of Rev. 3. 4. to be taken And hereunto runs the whole tenor of the Gospel making not our own righteousnes works but Christ in us the hope of Glory i. e. all the ground and worth upon which we may Cherish within our selves a lively hope of glory Col. 1. 27. 4 The word worthy in Scriptures oft signifieth Meet beseeming answerable to as Ma. 3. 8. Bring forth fruits worthy of Repentance Eph. 4. 1. Walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called Col. 1. 10. Walk worthy of the Lord. The meaning is that we should bring forth fruits beseeming the repentance which we profess walk agreeable unto in ways becoming our holy vocation answerable to the Grace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ not to make our selves worthy of the gift of repentance of so high a vocation of so glorious a Christ to be conferred upon us And in the same sense are those other scriptures Ma. 10. 11 12 13 37 22. 8. alleaged here by Mr. Br to be taken Where those that are termed worthy or unworthy of Christ and his Gospel are meant to be such as carry themselves in a way becoming or not becoming Christ and his Gospel preached to them Without any hinting at an imaginary worth or Merit in their performances that might make them deservers of Christ and the grace of the Gospel as is easie to be made out from the very Texts here alleaged if there were need thereof Thus it appears to be false either that in a larger sense promise is an obligation the thing promised is called Debt or that the performers of the coÌ„ditioÌ„s are called worthy their performance merit in the scriptures And consequently neither the fallacies nor the falsities of Mr Br do any thing avail him here to the setting up of Mans the frustrating of Christs Merits which is the scope of his levelling The explication in reference to this part of the Thesis hath nothing that may be called an addition to it Onely there pag. 141. as here in describing the third kinde of meriting he tels us that The obligation to reward is Gods ordinate Justice the truth of his promise the worthines lyeth in the performance of the Conditions on our part He doubted it seems that we would have taken him notwithstanding that which he had said equipollent with this in the Thesis to have had some seed of Christian modesty humility remaining in him that he had not totally forsworn all self-deniall unless he should express therefore hath expressed himself at the ful here to be ful of self-arrogance But in this doth he declare his intolerable contempt of the word that having himself quoted at the least 13 testimonies of scripture all with one harmony affirming that Gods Gospel dispensations are free of meer grace mercy without any reference to our works righâ—eousness that Gods grace mans works or worth cannot stand together but that they destroy either the other in reference to Justification salvation That mans merit in any respect without difference is a subversion and denyall of Gods grace in all respects For all this he shall find that will but peruse the 13 first scriptures which Mr B. quoteth in this Thesis yet he doth elude all w th this frothy distinction in the beginning of the same Thesis True Our Performances cannot be said to Merit in the most strict proper sense c. but in a larger sense they may What is this but to oppose the sacred verity of the most high God with the froth of mans wit what Scripture shall henceforth stand in its venerable Majesty authority if the boldnes of a corrupt worm shall thus puff it to nothing Of all other men I conceive Mr Br hath most need to make grace alone free Mercy his refuge For of all that I have met with accounted Members of any of the reformed Churches I never found any whose very meritorious services as he terms them such as this work of his is have more provocation in them But thus farr of his assertion which we have found full of the Leaven or rather to be the Leaven it self of the Scribes and Pharisees both of the former and latter ages Let us see now how he lenifieth sweeteneth it that his sacrilege in robbing God of the honour of his grace appear not B We ascribe not Merit saith he in the Thesis to our works as Merit is taken in its most proper and strict sense seeing there is nothing in the value of it or any benefit that God receiveth by it which may so entitle it Meritorius Neither is there any proportion betwixt it and the reward but in a larger sense as promise is an obligation and the thing promised is debt c. Yet in the explication p. 138 he grants to man a capacity of Meriting somwhat at the hands of God in this sense also lest he should seem to acknowlege that there are some of the worst reprobates yea devills that have not at all merited from God But of these he Concludes p. 139. that it is a poor kind of Meriting which they can boast of yet without some Merit that of good from the Justice of God he will not leave them destitute But in the Conclusion of the explication pag. 141. he adds somewhat more to take off the harshnes of his self-ascribing doctrine of Merit thus B This kinde of Meriting is no diminution to the greatnes or freenes of the Gift or Reward because it was a free and gracious Act of God to make our performance capable of that title and to engage himself in the foresaid promise to us and not for any gain that he expecteth by us or that our performance can bring him Lo ye now the strength of this mans wit that can blow heaven earth into a confusion with one breath with the next breath sett both into their due place and order again Nothing inferior is the slight of his wit to the slight and dexâ—erity of that head-mans hand that is reported so nimbly to execute his office that having cut off the head he left it standing without any wagging upon the shoulders still So this man hewes off the honour of Gods grace yet leaves it in all its glory without diminution still Yet let us reckon with the man a little Can he name any one of the worst Papists or Jesuits that doth attribute Merit to mans works in a higher degree than or doth not when he hath extolled mans Merits salve the grace of God as finely as himself Are not his words and theirs about Gods Grace and mans merits the same Doth he add any thing here of his own that he hath not learned of them We cannot merit saith Mr Br in the most strict and proper sense Why Alas saith he There is nothing in the value of our works or any benefit that God receives by them that may
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
saith our Saviour When the case is like it at present and the Angelici Doctores are silent it is the fit season for Christ to animate the very Terrae filios to speak in the defence of his grace I held my selfe the unfittest of many if not of all to come upon this stage yet not so unfit but if none else would I tooke my self obliged to ascend it Yea such is the power of Truth this Truth of Truths this great and cardinall truth here controverted that I feare not by the word and in the Spirit of the Lord Jesus to enter the Lists with all men and Devills that shall oppugn it so vain a shadow is all the wisdome and sophistry of men and depths of Satan when opposed to the Gospel of Christ which is the power and wisdome of God It will next be objected that this Tractate of mine comes forth into publique view more raw rugged incompendious and unpolished than befits the Majestie of the Doctrine whereof it treateth I doe not I cannot deny it I saw what should have been done more but was not in a capacity to do it That which I can say for my self is 1. That it was written for private use without any purpose to make it common untill I came to the latter part and almost the end of it 2. My acquaintance knoweth how many and how long interruptions of sicknesse I had in the writing thereof that I was but Canis ad Nilum did all by snatches which much hindered the right composure of the whole and connexion of its parts 3. I could not find one man about us that vel prece vel pretio was fit and willing to transcribe one Copie thereof neither was in strength of body to do it my selfe So that what was first done in the same Crasso filo in which it was first done without any abreviations alterations or polishings is now presented to the Printer to be made use of My judgment telling me that rather a course piece then nothing at all should appear against Mr. Baxter at least to invite others that excell in abilities of minde and body to come after with a more exact Treatise If all this excuse not and that the Velle be no fit Apology to take off the crime of Non Posse I am contented to lie under Censure yet with this comfort that the lesse of man the more of God is to be found in these fruits of my Labours All that is therein being grounded upon the sure word of God whose plainness hath more excellency in it then all mans accuratenesse It remains that before I discend to give my particular exceptions against the Doctrine of this Tractate of Mr. Baxter something be premised 1. Of the Author 2. Of the worke in generall 3. Of my intention in excepting against it The mistake of the two former more deluding some unwary persons as I have observed then all his arguments of themselves could do 1. Then of the Author I can speak nothing of him from my owne acquaintance with him For Albus an ater homo sit nescio I was never so happy or unhappy to see his face therefore must speak of him partly as he hath been represented and described by others partly as he makes out himself 1. Touching his learning as he hath been magnified by others such he manifesteth himselfe He that shall peruse this one Tractate of his must be forced to cry out Quantus quantus nil nisi sapientia est a deep and meer Philosopher I say not Philosophaster yea Grammaticus Rhetor Geometres c. In all partt of humane learning a Cathedrall Doctor But his Master-piece is Sophistry in this way of the worlds sublimated Divinity he is not behind the Angelicall and Seraphicall Doctors Thomas and Scotus and their followers As for that lower and meaner region of Learning viz. Scripture and more specially Gospel-knowledg himselfe tells us that his standing and understanding is mounted above that mentioned Job 8. 9. That for lack of other work and through the defect or absence of better Books he once read the Scripture six dayes together in Append. pag. 110 111. which time he suckt much more out of the Word then ever God breathed into it which he confesseth he could not have done of himselfe without the help of other Books which he had formerly read i. e. without the glosses of the Schoolmen and Jesuites which know so much of Christ as their Master Aristotle could teach them And that this man understands the Scriptures no lesse compleatly than the worst of them in a Catholique sense we shall finde I doubt not when we come to examine the Texts which he brings to prove his Catholique Justification 2. As for his piety strictnesse mortification holinesse zeal c. in respect whereof some have even canoniz'd him for a matchlesse and super-eminent Saint as I have understood by many in the Western parts before I ever saw any of his works I should say enough in saying over what Dr. Twiss hath written in his Answer to the Preface and Prefacer unto Arminius his Anti-perkinsinianism where the Prefacer in the same manner exalteth the parts and vertues of Arminius thereby to make way into the hearts of men to receive his Doctrine The Dr. acquitting himselfe first of any dislike that he hath of the piety of children in advancing their Fathers praise and affirming his desire herein to proceed no further then to lay downe a caution that the truth may receive no damage by the superlative praise of any man answers That although there might be opposed against Arminius that dissent from him in iudgment even the whole cloud of Protestant Divines the very lights of the Church that in parts and vertues were no way behind Arminius if not his superiours yet he will not do it because neither hath God commanded nor is it safe for us to make the splendor of mens persons but the infallible word of the most High our rule to judge of Doctrines and try the opinions of men But I adde secondly That it hath been usuall to Satan in all ages to employ whited Sepulchers beautifull without to broach and defend Heresies in the Church He wants not his depths is not ignorant that men of vitious lives are unfit to deceive and pervert consciences Therefore when himselfe will deceive he puts off his Devils face and transforms himselfe into an Angell of Light No marvaile then if he teach his Ministers when they are about to seduce to transforme themselves into Apostles of Christ and Ministers of Righteousnesse 2 Cor. 11. 13. 15. Where hath there ever been more appearance of holinesse and men cannot search the heart then in the Scribes and Pharisees Then in the Monks and Fryers then among the Socinians yea among the very Turkes Shall then the outward varnish of their seeming vertues befool us to drink downe their damning doctrines 3 Though Paul or an Angel from Heaven preach unto you another
in name but as void of the truth and power of Christianity as are the very Pagans that never heard of Christ I come now to speak of the fatall if I may so term it and almost totall ruine of the Church and Gospel Towards the end of that which is called the Primitive Church and of them which are dignified with the name of the ancient Fathers of the Church As the Saracens invaded the Eastern Churches so a most stupendous and barbarous people not onely unchristian but also inhumane the Goths and Vandals made incursions upon these Western Churches with one swelling tide carrying all at once before them and made impression into Italy it self and seizing on Rome made it their imperiall City and reigning over or at least molesting all those nations which in this western part of the world were then termed Christians made it their work for more then a hundred years not only to raze out the very being of christianity from the earth but also all polite learning filling all things and places with their barbarism which also in length of time they accomplished almost to the utmost Now when at length by the valour of Carolus Magnus they were discomfited and wholly driven out of these christian Lands after their subversion there sprung out of the Barbarism which they left behind them a Barabarian sect of Divines more pernicious to Religion then the Goths Vandals had been In a general term they are usually called Schoolmen or School-Doctors These like the Babel-builders erected upon other foundations and of other materials a Babel-Church with such barbarous slime in stead of cement and morter as was never before used since the first building of the old Babel who exauctorating Christ and his Gospel from having any soveraignty in matters of Religion and permitting them but now and then to peep for their advantage canoniz'd Aristotle the most subtle but untill then the least regarded of all the sects of Heathen Philosophers to be their ipse dixit chose Peter Lombards sentences to be their Text themselves to be the Commentators The matter of their Commentary a Miscellane partly of the excrements of their own brains partly of moralities legalities formalities and partly of superstitions idolatries and heresies borrowed some from the Jewes some from the Heathen and the rest from Hell it self The Language in which all is set forth no Language but being cought out in syllabical barbarous and bombastical sounds of their own coining would better fit the bellowing of a beast than the utterance of men or if the utterance of men more beseeming Conjurers and Charmers than Divines The God whom they serve and sacrifice unto in all is not Christ but Antichrist whose commands and decrees assoon as they have received they must and will with all their Hyperborean conjurations of ghastly words defininitions argumentations and a cell or hell full of distinctions maintain them to be from heaven though they smell of nothing but hell it self Nimble work-men leaving a glory upon their disputes when they meet with sublunary matter with a subject not above the comprehension of natural reason but such whereof all men have an idea or image within their Synterisis or natural conscience but when they meet with Gospel-doctrine that makes men wise to salvation blinder than Balaam that saw less than his Asse which hee rode upon These have erected and held up many hundred years a religion which can save none but damneth all that cleave strictly to it and they have this peculiar vertue that they have still waxed wors and wors the second generation more impure than the first and the third than the second and so lineally every generation almost until now save that in these last times they have attained so much of the subtlety falshood and impiety of Satan that there is scarce a possibility of receiving a further addition If then any man will read how far the humane Learning of which I am speaking may be helpful to propagate maintain the truth of the Gospel let him but look back to the fruit of these sophistical Doctors Labours these many hundred years last past and by that which hee seeth he shal be able to answer himself viz. that it hath been and is powerful to deface and subvert utterly the whole truth and salvation of the Gospel in relation to their Disciples that rest upon their Learning and Precepts for look what of Religion worship and ordinances there is in the Popish Church the praise of it redounds to philosophy and sophistry the main instruments of laying its ground-work and the sole instruments unless ye will annex to it the fire and fagot and tyrannical inquisition for the maintenance thereof Having seen how great a corruption and how long a desolation of the truth of Religion there hath been while Sophistry was made its perfidious Advocate We are now in the next place to consider how the same truth of Christian Religion thrived when delivered out of the captivity of and communion with this secular Learning After the long holding of the purity of the Gospel in unrighteousnes by these Theologasters it pleased God to raise up to himself for the reformation of his Church men of his own choise and gifted with a measure of the Spirit answering so great a work to which they were deputed as Luther Zuinglius and many other learned and godly men some their contemporaries some their followers These restored the Scriptures to light again which had been many hundred years buried in darknes and preached again the true and clear Gospel which had been long also clouded with mens inventions traditions and superstitions What success this their Ministry had cannot be unknown to them that know any thing of the history of those times Disciples came in by thousands and ten thousands unto Christ being totally revolted from Antichrist Whole Kingdoms Nations Dukedoms that ere while worshipped the Beast now fell flat at the feet of Christ to submit to his Scepter And this not as constrained by the command of their Magistrates or Laws but even while Magistrates and Laws slept yea when Magistrates and Laws persecuted with Fire and Sword all that went this way even then the Kingdom of heaven suffered violence and the violent tooke it by force i. e. by an unresistible conviction of the word and wonderful operation of this Spirit upon their souls they were carryed out in contempt of all dangers and persecutions to receive the Lord Jesus Christ purely revealed in his righteousnes beawty and salvation to them So that in few years maugre all the malice of the Pope Emperour Kings Princes World and Hell Christ might be even seen reigning in the midst of his Enemies and whole Lands at least great multitudes of many Lands which were darknes became light in the Lord even so farr as we see the Protestant Religion at this day propagated If it be demanded here how it came to pass that the word and truth of
in nature to support their faith for hereunto all Mr. Baxters disputes are levelled he makes indeed all that will be his Disciples no Christians And suppose that Mr. Baxter hath a great confidence by his sophistical distinctions and arguments even to wrest from the Lord Christ a crown for himself in the day of judgement yet what shall become of his unlearned Disciples that are not so nimble Sophisters nor have their dâ—stinctions at the fingers end so ready as their Master These must sink under the sentence of Christ having the word against and not being able to plead reason enough artificially and subtlely for themselves 12. Whether it tends not to the corrupting and depraving of all the people of God within the Land Mr. Baxter is no longer a student but the highest graduate in policy in that piece of policy at least now most in use to see and prosecute the neerest and readiest way to the attainment of his own ends His end in this work who sees not to be the poysoning of this whole Nation with the worst of Popish errors For the attainment hereof his whole endeavour and wit is employed to poyson therewith the Ministry as I have before shewed For his sophistry is of little force to beguile the ignorant which understand it not Therefore notwithstanding all his specious pretences he lays and spins out his webbs to catch the learned them at least that have some pieces of learning in them These he knows to be the pipes and sluces thorow which the water of life is to be conveyed thorow the Land If these be poysoned or tainted the tainture and poyson will be conveyed to all that come to dip the water of life from them They are the light of the world if he can prevail to turn this light into darkness how great will be the darkness of this our little world 13. Whether that kind of learning which he venteth so abundantly and trusteth in so confidently be not that secular wisedom which the Lord hath even cursed and threatned to destroy and bring to nothing and turn it into foolishness or madness 1 Cor. 1. 19 20. If so both he and we shall see in good time whose counsel shall stand either Mr. Baxters in counter-working against God setting up his wisedom and learning against the wisedom of God the wisedom of the word or Gods counsell in destroying Mr. Baxters wisedom and making it i. e. discovering it to the world to be meer foolishnes so turning his glory into shame and baseness Lastly whether this threat be not in some measure already executed upon him from heaven I would I could deny that I had good grounds upon which to deny it But sith Mr. Baxter not contented with the light and wisedom of the word hath rolled himself into the pits of heathen and Popish learning out of their darkness to digg to himself such light as is not cohering with but prejudiciall to the wisedom of God and his word whether the Lord hath not turned this wisedom of his into foolishness and yeelded him up to be stifled with the most pernicious of their errors and to hug the same in his bosom as a treasure so that he is become one of those some of whom the Apostle speaketh which while they profes this sophistical philosophical learning falsely called science or knowledge being indeed meerly prophane and vain babling have erred concerning the faith 1 Tim. 6. 20 21. The sequell of this his Treatise in our examination thereof will somewhat declare I have here spoken once for all in answer to his sophistical disputes as they are sophisticall and imitating the School-Doctors of the Popish Church having reference therein not only to what in this place he saith but to all of the same kind which we shall find flowing from him in full tideâ— else-where frequently in this book So that as oft as we meet him speaking again in the same tone I shall either pass him by with silence or els turn him over to that which I have here said There remains yet one question more in the explication of this 7th Aphorism and the same of as great importance and usefulness as most of the former are vain and superfluous Mr. Baxter thus proposeth it B. Whether we are justified by Christs passive righteousness only or also by his active p. 44. Here he mentioneth 3. opinions the first he utterly explodeth viz. the imputation of Christs active obedience unto Justification The second viz. the efficacy of Christs sufferings to make satisfaction to the justice of God for our sinns whereupon we are forgiven and constituted righteous in the sight of God he kindly saluteth and passeth some plausible Complements upon it and so Bids it farewell without any purpose to be in love or familiarity with it And then takes up the third as best agreeing with the end he drives at though in substance it be the same with the first which he shook off and trampled under foot with great defiance as the absurdest of absurdities What my judgment as to the two former is I need not here express because it is not a question controverted between us and the Papists It is a question not of very long standing Mr. Beza in his Exposition of the Epistle to the Romans by appropriating the severall parts of Christs righteousness to make up the severall parts of Justification gave the occasion of the dispute as I conceive And the difference hath hitherto made no breach of communion and amity between stable and able Divines or Christians Nay among them that hold for the active righteousnes also there have bin and are still at present not a few so learned and pious that it would be no disparagement to Mr. Baxter and my self to be admitted as their Amanuenses And therefore I question the truth of that accusation which Mr. Baxter layeth on Mr. Walker pag. 53. whom he principally not only meaneth but also nameth when he tells us of ignorant men that are strong revilers and weak disputers reproaching them for hereticks that dissent from them in judgment I doubt much that Mr. Baxters main end here in declaiming against Mr. Walker is to Apologize for himself and that his anger against Mr. Walker is because he finds the stroaks which M. Walker levelled against Mr. John Goodwin do now more wound Mr. Baxter than they did Mr. Goodwin then I remember I once saw that little Tractate of Mr. Walker in a friends house and read cursorily some part of it in which he charged Mr. Goodwin with Socinianism and Arminianism But if my memory fail me not as too oft it doth it was not upon this score that Mr. Goodwin maintained Justification by the Passive righteousness of Christ only but upon this that he upheld the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or act of believing or rather Faith as it is a part or act of our sanctification to be the very thing that is imputed to us for righteousness And Mr. Baxter
Christ and not by the works of the law for by the works of the law no flesh is justified Why then do we draw the poor Gentiles to seek any furtherance to their justification by the observation of the Law by which our selves who were most privileged with it could not be justified but by Christ onely without the law So here Even they that had the law and were not a little zealous for and active in the righteousness of the law had need of a redeemer were justified and saved not at all by the lawes righteousness but onely by Christs redeeming of them What madnes is it then in you O foolish Galathians that are not of the holy stock of Israel but sinners of the Gentiles to seek any help to your justification by the works of the law which could not justifie the very Israelites that were born and brought up in it and not to repose your selves upon Christ alone If Mr. Baxter will pretend any other meaning of the Text besides he shall therein wound and not strengthen his Cause For he speaks of the same persons here to be under the law onely in the hand of a Mediator not under the Curse of the law but under such an administration thereof that even before they actually beleeved in Christ the very person of Christ are affirmed ver 1. to be Lords of all all the inheritance which is by Christ ergo not under the wrath of God before they embraced the Faith of Christ As for the other Scriptures which he annexeth yet further to prove that the very elect before and untill they beleeve are under the Law in the sense so oft manifested let him once shew how he will argue and what he will conclude and upon what grounds from them we shall be ready to answer him In the interim I profess I see not any thing in them more prevalent to his purpose than a nights lodging in a bed of snow and ice to cure the Cough Yet from all these wrested Scriptures he Concludes at last that the deliverance which beleevers have by Christ from the Curse of the Law is a conditionall deliverance viz. if they will obey the Gospel i. e. when they beleeve if they will beleeve not onely while they live but also when they are dead and buried For as we say that a conditionall proposition doth nihil ponere so it is true in the sense of Mr Bax. here that this conditionall promise doth nihil promittere The Condition as long as this world lasteth being still in performing not performed and so nothing obteined Yet will he have this new nothing together with the abrogation of the ceremoniall Law to which we never were none but the Israelites ever have been subject to be the great privilege of beleevers and effect of Christs bloud When we poor souls with our dull eyes can see no more privilege that we have herein by Christs bloud than the worst of infidells and reprobates have for they also â—ave this conditionall deliverance from the curse and freedom from the ceremoniall law And this deliverance saith he is yet more full when we perform the conditions of our freedom And then we are said to dead to the Law Rom. 7. 4. and the obligation to punishment dead as to us ver 6. This is indeed a full and perfect deliverance But what doth he mean in saying when we perform c. either when we are performing the conditions That were a contradiction to himself in what he saith p. 74. that we are not perfectly freed till the day of resurrection and judgement And so also it will be hard for another save Mr. Br. to make sense of the words That the deliverance of beleevers is yet more full when they perform the Conditions are performing the conditions of their freedom i. e. more full when they beleeve than when they do beleeve For if we should grant to Mr. Br Faith to be a condition and not rather a mean or instrument of our justification yet would we grant him no other condition thereof Or doth he mean it is full when they have performed the Conditions it seems then that some of the Conditions are left to be performed in the next world because untill then he tells us we can have no such perfect freedom This is the free Grace of God which Mr. Br boasteth himself so much to extoll p. 79. let him that delights in it be his disciple That which he speaks in the upshott for the mitigation of his harsh doctrine aforegoing that he knoweth this Covenant of works continueth not to the same ends and uses as before c. is but a trick of the Jesuits to give sugar after the poyson which was before gone down to destroy Neither can he make out how beleevers are under the law of nature as a Covenant of works and yet not bound to seek life according to the tenor and condition of that Covenant If any marvell that Mr. Baxter should so waste his spirits in abusing both divine and humane learning to prove the Saints to be still under the Curse under the law as a Covenant of works he will cease to wonder if he take notice of a further aim that he hath therein He would not out of doubt have so much insisted on it had he not looked to a further end in it If the beleevers are still under a Covenant of works as to the Curse wrath and Condemnation much more are they under a Covenant of works as unto life and Justification If the former be once granted he accounts the game wonn as to the latter Therefore doth he so much stirr in the former that he may with the more facility and less contradiction bring in afterwards the latter Justification by works which is his very busines in Compiling this book CHAP. XI Whether as the Covenant of Works was made with all mankind in Adam their representative so the Covenant of Grace was made with all the elect in Christ their Representer What relation the Covenants made with Adam Abraham the Israelites and lastly with us under the Gospel have to that Covenant made with Christ B. Thesis 14. p. 89. THe Tenor of the New Covenant is this that Christ having made sufficient satisfaction to the Law whosoever will repent and beleeve in him to the end shall be justified through that satisfaction from all that the Law did charge upon them and be moreover advanced to far greater privileges and glory then they fell from But whosoever fullfilleth not these conditions shall have no more benefit by the bloud of Christ than what they here received and abused but must answer the charge of the Law themselves And for their neglect of Christ must also suffer a far greater condemnation Or briâ—fly whosoever beleeveth in Christ shall not perish but have everlasting life but he that beleeveth not shall not see life but the wrath of God abideth on him Mar. 16. 16. Jo. 3. 15 16 17 18. 36.
pense Bax. p. 94. Not that it receives its efficacy from these nor that these do add any thing at all to its worth and value no more than the cabbinett to the jewell or the applying hand to the Medicine or the offenders acceptation to the pardon of his Prince Yet without this acceptation and application this bloud will not be effectuall to justifie us These words would seem to plead a good meaning in Mr. Br to them that neither are acquainted with the glozings of the Papists nor with that which followeth in this Treatise of Mr. Br. He might be thought by this his smoothing to attribute our Justification wholly to Christs sufferings and nothing to any thing in our selves save to faith only nor to Faith but as it is appointed of God to be instrumentall for the accepting and receiving into our bosoms Christs merits and the benefits thereof The like fine words we shall finde oft falling from the pen of Pelagius Papists Arminians c. But both of him and them I may say what the Lord once said of Israel This people hath well spoken in all that they have said O that there were in them such a heart c. Deut. 5. 28 29. He proceeds and opposeth to the Authority of our Apostle Paul the authority of his St Grotius at the hearing of whose sophisticall learning all the doctrine of Paul must fall broken and shivered to the earth no lesse than the Ark of God did before the great Dagon of the Philistims Bax. Cum unusquisque actui ex sua voluntate pendenti legempossit imponere c. as may be there read at large p. 94. The summe of all is this Because our justification is an act proceeding from the meer and free will of God and of Christ it was therefore in their power after payment made by Christ and accepted by the Father in our behalf to covenant and accomplish our discharge either forthwith or a long time after either simply or upon Conditions Therefore it is Covenanted between the Father and the Son that we shall be after satisfaction made not forthwith but in processe of time justified and then also not purely or absolutely but conditionally A mad Argumentation For A posse ad esse non valet Consequentia It is as if I should argue God could have supported Mr. Br and his Mr Grotius in the truth of the Gospel Ergo he hath preserved them in the truth What judicious man that hath considerately read their works would not hisse at such an argument But he adds the authority of Austin Bax. As Austin He that made us without us will not save us without us O that Mr. Br had stood as Austin pillar-like to beare up the Grace of God entire in the whole busines of our salvation against all the sophisms of Pelagius and his followers We should in no wise have excepted against Augustines words in Mr. Baxters mouth uttering them in Augustines sense We make not men stocks and stones nor deny the operation of their wills moved by Gods Spirit in the way to happines Yet the sentence it self alleaged out of Austin I doubt is perverted by Mr. Baxter as it hath been by some before him I have been told that in Austin it is read intorrogatively and bears the force of an affirmative thus He that made thee without thee will he not save thee without thee which is equivolent to this if it were said he will save thee without thee For the truth of it I have been directed to his Serm. 11. de verb. Apostoli where though I finde it not totidem verbis yet the full sense and substance thereof I finde The Father treating of those words of the Psalmist He made us without us or not we our selves improves them by the annexion of other Scriptures against Pelagius demonstrating that he also saves us when we were lost without us To this effect his sentences are full and manifold Perditos nos per nos reficit nos qui fecit nos Again Ipse fecit nos non ipsi nos ut simus populos ejus oves pascuae ejus Again Homines sumus ipse fecit nos fidelâ—s sumus jam justi ipse fecit nos non ipsi nos Again Ipse fecit nos antequà m essemus omninò ipse fecit nos factos lapsos ipse justos fecit nos non ipsi nos Nondum erat homo factus est offendit salvus factus Again Quis prior dedit ei retribuetur ei Si Dominus retribuere vellet nihil nisi paenam debitam retribuisset Nihil dederunt ut eis retribueretur pro nihilo salvos fecit illos In a word as all this is directly against Mr. Baxter so is there no one title in the whole Sermon for him but all proving not in Mr. Baxters sophisticall way but seriously and profoundly from cleer and invincible Scriptures our salvation to be onely Gods work not his and ours together If nothing else should be said that which Austin in this one Chapter hath said is enough to bury Mr. Baxters doctrine in the dirt for ever Bax. He never maketh a relative change where he doth not also make a reall True but whether the relative or the reall change hath the precedency in order is the question Whether our reconciliation or justification go before sanctification or follow it as the fruit thereof Bax. Gods decree gives no man a legal title to the benefit decreed him seeing purpose and promise are so different True but altogether besides the question Bax. A legall title we must have before we can be justified and there must be somewhat in our selves to prove that title or else all men should have equall right If he speak of our being justified in our selves or having our Justification evidenced to our selves or our brethren we consent with him If he mean otherwise in the sense often mentioned what he saith here is that which he hath often said but it remaineth yet to be proved There is somewhat else as hath been oft shewed besides Mr. Brs somewhat in us that differenceth man from man that all have not equall right And this is somewhat in Christ not somewhat in us CHAP. XIII Mr. Baxters doctrine of a twofold i. e. a legal and Evangelical Righteousnes equally necessary to salvation or Justification examined The terms and phrase which he useth discussed and how little he saith to prove either phrase or matter to be good manifested I Shall totally pretermit the 16th Aphorisme and its explication not but that there are some passages therein deserving examination but because that what is delivered in such passages is done very warily and may admit of a good as well as of a bad Construction and in the following part of his book Mr. Br speaketh it out fully and plainly that no man can doubt of his meaning Therefore is more properly to be answered there than in this place Neither shall
by Christs repenting beleeving c. his satisfying of Gods justice by his expiatory sacrifice for the failings of our Faith and Repentance at they held not up to the Lawes perfection I dislike it no less then Mr. B. But can we conjecture that Mr. Saltmarsh himself was not the first that disliked it and all the rest both good and bad of what he wrote in that Tractate I have been told by some of his godly acquaintance that the man had a naturall impotency of crazines in his brain And the whirlwind of imaginations wherewith he was carried to a hasty taking up of opinions and no les hasty hurling away of them again the much of the top and the little of the bottom of wit the flashes of nimblenes and the want of solidity and depth which he shewed in his writings his inconsistency with himself with others with the Scriptures his exâ—reme mutability and roving from Tropick to Tropick without settledness any where do in great measure prove the report to be true And if so he is to be pittied though his infirmities are not to be patronized However this extravagancy of his into so loos and careless expressions doth neither justifie Mr. B. Tenents nor ought to â—rejudice the Truth from which Mr. B. or any other hath erred Neither doth Mr. B. captiousnes so null my charity as to enteâ—â—ain the least conjecture that ever Master Saltmarsh meant or thought that Christ had sinne to repent of or beleeved to obtein the pardon thereof Here now wee finde Master Baxter returning from his irefull pursuit of his imaginary not reall Antinomians and of a dead mans Ghost that could neither see nor hear him And when hee reviews what he had written hee sees it neither holpen nor amended by his hot words spent upon the wind He had affirmed that there is a two-fold Righteousnesse necessary to our Justification one the Righteousnesse of Christ imputed to us the other a personall Righteousnesse or Righteousnesse of our owne inherent in our selves And to this our own Righteousnesse had attributed an equall power with the Righteousnesse of Christ to our Justification if not a power above and superiour to it This assertion of his he perceives to savour so much of humane arrogance and to use his own words to be a self-exalting horrid Doctrine of so high a nature and so contradictory to the whole Tenor of the Gospel that a short affected brawl with No-bodies and dead men cannot turn away the hatred which all that know and love the Lord Jesus must needs conceive against it Hee is therefore in a streight cure it he cannot revoke it he will not Therefore in stead of a better shift he posteth to the Monks Jesuits borrows their either Cowl or Cloak to cover the deformity of it And good reason have they to stead him for it is their cause in his hand viz. Justification by our own personal Righteousness that hath streightened him Let us now see what he brings from them to us to make their assertion from his pen tolerable B. Thes 21. 115. Not that wee can perform these conditions without Grace for without Christ we can doe nothing But that he enableth us to perform them our selves and doth not himself repent beleeve love Christ obey the Gospel for us as he did satisfie the Law for us B. Explication This prevention of an objection I adde because some think it is a self-ascribing and derogating from Christ to affirm our selves to bee but the Actors of those duties though we professe to doe it onely by the strength of Grace But that it is Christ that repenteth and beleeveth not we is language somewhat strange to those that have been used to the language of Scripture or Reason Though I know there is a sort of sublime Platonick Plotinian Divines sprung up of late among us who think all things to bee but one c. We find in Scripture that as Christ hath his Mystery so hath Antichrist his Mystery also And that this latter is a Mystery of iniquity 2 Thess 2. 7. and Mystery Babylon the great c. And it is somewhat mysterious and strange that the materials of this Babel-building will not hold and close together without Babel slime to cement it Mr. Baxter would fain have fortified and fastened together the gaping chinks of this Babel with his owne morter But it will not hold therefore is he forced ever and anon to make use of the proper slime which the former Builders have left for them that come after to repair so doth hee in this place None of his own sHifts and tricks could hide the menstruousness and monstrousness of his Doctrine this Pall from Rome doth it no less perfectly then the Fig-leaf Aprons covered the nakedness and filthiness of our first Progenitors from the eye of God It sounded before so dreadfully as it was enough to make the ears of a true Christian to tingle at the hearing that Our own righteousnesse must goe foot by foot with Christs righteousnesse to our Justification but that which Mr. Baxter brings here from Rome takes off the ghastlyness and makes all smooth and himself in what he hath said no less amiable then he that had the Lambs horns but the voice of the Dragon Rev. 13. 11. How should it bee otherwise when all the glory is ascribed to Gods Grace and to the Spirit and Power of Christ so saith he Wee are justified in part by our own righteousnes indeed yet Not that we performe in this Righteousnesse which he termeth these conditions without Grace for without Christ wee can doe nothing but hee enableth us to perform them c. And in the Explication This prevention of an objection I adde because some thinke it a self-ascribing and derogating from Christ to affirm our selves to bee the Actors of these duties though we professe to doe it only by the strength of Grace Now when Mr. Baxter hath thus sayd and professed what reason can there be given why he should not bee thought as honest and innocent as the proudest Popish Prelates Jesuits and Friars that in answer to this objection which Mr. Baxter preventeth here have said and professed the same thing over and over many hundred times In stead of them all which even to name with their words abbreviated would fil a volumne I shall mention some few only First the Popish glosse thus speaketh Opera nostra quatenus nostra Glosa ordinaria in cap. 6. ad Rom. ver 23. sunt vim nullam Justificandi obtinent quatenus verò non à nobis sunt sed in nobis à Deo facta sunt per Gratiam Justificationem promerentur i. e. Our works as farre as they are ours have no power to justifie but as farre as they are not from us but wrought of God by Grace in us so they deserve justification In the same manner our English Jesuit Campian is recorded in the dispute which hee had with some of our English
wrath his life and righteousnesse were hid with Christ in God He could claim nothing from God by any evidential title but wrath and condemnation though he had right in Christ yet had he no right unto Christ though in Christ all was his because Christ had united purchased and received all into his hands for him yet had he no right to Christ by which to claim a partnership and interest in the kingdome and priviledge of grace was without all true peace of conscience all joy and consolation in the promises of grace under fears and terrors in expectation of wrath and damnation could be sensible of nothing but anger hatred and displeasure against him for sinne knew not himselfe to be one of the children of promise Gal. 4. 28. to be entitled to Christ in whom alone the promises of God are yea and Amen 2 Cor. 1. 20. Therefore as if there had been no Christ no Mediator and reconciler no Covenant of Grace yea no Grace or acts of Grace eternal or temporary in God thorow Christ so he remained under a Spirit either of delusion or of bondage still But now when the father hath drawn him to Christ and Christ hath received him when Christ hath apprehended him to himselfe by his Spirit and he by faith hath apprehended Christ to himselfe for redemption reconciliation remission righteousnesse and whatsoever else is laid up in Christ for him and so hath union and communion with Christ hath Christ in him and is himselfe in Christ Now his justification which was sure before in God and in Christ is also made sure to his conscience He is now justified in his own conscience after the tenor and by the vertue of the Gospel and Covenant and promises of Grace findes and knowes himselfe through Christ absolved at Gods tribunal hath all the evidences for it that possibly he can desire the Word and the Oath of God that by two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to ly he may have a strong consolation Heb. 6. 18. The Word evidenceth and his faith evidenceth the Covenant is now sealed mutually and reciprocally between God and him by beleeving he hath put to his seal that God is true and God sealeth to his conscience by certifying it by his Spirit that his wrath is pacified that all accusations are silenced there is no condemnation to him being now in Christ Jesus Rom. 8. 1. Himselfe may now rest satisfied banishing henceforth all fears and doubts and glorying in the Lord that the fear of death is past it is enough my soul is now alive Christ is made sinne for me that I might become the Righteousnesse of God in him 2 Cor. 5. 21. Now Lord lettest thou thy servant depart in peace for my eyes have seen thy Salvation and in the interim while he is here enjoying a heaven upon earth a kingdome of Righteousnesse joy and peace in the Holy Ghost untill he was incorporated by faith into Christ Christ might indeed plead for him but he had no evidence no shew of title not an article under Gods hand or from his lips to plead at Gods barre for life or pardon 6. That neverthelesse when a man truly beleeveth then may he apprehend justification and remission of sinnes not onely as now first declared and evidenced to his own soul But also as past and compleat before the foundation of the world was laid Because from eternity Christ satisfied in that he undertook to satisfie for the sinnes of the Elect and God from eternity rested in this satisfaction undertaken by Christ and so laid aside all displeasure which without this Covenant between him and his onely Son he might have taken up as wel against them that should afterward beleeve as against them which dye in unbeleef For their justification in time doth à posteriore argue their justification before all times and where faith findes the least rivulet of the great stream sent forth it can it ought by it to ascend up to the very fountain to be filled and satisfied with the deliciousnesse thereof Thus shall we finde the Apostle almost in all his Epistles from the sense of their present enjoyments in Christ to carry upward the Saints to whom he writeth unto the very bosom of Gods eternal grace counsell and good pleasure where all was laid up and treasured for them from all eternity that thence it might in due time be shed forth upon them Faith runs not away rashly and hastily with the gift but delights to enter and pierce through the vail to contemplate and embrace the as well eternal as infinite love of the giver 7. That although no man receiveth the sensible comfort of his justification before he actually beleeveth yet every elect vessell hath besides and without his knowledge the true benefit thereof as to freedome from vengeance throughout the whole time of his infidelity was in Christ beloved accepted and owned of God as righteous in that his sinne was not imputed as fully before as after he beleeved the price of his redemption was paid all his sinnes borne and punished upon the shoulders yea the soul and body of Christ so that himselfe was no lesse exempted from the revenging wrath of God from all obligation to make any part of satisfaction in his own person for his sinnes as hee that was already in Christ by faith So that whatsoever afflictions befell him in the time of his unbelief were not the infliction of the curse as the curse for sinne but sanctified chastisements of a loving father flowing from his grace and favour not from his indignation and hatred against his person though against his sins tending all to his good not to his ruine Else if he should have born the least stroke of Gods revenging justice and in the least pittance have made but one least peece of satisfaction by his sufferings for his offences then either Christ hath made satisfaction for him but in part and is not his whole Saviour and redeemer for that himselfe hath satisfied divine justice in part or otherwise the father hath taken satisfaction twice for the same sins once from the Lord Christ and after that from the offender also But this were to slander either the perfection of Christs mediation or the incorruptnesse of Gods justice both which are unsufferable 8. That the justification which is by faith consisteth not onely in a bare apprehension of our justification and pardon from God for this is onely mans act and no express act of God but first in Gods actual declaration evidencing and certisfying the conscience of man drawn to the barre of judgement set up as it were in the conscience that God hath taken satisfaction to his offended justice from the Lord Christ for all the offenders sinnes and hath for ever quit-claimed and discharged him from all sin and wrath and admitted him into favour and family to be under the dispensations of his grace for ever And then indeed God having by this
land of Canaan again The same is evident from the words of Moses in Deuteronomy where Moses having in the name of God pronounced the many blessings and whole confluence of secular happinesse to the obedient and to them that after much transgression and many curses for their transgressions should repent and turn and denounced curses upon curses a whole deluge of judgements and temporary afflictions one on the neck of another against as many as should disâ—bey the Commandements c. cap. 28. cap. 29. he doth cap. 30 15 19. Call heaven and earth to witnesse that he had done his duty in setting before them life and death good and evill blessing and cursing inplying the life and death here mentioned consisted chiefly in outward prosperity and adversity stroaking and striking That these were the apples and the rods to allure and terrifie them yet in their minority and under a paedagogie untill faith should come and the Sun of tighteousnesse shine in its splendor that they might walk by faith and not by feeling act from love and not from fear from the Spirit of adoption and not of bondage so that this shadie life promised to a legall repentance is nothing to the life of justification but so far beneath it that it is in no capacity to be used as a proofe about it These therefore serve not at all to drive on Mr. Baxters conclusion In the second place Those Scriptures which he quotes that offer life upon condition of Evangelicall repentance doe not make for him any more then the former For Gospell repentance is taken either in a large or strict sense in the more large sense it is the same with conversion or regeneration and oft times equipollent and the same thing with faith though some little consider it to be so And this is as oft as repentance is put for the one and whole thing required on our part to put us into the actuall and sensible possession of the grace and life of the Gospell as Mat. 3. 2. Mark 6. 12. Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand The summe of their preaching was Repent so Luk. 13. 3 5. Except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish 24. 47. and many other of the Scriptures which he quoteth In all these places repentance containeth primarily the change of our relation and but secondarily of our qualifications and manners It is a quidam motus in which acti agimus being moved by Gods Spirit we move the terminus a quo in this motion is self our self-righteousnesse and self-confidences from which we turn no lesse then from our polluted self sinfull self and sinfull wayes The terminus ad quem is God the grace of God inviting us The medinm per quod is the Lord Christ through whom we have accesse to the Father for remission first and then for sanctification also And as the scope of the Gospell requires us to understand in such Scriptures repentance in this sense so neither do the two Greek words rendered in Latine Resipiscâ—ntia in English Repentance refuse this sense For what is that change of the mind of the judgement wisdome and will when it is taken for a Theologicall vertue but a change of these in reference to happinesse A renouncing of and departing from natures groaping and erring directions by our own works and righteousnesse to seek for blessednesse and a cleaving to the directions of the Gospell pointing out Christ as the alone way to it For instance Paul while yet impenitent and unconverted walked by the light of his naturall conscience as it was informed and awaked by the Law and by this rule walked as a strict Pharisee touching the righteousnesse which is in the Law blamelesse Phil. 3. 5 6. and looking as Mr. Baxter doth upon the doctrine of free grace and righteousnesse freely imputed as upon a licentious doctrine was carried with full sails of zeal totally to destroy it I verily thought with my self saith he that I ought to do many things against the Name of Jesus c. which thing I also did c. Act. 26. 9 10. Now when the Lord Christ met him in the midst of his raging madnesse so working upon his heart that he now beleeved in Christ whom he had erewhile persecuted received him and rested on him for righteousnesse whom he had erewhile blasphemed What will ye call this obedience to the faith this closing of his heart with Christ in stead of further dashing against him was it not his conversion his repentance or is the promise of life I mean the life of justification made to any other repentance besides this In this sense therefore repentance is not a quid distinctum a thing distinct from but one and the same with justifying faith or if it be objected that it is somewhat larger then justifying faith I shall not contend but acknowledge that it comprehends whole faith both qua justificat qua sanctificat to justification and to sanctification Yet this hinders not but that these two phrases repentance to life or remission of sins and faith to life and the remission of sins are in the language of the holy Ghost one and the same Where repentance is taken in a stricter sense and some of the Scripture which he quotes seem to promise remission of sins or life to it we must necessarily understand of every such Scriptures that it speaketh of the repentance which is actuated in our first conversion and calling or after it That which is in our first conversion or calling when it is taken in a strict sense is not as in the former sense put as the whole thing required on our parts but seems in words a coordinate with faith to interest us in the righteousnesse and life which are by Christ Such are these Scriptures Repent and beleeve the Gospell repentance toward God and faith toward the Lord Jesus Christ Mark. â— 15. Act. 20. 21. and many other But in these repentance and faith together make up no more then in other Scriptures either faith alone or repentance alone in their large sense import and so repentance is taken for self-denyall self-abhorring self-subduing and faith for embracing Christ both these are repentance or faith in their larger sense To no other end doth repentance cast and empty out self but to be filled with Christ nor doth faith receive Christ untill self be let out and evacuated that it may receive him See we it in Paul his casting away his Phi. 3. 8 9. own righteosnesse as dung and losse and putting on of Christ to win and wear him for righteousnesse were two concurrent acts either of one faith or one repentance for we may use after the holy Ghost either term indifferently and repentance here is no distinct thing from faith nor faith from repentance and in naming these two the holy Ghost nameth not two gifts of grace but two acts of the same gift of grace in us so that hitherto the
but those of Mr. Baxter as far as they relate to it do follow justification 4 The scope of these Scriptures is to urge upon all that draw near to God in prayer to purge out all hatred and purposes of revenge against their brethren from their hearts and the argument by which this duty is pressed is that else it as also any other reigning sin allowed within the heart will make both their persons and prayers an abomination to the Lord. God will not hear will not forgive such as bring while they bring such a devill in their hearts before him they shall depart without any more answer of peace to their souls then they are disposed to give to their brethren against whom they are provoked From these Scriptures therefore we may gather how they are qualifyed which are forgiven and justifyed not by what qualifications and works they have obtained justification That whosoever hath tasted of the pardoning grace of God the same by beholding in Christ the glory of Gods grace as in a glasse is transformed into the same image of grace love mercy goodnesse pity c. towards his brethren as himself hath found in God and sees shining forth upon him from the face of God through Christ 2 Cor. 3. 18. That in whomsoever this mercy and goodnesse of God appears not whatsoever he boasteth of faith and devoutnesse in prayer yet it is certain that he is empty of justifying faith and of the justification which is by faith and so we have here some description of the justifyed and unjustifyed not a precept of duties by which the unjustifyed may attain to be justifyed 5 The three last quotations of Mr. Baxter do subvert utterly all that he built by the former quotations For these Scriptures affirming it to be not indefinitely prayer but the prayer of faith which saveth and obtaineth forgivenesse that not the asking simply but the asking of the faithfull in Christs Name is prevalent that not every one but we know that whatsoever we aske we have our petitions granted do manifest that whatsoever vertue is in prayer it floweth from faith prayer it self is a dead work unlesse faith enliven it and all our works of mercy and forgiving dead works untill faith becomes the living root from which they derive life or rather hath breathed out the life which it hath suckt from Christ our life into them That it is Christs name and mediation that makes all accepted with God and that not to all but to those peculiar ones of Christ that are in union and conjunction with Christ it being a priviledge peculiar to true beleevers that is here mentioned under the word we we have it saith the Apostle the world hath no part in it Esaus forgiving Sauls confession of sin and Simon Magus his prayer for forgivenesse may as in Mr. Baxters last quotation Act. 8. 22. perhaps be so far heard and forgivenesse obtained from the Lord as to the exempting of them from some temporall vengeance but not to interest them in the justification of the Gospell If the cryes and workes of any of these dogs bring them in to partake of the childrens bread it is but in mans judgement alone before God it was their faith and cleaving to Christ yea being in Christ by faith that of dogs made them children and partakers of the Gospell priviledges So these Scriptures in no wise prescribe as I said the duties by or for which we are but delineate the Acts and qualifications of those that are justifyed by Christ So much in generall to the summe of these Scriptures as for the meaning of the severall Scriptures and how Mr. Baxter argues from them as the Papists how the Sophisters for so our men fitly tearm the Papists endeavour from them to prove justification by works and the Protestants answer and confute them I leave to the Reader to fetch from the Commentators themselves whom they shall finde to speake fully as Mr. Baxter knoweth but concealeth not daring to enter the Lists with them The third duty which he brings as coofficiating with Pag. 236. faith to justification is a complexion of duties the whole swarm the vast mountain of duties all that men and Angels can devise to be duty yet that he might declare how he can measure and contain so huge an Ocean in his fist he crusheth them so together as that they may be held in the concave of two Eg-shels love and sincere obedience and their works Fain would he have followed Bellarmine as his shâ—ddow at every turne but he finds his genius somewhat differing from Bellarmines The Cardinall was for prolixity Mr. Baxter is for brevity Bellarmine puts love in the fourth place as operating to justification with faith and thence proceeds to more But Mr. Baxter follows him here to love and weary to go after him any further in particulars shakes hands in love with him and parts from him with good leave in respect of his method but in his matter to hold with him throughout the work The first Scripture which he quotes is the first which Bellarmine alleadgeth thus B. Luk. 7. 47. though I knew in Pinks interpretation of that It seems Pink hath given the right interpretation of that Text which all the Protestants give But Bellarmine interprets it otherwise and must not Christ mean as Bellarmine will have him The words of the Text are these Wherefore I say unto thee her sins which are many are forgiven for she loved much But to whom little is forgiven the same loveth litle What doth Mr. Baxter hence conclude the same with Bellarmine her much love was the ground of the forgivenesse of her many sins and so her love went before her justification and forgivenesse which followed as the fruit or consequent thereof Bellarmine and his fellowrs put authority and holinesse upon this interpretation else would not Mr. Baxter who makes right reason the foundation and rule of his Religion forswear his wit and reason to follow it For it is evident from the Text to all that are not sworn enemies to the truth that the Lord Jesus reasoneth here from the effect to the cause and not from the cause to the effect from the womans great love that many sins were forgiven her causing this love not from the greatnesse of her love as from the cause why so many sins were forgiven her So runs the Text Which will love most he to whom the creditor hath forgiven 500. pence or he Ve. 41 c. to whom he forgave 50 The answer was I suppose he to whom most was forgiven Thou hast well said saith the Lord so it is with this woman she loves much because much was forgiven her Who sees not here the forgivenesse to be the cause of the love not the love of the forgivenesse Or will Bellarmine which affirmes this woman to be Mary Magdalen or Mr. Baxter after him say that while she was yet a Harlot and had seven Devils in her 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
saith here he hath armed himself against all exceptions by saying it so that we shall not know his meaning Only thus far we may speak with Augustine Si non vis intelligidebes negligi What is not an understandable Argument we shall contemn as no Argument But his illustration and proof may possibly follow in his Explication Thither also we will follow him to examine which one of all these things delivered here so ambiguously he doth there plainly illustrate or prove it runneâ— thus pa. 281. B. This is the condition of the New Covenant at large That all this is sometime called faith as taking its name from the primary principall vitall part is plain hence Of the condition enough hath been said before we look for proof That all this is sometime called I mean in Gods not Mr. Baxters Scriptures faith we also will say it is plain if he make it plain by his Hence viz. B. 1. In that faith is oft called obeying of the Gospell but the Gospell commands all this Rom. 10. 16. 1 Pet 1. 22. 4. 17. 2 Thess 1. 8. Gal. 3. 1. 5. 7. Heb. 5. 9. 1 In all these Scriptures obeying of the Gospell is one and the same thing which in other Scriptures is called the obedience of faith i. e. obedience to that Gospell doctrine which requireth to rest upon Christ alone by faith for righteousnesse and life without any intermixture to attain the same called obedience to the Gospell to distinguish between the Gospell and Legall way of justification This Mr. Baxter knoweth well therefore he gives us the quotation without the words of these Texts most of them being such as if there were nothing else said in the whole Word even these are enough to subvert as pernicious his assertion 2 The thing in question is not whether the Gospell command these duties but whether it commands us to do them that we may be justifyed by such deeds and whether because the Gospell commands them it doth therefore call them faith or that all which is to be done in obedience to the Gospell is straightway to take up either the Nature or Name of faith 3 How doth he contradict himself here in what he had said before Thesis 31. pa. 154. where he affirmed the Commandements of the Gospell in relation to these duties to be the establishment of the Morall Law and the perfect obedience in the Law commanded and that this is but an adjunct of the new Covenant or Gospell and not a proper part thereof Will he say then that all the works which the Morall Law commandeth are faith or by the Gospell Metamorphosed from works into faith B. The fufilling of the conditions of the new Covenant is oft called faith c. But these forementioned are parts of the condition of the new Covevenant Ergo they are implyed and included in faith Gal. 3. 12 23 25. A wretched Argument lame in every foot in which one principle is begged to maintain another Neither of the premises nor yet the conclusion having any soundnesse either as they are considered a part or all together Or if he could have proved either proposition from Scripture would he have suffered them to passe under his bare affirmation alone The Scripture annexed prove only an opposition between faith and works the Gospell and the Law but are as far as heaven from earth from proving either of the premises Neither doth the conclusion infer what it should from the premises i. e. what is contained in them I should in particulars shew the deformed nakednesse of the Syllogism if it did not enough shew it self without my help How rotten must the cause needs be which puts so profound a man to such miserable shifts and absurd arguings to defend it where there is no opposer What followes in the same Sâ—ction is all one as if he had said not so but so c. because I have over and over told you so and what I have told you must needs be true The other things in the explication are not to this question Lest any should except that I wrong Mr. Baxter in calling these two latter his second and third Arguments to prove justification by works when he doth not so call them though he doth so use them I have prosecuted the matter of them wholly as considered in it self without any further reference to the conclusion then as himself in expresse words applies them to it CHAP. V. The fourth and great Argument of Mr. Baxter examined and the inference that because Christ as Lord as well as Saviour is the object of justifying faith as justifying therefore we are justifyed by works as well as by faith is confuted And withall proved that Christ as our Lord dying for us and not as Lord and a Lawgiver is the object of faith as justifying Mr. Baxters Reasons to prove the contrary answered HIS fourth Argument is drawn from the Object of Faith and the due qualification of the same Object It runnes thus as by his disputes compacted and compared together appeareth B. If Christ be the object of justifying faith as such not only in his Priestly office as our Redeemer and Saviour but also in his Kingly office our Lord and Ruler then other works and duties of obedience are as much required as faith in justifying us before God But Christ is the object of justifying faith as such not only in his Priestly but also in his Kingly office as our Lord as well as our Redeemer and Saviour Ergo other works and duties of obedience have so much to do injustifying as faith He saith affiance which whether iâ— at all differs from faith and whether he means not the same with faith we shall see afterward if it be necessary The Assumption he layes down and goes about to prove Thes 66. and in its explication beginning pa. 255. The consequent of the proposition he hath and endeavours to confirme in and under Thes 72 73. This one of all his Arguments hath the Dominicall letter on it it is the wood the rest are but the hay and stabble of his building his sacra anchora if this hold not the man with his vessell and all the trash-treasure therein must perish upon the Rocks All the rest of his Arguments are but bubbles in comparison of this bottle-glasse Therefore he attributes much to this gloryeth in it and only doth not fall down and worship it It was hinted before here and there in all his discourse but here he manageth it with all his strength and art I shall speak first to the Assumption because he first puts and endeavours to prove it And here now appears what his end was in laying a third opinion of the righteousnesse of Christ to justification besides the active and passive righteousness viz. a righteousnesse meritorious for us and not imputed to us after he had been 10. years for the passive righteousnesse only as he notifies to us pa. 54 55. The ground it seems of
praises of the man yet this act of his meriteth it not no not from Mr. B. For as far as he transcribes him p. 182. Mr. Ball no further foâ—lowes Grotius then to Gods relaxing of the Law to take satisfaction from Christ in our steed But if he had also asserted that after satisfaction actually taken they which in Christ have satisfied are yet all their life-time under the Curse of the Law to bear it in their own persons would Mr. B. have hidden it Yet this is the thing in question between Mr. B. and the Protestants whether after the giving and receiving of satisfaction for our breaches of the Law the Curs of the Law be either nulled or els onely in part relaxed as to our bearing it Yea if he â—e as Mâ— B. stiles him then have we the testimony of so great learned and holy a Divine as almost England ever bred against Mr. B. himself not being able to deny any one almost that England ever bred which hath written more directly and contrarily to Mr. B. then this man in his Tractate of Faith about Justification If elswhere he contradicts himself I shall oppose Ball against Ball yea Ball in afflictions when he lived by Faith and had nothing else but Christ apprehended by Faith to support his troubled soul to Ball nâ—w raised to a prosperous state in the world and whâ— seeing the Court infected with Popery Socinianism and Arminianism and no other bridge to prefermâ—nt so effectuall as some shew of bending at least to these wayes might possibly as far as Conscience would permit him make use of the language there held most authentick I say of the language for I cannot condemn his doctrine alledged in his three following Testimonies it taken in a good sense But his ambiguities of words seem to speak him out to have had a levell to somewhat els besides the supporting of the truth and yet his Conscience seems to hold him bound from saying any thing manifestly against the truth Mr. B. may possibly tickle himself with his words but his matter duly pondered gives him a sting sufficient to perswade him to forbear laughter Let the unbiassed judicious Reader add consideration to his reading and then judge The rest of the testimonies which he hath here cited and quoted I let passe as altogether besides the questions which Mr. B. hath set in agitation between himself and all the Protestant-Churches And thus at length have his Arguments been examined which he brings to confirm his Justification by works He hath many things tending to the confirmation of some other Paradoxes scattered in his Aphorisms beginning at p. 123. of his Appendix and ending at p. 164. but because those things are handled by way of disputation against others and Mr. B. as a challenger doth call out there by name Mr. Owen and Maccovius to a Duell with himself each after other exposing them to the world as base and silly Animals in what they have said except they come forth into open field to make it good It shall be both impertinent and uncivil in me to meddle in a business to which others and the same far more worthy and able are called as to their peculiar task I should not be excused by any herein from being one that loveth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be busie in another mans office specially seeing I know not what these challenged have done or are doing in the defence of themselves and the doctrine which they have asserted Were it that their reputation alone and not a truth of Christ which they had undertaken to defend were here clouded by Mr. B. I should think it no fault in them to pass it by in contemptuous silence but seeing Mr. B. endeavours upon their ruines to erect his mounts against the City of the living God to destroy it or at least spoyle it of its principall immunities denying the full justification of the Lords redeemed ones in this world holding them under the curs and wrath of God both in their life and death I perceive not how they can be silent without betraying the truth of God which they once undertook to defend Since this was written I understand Mr. Owen hath fully vindicated himself and learnedly defended all that Mr. B. had laid on his score Thus far to his Arguments that he hath brought to prove Justification by works I find no more nor in these have I hidden any thing but set them forth in their fullest strength CHAP. XV. Mr. Baxters Plea to prove his Doctrine free from Popery examined and refuted I Come now to the most accurate finest and chiefest part of Mr. Brs. Art his Alcumistry by which hee turneth the basest metals into gold darkness into light death into life deformity into beauty and hell into heaven it self All this he with strong endeavours labours to accomplish while with strong confidence hee goes about to vindicate his doctrine from all error all infection of Popery Socinianism Pharisaism and to render it the same with the doctrine of Paul and of Christ guiltless of all derogation to the praise of Gods grace Christs merits or the Saints comfort Yea to set it forth in such a splendor that although hee hath hitherto described such a grace of God as by his donation was no more appropriated and peculiarized to Peter then to Judas to the cursed in hell than to the Saints in heaven and such a Christ as reigneth Tyrant-like in the Kingdom of grace chaining up his own all his own subjects and friends under the curse of the Law to bear the horrors and torments of it in soul and body all their life yea after death as long as the world shall continue though he hath taken away from the Saints after their self-denyall repentance building themselves by their most holy Faith upon Christ the Rock after their renovation and sanctification by the Spirit all hope and possibility of attaining any assurance of Gods unchangeable love to them or of their sinns irrevocably pardoned or of their perseverance in the state of Grace or of their indefeazable right to glory or of their exemption from the curse and wrath of God while they live or of the rest and freedom of their souls after death either from the flames of Hell or of Purgatory as long as the world standeth After hee hath taught that no man shall have any part in Christ and his benefits which procureth it not by his own righteousness his own perfect righteousness in suo genere yea by the merits of his righteousness After that he hath proclaimed that his Gospel brings no better tidings of joy than these Yet at length hee comes to varnish over such a Grace such a Christ such a Gospel such a state of believers who are all of his own faigning with such paints and fine colours as by them to enamour all men to embrace these as the only true and appetible Grace Christ Gospel and state of beleevers That this Doctrine
he fights against natural reason perswading men never more to eat because their meat is not appointed to Clothe them or to walk naked because he saith their garments are not usefull to nourish them No more Cause hath Mr. Br. or the Papists to accuse us that we banish good works from the life of a Christian by teaching that they are not usefull or appropriated to justifie but to sanctifie very usefull in all the particulars before-mentioned How unacquainted with the frame of a Christian spirit are these objectors Either they do not experimentally know or else do stifle within themselves this knowledge that a Christ-enjoying and Gospellized soul gaspeth no less for deliverance from the bondage than from the Condemnation of sinn delights so much in performing duty to Christ as in receiving pardon from him groanes so pathetically under the body as ever he did under the guilt of sinn Cryeth with equall vehemency of affâ—ctionâ— for holiness unto God as for happiness with him for Conformity to him in righteousness as in glory makes no other use of his redemption than to run at liberty the race of obedience set before him embraceth and delighteth in sanctifying as well as in saving grace in the infusion as in the imputation of righteousness labours to dispense all for the Lord and his service whatsoever he hath received from the Lord and his free grace Therefore whatsoever the Lord powrs upon him to sanctification is received with so great joy in the Holy Ghost as that which is communicated to him to justification and he labours to be and express himself wholly Christs as well as to obtein Christ wholly his As for Mr. Brs meerly Morall Men that will receive Christ neither to Justification nor to sanctification but upon their own terms purchasing him by Fine and rent that the glory might be partly theirs and not wholly Christs It is enough that Mr. Br. hardens and subverts them in this their Moral madness wholly contradictive to the spirituallness and wisdome of the Gospel We shall not be insnared by all the nicities of his Arts and Chimicall extracts of the spirits of his spoyling Philosophy to involve our selves with him in the guilt of poysoning so many souls and turning their best righteousness and devotion into sinn by encouraging them to appropriate the same to such an end as is destructive to the glory of Gods grace and contrary to the minde and rule of the Gospel We have one Master which is Christ his dictates expressed by him and his Apostles in the plainness and foolishness of their preaching are so sacred and authoritative with us that neither the most labyrinthical mazes of sophistry shall unwinde us nor the extravagancies of the most luxuriating witts nor the most Curious plausibilities of humane reason shall by Gods Grace unreason us so from our selves as to undisciple us from him Yea though we could not in some things give a satisfactory answer to the sophisticated reasonings of these disputers against Christ and his Gospel yet should we fit down as fools with Christ and his Apostles adoring the manifold wisdome of God revealed in a mystery rather than be wise with these men to the world knowing that the foolishness of God is wiser and the weakness of God is stronger than men And we seek wisdome and happiness from the mines of Christs Gospel not from the dry quarrie of mans literature and inventions 2 Though we reject it as an arrogant and presumptuous doctrine which Mr. Br. in Common with the Papists teacheth That we are justified and saved by our good qualifications and works for our works for the merit and worthinesse of our good works yet we teach and believe that they are in respect of all that have age ability and time to perform them necessary Consequents of our Justification and Antecedents of our glorification Let a man pretend what he will of Faith in Christ yet if by Faith hee do not cleave firmly to him to derive from him power to mortifie every sinn to perform all duty if he can allow within himselfe any known evill or continue in the neglect of any known duty without striving to get the victory in the strength of Christs Spirit over every such infirmity wee take such a man so farr from Christ as Christ is from Belial A branch in Christ not bearing fruit which is appointed to be cut off and cast into the fire because he was never in Christ otherwise but by a formall profession never had vitall union to him or communion with him by the ligatures of Faith and the Spirit For sanctification is an individual companion of Justification And the office of Christ is to be the Author of both to all that believe Otherwise the work of his Mediator-ship should not be compleated in either one of these and so he should not be our Christ if a halfe Christ only to us And Sanctification is still begun and carried on towards perfection also where there is time and meanes in the kingdom of Grace before its perfecting and swallowing up into glory in the Kingdom of glory No righteousness and holiness of man is begun in the next life But there shall be the consummation in power of that which here was begun in truth though it laboured of and languished with much infirmity 3 Wee are guiltless of those Crimes wherewith Mr. Br. endeavours to defame us and our Doctrine For 1. Neither doe wee teach or think as M. Br. suggesteth that nothing is preaching Christ but preaching him as a pardoning justifying Saviour Aph. pa. 328. Indeed we preach Justification to consist if not only yet chiefly in the pardon of sinn through the mediation of Christs death That this benefit of Christ is perfected by the satisfaction which he hath made to Gods justice in suffering for us and appropriated to us by faith alone But wee deny this to be all the Gospel-grace exhibited to us by Christ and in and through him We hold him forth as the Light of the world also having all the treasures of wisedom and knowledg hid in him Joh. 8. 12. Col. 2. 3. from whom are all the irradiations and Revelations of all the mysteries of Grace effectuall to life and holiness Mat. 13. 11. 1 Cor. 2. 10. And to the word and spirit of Christ we send all men for illumination And the Life of the world not only to restore them to life in law by Justification but as the Lord and principle of Life to beget in us an inherent life active and moving to all obedience Therefore we endeavour to send all to Christ for life even for this life because the whole judgment and dispensation thereof is committed to him and he is our all to sanctification also Joh. 5. 21 22 25 26. Col. 3. 11. We indeed except against that Doctrine as more Legal than Evangelical that roars thunders Condemnation against poor Exiles in a dry wilderness where is no water fainting and even dead with
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
the Apostles termes by which he freely and without necessity in relation to his justice willeth the salvation of one and willeth not the salvation of another loveth or hateth imputeth not or doth impute sinne according to his own free will But justification in the latter sense is an act of Gods righteousnes or faithfulnesse by which hee faithfully and righteously accomplisheth his promises of grace in just â—ying and absolving them which believe by the sentence of pardon pronounced to their conscience according to the Gospel promise made to beleevers No word of promise went before justification in the former sense to make it an act of justice to fulfill that promise neither could it be an act of his natural justice that by the necessity of his nature he should so justifie and love any for then should none be either loved or saved freely of God when contrariwise it was in his own free choice to love or to hate to save or condemn all or mutatis vicibus to have loved Esau hated Jacob to have willed the condemnation of the saved and the salvation of the reprobated But the word of promise preceded justification in the latter sense which it is righteousnesse in God to fulfill therefore is it an act as well of his justice or righteousnesse as of his free grace 3. That Justification in the former sense is antecedaneous or foregoing to all covenants whatsoever 1. In order of nature though not in time it goeth before that covenant between the father and the son mentioned before in the examination of the explication of Mr. Baxters fourteenth Thesis and consequently before Christs undertaking to make or the fathers Covenant to accept what he should offer in satisfaction for the sinnes of the elect For in order of nature the willing of the end alway goeth before the willing of the means conducing to the end so that Gods willing mans righteousnesse and immunity from sinne and loving him to salvation must needs goe before his willing of Christs satisfying of his justice which was but a mean appointed of God to the constituting of man righteous before him that he might be pure from sinne discharged from condemnation and partaker of salvation which was the end Not that there was any precedency or following after of these acts of God in time for they are both coeternal and before all times Whom God hath loved and forgiven their sinnes them hath he so loved and forgiven in and through Christ from all eternity and through and for the merit of his satisfaction Much more doth this immanent act of justification go before not onely in nature but in time also the other temporary Covenants both the Covenant of workes made with Adam and the Covenant of Grace made after by Gospel promise by Christ or God in Christ to us and with us For these had all their being in time But justification in its other acceptation is subsequent unto and followes after and is an effect of not onely the Covenant of Grace but of faith it selfe which the Covenant of Grace calls for as a mean to attain it None else but a beleiver nor he until he actually beleeveth is thus actually justified or hath pardon of sinnes and absolution from wrath declared and pronounced of God in his conscience And thus to be justified in Christ or in God is one thing and to bee justified in our selves by God through Christ is another The former is an antecedent the latter an effect or consequent of the Covenant of Grace 4. That neither the mediation satisfaction of Christ nor much lesse our faith in Christ nor any of the most noble gifts of grace received from Christ either in their habit or operation do move God to justifie us so as to put into him a will to pardon our sins and accept us as righteous or to change his affection from nilling to will our forgivenesse and happinesse and from hating to love and accept us because he is God and therefore immutable and there cannot be any cause of Gods will rendred any more than of God himselfe For the Will of God is God himselfe and these immanent acts of God are God himselfe acting So that the substration of all that Christ hath suffered and by his sufferings satisfied for us and of all that we doe or can doe to put our selves into union with Christ and a conformity with the Will of God are in no wise the causes or conditions or antecedents of Gods first loving owning and pronouncing uâ— righteous and pure from sinne imputed but the effects thereof For he so loveth and justifieth all that in a Covenant way have been or shall be justified in their own conscience before ever they beleeve or live But that the intervening of Christs satisfaction for our sinnes and our recumbency upon and embracing of Christ so satisfying by faith that we may be justified do ad nothing to God which was not nor alter any thing which was in his will before but do onely lay and make a way by Gods ordination how he from all eternity loving and justifying us in himselfe freely may in a course most convenient to magnify both his truth and righteousnesse and withal his grace and mercy at length actually declare us just in and to our own consciences and for ever acquit us from sinne and wrath to the admiration of Men and Angels And so the former justification is a pure simple free and irrespective act of God having no causality out of himselfe moving him to it but the latter is a foederal Gospel or Covenant justification respecting his own Covenant before made Christs satisfaction already given and pleaded in heaven by Christ and mans faith in the mediator and promiser pleading the promise and the blood of the mediator sealing it upon all which he doth he cannot but actually pronounce and declare to the conscience of the beleiver his perfect absolution from sin and vengeance This latter is indeed the justifying wherof the Scriptures primarily speak as oft as they speak of justification by faith but so as the former is also in such Scriptures implyed Neither is the Scripture silent in reference to the former as considered without the latter or apart from it 5. That although all that are or shall be justified by faith in time i. e. each onâ— in the time when he so beleeveth were justified also in Christ secretly in God before they beleived or yet lived even from eternity Yet is there no man justified by vertue of the New Covenant and promise of the Gospel proclaiming right to the Lord Christ to forgivenesse of sinnes freedome from condemnation heirship to Gods Kingdom and all other benefits of Christs Passion until he doth actually beleeve and embrace Christ thorow him to have all those pretious promises made good and effectual to himselfe Though in Christ he were Lord of all before yet differed he nothing in himselfe from a servant from a child of
are or shall be justified and saved To the sixth I shall reserve my answer untill I come to examine the forequoted places of Master Baxter together with his impetuous and fiery dispute against it Append. pa. 76. and thence forward unto pa. 98. where wee shall find him combating against this opinion with as much gallantry and possibly with no lesse successe than the Dragon fought against Michael In the interim I doubt not thence after the question rightly stated to maintain the position as our Divines most eminent in the reformed Churches have taught it to be the sacred and sound Doctrine of the Gospell as free from Antinomism as the contrary assertion of Master Baxter is full of Popery The examination of the things conteined in the eighth and ninth I shall leave to their proper place particularly to be examined because they have a multitude of particulars congested in them requiring particular answers From all that hath been said upon this point wee may take up two observations in reference to Master Baxters dealing therein 1. That there is no truth and sincerity in his pretence of fighting against the Antinomians truly so called throughout this his Tractate For he medleth not at all with their erroneous Tenents But contrariwise that he useth meer fraud to inure the odious Term of Antinomism upon the choice and most pretious Doctrines of the Gospel delivered by Christ and his Apostles and taught and defended by the most able and most faithfull Ministers of Christ in all ages to make both the pure Gospel and the defenders thereof to stink in the nostrills of unread and unwary men subtlely concealing the names of those worthies which have taught and maintained these truths lest their light and glory should bring his Doctrines contrary to theirs into suspition first then to examination and lastly to an abhomination among men How much more candour do we find in his fellowes the Arminians or Remonstrants These in all their Tenents wherein they dissent from the Protestant Churches do not load the contrary opinion with the imputation of Antinomism but throughout their Apology ever and anon ingeniously confesse of that which they hold Contra quod fere hactenus creditum est in these and in words equipollent acknowledging still their opinions to be wholly against the judgement of the best Churches and Divines before them Master Baxter it seems hath more of the serpent in him than they had therefore followes the steps of our English Arminians rather than those in Holland before them For as these blasted the sacred truths which they opposed with the name of Puritanism so doth this man with the name of Antinomianism to make them odious A trick which the old Pharisees had learned of their Father Jo. 8. 44. and propagated to their sonns the Papists to besmear the Doctrines of Christ with the infamous titles of Schism Nazarism Heresie Who then will lay it as a fault to their Children in our times if they doe also Patrizare Secondly that he hath the like fraudulent design in mingling with the truths of the Gospel which he brandeth with Antinomism the dreams of Colyer Spriggs Hobson and other Ranters if indeed these be such for I have not read them giving the same brand to these as to the former by this feat endeavouring to instill into the mindes of them that will be deceived 1. That all the hereticall and blasphemous Doctrines which these men teach are Antinomian 2. That the truthes which the one side teach against Antichrist and the Blasphemies which the other side vent against Christ are of one Nature and the former to be no lesse abhorred than the latter Now if the Pamphlets of these men be so abhominable as Master Baxter affirmeth and others also that are both able to judge and faithfull to give their judgement have told me for I acknowledge my self never to have been so ill at leisure to spend two hours in reading what any or all of them have written he dealeth unjustly to yoake them together with those tenents which he falsely accuseth of Antinomism yea with those that are rightly fathered upon Antinomians indeed For granting that they hold some Tenents of the Antinomians yet this neither argueth that all their heresies and blasphemies are so many peeces of Antinomism Nor yet that the Antinomians speaking the same things with these in the points proper to their sect do also close with them in their abhominable Doctrines that are totally alien from the Antinomists Tenents Else because Master Baxter joineth with the Jesuits in the Doctrine of Justification by works we might conclude that in all points he is a Jesuit holdeth not onely lies equivocations and mentall reservations but also murthers Massacres Seditions Powder treasons and all other practices devised in hell it self to be Meritorious works if done to the advancing of Romes interest And because he holdeth the very Act of believing to justifie with the Socinians therefore he is in all other the most blasphemous of their assertions against Christ and his blood a Socinian also or on the other side that the Jesuits and Socinians are in all things because in some things of the same judgement with Master Baxter Were it the truth of Christ which Master Baxter goeth about to propagate he would doubtlesse seek the propagation of it in Christs Spirit and Christs way When we see such serpentine windings and crookednesse in his disputes who can but judge that it is the work of the Old Serpent about which he is imployed Neither the truth of Christ nor Christ which is the truth have any such impotency in them as to need any deceits and shifts for their support When Mr. Baxter yea when all the Jesuits have raised all their mists of Sophistry Sycophancy contumely c. as thick as the smoke from the bottomlesse pit to dim the beams of Gods grace shining forth in the Sunne of Righteousnesse not one Raie thereof shall be thereby diminished it shall hide the pure light of the Gospell onely from them that perish whose eies the God of this World hath blinded 2. Cor. 4. 3 4. No one Soul shall be thereby beguiled save those onely that were made to be taken and destroyed 2 Pet. 2. 12. A large Catalogue more of the Antinomian Tenents are set forth by Master Anthony Burgess affixed to his Lectures against them Which he saith he hath gathered from Luthers works against them I will not question his faithfullnesse in collecting them whether Islebius and his Disciples directly maintained such Doctrines or whether Luther in prosecuting them enumerates these as absurdities that would follow upon their Doctrine whether they are imaginary or reall opinions of any sect of men the most of them are detestable But I find not that either Master Burgess or Mr. Bax can name any one creature under the Sun that hath declared by words or writing that he held them If they can we shall joyn with them as dissenters from and excepters against
every such person That these Antinomians of the former age were filthy dreamers loose livers such as turned the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ into lasciviousness is very probable if not certain from that which Calvin and others have written against Antinomians and Libertines And from such we have no less abhorrence then Mr. Baxter But while Mr. Baxter declaimeth against the innocent hee proclaimes himselfe a rank Antinomian in teaching and maintaining that the perfect obedience and righteousnesse of the Law are not required and consequentially not due under the Gospel Islebius himself never spake so derogatorily to the righteousness of the Law CHAP. XXIII Arg. Mr. Baxters distinction of Justification in Title of Law and in Sentence of Judgement examined together with other distinctions equipollent to this Whether besides the present there be also a future Justification and whether it be begun and perfected together at once I should wholly have passed over the 37 38 39 and 40 Theses with their Explications as meerly shady imaginations voyd of all reality and substance without stopping to give them one word of answer For why should wee talke of Pictures that have no life in them were it not that it is Master Baxters drift to carry us through these wayes of his own chalking wholly from Christ under a pretext of leading us to Christ the Justifier To frustrate therefore his deceit I shall speak somewhat to these passages of his Tractate also Thes 37. pag. 183. B. Iustification is either in title and the sense of Law or in sentence of judgement The first may be called Constitutive the second Declarative the first Virtual the second Actual Lawyers have layd it down for a Maxim Non est distinguendum ubi Lex non distinguit i. e. We are not to distinguish of any point in the Law where the Law it self hath not made a distinction If the Laws of men are not much lesse are the Laws and Word of God to be violated with mens bold distinctions For this is no lesse then to bring Gods sacred Oracles into a subjection to mans vain fancies Let Mr. Baxter shew any Scripture that gives footing for the distinguishing of Justification into that which is in title of Law and that which is in sentence of judgement into constitutive and declarative or virtuall and actuall Justification These are the inventions of wanton wits in these latter times whose endeavour it hath been to tear in peeces and thereby wholly nullifie Gods Justification and to put many Justifications of their own in stead thereof We deny not a constitutive and declarative Justification in some sense but in Mr. Baxters sense we deny it It is granted that the Satisfaction which the Son by promise gave and the Father accepted for the sins of the Elect according to the Covenant between the Father and the Son before more then once mentioned did constitute the Elect justified in Christ before they were born who notwithstanding were not declared just to their own consciences before they actually beleeved nor to others until they manifested their Faith by their Works But Mr. Baxter explodes this constitutive and declarative Justification as an unsufferable abhomination and will not have his virtuality and actuality to these applyed And let him alleage any one Scripture that calls the sentence of life unto those that shall bee saved by grace that is to be pronounced in the last day Justification Or if he cannot but that the justification of the New Covenant wherever it be mentioned in the Word be that which is in this present life who sees not that his distinguishing here tends to the subverting of Scriptures and of the both virtual and actual Justification which the Scriptures speak of B. The Scripture speaks of it many times as a future thing and not yet done Rom. 3. 30. Mat. 12. 37. Rom. 2. 13. Explic pag. 185. This is all that he bringeth or can bring for Justification in the day of Judgement and this all is nothing It followeth not because these Scriptures speak of Justification as of a thing to come saying they shall be not they are justified that this Future tense doth point out the day of Judgement If I should say Mr. Baxter shall dye I should not be accused for speaking an untruth but if any will needs confine that shall to the day of Judgement that Mr. Baxter shall then dye who would not laugh at the absurdity of the consequence That of Mat. 12. 37. By thy words thou shalt be justified and by thy words thou shalt be condemned and that of Rom. 2. 13. Not the hearers but the doers of the Law shall be justified speak of Justification after the tenor and covenant of the Law not of Grace therefore pertain nothing to the present purpose Hee shall but Dare verba damnably deceive with words that teacheth men to seek for Justification by the righteousness of the Law consisting in deeds and words Whosoever indeed shall neither in word or deed be found a transgressor of the Law actually or originally shall be justified by his words and deeds But this man must be sought for out of a happier generation then those of the race of Adam else if we except Christ alone we must return our Non est inventus That of Rom. 3. 30. speaks indeed in the Future tense but may be as properly rendred by the word will as shall though the difference be not very considerable thus It is one God which will or shall justifie the circumcision by faith and the uncircumcision through Faith The Apostle here meaneth no otherwise speaking here in the Future then what he had said before in the Present Tense of Justification And it is as if he had said God hath decreed and declared his method of justifying both Jews Gentiles to be one and the same As long as there remain or succeed any upon earth of either part to be justified the purpose of God abides firm to justifie as wel the one as the other by faith and no one of either sort by Works neither circumcision nor uncircumcision shall avail or hinder any thing but Christ faith in Christ shall bee all unto all in this businesse as long as the world endureth And what is there then in this Text to pâ—ove Mr. Baxters declarative Justification in the day of Judgement Not that wee deny the adjudging of life in the day of Judgement to all that in this life were justified but the Scriptures terming this last sentence by the name of Justification whatsoever is said of Justification by Faith or Grace is still to be understood in this life And the whole reason that Mr. Baxter hath here to coyn a Justification in the day of judgement is to lay a foundation of Popish Justification by Works as by the sequele of this his Treatise will more fully appear Else would we not contend with him about meer words did they not tend to a destructive end and that we are taught