Pilate I finde no fault in him and forthwith to whip and hang him for no fault Such divine mercy and Justice do these white sonnes of the Pope ascribe to the Father of Mercies and to his dear Son the purchaser and sluce of all Mercies Touching the doctrine it self I have answered Mr. Baxters Arguments But as to these arguments of the Papists I pass them by not having undertaken to answer them here any farther than Mr. Baxter is their mouth to dispute for them 2 The Papists teach according to the forementioned rule that Christ hath in part also satisfied for the punishment of sin as well as wholly for the fault And as far as Christ hath born and satisfied so far we are freed from the punishment But Christ hath satisfied onely for the infinite eternall punishment leaving us to bear the finite and temporary punishments and curse of the Law or to satisfie for it our selves So that by their doctrine Christ hath not at all by his merits freed us from the substance of the Curse penalty and vengeance of the Law but onely from the boundles measure and endles duration thereof What saith Mr. Baxter to this Christ saith he in reference to the punishment of sin hath suffered so much of what the Law did threaten as we our selves were unable to bear Thes 7. leaving to us to bear the greatest Curses of the Law but not in their full rigor and in their rigorous execution thereof p. 69. Arg. 3. p. 71. Arg. 8. What is this rigor and rigorous execution of the punishment and curse of the Law but the execution of the same in its infinite measure and endles duration which could not be as he confesseth born without the offenders everlasting undooing Thes 6. And thus he with the Papists makes the satisfaction which Christ hath given to his Fathers Justice effectuall to deliver us not from the substance of the Curse and vengeance but onely from the extent of its measure and duration So that if I understand my mother language and the equipollency of terms and words therein there is but the name and a Cardinals hat that puts a difference between a Bellarmine and a Baxter in this point both speak not onely the Tantundem but the Idem the very self same thing in matter substance to the diminution yea degrading of the merits of Christ to make way to set up mans satisfactions parallell with if not supereminent and above Christs With whom if I should enter into a Contest upon this Argument and dared as they to make the Scripture a meer Kickshose without substance and authority under the Charm of distinctions to be formed conformed deformed unto and into any sense at pleasure I could upon more probable grounds and with more plausible reasons argue that Christ hath satisfied for and we by his satisfaction are delivered from the finite and temporary part of the Curse and vengeance onely but are left to bear for ever the infinite and eternall torment thereof in hell than they bring for our deliverance onely from the temporary and not from the eternall Because according to Mr. Baxter Christ suffered the temporary and finite pains onely for us not the eternall but left these as it more probably seems to be suffered by our selves for our selves But as Mr. Baxter will not learn from Christ himself to oppose the Majesty power of the Word against Sophistry so neither dare I learn to oppose his Sophistry against Christ and his Word 3 The Papists teach that those punishments which come upon Christians unavoydably by the threat of the Law for the transgression of the Law viz. the temporall evills that are incident to their souls and bodies in this life as sicknes sorrow loss of friends credit or estates poverty tribulations persecutions trouble of Conscience c. if they be suffered willingly and with patience are satisfactions to God for sin but if unpatiently and unwillingly they are Gods revenge upon us So much the holy Councell of Trent doth even in express words affirm and determine What doth Mr. Baxter say in conformity or contradiction to this assertion He tells us that all temporall evills do necessarily invade beleevers and that by the force and Curse of the Law that when God sanctifieth the same to them he doth not thereby take away their naturall evill or their Curse but onely produceth by it as by an occasion a greater good What reason can be given why God should not do us all that good viz. which the Orthodox Divines attribute to his sanctified Chastisements without our sufferings which now he doth by them were there not sin and wrath and law in them Sure he could better us by easier means They are managed by Christ to our advantage and good These are Mr. Baxters words Pag. 69 70 72. Arg. 2 3 4 7 10. Let us a little examine them When we affirm that these sufferings as they befall beleevers are not from the Law as a Curse but sweet Chastisements of Gods love by which he mortifieth the flesh increaseth their self-denyall Conformeth them to Christ as well in his sufferings as in his graces and doings exerciseth and quickeneth all the gifts of his grace in them Crucifieth the world to them and them to the world and being in dispute with Papists mention many other precious ends and effects of his Chastisements Mr. Baxter Comes in with his Tush at all this Arg. 7. Cannot God do us all this good saith he without our sufferings and better us by an easier means What then Doubtles there is sin and wrath and law in these sufferings What can he mean by this but that first there is our sin as the merit of all these sufferings and secondly that God in executing them takes satisfaction from them and upon them for his law violated and his justice offended Let any man that hath not divorced his reason from him through prejudice pick out any other meaning of his words or deny his words in this meaning to be heterodox and Popish And when he saith that God doth by these sufferings produce a greater good to beleevers than their sufferings bring evill upon them Arg. 4. And that they are managed to our advantage and good what means he by this advantage and good Not our purifying and bettering c. as we hold For this as we have seen he shakes off as a singlesoled supposition with a kinde of Apage Nor any other good that his front hath yet taken boldnes to express for speaking thereof so oft in generall he would not have been so shie to speciallize it for our edification and comfort if there were any in it It must be therefore such a good and advantage that though he would have us know yet he will not speak it out plainly least his tongue and teeth should bewray him to be a professed Papist before such time as he hath Phariseelike c. depraved others that are unwary and made
whatsoever notions of naturall righteousnes and holines of God of good and evill of truth and falshood there are in naturall men without the word the same not to be ingraven into them by nature or remainders of any Law written in mans heart at his first Creation but of Gods immediate infusion by a generall and common operation of the Spirit in time distributed to some in a greater to some in a lesser measure to some scarce at all as his infinite wisedom shall see it to make most for his glory And from these Mr. Baxter seems elswhere not to dissent And how then can that be nulled and repealed or what new super-addition can there be made to that whith was never in being much less can a Covenant stand firm which was never existent If the second then contrary to his Assertion the Old Covenant in respect of our personall Obligation to it and of the dependence of our life and death upon it according to our personall obedience or disobedience to it is nulled there being now no accessible Paradise nor tree of knowledg of good and evill about which our obedience may be exercised or disobedience manifested If the third Mr. Baxter speaketh point-blank in contrariety to the Apostle in saying that the Covenant of Grace was added to the Law or Covenant of works For the Apostle giveth the priority to the Promise or Covenant of Grace and affirmeth expresly that the Law or Covenant of works was many hundred years after added to it Gal. 3. 17 19. So that we know not where to meet with Mr. Baxter to understand much less to answer him 4 He hath a mentall reservation also when he affirmeth that the Covenant of Grace was super-added as the onely possible way of life Who knows whether he pronounceth it the onely possible way to life as it hath fulture and supportance from the Law and Covenant of Works to which it is super-added and so Moses and Christ meeting together in the Mount do save a poor sinner and what the Law could not do of it self being weak through the flesh that could not fulfill it Rom. 8. 3. Now by the super-added help of Grace it doth perform Or as it is operative in it self and by it self saving by its own soveraign power without any help from the works of the Law Why doth not Mr. Baxter speak out Veritas non quaerit angulos Truth loveth to shew its face in the cleer light not hiding it self in the clouds I do no wrong to Mâ— Baxter in pressing upon him for his meaning herein every man may see in the sequell of his Tractate that grace and faith have with him very little power to justifie or save but what they borrow and fetch home in a Cardinals Hat or Monks Cowl from good works 5 And he leaves us in the dark and doubtfull what he means by the word hereby when he saith Christ doth not null the Covenant hereby it is a relative word and must have its meaning from that which is antecedent in the tenth Aphorism viz. Christs prescribing of a new Law and tendering of a new Covenant The old Covenant is not nulled hereby saith Mr. Baxter Doth he mean by the tendering of the New Covenant Or the offer of Grace This makes nothing to the end he drives at None conceiving that the offer or tendering of Grace to a sinner doth forth with free him from the Curse of the Law untill he accepts the tender Or doth he mean that the effectualizing of the Covenant of Grace to a sinner or the taking of him effectually into the Covenant of Grace doth not make void the Law to him as a Covenant of works This is indeed like himself and agreeable to his purpose He is not consistent with himself nor with the most subtle and sophisticall of the Papists whom he loves as dearly as himself if he do not so mean Nevertheles because he is willing here to pass under a vizzard I will not trouble my self to unmask him Himself will openly enough discover himself to us when the humour takes him At present let him be sullen 6 The same might I say of that which followeth The former i. e. The Covenant of works or the Law still continueth to command prohibite promise and threaten A wide dominion and large authority but who the subjects servants are over whom it is exercised he leaves as all the rest in an ambiguity is not disposed to tell us except the next words do it So that the sins even of the justified are still breaches of that Law and c. 7 But here also he determineth to passe away in the dark tells us onely what power the Law hath against the sins not against the persons of the justified that it threatens and curseth their transgressions but whether onely upon the person of Christ satisfying for them or els in their own persons also after Christ hath so satisfied is a secret that at this time and in this place we must not know from him though if he had not let it out before he would have been in pangs of travell with it untill he were delivered of it Thus have we found M. Baxter in this Aphorism fighting against the fore-mentioned Conclusion and the Scriptures that confirmed it with his sword in the scabbard How terrible the skirmish was they that felt either the point or edge of his weapon can tell you Suppose he should now unsheath it who could stand before his drawn sword This he is about to do by his Explication Mr. B. I acknowledge that this assertion is disputable and difficult and many places of Scripture are usually produced which seem to contradict it I know also that it is the judgement of learned and godly men that the Law as it is a Covenant of works is quite null and repealed in regard of the sins of believers Yea many do believe that the Covenant of works is repealed to all the the world and onely the Covenant of grace in force Against both these I maintain this assertion by the Arguments which you find under the following Position 13. And I hope notwithstanding that I extoll free grace as much and preach the Law as little in a forbidden sense as though I held the contrary opinion First he acknowledgeth his Assertion to be disputable and difficult We have found it not onely to be so but to be so of his own making by means of his clothing it with the darknes of such and so many ambiguities equivocations c. Against it he saith there is a two-fold authority usually produced the one Divine the othee humane The one he despiseth and blowes of as contemptible the other he falsifieth I am confident that he may have somewhat to say in answer to it 1 There is Divine authority or many Scriptures produced which seem to contradict his Assertion And here take we notice in how base esteem he hath the Holy Scriptures of those many Scriptures he
other sin but final unbelief and rebellion But this finall unbelief and finall rebellion hath its belly so full of other small sins threatned in the womb of their Mother Rebellion as ever a man found of the berries in the belly of a breeding Lobster And in his Appendix pag. 23. he makes finall unbelief the genus to which he attributes but three species of which the first viz. Ordinary finall unbelief is not to bee considered as species specialissima but subalterna which being looked upon as a genus hath so many species or as a species hath so many individuals under it according to Mr. Baxters doctrine as the best Arithmetician in the world saving himselfe will not dare to yeeld up upon his casting the true summe of them to satisfie Mr. Baxters censure therein as it will appear when Mr. Baxter comes to unlace and rip abroad his Justifying Faith in its largest sense Thes 70. To these I might adde many more quaintisies of the same nature breathing out themselves from the veins of this his dispute But all the rest as those already mentioned are but tarrying irons to take up the time of men that are Malè feriati rather love to play with the buttons then to close with the body and drink in the spirit of true Christianity And what other end can Mr. Baxter have in these his chippings and mincings but to shew the delicacy of his wit Whom hath he in the substance of what he speaketh his adversary We grant and teach with him 1. That there is no sin prohibited by the Gospel or New Covenant which is not a sin against the Law and Old Covenant also 2. That finall unbelief and rebellion are sins if not unpardonable as if they exceeded the bounds of Gods grace and Christs merits to pardon them yet which have no futurition of pardon shall never be pardoned in this life or in that which is to come For so hath the Lord declared his purpose in reference to these sins 3. That both the Law and the Gospel concurre in damning such persons the Law as a Covenant of Workes properly for their refusall to submit even till death it self to the will and authority of God requiring Faith in Christ for their redemption from vengeance The Gospel improperly by withholding its shelter from the Laws sentence against them because they would never be perswaded to come under the shelter of it yea more in strengthning the hand of the Law to give them the sorer punishment for the contempt of Gods grace as well as of his Authority and Justice And thus not onely the mountains of their sinnes against the Law but also Christ the Rock shall fall upon them to their greater shivering for that they dared to dash themselves against him and would not be induced to be built against all the stroakes of vengeance upon him This is the summe of all that which Mr. Baxter here in substance saies To what purpose then are his elaborate distinctions of the differing respects and aspects senses and non-senses in which Christ hath either satisfied or not satisfied for mans sins unlesse it be Balaam-like to lay a stumbling block in the way of the simpler people of Gods Israel to occasion their fall to puzzle their judgements and consciences and to make the way of grace which is in it self as discovered by the Lord Christ easie and plaine to be unto them by his evill working therein intricate perplexed and full of snares To all sober men it sufficeth to know 1. That there is no one of their sins in whatsoever consideration it be taken but hath death and hell in the tayl of it 2. That there cannot be any other way of exemption from the death hel which every such sin of theirs meriteth by any other meanes but by the redemption which is by and in the Lord Jesus 3. That the blood of Christ hath in it a perfect efficacy to cleanse from all sin whatsoever no one excepted if it be applyed to cleanse Not the very sin against the Holy Ghost which it hath not power totally to purge out from the conscience if it were truly applyed But therefore is that sin never pardoned and purged from the soul because the Spirit of God never doth nor will apply the blood of Christ to the soul that is guilty of it nor generates Faith in such a soul to run unto and wash in the Fountain of Christs blood that it may be clean Let there be any one sin named of all the sins whereof our corrupt nature is pregnant that is so much a sin against the Gospel but that the purging or not purging away of it the absolving of the conscience from it or retaining of it upon the conscience doth not wholly depend upon the application or not application of the blood of Christ to the soul and I shall acknowledge that I have seen but the Letter and was never yet acquainted with the Spirit and drift of the Scriptures Or suppose we should take a delight to contend about that which is a meer lana caprina whether it be hair or wooll that grows upon the Goats shoulders how feeble might we manifest the reasons to be which Mr. Baxter beingeth to prove that the sins against the New Covenant are not satisfied for by the sacrifice of Christs death As 1. When the Apostle affirmeth Christ to have suffered death for the redemption of the transgressions under the first Testament Heb. 9. 15. Doth it follow thence that he hath not redeemed from the transgressions against the New Covenant also If I say that Christ forgave to Peter or Paul or Mary Magdalen all their sins committed before conversion do I thereby as much as imply that he retains still and revengeth upon them all the sinnes they committed after they were converted Or should one of Mr. Baxters acquaintance say that whatsoever Mr. Baxter preached and wrote untill four or five years since was good and Orthodox doth it follow that all that he hath since preached and written is heretical and erroneous Nay the purpose of the Apostle here is to convince the Hebrews that sought in part for righteousnesse by the Law or Old Testament that it could not make its observers perfect For Christ dyed to redeem the transgressions of them that were under the first Covenant which he needed not to have done if all the Sacrifices under the Law could have purged them And thus the Morall Law is not here at all opposed to the Gospel that the Gospel or New Covenant doe purge the sinnes onely that were committed under and against the Morall Law because all the righteousnesse of the Morall Law could not purge them but the sacrifice of Christ the Mediator of the New Covenant is here opposed to the Leviticall sacrifices under the Legall Covenant What these could not the sacrifice of Christ hath expiated 2. Where he tels us that Christ could not satisfie for sinnes committed against the New Covenant
Readers with Affection and prejudice the two worst Clouds which oft bemist the judgement of them that are both pious and prudent that in seeing they do not because they would not perceive the truth for a season The Affections of many he attracted to himself by professing himself a zealous Presbyterian This pretext made not a few to look over and beyond his Contagious doctrine to behold and regard the person of the man for his unanimity with them in discipline This vizzard is at length so faln from his Face that the most do and all may see him under this profession to have been but as the Anabaptized Jesuit taking his station there from whence he thought to have most advantage to promote his Popish doctrines Concluding that under that name his Fraud would not be so easily espyed And is there now any which seeth not he would be Episcopal Presbyterian Independent for any Government for no Government helping him to drive home to the head his soul-subverting doctrines into the hearts of men Prejudice against the sacred Truth which he oppugneth he fomented by aspersing the whole Doctrine of the Gospel and the reformed Churches of Christ with the black brand of Antinonianism reserving onely the Papists and Arminians whom he followeth free of it How much he hath prevailed in sowring with the leaven of Scribes and Pharisees which is hypocrisie the vulgar sort not onely of the people but of the Ministers also with this gross imposture would be incredible if experience did not manifest it Therefore finding this Feat so soveraign to the attainment of his ends assoon as he heard of exceptions in the Press against his Aphorisms his first indeavours have been to fill with prejudice the minds of men against the both work and Author thereof dispersing thorow this Citty by his Printer that it is the Hant-shire Antinomian that excepteth so against him How irrational and malicious this his inditement against me is may appear hence that I dwell in one of the obscurest nooks of this English little world so unknown as he is famous that he could not so much as hear of my name saving by some one of his Circumforaneous Legates which having their Provinces assigned either of one or more Counties are still Circling and Compassing them first to disperse this his Mystery of iniquity with such accurateness that there may be no one that hath the repute of a pious Gentleman or Minister a stranger to it and then by their frequent visitations to examine how the Baxterian Faith thrives in each person and to hold them fixed to it These returning once in six or seven Moneths out of their Circuits to their Grand Master may possibly speak in things which they know not what they think may be plausible to him It hath not been unknown I acknowledge to some of these that I disrelished his doctrine and did hinder the embracing of it But might not this my dissenting be as properly termed Treason as Antinonianism Yet because I understand that these sparkes of false fire have no sooner faln than taken in some I am forced to Apologize somewhat and that with the more Confidence because to you that have the eyes of your understanding most clear rightly to Censure or judge that prejudice may be no hinderance to the truth What I shall speak herein must relate partly to my self partly to Mr. Br. and partly to the doctrine it self which he hath drawn into Controversie Condemning it of Antinomism 1 What I shall speak of my self shall not be with an heart and a heart the one open to let out what it listeth the other reserved to retein in secrecy what is not for advantage to the ends sought after but in plainness and simplicity I shall deliver the whole and naked truth of my judgement as before the Lord my Judge and Justifier Neither is there need of hiding and Tergiversation for I am not ashamed of the Gospel of Christ It is the power of God to salvation c. And as sweet to me as the salvation which it bringeth I therefore profess my self clear from all that is rightly Called and hath been judged by the reformed Churches and their Champions Antinonianism i. e. oppositeness to the Law These things I acknowledg my self to hold and teach 1 That Beleevers are not under the Curse of the Law as the Curse 2 Nor are the Afflictions which befall them so the Curse of the Law or revenging punishments for sinn but the fruits of the tender Love of a good and provident Father working for good to them 3 That they are not under the Law as a Covenant of works If these things be Antinonism I acknowledg my self an Antinomian yet such as onely the blindness madness and malice of men possibly may account so but that I have the Apostles and all the Protestant Churches and Writers without any exception under the same aspersion with me having all stoutly maintained all these as Gospel-truths against the false Apostles Papists and Arminians in their severall generations without the Contradiction of any except Papists and Arminians to whom Mr. Br. not without some fellowes hath lately Apostatized 4 Yet I still grant the preaching of the Law and that in its full perfection and all its terrors usefull to shake in pieces all the carnall Confidences and self righteousness of man that despairing of safety in himself he may be forced to seek it out of himself from meer Mercy in another which is Christ the Saviour 5. That the Law is still a perfect rule and directive of all morall righteousness and obedience both to beleevers and unbeleevers so that in both all variation from it is sinn but Conformity to it is regularity and obedience In respect of my judgement therefore about the Law I question not my discharge from the imputation of Antinomism among the truly wise and orthodox except to be a Christian be Antinonianism 2 As to Mr. Br it is evident that he asperseth the innocent with the Fault whereof himself is guilty He denies Christ to require under the Gospel the perfect holiness and righteousness which the Law commandeth and Consequently that it is not either our duty to perform it or our sinn to fail in it or that the Law is an adequate and Competent rule of morall obedience Because it Commands more than it is our duty to perform He saith not Christ requires it not in order to this end but simply and absolutely he requires it not If this be not Antinomianism Part. 1. p. 213. c. then Islebius himself hath been unjustly Charged with it 3 As to the matter yet remaining Charged by Mr. Br. and others with Antinomianism it may be reduced principally to four heads 1 Justification as an Immanent Act in God As actually Completed in the redemption which is by Christ in Christ both these before we beleeve 3 The absoluteness and irrespectiveness of it freely without Conditions 4 Christs satisfying for mans
Br. with so much impetuousnâ—sse and impotency to use his Mounts and Mines against them Neither can I see any ground of objecting that either of these two doctrines can in any respect dull the affections to good works sith it is confessed that they have no co-officiating with Faith to Justification 4 To Christs satisfying for sins against the Gospel as wel as against the Law I doubt not but ye see both the nicity and falsity of Mr. Brs Negation thereof The chief Doctrines of the Gospel are Grace and Gratitude Justification and Sanctification If Christ hath not satisfied for our long unbelief and contempt of the word of Faith before we beleeve and of the infirmities of our Sanctification and Thankfulness when we have beleeved or that there are sins against the New which are not sins against the Old Testament also or that the Lord Jesus is not the Mediator of the New Testament but of the Old onely or that in any of these it should be Antinomianism to dissent from Mr. Br These all are so grosse Paradoxes that your gravity and wisedom cannot without Nauseousness smell them plainly enough declaring indeed that whatsoever standeth in his way of Babel building he will curse it though never so sacred and fright them that are as feeble as fearfull with his scar crow of Antinomianism though he make himself never so ridiculous thereby to the intelligent and prudent I have no more to say upon this subject and what I have said hath been before him that being omniscient knoweth that I have spoken singly the whole truth and nothing but the Truth Neither can all the strength of my jealousy suspect any least or greatest thing besides these wherewith either Mr. Br. or any of his Disciples câ—n charge me as with Antinomianism so that I do with some confident boldnesse appeal to your judgment whether I deserve from them this imputation Inded such soul-reviving comforts have flown in upon me from the Grace of God in Christ that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth will speak and I can scarce Preach any other thing then Christ and him Crucified yet in holding forth a wounded I hold not forth a maimed Christ to the people but Christ with all his benefits in particular to Sanctification no lesse then to Justification If it be Antinomianism so to reduce all to Christ and derive all from him I must undergo the worlds condemnation for Christs sake that hath justified and will at length receive me One thing more I have to add and I shall be no further tedious It may be a Charge against me that I am too plain broad and unsparing in my words against Mr. Br. throughout this Tractate That which I have to say for my self is 1 That it ariseth not so much from my own temper as from the occasion thereof given by Mr. Br. I am ready for Christs sake to become the footstool of the meek but where I find a self exalting I cannot cry Abreoh When I see Mr. Br. usurping the Chair to passe sentence and censure upon all the Divines that have written these are learned those unstudied Divines to exalt and degrade better men than himself as they are more either concurrent with or abhorrent from his Bellarmin and Arminius I cannot I dare not use words that might strengthen but rather vilifie the self confidence and arrogance of the man So when the Wolf comes in sheeps clothing to devour when under the profession of a Protestant and Presbyterian Divine he vends his Popish and Arminian under the name of Protestant Tenets dissembling his confederacy with the enemies thereof Si natura negat facit indignatio versum The view of such hypocrisy is enough to make a sheep a Satyrist Had I been to deal with a Papist or Arminian that had discovered themselves unmasked I should have spoken in another Dialect 2 It sprang from other mens yea Ministers too much admiration and almost adoration of him when from all parts there was such Concurse in a way of Pilgrimage to him to blesse him or be blessed by him and the admirers returned to the deceiving of others with no lesse applaus and triumph than the Turks from visiting the shrine of their Mahomet at Mecha It was requisite to discover whether he were a God or an Idol to whom such honour was presented 3 I have herein Christ and his Apostles my leaders from whom though we seldome heare a course word against any other sort of men yea of sinners yet when they speak against Impostors and Heretikes specially such as bring their own works and righteousnesse to Justification they so speak as if they were made up of bitternesse and invectives Ye hypocrites sowred with the leaven and whose doctrine is the doctrine of hypocrisy Mat. 16. 3. 6. 12. Ye Serpents a Generation of Vipers how can ye escape the judgment of Hell Mat. 23. 33. Wo unto you wo unto you Scribes and Pharisees hypocrites for ye shut up the Kingdom of God against men ye neither go in your selves nor suffer them that would to enter c. Mat. 23. 14 15 c. Children of hell blind guides fools and blind whited Sepulchres ver 15 16 17 27. The Publicans are justified rather then you enter into the Kingdome before you Lu. 18. 14. Ma. 21. 31. More joy is in Heaven for one sinner repenting than 99 such c. Lu. 15. 7. False brethren Gal. 2. 4. Subverters of souls Acts 15. 24. Grievous Wolves not sparing the flocke Acts 20. 29. False Apostles deceitfull workers transforming themselves into the Apostles of Christ Satans Ministers transformed into Ministers of Righteousness as Satan transformed himself into an Angel of light 2 Cor. 11. 13 14 15. Doggs evil workers the Concision Phil. 3. 2. Let them be accursed Gal. 1. 8. I would they were cut off Gal. 5. 12. with many other the like passages It savours not of the spirit and zeal of Christ and his Apostles not to speak home to this kind of men above the rest But if I have not fully proved Mr Brs principles and doctrines to be the same in substance with these false Apostles as elswhere in this Treatise so specially Part 2. Chap 19. I acknowledge my self not to understand either Saint Paul or Mr. Br. My Request now shall be such as hath equity in it that as far as ye find this Tractate Orthodox and Consonant to sound Doctrine ye will be pleased to grant it and the Author of it your Patronage and prayers for a blessing upon it and where ye see it otherwise to vouchsafe to its Author your Admonition not suffering him to stray whom charity binds you to reduce into the way This is desired as from all so from every of you by From my Lodging in Aldersgate street Decemb. 24. 1653. YOVR Humbly devoted Servant in the Lord Jesus JOHN CRANDON To the truly Vertuous and Religious Lady Margaret Hildesley of Hinton in the County of South-Hampton
cursed opinions so that we find him in stead of a Gemm bringing forth a Cockatrice-egg which if it be not destroyed in the shell will ruine himself and many others It is an infirmity that hath made impression in points lesse momentous upon some persons of great note in the Church I shall mention one Hierom in stead of the rest In his works as they are set forth by Erasmus Tom. 1. there is a Book intituled Catalogos Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum in which Hierom mentioning Tertullian and not being able to deny his falling into Montanism he thus at least minceth his fault Invidia contumeliis Clericorum Romanae Ecclesiae ad Montani dogma delapsus est saith he i e. through the envy and reproaches which he suffered from the Clergy of Rome he declined to the opinion of Montanus Erasmus in his Scholia upon these words thus writeth Vt favit Hieronimus ingenio Tertulliani c. i. e. See how Hierom favoured Tertullians wit almost excusing him for falling into the faction of the Montanists laying the fault upon the envy and reproaches of the Roman Priests So farr Erasmus He might have further added so farr he delighted in Tertullians wit that he did not only excuse him but also was carried by the pleasing stream of his wit and learning into the very dregs of Montanism as deep as Tertullian himself So shall wee finde him discovering himself at the full in his first Book against Jovinian as Erasmus himself in his Antidote prefixed thereunto doth hint but the work it self makes it notoriously plain It contents not that good Monk Father there to produce as his own all Tertullians arguments except he also delivers them for the most part in Tertullians very words so that there were not wanting such as excepted against him as a very Montanist I speak not to lessen the worth of those two ancient Writers but to manifest in these two great and sublimated Wits when the Genius of one man so conspireth with anothers as to delight abundantly it is as the Loadstone and iron to draw to follow into falshood as well as truth except there be interposed much of the spirit of grace and meeknes and so high an esteem of the Word that the mind explodes all other learning as base in comparison of it No marvail then if Mr. Baxter having immixt himself into whole troops of Schoolmen Jesuits and others of the same Scholastick train with himself hath been carried away in the crowd captive to their basest errors Some would marvail rather how there should be found in England any Divines professing antipathy to Rome applauding the very worst piece of Romes Herisies as soon as Mr. Baxter hath breathed upon and blessed it But the case is the same Mr. Baxter well knew in what water to angle that he might catch he perceived that the Doctrine of Justification for these fifty years hath been too little preached in England That since the heat of controversie betwixt us and the Papists about it abated this Doctrine sounded in few Pulpits which before sounded in all that the Pia fraus as they termed it prevailed every where a godly deceit to with-hold from the people the knowledg of the libertie which they have by Christ lest they should turn it into licentiousnesse That as this pions fraud passed from hand to hand among the Ministers many of them while they were deceiving were themselves deceived and verily thought it the right art of profitable preaching to hold out the Law and keep in the Gospel to wash the utter part of the cup and platter leaving that which is within full of guilt and corruption Hence it came to pass that the Law by many was turned to a two-fold use like the sword of Achilles to Tilephus to wound first and then to heale to cast down and to erect again to kill and make alive to damn and then to save also First it was so brandished for conviction that all men by the light and curse thereof might be compelled to see themselves under sin and condemnation and then held forth as a soveraign remedy against damnation and means of salvation such repentances for sin such degrees of contrition and reformation prescribed out of the Law which being practiced pardon of sin and eternall life must needs follow Thus man was made not only his own condemner but his own Saviour also his evill works in transgressing the Law pursuing him with vengeance and his returning by repentance to good works in strict obedience to the law restoring him to life salvation In mean while Christ was left in a corner to look upon all but without interposition of his operation or Passion Sometimes indeed much might be heard of the riches of Gods Grace of the efficacy of Christs merits to save the chief of sinners so that the people might even see the door of heaven open to them but in conclusion the Preacher as if he had been deputed to the office of the Cherubims Gen. 2. ult to keep the way of the tree of life with his flaming sword turning every way affrighted the poor soules from all hope of entring crying procul hinc procul ite prophani no prophane or unclean person hath right to meddle with this Grace No first they must have such heart-preparations purifications and prejacent qualifications before they draw neer to partake of mercy must first cleanse and cure themselves and then come to Christ afterwards must be cloathed with an inherent Righteousnesse first and then expect to be cloathed upon with a Righteousnesse imputed Such hath been and still is the Doctrine delivered in many Congregations within this Nation I neither fain nor aggravate It is that whereof my self not without griefe have been oft an ear-witnesse and that from the mouths of very zealous Ministers And I fear the Lord hath a controversie against the Ministry and will more yet obscure and vilifie many of them for their obscuring of his grace and his Christ Now when so many of them were by the tide of their own judgments moving before not a little in Mr. Baxters way no marvail if they have admitted him among themselves to hoyse the sailes and carry them hastier and further than they before had purposed specially when all the way along and thorowout his whole Treatise he deals with them as Elisha did with the Syrians telling them that he is leading them to Dothan to Hierusalem holding their eyes and wits suspended until he hath brought them into the streets of Samaria of Rome it self 2 King 6. 8 c. This I thought fit to premise of the Author the next thing promised was touching the work it self Whether we consider the matter or the artifice of it I cannot in generall otherwise give a livelier character or description thereof than in the words of Mr. Fox in his Tractate De Gratiâ gratis Justificante against Osorius and others where he gives his censure upon a book of the same
saith nothing Yet because this still leaveth sub judice litem and certain Conclusions cannot be inferred upon premisses left uncertain I should answer secondly That the Curse pronounced and inflicted upon Adam related to him not as a private but publike person For so he fell and so was he sentenced As comprehending the Elect he had the blessing of the seed of the woman but as representing those that perish so he had the Curse But touching those things which he and the other godly do suffer the learned Sadeel Adver sus humanas satisfactiones answereth this Popish Argument here proposed by Mr. Baxter out of Augustine Posset aliquis dicere saith Augustine Si propter peccatum Deus dixerit homini In sudore vultus tui edes panem tuum spinas tribulos proseret tibi terra c. Cur fideles post peccatorum remissionem eosdem dolores patiuntur Respondemus saith Austin Ante remissionem esse supplicia peccatorum post remissionem esse certamina exercitationesque justorum i. e. Some one may say If for sin God said to man In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat thy bread and the earth shall bring forth to thee bryars and thorns c. Why do the beleevers after the remission of sinns suffer these sorrowes We answer saith Austin Before remission these are punishments of sinns after remission they are tryalls and exercises of the Righteous Whereunto Sadeel addeth Non sequitur si mors vitae praesentis aerumnae per se sunt peccati poenae quippe propter peccatum in mundum ingressae eas esse proptereà peccatorum paenas ipsis etiam fidelibus quibus peccata sunt propter Christum condonata i. e. It followeth not if death and the sorrows of the present life be in themselves the punishments of sinn because they entred into the world for or by means of sinn that they are therefore punishments of sinn to the very faithfull also to whom their sinns are forgiven for Christs sake But to do him a pleasure should we give him his Argument forgiving the unsoundnes of it what doth he conclude Thus much that the suspending of the rigorous execution of the sentence of the Law is the most observable immediate effect of Christs death that the redeemed of the Lord partake of By suspending the rigorous execution of the Law he means that he doth forbear an hour or a day or some short time to destroy their lives and cast their souls into hell But so that every moment they must stand in expectation of it and that to their greater torment at last as their sinns during the time of the suspension is increased Whosoever now of Gods redeemed ones receives comfort by this doctrine will I doubt not give his verdit for Mr. Baxter having so nobly and divinely resolved this question that He is a Divine indeed He tells us there be other effects of Christs death c. But he is not at leisure now to communicate them But if they have no more sweet and marrow than this let him keep them to himself we will not be inquisitive after them P. 68. B. To the second Quâ—stion The Elect before Conversion do stand in the same relation to the Law and Curse as other men though they be differenced in Gods Decree Eph. 2. 3 12. Very short yet not so sweet as short He saith it but he proves it not For the Scripture which he brings for proof doth onely declare what the Elect are by nature before conversion not what they are before God in relation to his Covenant of Grace But Mr. Baxter purposeth to speak more largely hereunto in another place which will give me occasion to enlarge my answer At present he is in travell with his answer to the third question and cannot be at rest untill he be delivered of so beautifull a Monster and thus it comes from him Bax. To the third question I confess we have here a knotty question The common judgment is that Christ hath taken away the whole Curse though not the suffering by bearing it himself and now they are onely Afflictions of Love and not punishments I do not contradict this Doctrine through affectation of singularity the Lord knoweth but through constraint of judgment and that upon these grounds following 1 It is undeniable that Christs taking the Curs upon himself did not wholly prevent the execution upon the offender Ge. 3. 7 8 10 15 16 17 18 19. 2 It is evident from the event seeing we feel part of the Curs fulfilled on us we eat in labor and sweat the earth doth bring forth thorns and brayars women bring forth their children in sorrow our native pravity is the Curs upon our souls we are sick weary full of fears sorrows and shame and at last we dye and turn to dust 3 The Scripture tells us that we all dye in Adam even that death from which we must at the Resurrection be raised by Christ 1 Co. 15. 21 22. And that death is the wages of sin Ro. 6. 23. and that the sickness and weakness and death of the godly is caused by their sins 1 Co. 11. 30 31. And if so then doubtles they are in execution of the Law though not in full rigour 4 It is manifest that our sufferings are in their own nature evils to us and the sanctifying of them to us taketh not away their naturall evil but onely produceth by it as by an occasion a greater good Doubtles so farr as it is an effect of sinn it is evill and the effect of the Law also 5 They are ascribed to Gods anger as the moderating of them is ascribed to his lâ—ve Psa 30. 5. and a thousand places more 6 They are called punishments in scripture and therefore we may call them so Lev. 26 41 43. Lam. 3. 39. 4. 6 22. Ezras 9. 13. Hos 4. 9. 12. 2. Lev. 26. 18 24. 7 The very nature of affliction is to be a loving punishment a naturall evil sanctified and so to be mixt of evil and good as it proceeds from mixt causes Therefore to say that Christ hath taken away the Curs and evill but not the sufferings is a contradiction becaus so farr as it is suffering it is to us evill and the execution of the Curs What Reason can be given why God should not do us all that good without our sufferings which now he doth by them if there were not sin and wrath and law in them Sure he could better us by easier means 8 All those Scriptures and Reasons that are brought to the contrary do prove no more but this that our afflictions are not the Rigorous execution of the Law that they are not wholly or chiefly in wrath but as the common love of God to the wicked is mixt with hatred in their sufferings and the hatred prevaileth above the love so the sufferings of the godly proceed from a mixture of Love and Anger and so have in them a mixture
Who shall lay any thing to the charge of Gods elect it is God that justifieth who is he that condemneth it is Christ that hath dyed yea rather that is risen again who sitteth at the right hand of God and maketh intercession for us Having laid down these two positions as truths undeniable that Christ hath effectually satisfied and as a perfect Mediator sits at the right hand of God making intercession for believers And that God thereupon justifieth them He now boldly challengeth earth and hell who shall charge them who shall condemn them Yea his interrogations bear the force of strong negations as if he had said None can effectually charge much less condemn them yea none dares to attempt it no not one not sin nor Satan the Lords Enemies much less the Law which is just and conformed to the will of God Collect we together now but some short notions of these Scriptures what the Holy Ghost concludeth in them and by them that believers are not under the Law that it is an apostacy from Christ from grace to put themselves in the least part under the Law as a Covenant of works that they are dead to the Law that the Law is dead to them that they are delivered from the Law are no more under it were servants to it but are now free from it there is no Law against them that it is done away from having any domination over them that they are departed from the Lawes terrours and come to the Gospels celestial previledges are not under the Covenant of Works but under the Covenant of Grace have the originall of their present condition not from Sinai but from the supernall Hierusalem are sons not of the bond-woman but of the free that there is none that can condemn them none that can justly say any thing to their charge Let any man now that beleiveth there is a Holy Ghost and that the Holy Ghost speaketh in the Scriptures judge whether iâ— be possible for the wisedom of the Holy Ghost himself which is infinite to give his testimony more fully cleerly or plainly to this assertion that believers are not under the cursing power of the Law or under the Law as a Covenant of works whether this truth hath not from these testimonies of Scripture a sufficient fortification raised about it against all Jesuits and Devils Yet Mr. Baxter with horn and hoof tooth and nail assaults it partly by secret minings and partly by open batteries to subvert it I shall hold out his slights in his owne words B. Thes 11. Not that Christ doth absolutely null or repeal the old Covenant hereby viz. by constituting a New Covenant Thes 10. But he superaddeth this as the onely possible way of life The former still continueth to command prohibite promise and threaten so that the sins even of the Justified are still breaches of that Law and are threatened and cursed thereby This is his first plea his dispute in generall against the before proved Assertion The Aphorism consisteth of meer obscurities ambiguities equivocations and mentall reservations in words and phrases wherein the Aphorist hides himself that he may smite and not be smitten speaking in words of a double and doubtfull sense that he may beguile the unwary in the sense wherein he would be understood that he may deceive and yet in case that by them which are wise and wary he be called ad partes to answer for his fallacious subtlety he might fly for shelter to the other sense that he might not appear to be a deceiver And first the word nulling yea the phrase absolutely nulling is ambiguous equivocall and fallacious A thing a law a covenant may be said to be nulled i. e. made void or none either as to its essence and being or as to its power and operation yea to be absolutely nulled in some operations though absolutely in force in other Null as to such ends or persons though in its perfect validity to other But when Mr. Baxter saith absolutely null he would be taken in another sense then he dares to avouch in the sense that the words do most litterally and gramatically import viz. the whole and absolute nulling of it not onely to some but to all operations ends and persons yea not onely to its operation but to its being also For so much that distinguishing word absolutely insinuateth viz. in contra-distinction to secundum quid that it is nulled not as to this or that purpose in this or another respect but absolutely simply wholly from having any more operation or being And this equivocation of his serves him to three ends 1 To leave a secret accusation and odium among the people upon the Orthodox Divines against whom his dispute bendeth that they deny both the power and being of the Law of God and hold that it is become useless and abrogated so that the people of God must be no more acquainted with it And this is a tacit slander for who among them ever taught such things 2 To lay open to himself a wide field for a luxuriating and extravagant disputation to affirm or deny confirm or confute any thing about the present state of the Law knowing that what is incompetent to what he asserteth in one sense will be enough competent in another and he doubts not while he is thus circling and roving some pur-blind ones will be taken in his snare if none els yet at least such as are made to be taken 2 Pet. 2. 12. 3 That if his words come to a strict examination how little of simplicity and truth how much of doublenes and falshood is couched in them he may not want a place of retreat his meaning forsooth was but so and so and there is a fault in them that mistake him 2 The same might I say of the word repeal which he useth But because he repeats it again in the Explication of this Aphorism affirming that there are godly and learned men that hold the repealing of the first Covenant c. I shall there speak what els might be here not unfitly spoken 3 No less ambiguous is it what he will have us to understand by the Old Covenant which he affirms not to be nulled but to have the New Covenant super-added to it at least to what sense thereof he will stand Whether he meaneth 1 The Law of nature not sounded in the ear but written in the heart of man at his Creation Doe and live Sin and dye Or 2 That Covenant expressed in the word about a positive Command of not eating of the Tree of knowledge of good and evill Eat and dye and consequently Abstein and live Or 3 The Covenant of the Law written in stones upon Mount Sinai If the first Mr. Baxter himself sometimes declares his doubting whether there were such a Law with a clear impression of its penalty ever created and imprinted in mans soul And there are not wanting some among the most profound and Classicall Divines which hold that
was not executed on him This is a clear but an intolerable consequence 6 Scripture plainly teacheth that all men even the Elect are under the Law till they believe and enter into the Covenant of the Gospel Therefore it is said Jo. 3. 18. He that beleeveth not is condemned already and the wrath of God abideth on him ver 36. And we are said to believe for remission of sins Acts 2. 38. Mark 1. 4. Luke 24. 47. Acts 10. 43. 3. 19. which shew that sin is not before remitted and consequently the Law not repealed but suspended and left to the dispose of the redeemer Els how could the redeemed be the children of wrath Eph. 2. 3. The circumcised are debtors to the whole Law Gal. 5. 3 4. And Christ is become of no effect to them but they that are led by the Spirit are not under the Law and against such there is no Law Gal. 5. 18 23. The Scripture hath concluded all under sin and so far under the Law no doubt that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to them that beleeve Gal. 3. 22. We are under the Law when Christ doth redeem us Gal. 4. 5. See also Ja. 2. 9 10. 1 Tim. 18. 1 Cor. 15. 56. Gal. 3. 19 20 21. Therefore our deliverance is conditionally from the curse of the Law viz. if we we will obey the Gospel And this deliverance together with the abrogation of the Ceremoniall Law is it which is so oft mentioned as a privilege of believers and an effect of the blood of Christ Which deliverance from the curse is yet more full when we perform the conditions of our freedom And then we are said to be dead to the Law Rom. 7. 4. and the obligation to punishment dead as to us ver 6. but not the Law void or dead of it self 7 Lastly all the Scriptures and Arguments p. 60 61. which prove that afflictions are punishments do prove also that the Law is not repealed For no man can suffer for breaking a repealed Law nor by the threats of a repealed Law yet I know that this Covenant of works continueth not to the same ends and uses as before nor is it so to be preached or used We must neither take that Covenant as a way to life as if now we must get our salvation by fulfilling its conditions nor must we look on its Curse as lying on us remediless Alas for the conscience of this man I know saith he that this Covenant of works continueth not c. yet against knowledg and against conscience will he not only teach the contrary but with all Jesuiticall arts labour to screw it into the judgments of men that are more Logicall then Theologicall How hath he suspended our expectation with promises that in and under the 13 Thesis he would bring his Reasonâ— to prove 1 That the Law as a Covenant of works is not become null and void to believers p. 79. that they are not discharged in this life from the curse of the Law p. 82. But that 2 They are under the Law as a Covenant of works still after that they are in Christ and partakers of of his Redemption Why had he not by and by proved it but that he might Bellarmine-like first busie his Reader with Sophisticall distinctions and disputes untill he had forgotten the state of the Question and then prove what he would not what he should to his forgetfull Reader For so there is not the least gry or jota in all his Arguments here that doth so much as glance upon the things that he was to prove but a labouring to confirm things which no one of those whom he makes his adversaries doth or did ever Question much less deny So that all these his Arguments are meer impostures not as he tearms them Reasons to confirm the Doctrines which he pretends to prove For first his five first Arguments or rather those three in his Thesis which in the Explication he sub-divides into five and the seventh also in the Explication tends only to prove that God hath not did not revoke repeal and extinguish the Law that it should have no more a being or remain a Law to the sons of men assoon as Adam had sinned and a promise of redemption by Christ was made Gen. 3. 15. who ever taught or thought so or what is this to prove that the Saints after they have suffered and satisfied in and by Christ the whole penalty of the Law for all their transgressions of the Law are not delivered from it as a Covenant of works Secondly the other Argument which he puts in the sixth place goes about to prove that unbelievers are under the Law And this is as potent a reason to prove believers to be under the Law as if I should thus argue Mr. Baxter is a Jesuite because Bellarmine and Maldonat were Jesuiteâ— oâ— that Mr Baxter is not the Teacher of the Church at Kederminster because Robin Hood and little John are not Teachers there This might suffice as a full Answer to his seven Arguments and to manifest his sin and shame in using them But I shall add something by way of Explication to make that which I have said plain to the weakest Not imitating Mr. Baxter who under a pretence of Explication doth in most places totally darken what was before cleer and plain First then I grant to Mr. Baxter that if Christ had from the beginning of sins entrance into the world repealed and in the proper and full sense of the word abrogated the Law those five consequences which he mentioneth in his 5 first Arguments would follow 1 That no sin but that of Adam and finall unbelief is so much as threatened with death the one being forbidden by the Law while it was in force the other by the Gospel that is still unquestionably in force Nay not any thing else in reference to the old Covenant but that of Adam should be a sin because sin is the transgression of the Law and where there is no Law there can be no transgression 2 That Christ by his satisfaction for us prevented not the wrath deserved viz. otherwise then by Adams sin but the desert of wrath 3 Neither doth he properly pardon any such sin for where no Law is there is no sin where no sin there is nothing to be pardoned 4 And then might we plead innocency or our non deserving of death except before excepted for our discharge at judgement 5 And Christ in suffering did not bear the punishment of any other sins of mankinde besides the fore-mentioned Thus we grant Mr. B. five of his Arguments without any detriment to our Caus or advantage to his Believers are as fully freed from the Law as if he had slept while he thus disputed For all these his Arguments lean upon a false supposition If the Law be so repealed and abrogated as is before supposed then and not els will these cursed Consequences take place But
that gave and as he gave his life for the world and giveth life to the world All works are excluded that this beleeving might be reserved sole entire sacred and soveraign to receive Christ to Justification and salvation Here at length I shall put a period to my Examination of this Tractate of Mr. Br. in which I have not wittingly let passe any one particle of all that he hath brought to the re-erecting of Justification by works without examining the strength and force of it which if he had done in relation to all the Arguments which the Protestant Churches and Divines have brought against it before he adventured peremptorily to pronounce their doctrine Hâ—torodox and Antinomistick and the doctrine of the Papists in this point sound and holy I am of opinion that either this work of his had never come forth to the subverting of souls and troubling of the Church or if it had so come forth it would have been a very abomination to all that are not made to be taken and trampled under foot as an accursed thing But now having begun in that manner as we see to set up this worst piece of damning Popery under a false pretence of love to the Protestant and hatred of the Popish Religion It is not to be expected but that seeing his reputation jeoparded he will per fas nefas proceed to seek the support of it though it be to the further ecclipsing of the Grace of God and honour of Christ CHAP. XXV The Conclusion of the whole Treatise demonstrating that although we with the Scriptures exclude works from Justification yet we include them as necessary to a Christian life and that no less seriously and upon more spirituall grounds than the Evill Workers that will be justified by them HAving ended at present with Mr. Baxter I have for the Conclusion of all somewhat to say that may have relation to the weak reader It is a difficult thing to remove works from justification and not to expose our selves therein to the Censure of babish ungospellized and unstablished men that we therein banish them also from the life and practice of a Christian When we teach that the righteousness of the Gospel is revealed from Faith to Faith as it is written the just shall live by Faith not by works Rom. 1. 17. And that no man is justified by the Law i. e. by the strictest observation of the righteousness of the Law Because it is written that the just shall live by Faith Gal. 3. 11. That the inheritance is by Faith not by works lest any man should boast Rom. 4. 1 2. Eph. 2. 8 9. That it is of Faith that it may be of Grace and if it be of grace then is it no more of works else grace were no more Grace But if it be of works then is it no more of grace otherwise works were no more works Rom. 4. 16. 11. 6. That whosoever seeketh justification and blessedness by works worketh himself out of it and shall never attaine it because they sought it not by Faith but as it were by the works af the Law Rom. 9. 31 32. At the sound of this doctrine the unspiritual man excepteth and flesh and bloud swelleth murmuringly Crying out What profit is it then to serve the Lord Why should I fast pray give alms shew mercy study holines and purity deny my self the pleasures of sinn any more when all these have no â—fficacy in them to justifie and save It was the Clamor of men against Paul when he preached the riches of grace abounding the more by the abounding of Mans sinns We will therefore sinn said they that Grace may abound Rom. 6. 1. And do evill that good may come Rom. 3. 8. This doctrine of Faith makes voyd the Law loosing us from all obligation to perform the holines and righteousness which the Law requireth Rom. 3. 31. And as Mr. Br. teacheth them further to reply against God tendeth to drive obedience out of the world For if it be denyed that man can merit happiness by his own righteousness he will cease to be righteous and take the bitt in his teeth to run rebell So deep an impression hath the Covenant of works yet still in mans heart that though he be insufficient to do or to think as he ought 2 Cor. 3. 5. yet he will have Do and Live to be the issue of Life and Death still And Mr. Br. teacheth them to stopp the hole of mans insufficiency with this nayl not of the Sanctuary but of Alexander the Copper-Smith because we cannot perform legall therefore Gospel-obedience shall do the work as if work were not work when the Title of Gospel is written on it and because we cannot fullfill perfect therefore sincere obedience shall serve the Turn Hence is it that the Popish and Arminian doctrines wherewith this Book of Mr. Br. is fully fraughted takes every where so plausibly with and hath such Compleat acceptance among the multitude both of the learned and unlearned It is a doctrine not above but agreeing with the principles of Nature and the naturall man even the naturall Conscience suggesteth it to the unlearned to seek for happiness by their own righteousness And both that and the precepts of Moral Philosophy also together with the Law of Moses instruct the learned to seek for the Summum Bonum the best felicity all felicity in the way of vertue and vertuous performances Here now when any comes to them in the name of Christ holding forth to them the same doctrine it kindles in them so swiftly as fire in towe no need of the teaching of God or renewing of the Spirit Flesh and bloud of it self gives its suffrage to it An easie task have these teachers to perswade men and draw disciples after them and set them in an activeness and dexterity of practicing what they teach It is easily learned to swimm swiftly with the stream and to drop the Bowle down the hill But to teach men to live by Faith and yet to be fruitfull in good works too Not to seek justification and life by their righteousness yet to be zealous of all righteousnes and good works continually hic labor hoc opus est It is above the principles of Nature to apprehend it He must swimm against the stream and roll the Bowl against the Hill walk after the Spirit and not after the Flesh that puts it effectually into practice Yet that our Doctrine doth not let loose the reins to the flesh nor howsoever carnall sensuallists may abuse it to their Condemnation in the least degree blunt the spirits of the spirituall man to well-doing nor deny the both expediency and necessity of all good works in the life of a Christian is evident 1 Because although we exclude morall qualifications and works from officiating to Justification yet we retein and include them in and unto sanctification Our doctrine with Christs and his Apostles holds forth the Lord Jesus to every soul
Religion in so short a time so mightily grew and prevailed that so great a part of the world from so small and even despicable a beginning became so fully and so quickly seasoned with it It were a full answer I acknowledg to say It was the Lords time and he would so have it But because the Lords operations are all done in wisdom truth and righteousness an inferiour subordinate cause visible to our eies may be also alledged when the Lord had purposed to do this great work he ordained and fitted instruments for it The Ministers which he employed the first threescore years and upward about the work of Reformation were such as clave only and wholly to the word both in preaching and defending the sacred truth of the Gospel minding only Christ Jesus not seeking their own things their own greatness glory and praise but the things of Christ Denyed all other authority save Christs knew no other admitted no other Master to define and determine any thing in matters of Religion but Christ alone Therefore whether they provoked the Adversaries or were provoked by them to disputation their challenge or receiving the challenge was stil upon this condition that the Word alone must be umpire in all things Thus they had Disputes before the Emperour Charls the 5. so they offered themselves to be disputers in the Councel of Trent But still refused the authority of Aristotle and his genuine sons Thom Aquinas John Duns Scotus and the whole rabble of their followers and all the testimonies and learning of such as incompetent Judges of heavenly things Thus these holy men ploughed the Lords field with his own Heyfers and sowed it with his own seed therefore he gave so large an encrease They preached as they had commandment and commission from him only his Gospel and all and only whatsoever he had commanded them therefore according to his promise he was with them giving a blessing But if it be further demanded how it came to pass at last that there was a stop to the glorious proceedings of the success of the Ministry of the Gospel these last sixty years that we see not any further propagation of the truth but Antichrist rather regaining strength than losing and the kingdom of Christ rather declining than increasing I answer that as about that time the new sect of Loyalla the Jesuits came to some maturity who being spes ultima Romae ruentis the last subsidiary help of the Romish nodding and falling power perceived that they might seek but not find any fulture from the Scriptures to their fainting cause therefore applied themselves to the study of Aristotle the Pagan and the Schoolmen the Semi-pagans drinking into themselves their sophistry and refining it into som-what a purer Language though most of them retain a scholastical style still And being thus furnished they provoke our Divines to a dispute objecting against them that through their ignorance and illiterate sottishness they dared not to dispute scholastically therefore still cryed Scripture Scripture to hide their want of Schollarship from the eyes of men As about that time I say there were in such an operation a new kind of Antagonists against the power of the Gospel So on our part in many Churches there succeeded the former Worthies about the same time Pastors in their own eyes possibly of a more noble but in spiritual eyes of a baser mettall who to evade that scandal laid upon us by the Adversaries that we destroyed good works by our Doctrine of free Grace through Christ preached some mens inventions superstitions and traditions others meer moralities legalities or duties after the tenor of the Law scarce touching upon the strings of the Gospel to tune up the Justification Life Liberty Peace Joy and other priviledges which are by Christ And to gain to themselves an applause and opinion among men of their universal Learning assented to the forenamed Challengers to discend to them in their own Field and to traverse their Disputes about heavenly things after the rules of worldly wisedom thus basely prostituting the cause and doctrine of the Lord Christ to the censure and arbitration of Heathen Philosophers and of John Duns and other enemies to the purity of the Gospel For in trying all by their learning by the light of Reason which they have dazled and sophisticated with their rules and precepts is to make them judges of Christ and his Gospel how farr they shall stand or fall Who can deny but in stead of the former Eagles which the Church had that stil beheld the Sun of righteousnes to fetch their light from his beams we had now Owls that looked downward and pitched upon the elements and rudiments of the world and worldly learning as the Apostle terms them Col. 2. 8. to fetch light authority thence in pretence to maintain the truth but in deed and successe to betray it No marvell if in this case Christ hath with-drawn himself and his blessing from such Apologists for his Cause which plead for him with such a kind of argumentation as is worse then totall silence For what of Christ is there in such disputes when the first syllogism or its prossyllogism or a distinction diverts the question from all the lists of Divinity into Philosophy or Metaphysicks c. and not the least parcell or particle of Scripture is any more heard of through the whole disputation It is but as it falls ouâ— sometimes between two Apes that having a heap of shels cast before them which they take for nuts inconsiderately break out into a skirmish rending in pieces either the others jackets and then with tooth and nail wound either the others hides untill the weaker yeeld the victory to the stronger and the Conquerour by his victory gets nothing but shels to break his teeth not a kernell to stay his hunger So when a question in Divinity once translated and removed into Logick in this element to be tryed there is notable jangling untill one of the Antagonists that hath the stronger front and more subtle brain and clamorous voyce hath put the other to silence and then one is as wise and as great a gainer as the other For the question is adhuc sub judice where it was it was above all logicall and metaphysical notions to decâ—de it I acknowledg that in such disputes it hath much delighted me sometimes to find the sophistical fallacies of an adversary detected and shamed in a logicall way by some of our Divines Yet this in no wise either doth or should satisfie me as touching the question untill I find the true assertion confirmed â—y Scripture it self One testimony from above in this case is of more worth and weight than a thousand volumes of Arguments drawn out of worldly wisedom which is from beneath And lest I should be taken as singular in this peece of prattle as Mr. Baxter will term it I shall mention in stead of many two famous modern Writers the one speaking with
of works is repealed to all the world and the Covenant of Grace alone in force Those that hold it most probably are some Eutopians that Mr. Baxter alone and no other either man or Angel besides him have had acquaintance with or the happines to know their opinion So that Mr. Baxter might have done well to have taken a second voyage into the land of Eutopia either to have joyned with them or disputed against them upon their own happy turf and not to have troubled our unhappy Coasts with this Controversie it hath the unhappines doubtles to be pestered with so many opinionists as any Nation in the world but among all hath not such bug-bears or phrenticks that I know who maintein such an assertion But it is one of Mr. Baxters subtleties to feign such ghosts and phantasmes of men to fight against thereby taking the advantage secretly and unespyed as he hopeth to erect more cursed and monstrous assertions than all such ghosts and phantasmes as he feigneth could have devised But we cannot stop him in his Career on he posteth and Against both these imaginary opinions saith he I maintein this Assertion i. e. his 11th Thesis which we have found to be a meer fardle of equivocations ambiguities c. for explication whereof we have sought where he promised it but have found nothing but fictions imaginations and new falshoods more to obscure it Yet this peece of darknes he promiseth to maintain under the 13 posiâ—ion where we shall wait on him But in the mean while he hath a 12th Thes and an explication to intersert which we must by the way take notice of as a most noble preparative to the sublime learning which in the 13th he will deliver As for that brag wherewith he shuts up all that he hath said in the titular explication of this his 11th position I hope that I extoll free Grace as much and preach the Law as little in a forbidden sense as though I held the contrary opinion unto it I say but this If his preaching be so much better and honester than his writing we could wish him henceforth to apply himself wholly to the Pulpit not at all to the Presse And notwithstanding his brags and all his equivocations windings and fallacious argumentation we will still keep in minde the state of the question from which he seeks to avert us viz. that the Law is not nulld to beleevers but even when they are beleevers they are still under the Law as a Covenant of works This he hath promised to maintain against Scriptures and Orthodox Writers whatsoever els he speaketh and not home to this point is besides the question Attend we therefore what he hath to make this good in the next position CHAP. IX Mr. Baxters Distinctionary preparative to the Confirmation of his Assertion that beleevers are under the Law as a Covenant of works examined and all that he haeh therein manifested to be in part impertinent to the question and pertinent onely to his vain-glory in the rest to be Popish and destructive to all hope of salvation Thesis 12. BAx Therefore we must not plead the repeal of the Law for our Justification but must refer it to our surety who by the value and efficacy of his once offering and merits doth continually satisfie We assent here to his words in substance but finde Cause in the placing of them to doubt of a fallacious meaning which he hath therein 1 We do not we will not plead the repeal of the Law for our Justification But Mr. Baxter as he makes it appear by what is antecedent and following in this dispute would have us to conceive that in the not repealing of the Law is included our being under the Law as a Covenant of works Such tame fools in the lofty opinion that he hath of himself doth he account us If in the following words of the position he meant fairly he would speak plainly We must not plead the repeal of the Law for Justification c. What then but we must refer it to our surety who by the value c. Why saith he not plainly we must not plead the lawes repeal for c. but our fullfilling of it in Christ or the satisfaction which he hath once made for all the breaches of the Law which we have or shall have committed why speaks he ambiguously we must refer it to our surety what whether or when we shall be justified or to him to plead for us neglecting to seek for any ablenes to plead and give account of our hope for our selves willingly remaining uncertain of salvation all our life time And when he saith by his once offering and merits he doth continually satisfie though in a good sense it be true and good yet hath he not already actually satisfied and are not beleevers by that satisfaction actually justified we shall finde anon there was a monster conteined in the womb of these equivocall locutions In the interim let us search whether in the place of explication there be any thing spoken to explain his meaning Explication Bax. I shall here explain to you in what sense and how far the Law is in force and how far not and then prâ—ve it in and under the next head Here now he brings in a quaternion of distinctions to undermine and blow up the authority of the sacred Tâ—inity expressed in the forecited Scriptures that proves beleevers not to be under the Law as a Covenant of works and foure against three is odds Bâ—x You must here distinguish betwixt 1 The repealing of the Law and the relaxing of it 2 between a dispensation absolute and respective 3 Between the alteration of the Law and the alteration of the subjects relation to it 4 Between a discharge conditionall with a suspension of execution and a discharge absolute Parturiunt Montes What follows upon all these polite and profound distinctions many notable Conclusions doubtles Mr. Baxters nose is as right in the middle of his face since as before his disburthening himself of these distinctions But most certainly we are dull and cannot piece deeply But Mr. Baxter is no less acute than deep let us see what work he can make of it Bax. And so I resolve the question thus 1 The law of works is not abrogate or repealed but dispensed with or relaxed A dispensation is as Grotius defineth it an act of a superiour whereby the obligation of a law in force is taken away as to certain persons and things 2 This dispensation therefore is not totall or absolute but respective For 1 Though it dispense with the rigorous execution yet not with every degree of execution 2 Though the law be dispensed with as it conteineth the proper subjects of the penalty viz. the parties offending and also the circumstances of duration c. yet in regard of the meer punishment abstracted from person and circumstances it is not dispensed with For to Christ it was not dispensed with His satisfaction
which is in our selves could be more excellent than that which Christ is made to us untill this new Doctor took the Chair to teach Mysteries and by inverting and misnaming Scripture-phrase hath so taught Nevertheles it behoved Mr. Br having resolved to keep on the triple Crown upon the Popes head by stablishing justification upon works though it were to the uncrowning of Christ to reject uprightnes and to seek after inventions Eccles 7. 29. First he must hold beleevers to be under both Covenants els while he builds up one peece of Babylon he should pluck down another and give his judgment against his holines in one point while he acts the Champion for him in another and adventure with all the loss of his Cause if he keep not as strong hold-fast in the Covenant of works with the one hand as in the Covenant of grace with the other 2 He must call the Condition or means of applying Christ to us or obteining interest in his satisfaction our Righteousnes els he will not be able to evade those Scriptures which assert our Justification by faith But by this feat he thinks himself in a fit posture both to answer this and to bring in all qualifications and works that he pleaseth in a partnership with faith to justifie True will he say we are justified by Faith as a part of our righteousnes and by all other good qualifications and works as other parts of our righteousnes 3 He must call faith and works our Evangelicall righteousnes having seen in what a stinking trance some of his dirty deer brethren in their disputes have been left when they would prove that good works as works of the Law do justifie and how little better they have fared who would have them to justifie onely as works of grace having not had enough subtlety to prove them Gospel or Grace works Need had he therefore to put himself upon strong and strange inventions that himself may not stick in the same mire after them But enough in generall let us hear him deliver his own minde in particulars B. Thes 17. p. 102. As there are two Covenants with their distinct Conditions So is there a twofold Righteousnes and both of them absolutely necessary to salvation The latter member of this proposition is grounded upon the former the Thesis upon the Hypothesis As true is the latter as the former But how true is the former that there are two Covenants and that they have their distinct Conditions First when he saith there are two Covenants he meaneth two Covenants in force to the very Saints in Christ that while they are under grace to salvation they are also under the Law to the Curse and Condemnation This hath been his busines to Confirm in the former part of this Treatise and he owns it in the explication of this Thesis But this is false as in disapproving of his arguments before hath been proved They are no more under the Law who are once under grace Rom. 6. 14. 2ly Neither have the two Covenants their distinct Conditions according to Mr. Br. For Thes 4. he makes the Condition of the first Covenant Perfect Obedience or Righteousnes The same he makes here the Condition of the New Covenant viz. Faith and Obedience but both as integrant parts of our own inherent righteousnes as we have partly seen and shall be forced to see more fully in that which is to come after So that we grant him that as true as there are two Covenants with their distinct Conditions in force to the same persons so true is it that there is a twofold Righteousness and both absolutely necessary to salvation if by salvation he means Justification At falsum prius ergo posterius When he brings proofs to Confirm his assertions he may meet with a larger answer In mean while a simple Negation stands fittest in opposition to his bare affirmation That which he brings in the explication to Confirm it hath been answered over and over before Onely he tells us in the upshot that He will take it as granted To which I answer that there hath been such a generation of men still upon earth so fingerative that will needs take that which was never granted and delivered to them such is the main bulk of Mr. Brs doctrine in this book taken but never delivered to him from God or his Christ Bax. The usuall confounding of these Righteousnesses saith he doth much darken the Controversies about Justification And Mr. Br doth no less cleer the Controversie than an Ecclipse the Sun-beams He proceeds to explain what this twofold Righteousnes is so absolutely necessary to salvation Bax. The legall Righteousness saith he is not in us or consisteth not in any qualifications of our own persons or actions performed by us But it is wholly without us in Christ Thes 18. p. 103. The righteousnes of the New Covenant is the onely Condition of our interest in and enjoyment of the Righteousnes of the old c. Thes 19. p. 107. Our Evangelicall Righteousnes is not without us in Christ as our Legall Righteousnes is but consisteth in our own actions of Faith and Gospel Obedience c. Thes 20. p. 108. What there is more in any of these three positions is transcribed at large before To the 18 Thesis he annexeth in the explication a dispute against the Papists not to Confute them as adversaries to the truth for joyning mans righteousnes with Christs righteousness unto justification for herein he professeth entire Communion with them but to admonish them as his loving brethren to defend this their Conclusion of Justification by their own righteousness not under the terms of their legall but of their Evangelicall righteousness Because the legall righteousnes is unpossible but the Evangelicall righteousnes according to his carving and forming of it is easie to be fullfilled and almost unpossible to be violated Not that the Papists were wholly ignorant of this mystery untill Mr. Br here teacheth them Nay many of them had and pleaded it very artificially before he was born And himself hath learned it of them But he as the most proficient of all their disciples hath more fully improved it so that now he becomes a teacher to his very Masters and exhorts them to learn of him the pious feat and fraud of making use of this distinction yet further than ever they had the wit or grace to devise even to all matters and purposes that tend to the eluding of the word of Christ and the advantaging of the holy mother Church in her doctrine of Justification that is altogether Contradictory to the doctrine of the Scriptures upon the same Argument To the 19th 20th positions he annexeth an explication of both of these and of all that was said in the two former positions also In it we shall finde whatsoever deserveth a fuller Answer than hath been yet given to all and every of these four positions or any thing in all or any of them conteined not
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 Gospâ—l 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
put a difference betwixt mid-day and mid-night It is plain by what light by what argument It is the thing in question and none untill Mr. Br. ever held forth this assertion in these his expressions Yet it must be plain viz. because he hath said it so plain as a New world created in Mr. Br. fist he that can see what is not may see it We deny both the righteousnes which is by Christ to be a legall righteousnes and our own qualifications to be the terms and grounds upon which he is made to us Righteousnes And let the world judg whether he shew himself a Christian Teacher or an Antichristian Imposter who having promised a confirmation of his strange and before unheard of doctrine brings nothing but flourishes of words to charm fools not one argument or Scripture to satisfie the wise and conscientious Himself seeth the grosnes and palpablenes of his delusions and left his Reader should stay in his meditations upon it to see it also he hasteth to annex a fourth Conclusion very plausible to them whom he hopes to beguile wherupon as on a Cross he naileth the picture of an Antinomian to crucifie him that with this pleasant spectacle he may divert his Readers eyes from the nakednes and nothingnes of what went before to the beholding of a new object set before him To affirm therefore that our Evangelicall or New Covenant Righteousnes is in Christ and not in our selves or performed by Christ and not by our selves is such a monstrous piece of Antinomian Doctrine that no man c. ut supra Which is as much as if he had said to his Reader if upon the bare authority of my words when I have no one good Argument to prove them thou wilt not become a rank Papist I will register thee for an Antinomian and make thee out to the world such a Monster that all shall abhor thee as unsufferable With this Thunder-bolt he knows he shall shake into an Ague all those that Nicodemus-like are Disciples of Christ but secretly for fear of the Jewes Should they be suspected of the least tang of Antinomianism they should never more have a good look from the Scribes and Pharisees But he is not forth with an Antinomian whom Mr. B. so termeth If Pythagoras his transmigration of souls into new bodies were Canonicall I should conclude that the ghost of one of those ghostly Fathers of the Councell of Constance had crept into Mr. B. body They to make John Huss odious painted an ugly Devill in paper and crowned John Huss therewith when they carried him to the stake to be burned at the view whereof the people exulted in his death as if they had seen some Witch or rather young Devill burned So deals Mr. B. here with them which are truly Evangelical inures upon them the black brand of Antinomianism so to make truth in their mouth hatefull as well as the persons But is it decreed that they are all Antinomians that hold and that it is a monstrous piece of Antinomianism to hold that our Evangelicall or New Covenant righteousnes is in Christ not in our selves performed by Christ and not by our selves If so I much question whether there will be found any one save Mr. B. alone in all the Reformed Churches that are or have been but must bear the imputation of a monstrous Antinomian I will not be over confident of Socinus Arminius Grotius and their followers because I take them not for members but troublers of the Reformed Churches For my part I know no difference about this point between the Orthodâ—x and Antinomians Both consent 1 That our Gospel-righteousnes which worketh effectually to our Justification is in Christ not in our selves save by imputation 2 That our Gospel or New Covenanâ— righteousnes in reference to our sanctification is in Christ radically but in us by derivation and influence actually to sanctifie us 3 That our faith repentance obedience holines good works though flowing from Christ himself into us are the Gospel or New Covenant Righteousnes not by which we are justified but by which we are sanctified And let Mr. B. or any of his Disciples produce that Orthodox man that ever called this doctrine Antinomianism or that hath not shunned the contrary doctrine as Popish and Antichristian Yet Mr. B. finding himself bound by promise to prove many things as was said before that his fallacious dealing might not be too notorious and shamefull he chooseth one of the many leaving the rest untouched to speak something to it as he had said though not to prove it And in that which he saith there is nothing to confirm his own assertion but a meer reviling abusing abasing of them that assert the contrary under the false imputation of Antinomianism And here he comes upon the stage like Hercules Furens who in a Phrensie taking his Wife and Children to be a Lioness and her Whelps falls upon them fiercly with his Clubb and envenomed Arrows untill he had utterly destroyed them So Mr. B. in somewhat a like fit not finding reall Antinomians but making in his fancy imaginary Bug-bears and phantasms of them curseth them with Bell Book and Candle for saying that Christ hath fulfilled the conditions of the New as well as of the Old Covenant and that our Evangelical righteousnes is not in our selves but in Christ At the supposition of such assertions which none ever laid down in these terms the man is in a rage beats the wind and flings dust in the Aire cryeth Blasphemy heresie impiety and enumerates Absurdities upon absurdities arising from such doctrine all which I am not at leizure to transcribe it being all superfluous and not to the purpose but may be read at large pag. 111 112 113 of his Tractate More proper shall it be for me here to make out Mr. B. either willing or unwilling mistake herein and then all his absurdities will â—ither vanish into winde or return upon himself First then as we deny not Faith in the Lord Christ to be instrumentall to apprehend to our selves Christ for our justification and a declarative evidence to our own souls that we are actually justified by him as before hath been granted so we affirm it to be hereticall and popish doctrine which Mr. B. doth here pag. 111 deliver in asserting repentance obedience submission c. and afterward all other vertues and good works to be conditions of the New Covenant viz. by which as by our Gospel righteousnes we are and without which preceding we cannot be justified For all these in Mr. B. sense as Austin from the tenor of the Gospel saith Non precedunt justificandum sed sequuntur justificatum are not the precedents but fruits of justification 2 We affirm Repentance Obedience Charity c. and all good works which the Gospel requireth to be originally and materially the works and duties of the Law Nature and naturall conscience it self suggesting to every of us both the rest and withall in
good from him upon that subject because that although there are many who extoll the power of mans Free-will to his conversion even to the clouding of the glory of Grace that do notwithstanding hold fast the doctrine of Justification by Christ alone without any intermixture of our own righteousnesse Yet I know no one sort or sect of men that part our Justification between Gods righteousness imputed and our own inherent but that the same also about the doctrine of Free-will are wholly Popish if not Pelagian also In the bulk and body of his Explication wherein he inveigheth against those whom hee in termes of abasement calleth sublime Platonick and Plotinian Divines when as they account themselves essentially God himselfe he hath not us dissenting from him CHAP. XV. Whether men in Scriptures are said to be personally Righteous because they perform works and duties as conditions of the new Covenant ye a only for this Master Baxters reasons by which he labours to make it good examined Thesis 22. BAx page 118. In this fore-explained sense it is that men in Scripture are said to be personally Righteous and in this sense it is that the faith and duties of beleivers are said to please God viz. as they are related to the Covenant of Grace and not as they are measured by the Covenant of Works Explication Those that will not acknowledge that the Godly are called Righteous in the Scripture by reason of a personal Righteousnesse consisting in the Rectitude of their own dispositions and actions as well as in regard of their imputed Righteousnesse may be convinced from these Scriptures if they will beleive them Gen. 7. 1. and 18. 23 24. Job 17. 9. Psal 1. 5 6. and 37. 17 21. Eccles 9. 1 2. Ezek. 18. 20. 24. and 33. 12. 13. 18. Mat. 9. 13. To these he addeth as may be there read a multitude of Scriptures more which unlesse it were to better purpose it is not worthy the labour to transcribe To this he further addeth That men are sometimes called Righteous in reference to the Lawes and judgements of men I acknowledge Also in regard of some of their particular actions which are for the substance good and perhaps sometimes in a comparative sense as they are compared with the ungodly as a line lesse crooked should be called streight in comparison of one more crooked But how improper an expression that is you may easily perceive The ordinary phrase of Scripture hath more truth and aptitude then so Therefore it must needs be that men are called righteous in reference to the New Covenant onely Which is plain thus Righteousnesse is but the denomination of our actions or persons as they relate to some rule This Rule when it is the law of Man and our actions suit thereto we are then righteous before men When this rule is Gods Law it is either that of Workes or that of Grace In relation to the former there is none Righteous no not one for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God Onely in Christ who hath obeyed and satisfied wee are Righteous But if you consider our actions and persons in relation to the Rule of the New Covenant so all the regenerate are personally righteous because they all performe the conditions of this Covenant and are properly pronounced righteous thereby Neither can it be conceived how the works of beleivers should either please God or be called righteousnesse as they relate to that old Rule which doth pronounce them unrighteous hatefull and accursed All this in its substance at least might be granted to a conscientious man that meaneth as he speaketh hating all equivocations and mentall reservations For it being first granted to us what is here granted That men are called in Scripture Righteous sometimes in Regard of their imputed Righteousnesse sometimes in reference to the lawes and judgements of Men sometimes also in regard of some of their particular actions which are for their substance good and sometimes in a comparative sense as they are compared with the ungodly The 3 last of these consisting in the Conformity of persons and actions with the Lawes of God or of men though not a perfect Conformity upon this first yeelded to us we could without any prejudice to truth grant back again to such qualified men as are before mentioned that sometimes men are called personally Righteous in reference to the New Covenant i. e. in regard of their inchoat sanctification and an inherent righteousnesse flown out of Christ into them by means of their union unto Christ for which though not yet Complete and perfect in them they are à parte praestantiore termed Righteous But to Master Baxter whom we have as the wolfe by the ears prepared if we hold him to bite at our hands if we let him go to fall upon our throats or invade our face and head if we deny him what he would have to bite at us if we grant it him to improve it against Christ our head we grant nothing wee can grant nothing because in all that he speaketh he means not as he speaketh but covers under fine words fallacies and falsities First then we except against his Thesis that it is a meer fardle of Amphibologies and Equivocations That he so delivers all that he will be held to nothing For first when he saith In this fore-explained sense it is his meaning was no doubt to leave us doubtfull or at least to leave himselfe this advantage that wee should remain uncertain where to find him If we should fetch the explanation from the next Theses he might except that his meaning was of some of the more remote Theses if from the remote he would fly to the next or if wee should draw the sense from both the next and remote Theses he might evade thus that he meant not any thing that was said in any of his Theses but something in the explication of some of them And thus wee might pursue the wild-goose long enough before wee should finde her pitching Secondly When he saith Men in Scriptures are said to be personally righteous his purpose was to leave us in the like doubt whether he means the Righteousnesse of justification or the Righteousnesse of Sanctification and himselfe the like advantage to fly from the one to the other as may most further his ends Thirdly when he saith again And in this sense it is he leaves us as knowing as before what sense he meaneth himselfe hath not yet concluded what the sense shall be saving in general such a sense as upon all occasions may serve to his purposes Fourthly When he saith That the faith and duties of believers are said to please God viz. As they are related to the Covenant of Grace and not as they are measured by the Covenant of works he had a project to leave us uncertain whether by the word They and They twice used he means those beleevers or those duties and works And upon this hinge
runs the question in great part between us and the Papists whether the works make the person or the new relation of the person make his works accepted And in the Fift place no lesse ambiguity is there in the phrase Related to the Covenant of Grace not to the Covenant of works For in many respects may a person or thing be related to either Covenant and he tells us not in what respect he meaneth Now though from the whole scope of his worst we may assure our selves that he would be understood in the worh i. e. in the Popish sense in reference to all these things which he delivers in such words as may bear a manifold sense yet because the man delights to dance in the dark that he may not be yet taken wee will neither crosse his humor nor befool our selves in dancing after him untill he shall discover himself and his meaning in the light To the explication I except that it is full of extravagancies equivocations contradictions saying and gainsaying doing and undoing mentall reservations and in all of fallacious subtilties First he racks rakes together Scriptures in heaps to prove that a mans eyes are in his head not in his heeles I mean to confirm that which no rational man ever denyed viz. that sometimes men are called righteous by reason of a personal righteousnesse c. what an extravagancy is this so strongly to fortifie where there is no fear of an assault But there lurketh here a twofold fallaciousnesse and subtilty of Master Baxter 1 a trick to delude his inconsiderate readers that view his words running without any stay or stopping to consider with an opinion that he hath all the Old and New Testaments on his side in that hee can spit Scriptures so swiftly and numerously for himselfe 2. a feat to screw into the mindes of unwary men a conceit that all these Scriptures which he confides they will not examine doe hold forth justification by our own personal or inherent righteousness Which they do no more prove then a crow upon a sheeps back proves the sheep to be a crow or a red hat forced upon Master Baxters head proves him to be a Cardinal Yet this must hee mean and aim at else to use the very same words which he before used against Master Saltmarsh his Argumentation is no more to the businesse that he hath in hand then a harp to a harrow For it is not the righteousnesse of sanctification but of justification that is the subject of his dispute 2. He is liberal in his concessions grants us first that the Scripture calls men righteous sometimes in regard of their imputed righteousnesse and when they are so called in respect of their inherent righteousnesse it is sometimes in reference to the lawes and judgements of men Also sometimes in regard of some of their particular actions which are in their substance good viz. therein conformed to the law And sometimes in a comparative sense as they are compared with the wicked c. Yet with one flat contradiction recalls all again thus Therefore it must needs be that men must be called Righteous in reference to the New Covenant onely Who ever heard untill now of such a conclusion from such premisses If because we are sometimes in Scripture called righteous in regard of imputed Righteousnesse which according to Master Baxters Divinity is our legal righteousnesse and in regard of these other waies which he mentioneth none of which relateth to the New Covenant how doth it follow hence Ergo men are called righteous in reference to the New Covenant onely In this his Logick is no lesse mystical then his Divinity I can see no other ground of such an argutation in stead of an Argumentation But this Master Baxer hath granted and laid the premisses Ergo earum contrarium verum est i. e. Therefore the contrary to what he saith must needs be true But paradventure he drawes the conclusion not from those concessions but onely from the words next immediately going before viz. The ordinary phrase of Scripture hath more truth and aptitude then so Therefore c. Did he not grant that the Scriptures do call men righteous in all the former mencioned respects what is it then that he here saith The ordinary phrase of Scripture hath more truth c. Are some Scriptures more true then others And therefore doth he reject that which is affirmed by the lesse true conclude that which is affirmed by the more true Scriptures or can hee deny the Scriptures sometimes to call men righteous in the former respects No marvell if he doth so prophanely wrest and abuse the Scriptures when he takes them for such false and uncircumcised things that in his account they need also an inherent truth and righteousnesse to justifie them I should here prove that men are called Righteous not in reference to the New Covenant onely But let him first bring his proofs to confirm the contraâ—y and I stand waiting to answer him This he attempts to do in the next words Wherein wee shall find him bringing nothing else but some vain and loose propositions fallaciously and sophisticaâ—ly disposed laying them down as known principles when they are the very things in question for the most part of them yet Confirming them with no other authority than his own bare affirmation and Negation as if every paradox must be taken as sacred and undisputable when he hath and because hee hath delivered it It is plain thus saith he B. Righteousnesse is but the Denomination of our actions and persons as related to some Rule He had before said in the Explication of Thes 16. pag. 96. That Righteousness is no proper real being but a Modificatio entis the Modification of a being This he means also here in calling it the Denomination of our persons and actions as related to some Rule But what end hee hath in degrading Righteousness from the honour of a positive reall being more then other virtues I do but yet kenn at a distance and not fully comprehend This wee clearly see that he takes the chair and challengeth to himself a Magisterial power to create and destroy what his Cap thinks fit in Philosophy Logick and Divinity A famous Doctor long versed in more sublime and profound studies and by means thereof having let slip some of the poor elementary rules of Grammar having once by a mistake broken Priscians head being admonished thereof is said in great haste to have answered He would make a New Grammar that should conform to the incongruity of his words seeing his words were unconform to the congruity of Grammar Such is the animosity of Mr. Baxter where his opinions agree not with the rules of Philosophy or Divinity there he damns and annihilates the old and with the breath of his mouth creates a new Philosophy and Divinity that shall be subservient to his opinions and so God-like Diruit aedificat mutat quadrata rotundis This he doth
here in defining or describing righteousness denying it a positive and reall being herein puffing off all the Classicall Philosophers and Divines Philosophers for Aristotle affirmeth that all Philosophers call Righteousnesse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Such an habit by which men are apt to practise just things and by which they act and will just things And to them he gives also his assent calling it further 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not onely a virtue but a perfect virtue citing and approving that Proverbial verse 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That all or every vertue is complexively or comprehensively in Righteousness Yea the most perfect virtue 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and again it is saith he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the most excellent of virtues 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not a part of virtue but virtue in the whole So speakes he of Righteousness in the general and as in the next Chapters he distributes it into its specials he makes virtue the general of those several Righteousnesses In the same manner the choicest of all the learned and Orthodox Divines that I have met with make Righteousness thus taken in its largest sense to sound and to bee one and the same thing with virtue it self Some call it bonitatem probitatem integritatem goodnesse honesty and integrity others rectitudinem virtutis the uprightnesse or rectitude of Virtue defining its specials by Virtue when they assign the next and immediate genus by habitus when they assign the remote genus And are not Virtues and either naturall morall or infused Habits Positive and Reall Beings Must all other Philosophers and Divines vanish to nothing when Mr. Baxter comes with his Denominations Modifications or rather Noddifications Neverthelesse though we deny to him that Righteousnesse is but a bare Denomination or dead notion yet we grant to him that true righteousness both of Mens Actions and persons must relate to some rule What will follow hence B. This Rule when it is the law of Man and our actions suit thereto we are then Righteous before men True and yet latet anguis in herba under this truth there lurketh a fraudulent falshood Mr. Baxter hath his restrictions to promote but not to prevent a falshood The thing that he pretends to prove is That men are called Righteous in Scripture in reference to the New Covenant onely There he finds the word onely to make a falshood Here he cannot find it will not finde it for if it bee brought in place it will reprove him of falshood to all men Is it for mens actions suiting to the Lawes of men onely that they are called in Scripture righteous before men He would be so understood for if it be not onely for this if at all for their outward and appearing conformity to the Law of God they are called Righteous before or in the account of men his conclusion is destroyed by this prop which he brings to sustain it And yet he dares not to say onely for this they are called Righteous before men For he knoweth whole streames of Scriptures would bee brought â—o confute so bold an assertion But he proceedeth B. When this Rule is Gods Law it is either that of Workes or that of Grace In relation to the former there is none righteous no not one c. ut supra This and that which followeth is all sophisticall fallacious and catching First the distinction which he here maketh of the Law of God that it is either the Law of Works or Law of Grace is somewhat a strange phrase to chaste ears that desire to hear Scripture Doctrines delivered in Scripture termes that oppose Grace to the Law and are not wont to call it a Law Secondly it is contrary to Mr. Baxters doctrine and Gospel for howsoever he in words talketh of a two-fold Covenant of Works and of Grace to beguile such as desire to be beguiled yet really hee labours to bring all under a Covenant of Works making mans own righteousnesse the condition of both so altering the name but retaining the nature and power of the first Covenant still as I have before evinced from his disputes and himself will in the following part of his book discover more fully 3. There is an ambiguity in the word Rule he manifesteth not how farre his meaning therein in reference to the Law extendeth whether for a direction onely what is good and what is evill wherewith God will be served and what is it that offendeth him teaching us to perform the one and to shun the other Or whether also for a direction how far in what degrees the good is to be done and the evill shunned that we may bee justified and saved thereby Though we may without much difficulty smell his meaning herein yet because he reserveth it for another place clearly to expresse himselfe we also will reserve it for the same place to make him a full answer 4. He playeth his usuall game of equivocation in telling us that In relation to the former there is none righteous no not one This is not that which is concluded and nothing ought to be in the conclusion which is not also in the premises The conclusion as we have seen is that none is called righteous c. The proof here is that none is righteous These phrases much differ A man may be called righteous in reference to the rule of the Law though he be not absolutely righteous in every particular thereof to Justification and himself acknowledgeth that in many respects the Scripture calleth men righteous in reference to the Law of Works who notwithstanding shall never be justified by the Law of Works as a little before in this Explication we have seen Concerning the Righteousnesse which is by the Law I was blamelesse saith the Apostle Phil. 3. 6. And I have lived in all good Conscience unto this day Act. 23. 1. Lo even while Paul was yet a Saul a hater a persecuter of the Gospel Righteousnesse yet he is termed and called Righteous blamelesly Righteous conscientiously righteous in relation to the Law of Works Or when Judah saith of Tamar She is or Saul of David Thou art more righteous then I and Solomon of Joab Two men more righteous then himself Gen. 38. 26. 1 Sam. 24. 17. 1 Kings 2. 32. Were these here called Righteous in reference to the righteousness of the Gospell and not of the Law Or when the Lord by his Prophet calls them righteous which turned from their righteousnesse and perished in and for their wickednesse Ezek. 3. 20 21. and 18. 20 24 26. and 33. 12 13 18. was it an Evangelical or a legal Righteousnesse that gave them the denomination of Righteous persons When Isaiah calls all his all the peoples Righteousnes menstruous or filthy Raggeâ— and Paul his Righteousnesse Dung Isa 64. 6. Phi. 3. 9. yet both such as gave them the denomination of Righteous men Mr. Baxter himself will not say that these were the righteousness of the New Covenant I could
the rule of the Gospel and if we draw his reasoning into a syllogism it runs thus All that perform the conditions which the Gospel or New Covenant prescribe unto Justification are personally righteous thereby and properly so called But all the Regenerate perform the conditions which the Gospel or New Covenant prescribe unto Justification Ergo All the Regenerate are personally righteous and properly so called thereby If Mr. Baxter saith not this either he saith nothing or I understand nothing of what he saith But if this be his meaning then as to his Proposition or Major 1. I except against the ambiguity of the termes they want explication What he means by conditions I know not for if wee grant one yet shall wee grant but one Gospel condition of Justification viz. Faith in Christ Jesus When therefore he puts the plural number for the singular untill he shall certifie us what he meaneth we must leave him uncerta in what wee will answer Again it is doubtful what he meaneth by personally Righteous if he mean thereby the same thing with that which our Divines call inherently Righteous and put in opposition to imputed righteousnesse we deny the proposition as false and Popish But if he means by personal righteousnesse the Justification of our persons by the blood of Christ apprehended by Faith we gainsay not his proposition but pronounce it to be utterly besides his purpose which is to prove a twofold righteousness one in our selves the other in Christ necessary to salvation Yet that this is not but the former is his meaning he makes evident by the word thereby i. e. by such performance And if righteous by his owne workes and performance hee needs not to step further to Christ for another righteousness to make him more then righteous exorbitantly righteous righteous in a way of supererogation He that hath justified himself needs no other Justifier Christ came not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance As to the Assumption or miner Proposition I except that it labours of the same ambiguity in the word conditions with the major so that untill hee tell us how many thousand and what conditions he meaneth I must be dumb instead of answering To both Propositions I except that there lyeth a fallacie in the word perform No living person can perform any thing so as to be justified and bee termed absolutely righteous by such performing Yet every Regenerate man doth perform that upon which he may rest confident that Christ is made of God Righteousness to him and so have his Justification evidenced to his own conscience But if Mr. Baxter will change his termes and call after the tone of Scriptures and Orthodox Writers Christ our New Covenant or New Gospel righteousness and our performings or works our legall righteousness then lo how neare I shall close with him I shall say with him that all which perform are righteous but in what sense Righteous in a proportion answering the proportion of their performings if they perform perfectly then perfectly righteous if unperfectly and sinfully then sinfully and unperfecâ—ly righteous Whatsoever else Mr. Baxter would hence elicite in doing it hee prostitutes all his integrity to sophistry and fallacies The rest hath been said and answered before in and upon the former clauses of this Explication Yet as if he had spoken all this out of Peters chair which is as free from errors as an Irish cabbin from Lice so he holds forth his golden foot triumphantly to tread on their necks as being all laid prostrate before him whosoever have since the beginning of the world said any thing contrary to this doctrine which he hath brought to light now at the end of the world Thus disdainfully exulting over them Bax. pag. 121. Two sorts among us therefore discover intolerable ignorance in this point 1. Those that commonly use and understand the words Righteous and Righteousness as they relate to the old Rule as if the godly were called righteous besides their imputed righteousnesse onely because their sanctification and good works have some unperfect agreement to the Law of works as if it were a streight line which is in one place streight and in another crooked much lesse that which is in every place crooked in some degree I have been sorry to hear many learned Teachers speak thus In these words wee finde first gross contradiction whom he accuseth in one breath of intollerable ignorance in the next breath he applaudes to be learned Teachers If intollerably ignorant how learned Teachers If learned Teachers how intollerably ignorant Doth hee not contradict himself unlesse hee will thus solve it That in comparison with others they are learned Teachers but as compared with himself they are intollerably ignorant This indeed is implyed in the next words compassing the learned Teachers I have been sorry to hear many learned Teachers speak Others that were taken for learned saw no infirmity in them But I have been sorry to take notice of their nakedness and babishness in learning So doth the light of Moon and Starres vanish before the Sunne Let us next take notice whom hee calleth intollerably ignorant and for what 1. Those that commonly use and understand the words c. ut suprà The Crab-fish cannot will not cease to goe fideling and crooked though his damme intreate him to take streight steps Can Mr. Baxter in a case of this nature deale simply and sincerely Shall we conclude because hee saith it that many intollerably ignorant learned Teachers have said and maintained that the Godly are in Scriptures called Righteous besides their imputed righteousness Onely because their Sanctification and good works have some imperfect agreement to the Law of works Credat Judaeus Apelles or Quaerat peregrinum I am too much acquainted with his fallacies and falsifications to beleeve it It were a mâ—er contradiction for how that should bee called Sanctification which hath onely some imperfect agreement with the Law of Works I see not I never met with that man that hath professed himself to have seen We doe not place Sanctification in some outside conformity of the utter man and his visible works onely to the Letter of the Law but in the actuall infusion of the Holynesse and Righteousnesse of the Law into mans heart working a reall change of the whole man from the image of Satan unto the image of God Whom the Lord Jesus hath justified and by his blood reconciled to God so changing their relations Them also he sanctifieth by his Spirit and reformes to the image of God by the alteration of their qualities which though it be but inchoate and unperfect at the first yet is it more and more consummate and perfited untill the day of the Lord Christ So that here is not onely the Law without to rule and direct but the holynesse and righteousness of the Law and Christ by his Spirit as the root thereof wrought by Gospel grace in the heart and diffused through the whole life
and the same conformed not onely to the Law but the Gospel also as before hath been mentioned In respect of this sanctification though yet but unperfect wee indeed affirme the godly to bee sometimes called Righteous yet not righteous to Justification but in regard of the life of Righteousnesse new begotten and inherent in them But it is observable how subtlely he slanders the Orthodox Teachers with a fault which is his not theirs how hee would condemn them for men attributing too much to the Law and Workes because they call those virtues and good works which the Law commandeth a righteousnesse with which the godly do serve the Lord in and through Christ Jesus When himsel◠affirmes the same to be the very Righteousnesse by which they are justified For if he be demanded whether the personall Righteousnesse which he contendeth to bee necessary and effectual to Justification ought not to have at least some unperfect agreement to the Law of God he answers affirmatively and fights strongly for it in the sequele of this Treatise Let him be demanded whether any other supposed Righteousnesse that the Law command not can be our personal righteousnesse to justifie us This he◠denyeth What then is the difference betwixt him and them This onely that they will not say with him that his righteousnesse so unperfect as hee here termes it and which in the las◠words of the former Section he pronounced unrighteous hatefull and accursed is the personall righteousnesse by whic◠men are justified before God If you ask how such workes should justifie being so unrighteous and accursed yes saith he as God hath appointed them to be the conditions of the New Covenant the performance whereof justifieth and maketh us personally righteous before God Here now is a heavenly Gospel Such conditions and such a justification if the one bee accursed much more the other And where is Gods Righteousness if hee will not justifie but upon accursed conditions Those that will not have not consented to this doctrine of his he calls intolerably ignorant Let him now name any one either Divine or understanding Christian in any of the Churches that have shook off Popery and not suckt it back again consenting with him in this doctrine else it is not his humility that is discovered in calling all the godly and learned that are or have been in any of the Churches of Christ intolerably ignorant Satis pro imperio enough Magisterially out of doubt What he talks of the streight crooked line hath its dependence onely upon the fallacious definition which hee before gave of Righteousness making it a mear empty notion not a vertue or gif of Gods grace which definition falling this comparison fals with it For if we grant unto Righteousness a real being Master Baxter himself will not deny but as one sparke of fire under a vast heap of ashes is as true and real fire as if no ashes were there so one spark of righteousness I mean living Righteousness under a whole body of infirmities is as true and truly Righteousness as if no infirmities were there And if God vouchsafe to call a man righteous in reference to that poor pittance of Righteousness rather than unrighteous for the whole mass of his corruptions what art thou O man that repliest against God is thine eye evil because he is good B. Most they say to maintain it is in this simple objection If we are called holy because of an unperfect holinesse then why not Righteous because of an imperfect righteousnesse Answ Holinesse signifieth no more but a dedication to God either by separation onely or by qualifying the subject first with an aptitude to its Divine employment and then separating or devoting it as in our sanctification Now a person imperfectly so qualified is yet truly and really so qualified And therefore may truly be called Holy so farre But Righteousnesse signifying a conformity to the rule and a conformity with a quatenus an imperfect rectitude being not a true conformity or rectitude at all because the denomination is of the whole action or person and not of a certain part or respect therefore imperfect Righteousnesse is not Righteousnesse but unrighteousnesse It is a contradiction in adjecto Object But is our personal Righteousnesse perfect as it is measured by the New rule Answ Yes as I shall open to you by and by I could here heap up a multitude of orthodox writers that do call our personal Righteousnesse by the title of evangelicall as signifying from what rule it doth receive its name The words of the Poet are here verified by Master Baxter mali bonos malos esse volunt ut sint sui similes Hee is angry with the simplicity of the godly and orthodox that they are single and sincere in their disputes and would have them double and crafty like himselfe In this sense I acknowledge the Argument which he saith they bring and is most they say to maintain their assertion is a simple objection They have more to say for the maintenance thereof then all his sophistry can subvert And this argument though simple yet is not silly or weak but strong and sound against all his batteries It is drawn à pari If there be a parity between righteousnesse and holinesse to give a denomination of holy and righteous persons then the argument is firme and men may be as properly termed Righteous in reference to a righteousnesse not yet perfected as holy in reference to a holinesse not perfected at verum prius ergo Postorius The former is true therefore the latter also Master Baxter denyeth the assumption and goes about to shew a disparity in this case between righteousnesse and holinesse making holinesse to be either onely a separation of a thing or person to holy use without an infusion of a new qualification to fit him for holy employment or at least the qualification of such a person first alway and then a separating of him afterward as if usually the consecration or separation by the blood did not go before the new qualifying of him by the Spirit of Christ this indeed is not so squaring with the Popish Canon as his way But to let passe this touch onely upon that wherein he opposeth righteousnesse to holinesse Holinesse he grants to be a qualification and consequently to have a real Being This here he denyeth as before of righteousnesse A meerly fallacious evasion for righteousnesse hath no lesse a real being than holinesse as hath been before shewed And the Scripture gives its Testimony making Righteousnesse and true Holinesse as it were the two essentials of the New Man which is created after God i. e. in answer and conformity to that essentiall Righteousnesse and Holiness that are in God himselfe Eph. 4. 24. And what els doth Saint Peter mean in affirming the Saints to be Partakers of the Divine Nature but by the infusion or creating of Righteousnesse as well as Holinesse in them by which they are reformed to
explained as Christ is our legall Righteousness Explication This assertion so odious to those that understand not its grounds is yet so clear from what is sayd before that I need no more to prove it For first I have cleared before that there must be a personall righteousnesse besides that imputed in all that are justified And that secondly the fulfilling of the conditions of each Covenant is our Righteoesnesse in reference to that Covenant But Faith is the fulfilling of the conditions of the New Covenant therefore it is righteousnesse in relation to that Covenant I do not here take Faith for any our single act but as I shall afterward explain it Mr. Baxter verifieth the Proverb Noscitur ex comite qui non cognoscitur ex se The affections of the man may bee discerned by his company with whom he is as it were in a confederacy The Holy Ghost pronounceth of the Jews once degenerated into the manners and false-worships of the Canaanits that they were no more children of Abraham but that their birth was of the land of Canaan their father was an Amorite their mother a Hittite when once they had taken the pattern of their Religion from the Amorites and Hittites and diverted from the Word of God and steps of their own Progenitors Abraham Isaac and Jacob and the following Patriarcks and Prophets Ezek. 16. 3. What should we account lesse of Mr. Baxter whom wee finde deriving his Religion from the Papists and their associates the Arminians in contempt of Scriptures and the godly Divines of the Reformed Churches His former assertions That beleevers are still under the curse of the Law after they are in Christ That their Justification is but conditionall both before and after their believing That none is in any sense justified before he believeth That Justification is a continued act during onely so long as we continue fulfilling broken off when we break and repaired when we return to the fulfilling again of the supposed conditions thereof That it is not compleated before the end of our life or as Mr. Baxter out-stripping most of his Masters will have it not before the day of Judgement These all hee cannot deny to be Doctrines held in common by the Jesuits and Arminians and I could were there need alleage the very words of Bellarmine and other Jesuits and of Arminius Corvinus Episcopius Grevinchovius the Apology of the Remonstrants and in most of these even Socinus himselfe whose not onely matter but also their very words Mr. Baxter hath transcribed into our language in the delivery of those Tenents Here againe hee doth in this Thesis lay downe a conclusion before more then hinted at wherein Bellarmine Socinus and Arminius fully agree that Faith is our righteousnesse even Faith it self our Evangelicall righteousnesse viz. to Justification that it is so far from being an error to affirm it that it is a truth necessary for every Christian to know He acknowledgeth it in the Explication to be an assertion odious to some Rational men would therefore expect great strength of Arguments to prove it And what brings hee Nothing but his own Authority which to us is of equal and but of equal authority with theirs from whom hee hath taken it up It is clear saith he from what is said before No lesse clear I acknowledge then the face of a man in a mud-wall for a Looking-glasse 1. I have cleared before saith he besides that imputed that there must be also a personall Righteousness in all that are justified This is not denyed that there must bee such a personall Righteousnesse but that where it is it is there proper and effectuall to Justification is no better cleared then hath been said How the second thing was before cleared by him I referre to that which hath been said of both sides about it If the casting of dust and dirt into the eyes may be properly called clearing of them in this and in no other sense doe I acknowledge the thing to bee cleared by what Mr. Baxter hath before said Where he laies down this caution I doe not here take Faith for any one single act but as I shall afterward explain it he might have spared the labour to tell us so For wee see what himself seeth that so to take it would bee a ruinating blow to the most of the foregoing and following doctrines about Justification conteined in this his book But he goeth forward thus B. Quaest In what sense is then Faith said to be imputed to us for Righteousnesse if it be our Righteousnesse it self Answ Plainly thus Man is become unrighteous by breaking the Law of Righteousnesse that was given him Christ fully satisfieth for this transgression and buyeth the prisoners into his own hands and maketh with them a New Covenant That whosoever will accept of him and beleeve in him who hath thus satisfied it shall be as effectuall for their Justification as if they had fulfilled the Law of Works themselves A Tenant forfeiteth his Lease to his Landlord by not paying his Rent he runnes deep in debt to him and is disabled to pay him any more Rent for the future Whereupon he is put out of his house and cast into prison till he pay the debt His Landlords sonne payeth it for him taketh him out of prison and putteth him in his house again as his Tenant having purchâ—sed house and all to himself He maketh him a new Lease in this Tenor that paying but a Pepper-corn yearly to him he shall be acquit both from his debt and from all other Rent for the future which by his old Lease was to be payed Yet doth he not cancell the old Lease but keepeth it in his hands to put it in suit against the Tenant if he should be so foolish as to deny the payment of the pepper-corn In this case the payment of the grain of pepper is imputed to the tenant as if he had payed the rent of the old Lease Yet this imputation doth not extoll the pepper corn nor vilifie the benefit of his benefactor whoredeemed him Nor can it be sayd that the purchase did onely serve to advance the value and efficacy of that graine of pepper But thus a personall Rent must be payd for the testification of his homage He was never redemeed to be independent and his own Land-lord and Master The old Rent he cannot pay His new Land-lords clemency is such that he hath resolved this grain shall serve the turn Doe I need to apply this to the present case or cannot every man apply it Even so is our Evangelicall Righteousness or Faith imputed to us for as real Righteousnes as perfect obedience Two things are considerable in the debt of Righteousness The value and the personall performance and 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 value of our Faith is not so imputed But because there must be some personal
the natural righteousnesse which it prescribeth shall be effectual and of necessary use to mans justification This indeed were an intolerable absurdity for one of us that have our stations here below under Christ to bee regulated by his doctrine to utter But for Mâ—ster Baxter that hath soared upward in his Aenigmatical and Metaphysical learning unto the sphere of Saturn high above the Sunne of righteousnesse and his light it is no absurdity to deliver it It is but the language of Rome that the righteousnesse of the moral law must under the Gospel still justifie us as when we were perfect in Adam though then in him we could but now we cannot perform it And why so not because Christ hath declared by his word that he will so have it but because the holy Mother Church that hath the power to make the word of Christ to dance into all formes and senses after her interpretations hath so decreed If this be Mr. Baxters meaning that it appears to him to be a plain truth why doth he not make it plain to us that we may see it with him but onely saith it as a cathedral doctor without adding illustration or confirmation to it 3. What he meaneth by that which he next saith viz. and it is so continued in the sense before expressed is not plain to me where this sense is expressed whetheâ— in the former part of this answer then it must be continued by Christ to be the preceptive part of the Covenant of works still or in the question and so it is continued by Christ to be the preceptive paâ—t of the New Covenant or in some one or more passages of the foregoing part of this his treatise so we shall be still uncertain of the sense because we câ—nnot tell and he doth not tell us where it is expressed And for us to seek after a man in his sense who wilfully hides himselfe and his sense in the darke that wee may not finde them were but a senseless peece oâ— wâ—rke especially when wee know it will nothing better our senses in case we should bee so luckie as to finde his I should ghess that hee means the sense expressed in the former part of this answer and so it will be examined in that which hee addeth in his second Answer viz. 2. That the moral Law doth therefore so continue c. as before What else should he mean in saying it doth continue but that as he had said in the former clause of the first answer viz. to be the preceptive part of the Covenant of workes or why doth he say it doth therefore so continue but that his therefore bids us to fetch the cause from the same answer because Christ into whose hands it is delivered hath so continued it And if so to what purpose is all this reasoning Tends it to affirm that it was possible for Christ considered either as God or as our mediator to rescind and destroy the eternal and immutable Law of naturall and eternall righteousnesse or that it would have falne to the ground with its own weight if it had not been delivered into Christs hand to sustaine it Or that it would not bee in it self the rule of Righteousnesse for ever except Christ had assumed our nature in it to give it a second birth and stablishment Or that the Morall Law had lost its power and righteousnesse when we had lost ours and so it needed no lesse then we a reparation Nay whether man had sinnâ—d or not sinned been redeemed or not redeemed the Morall Law was and is stil the same What the Psalmist saith of God Before the mountains were brought forth or ever the earth and world were formed from everlasting to everlasting thou art God Psal 90. 2 So may I say of the moral Law wheresoever it is and as farre as it is truly held forth and fully too whether by Christ or by Moses by the Old or by the New Testament by the creature by the conscience by the Philosophers Ethicks or by any other way or means whatsoever before the mountains and world were formed from everlasting to everlasting it hath been and is the perfect rule of Moral righteousness stil Neither shall it cease so to be when world and mountains are dissolved but then we shal see perfectly in the face of God himselfe what we now see in his either more or lesse perfect images be perfectly configured thereunto In the mean time evenbeleivers have this as one of their great priviledges to be free fâ—om sin and servant of Righteousnesse Ro. 6. 18. and so the Law of Righteousnesse continueth to command both beleevers and unbeleevers and the perfect obeying thereof is the duty of both and the not obeying their sinne deserving the death threatened in the Old Covenant But so that beleevers having fully done their Law in Christ and being freed from the Old Covenant though still in a sweet conjunction with the Moral Law Rom. 7. 22. have no more their hated irregularities imputed to them but fully forgiven for Christs sake Thus the Word of God and Doctrine of Christ runne smoothly and clearly why doth Mr. Baxter not finde but make whirlpooles and stoppages therein to offend and drown poor soules that cannot yet swim in the deep Good ends have streight wayes leading to them Mr. Baxters crooked windings argue him not to have a streight and upright meaning His unusefull therefore and therefore put out of joynt that which God hath so compacted as that it ought not to bee dis-joynted And if wee would know what hee aimes at in his circumlocutions to circumvent the simple in these his two first answers let us but follow him to the next and we shall in part finde it B. 3. That Jesus Christ hath further made use of the same moral Law for a direction to his subjects c. ut suprà What he saith in this his third answer to the second question of the usefulnesse of the moral Law for direction to Beleivers is granted And this is one great prerogative which Beleivers have that the moral Law which in relation to unbeleivers hath the curse of the Old Covenant as a scourge and sword annexed to it to take vengeance of them for their transgressions is to them that are in Christ a peaceable sweet and unarmed counseller But in the opening hereof Master Baxter shews himselfe to bee himself in foisting in two of his unauthentick paradoxes or falsities call them which ye will the same so finely with slight of hand interwoven in his discourse that his craft might not be easily espyed but being espyed every one that knoweth Master Baxter may know them to be from his Artifice so inserted viz. 1. That obedience to Christ in the performance of all the duties which the moral Law prescribeth is part of the condition of the New Covenant 2. That the Gospel or New Covenant doth not require of men perfect but sincere obedience onely Both
have no Sabbath under the Gospel but all holyness in dayes and difference between dayes and dayes is taken away so that to sanctifie any one day to the Lord above another is meer Wil-worship and Superstition Upon this ground they actually made use of shooting bowling and other lawful recreations upon the Lords day pronouncing it to be a use of the Liberty which Christ had purchased for them 4. They disrelished altogether that phrase of Justification by Faith as attributing somewhat to man and would that all should rather say that we are Justified by Grace or by Christ or by being found in Christ or by our union unto Christ that the praise of our Justification might be reserved whole and entire to the Grace of God in Christ alone 5. That we are justified by the Passive not the Active obedience of Christ 6. That God seeth no sinne in the justified he knows indeed when they sinne and that they have sinned but the doth not see it because themselves and it are covered under the righteousnes and cross of Christ so that the Father doth not will not see it As if the eternal God had any other eyes besides the eyes of his knowledge to see or that Gods seeing and his knowing were at least disparats and not the same thing 7. That God punisheth not sinne in his people for he seeth not sin in his people and what he seeth not that he cannot punish He hath punished it upon Christ therefore are they free from punishment 8. That whatsoever is not in precise words forbidden in the New Testament that is lawfull for a Christian to doe how strictly soever it be prohibited in the Law and Old Testament So that I have taken notice that when in disputes such and such things have been denyed to be expresly forbidden in the New Testament and that they could not finde any clear testimonies of the New Testament literally forbidding them though before they made it a case of conscience to abstain yet thenceforth notwithstanding all that is said in the Old Testament against it they have taken full liberty to commit it These things were formerly as farre as I have taken notice either all or the chief things branded with the name of Antinomianism And they that held them were called by the most Antinomists or Antinomians because either in all or most of these assertions they either did or seemed to oppose and set themselves against the Law or Old Testament In these last seven or eight years indeed wherein all the Ghosts of all the Hereticks of former Ages have been let loose from hell in full swarms to infest this Nation more then ever the Locusts did the Land of Egypt and men in wantonizing against Christ and his Truth have thought it too little to be Satans budget-bearers in some except they had their packs filled with all varieties of his hell-bred errors so that the Legion of Devils now might be found sometimes in one man which heretofore was distributed into a legion of men By means whereof many Heresies moulded together have gone under one denomination partly through ignorance and partly out of malice both all the dreames of mad Eâ—thusiâ—sts and blasphemies against the Word sometimes and sometimes the very sacred truths of the Gospel of Christ have been exposed to the hatred of the multitude under the title of Antinomianism Men ful of all subtiltie and mischief thus painting Christ in the midst of many Devils that he might be taken for one of them and the truth of his Gospel bee abandoned under the name of Heresie But as to the forementioned tenents in former times charged with Antinomianism I shall say something First those three mentioned by Sleidan as he expresseth them it is very ambiguous whether they were truths or errors Because the words by which he describes them are ambiguous and may be taken either in a good or evill sense 1. That they taught that Repentance is not to be taught out of the Decalogue It is doubtfull what his meaning is 1. Whether they denyed it to be taught simply or secundum quid either that it ought not to be thence taught at all or not to be taught thence as ordained and effectual to justification and salvation 2. It is doubtfull also what hee meanes by the Decalogue whether he means the Ten Commandements considered strictly in their own words as meer Law for so I see not how repentance can be taught properly out of the Decalogue because it commandeth perfect obedience that there may be no need of repentance or as the Doctrine of the said Decalogue is amplified and expounded in other Scriptures where we shall find indeed Repentance required in case of transgression with a promise of temporall deliverances and blessings annexed and so the teaching of Repentance out of the Law be here opposed to the teaching of it out of the Gospel and consequentially the Legall be here opposed to the Evangelical Repentance 3. Or whether his meaning be that they would not have repentance at all taught because they took it to be a meerly Legall not an Evangelical duty therefore pertaining to the administration of the Law not of the Gospel I conceive the Historian being a man singular for his moderation in all that he writes though he speaks of their opinion in the easiest words he may yet meanes that they held it in the worst sense And such have been the Antinomians in these latter times otherwise in a good sense that his words will bear this first tenet deserves not the name of Antinomianism or error To the second if his meaning be that they impugned those that preached the Law to shake the hearts of men into self-denial and to break down the proud confidence of safety and righteousnesse in themselves thereby to make way for the doctrine of Christ into them There is something indeed worthy of blame layd to their charge But if we take his words strictly as they lye viz. that they opposed them which teach that the Gospel is not to be preached untill the Law hath so convinced and shaken the conscience c. I professe my self to be an Antinomian also if this be Antinomianism For what warrant hath any Minister so to teach The commission which we receive from Christ is to preach the Gospel to every creature in all the world Mar. 16. 15. without any restriction whether they be shaken or unshaken And if we continue Law-shakers still among some people untill wee see them thereby shaken into a Palsie of selfe-despairing I know no ground we have to promise to our selves a time of preaching Gospel so long as we live And what answer can be given in such a case to Christ for following our own carnall wisdome and not his commission Neither was it one of Luthers praises pace tanti viri dixerim from the experience of Gods working upon himself which was first the laying of him prostrate by the Law under great horrors and
then reviving him with the precious comforts of the Gospel to prescribe unto God the same method or to conclude the same to bee the method of God in his operations upon all in converting them The rending whirlwind doth not alway goe before the quickening beams of the Sun of Righteousness To the third if he mean that they taught that Justification by Faith in the Gospel promises might be sound and effectuall though no sanctification but all allowed impurity of life should follow the assertion and doctrine implies a contradiction for there can be no living Faith in the promises that is not fruitfull in good works And herein they declared themselves no lesse Anti-Gospellers then Antinomians But if hee meane that without all such extream horrors of the Law a man may be truly justified by Faith in Christ notwithstanding all his former loose and impure life and so the Publicans and Harlots enter into the Kingdome of God before the self-righteous Pharisees this is not Antinomistick except Pauls doctrine also be such Rom. 4. 5. 2. As for those opinions charged in these latter times with Antinomianism by many the 1 2 and last cannot be excused Onely to give the Assertors their due whatsoever of doctrinal truths to be beleeved or of Moral duties to be practised are expressed both in the Old and New Testament they were conscientious to submit themselves thereunto yet not for the authority of the Law or Old Testament but of the New only The third can bee justly charged with Antinomianism no farther then as either the Maintainers of it were in other points Antinomists or in respect of the foundation which they laid to maintain it which was the abrogation of the Law and old Testament The Law of the Sabbath being one part therof which must stand or sink with the rest But as they denyed the lawfulness of all discrimination or difference of daies by way of Morall or Ecclesiastical or Apostolical order for the more orderly and profitable celebration of publick Assemblies and the ordinances of Christ in publick Communion calling it Will-worship and Superstition This error they drew from the Petrobusians and Anabaptists not from the Antinomians that had been before them As to other questions about the authority of the Sabbath first now of the Lords day what relation they have either to other whether the observation of them be of Natural or Positive right If of Moral and Natural right by what express authority it is altered from the last to the first day of the week If of Positive right whether it began from the Creation or from the Law given upon Mount Sinai Whether the fourth Commandement hath any thing in it Typical now vanished in Christ Or whether wholly Moral and binding for ever how far it did or did not bind precisely to a day not this day of 7 Whether it were of Moral Righteousnes or else only of Moral order Whether the holyness of the 7th be now wholly translated upon the first day of the week By what authority the observation of the seventh day ceased and of the first day of the week was instituted to succeed Whether by virtue of Christs Resurrection or by some express command of Christ and where that command is to bee found Or else by Apostolical appointment And then whether in respect of order or of the aforegoing authority of Gods Commandement about the Sabbath or else by the appointment and consent of the Churches in or after the Apostles times These and many other the like questions Mr. Baxter knoweth to have been in agitation between both the greater and the lesser Divines and Members of the Reformed Churches adhuc sub judice Lis est Onely some within the Church of England ever since a Tractate came forth upon this subject from one Dr. Bownd Anno Christi 1595. seem to fix the observation of the Lords day upon more strict grounds and to bind it to more precise termes then the other Reformed Churches beyond the seas admit or many of the solid Divines have approved But of this there is no proper occasion here given to dispute This assertion therefore any further then hath been specified I doubt not but Mr. Baxter himself will discharge of Antinomianism The 5. 7. Mr. Baxter himself will not have to be ranked among Antinomian errors confessing the former to be the judgement of many learned and godly Divines of singular esteem in the Church of God pag. 53. Ap. pag. 12. The latter hee pronounceth to be the Common Judgement viz. of Churches and Divines therefore of ignorance accused of Antinomianism pag. 68 of his Aphorisms The fourth gives us cause to accuse them of some audaciousnes in teaching the Holy Ghost to speake and pertinaciousness in binding themselves to phrases and words even to the declining of the language of the Holy Ghost in Scriptures To be justified by Faith and to bee justified by Christ or our being found in Christ being ever both in Canonical and Ecclesiastical Writings taken as Equipollent terms until in these few last years Mr. Bax. and some of his fellows irradiated from Rome and by the doctrine of Socinus and Arminius have broached another a new and unheard of interpretation of the phrases For whether we say we are justified by Faith wee were formerly understood to affirm our Justification by Christ to whom our Faith hath united us or by Christ it was understood by Christ apprehended by faith Neither manner of Locution therefore was to be rejected as opposing the other The sixth I take to be a fancy if they understand Gods seeing and knowing in generall without restriction troubling the brains of men with a strife about words without substance God seeth no sin unpardoned upon his people we acknowledge In reference to Judgement and Vengeance hee hath seen them all upon Christ and punished them upon Christ so that he no more sees sinne in beleevers to take vengeance of them for it But it were our loss and misery if God should not at all and simply see sinne in us How then should he purge it from us and us from it He is the Husbandman of his Vineyard sees and cuts out every canker from his Vines seeth and pareth off every unprofitable sprigg from the branches by meanes whereof fruitfullnesse followeth where else there must ensue barrennesse and rottennesse Some Divines therefore thus distinguish that Gods seeing of sin may be considered as either in Articulo providentiae so he seeth all sinns of all men alike to dispose of them to his glory or in Articulo Iustificationis so he seeth the sinnes onely of the unjustified Ier. 18. 23. Forget not their iniquity neither blot out their sin from thy sight but the sinnes of the justified are forgotten and blotted out of his remembrance and sight as the constant phrase of Scripture affirmeth no more to be imputed If they mean onely in this latter sense they erre not By that which hath been
Treatise what before he did but hint and whisper in a kind of darkenesse now he preacheth on the top of the house proclaiming it as the sole Soul-saving doctrine canonizing as Saints the Papists for the constant holding forth of it and Anathematizing all the Protestants Churches as Apostaticall for departing from it as by examining what followes in this his Tractate will appear For the avoiding of confusion and prevention of a voluminous prolixity into which I see my self already carried by following him Thesis after Thesis being necessitated thereby as he speaks so to examine and answer the same things often in many places I shall endeavour to reduce unto some few heads the sum of what he saith upon this Question examining that which is to the purpose and leaving the rest that is inconsideraable or impertinent to it 1 Then I shall endeavour to draw out from him the state of the Question what he holdeth and how he holds it forth to us 2 I shall examine his Arguments and Reasons by which he endeavoureth to confirme his assertion or assertions 3 I shall also examine what force there is in the Reasons which he bringeth to clear himself and his doctrine from being derogatory to the grace of God and full efficacy of Christs mediation or from all tainture of Popery Socinianism or other heresies Within this Triangle I conceive the whole fabrick of his doctrine of workes to be comprehended and in examining of these fully nothing to be left unexamined that may make for his purpose 1 The state of the Question or his assertions which he maintaineth I shall as neer as may fitly be done transcribe from him in his own words thus 1 The bare act of beleeving is not the only condition of the new Covenant but severall other duties also are part of this condition viz. of Justification For this is his meaning and if he be not so understood he is understood besides his meaning and in what he saith he saith nothing His Tractate contains Aphorisms of Justification only And the conditions of the new Covenant which tend to Illumination Sanctification Glorification c. must not be confounded with those of Justification if it were granted him that the Gospell dispenseth all or any of these upon conditions In this sense therefore he must he will be understood Thes 60. pa. 235. 2 That these duties coordinate with Faith to our Justification as conditions thereof are Repentance praying for pardon forgiving others love hearing the word consideration conviction godly sorrow knowledge of Christ assent to the truth of the Gospell subjection consent acceptance cordiall covenanting self-resigning esteeming and preferring Christ before all loving him above all sincerity perseverance affiance sincere obedience and works of love serious painfull and constant use of Gods ordinances hearing praying meditating in a word all good works i. e. all the works of Righteousnesse holinesse mercy c. which the Law requireth yet with this proviso that all these legall workes must be called not our Legall but our Gospell Righteousnesse Thes 60. p. 235 236. p. 240 241 242. Thes 73 74 p. 289. 290 291 292. 3 That the non-performance of any one of these doth hinder but it is not one or many but a concurrence of all these together in one that sufficeth to condition us unto Justification Thes 61. So that when the promise of life is made in Scripture to our beleeving in Christ or to any other inseparable concomitant of Faith you must understand it Caeteris paribus viz. that your knowledge repentance obedience good workes c. are not an inch behind your faith or in sensu composito that it is a compounded Faith hath all other vertues not only included in it but also actuated and cooperating with it for justification or else you must be shaken off unjustified yea though all the rest be in act and but one out of act Thes 61. and its Explication He saith not this indeed totidem verbis word by word But let him deny the least particle of all this to be his meaning he shall by such a denyall extremely wound if not wholly subvert his cause and yeeld it to us 4 It is not the habit of these vertues as infused from above into us but the act or work of them as set in operation by us that justifieth For so saith he of Faith it self much more implieth it of the other vertues that it is the act of faith alone as it is our act or work that justifyeth aâ—d consequentially that we are justifyed wholly by works viz. as the alone condition or causa sine qua non 5 That some of these justifying vertues or works are antecedaneous to or fore-going preparatives of some integrall parts some proper essentiall formall acts some differentiall and essentiall parts some modifications some in separable products some both parts and necessary consequents and subservient acts some necessary continuing and exercising means and lastly some separable adjuncts of Faith yet tending to the well being thereof and thus having adorned faith like the Cornish Chough with the feathers of all the best birds he sends it to scar aloft with these plumes to heaven for justification which without this borrowed help of it self it was not in a capacity to do pa. 240 241 242. In these particulars I take the whole sum of his doctrine about this Question to be comprehended He addeth indeed some lenitives here and there to mitigate and make tolerable the asperity and harshnesse of these his assertions which we shall examine among the reasons that he brings to manifest his doctrine not to be derogatory from the glory of Gods grace c. as being more proper to that then this place All the forementioned particulars may be summed up in this one That all the acts or works of all morall vertues and of all insuâ—ed Habits if he grant any such are required coordinately with faith to make up the conditio upon which we shall and without which we cannot be justifyed In opposition to this all the Protestant Churches do and still have maintained that Faith alone and the same not as it is in the consideration of a habit or vertue or as an act of ours but by way of a means or instrument as hath been before explained justifyeth without any concurrence of works with it in the act and office of justifying This assertion he endeavours to destroy and establish his own with many Arguments which we shall examine severally either after other CHAP. II. Mr. Baxters preface to his first Argument drawn from Scriptures to prove Justification by works examined and the Scriptures which the Protestant writers bring against it and Mr. Baxter would have stifled in darknesse here brought to light together with the opinion of the most eminent Protestant writers upon this Subject HIS first argument is drawn from Scriptures unto which he thus prefaceth B. 235. I desire no more of those that deny this but that
passed thorough after men are dead With hundreds more of the same kind and worth wherein it seems Mr. Baxter here would imitate them to ingratiate himself into their favour As for the residue of Mr. Baxters quotations in this place they are for the most part if not all urged in another place to prove works the condition of our glorification and future salvation and untill then I forbear to answer them But lest any in the interim should stand doubting at any of the Scritures hâ—re quoted promising either love or life or grace or glory to men thus and thus qualifyed and conceive that such qualifications are the ground and condition together with faith to in right us in that which is promised I think it fit to premonish by the way what all Protestant writers have â—maintained and cleared against the Papists that the ground of our right in such selicities promised is not the qualifications or works of the person but the new relation of the person so qualifyed his union with Christ justification and adoption before God Such promises not being made to all but to the Saints in Christ so doing I shall clear it up to you by a similitude Isaac promiseth his son Esau his blessing but bids him go a hunting and bring him venison and then in eating it he will blesse him what was that which enrighted Esau to the blessing that was the ground or condition upon which Isaac would blesse him the venison caught and dressed nothing lesse for if a 1000. others should have presented him with a 1000. pieces of venison at severall times all dressed and fitted to his appetite the blessing should have been reserved entire for Esau and they all have been sent away empty as appeareth by his dealing with Jacob presenting his made venison how agreeing so ever the dish was to the palate of the old Patriark yet he will examine thorowly who it is whether his very son Esau that brings it before he gives the blessing It was not then the venison but the sonrship yea primo-geniture of Esau that was the ground and condition of Isaacs promise to blesse him So is it also to his justifyed and adopted ones in Christ that the Lord saith Aske and ye shall have seek and ye shall finde knock and it shall be opened to you Run and ye shall obtain Overcome and ye shall be crowned Love and I will love you Be mercifull and I will be mercifull to you Humble your selves and I will lift you up and a thousand more such promises of grace as far as they hold forth spirituall and saving blessings they are the Childrens bread dispensations of God within his own family no stranger hath part in it or right to it Let the world those that are not beloved aske seek knock run fight c. the Lord may possibly out of the goodnesse of his providence infinitenesse of his wisdome and bounty of his nature reward with corporall and temporall good things their carnall and temporall endeavours but untill by the spirit of adoption they are through faith united to Christ they have no right by the new Covenant to make claim to the spirituall and saving blessings promised neither are they any otherwise to be ratifyed to any but as they were beloved of God in Christ before there were any such qualifications and motions in them as Mr. Baxter cals conditions as hath been before declared Yea suppose that Esau could not have brought the venison to his Father had been hindered or drawn aside from seeking it or seeking could not find it or finding could not have taken and brought it should the promise and purpose of Isaac to blesse him for this cause have failed He performed not the condition he shall therefore be bereaved of the blessing Nothing lesse for the generall and fundamentall ground and condition the relation of a son of the first-born son stood still fixed unto which the good will of the Father and the blessing in the Fathers purpose was entailed In like manner though a child of God fail in some of the works and qualifications which Mr. Baxter cals conditions of the new Covenant yet this makes not the promise of the Covenant or the beneficence of the Covenanter promising to be void because these are grounded so far as they are grounded out of God upon Christ our union unto Christ and new relation to God in Christ All which I doubt not shall be made manifest in its own place only what hath been said I thought fit to be said by the way for the prevention of doubts and perplexities that might ingage the weak reader before we come thither I should here have put an end to what I had to say to his first Argument drawn from Scriptures having spoken to all that in this place are quoted saving those which he brings again elsewhere for which place I have put off my examination of them But that p. 310. he comes with a new supply Lest therefore I should make another work of it there or minister occasion to any of saying that where his Argument is most fortifyed there I shun and shrink from answering I shall examine here also what force such of those Scriptures as have not been here quoted and examined have to prove justification by works and so much the rather because he tels us there that the assertion is evident from these following Scriptures B. Mat. 12. 37. By thy words thou shalt be justifyed and by thy words thou shalt be condemned Justification and Condemnation seem here by our Saviours testimony to depend upon the sinfull and blamelesse use of our tongues Ergo upon works We may grant all in our Saviours sense without advantaging Mr. Baxters cause or endammaging our own For the Lord Christ here directeth his words to those Legall Jewish Pharisaicall Justiciaries who stuck fast to the righteousnesse of the Law for justification and in zeal thereof blasphemed as in the precedent part of the Chapter upon which this dependeth is to be seen Christ and his Gospell This blasphemy Christ here reproveth and smiteth with a weapon fetcht out of their own Armory Even your own law forbids such evill words and blasphemies holding forth Justification and Condemnation not only upon condition of good and evill works but words also so that there is nothing spoken of the justification of the New but of the Old Covenant only A reprehension and commination pat to them to whom it was denounced the threat of the Law to them that refused the Gospell and were and would be under the Law But this is nothing to the justification of the new Covenant that followes the rule of the Gospell The next Scripture not contained and examined in the former sardle of quotations is B. 1 Joh. 1. 9 If we confesse our sins God is faithfull to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from our iniquities Here confession another work seems to be a condition of forgivenesse and justification
apt still to decline from his righteousnes and to close with our own if there bee not continuall working and warring against its fleshly working in this kind If wee look to that which follows all confidence in our own strength is prohibited and all dependance and relying upon Gods grace and power is commanded that wee stand alway in a trembling feare of falling and sinking through our miserable weaknesse and proneness to Apostacy and therefore keep firme and continuall hold-fast in the grace and power of God extended to us in Christ for our supportation because it is God alone that worketh in us both to will and to doe of his good pleasure and not of any worth or workes of ours moving him ver 13. Such a working out of our salvation that consisteth in working away all our owne works righteousnes as insufficient yea as destructive to it and in working up our selves by the power of God into Christ into the shelter of Gods grace for salvation wee grant to Mr. Baxter But this will not please him Yet because the Apostle as by the context is evident teacheth this and no other working for salvation here we must leave him so displeased as they are wont to be that by their owne plea destroy theire owne cause and minister matter out of their owne mouth to be judged B. Ro. 2. 7. 10. hath been before answered B. 1. Co. 9. 24. so run that ye may obtaine 2. Tim. 2. 5. If a man strive for mastâ—ries he is not crowned except he strive lawfully What this running striving or fighting is the same Apostle teacheth us by his example 2. Tim. 4. 7. 8. I have fought the good fight saith he I have finished my course what meanes he by these the next words declare I have kept the Faith henceforth c. B. 2. Tim. 2. 12. If we suffer we shall also reign with him If we deny him he also will deny us This is if in despite of all sufferings or persecutions wee stand fast in the Faith and adhere firme to Christ we shall reign with him But if for feare of persecution we deny him and fall from the Faith he also will deny us that ever wee had any true union and communion with him by faith B. 1. Tim. 6. 18. 19. Charge them that are rich c. not to trust in uncertain riches c. that they do good bee rich in good works ready to distribute willing to communicate laying up for themselves a good foundation against the time to come that they may lay hold on eternall life The Apostle heer forbids the rich to trust in or to make their uncertain riches a foundation of happines to themselves and contrariwise admonisheth them that this trashy felicity should not hinder them from laying a good foundation of their everlasting blisse in heaven He saith not as Mr. Br. abusively wresteth his words in his Append. p. 95. that they should lay their good works as a good foundation against the time to come that they may lay hold on eternall life For so should he have contradicted himself 1. Co. 3. 1â— 11. According to the grace of God given me I have laid the foundation c. For other foundation can no man lay than that is layd Jesus Christ So this exhortation is the same in substance with that of our Saviour Lay not up for your selvs treasure upon earth where moth and rust doth corrupt c. but lay up for your selves treasure in heaven where neither moth c. B. Lu. 11. 28. Blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it Amen For the word of God makes Christ our All and in us all Col. 3. 11. Search the Scriptures or the word of God sayth the same our Saviour for in them ye think to have eternall life and they are they which testifie of me not of works to have wrought out eternall life for you yet yee will not come to mee but to works and your own righteousness that ye may have life Io. 5. 39. 40. B. Mat. 25. 41. 42. Goe yee cursed into hell fire prepared for the Divell and his Angels for I was hungry and yee fed me not thirsty c. Righteous judgement For what other cause should the cursed be sentenced to the curse but for their unbeleefe and evill deeds which brought and deserved the curse Would he have them to be damned for their faith and good works The rest Scriptures have been urged and examined before Now of all these Scriptures let Mr. Br. name but two that were not prepared to his hand eyther by Bellarmine or some other Papists in their disputes against the Protestants or shew any reason why he mentions most of them having no shew of subserviency to his purpose unless he thinks them hallowed by their fingering If there bee expected a larger and fuller Answer to the Arguments which the Papists draw from any of these Scriptures I transmit to some of the many hundreds of our Divines that have answered them CHAP. VIII Arg. Mr. Baxters 7. Argument for Justification by Works examined drawne from the Tenour of the last dayes Judgement which he saith shall pass according to works And these questions discussed whether upon whom and in what respects the last sentence shall so passe according to Works A Seventh Argument which he brings to prove Justification by works is drawne from the issues upon which our future Judgement shall passe in the last day That saith he shall be according to works Therefore is this also But let him bee heard speaking his owne words B. Thesis 80. pag. 317. It is most clear in the Scripture and bâ—yond all dispute that our Actuall most proper compleat Justification at the great Judgement will be according to our works and according to what we have done in the Flesh whether good or evill which can bee no therwise than as it was the Condition of that Justification And so Christ at that great Assize will not give his bare will of Purpose as the Reason of his proceedings but as he governed by a Law so he will judge by a Law and will then give the reason of his publicke sentence from mens keeping or breaking of the conditions of his Covenant that so the mouths of all may be stopped and the equity of his Judgement may be made manifest to all and that he may there set forth his hatred to the sins and not only to the persons of the condemned and his love to the obedience and not only to the persons of the justified This also he hath from Bellarmine the other Jesuits Papists Neither is there any one besides his fourth Argument which he hath not transcribed from them and even that also is by them somewhat hammered to his use Nay from the very beginning to the end of this his Tractate all is theirs as to the matter thereof onely the translating of it into English and reducing it to his owne method
nothing c. When the Auâ—hor 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 aniâ—amque in vulnere ponit If it be an intolerable errour in this man much more in Mr. Baxter who much more vehemently and upon sligâ—â—er and slenderer grounds asserts it The Scriptures which Mr. Baxter alleâ—dgeth 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 hâ—e 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 mâ—n 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— thankâ—full 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
works are required to it viz. The fear of God hope in his mercy Love Repentance a desire to receive the Sacraments a purpose to lead a new life and keep the Commandements under this lâ—st speciall they comprize all good works whatsoever Nay so far are both parties from this Faith that Faith onely justifieth that Both teach we are justified by Works only For 5 We are justified by the Act of Faith which is a work and a Law so that if we are not justified by works Faith it self must be excluded from justifying Though we are not justified by any works i. e. by any works of the Law yet by a work of the Gospel such as Faith is we may be justified 6 Our Adversaries i. e. the Protestants consent together in this that good works are not necessary to salvation otherwise than by the necessity of their presence but that they have not any relation to salvation as merits or causes or conditions thereof c. We contrariwise say that good works are necessary to a righteous man unto salvation by way of causality or efficiency because they effect or work salvation 7 When the Apostle saith we are justified by Faith and not by Works there is to be understood a Synecdoche in the words of Paul that when he saith we are justified by Faith hee meaneth not without works but by Faith and works together so that Faith is put for Faith works of Faith 8 The good works of justified men which effect their Justification are absolutely just and in their Mode or manner perfect 9 So the perfection of our righteousnes and Justification is not from Faith but from works For Faith doth but begin Justification and afterward it hath assumed to it self Hope and Charity it doth by these perfect it 10 Good works merit without all doubt yet not by any intrinsecall vertue and worth in themselves but by vertue of Gods promise A promise made with a condition of work brings to pass that he which performs the work is said to have merited the thing promised and may challenge the reward as his debt in Law 11 The Hereticks teach that it is unpossible for a righteous man to fullfill Gods Law The Catholicks teach that it is absolutely possible for a righteous man to fullfill it by the help of Gods Grace and Spirit of Faith and Charity infused into them in their Justification 12 The contrary doctrine which denyeth Justification by works and the Merit of works is a pernicious doctrine an enemy to all good endeavours good works invites all to a licentiousness of sinning and to transgress without fear or shame what evil will he fear or what good will he not despise who thinks faith alone sufficient to righteousness 13 Though a man hath received the infusion of grace and the Spirit of Faith and Charity and is now justified yet he is under the penalty and curse of the Law still For Christ hath given and God hath taken satisfaction onely for the fault but not for the punishment so that when God hath fully pardoned the fault he may and will inflict the punishment upon the offender 14 Yea this punishment remains upon the Justified both inlife and death and after death in Purgatory 15 For the Righteous or Justified man is so under the obligation of Gods Law that except he shall fullfill it he shall not be saved 16 Because our Justification being still conditionall even after we are Justified may be somtimes lost somtimes reteined now had and then lost and after recovered yea and lost again as we do hinder or not hinder the Grace of God 17 No man can be assured of his eternall Election that he is ordeined of God to life or of his perseverance in grace to the end and consequently not of his salvation For the Scripture in express words teacheth that Salvation depends of the condition of works But no man can certainly conclude that he shall do much less persevere to do all that Christ hath Commanded 18 It cannot be that the Righteousness of Christ be imputed to us in that sense that by it we may be called and be formally righteous although it be true that Christs merits be imputed to us because God hath made them ours by donation and we may offer them to God the Father for our sinns because Christ hath taken upon him the burthen of making satisfaction for us and of reconciling us to God the Father yet the denomination of righteous persons is from the intrinsecall righteousnes in themselves 19 Though we are justified by the works which the Law commandeth yet are we not justified by them as they are works of the Law but as they are Evangelicall and works of the Gospel done in the strength of Christ and by the power of renewing grace powred upon the Elect by Christ under the Gospel 20 Love or Charity is the form of Justifying Faith so that when faith doth Justifie it justifieth by charity as its form which gives it its life and motion so that if Faith justifieth love justifieth either in an equality with it or more than it 21 Justifying Faith consisteth in the Assent of the judgement to all things which are written in the word of God No other faith is required of any But an implicit Faith is sufficient in the Laity and ignorant which are not acquainted with the Scriptures in whom it is enough to beleeve as the Church beleeveth i. e. as their Clergy teacheth and beleeveth though they do not explicitly and in particulars know what the Church beleeveth BAXTER JVstification is two-fold either in Trident. Conc. Sess 6. c. 6 7 8. Tilet in Apol p. 237. in defeÌ„s Trid. Conc. adversus ChemnitiuÌ„ part 1. title of Law or in sentence of Judgment In this later having out-runn the Papists to meet with them again he looks back to the former and makes it two-fold thus Justification in title of Law is to be considered either in its first point possession or in its after continuance and accomplishment The later he makes entire consequently in the way of opposition there used the former to be put in part Aph. p. 302. 311. The first point and possession of Justification I acknowledg to be by faith alone without either the concomitancy or co-operation of works Iidem Ibid. for they cannot be performed in an instant But the continuance and accomplishment of Justification is not without the joynt procurement of obedience Aphor. p. 302. The righteousness of the New Covenant i. e. in his sense faith and works is the only condition of our interest in and enjoyment of Bel. l. 1. de purg cap 14 Sect. 4. Ratio 4. Bell. lib. 4. de Just c. 2. the Old i. e. of the righteousness of Christ to justification Both these righteousnesses are absolutely necessary to salvation Aph. Thes 17. 19. 60. and from thence every where untill the very end of his Book The bare Act of beleeving is
and conditions of the Law and the works and conditions of the Gospel 1 He onely saith all but proveth nothing therefore deserves onely the contempt of not an Answer from his Reader 2 He saith nothing but what he hath been taught by the Papists that though we cannot be justified by the works of the Law yet we are justified by Gospel works such as Faith is And must the Conclusions of the holy Apostaticall not Apostolicall Church be Canonicall to us because he hath made them so to himself 3 If he therefore forbears to prove what he saith because he holds it enough proved by the Papists already and so transmits his Reader to their Writings We also refer the reader to the perusall of the works of our Protestant writers that have dashed into shivers all such seeming proofs of the papists and brought to light the truth which they sought to imprison in darkness 4 Whatsoever he fableth here of Gospel works yet are they all legall or works of the Law which he obtrudeth upon men to Justification or as he here phraseth it to acquire part in Christ even to Faith it self he attributes no such property or power but as it is a morall work which the Law commandeth as we have found him speaking 5 to come to that in which the whole force of his reasoning here lyeth It is false what he affirmeth either that Paul doth in express words or in the sense and scope of his speech exclude onely the works of the Law but never the fulfilling of the same works as required by the Gospel for unless he so meaneth he saith nothing from their co-operation with Faith to Justification or that this is the reall difference between Legall and Gospel works that whereas in matter and substance they are one yet as they are done to justifie us by their own righteousness they are works of the Law but as done to justifie us by the righteousness of Christ so they are works of the Gospel or Gospel Conditions This is nothing but the Sophistry of a brain sophisticated with strong delusions to falsifie and nullifie the pure word of God For 1 What doth he bring to prove â—â—y least particle of what he saith if he had the testimony of God and Christ on his side would he leave their name and authority unmentioned 2 The Apostle when he treats of Justification by Christ doth not onely exclude works of the Law but works indefinitely and universally any works all works from having any power ordinate or not ordinate to give us part in it or him as hath been fully in its place before demonstrated 3 His dispute every where is as was declared and confirmed in the former Chapter not so much what is the righteousnesse which by its own power and vertue justifieth but what it is that instrumentally uniteth us to Christ for justification by him This he denyeth to all to any works and attributes to Faith alone as hath been there evidenced 4 In such places where he expresly speaketh of the works of the Law he means the Law written as it was given and pertained to the Jewes alone as a signall evidence of Gods love to them above all other Nations This is cleer from the Apostles own Testimony Ro. 2. 12 14. 17. 5. 13. as also where he numbreth Circumcision the observation of times and meats and other rituall peeces of the Ceremoniall Law together with the morall works of the Decalogue And will Mr. Br say that these rituall works are Conditions also of our part in Christ 5 When he so giveth the Adject of the Law to works calling them the works of the Law he doth it to beat down the pride and boasting of the Jewes that gloried in the Law Rom. 2. 23. declaring to them that although the Law were one principall prerogative vouchsafed to them not to any other people Rom. 9. 4. yet the works of the Law so glorious and privilegious had nothing to do with Faith to further our Justification by Christ but that the Gentiles without the Law had as free accesse to God by Faith in Christ as they with all the furniture of the Law and its works 6 Paul doth exclude all works under what name or notion soever from justifying so as Faith justifieth or to be instrumentall and conditionall to justification as Faith is But Faith is instrumentall or as M. Br. terms it conditionall to receive Christ to Justification Thereforr works are excludeded from being so conditionall or to be Conditions of the Gospel as he phraseth it This is apparent by those Scriptures where Paul saith Not of works but of Faith by Faith without works to him that worketh not but beleeveth c. as hath been 〈…〉 before alledged and amplified And all this of works without the adjection of the Law yea of works done hundreds of years before the Law to which Paul had reference in such disputes was given 7 Paul denyeth to works any operation in the Justification of Abraham or of us that obtein the same Justification with Abraham But the works which are denyed to justifie Abraham could not in Pauls sense be the works of the Law being acted 430 years before the Law was given and the Justification which is common to Abraham and his spirituall seed was and is justification by Christ So that works have nothing to do with Faith to condition us for justification by Christ This hath been made out in the former Chapter from Rom. 4. 1 c. 8 And lastly If such imperious arbitrary unreasonable and unproved distinctions be harkened to in Divinity what one part either of Law or Gospel shall abide sacred The whole word as Mr. Br. the great Artificer in the Trade somewhere complaines shall be made a waxen Nose For with as much integrity as Mr. B. hath here used to put the greatest Article of the Gospel to a topsie turnie may I mock at all the Commandments of the Decalogue with a distinctionary vanity to nullifie them Thou shalt have no other Gods before me True may I say but God meaneth other Gods of the Pagans devising not excluding the Gods of my own feigning Thou shalt not make to thy self any graven Image That is right said the Greeks once but God here excludeth the graven Images which the Romanes not the painted Images which we adore Thou shalt not steale the thief may here distinguish the lean Cattell are here excluded not the fat Thou shalt not murther the Pharisees glosse upon it was to wit my friends but my enemies I may The like might I say of the rest yea of every Gospel truth also and all with as good reason as Mr. Br. here deals with Paul We are justified or have part in Christ not by works but by Faith by Faith without works saith Paul Right saith Mr. Br. for he excludeth works onely as they are works of the Law not as they are works and Conditions of the Gospel Yet Vltra Sauromatus fugere
required to justification Or Mr. Br. that without craving leave of Paul by such gross distinetions goes about to make him unsay what he hath said and the world to believe that in all what he wrote of Justification hee meant to be understood on the contrary to what hee speaketh 6. If we bring works at all to procure justification by Christ we do by evacuating the grace of God and merits of Christ to our selves oblige put a bondage upon our selvet to fulfil the whole Law legally in its perfection else can we never be justified but abide under the Curse for ever For he that worketh requireth the reward as a debt in law and not as a gift of grace therefore except his work be so perfect as that it can in strict justice save him hee can never attain salvation as by comparing together these Scriptures will be evident viz. Gal. 5. 3 4. 3. 10. Rom. 4. 4 5. 9. 30 31 32. 7. As to the rules or qualifications which he gives to covenanting and obedience that it may be sincere they are in substance meerly legal the Name of Christ being only put in stead of the Name of God And who is there not only of the Jesuits Socinians with the Arminians from whom he borroweth most of his principles but even of the reall Antinomians whom he pretends to oppose who in all those particulars thinks not himself or gives not cause to all to think them as sincere as Mr. Br what ground have we to conclude but that they know the ends nature and conditions of the Covenant so truly and obey with so much deliberation and as little fittishness and rashness so seriously without dissimulation and slightness so freely intirely and singly aâ— Mr. Br. doth Thus every stigmatized Heretick in his own way bringing with him such a sincerity of obedience shall thereby be possessed of the investiture of Christs righteousness though he seek it in his own not in Gods way by his own righteousness and not by Faith alone which alone God hath stamped with an aptitude and efficacy to this work B. 2. The Law saith he requireth obedience and doing by its own righteousness to justifie us but the Gospel requireth it as a Medium to acquire to us Christs Righteousness by which wee may be justified So that the one requires works to justifie us withoutt the other the same works to justifie us by a Mediator This he saith so frequently in substance that it were lost labour to quote the places And it hath been almost so oft answered as said Therefore I shall referr the Reader to the places where it hath been answered and specially to the examination of those his disputes in which he labours to cleer his doctrine from all tincture of Popery from all contradiction to Paul and from being derogatory to Christ his righteousnes Here only I add that this doctrine is the same with that of the most legal Pharisees against whom the Apostle so much inveigheth wishing them accursed cut off for troubling the Churches therwith Gal. 1 9. 5. 12. For they arrogated to themselves alone part in Christ his Righteousnes because of their own personall righteousness in the works and obedience which the Law requireth resisting the Gentiles denying to them all possibility to partake in the Justification which is by Christ by means of Faith alone except they also fulfilled the righteousnesse which the Law required to give them right to him and it Yea Mr. Br. with these ascribes more to works than the very unbeleeving Pharisees For these claymed Justification only by their works but he and the beleeving Pharisees challenged for their works right both in the Justifier and in his justification also For Causa causae est etiam causa causati As farr as they ascribe to their works a Causality to make Christ theirs they make them causal to render the Justification which is by Christ theirs also B. 3. That neither is his Doctrine legall nor doth he ascribe too much to works because he maketh Faith and obedience to be but a Condition or a Mâ—dium or a poor improper Causa sine qua non of our Justification Aph. pa. 223 224. and our doing no part of satisfaction for our unrighteousness for this hee seems to have ascribed before to our sufferings in bearing the Curse but to be our Gospel-Righteousness or the Condition of our participation in Christ who is our legall Righteousness so of all the benefits that come by him App. p. 78. I say that subjection and obedience justifie 1 Not as works simply considered 2 Nor as legall works 3 Nor as meritorious workes 4 Nor as good works which God is pleased with 5 But as Conditions to which the free Law giver hath promised Justification and life Nay your i. e. the Protestants doctrine ascribeth farr more of the work to man than mine For you make Justification an effect of your own Faith and your faith an instrumentall cause of it and so make your self your own Justifier And you say your faith justifieth as it apprehendeth Christ which is the most intrinsicall essentiall consideration of Faith so faith hath much of the Honour But while I affirm that it justifieth only as a condition which is an extrinsicall consideration and alien from its essence and Nature I give the glory to him that freely giveth mee life and that made so sweet a condition to his Covenant and that enableth me to perform the said Condition App. pag. 120 121. All this hath been oft and fully examined before in its place also and how little truth there is in any part or parcell thereof discovered It would be weariness to the flesh and vexation to the Spirit but to look so often upon his great Goddess his Queen of Heaven CONDITION as he blesseth her O that his conscience had been so well acquainted with Christ as his fancy is with this Idoll he would not then have pestered the Church with such an imaginary Deity nor prostituted all that is called God at the feet of such a Proserpina I am weary any more to attend to him making the will of God i. e. God willing conditional and so the immutable God a conditional God the salvation of Christ conditional so Christ a conditional Saviour or the witness seal of Christ a conditional seal and witness and so the Holy Ghost a conditional Spirit of Adoption or the gospel of righteousness forgiveness and life a conditional Gospel and consequently nulling all thâ—se and pronouncing them no God no Christ no Holy Ghost no Gospel For a conditional proposition doth Nihil ponere and after Mr Brs. principles it is in mans righteosness to give or destroy the actual existence of every of these But I leave to him that delights therein to bury himself in this guâ—ph I conceive my self obnoxious to censure for spending and spilling so many words already to shew the deformity and