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
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
The righteousness of God and grace opposed to works is really nothing else but the meritorious righteousness of Christ procuring the pardoning Covenant of grace and our performing the condition that is the righteousness of the Covenant of grace accepted by God for Christs sake instead of the righteousness of the Covenant of works Only we are to know this righteousness may be understood either with respect to God as it is all one I say with his grace or with respect to Vs as it is all one with that upon which this grace is vouchsafed Charitas Dei dicta est diffundi in cordibus nostris non qua nos ipse diligit sed qua nos facit dilectores suos sicut justitia Dei qua justi ejus munere efficimur As it is called the love of God whereby we are made to love him so the righteousness of God whereby we are made righteous through his gift Aug. de spir lit c. 32. It is true that this righteousness is wrought in us by the spirit and flowes not from our selves it is true also that as we performe it by his aid it is our own work yet is not the one the reason why it is called the righteousness of God nor the other any hindrance why it should not be so called for the reason lyes altogether in the opposition of it meerly to that of works Let a man do all that he can whether by his own strength or by Gods aid he can never come up to the law of works or to a conformity to the terms of the Covnant of nature or law of Moses as it was a representation of that Covenant so that by the deeds thereof he cannot be justified and for as much as it pleased God therefore to vouchsafe us a new law the law of faith or grace or the new Covenant having lower terms that in the performance hereof or in a conformity only hereunto the man who is a sinner in respect of the law may be righteous and so God just in justifying him this grace and condescention of God being meerly from his own good will is called thus the righteousness which is of him in opposition to the other which is of nature and so were ours or mans righteousness properly if he could attain unto the same But when he cannot attain unto that which is so by nature whatsoever he attains if it be less must be a righteousness only through grace which notwithstanding our shortness God mercifully condescends to accept instead of that which is perfect through the merits of our Saviour and in regard of that acceptation N. B. it is called his or the righteousness which is of him of his own free tender and allowance when in regard of performance it is ours though we do it by his help Lo here the true key that opens the mind of the Apostle and consequently the door to that treasure which depends upon it That which is said I know by our Protestants most to the quick is this that pardon indeed is an act of meer grace but justification is an act of justice according to law and therefore must Christs is an act of justice according to law and therefore must Christs righteousness which alone does answer the law be brought in to justifie the believer But this is a mistake for if justification lyes not altogether in pardon Even as David describeth the blessedness of the man unto whom God imputeth righteousness without works saying blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven it is at least one part of it and the whole is expresly declared by the Apostle to be by grace being justified freely by his grace True indeed it is an act of righteousness even a judicial or forensical act that is according to law but what law not the law of works but according to the law of Faith It is an act I say of that righteousness of God and no other which the Apostle sets forth in opposition to the law and works and makes all one with his grace To reckon it then an act of justice according to the Law intending thereby the law of works is to correct the Apostle and to tell him we know better how we are justified by Christ then he It is the understanding of this righteousness whereof we are now speaking will set us all right It is Christs obedience and sufferings alone no doubt which could make any compensation to God for our sins that he might without diminuition to his honour as Law-giver or Governour recede from his first law but when Christ hath by his satisfaction procured this that God should now deal with us by a new law the remedying law or upon other terms the thing is manifest in itself that the righteousness then which is pleaded and accepted for this satisfaction sake of Christ must be this righteousness of the new law or the righteousness of faith and not of works which both denominates the performer righteous and God just in justifying him according to it For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth That is as I construe it Christ by his satisfaction hath procured that we should not be judged by the law of works and consequently that righteousness or justification be attained if we do but perform the terms of the Gospel To declare I say at this time his righteousness that he might be just and a justifyer of him that belives in Jesus Who is made unto us of God that is a phrase I take it signifying no more then through whom one way or other God would have us obtain all spiritual blessings wisdome righteousness sanctification and redemption After this there are no texts I count such as the last purposely mentioned which are pressed by our Divines for their service before that are able to carry such a burden He hath made him sin for us sin as the expiatory sacrifice under the law is called sin who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him That is he who was the imaculate Lamb was made a sacrifice for our sins that we may become righteous with the righteousness of God which he accepts through him Christ as a Sacrifie redeems us from the law of sin and purchases for us a law of grace according to that law we have a righteousness which is accepted unto life through Christ I pray note it therefore it is not said that his righteousness might be made ours nor that we might be made his righteousness but that we might be made the righteousness of God And what is the righteousness of God I have shewen you just now and what in him likewise is declared here together with it in these few words Vt simus justitia Dei in ipso Haec est illa justitia Dei non qua ipse justus est sed qua nos ab eo facti That we should become the righteousness of God in him This is that righteousness