be justifyed Pauls own righteousness as a Jew or as a Pharisee I say is one thing and Pauls faith and obedience which is his righteousness as a Christian is another And this distinction our Saviour himself hath first offered Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharises The righteousness of works is twofold The righteousness of Mankind according to the Covenant of Nature and the righteousness of the Jewes while they reckoned to be justified by the external observation only of the rites of Moses The one of these exceeds the righteousness of faith and we are not justified by it because no man can attain to it the other falls short of the righteousness of faith or of a true Christian according to these words of our Lord and for that reason as for several others the establishment of it was dangerous to their Salvation A last text they have what the law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin condemned sin in the flesh that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit It is urged here by a Perfectist that if the Protestant doctrine were true it should be said that the righteousness of the law should be fulfilled in Christ and not in us But these words I apprehend may be a phrase of the Apostles as the words attaining unto righteousness otherwhere and so it will be all one as if he had said that we might be justified who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit Nevertheless there is this here must be known and noted that when a Christian obeys God according to the Gospel that obedience of his proceeding from faith though imperfect is accepted of God instead of the laws perfect righteousness or stands him in the stead as if the whole law were fulfilled which is the ground of such expressions From whence in the way we may have light for the understanding the Apostle when he tells us the law is established by faith or uses the like words The law is established only by the fulfilling of it and faith as it works by love fulfils the law But how why in the sense N. B. as is now told you Faith produces obedience which is imperfect yet answering the terms of the gospel it is through that grace and condescention from God which Christ hath purchased for us in the work of our redemption imputed to us for righteouaness that is accepted and rewarded so as it is made to stand us in the same stead as the full performance of the law would have done which is to justifie us and bring us life eternal When God made man he gave him a law suitable to his Creation That law being founded in the image of God wherein he was created is most holy equal and unchangeable God as Rector must deal with the World according to this law so that man transgressing he is engaged to proceed against him by it unless there be some means found out that he may be no loser in his justice if he do not There is nothing can be offered to God but his justice and holiness must be losers if it be of consideration less valuable then that which the law it self required which is the obedience of all mankind or their everlasting suffering for its transgression No Man or Creature but Christ alone could offer any such satisfaction as this for us And this he offered in the obedience or righteousness of his whole life and death as the price sacrifice ransome propitiation for our sins which through the dignity of the Person that offered it being the Son of God as well as man was of value which is infinite That which exceeds a thing or is more in value then it cannot be the very thing it self which in value it exceeds The righteousness then of Christ is really imputed to man tendred in his behalf and made ours in regard of this effect or in the end to which it was intended I will say when it cannot be ours in it self to wit that God being satisfied or made no loser in his justice hereby does deal with us otherwise then by that law unto which at first we were created If he deals not with us then according to that it must be by some other which hereby also is purchased and that is according to his grace or righteousness revealed in the Gospel This grace or righteousness lyes in his acceptance of faith and repentance instead of perfect obedience for this righteousness sake of Christ thus imputed and no otherwise then thus When our Divines now say that there are no works of ours can stand before God in his district judgment that they should be causa propter quam the cause for which that is for the merit sake or worthiness whereof he should justifie any person they say well and there meaning is that our works coming not up to the original law God cannot for the performance of them absolve us as no sinners but yet seeing they are such as answer the terms of the Gospel he does for Christs sake or his merits sake both pardon their imperfection and impute them to us for righteousness in the accepting them to life or rewarding them with everlasting salvation In short Christs righteousness is imputed to us but not for righteousness It is for the righteousness sake but not formally though efficiently by the righteousness of another we are justified It is not Christ but our selves that perform the new Covenant and by the new Covenant is it or by grace that we are righteous in Gods sight It is not consequently Christs sufferings or obedience only but our faith obedience sincerity also that is rewarded with salvation yet is it not for the merit of this obedience of ours but for his merits or the merits of his righteousness Behold this is the critrical hindge upon which the whole controversie does turn We will stand for the imputation of Christs righteousness N. B. so far as ever we can with holding justification by the Covenant of grace but when some Protestants have stood for it so as renders our justification to be by the law or the Covenant of works and not by grace they have departed from the Apostle And thus the dispute in the upshot will I think end in this that Christs righteousness is the meritorious indeed the only meritorious or meritoriously procuring efficient but must not be made the formal cause of mans justification And yet do I see there is need still of some more words seeing here the heart of all lyes A righteousness we must have if we be justified and what is that righteousness There is a legal righteousness and Evangelical Christs righteousness our Divines account our Legal righteousness which must answer the law for us and our faith and repentance must be produced to answer the
holyness of life though they have bin holy men that have received it It is on the hearts I find of several Persons and sorts of Persons disagreeing otherwise in their way the providence of the Almighty who is the Authour being the Conductor of all truth to its proper use and end to shew themselves against it and to advance this tenent if I may offer the determination to the contrary That the justification of a sinner is not by the imputation of Christs righteousness made his in it self by faith as an instrument but by the righteousness of faith to wit by Christs righteousness as the meritorious cause and his faith and resolution first and sincere obedience added after as the condition of pardon and life through him or by our sincere obedience proceeding from faith which being in it self but imperfect as to the Law is imputed for righteousness to the sinner for Christs merits sake through the grace of the Gospel But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested having witness of the Law and the Prophets Si ergo nunc manifestata est etiam tunc erat sed occulia If it be now manifested t must have bin before lying hid Aug. de peccato originali cont Pel Cel. c. 25. Et tunc ergo ista gratia mediatoris erat in populo Dei sed tanquam in vellere pluvia And then was there this grace of the Mediator among Gods people as the rain in the fleece that is though unseen or not understood Ib. I observe here that the righteousness of God and the grace of the Mediator is rightly made by this Father to be one We are said to be justified by grace and not by works so by the righteousness which is of God and not of works What then is that righteousness of God which is the grace of Christ and by which we are justified By this grace and righteousness it is certain that Austine understands inherent grace which is a quality infused by the Spirit in our hearts enabling us to good works and that this way do the Papists go after him according to what also is said before Istam quippe gratiam qua justificamur id est qua Charitas Dei diffunditur in cordibus nostris De gratia Christi c. 30. that is grace whereby we are justified is no other but the love of God shed abroad in our hearts or the grace of Charity whereby faith is made perfect and so justifies as they and he agree Now this grace is opposed to works and called the righteousness which is of God and not of works according to them which hath been said before likewise because it is that which is given or infused of God and not wrought by our own strength or procured by our deserts Justitia ex lege dicitur quae fit propter legis mandatum justitia ex Deo dicitur quae datur per gratiae beneficium Ib. c. 12. That is said to be the righteousness of the law or of works which is done through the strength of our selves only upon the command that is the righteousness of God which we are helpt to do by the benefit of grace Again Non dicitur justitia nostra sed Dei quia sic sit nostrum ut nobis ex Deo It is not said our righteousness but the righteousness of God because it is ours so as to be first given of God In the same Chapter and Book The truth is this Father being possessed with his own dispute as it is incidental to the mind to fashion all things according to the impressions it hath received does frame such a meaning still in the words of the Apostle as if Paul as well as he were purposely writing against Pelagius There are three things in the soul said that learned Person Posse Velle Esse Possibilitas Voluntas Actio as Austine expresses it the Power the Will and the Deed. The grace of God he accounted was conversant only about the Power and not the Will or the Action Not that he placed all grace only in the giving the power for that must confound Grace and Nature indeed quite seeing all have the power but allowing grace to lye in divine help the power alone he held was aided by God and the will left to its self This aid now in explaining himself he confined to Doctrine God he said does reveal what he would have done in his law and in the gospel and gives us besides Christs example and then the will of it self the power alone thus helped embraces that which is good St. Augustine therefore sets himself to prove that God does not assist us only by his word but by operating on the will and giving us hearts also to do it And for as much we do nothing of our selves but by his help or by the operation of his spirit it is by grace sayes he that we are justified and not by works Quomodo est gratia si non gratis data quomodo est gratia si ex debito redditur How is it grace if it be not of free gift How is it grace if it be rendred as debt De gra Chr. c. 23. Again Non enim Dei gratia erit ullo modo nisi gratuita fuerit omni mode It cannot be the grace of God at all if it be not free altogether De pec or c. 24. One would think this Father in such speeches as these had imbibed the Protestant notion of grace but we are mistaken for his thoughts still ran upon the Grace of God infused in our hearts that is the inherent work of the spirit which he pleads to be gratuitous because it is not at first given for our merits The works which we do of our selves without grace he accounts merits nothing but are splendid sinnes the works which we do from grace or by the spirit do justifie according to him and merit eternal salvation Quod si vocatus vocantem secutus fuerit quod est in libero arbitrio merebitur spiritum sanctum per quem bona possit operari in quo permanens quod niholominus est in libero arbitrio merebitur vitam aeternam quae nulla possit labi corrumpi But if he that is called shall follow his call which is in our free will he shall merit the holy Ghost by whose help good works may be performed wherein if he perseveres which is no less in his power he shall merit eternal life which is perfect and never fadeth away In lib. ex pos ad Romanos The Protestant meeting with this doctrine in the Papist are no wayes satisfied with such an interpretation By the Righteousness of God therefore as by the grace of God opposed to works they will by all means conceive of a righteousness without us that is the righteousness of Christ which is not ours by performance but by faith But neither the Protestants after Luther nor the Papist after Austine have bit the mind of the Apostle
how we are justified by Faith As our trusting to a good man does naturally draw out win or procure his assistance which yet is free and not of debt so does our trusting in God for acceptance when it hath first been effectual upon us to the performing our part to that end procure the same from him to our justification Let us take heed of making faith a single act as it does specificative and a complex act as it does reduplicative justifie the believer These are two extreams I think and to be thus composed And so you have my poor thoughts at full upon this vexed question I come then to the third thing wherein the Father is out and that is in his notion of justification it self which is the making us just by infusion This the Papists have so improved as in effect to exclude pardon from it For while they place the work of justification in the abolishing of all sin in the baptized and justified so that there remains no longer any thing that is peccatum but fomes peccati only they do I must say in effect put us to dispute with them whether there by any remission of sins at all seeing the wicked are not pardoned and the justified have their sins so done away by this infused grace as to have none and from hence does there spring their doctrine of merit and perfection which the controversie of justification by works does carry along with it Now I doubt not but the truth here as it doth every where is suffering between two theives That there is no merit or perfection I am convinced and that our works do not merit because they are not perfect but that we are justified by works as we are by faith St. James his words must goe as well as St. Pauls and both must stand good because faith justifies only as productive of works Justification indeed is by works but not meritorious works by works which make reward to be of debt so the Apostles are before reconciled There are two questions then may adjust this great matter between Us and the Papists or unto which the issue of our disputes on this point may be reduced In the one they have the advantage of us in the other we have the better of them The lover of truth must be humbly hardned to follow its footsteps wheresoever he finds them whither on the one side or the other The first question is whether the righteousness we perform our selves or that Christ performed for us be the matter of our justification and I say the faith repentance new obedience which the Christian through divine aid performes himself is accepted with God for Christs sake unto pardon of sin and eternal life It is true the obedience of Christ wrought for us does justifie us suo genere by meriting the pardoning justifying Covenant which is the donative instrument of pardon and life But if the question be askt whether we have performed that which this instrument requires as conditio tituli it must be our own faith and repentance here that is the matter of our righteousness A man may be just in respect to the law of innocency which no man but Christ ever was or in respect to the law of grace which all are and must be that are saved Again a man may be just in respect to the perceptive part of a law or the retributive part It is Christs righteousness and sacrifice alone that justifies Us in regard of the one but not so in regard of the other yet is it that alone which is the meritorious cause both of the acceptation of what we do and freedom from the Laws condemnation The second question is whether salvation then and justification is not according to our merits And I answer as the Scripture is cleer and full from one end to the other for the affirmative in the former question so is the Apostle Paul as full and cleer and positive as can be for the negative in the latter What is it indeed he beats upon but this altogether that there are no works in the earth Christs excepted that do merit and that justification and salvation therefore are of grace Not of works but of grace What is that in the sense and meaning but as much as if he should have said it in express terms not of merit but of grace or not of works that are meritorious and would make the reward to be of debt but of such works that though they be rewarded it is of grace and more then in justice according to the law God needed to have done For this is the meaning of the Apostle in excluding of merit There is a paternal government according to the law of grace wherein the denyal of a reward due to our works were to overthrow all religion A good child by his filial behaviour merits love and benefits We dispute not unless de nomine only against such a merit as this But as to a merit in Gods strict distributive justice according to the law of works or any other justice which should make our works to be meritorious ex condigno non solum ratione pacti acceptationis sed ratione operis as Bellarmine with the Papists does speak St. Paul is full in the deny l. It is nothing else certainly but the misapprehension of the word grace in St. Austin received by the Church of Rome from him that could have blinded them so in this point I have shown his mistake in this term and in those of works and grace and have and do here give you the right sense of each according to the Apostle The certain truth is this God gave a law to man according to his creation and if he had performed that or any of us could perform that then should he as Creator and Rector be engaged to reward the performance according to this law so that the reward should be of right but seeing man is fallen and no Person on earth does or can perform that law there are no works on earth that do properly merit or no man on earth that can be justified if he have only his desert by his works This is undoubtedly the very entendment of the Apostle That all boasting and merit may be excluded from the world while it is proved that no mortal is justified or saved but by grace And what need further conviction in this matter we have the Papists own words and general confessions that they are all sinners and that it is through Christs merits that they merit If they are sinners then have they not these works that are meritorious but it must be of mercy that they are not condemned and if it be through Christs merits that they merit then is the reward not for the work sake but for his And what is it that Christ hath merited that they should merit It must come to this that Christ by what he hath done for us hath merited or procured this grace or favour from