers doctrines of faith Christ is become of no effect to you ye are faln from grace saith the Apostle to them Gal. 5. 4. Surely the doctrine of Mr. Baxter is the same in generall and substance with theirs that corrupted and seduced Galatia The Lord avert the like success from Kederminster 5 It is a Doctrine pernicious in it self and brings a curse upon them that receive it in the very receiving of it For cursed is man that trusteth in man and maketh flesh his arm whose heart departeth from the Lord Jer. 17. 5. If so in earthly much more in spirituall things So much of this point in which having found what Mr. Baxter is before his entrance upon the bulk of his work we may easily conjecture what a one we shall find him being entred CHAP. II. Mr. Baxters Sophisticall way and Method of dispute to obscure and not to cleer the truths of the Gospel discovered And that therein he imitates the Papists IN the former Chapter we have found Mr. Baxter before his entrance upon his Treatise somewhat discovering with whom he joyns in opinion so far that we may discern and guess ex ungue leonem by one little piece of the man what he is in his whole bulk and frame It contents him not to be one and the same with the Papists in his judgment but that he will next also discover himself to be the same with them in their slights and artifice to bring all others into the same judgment and opinion with them That generation of the Popish Schoolmen are fitly likened by Sir Francis Bacon in his Advancement of learning to Spiders which spin out their webbs out of their own bowels So these spinn all their doctrines in religion out of their own brains their own reason naming Christ sometimes therein but rather hiding and darkning the authority of his word than following it as their leading threed in all their doctrines All their writings about Evangelicall and saving points of knowledg are but as so many webs of their fancy to catch and carry away from the purity of Christs Gospel not so many well-ordered threeds of sacred Scriptures to guide and bring us to him Who is there of all that have but cursorily read their works that finds them not consisting of large heaps of needless and superfluous questions to obscure the light of the word and to bring all to the tryall of reason yea sophisticall and sophisticated
and to make his authority the greater to deceive 6. Whether he offends not here and elsewhere against the rule of the Apostle who enjoyneth upon all to take heed of high thoughts of themselves and to be wise to sobriety Rom. 12. 3. i. e. not to mount above their reach and measure And what shall be accounted a wisedom without and against sobriety if not that which intrudeth it self into the things of God which it hath pleased him not to reveal pretending an ability with the key of secular learning to unlock the Cabinet of âods Counsells to which the most glorious Angels never dared to approach The Christian Spirit is the meek and modest Spirit where the Scripture is not the instructor contents it self to be ignorant concluding with Tertullian Quis revelabit Tert. lib. de Anima fere in Principio quod Deus texit unde sciseitandum est unde ignorare tutissimum est Praestat per Deum nescire quia non Revelaverit quam per hominem scire quia ipse presumpserit i. e. Who shall reveal what God hath covered whence in such case shall we make enquiry âea hence to be ignorant is most fafe It is better not to know by the will of God because he hath not revealed it than to seem to know by man because he hath presumed 7. Whether he doth not cross another precept of the Apostle 1 Tim. 6. 20. peculiarly appropriated to all Ministers under the name and person of Timothy O Timothy keep that which is committed to thy trust avoyding prophane and vain bablings and oppositions of science falsly so called He cannot none can deny the thing committed to Timothies trust to be the Gospel in its verity purity and simplicity This therefore he is charged to keep to make it his business to preserve it alive and inviolated within him to keep and hold himself closely to it without deviating to any other studies as helpfull to salvation Therefore to avoid vain bablings and oppositions of science falsly so called Neither will Mr. Baxter deny and all Commentators affirm the thing to be avoyded here to be sophisticall and philosophical disputes which if intermixed with the Doctrine of the Gospel are here termed prophane and vain babling which hath the name and opinion of science or wisdom in the opinion of men but is falsly so called and reputed Doth not Mr. Baxter here see himself set aside by the Holy Ghost for a prophane and vain babler and his learning and wisdom exploded as shady and false having nothing of substance and truth in it 8. Whether he doth not by this way of disputing as much as in him is uncanonize and make void the word For if he hold with the Apostle that the holy Scripture is sufficient and able to make men wise to salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus 2 Tim. 3. 15. why doth he not stick to it what els doth his so oft and foul digressions from it to fetch ayd from his sophistry but argue that he holds the Scripture to be invalid to save and that there is either an equall or greater power in his sophistry to make men wise and perfect to salvation 9. Whether it doth not bewray his Cause to be naught that he knows it to be naught therfore seeks to bear it up with such slights feats as a good Cause needeth not When we see a house propped up on every side at every end with posts stakes and pillars who concludes not surely it is a ruinous and rotten building that needs so many supporters It is not for the maintenance of the Aphorism or Doctrine which Mr. Baxter doth here pretendedly explicate that he doth tye knots and unty them bind and loose with such a hurry of questions and distinctions This doctrine stands firm enough upon its own bottom Conscious he is therefore of a rotten building which he means in the following part of this Treatise to erect and therefore furnisheth himself with so many posts and stakes to under-prop it It is well observed by Mr. Pemble out of Erasmus Malè res agitur ubi opus est tot remedijs It is a certain Pemb. of Justis Sect. 2. Cap. 1 p. 37. sign of an untrue opinion when it must be bolstered up with so many distinctions And if the Cause be naught and the defender know it yet persists to defend it then are the Cause and the man both alike 10. Whether this kind of Argumentation doth not declare Mr. Baxter to be of another spirit from Christ and his Apostles Christ came into the world to preach the Gospel to the poor Lu. 4. 18. to give sight to the blind that they which see not might see Joh. 9. 39. And Paul discended low nurslike with flattering speech unto the weak as to babes in Christ feeding them with milk and not with meat untill they became capable to digest it 1 Cor. 2. 1. 4 3. 1 2. likewise also the rest of the Apostles But this man soareth on high unto the upmost region of the Airy element above the kenn and reach of weak Christians such as he acknowledgeth them for the greatest part to be for whose sake chiefly he wrote this speaking not to the comprehension of any save of such windy ones as himself at least to the delight of no other so elevated seems he with the vain-glory of his own excellencies And do not these contrary operations somwhat argue a contrary spirit moving him I mean contrary to that which moved in Christ and his Apostles 11. Whether it tends not to the quenching of the comfort and hazzarding of the salvation of weak Christians 1 to the quenching of their comfort For when from the pure word of God not sophisticated with the intermixture of mans wisedom and inventions they have attained to believe and joy in believing and living by faith in Christ rejoyce in the grace and light of Gods countenance shining upon them thorow him meeting with Mr. Baxters work and finding therein so holy so incomparable a man for learning and piety scattering so many doubts and puzling questions about the very beginning foundation of our redemption that himself cannot answer himself otherwise than by conjectures peradventure it may be thus and it may be it is so The poor souls are apt to fall foul upon themselves for that they have been so audacious to believe any thing seeing now so many doubts and uncertainties and to account all their former joyes in Christ to be a delusion and being unable to make out the mystery of their redemption to themselves in his sophisticall way they lye down and sink under the burthen of their sorrow as hopeless It tends to the hazzarding of their salvation also For while he goes about to make them philosophicall Christians Popish and Socinian Christians to live not by faith but by sense not by the word of Gods mouth but by reason so far only to believe as they see reasons
in nature to support their faith for hereunto all Mr. Baxters disputes are levelled he makes indeed all that will be his Disciples no Christians And suppose that Mr. Baxter hath a great confidence by his sophistical distinctions and arguments even to wrest from the Lord Christ a crown for himself in the day of judgement yet what shall become of his unlearned Disciples that are not so nimble Sophisters nor have their dâstinctions at the fingers end so ready as their Master These must sink under the sentence of Christ having the word against and not being able to plead reason enough artificially and subtlely for themselves 12. Whether it tends not to the corrupting and depraving of all the people of God within the Land Mr. Baxter is no longer a student but the highest graduate in policy in that piece of policy at least now most in use to see and prosecute the neerest and readiest way to the attainment of his own ends His end in this work who sees not to be the poysoning of this whole Nation with the worst of Popish errors For the attainment hereof his whole endeavour and wit is employed to poyson therewith the Ministry as I have before shewed For his sophistry is of little force to beguile the ignorant which understand it not Therefore notwithstanding all his specious pretences he lays and spins out his webbs to catch the learned them at least that have some pieces of learning in them These he knows to be the pipes and sluces thorow which the water of life is to be conveyed thorow the Land If these be poysoned or tainted the tainture and poyson will be conveyed to all that come to dip the water of life from them They are the light of the world if he can prevail to turn this light into darkness how great will be the darkness of this our little world 13. Whether that kind of learning which he venteth so abundantly and trusteth in so confidently be not that secular wisedom which the Lord hath even cursed and threatned to destroy and bring to nothing and turn it into foolishness or madness 1 Cor. 1. 19 20. If so both he and we shall see in good time whose counsel shall stand either Mr. Baxters in counter-working against God setting up his wisedom and learning against the wisedom of God the wisedom of the word or Gods counsell in destroying Mr. Baxters wisedom and making it i. e. discovering it to the world to be meer foolishnes so turning his glory into shame and baseness Lastly whether this threat be not in some measure already executed upon him from heaven I would I could deny that I had good grounds upon which to deny it But sith Mr. Baxter not contented with the light and wisedom of the word hath rolled himself into the pits of heathen and Popish learning out of their darkness to digg to himself such light as is not cohering with but prejudiciall to the wisedom of God and his word whether the Lord hath not turned this wisedom of his into foolishness and yeelded him up to be stifled with the most pernicious of their errors and to hug the same in his bosom as a treasure so that he is become one of those some of whom the Apostle speaketh which while they profes this sophistical philosophical learning falsely called science or knowledge being indeed meerly prophane and vain babling have erred concerning the faith 1 Tim. 6. 20 21. The sequell of this his Treatise in our examination thereof will somewhat declare I have here spoken once for all in answer to his sophistical disputes as they are sophisticall and imitating the School-Doctors of the Popish Church having reference therein not only to what in this place he saith but to all of the same kind which we shall find flowing from him in full tideâ else-where frequently in this book So that as oft as we meet him speaking again in the same tone I shall either pass him by with silence or els turn him over to that which I have here said There remains yet one question more in the explication of this 7th Aphorism and the same of as great importance and usefulness as most of the former are vain and superfluous Mr. Baxter thus proposeth it B. Whether we are justified by Christs passive righteousness only or also by his active p. 44. Here he mentioneth 3. opinions the first he utterly explodeth viz. the imputation of Christs active obedience unto Justification The second viz. the efficacy of Christs sufferings to make satisfaction to the justice of God for our sinns whereupon we are forgiven and constituted righteous in the sight of God he kindly saluteth and passeth some plausible Complements upon it and so Bids it farewell without any purpose to be in love or familiarity with it And then takes up the third as best agreeing with the end he drives at though in substance it be the same with the first which he shook off and trampled under foot with great defiance as the absurdest of absurdities What my judgment as to the two former is I need not here express because it is not a question controverted between us and the Papists It is a question not of very long standing Mr. Beza in his Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans by appropriating the severall parts of Christs righteousness to make up the severall parts of Justification gave the occasion of the dispute as I conceive And the difference hath hitherto made no breach of communion and amity between stable and able Divines or Christians Nay among them that hold for the active righteousnes also there have bin and are still at present not a few so learned and pious that it would be no disparagement to Mr. Baxter and my self to be admitted as their Amanuenses And therefore I question the truth of that accusation which Mr. Baxter layeth on Mr. Walker pag. 53. whom he principally not only meaneth but also nameth when he tells us of ignorant men that are strong revilers and weak disputers reproaching them for hereticks that dissent from them in judgment I doubt much that Mr. Baxters main end here in declaiming against Mr. Walker is to Apologize for himself and that his anger against Mr. Walker is because he finds the stroaks which M. Walker levelled against Mr. John Goodwin do now more wound Mr. Baxter than they did Mr. Goodwin then I remember I once saw that little Tractate of Mr. Walker in a friends house and read cursorily some part of it in which he charged Mr. Goodwin with Socinianism and Arminianism But if my memory fail me not as too oft it doth it was not upon this score that Mr. Goodwin maintained Justification by the Passive righteousness of Christ only but upon this that he upheld the ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã or act of believing or rather Faith as it is a part or act of our sanctification to be the very thing that is imputed to us for righteousness And Mr. Baxter
the law is not so repealed c. therefore none of these will follow For we hold that Believers are therefore delivered from the law as a Covenant of works not because the law was almost from the very beginning repealed or abrogated from being any longer a Covenant of works but because the law as a Covenant of works hath executed upon them in Christ all its penalty for all their sins and hath therefore now no more power to question them as hath been more copiously declared before The same I say also to the seventh Argument as it pointeth to the not repealing of the law whatsoever els is in it hath been in answer to the place cited sufficiently spoken to His sixth Argument about which he laboureth more then about all the rest though as I said a little before it makes nothing to his present and explicit purpose proving onely unbelievers to be under the law for this is nothing to believers yet it makes way to an implicit or secret end which he hath and determineth to prosecute with much ardency in the following parts of this Treatise There are two sorts of unbelievers the one under a temporary the other under a finall unbelief the elect and the reprobate Mr. Baxter here driveth with all his force to prove both under the law because he conceiveth that if he prove the elect before they beleeve in Christ are under the law and so granted to be it may be proved much the more easily and plainly that they are so also after they become believers For many of the strongest Arguments which are for the one are for the other and which are against the one are against the other also So that it is hard to bring reasons for the affirming or denying of either without giving advantage for the like affirming or denying of both I purpose not here to anticipate but to suspend the dispute upon this Question untill Mr. B. shall shew his face openly as a Challenger here he doth but as it were peep behind the Curtain in comparison of what he saith afterwards with full expressions of himself Yet that I may not be forced then to retreat hither again to what he doth here deliver but answer every thing in its owne place I shall at present examine those Scriptures which he here produceth whether and how far they prove elect unbelievers to be under the law as a Covenant of works And to clear up a way to the beâter understanding of these and the like testimonies of Scripture I shall prefix two Positions visibly and apparently springing from the pure fountain of Gods word First that all which are elected from eternity shall in their appointed times come unto Christ and persevere in him by a living Faith I mean not onely all but onely these and none besides them As many as were ordained to eternall life beleeved when Christ was and Acts 13. 48 so still do or shall believe when Christ is or shall be preached to them If the Gospel be hid from any viz. so that they believe not in Christ manifested by the Gospel to them it is to them that perish c. 2 Cor. 4. 3. i. e. to them that are not elect but reprobates All that the Father giveth me shall come to me and him that cometh to I will in no wise cast out or suffer to be lost John 6. 37. To come to Christ is to believe truly in him such shall never be lost never fall away or make shipwrack of their Faith But who are they whom God giveth to Christ that they may beleeve in him Thine they were and thou gavest them me saith our Saviour Mr. B. will say they were in a peculiar manner to be Gods people at least by election and therefore given to Christ that by faith in him they might be saved Jo 17. 6. To you it is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God but unto them that are without all these things are done in Parables that seeing they may see and not perceive c. Mark 4. 11 12. Why was it given to the one part to know the mystery life and spirit of the Gospel to the other onely the outside and letter thereof They were within these without the lines of Gods election They went out from us but they were not of us for if they had been of us they would without doubt have continued with us but they went out that they might be made manifest that they were not of us 1 Joh 2. 19. Not of us he means not of the number of them that are called according to Gods purpose of Election Rom. 8. 28. for then they could not have faln away All should have wrought for good to them So that hence it followeth that every elect unbeliever shall come to and continue in the Faith and whosoever doth not so is manifested not to have been elected of God 2 That justification or remission of sins may be considered in a threefold respect 1 As it is in God 2 As it is delivered over by God into the hands of Christ our Mediator 3 As it is by Christ brought home unto and given into the bosom and possession of any man As it is in God I shall pretermit to speak much of it any where but any thing at all untill Mr B. directly and exprâsly calls me to it least the man should be tormented before his time For he hates the very naming and thought thereof as an Act Immanent in God cane pejus angui and is ready Jew like to rend his cloaths and fling dust in the aire at any mention thereof as an article that stands in enmity to his justification by works 2 Then as it is delivered into the hands of Christ we may speak of it without such terrible offence to his patience or setting him into so direfull a commotion conditionally that we will undertake for Christ that he shall be ruled by Mr. B. to do what he appoints with it that is to keep it in his pocket and deliver it to no man but hold all under the Curse of the Law untill the day of judgement we cannot adventure upon such an undertaking nevertheles shall hold forth the truth of God in this case This is that Christ by offering himself a Sacrifice for sin and presenting the Sacrifice of himself unto God in the most Holy place i. e. in heaven at his Mercy-seat hath thereby effectually purchased everlasting redemption and remission of sins and hath received a full absolution and acquittance from the father for all his elect by name So that in Christ they are justified from all sin and freed from the Law as a Covenant of works even while they are unbelievers have this freedom I mean in the hand of Christ though not in their own apprehension and possession Though as to themselves and their own judgments and as to the apprehension of men they are under the Law under wrath yet in Christ they
have done their Law their iniquities past present and to come are blotted out their peace made and they reconciled to God This is observably set forth in Aaron and the other High Priests his successors as they were Types of Christ Aaron the High Priest must bear the Names of the Children of Israel engraven upon 2 precious stones on the two shoulders of his Ephod before the Lord for a memoriall Exod. 28. 10 12. yea he must bear their names in the breast-plate of judgment upon his Heart when he goeth in unto the Holy place viz. with the blood of the sacrifice for the expiating of siâs for a memoriall before God continually What memoriall that they were the men for whom the sacrifice was offered and that their sins were purged thereby that God should therefore have them in remembrance to preserve them from the Curse and judgment of the Law for so it followeth And Aaron shall bear the judgment of the Children of Israel upon his heart continually ver 29 30. These things were but figuratively done in Aaron but really and fully accomplished in Christ his Antitype who being constituted our High Priest and having received Command from the Father not onely what but for whom to offer even for Israel i. e. the elect of God which for a great part were not yet in being hâth by his own blood entred into the Holy place with their names engraven upon his heart having purchased for them an everlasting Redemption Not into the Holy place made with hands but into Heaven there to appear for them by way of Mediation and Intercession Heb. 9. 12 24. Rom. 8. 34. Wherefore also God hath given him not onely an acquittance for them from all their sins Heb. 10. 17. but hath also given and delivered up them into his hands as hath been before proved and Mr. B himself confesseth yet not as he insinuateth to plague and Curse them and hold them during life under the intolerable bondage of the Law but to deale with them in a gentle dispensation according to the tenor of the Covenant of Grace in tender mercy to draw them unto and keep them in the Faith without all Apostacy to the end All which he performeth to all his elect as is evident from most of those Scriptures which were brought for the confirmation of the former point and elswhere Gods giving them to Christ and into his dispensation being their perfect translâtion from the Covenant of the Law into the Covenant of Grace And this was done before their beleeving All that the Father giveth me shall come to me first they are given and then they shall come Be not afraid but speak and hold not thy peace for I have much people in this City said the Lord Jesus to Paul of the Corinthians yet Heathen Acts 18. 9 10. They were his people before therefore must they be gathered to him by Faith I have other sheep which are not of this fold them also I must bring and they shall hear my voyce c. Jo 10. 16. he means the Gentiles that were infidels yet nevertheless his sheep that must afterward hear his voice because they were his sheep how were these termed Christs people Christs sheep while yet in Paganism idolatry and unbeleef but because they were his redeemed and justified ones Ye beleeve not because ye are not of my sheep Jo 10. 26. What is that but because they were not of the number of them for whose sins he had effectually satisfied Gods justice 3 Justification and Remission of sins may be considered also as it is brought into their own apprehension and Conscience that were justified by Christ and in Christ before And in this sense it is oftenest taken in Scriptures yea alway when we are said to be justified by Faith This is done when Christ by the manifestation and ministry of the Gospel maketh known in all ages to them for whose sins he hath satisfied the Mystery of Grace by him and frameth their hearts with all gladnes by Faith to embrace him and it thorow him unto Justification Then are they justified in themselves and remission of sins sealed up by the spirit to their own Consciences and so have the Kingdom of God within them consisting of Peace Righteousnes and Joy in the Holy Ghost Before this Christ had life for them now they are said to have it themselves Jo 20. 31. 1 Jo 5. 12. Untill now was their winter season so that all their life was in Christ as the Vine or Root now is their spring so that the life sheweth it self in them as the branches blossoming with peace and joy unto all obedience Before life was purchased and seizure thereof taken for them by Christ Now they are passed from death to life 1 Jo 3. 14. i. e. are put into the actuall possession of it Before though they were Lords of all as the Apostle in a case little different from this speaketh Gal. 4. 1 2. yet differed nothing from Servants being in their own apprehension under the threats and condemnation of the Law and so still in slavish fears and terrors But now they see their freedom and take possession of it with boldness to cry Abba Father and to enter into the Holiest by the blood of Jesus and through the veil of his flesh with full assurance of hope c. Hebrewes 10. 19 20. These things so premissed we shall the better see whether the Scriptures which Mr. Baxter here produceth do by their own force or else by his mis-interpretation of them seem to prove that the Elect while unbeleevers are under the Law as a Covenant of works First that of Joh. 3. 18. is a threat of the Gospel Covenant against the Contemners of it and of Christ the preacher thereof and not of the Law Covenant And it is brandished against reprobats and not against elect unbeleevers Christ had now preached his Gospel a while in Galilee the elect beleeved and of them saith Christ they are not condemned The reprobates would not beleeve of them he saith they are condemned already and the reason is rendred not because they have broken the morall Law but because they have not beleeved in the Name of the onely begotten Son of God This is the condemnation that Christ the light is come into the world and men preferred their own darknes before him c. The same also is the meaning of the 36 ver which he citeth Neither of these pointing in their threat to the elect but the reprobates among unbeleevers Neither threatening for Contumacy against the Law but the Gospel Therefore nothing here proveth the elect before they beleeve to be under the Law as a Covenant of works Again those Scriptures which he saith bid us to beleeve for the remission of sinnes Act. 2. 38 c. do only prove that faith in Christ doth justifie the elect in the third consideration of Justification or remission of sinns before mentioned viz. as it evidenceth and brings
home into their apprehension and Conscience that their sinns are remitted For so run the words in that 10 of Act. v. 47. that Whosoever beleeveth in him shall receive remission of sins not denying that Christ had received it for them before but affirming only that now they should receive it from Christ Besides this promise is held forth there promiscuously to all both elect and reprobate and it is but an offer not the gift of pardon to distinguish betwixt them for whom Christ had and those for whom he had not effectually satisfied and received absolution from the Father by the ones beleeving and receiving by faith from the hand of Christ the pardon and the others refusall and manifesting thereby their abode under death and the Law still The surety had paid the penalty of the obligation taken up the bonds and acquittance or discharge of the debt Thenceforth the Creditor had no more plea against either principall or surety Nevertheles the principall knew it not therefore playeth least in sight is in continual fear of arrests thinks every bush hath a Sergeant or Bayliff under it but at length the surety gives and delivers into his hand both the acquittance the obligation Cancelled Now is his first receiving of a discharge now he first finds himself free from his Creditors obligation now hath he the first comfort of the benefit but he was discharged before though he knew it not so is it with the elect c. Therefore Mr. Baxters inference hence is unsound He addeth the Testimony of Paul Eph. 2. 3. That the redeemed were by nature the Children of wrath who denyeth it But this is nothing to the question It is not here enquired whether the redeemed drew not the seeds of sin and death by naturall propagation from their parents as much as others But whether by the satisfaction which Christ made for them according to the Covenant of grace they were not redeemed from that wrath before they yet beleeved It is true what Mephibosheth said of himself and his brethren to David We were all as dead men before my Lord the King c. 2 Sam. 19. 28. because they were the progeny of Saul that fought against David Nevertheles by means of the Covenant that intervened between David and Jonathan Mephibosheth had right to all the favour that King David could express As for those testimonies cited by way of Thesis and Antithesis out of Gal. 5. ver 3 4. ver 18 23. they make wholly against him nothing for him The 3 4 verses speak nothing to the question in hand but utterly destroy that to which in this whole dispute he driveth nothing to the question in hand The circumcised are bound or debtors to the whole Law and Christ is become of none effect to them He was to have proved that beleevers were before they beleeved under the Law This Text speaketh not of the elect before they beleeved but of professed beleevers returning to Circumcision and the Law to fetch thence help unto their justification after that they seemingly at least beleeved in Christ so here is nothing that makes for him because nothing to the present question But much against him in reference to the grand thing which he laboureth for to bring beleevers under the Law as a Covenant of works Whosoever doth so saith the Apostle in the least mite that contents not himself with Christ alone takes in but so poor a peice of the Law as Circumcision to help with Christ to Justification the same person hereby forfeiteth all his claim to Grace and Christ and must gain heaven by his perfect fullfilling of the Law or must be damned in hell for ever Into this state Mr. Baxter striveth to bring himself and his disciples I shall not wish them joy in it because I use not to wish impossibilities Touching the verses which he puts in opposition to these ver 18 23. But if ye be led by the Spirit ye are not under the Law against such there is no law If he mean simply and sincerely what the Apostle here meaneth by being led by the Spirit viz. the seeking of righteousnes by Christ alone as the same Apostle more fully expresseth himself Gal. 3. 3. Phil. 3. 3. Then by granting that such are not under the Law there is no law against them he destroyeth and recanteth all that he hath before spoken to prove beleevers under the Law But if by being led by the Spirit his aim be to bring in works to justification under the name of the fruits of the Spirit we shall here forbear to answer him because it is besides the present question leaving it to its fit place where he openly explaineth himself And no less abhorrent from the question is his next proof Gal. 3. 22. The Scripture hath concluded all under sin that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ may be given to them that beleeve What is this to the purpose in hand we deny not the promise of or the promised Justification and remission of sinns by faith in Jesus Christ to be given to them that beleeve into their hands and possession when they beleeve by affirming that Christ hath taken possession thereof for them before they beleeve that he may let it down into their hearts when they beleeve He ascended up on high and led captivity captive and gave gifts to men Eph. 4. 8. The Apostle fetcheth his authority from the word in Psal 68. 18. where it is said He received gifts for men viz. to give them in his time But the Apostle contents himself with the scope of the word not binding himself to the bare letter and sound thereof So Christ at his ascension received for us the gifts of Justification and remission and all other benefits of his passion They were then laid up for us in his Custody so that we had them in him before our actuall existence upon earth But he gives them to us into our sensible possession when we come to be to live and to beleeve That which he citeth from Gal. 4 5. is altogether besides the question also Himself acknowledgeth that it proveth us onely to be under the Law when Christ redeemed us or undertook to pay our ransom Not that we were under the Law after he had redeemed us by paying our ransom before we yet beleeved The words are these in the 4 5 verses God sent forth his Son made of a woman made under the Law to redeem them that were under the Law The scope of the Apostle here is one and the same with that to which he drives Gal. 2. 15 16. We who are Jewes by nature a holy seed within the Covenant and have all the privileges of the Law and not sinners of the Gentiles that are without the Covenant and the Law knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but by the faith of Jesus Christ even we have beleeved that we might be justified by the faith of
Christ and not by the works of the law for by the works of the law no flesh is justified Why then do we draw the poor Gentiles to seek any furtherance to their justification by the observation of the Law by which our selves who were most privileged with it could not be justified but by Christ onely without the law So here Even they that had the law and were not a little zealous for and active in the righteousness of the law had need of a redeemer were justified and saved not at all by the lawes righteousness but onely by Christs redeeming of them What madnes is it then in you O foolish Galathians that are not of the holy stock of Israel but sinners of the Gentiles to seek any help to your justification by the works of the law which could not justifie the very Israelites that were born and brought up in it and not to repose your selves upon Christ alone If Mr. Baxter will pretend any other meaning of the Text besides he shall therein wound and not strengthen his Cause For he speaks of the same persons here to be under the law onely in the hand of a Mediator not under the Curse of the law but under such an administration thereof that even before they actually beleeved in Christ the very person of Christ are affirmed ver 1. to be Lords of all all the inheritance which is by Christ ergo not under the wrath of God before they embraced the Faith of Christ As for the other Scriptures which he annexeth yet further to prove that the very elect before and untill they beleeve are under the Law in the sense so oft manifested let him once shew how he will argue and what he will conclude and upon what grounds from them we shall be ready to answer him In the interim I profess I see not any thing in them more prevalent to his purpose than a nights lodging in a bed of snow and ice to cure the Cough Yet from all these wrested Scriptures he Concludes at last that the deliverance which beleevers have by Christ from the Curse of the Law is a conditionall deliverance viz. if they will obey the Gospel i. e. when they beleeve if they will beleeve not onely while they live but also when they are dead and buried For as we say that a conditionall proposition doth nihil ponere so it is true in the sense of Mr Bax. here that this conditionall promise doth nihil promittere The Condition as long as this world lasteth being still in performing not performed and so nothing obteined Yet will he have this new nothing together with the abrogation of the ceremoniall Law to which we never were none but the Israelites ever have been subject to be the great privilege of beleevers and effect of Christs bloud When we poor souls with our dull eyes can see no more privilege that we have herein by Christs bloud than the worst of infidells and reprobates have for they also âave this conditionall deliverance from the curse and freedom from the ceremoniall law And this deliverance saith he is yet more full when we perform the conditions of our freedom And then we are said to dead to the Law Rom. 7. 4. and the obligation to punishment dead as to us ver 6. This is indeed a full and perfect deliverance But what doth he mean in saying when we perform c. either when we are performing the conditions That were a contradiction to himself in what he saith p. 74. that we are not perfectly freed till the day of resurrection and judgement And so also it will be hard for another save Mr. Br. to make sense of the words That the deliverance of beleevers is yet more full when they perform the Conditions are performing the conditions of their freedom i. e. more full when they beleeve than when they do beleeve For if we should grant to Mr. Br Faith to be a condition and not rather a mean or instrument of our justification yet would we grant him no other condition thereof Or doth he mean it is full when they have performed the Conditions it seems then that some of the Conditions are left to be performed in the next world because untill then he tells us we can have no such perfect freedom This is the free Grace of God which Mr. Br boasteth himself so much to extoll p. 79. let him that delights in it be his disciple That which he speaks in the upshott for the mitigation of his harsh doctrine aforegoing that he knoweth this Covenant of works continueth not to the same ends and uses as before c. is but a trick of the Jesuits to give sugar after the poyson which was before gone down to destroy Neither can he make out how beleevers are under the law of nature as a Covenant of works and yet not bound to seek life according to the tenor and condition of that Covenant If any marvell that Mr. Baxter should so waste his spirits in abusing both divine and humane learning to prove the Saints to be still under the Curse under the law as a Covenant of works he will cease to wonder if he take notice of a further aim that he hath therein He would not out of doubt have so much insisted on it had he not looked to a further end in it If the beleevers are still under a Covenant of works as to the Curse wrath and Condemnation much more are they under a Covenant of works as unto life and Justification If the former be once granted he accounts the game wonn as to the latter Therefore doth he so much stirr in the former that he may with the more facility and less contradiction bring in afterwards the latter Justification by works which is his very busines in Compiling this book CHAP. XI Whether as the Covenant of Works was made with all mankind in Adam their representative so the Covenant of Grace was made with all the elect in Christ their Representer What relation the Covenants made with Adam Abraham the Israelites and lastly with us under the Gospel have to that Covenant made with Christ B. Thesis 14. p. 89. THe Tenor of the New Covenant is this that Christ having made sufficient satisfaction to the Law whosoever will repent and beleeve in him to the end shall be justified through that satisfaction from all that the Law did charge upon them and be moreover advanced to far greater privileges and glory then they fell from But whosoever fullfilleth not these conditions shall have no more benefit by the bloud of Christ than what they here received and abused but must answer the charge of the Law themselves And for their neglect of Christ must also suffer a far greater condemnation Or briâfly whosoever beleeveth in Christ shall not perish but have everlasting life but he that beleeveth not shall not see life but the wrath of God abideth on him Mar. 16. 16. Jo. 3. 15 16 17 18. 36.
governed untill his coming That it was he who first preached to Adam salvation by the seed of the Woman and afterward more cleerly to Abraham That it was he also which delivered the Law upon Mount Sinai and added there a second Covenant in shew and sound a meer Covenant of works Do and be Blessed Sin and be Cursed which Covenant alone is expresly called the Old Covenant and is indeed now repealed and abolished from being any more a Covenant saving to them that put themselves under it This was but a temporary Covenant an Appendix to the Covenant before made with Abraham and both this and that with Abraham were but subordinate Covenants to that before mentioned between God and Christ Here now all that were justified before Christs coming in the flesh were justified in Christ by force of the first Covenant made between the Father and the Son The promise to Adam and the Covenants made with Abraham and with the Israelites together with all the Sacraments and signes annexed to all these tended onely to bring them that were justified before in Christ to a reall and sensible participation of it and the comforts thereof by Faith within their own consciences So is it now under the Gospel administration That first Covenant is that by which our justification is compleatly finished in Christ the preaching of Faith in a Covenant way tends onely to this that as many as were before justified in Christ may by Faith have their Justification declared and evidenced to their consciences to fill them with joy unspeakable and full of glory and with that peace which passeth all understanding Not but that Christ could without any such Sub-Covenanting have filled up his elect with all the marrow and mystery of Justification by immediate Revelation from himself as he dealt with Paul the Apostle but that this way made most for his and his Fathers glory both in them that are saved and in them that perish 4 Faith it self much less any other qualification gift or act is not a condition of Justification in foro Dei there Christ hath pleaded our discharge by his blood still maketh intercession for us but a means or instrument by which we receive Christ Jesus and the righteousnes or justification that is in him to our selves for consolation and salvation in foro conscientiae so stood the case in respect of the fore-mentioned under Covenant that of the Law When the Lord Christ had published his Law upon Mount Sinai and given to Israel by Moses all his Judgments and Statutes there now passeth a solemn Covenant betwixt Christ and them the people also every one in person assenting gladly to fulfill all that they might be blessed or if in the least point they should fail to yeeld themselves cursed This Covenant was made more visibly and in every part more strictly after the nature and rule of Covenants then this under the Gospel Yet will any say that this perfect obedience so Covenanted was a condition of their justification and salvation without which none could be justified or saved Then were all damned for no one either did or could perfectly obey Nay it was added because of transgressions saith the Apostle Gal. 3. 19. i. e. as a means so to operate about sin in the discovery of it and the damnation that is by it so also to convince men that they might be driven from all supposition of their own righteousnes and seek righteousnes by Christ alone in whom alone the elect were justified before this Covenant was made In the same manner the holding forth of justification now under the Gospel in the form and likenes of a Covenant Beleeve and be saved beleeve not and perish for ever proveth not Faith to be the condition of the New Covenant as hath been said even the whole preaching of salvation by Christ and injoyning of Faith upon all to receive it is an effect of that First great Covenant of Grace between the Father and the Son and a part of Christs Propheticall Office which he undertook in that Covenant to accomplish in undertaking the Mediatorship between God and Men. An effect of that first Covenant I say For so it was agreed that All which the Father had given to Christ by him to be justified and saved should come to him i. e. beleeve in him Jo 6. 37. To this purpose it was Covenanted on the Sons part to seek and to save that which was lost Luke 19. 10. to call unto him all to participate by Faith of the life light righteousness and salvation that he had received for them Isa 55. 1. Io 7. 37. Ma. 11. 28. This was a part of his Propheticall Office to discover the treasures of Grace in his heart and to envite all to the participation thereof And then on the Fathers part it was Covenanted that he would draw to Christ all the Elect all that he had given to Christ that while the Gospel sounded in their ears he would divinely by his Spirit teach and move their hearts that they shall not but come to Christ Jo 6. 43 44. And lastly it is agreed on the Sons part again that of all that the Father thus bringeth to him he must cast out none lose none but raise them all at the last day to glorification and the reason of all is annexed It is the Fathers will i. e. that which was Covenanted between the Father and him in Heaven and he came down from Heaven not to do his own will i. e. any thing of his private will without the consent of his Father but the will of him that sent him i. e. what was Covenanted between the Father and him and concurrent with the will of both Jo 6. 37 38 39. Thus all that which Mr B. calleth the Covenant of Grace is but an effect or an Article and branch of the Covenant made of old between God and Christ And Faith not so properly termed a condition of justification as an instrument to apprehend the present comfort of it being before ours in Christ 5 That this Covenant of Grace is absolute shall be the work of the next Chapter to evince CHAP. XII That Text of Jer 31. 31 32 33 c. opened and Mr. Baxters elusions by which he would evince that it proveth not a free and unconditionall Covenant answered with some other Argumentations with Mr. Baxter about the same Question I Now come to that Testimony of Jer. 31. 31 32 33. cited in Heb. 8. 8-10 against which Mr. B. so much excepteth That New Covenant there mentioned is called the New Covenant not in opposition to the Old Covenant made in the beginning with Adam but in opposition to that Covenant made two thousand and six hundred years after at least with Israel upon Mount Sinai And that Covenant upon Mount Sinai is called the Old Covenant not in opposition to the Cov of Grace made if not from eternity according to Mr. B. yet by Mr B. acknowledgment almost 3000 years
I say much to the 17 18 Aphorisms because they are but as it were a bridge of Mr. Brs making on which to pass over to the following matter Yet that he may not Complain of wrong that he is deprived of the honour of his artificiall Methode I shall transcribe his words and annex some animadversions upon them Thesis 17. Bax. p. 102. Therefore as there are two Covenants with their distinct conditions So is there a twofold Righteousnes and both of them absolutely necessary to salvation Thesis 18. pag. 103. Our Legal Righteousnes or Righteousnes of the first Covenant is not personall or consisteth not in any qualifications of our own persons or actions performed by us for we never fulfilled nor personally satisfied the Law but it is wholly without us in Christ And in this sense it is that the Apostle and every Christian disclaimeth his own Righteousnes or his own works as being no true legal Righteousnes Phil. 3. 7 8. Thesis 19. p. 107. The Righteousnes of the New Covenant is the onely Condition of or interest in and enjoyment of the Righteousnes of the old Or thus Those onely shall have part in Christs satisfaction and so in him be legally Righteous who beleeve and obey the Gospel and so are in themselves Evangelically Righteous Thesis 20. p. 108. Our Evangelicall Righteousnes is not without us in Christ as our legall Righteousness is but consisteth in our own Actions of faith and Gospel obedience Or thus Though Christ performed the conditions of the Law and satisfieth for our non-performance yet it is our selves that must perform the Conditions of the Gospel I close up all these positions together as it were in one Frontispice partly in regard of their neer Cognation in Nature and partly that the profoundnes and dexterity of Mr. Br may the more cleerly appear and that it may be here evidenced to the very senses of all what is said Gen. 3. 1. That the Serpent is more subtle than all the beasts of the field which God hath made The one part of Mr. Brs Gospel we have found in the former part of this Tractate the summe and substance whereof may be thus expressed That Christ Jesus by the will of his Father hath by the satisfaction made to justice for the sins of the Elect obteined that the whole Curse and managing thereof together with the Elect for whom he hath satisfied should be delivered up into his hand And he sheweth himself in this his power an unmercifull High Priest holding his redeemed ones under the Curse wrath and torment in soul and body not giving them deliverance untill the day of judgement He did somewhat before look unto but now really enters upon the second part which is like to the former holding forth a justification in the world to come upon such Conditions as will not bring any unto but certainly exclude all that to this end use and perform them from justification into condemnation Within the Confines of these two essentiall parts of his Gospel he comprizeth all the riches of grace by Christ which whosoever likes it may if he will partake of Such have we already found the Nature of the first part of his Gospel We are now to examine whether the second part thereof be not such as I have here mentioned if not I have wronged Mr. Br if so he wrongs Christ and works against him seeking the damnation of the Elect. And by the very words of these four propositions of his if nothing els were to be added he that is both orthodox and judicious may somewhat judge whither Mr. Br driveth finding him to set up mans righteousnes parallell with Christs righteousnes and equally necessary to our Justification so making man at least a demisaviour to himself and so in effect prove an absolute destroyer of his own soul For whosoever brings any thing besides Christ to his justification falls utterly from Christ righteousnes and salvation Yet while he thus acts the part of one of those evill workers mentiuned Phil. 3. 2. he shews himself an Artizân to deceive the wits of the time no less than Muncer did himself to beguile the witles Common people in Germany He when he was vanquished taken and now under the hands of the tormentor being demanded why he had so deluded the silly vulgar multitude to his own and their ruine breaking forth into a vehement laughter answered Sic voluerunt They would have it so insinuating that because he found them little regarding the solidity and power of the Gospel but itching after novelties he attempered and even sacrified his studies to their humour untill he had subverted himself and them So Mr. Br taking notice of some affected wits that had rather perish and dye for ever by Art that which is falsely called Science or learning 1 Tim. 6. 20. than to live and be saved by the simplicity and plainnes of the Gospel composeth himself wholly to please their humour and make himself their darling handles the Case so finely and artificially that he may kill them softly they never feeling it untill they are dead and ruined for ever One peece of his artifice we have here in his invention of that twofold Righteousnes of the two Covenants absolutely necessary to justification or salvation The one in Christ the other in our selves Christs righteousnes purchasing for us a conditionall justification a possibility of righteousnes bliss in the world to come but the other our righteousnes when once finished and compleated being that which doth the deed and drives the nail to the head making both Christs righteousness and the justification purchased by it to be no longer Conditionally but actually and really ours Provided and alwayes excepted that this cannot be in this life and so the tryall of Mr. Brs doctrine by experience can never be made untill this world be wholly ended This is learning indeed such as neither the dictates of men at least totidem verbis in so fine a contexture of words nor the Oracles of God could ever teach Mr. Br. It is his own and possibly may continue his onely to the worlds end all men els proving themselves too wise or too foolish to joyn with him in this his speculation We thought that the righteousness according to the Covenant under which God hath placed us had sufficed to justification he tells us nay but we are under both the Covenant of works and the Covenant of grace too and must be righteous in the righteousnes of both The world had not the wit untill now nor yet Christ or any of his Prophets or Apostles had it ever in their Consideration to term Christ our legall and our own works and qualifications our Gospel righteousnes Mr. Br first having received it rough hewen from Papists and Arminians teacheth us this piece of distinctionary learning Neither did it enter ever into our thoughts that the righteousness of the Old Covenant was of a more noble âace or that the righteousnes
against but according to his own expressed and explicated meaning Bax. p. 108. Explication The Contents of these Positions being of so neer nature I shall explain them here together though they seem so plain and clear to me that they need not much explication and less confirmation Yet because some Antinomians do down-right oppose them and some that are no Antinomians have startled at the expressions as if they had conteined some self exalting horrid doctrine I shall say something hereto Though for my part I do so much wonder that any able Divines should deny them yet me thinks they should be Articles of our Creed and a part of Childrens Catechisms and understood and beleeved by every man that is a Christian I mean the matter of them if not the phrase though I think it to be agreeable to the matter also Egregious Confidence and a sparkish spirit If the Triumphant Chariot were in use again at Rome and that Mr. Br could either not get it or not hold it he would at least give occasion to the world to Epitaph upon him Magnis tamen excidit Ausis he hath bidden fair and stretched wide for it Yet there would be some men that would otherwise Comment upon his bravery of words That they are usually bad wares that will not go off without such bravery of words That Bragg is seldom the best Souldier That thundering words are mostly used when there is wanting strength of reason to support a Cause We shall in some measure be able to judge when we have examined what sound Arguments Mr. Br brings to Confirm his assertions By the way we are to note his subtlety his ingenuity and his gallantry 1 His subtlety in pretending that his Assertions are mainly opposed by Antinomians and that all that he delivers here is out of his pure zeal good man to dash those earth-born monsters that they may do no more harm Doth Mr. Br think that none but strangers in our Israel none but novices in divinity that never saluted the Gospel but at twelve furlongs distance none that ever had acquaintance with this Controversie bâtween the Papists and us should read his book that he thinks to blinde the eyes of all with such a mummery Nay let him name one man in any of the reformed Churches that hath been numbred among the Orthodox which dissenteth not in the Chaffy doctrine here delivered from him Or any save the worst or a man worse than the worst Papists that consenteth with him to make our inherent righteousnes the Condition to give us right to Christs imputed righteousness Must Christ and Paul and all Evangelicall disciples be rejected as Antinomians because they became not Mr. Baxters disciples and that before he became their Teacher Or how could they downright oppose this doctrine before he vented it in print Was he so familiar with them as to Communicate to them his Manuscripts Or hath any other since the world began delivered the same assertions in the same words that in opposing them Mr. Br should take himself opposed But he suspends his subtlety a little to shew some though but little ingenuity which is the second thing here Considerable in him Confessing that there are some that are no Antinomians who have startled at the expressions as if they had conteined some self-exalting horrid doctrine And did not this also startle Mr. Br to reexamine what he had written before he Committed it to the Presse Nothing less but he looks over them with a fastidious admiration that they should be so shallow himself being so profound rejecting their authority with the like Contempt that Caesar did Syllaes Tush he was a duus Non potuit dictare so he of these Nequeunt Philosophari And thus in the third place passeth on to his gallantry or rather his arrogance That his doctrines here are so plain and clear that they need little explication less Confirmation That he wonders any able Divines should deny them shall such be termed Divines nay his very Catechumeni the Children under his Catechising much more every man that is a Christian should understand and beleeve them That they should be taken up for our Creed why because profound Mr. Br hath delivered them if not upon this ground let him name that man upon earth that hath delivered or beleeved them before himself became the author of them But at length he somewhat stoopeth from his bravery and tells us that he would have the matter of them at least thus taken into the Canon of our faith and Creed if not the phrase though he think it to be agreeable to the matter also and therefore goeth about thus to defend his phrase and make it good Bax. p. 109. That there may be no contention about words you must take my phrase of legall and Evangelicall Righteousnes in the sense before explained viz. as they take their name from that Covenant which is their rule And I know not how any Righteousnes should be called Legall or Evangelicall in a sense more strict and proper nor whence the denomination can be better taken than from the formall Reason of the thing yet I know that the observance of the Law of Ceremonies and the seeking life by the works of the Law are both commonly called legall Righteousness but in a very improper sense in comparison of this I know also that Christs legall Righteousnes imputed to us is commonly called Evangelicall Righteousness But that is from a more alien extrinsecall Respect viz. because the Gospel declareth and offereth this Righteousness and because it is a way to justification which onely the Gospel revealeth I do not quarrell with any of these forms of speech onely explain my own which I know not how to express more properly that I may not be misunderstood The righteousnes of the New Covenant then being the performance of its Conditions and its Conditions being our obeying of the Gospel or beleeving it must be plain that on no other terms we do partake of the legall Righteousnes of Christ To hold therefore that our Evangelicall or New Covenant Righteousness is in Christ and not in our selves or performed by Christ and not by our selves is such a monstrous peece of Antinomian Doctrine that no man who knowes the Nature and difference of the Covenants can possibly entertain and that which every Christian should abhorr as unsufferable Here we finde Mr. Br at the very top of his gallantry and animosity most probably his fancy had suggested to him a totall rout of all terrene animals at the sound of his precedent glorying and polemicall argumentation as if therefore all this visible world were Conquered and he were marching out of it in triumph as Israel out of Egypt not a dogg being left to move his tongue against him he now challengeth the Heavens and Calls the Holy Ghost ad partes to Come to a reckoning for the impropriety of language which he useth by his penmen in the Scriptures For when he saith
was a voluntary agent Called and Consecrated by the Father to be our Priest Heb. 5. 5. No man taking his life from him but himself laying it down of himself for us and in our stead Joh. 10. 18. Thus he became the purchaser of righteousnes for us and is made of God Righteousnes to us 1 Cor. 1. 30. But all this he did not by the rule of the Law or Covenant of works but of the secret and sacred Covenant made between the Father and him Therefore having mentioned the voluntarines of his suffering in the fore quoted Joh 10. 18. He addeth This Commandment have I received of my Father implying that this his satisfactory obedience in dying for us had its regulating not by the old Covenant of works or any precept of the Law given to man but by the Covenant which had passed between the Father and the Son in reference to man and a speciall positive Commandment from the Father agreeing with the tenor of that Covenant As for our apprehending and pleading the righteousnes of Christ to Justification impudency it self will neither affirm it to be done by the rule of the Covenant of law and works nor deny it to be done in Conformity to the Covenant of grace and rule of the Gospel Or because Christ hath born the penalty of the Lawes breach shall he therefore be Called our legall righteousnes as from the formall reason of the thing Nay both that Christ suffered and the Father received and accepted his sufferings in full satisfaction for our transgressions That the Father sent him to satisfie the justice of his law for us and for his satisfactions sake he doth no more impute to us the breach of his Law All this is the fruit of his grace and in conformity to the Gospel and Covenant of grace not to the Law and Covenant of works Therefore if we give the denomination from the formall reason of the thing we must call it our Evangelicall not Legall righteousnes which is in Christ Touching the other opposite term that any thing inherent in man whether the gifts of grace Faith Repentance Charity c. or their fruits and works should be called our Gospel righteousnes I see no reason for it neither can devise in what other sense they may be so called but by a Catachresticall Ironia which names a thing and means the contrary As the Mounteins are called Montes quia minime movent Mounts or Movers because they do in no wise Move or as the Fames Auri is sometimes called sacra the inordinate desire of money is termed holy quia minime sacra sed prorsus execrabilis because it is in no case sacred but wholly accursed So in no other sense may this righteousnes in self be called Gospâl righteousnes in reference to Justification but because it is totally opposite to the doctrine and nature of the Gospel and because the Gospel doth wholly reject and abandon it Mr. Br. peradventure may and will bring other reasons and where he doth it we shall take pains to examine them 4 Why he calls beleeving or Faith to be our Gospel righteousnes and whether it be to any other end but with the Papists upon the same grounds to bring in good works to Justification also If he deny this the whole sequele of his Book will be an enditement of falshood against him CHAP. XIV That which Mr. Baxter brings to confirm the matter of this his Doctrine examined and found both fallacious and empty And what he addeth to mitigate the asperity viz. That we perform these conditions not by our own strength but by the grace of Christ evidenced to be a meer shift borrowed from the Papists Mr. Baxter after he hath thus made a flourish and nothing but a flourish to explain and defend his phrase and make odious the phrase of Scripture now proceedeth to confirm the matter of his doctrine Let us see whether there be any thing Logicall or Theologicall and not meerly sophisticall He hath confessed before p. 109. that some who are not Antinomians but Orthodox Divines have startled at the expressions of his 19 and 20 Positions as conteining in them some self-exalting horrid doctrine therefore will he say something thereto by way of explication and confirmation Now having said something as bad as nothing to take off contention about words what doth he add for the confirmation of the matter of his doctrine He was to have proved 1 That Gospel righteousnes or the righteousnes of the New Covenant consisteth not in the imputation of the righteousnes which is by Christ to us but in our own actuall and personall faith and obedience 2 That we must be righteous in our selves first and then after be made righteous by Christ 3 That the righteousnes of the New Covenant is not sufficient to justifie and save but onely to give us right to the righteousnes of the old Covenant which doth actually and immediately save and justifie 4 That those gifts of grace vertues and endowments that are required to our sanctification are not the fruits but the causes of our justification and conditions of our interest in Christ and consequently that our sanctification hath a priority and goes before justification These were the points in which he acknowledgeth himself to be down-right opposed by some and startled at by others What doth he now say for the silencing of these down-right opposers and startlers Just so much as he that would confute all that Bellarmine had written in three words viz. Bellarmine thou liest Or what brings he for the confirmation of those his assertions wherein he is so opposed Nothing but a fardle of sophisticall fallacies consisting of begged principles and homonymies of words First he clustereth together many Conclusions without either premisses or proofs The righteousnesse of the New Covenant then being the performance of its conditions this is his first Conclusion which by the word then bearing the force of therefore he would insinuate to lean upon some foregoing premisses when contrariwise there is not so much as a peble of four grains to sustein it not a word laid as the foundation thereof It is the thing in question we deny it he brings nothing to confirm it besides his bare affirmation which to us is no more then a pillar of straw to bear up a Castle And its conditions being our obeying the Gospel or believing This is his second Conclusion taken as granted when contrariwise his opposers utterly deny it And here he plaies also with an homonymy of words as if faith and obeying the Gospel which in the Apostles sense are so in his sense also were the same thing covering his poyson untill the feat be done by it It must needs be plain that on no other terms do we partake of the legall righteousnes of Christ I will not say that self-confidence hath made the man mad but rather that he thinks all the world mad and in such a sottish slumber that none can
case of offence committed against God or man to repent of it to sorrow for it and at our utmost to make satisfaction for the offence Yea even Faith in Christ is in generall required by the Old Law and Covenant We in no wise ascribe to the Gospel a creating of new points of righteousnes or injoining of new duties which the Law did not at least in generall bind us unto this opinion we leave as proper and peculiar to the Socinians But a modification spiritualizing and appropriating the righteousness and duties which the Law in generall commanded to the now present lapsed condition of man to Gods present offers of grace and our present necessities Yea herein we have Mr. B. consenting to us who Thes 30. and its Explication delivers his judgment herein to be fully one with the stream of Orthodox Divines So that if we should affirm that Christ hath beleeved repented sorrowed c. for us and in our steed it would not thence follow that we pronounce Christ to have performed the conditions of the New but onely of the Old Covenant for us 3 Yet are we far from affirming that Christ in the most strict and proper sense hath so beleeved repented c. for us that we should be taken to have beleeved repented c. not in our selves but in him and by him But the reason why we neither affirm nor hold it is not because that these are our Gospel righteousnes or New Covenant conditions of righteousness and life in the sense before oft mentioned for we have denyed and do still deny them to be such But 1 because it is in question whether the active righteousnes of Christ be imputable to us for justification And 2 if it were yet were it an unchristing of Christ to affirm him to have been ever in such a state and condition that he had need of repentance or faith to the remission of sins He took indeed our nature not the sinfulnes of our nature had our sin imputed to him or as the Scripture phrase expresly speaketh laid on him Isa 53. 6. to suffer and satisfie for it but had no sin of his own to repent of and mortifie then had there not been vertue in his Priesthood sacrifice to have expiated ours And to say that he actually repented sorrowed beleeved c. for the pardon of our sins we confes is a harsh unproper and Catachresticall locution Yet we still hold that the flawes and infirmities of our faith and repentance as well as our other iniquities were laid upon Christ that he hath satisfied divine justice for them by his sufferings and that therefore God imputeth them not to us being once in Christ Otherwise though they are parts of Gospel righteousnes to sanctification the sin and infirmity that is in them in not squaring fully with the Law their rule would bring upon us condemnation These things premissed all the absurdities which to make the assertion odious Mr. B. layeth upon us for affirming our New Covenant righteousnes to be in Christ in the sense mentioned and explained and denying our faith repentance obedience c. to be our New Covenant righteousnesse to Justification vanish into smoke For 1 It implyeth not as he saith it doth blasphemy against Christ as if he had sin to repent of for we utterly deny that Christ hath beleeved or repented for us otherwise then by satisfying justice for our not repenting beleeving c. home to the rule of the Law 2 Nor doth it imply that Jewes Pagans and every one shall be saved because Christ hath fulfilled the conditions of both Covenants for them so that they are culpable in neither For Christ hath not satisfied for the breach of much less fulfilled that which Mr B. called the conditions of the New Covenant as such conditions c. but as precepts of the old Covenant or Law of works Or should I say Christ hath satisfied onely for the Elect will M. B. contradict 3 If it should follow hence that the Elect then are righteous and justified viz. in Christ before they beleeve this would not sound as an absurdity to any other besides them to whom truth is an absurdity as hath been before shewed 4 Neither if it would follow hence that beleeving is needless to justification would it also follow that it is needless to any other use This cannot fall from any other but a prophane mouth and self-seeking man that will have nothing done out of love and obedience to God to glorifie him but all out of self-love for his own benefit onely But I have before proved faith to be needfull to justifie us to bring home into our own Consciences the benefit and evidence of our Justification even Faith acting in us therefore Faith so acting in us is also needful to this as well as to other uses though Christ hath satisfied for the infirmity of it in reference to the Law 5 It were no absurdity to confess the saved and the damned to be alike in themselves and by nature before Justification but that the difference is onely in election and Christs intention Untill then the Holy Ghost pronounceth both to be Children of wrath by nature Eph. 2. 3. both to be ungodly Rom. 4. 5. what then is the difference in themselves But their beleeving and Justification puts a difference in their relation first and then in their qualifications also the one becoming sanctified the other remaining unholy still The rest that is contained in this fifth place hath been objected before and before answered 6 What he saith in the sixth place proceeds from the heat of passion and height of self-confidence not from strength of reason or evidence of Scriptures Which of all the Lawes and precepts of Christ had Justification for its end save that of Faith Or who hath confounded Law and Gospel and overthrown all the Lawes and Precepts of Christ by removing Faith from operating in its office to this end Who hath contradicted the whole scope of Scriptures by denying Christ to be made under the Law to have fulfilled the Law to have born the curse of the Law or its imposing upon all the necessity of duty to perform our selves whatsoever the New Covenant requireth of us to Justification or Salvation But that all which Mr. B. would make conditions of Justification must be such because he will so have it notwithstanding all his bombasticall noise of woâds his great Cry and little wooll will not be grânted him When he brings us his large transcript of New Testament Scriptures I doubt upon due examination they will be found to make not for but against him What he instanceth p. 113 114 115. of Mr. Saltmarsh I cannot deny it neither will I defend it I remember that I did once read this passage in him and it was the same in substance as Mr. B. here transcribes him It is not a grain or two of salt that can make his Argumentation there enough savory unless he mean
performance of homage therefore the personall performance of Faith shall be imputed to us for a sufficient personall payment as if we had payed the full rent because Christ whom we believe in hath paid it and he will take this for satisfactory homage So it is in point of personall performance and not of value that Faith is imputed I should have left this passage as meerly windy to the wind finding nothing in it that hath the least force to disturb or shake any wel-grounded Christian Only because not all that are true Christians are also so well grounded and rooted in Christ and built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets as could be desired but not a few children in understanding whirled to and fro with every winde of doctrine for prevention of their sliding I shall say something and there is not much need of speaking much to it Mr Baxter shews himself to be a notable proficient yea a perfitist in the art of Imposture As hee hath his feats and shifts of sophistry still in readiness to beguile them that pretend to learning so he hath and here makes use of his good words and fair speeches smoothnesse of language and a shew without substance of reason which the Holy Ghost affirms to be the common slight of false teachers to deceive the hearts of the simple Rom. 16. 17 18. His scope here seemes to be two-fold 1. To hold himselfe in favour with the Arminians his younger brothers and kindly to draw them with him up to a full closure with the Papists the worst of Papists to speak not onely the same thing but also the same words with him and them in the point of Justification 2. To delude and charme with golden words of painted vanity in stead of sound verity the weak and unwary Christians among us into a confederacy with him in his opinions 1. In reference to the former part of his aim and purpose it is evident that though the Arminians are led by the same spirit with the Papists and as much as we can understand by their writings have even sacrificed themselves to drive on the Papists interests yet they speak not altogether so broad and home as Master Baxter doth in the Popish dialect in this point of justification The times of Master Baxters and Arminius his declaring themselves for the Popish synagogue were not one and the same Here Master Baxter hath the advantage of Arminius improves it diligently Arminius was to broach his doctrine in Common-wealth where he knew he should have all the Magistracy Ministry and people also on a sudden rising up with co-united strength to oppose him yea all the Magistrates and Ministers of the reformed Churches round about bringing their co-united help to extinguish his wild-fire Needfull was it therefore for him in policy to speak warily non repente fieri turpissimum not at once to discover himselfe at the worst The times do better serve Master Baxters purposes Providence hath cast him upon a people of itching ears at a time when the promoting and admitting of Monstrosities in opinions is the fashion mainly in request in religion the most like the Athenians harkening âfter nothing else but news and novelties in doctrine having set up Altars in their hearts to the unknown Gods are ready to burn incense and offer sacrifice to every phantasm of falshood which under the name of a new light or truth shall be discovered to them It behoved him therefore for the full attaining of his designs to make use of the opportunity to strike home and to the purpose while the iron is hot and having his mouth once open to vomit out all the poyson in his belly in one floud while there are so many mouthes and bellies open to receive it Hence it is that Arminius and his followers though they had as good stomacks as Mr. Baxter yet did not open their mouthes as wide as hee in Babel language Though they spake the tantundem yet they spared to utter the idem with the Papists to obscure the Grace of God in our Justification They termed not as the Papists do Faith the very or part of the very righteousness which justifieth of it self but that which is imputed to us for or in stead of perfect righteousness to Justification asserting not that it justifieth by its own inherent virtue or righteousness but to bee graciously accepted for righteousnesse at Gods tribunall Christ say they hath merited for us that our Faith should be accepted and esteemed of God for and in place of the perfect righteousness of the Law to justifie us in his sight In substance they speak the same thing with but in words they are somewhat more favourable and modest then the Jesuits But Mr. Br. doth not thus speak thorow his teeth lisping to mince the matter but having the advantage of a good wind and tide as hath been said hoyseth sayles and is at once carried into the very Lateran of Rome through the streams of Tibris and speakes out in the Romish tone asserting Faith to be the personall righteousnesse by which we are justified and makes the righteousness of Faith a collateral with the righteousness of Christ to our justification Yet doubting his good friends the Arminians will be angry for his posting before them and finding them in reverence to their Father Arminius yet sticking to and loath to depart from his words that Faith is but imputed for righteousness he calls back notwithstanding all his haste to them inviting them to follow him for he is still of the same mind with them and endeavours to shew them that Faith it self may be our righteousnesse and yet be imputed to us for righteousnesse also Which also he doth so graphically paint out to them that they may if they will not be too wayward easily perceive that they may own the Pope for their Father and be nevertheless the genuine sons of Arminius still What effect his fine words will take upon the Armians I know not I care not Only this was requisite to be made out to be one end that he had in this passage of his that we might the better know the man what he is One that hangs so close to Rome as the bur to the garment yet holds sweet correspondence with the Arminians too to draw them to so full a discovery of themselves as himself hath made of himself 2. In reference to the weake and unwary Christians among our selves his aime is to fasten both the Popish and Arminian doctrines before mentioned upon them and that not by strong arguments of Scripture whereof he is wholly destitute in this point but by fine paints and flourishes of words and delightful fimilies pretending much sweetness and innocency in those doctrines having learned of his forefathers that images are Laymens best books viz. to carry them into idolatry error and pictures are of more force to work upon the ignorant then sound doctrine To prevent therefore what
he do so no more that he speaks here more orthodoxly than he purposed viz. the prisoners debt to be satisfied the prisoner to be delivered restored to his house to the inheritance again by the meer grace and purchase of the Son before God which implyes no less than a full justification with by God before ever the prisoner beleeved or had a new Lease a new Covenant of grace and faith made with him a doctrine which before Mr. Br anathematizeth to hell it self and will do so again though he thereby Curse himself for that which inconsiderately here fell from him These things granted and winked at we utterly explode all the rest in the Similitude not onely as uncoherent with but as contrary to the doctrine of Grace yea utterly destructive to the nature and working of grace in our Justification and that in these particulars as I promised above to specifie 1 That it maketh our Justification mercenary and held by yeerly rent for though it be but a pepper-corn that is payd yet that is rent and payment as shall be manifested before we passe from this similitude which is contrary to the Covenant of grace and doctrine of the Gospel which affirmeth that We are justified freely by his Grace through the Redemption which is in Jesus Christ Rom. 3. 24. And wholly agreeing with the doctrine of the Gospel is that of Austin Non enim gratia Dei Gratia erit ullo modo nisi gratuita sit omni modo The Grace of God shall not be grace in any respect except it be free in every respect But how is it free which is a debt acquired and held by rent and payment 2 That it maketh our Justification Conditionall if Articles of Covenant be performed then the Tenant abides in the inheritance the man is justified if through foolishnes or forgetfulnes unperformed then is the Tenant outted the man unjustified And to be thus conditionally Justified is no Justification When contrariwise the Gospel holds forth a reall and absolute Justification Son Daughter Be of good cheare thy sinns he forgiven Mat. 9. 2. Luk. 7. 48. He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet but is clean every whit Joh. 13. 10. Being justified by faith we have peace with God and glory in tribulation Rom. 5. 1. 3. Is it not a reall and absolute but a conditionall forgivenes washing Justifying here spoken of then must the effects in these places added and attributed to such forgivenes washing Justifying be not reall but conditionall also A conditionall not reall chear comfort a conditionall not reall cleanness a conditionall not reall peace with God and glorying in tribulation But these effects are out of question reall Therefore Justification the Cause of these effects reall also 3 It delineats an unperfect Justification The Old Lease is not cancelled but kept firm to be put in suit against the Tenant after the New Lease is made The Old Covenant of works is kept in force against the beleever after he is entred into the New Covenant of grace to be put in suit against him upon occasion to his totall damnation When the Gospel pronounceth the justification of a beleever perfect the Old Covenant in respect of any power over him to be dead Rom. 7. 6. The hand writing against him and contrary to him blotted out taken out of the way and nailed to the Cross of Christ Col. 2. 14. So that he is no longer under the Law of workes to be pleaded or putt in suit against him Rom 6. 14. Nor is there now any more Condemnation to be inflicted on him Rom. 8. 1. 4 It points out a mutable justification While the Tenant payeth the rent he shall be acquit both from his debt and all other rent for the future but if he miss of payment then both the old dâbt and rent falls on him as a mountain again crushing him untill the pepper-corn intercede remove the mountain and then acquitt again untill the pepper-corn be lost in carriage or being round and full of volubility run besides the Landlords hand then on comes the mountain of debt upon the Tenant again c. Thus mans justification is made fast or loose according to the stedfastnes or mutableness of mans will and the grace of God in justifying of so little fixedness that a pepper-corn can weigh it and sway it up and down at pleasure When contrariwise the Scripture every where pronounceth the grace of God and Covenant of grace everlasting unchangeable and makes the Justification of man to rest not upon his own mutable and mad will but upon the stable and stablishing grace of God I will be mercifull to their unrighteousness and their sinns and iniquities will I remember no more Heb. 8. 12. I will make an everlasting Covenant with them that I will not turn away from them to do them good but I will putt my fear in their hearts that they shall not depart from me Jer. 32. 40. with a large heap of testimonies more to the same purpose which would be here impertinent to transcribe Thus is the similitude as here framed in all these respects proper indeed to illustrate the bugbear figment of Justification in Mr. Brs brain but altogether incoherent with the Justification which the Gospel holds forth to us Yet he addeth In this case the payment of the grain of pepper is imputed to the Tenant as if he had payd the Rent of the old Lease When contrariwise the reformed Churches affirm from most full and pregnant Testimonies of Scripture that to rest any thing at all upon the imputation of such pepper payments for righteousness doth utterly frustrate the offers of grace and benefits of Christs death unto us as hath been oft before manifested That which followeth doth not take off the Odium and falshood of this his doctrine but rather augments it declaring that he hath learned of the Papists not onely their falsifications of the Gospel nullifying of the grace and righteousness of God and extolling the crest of mans pride but also their fallacious shirts to dâfend his dealing herein Yet this imputation saith he doth not extoll the pepper-corn nor vilifie the benefit of his benefactor who redeemed him Nor can it be said that the purchase did onely serve to advance the value and efficacy of that grain of pepper The very language of the Papists and the Arminians for âo they when they have mounted the righteousnes of mans faith and works to be a part or the whole of the righteousness effectuall to Justification they come after with a plausible varnish of words professing that they do not herein abase Gods grace nor heave above its own proportion mans righteteousness For say they we do not attribute any thing to mans righteousness either as it is mans righteousnes or to the price and value of it as if by its own worth merit it doth Justifie but partly saith Antoninus ex ordinatione Divina as God hath ordeined
signifie But that he means to extoll them he doth enough plainly give us to understand When he saith that the purchase did not Onely serve to advance the value and efficacy of that grain of pepper his meaning must be at least that Christ dyed and by his death hath purchased to the pepper-corn of mans righteousness a value and efficacy in part though not Onely to Justifie us so that our righteousness must go Cheek by Cheek with the righteousness of Christ to Justification Now as if Usury as it Consisteth in taking increase be unlawfull a penny of a hundred pounds taken by way of increase is no less in substance Usury and unlawfull than the taking of Tenn pounds of the hundred so if the adding of our righteousness to the righteousness of Christ for our justification be an unlawfull exalting of our own and depressing of Christs righteousness then to bring our own righteousness with the righteousness of Christ in the least part to justifie is as truly an unlawfull depression of Christs righteousness and advancing of our own as if we brought it in the highest degree wholly and alone to justifie us and so by his account Christ dyed to make man though not the Onely yet in part a saviour of himself And herein to follow his doctrine is the ready way to be a self-destroyer Christ is become of none effect to you whosoever of you are justified by the Law ye are faln from grace said the Apostle to a people that did extoll but in part and not Onely their own righteousness to justification Though it be not Onely poyson which a man eateth yet it there be poyson in it it brings death after iâ If we magnifie one grain of our own pepper to that height that we make it a part of that righteousness by which to stand at Gods tribunall this one grain will sink us down to hell so hot a poyson is Mr. Brs pepper-corn I shall joyn that which followes in the similitude viz. Bax. But thus A personall Rent must be payd for the testification of his homage He was never Redeemed to be Independent and his own Landlord and Master The olde Rent he cannot pay his new Landlords clemency is such that he hath resolved this grain shall serve the turn With that which is homogeneous to it in the application Bax. Two things are considerable in this debt of righteousness The value and the personall performance or interest The value of Christs satisfaction is imputed to us in stead of the value of a perfect Obedience of our own performing and the volue of our Faith is not so imputed But because there must be some personall performance of homage therefore the personall performance of Faith shall be imputed to us for a sufficient personall payment as if we had payd the full Rent because Christ whom we beleeve in hath payd it and he will take this for satisfactory homage so it is in point of personall performance and not of value that faith is imputed It is not denyed but a personall testification of homage is required We were not Redeemed to be independent or our own Landlords and Masters to serve our selves and walk after our own thoughts No Ye are not your own for ye are bought with a price saith the Apostle Therefore glorifie God in your body and in your Spirit which are Gods 1 Cor. 6. 20. And again He hath given himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purifie to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works We must live and dye to him that dyed for us in testification of our homage But the thing in question is not whether this homage is to be done but whether when it is performed it be a Cause or an effect of our redemption and justification Whether we are to perform all duty that we may be redeemed and justified or because we are redeemed and justified Whether the relation of the persons go before the relative duties or the relative duties before the relation of the persons Reason tells us that filiall obedience doth alway presuppose the relation of a Son and where there is no Childe there can be expected no Childlike obedience First free and then free service And to this tenor runs the vote and voyce of the Gospel We are delivered out of the hands of our enemies that we may serve him without fear in holines and righteousness before him all the dayes of our life Luk. 1. 74 75. Not that we shall be delivered out of c. because we have so served him all the dayes of our life That we are married to Christ that we should bring forth fruit unto God Rom. 7. 4. Not that we are married to Christ because we have brought forth fruit unto God That he dyed for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves but unto him that dyed for them 2 Cor. 5. 15. Not that we must live to Christ that we may live by Christ and obtein life by his death If any man be in Christ he is a new creature 2 Cor. 5. 17. Not that he must be a new creature to the end that he may be in Christ Mr. Br shakes the whole frame of the Gospel into a topsie-turnie and might as rationally make our glorification the Condition of our sanctification as sanctification the Condition of our Justification and Adoption As for the distinction which he puts in the application between the value and the performance of Faith i. e. in his sense of sanctification making the value of Christs satisfaction to be imputed in stead of the value of a perfect obedience and the personall performance of Faith to be imputed onely in stead of the personall performance of the Law and so our inchoat sanctification for that he means by the performing of faith is imputed to us in place of performing all perfect righteousness unto justification some pretty witty men may be taken with it as a pretty witty fancy But whosoever Loveth the Lord Jesus up to a due jealousie for his honour Cannot but have his heart full of trembling to see the sacred word and mysteries of Christ to be made the play-game of an audacious and frothy wit and eluded yea vilified and enervate with such absurd and windy distinctions that have no footing in the word of God Himself using this distinction with a purpose not to teach but to Cheat the simple For pag. 141. he doth in express words affirm the worthines or value which he doth here ascribe to Christs satisfaction to lye in our performance or works Either he must be destitute of all natural and moral operations of Conscience or an Anti-Hannibal that hath sworn unreconcileable warrs not for God against Rome but for Rome against Christ that in so holy a busines can so frequently and fearlesly act the wanton I shall conclude therefore in the words which Mr. Pemble hath against the brethren of Mr. Br in this point
the Apostles termes by which he freely and without necessity in relation to his justice willeth the salvation of one and willeth not the salvation of another loveth or hateth imputeth not or doth impute sinne according to his own free will But justification in the latter sense is an act of Gods righteousnes or faithfulnesse by which hee faithfully and righteously accomplisheth his promises of grace in just âying and absolving them which believe by the sentence of pardon pronounced to their conscience according to the Gospel promise made to beleevers No word of promise went before justification in the former sense to make it an act of justice to fulfill that promise neither could it be an act of his natural justice that by the necessity of his nature he should so justifie and love any for then should none be either loved or saved freely of God when contrariwise it was in his own free choice to love or to hate to save or condemn all or mutatis vicibus to have loved Esau hated Jacob to have willed the condemnation of the saved and the salvation of the reprobated But the word of promise preceded justification in the latter sense which it is righteousnesse in God to fulfill therefore is it an act as well of his justice or righteousnesse as of his free grace 3. That Justification in the former sense is antecedaneous or foregoing to all covenants whatsoever 1. In order of nature though not in time it goeth before that covenant between the father and the son mentioned before in the examination of the explication of Mr. Baxters fourteenth Thesis and consequently before Christs undertaking to make or the fathers Covenant to accept what he should offer in satisfaction for the sinnes of the elect For in order of nature the willing of the end alway goeth before the willing of the means conducing to the end so that Gods willing mans righteousnesse and immunity from sinne and loving him to salvation must needs goe before his willing of Christs satisfying of his justice which was but a mean appointed of God to the constituting of man righteous before him that he might be pure from sinne discharged from condemnation and partaker of salvation which was the end Not that there was any precedency or following after of these acts of God in time for they are both coeternal and before all times Whom God hath loved and forgiven their sinnes them hath he so loved and forgiven in and through Christ from all eternity and through and for the merit of his satisfaction Much more doth this immanent act of justification go before not onely in nature but in time also the other temporary Covenants both the Covenant of workes made with Adam and the Covenant of Grace made after by Gospel promise by Christ or God in Christ to us and with us For these had all their being in time But justification in its other acceptation is subsequent unto and followes after and is an effect of not onely the Covenant of Grace but of faith it selfe which the Covenant of Grace calls for as a mean to attain it None else but a beleiver nor he until he actually beleeveth is thus actually justified or hath pardon of sinnes and absolution from wrath declared and pronounced of God in his conscience And thus to be justified in Christ or in God is one thing and to bee justified in our selves by God through Christ is another The former is an antecedent the latter an effect or consequent of the Covenant of Grace 4. That neither the mediation satisfaction of Christ nor much lesse our faith in Christ nor any of the most noble gifts of grace received from Christ either in their habit or operation do move God to justifie us so as to put into him a will to pardon our sins and accept us as righteous or to change his affection from nilling to will our forgivenesse and happinesse and from hating to love and accept us because he is God and therefore immutable and there cannot be any cause of Gods will rendred any more than of God himselfe For the Will of God is God himselfe and these immanent acts of God are God himselfe acting So that the substration of all that Christ hath suffered and by his sufferings satisfied for us and of all that we doe or can doe to put our selves into union with Christ and a conformity with the Will of God are in no wise the causes or conditions or antecedents of Gods first loving owning and pronouncing uâ righteous and pure from sinne imputed but the effects thereof For he so loveth and justifieth all that in a Covenant way have been or shall be justified in their own conscience before ever they beleeve or live But that the intervening of Christs satisfaction for our sinnes and our recumbency upon and embracing of Christ so satisfying by faith that we may be justified do ad nothing to God which was not nor alter any thing which was in his will before but do onely lay and make a way by Gods ordination how he from all eternity loving and justifying us in himselfe freely may in a course most convenient to magnify both his truth and righteousnesse and withal his grace and mercy at length actually declare us just in and to our own consciences and for ever acquit us from sinne and wrath to the admiration of Men and Angels And so the former justification is a pure simple free and irrespective act of God having no causality out of himselfe moving him to it but the latter is a foederal Gospel or Covenant justification respecting his own Covenant before made Christs satisfaction already given and pleaded in heaven by Christ and mans faith in the mediator and promiser pleading the promise and the blood of the mediator sealing it upon all which he doth he cannot but actually pronounce and declare to the conscience of the beleiver his perfect absolution from sin and vengeance This latter is indeed the justifying wherof the Scriptures primarily speak as oft as they speak of justification by faith but so as the former is also in such Scriptures implyed Neither is the Scripture silent in reference to the former as considered without the latter or apart from it 5. That although all that are or shall be justified by faith in time i. e. each onâ in the time when he so beleeveth were justified also in Christ secretly in God before they beleived or yet lived even from eternity Yet is there no man justified by vertue of the New Covenant and promise of the Gospel proclaiming right to the Lord Christ to forgivenesse of sinnes freedome from condemnation heirship to Gods Kingdom and all other benefits of Christs Passion until he doth actually beleeve and embrace Christ thorow him to have all those pretious promises made good and effectual to himselfe Though in Christ he were Lord of all before yet differed he nothing in himselfe from a servant from a child of
wrath his life and righteousnesse were hid with Christ in God He could claim nothing from God by any evidential title but wrath and condemnation though he had right in Christ yet had he no right unto Christ though in Christ all was his because Christ had united purchased and received all into his hands for him yet had he no right to Christ by which to claim a partnership and interest in the kingdome and priviledge of grace was without all true peace of conscience all joy and consolation in the promises of grace under fears and terrors in expectation of wrath and damnation could be sensible of nothing but anger hatred and displeasure against him for sinne knew not himselfe to be one of the children of promise Gal. 4. 28. to be entitled to Christ in whom alone the promises of God are yea and Amen 2 Cor. 1. 20. Therefore as if there had been no Christ no Mediator and reconciler no Covenant of Grace yea no Grace or acts of Grace eternal or temporary in God thorow Christ so he remained under a Spirit either of delusion or of bondage still But now when the father hath drawn him to Christ and Christ hath received him when Christ hath apprehended him to himselfe by his Spirit and he by faith hath apprehended Christ to himselfe for redemption reconciliation remission righteousnesse and whatsoever else is laid up in Christ for him and so hath union and communion with Christ hath Christ in him and is himselfe in Christ Now his justification which was sure before in God and in Christ is also made sure to his conscience He is now justified in his own conscience after the tenor and by the vertue of the Gospel and Covenant and promises of Grace findes and knowes himselfe through Christ absolved at Gods tribunal hath all the evidences for it that possibly he can desire the Word and the Oath of God that by two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to ly he may have a strong consolation Heb. 6. 18. The Word evidenceth and his faith evidenceth the Covenant is now sealed mutually and reciprocally between God and him by beleeving he hath put to his seal that God is true and God sealeth to his conscience by certifying it by his Spirit that his wrath is pacified that all accusations are silenced there is no condemnation to him being now in Christ Jesus Rom. 8. 1. Himselfe may now rest satisfied banishing henceforth all fears and doubts and glorying in the Lord that the fear of death is past it is enough my soul is now alive Christ is made sinne for me that I might become the Righteousnesse of God in him 2 Cor. 5. 21. Now Lord lettest thou thy servant depart in peace for my eyes have seen thy Salvation and in the interim while he is here enjoying a heaven upon earth a kingdome of Righteousnesse joy and peace in the Holy Ghost untill he was incorporated by faith into Christ Christ might indeed plead for him but he had no evidence no shew of title not an article under Gods hand or from his lips to plead at Gods barre for life or pardon 6. That neverthelesse when a man truly beleeveth then may he apprehend justification and remission of sinnes not onely as now first declared and evidenced to his own soul But also as past and compleat before the foundation of the world was laid Because from eternity Christ satisfied in that he undertook to satisfie for the sinnes of the Elect and God from eternity rested in this satisfaction undertaken by Christ and so laid aside all displeasure which without this Covenant between him and his onely Son he might have taken up as wel against them that should afterward beleeve as against them which dye in unbeleef For their justification in time doth à posteriore argue their justification before all times and where faith findes the least rivulet of the great stream sent forth it can it ought by it to ascend up to the very fountain to be filled and satisfied with the deliciousnesse thereof Thus shall we finde the Apostle almost in all his Epistles from the sense of their present enjoyments in Christ to carry upward the Saints to whom he writeth unto the very bosom of Gods eternal grace counsell and good pleasure where all was laid up and treasured for them from all eternity that thence it might in due time be shed forth upon them Faith runs not away rashly and hastily with the gift but delights to enter and pierce through the vail to contemplate and embrace the as well eternal as infinite love of the giver 7. That although no man receiveth the sensible comfort of his justification before he actually beleeveth yet every elect vessell hath besides and without his knowledge the true benefit thereof as to freedome from vengeance throughout the whole time of his infidelity was in Christ beloved accepted and owned of God as righteous in that his sinne was not imputed as fully before as after he beleeved the price of his redemption was paid all his sinnes borne and punished upon the shoulders yea the soul and body of Christ so that himselfe was no lesse exempted from the revenging wrath of God from all obligation to make any part of satisfaction in his own person for his sinnes as hee that was already in Christ by faith So that whatsoever afflictions befell him in the time of his unbelief were not the infliction of the curse as the curse for sinne but sanctified chastisements of a loving father flowing from his grace and favour not from his indignation and hatred against his person though against his sins tending all to his good not to his ruine Else if he should have born the least stroke of Gods revenging justice and in the least pittance have made but one least peece of satisfaction by his sufferings for his offences then either Christ hath made satisfaction for him but in part and is not his whole Saviour and redeemer for that himselfe hath satisfied divine justice in part or otherwise the father hath taken satisfaction twice for the same sins once from the Lord Christ and after that from the offender also But this were to slander either the perfection of Christs mediation or the incorruptnesse of Gods justice both which are unsufferable 8. That the justification which is by faith consisteth not onely in a bare apprehension of our justification and pardon from God for this is onely mans act and no express act of God but first in Gods actual declaration evidencing and certisfying the conscience of man drawn to the barre of judgement set up as it were in the conscience that God hath taken satisfaction to his offended justice from the Lord Christ for all the offenders sinnes and hath for ever quit-claimed and discharged him from all sin and wrath and admitted him into favour and family to be under the dispensations of his grace for ever And then indeed God having by this
every such person That these Antinomians of the former age were filthy dreamers loose livers such as turned the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ into lasciviousness is very probable if not certain from that which Calvin and others have written against Antinomians and Libertines And from such we have no less abhorrence then Mr. Baxter But while Mr. Baxter declaimeth against the innocent hee proclaimes himselfe a rank Antinomian in teaching and maintaining that the perfect obedience and righteousnesse of the Law are not required and consequentially not due under the Gospel Islebius himself never spake so derogatorily to the righteousness of the Law CHAP. XXIII Arg. Mr. Baxters distinction of Justification in Title of Law and in Sentence of Judgement examined together with other distinctions equipollent to this Whether besides the present there be also a future Justification and whether it be begun and perfected together at once I should wholly have passed over the 37 38 39 and 40 Theses with their Explications as meerly shady imaginations voyd of all reality and substance without stopping to give them one word of answer For why should wee talke of Pictures that have no life in them were it not that it is Master Baxters drift to carry us through these wayes of his own chalking wholly from Christ under a pretext of leading us to Christ the Justifier To frustrate therefore his deceit I shall speak somewhat to these passages of his Tractate also Thes 37. pag. 183. B. Iustification is either in title and the sense of Law or in sentence of judgement The first may be called Constitutive the second Declarative the first Virtual the second Actual Lawyers have layd it down for a Maxim Non est distinguendum ubi Lex non distinguit i. e. We are not to distinguish of any point in the Law where the Law it self hath not made a distinction If the Laws of men are not much lesse are the Laws and Word of God to be violated with mens bold distinctions For this is no lesse then to bring Gods sacred Oracles into a subjection to mans vain fancies Let Mr. Baxter shew any Scripture that gives footing for the distinguishing of Justification into that which is in title of Law and that which is in sentence of judgement into constitutive and declarative or virtuall and actuall Justification These are the inventions of wanton wits in these latter times whose endeavour it hath been to tear in peeces and thereby wholly nullifie Gods Justification and to put many Justifications of their own in stead thereof We deny not a constitutive and declarative Justification in some sense but in Mr. Baxters sense we deny it It is granted that the Satisfaction which the Son by promise gave and the Father accepted for the sins of the Elect according to the Covenant between the Father and the Son before more then once mentioned did constitute the Elect justified in Christ before they were born who notwithstanding were not declared just to their own consciences before they actually beleeved nor to others until they manifested their Faith by their Works But Mr. Baxter explodes this constitutive and declarative Justification as an unsufferable abhomination and will not have his virtuality and actuality to these applyed And let him alleage any one Scripture that calls the sentence of life unto those that shall bee saved by grace that is to be pronounced in the last day Justification Or if he cannot but that the justification of the New Covenant wherever it be mentioned in the Word be that which is in this present life who sees not that his distinguishing here tends to the subverting of Scriptures and of the both virtual and actual Justification which the Scriptures speak of B. The Scripture speaks of it many times as a future thing and not yet done Rom. 3. 30. Mat. 12. 37. Rom. 2. 13. Explic pag. 185. This is all that he bringeth or can bring for Justification in the day of Judgement and this all is nothing It followeth not because these Scriptures speak of Justification as of a thing to come saying they shall be not they are justified that this Future tense doth point out the day of Judgement If I should say Mr. Baxter shall dye I should not be accused for speaking an untruth but if any will needs confine that shall to the day of Judgement that Mr. Baxter shall then dye who would not laugh at the absurdity of the consequence That of Mat. 12. 37. By thy words thou shalt be justified and by thy words thou shalt be condemned and that of Rom. 2. 13. Not the hearers but the doers of the Law shall be justified speak of Justification after the tenor and covenant of the Law not of Grace therefore pertain nothing to the present purpose Hee shall but Dare verba damnably deceive with words that teacheth men to seek for Justification by the righteousness of the Law consisting in deeds and words Whosoever indeed shall neither in word or deed be found a transgressor of the Law actually or originally shall be justified by his words and deeds But this man must be sought for out of a happier generation then those of the race of Adam else if we except Christ alone we must return our Non est inventus That of Rom. 3. 30. speaks indeed in the Future tense but may be as properly rendred by the word will as shall though the difference be not very considerable thus It is one God which will or shall justifie the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through Faith The Apostle here meaneth no otherwise speaking here in the Future then what he had said before in the Present Tense of Justification And it is as if he had said God hath decreed and declared his method of justifying both Jews Gentiles to be one and the same As long as there remain or succeed any upon earth of either part to be justified the purpose of God abides firm to justifie as wel the one as the other by faith and no one of either sort by Works neither circumcision nor uncircumcision shall avail or hinder any thing but Christ faith in Christ shall bee all unto all in this businesse as long as the world endureth And what is there then in this Text to pâove Mr. Baxters declarative Justification in the day of Judgement Not that wee deny the adjudging of life in the day of Judgement to all that in this life were justified but the Scriptures terming this last sentence by the name of Justification whatsoever is said of Justification by Faith or Grace is still to be understood in this life And the whole reason that Mr. Baxter hath here to coyn a Justification in the day of judgement is to lay a foundation of Popish Justification by Works as by the sequele of this his Treatise will more fully appear Else would we not contend with him about meer words did they not tend to a destructive end and that we are taught
opposeth it to Conditional Justification in Christ how many senses it may bear and scarce ever a good one yet in the ambiguity of the phrase a way left him to evade The 44 Thesis is ridiculous to all that desire to speak after the wisdome of God and not after the fallacies of men that are meere foolishnesse with God Men that are but thus conditionally pardoned and justified may be unpardoned and unjustified again c. ut suprà In this at last Master Baxter is not to be deprived of his due praise that he makes his foundation and building to consist of homogeneous Materialls an imaginary foundation and a phantasticall building It is as much as if he had said A fancied something made up of nothing may without the spilling of much blood or sweat be resolved into nothing again The Cat in the Fable which Venus turned into a fair Virgin because she would not leave to hunt mice was quickly reformed into a Cat again If one dream make Master Baxter a Holy Pope the next dream may unpope and unhallow him again And men that were but conditionally justified may be unjustified again and be altogether as well justified while unjustified as when conditionally justified and as fully pardoned while unpardoned as when conditionally pardoned and all the debt as fully required at their hands when it is conditionally forgiven as when it is unforgiven again And all this without any change in God or in his lawes For all these are not Gods but Master Baxters and his Arminians and Jesuits justifications and Non-Justifications pardonings and unpardonings forgiving debts and requiring them again God is unchangable His gifts and calling without Repentance Rom. 11. 29. But these are Protei and Chamelions specially when the change is from evill to worse and would feign to themselves and us a God like to themselves that should be a changeable God no God It behoved Master Baxter to have proved from Scriptures this Popish Arminian Doctrine of conditionall justifying and unjustifying c. from the word that it might appear to us that the Oracles of God and not the Sophistry of men had drawn him into this Topsie turnie tattle rather than Doctrine of justification Not doing this his breath smells of a Pope in his belly That his aim is to make the word of God to strike saile to the Sophisms of the Papists and Arminians and not these to the word For so he proceeds in the next which is the 45 Thesis in their language B. Yea in Case the justified by faith should cease believing the Scripture would pronounce them unjust again c. because their Justification doth continue conditional as long as they live here c. if they should cease to be believers they would cease to be justified If the Heavens fall we shall need no hobbies to catch larkes If Master Baxter cease to be a man he will cease to be an Impostour They are suppositions of things possible or impossible which in both these his Theses he maketh if of possibles why doth he not prove them if of impossibles what can he aim at but the deceiving of them that are made to be taken and the destroying of the peace of tender and infirme consciences Hee turnes us over in the former position to Ball of the Covenant I have it not But if there he be the same Ball with Ball of Faith there is no more agreement betweene Ball and Bax than betwixt Christ and Belial I heard indeed long since that this Master Ball seeing fashionablenesse and formality tending somewhat to the Popish Outsidenesse in Religion was the way to preferment had before his death somewhat declined But unlesse I saw grounds for such a thought I cannot entertain it so great an estimation both of his ablenesse and holinesse hath his Treatise of Faith left in me But if otherwise it is not unnaturall to a Ball to roll especially down the hill And we halt not between two opinions we have the Lord and not Baal for our God But Master Baxter cannot put upon us this bull that he should with a trick of the hand beguile us into an opinion that in this Doctrine he is a follower of Baal Nay first his popish Schoolmen and Jesuits have taught him and then Arminius and his followers have polished him so that in these two Theses he doth but speak parat-like even word for word after these his Masters as I could if there were need alleadge cut of the Authors whom he followeth Yea further the more antient Schoolmen and the most learned and Metaphysicall among the Jesuits blow off as basely derogatory from the perfection of Gods Nature the frothy positions which he here layeth down as Articles of Faith which he doth not at all apply himselfe to prove as if they were unquestionable because his quill hath dropt them He sees his Doctrine in these 2 Theses such as either hath nothing but words in it or if any thing reall such as tendeth to the advancing of the Popish and Arminian Doctrines of Universall Redemption Freewill falling from Grace c. Therefore intreats his reader in the Explication to suspend his judgement till another Tractate of his about universall Redemption come forth which in the Postscript to these Aphorisms he tels us he is not certain whether it will be ever and in his Append. pag. 164. seems to conclude that it will be never And that if I mistake not is upon Saint Justifications day according to the Baxterian account And in case it bring no better savour of Christ with it then this his Tractate better then then sooner To which time also if he had suspended the publication of this book I doubt not he might have obtained more then a conditional Justification from the guilt of such a suspension And For that which intimates the falling away of the justified saith he he speaks onely upon supposition c. but doth beleeve that the justified by Faith never do nor shall fall away ibid. Explic. A larger profession in respect to this Article of his Creed then I expected from him if it be single and hath no flaw of rottennesse and deceit in it But when we have found him calling the sentence of judgement in the last day justification by Faith as well as that which is in this life in title of Law as he terms it pag. 185. and makes the justification in this life to be meerly conditional and consequently either nul or reversible in these 44 45 Thes what can we think can be his meaning when he saith I beleeve that the justified by faith never do or shall fall away but this that they that are sentenced once to life in the day of judgement and already glorified neither doe nor shall fall away And yet for him that holds our justification to be stil but conditional untill the day of judgement it would I think be a harder task to prove that it remains not conditional after
the day of judgement then for the truly Orthodox in this point to prove it to be in this life absolute and unconditional Were I the man that were fit to undertake such a dispute I should as I conceive have a great advantage against such an adversary for most of the arguments which he should bring to prove the absoluteness and immutability of justification in the Kingdom of glory would strengthen against himself the same absoluteness and immutability of justification in the Kingdome of grace And almost all that he should be able to answer for the eluding of my arguments against absolute justification above would strengthen me to answer his arguments against absolute justification here But I hold it altogether unproper to make so holy a thing the subject of ludicrous exercitations The Scripture is as full to prove the Saints perseverance in grace here as their perseverance in glory above and as possible is the falling from the latter as from the former Now before I wholly pass from these positions of Mr. Baxter to make way for the examination of other Positions of his which I shall annex to these in this Chapter because of the neer affinity of their matter with that which is contained in these I shall speak something in opposition to Mr. Baxters universall conditional Justification in Christ or as Mr. Baxter termes it in Christs own Justification First then whatsoever sins of whatsoever persons were imputed unto Christ and for which he hath made full satisfaction to Gods Justice these are no more imputed but forever remitted in Christ absolutely and unconditionally to them who were the committers thereof But all the sinnes of all the elect and of them onely and not of the world were imputed to Christ and hee hath made full satisfaction c. Therefore c. The proposition is clear unless we will pronounce God unjust For if he should impute to the offender any one sin which was imputed to Christ and for which Christ hath fully satisfied Gods Justice then should God bee unjust in taking vengeance twice of the same sin once from Christ and another time from the offender contrary to the both equity of his justice and infallibility of his truth in either of which it is unpossible for God to fail Or if any should say that their sins were but conditionally imputed to Christ and that he made but a conditional satisfaction for them this were totally to deny the truth and reality of Christs sufferings It was not a conditional but absolute and real satisfaction that he made to divine Justice they were real stripes real and absolute wounds groans torments death-pangs by which he satisfied Justice He was not conditionally but verily made fin for us 2 Cor. 5. 21. a Curse for us Gal. 3. 13. himself bare our sins in his own body on the tree 1 Pet. 2. 24. was wounded for our transgression bruised for our iniquity Isa 53. 5. When all this was done absolutely and really and so a real and absolute condition made shall all this produce only a conditional and not a real and absolute justification in Christ to and for them who in him have made absolute satisfaction so that themselves in themselves must make absolute satisfaction again This possibly may agree with Mr. Baxters Justice but never with the Justice of God The assumption is thus proved as to his bearing and satisfying for the sins of the Elect only and not of the world He suffered not for such as we call Individua vaga certain uncertain persons himself not knowing who they were or should be The High Priest that typifyed him offered not his sacrifices at adventures for he knew not whom but bare the names of them for whom he offered before the Lord Exo. 28. 9 10 11 12 29. And this was to be fulfilled in Christ their Antitype I lay down my life for the sheep saith he and know my sheep Joh. 10. 11 14 15. For the sheep onely for them whom he knew to be his sheep he layd downe his life And lest any should think hee speakes here onely of his called and not his elect ones he addeth Other sheep also I have which are not of this fold i. e. of Israel but of the Gentiles them also I must bring and they shall hear my voice They are his sheep and he layeth down his life for them to satisfie for their sins before they were beleeving before they were in being and brings them home by the voice of his Gospel afterward ver 16. But to the unbeleeving Jews he saith Ye beleeve not because ye are not of my sheep ver 26. First sheep purged and redeemed by the blood of the Shepheard and then beleevers afterward And if not sheep first then unbeleevers forever Neither saith he ye are not my sheep justified and reconciled by my death because ye beleeve not but ye beleeve not because ye are not of my sheep in the number of my Elect and justified ones Justification absolute justification in Christ still goeth before faith in the so justified Again for them all and onely did Christ as our Priest offer himself in sacrifice for whom as our Priest he offered prayers to God when the offering of himselfe was at hand but he so offered his prayers not for the world but for them which God had given him i. e. the elect Joh. 17. 9. So in this part the Assumption stands firme on the other part that he bare and satisfied for all the sinnes of all the Elect is plain The blood of Christ purgeth from all sinne 1 John 1. 7. by one offering he hath perfected forever them that are sanctified Heb. 10. 14. When it is said they are perfected forever it is included that there remaines not one sinne unsatisfied for And this is the priviledge of all the Elect of all the Sheep both in being and in futurition both within and without the fold as before was manifested 2. If Christ hath purchased and we receive in this life onely an universall conditionall Justification It will follow also that God hath in himself decreed before all time onely such a justification to men and consequently that he neither loved nor elected to life them that are saved more then the damned For the Son was in the bosom of the Father therefore privy to his secret will to his very bosom counsels came down from heaven not to transgresse but to fulfill his will Joh. 6. 38. 4. 34. 5. 30. was faithfull to him that appointed him c. Hâb 3. 2 6. So that he acted in time according to the will and decree of God before all time But it is false that God decreed onely such an universall conditionall justification to all not preferring in his love and elâction those that shall be saved before them which shall be damned as appeareth Act. 13. 48. Rom 8. 30. 9. 15 to the 25. Eph. 1. 4 5 6 7. Therfore it is false also that
instrumentall cause also But this Mr. Baxter will answer anon and I shall wait on him to hear how satisfactory his answer is 2. Whether in his answer to the Question as he puts it when he makes a mans lease or deed of gift and a Kings pardon to have their force from the hand and seal annexed to it is it not much more implyed that the grant of the Gospell without hand and seal put to it is not a sufficient instrument to the justifying of any man For the grant of the Gospell is made to the world indefinitely but when faith as the impression of Gods hand upon the soul and the Spirit witnessing and sealing to the conscience thou art the person to whom the justification generally proposed in the Gospell doth particularly belong and so are applyed by God as true accessary evidences to the grant of the Gospell to terminate justification upon the soul of man can Mr. Baxter deny these being acts of God distinct from the word of promise to be instrumentall to justification as properly and fully as the said promise and grant 3. To his Procatarctick causes which in the Thesis he giveth viz. so far as God may be said to be moved by any thing out of himself speaking after the manner of men saith he I aske 1 Whether God may be moved in his will by any thing out of himself If so whether then something out of God do not give magis minus increase and diminution to God For every change of Gods will is a change of God himself and what shall it avail any to be justifyed by a mutable God that to day will justifie to morrow unjustifie againe being apt to take impression of change from things without him yea if a God mutable then in truth no God but one of the Pagans Idols or Puppets Or how little doth his additionall cause help him to speake after the manner of mân he ought not to speak a lie for God to please men much lesse to lie against God to fashion himself to the manners of men foolish or wicked men If he say God cannot be moved by any thing out of himself how can he excuse himself from being a slanderer of the most high God by devising and asserting here 4. causes out of God moving him to justifie us having before wilfully suppressed in darknesse the riches of Gods grace within himself alsufficient without any auxiliary strength from the creature to move him How preposterous is he herein to the order of nature making the fruit to bear the tree and not the tree the fruit What lesse doth he in making Christs satisfaction and intercession the sinners supplication and desire of supply and the opportunity or advantage for the glorifying of his justice and mercie the causes of Gods will and gracious willings when contrariwise Gods gracious will is the cause of all these 2 Whether he jears at the invaluable means of our salvation or else that he thinks himself matching cocks for the game that he counterpoiseth the highest perfections of Christs mediatorship with mans vanity how unsufferable is it to see him putting into the one scale a precious pearl into the other a peppercorn or cherry stone To match Christs intercession with the sinners supplication To make the feeblenesse of man a collaterall and concause in the same order and degree of efficacy to justification with the vertue of Christ glorifyed It is to be acknowledged that the nothingnesse of the one is of as full validity as the omnipotency if I may so terme it of the other to beget new love new purposes new acts in Gods will This is that which God himself cannot do not because it is a work above his power but beneath his nature and perfection to work or to be capable of the working of any new impressions or changes in his will Neverthelesse this excuseth not Mr. Baxters vilifying of Christ in mating his intercession with the sinners supplication as if the former were a star of the same magnitude with the latter like that profane fellow that twisted together Religion and Cheese 3 Not to trifle away time upon every trifling word of Mr. Baxter I demand of him why seeing in the Explication pa. 215. he acknowledgeth that Procatarcticall or outwardly impulsive causes have properly no place with God he doth yet in his Thesis here fetch about again his four impulsive causes to marke them with severall names in their foreheads in Aristotles print is it not a testimony under his own hand that he will rather play and dance about God as if he were a meer may-pole then lose the ostentation of one least peece of his wit and art 4 Though I mean not to contend about the meritorious causality of Christs satisfaction because in this he hath as well many orthodox writers as Papists speaking in the same tone with him neverthelesse I should deny his assertion unlesse he he will grant me these 4. or 5. suppositions 1. That so far as justification is an act eternall and immamanent in God Christs satisfaction is not the meritorious cause of it 2. If in some other respect it be the meritorious cause that God doth therein merit from himself For the satisfaction made to him is of his own proper money himselfe paid the price in delivering his Sonne for our sinnes the body which Christ offered for us was given him by the Father to offer in our behalf 3. That this merit must in no wise hinder but that the entire benefit of justification must come to us freely without money and without price 4. That it is but unproperly termed merit even then when it respecteth the discharge which God giveth into a mans conscience it being so called metaphorically as our state in sin is considered as a state of debt which when Christ our surety hath paid for us he hath so far merited only as the payment of our debt may be said to deserve that we should receive a full acquittance from the debt In which Mr. Baxter goeth yet further that it was so paid that the Creditour might have chosen to accept it for satisfaction much more to have given us a full acquittance and discharge So that in relation to him and his principles it is lesse properly merit then to another 5. That Christs satisfaction is more properly to be called Gods foundation of this our new relation of justifyed persons upon which he hath inabled himself to justifie us in mercie without any seeming diminution of his justice and truth These things granted me I dismisse Mr. Baxter with his meriâorlous cause 5 When he cals Christs intercâssion and the sinners supplication the morall perswading cause c. I demand whether there were such a totall deficiency or so great a scarcity of morall reason in God that it needed a begetting or quickning by perswasions from without him or whether he were so flinty aâ that without strong perswasive reasons he could not be induced
or between the not accusing or condemning of a man and the not imputing any thing to him to his accusation and condemnation CHAP. XXV Arg. of the Causa sine qua non or the condition or the instrumentall cause and whether faith be the instrument And in what sense it is so The absurdities wherewith Mr. Baxter chargeth this doctrine removed and those that follow his doctrine in part particularized TO the first Question we must apply our selves somewhat more fully because in answer to the former Questions Mr. Baxter seems to me to have aimed chiefly to the ostentation of his wit and Logicall both acutenesse and profoundnesse to make himself thereby admired and formidable But in answering this and the next he collects in one all his subtilty and Sophistry âo beguile and deceive if it were possible the very Elect. And indeed if he carry these two Questions in captivity to his own sense and purpose he shall thereby make at least a seeming way by which to introduce all his Popish soul-subverting errours about justification which follow and hang as at the tayle of these Questions His words in the Thesis are B. The Causa sine qua non is both Christs satisfaction and the faith of the justifyed As much as he thought would be objected against his putting Christs satisfaction in the same place and degree of causality as a collaterall with faith he hath spoken to in his answer to the second Question and the firmnesse of this his answer hath been there examined But what concernes faith that which he thinks he shall be opposed in he formes into two Questions Explication pa. 214. 1. Why he makes it not the Instrumentall cause 2. Why he makes it the Causa sine qua non The former which is his 5. Question he applies himself to answer pa. 219. in these words B. To the fift Question perhaps I shall be blamed as singular from all men in denying faith to be the instrument of our justification But affectation of singularity leads me not to it 1. If faith be an instrument it is the instrument of God or man Not of man for man is not the principall efficient he doth not justifie himself 2. Not of God for 1. It is not God that beleeveth though it 's true he is the first cause of all actions 2. Man is the causa secunda between God and the action and so still man should be said to justifie himself 3. For as Aquinas the action of the principall cause and of the instrument is one action and who dares say that faith is so Gods instrument 4. The instrument must have influx tâ the producing of the effect of the principall cause by a proper causality and who dare say that faith hath such an influx into our justification Here I know not whether we have more of the subtle serpent or of the roaring Lyon 1. He useth his winding Sophistry to intangle 2. His daring threats to them that being not intangled will be so bold as to contradict him Let us examine what efficacy there is in either or both these and first in his Sophistry To insinuate or as the Apostle saith to creep into the hearts of his Readers to deceive them he tels us Perhaps he may be blamed as singular from all men in denying faith to be the instrument of justification It seems he doubted that some of his Readers for lack of acquaintance with many Authours upon this subject would not or could not take notice that it is a new doctrine which he here delivereth and so he should be robbed of the glory of his new invention That the praise thereof might therefore wholly redound to him he tels them he is the first of men that ever saw and taught Faith not to be the instrument of justification that herein he is singular from all men Bât had he not rubbed his forehead that with open face he thus vindicateth to himself that which he hath received from the Priests and Jesuites Let him name himself singular and abhorrent from all Protestants yea from Christ and his Apostles not from all men he is singular and alone in this and most his assertions from the Orthodox from whom but holds it in common with the whole herd of Antichrist to whom he is fallen Doth not Bellarmine deny that faith can truly be said to justifie us except it doth obtain and in some sort merit Justification from God Do not all his brethren with one voice shake off the instrumentall causality of justification and make it as a perfect quality or good work to merit it A two fold subtlety yea falshood is there to be found therefore in this his insinuation 1. That he affirmes himself singular in this point to catch after an usurped praise to himself as if he had seen what none in the world before him had seen 2. In pretending it to be a new doctrine thereby to draw disciples after him in a time wherein the ears of men itch after new in disdain of sound and true doctrines But further to insinuate he tels us that affectation of singularity leads him not to it We beleeve him without oath or protestation It is not the desire of them that are of his hair to trudge single but accompanied with a whole Brigade of disciple under their conducting and seducing unto Rome But let us come to his Arguments B. If faith be an instrument it is the instrument of God or Man But of neither of these Ergo not at all an instrument His Proposition or Major we grant him And it were enough and full to that which can be expected to refell his reasons which he brings for the proof of the minor Yet because my drift is not so much to answer him as to stablish some weak and unwary Christians against his impostures I shall endeavour first to confirm what he denyeth and seeks to shiver and then to examine the strength of reason which he brings against us When he saith in the Minor that faith is the instrument neither of God nor Man in justification What if I should undertake to prove and defend it to be the instrument of both He speaketh here of Justification as taken Passively declared to and termined upon the conscience For if we should mention justification as taken meerly Actively for that internall eternall and immanent act in God not transient upon an extraneous subject but hid in God before the world was or any justifyed or unjustifyed persons began to live or be Mr. Baxter would be ready to deal with us as did the Jewes with Steven Act. 7. 57. stop his ears and cry out against us with a loud voice Blasphemy blasphemy Yet in this sense we acknowledge that saith is neither Gods nor Mans instument of justification But in that sense which alone Mr. Baxter here taketh justification for that gracious act of God by which he dischargeth for Christs sake the sinner from condemnation by vertue of the new
Covenant and that pretious Gospell promise He that beleeveth in the Son shall not come into condemnation but is passed from death to life so I affirm faith to be both Gods and Mans instrument Gods effective and mans receptive instrument in relation to justification as shall be beneath more fully explained First it is Gods instrument This justification is but Gods pronouncing and declaring a man to his own conscience to be just and discharged from sin and condemnation through Christ so that he perceives and apprehends himself absolved and doth acquiesce in this absolution One chief instrument by which God doth thus justifie or declare and manifest man to himself just and pardoned is faith This is Gods instrument in the same sense in which Mr. Baxter maketh the promise and grant of the new Covenant to be Gods instrument and that more fully as I in part shewed before For that grant doth but declare a possibility to a man as it is considered by it self to be justifyed promising forgivenesse and life to all that shall beleeve By this act alone no singular person is actually justifyed But now this grant premised when God is pleased to infuse faith into the soul of any singular person by it as by his instrument he declareth that person to himself just and acquitted from condemnation so that he can thenceforth plead out his own justification God hath pronounced them all just and pardoned which beleeve in his Son I so beleeve therefore I am pronounced and declared of God just and pardoned So this faith is the instrument of God for so Lawyers term Deeds and Grants in writing instruments yea instruments of him that makes the Deed or Grant And the promise of the new Covenant or the new Testament is called novum Instrumentum as it is his evidence written not without the man as that Gospell grant but by the finger of Gods Spirit in the hearts of the Elect so that they may read this instrument of Gods writing within their hearts evidencing and manifesting to themselves their justification from God And this is one principall instrument and evidence of God promised under the new Covenant Jer. 31. 31-35 recited as now fulfilled by the Apostle Heb. 8. 8-12 10. 16 17. I will write my Lawes in their hearts c. what Law but the rule doctrine and evidence of life and salvaâion But what benefit by having it written within them more then if it were in writing without them Yes this They shall not need externall teaching to know the Lord for they shall all know me from the least to the greatest What knowledg of God was this whereupon they should not need teachers They shall know him to be their God their Justifyer their Saviour for so much intimate the next words For I will forgive their iniquities and remember their sins no more This was one chief part of the Law or will of God written in their hearts justification or everlasting remission of sins This they should not need to be taught from without the instrument of writing or evidence thereof should be within their own hearts apparent not to others but their own reading And what more principall evidence or instrument of writing within our hearts thus to assure us then our faith engraven by Gods own hand in us I appeal to Mr. Baxter himself whether I wrest this Scripture from its proper sense or if any shall except against me I doubt not but I shall make it good to be the minde of the holy Ghost which I have here given To the same purpose is it that Faith is called the Evidence of things not seen Heb. 11. 1. Whose evidence Gods evidence given us by which he declareth to us and manifesteth to our consciences the invisible things of our justification and salvation and when given then our evidence also by which we not only apprehend but also plead against all the accusations of the Law yea of sin and Satan our actuall justification And that it is called the witnesse of God in us or within us because God by this witnesse as his instrument declares and evidenceth us to our own consciences justifyed 1 Joh. 5. 10. Secondly It is mans instrument by which he applyeth to himself and without which he cannot applie to himself this justification and remission of the new Covenant to know and be sensible of it that he may rest and rejoyce in it being justifyed in himself i. e. in his own knowledge and conscience God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself not imputing to them their trespasses 2 Cor. 5. 19. Reconciliation and Justification as hath been shâwed are one and the same thing That we may receive it therefore from him in Christ he gives us as many as are his Elect this living faith as an instrument by which he may apply it and bring it home into our bosomes Therefore is the operation of the soul by faith set forth in the Scripture by a comparison of a mans working by the severall members of the body as by his instruments Calling Faith sometimes the eâe of man by which he looketh to Christ crucifyed as the Israelites to the brazen Serpent thence to obtain cure to the wounded and poysoned soul Joh. 3. 14 15. Sometimes the fooâ of the soul by which it runs and comes to Christ for life and justification Joh. 5. 40. Sometimes the hand of the soul by which it apprehendeth Christ and the justification that is in and by him To as many as received him to them he gave power to become the sons of God even to as many as beleeve in his Name Joh. 1. 12. Sometimes the mouth of the soul by which it eateth and drinketh in Christ with the life that is in him both to justifie and sanctifie He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my bloud hath eternall life Joh. 6. 54. If ye have tasted that the Lord is gracious 1 Pet. 2. 3. Sometimes the armes of the soul by which it embraceth and holdeth in possession Christ with his life and righteousnesse He that hath the Son hath life he that hath not the Sân hath not life 1 Joh. 5. 12. What doth all this imply lesse then that faith is instrumentall to our justification Yea given to us to be the sole instrument on our part by which to apply to our selves the justification offered by God in Christ Or what else is meant by the generall voice of the Gospell pronouncing us to be justifyed by faith but by faith Gods instrument and evidence to declare and manifest it to our souls and our instrument to apprehend and hold it fast and firm to our selves It remaineth now to examin Mr. Baxters reasons by which he assayeth to prove that it is neither mans nor Gods instrument First that it is not mans instrument he thus argueth B. Not mans instrument for he is not the principall efficient he doth not justifie himself Both this and all that which followeth in this his dispute
a corrivall with it 6. He at last deals no lesse sophistically in his comparisons You may as well call saith he a mans life his instrument of acting or the sharpnesse of a knife the knives instrument as to call our holinesse or habituall faith the instrument of receiving Christ The aptitude of a cause to produce its effect cannot be called the instrument There is no parity in the Comparison Life to acting and faith to receiving of Christ are not Mr. Baxter will not say they are in one and the same kinde and order of causes and effects Besides one of the effects is put with the other subtlely left without an object as if the receiving of Christ were no more then and altogether as naturall to man as receiving indefinitely any naturall object so that albeit this Comparison may stand in some parity with a naturall and civill faith without the object Christ annexed to it yet the divine faith whereof we hear speak is of an another an upper and higher region and agrees not in motion with the naturall life or with the naturall or civill faith The one moves its course and operation in a way that God by nature hath prescribed and the other in the way which God by grace hath prefixed Their orbs are severed and not confounded either with other As for the other Comparison the sharpnesse of the knife Nothing else undoubtedly but the sharpnesse of M. Baxters wit could have devised it Is then faith in man no more then sharpnesse in a knife What good then might a ship-load of whet-stones and grinding-stones do among the Turks to make them Christians The sharpnesse of the knife is not any thing really distinct from the knife it is otherwise with the faith of a man The knife is mans instrument the sharpnesse thereof is but the aptitude of the instrument by which man as the efficient produceth the effect How shall this square in the Comparatum Man must be the principall efficient cause what will he assigne to be the instrument whereof faith is the aptitude to produce the effect But I fear of transgressing by following him that Parvis compânere magna solebat That dares with audacious arrogance to measure the bottomlesse ocean in his fist and to try Celestiall and Spirituall things in the scales of Nature and to compare not with the Apostle spirituall things with spirituall 1 Cor. 2. 13. but with carnall profanely making the Mysteries of Christ to be rather the whetstone of his wit then the object of his reverence and ballast of his conscience I shall forbear here to add my judgment concerning what faculty or faculties of the soul are the subject of faith Whether faith may be more properly said to receive Christ by the faculty or the faculty by faith How far faith in the habit and how far in the act may be said to justifie These and other things may come more properly to be handled afterward then in this place It shall suffice that here notwithstanding Mr. Baxters winnowings yet faith faileth not from being our instrument of applying or receiving Christ Eightly The latter which he maketh his sixth Question Why he maketh faith the Câusa sine qua non he thus endeavours to maintain as it followeth in the nâxt Chapter CHAP. XXVI Arg. Mr. Baxters further dispute upon the same Subject examined and answered B. Pag. 223. TO the 6. and last Qâestion I answer Faith is plainly and undeniably the condition of our justification The whole tenour of the Gospell shewes that And a condition is but a Causa sine qua non or a medium or a necessary antecedent Short and in compasse of words little is it which he here speaketh yet if we look to the matter thereof in it two things are principally to be examined 1. That he makes faith the condition of justification and what he means by that term 2. That he cals it the Causa sine qua non He means questionlesse the same thing by both but the words differ and he useth both as by both together so by either part to get advantage to his cause Therefore I shall examine them severally To the former I have spoke somewhat largely before in the examination of his 13 14 15 17 18 19 20 43 44 45. Theses as he gave me occasion in these severall positions to answer what he there asserted of conditionall justification I have therefore here the lesse to speak referring the reader to what hath been spoken before Yea in this point I should be totally silent because Mr. Baxter in words speaks no more here then what some of our most sound and godly Divines have spoken before him that faith is the condition of justification were it that Mr. Baxter meaneth as they mean For though in the best meaning of the best men the propriety of the terms or phrase may be much questioned and give occasion of much dispute yet traversing controversies about words when there is agreement in the substance to which both parties drive is in my apprehension a businesse so far tending to distractions and breach of union among the Saints that it is the last and least Trade I am confident that ever will befall me to drive But in this point though Mr. Baxter here speaks in words what some of ours have said and do say still and that without any detriment that I can see to the Gospell Yet his meaning and theirs are in no lesse antipathie then a Hawk and a Heron and that as in other lesser so principally in these particulars of moment 1. By faith they mena our application or faith as it is our instrument of applying Christ and the grace of God in Christ to our justification he by faith means not only the ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã credere as a part of our inherent righteousnesse but as a generall and common word that compriseth within it self all good qualifications and good works whatsoever as elsewhere and specially in and under his 70 71. Theses he declareth himselfe so that he makes and under the word Faith understandeth all these as equall conditions with faith of our justification 2. By condition they mean that which being once attained and once fixed upon Christ speaks us absolutely justifyed for ever So that in calling faith the condition of justification they mean we cannot be justifyed without it but having once by faith apprehended Christ we are by it united and joyned to Christ and by force of our union with him are thenceforth absolutely and irrevocably pardoned and accepted as righteous in Gods fight He cals it so a condition as that it continues still a condition justifying us only conditionally and not absolutely so that it leaves our estate still one and the same no more justifyed and pardoned when beleevers then when unbeleevers For by the satisfaction of Christ we are before faith cometh conditionally justifyed if we beleeve and when faith is come we remain still but conditionally
justifyed if we beleeve our safety being as loose and uncertain then as before depending still upon the residence and abode of faith in us as before it did upon the possibility of its future ingeneration into us and acting in us and that we are no longer justifyed then while we beleeve and obey so that by beleeving and unbeleeving obeying and rebelling we may be justifyed and unjustifyed again a thousand times before we die and how often after himself expresses not I need not mention more these two differences are enough to declare that although here he speak in the same tone with some of our Divines yet his judgement no more agrees with theirs then the Pope with Luther and Calvine Elymas with Paul Simon Maguâ with Peter or the Scribes and Pharisees with Christ In stead of speaking what might be further expected I shall onely content my self here to lay open some of the many monstrous absurdities and mischiefs that follow this doctrine 1. It proclaims mutability in God and alteration in his minde and will as swift and sudden as in mutable and sinfull man For if God justifie and unjustifie forgive and unforgive love and hate as oft as belief and unbelief obedience and disobedience do nod and succeed either after other in man through infirmity then is there no more stedfastnesse and consistency with himself in God then in man but rather God is swayed hither and thither in willing and nilling love and hatred by influx from man as the Sea by the influx of the Moon then man by influx from God Mr. Baxter sees this absurdity as well as his fellows the Arminians and goes about here and there by the Arminians Sophisms for lack of better to wipe off the stain telling us that the change is in man the object and not in God God hates Paul unbeleeving and persecuting but loves him beleeving and obeying the change is here in the object not in God No more then the Sun is changed by the variety of the Creatures which it enlightneth and warmeth or the glasse by the variety of faces which it represents or the eye by the variety of colours which it beholdeth pag. 174. But Aethiopem dealbat If God love to salvation and hate to damnation one and the same person and love succeeds into the place of hatred and hatred into the place of love and God that erewhile willed the salvation anon willeth the damnation and after that again the salvation of the same man c. as this kinde of Anti-Gospellers assert this is one and the same mutablenesse in God whether it proceed from a principle of inconstancy within or from the mutation of the object without him It denies not the Chameleons that change their colour from white to black and black to white to be mutable because these changes befall them from outward objects the divers coloured Carpets on which they are laid Or if he shall object as do the Arminians Here is no shew of change in God for God changeth not his purpose of saving because he had never but a conditionall purpose and will to save viz. if man will beleeve and obey and this conditionall intent remains in God still together with a conditionall intent to hate and damn him if he perform not the conditions I should answer him in the words of our Divines in answer to the Arminians and Mr. Baxter knows them to be beaten with shame out of this plea therefore to decline the strokes I finde him not yet adventuring to make use of this obiection 2. It denies in effect and substance the justification and remission of any man in this life for to forgive upon such a condition as no man hath power in himself to perform is but a verball not a reall forgivenesse And Mr. Baxter will not let out one gry or iote from his lips that shall give hope to the sinner yea to the believer of any dram of grace and power that the Lord will minister to the Elect more then to the reprobates for the supportation of their Faith and from themselves they have all propensivenesse to fall and no strength to stand In this respect therefore he makes the state of beleevers worse then the state of unbeleevers For Miserrimum est fuisse beatos To have had Faith yea Christ in hand and Heaven in hope and then to fall from all makes their case more miserable in the losse of it then it would have been if they had never had any thing in hand or in hope It utterly destroyeth all joy in beleeving all peace of Conscience all consolation in the holy Ghost while it sets the beleever in the arms of Christs love and participation of his merits and benefits as Dionysius placed Damocles at his table with all sumptuous provisions before him Musick attendance and whatsoever else was Majestical or delightful to cheer him but with a sharp sword hanging by a single hair over his head threatning him No other after Mr. Baxter is the state of a beleever in all his most spiritual enlargements and comforts in Christ there is but a single hair between him and hell fire Death is in the pot of all his contentments Fear of imminent vengeance gives him not leave to taste one of the sweet morsels upon or crums that fall from Gods table And this is a Gospel from hell contrary to the everlasting Gospel which Christ brought from heaven giving a joy that none shall take from beleevers Joh 16. 22. The foundation thereof the love of God in Christ remaining immutable impregnable I am perswaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities c. shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord Rom 8. 38 39. 4. Whereas there are three acts considerable about our Justification 1. Christs giving 2. Gods accepting the satisfaction given for us and 3. Gods justifying or declaring and evidencing us justified in and to our consciences for this satisfaction so given and accepted I would here demand of which of these Faith is a Condition If he say of Christs giving satisfaction this is a contradiction for Christ gave satisfaction before we beleeved or lived so that Faith which came after could not be the Condition of an Act that went before except he will say that Christ must so oft dye as sinners attain to beleeve If of Gods acceptance then more is ascribed to our faith then to Christs death for our justification and faith shall be more then collateral with the sacrifice of Christ to our salvation the sufficiency of satisfaction remaining only in Christs bloud but the efficacy thereof arising from mans faith yea and so Christ should have paid our debts and spilt his bloud for us at the feet of the Father without knowing whether he would accept it or no and so whether there should be the least fruit of his death for the justification of the beleevers before his death is but conditionall
or conditionall offer thereof to us Nor any thing to the justified and actually declared just in themselves Justification is no longer in a conditionall offer to them but in its absolute being within them Whatsoever therefore he addeth there pag. 43 44. is wide from the question being not limited to the Justification of the New Covenant which is the subject of his Treatise which here he shunneth and talketh extravagantly about sanctification because he cannot confute the absolute justification but that it doth and will stand and standing will not admit a conditional justification to stand with it and by it in its beeing though the offer thereof before it is in beeing be conditionall And this is all which at length he concludeth pag. 45. of the conditionall Covenant of Grace which without all this circuition would have been granted him viz. that it is propounded and offered to mankinde conditionally if they will beleeve and without this faith none hath or shall have the benefit and comfort thereof to themselves and in themselves because all these that do not or shall not being in a capacity to beleeve are reprobates and as many as are elect shall come to Christ and beleeve in him as hath been before shewed What he addeth for the application may have some pertinency to the matter there objected but it hath none to the thing here in question Therefore I passe it by as not concerning us 2. To his Causa sine qua non briefly thus 1 In so tearming Faith he denyes faith to be any cause at all of our Justification for that is but Causa âquivoca or nomine tenus or titulo tenus hath but the name not the nature of a cause hath no causality upon gives no influx into the effect 2 Neither whatsoever it be is Faith the Causa sine qua non of Justification in that sense as Mr. Baxter taketh and defineth it either in his stricter or larger definition except he will say that no Infants are justified who do not cannot accept Christ much lesse so beleeve as in his larger definition he sets forth faith 3 Faith is not the Causa sine qua non of our justification in God no nor yet in Christs Justification as he tearms it for these are antecedaneous to our faith and our faith not an antecedent to it 4 At the utmost it can be but the Causa sine qua non of Gods declaring and evidencing of our selves to our selves justified and this justification Mr. Baxter so disdaineth and snuffs at that he will not own it much lesse mention it Yet can he not with all his Sophistry name any other act of justification in this life whereof faith can be proved to be the Antecedent Medium or Causa sine qua non 5 Why doth he call faith and all the conqualifications wherewith he loadeth the shoulders thereof and all the works which he makes its Concomitants the Causa sine qua non as if all these with their Colaterall in the other scale of his ballance Christs satisfaction did make up the one and sole Causa sine qua non of our justification can none else be named Besides other the weaknesse and infirmity of the Law to justifie as it removes the impediment of justifiablenesse in Gods Court of strict Justice For had there been a Law given which could have given life verily righteousnesse should have been by the Law Gal. 3. 21. and sin which removes the same impediment might more properly and socially then Christs satisfaction have been placed on horseback in the same saddle of Causa sine qua non had not Mr. Baxter thought Christ would blesse but these would have defiled this golden saddle of his own either making or appropriating to this use and so bespattered and undressed the righteousnesse of his Qualifications and good works that they would never more become fit to ride on horsback in procession with the Holy Wafer Thus his condition and Causa sine qua non must be new modelled ere they will be Canonicall But see we here the mans wit which never fails him at a dead lift What he cannot act by power he seeks to compasse by a stratagem Because he cannot cover the nakednesse of his assertion he labors to make bare ours and cast filth in it that having diverted the eyes of his Reader thither he may forget the vanity of his Condition or Causa sine qua non And thus he doth it B. Here by the way take notice that the samemen thus blame the advancing of Faith so high as to be our true Gospel Righteousnesse Posit 17 20. and to be imputed in a proper sense Posit 23. do yet when it comes to tryall ascribe far more the faith then those they blame making it Gods instrument in justifying In examining all these quoted Theses I have shewed both who they are which blame him or at least his doctrine which was born before ever he commenced such a Doctor viz. All the Orthodox Protestant Divines and Christians and withall for what they blame it viz. as it is Papism Socinianism and at the best Arminianism 3. To which I have also made out their just grounds of blaming it as may be there seen yet to cheat his Reader he cals these those very men as if there were some few contemptible Antinomians lately sprung up when himself knows them to be all the Churches of Christ which since the Reformation have been called Protestants But of what blasphemy or evill fact doth he accuse them That they ascribe more to Faith then those they blame making it Gods instrument in justifying Yea but we have seen or thought we had seen at least just grounds for their so doing how doth Mr. Baxter aggravate it to make it odious B. 1. And so to have part of the honour of Gods own Act. Fie upon the Hugonets and Lutherans if this be true who then will not run from them at Mr. Baxters heels to Rome But the Scriptures make Balaams Aâse Gods instrument to rebuke the madnesse of the Prophet Namb. 22. 28 30. 2 Pet. 2. 15 16. The Raven his Instrument to feed Elijah 1 King 17. 6. The brazen Serpent his instrument of healing the Israelites bitten with firie Serpents Joh. 3. 14. Numb 21. 9. The Assyrians his instruments of chastising and reforming his people Isa 10. 5. c. and the very Devil his instrument of trying Job Job 1. 12. and of executing his pleasure upon Ahab 2 King 22. 21 22. Shall we now fall foul with the Scriptures and accuse them that they ascribe part of the honour of Gods own acts to the Asse the Raven the Serpent the Assyrians the Devil by affirming these to be the instruments by which God acted Doth not the seeblenesse of the means and instruments speak out the whole honour of the action to pertain to the Lord Was it to honour his slaves and abase his freemen and subjects the Lords Israel that Solomon made the former
he hath enough manifested himself B. Some think that Faith may be some small low and impulsive cause but I will not give it so much though if it be made a Procatarctick objective cause Iâ will not contend If he mean any other difference between the impulsive and the Procatartick objective cause besides that which is between the Generall and the Speciall it is past my skill to understand him or to comprehend what he denies and what he grants no doubt either he would not be understood or else he attributes to his righteousnesse of faith and good works an excitation but not an impulsion forsooth of the Grace of God actually to justifie those whom he beholdeth Schild Metaph li. 1. câ 44. N. 24 25 40. fairly dressed therewith and so the beauty of the object enamors God to love and justifie And what more doe the Pâpists teach and so our justification as Gods act is but in posse till our righteousnesse as a sufficient cause brings it into esse or act Thus far of Mr. Baxters causes of Justification in which if he hath illustrated or confirmed any truth of God God is much beholden to him and Aristotle for it For distrusting the succour of the Scriptures he hath left them and brought nothing else but Logical and Metaphysical notions and reasons to prove all that which he hath said CHAP. XXVII Arg. Whether the sinner be justifyed only by the act not the habit of faith And whether it be not ordained to this use by reason of the usefull property which God hath infused into it to receive Christ Whether and in what sense a man may be said properly to be justifyed by faith In which also some things are intermixed about Mr. Baxters ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Credere and conditions of Justification B. Thes 57. IT is the act of faith which justifyeth men at age and not the habit yet not as it is a good work or as it hath in it self any excellency above other graces but 1. In the neerest sense directly and properly as it is the fulfilling of the condition of the new Covenant 2. In the remote and more improper sense as it is the receiving of Christ and his satisfactory righteousnesse It is not for nothing that Mr. Baxter puts here a restriction upon justification by the Act of faith limiting it to men of age Are then elect infants that die before they attain age and strength of reason to put forth their faith into act justifyed only by the habit of faith It seemeth then that the hue and crie hath apprehended the ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã credere as to them and laid it fast from justifying them Again if they are justifyed by the habit of faith as a habit of inherent grace though not such as he here denyeth to have an excellency above other graces what difference doth he put between Justification and Sanctification Doth he not speak the same things here with the Papists Yea in a higher dialect then any of them For they grant to Infants justification only by the washing of Christs bloud conferred upon them in Baptism without any qualification of their own But this man if he thus say justifies them by an inherent righteousnesse of their own But if Infants are justifyed without the act of faith and yet not by its habit how are they then Justifyed but by that which he calleth Christs own justification as a publick person at his resurrection which notwithstanding he utterly denyed Thes 42. and its Explication and if they are so justifyed will it not follow then that justification by the act of faith is Gods declaring and mans applying of his justification to his present comfort and full assurance which Mr. Baxter explodeth as an unsufferable conclusion But dying Infants are to have no use of this present comfort and full assurance therefore it sufficeth them to be justifyed in Christ though not in themselves Lastly or do they depart hence unjustifyed because without actuall beleeving and receiving of Christ and so shall be justifyed in the day of judgment because at the resurrection they shall actually beleeve What a crie do the poor souls in the interim then make in that Limbus insantum And why may not then according to Origen all the Devils and reprobates in hell be then justifyed and saved also because then they may actually beleeve and according to Mr. Baxter the condition of justification lasteth untill that day B. Explication That faith doth not properly justifie through any excellency that it hath above other graces or any more usefull property may appear thus To the excellency of faith above other graces I have nothing to say But to the reasons which he brings to deny the more usefull property of it I shall speak briefly B. 1. Then the praise would be due to faith No more then when God gives us meat the praise of our nutriment and life is due to our teeth because they have a more usefull property to grind and chew the meat then our eyes or ears B. 2. Then love would contend for a share if not a priority This is only said and not proved or declared upon what grounds love should contend B. 3. Then faith would justifie though it had not been made the condition of the Covenant 1. We denie faith to be the condition of the Covenant in Mr. Baxters sense If he would have spoken directly to them against whom he argueth he should have said Then faith would have justifyed though it had never been appointed and given of God as an instrument to receive Christ the justifyer And then we should answer 2. That it is so much as if he had said Then our teeth would have nourished and preserved life although God had never appointed and given them to us as instruments to chew the nourishing meat And thus the Caveat that he addeth becomes uselesse viz. B. Let those therefore take heed that make faith to justifie meerly because it apprehendeth Christ which is its naturall essentiall propertie For none affirmes faith to justifie meerly because it apprehendeth Christ without considering also Gods ordering and fitting it to this office together with his promise and the virtue laid up in Christ to justifie all that do by faith so apprehend him B. That it is faith in a proper sense that is said to justifie and not Christs righteousnesse onely which it receiveth may appear thus 1. From a necessity of a twofold righteousnesse which I have before proved in reference to the twofold Covenant 2. From the plain and constant phrase of Scripture which saith he that beleeveth shall be justifyed and that we are justifyed by faith and that faith is imputed for righteousnesse It had been as easie for the holy Ghost to have said that Christ only is imputed or his righteousnesse only or Christ only justifyeth c. if he had so meant He is the most excusable in an errour that is led into it by the constant
expresse phrase of Scripture 3. From the nature of the thing For the effect is ascribed to the severall causes though not alike and in some sort to the conditions especially me thinks they that would have faith to be the instrument of justification should not deny that we are properly justifyed by faith as by an instrument For it is as proper a speech to say our hands or our teeth feed us as to say our meat feedeth us I shall not have need to speak much to this passage because Mr. Baxter hath before said and I have answered to the greatest part of it in examining his 23. Thes with the explication thereof Here as there I shall defend against him that it is not faith as it is righteousnesse but Christs righteousnesse by which we are said to be justifyed The first reason which he brings to evince the contradictory and contrary conclusion hath been there examined and I will not here actum agere To the second 1. He should have quoted that Apocryphal Scripture which saith He that beleeveth shall be justifyed as if he were not already justifyed I finde it not in the Canonicall 2. Those Scriptures which say we are justifyed by faith say not that we are justifyed by it as it is our righteousnesse or any part of our justifying righteousnesse and those that say it is imputed to us as Mr. Baxter will have it for righteousnesse have been sufficiently spoken to under Thesis 23. And by the way Mr. Baxter is not ignorant that the originall text may be more properly rendred unto or to righteousnesse then for righteousnesse and that the old translation and most of our Protestant Divines so render it neither have I met with any one that declares his dislike of that version And from the text so read what Mr. Baxter can suck out to stablish the righteousnesse of faith not as the same but as a collaterall with the righteousnesse of Christs satisfaction to justification I understand not 3. To his Only only and only I answer 1 That it is not the first time that Mr. Baxter hath taken the boldnesse to teach the holy Ghost to speak properly and fully 2 When the holy Ghost saith That the bloud of Christ cleanseth from all sin 1 Joh. 1. 7. that whosoever is washed therein needs no other washing Joh. 13. 10. that he is the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world Joh. 1. 29. that by his one offering he hath for ever perfected them that are sanctifyed by taking away their sins and iniquities Heb. 10. 14 17. That he is made of God righteousnesse to us 1 Cor. 1. 30. that he was made sin for us that we might become the righteousnesse of God in him 2 Cor. 5. 21. That he is all in all Col. 3. 11. Will Mr. Baxter elude all these and a whole century more of the like Scriptures with this evasion yea Christ hath done and is all this in part to us leaving the other part of righteousnesse not perfected by him to be supplyed by faith his collaterall to our justification Or when it is said There is salvation in no other nor any name else given us under heaven by which we may be saved besides Christ Act. 4. 12. and the Apostle professeth it his whole labour to be found in Christ not having his own righteousnesse which is of the Law but the righteousnesse which is through the faith of Christ the righteousnesse which is of God by faith so making Christ put on for righteousnesse the righteousnesse which is through the faith of Christ the righteousnesse which is of God by faith not severall kinds of righteousnesse but one and the same righteousnesse which he opposeth there to his own inherent righteousnesse which he excludeth are not these speeches equipollent to that which Mr. Baxter requireth the Christ only or the righteousnesse of Christ only It is but a flourish wherewith he concludes this argument about the constant expresse phrase of Scripture For let him either produce one Scripture that affirmeth faith by any inherent righteousnesse in it self or of her own conveyed into us to contribute somewhat to our Justification or else confesse his errour to be derived from the scriblings of Bellarmine Socixus Grotius and Arminius where this Doctrine is to be found and not from the Scriptures of Gods inspiration that are wholly against it To his third reason I can say nothing because I understand nothing of his meaning therein or if I doe understand it nothing needs to be said because it hath nothing for himself or against us But to that which he addes of his thinking 1. Let him say whether by them that he saith would have faith to be the instrument c. he doth not mean all the Protestant Churches both Lutherans and Zuinglians or Calvinists as they are by some distinguished whether the best that have opposed them herein have not been the Arminians and from what Rome or Hell these first drank in their opinion he is not ignorant having fished in the same pools after them 2. When he thinks these should not deny that we are properly justifyed by faith as an instrument I answer 1 If they will not deny it will Mr. Baxter with them confesse it 2 The word properly is vox aequivoca a phrase may be said to be proper as it is enough fit and proportioned to declare the meaning of the speaker and in this sense we deny not that faith as an instrument subservient to the principall efficient doth so properly as an instrument can justifie us in our selves or to our own consciences Again it may be said to be proper in opposition to a tropicall way of speaking and in this sense we cannot say that faith doth so properly justifie specially in that extent wherein Mr. Baxter and his Masters will have it to justifie without a trope in the phrase of speaking which I would shew if it were pertinent to the question I shall spare to transcribe at large his next section which he puts under n. 4. of his Explication Because if he meant singly and precisely as he speaks all might be granted in a positive sense without prejudice to our cause or advantage to his viz. that faith doth directly and properly justifie in and to themselves those that were before justifyed in Christ as it is in a good sense the condition of the new Covenant and a means or instrument of Gods stamping by his commandement and promise to the attainment of this justification For this denyeth not that truth which before he kicked at that faith doth so justifie also in regard of that usefull and essentiall property which it hath above all other gifts of grace to be instrumentall to apprehend Christ for righteousnesse Nay even for this cause hath God either ordained and commanded faith to this end because it hath this property or because he hath ordained and given to it this property therefore he not only requireth but
also concurreth with it to blesse it even it alone to this end Here to determine peremptorily whether of these acts of God his qualifying of faith for or his commanding it to this use is more and lesse direct or proper to the end or whether they are coordinates thereunto I fear may proceed more from a headie rashnesse then from the modesty of Christian wisdome especially because I take justifying faith to be more then a naturall or morall virtue which Mr. Baxter possibly will deny viz. an infused habit qualifyed by God himself that infuseth it with this peculiar property to cleave unto Christ and receive him But by the way it shall not be impertinent to shew in some particulars what mentall Reservations Mr. Baxter hath in his words not easily appearing to a cursory reader 1. When he saith B. Faith justifyeth as it is the fulfilling of the condition of the new Covenant His meaning is that it only so far justifyeth as it fulfilleth the condition But throughout our whole life according to his principles we are but fulfilling have not fulfilled the condition of the new Covenant therefore throughout our whole life we are but in justifying not justifyed And then consequently if it be true what most of our Divines conclude that in the next life there shall be no use of faith because vinon and fruition are proper to that state beleevers shall not be justifyed at all because the condition was never fulfilled 2. When he saith B. Because God hath commanded no other means nor promised justification to any other therefore it is that faith is the only condition and so only thus justifyeth The reader that doth but catch here a little and there a little of his doctrine would think him by what he here findeth no lesse Orthodox in the point of Justification then Luther or Paul himself that he explodes all works all inherent righteousnesse from bearing the least part with faith unto justification whereas contrariwise he speaks not here of the faith of Gods stamping but of his own coining of a faith that brings in all good works that is it self all good works to justification attributes no more to faith then he doth to any other part of our inherent righteousnesse nor any thing to faith it self as usefull to justifie but as it is our whole inherent righteousnesse or at least a part of it as partly by that which hath been but principally by that part of his treatise which remains to be examined appeareth The rest of this Section I let passe without examination I come now to the fift and last Section of his Explication pag. 230. B. 5. That faiths receiving Christ and his righteousnesse is the remote and secondary and not the formall reason why it justifyeth appeareth thus We finde verifyed in Mr. Baxter that of the Poet Dolus an virtus quis in hoste requirat having professed open warre against the doctrine of all the Protestant Churches yea of the Gospell of Christ he manageth it more by stratagems then by valour We finde him here perverting in stead of rightly stating the question thereby to get advantage to answer what he will and to what he pleaseth The question controverted between us and the Papists first and in these latter times the Arminians also is not whether Gods instituting of faith in Christ or else the acting of faith so instituted be the one the formall and the other the remote reason why it justifyeth But whether faith so instituted of God to be the mean or instrument of our Justification doth justifie by vertue received from Christ its object or else by its own vertue as it is a good work or as it is an act of righteousnesse performed in obedience to Gods commandement That which they maintain is that faith justifyeth by vertue of its object Christ denying the Papists work and the Arminians act If Mr. Baxter did labour more for truth then for victory we should not finde in him so much fraud and so little of sincerity It is not Christs but Antichrists kingdome that is maintained by the pillarage of shifts and sophisms Let him not astonish the poor Saints of Christ with words that they cannot understand obscuring the truth with needlesse terms of art his poor flock of Kederminster for whom he affirmes himself to have compiled this work are in all probability as well acquainted with the formall and remote reason why faith justifyeth as they are with Hocus Pocus his Liegerdemain In this point let him either confute the assertion of our Divines or maintain the adversaries assertion here he doth neither directly but beats the aire and makes a great noise to little purpose Yet let us see how well he proveth his own assertion B. Suppose Christ had done all that he did for sinners and they had beleeved in him thereupon without any Covenant promising Justification by this Faith would this Faith have justified them By what Law or whence will they plead their Justification at the Bar of God This supposition is not full there must be another supposition antecedaneous to this supposition A true supposition that will shew the invalidity of this feigned one Suppose that upon a foregoing Covenant between the Father and him Christ hath done all this for his elect whom he knoweth by name and so Christ in their names hath given and God hath taken full satisfaction for all their offences and hereupon Christ hath received in their behalf a full acquittance and discharge Who now shall lay any thing to their charge It is God that justifieth Rom. 8. 33. under this supposition they are for ever freed from pleading at Gods Bar They have there an Advocate to plead for them Jesus Christ the righteous and he is the Propitiation for our sins 1 Joh. 2. 1 2. Sits at the right hand of God with the effectuall Oratory of his pretious bloud making intercession for us Rom. 8. 34. so the supposition of Mr. Baxter extends no further then this if without any Covenant promise of Justification by Faith in Christ could they by beleeving in him have had the beeing and comfort of Justification within their own souls Unlesse God had by some other way ratified and sealed this benefit to them I acknowledge they could not yet had their justification been still nothing the lesse firm before God in Christ But now by the promise of the New Covenant through Faith they have the sweetnesse and joy thereof in themselves also B. But suppose Christ having done all that he did for us that he should in framing the New Covenant have put in any other condition and said whosoever loveth God shall by vertue of my satisfaction be justified would not this love have justified No doubt of it I conclude then thus The receiving of Christ is as the silver of this coin the Gospel promise is as the Kings stamp which maketh it curraut for justifying If God had seen it meet to have stamped any thing else it
his sophistry hath bin occupant In these two Positions viz and 57 58. Mr. Baxters aym is at two assertions of the Protestants to smite them through viz. the instrumentality of Faith and the vertue which it deriveth from Christs it object to justifie and to set up his ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Credere or act of beleeving under the name of a condition of the New Covenant without any respect of instrumentality that it hath to apprehend Christ or any vertue that it receives from Christ apprehended to justifie This he doth in the last words of the 57. Thesis telling us that faith can be said only in a remote and improper sense as it receiveth Christ to justifie where by receiving he shaketh and shifts off the instrumentality of faith and by Christ the vertue of faiths object into a remote and darke corner as not working at all or very obscurely in our justification But his act of beleeving he exalteth as the proper and formall reason of faiths justifying This he illustrateth in the Explication pa. 230. Suppose Christ had put some other condition of the new Covenant as Love Patience Temperance Mercy c. that could not be instruments of receiving Christ nor have Christ their object to draw vertue from him should not either of these notwithstanding though neither instruments nor in a capacity to have Christ their object from which to have drawn vertue by their own act have justifyed So faith being the condition of the new Covenant doth by its act justifie So argued he under Thes 57. But doubting of the validity of his reasons there either to weaken ours or to stablish his own assertion he addes this Thesis more fully to confirm what he had there endevoured The ground of this is saith he because and because as is before expressed I answer there is no sufficient ground laid for the confuting of ours or the strengthning of his tenent For be it that Christs righteousnesse be ours by divine donation or imputation how doth he build his opinion upon this ground that the act of faith as being the condition c. doth properly justifie He must shew his meaning in words at length and not in figures before he shall win us to build with him straw and stubble upon the ground that is good and fitted to bear a good structure But very remarkably doth he here dispute in opposing Gods donation or giving or our beleeving or receiving of Christs righteousnesse as if they could not both consist together in justifying us at least properly Then it seems we are properly justifyed by the donation of Christ without his ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã credere or act of faith Yea then are we properly and formally justifyed in Christ before we yet beleeved For he will not denie that Gods donation of Christ at least in his sense is before our receiving him And thus with one breath he will throw down all that before with so much labour he hath built But let us see how from this ground he batters our assertions and what force there is in his battery If we look to the Prothesis of his Thesis alone the argument in substance runs to this Tenour Faith doth not justifie us either as an instrument or by vertue of Christ or Christs righteousnesse its object because it doth not justifie us as an instrument or by vertue of its object Who can shake his buildings that founds them on such firme ground That this is the force of his reasoning is evident to them that observe him that by the word receiving he excludes the instrumentality and by Christ excludes the object of faith from any proper acting to justifie us as I said before But we will annex the Antithesis to his Prothesis and so fill up his Thesis and then see what strength there is in the whole to his advantage or our disadvantage What he must prove in his and refute on our part hath been already declared Only in the forecited Prothesis he begs the conclusion that he should have proved Therefore we must lay his whole argument from the donation or imputation alone yet will we put his Argument fully thus If Christs righteousnesse doth not properly justifie us because we beleeve or receive it but because it is ours in Law by Gods imputation or donation then faith doth not justifie as an instrument or by vertue of Christ its object but as it is an act containing the condition of the Covenant But the former is true therefore the latter also I deny the assumption as to the former member thereof the beleeving and receiving c. And Mr. Baxter brings not so much as a gry to prove it And as to the latter member Gods donation c. I deny the consequent of the Major Though Christs righteousnesse justifie us properly because it is ours in Law by Gods donation or imputation yet it followes not that either faith as an act or condition doth so of it self justifie or that it doth not justifie as an instrument and by vertue of its object or as some say its correlate or as others by the communion that it puts us into with Christ this I prove thus not from terms of art but from the authority and testimonies of the most high God 1. From the relation between the brazen Serpent the Type and Christ Jesus the Antitype Joh. 3. 14. The brazen Serpent was of Gods donation to Israel so also was the Soveraigne power that was infused into it to heal but the eyes of the wounded Israelites must be directed unto and fixed upon the Serpent for cure and then vertue issued from it to heal So was the son of man lifted up with vertue in him to heal Christ with this vertue is of Gods donation yet this donation hinders not but that our faith as an instrument must be directed to and fixed upon him alone for justification and so that justifying vertue or righteousnesse in him comes from him upon us to justification It is no more the act of faith that of it self because a condition if indeed a condition doth it then the act of the eye cured the wounded without vertue drawn by it from its object 2. From the cure of the woman which had the bloudy issue Marke 5. 25. it will not be denyed that the vertue by which she was healed was of divine donation yet it was brought home to her not by the instrumentall service of her hand touching Christs garment for the multitude touched his garments and thronged him yet had no benefit by it verse 31. But her faith apprehending Christ himself so said the Lord Thy faith hath made thee whole verse 34. yet not the act of faith as a condition but faith as an instrument by which the poor woman drew vertue from Christ its object Jesus perceived that vertue had gone out of him verse 34. So it was not the vertue of the ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã or act of beleeving but of Christ beleeved
what Scriptures our Divines bring to prove justification to be only by faith and to deny all cooperation of works therein And herein I shall put limits to my self not letting out all that they produce for so should I offend with immoderate length but some particulars that the weakest reader may see what Mr. Baxter would not give him to see that our Churches are not destitute of strong grounds for the bearing up of their faith and assertions And when this is done I shall descend to examine the force of those Scriptures quoted by Mr. Baxter to see whether they make for him and against us I shall begin from the reasoning of the Apostle Rom. 3. 20. c. having before proved both the Jews by and under the Law and the Gentiles without the Law to be guilty before God he concludes Therefore by the deeds of the Law there shall no flesh be justifyed c. and ver 21. The righteousnesse of God viz. to justification is manifested without the Law being witnessed by the Law and the Prophets to wit a righteousnesse which the Law is ignorant of the righteousnesse or life which is by faith From this righteousnesse the tenour of the Law or legall Covenant turns aside telling us he that doeth them shall live in them Gal. 3. 11 12. ver 22. Even the righteousnesse of God which is by the faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all that beleeve Lo here it is denyed to be by the most righteous works which the most perfect Law of God himself prescribeth and attained by faith only ver 24. Being justifyed freely by his grace through the redemption which is by Jesus Christ what can be said more fully It shall not be impertinent to annote briefly out of Zanchy what he hath upon Hier. zanch De natura Dei Lib. 4. Cap. 2. Th. 2. this verse more largly when the Apostle saith we are justifyed by his grace Per Gratiam intelligit gratuitum Dei favorem omnibus nostris exclusis sive naturalibus sive supernaturalibus dignitatibus saith he i. e. by Grace the Apostle meaneth the free love or favour of God excluding all parts and pieces of our worth both naturall and supernaturall and addeth that the Apostle still opposeth grace to all our works and to all our inward vertues wrought in us by the holy Ghost himself as well as to our legall and morall righteousnesse yea to faith it selfe as it is a work as is manifest to every one that hath with any consideration read this Epistle Therefore saith he he excludeth all works that he may conclude our Justification to be by grace alone Yea more the Apostle saith he not contented to say we are justifyed by grace addeth thereto ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã his grace that is by the grace which is in God not by any gift of grace infused by him into ourselves that it might be wholly of God and not of our selves at all in the least part Yea not contented with all this he addeth freely to notifie that there is not required any work or qualification on our part to put us into the possession thereof for so it should not be wholly by the free and naked favour of God as he tearms it And lastly he addeth by the redemption which is by Jesus Christ by this work of Christ excluding all ours hitherto that profound Zanchius Neither cannot it be freely by the redemption of Christ if our qualifications and conditions be brought to interesse us to it for so should we be in some kinde purchasers and not receive it freely The Apostle proceeds ver 25. Whom God hath set forth as a propitiation through faith in his bloud to declare his righteousnesse for the remission of sins c. The whole thing of Gods ordination to make the redemption propitiation and remission of sinnes which is by Christ actually ours to our comfort is here assigned to be saith in his blood and not any foregoing concomitant or subsequent vertue or duty of ours annexed to it and all to declare his righteousnesse Ver. 26. His righteousnesse he saith again that he may be just and the justifyer of him that beleeveth in Jesus If Mr. Baxters fancy stand of the Legall righteousnesse in Christ and the Evangelicall righteousnesse in us the Apostles assignation of the end of Gods justifying us by Christ should be maimed For he should have said To declare to declare I say his righteousnesse and our righteousnesse that he might be just and a justifyer and we might be just and justifyers of our selves And then we are to expunge the next verse Where is boasting then it is excluded by what law of works nay but by the law of faith For boasting should not be at all excluded if our works should bear a part with faith in justifying so should we have matter of glorying in our selves still How full is the Apostle here in the confirmation of Justification by faith without works had he seen what the Papists and Mr. Baxter over their shoulders would have objected against it he could not have spoken more punctually Yet as I know what the Papists say for themselves so I am not ignorant what Mr. Baxter will except for himself But I reserve the Examination thereof for another place where he goeth about to purge his doctrine from all contrariety that it hath to the doctrine of the Apostle and from any derogation from the Grace of God A second Testimonie or authority from Scripture we may draw from Rom. 4. 1 c. I shall be short in it The Apostle here denies 1 Our father Abraham the father of the faithfull himself to have been justifyed by works for then he should have whereof to glory ver 2 3. But as Abraham was so all the faithfull are justifyed by faith without works or to render the words of the Text By faith and not by works Here Mr. Baxter hath no evasion as in the former Chapter viz. that the works of the Law only are denyed for Abraham was under the promise not under the Law nether was the Law then given and the promise under which he was was without all condition of works so that the Apostle here excludeth works indefinitely I mean not good and evill works for no man ever brought evill works as evill to be thereby justifyed But good works whether Legall or Evangelicall all acts and deeds both of naturall and infused righteousnesse and holinesse 2 In affirming of him that worketh i. e. that seeketh justification by works that the reward is reckoned of debt to him that he requires it as due and shall not receive it if it be not found due in Justice but to him that worketh not but beleeveth on him that justifyeth the ungodly his faith is imputed to righteousnesse i. e. as hath been already evinced Christ by faith apprehended is of the free grace of God made righteousnesse to him When Mr. Baxter therefore claps his bundle of works upon
the shoulders of faith to officiate with it to justification he teacheth us to reject the grace of God and to exact at Gods hands both the righteousnesse of Christ and the end of it our salvation as a debt and due in justice The Apostle puts no medium here either between faith and works or between grace and debt where workes peep up with faith to justifie in any degree faith is destroyed grace rejected works alone stand pleading for justification and salvation at the barre of Gods justice from thence alone God heareth the plea of works in vain is it to plead them at the throne of grace there nothing else but the plea of faith in Christ is heard and excepted ver 4 5. 3 In describing the righteousnesse of justification to be a righteousnesse without works a blessednesse consisting in the covering forgiving and not imputing of sin ver 6 7 8. so that to obtrude works with faith into the office of justifying is to subvert Gods justification and erect our own i. e. our own condemnation 4. Ver. 16. From all his precedent reasoning the Apostle concludeth Therefore it is of faith that it might be by grace and left this should be taken for a justification peculiar to Abraham and not common to all beleevers he addeth that the promise might be sure to all the seed c. which is of the faith of Abraham as before he had said that he might be the father of all them that beleeve that righteousnesse might be imputed to them also even to them which walke in the steps of the faith of our father Abraham ver 11 12. And again afterwards ver 23. It was not written for his sake alone that it was imputed to him but for us also to whom it shall be imputed if we beleeve in him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead ver 24. In all which places though faith and beleeving alone are named yet are they named in opposition to and with an exclusion of works as the attentive reader of that chapter will easily perceive Not to fill up the paper with any other series or body of disputation which the Scriptures plentifully afford for the confirmation of our doctrine I shall only annex some scattered testimonies thereof compleatly proving the same The whole stream of the Gospell runs this way We that are Jewes by nature in covenant with God and not sinners of the Gentiles Knowing that a man is not justifyed by the works of the Law but by the faith of Jesus Christ even we have beleeved in Jesus Christ that we might be justifyed by the faith of Christ and not by the works of the Law c. Gal. 2. 15 16. By the position of faith works are here deposed By grace are ye saved through faith and that not of our selves it is the gift of God Not of works lest any man should boast Ephes 2. 8 9. Not of works but of him that calleth Rom. 9. 11. Not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth but of God that sheweth mercy Rom. 9. 16. Not by works of righteousnesse which we have done but according to his mercy Tit. 3. 5. This is the work of God that which is in stead of all works and effectual to justification without all works to beleeve in him whom he hath sent Joh. 6. 29. They which are of faith are the children of Abraham and blessed with our father Abraham for as many as are of the works of the Law are cursed Gal. 3. 7 9 10. Beleeve in the Lord Jesus and thou shalt be saved Act. 16. 31. Not by the Law of works for it is written The just shall live by faith Gal. 3. 11. If by grace then it is no more of works else grace should be no more grace if of works then it is no more grace else should work be no more work Rom. 11. 6. Hence is the opposition which the holy Ghost every where maketh between Gods righteousnesse and our righteousnesse Rom. 10. 3. The righteousnesse of faith and the righteousnesse of works Rom. 9. 30 31 32. Phil. 3. 9 10. and the consenting harmony of Scriptures that so oppose Law and Gospell faith and works Gods grace and mans righteousnesse Moses and Christ the righteousnesse which is by promise and that which consists in doing Gods imputation and our qualifications so that if the one be admitted the other must be excluded from justification Unto which if I should add all of the the rest Testimonies and examples of Scripture together with the Arguments which our Divines bring thence I should to use Mr. Baxters phrase be necessitated to transcribe almost all the Scripture that relateth to the New Covenant The conclusion therefore of our Divines is not only that works have not but also that they connot have any place in or to our Justification because righteousnesse and life are meerly and wholly by promise even by the free and absolute promise made to Abraham which was without all conditions annexed Gal. 3. 8 16 17. 18. therefore without works freely conferred on the children of the promise That they are by inheritance therefore descend freely upon them that are sons by saith Gal. 3. 18. Heb. 9. 15. Rom. 4. 13 114 16. and not attained by works That in respect of the righteousnesse of works Paul knew nothing by himselfe wherein he was not perfectly sincere and sincerely perfect yet deems not himself to be thereby justifyed for the Lord is his judge and justifyer whose justifications are free 1 Cor. 4. 4. That if justification were in any part by works then had man somewhat at least whereof to glory before God but he hath nothing whereof to glory therefore c. Rom. 4. 2. That it is by imputation wholly therefore cannot be from any inherent good in our selves Rom. 4. 3 4. That if flowes wholly from faiths object or correlate not at all from any vertue of faith as a qualification inherent in us much lesse therefore from any other qualification or work of ours whatsoever To which I might add their many other reasons proving that works cannot justifie That it is by promise as I said which is still opposed to works Gal. 3. 17 18 22. even by that promise that was made to Abraham which was free absolute and without all condition of works that Gospel promise In thee all Nations of the earth shall be blessed A promise admitting only them that are of faith to blessednesse but rejecting them that are of works to the curse Gal. 3. 7 8 9 10. Yea by the same absolute and unconditionall promise or covenant oft renewed Jer. 31. 31 -34. 32. 40. That this promise is made Yea and Amen ratifyed and effectuallized in Christ Jesus 2 Cor. 1 20. Not in works no nor in faith as the Papists work or Arminians act and deed or otherwise then as it is as Luther describes it Allegorically Luth. in Gal. Ca. 2. v. 16. the matter whereof Christ is the form
unlesse it be consented unto in calculum fidei non venire opera sed prorsus Idem ibid. §. 18. separanda esse i. e. that works have nothing to do in the borders of faith to justifie but must be wholly separated from it and proceeds that the Law and faith are here opposed Therefore because works are required to the righteousnesse of the one ergo sequitur ad hujus justitiam non requiri it follows therefore that they are not required to the righteousnesse of the other and further in the same place Herein the Gospell differs from the Law quod operibus non alligat justitiam sed in sola dei misericordia collocat that it binds not righteousnesse to works but placeth it in the sole mercy of God And Fides sine operum adminiculo c. Faith without any proppage of works resteth wholly upon mercy And that wherewith he concludes this Section That the righteousnesse by which we are justifyed is not ushered into our possession by works nec operando nos eam consequi sed vacuos accedere ut eam recipiamus i. e. not that we attain it by working but come with our hands empty of all works to be filled with it With those agreeth Ph. Melanchthon Evangelium offert remissionem per imputationem justitiae vitam aeternam sine conditione legis aut operum nostrorum i. e. the Gospell offers remission by the imputation of righteousnesse and eternall life without condition of the Law or our works Again Vulgo imaginantur homines Evangelium esse promissionem conditionalem at ab hac imaginatione abducendi sunt i. e. Men must be drawn off from that vulgar imagination that the Gospell is a conditionall promise And upon Rom. 4. Credens est salvus sola fide sine operibus Neque nostra obedientia aut causa est aut conditio propter quam accepti sumus coram Deo i. e. He that beleeveth is saved by faith only without works Neither is our obedience either a cause or a condition for which we are accepted before God So Zanchius in Hos 2. 21. Notandum est hanc esse simplicem Evangelicam sine omni conditione promissionem Hic nihil exigit Deus sed simpliciter promittit quod velit ipse c. This is a simple and Evangelicall promise which is without all condition where God requireth nothing but simply promiseth what he pleaseth As for Luther it is superfluous to cite him being every where so full both in the positing and confirming of this doctrine let but his Sermon upon Tit. 3. 5. be read he shall be there found calling it devillish doctrine and the teachers thereof Hypocrites who teach salvation to be far off and not already attained and to be sought for by works concluding Quicunque salutem non ex mera gratia per fidem ante omnia opera c. whosoever receives not salvation out of meer grace by faith before all works he shall never be saved I had a purpose to have annexed the Testimonies of some more of the Chieftains against Antichrist but there is no need Mr. Baxter for his part is not a Zizca warreth not by other mens eyes seeth and knoweth against whom he levelleth is not ignorant that all especially the more antient and unsophisticated worthies of all the Churches speak the same things and in the same tone with these against the Papists Neither was it my purpose to deal at all in this passage with Mr. Baxter but to shew the vanity of some Pharisaicall Cabalisticall Sophisticall but little Scripturall and Theologicall Rabbies who with Anti-evangelicall spirits partly to set up again a Babell or Babylon of works as a mount against Antinomianism as they term the liberty and purity of the Gospell and partly in a prostrate devotion wherewith they sacrifice to every Barbarism and Aphorism of exotick arts to which they must submit though it be to the denying of the whole word of God for fear they should not be reckoned Scholars are ready to gallop after Mr. Baxters Sophisticall Lectures into the very Lateran of Rome not knowing whence they run nor whither whose company they leave and whose they follow such levity and giddinesse hath taken their head-pieces that as having gotten a professed Protestant Divine to lead them into the worst sink of Popery they run with head and shoulders thronging who shall be foremost so no doubt if under the profession or misprision of a Jesuite Paul himself should descend to preach again and maintain the Doctrine of the Gospell in all its verity power and purity and not in a dialecticall phrase they would throw it back in his face as Jesuiticall and devillish For without such lightnesse and emptinesse it were impossible for them to be so suddenly and easily whirled into an applause of an assertion so grosly and palpably Popish and Damning by a peevish veneration of the learning and holinesse of the Penman thereof As if among the Jewish Scribes and Pharisees and Popish Monkes and Jesuits there were not to be found in depth of Learning and strictnesse of Legall righteousnesse many to whom this man may possibly serve and but serve as a shaddow But it sufficeth here to have manifested that the Doctrine of Mr. Baxter is totally the same in this particular with the doctrine of the Jesuits Or if in any respect we shall find it in what remains to be examined not wholly the same I doubt not but in every such difference which we shall meet with to demonstrate that it is far worse then theirs Or if it be not so let him produce any one knowing man within any of the Protestant Churches except he will make the Concision of Socinians and Arminians the true Protestants that hath ever taught or held this doctrine CHAP. III. The first Argument for Justification by Works drawn from Scriptures examined The Scriptures cited prepared to Mr. Baxters hand by the Papists and the Protestants answer to all the Arguments drawn from those Scriptures by the Papists by him concealed and the abhorrency of those Scriptures from the conclusion which they are brought to prove demonstrated HAving in part supplyed what Mr. Baxter would have buryed here in silence some of the Scriptures and Arguments from Scriptures which are brought by the Protestants to remove works from having concurrence with faith in the businesse of justifying let us now examine the Scriptures which he quoteth to prove their cooperation with faith to justifie Here as I said we meet not with words but figures partly therefore because he maintains the same assertion with the Papists partly because the Scriptures which he quoteth are all such as the Papists have urged before him against us so that he hath taken them up at the second hand as they were collected to his hand by the Fryers and Jesuits himself not expressing how he would argue from those Scriptures I conceive it is his desire that we should understand he means so to argue
land of Canaan again The same is evident from the words of Moses in Deuteronomy where Moses having in the name of God pronounced the many blessings and whole confluence of secular happinesse to the obedient and to them that after much transgression and many curses for their transgressions should repent and turn and denounced curses upon curses a whole deluge of judgements and temporary afflictions one on the neck of another against as many as should disâbey the Commandements c. cap. 28. cap. 29. he doth cap. 30 15 19. Call heaven and earth to witnesse that he had done his duty in setting before them life and death good and evill blessing and cursing inplying the life and death here mentioned consisted chiefly in outward prosperity and adversity stroaking and striking That these were the apples and the rods to allure and terrifie them yet in their minority and under a paedagogie untill faith should come and the Sun of tighteousnesse shine in its splendor that they might walk by faith and not by feeling act from love and not from fear from the Spirit of adoption and not of bondage so that this shadie life promised to a legall repentance is nothing to the life of justification but so far beneath it that it is in no capacity to be used as a proofe about it These therefore serve not at all to drive on Mr. Baxters conclusion In the second place Those Scriptures which he quotes that offer life upon condition of Evangelicall repentance doe not make for him any more then the former For Gospell repentance is taken either in a large or strict sense in the more large sense it is the same with conversion or regeneration and oft times equipollent and the same thing with faith though some little consider it to be so And this is as oft as repentance is put for the one and whole thing required on our part to put us into the actuall and sensible possession of the grace and life of the Gospell as Mat. 3. 2. Mark 6. 12. Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand The summe of their preaching was Repent so Luk. 13. 3 5. Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish 24. 47. and many other of the Scriptures which he quoteth In all these places repentance containeth primarily the change of our relation and but secondarily of our qualifications and manners It is a quidam motus in which acti agimus being moved by Gods Spirit we move the terminus a quo in this motion is self our self-righteousnesse and self-confidences from which we turn no lesse then from our polluted self sinfull self and sinfull wayes The terminus ad quem is God the grace of God inviting us The medinm per quod is the Lord Christ through whom we have accesse to the Father for remission first and then for sanctification also And as the scope of the Gospell requires us to understand in such Scriptures repentance in this sense so neither do the two Greek words rendered in Latine Resipiscântia in English Repentance refuse this sense For what is that change of the mind of the judgement wisdome and will when it is taken for a Theologicall vertue but a change of these in reference to happinesse A renouncing of and departing from natures groaping and erring directions by our own works and righteousnesse to seek for blessednesse and a cleaving to the directions of the Gospell pointing out Christ as the alone way to it For instance Paul while yet impenitent and unconverted walked by the light of his naturall conscience as it was informed and awaked by the Law and by this rule walked as a strict Pharisee touching the righteousnesse which is in the Law blamelesse Phil. 3. 5 6. and looking as Mr. Baxter doth upon the doctrine of free grace and righteousnesse freely imputed as upon a licentious doctrine was carried with full sails of zeal totally to destroy it I verily thought with my self saith he that I ought to do many things against the Name of Jesus c. which thing I also did c. Act. 26. 9 10. Now when the Lord Christ met him in the midst of his raging madnesse so working upon his heart that he now beleeved in Christ whom he had erewhile persecuted received him and rested on him for righteousnesse whom he had erewhile blasphemed What will ye call this obedience to the faith this closing of his heart with Christ in stead of further dashing against him was it not his conversion his repentance or is the promise of life I mean the life of justification made to any other repentance besides this In this sense therefore repentance is not a quid distinctum a thing distinct from but one and the same with justifying faith or if it be objected that it is somewhat larger then justifying faith I shall not contend but acknowledge that it comprehends whole faith both qua justificat qua sanctificat to justification and to sanctification Yet this hinders not but that these two phrases repentance to life or remission of sins and faith to life and the remission of sins are in the language of the holy Ghost one and the same Where repentance is taken in a stricter sense and some of the Scripture which he quotes seem to promise remission of sins or life to it we must necessarily understand of every such Scriptures that it speaketh of the repentance which is actuated in our first conversion and calling or after it That which is in our first conversion or calling when it is taken in a strict sense is not as in the former sense put as the whole thing required on our parts but seems in words a coordinate with faith to interest us in the righteousnesse and life which are by Christ Such are these Scriptures Repent and beleeve the Gospell repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ Mark. â 15. Act. 20. 21. and many other But in these repentance and faith together make up no more then in other Scriptures either faith alone or repentance alone in their large sense import and so repentance is taken for self-denyall self-abhorring self-subduing and faith for embracing Christ both these are repentance or faith in their larger sense To no other end doth repentance cast and empty out self but to be filled with Christ nor doth faith receive Christ untill self be let out and evacuated that it may receive him See we it in Paul his casting away his Phi. 3. 8 9. own righteosnesse as dung and losse and putting on of Christ to win and wear him for righteousnesse were two concurrent acts either of one faith or one repentance for we may use after the holy Ghost either term indifferently and repentance here is no distinct thing from faith nor faith from repentance and in naming these two the holy Ghost nameth not two gifts of grace but two acts of the same gift of grace in us so that hitherto the
Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall Rom. 10. 13 14. be saved How then shall they call upon him in whom they have not beleeved His argumentation runs thus Whosoever do rightly call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved but beleevers only call rightly upon the name of the Lord ergo beleevers only shall be saved He argues here from the effect to the cause from acceptable prayer to faith from whence it floweth concluding that salvation is promised to prayer not as it is an act performed in its self but as it is a fruit of faith ascribing all the furtherance unto salvation by prayer to faith that breaths it out and all the efficacy which faith hath to salvation to the Lord i. e. the grace of God or Christ the Mediatour beleeved in So making faith to be that which in the vertue of its object saveth and not prayer either in its act or in respect of the spirituall disposition of the heart to pray And with the Apostles argument from prayer to faith I might also argue to manifest that the Scriptures which Mr. Baxter quoteth to prove that forgiving of others is a collaterall condition with faith to justification or forgivenesse have no force in them to prove such a conclusion viz. Mat. 6. 12 14 15. Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtours for if we forgive men their trespasses your heavenly father will also forgive you but if ye forgive not men their trspasses neither will your heavenly father forgive your trespasses Mat. 18. 35. So likewise shall my heavenly father do to you also if ye from your hearts forgive not every man to his brother their trespasses The like also in Mar. 11. 25 26. When ye stand praying forgive c. as in the former Scriptures Luke 6. 35. Forgive and ye shall be forgiven Isa 5. 15. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick and if he hath committed sins they shall be forgiven him Joh. 14. 13 14. Whatsoever ye shall aske in my Name I will do it c. 1 Joh. 5. 15. Whatsoever we aske we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him The rest have nothing of sound much lesse of substance to the purpose for which they are quoted How much these Scriptures together with those of the former bunch that were intended by Mr. Baxter for the foysting in of Repentance and of the next bundle that he would have to force in all the works of love and obedience into the office of justification may prevail with some simple and ignorant persons I know not For these not being able to compare Scripture with Scripture and spirituall things with spirituall nor to search into the pith and bottom of Scriptures are carried as the Apostle saith with every wind and sound of doctrine whither their seducers will But I do not comprehend what Mr. Baxters designe is who having compiled this work chiefly if not only for the reading of the Learned should fardle up together these Scriptures to deceive such for the very quotations will send them not only to the Scriptures but also to the Commentators upon these severall Scriptures where they must needs find him and the Jesuits so wresting from them the same doctrine and Mr. Baxter so fully answered in their answer to the Jesuites that his Readers will not be able to decide which is the verier Jesuit he or those whom he followeth I had a thought therefore to transmit the Reader to the Commentators But to manifest to the simple how little there is in substance in these quoted Scriptures making for Mr. Baxter I shall interpose these few things 1 That the Scriptures are all of Gods inspiration concenting together in oâe harmony no where dashing either against other no more then God their Author dasheth against himself so that we must necessarily conclude that neither all nor any one of these Scriptures doth in its proper and genuine sense contradict those before alleadged Scriptures of justification by faith and not by works by faith without works by the righteousnesse of faith and not by our own righteousnesse by the law of faith in opposition to the law of works c. as before If then these Scriptures should bring in justification and remission but in part by our own works and righteousnesse Scripture would here be set in commotion against Scripture and God against God 2 Mr. Baxter doth here make this work of forgiving and praying for forgivenesse as also in the next place all love obedience and the works thereof not simply conditions of justification and forgivenesse which in some sense far from Mr. Baxters some of our Theologists admit but collaterally and in the same relation with faith and this is the highest toppe of Papall presumption not the worst of Jesuits speak more derogatorily to the depressing of Gods grace or more proudly to the exalting of mans works worth and righteousnesse 3 From this doctrine of his it would follow that praying and forgiving others must be such a condition of justification that where it is there is justification where it is not there is not justification the positing or not positing of the one including the summe of the other for so it is with faith He that beleeveth shall be saved he that beleeveth not shall be damned Mark 16. 16. so Joh. 3. 36. Will Mr. Baxter say so of forgiving others and praying for forgivenesse are all that do it justifyed dares he to say it No otherwise but with his caeteris paribus and sensu composito if he doth this and all things else which a Christian should do And thus I might also make every civill and indifferent Action the condition of justification A mans sleeping by night and working by day his eating when he is hungry and drinking when he is thirsty his improving of his groundâ before he sowes them and sowing them when improved and reaping them when the crop is come to maturity all these and the like may be as well called conditions of justification for these also caeteris paribus when all things else are done which a Christian should do do stand as full in strength to justification as those works which Mr. Baxter particularizeth yea this caeteris paribus makes sin guilt ungodlinesse perdition c. more properly conditions of justification then any of those which Mr. Baxter nameth for without the actuall being of those none can be justifyed in Christ before God For Christ Came not to call the righteous but sinners to Repentance Mat. 9. 13. He hath shut up all under guilt under sin that the promise of righteousnesse by the faith of Jesus Christ might be upon all that beleeve Rom. 3. 19 22 23 24. He justifyeth the ungodly Rom. 4. 5. And saveth that which was lost Mat. 18. 11. Are these duties to be performed coordinately with faith that we may be justifyed surely rather then those which Mr. Baxter nameth for these still go before
1 If we look strictly to the words Mr. Baxter must hence argue only that our confession is a condition of Gods faithfulnesse as if God either cannot or will not be faithfull except we confesse But let us give Mr. Baxter the largest advantage that he can claim in the meaning of the words that God is positively and not hypothetically or conditionally faithfull and that of his faithfulnesse he will forgive and cleanse if we confesse In this sense then whereas the Apostle speaketh affirmatively not negatively if we confesse he will forgive not if we confesse not he will not forgive I do 2 Demand whether confession be so a condition of forgivenesse that whosoever confesseth shall be forgiven This Mr. Baxter will not affirme without his caeteris paribus whereof the Text speaks not a word expresly or implicitely for him and if he conclude negatively he concludes not from the Text but his own fancie Obj. But if you deny forgivenesse upon confession made you deny what the Text affirmeth and so fight against the word it self denying what it clearly affirmeth Answ True if we deny it to them to whom the Text grants and promiseth it But the Apostle speaks here not to the unjustifyed and unforgiven but to the Sants forgiven and justifyed already and the Emphasis of the proposition or promise is in the word we if we that are in Christ confesse God will hold faithfull in keeping Covenant with us and forgive So that this is a consolation to the Saints against all their dayly infirmities They have a priviledge above all the world besides If they sin they have an advocate with the Father c. through whom when they confesse and bewail their sins the grace of God will by his Spirit testifie and seal to their consciences the forgivenesse of them 3 To descend without the Text to Mr. Baxters conditio sine qua non there must be more then a grain of salt to make his assertion savory that without confession there is no forgivenesse For if by it he mean that of the Apostle Confession with the mouth he shall exclude many thousands from justification whom the Scripture excludeth not 4 I grant to Mr. Baxter that some of our Divines have affirmed though I fear somewhat rawly and inconsiderately that confession is a condition sine qua non of forgivenesse yet far from Mr. Baxters sense viz. with these three limitations whereof Mr. Baxter will not endure the test 1 Of the forgivenesse which is by the new Covenant or as it is declared and sealed up to our consciences Not of the forgivenesse which was laid up in the hands as laid up in the hands of Christ and ours in him before we beleeved or confessed 2 Such a condition as is not in the same relation with faith as Mr. Baxter makes it the very naming whereof they detest as absolutely contradicting the nature and authority of the Gospell 3 Such a condition as explodes the caeteris paribus sensu composito of Mr. Baxter so that though they speak somewhat of Mr. Baxters words yet they are at a defiance against his sense and meaning How and in what sense they will have it a condition is no place here to treat It hath been a digression to say any thing of it because it is utterly besides the Text to which alone here I was to speak B. Act. 8. 22. Repent of this thy wickednesse and pray God if perhaps the thought of thy heart may be forgiven thee This Scripture I passed by in the former heap of his quotations as possibly a mistake in the quotation but finding it here again and afterward in a third place I see the man means as he quoteth and cannot enough marvell what he can fish from this Scripture to prove any thing of mans works a condition of justification If the word If here make or argue a condition it must be on Gods not on mans part that man must repent and pray upon condition that God will forgive else not if forgivenesse be not the causa sine qua non of repentance and prayer But this is nonsense to have God upon terms if he will have any duty from us He must therefore mean on the other side God will forgive upon condition of prayer and repentance But how he will perswade this Scripture to say it is past my capacity to comprehend Here is no promise himself grants there is but an half-promise of forgiving on Gods part Append. pag. 79. and nothing mentioned as a condition on mans part But contrariwise duties of naturall righteousnesse commanded or counselled to a naturall man upon such cold encouragement as the Scripture affords to the carnall devotions of carnall men carnally performed If perhaps the thought of thy heart may be forgiven If Mr. Baxters Assertions be but so sound as his Arguments neither will serve for good Bell-mettall B. Act. 3. 19 Repent and be converted that your sinns may be blotted out c. How far repentance is a condition hath been discoursed of and discussed already B. Act. 22. 16. Arise and be baptized and wash away thy sins calling on the name of the Lord. Is then Baptism a condition so necessary that without it there is no washing away of sin And must the Popish Tenent be found writren in Mr. Baxters Calender with red letters Sacramenta opere operato conferunt gratiam or doth Baptism prove ineffectuall to all that do not cannot call upon the name of the Lord Then whether Mr. Baxter be more against himself or against the Protestant Churches who can decide More modestly speaks even Bellarmine which makes the desire of receiving the Sacraments a condition of justification expelling from forgivenesse them that desire them not this man rigorously and cruelly shakes into condemnation those that do not because they have not opportunity to receive them though their desire be unfeigned or if he doth not so this Scripture proves not Baptism to be the condition sine qua non As for calling upon the name of the Lord I have before spoken to B. 1 Pet. 4. 18. If the righteous be scarce saved where shall the wicked and ungodly appear I should be in a Labyrinth of doubts how he would argue hence for himself were it not that elsewhere he explaineth himself in his book thus If the righteous be scarce saved by all their strivings how shall they be saved that strive not at all We deny not the duty of striving in holy things yea of striving for salvation though in Mr. Baxters sense we deny it Yet the meaning of this Text as appears by its dependence upon the verse precedent is If the corruptions and unbelief of heart be so great in the very Saints and beleevers that they must passe through the purifying fire of Gods judgments more and more to perfect them before they be made vessels of honour in the Kingdome of glory or that they need the scourge of Gods correction to whip them back
by the father of it with the name of justifying faith This definition he giveth Thes 70. pa. 279. I put this in the third place not because Mr. Baxter doth so for he hath many things between the former and this but because of its cognation if not identity with the former No doubt he saw the former argument more to shame then help his cause therefore in likelihood he brings it here again in another mode and forme if so paradventure it may relieve him Thus then runs his definition B. Faith in the largâst sense as it comprehendeth all the condition of the new Covenant may be thus defined It is when a sinner by the word and spirit of Christ being throughly convinced of the righteousnesse of the Law the truth of its threatning the evill of his own sin and the greatnesse of his misery hereupon and withall of the nature and offices sufficiency and excellency of Jesus Christ the satisfaction he hath made his willingnesse to save and his free offer to all that will accept him for their Lord and Saviour doth hereupon beleeve the truth of his Gospell and accept of Christ as his onely Lord and Saviour to bring them to God their chief good and to present them pardoned and just before him and to bestow upon them a more glorious inheritance and doe accordingly rest on him as their Saviour and sincerely though imperfectly obey him as their Lord forgiving others loving his people bearing what sufferings are imposed diligently using his means and ordinances and confessing and bewailing their sins against him and praying for pardon and all this sincerely and to the end Sponte Cretizantem quis neget esse Cretem Never more dubiousnesse in the most dubious Oracles of Apollo Delphicus then in this definition if indeed it be a definition because Mr. Baxter so calleth it He so speaks all that by all he might astonish some and deceive others yet if he be questioned his words bind him to nothing but that he may goe off and on at his pleasure The subtilissimus Doctor could not more warily have provided himself with evasions so sure that if all the world together should indeavour it none can catch him 1 If we demand of him whether he speak of faith quae Justificat qua Justificat which Justifyeth and as it Justifyeth he leaves us here at a losse and will noâ tell us 2 In saying Faith as it comprehendeth all the condition c. and by all the condition understanding all the duties which the Law requireth if he be demaunded whether there be a faith which comprehendeth all these or if so whether as parts of it self or things reducible to it or if the latter why are all these or how more comprehended in faith then faith and all other of the rest in his sensu composito comprehended in any one of the rest or if in the former sense whether it be a faith of Gods making or of Mr. Baxters making made in the defining and defined in the making To no one of these our doubts that he leaves upon us by his ambiguity of speaking hath he one word to resolve us so that where to finde an answer to him he leaves us uncertain 3 If we should aske him where he saith in the beginning of of the definition It is when a sinner c. whether he means that the quando is the genus of faith or whether it be a regular definition of an act or habit to posit when it is and not what it is and if so why doth he not define it by a certain rather then by an indefinite time by Anno Mundi or Anno Domini or Imperii or Regni c. that from the Chronicle we may seek and finde it Or if by his quando we can find out the time how shall we find and know the thing Be it that we can hit the time when all that followeth is done and so upon Mr. Baxters authority conclude that then faith is yet do we not remain so uncertain as at first what it is that we may make use of it to justification he speaks nothing to certifie us that from what he saith we might take the occasion to consent with him or dissent from him 4 If we would know from him of all those things at whose being positure and acting he tels us faith is whether they include faith constitutively or else but declaratively whether faith consists of these as the whole of its parts or the genus of its species or the compound of its simples or else whether all these do but declare and evidence the truth of faith in a man If declaratively alone how then do those things which only declare faith any more then declare and evidence Justification by faith and how then holds his conclusion hence that we are justifyed before God by these because so justifyed by faith Or if constitutively as many severall parts and ingredients they make up as it were the body of faith how then doth the holy Ghost oppose faith and works even to the excluding either of other about the point of justifying as in other Scriptures so in that before mentioned Text Eph. 2. 8 9 10. Is there a conflict of flesh and spirit Jacob and Esau Christ and Eaxter in one and the same body and bowels of faith either to destroy the other as to Justification or if faith be made up of works and the holy Ghost doth so frequently in Scripture reject yea accurse works from the justification of the new Covenant how is not faith it self which is nothing else but a body and bundle of works accursed from justification also In none of these ambiguities that he hath left in his Thesis doth he speak one word to saâisfie us Lastly where he saith that faith is when all these duties are done sincerely to the end if we demand him whether he mean thaâ when there is an end of doing them or of the man that doth them that then faith hath its being and not till then and so all other duties act in justifying while we live and faith after all when we are dead or whether he means that as long as these duties are done faith is but when they arâ not done or when they cease to act faith is not but loseth its being Fuit Ilium ingens gloria Teuerorum I had once a faith and a ravishing joy in beleeving either while I was under sufferings for Christs sake but now my sufferings are ended and I am no more persecuted my faith is expired or while I waited on all the ordinances of Christ but now my sick bed or prison or banishment intercepts me from many of Christs ordinances My faith is lost which of these wayes or in what third sense he will be understood let him that can conjecture but in respect of any thing that we have under his hand in the Thesis he is yet free to choose his meaning so that in all that he
had said it is such a justification as justification dependeth on or such a salvation as salvation dependeth on The Apostle there speaks of a dead and barren Faith of a profession not a being of Faith and by an interrogation bearing the force of a strong Negation by saying Can Faith or the saying that he hath Faith save him he means and saith it cannot save him and that is the same with him as if he had said it cannot justifie him Here wee have indeed an idle dreame of Faith that cannot save But a Iustification that cannot justifie or cannot save or can justifie and not save is as far from James as neare to Mr. Baxter B. 2. It is such as followeth only a saving faith But the world may as well justifie us when we have no Faith at all That the justification of the New Covenant in which God evidenceth by faith to us that we are justified in Christ or the justification which consisteth in the evidencing by works to men the truth both of our Faith and Gospel Justification so far that in charity they are to regard us as truly beleeving and truly justified do both follow either saving faith or that which in charity to them that profess it men are to account a saving faith none denieth But it will not hence follow that works justifie us at Gods Judgement seat because they follow faith that declareth and evidenceth us to our selves to be so justified He comes with a new supply pa. 296. B. Once more 1. Was Abrahaem justified before men for a secret Action 2. Or such an Action as the killing of his only Son would have been 1. Had the Action been kept secret from men it could not have justified him before God or men Not before God for no actions as actions are the ground of his justifying us as hath bin already abundantly proved Nor before men for this action could not have declared the truth of his faith to them that never heard of the man or his Action But God having ordeyned him to bee a Father of the Faithfull and pattern of all beleevers to the worlds end and to confer Blessedness with Abraham upon all that walk in the steps of the Faith of our Father Abraham Ro. 4. 9. 12. hath recorded this Action of his to justifie and magnifie the truth of his Faith to all that in all ages shall beleeve and to incite them by his patterne by the like eminent obedience to justifie their Faith also to others 2. We are not to enquire what the evil world will judge of such an Action but whether Abraham or rather the spirit of God working in and by Abraham did not give in this Action a sufficient demonstration to convince the evill world much more the saints chosen out of the world of the truth of his Faith Which conviction if the evill world will carnally neglect or cursedly oppose it shall leave them the more inexcusable in the day of Judgement B. Was not he the Justifier beer which was the imputer of Righteousness but God was the imputer of Righteousness ver 23. Therefore God was the Justifier So I leave that Interpretation to sleep This is one of his extravagancies He hath all this while disputed of Justification by works what he cannot prove of works now he proves of Faith James saith Abraham beleeved God and it was imputed to him for righteousness Was it imputed to him of God for a partiall or for a perfect righteousness If but unto righteousness in part let him prove it or stand guilty before God for perverting his word If in the whole then is there no place left for works to challenge a part Or let him produce from James the like sentence of works imputed to Abraham to Righteousness else he puts the handle of his Argument into our hands to retort it upon him Abrahams Faith was imputed to him by the testimony of Iames to righteousness Ergo by the testimony of Iames works were not so imputed to him So his Epiphonem I leave that interpretation to sleep is the only sound thing that he hath spoken to this question For he hath said nothing that hath any power to awaken much less to rowze it So that it may sleep and that securely and in safety because they are but false Alarms that he soundeth against it The second interpretation as Mr. Br. terms it or as it is indeed the second homonymy or different sense of words wherin our Divines affirm Iames and Paul to speak in sound one but in meaning disagreeing eyther from other is in the word Faith as hath been sayd Paul when he attributes justification to Faith without works means a living faith fruitfull in good works Iames where he denies Faith without works to justifie means a dead faith a meer profession of faith that hath neither life nor being much less fruitfulness in good works That Iames takes the word Faith in this sense appears by these Reasons from the Text it selfe 1. From the scope of his dispute which we shall find to be as I sayd to beat down the presumption of carnall professors who reposed the hope of salvation wholly upon a bare profession of faith though the faith wherof they boasted had no vertue to sanctification obedience and to prove that alone to be a justifying Faith which is alive to good works This even Cajetan himself one of the pillars Cajetan in Jacob. of the Romish Church giveth as the scope of the Text as I have shewed he further expresseth himself thus Adverte hic prudens Lector quod Iacobus non sentit Fidem sine operibus mortuum esse c. Quoniam constat nos per fidem justificari etiam sine operibus sed sentit fidem sine operibus i. e. renuentem operâri vel non paratam operari esse mortuum esse vanam non justificare That is Let the prudent Reader heer note that Iames means not that faith is dead without works to accompany and help it in justifying us for it is evident that faith justifieth even without works but his meaning is that faith without works that is that refuseth or is not in a readiness to good works is dead vain and justifieth not Thus he makes the scope of James heer to prove that an idle and fruitless faith is not a saving or justifying faith So that we find it easier in this argument to find the truth from the very Papists than from Mr. Br. 2. From the 14. ver where James putting the question of faith without works saith not indefinitely can faith but annexeth the article to it ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã can this faith save Is there power in such a faith to save which hath no power to sanctifie In like maner as heere ver 20. What in our Translation is rendred faith absolutely is there also in the Originall put with the restriction of the same article that faith which is without works is dead 3.
Even Mr. Pemble himselfe whose words hee can almost if not altogether rehearse without book gives it as the common interpretation of Protestant Writers so that he cannot be ignorant of it Yet he saith nothing to it and saith all to what none denieth Is this sincerity in handling the chiefe point of mans salvation Such as hee begged from God upon his knees or the use of that which he injoyns upon us tenderness in the interpretation of Scriptures But we must leave him in his own way because hee is resolute therein Sith hee will not answer us let us answer him in these things which in stead of an answer to us he would fish from the Text for himself Br. pag. 299. 1. When it is sayd we are justified by works the word by implieth more than an idle concomitancy if they only stood by while Faith doth all it could not be sayd wee are justified by works We grant it doth much yea almost all in the justification wherof James there speaks viz. before men And this is that which he speaketh ver 21. 22. 23. of Abrahams justification by works fulfilling that Scripture which sayth Abraham beleeved God and it was imputed to him for righteousness How did his justification by works fulfill the Scripture which affirmed him to be justified by faith but as this great work and fruit of his faith declared and manifested to men the truth of that Scripture and the truth of his faith by which he was so many yeers before justified B. p. 300. 2. When the Apostle saith by workes and not by faith onely hee plainly makes them concomitant in the procurement or in that kinde of causality which they have especially seeing he saith not as he is commonly interpreted Not by Faith which is alone but By Faith onely ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã All is granted as before of the justification before men The profession of Faith or to say we have Faith is not sufficient without declaring it by works so to justifie us Therefore saith the Apostle Shew me if thou canst thy Faith without thy works and I will shew thee my Faith by my works vers 18. B. 3. Therefore he saith that Faith is dead being alone because it is dead to the use and purpose of justifying for in it selfe it hath a life according to its quality still This appears from his comparison in the former verse 16 that this is the death he speaks of And so works make Faith alive as to the attainment of its end of Justification We grant that the hypocriticall profession of Faith which James reproveth is as all other sinne alive to condemne the unbelievers and unjustified but dead to the use of justifying us in our consciences before God or outwardly before men But that the addition of workes to such a dead Faith can make it alive to justifie a man before God we deny neither doth James affirm though there may be some force that way to his justification before men who are subject to failings in their judgement In the fourth place he findes something to say for and something against the Analysis of Piscator and Mr. Pemble When he would depresse it at the utmost he can onely say that they seeme to faile in the Explication of the 22. verse about the ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã Faiths working with Abrahams workes and perfecting by workes In this I leave the Reader to peruse Mr. Baxter and them whom hee opposeth from thence to judge which party layes the surer ground of their interpretation As to the question in hand the working of both together to justifie and declare his faith perfect or sincere to men doth nothing strengthen his assertion or weaken ours The rest that hee hath in this Section are meere words without proofs as also his Answer given to some Objections made on our part and the same so curt that the best examination of them is to leave them unexamined untill he bring somthing to prove them Yet what of all that hee saith heere hath or seemes to have force to some other end I may possibly in its proper place call it into Examination CHAP. VII Argument Mr. Baxters sixth Argument to prove justification by works drawne from the Identity of the Conditions of justification and salvation examined To which are added the Rules which Protestant Writers give for the Right understanding of such Scriptures as promise eternall life to men of such works and qualifications an enquiry into the force of those Scriptures out of which Mr Baxter seeks to evince that eternall life runs upon condition of works A Sixth Argument he draweth from the Identity of Justification and Salvation in relation to the Condition of their procurement and attainment He layes it thus p. 310 B. Thes 78. Our full Justification and our everlasting Salvation have the same conditions on our part But sincere obedience is without all Doubt a condition of our sâlvation Therefore also of our Justification We except here against the Terms or Phrases used in the proposition and that 1. against that which by way of distinction hee names our FULL Justification implying thereby that there is an empty or at least partiall maimed and not full Iustification before God as by what he hath oft said before by his own expressing himselfe and his meaning in the Explication of his Thesis he makes evident The Protestants utterly deny this 1. and 2. partiall and full unperfect and perfect Iustification acknowledging one onely Iustification of the New Covenant which as an act of God is simul semel perfect admits of no degrees or increases though as to a mans owne apprehension and comfort it hath its increases and decreases And whatever Mr. Baxter hath hitherto brought to proove on his part wee have found no lesse vaine than is that which hee seekes to prove The Scripâure is altogether ignorant of such a two fold Iustification so that we leave it as Mr. Baxters not Gods Iustification 2. Against that which by the like way of distinction hee calls our everlasting salvation implying thereby a temporary salvation which is by Christ in respect whereof the saved may be unsaved againe and so the salvation which they have by Christ become transitory not everlasting Both these wee deny and detest as Popish Socinian and Arminian doctrines what audaciousnesse is it in Mr. Baxter to name them and not to prove them to beguile his credulous Reader not acquainted at all with Controversies with an opinion that these things are knowne and granted by Protestants who detest the hearing of them and with unresistable arguments of Scripture oppugne the Authours of them Wee shake off as prodigies in the Gospel Doctrine of Iustification and Salvation the Attributes which hee giveth in that sence in which hee gives them It is a bad Cause that seekes the support of Sophistry and fallaciousness to support it Truth loves to bee attended with simplicity and plainnesse Let Mr. Baxter say why he puts
life and salvation not to the end that we may be justified by them but in thankfullnesse for our justification by Christ without workes to bee an Antinomian and damning doctrine if reduced to practice he pârremptorily pronounceth not onely all Protestant Churches and saints but also Paul himselfe an Antinomian and damned For 1. that Paul and all the Apostles of Christ doe teach and urge upon all the Saints of Christ all diligence in good workes and duties and fruitfulnesse in obedience in thankfulnesse for their Iustification Mr. Baxter will not cannot deny for if he should he cannot be ignorant that he shall be forthwith overwhelmed with testimonies of Scriptures against him that himself must acknowledge unwrested Yea he must quench not only the light of the Gospell but also of reason and nature it selfe which possibly are more authentique with him than Gospell to deny that we are to be really as well as verbally thankfull to God for his least much more for his greatest benefits such as are our Iustification and salvation But that the Apostle also teacheth that we are not to performe good works and duties that we may be justified and saved by them is evident To him that worketh saith he i. e. seeketh it by works the reward is reckoned not of grace but of debt shall be conferred on him if due in strict Iustice he must expect nothing from grace But to him that worketh not seeks not the attainment therof by works his Faith is imputed to him for righteousnesse Ro. 4. 4. 5. to which he addeth the testimony of David pronouncing the man blessed to whom God imputeth righteousnesse without workes ver 6 7 8 By Grace are ye saved through Faith not of workes least any man should boast Eph. 2. 8 9. we knowing that a man is justified by the workes of the Law have beleeved in Christ Iesus that we might be justified by the Faith of Christ for by the works of the Law none can be justified Gal. 3 16. Not by workes of righteousnesse which we have done but of his mercy he hath saved us Tit. 3. 5. That no man is justified by the Law it is evident for the just shall live by Faith The strength of the reasoning is in the opposition of the Righteousnesse by which the Gospell to that by which the Law justifieth By Faith therefore not by our sinceerest and exactest study of the righteousnesse which the Law prescribeth Gal. 2. 11. with many other testimonies before frequently alledged Lo heere the Apostle teaching the same doctrine which Mr. Baxter damneth a working not for Iustficacation by his workes but from justification and in thankfulnesse for it Yea hee reduceth it to practise also Wee knowing that there is no iustification by workes have beleeved in Christ Jesus that we may be justified Gal. 2. 16. I count all things doung that I may winn Christ and bee found in him not having my owne Righteousnesse which is of the Law but that which is through Phil. 3. 8 9 the Faith of Christ the Righteousnesse of God by Faith Behold wee heere in these Scriptures the Apostle teaching and reducing to practise every particle of the doctrine which Mr. Baxter heere dâmneth What followeth According to Mr. Baxter Paul is an Antinomian and damned Let me also be so damned with Paul the Antinomian rather then justified in the way of Mr. Baxters justification Mr. Baxter cannot evade here by any sophisticall interpretation of Pauls sense and meaning in these scriptures For they which have delivered this doctrine of Paul in Pauls words or in words equivalent professe themselves to hold it also in Pauls sence and meaning So that Mr. Baxter in interpreting Pauls interprets their meaning also so that it is evident that his wrath here is against the very doctrine of Paul though his pretence bee to blow up them onely which speake after him But Mr. Baxter hath a greater authority than Paul can boast of for himselfe to pronounce them all Antinomians and damned with Paul that followe Pauls doctrine viz. the determination of the Holy councell of Trent which hath thus concluded Si quis dixerit c. If any shall say that a man is justified by Faith alone without workes let him be accursed Who dares now to equillize Pauls Tent to the Popes Throne and so many Cardinals and Bishops palaces As to the matter it selfe it is all sophisticall and fallatious that Mr. Baxter here delivereth Let him bring that Antinomian to light that hath ever taught that we must not labour and strive for justification and salvation against whom his Argument may holde good that he must needs bee damned because he that seeketh not and striveth not to enter shall never enter Some indeede by expressing themselves too briefly have given occasion to Mr. Baxter and such as he is to catch a phrase or sentence from them that may smel of some absurdity as considered in it selfe and by its selfe such as is that which he heer mentioneth we must work from life and not for life But if the scope of the Authors in such phrases be gathered from that which went before and that which followeth it will appear clearly they meant we are not to work and perform duties to this end that wee may bee justified and saved by such works as works and duties but to perform them in love and thankfulness to him that justifieth us freely of meer grace without works through the Redemption which is by Christ Jesus And this is the Question betweene Mr. Baxter and the Papists on the one part and the Antinomians i e. the Protestants on the other part whether wee must perform good works and duties to bee justified and saved by them and for them so performed yea by them or for them as they are our inherent righteousness our perfect possible and meritorious Righteousness All which he affirms and the Protestants with one consenting voice deny as hath been before and may after before we part from Mr. Br. be more fully manifested What he concludes with as a notable absurdity and inconvenience that will befall his doctrine of works if we will not say what he sayth viz. If good works bee no part of the Condition of our full justification and salvation who will use them to that end For how it can procure justification as a means and not be the condition therof I cannot conceive Besides his fallacy before noted in arguing from justification and salvation simply and indefinitely taken to a full justification and salvation of his own devising and so controvertibly again from this latter to that former it concerns him to look to the inconvenience and danger which useth and practiseth not to us which use not good works to that end And now is his time to consider that his full justification when hee thinks to possesse it do not evaporate into no justification no salvation Now to make way for the examination of what hee hath more largely to
this purpose in his Answer to the tenth eleventh Questions in his Appendix and to shew how hee there fights with his own phantasm feigns an Adversary and then quells him falls out with his own shadow never comming neer that which hee hath made to be the Question between him and the Protestant Churches but when the Adversary is Eastward hee rides out in indignation Westward beating every bush and wounding every bough that he meets with proclayming it an Adversary and so returns at last with as much gallantry as ever did William the Conquerour it shall be expedient for the disabusing of such as are apt in this kind to bee abused to premise something for the right stating of the Question heer controverted First then the doings duties and works about which the Question is conversant are of two kinds Legall or Evangelicall such as have their foundation in that law which is of Natural and Moral or such as are founded on precepts and doctrines of Gospell Positive right By the former I mean such works and duties as the naturall conscience specially if holpen by the written Law can apprehend to be and urge upon man as duty though there had never been a Christ or Gospell to adde further light By the later I meane such duties as are only in generall comprehended in the Law whatsoever the Lord shall at any time declare to bee his will and impose upon thee as thy duty thou shalt observe and do but cannot possibly be known in speciall to bee duties without a new revelation from heaven such as the Gospell is The former duties are naturall founded in Nature it selfe the later supernaturall because without a supernaturall manifestation they cannot be known and without a supernaturall power infused they cannot bee effectually performed All this Mr. Br. himselfe granteth in this his Treatise saving the very last clause which also because I finde him not any where flatly denying I shall forbear to prove taking it as granted with the rest 2. That this naturall righteousness and obedience was the Condition of the Old Covenant as to life and so remayneth still to them that remayn under the Old Coveant but so as that no man living can be saved by it since Adams fall but that whosoever is saved the same is saved after the tenour of the New Covenant i. e. the Covenant of Grace or the Gospel This also Mr. Baxter hath frequently taught and granted 3. That the duties of the New Covenant are of two sorts eyther more or lesse principall the more principall is fayth or receiving and embracing the Lord Christ together with the justification and salvation that are by him The lesse principall duties which are also pure Gospel duties are such as are subservient to faith or to the receiving of Christ alone to justification quickening illumination sanctification c. or to the reteyning of him and fuller closing with him to all these all other Evangelical ends for which he is given to us by the Father These 3. Positions are so frequently granted by Mr. Baxter in this his Book that I forbear to quote the places 4. That justification and salvation as the Scripture terms them a reward if indeed it doth ever so term justification as properly and strictly taken may bee considered first as benefits already conferred and in our possession in part or in the whole or else as rewards heerafter to be conferred the ground and foundation wherof was layd in our first conversion and union to Christ by faith together with the earnest and pledge of the spirit given to us by God to assure us of our full possession of all the fruits therof in the future And 2. if future the Gospel proposeth these as rewards of his free grace and benignity or else as rewards of dâbt due to our service and for the service done to him Neither in this can Mr. Baxter oppose or dissent 5. Then to come home and close to the Question it remains to be expressed how far all these duties are to be done for life I mean how far all or any kind of these are to bee performed for the attayning of justification and salvation as a reward and how far onely in love and thankfulness for the reward alrâady made ours in possession or in hope 1. We grant that theâ which are wholly under the Old Covenant having never the Gospel revealed unto them are bound to seek justification and salvation by the works of the Law or naturall righteousness still but they shall never attaine what they so seek because they are impotent to fulfill the condition Yet their unableness is no prejudice to Gods authority and obligation upon them It is otherwisâ with them that live under the Gospel and have the Covenant of Grace in Christ revealed to them but have not yet so âffectually received Christ by fâith as to beâ justified and declared righteous within their own souls These are indeed to seek for justification and sâlvation yet not by the workes of the Law or legall naturall and meerly morall righteousnesse for this were to reject the new Covenant or Gospel with the justification which is by Christ and to hold themselves fast under the old Covenant in an incapacity to be justified and saved The best works of naturall righteousness which they can performe being but dead works of dead men like the stinch of Carrion offensive to the pure nosthrills of God who will therefore condemn not justifie for them 2. They that are in Christ and have obtayned justification and inchoat salvation by him i. e. have their conscience absolved and saved from sin and obligation to vengeance by faith in his bloud are to perform those works of naturall righteousnes not for life but from life not to procure thereby the life of justification for they have it already in Christ and to seek it more compleatly to be perfected by such works is as hath been before shewed to be so foolish as having begun in the spirit to seeke to bee perfected by the flâsh but in duty and thankfulness for so full and free a pardon and Gal. 3. 3. absolution which all our doings all our sufferings are insufficienr to answer Nevertheless the intuition of so great a redemption already attayned and in our possession together with the promise of so glorious an inheritance for the future life already confirmed to us by the seal of the spirit in the bloud of Christ are of such infinite value that we are to walk still in the splendor and glory of it so that our spirits should bee sublimated above earth and selfe to dwell and to spend our selves and be spent in the bosome of that Grace from which wee have received so much and expect yet so much more of ravishing and never ending felicity What neither eye hath seen nor ear heard nor the heart of man in a naturall way conceived of the riches of the incomprehensible bounty and free grace of God being
that I will accuse you to the Father there is one that accuseth you even Moses in whom you trust Jo. 5. 45. But whether the inference of making Paul a Legall Preacher is to be ascribed to Mr Baxter or to the Author of the Marrow of Modern Divinity is easily discernible That Author had onely sayd that one sentence of Paul in a whole Epistle was the voice of the Law Mr. Baxter inferreth that so to say is to make Paul a Legall Preacher consequentially that to preach any thing of the Law makes a Legall Preacher Let now Mr. Baxter name one Minister within this Nation that hath taught such ranke Antinomisme as himselfe here that professeth himselfe an Antaegonist to destroy it But wee may perceive by this he will be all things as well Antinomian as Arminian and Papist to smother the truth of the Gospell B. And as shamefully doth he abuse 1 Co. 6. 9. 10. as if the Apostle when he biddeth them not to be deceived were deceiving them himselfe in telling them that no unrighteous person fornicators adulterers c. shall inherit the Kingdome of God Is this Law Then let me be a Preacher of the Law If Paul be a Legallist then will I be a Legallist too But these men know not that the Apostle speaketh of those that die such and that these sins exclude men the Kingdome as they are rebellious against Christ their Lord and so a violation of the new Covenant How extreamly is this man in love Narcissus like with his own beauty or rather fancy Every other Visage not begotten of his seed and fashioned to his image is an Owle with him The words of the Authour are these The Law saith knowest thou not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdome of God Be not deceived c. 1 Cor. 6. 9. And therefore thou being a sinner and not righteous shalt not inherit the Kingdome of God This is all that he hath against which Mr. Baxter raiseth his hubub a shamefull abuse of the Scripture Let him deny if hee can this to bee though lesse principally and secondarily the voice of the Gospel yet primarily and more principally the voice of the Law If not then surely as he hath a Gospel so also hath hee a Law of his owne making Or what other ground is there why such shall not inherit the Kingdome but because they are not in Christ Fer whosoever is baptized with the bloud of Christ to justification is baptized also with his spirit to sanctification And if not in Christ then under the Law If under the Law then under the curse and condemnation of the Law and consequentially under the threat of the Law here denounced Or what should hinder the Apostle from denouncing the curse of the Law against them that are and wil be under the Law Let Mr. Baxter have his will that the Gospel condemnes them for their finall unbeliefe and rebellion against Christ yet doth not the Law condemne them too for all their unrighteousness fornications Adulteries c. If he deny it wee shall finde him the Author of a sweet peece of Gospel Doctrine That they which are in Christ are under the Curse of the Law so hath hee before stoutly asserted but they which are enemies of Christ are exempted from it If he confess it then the shame returns upon himselfe which he layes on this Author B. So in part 1. pag. 189. hee mentioneth a Preacher that sayd hee durst not exhort nor pârswade sinners to beleeve their sinnes were pardoned untill hee saw their lives reformed for feare they should take more liberty to sinne And hee censureth that Preacher to bee ignorant in the Mystery of Faith And putting a false construction upon his words he descanteth over him and insulteth against him for delivering an absurdity in saying that which he said not Let him but add what followeth it wil appear there is no footing for him in these his words for al the abusive carpings wherwith he seeks to disgrace him I thinke âsayth the Author that Preachâr was ignorant of the Mystery of Fayth for it is of the Nature of sovereigne Waters which so wash off the corruption of the Vlâer that they coole the heat and stay the spreading of the insection and so by degrees heal the same Neither did he know that it is the Nature of Cordialls so to comfort the heart and âase it as to expell the noxâous humours and strengthen Nature against them Is it not heere evident that the fayling which hee censureth in that Minister is his mistake of the power and Nature of Spirituall and Gospel comforts that hee dared not to speake a word oâ consolation to a wounded soule before hee saw and had had pâoofe of his reformation though never so much burthened with the consideration of his sinne past and gasping after Christ and forgiveness by him for fear such spirituall comfort would carry him backe into carnall liberty againe Nay sayth this Author The Mystery of Faith or consolation which is by faith in Christ Jesus is like sovereigne Waters and Cordialls doth not onely comfort the wounded soule against the guilt but also subdue the power and stay the spreading of sinn strengthening the soule against the future prevalency of corruption so that the due application and reception of it is the best furtherance and not at all a hinderance to the reformation of the Life This doctrine may possibly offend Mr. Baxters palate but I am sure it squares with the Gospel All that Mr. Baxter hath therefore pag. 104. 105. against the Authors words wrested into a wrong sense expresseth Mr. Baxter what hee is but in no wise weakeneth the estimation of the Author with them that are wise âor he doth neyther explicitely nor implicitely affirme that justifiing Faith is a beleeving that our sinnes are pardoned as Mr. Baxter untruly suggesteth ând thence draws matter of sugillation He names the Mystery or âaith which is one and the same as if he had sayd the Mystery of Christ or the Mystery of the Gospel all which in holy Writ are ãâ¦ã lent âârme And what he affirms of this Mystery of Faith or ãâ¦ã the deeper it sincks into the heart the more it purifies ãâ¦ã strengtheneth in the power of godliness Mr. Baxterâ ãâ¦ã affixed to this Doctrine shall not hinder my Amen ãâ¦ã B. Many other intolerable errourâ I could shew you in this booke as his making the New Covenant to threaten nothing but present afflictions and losse of our present communion with God pag. 208. And that we pray for no other kinde of Pardon pag. 206. 210 Contrary to Mar. 16. 16. Heb. 10. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. Heb. 2. 3. Jo. 15. 2. 6. and many other places He might more properly have sayd Many other intolerable slanders his candor and conscience could have iâured upon this booke For so his next words would have verified what hee had sayd as his mâking the New Covenant to threaten
thought to justifie his meaning is which all the Protestant Churches and Divines teach and which our people doe all most easily embrace is the receiving of Christ for their Saviour and expecting pardon and salvation by him but not withall receiving him for their Lord and King nor delivering up themselves to be ruled by him Let him now name that one Church or one Theologist in any one of the Protestant Churches that hath so taught and divided the receiving of Christ as Lord and King from receiving him as Saviour and pardoner in justifying Faith or els confess that he hath drunk deeply into the Jesuits prenciples that all equivocations frauds lyes slanders and whatsoever is worse than these are all not only lawfull but also meritorious when practiced for the advancâment of the Triple Crown and the Holy Mother-Church of Rome We do indeed divide works from Faith and banish them from having any concausality with it in justifying But let Mr. Br. produce one that hath divided Christ the King from Christ the Saviour or denyed him in either Title to be the object of justifying Faith or any one that hath taught that to be a justifying Faith which expecteth salvation from Christ but will not deliver up the soul to be ruled by him I chalenge Mr. Br. to vindicate herein his reputation and to manifest that he followeth the dictates of Naturall conscience at least and not of wilful malice against the truth by naming one that hath taught any such thing The Protestant Churches and Writers are so cleer herein that they do not divide from justifying Faith the very Assent that there is a God that hee made the world that he drowned it and repair'd it that Christ was the Son of the Virgin Mary that hee was born at Bethlehem circumcised at eight days old disputed among the Doctors turned water into wine and did many miracles or whatsoever els the Scriptures in the least things affirme to be true All this the justifying Faith assents to neither can it not assent to every truth of the word yet it so assents not as justifying In this act it knows nothing but Christ and him crucified Much lesse do they so divide as Mr. B. here against knowledg and conscience objecteth They so far shew themselves abhorrent from it that they utterly deny any to come to the Kingdom of glory but through Christs Kingdom of grace But the Doctrine it self which here he reneweth about the object of Faith Christ as our Lord as well as our Saviour I have examined before in answer to his fourth Argument Thither I send the Reader for satisfaction what the Protestants hold and upon what grounds here it is besides the matter to fall into a new dispute about it It shall suffice here only to examine the new Argument which he brings to prove that the Doctrine which holds forth justification by Faith is a soul-cozening but that which teacheth justification by works is a soul-saving doctrine For this is his meaning in what he disputeth here of Christ the Saviour and Christ the Lord made the object of justifying Faith as hee hath largely explayned himself before And if hee mean not so all that he here sayth is but a hunting after Grashoppers in the snow to fight with them For none is there to be found opposing what he sayth in the words and phrase he useth But himself is a sure Interpreter of himselfe and we must take him as himself hath explayned his meaning And then his Argument is drawn from the easinesse or difficulty of receiving the one or the other Doctrine It must be a soul-cozening doctrine which all are easily perswaded to be cozened with Thus wee find him expressing himself in that part of the Query which is before transcribed Our people saith he do all most easily embrace it I meet with no one but is resolved in such a faith till it be overthrown by teaching them better They would all trust Christ for the saving of their souls c. And in the following part of the Querie B. Let any Minister but try his ungodly people whether they will not all be perswaded very easily to believe that Christ will pardon and save them c. But whether it be not the hardest thing in the world to perswade them really to take him for their Lord and his word for their Law and to endeavour faithfull obedience accordingly Surely the easinesse of the former and difficulty of the later seemeth to tell us that it is a spirituall excellent necessary part of justifying Faith to accept unfeignedly Christ for our Governour and that part which the world among us will most hardly yeeld to and therefore hath more need to be preached than the other Were he a true Israelite in whom there is no guile which speaketh all this might be granted him But because he hath fully declared that he meaneth by receiving Christ for our Saviour justification by Faith in Christ the Redeemer and by receiving him for our Lord and Governour justification by works nothing can be safely granted to him The whole summ of his Argumentation amounts to this syllogism That doctrine of Justification which the multitude doth easily embrace is a soul-cozening doctrine but that which they are not without much difficulty perswaded to receive is a soul-saving doctrine But the multitude easily embraceth Justification by Faith alone and not without difficulty Justification by works Ergo the former is a soul-cozening the latter a soul-saving doctrine He must acknowledge that he thus argueth or argueth nothing or nothing to the question To the Proposition I distinguish first about the meaning of the terms And first about the word embracing or receiving betwixt a vitall or effectuall and a meerly historicall embracing betwixt a reall receiving and an assent of the judgment that the thing is to be received or more plainly beleeving and a mans saying he doth beleeve or his profession of Faith 2 Between that which is easie or difficult in it self or to mans naturall ability and that which God makes easie by the concurrence or leaves difficult by the with-holding of his grace Having thus distinguished in whatsoever sense he takes the Terms I deny both Consequenââ of the Proposition For if he mean onely an externall assent to the verity and goodness of the doctrine All men which have reason in their understandings and freedom in their wills do with the like facility choose that which is made out to them to be good and refuse that which is made out to them to be evill Or if he mean a vitall and effectuall embracing the doctrine of Justification is alike difficult to all that are of the carnall multitude It is a spirituall doctrine and the naturall man receiveth not cannot receive spirituall things 1 Cor. 2. 14. Again if he mean an easines and difficulty in it self and to mans naturall ability The true doctrine of Justification is alike difficult yea unpossible to all effectually
times aboundeth envied because they could not match and sought to defame because they envied the excellent parts of these two Worthies was either of them so wise and learned as to run headlong from Christ to Rome upon it Nay this is a piece of learning which Mr. B. his Grotius have of very late yeers learned and taught The true servants of Christ in former times were so little scholasticall that they were ignorant in this Art Yet whether Melancton after the death of Luther gave not some occasion to the Protestant Churches to mourn till this day for the yet remaining fruits of his timorousness or as Mr. Br. will have us call it moderation I leave to the wise who are acquainted with the passage of those times to judg But I never understood any such thing imputed to Bucer or that he hath left any other but a sweet savour behind him Nor any thing that can so dim the worth of Melancton that his name should not be in continuall veneration among the Saints For who can say he is without his infirmities But in the point of Justification by Faith only he was sound till death 4 But what hee saith of the Antimonian Teachers what they preach at present and yet are magnified for the only preachers of Free Grace is that which startles Mr. Br. and makes him run many furlongs beyond Grotius If his hast had not put him out of breath he might have told us what places of England are haunted with these Spirits that we might have shunned them Why should a man of such animosity that scorns to look upon Colier Hobson Spriggs and such like fellows be so troubled about these unconsiderate animals which he here mentioneth what the former three are I do not know yet by what I have heard of them I should think them not so inconsiderate as these to affirm justifying faith to consist in a mans believing that he is justified or in a perswasion that God loveth him But that there are either more than one fountaine opened for the purging away of sinne or any other propitiation for our sins set forth by God Besides Christ alone or any other means to effectuallize it to the chief sinners besidâs faith in his blood or that the justification which is by Faith iâ according to the tenor of the Gospel revocable I am so far an Antinomian of Mr. B. defining to deny and cannot find him so learned a Papist or Pharisee to prove it There is nothing else which I see in this Quere which he hath not in substance said and so hath been examined before or else will more properly offer it self to examination in that which remaineth to be examined And this shall suffice to have said to that one and yet five-fold Argument comprehended in his five Quere's CHAP. XIV Mr. Baxters last Argument drawn from the Testimony of many approved Authors Examined and Answered HIs last Argument is drawn from the testimony and authority of many eminent Divines in the Protestant Churches which he saith have taught and published this doctrine before him This Argument is principally urged not in the Aphorisms but the Appendix And although Mr. Br. tell us App. p. 111. that he alleageth them not to confirm his doctrine but to shew that he is not singular but hath the concurrent judgments of others therein And App. p. 167. 188. that he doth it to satisfie them which charge him with singularity not as an appeal to man Yet it is too evident that his purpose herein is to abuse the less knowing and considering part of his Readers with this more then with the most of his other Arguments Great names he knowes doe make deep impressions upon the fancies of men that have much of affection but little of judgment And that these look not so much to the matter as to the men Could they think Mr. Br. hath here said no more then these and these confessedly pious and learned Worthies have said before him they will take him for a blasphemer that shall say against him Therefore he musters together so many choyce vessels and pretious servants of Christ trusting to the either imbecility or credulity of his vulgar Readers that either they cannot or will not examin and compare these and Mr. B. together and then Mr. Br shall be taken to be of the same spirit with Dr. Preston Dr. Twisse Calvin Pareus Perkins and the other renowned Divines whom he alleageth and then also it must be all truth that he hath said after such men and whosoever shall oppose him must be brought forth to be stoned But where is the mans sincerity that will be justified by the morall sincerity of his obedience and works Was it not wholly banished from him when he cited these men as concurring in judgment with him when he knowes them all to detest his assertions against which we except more then death it self and that many of them have jeoparded and some of them laid down their lives and blood to give testimony to the contrary Assertions Or will Mr. B. name any one of these at whose judgment his doctrine shall stand or fall as true or erroneous Why doth he thus abuse the simple thereby discovering his impudent fallaciousness to the intelligent with whom elswhere he seeks chiefly to ingratiat himself But come we to the Testimonies which he alleageth Bax. 1 Mr. Wallis Faith is an accepting of Christ offered rather then a beleeving of a Proposition affirmed App. p. 111. Who hath denied this Or what is this to Justification by works It may possibly be something to the Question not considerately there proposed but nothing at all listing with that conclusion to which all the rest which he delivers are but preparatives Next to Mr. Wallis he alledgeth Dr. Preston at the end of the same page The six first Positions wherein he affirms him to speak the same thing with himself I see no sound reason why any should except against But if Mr. B. or Dr. Preston or Paul or an Angel from heaven shall deduce erratick and erroneous Conclusions from those Premisses they are not to be heard but resisted at the face None of the worst Hereticks but agree in some principles with the most Orthodox yet this nothing hinders but that the assertions in which they dissent may be altogether pernicious How far and how unanimously all the Protestant Churches maintain the seventh point wherein Mr. B. affirms this pious and learned Doctor to agree with him hath been before fully expressed in the examination of the fourth Argument So that it is useless here to run over so many passages of the Author from p. 112. to p. 117. of the Appendix to declare that this one man saith what all the rest say and hold with him viz. That justifying Faith is an accepting of Christ as Lord and Saviour But what is this to the substance of the question to which Mr. B. answereth Where it is objected to Mr. Br
Qu. 14. that he so layeth this position that he may thereby lay a ground-work for Justification by works Doth Dr. Preston to this end make Christ as Lord the object of Justifying Faith or any where affirm him to be offered as a Law-giver or Commander of morall works and duties to our justifying Much less doth he affirm that such works have any thing to do with Faith in justifying A notable skill hath Mr. Br in confounding when he should divide and distinguish and in distinguishing when there is no need as either may serve to his purpose He knowes that Dr. Preston when he treats of the New Covenant comprehends under it the whole doctrine and all the Promises of Grace made Yea and Amen in Christ as the same Christ is given to us not onely to Justification but also to regeneration illumination sanctification and whatsoever the Grace of the Eternall Father hath made him to us And when he treats of Faith he handles it as the instrument by which not onely Justification but also all the other benefits of Christ may be made ours in receiving Christ the treasury spring of all appropriated to us Therefore in describing the New Covenant he describes it in generall as the womb of all the blessings which are attainable by Christ and not of Justification and Salvation alone And in describing Faith he describes it as the instrument by which we apprehend and appropriate to our selves not onely Christ as righteousness and salvation but also as wisedome and sanctification yea all that tends to the perfecting of a poor sinner to our selves Therefore is it that he speaks more largely of the Covenant and treats more fully of it then needed if he had been to speak of it onely to Justification and Blessedness and that he speaks of Faith more largely and mentioneth other acts of it then are required to this one end And necessarily must he so do else should he have maimed both the Covenant of Grace and the Faith of Christ Here whatsoever Dr. Preston speaketh of the Covenant and Faith in generall of which some part belongeth to the interessing of us to sanctification and other blessings which are by Christ Mr. Br to beguile his Reader confoundeth and confineth to Justification as being spoken of it alone When contrariwise the Doctor doth enough cleerly express the distinct benefits of the Covenant and the distinct acts of Faith receiving the distinct benefits in the very words which he alledgeth out of him App. p. 117. Thou shalt receive the gift of Righteousness wrought by him for an absolution for thy sins and for a reconciliation with me This is our Justification And thereupon thou shalt grow up in love and obedience towards me This is our sanctification But suppose he should have affirmed that Faith as it cleaveth to Christ not onely for the sprinkling of his blood for Justification but withall for the effusion of his spirit to sanctification and the shedding forth of his beams for illumination and the stretching forth of his Almighty arm for supportation c. doth in all these acts justifie as some Divines do seem to speak though without prejudice to their reputation not enough advisedly yet both he and they are so far from making either the most spiritual knowledge and wisedom which are the immediate fruits of illumination or love righteousnes and holines and their acts or works which are the immediate fruits of sanctification to be in any respect usefull to justification that they utterly deny peace joy and hope the immediate fruits of Justification to be any way effectuall and usefull in this business But I find not Dr. Preston any where laying that ground-work much less erecting such a building on it To the five last points if Mr. Br hold them in that which I have expressed to be Dr. Prestons sense yea which himself expresseth to be his own sense I have nothing to say against him The tenth onely excepted to which I must be also mute because neither doth Mr. Br alledg what the Doctor saith and I have not that Treatise of his to inform me But all this is but a playing with holy things he might as well have said Dr. Preston consents with him in confessing there is a God a Christ a Justification a man a sinner to be justified as have said most of what he hath here said We expected he should have produced testimonies of other Divines speaking in common with him what he speaks in common with the Papists in opposition to the doctrine of the Protestants In his Appendix p. 167. and thenceforth to the end of the Book he brings a new supply of Testimonies which he intituleth Bax. Sayings of excellent Divines added to satisfie you who charge me with singularity I shall examine so many of them as have any shew of agreement with Mr. Br in those things wherein he fights against the doctrine of the Protestant Churches Bax. 1 He alleadgeth Dr. Twisse his discovery of Dr. Jacksons vanity p. 528. What one of our Church will maintaine that any one obteins actuall Redemption by Christ without Faith esspecially considering that redemption by the blood of Christ and forgivenesse of sins are all one Eph. 1. 17. Col. 1. 14. How prettily would he here instill into the thought of his Reader that Dr. Twisse is a man of levity here a subverter of Antinomianism whereof in his Aphorisms p. 173. he complained him to be a Pillarer that here he subverteth Justification from eternity whereof elswhere he is an assertor Nay here he speaketh of the Justification which is by vertue of the New Covenant of the obteining of it actually to our selves This neither Papist nor Protestant neither Dr. Twisse noâ Mr. Br ever affirmed to be without Faith Bax. 2. Bishop Hooper cited by Dr. Jackson Christ onely received our infirmities and originall disease and not the contempt of him and his Law Expounded by Dr. Twisse against Dr. Jackson p. 584. His meaning in my judgment is onely this that Christ hath made satisfaction for the imperfection of our faith and holiness although we continue therein untill death But he hath not made satisfaction for the contempts and hatred of his word c. in case men do continue therein unto death Here is nothing of that which Mr. B. hunts after that Christ hath satisfied for no offence no infirmity committed against the New Covenant but this alone is the sum of it that they shall have no benefit by Christ no one sin committed against the Law or Gospel pardoned to them who live and dye impenitent and unbelievers According to that of our Saviour Jo. 8. 24. Therefore I said unto you ye shall dye in your sins for if ye beleeve not that I am he ye shall dye in your sins B. 3 Alstedius Distinct Theol. cap. 17. p. 73. The Condition of the Covenant of Grace is partly Faith partly Evangelicall obedience or holiness of life proceeding from Faith in Christ 1 In
is as smooth as Esau's hands as free from Popery Socinianism from all injurie against the grace of God all-sufficiency of Christs merits consolation of the Saints yea from all error whatsoever as Lazarus was from sores or the poor Gadaren from Devills that had but a legion of them within him That it agrees so harmoniously with the doctrine of Paul as light with darkness Christ with Belial and the Temple of God with Idols That in these things the Covenant of Grace consisteth indeed therefore invites all at the consideration of the innocency and profundity of this his Gospel to follow him in seeking a sure salvation by their own righteousness in the Curse of the Law To insist no longer upon generals I shall examine the particular Apologies which he makes for this his Doctrine of Justification by works to cleer it from the false imputations which the ignorant Antinomians that is in his Construction Luther Calvin Twisse Pemble and their followers might charge it withall His first Task which he appoints to himself is to vindicate it from having any smack of Popery how so doth not both he and they maintain in the same words that we are justified by works this he cannot deny But forsooth there is a great difference in this whose pen it is that drops the assertion The Papists do it with a quill of a Capitoline Mr. Br. with a quill of a Kederminster goose This alters the case saith Ploydon makes the same Proposition to be Popery and no Popery But let us hear himself speaking and multiplying his reasons why it must not be taken for Popery Br. Aphor. p. 304 305. How this differeth from the Popish Doctrine I need not tell any Scholar that hath read their writings 1 They take justifying for sanctifying so do not I. 2 They quite overthrow and deny the most reall difference between the Old Covenant and the New and make them in a manner all one But I build this Exposition and Doctrine chiefly upon the clear differencing and opening of the Covenants 3 When they say we are justified by the works of the Gospell they mean only that we are sanctified by works that follow faith and are bestowed by grace they meriting our inherent justice at Gods hands In a word there is scarce any one Doctrine wherein even their most learned Schoolmen are most sottishly ignorant then in this of Justification So that when you have read them with profit and delight on some other subjects when they come to this you would pitty them and admire their ignorance 4 They take our works to be part of our legal Righteousnes I take them not to be the smallest portion of it but only a part of our Evangelicall righteousness or of the condition upon which Christs righteousnes shall be ours Suppose all these things were true and the difference between him and the Papists were so great and manifold as in these particulars he pretendeth yet all this nothing evinceth his Doctrine not to be Popish especially among Scholars to whom he appealeth For 1 All this would but excuse him a tanto non a toto that in these particulars he is not though in many other and greater he be Popish 2 Though he differed from them in the premisses yet he is one with them in the conelusion Bellarmine brings his arguments and Stapleton his to prove that works justifie Are they not both Papists because their arguments differ when their Conclusion is one Mr. Br thinks that in some particulars his curious wit hath prompted him with a finer and surer way of demonstration to stablish Justification by works than ever entered into the Cardinals Cap or Cranion Doth this deny him to be a Papist because he speaks more for them than they could for themselves 3 Though Bellarmins and Brs. way of arguing do in some particulars differ yet is the later as great an opposite to the truth of the Gospell in his way as the former in his Both oppugn with their utmost strength the doctrine of grace though they divide the battell between them the one scaling from the North the other from the South 2 But it cannot be truly sayd that there are truly those reall differences between Mr. Brs. and the Papists Doctrine which hee here particularizeth For 1 Though in some of these particulars he speaks not the idem yet he speaks the Tantundem with them 2 Where he speaks not the very idem hee speaks more grosly Pharisaically and adversatively to the truth then they For the manifesting hereof let us particularly examine those particulars in which he saith he differs from them 1 Saith he They take justifying for sanctifying so do not I. 1 This speaks out their Doctrine to be more tolerable then his For the Scripture denies not the increase of sanctification to be in part by works which is all that the Papists hold But accurseth them that shall attribute Justification either in its beginning or growth if there were any such thing to works 2 It is not true that the Papists make whole or all Justification to consist in Sanctification For in their many divisions and distinctions of Justification among the rest they have this There is a first and a second justification The former of Infants and new Converts conferred in baptism This consists in remission of sins meerly by the blood of Christ sprinkled by the Spirit in Baptism upon Infants that are not of age actually to believe and received also by Faith by believing Converts in their Baptism The later end indeed they make to consist in the infusion of the habit of grace and sanctification when the justified man ex justo justior fit is more and more justified This will afterward be manifested So that all Scholars must acknowledg Mr. Br. to have the Tantundem and almost in every apex the Idem of this Doctrine Yea worse is his doctrine in this particular than theirs For he makes Sanctification and good works a Collateral with the righteousness of Christ in justifying They abandon this doctrine teaching that they are but fruits of Gods grace and Christs merits Thus he sets up vain man as Cheek-mate with Christ they set him at his foot-stool or appoint him to follow and apprehend the hemm of his garment to draw vertue from him though indeed to other and prouder ends then he hath ordained Br. They quite overthrow and deny the most reall difference between the Old Covenant and the New and making them in a manner one I build upon the clear differencing and opening of the Covenants 1 All this is said not shewed and proved 2 If the Papists did wholly as he saith Mr. Br. to every particle of what he charges them with might tune up the Poets Epigram Jam sumus ergo pares Jam sumus ergo pares In all this we shake hands What fouler confounding of the Covenants can there be then what Mr. Br hath committed when he makes DO and LIVE to be the voyce of
and actions the godly are called Righteous in Scripture and their faith and duties are said to pleas God viz. at they are related to the Covenant of grace i. e. as they are coÌditions procuring our Justification by Christ as well as in regard of the imputed Righteousnes which he addeth but as a cypher bringing no proof for it but all seemingly for the former Aphor. Thes 18 19 20 22 and its explication p. 119. c. We are justified by works commanded This is the generall vote of all Popish writers none excepted in the Law yet as they make up not our Legall but our Evangelicall Righteousness not as they are done upon legall terms but as they are conditions of the New Covenant This is the chief substaÌce of Mr Brs whole book and it is a poorer shift to elude the doctrine of Paul than is that of the Papists Love is an essentiall part of Justifying Faith not properly a fruit of of it Aph. p 266. When Faith therefore The common Tenet of Papists not love is said to justifie it is said so to work in its essentiall work of accepting by Love pa. 268. That both are necessary to salvation are concurrent in apprehending Christ is doubtless p. 271. Love doth truly receive Christ c. p. 224. The people are to understand that for them to take upon trust from their Teachers what they cannot yet reach to see in its own evidence is less absurd and more necessary that many This also is a known Tenet among the Papists do imagin Epistle to the reader in the last page save two These may suffice for a Taste by which the reader may judge whether Mr. Brs and the Papists Barrells are filled with the same Herring or not Should I proceed to Compare also his and their equivocations ambiguities mentall reservations together with their purposed and not unwary Contradictions when to say and deny the same thing in severall places as may severally make for their advantage But specially if I should go on to Compare them how they bring the same arguments to prove their severall assertions and the same distinctions and other shifts of Sophistry to elude the Scriptures and reasons which make against them I should procedere ad infinitum almost begin but finde no end In alleaging the words of the severall Authors something here and there hath perhaps been abbreviated some words standing as cyphers without waight in reference to the questions Controverted interserted to make up some orderly Connexion of the following with the foregoing particular cited But no where have I wittingly Committed any such alteration of the words as to alter in one Title the sense of the Writer as will be evident to all that will but take the pains to examine the citations with their authentique or books from which they are cited Neither is there any one thing alleaged in which the two parties Cohere but what hath been still Controverted between the Papists and Protestants Else would it be easie to produce a thousand particulars wherein the Pope and Luther themselves speak one and the same thing without opposition or difference If any where when Mr. Br and the Papists speak the same words yet Mr. Br means not punctually the same thing with the Papists in every such allegation I undertake to manifest that he is worse and delivers more self-exalting Grace-depressing doctrine than they Yet all this is too little to set forth the frame of Mr. Brs spirit he may take himself injured and left too obscure if he be but matched with the Papists and have no pre-eminence granted him before and above them in exalting mans righteousnes and nullifying the Grace of God in Christ That we may not rob him of the praise to which his ambition seems to aspire we will grant to him that the Papists are but the Pigmies and he the Giant that in the battell between Michael and the Dragon he hath superexcelled more deserved the Scarlet Hat Miter Crosier yea Triple Crown it sâlf than they that have and wear them if not by his Art yet at least by his daring boldnes in his undertakings This service therefore I shall do him to manifest not onely his equality with but also his exâperancy above many of the famous Champions of Rome That many of the brave Cardinals Bishops Jesuits and Fryars of the Church of Rome are Protestants in the poynt of Justification as compared with Mr. Br and that he sheweth himself in many particularâ about this doctrine a Papist of a deeper dye than the more modest Papists yea than some of the most Jesuitized and Trentified Rabbi's among them This shall be the business of the next Chapter CHAP. XVII A comparing of Mr. Baxters Doctrine with the Doctrine of some of the more Modest and other more Trentified and Jesuitized Papists in which he is found more Antichristian than they Papists 1 IT is to be noted that the Scripture attributeth this imputation of Righteousness to no other thing but Faith 2 Faith hath not of it self any efficacy as it is our act to forgive and reconcile but all its vertue proceeds from its object namely Christ whose vertue and merit God hath disposed to apply to the sinner unto Justification by Faith on him 3 If it be enquired how the Law of Faith is distinguished by Paul against the Law of works even of morall works when Faith also is comprehended under the genus or kind of works for to beleeve is our work The solution is that to beleeve in him that justifieth the ungodly leaneth upon the Righteousnes of another to wit of God through Christ but other works do lean upon their own Righteousness every work is in or after it self good and makes him good that hath it 4 If Faith as it is a certain Act and of it self should procure Righteousness then were not Righteousness given freely God hath not used works to justifie as he hath used Faith that men should not boast attributing Righteousness to the vertue or merit of works 5 Faith is not counted to us for Righteousness as if it self were made our Righteousness but because it brings a Righteousness on man before God not as it is an act of man then Grace should be of works for to beleeve is a kind of work but of Gods will as he hath willed that Righteousness should be given to man by Faith and the vertue of Christ upon whom man beleeveth should be communicated to the beleever This is to count or impute Faith to Righteousness before God 6 Whereas we attain a twofold Righteousness by Faith an inherent Righteousness c. by which we become pertakers of Gods nature and the Righteousness of Christ imputed to us c. It remains to be enquired upon which of these we ought to lean or trust and to account our selves justified before God My judgment is that we are to rest to rest I say as upon a stable
thing that firmly susteineth namely the Righteousness of Christ imputed to us and not on the holiness and grace inherent in our selves For this is unperfect c. therefore we cannot for it be counted Righteous before God But the imputed righteousness of Christ is a perfect righteousnes in which there is nothing that can offend the eyes of God but all things that can abundantly please him Vpon this alone therefore are we to rest as upon a thing sure and stable and to beleeve that by it alone we are justified 7 This may undoubtedly be affirmed and it is the opinion of all Divines that God can justifie men and make them pleasing and amiable to him without any inherent quality or habits infused 8 To the same purpose and somewhat more fully speaketh Bellarmine The guilt or obligation to punishment saith he may be taken away without the infusion of Righteousnes For nothing hinders by how much the less God can will the not ordeining to punishment and the pardoning of the offence and the not accounting him for an enemy to whom he hath not granted the gift of habituall Righteousness 9 The Scope of James in the second Chapter of his Epistle is to shew that we are justified not by a barren but by a fruitfull Faith 10 The meaning of James is not that Faith without works is dead c. For it is evident that we are justified by Faith even without works But his meaning is that Faith without works that is which refuseth to work or is noâ disposed to work is a dead Faith vain and justifieth not What therefore James alleageth out of Gen. 15. Abraham beleeved God to this purpose he alleageth it that he beleeved being in readiness to work Therefore he saith that in the work of offering his Son the Scripture was fulfilled speaking of his Faith prepared to work It was fulfilled I say as to the execution of that great work to which his Faith was prepared 11 If any where in Scripture thou hearest reward or wages promised know that it is no otherwise due then by Gods promise freely he hath promised freely he gives If thou wilt abide in his Grace and Favour make no mention of thy Merits 12 All Papists consentingly make the Merits of Christ the foundation of mans merits as far as he can merit Neither Faith nor works nor doing nor sufferings say they have any other vertue to merit then what they receive from the merits of Christs death then as they are dipt in his blood this makes them acceptable to the Father 13 When Christ saith of the woman Luk. 7. 47. Many sins are forgiven her for she loved much it is to be understood not that she loved much and so her much love was the cause of her great forgiveness but contrarywise that because many sins were forgiven her therefore she loved much 14 To be given freely and to be a retribution to works are as much opposit as that which is free and that which is from Justice or as not due and debt And this way of inference the Apostle useth in the beginning of this 4th Chapter viz. speaking of Justification by Grace 15 The work of Justice is wages or Reward and this way of Justice Grace excludeth whose work is meer gift or Donation 16 In this verse the Apostle concludeth that Christ hath saved us from all the evill both of fault and punishment That there is nothing of condemnation remaining to them that are in Christ because all judgment is taken away both to the fault and the punishment 17 It is certain that when originall sin is remited that the evils which it brought are not remitted and taken away as all finde by experience Notwithstanding they remain not under the consideration of punishment because the fault being taken away there can be no desert as to punishment remaining 18 I will remember their iniquities no more saith the Lord i. e. I will neither in this world injoin any Penance for them nor in that which is to come inflict any punishment for them So hath the Holy Ghost promised that our sins shall be forgiven by the New Covenant of Grace 19 In regard of the uncertainty of our own righteousness and the danger of vain glory it is most safe to repose our whole confidence in the sole mercy and benignity of God Baxter THe bare act of beleeving is not the onely condition of the New Cardinall Contarenus in Rom. 4. Covenant but severall other duties also are parts of that Condition The Common opinion that justifying faith as justifying doth consist in any one single act is a Wretched Mistake by the one act of faith he means Faith in opposition to works Aph. p. 235 248. Faith it self is our righteousnesse viz. our Evangelicall as Christ is our Legall Righteousnesse It self Toletus a Iesuite upon Rom. 3. is imputed to us for righteousnesse Aph. p. 125 126. It justifieth as it is an act of ours and as it is a morall duty App. p. 80. 102. Both Faith and workes make up one condition one righteousness one perfect righteousness of our own by Cardinall Cajetan upon Rom. 3. which we merit to be justified by God by the legall righteousness which is in Christ And consequently Faith doth not lean upon anothers and works upon their own righteousness but both make up one compounded righteousness and goodness which make us righteous and good also and by this righteousness and goodness deservers of justification salvation Aph. Thes 17 18 19 20 23 24 26. and scatteringly throughout the whole Book Faith as an act of ours and of it self with other workes procureth Righteousness And God hath used Toletus the Iesuit up on Rom. 1. works to justifie as he hath used faith even in the same kinde of causality So we have found Mr. Br. oft affirming as may be seen in our former quotations Let him deny that he holds the consequents of these two Antecedents if he will It is so far from being an error to affirm that Faith it self is our righteousness that it is a truth necessary for every Christian to know yea it both is our Righteousnesse and is imputed to us for righteousnesse The very personall performance of faith shall be imputed to us for a sufficient personall payment of righteousnes Idem in Rom. 4. as if we had paid the full duty and righteousnesse which the Law requireth This is the substance of his words though not his very words which being continued in terms of a Metaphor cannot without the citing of the whole similitude be expressed to the understanding otherwise Aphor. p. 125 126 129. There is a two-fold righteousnesse attainable by Christ at least in words the one an inherent righteousnesse in our selves consisting in the seed and acts of Faith Love Holinesse c. the other in Christ but made over to beleevers by Gods Donation if not imputation Both of these are absolutely necessary to salvation neither is
out to be children of the Devill though they brake not out in them into every particular Act as in the Devill The utmost that M. Br. can from such premisses conclude is that though in many things els it be yet in this one his Doctrine is not aspersed with Socinianism 2. I think it will not be objected by any to M. Br. that he is ambitious in all things to be a Socinian but in such only wherein the Socinians are most subtle Sophisters than the Jesuites and doe bring more shew of sophisticated reason to exalt Popery than the Papists themselves and with greater plausibility and craft do pervert the truth and simplicity of the Gospel more extolling mans pride and more nullifying Gods grace than any of the Champions of the Pope had either the wit or the audacity to do untill these had taught them If then in the before-mentioned point hee holds not with Socinus no marvell for then should he have relinquished the Papists I do not think that his wits do run in Pilgrimage to Racovia upon any other grounds but in love to Rome and in abhorrence of free Jerusalem Gal. 4. 26. 3. Hee should have cleered if hee could his Doctrine from other peeces of Socinianism which he knows it guilty of would be objected against him As 1. His To Credere or Act of believing justifying a sinner 2. All other works of obedience as our Acts or works justifying in an equality and in the same manner with Faith without mentioning any vertue that they have from the death of Christ to this end as the Papists teach but rather that Christ fetcheth vertue from these to justifie 3 His doctrine of Gods dispensing with and relaxing of his Law To which I might add in the 4 th place his canonizing and almost deifying Reason and that without any adject of renewed or spirituallized even of naturall and sophisticall reason to which he doth so frequently in his book almost sacrifice as to the sole and sufficient Judg of the Scriptures and guide unto salvation These things he cannot deny to be originally from Socinus though probably brought home to him by other dirty Channels and not dipt from the spring or rather puddle it self It is but a vain piece of his sophistry to defend himself where none will accuse and to hide himself in the dark where ke knows he should meet with opposition and accusation 4 He professeth himself to be but yet a puny in the School of Secinus hath read but little of their doctrine yet is much sowred with the Leaven thereof when hee hath more fully tryed the quaintnes depth of their sophistry in which his soul delighteth more than in the plainnes foolishnes of the Gospel who knoweth whether he may not following such a guide as reasoÌ at length also sup up with pleasure what now he casteth off with defiance the Apost speaks somthing that may put us in fear of it 2 Tim. 3. 13. 5 Even this error of Socinus against which in speciall he protesteth his abhorrence he doth in generall maintain with as strong a Front as any of the Socinians They say that Christ offereth salvation to all but it is every particular mans particular faith and obedience their actuall believing and obeying following his precepts and treading in his steps to the end that in the end makes him to be actually and effectually a Saviour to them And this is the sum and full dimension of Mr. Brs. doctrine Only they make Christ the Prophet chiefly but this man Christ as Priest and King to be the Saviour In this they both agree that except we by our own righteousness become self-Saviours we shall have no salvation by him What else he hath in this Section for the vindicating yea magnifying of his doctrine hath been oft spoken to already and will a little after be examined again where hee useth the Tantundem though not literally the Idem of these words to apologize for his doctrine against other crimes imputable to it CHAP. XIX Mr. Baxters first Reason examined by which he endeavours to evince his Doctrine not to be repugnant to Pauls viz. that Pauls question in his Epistles and his question in his Aphorisms are not one but divers Pauls question what is that proper Righteousness by which we are justified from the laws malediction which the Apostle concludeth to be Christs satisfaction only But Mr. Brs. and St. Iames his question what is the condition of this Justification by Christs Righteousnes whether Faith alone or works also WEe have examined what he hath to say for the vindicating of his Doctrine from Popery and Socinianism we expected also that hee should in the next place have shewed or at least pretended some distance between him and the Arminians But it seems he glories in it as his Crown to be reputed one of their part Therefore leaving this he undertakes a greater Task an Herculean Labour in his third dispute of this kind viz. to cleer his doctrine from all opposition to Paul and the Scriptures This is a work indeed which if hee discharge honourably and full up to what he promiseth all will grant him the Lawrell above all the Angelical and Seraphical Divines that have in any age made use of ink and paper It is the sole thing that we long after for satisfaction Let him bless us with sound demonstrations to prove it wee shall all run after him And though some madd men may term us Papists Socinians Arminians or whatsoever else we shal gladly bear it to become his Disciples All what else he hath said would be superfluous to every conscientious man This alone would win him But how poorly and Pigmie-like this supposed Giant dischargeth this bold adventure let his owne words declare B. p. 307 c. Lastly let us see whether S. Paul or any other Scripture do contract I thinke it should be printed do contradict this And for my part I know no one word in the Bible that hath any strong appearance of contradiction to it The usuall places quoted are these Rom. 3. 28. 4. 2 3 14 15 16. Gal. 2. 16. 3. 21 22. Eph. 2. 8 9. Phil. 3. 8 9. In all which and in all other the like places you shall easily perceive 1 That the Apostles dispute is upon this question what is the Righteousness which we must plead against the accusation of the Law or by which we are justified as by the proper Righteousness of that Law And this he well concludeth is neither works nor Faith but the Righteousness which is by Faith that is Christs Righteousnes But now St. James his question is what is the condition of our Justification by this Righteousness of Christ whether Faith onely or works also This is the first part of this his Dispute Let us examine what force it hath to the end for which he useth it whether it reconciles Paul to Mr Br. or shew they never contradicted one the other 1
and touching the righteousness thereof were blameless When contrarwise the Gentiles had walked inordinately lawlesly after the instinct of their own nature and lusts of their own hearts servants to idols and devills not to God For this Cause they Contended that they by this their righteousness had that the Gentiles by means of their unrighteousness had not right to the redemption and Justification which are by Christ That the Gentiles in stead of the naturall holiness before mentioned must become Proselytes and so the ascititious or adopted Children of Abraham becoming Jewes must receive the seale of the Covenant Circumcision in their flesh receive and be brought under the Law and become personally righteous in keeping it Else they could not be saved by Christ Act. 15. 1 24. Their bare Faith in Christ without their own righteousness and works could not make them partakers of the tighteousnesse and salvation which are by Christ And who seeth not here that Mr. Brs doctrine is one and the same in generall with theirs that were the first heretical troublers and subverters of the Church of Christ But against this plea of the beleeving Jewes the Apostle layeth his Contradictory Conclusion That both the Circumcision and the uncircumcision they that had and they that had not all or any of these kinds of righteousness were made partakers of Justification through Christ onely by Faith in him That our own prejacent works and righteousness are nothing to further nor our former unrighteousness and sinn any thing to hinder our Justification but Faith in Christ is all He that beleeveth is not condemned he that beleeveth not is already condemned whether he be Jew or Gentile clean or unclean outwardly because as he had said before ver 22 23. There is no difference For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God This Conclusion that Faith alone without our prejacent or concomitant works and righteousness do make the righteousness which is by Christ ours to Justification he proveth soundly in the 4th Chapter 1 From the example of Abraham the Father of the Faithfull By what means Abraham found and obteined the Justification which is by Christ by the same means all now obteine it that are Justified But Abraham found or obteiaed it not by his own righteousness or works but by Faith Therefore so do now all that are justified The proposition he leaves as standing so firm on its own pillars that none will dare to seek the demolishing thereof The assumption he proves in both its members that it was not by his own righteousnes either Natural i. e. derived from parents and ancestors for they were Idolaters and served other Gods Josh 24. 2. Or faederall in the Jewes sense for he was justified before he was circumcised and after received Circumcision as a seal of the Righteousness of Faith ver 10 11 of this 4th Chapter to the Romans or Legal For he was so Justified 400 years before the Law was given Or personall by the works of righteousness which he had done For then first he should have had matter of boasting that he had done something towards his own Justification ver 2. And secondly then his justification should have been reckoned not of Grace but of debt and so the glory thereof should have redounded to Abraham and not to God ver 4. And if by no one of these kinds of his own then not at all by his own righteousness That it was by Faith he proves by clear Testimony of Scripture ver 3. Therefore the conclusion stands that we are justified also by faith without works That Faith and not any righteousness of our own makes Christs righteousness ours Another Argument he draws from clear and evident Scripture witnessing that the righteousness and justification which consisteth in the forgivenes not imputing and covering of sinn is made ours without works therefore by Faith alone ver 6 7 8. When in these two Arguments none can deny but that the righteousness and Justification which Abraham obteined and which Consisted not in the doing but in the imputing of righteousness and in the pardoning and not imputing of sinn is the Justification which is by Christ and when the Apostle laboureth not at all to prove this to be The proper Righteousness to Justification but takes it as granted and unquestioned all must acknowledge that his question was not What righteousness it is that Justifieth whether Christs or ours But when all his dispute is confined to this one point to prove that this righteousness by Christ is made ouâs not at all by works but altogether by Faith what rational man can be so swayed by a Spirit of Contradiction as to say with Mr. Br. that St Pauls question was not to make out by what means this Justification by Christ may be made ours Whosoever will see these two Arguments further and fully illustrated and amplified together with more arguments to these annexed let him peruse the residue of this 4 Chap. And if he return with his Reason sound and brings not this verdit that it is impudence not judgement in Mr. Br. to state Pauls question as he doth Then am I a stranger both to Paul and Reason Again when the Apostle still insisting upon the same subject setts forth the priviledges of them that are justified by Faith doth withall affirm that while they were yet sinners Châist dyed for them and so they became Justified by his bloud and being yet enemies are reconciled to God by his death Rom. 5. 1 8 9 10. thereby implying that there is nothing of our own works and righteousness except sin and enmity against God be such that doth or can Concurr to our justification so leaving justification to Faith onely it is evident that his principall question was not whether we are Justified by Christ but whether Faith alone or works with Faith are appointed of God in order to Justification I shall forbear to cite short testimonies from other Epistles of the Apostle evincing this Truth and pass to his Epistle to the Galathians in which he wholly levelleth to this mark It cannot be denyed by Mr. Br. himselfe that the Apostle there disputeth not of a legal but Gospel Justification and that this is a Justification onely by Christ that when he saith If any man if we or an Angel from heaven preach any other Gospel c. his meaning is not a Justification out of Christ for this should be a legal not a Gospel Justification but any other way to the Justification which is by Christ save that which we have preached let him be accursed Gal. 1. 8 9. Herein it was agreed between the Apostle and the false Apostles that Christ is the alone Justifier and that salvation is onely by him and to this all the seduced ones among the Galathians assented Else had they been Apostate from Christ to the Law and not to another Gospel as the Apostle terms it Gal. 1. 6. And from their beginning in the Spirit to seek
perfecting by the flesh The question therefore was whether Faith alone in Christ or eââe together with it a naturall faederall and practicall righteousness after the rule of the Law were required to the acquiring of the Justification which is by Christ Hence is that his zealous expostulating with Peter and Barnabas for giving some occasion to the Gentiles to question whether besides Faith in Christ some Conformity to the Law were not also needfull to Justification We saith he who are Iewes by Nature and not sinners of the Gentiles knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but by the Faith of Iesus Christ even we have beleeved in Iesus Christ that we might be justified by the Faith of Christ and not by the works of the Law for by the works of the Law shall no flesh be justified Gal. 2. 15 16. The sum of his debate is as if he had said If we that besides the supereminent prerogative vouchsafed to us to be the Apostles of the Lord Jesus have a derivative holines by nature and the Covenant of God from Abraham and withall a righteousness oâ works by living up to our utmost in the highest pitch of obedience to the Law having found by revelation from the Lord Iesus Christ that all these are nothing available but Faith alone proper and effectuall to obtein the salvation and righteousness which is by Christ have wholly rejected all confidence in and use of these in order and reference to justification and made our addresses by Faith alone to partake of his righteousness why do we by our judaizing beguile the poor Gentiles that have none of these prerogatives into a pernicious opinion of perfitting their justification by Christ with their practicall righteousness in obedience to the Law Where it is to be noted that in one and the same verse the Apostle doth thrice expresly banish works from having any thing to doe in the business of justification by Christ and no less often attribute it to Faith and belâleeving in Christ without all help of works And can it be doubted what the question is about which he disputeth To the same scope is directed all that he delivereth in the third Chapter That he pronounceth the Galathians foolish and even bewitched that having obteined justification already by Faith alone in Christ they would be seduced to seek the perfecting thereof by works Gal. 3. 1 2 3. That while they were ambitious to become the Children of Abraham they fell utterly from Abraham and from the justification which Abraham found by seeking it another way then Abraham found it viz. by works and not by Faith onely ver 6 7 8 9. That so to seek it was the way to meet with the Curse in steed of the blessing of Christs righteousnesse ver 10-12 of which more may be said a little after That the justification which is by Christ discendeth by promise to us and promises are the object of Faith not of works ver 17 18 22. But all this together with what the Apostle disputeth of liberty and bondage in the fourth Chapter I leave to them that will but considerately read it to judge whether it evinceth not that to be Pauls question which I have mentioned Lastly when the Apostle Gal. 5. 4. brandisheth so heavy a denuntiation against such as had suffered themselves in this point to be sedueed by the false Apostles whom Mr Br. followeth as his guides and gods Christ is become of no effect to you whosoever of you are justified by the Law ye are fallen from Grace What force had there been in this wrathfull threat if the question between him and them had been about the proper Righteousness by which we are justified if they had held iâ to be their own righteousness in opposition to Paul that held it to be the righteousness of Christ they would have laughed at such a Commination as a meerly frighting squibb or scar-crow answering we grant all that we are fallen from Grace that Christ is become of no effect to us But what damage can by all this befall us we make not Christ our Justifier but labour to Justifie our selves we seek Salvation not from Grace but as a debt in justice due to the Righteousness of our own works The Apostle surely was not such an ignorant Antinomian as to dispute so impotently that his Arguments might by subtle Baxterians be thus flung back as absurdities in his face It is therefore evident that the Galathians when most sednced ceased not to make Christ their Righteousness but had yeelded to this imposture as the next Vârse declareth that not Faith alone but their own works and righteousnes with it were pre-required to make them capable of the righteousness which is by Christ and that upon this ground the Apostle denounceth them to be Apostates from Christ and Grace because they sought by their own righteousness to entitle themselves to the righteousnesse which is by Christ and sought it not by Faith alone If any demand the reason of this Consequence that whosoever seeketh right to the Justification of Christ by his own works makes himself an alien from Christ from Grace the Apostle in part implyeth it in that which he speaketh in these 4 and 5 verses of Chapter 5. But had more fully explained himself Chap. 3. 9 10 11 12. So that by comparing together what he hath said in both places the reason of his Conclusion resulteth into all mens view viz. that such a one seeketh the righteousness and salvation which are by Christ in a legall not an evangelicall way by works and not by Faith therefore is bound to bring the perfect righteousness and works which the Law requireth to make him capable of justificasion by Christ or els falls from Christ from Grace to his everlasting ruine I shall add no more upon this subject not because the Scripture hath no more but because I hold this sufficient and know the morosity and humorousness of most readers in our times preferring an erroneous conciseness before a sound and full manifestation of the truth But my endeavour is to please not men but Christ I leave Mr. Br to trample his own rule not to be bold with Scripture by being first bold with Conscience I dare not usurp to my self his peremptory audaciousness with one breath of the mouth to destroy the whole Gospel in saying onely not shewing and proving that it must be thus understood He that can so do with holy things bewrayeth much pride and prophanness in his heart though he be never so much pharisaically enamelled and philacterized in the outside Let him see how he can answer God for his audacious curtness I shall not fear the censures of men for my length in bringing to light what he hath stifled in darkness Let my style please or displease fancies it shall suffice me to have taken off his first Paradoxicall imposture that he brings to prove his doctrine to be the same with
hine libet it makes me not onely to wish but even to hold my self almost in a desart as impatient of the company of some of our distinctionary Rabbies that admire and are ready to blesse themselves at the wit and profoundness of such wilde barbarous prophane senseless distinctions of this incomparable man that hath not his Peer in England when in this piece of his worth there is not a ploughboy so rustick but would easily whistle so prophanely in this kinde as he And if the reason were given to Mr. Br. why he is in this artifice more full than others it might be given in the Poets words Non tibi plùs cordis sed minùs oris in est Bax. pa. 309. 3 Paul doth by the word Faith especially direct your thoughts to Christ beleeved in For to be justified by Christ and to be justified by receiving Christ is with him all one Though I might except in some sense against this assertion yet because I cannot apprehend waking what he dreams sleeping how he will from this assertion prove that Paul either doth not exclude works from Justification or doth not attribute it to Faith alone I leave it unexamined If by Receiving Christ he means our taking him as our Lord to be obeyed in all his Commandments that we might thereby be justified enough hath been said before in the examination of his 66 72 73 Thes in answer to the fourth Argument that he brings for justification by works unto it I refer the reader Bax ibid. 4 And when he mentioneth Faith as the Condition he alwayes implyeth Obedience to Christ Therefore beleeving and obeying the Gospel are put for the two summaries of the whole Conditions The vanity and falsity of this assertion hath been discovered in the examination of his 62 70 Theses in which is Comprehended his 2 Argument for Justification by works What is there said being perused will take off I suppose from the reader all expectation of any more to be here said to it Onely by the way all may note 1 That what he saith here labours of the same disease with the former it is onely said not proved We must all sit at the Feet of this Gamaleel and beleeve because this great Doctor and Magister noster hath spoken it 2 That although it be the Popish Cause which he here mainteineth yet he with a holy Craft makes use rather of the Arminian than Popish Phrase the more easily to beguile the simple Calling works not as the Papists do plainly Works but Obedience to Christ and Obedience to the Gospel How doth he fitt his bait to be swallowed by gudgeons that cannot discern a line from a halter He knows there is a generation of men that detest swines flesh yet feed every morning upon pistles of pork as the greate ââelicacie Change the name and they disaffâct not the substânâe 3 Yet what he here saith he hath received in matter though notiân words from Stapleton the Priest and his fellows We are justââed saith the Apostle by Faith not by works i. e. saith Stapletâ not by works without faith but by works and Faith that is saith Mr. Br. not by works or obedience out of Faith but by works implyed in Faith Let him that can decide which of these two is the finer Sophistâr and Papist 4 And no less harmoniously do Pauls words and Mr. Brs exposition and distinction upon them agree together than a harp and a harrow Paul affirms Justification or imputation of Righteousness to be without works Rom 4. 6 Mr. Br expounds his meaning to be without works which are not but by works that are implyed in Faith As good a distinction as if I should distinguish between the brains that a man hath out of his head and the brain which he hath in his head How great is his self-Confidence that he should think such absurd distinctions should take with any rationall man onely upon this Authority because such a Cathedral scholar hath said it And when Paul saith so frequently Not by works but by Faith he should mean by Faith works also implyed in Faith This were to affirm that Paul in the delivery of the sacred doctrine of the Gospel speaks by Contraries and that what things he setts in opposition we must take to be in a Conjunction so that if he had said a man seeth with his eyes not with his heels we must understand him to mean that he seeth with his eyes and heels together or with his heels implyed in his eyes What he addeth of beleeving and obeying the Gospel that they are the two summaries of the Gospel hath been before examined and both found to be the same thing Obedience to the Gospel being nothing else but the hearts submission to the voyce of Christ and doctrine of the Gospel in stretching forth faith to apprehend Christ alone to Justification illumination sanctification c. resting upon him both for salvation and for grace and power to walk worthy of it as hath been more fully before expressed Thus much in way of examination of the third part of his vindication viz. that his doctrine in nothing dissents from Pauls And in this poynt I doubt not but we have found Paul and him no less Cohering than Christ and Antichrist CHAP. XXII Whether there be any validity in Mr. Brs Apologizing for his Doctrine that it is not derogatory from the Righteousness of Christ THe 4th part of his vindication is to free his doctrine of Justification by works from being derogatory to Christ and his righteousness Here unto his endeavours bend in many parts of this his Tractate In stead of all I shall mention onely two or three places which Comprehend the summe and whole of all the rest Bax. pa. 307. The Righteousness which we must plead against the Lawes accusations is not one grain of it in our Faith or works but all out of us in Christs satisfaction Again Appendix pa. 78. Our dooing or works are required not to be any part of our Legall Righteousness nor any part of satisfaction for our unrighteousness but to be our Gospel Righteousness or the Condition of our participation in Christ who is our Legall Righteousness and so of all the benefitts that come with him What his meaning is he expresseth Aphor. Thes 79. pa. 313. in a Syllogism thus This Doctrine is no whit derogatory to Christ and his Righteousness For He that ascribeth to Faith or obedience no part of that work which belongeth to Christs satisfactory righteousness doth not derogate in that from that Righteousness But he that maketh Faith and Obedience to Christ to be onely the fullfilling of the Conditions of the New Covenant and so to be onely Conditions of Justification by him doth give them no part of the work of his Righteousness Seeing he came not to fulfill the Gospel but the Law Ergo c. I shall speak onely to the Syllogism because in it is fully Comprehended all that Mr. Br. hath
Sophister to be guâle fools in stead of a Logician to satisfie the intelligent He that ascribeth saith he to works or obedience no part of that work which belongeth to Christs satisfactory Righteousness doth not derogate in that from that Righteousness No less true than the Gospel but so farr from the question as the earth is from heaven For who ever questioned whether the not ascribing to works that which belongeth to Christs satisfactory righteousness be a derogating feom that righteousness Yea it were madness in any to question it For if the not ascribing should so derogate then God Christ Spirit Word Apostles Prophets all Protestants yea all animate and inanimate Creatures without understanding should be guilty of derogating from Christs satisfactory righteousness For none of these ascribe to works any part of that work which belongeth to that righteousness of Christ How palpable is this cheat which Mr. Br. would put upon us He that doth not ascribe c. doth not derogate in that i. e. in his not ascribing to mans works what belongs to Christ from Christ By the like Argumentation might Joah clear himself from the guilt of murther Committed upon two better men than himself and Christs Tormentors themselves from having any hand in his death Thus might they learn of Mr. Br. to plead They that wound not that keep a mans head from wounding do not in that take away his life True the not wounding of the head was not prejudiciall to the life of them whom they slew But the wounding and piercing of their bodies and shedding out their bowells made them as actually murtherers as if they had also dashed out the brains of them whom they slew It was not what they did not but what they did that Constituted them guilty of murther So it is not Mr. Brs not ascribing but his ascribing to works that derogates from Christ Shall we thinke that Mr. Br. slumbered and doated into this fallacy Is he a puny that he should need to be taught how to express himself in an argument Nay all must see that he knows it to be a heterodox and desperate Conclusion which he mainteineth that no honest and holy means can pillar up therefore tramples all ingenuity under-foot running over it to fetch patronage from his Sophistry And even herein bewraies the high thoughts that he hath of himself that all his flies are Eagles and his grossâst Conceptions oracles and his abasing of all others that they are so blinde as not to see and so blunt as to be all taken in his rook nets Or if we take his meaning thus That his doctrine in making Works a Collaterall with Faith to Justification which he would say plainly if he meant not fraudulently and had not his own judgement and Conscience suggesting to him the weakness falshood of such an assertion because it ascribeth no part of the work of Christs satisfactory righteousness to works doth not derogate from Christ and his righteousness Then I deny both the Consequent and Consequence of the Proposition For 1 It derogates from him and it a full potency and efficacy to justifie any one untill it be animated and enlivened by our own works to do it leaving it all feeble dead to produce its effect untill our obedience as its Concause gives life to it And this is Contradictive to the doctrine of the Apostle who asserteth the efficacy and actuall efficiency of Christ and his righteousness to justifie us yet ungodly Rom. 4. 5. yet without strength to work yet sinners yet enemies and so workers against him Rom. 5. 6 8 9 10. 2 It derogates from it its glory in parting and dividing our Justification between his righteousness our righteousness so ascribing part of the praise to man which ought to be attributed full and entire to Christ This also is contrary to the doctrine of the Apostle that excludes works under every notion from having to do in the business of Justification to exclude Boasting lest any man should boast or glory in himself Rom. 3. 27. 4. 2. Eph. 2. 9. But that He that glorieth may glory in the Lord 1 Cor. 1. 29 30 31. Nay it doth not onely derogate from but totally destroy and nullifie the righteousness of Christ as to us and our justification For so first the Apostle testifieth Christ is become of no effect to you whosoever of you are justified by the Law Gal. 5. 4. And to be justified by the Law or by the works of the Law are with the Apostle the same thing as hath been oft shewed before Yea to seek justification in any part or degree by the works or obedience which the Law requireth as a Condition of Justification is to seek to be Justified by the Law Works being the Condition of Justification by the Law and not by Grace 2 Because it obstructeth the way of Justification which Christ hath made and sends poor souls to seek it in a way that is impervious by which there can be no access to Christ his righteousness For the righteousness of Christ is given of free Love pure grace meer mercy as a free Gift Rom. 5. 15. Freely offered and received Rev. 22. 17. Without money and without price Isa 55. 1. He is the worst Simoniak that seeks to buy this gift of the Holy Ghost for money to make it his by his own Merit and obedience Whosoever is admitted to it such a one is rejected from it For Christ came to call not the Righteous but sinners to repentance The Publicans and Harlots enter when these are excluded They shall come from the East and from the West c. From all parts of Paganism and Barbarism that shall sit down with Abraham Isaac and Jaakok in the kingdome of God in the possession of graâe and righteousness by Christ but these that think themselves in their own righteousness to be the children of the kingdome shall be cast out with the Jewes into whose doctrine manners they are naturallized And justly For he that worketh i. e. brings works to inright him to Justification Challengeth it as Debt from Gods Justice as the fruit of his own work Merit that God oweth to him not as a free gift from his grace Rom. 4. 4. Who will envie to him the fruit of his deservings This is Condemnation from the Tribunall of Justice where no flesh can be justified when they which work not but beleeve on him which Justifieth the ungodly i. e. which bring Faith alone without works as Coadjutors to put them into the actuall and sensible possession of the righteousness which is by Christ these even these alone shall be justified at the throne of grace Rom. 4. 5. Why these seek it in the way where God is present to give it The other in a way wherein God never was never will be present to bestow it Lastly I deny the Assumption also It is false that Mr. Br. making so as he doth it Obedience or Works the condition
he fights against natural reason perswading men never more to eat because their meat is not appointed to Clothe them or to walk naked because he saith their garments are not usefull to nourish them No more Cause hath Mr. Br. or the Papists to accuse us that we banish good works from the life of a Christian by teaching that they are not usefull or appropriated to justifie but to sanctifie very usefull in all the particulars before-mentioned How unacquainted with the frame of a Christian spirit are these objectors Either they do not experimentally know or else do stifle within themselves this knowledge that a Christ-enjoying and Gospellized soul gaspeth no less for deliverance from the bondage than from the Condemnation of sinn delights so much in performing duty to Christ as in receiving pardon from him groanes so pathetically under the body as ever he did under the guilt of sinn Cryeth with equall vehemency of affâctionâ for holiness unto God as for happiness with him for Conformity to him in righteousness as in glory makes no other use of his redemption than to run at liberty the race of obedience set before him embraceth and delighteth in sanctifying as well as in saving grace in the infusion as in the imputation of righteousness labours to dispense all for the Lord and his service whatsoever he hath received from the Lord and his free grace Therefore whatsoever the Lord powrs upon him to sanctification is received with so great joy in the Holy Ghost as that which is communicated to him to justification and he labours to be and express himself wholly Christs as well as to obtein Christ wholly his As for Mr. Brs meerly Morall Men that will receive Christ neither to Justification nor to sanctification but upon their own terms purchasing him by Fine and rent that the glory might be partly theirs and not wholly Christs It is enough that Mr. Br. hardens and subverts them in this their Moral madness wholly contradictive to the spirituallness and wisdome of the Gospel We shall not be insnared by all the nicities of his Arts and Chimicall extracts of the spirits of his spoyling Philosophy to involve our selves with him in the guilt of poysoning so many souls and turning their best righteousness and devotion into sinn by encouraging them to appropriate the same to such an end as is destructive to the glory of Gods grace and contrary to the minde and rule of the Gospel We have one Master which is Christ his dictates expressed by him and his Apostles in the plainness and foolishness of their preaching are so sacred and authoritative with us that neither the most labyrinthical mazes of sophistry shall unwinde us nor the extravagancies of the most luxuriating witts nor the most Curious plausibilities of humane reason shall by Gods Grace unreason us so from our selves as to undisciple us from him Yea though we could not in some things give a satisfactory answer to the sophisticated reasonings of these disputers against Christ and his Gospel yet should we fit down as fools with Christ and his Apostles adoring the manifold wisdome of God revealed in a mystery rather than be wise with these men to the world knowing that the foolishness of God is wiser and the weakness of God is stronger than men And we seek wisdome and happiness from the mines of Christs Gospel not from the dry quarrie of mans literature and inventions 2 Though we reject it as an arrogant and presumptuous doctrine which Mr. Br. in Common with the Papists teacheth That we are justified and saved by our good qualifications and works for our works for the merit and worthinesse of our good works yet we teach and believe that they are in respect of all that have age ability and time to perform them necessary Consequents of our Justification and Antecedents of our glorification Let a man pretend what he will of Faith in Christ yet if by Faith hee do not cleave firmly to him to derive from him power to mortifie every sinn to perform all duty if he can allow within himselfe any known evill or continue in the neglect of any known duty without striving to get the victory in the strength of Christs Spirit over every such infirmity wee take such a man so farr from Christ as Christ is from Belial A branch in Christ not bearing fruit which is appointed to be cut off and cast into the fire because he was never in Christ otherwise but by a formall profession never had vitall union to him or communion with him by the ligatures of Faith and the Spirit For sanctification is an individual companion of Justification And the office of Christ is to be the Author of both to all that believe Otherwise the work of his Mediator-ship should not be compleated in either one of these and so he should not be our Christ if a halfe Christ only to us And Sanctification is still begun and carried on towards perfection also where there is time and meanes in the kingdom of Grace before its perfecting and swallowing up into glory in the Kingdom of glory No righteousness and holiness of man is begun in the next life But there shall be the consummation in power of that which here was begun in truth though it laboured of and languished with much infirmity 3 Wee are guiltless of those Crimes wherewith Mr. Br. endeavours to defame us and our Doctrine For 1. Neither doe wee teach or think as M. Br. suggesteth that nothing is preaching Christ but preaching him as a pardoning justifying Saviour Aph. pa. 328. Indeed we preach Justification to consist if not only yet chiefly in the pardon of sinn through the mediation of Christs death That this benefit of Christ is perfected by the satisfaction which he hath made to Gods justice in suffering for us and appropriated to us by faith alone But wee deny this to be all the Gospel-grace exhibited to us by Christ and in and through him We hold him forth as the Light of the world also having all the treasures of wisedom and knowledg hid in him Joh. 8. 12. Col. 2. 3. from whom are all the irradiations and Revelations of all the mysteries of Grace effectuall to life and holiness Mat. 13. 11. 1 Cor. 2. 10. And to the word and spirit of Christ we send all men for illumination And the Life of the world not only to restore them to life in law by Justification but as the Lord and principle of Life to beget in us an inherent life active and moving to all obedience Therefore we endeavour to send all to Christ for life even for this life because the whole judgment and dispensation thereof is committed to him and he is our all to sanctification also Joh. 5. 21 22 25 26. Col. 3. 11. We indeed except against that Doctrine as more Legal than Evangelical that roars thunders Condemnation against poor Exiles in a dry wilderness where is no water fainting and even dead with
thirst if they do not arise work and fulfill their task We require first that the Rock be cloven with the Rod of God that the water of life may gush out in full Rivers and that the fainting souls be brought to drink thereof and then called upon in the life and strength which they have hence received to work and be doing Yea to come to this stream often to drink that their strength and spirits may be daily more revived that they may bâcome daily more enabled for and more abundant in the work of the Lord. We have not with Mr. Br. yet learned the skill of preaching good works to make Christ ours but follow the rule of the Scriptures to preach Christ into the hearts of men to make them fruitfull in good works Neither doe wee count all formall obedience and righteousnesse of men though conscientiously and by the guidance of Naturall Conscience performed to be either sanctification or the fruit thereof That onely is sanctification which flowes from the heart of Christ and is infused by the Spirit of Christ For the attaiâment thereof we call all men into union and fellowship with Christ so far are we from holding that Nothing is preaching Christ but the preaching him as Justifier and Saviour that we hold it an empty Preachment that preacheth any good thing without Christ or out of Christ of which men are not taught to make Christ the Alpha and the Omega We leave it to Mr. Br. and his brethren to urge works duties obedience c. and once in a Moon upon an auspicious Tropick thereof to remember Christ and grace and tell us that all must be done by the help of grace and without Christ we can do nothing Yet leaving us uncertain still whether it be the Grace and Christ of Pelagius or else of God reconciled to us that he speaketh I should be too long in expressing fully how we hold forth Christ whole Christ and only Christ to Adoption protection perseverance strengthening comforting perfecting c. In a word to all that is either good to be received or good to be done In him wee teach that God will have all his frâsh springs to reside that without him we are nothing can do nothing that in him and by him we have all and can do all things That therefore we preach nothing but Christ yet preach all that is to be preached in preaching him because in him it pleased the Father that all fulness should dwell Col. 1. 19. even all fulness for us so that in him we are full out of him meer emptiness We would not have one beam of this Sun of Righteousness clouded but labour to discover to our people his full glory and Soveraignty to all those sacred ends to which God hath consecrated him that if any would have nothing of Christ to be preached but his pardoning and saving the sin may be wholly theirs not ours that they will receive the skirt of Christ and consequently refuse Christ when we preach to them whole Christ and all the benefits that are by him Nor 2 do we deny an ordinate and subordinate love to our selves as Mâ Br. slanders us no lesse bitingly than secretly App. pa. 81 82. in teaching that it is the most Gospel-ârame of Spirit to perform duty out of meer love to God without seeking by such duties wrought quasi opere operato remission of sins redemption from Hell and right to glory by the Merit thereof as he teacheth us to do thinking no doubt his glory shall be great if he can there perswade where all the suâtlest sons of Satan the Jesuits have not been able Nay we maintayn that none can regularly love himself who loveth not God above himself and seeks not Gods glory more than his own good That whosoever in a pretext of love to himself brings his fardle of trashie works at the feet of Christ by them to purchase to himself the benefits of his death is of all men the worst enemie to himself incurs rejection and expulsion from Christ and all the benefits of his death and resurrection For hee was sent to seeke oâely that which was lost came not to call the righteous but sinners to repenâânce He loves himself indeed and spiritually that for his love to God denies himself The self-dejected Publican is acceâted with God when the prating Pharisee is hurled with his mouth full of works out at the door Or is there any great difference between this and the Devils doctrine preached to our first Parents Ye shall be as Gods said the Devill Ye shall be all Christs Saviours Justifiers saith Mr. Br. Your righteousness and Christs righteousness shall jump together into the same kind of Causality to justifie and save you Our first Parents hearkned and seeking to become Gods became Devils or what is worse slaves to the Devill We have all felt the smart yet many and that of them which are termed Angels listen earnestly to the like hissing of the Serpent now again We can but mourn for them that in madd love to themselves will hasten up to heaven by climbing high Steeples that look fairly thither-ward but can never heave them up to it nay contrariwise can give them no such sustentation but that they fall thence and dash themselves into shivers Yet in our doctrine is contained a wise and ordinate love to our selves Though we use not works as waxen wings to soar aloft to kisse the Sun and settle our selves in the same Sphere with him yet wee make use of our qualifications and duties to the continuall encrease of our sanctification and to what greater good for himself can mans strongest love to himself aspire than to his full and real perfection consisting in his restitution to Gods image and conformity to his will and nature This shall be the Consummate blessedness which we shall enjoy above and it is a blessedness inchoate and increasing while we passe from strength to strength in it here Who are the self-haters and self-destroyers the Papists or we the success will at length evidence and such professed Divines and Christians among us as have not their eyes soyled with Kederminster dust and smoak can discern already Nor thirdly doth our doctrine tend to drive obedience out of the world So that we may answer Mr. Brs question Aphor. p. 325. If men once beleeve that works are not so much as a part of the Condition of our Justification will it not much tend to relax their diligânce with the authority of the Apostle who having taught his Ephesians that we are saved by grace through faith not of works lest any man should boast Eph. 2. 8 9. Yet concludeth that as many as have learned Christ truly and heard him and have been taught by him as the truth is in Jesus These all have learned to put off concerning the former conversation the old Man which is corrupt c. and to be renewed in the spirit of the mind and to put on
on which wrought the cure such are the operations of Christ and faith in the cure of the soul as here in the cure of the body 3. From 1 Gâr 30. 31. Christ is of God made unto us Righteousnesse viz. to Justification That he which glorieth may glory in the Lord. God hath made him righteousnesse but how to us or our righteousnesse that it may be of his donation to us Mr. Baxter must answer by faith else farewell his condition but if by the act of faith as our righteousnesse in fulfilling âhe condition or otherwise then an instrument to apprehend the righteousnesse of Christ to justification then have we somewhat of our own righteousnesse wherein to glory all would not be the Lords that we might glory in him alone 4. To this I might add also the phrase which the Apostle useth that we are justifyed ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã by faith through faith as an instrument and never ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã ãâã for our faith or upon our faith as for a cause or upon a condition fulfilled as some of our Divines have well observed I proceed to the next position B. Thesis 59. Justification is not a Momentaneous act begun and ended immediately upon our beleeving but a continued act which though it be in its kind compleat from the first ' yet it is still in doing till the finall justification in the judgment day All this together with most of the Explication may be granted as being capable of an Orthodox sense 1. That justification as an act immanent in God is such as is here described is confessed But Mr. Baxter is deaf in this ear 2. That our justification in Christ is such in some sense we also grant but neither will he listen to this 3. Therefore if he would take off all ambiguity of his words and declare his sense to be the same with the sound we would grant to him also that such is our personall justification in our selves which he owneth only for justification For as it is an act of God it is never interrupted or dissolved till the day of judgement though as it is taken Passively there may be many interruptions of our sense and apprehension of it But his Thesis is faced like Janus lookes two wayes at once is set forth in such words as will more properly admit of an evill then a good sense And that he speaks them after the Remonstrant not the Protestant dialect is too probable though not infallibly evident from these reasons to be meant in an evill sense 1. Because he delivers it in the Arminian phrase For so his St. Episcopius Justificatio est actus continuus qui est Episcop Disp 22. Thes 12. de Justif durat quamdiu durat ipsius conditionis requisitae praesentia interrumpitur vero semper toties quoties actus praestantur ejusmâdi qui cum vera fide conscientia bona consistere nequeunt i. e. Justification is a continued act which is and dureth as long as the presence of its requisite condition continueth but is interrupted so often as such acts are done which cannot consist with true faith and a good conscience To the continuance of justification Mr. Baxter here speaketh the same thing with him and though as to the interruption of it he speaks here as out of a cloud yet compare with this his 45. Thesis and you will have the whole of Episcopius from the pen of Mr. Baxter 2. Because his words do seem here to suppose a Magis minus in its active acceptation or sense It is not begun and ended immediately saith he but is still in doing in a way of perfecting untill the judgment day 3. His restriction added to the compleatnesse or perfection thereof at the first It is compleat at first saith he but in its kind which restriction makes the compleatnesse of justification incompleat and its perfection imperfect till the day of judgment as himselfe hath expressed himselfe before Thesis 41. These things from the position it self From the explication will follow 4. The heartlesse and comfortlesse proof that he brings to prove the continuance of this justifying act making it to reach only to the Genera singulorum not to the singula generum to such a kinde of men not to any singular man or individuall person upon earth to Beleevers but not to this or that beleever So that the holiest Saint if at any time his faith in some temptation faint and cannot be brought to sensible acting is left destitute of all comfort from the Gospell or new Covenant after Mr. Baxters principles It justifieth onely so long as faith actually receiveth Christ if faith through infirmity cease to act he gives the distressed soul no comfort that God continueth to justifie 5. From the first use of instruction which he draweth from this position This sheweth us saith he in the first place with what limitation to receive the assertion of our Divines that remission and justification are simul and semel performed his meaning is that we must understand them in this assertion to deal as Mr. Baxter is wont viz. to say one thing and mean another Not to think as they speak but to equivocate and retaine a mentall reservation within themselves That our justification is begun and perfected both at once and together but all this is but suo genere in its kinde that is conditionally even as the Usurer frankly and freely forgave to his debtor all that he owed him but with this limitation that if he were not paid the whole debt to day he would cast him in prison to morrow there to lie untill he should pay the whole forfeiture But because Mr. Baxter is disposed here to lisp and not to speak alowd and plain his minde we shall leave him to his humour and proceed to hearken to him where he speaketh plainly and without parables Mr. Baxters APHORISMS EXORIZED AND ANTHORIZED OR An Examination of and Answer to a Book written by Mr. Rich. Baxter Teacher of the Church at Kederminster in Worcestershire ENTITULED Aphorisms of Justification THE SECOND PART By JOHN CRANDON an unworthy Minister of the Gospel of CHRIST at Fawley in Hantshire LONDON Printed by E. C. 1654. Mr. Baxters APHORISMS Exorized and Anthorized OR An Examination of and Answer to a Book written by Mr. Rich. Baxter Teacher of the Church at Kederminster in Worcestershire ENTITVLED Aphorisms of Justification THE SECOND PART CHAP. I. The following Doctrine of Mr. Baxters Book reduced to some few heads and the question between him and the Protestants about Justification by works stated HItherto we have been busied about the view of Mr. Baxters swelling which the more and the farther we gazed on the more it increased and after a long expectation of an issue at length the imposthumated matter breaks out in the sight of all men to the offence of all spiritualized men Justification by workes This is the declared and professed Subject of all the following part of this