they shall do better without him and a third party that seem to be friends tell them though you do take him for your Physitian yet must you work your self to health and take those other medicines as well as his if you will be cured But the Physitian saith its only your trusting in me that can cure you Now here we are at a loss in the interpreting of his conditions Some say that they must be cured barely by believing or trusting in him and not by taking his person in the full relation of a Physitian or at least not by taking his medicine which they abhor nor by exercising or sweating upon it or observing the dyet and directions which he giveth them But I rather interpret him thus in requiring you to take him for your Physitian it is implyed that you must take his medicines how bitter soever and that you must order your selves according to his directions and must not take cold nor eat or drink that which he forbiddeth you for though it be only his precious medicine that can cure you yet if you will take those things that are destructive to you it may hinder the working of it and an ill dyet or disordered life may kill you The working therefore that he excluded was not this implyed observance of his directions but your own Receipts and Labourings as above-said 3. I further answer to your observation that the same Scripture that saith We are justified by faith doth also say that Except ye Repent ye shall all perish Luke 13.3 5. And Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Iesus Christ for the Remission of sins Acts 2.38 and mentioneth the Baptism of Repentance for the Remission of sin and joyneth the preaching of Repentance and Remssion Luke 24.47 Repent and be Converted that your sins may be blotted out c. Luke 6.37 Forgive and it shall be forgiven you Jam. 5.15 The prayer of faith shall save the sick and if he have committed sins they shall be forgiven him Mat. 6.14 15. If you forgive men their trespasses your heavenly Father will forgive you but if you forgive not c. Mark 11.11 25. Forgive that your Father may forgive you 1 Iohn 1.9 If we confess our sins he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins c. Isa 55.6 7 c. And he that saith We are Justified by faith saith also that by works a man is justified and not by faith only and that by our words we shall be justified 4. Lastly to your argument from the peculiar attributions to faith I say that we do accordingly give it its prerogative as far as those attributions do direct us and would do more if it were not for fear of contradicting the Scripture Treat pag. 224. From these expressions it is that our Orthodox Divines say that faith justifieth as it is an Instrument laying hold on Christ c. ad pag. 226. Answ Though I could willingly dispatch with one man at once yet because it is the matter more then the person that must be considered I must crave your Patience as to the Answering of this Paragraph till I come to the Dispute about faiths Instrumentality to which it doth belong that so I may not trouble the present Dispute by the Interposition of another Treat pag 226 The third Argument is If in the continuance and progress of our Justification we are justified after the same manner we were at first then it s not by faith and works but by faith only as distinct to works Rom. 1.17 Galat. 3.11 Answ 1. I grant the whole understanding faith and works as Paul doth but not as you do 2. By the same manner either you mean the same specifically as specified from the Covenant and Object as distinct from Jewish Righteousness or from all false waies or all Mercenary meritorious works so intended or any manner that is not subordinate to Christ and implyed in Believing And thus your Antecedent is true and your Consequence in your sense of faith and works is false Or else you mean the same manner in opposition to any additional act implyed in our first believing as its necessary Consequent And thus your Minor or Antecedent is false If you will not believe me believe your self who as flatly spake the contrary Doctrine as ever I did being not as it seems in every Lecture of the same thoughts pag. 118. you write it for observation in a different Character thus For though holy works do not justifie yet by them a man is continued in a state of Justification so that did not the Covenant of grace interpose gross and wicked waies would out off our Justification and put us in a state of Condemnation But because you may avoid your own authority at pleasure many waies I shall give you a better authority that cannot be avoided 1. In our first Justification we were not justified by our words but in our last Justification at Judgement we shall Mat. 12.36 37. therefore they so far differ in the manner 2. In our first Justification we were not justified by our works but afterwards we are in some sense or else James spoke not by the Spirit of God Jam. 2.24 The Major is plain in that the works of Abraham Rahab and such like that Iames speaks of were not existent at their first Justification 3. In our first Justification we are not Judged and so Justified according to our works But in the last we are therefore they differ in the manner 4. In our first Justification we are not justified by the mouth of the Iudge in presence passing a final irreversible sentence on us but in the last we are therefore they differ in the manner 5. Our first pardon is not given us on condition of our first forgiving others but the continuance is Matth. 18.35 6.14 15. 6. Our first pardon is not given us if we confess our sins For we may be pardoned without that but the renewed or continued pardon is if we be called to it 1 John 1.9 7. Reconciliation and final Justification is given to us in title If we continue in the faith grounded and settled and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel c. Col. 1.23 8. In our first Believing we take Christ in the Relation of a Saviour and Teacher and Lord to save us from all sin and to lead us to glory This therefore importeth that we accordingly submit unto him in those his Relations as a necessary means to the obtaining of the benefits of the Relations Our first faith is our Contract with Christ or Acceptance of him as our Saviour And all contracts of such nature do impose a necessity of performing what we consent to and promise in order to the benefits To take Christ for my Saviour is to take him to save me viz. from the power and guilt of sin therefore if I will not be saved by him when I have done but had rather keep my
sin then I did but nominally and hypocritically take him for my Saviour To take him for my Teacher and become his Disciple importeth my Learning of him as necessary to the benefit And in humane contracts it is so Barely to take a Prince for her husband may entitle a woman to his honours and lands But conjugal fidelity is also necessary for the continuance of them for Adultery would cause a divorce Consent and listing may make a man your Souldier but obedience and service is as necessary to the Continuance and the Reward Consent may make a man your servant without any service and so give him entertainment in your family But if he do not actually serve you these shall not be continued nor the wages obtained Consent may enter a Scholar into your School but if he will not Learn of you he shall not be continued there For all these after-violations cross the ends of the Relations Consent may make you the subject of a Prince but obedience is necessary to the continuance of your Priviledges All Covenants usually tye men to somewhat which is to be performed to the full attainment of their ends The Covenant-making may admit you but it s the Covenant-keeping that must continue you in your priviledges and perfect them See more in my Confess pag. 47. 3. But I further answer you that according to the sense of your party of the terms faith and works I deny your consequence For with them Faith is Works And though in Pauls sense we are not at all justified by works and in Iames his sense we are not at first justified by works Yet in the sense of your party we are justified by works even at first For the Accepting of Christ for our King and Prophet is Works with them and this is Pauls faith by which he and all are justified Repentance is works with them And this is one of Gods Conditions of our pardon The Love and Desire of Christ our Saviour is works with them but this is part of the faith that Paul was justified by The like I may say of many acts of Assent and other acts Treat Lect. 24. p. 227. Argu. 4. He that is justified by fulfilling a Condition though he be thereunto enabled by grace yet he is just and righteous in himself But all justified persons as to Iustification are not righteous in themselves but in Christ their Surety and Mediator Answ 1. If this were true in your unlimited latitude Inherent Righteousness were the certainest evidence of damnation For no man that had inherent Righteousness i. e. Sanctification could be justified or saved But I am loth to believe that 2. This Argument doth make as much against them that take Faith to be the Condition of Justification and so look to be justified by it as a Condition as against them that make Repentance or Obedience the Condition And it concludeth them all excluders of the true and only Justification I am loth to dissent from you but I am loather to believe that all those are unjustified that take faith for the Condition of Justification They are hard Conclusions that your Arguments infer 3. Righteousness in a mans self is either Qualitaetive or Relative called imputed As to the later I maintain that all the justified are Righteous in themselves by an Imputed Relative Righteousness merited for them by Christ and given to them And this belief I will live and die in be the grace of God Qualitative and Active Righteousness is threefold 1. That which answers the Law of works Obey perfectly and live 2. That which answers the bare letter of Moses Law without Christ the sense and end which required an operous task of duty with a multitude of sacrifices for pardon of failings which were to be effectual only through Christ whom the unbelieving Jews understood not 3. That righteousness which answers the Gospel imposition Repent and Believe As to the first of these A righteousness fully answering the Law of nature I yield your Minor and deny your Major A man may be justified by fulfilling the condition of the Gospel which giveth us Christ to be our Righteousness to answer the Law and yet not have any such righteousness qualitative in himself as shall answer that Law Nay it necessarily implyeth that he hath none For what need he to perform a Condition for obtaining such a Righteousness by free gift from another if he had it in himself And as to the second sort of Righteousness I say that it is but a nominal righteousness consisting in a conformity to the Letter without the sense and end and therefore can justifie none besides that none fully have it So that the Mosaeical Righteousness so far as is necessary to men is to be had in Christ and not in themselves But the performance by themselves of the Gospel Condition is so far from hindring us from that gift that without it none can have it But then as to the third sort of righteousness qualitative I answer He that performeth the Gospel Condition of Repenting and Believing himself is not therefore Righteous in himself with that righteousness qualitative which answereth the Law of works But he that performeth the said Gospel Conditions is Righteous in himself 1. Qualitatively and actively with that righteousness which answers the Gospel Constitution He that believeth shall be saved c. which is but a particular Righteousness by a Law of Grace subordinated to the other as the Condition of a free gift 2. And Relatively by the Righteousness answering the Law of Works as freely given by Christ on that Condition This is evident obvious necessary irrefragable truth and will be so after all opposition Treat pag. 228. Yea I think if it be well weighed it will be found to be a contradiction to say they are Conditions and yet a Causa sine qua non of our Justification for a causa sine qua non is no Cause at all but a Condition in a Covenant strictly taken hath a Moral efficiency and is a Causa cum qua not a sine qua non Answ 1. You do but think so and that 's no cogent Argument I think otherwise and so you are answered 2. And Lawyers think otherwise as is before shewed and more might be and so you are over-answered A Condition qua talis which is the strictest acception is no Cause at all though the matter of it may be meritorious among men and so causal If you will not believe me nor Lawyers nor custom of speech then remember at least what it is that I mean by a Condition and make not the difference to lie where it doth not Think not your self sounder in matter of Doctrine but only in the sense of the Word Condition but yet do somewhat first to prove that too viz. that a Condition as such hath a moral efficiency Prove that if you are able Treat ib. If Adam had stood in his integrity though that confirmation would have been of
that bona opera sequuntur justificatum non praecedunt justificandum in regard of our first justification I dare not say they are Antecedents or media ordinata Where you add what is that to you that make the righteousness of the Covenant of grace to be made ours upon our godly working c. I answer 1. I have shewed it is as much as I say if not more upon intending but a condition or medium ordinatum 2. I never said what you say I maintain in phrase or sense if the word made intend either efficiency or any causality or the first possession of Righteousness 3. You much use the harsh phrase of working as here Godly working as mine which I doubt whether ever I uttered or used And the term works I little use but in the explication of James For I told you that I disclaim works in Pauls sense Rom. 4.4 which make the reward not of grace but of debt You add If therefore you had spent your self to shew that faith hath no peculiar instrumentality in our justification but what other graces have then you had hit the mark Answ I confess Sir you now come to the point in difference But do you not hereby confess that I give no more to works then you but only less to faith Why then do you still harp upon the word works as if I did give more to them the task you now set me is to prove that faith doth no more and not that works do so much That faith is not an instrument and not that love or obedience are conditions And to this I answer you 1. I have in my book said somewhat to prove faith no instrument of justifying and you said nothing against it Why then should I aim at this mark 2. I think I have proved there that faith justifieth primarily and properly as the condition of the Covenant and but remotely as A receiving justification this which you call the instrumentality being but the very formal nature of the act and so the quasi materia or its aptitude to the office of Justifying And because I build much on this supposition I put it in the Queries which you judge impertinent 3. Yet if you will understand the word instrument laxely I have not any where denyed faith to have such an instrumentality that is receiving or apprehensiveness above other graces Only I deny and most confidently deny that that is the formal proper or neerest cause of faith's justifying But the formal reason is because God hath made it the condition of the Covenant promising justification to such receiving which else would have no more justified then any other act And therefore so far as others are made conditions and the promise to us on them they must needs have some such use as well as faith And that they are conditions you confess as much as I. 4. But what if I be mistaken in this point what is the danger If faith should deserve the name of an instrument when I think it is but a condition 1. Is it any danger to give less to faith then others while I give no less to Christ For if you should think I gave less to Christ then others I should provoke you again and again to shew wherein 2. I deny nothing that Scripture saith It saith not that faith is an instrument perhaps you will tell me Veronius argues thus But I mean it is neither in the letter nor plain sense and then I care not who speaks it if true 3. You make man an efficient cause of justifying himself For the instrument is an efficient cause And what if I dare not give so much to man is there any danger in it or should I be spoke against for the Doctrine of obedience as if I gave more to man then you when I give so much less 4. Those that dissent from me do make the very natural act of faith which is most essential to it and inseparable from it as it from it self viz. Its apprehension of Christs Righteousness to be the proper primary reason of its justifying What if I dare not do so but give that glory to God and not to the nature of our own act and say that Fides quae recipit Justificat sed non qua recipit primarily but as it is the condition which the free justifier hath conferred this honour upon is there any danger in this and will there be joy in heaven for reducing a man from such an opinion You say What more obvious then that there are many conditions in justificato which are not in actu justificationis The fastning the head to the body c. Answ 1. You said before that they are Antecedents Media ordinata and then they are sure conditions in justificando as well as in justificato 2. Your mention of the condition in homine vidente is besides our business and is only of a natural condition or qualification in genere naturae When we are speaking only of an active condition in genere moris The former is improperly the later properly called a condition 3. If this be your meaning I confess there are many natural or passive qualifications necessary which are no active or proper moral conditions in a Law-sense But this is nothing to the matter 4. The phrases of Conditions in justificato in actu justificationis are ambiguous and in the Moral sense improper Our question is whether they are conditions ad justificationem recipiendam Which yet in regard of time are in actu justificationis but not conditiones vel qualificationes ipsius actus And if you did not think that repentance is a condition ad justificationem recipiendam and so in actu justificationis how can you say it is medium ordinatum A medium as such essentially hath some tendency or conducibleness to its end 5. As obvious therefore as you think this is it is past the reach of my dull apprehension to conceive of your conditions in a judiciary sense which are in justificato for the obtaining of justification and not be both ad actum in actu justificationis for I suppose you are more accurate and serious then by the word condition to mean modum vel affectionem entis Metaphysicam vel subjecti alicujus adjunctum vel qualificationem in sense Physico when we are speaking only of conditions in sensu forensi And there are many thousand honest Christians as dull as I and therefore I do not think it can be any weighty point of faith which must be supported by such subtilties which are past our reach though obvious to yours God useth not to hang mens salvation on such School distinctions which few men can understand 6. And every such Tyro in Philosophy as I cannot reach your Phylosophical subtilty neither to understand that the fastning of the head to the body is not conditio in actu videntis though it be nothing to our purpose Indeed we may think it of more remote use
as flat conditions of her continuing her enjoyments as the marriage Covenant was of first obtaining them To my second Answer you shew that Paul excludes works under any notion 1. From his opposition between faith and works where you say I contradict Paul and give a tertium To which I answer to distinguish of Pauls terms and explain his meaning in his own words is not to give a tertium or contradict but this is all that I do I distinguish of the word Works sometime it is taken more largely for Acts or Actions and so James takes it sometimes more strictly for only such Actions as a Labourer performeth for his Wages or which make the Reward to be not of Grace but of debt So Paul tells you that he understandeth or useth the term Rom. 4.4 usually therefore calling them Works of the Law Now he that excludes Works only under this notion doth not therefore exclude them under every notion Where you add that Pauls opposition is between Faith and any thing of ours I answer 1. Is not Faith ours as much Love c 2. Are not Knowledge Words Works ours by all which God saith we are justified 3. There is no such Scripture where Paul makes any such opposition but only he renounceth his own Righteousness which is of the Law Phil. 3.8 9. and any thing of our own that may be called Works in the stricter sence Your second is because Paul excludes Abrahams works c. Answer 1. You make my tertium to be works that are of Grace and here again works that flow from Grace and say Abrahams were not by meer strength of the Law But these are no words of mine nor is it candid to feign them to be mine but that I impute it to your haste I believe you remembred so well the words of Andradius Bellarmine and other Papists that they dropped from your pen in haste in stead of mine nor is my sence any whit like theirs for I speak not of the efficient cause of works Nature or Grace nor the meer command requiring them when I speak of Law and Gospel but the full entire Covenant or Law consisting of all its parts and so making our Acts the conditions of the Punishment or Reward as I have opened over and over in my Book 2. You ask Were Abrahams works in opposition to that c Answer 1. Paul excludes also works in co-ordination with Christ and so do I. 2. Yea and works supposed to be subordinate to Christ which are not capable of a real subordination 3. but not such as are truly subordinate from being such conditions as is before said 4. You seem to me to mistake Paul much as if he took it for granted that Abraham had such works which Paul disputeth against but could not be justified by them Whereas I doubt not to say that Paul contrarily supposeth that Abraham had no such Works which make the reward to be of Debt and not of Grace and therefore could not be justified by them Your third Argument is because imputing covering all is wholly attributed to God Answer I doubt not but that God is the only Principal efficient Cause and his Promise or Covenant the Instrumental therefore I cannot think as others that man is the efficient Instrumental by believing or that Faith is such But what Is all therefore attributed to God Even the performance of the Conditions on mans part Or are there no such conditions which man must perform himself or perish God only covereth sin imputeth Righteousness c. but to none who have not performed the Conditions Is Believing attributed to God or is it an act of man Or is it excluded When will you prove the Consequence of this Argument Your fifth Argument is because the Assertion is universal without works in general Answer 1. Doth not the Apostle contradict you by expounding himself in the very next verse before those you cite Rom. 4.4 That by works he means not simply good Actions as James doth but such as make the reward to be of debt and not of Grace Indeed such works are universally excluded 2. Therefore he excludes the very presence of works and saith to him that worketh not c. ver 5. But the presence of good actions you say is not excluded Your last Argument seems to me the same with the fourth and it forceth me to admire that you should think the consequence good Blessedness is when sin is forgiven therefore no work or good act performed by man is the condition of forgiveness either as begun or continued or consummate If this be not your consequence you say nothing against me if it be I assure you it is not in my Power to believe it nor to discern the least shaddow of probability of truth in it nor to free it from the charge of being the grossest Antinomianism si pace tui ità dicam And here I must needs tell you also my utter disability to reconcile you with your self for you before say they are media ordinata and here you say They are excluded under any notion As if to be a medium were no notion or the medium did nothing in or to the very justifying of the person To my next Answer If works be excluded under any notion then James his words cannot be true that we are justified by works You reply If there be justifying works how saith Paul true I answer This is a most evident Petitio principii It is undeniable that James includeth works under some notion and that Paul excludeth them under some other notion now therefore I might well ask How saith James true else Because my supposition cannot be denyed But you suppose that Paul excludeth works under any notion which is the very Question and is denyed When you ask how saith Paul true Paul saith true because he speaks of works strictly taken as is by himself explained James could not say true if works under every notion as you say be excluded Next you come to reconcile them by expounding James where you say Faith which in respect of its Act ad intra only justifies yet it works ad extra fides quae viva non qua viva I answer What 's this to the Question The Question is not whether Faith work Nor whether Faith justifie Nor what Faith justifieth But in what sence James saith we are justified by works and not by Faith only You answer by a direct contradiction to James if I can reach the sence of your Answer saying It is by Faith only and that not as it liveth c. So dare not I directly say it is not by works when God saith it is but think I am bound to distinguish and shew in what sence works justifie and in what not and not to say flatly against God that we are not justified by works under any notion but only by the Faith which worketh A denyal of Gods Assertions is an ill expounding of them To what you say of the
hear that their Discretion forbad them the other For all men are not so easily whistled into a Christs-Church contention against the Truth and Church of Christ as ' Dr. K. and one or two Confidents that living in a cold and sâ—eril Country are less substantive and more adjective then Innocents and Independents use to be None 's here so fruitfull as the Leaning Vine And what though some be drunken with the Wine They 'l fight the better if they can but hit And lay about them without fear or But stay See What Example is As the name of Dâ— K. and the remembrance of his differtatiuncula an Appendant to fax pro Tribunali that could salva fide fidem solvere began to tice me into a jocound vein so your concluding Poetry had almost tempted me in an Apish imitation to Poetize when weariness made me think of a conclusion But I had rather conclude with this serious motion to you that my end may meet your beginning that before you next write on this Subject you will better consider of the question that your qua justificans concerneth And instead of telling us that fides qua justificans respicit Christum Salvatorem that is fides qua justificans est fides as if it were justifying in order of Nature before it is Faith you will be pleased to tell us sub qua ratione fides justificat vel fide justificamut Whether you will say that fides qua justificans justificat or fides qua fides justificat which I think you disown or fides qua respicit apprehendit recipit Christum which is all one as fides qua fides or fides qua Instrumentum apprehendens which Metaphorical expression still signifieth no more then qua credit in Christum or qua fides Or whether you will stand to what you have affirmed chap. 9. pag. 67. that its Gods assignation of it to the office who therefore doth it because he wills it and to what you said pag 304. The meerest formal reason of a Believers Interest to pardon is a Believers fulfilling the condition And if you will stand to this that you have said and understand that the Doctrine of us whom you assault is the same more carefully expressed be intreated then to let your next bolt be shot at the right mark which is all that 's now requested of you by Your Christian Brother whether you will or no RICHARD BAXTER Decemb. 25. 1657. Richard Baxters DISCVSSION OF Mr John Tombes his Friendly Acceptable ANIMADVERSIONS ON HIS Aphorisms and other Writings About the Nature of Justification and of justifying Faith LONDON Printed by R.W. for Nevil Simmons Book-seller in Kederminster and are to be sold by him there and by Nathaniel Ekins at the Gun in Pauls Church-yard 1658. Sir UPON reading of the Postscript in your late Book I have sent you these Animadversions You say Aphor. of Justification â—ag 184. All those Scriptures which speak of Justification as done in this life I understand of Justification in Title of Law So Rom. 5.1 and 4 2. and 5.9 Jam. 2.21 25 c. I conceive Justification being Gods Act Rom. 3.30 Rom. 8.33 consequent upon Faith and calling and importing a sentence opposite to Condemnation Rom. 8.30 33 34. and 5.1 terminated on particular persons Rom. 4.2 3 Rom. 8.30 it must be more then the Vertual Justification in Law-Title which is only an act of God prescribing or promisig a way of Justification not the sentence it self and is general and indeterminate to particular persons and is performed before the person justified believes Yea is the same though none were actually justified and therefore in my apprehension that Act of Gods Covenanting or promising in which I conceive you place the Justification by Law-Title Thes 38. Is not the Justification by faith meant Rom. 5.1 c. Besides to be justified notes a Passion which presupposeth an Action an Act Transient not Immanent or only Gods purpose to justifie nor can it be Gods Promise to justifie For the Act though it be Transient yet it is only a Declaration what he will do his promise to justifie upon condition is not Justifying and therefore a man is not by the Covenant without a further Act Denominated Justified though he be made justifyable by it I conceive Justification is a Court term Importing an Act of God as Judge whereas his promising is not his Act as Judge but Rector thes 42. you mention the Angels judging us Righteous and Rejoycing therein which whence it should be but by a sentence passed in Heaven I know not Constitutive Justification different from Declarative by sentence I do not find expressed under the term Justification It would be considered whether any other Act besides the sentence doth make a man just but giving of faith notwithstanding Christs Death and the conditional Covenant before faith a person is only justifyable Conditionalis nihil ponit in esse A person is upon giving of Faith justified but not by giving of faith that 's an act of Sanctification but by a sentence of God Thes 59. You make justification a continued act now it being a transient act I suppose it may not be well called a continued Act which imports a successive motion between the terminus a quo and terminus ad quem whereas the act whether by sentence or Covenant is not such a Motion It s not to be denyed that the Benefit and Vertue of it is continued but I think not the Act. If it be not sâ—mel but saepe yet it should be rather called Actus Renovatus Repetitus Iteratus then continued I incline to think there is but one Justification of a person in this life though there be frequent remissions of sin Of this you may Consider In the Saints Everlasting Rest pag. 11. Doubtless the Gospel takes faith for our obedience to All Gospel Precepts Believing doth not produce subjection to Christ as King as a finite but contains it as an Essential part c. Aphor. p. 25.5 Faith doth as Really and Immediately Receive Christ as King as Saviour or Priest and so Justifie Thes 65. Scripture doth not take the word Faith for any one single Act nor yet for various Acts of one only faculty but for a compleat entire motion of the whole soul to Christ its Object Thes 57. It is the Act of faith which justifies men at Age and not the Habit. Against this I object 1. Faith worketh by Love Gal. 5.16 If one be an essential part of the other and faith a compleat entire motion of the soul then when it is said Faith worketh by Love it might be said it worketh by Faith 2. Gospel Precepts are many if not all the same with the Moral Law if Justified then by obedience to them are we not justified by the works of the Law You conceive the Justification Jam. 2. to be by works in a proper sence and that before God and Rahabs act was a work of Hospitality ver 25.
hereabout are such as if they were held practically and after the proper sense of their expressions would be a great hinderance to salvation if not plainly hazard it And therefore the question is not to be cast by as needless or unprofitable It is so neer the great matters of our Redemption Justification and the nature of faith that it is it self the greater And if Amesius say true that truths are so concatenated that every Error must by consequence overthrow the foundation then it must be so in this The consequents shall be mentioned anon in the Arguments where it will be more seasonable And in great matters it is not a contemptible Error which consisteth but in mis-naming and mis-placing them It is a very great help to the clear and full understanding of Truths to have right Notions and Methods And the contrary may prove dangerous to many others when the particular Patrons of those mistakes may be in no danger by them For perhaps their first Notions may be righter than their second and they may not see the consequents of their mistakes and yet when such mistakes in terms and methods shall be commended to the world other men that hear and read their words and know not their hearts and better apprehensions are like enough to take them in the most obvious or proper sense and by one disorder to be led to more and to swallow the Consequents as well as the misleading Premises And therefore I must needs say that this point appeareth of such moment in my eyes that I dare not desert that which I confidently take to be the Truth nor sacrifice it to the honor or pleasure of man For the explication of the terms it is needless to say much and I have neither time for nor mind of needless work By Justification here we mean not either Sanctification alone or sanctification and remission conjunct as making up our Righteousness as the Papists do though we deny not but sometime the word may be found in Scripture in some such sense For thus it is past controversie that our justification that is our sanctification as to all that followeth faith is as much if not much more from our belief in Christ as Teacher and King as from our belief in him as a Ransome But by Justification we mean that Relative Change which Protestants ordinarily mean by this word which we need not here define The Preposition By when we speak of being justified by faith is not by all men taken in the same sense First Sometime it s used more strictly and limitedly to signifie only an efficiency or the Interest of an Efficient cause And thus some Divines do seem to take it when they say that we are justified by faith in Christs blood and Righteousness and not by faith in him as a Teacher or a Lord which occasioneth the Papists to say our difference is wider then indeed it is For the word By hath an ambiguity and in their sence we yield their Negative though not their Affirmative in the last-mentioned conclusion Secondly Sometime the word By is used to signifie a Conditionality or the Interest of a condition only in special And thus we take it when we explain our selves in what manner it is that we are justified by faith and by these questioned acts in particular And therefore those Protestants that dispute against us who are for the Affirmative do if I understand them deny only the propriety of the phrase which we use but not the thing or sense which we express by it for they grant that these acts of faith are Conditions of our Justification when they have never so much disputed that we are not justified by them and so a small syllable of two letters is much of the matter of their controversie Thirdly sometime this word is used to signifie the Interest of any other cause as well as the Efficient and that either generally or especially of some one This Paper is white By the whiteness as the formal cause we are moved to a godly life By God and salvation as the final cause c. Fourthly Sometime the term By is taken yet more largely and fitly enough for all or any Means in General or the interest of any means in the attainment of the End And so it comprehendeth all Causes even those Per accidens and Conditions as well as Causes and all that doth but remove impediments And in this comprehensive sense we take it here in the Question though when we come to determine what is the special Interest of faith in Justification I take it in the second sense Take notice also That I purposely here use this phrase we are Justified by Believing or by Faith rather than these justifying faith or Faith doth justifie us And I here foretell you that if I shall at any time use these last expressions as led to it by those with whom I deal it is but in the sense as is hereafter explained The Reasons why I choose to stick to this phrase rather then other are First Because this only is the Scripture phrase and the other is not found in Scripture that I remember It is never said that Faith doth justifie us though it be said that we are justified by faith And if any will affirm that I may use that phrase which is not found in Scripture he cannot say I must use it And in a Controverted case especially about such Evangelical truths the safety of adhering to Scripture phrase and the danger of departing from it is so discernable and specially when men make great use of their unscriptural phrases for the countenancing of their opinions I have the more reason to be cautelous Secondly Because the phrases are not alwaies of one and the same signification The one is more comprehensive then the other if strictly taken To be justified by faith is a phrase extensive to the Interest of any Medium whatsoever And there are Media which are not Causes But when we say that Faith doth justifie us or call it justifying Faith we express a Causality if we take the word strictly Though this last phrase may signifie the Interest of a bare Condition yet not so properly and without straining as the former The Reverend Author of the seond Treatise of Justification is of the same mind as to the use of the terms but he conjectures another reason for the Scripture use then I shall ever be perswaded of viz. that it is because Credere is not Agere but Pati to Believe is to Suffer and not to Act that it is a Grammatic all Action but Physically a Passion Though I think this no truer then that my brains are made of a looking glass and my heart of marble yet is there somwhat in this Reverend mans opinion that looks toward the truth afar off For indeed it intimateth that as to Causality or Efficiency faith is not Active in the justifying of a sinner but is a meer condition or
as that any acts of our own must interpose but they are in eodem instanti and differ only in order of nature In sum we prove a promise of pardon to all that receive Christ himself and believe in him If any will affirm the necessity of any other act before we can be justified it is incumbent on them to prove it This was the substance of my Answer to which the Reverend Bishop said no more whether satisfied or not I cannot tell But I thought meet to recite his Judgement both because it comes so neer the matter and because I know not of any other that saith the same or so much of seeming strength against us Against all these seven particular Opinions I am now to defend the Thesis when I have first told you in certain distinctions and propositions how much I grant and what I deny which I shall in short dispatch And here I need but to rehearse what I have said already to Mr. Blake pag. 3.4 or to give you some short account of my thoughts to the same purpose First We must not confound Justification by Constitution or Guift and justification by the Sentence of the Judge and the Execution of that sentence which are three distinct things Secondly We must not confound Justification with the assurance or feeling of Justification Thirdly We must distinguish between our first Justification from a state of sin and our daily Justification from particular Acts of sin Fourthly Between that which is necessary on Christs part and that which is necessary on our part to our Justification Fifthly Between Christs purchasing our Justification and his actual justifying of us Sixthly Between these two senses of the phrase justified by Fatih viz. as by an efficient Cause or as a meer Condition Seventhly Between the Causality of faith in the Physical effects of sanctification on the soul and its conducing to the efficacy of the Promise in our Justification Proposition 1. Ex parte Christi We easily grant that it is not his Teaching or Ruling us but his Ransome and Obedience that are the Meritorious cause of our Justification and Salvation Proposition 2. Therefore if Christ did justifie us per modum objecti aprehensi in the nearest sense as the Belief of sacred Truths doth make a Qualitative impression on the soul in our Sanctification and the exciting and acting of our Graces then I should confess that it is only that Act of Faith which is the apprehension of this Object that doth help us directly to the benefit of the Object Proposition 3. But it is not so For the Object justifieth us causally by way of Merit and Moral procurement and the benefit of that Merit is partly the Promise conveying to us Justification and partly Justification conveyed by that Promise not to speak now of other benefits and the Promise conveyeth Justification by Moral Donation as a deed of Gift or a Pardon to a Traytor Therefore the Gift flowing purely from the Will of the Giver and the Promise or deed of Gift being the Immediate Instrumental efficient Cause of it as it is signum voluntatis Donatoris our Belief or Apprehension qua talis cannot justifie us nor have any nearer or higher interest in our Justification then to be the Condition of it as it is a free Gift And therefore the Condition must be judged of by the will of the Donor expressed in his Promise and not immediately by the conceits of men concerning its natural agreeableness to the Object in this or that respect Proposition 4. Yea Even ex parte Christi though he Merit Justification by his Ransome and Obedience yet he actually justifieth us as King of his Church and that in regard of all the three sorts or parts of Justification He giveth it constitutively by his Promise as Lord and Legislator and Benefactor on these terms of Grace He sentenceth us Just as our Judg and he executeth that sentence as a Just Judge governing according to his Laws So that if Faith did justifie ex natura rei which they call its Instrumentality I see not yet but that the apprehension of Christ as Lord and Judge must justifie us because the Object apprehended doth thus justifie us Proposition 5. I easily grant that in our Sanctification or the exciting and exercise of our Graces the case standeth as the Opponents apprehend it to do in Justification This Interest of the Act must be judged of by the Object apprehended For it is not the Belief of a Promise that feareth us but of a Threatning nor the Belief of a Threatning that Comforteth us but of a Promise For here the Object worketh immediately on our minds per modum objecti apprehensi But in Justification it is not so where God is the Agent as a Donor and there can be nothing done by us but in order to make us fit Subjects and the change is not Qualitative by an Object as such but Relative by a Fundamentum which is without us in the Gospel and nothing within us but a qualifying Condition without which it will not be done Proposition 6. Accordingly I easily grant that the Sense or Assurance of Justification in our Consciences is wrought by the Object as an Object Because this Assurance is a part of our Sanctification But that Object is not directly Christs Ransome but the Promise through his blood and our own Faith which is the condition of that Promise Proposition 7. I easily grant that Faith in Christ as Lord or Teacher of the Church is not the Instrumental efficient Cause of our Justification They need not therefore contend against me in this But withall I say that faith in his Priest-hood is not the Instrumental efficient Cause neither though I allow it to have a nearer Physical Relation to the Ransome which meriteth our Justification Proposition 8. Though there is a greater shew of Reason to assert the Interest of the single Belief in Christs Priest-hood for a particular Pardon then for our first general Pardon yet indeed it is but a shew even there also For it is not only the applying our selves to his blood or Ransome but it is also the applying our selves to whole Christ to make up the whole breach that is the Condition of our particular Pardon so far as a particular Act of saith is a Condition which though it be not a Receiving Christ for Union with him as we did in the beginning yet is it a receiving him ad hoc et secundum quid and a renewed Consent to his whole Office and adhesion to him as our special remedy for recovery from that fall by freeing us both from the guilt and stain of Sin Proposition 9. It is undoubtedly the duty of every Sinner in the sense of his guilt and misery to fly to the Ransome of Christs blood and the Merit of his Obedience as the satisfaction to Gods Justice and the Purchaser of our Justification And he that doth not this how willing soever he may seem
offices and look not to him as making the Covenant or Grant of pardon in his blood and as teaching and perswading and working us into Union with himself that we may have part in his blood and as conferring daily the fruits of his blood as King in Renewed pardon of daily sins and as justifying us at Judgement as King and Judge His blood is a Foundation without a building if you take it without all these Overlook these and you deny it as well as by over-looking his Resurrection Besides Session at Gods Right Hand which is one thing that the Apostle instanceth in Romans 8.35 is his Glorification it self And when you say He presents his blood as High Priest c. I answer But not as a renewed sacrifice presenting it is not shedding it or offering it in sacrifice And the presentation is not a minding God of what he knows not or hath forgot or an arguing with him to extort his Mercy but as the value and merit of Christs sacrifice hath its continual Being before God so Christ doth give out all his benefis to his Church as procured and received from the Father by the merit of his sacrifice and this is his Intercession But your arguing yiedeth that to Justification we must not only believe in Christ as shedding his blood for us on earth but also on Christ as presenting his blood for us in heaven which is enough to my ends Mr. Blake You tell me further that the thing I had to prove was not the exclusion of faith in his commands but of faith in Christ as Lord and Teacher I can no more distinguish Lord and Command than I can Blood and Sacrifice it being the office of a Lord to Rule as of blood to make atonement Repl. First If you cannot distinguish there 's no remedy but you must err by confusion It s obvious to an ordinary understanding that even Blood and Sacrifice may as well be distinguished as Earth and Man or Ink and Writing Blood signifying only the matter yea but part of the matter and a Sacrifice signifying that matter with its moral Form Secondly And it s as obvious that Lord and Command do otherwise differ then Blood and Sacrifice for Lord as it signefieth principally a Proprietary is toto caelo distinct from command as standing in another series And Lord as it signifieth a Rector doth differ from Command as the efficient from the effect which is otherwise then as part of the matter doth from the whole informed It is no Argument against the truth which I maintain that you cannot distinguish these Thirdly If it be the office of a Lord to Rule then you may well distinguish betwen the office and the work But indeed in the first sense Lord signifieth a Proprietary and but in the second a Rulers Power which is not alwayes properly called an Office neither no more then the Soveraign is properly an Officer Fourthly To make Atonement is not all one as to be a Sacrifice which was your former term for Atonement is the effect of a Sacrifice not of blood as blood but as a Sacrifice meritorious and accepted Fifthly And as to the point in difference between us the difference is palpable and weighty between believing in Christ as King and believing or obeying his Commands As his Kingly Power belongs to the Constitution of his mystical body or Republike and his commands that flow from it to the Administration so Subjection to his Power and Relation and consenting to this constitution do enter us into the Body and unite us to him when believing and obeying his Laws for Administration do follow as the fruits If you could have distinguished between the Root and Fruits between Faith and Obedience between making Disciples and teaching to observe c. Mat. 28 19.2â— or becoming Disciples and Learning you might have distinguished between becoming a Subject and obeying And what ever you do I am sure others of your way do grant that Receiving Christ as Lord and Teacher is the faith that justifieth though not qua talis but they will not say so by receiving or obeying his Governing Laws which are distinct from the constitution or fundamental Law Mr. Blake You yet tell me it was fittest for Paul to say by faith in his blood because he intends to connote both what we are justified by ex parte Christi and what we are justified by ex parte nostri but the former principally To this I say If this were fittest for Paul then it is unfit for any to come in with Animiadversions and tell us of any other thing ex parte Christi or ex parte nostri for Justification I pray you rest here and we are well agreed Here is Christs Priestly Office on his part alone and I am resolved to look no further Repl. Though I may not hope to change you if you are Resolved yet I may take leave to render a reason of my contrary as peremptory Resolution I am resolved to look further ex parte Christi then to his blood yea or his whole Merit yea or whole Priest-hood for my Justification even to whole Christ and in special to his Regal constitution and sentence Yet I rest where you desire me as to the Truth of what I said and if we are agreed it s better then I can perceive in your other words First Though Paul there mention the Priestly office alone yet that 's not all his Epistles nor all the Scriptures nor doth he here exclude the rest Secondly It may be fittest to Pauls design in that particular discourse to mention faith in his blood and yet it may be fit for another to come in with animadversions and tell you of more necessary both ex parte Christi nostri It s common to express our meaning of a whole in a summary notion taken from a chief part And indeed in Political discourses it is hard to meet with a fitter way of expression Thirdly Paul himself was not of your opinion nor Christ neither and yet it was not unfit for them to discover it The same Paul that here thought it fittest to mention faith in his blood did elsewhere think it fit to mention Jusstification by his Obedience and that he Rose again for our Justification and to promise Jmputation of Righteousness to us if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead Rom. 4.24 25. with the like passages before mentioned But most frequently it is the comprehensive phrase of believing in Christ Jesus our Lord that he useth The same Christ that calleth himself so oft the Lord and Master of his followers excludeth not thereby his other Relations And when he saith in one place I am the Vine he may freely say else where I am the good Shepherd And he that speaketh of laying down his life for the sheep doth not thereby make it unfit to mention other Pastoral a is for them And he that tels us of eating his flesh
again I shall yield so far to their Importunity as to recite here briefly the state of the Controversie and some of that evidence which is elsewhere more largely produced for the truth And First We must explain what is meant by Works and what is meant by Justification what by a Condition and what by the Preposition by here when we speak of Justification by works And then we shall lay down the truth in several propositions Negative and Affirmative It seems strange to me to hear men on either side to speak against the Negative or Affirmative of the Question and reproach so bitterly those that maintain them without any distinction or explication as if either the error lay in the terms or the terms were so plain and univocal that the Propositions are true only on one part what sense soever they be taken in No doubt but he saith true that saith that Works are the Condition of Justification and he saith as true that saith they are not if they take the terms in such different senses as commonly Disputers on these Questions do take them And its past all doubt that a man is justified by faith without the works of the Law and that it is not of Works but of Grace and it s as certain that a man is justified by works and not by faith only and that by their Words men shall be justified and by their Words they shall be condemned Gods word were not true if both these were not true We must therefore necessarily distinguish And first of Works First Sometime the term Works is taken for that in general which makes the Reward to be not of Grace but of Debt Meritorious works Or for such as are conceited to be thus meritorious though they be not And those are materially either Works of perfect obedience without sin such as Adam had before his fall and Christ had and the good Angels have or else Works of obedience to the Mosaical Law which supposed sin and were used in order to pardon and life but mistakingly by the blind Unbelievers as supposing that the dignity of the Law did put such a dignity on their obedience thereto as that it would serve to life without the satisfaction and merit of Christ or at least must concur in Co-ordination therewith Or else lastly they are Gospel duties thus conceited meritorious Secondly But sometime the word Works is taken for that which standeth in a due subordination to grace and that first most generally for any moral virtuous Actions and so even faith it self is comprehended and even the very Receptive or fiduciall act of faith or less generally for external acts of obedience as distinct from internal habitual Grace and so Repentance Faith Love c. are not Works or for all acts external and internal except faith it self And so Repentance Desire after Christ Love to him denying our own Righteousness distrust in our selves c. are called Works Or else for all Acts external and internal besides the Reception of Christs Righteousness to Justification And so the belief of the Gospel the Acceptance of Christ as our Prophet and Lord by the Title of Redemption with many other acts of faith in Christ are called works besides the disclaiming of our own Righteousness and the rest before mentioned Secondly As for the word Justification it is so variously taken by Divines and in common use that it would require more words then I shall spend on this whole Dispute to name and open its several senses and therefore having elsewhere given a brief schem of them I shall now only mention these few which are most pertinent to our purpose First Some take Justification for some Immanent Acts of God and some for Transient And of the former some take it for Gods eternal Decree to justifie which neither Scripture calleth by this name nor will Reason allow us to do it but improperly Sometime it s taken for Gods Immanent present Approbation of a man and Reputing him to be just when he is first so constituted And this some few call a Transient Act because the Object is extrinsick But most call it Immanent because it makes no Alteration on that object And some plead that this is an eternal act without beginning because it is Gods essence which is eternal and these denominate the Act from the substance or Agent And other say that it begins in time because Gods Essence doth then begin to have that Respect to a sinner which makes it capable of such a denomination And so these speak of the Act denominatively formally respectively Both of them speak true but both speak not the same truth Sometime the word Justification is taken for a transient Act of God that maketh or conduceth to a change upon the extrinsick object And so first It s sometime taken by some Divines for a Conditional Justification which is but an act that hath a tendency to that change and this is not actual Justification Secondly Sometime it is taken for actual Justification and that is threefold First Constitutive Secondly Sentential thirdly executive First Constitutive Justification is first either in the qualities of the soul by inherent holyness which is first perfect such Adam once and the Angels and Christ had secondly or Imperfect such as the sanctified here have Secondly Or it s in our Relations when we are pardoned and receive our Right to Glory This is an act of God in Christ by the free Gift of the Gospel or Law of Grace and it is first The first putting a sinner into a state of Righteousness out of a state of Guilt Secondly Or it is the continuing him in that state and the renewing of particular pardon upon particular sins Secondly Sentential pardon or Justification is first by that Manifestation which God makes before the Angels in heaven Secondly at the day of Judgement before all the world Thirdly Executive Justification viz. the execution of the aforesaid sentence less properly called Justification and more properly called pardon consisteth in taking off the punishment inflicted and forbearing the punishment deserved and giving possession of the happiness adjudged us so that it is partly in this life viz. in giving the spirit and outward mercies and freeing us from judgements And thus sanctification it self is a part of Justification and partly in the life to come in freeing us from Hell and possessing us of Glory Thirdly As for the word Condition the Etymologists will tell us that it first signifieth Actionem condendi and then Passionem qua quid conditur and then qualitatem ipsam per quam condere aliguis vel condi aliquid potest hinc est pro statu qui factus est rem condendo deinceps pro omni statu quem persona vel res aut causa quoquo modo habet aut accipit But we have nothing to do with it in such large acceptions in which all things in the world may be called Conditions Vid. Martin in Nom. They
explicatory Propositions I Come now to prove the sum of the Affirmative Proposition together so far as they resolve the Question in hand viz. that works or acts of man have such an Interest in our Justificaon and are so far conditions as is here asserted My first proof is from those Texts of Scripture which expresly speak of Justification by such acts or works If we are justified By our words and works then are they no less then conditions of Justification But we are justified By them Ergo. c. The Consequence of the Major is plain first In that the Preposition By doth signifie no less then the Interest of some means but these Works can be no means but either a condition or a cause which is more A cause the persons that now I deal with will not affirm them to be If they do then they ascribe much more to them then to be a condition Secondly The Interest of faith it self is expressed by no higher terms then By that is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and so is the Interest of these other acts The Minor is express 1. Mat. 12.36 37. For by thy words thou shalt be justified and by thy words thou shalt be condemned 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is at the day of Judgement in the great Justification 2. Jam. 2.24 ye see then how that By Works 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a man is justified and not by faith only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 This speaks of Justification in this life When men argue against Justification by our words or works I desire 1. to understand whether it be the words or the sense that they argue against If the words then it is either against the use of them simply as being false or unmeet or else against unseasonable use of them For the former they have no ground for you see it is the express language of Christ himself and his Apostle And as to the later I easily grant that no Scripture phrase should be unseasonably used But if it be not the words but the sense that they blame why then do they harp so much on the words themselves and raise the most of the odium from thence And what is the unwarrantable sense I know not of any lower sense that they can put on these words then what importeth the Interest of a condition As for that of Mat. 12. they say little to it And as to that of James they interpret it differently among themselves First Some of them say that James speaks of Justification before men and others say he speaks of Justification before God The former are easily confuted as they restrain the text to that alone by the express words of the Text. For first ver 23. it expresly speaks of Righteousness by divine Imputation and of Gods accepting Abraham into friendship Secondly The text speaks of that Justification which concurreth with Salvation ver 14. can faith save him Thirdly It speaks of the Death of faith without works as to Profiting ver 16.17 which is different from manifestation Fourthly It instanceth in the secret act of Rahab and such an act of Abraham as we read of no men that then justified him for nay they were liker to condemn him Fifthly Men may justifie an Hypocrite as soon as the truly godly and can but conjecture at the faith by the works But the scope of the text shews that it is no such frivolous justification that is here meant Secondly They that say that it is justification before God that is here meant as no doubt it is have yet divers interpretations of the word Works Some say that by Works is not meant Works themselves indeed but a working faith To them I say first I deny it and wait for better proof then is yet brought Secondly The text nameth works expresly twelve times in a few verses which is not usual in speeches so tropicall as this is supposed to be Thirdly In many or most of the texts that interpretation would make the words non-sense as the perusall will declare Fourthly If the word works did emphatically signifie the working nature of faith or faith not qua fides but qua operans it will be all one as to the matter in question and yield what I desire Others say that by works is indeed meant the works themselves properly but then they say that the text speaks not of the Justification of the person by them but of faith by them for faith say they alone doth justifie the person and works only justifie faith Answer But first this contradicteth the express text for verse 14. It is the Salvation of the person that is denyed and ver 21. It it the justification of Abraham himself that is there mentioned and ver 24. it is the man that is said to be justified by works and not by faith only and verse 25. it is Rahab her self that is said to be justified by works Secondly The answer contradicteth themselves or granteth what I desire for if works justifie the faith they must needs justifie the person in tantum against any accusation of gross Infidelity and Hypocrisie Sometime the person is justified when his Action cannot be justified as in case of satisfaction and pardon but to justifie the action it self is the highest sort of justifying the person So that all other Interpretations being either overthrown or resolved into that which we maintain I need to say to more for the defending of it My next proof is from those texts that say we shall be Judged according to our works and rewarded according to our Labour c. 2 Cor. 5.9 10. 1 Cor. 3.8 1 Pet. 1.16 17. Matthew 16.27 c. If men shall be justified according to their works then those works are no lower then a condition of that justification But the Antecedent is true as I prove thus If men shall be judged according to their works therefore they shall be justified according to their works The reason of the Consequence is evident because judging is the Genus which comprehendeth Justification and condemnation as its species The reason also of the consequence of the former Argument is apparent because the term of judging according to works doth in the common use of men signifie ordinarily that which they call the Meritum causae but never any thing lower then a bare condition nor can any lower tolerable judiciary sense be put upon them as might easily be shewed if it were worth the standing on My next proof is from those texts that expresly promise the pardon of sin on condition of Repentance Confession c. If Repentance and other acts are made by the Gospel conditions of pardon and our first general Pardon then are they made conditions of our first admission into a state of Justification But the Antecedent is plain in Act. 2.38 Mar. 14. Luke 13.35 Isa 55.67 and 1.16 17 18. Ezek. 33.11 16. and 18.28 29 30 31 32. Prov.
28.13 Act. 3.19 with many more The Consequence is plain in that Pardon is by very many made the whole of our Justification and by others confessed a chief part and by all it s confessed to be made ours on the same terms as is Justification it self My fourth Proof is from those texts which make these kind of Acts to have the place of a condition in order to salvation if they are conditions of salvation then are they no less then conditions of our final Justification But the Antecedent is ordinarily acknowledged by the Opponents and it s proved 1 Tim. 4.8 Heb. 5.9 1 Tim. 6.18 19. Luk. 11.28 and 13.24 1 Cor. 9.24 25 26 27. Rev. 22.14 John 12.26 Rom. 8.13 Mat. 5.20 Mat. 19.29 Mat. 6.1 2 4 6. and 5.12 46. and 10.41 42. 2 Thess 1.5 6. Col. 3.23 24. Heb. 6.10 2. Tim. 4.7 8. Gal. 6.4 5 6 7 8 9 10. 2. Cor. 9.6 9. John 5.22 27 28 29 c. The Consequence is proved good first In that final Justification and Glorification have the same conditions as is plain both in many Scriptures mentioned and in the nature of the thing for that Justification is the adjudging us to that Glory and therefore so far as any thing is the cause or condition of the Glory it self it must be the reason of the sentence which adjudgeth it to us Secondly And salvation is as free as Justification and no more deserved by man and therefore the Apostle equally excludeth works from both Eph. 2.5 8 9. By Grace ye are saved through faith and that not of your selves it is the gift of God not of worke lest any man should boast so Tit. 3.5 6 7. more fully Now if Salvation by grace through faith without works exclude not sincere obedience from being a Condition of Salvation then Justification by grace through faith without works doth not in Scripture sence exclude sincere obedience from being the condition of our final Justification nor Repentance from being the condition of our justification as begun for there is eadem ratio and the Text makes the one as free without works as the other But the Antecedent is plain in the Scriptures Ergo c. My fifth Proof is from those texts that in terms seem to assign a causality to such obediential acts which can be interpreted of no less then a conditionality such are Luke 19.17 Mat. 25.31 23 34 35 40 46. Gen. 22.16 17 18. 2 Chron. 34.26 27. Psalm 91.9 14. Mark 7.29 1 John 3.22 23. John 16.27 Rev. 3.10 and 3.4 and 7.14 15. c. And though some of these texts speak not of Divine acceptance to life yet first some do secondly and the rest speak of no mercy but what is as freely given as Justification A mans own works are excluded other Means and parts of salvation as well as that I run over these briefly and generally both because I expect that the bare texts without my Comments should work upon the Considerate and because I have been so much upon it formerly in other writings as Confess § 3. p. â—6 cap. 3. cap 5. § 2. pag. 117 118. alibi passim as that I apprehend in this work more tediousness than necessity But the chief thing that I further here intend is to answer some Objections that by a Reverend Brother in his second part of his Treatise of Justification are brought against me But before I come to his Arguments its necessary that I a little animadvert on his Description of Justification that we may first agree upon the sense of our terms or at least know how to understand one another Treat Of Justification p. 126. Justification is a gratious and just Act of God whereby through Christ our Mediator and Surety a sinner but repenting and believing is pronounced just and hereby put into a state of Reconciliation and favour with God to the praise of Gods glorious attributes and to the Believers eternal salvation I shall not examine this Description by accurate Logical Rules c. Answ First Doubtless an accurate rather then popular definition would as soon be expected from you as from most and here as anywhere in a Treatise purposely on the Subject Secondly Pronunciation doth not go before Constitution not put us into a state of Reconciliation and favour but find us in it you say your self pag. 120. To justifie is to constitute and to declare or pronounce righteous And in your first Treatise of Justification pag. 7. Indeed the Apostle Rom. 5. saith many are made righteous by the second Adam which if not meant of inherent holiness doth imply that the righteousness we have by Christ is not meerly declarative but also constitutive and indeed one is in order before the other for a man must be righteous before he can be pronounced or declared so to be Treat p. The Application of Justification is attributed to the Holy Ghost Answ I know not of any such except first where Justification is taken for Sanctification Secondly or as the Holy Ghost is made the Author of the Promise though I doubt not but he is the Author of faith also Treat 16. The Socinians say Christ justifieth only Instrumentally not principally even so faith is said to save but this cannot be because Christ is God as well at Man and therefore cannot be instrumental but principal Answ As they err on one hand that say Christ justifieth only Instrumentally which flows from their blasphemous denyall of his God-head so it s an error on the other hand to say that Christ cannot be Instrumental but principal I prove the contrary first If Christ may be an Officer appointed by the Father to the Redemption and ruling of mankind then may he be an Instrument But c. Ergo c. Secondly If Christ may be a means he may be an Instrument but he may be a means for he is called by himself the way to the Father and a way is a means Thirdly He is called the Fathers servant therefore he may be an Instrument Fourthly He is said to come to do his Fathers will therefore he is his Instrument Fifthly All Power is said to be given him even the Power of judging John 5.22 and Matthew 28.18 19. therefore he is the Fathers Instrument in judging And your reason is invalid viz. because Christ is God for he is Man as well as God and so may be Instrumental Treat p. 129 130. It sounds as intolerable Doctrine in my ears that Christ our Mediator did only expiate by his death sins against the Law and Covenant of works but that those that are against the Covenant of Grace c. Answ A sin is against the Law of Grace or Gospel first because it is against some object revealed in the Gospel which the sin is against as Christ Thus sin was expiated by Christ 2ly As it is against a Precept of the Gospel and thus it is expiated by Christ 3ly As it is a breach of a mans own Promise or
many Scriptures against you Put to your self it s enough to ask How can you constantly make Remission an Essential part of Justification and yet say that we cannot call it a state as we do Justification In your first Treat of Just Lect. 17. pag. 145. you say Prop. 4. Remission is not to be considered meerly as removing of evil but also as bestowing good It is not only ablativa mali but collativa boni a plentiful vouchsafing of many gracious favours to us such as a Son-ship and a Right to eternal life as also peace with God and communion with him And why may we not say A state of Sonship or salvation as well as of Justification Treat ib. There is a Justification of the cause and of the person alwaies to be distinguished Answ There is no Justification of his cause which doth not so far justifie the person Nor any sentential Justification of the person but by justifying his cause Though his actions may not be justifiable yet when the cause to be tryed is Whether sinful actions be pardoned by Christ that cause must be justified if that man be justified Even as Accusations are not charged upon the person without some cause real or pretended Treat pag. 152. Not only Bucer who is known to place Justification both in Imputed righteousness and Inherent thereby endeavouring a Reconciliation with the Papists But Calvin li. 3. cap. 17. sect 8. To this purpose also Zanchy Answ Why then might not I have had as fair measure as Lud. de Dieu Bucer Calvin Zanchy especially when I go not so far And yet I take my self beholden to Guil. Rivet for helping me to some scraps of Phil. Codurcus who drives at this mark as you say Bucer doth though I cannot yet get the Book it self Treat pag. 158. O this is excellent when a man is amazed and in an holy manner confounded at his holiness as well as at his offences Answ So you before say they must be ashamed of their Righteousness as well as their sins I do not well understand these distinctions Nothing in all the world confoundeth me so much as the imperfection of my Holiness But I dare not think that imperfection to be no sin left I must think the perfection to be no duty and so come to works of supererrogation and Evangelical Counsels And Holiness considered in it self and not as sinful and imperfect is amiable in my eyes and I know not how to be ashamed of it without being ashamed of God that is its object and exemplar and heaven that is the state of its perfection Treat ib. Set some few even a remnant aside comparatively the whole Christian world both Doctors and people learned and unlearned fasten on a Justification by works Answ I hope not so many as you fear or affirm First all the Doctors and people of your judgement do not And if you thought those so exceeding few among Christians you would not take me for so singular as you do 2. None of the truly sanctified are such as you here affirm 3. The multitude of groundless presumers of Free Grace are not such And truly though I doubt Justiciaries are too common I do not think that such Presumptuous ones are so small a Remnant 4. The Libertines and Antinomians and many other Sects of their mind are none of this great number 5. I will yet hope for all this that you cannot prove it of the Doctors and people of half the Christian world Their hearts God knows And I will not yet believe that in their Doctrine about Justification by works the Greek Churches the Armenians Jacobites Copti's Abasineâ— c. do fasten on such dangerous sands or differ so much from you 6. I heard as eminent Divines as most I know some yet living in a publick meeting say that Bishop Vsher and Mr. Gataker affirmed that the Papists did not fundamentally differ from us in the Doctrine of Justification Treat pag. 167. By all these subtile Distinctions men would be thought Answ Your scope in that page seems to be against any distinguishing whatsoever about works in this proposition We are justified by faith and not by works If so that we must not run to any distinction but say that in every motion or sense Works are excluded and do justifie in none then I profess it is past my uttmost skill to justifie you for accusing Althamer as you do for saying Mentiris Jacobe in caput tuum Yea if he had upon the reading of Mat. 12.36 risen higher and said Mentiris Christe in caput tuum For sure he that saith By thy words thou shalt be justified Or by works a man unjustified and not by faith only can no way possibly be excused from that crime if no distinction may verifie his words but they must then be taken as absolutely false which I will not be perswaded of Treat pag. 219. Serm. 23. Observ That even the most holy and regenerate man is not Iustified by the works of grace which he doth This truth is the more diligently to be asserted by how much the error that confronts it is more specious and refined and maintained by such abettors whose repute is not so easily cast off as the former we spake of Now you come purposely I perceive to deal with me I confess the repute of Abettors doth much to bear up opinions through the world even with them that speak most against implicit faith But you need not despair of casting off the repute of them you mention Mr. Robertson and Mr. Crandon can teach any man that will learn that lesson Treat ib. The Question is not Whether we are Iustified by works though flowing from grace as meritorious or efficient of Justification This the Opinionists we have to deal with do reject with indignation To make Works either merits or efficient causes of our Iustification before God they grant it directly to oppose the Scriptures yea they seem to be offended with the Orthodox as giving too much to faith because it s made an Instrument of our Iustification therefore they are to be acquitted at least from gross Popery Answ This is one passage which I understand by your Preface to you Sermons on John 17. you lookt for thanks for and I do freely thank you for it for the world is such now as that I must take my self beholden to any man that doth injure me with moderation and modesty But you might have done that justice to us Opinionists as to have put any causes at all instead of efficient causes when we had so often told you the Orthodox that we disclaimed all true causality and then your Reader would have been ready to hope that we are free also from the finer Popery as well as the gross But since I have heard of late times what it is that goes under the name of Antichristianity and Popery even with many that are able to call themselves Orthodox and others that dissent from them worse then
said Causalitas quaedam which is terminus diminuens If quoad esse causalitatis it be terminus diminuens then the meaning is that I make them no causes But do you think any Reader will English Causalitas quaedam by no Causality But doubtless you mean that it is Terminus diminuens as to the quality or nobility of the cause But first I never heard before that quaedam was terminus diminuens and if no Readers must understand you but those that know this to be true I think it will be but few Secondly But what if that were so Did you not know that I denyed even all causality how diminute soever quaedam can express if it be but real Thirdly But you added Concurrence But it was in Concurrence with the several unjust passages before mentioned and sure the neighbour-hood of that word hath not force enough to make them all true Preface My Reverend Brother saith He vehemently disclaimeth all Causality of works in Justification surely his meaning is all Proper causal efficiency and so did I in the stating of it But to deny Causality in a large sense is to contradict himself Answer If so what hope of Justice Must I in paper after paper disclaim all true Causality and will you not only perswade the world of the contrary but persist in it whether I will or not and say I mean a proper causal efficiency Reader I have no other remedy left but to advise thee that if yet after this it be affirmed the next time that I disclaim not all true causality or mean not as I say thou believe not the affirmation Preface For in his Aphoris 74. Thes They both viz. Faith and Works justifie in the same kind of causality or mediate it should be media and improper causes or as Dr. Twiss causae dispositivae but with this difference Faith as the principal Obedience as the less principal Here is causality though improper Here is a causa dispositiva and yet shall I be blamed after I had removed Efficiency and Merit Answer This is but to add injustice When I have written at large that faith and works are no true causes of Justification and after tell you that a condition is commonly called causa sine qua non which is causa fatua and no cause at all but meerly nominal having by custom obtained that name and that Dr. Twiss calls this causa dispositiva when I say that they have only a causality improperly to called which indeed is no causality Is it justice for you still to perswade the world that I mean some causality though not efficiency The thing I renounce the name is not it that you only charge me with if you had I was not the maker of it It was called causa sine qua non before I was born I must comply with common language or be silent especially when I tell you I take it for no Cause You give me such justice as the hoast of the Crown Tavern in Cheap-side had who as Speed saith was hanged for saying merrily that his Son was Heir of the Crown and his exposition would not save his life I pray you hereafter remove more then Efficiency and Merit I take not works to be either the material or formal cause of Justification no nor the final though you in the words before cited affirm it such Who then gives more to works you or I The final cause is so called because it causeth us to choose the means to it Justification is not a means of our using but an act of God Therefore works are not properly the end of it as to us And yet let me say this to you lest you should mistake me As vehemently as I disown all true causality of works to our Justification I intend not to fall out with all men that call them causes As first Not with Piscator nor such other that call them causes of our final absolution and salvation Secondly Nor with those that call them meritorious in the same sense as the Fathers did though they unfitly use the word Thirdly Nor with those that will say that because they please God and so are the object of his complacency and will they may therefore speaking after the manner of men be called Procatarctike causes of his act of Justification and so that the Amiableness and desirableness of faith and holiness is the cause why he assigned them to this Noble place and office Fourthly Nor with them that say faith is a moral or a Metaphorical passive or active Instrument of Justification Though I say not as these men I will not quarrel with them Preface But I need not run to this for my Arguments militate against works at works justifying under any pretended Notion whatsoever Answer By the help of this I shall interpret all your Arguments And if so then they militate against the act of faith justifying under the pretended notion of an Instrument unless you will say that faith is no Act or Instrumentality is no pretended notion Preface And this maketh me admire how my learned Brother could let fall one passage wherein he may be so palpably and ocularly convinced to the contrary by the first looking upon my Arguments that which he saith is the strength of my Arguments lies upon a supposition that conditions have a moral efficiency There is no one of these ten Arguments brought against Justification by works as a Condition sine qua non that is built upon this supposition or hath any dependance on it only in the fourth Argument after their strength is delivered I do ex abundanti shew that a Condition in a Covenant strictly taken hath a moral efficiency Answer First you confess it is your Assertion that such Conditions have a moral efficiency Secondly I never said that you made that a Medium in all your Arguments nor that you intended that as their strength but that their strength lyeth on that supposition and if I have mistaken in that I will not stand in it But I think to shew you that without that supposition your Arguments have no strength which if I do then judge at what you marvailed But it s a farther act of injustice in you in alleadging me Apol. pag. 8. saying that some conditions are impulsive causes when I told you it is not qua conditions but only as materially there is somewhat in them that is meritorious I doubt not but the same thing may be the matter of a cause and a condition I shall now return to your Lect. of Justification and there speak to the other passage in your preface about justifying Repentance and Love c. Treat pag. 220. This therefore I shall God willing undertake to prove that good works are not a condition or a cause sine qua non of our Justification Answer But remember that it is Justification either as begun in constitution or continued or as pronounced by the Judges Sentence that the Question comprehendeth and not only the
putting us into a justified state And its works under any notion that you speak of and not only under the reduplication quà works Treat p. 221. First I shall instance in the great pattern and example of our Justification Abraham from whom the Apostle concludeth a Justification of all Believers in the like manner he was Now that Abraham was not Iustified by works or his working though a godly man the Apostle c. Answ 1. I distinguish between works in Pauls sense and works in Iames his sense And because you say so much against distinguishing of works before as deceitful I will first prove the necessity of distinguishing 1. Works in Pauls sense are such as make the Reward to be not of Grace but of Debt Works in Iames his sense are not such therefore they are not the same Works in Pauls sense are actions as valuable offered to God and justifying by their value But works in Iames his sense are none such Proved The works that James speaks of must necessarily be done Works in Pauls sense we may not so much as imagine that we can do viz. such as make the Reward of Debt and not of Grace Though the matter of such works may be done which Justiciaries thus conceive of yet under such a notion no man may once imagine that he hath them 2. Works in Pauls sense are such as stand in competition with Christ or at least would be co-partners with him in a co-ordination But works in James his sense are none such but such as stand in a due subordination to Christ such undoubtedly there are And such James speaks of That Paul speaks of works as Competitors with Christ or as co-ordinate an hundred Texts will prove and the case is so plain that I think it not worth the insisting on seeing the impartial reading over the Epistles may satisfie 2. I distinguish of Justifying quoad modum procurandi or of the distinct Interests of mens actions therein signified in the preposition By. Paul speaks of Justification By works as by valuable deserving causes or procatarctike causes moving God to justifie us by their worth or by some true causality procuring it But Iames speaks of Works as supposing the perfect Satisfaction and Merit of Christ and that all that is valuable to the causal procurement of our Justification is to be found in him alone and therefore he leaves no causality herein to works but takes them as a meer condition which cease suspending when performed For the efficiency of a condition is only in suspending till performed And so Rebellion can suspend when the ceasing of that Rebellion by obedience doth not cause but only cease suspending Now I answer to your Minor that Abraham was not justified by works in Pauls sense but he was in Iames's sense unless you will own the saying which you chide Althamer for Though I must say that in his Conciliationes Loc. Script Althamer deals more mannerly with Iames. Abraham was not justified by works as making the Reward of debt and not of grace for he had no such works But Abraham was justified 1. By the act of faith as a condition therefore by an act under some notion I know of few Divines that deny that faith is a condition of Justification 2. However you confess your self that Abraham was Justified by faith as an instrument and you say that it was by the act of faith and not the habit And though you take this to be but a nominal act and really a Passion yet so do not others for herein you are more singular a thousand to one as far as I am able to understand then I am in the Doctrine which you charge with singularity 3. The faith that Abraham was justified by was not only a bare apprehension of Christs Righteousness but a receiving of Christ as Christ which is called Works by your party 4. It was either By or Because of his External Obedience that Abraham was justified Proved 1 By Iames 2.21 Was not Abraham our Father justified by works when he had offered Isaac his son upon the Altar 2. From Gen. 22.12 16 18. By my self have I sworn saith the Lord for because thou hast done this thing and hast not with-held thy son thine only son that in blessing I will bless thee c. And in thy seed shall all the Nations of the earth be blessed because thou hast obeyed my voice But then I must add that this was none of Abrahams first Justification for he was just before this but it was a renewed Acceptance and Approbation of God and a kind of sentential Declaration thereof by the voice of the Angel But a Justification it was and so James calls it Now let us hear your Replies Treat pag. 221. This cannot be a solid Answer 1. Because the Apostle speaketh generally of works in this description of Iustification though in other places he sometimes saith the works of the Law yet Abraham could not be Instanced in for such works c. When we read the Holy Ghost spake generally of all works who are we that we should limits it to some By their interpretation the believer should be opposed only to some kind of works and faith c. Answ 1. The ordinary strain of the Apostles speech being expressive of the works of the Law is Expository of the rest 1. Because a few passages must be usually expounded by many 2. And because a few much more abundance of limiting passages must expound those where the restriction is not expressed 2. Have not I ever yielded to you that all works are excluded from Justifying as works but it follows not that therefore they are as you may say excluded under any Notion whatsoever 3. And why might not Abraham be instanced in Your proof is none 1. Is it not a good Argument Negative Abraham was not justified by works therefore we are not And a good Argument to prove the Antecedent Because he had no works that could justifie No nor those which were then trusted on to Justification 2. Doth not Paul shew that he speaks of these when he proves his assertion 1. Because Abraham was then in uncircumcision Rom. 4.10 what 's that to Gospel obedience 2. Because the Law was long after the promise and was not then given Gal. 3.17 3. Paul maketh it all one to be justified by works and to be justified by the Law as abundance of passages shew A multitude of particular Texts do expresly shew that it is a Legal Iustification only that he speaks of and that he directly intendeth only Legal works I will now instance but in one viz. Rom. 4.13 compared with Gen. 22.18 For the promise that he should be heir of the world was not to Abraham and his seed by the Law but through the righteousness of faith Now compare with this the words of the promise it self And in thy seed shall all the Nations of the earth be blessed because thou hast obeyed my voice So ver
know not they are not Scripture words nor my words For still I say All Good works are of Debt to God from man Argument 1. Ex natura rei There are many Moral Acts that make not the Reward from men to be of Debt and not of Grace Much less will such Works make the Reward from God to be of Debt and not of Grace The Consequence is grounded on these two or three Reasons 1. God is infinitely above us and therefore less capable of being obliged by our works then man 3. God is our absolute Proprietary and we are wholly his and therefore we can give him nothing but his own 3. God is our Supreme Rector and we are bound to a perfect fulfilling of his Law and we are sinners that have broak that Law and deserve eternal death therefore we are less capable of obliging him by our works as our Debtor then of obliging men and indeed uncapable 4. Gods Reward is Eternal Glory and mans is but some transitory thing therefore we are less capable of making God our Debtor for Justification and Salvation then man for a trifle This proves the Consequence Now the Antecedent I prove by Instances 1. If a man be ready to drown in the water and you offer to help him out if he will lay hold of your hand this act of his is Actus humanus vel moralis and yet makes not the deliverance to be of Debt and not of Grace 2. If a man be in prison for Debt and you ransom him and offer him deliverance on condition he will but consent to come forth on the account of your Ransom this moral Action makes not his Deliverance to be of Debt and not of Grace 3. If a man be condemned for Treason and upon Ransom made you procure and offer him a pardon on condition he will take it or if you say If you will give me thanks for it or take it thankfully or If also you confess your Treason or If also you crave pardon of the Prince or If also you confess me your benefactor or If also you will profess your purpose to take up rebellions arms no more or If also you will openly profess the Princes Soveraignty and renounce the Leaders of the Rebells whom you have followed Vpon any one or on all these conditions you shall have a free and full pardon without any cost or suffering of your own Do you think that any of these do make the pardon to be of Debt and not of Grace 4. If you give a man a Lordship on condition he take it as a free Gift from you and pay you yearly a grain of sand or do some act of homage as to say I thank you which hath in it no consideration of value but only of acknowledgment of dependance doth this make your Gift to be not of Grace 5. If you give a beggar a piece of gold on condition he will take it and put off his hat and say I thank you I will not believe that any of these Acts do make the Reward to be not of Grace But if you bid them Go and do me so many daies work for it importing somewhat profitable or valuable for yourself then the case is altered Argument 2. Those works which a man cannot be justified without make not the Reward to be of debt and not of Grace But there are some works that a man cannot be justified without Jam. 2.24 Matthew 12.37 what ever they be some they are Argument 3. Those works which a man cannot be saved without make not the Reward to be of Debt and not of Grace But there are some works that we cannot be saved without Therefore there are some works that make not the Reward of Debt and not of Grace The Major is proved by the express exclusion of works in this sense from salvation both as begun and as consummate 2 Tim. 1.9 who hath saved us and called us with an holy calling not according to our works but his own purpose and grace c. Ephes 2.8 9. For by Grace ye are saved through faith and not of your selves it is the gift of God not of works lest any man should boast Tit. 3.5 6 7. Not by works of Righteousness which we have done but according to his Mercy he saved us by the washing of Regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost that being justified by his Grace we should be made Heirs according to the hope of eternal life Rom. 6.23 For the wages of sin is death but the Gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord Act. 4.12 Neither is there salvation in any other Mat. 25.34 Come ye blessed of my Father inherit the Kingdom prepared for you c. whence Expositors conclude against works The Minor may be proved by an hundred texts Mat. 25.35 For I was hungry c. Rev. 22.12 and 2.23 Mark 13.34 Rev. 20.13 Jam. 2 14. 1 Pet. 1.17 He will judge every man according to his works c. Argument 4. Those works which Grace commandeth and causeth the Godly to perform do not make the Reward to be not of Grace but of debt But there are some such works Ergo c. The Major is evident What Saint dare say that he hath a work that makes not the Reward of Grace especially when it is a work of Grace The Minor is as true as Scripture is true 2 Cor. 9.8 Col. 1.10 2 Thess 2.17 2 Tim. 2.21 Tit. 3.1 Heb. 13.21 Mat. 5.16 Heb. 10.24 1 Pet. 2.12 Tit. 2.14 and 3.8 14. Ephes 2.10 c. Dare any say that God hath not commanded good works or yet that he hath commanded us in the Gospel so to work that the Reward may not be of grace but debt Will any say that the Saints do no good works or else that they do such good works as make the Reward to be not of Grace but of debt I hope not Argument 5. Repentance is a moral Act Repentance maketh not the Reward to be of debt and not of grace therefore there are some works that make not the Reward to be not of grace but of Debt The same I say of Faith it self and other Acts. But perhaps some one else will object that though its true that there be such works yet they have no Interest in the business of our Justification and therefore Paul doth hence exclude them Answer First It sufficed to my last purpose to prove that there are works which will not bear his description and therefore are not they that he means Secondly But that those other works have some Interest in the business of our Justification I have proved in the beginning Repentance hath the promise of Pardon so hath faith c. But I 'le not unseasonably here digress to this but refer you to what is said before and after and elsewhere more at large Argu. 6. In ver 5. the opposite term he that worketh not doth not signifie him that performeth no moral act
Cartwright cont Rhem. in loc For if the Reward should be given according to works God should be a Debtor unto man But it is absurd to make God a Debtor to man 2. He speaketh not of that Reward that ignorant men challenge to themselves but of the Reward that God should in justice give if men had deseerved it by their works 12. Hemiâ—gius even a Lutheran supposeth the Argument to be thus Imputatio gratuita non est operantis merces justitia credentis est imputatio gratuita ergo justitia credentis non est operantis merces Major probatur per contrarium Merces operanti id est ei qui aliquid operibus promeretur datur ex debito Probatio haec per concessionem Rhetoricam intelligenda est Nequaquam enim Paulus sentit quod quisquam ex debito fiat justus revera sed quae sit natura rerum indicat Imputare est aliquid gratia conferre non ex debito tribuere Merces proprie est quod debebatur ex merito hoc est Debiti solutio Yea in his blow at the Majorists he confesseth the truth 8. Evertitur corum dogma qui clamant opera necessaria ad salutem quae salus cum à Justificatione separari nequit non habet alias causas aut merita quam ipsa Justificatio Hoc tamen fatendum est quod opera necessariò requirantur in Justificatis ut iter intermedium non ut causa aut merita 13. Mich. Ragerus a Lutheran in loc Imputatio fidei opponitur imputationi ex merito imputatio fidei fit secundum gratiam E. fides in negotio Justificationis non consideratur ut opus morale quid enim per modum operis imputatur secundum debitum meritoriè imputatur Et qui operatur sive operans renatus sit sive non dummodo eâ intentione operetur ecque fine ut mercedem reportet opera sua censorio Dei judicio opposita velit 14. In like manner Georg Calixtus a Lutheran in loc pag. 26.28 c. To these I might add many other Protestant Expositors and the votes of abundance of Polemical Divines who tell the Papists that in Pauls sense it s all one to be justified by works to be justified by the Law and to be justified by merits But this much may suffice for the vindication of that Text and to prove that all works do not make the Reward to be of Debt and not of Grace but only meritorious mercenary works and not those of gratitude c. beforenamed Treat ibid. The second Argument may be from the peculiar and express difference that the Scripture giveth between faith and other graces in respect of Justification So that faith and good works are not to be considered as concurrent in the same manner though one primarily the other secondarily so that if faith when it s said to Justifie doth it not as a condition but in some other peculiar notion which works are not capable of then we are not Justified by works as well as faith Now it s not lightly to be passed over that the Scripture still useth a peculiar expression of faith which is incommunicable to other graces Thus Rom. 3.25 Remission of sins is through faith in his blood Rom. 4.5 Faith is counted for Righteousness Rom. 5.1 Galatians â— 16 c. Answer First This is nothing to the Question and deserves no further answer The Question is not now whether faith and works justifie in the same manner that 's but a consequent rightly explained of another thing in question your self hath here made it the question whether Works be Conditions of Justification And that which I affirmed is before explained I grant that if faith justifie not as a condition but proxime in any other respect then Faith and Repentance c. justifie not in the same manner so that the sameness of their Interest in the general notion of a condition supposeth faith to be a condition but if you can prove that it is not I shall grant the difference which you prove Now it is not our question here whether faith be a condition or an Instrument but whether other works as you choose to call them or humane acts be conditions Secondly Scripture taketh not faith in the same sense as my Opposers do when it gives it the peculiar expressions that you mention Faith in Pauls sense is a Belief in Jesus Christ in all the respects essential to his person and office and so a hearty Acceptance of him for our Teacher Lord and Saviour Saviour I say both from the guilt and power of sin and as one that will lead us by his word and spirit into Possession of eternal Glory which he hath purchased So that it includeth many acts of Assent and a Love to our Saviour and desire of him and it implyeth self-denial and renouncing our own righteousness and all other Saviours and a sense of our sin and misery at least Antecedents or concomitants and sincere Affiance and Obedience in gratitude to our Redeemer as necessary consequents And this faith is set by Paul in opposition to the bare doing of the works of Moses Law and consequently of any other works with the same intention as separated from Christ who was the end and life of it or at least co-ordinate with him and so as the immediate matter of a legal Righteousness and consequently as mercenary and valuable in themselves or meritorious of the Reward This is Pauls faith But the faith disputed for by my Opponents is the Act of recumbency or Affiance on Christ at Justifier or Priest which they call the Apprehension of Christs righteousness and this as opposed to the Acceptance of Christ as our Teacher and King our Husband Head c. further then these contain his Priesthood and opposed to Repentance to the love of our Saviour to denying our own righteousness confessing our sins and confessing Christ to be our only Saviour Thankfulness for free grace c. all which are called works by these men and excluded from being so much as Conditions attending faith in our Justification or Remission of sin The case may be opened by this similitude A Physitian cometh to a populous City in an Epidemical Plague There is none can scape without his help he is a stranger to them and they have received false informations and apprehensions of him that he is but a mountebank and deceiver though indeed he came of purpose in love and compassion to save their lives having a most costly receipt which will certainly cure them He offereth himself to be their Physitian and freely to give them his Antidote and to cure and save them if they will but consent that is if they will take him for their Physitian and thankfully take his medicine His enemies disswade the people from believing in him and tell them that he is a Deceiver and that if they will but stir themselves and work and use such dyet and medicines as they tell them of
grace yet his works would have been a causall Condition of the blessedness promised In the Covenant of Grace though what man doth is by the gift of God yet look upon the same gift as our duty and as a Condition which in our persons is performed This inferreth some Moral Efficiency Answ 1. See then all you that are accounted Orthodox the multitude of Protestant Divines that have made either Faith or Repentance Conditions what a case you have brought your selves into And rejoyce then all you that have against them maintained that the Covenant of Grace hath on our part no Conditions for your Cause is better then some have made you believe and in particular this Reverend Author Yea see what a case he hath argued himself into while he hath argued you out of the danger that you were supposed in For he himself writeth against those that make Repentance to be but a sign and deny it to be a Condition to qualifie the subject for Iustification Treat of Iustif part 1. Lect. 20. And he saith that in some gross sins there are many Conditions requisite besides humiliation without which pardon of sin cannot be obtained and instanceth in restitution pag. 210. with many the like passages 2. Either you mean that Adams works would have been Causall quatenus a Condition performed or else quatenus meritorious ex natura materia or some other cause The first I still deny and is it that you should prove and not go on with naked affirmations The second I will not yield you as to the notion of meritorious though it be nothing to our question The same I say of your later instance of Gospel Conditions Prove them morally efficient qua tales if you can Treat ib. And so though in words they deny yet in deed they do exalt works to some kind of causality Answ I am perswaded you speak not this out of malice but is it not as unkind and unjust as if I should perswade men that you make God the Author of sin indeed though you deny it in words 1. What be the Deeds that you know my mind by to be contrary to my words Speak out and tell the world and spare me not But if it be words that you set against words 1. Why should you not believe my Negations as well as my supposed affirmations Am I credible only when I speak amiss and not at all when I speak right A charitable judgementi 2. And which should you take to be indeed my sense A naked term Condition expounded by you that never saw my heart and therefore know not how I understand it further then I tell you Or rather my express explication of that term in a sense contrary to your supposition â—ear all you that are impartial and judge I say A Condition is no Cause and Faith and Repentance are Conditions My Reverend Brother tells you now that in word I deny them to be efficient Causes but in deed I make them such viz. I make them to be what I deny them to be Judge between us as you see cause Suppose I say that Scripture is Sacred and withall I add that by Sacred I mean that which is related to God as proceeding from him and separated to him and I plead Etymologie and the Authority of Authors and Custom for my speech If my Reverend Brother now will contradict me only as to the fitness of the word and say that sacer signifieth only execrabilis I will not be offended with him though I will not believe him but should so good and wise a man proclaim in print that sacer signifieth only execrabilis and therefore that though in word I call Scripture Sacred yet in deed I make it execrable I should say this were unkind dealing What! plainly to say that a Verbal controversie is a Real one and that contrary to my frequent published professions What is this but to say Whatever he saith I know his heart to be contrary Should a man deal so with your self now he hath somewhat to say for it For you first profess Repentance and Restitution to be a Condition as I do and when you have done profess Conditions to have a Moral Efficiency which I deny But what 's this to me that am not of your mind Treat pag. 229. A fifth Argument is that which so much sounds in all Books If good works be the effect and fruit of our Justification then they cannot be Conditions or Causa sine qua non of our Iustification But c. Answ 1. I deny the Minor in the sense of your party Our first Repentance our first desire of Christ as our Saviour and Love to him as a Saviour and our first disclaiming of all other Saviours and our first accepting him as Lord and Teacher and as a Saviour from the Power of sin as well as the guilt all these are works with you and yet all these are not the effects of our Relative Justification nor any of them 2. As to External acts and Consequent internal acts I deny your Consequence taking it of continued or final Justification though I easily yield it as to our Justification at the first 1. All the acts of justifying faith besides the first act are as truly effects of our first Justification as our other graces or gracious acts are And doth it therefore follow that they can be no Conditions of our continued Justification Why not Conditions as well as Instruments or Causes Do you think that only the first instantaneous act of faith doth justifie and no other after through the course of our lives I prove the contrary from the instance of Abraham It was not the first act of his faith that Paul mentioneth when he proveth from him Justification by faith As it s no good Consequence Faith afterward is the effect of Iustification before therefore it cannot afterward justifie or be a Condition So it s no good Consequence as to Repentance Hope or Obedience 2. It only follows that they cannot be the Condition of that Justification whereof they are the effect and which went before them which is granted you But it follows not that they may not be the Condition of continued or final Justification Sucking the brest did not cause life in the beginning therefore it is not a means to continue it It followeth not You well teach that the Justification at the last Judgement is the chief and most eminent Justification This hath more Conditions then your first pardon of sin had yea as many as your salvation hath as hath been formerly proved and may be proved more at large Treat pag. 230. By this we may see that more things are required to our Salvation then to our Iustification to be possessors of heaven and than it should be to entitle us thereto Answ 1. It s true as to our first Justifying and its true as to our present continued state because perseverance is still requisite to salvation But it s not true as to
our final sentential Justification There is as much on our part required to that as to salvation it self 1. The promise makes no difference 2. The nature of the thing doth put it past doubt For what is our final Justification but a Determination of the Question by publick sentence on our side Whether we have Right to salvation or not The 25. of Matthew shews the whole 2. I argue against you from your own Doctrine here thus If Justification be it that gives us Right or Title to salvation then that which is the Condition of our Right to salvation is the Condition of our Justification the Antecedent here is your own Doctrine and is partly true And the Consequence is undenyable whereto I add But the Doing of Christs Commandments is the Condition of our Right to salvation therefore also of our Right to Justification viz. as Consummate The Minor I prove from Rev. 22.14 Blessed are they that do his Commandements that they may have Right to the tree of life and may enter in c. Whosoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved Rom. 10.13 Acts 2.21 We are saved by hope Rom. 8.24 Who so walketh uprightly shall be saved Prov. 28.18 Baptism doth save us 1 Pet. 3.21 In doing this thou shall both save thy self and them that hear thee 1 Tim. 4.16 If he have not works can faith save him Iames 2.14 Treat ib. It s true that Iustification cannot be continued in a man unless he continue in good works Yet for all that they are not Conditions of his Iustification they are Qualifications and Determinations of tht subject who is justified but no Conditions of his Iustification As in the generation of man c. Light is necessarily required and dryness as qualties in fire yet c. Answ 1. It s well you once more confess that the thing is necessary Our question then is only of the nature and reason of that necessity Whether it be necessitas medii ad finem as to the continuance or consummation of our Justification This I hope you will never deny If medii then what medium is it not a cause If not a condition then tell us what if you can Secondly You say nothing to the purpose when you give us Instances of Natural properties and qualifications For besides that some of them are not media as Light to burning the rest that are media are Physically necessary ad finem But First We are not discoursing of Physicks and Physical necessities but of Morals and moral necessity Secondly You cannot here pretend or at least prove that there is an absolute Physical necessity ad finem to every one of the things in question to their end Thirdly Much less that this is the nearest reason of their Interest and that God hath not morally superadded the necessity of a Condition by his Constitution I prove that the necessity is moral First It is imposed by way of Precept which causeth a moral necessity Secondly The Precept hath varied at the pleasure of God there being more Duties now then formerly were and some ceased that were then imposed Yea That its a condition having necessity ad finem is evident First Because it is the modus promissionis imposed on us by God as Promiser in a conditional form of words as necessary to our attaining of the benefit promised If thou confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead thou shalt be saved Rom. 10.9 If you forgive men their trespasses your heavenly Father will forgive you c. Mat. 64.15 Secondly And it is not of Physical necessity for then God could not save us without it but by a Miracle Whereas he saved men before Christ by believing in a Messiah in general without beliveing that this Jesus is he and without believing that he was actually conceived by the Holy Ghost born of the Virgin Mary was crucified buried rose again ascended c. And he saveth Infants that themselves believe not at all so that when you say it is a qualification of the subject you mean either the subject as justified and that is nothing to the business for then the question is not what Relation our actions have to that which is past but to that which is future Or else you mean the subject as to be Justified at Judgement or here to be so continued And then the question still remaineth whether those qualifications are means or no means And if means of what sort if not conditions Treat pag. 231. The sixth Argument If Justification be by works as a condition then one man is more or less Justified then another and those works are required to one mans Justification which are not to another so that there shall not be two godly men in the world Justified alike For if faith Justified as a work then he that had a stronger faith would be more Justified then he that hath a weaker Answer First I grant the conclusion if you had taken Works in Pauls sense for the works of a hirling or any that are supposed to justifie by their value Secondly I deny your first consequence And I give you the reason of my denyal I hope a little better then yours for the proof of it First It is not the degree of Repentance or Obedience that is made the Condition of our continued and final Justification but the Sincerity Now the sincerity is the same thing in one as in another therefore one is no more justified hereby then another Secondly You might as well say that different degrees of faith make different degrees of Justification But that is not just because it lies all on the sincerity therefore it is as unjust here for the same reason Your Reason is such as I expected not from you For if Faith say you justifie as a work But who saith it doth justifie as a work Your Reader that suspecteth nothing but fair in your words may think I do when I have again and again in terminis disavowed it And do you think it is a cogent reason indeed If works or faith justifie as a condition there will be various degrees of Justification Because if it justifie as a work there will be various degrees The reason of the Consequence is as strange to me as a baculo ad angulum Once more First Faith doth not justifie as a Physical act Secondly Nor as a Moral act or virtue in general Thirdly Nor as a mercenary meritorious act Fourthly But as an act adapted to the object and specially fitted to this gratious design it is chosen to be the condition and repentance and self-denyal accordingly to attend it Fifthly And as the appointed condition we are justified by it Sure therefore it doth not justifie as a work But how they will avoid your consequence that say it justifieth as an Instrument let them see As to your Consequence I answer First That which is absolutely necessary is
sincere Repentance and sincere Obedience and this is the same in all Secondly But the matter of both these viz. the sins repented of and the duties of Obedience may differ in many particulars in several persons One may not have the same sins to Repent of as another and one may have some particular duties more then another though in the main all have the same sin and duty But this difference is no absurdity nor strange thing When Christ mentioneth the final Justification of some Mat. 25. and gives the reason from their works for I was hungry and ye fed me c. I read of none that took it for an absurdity because First The poor Secondly Infants Thirdly Those that dye before they have opportunity do no such works Treat pag. 231. The seventh Argument This Assertion according to the sense of the late Writers that are otherwise Orthodox for I mean not the Socinians will bring in a Justification two waies or make a twofold Justification whereof one will be needless For they grant an Imputation of Christs Righteousness in respect of the Law he fulfilled that and satisfied Gods Justice that the Law cannot accuse us And besides this they make an Evangelical personal Righteousness by our own Evangelical works Now certainly this later is wholly superfluous for if Christs Righteousness be abundantly able to satisfie for all that righteousness which the Law requireth of us what is the matter that it removeth not all our Evangelical failings and supply that righteousness also surely this is to make the stars shine when the Sun is in its full lustre Thus it may be observed while men for some seeming difficulty avoid the good known way of truth they do commonly bring in Assertions of far more difficulty to be received In this case it s far more easie to maintain one single Righteousness viz. the Obedience of our Lord Christ then to make two c. Answ First This twofold Righteousness is so far from being needless that all shall perish in everlasting torment that have not both I doubt not but you have both your self and therefore do but argue with all this confidence against that which you must be saved by and which you carry within you As if you should argue that both a heart and a brain are needless and therefore certainly you have but one But the best is concluding you have but one doth not really prove that you have but one for if it did it would prove you had neither and then you were but a dead man in one case and a lost man in the other First Did ever any man deny the necessity of inherent Righteousness that was called a Protestant Object But that 's nothing to its necessity to Justification Answ First it s the very being of it that you plead against as needless if your words are intelligible 2ly It s as gross a contradiction to talk of a Righteousness that makes not righteous or will not justifie in tantum according to its proportion as to talk of whitness that makes not white or Paternity that makes not a father or any form that doth not inform or is a form and is not a form Secondly If there be two distinct Laws or Covenants then there is a necessity of two dstinct Righteousnesses to our Justification But the Antecedent is certain I suppose it will be granted that Christs righteousness is necessary to answer the Law of works And I shall further prove that a personal righteousness given from Christ is necessary to fulfill the condition of the new Covenant or Law of Grace believe and be saved c. Thirdly Christ did not himself fulfill the condition of the Gospel for any man nor satisfie for his final non-performance therefore he that will be saved must perform it himself or perish That Christ performed it not in person is past doubt It was not consistent with his state and perfection to repent of sin who had none to repent of to return from sin to God who never fell from him to beleve in Christ Jesus that is to accept himself as an offered Saviour and to take himself as a Saviour to himself that is as one that redeemed himself from sin to deny his own righteousness to confess his sin to pray for pardon of it c. Do you seriously believe that Christ hath done this for any man For my part I do not believe it Secondly That he that hath not satisfied for any mans final predominant Infidelity and Impenitency I know you will grant because you will deny that he dyed for any sin of that person or at least your party will deny it Thirdly All that shall be saved do actually perform these conditions themselves I know you will confess it that none adult but the Penitent Believers Holy shall be saved This sort of Righteousness therefore is of necessity Fourthly The Benefits of Christ obedience and death are made over to men by a conditional Promise Deed of gift or act of oblivion Therefore the condition of that Grant or Act must be found before any man can be justified by the righteousness of Christ It is none of yours till you repent and believe therefore you must have the personal Righteousness of faith and repentance in subordination to the imputed righteousness that it may be yours And will you again conclude that Certainly this later is wholly superfluous Hath not God said He that believeth shall be saved and he that believeth not shall be damned And Repent and be converted that your sins may be blotted out c. Is it not necessary that these be done then both as duty commanded and as a condition or some means of the end propounded and promised And is this wholly superfluous In Judgement if you be accused to have been finally impenitent or an Infidel will you not plead your personal faith and repentance to justifie you against that accusation or shall any be saved that saith I did not repent or believe but Christ did for me If it be said that Christs satisfaction is sufficient but what 's that to thee that performedst not the conditions of his Covenant and therefore hast no part in it Will you not produce your faith and repentance for your Justification against this charge and so to prove your Interest in Christ Nay is it like to be the great business of that day to enquire whether Christ have done his part or no or yet to enquire whether the world were sinners or rather to judge them according to the terms of grace which were revealed to them and to try whether they have part in Christ or not and to that end whether they believed repented loved him in his members improved his Talents of Grace or not Or can any thing but the want of this personal righteousness then hazard a mans soul But you ask If Christs righteousness be able to satisfie what is the matter that it removeth not all our Evangelical failings c. Answ
flyeth too boldly in the face of Christ and many a plain Text of Scripture Christ saith John 15.10 If ye keep my Commandments ye shall abide in my love even as I have kept c. 14. Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you Mat. 7.21 Not every one that saith Lord Lord shall enter into the Kingdom of heaven but he that doth the will of my Father which is in heaven 23 24. Whosoever heareth these sayings of mine and doth them c. Mat. 5. throughout verse 20. Except your righteousness exceed the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees ye shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of heaven 1 John 3.10 In this the children of God are manifest and the children of the Devil whosoever doth not righteousness is not of God neither he that loveth not his brother An hundred such passages might be cited And will you meet all these with your objections and say How shall I know when I have the full number c. Know that you have sincere Faith Repentance and Obedience and you may know you perform that Condition of the Gospel else not Treat pag. 236. That if good works be a Condition of Justification then none are justified till their death because in every good work is required perseverance in so much that perseverance is that to which the promise is made Mat. 24.6 Heb. 10.38 Rev. 2.7 20. So that it is not good works simply but persevered in that is required and therefore no Justification to the end of our daies so that we cannot have any peace with God till then Neither doth it avail to say Justification is not compleat till then for it cannot be at all till then because the Condition that gives life to all is not till then Answ 1. And is not perseverance in faith as necessary as perseverance in obedience Read Col. 1.23 John 15.2 3 c. and many the like and judge Will you thence infer that none are justified till death 2. But a little step out of the darkness of your Confusion will bring the fallacy of your Argument to the light and there will need no more to it The Gospel conveyeth to us several benefits some without any Condition and several benefits on several Conditions 1. Our first Actual pardon and Justification and right to life is given on Condition of our first Faith and Repentance and not on Condition of External works of Obedience nor yet of the persevering in faith it self much less in that Obedience 2. Our state of Justification is continued on condition of the continuance of Faith and Repentance with sincere Obedience 3. Our particular following sins have a particular pardon on Condition of the Continuance of the habits and renewing of the acts of that faith and repentance for known observed sins 4. Our full Justification by Sentence at Judgement is on the same condition as Glorification viz. On perseverance in Faith Repentance Hope Love and sincere Obedience Prove now if you can that perseverance is the Condition of our first pardon Prove if you can that final perseverance is the Condition of our continuance in a justified state till now You say Justification and peace cannot be ours till the condition be performed But what condition of that gift or of another gift If of that it s granted but it s still denyed that perseverance is any of the Condition of our first pardon If of another gift it s no reason of your Consequence If you speak of final Justification and Salvation I grant you all thus far that you have no full Right of possessing them but on perseverance nor no Right at all or certainty of Salvation but on supposition of perseverance as necessary to the possession And therefore if you can prove that we have no certainty of perseverance I will yield that we have no certainty of salvation Treat Thus we have asserted this truth by many Arguments and though any one singly by it self may not convince yet altogether may satisfie Now to the great Objections Answ I heartily wish that wiser Readers may find more truth and satisfaction in them then I can do if it be there to be found and to that end that they make their best of them all Treat James saith Abraham was justified by works so that in outward appearances these two great Apostles speak contradictions which hath made some deny the Canonical authority of James 's Epistle Yea one said blasphemously Althameirius Mentiris Jacobe in caput tuum But this is to cut not untie the knot 1. The scope of the Apostle Paul is to treat upon our Justification before God and what is the Instrument and means of obtaining it But the Apostle James takes Justification for the Declaration and Manifestation of it before men Answ This is not the only sense of James as I have proved before to which I refer you no nor any part of the sense of the word Justification with him though he mention shewing faith by works to men as an argument for his main conclusion yet he nowhere expoundeth the word Justification by it James expresly speaks of Imputation of Righteousness by God and of that Justification which is meant in the words of Gen. concerning Abraham even the same words that Paul expoundeth and of that Justification which inferreth salvation Treat Paul informeth us that faith only justifieth and James what kind of faith it is even a lively working faith Answ I have answered this in the beginning of this Disputation Treat It s said They dare not go against the plain words of the Apostle But it s not the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 not the words but the sense Answ Our Question is How the sense of James shall be known Will you say not by the words but by the sense The words are to express the sense and we must take heed of forcing them as much as we can As to your saying of the Anthropomorphites and Hoc est corpus meum I answer the Tropical sense is oft the plainest and in particular in these instances If any man point to several pictures and say This is Caesar and this is Pompey c. I shall by use of speech the interpreter of words take the tropical sense to be the plainest and not the literal viz. That this is Caesars Image and not that it is his person And so here 2. Give me any cogent Evidence that I must leave the plain sense and I am satisfied 3. Remember I pray you that it s not the words but the sense that you except against Do not you except hereafter against the saying that we are Justified by works and not by faith only as James doth but against the ill sense that you can prove to be put upon the words Treat pag. 238. Lastly They are forced to add to the Apostle for they say works justifie as the Condition of the Gospel which the Apostle doth not speak a
Word of Answ 1. We say not that Jams calls them a condition therefore we add not to him as his 2. Every Exposition and application is an addition of another sort but not as of the same 3. I use not the active phrase that Works justifie agreeing so far with you who note a difference between these sayings Faith justifieth and we are justified by faith for all that Mr. Blake despiseth the observation which perhaps he would scarce have done if he had known that you had being guilty of it also 4. Scripture supposeth Grammer Logick Physicks c. and no more is to be expected from it but its own part If James tell you that we are justified by works he doth not say that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a verb and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is a noun and so of the rest but he warranteth you to say so without any unjust addition supposing that Grammer so call them If the Scripture say that God created the Heavens and the earth it doth not say here in terms that God was the efficient cause but it warranteth you to say so If it say that Christ dyed for us and was a Sacrifice for our sins and hath obtained eternal redemption for us yet it saith not that he is the meritorious cause or the material cause of our Justification But it will warrant you to say so without the guilt of unjust additions If you may say as a Grammarian and a Logitian when you meet with such words in Scripture These are Paronyma and these Synonyma and these Homonyma and this is an universal that a singular that a particular and that an indefinite this is an efficient cause that a material formal or final this is a noun that a verb the other a participle or an adverb I pray you then why may not I say when I read in Rom. 10.9 that If thou confess with thy mouth and believe in thy heart c. that If is a conjunction conditional Is this adding to the Scripture unjustly If I did when ever I read that we are justified by faith collect thence that faith is an Instrumental cause as if by were only the note of an Instrument then you might have accused me of unwarrantable addition or collections indeed Lastly If you have a mind to it I am content that you say by the unscriptural names or additions as you speak of nouns pronouns verbs antecedents consequents efficient or material causes c. and I will lay by the name of a condition as you do of an Instrument and we will only use the Scripture phrase which is If you forgive men your Father will forgive you if we confess our sins he is faithfull and just to forgive we are justified by faith without the works of the Law A man is justified by works and not by faith only By thy Words thou shalt be justified Every man shall be judged according to his works c. Let us keep to Scripture phrase if you desire it and you shall find me as backward as any to lay much stress upon terms of Art Having gone thus far I shall in brief give you a truer reconciliation of Paul and James then you here offer us 1. They debate different questions 2. And that with different sorts of persons 3. And speak directly of different sorts of works 4. And somewhat differ in the sense of the word Faith 5. And somwhat about the word Justification 6. And they speak of works in several Relations to Justification 1. The Question that Paul disputed was principally Whether Justification be by the works of the Mosaical Law and consequently by any mercenary works without Christ or in Co-ordination with Christ or any way at all conjunct with Christ The question that James disputed was Whether men are justified by meer believing without Gospel-Obedience 2. The persons that Paul disputed against were 1 The unbelieving Jews that thought the Mosaical Law was of such perfection to the making of men righteous that there needed no other much less should it be abrogate Where specially note that the righteousness which the Jews expected by that Law was not as is commonly imagined a righteousness of sinless obedience such as was required of Adam but a mixt Righteousness consisting of accurate Obedience to the Mosaical Law in the main course of their lives and exact sacrificing according to that Law for the pardon of their sins committed wherein they made express confession of sin so that these two they thought sufficient to justifie and lookt for the Messias but to free them from captivity and repair their Temple Law c. And 2. Paul disputed against false Teachers that would have joyned these two together the Righteousness of Moses Law and Faith in Christ as necessary to life But James disputed against false Christians that thought it enough to salvation barely to believe in Christ or lived as if they so thought its like misunderstanding Pauls Doctrine of Justification as many now do 3. The works that Paul speaks of directly are the services appointed by Moses Law supposed to be sufficient because of the supposed sufficiency of that Law So that its all one with him to be justified by the Law and to be justified by works and therefore he ofter speaks against Justification by the Law expresly and usually stileth the works he speaks of the works of the Law yet by consequence and a parity of Reason he may well be said to speak against any works imaginable that are set in opposition to Christ or competition with him and that are supposed meritorious and intended as Mercenary But James speaks of no works but Obedience to God in Christ and that as standing in due subordination to Christ 4. By Faith in the Doctrine of Justification Paul means our Assent to all the essential Articles of the Gospel together with our Acceptance of Jesus Christ the Lord as such and affiance in him that is To be a Believer and so to have faith is with Paul to be a Disciple of Christ or a Christian Though sometime he specially denominates that faith from one part of the object the promise sometime from another the blood of Christ sometime from a third his obedience And in other cases he distinguisheth Faith from Hope and Charity but not in the business of Justification considering them as respecting Christ and the ends of his blood But James by faith means a bare ineffectual Assent to the Truth of the Christian Religion such as the Devils themselves had 5. Paul speaks of Justification in its whole state as begun and continued But James doth principally if not only speak of Justification as continued Though if by works any understand a disposition to work in faith or conjunct with it as Dr. Iackson doth so his words are true of initial Justification also 6. The principal difference lyeth in the Relations of works mentioned Paul speaks of works as the immediate matter of a legal personal Righteousness
Instrument 4. And Repentance under the notion of a preparative or condition 5. But if you mean only that he excludes the co-operation or efficiency of works I yield as before 6. Paul expresly excludes only the works of the Law that is such as are considered in opposition to Christ or co-ordination as required by the Law of Works and not such as Christ himself enjoyneth in subordination to himself so they keep that place of subordination 7. Pauls Question is What is the Righteousness which must denominate a sinner just at the Bar of the Law And this he saith is no Works under any notion no not Faith but only Christs Righteousness and so faith must be taken relatively for certainly it is Christ and not Faith that is that Righteousness Is not this all that our Divines say or require and so say I over and over But Paul doth not resolve there what is the Condition on which Christ makes over this Righteousness of his so directly but collaterally 8. Or if you say he do yet if Paul speak of our first possession of Justification I say it is without not only the operation but the presence of works which is more then you say 9. Or whether he speak of begun or continued Justification I say we are justified without works in Pauls sense yea that they are not so much as a condition of the continuance of Justification For works in Pauls sense relate to the reward as of debt and not of Grace As a man that works to yearn wages as Paul plainly saith Rom. 4.4 To him that worketh the Reward is not of Grace but of Debt These works I disclaim as sinfull in their ends But obeying the Gospel or being willing that Christ who hath redeemed us should rule over us and running that we obtain and fighting the good fight of faith and suffering with Christ that we may be glorified with him and improving our Talent and enduring to the end and so doing good works and laying up a good foundation against the time to come I think Paul excludes not any of these from being bare conditions or causae sine quibus non of our Justification at Judgement or the continuance of it here Abrahams faith excluded works in Pauls sense as before but not works in this sense or in James his sense When you say my sense for reconciling Paul and James cannot be admitted 1. I would you had told me what way to do it better and answered what I have said in that 2. Your reason appears to me of no seeming force For first you say the one saith a Justification by faith without works you make Faith as well as works c. Answer 1. Paul saith not barely without works but without the works of the Law And I have shewed you what he means by works Rom. 4.4 2. I say no more then James that a man is justified by works and not by faith only I believe both these Scriptures are true and need no reconciling as having no contradiction in the terms And yet I speak not so broad usually as James doth Where you say that the Orthodox do sweetly reconcile them I know not who you mean by the Orthodox For I doubt not but you know the variety of interpretations to reconcile them Piscator and Pemble have one Interpretation and way of Reconciliation Calvin Paraeus and most Divines another Camero confuteth the best esteemed and hath another Brochmond with most of the Lutherans have another Jac. Laurentius Althemor and many more tell us of divers which of these you mean by the Orthodox I know not But if you exclude all those from the Orthodox that say as I say in this you will exclude as Learned Divines and well reputed of as most Europe hath bred viz. excellent Conrad Bergius Ludov. Crecius Johan Crocius Johan Bergius c. Who though they all dispute for Justification by faith without works understanding it of the first Justification for most Divines have taken Justification to be rigidly simul semel till Dr. Downam evinced that it is a continued Act yet they both take works for meriting works that respect the reward as of Debt and they say that otherwise Obedience is a Condition or cause as they make it of continuing or not losing Justification once attained And is not that to say as much as I And many more I can name you that say as much And you approve of Mr. Bals book which saith that works or a purpose to walk with God do justifie as a passive qualification of the Subject capable of Justification You add that we may dispute c. but you know not how a godly man at his death can look on his Graces as Conditions of the Covenant fulfilled by him c. Which speech seems strange to me I confess if I be so I am ungodly For I have been as oft and as long in the expectation of death as most men and still am and yet I am so far from being afraid of this that I should live and dye in horror and desperation if I could not look upon the conditions of the Covenant of Grace fulfilled by my self through goes workings If by our Graces you mean Habits I think it more improper to call them the fulfilling the conditions of the Covenant For what you say of the Papists you know how fundamentally almost they differ from me in this confounding the Covenants Righteousness c. If it were not to one that knows it better then my self I would shew wherein For your question How come the imperfections in our conditions to be pardoned You know I have fully answered it both in the Aphorisms and Appendix And I would rather you had given me one discovery of the insufficiency of that answer then asked the Question again Briefly thus Guilt is an obligation to punishment as it is here to be understood Pardon is a freeing from that Obligation or Guilt and Punishment All Punishment is due by some Law According to the Law or Covenant of Works the imperfection of our Faith Love Obedience c. deserve punishment and Christ hath satisfied that Law and procured forgiveness of these imperfections and so acquit us from Guilt and punishment The new Law or Covenant of Grace doth not threaten death to any but final Unbelievers and so not to the imperfection of our Faith Love Obedience where they are sincere And where the Law threatneth not Punishment there is no obligation to Punishment or Guilt on the party from that Law and so no work for Pardon Imperfect believers perform the conditions of the new Covenant truly and it condemneth none for imperfection of degree where there is sincerity No man is ever pardoned whom the new Law condemneth that is final Unbelievers or Rejecters of Christ So that Christ removeth or forgiveth that obligation to punishment which by the Law of Works doth fall on us for our imperfections And for the Law of Grace where it obligeth not
to punishment that obligation which is not cannot be taken off nor that man pardoned that was never guilty Your Question occasioneth me to be unmannerly in opening these easie things to you that I doubt not knew them sure twenty years ago and more Though I confess I had not the clear apprehensions of them seven years ago What ever I was then thought by others I confess I was ignorant and am glad that God hath in any measure healed my ignorance though with the loss of my reputation of being Orthodox Where you add that conditions have a moral efficiency either you mean all or some if all or if this whereof we are in speech though I am loth to contest with you in Philosophy yet I must confess I never read so much in any Author nor can force my self to believe it Causa sine qua non est causa fatua It is as Schibler and others a meer Antecedent The word Moral is ambiguous but if you mean it as I conjecture you do for an efficiency interpretative in sense of Law as if the Law would ascribe efficiency to him that fulfills the condition I utterly deny it in the present case or if you mean that our fulfilling the conditions hath an efficiency on God to move him to justifie us as an impulsive procatarctick cause I not only deny it but deny that any such cause is properly with God or hath efficiency on him nor can it have the operation of the final cause which some call moral seeing it is none of Gods end nor can any thing move God but God nor be his end but himself If you mean by moral efficiency any thing else which is indeed no efficiency I stick not on meer words Sir I should not have presumed to expect so much labour from you as to write a sheet for my satisfaction had I not perceived that others expect much more to less purpose and that your letters express that hereafter you intend more If you deny me your answer to this I will trouble you no more And because I would have your labour as short as may be I shall only desire your answer to these few Questions which I ground on both your Letters because the clear resolving of these will be the readiest way to satisfie me Quest 1. Hath the Covenant of Grace which promiseth Justification and Glorification any condition on our parts or none If it have Quest 2. What are the Conditions Is not Love and Obedience part of the Condition Quest 3. Must not those Conditions be fulfilled by our selves or hath Christ fulfiâ—led them by himself for any man Quest 4. If we must fulfill him why may not a dying man look on them Or what mâ—â—â— Paul to rejoyce in the testimony of his Conscience that in simplicity and godly sincerity he had his conversation c. And that he had fought a good fight and finished his courâ—â— c. And that in all good conscience c. and Hezekiah Remember Lord that I have walked before thee c. Quest 5. Can a man have any assurance ordinarily that death shall not let him into â—ell who hath no assurance that he hath performed these conditions and how should he have it Can he know that all shall work to him for good though he know not whether he love God or that there is no condemnation to him though he know not that he is in Christ and walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit Quest 6. If our Love and Obedience have no tendency to salvation but as meer figures then is not the Antinomian Doctrine true that we may not Act for Salvation Q. 7. What do you mean your self when you write against those that deny Repentance to be a Condition to qualifie the Subject to obtain forgiveness but a sign Lect. 20. of Justification And when you say that Scripture limits Justification and Pardon only to those Subjects that are so and so qualified p. 171. where you instance in Repentance Confession Turning Forgiving others c. and make faith an Instrumental cause but say there are many qualifications in the Subject p. 172. And what mean you when you say p. 210. In some gross sins there are many conditions requisite besides humiliation without which Pardon of sin cannot be obtained where you instance in Restitution Besides those p. 148 149 150. Is it not safe when a man hath prerformed these conditions to look on them either living or dying Or what do you say less then I do here I know you are none of the men of contention and therefore will not recant your own Doctrine in opposition to me And if you did not mean that these are conditions of Pardon and Justification when you say they are who can understand you If those gross sins be in the unjustified you will not say that the conditions of his Pardon are no conditions of his Justification I know that you give more to faith and so to man then I do viz. to be the Instrument of his own Justification which I will not contend against with any that by an improper sense of the word Instrument do differ only in a term but what do you give less to Repentance and the rest then I do you say they are conditions and I say no more Qu. 8. And what do the generality of our Divines mean when they say that Faith and new Obedience are our conditions of the Covenant As I have cited out of Paereus Scharpius Willet Piscator Junius Aretius Alstedius who saith the condition of the new Covenant of Grace is partly faith and partly Evangelical Obedience or Holiness of life proceeding from faith in Christ Distinct Chap. 17. p. 73. And Wendeliâ— the like c. If it be said that they mean they are conditions of Salvation but not of Justification Then Quest 9. Whether and how it can be proved that our final Justification at Judgement which you have truly shewed is more compleat then this Justificatio viae and our Glorification have different conditions on our part and so of our persevering Justification here Quest 10. And whether it be any less disparagement to Christ to have mans works to be the conditions of his Salvation then to be the bare conditions of his ultimate and continued Justification Seeing Christ is a Saviour as properly as a Justifier and Salvation comprizeth all Quest 11. What tolearable sense can be given of that multitude of plain Scriptures which I have cited Thes 60. For my part when I have oft studyed how to forsake my present Judgement the bare reading of the 25 of Matthew hath still utterly silenced me if there were no more Much more when the whole Gospel runs in the like strain Quest 12. Is not the fulfilling of the conditions of the new Law or Covenant enough to denominate the party righteous that is not guilty of non-fulfilling or not obliged to punishment or guilty as from that same Law or Covenant And doth
not every man that is saved so fulfill the conditions of the new Covenant and so is Evangelically righteous The condition is not Believe and obey perfectly but sincerely Quest 13. If there be no such thing as a personal Righteousness necessary to salvation besides imputed Righteousness 1. What is the meaning of all those Scriptures cited Thes 22. that say there is 2. And of our Divines that say there is inherent Righteousness And 3. What real difference between the godly and the wicked the saved and damned Quest 14. Have you found out any lower place for Love and Obedience then to be bare conditions if you acknowledge them any way conducible to final Justification or Salvation If you have what place is it and how called and why hath it not been discovered unto the world To say they are qualifications of the Subject is too general and comprizeth qualifications of different Natures and it shews not how they are conducible to the said ends and why a man may not be saved without qualifications as well as with them if God have not made them so much as conditions Quest 15. Seeing I ascribe not to Evangelical Obedience the least part of Christs Office or Honor nor make it any jot of our legal Righteousness where then lies the error or danger of my Doctrine Quest 16. Do not those men that affirm we have an inherent Righteousness which is so pronounced properly by the Law of works accuse the Law of God for blessing and cursing the the same man and action And how can that Law pronounce a man or his action righteous which curseth him and condemneth him to Hell for that same Action It makes me amazed to think what should be the reason that Divines contest so much that it is the Law of Works that pronounceth them inherently righteous which they know condemns them rather then the Law of Grace or new Covenant which they know absolveth them that sincerely perform it When all Divines acknowledge an inherent Righteousness and that the Law of Works is fulfilled by none and that it pronnunceth none righteous but the fulfillers and when the condition of the new Covenant must be performed by all that will be saved and when the Holy Ghost saith that it was by faith and so pronounced and measured by the Law of faith that Abel the second Righteous man in the world offered the excellent Sacrifice and by it obtained witness that he was righteous God testifying of his gift c. Heb. 11.4 Quest 17. Do not those Divines that will affirm that our inherent Righteousness is so called from its imperfect conformity to the Law of works and that it is the Law that pronounceth them righteous lay a clear ground for Justification by works in the worst sense for if the Law pronounce their works and them properly righteous then it justifieth them and then what need have they at least so far of Christ or Pardon yea and what Law shall condemn them if the Law of Works justifie them At least do they not compound their Righteousness as to the law of Works partly of Christs satisfaction and partly of their own Works Quest 18. Whether you should not blame Dr. Preston Mr. Norton Mr. Culverwel Mr. Throgmorton c. for laying by the good sound definition of Faith as you call it as well as me And is it not great partiality to let the same pass as currant from them which from me must be condemned And why would you agree to such a corrupt definition being one of the Assembly when theirs in the lesser Catechism and indeed both is in sence the very same with mine And why may not I be judged Orthodox in that point when I heartily subscribe to the National Assemblies Definition viz. that Faith is a saving Grace whereby we receive and rest on Christ alone for Salvation as he is offered to us in the Gospel Qu. 19. Do I say any more then the Assembly saith in the preceding Question What doth God require of us that we may escape his wrath and curse due to us for sin Answ God requireth of us to escape the said wrath and curse c. Faith in Jesus Christ repentance unto life with the diligent use of all the outward means whereby Christ communicateth to us the benefits of Redemption And is not Justification one benefit And is not final Justification a freeing us from that Curse Quest 20. Which call you the good sound definition of Faith When our famous Reformers placed it in Assurance Camero and others in perswasion such as is in the understanding others in Assent as Dr. Downam c. Others in a Belief of Gods special Love and that sin is pardoned Others in Affiance or Recumbency Others in divers of these Some as Mr. Ball calling it a fiducial Assent Others an obediential Affiancce Did not each of these forsake that which by the former was accounted the good sound Definition And why may not I with Dr. Preston Mr. Wallis c. say it is an Acceptance or consent joyned with Assent or with the Assembly and the rest say it is a receiving which is the same in a more Metaphorical term Quest 21. If you judge as Melanchton John Crocius Davenant Amesius c. that Faith is in both faculties how can you then over-leap the Elicite Acts of the will which have respect to means Eligere consentive uti Quest 22. If the formal reason of justifying faith lie in a Belief or Perswasion that Christ will pardon and save us or in an Affiance or resting on him or Trusting to him only for Salvation or in an Acceptance of him as a Saviour meerly to justifie and save from Hell Why then are not almost all among us justified and saved when I scarce meet with one of an hundred that is not unfeignedly willing that Christ should pardon and justifie and save them and do verily trust that Christ will do it and the freer it is the better they like it If they may whore and drink and be covetous and let alone all the practise of Godliness and yet be saved they will consent If it be said that they rest not on Christ for Justification sincerely I Ans. They do it really and unfeignedly and not dissemblingly which as we may know in all probability by others so we may know it certainly by our own hearts while unregenerate So that it is not the natural but the moral Truth that is wanting And what is that And wherein is the Essential formal difference between a wicked mans resting on Christ for Justification and a true Believers To say it is seen in the Fruits is not to shew the Essential difference Quest 23. If resting on Christ for Justification be the only condition of final Justification What is the reason that Perkins Bolton Hooker Preston Taylor Elton Whately and all the godly Divines also yet living do spend most of their labour to bring men to obey Christ as their Lord
if God wil shew me so much Mercy as to enable this restless uncessantly-pained Sceleton to such a work I shall be bold to send you word and claim the favour you offer In the mean time it is my duty to let you know I have received your Letter and to return your hearty thanks for it though it be not that which I hoped for and shall now cease to expect I am convinced now as well as you that Letters are but a loss of time but your Arguments or direct answers to my Questions would have been for my advantage a precious improvement of it but seeing I may not be so happy I must rest content It still seemeth to my weak understanding to be no impertinency to prove that your self affirm Repentance Confession Turning Forgiveing others c to be more then signs i. e. to be conditions to qualifie the Subject to obtain forgiveness and to tell you that I say no more and to tell you still that you give more to faith and so to man then I but I give no more to works for ought I descern then you I am sure then our ordinary Divines do And if I do mistake herein you have little reason to suspect me of willfulness though of weakness as much as you please As for the state of the Question between us which you speak of I am a stranger to it and know not what you mean I never came to the stating of a Question with you nor did you state any to me in your letters but mentioned your vehement dissent from several passages in my book and therefore I had reason to think that you fell upon the Questions as there they were stated so that it is intime medullitùs pertinent to my question which is impertinent to yours You say the question is Whether the Gospel righteousness be made ours otherwise then by believing and tell me that I say by believing and obedience when I never stated such a question nor ever gave such an answer I suppose by Gospel Righteousness you mean Christs Righteousness given to Believers Now I have affirmed that those only shall have part in Christs satisfaction and so in him be legally righteous who do believe and obey the Gospel and so are in themselves Evangelically righteous But your phrase made ours doth intimate that our first possession of Christs Righteousness should be upon Obedience as well as Faith which I never affirmed But Christs Righteousness is continued ours on condition of obeying him though not made ours so and we shall be justified at Judgement also on that condition As it is not marriage duty but Contract which is the condition of a womans first Interest in her Husband and his riches but marriage duty and the performance of that Covenant is the condition of her Interest as continued And indeed it is much of my care in that Book to shun and avoid that question which you say is stated between us for I knew how much ambiguity is in the Word By which I was loth to play with I know we are justified By God the Father By Christs satisfaction By Christs absolution By the Gospel Covenant or Promise By the Sacraments By Faith By Works for I will never be ashamed to speak the words of the Holy Ghost By our words for so saith Christ Therefore if you will needs maintain in general that Christs Righteousness is made ours no otherwise then by beleiving nor otherwise continued ours you see how much you must exclude But to remove such Ambiguity I distinguish between justifying By as an efficient instrumental Cause and By as by a condition and I still affirm that Works or Obedience do never justifie as any cause much less such a cause but that by them as by a condition appointed by the free Lawgiver and Justifier we are finally justified And truly Sir it is past my reach at present to understand what you say less in this then I except you differ only about the word By and not the sence and think that it is improper to say that Pardon or Justification is By that which is but a condition You seem here to drive all at this and yet me thinks you should not 1. Because you affirm your self that conditions have a moral efficiency and then it seems when you say Repentance Confession c. are conditions you mean they are morally efficient which is a giving more to works then ever I did 2. Because you know it is the phrase of Christ and his Spirit that we are justified By our words and works and it is safe speaking in Scripture phrase 3. Because you say after that my Assertions are destructive of what Divines deliver but the word By if we are agreed in the sence cannot be destructive and except the phrase only By c. be the difference where is it When you say Repentance c. are conditions and I say they are no more and I have nothing from you of any disagreement about the sence of the word condition Lest you should doubt of my meaning in that I understand it as in our usual speech it is taken and as Lawyers and Divines generally do viz. Est Lex addita negotio quae donec praestetur eventum suspendit Vel est modus vel causa quae suspendit id quod agitur quoad ex post facto confirmetur ut Cujacius And whereas Conditions are usually distinguisht into potestativas causales mixtas seu communes I mean conditiones potestativas Where you add that you say only faith is the condition justifying c. but I make a justifying Repentance c. And whereas heretofore we had only justifying faith now c. I answer 1. If by justifying Repentance c. you mean that which is as you say Faith is an instrument or efficient Cause I never dreamed of any such If as a Condition you confess it your self 2. If you speak against the sence we are agreed in that for ought I know If against the phrase then justifying Faith or Repentance is no Scripture phrase but to be justified By faith and By works and By words are all Scripture phrases You say you firmly hold that Repentance and other Exercises of Grace are antecedent qualifications and media ordinat◠in the use whereof only Pardon can be had but what is this to me c. I answer 1. Add conditions as you do in your Book and you say as much as I. 2. If by the other exercises of Grace you mean the particulars in your book enumerated or the like and if by Pardon you mean even the first pardon as the word Only shews you do then you go quite beyond me and give far more to those exercises of grace then I dare do For I say that Christ and all his imputed Righteousness is made ours and we pardoned and justified at first without any works or obedience more then bare faith and what is precedent in its place or concomitant and
then some other and but propter aliud quasi conditio conditionis and if you say so of Repentance c. we should not disagree You say In other things I come off and so mollifie my assertions that you need not contend Answ 1. I would you had told me wherein I so come off For I know not of a word If you mean in that I now say obedience is no condition of our first attaining justification but only of the continuance of it c. I said the same over and over in my book and lest it should be over-lookt I put it in the Index of distinctions If you mean not this I know not what you mean 2. But if explication of my self will so mollifie and prevent contending I shall be glad to explain my self yet further Yea and heartily to recant where I see my error For that which you desire I demonstrate that its By love and Through love c. I have answered before by distinguishing of the sense of By and Through and in my sense I have brought you forty plain Texts in my book for proof of it which shew it is no new Doctrine To your argument from Rom. 4. Where you say that Abrahams justification is the pattern of all others I conceive that an uncouth speech strange to Scripture for phrase and proper sense though in a large sense tolerable and true Certain I am that Paul brings Abrahams example to prove that we are justified by faith without the works of the Law but as certain that our faith must differ from Abrahams even in the essentials of it We must believe that this Jesus is he or we shall dye in our sins which Abraham was not required to believe Our faith is an explicite Assent and Consent to the Mediators Offices viz. that he be our Lord and Saviour and a Covenanting with him and giving up our selves to him accordingly But whether Abrahams and all recited in Heb. 11. were such is questionable Too much looking on Abraham as a pattern seems to be it that occasioned Grotius to give that wretched definition of faith Annot. in loc that it is but a high estimation of Gods power and wisdom and faithfulness in keeping his promises c. yet I know he came short also of describing that faith which he lookt on as the pattern My first answer was that I exclude also any effective co-operation to which you say Why do we strive about words c. I see that mens conceivings are so various that there is no hopes that we should be in all things of one mind Because I was loth to strive about words therefore I distinguished between causality and conditionality knowing that the word By was ambiguous when we are said to be justified By faith c. now you take this distinguishing to be striving about words to avoid which you would bring we back to the ambiguous term again Whereas I cannot but be most confident that as guile is most in Generals so there would be nothing else between us but striving about words if we dispute on an unexplained term and without distinction Do you indeed think that to be an efficient cause of our justification and to be a bare condition is all one or do you think the difference to be of no moment You say I do not exclude works justifying as well as faith let the expressions be what they will Answ 1. You should have said Let the sense or way of justifying be what it will for sure the difference between an efficient cause and a condition is more then in the expression or else I have been long mistaken 2. I do not exclude God justifying Christ justifying the Word justifying c. and yet to distinguish between the way that these justifie in and the way in which faith justifies I take to be no striving about words but of as high concernment as my salvation is worth 3. Either you mislike my phrase or my sense if the phrase then you mislike the word of God which saith a man is justified by works and not by faith only If the sense then you should not fall upon the phrase and then to distinguish and explain is not to strive about words 4. If I do bring faith and obedience neerer in justification then others it is not by giving more to works then others but by giving less to faith And if in that I err you should have fallen on that and shewed it and not speak still as if I gave more to works then you I am sure I give less to man and therefore no less than you to Christ I perceive not the least disadvantage herein that I lye open to but only the odium of the phrase of justification by works with men that are carried by prejudice and custome 5. I will not quarrel about such a word but I like not your phrase of Faith justifying and works justifying for it is fitter to introduce the conceit of an efficiency in them then to say We are justified by faith and by works which are only the Scripture phrase and signifie but a conditionality To that you say out of Phil. 3.9 I believe Paul doth most appositely oppose the righteousness which is by faith to that which is by the Law But then 1. He means not By faith as an instrument of justification 2. Nor by faith which is but a meer affiance on Christ for justification or only as such 3. Nor doth he exclude Knowledge Repentance Obedience c. 4. But to say that righteousness or justification is by love or by obedience c. Without adding any more is not a convenient speech as it is to say that righteousness is by faith 1. Because the speech seems to be of the first receiving of righteousness wherein obedience or works have no hand 2. Because faith having most clear direct relation to Christ doth most plainly point out our righteousness to be in him 3. Because faith as it is taken in the Gospel is a most comprehensive grace containing many acts and implying or including many others which relate to Christ as the object also Even obedience to Christ is implyed as a necessary subsequent part of the condition seeing faith is an accepting of Christ as Lord and King and Head and Husband as well as a justifier 5. Yet Scripture saith as well as I that Christ shall justifie us By his knowledge and we shall be justified by our words and by works and me thinks it should be no sin to speak the words of God except it be shewed that I misunderstand them It is not so fit a phrase to say that a poor ignoble woman was made rich and honorable by her Love or Obedience or Marriage faithfulness and conjugal actions as to say it was by marriage with such a Noble man or consent to take him to be her husband For the marriage consent and Covenant doth imply conjugal affection action and faithfulness Yet are these last
honour of faith Though that were not so dangerous as to derogate from Christ For I acknowledge faith the only condition of our first Remission and justification and the principal part of the condition of our justification as continued and consummate And if faith be an instrumental cause I do not give that honor from it to works for they are not so Nay I boldly again aver that I give no more to obedience to Christ then Divines ordinarily do that is to be the secondary part of the condition of continued and consummate justification Only I give not so much as others to faith because I dare not ascribe so much to man And yet men make such a noise with the terrible name of Justification by works the Lords own phrase as if I gave more then themselves to man when I give so much less And thus Sir I have according to your advice spent my self as you speak in aiming at that mark which you were pleased to set me And now I shall proceed to the rest of your exceptions My next answer to you was that If works under every notion are excluded as you say they are then repentance is excluded under the notion of a condition or preparative But repentance under that notion is not excluded Therefore not works under every notion To this you reply that Repentance is not excluded as qualifying but as recipient which what is it but a plain yielding my Minor and so the cause For this is as much as I say If repentance be a work or act of ours and not excluded under the notion of a qualification or as you elsewhere yield a Medium ordinatum and a condition then works are not under every notion excluded And that repentance is not recipient how easily do I yeild to you But do you indeed think that when Paul excludeth the works of the Law that he excludeth them only as Recipient and not as qualifying If so as this answer seems to import seeing you will not have me here distinguish between works of Law and of Gospel or New Covenant then you give abundance more to works of the Law then I do or dare For I aver that Paul excludeth them even as qualifications yea and the very presence of them and that the Jews never dreamt of their works being Recipient To my next you say Whether Paul dispute what is our righteousness or upon what terms it is made ours it doth not much matter But I think it of very great moment they being Questions so very much different both in their sense and importance And whereas you think Paul speaks chiefly of the manner I think he speaks of both but primarily of the quasi materia and of the manner or means thereto but secondarily in reference to that So that I think the chief Question which Paul doth debate was Whether we are Justified by our own works or merits or by Anothers viz. the satisfaction of a surety which yet because it is no way made ours but by believing therefore he so puts the Question whether by works of the Law or by faith and so that he makes them two immediate opposites not granting any tertium I easily yield But of that before To the next you say that I cannot find such a figure for faith Relatively in my sense Answ And I conceive that faith in my sense may be taken Relatively full as well as in yours Doubtless acceptance of an offered Redeemer and all his benefits doth relate as properly to what is accepted viz. by the assent of the understanding initially and by the election and consent of the will consummately as a Physical Passive reception or instrumentality can do And also as it is a condition I make little doubt but it relateth to the thing given on that condition and that the very name of a condition is relative So that in my sense faith relateth to Christ two ways Whereof the former is but its very nature and so its aptitude to its office The later is that proper respect in which it immediately or directly justifieth Yet do I not mean as you seem to do as I gather by your phrase of putting Love and Obedience for Christs Righteousness For I conceive it may be put relatively and yet not strictly loco correlati for the thing related to when I say my hands or teeth feed me I do not put them instead of my Meat and yet I use the words relatively meaning my Meat principally and my teeth secondarily Neither do I mean that it relateth to Christs righteousness only or principally but first to himself And I doubt not but Love to Christ and Obedience to him as Redeemer do relate to him but not so fully clearly and directly express him as related to as Faith Faith being also so comprehensive a grace as to include some others It is a true saying that a poor woman that is marryrd to a Prince is made honourable by love and continued so by duty to her husband But it is more obscure and improper then to say she is made honourable by Marriage or taking such a man to her husband which includes love and implyeth duty and faithfulness as necessarily subsequent I conceive with Judicious Doctor Preston that faith is truly and properly such a consent contract or marriage with Christ Next to your similitude you say that I hold that not only seeing this brazen Serpent but any other Actions of sense will as well heal the wounded Christian To which I answer Similitudes run not on all four Thus far I believe that this holds 1. Christ was lift up on the Cross as the brazen Serpent was lift up 2. He was lift up for a cure to sin-stung souls as the brazen Serpent for the stung bodies 3. That as every one that looked on the Serpent was cured an easie condition so every one that believeth Christ to be the appointed Redeemer and heartily Accepteth him on the terms he is offered and so trusteth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life 4. That as the cure of their bodies came not from any natural reason drawn from the eye or from any natural excellency or efficacy of seeing above hearing or feeling but meerly from the free will and pleasure of God who ordained that looking should be the condition of their cure So all those Acts usually comprized or implyed in the word believing which justifie do it not from any natural excellency efficacy or instrumentality but meerly from the good pleasure of the Law-giver And therefore the natural Receptivity of Faith that is its very formal essence must not be given as the proper direct cause of its Justifying But that is its conditionality from the free appointment of God But on the other side 1. It was only one Act of one sense which was the condition of their cure but you will not say I believe that it is only one act of one faculty which justifieth however I will not 2. It
was the Act of seeing which cured them without touching laying hold on apprehending resting on c. But you will not say so of justifying faith 3. The sight which was the condition of their cure was no actuall reception of the brazen Serpent but the species of that Serpent by the eye and so the eye did no otherwise receive the Serpent then it received every Object it behold even the Serpent that stung them But if you say that our receiving Christ is but per simplicem apprehensionem objecti and that it is a receiving of his species and so that we receive Christ no otherwise then we receive Satan or any Object of Knowledge I will not be of that opinion 4. Their cure was simul semel but our Justification is a continued Act as really in doing all our lives as at first 5 Therefore though one act finished their cure and there was no condition perscribed as requisite for the consummation or continuance yet when our Justification is begun and we truly justified there is further conditions prescribed for its continuance and consummation To conclude I am so far from saying that any other Act will as well heal the wounded Christian besides what God hath made the express condition of his cure that I flatly aver no other will do it But whether he hath made any one single act or Passion to be the whole of that condition I have elsewhere out of Scripture shewed you and you do not deny what I say My two last Answers to your exposition of Pauls words you are pleased to overpass the last of which the ninth being the main that I made use of viz. that Paul taketh the word Workâ— more strictly for such working as maketh the Reward to be not of Grace but of debt and in this sence I disclaim all works not only as you do from being receptive or instrumental or effective but from being concomitant why you said nothing to this my chief Answer I do not know You next tell me that I cannot take the Assemblies definition in that sence as they declare it or the Scripture words which are Metaphorical imply for its the resting of a burdened soul upon Christ only for Righteousness and by this Christs Righteousness is made over to us and it s a receiving of Christ as the hand embraceth any Object c. Answer That the word Receiving and Resting are Metaphorical I easily grant you and wonder the more that you still insist on them and instead of reducing them to more proper expressions do here add Metaphor to Metaphor till all your definition be a meer Allegory when you know how much Metaphors do seduce But for the Assemblies Definition I embrace it unfeignedly in that sence as the words seem to me most evidently to import without using violence with them But I perceive by this that you will not think it enough in a man to subscribe to national Confessions and Catechisms in the obvious sence or that which he judgeth the plain proper sence except he also agree with you in the explication Some think it not enough that we subscribe to the Scripture because we may misunderstand it and therefore we must subscribe to national Confessions as more explicate which I like well so we add nothing to Gods word nor thrust our own Commentaries into the Text or obtrude out own Doctrines upon men as Articles of their faith or at least as the Bishops did the Ceremonies which they made indifferent in word but necessary indeed But now I perceive the matter comes all to one in the issue when you cannot make a definition of Faith in such Language as is any easier to be understood then the Scripture when you and I cannot both understand it and I find that many are of Bellarmines judgement Apol. c. 7. cited by Mr. Vines in his Sermon against Haeres pag. 50. That a man may be an Haeretick though he believe the Scriptures the three Creeds and the four great general Councils But for the sence of the Assemblies definition 1 I know not what you mean by the words as they declare it If any private declaration I am not to take notice of it nor do I know what it meaneth and could wish they would do or might have done as Mr. Vines desired in his Sermon Jâ—â— 28. 1645. that is To second their conclusions with the Reasons and Grounds of them which will do much to make them pass for currant seeing saith he the Gorgons head which struck all dumb in former times The Church The Church is not likely to have the same operation row in this seeing and searching age for though men be willing to be subject to Authority yet as they are men they will be slaves to Reason So that if there were any private exposition I would we had it But if you mean only what is declared in the words of the Definition I am most confident though I never was in the Assembly that I have hit on their sence far neerer then you seem to have done and I dare not think otherwise lest I be hainously censorious of so reverend an Assembly which I am resolved not to be 1. Their very words are a receiving of Christ and not immediately and primarily his Righteousness but himself and in the confession they say as I do that it is an accepting receiving and resting on Christ 2. And as Christ the anointed which Name signifieth the Offices which he is anointed to viz. King Priest c. 3. It maketh it to consist in no one act but several expressed in two phrases 1. Receiving Christ 2. Resting on him alone for salvation 4. It expresly saith that it is a receiving of him as he is offered in the Gospel and that is not as a justifier only but as a Lord and Prophet and that as immediately as the other and conjunct with it for he is no where offered as a justifier alone if he be shew where it is 5. And hence it is plain that they mean no Reception but moral by Willing Consenting Accepting as they expresly say in the confession of Faith For he is no otherwise offered to us in the Gospel He is not offered to our Physical Reception It is not his person in substance that is offered to the Contact of our Spirits much less of our flesh but his person as cloathed with his Relations of Mediator Redeemer Lord Saviour c. And can you receive a King as King who is personally distant or invisible by any other Reception then I have said If we do receive a King into England the only Acts of the soul are hearty consenting and what is therein and thereto implyed though bodily Actions may follow which as to Christ we cannot perform I think verily this is the plain sound sence of the Assembly and shall believe so till the same Authority that thus defined do otherwise interpret their own definition And for your phrase of Resting a burdened
14.9 And therefore when we are freely pardoned bought from hell it is equal that Christ should rule us who bought us and that his Covenant hang till the continuance of our Legal title to pardon justification and glory and so the full possession of them upon this perseverance in sincere loving grateful subjection to him that bought us and by him to the Father And thus Sir I have digressed and used many words on this which to you I think needless not only because I perceive that you acknowledge the conditionality of obedience in some sense but tell me not in what sense but lest you should not discern my sense who desire to speak as plain as I can that you may truly see wherein we differ And that I also may see it when you have as clearly opened your meaning of your term Qualifications And for your Question Whether a godly man can think the Righteousness of Christ made his by working or only believing I answer causally and efficiently by neither I think though you think otherwise I dare not so advance faith and so advance man I remember good old learned solid Gatakers words to Saltmarsh pag. 53 It is your self rather then any of us that trip at this stone when you would have faith so much pressed in the Doctrine of salvation in regard of the gloriousness and eminency of the grace it self which to assert is not sound sic in Animadv in Lucium part 1. § 9. v. 7. The righteousness of Christ is made ours by Gods free gift but faith and true subjection are conditions of our participation and what interest each hath in the conditionality and on what grounds I have shewed I fear you give too much to faith and man You ask Is it repent and Christs righteousness by this is made yours Answer It is oftimes Repent and be forgiven and repent and be baptized and repent and believe and be forgiven but not efficiently by repenting nor believing but on condition of both though in ordaining them conditions God might intend one but as preparative or subservient to the other and not one equal terms or to equal use immediately And when you say that the dying Christian is directed to the Resting on Christ and eâ—ing the brazen Serpent not to be found in any thing but a righteousness by faith I never durst entertain any doubt of this it is no question between us only in what sense it is called a Righteousness by faith I have shewed even in opposition to Works in Pauls sense which make the reward to be of debt and not of Grace Rom. 4.4 where you say It is an Act Dependance not of Obedience that interests us in Christs Righteousness I answer It is no one Act but many It is an act of Assent first and thence the whole hath the name of faith it being so hard a thing to believe supernatural things as it would have been to us to believe Christ to have been God when we had seen him in the shape of man had we lived in those times when the Doctrine of faith came not with those advantages as now it doth And then it is an act of willing consenting electing affecting which three are but a velle Respectivum and so in the act all one in this in order of nature goes before any act which you can in any reasonable propriety call Dependance and I doubt not are far more essential to justifying faith yet I am heartily willing to take your acts of dependance for those also are more then one in the next place But it confoundeth and abuseth us and the Church in this controversie that many learned Divines will needs shun the strict Philosophical names of the several Acts of the soul and overlook also the natural order of the souls motions and they will use and stil use the Metaphorical expressions as apprehension improper dependance relying resting recombency adherence embracing with more the like I know Scripture useth some of these but then it is not in strict disputing as Joh. Crocius tels Bellarm. We may use apprehend figuratively because Scripture saith apprehendite disciplinans and lay hold on eternal life But this would quickly end disputation or else make it endless Yet in the places cited who knows not the same word hath different senses in the former being used for to accept and stoop to in the later for an earnest pressing on and endeavouring after as a runner to catch the prize And they will be loth to say these are all and each of them the justifying acts And where you add that it s not an act of obedience I answer 1. I would you had first answered the many Scriptures to the contrary produced in my Aphor. 2. It s true of the first interest in Christ further then faith is called obedience but not of the further continued and consummate interest 3. Doth not Christ say Take my yoak learn of me to be meek and lowly that they may have ease and rest Ease and Rest From what Why from what they came burdened with and that was sure guile and curse and what ever is opposed to pardon and justification Mat. 11. And Blessed are they that do his commandments that they may have right to the tree of life and may enter in c. Rev. 21.14 And he is the Author of eternal salvation to all them that obey him Heb. 5.9 And Mat. 25. is who'ly and convincingly against you And so is the second Psalm wholly which makes subjection to Christ as King the great part of the Gospel condition Kiss the son conteineth more then Recombency in my judgement and yet no more then that true faith which is the condition of justification But no word in your paper brings me to such a stand as your next where you say And that is very harsh still which you express to expect the Righteousness of the Covenant of Grace upon the conditions fulfilled by your self through Gods workings Answ Truly it is quite beyond my shallow capacity to reach what you here mean to be so harsh what should I imagine That there are conditions upon which the Tenor of the Gospel gives Christ Righteousness you acknowldge And that he that performeth them not the Gospel giveth him none of it I know you confess these And that we must needs perform them our selves through Gods workings i. e. both enablement and excitation and co-operation I know you doubt of none of these for you have wrote against the Antinomians and Mr. Gataker hath evinced the sottish ignorance or impudency of Saltmarsh in denying Faith Repentance and Obedience to be the conditions on which performed by us we must enjoy the things promised Pardon c. or else not Yea in this paper you yield to this conditionality What then is the matter Is it harsh when yet you never once shew the fault of the Speech It must be either the falshood or the unfitness but you have yet accused it of
your Grounds conduce to it more then mine I shall like them better Sir pardon the prolixity here and Acrimony elswhere of Your unfeigned well-willer RICHARD BAXTER THE Reader must understand that since the Writing of this I have endeavoured to clear this point in my Directions for Peace of Conscience To which now I add but this that besides a Plenary Guilt or Remission there seems to be a Guilt and Remission that are both but imperfect and of a middle sort that is that as in Peters act of sin the habit of faith remained so with his Guilt a state of Justification remained As none of his old sins returned on him so the Covenant of Grace upon his Habitual Faith did hinder the Guilt from being Plenary or fixed by beginning a Remission I fear not to call it an imperfect Remission The Law doth pronounce Death on a man for every sin it is so far in force as to determine that Death is both deserved and due to this man for this sin But at the same instant though after in order of nature the Gospel that giveth pardon to Believers doth give an Imperfect pardon to David Peter and such Habitual Believers as soon as they sin before Faith and Repentance for that sin be actuall and their Pardon will become plenary when they actually Repent and Believe Their Sin is like the fault of a Kings Son or Subject that in a Passion should strike the King when yet Habitually he hath a loving Loyal heart to him He deserveth Death and by Law it may be his due but he is a Son still and the King will not take this advantage against him though he will not fully pardon him till he submit and lament his Fault We are still the Children of God notwithstanding those sins that go against the Habitual bent of our Hearts for that 's the Tryal but must have actual Faith and Repentance before we shall have full pardon Whether you will call that Pardon which the Promise giveth upon meer habitual Repentance A vertual Pardon and that which it giveth on actual Repentance an actual Pardon or what name you will give it I leave to consideration but compleat it is not in a case of heynous sin till Actual Repentance Though it may be in a case of some unknown unobserved or forgotten infirmities For the full condition is necessary to a full Pardon He is near the case of a man that hath a Pardon granted him for Murder but for want of some action to be performed he hath not yet possession of it and cannot yet plead it If you ask me what should become of such a man if he so die before Repentance I answer 1. I think it is a case that will never fall out For 1. God is as it were engaged by Love and Promise and by giving his indwelling Spirit to Believers to bring them to Repentance 2. The new Nature or Disposition of such a man will not suffer him to be long without Actual Repentance at least in some measure especially when Death shall look him in the faâ—e I doubt not but David did repent before Nathan spoak to him but God would not wake up with so short and secret a Repentance for so great and odious a Crime 2. But if you can prove it profitable for such a 〈◊〉 to be suddenly cut off before Repentance and that such a thing will be I should incline to think that he will be fully pardoned at the instant of Death and so saved because the Lord knoweth that he repented Habitually and vertually and would have done it actually if he had had time for consideration 3. Or if we should conclude that God hath purposely left men of such a middle condition without any certainty how he will deal with them that so no man may be encouraged to sin and in Impudency I think it no dangerous Doctrine nor injurious to the Body of saving Truth And thus I have now many years since the writing of the foregoing Papers told you in brief what satisfieth me concerning this difficult point for the reconciling of the guilt of every particular sin especially the more haynous with the Doctrine of persevering uninterrupted Justification Somewhat also I have said of it in my Papers expressing my Judgement about Perseverance lately published Jan. 5. 1657. 8. THE FOURTH DISPVTATION Qu. Whether the Faith which Paul opposeth to Works in the Point of Justification be one only Physical Act of the soul Neg. OR Whether all Humane Acts except one Physical Act of Faith be the Works which are excluded by Paul in the Point of Justification Neg. By Richard Baxter LONDON Printed by R.W. for Nevil Simmons Book-seller in Kederminster and are to be sold by him there and by Nathaniel Ekins at the Gun in Pauls Church-yard 1658. Question Whether the Faith which Paul opposeth to Works in the Point of Justification be one only Physical Act of the Soul Neg. OR Whether all Humane Acts except one Physical Act of faith be the Works which are excluded by Paul in the Point of Justification Neg. I PUT these two Questions together for brevity and Elucidation of the Matter in doubt for so in effect they are but One avoiding all unnecessary Explication of terms concerning which we are agreed it is but little that I have need to say for your understanding of the sense of the Question 1. It is here supposed that Paul doth maintain Justification by Faith and opposeth it to Justification by the works of the Law and so opposeth Salvation by Grace and by works 2. It is supposed that non datur tertium there is no middle way of Justification besides these two by faith or by Works and therefore whatsoever Acts we are here justified by it must needs follow that those Acts are none of the Works that Paul here speaketh of as excluded and whatsoever Acts are excluded are none of the Faith by which Paul telleth us here that we are justified This we are agreed on and so it is often pressed by my Opponents that there is no third way which I grant them But note that I do not therefore grant them that there is no tertium or other act either implyed in Faith or subservient to it in that way of Justification that is by Faith It was never Pauls meaning to exclude all other Gracious Acts relating to Christ no not from this business of Justification as attendants on Faith or modifications of it implyed in it or subservient to it And therefore it will not follow that any third thing by which we are thus justified is either Faith or Works but only that is not Works because they are excluded 3. I put the Physical Act whose Unity we speak of in contradistinction to one moral Fact which may contain many Physical Acts such as Marriage which is one in a civil or moral sense but many Physical Acts and such as almost all Contracts be as taking a man to be my
of our sight to be our Saviour Soveraign by redemption and Husband even here in our native Country the match being moved to us by his Embassadors and imperfectly solemnized upon our cordial consent and giving up our selves to him by our Covenant but it shall be perfectly solemnized at the great Marriage of the Lamb. This is my faith of the nature of true justifying faith and the manner of its receiving Christ THE Reader must understand that after this I had a personal conference with this Dear and Reverend Brother wherein he still owned and insisted on the passiveness of Justifying faith viz. That it is but a Grammatical action or nominal and a physical or hyperpyhsical passion which also he giveth us again in the Treatise of Imputation of righteousness FINIS A DISPVTATION Proving the Necessity of a two-fold Righteousness to Justification and Salvation And defending this and many other Truths about Iustifying Faith its Object and Office against the confident but dark Assaults of Mr. Iohn Warner By Richard Baxter Acts 5.31 Him hath Gad axalted with his right hand a Prince and a Saviour to give Repentance unto Israel and forgiveness of sins Rom. 4.22 23 24 25. And therefore it was imputed to him for Righteousness Now it was not written for his sake alone that it was Imputed to him but for us also to whom it shall be Imputed if we Believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead who was delivered for our offences and was raised again for our Justification LONDON Printed by R.W. for Nevil Simmons Book seller in Kederminster and are to be sold by him there and by Nathaniel Ekins at the Gun in Pauls Church-yard 1658. Question Whether Besides the Righteousness of Christ Imputed there be a Personal Evangelical Righteousness necessary to Justification and Salvation Affirm THough it hath pleased a late Opponent Mr. Warner to make the Defence of this Proposition necessary to me yet I shall suppose that I may be allowed to be brief both because of what I have formerly said of it and because the Question is so easily decided and Christians are so commonly agreed on it For the right understanding of what we here maintain its necessary that I explain the Terms and remove confusion by some necessary distinctions and lay down my sense in some Propositions that make to the opening of this To trouble you with the Etymologies of the words in several Languages that signifie Righteousness or Justification would be a needless loss of time it being done to our hands by so many and we being so far agreed on it that here lyeth no part of our present controversie The Form of Righteousness signified by the name is Relative as strait or crooked is For it is not the Habit of Justice by which we give every man his own that is the Subject of our Question but Righteousness in a Judicial or Legal sense 1. Righteousness is either of the cause or of the person Not that these are subjects actually separated but distinct the one being subordinate to the other The cause is the nearest subject and so far as it is just and justifiable so far the person is just and justifiable Yet the person may otherwise be just and justified when one or many causes are unjustifyable 2. Righteousness is denominated either from a Relation to the Precept of the Law or to the Sanction To be righteous in Relation to the Precept is to be conform to that Precept An Action or Disposition conform to the Precept is called a Righteous Action or Disposition and from thence the person being so far conform is called a Righteous person And so this Righteousness as to the positive precept is his obeying it and as to the prohibition it is his Innocency contrary to that guilt which we call Reatus culpae Righteousness as a Relation to the Sanction is either a Relation to the Commination and penal Act of the Law or to the promissory or Premiant Act. As to the former Righteousness is nothing but the Not-dueness of the punishment contrary to the Reatus poenae as it respects the execution and so A not being lyable to condemnation as it respects the sentence This is sometime founded in the persons Innocency last mentioned sometime on a free pardon or acquittance sometime on satisfaction made by himself And sometime on satisfaction by another conjunct with free pardon which is our case Righteousness as a Relation to the Promise or Premiant part of the Sanction is nothing but our Right to the Reward Gift or Benefit as pleadable and justifyable in foro Which sometime is founded in merit of our own sometime in a free Gift sometime in the merit of another conjunct with free Gift which is our case other cases concern us not This last mentioned is Righteousness as a Relation to the substance of the Promise or Gift But when the Promise or Gift or Testament or Premiant Law is conditional as in our case it is then there is another sort of Righteousness necessary which is Related to the Modus promissionis and that is The performance of the condition which if it be not properly called Righteousness Ethically yet civilly in a Judiciary sense it is when it comes to be the cause to be tryed and Judged whether the person have performed the condition then his cause is just or unjust and he just or unjust in that respect 3. Righteousness is either Vniversal as to all causes that the person can be concerned in or it is only particular as to some causes only and so but secundum quid to the person 4. A particular Righteousness may either be such as the total welfare of a man depends on or it may be of less and inconsiderable moment 5. When a cause subordinate to the main cause is Righteous this may be called a subordinate Righteousness But if it be part of the main cause it is a partial righteousness co-ordinate I will not trouble you with so exact a disquisition of the Nature of Righteousness and Justification as I judge fit in it self both because I have a little heretofore attempted it and because I find it blamed as puzling curiosity or needless distinguishing Though I am not of that mind yet I have no minde to be troublesome As for the term Justification 1. It either may signifie the Act of the Law or Promise or the sentence of the Judge or the Execution of that sentence For to one of these three sences the word may still be reduced as we shall have to do with it that is to constitutive or sentential or Executive Justification though the sentence is most properly so called To these Justification by Plea Witness c. are subservient 2. Justification is either opposed to a false Accusation or to a true 3. In our case Justification is either according to the Law of works or to the Law of Grace I think we shall at this time have no great need
to use any more distinctions then these few and therefore I will add no more about this Term. As to the term Evangelical Righteousness may be so called in a four-fold sense 1. Either because it is that righteousness which the Covenant or Law of Grace requireth as its Condition Or 2. Because its a Righteousness revealed by the Gospel Or 3. Because it is Given by the Gospel 4. Or because it 〈◊〉 ◠perfect fulfilling of the Precepts of the Gospel By a personal Righteousness we mean here not that which is ours by meer Imputation but that which is founded in somewhat Inherent in us or performed by us Necessity is 1. of a meer Antecedent 2. Or of a Means We mean the last Means are either causes or conditions I shall now by the help of these few distinctions give you the plain truth in some Propositions both Negatively and Affirmatively as followeth Proposition 1. It is confessed by all that know themselves or man and the Law that none of us have a Personal universal Righteousness For then there were no sin nor place for confession or pardon or Christ Prop. 2. And therefore we must all confess that in regard of the Preceptive part of the Law of works we are all unjust and cannot be justified by the deeds of the Law or by our works Prop. 3. And in regard of the Commination of that Law we are all under guilt and the Curse and are the children of wrath and therefore cannot be justified by that Law or by our works Both these are proved by Paul at large so that none have a personal Legal Righteousness Prop. 4. No man can plead any proper satisfaction of his own for the pardon of sin and escaping the curse of the Law But only Christs Satisfaction that fulfilled the Law and became a curse for us Prop. 5. No man can plead any merit of his own for procuring the Reward unless as actions that have the promise of a Reward are under Christ improperly called merits But our righteousness of this sort is only the merit and purchase of Christ and the free gift of the Gospel in him Prop. 6. We have no one work that is perfectly justifiable by the perfect precepts of the Law of works And therefore we have no legal personal Righteousness at all that can properly be so called but are all corrupt and become abominable there being none that doth good no not one Imperfect legal righteousness is an improper speech it is properly no legal righteousness at all but a less degree of unrighteousness The more to blame they that call sanctification so Prop. 7. No man can say that he is a Co-ordinate Con-cause with Christ in his Justification or that he hath the least degree of a satisfactory or Meritorious Righteousness which may bear any part in co-ordination with Christs righteousness for his justification or salvation Prop. 8. We have not any personal Evangelical Righteousness of perfect obedience to the Precepts of Christ himself whether it be the Law of Nature as in his hand or the Gospel positives Prop. 9. Even the Gospel personal Righteousness of outward works though but in sincerity and not perfection is not necessary no not as an antecedent to our Justification at the first Prop. 10. External works of Holiness are not of absolute necessity to Salvation for it is possible that death may suddenly after Conversion prevent opportunity and then the inward faith and repentance will suffice Though I think no man can give us one instance of such a man de facto not the thief on the cross for he confessed prayed reproved the other c. Prop. 11. Where sincere Obedience is Necessary to Salvation it is not all the same Acts of obedience that are of Necessity to all men or at all times for the Matter may vary and yet the sinecerity of obedience continue But some special Acts are of Necessity to the sincerity Prop. 12. If Righteousness be denominated from the Precept Christs Obedience was a perfect legal Righteousness as having a perfect conformity to the Law But not so an Evangelical Righteousness for he gave us in many Laws for the application of his Merits that he was neither obliged to fulfill nor capable of it If Righteousness be denominated from the Promise or premiant part of the Law Christs righteousness was in some sort the righteousness of the Law of works for he merited all the reward of that Law But it was principally the righteousness of the special Covenant of Redemption between the Father and him but not of the Covenant of Grace made with man he did not repent or obey for pardon and salvation to himself as a Believer If Righteousness be denominated from the Comminatory or penal part of the Law then Christs sufferings were neither a strictly legal or an Evangelical righteousness For the Law required the supplicium ipsius delinquentis and knew no Surety or Substitute But thus Christs sufferings were a Pro-Legal-righteousness as being not the fulfilling of the Threatening but a full Satisfaction to the Law-giver which was equivalent and so a valuable consideration why the Law should not be fulfilled by our damnation but dispensed with by our pardon So that the Commination was the cause of Christs sufferings and he suffered materially the same sort of Death which the Law threatened But most strictly his sufferings were a Righteous fulfilling his part of the Covenant of Redemption with the Father But in no propriety were they the fulfilling of the Commination of the Law of Grace against the Despisers or neglecters of Grace I mean that proper to the Gospel Prop. 13. Christs righteousness is well called our Evangelical Righteousness both as it is Revealed by the Gospel and conferred by it and opposed to the legal way of Justification by perfect personal Righteousness So that by calling our own personal righteousness Evangelical we deny not that Title to Christs but give it that in a higher respect and much more Prop. 14. No personal righteousness of ours our faith or repentance is any proper cause of our first Justification or of our entering into a justifyed state Though as they remove Impediments or are Conditions they may improperly be called causes So much for the Negative Propositions Affirm Prop. 1. That a Godly man hath a particular righteousness or may be Just in a particular cause there is no man can deny unless he will make him worse then the Devil for if the Devil may be falsly accused or belyed he is just in that particular cause Prop. 2. All Christians that I know do confess an Inherent Righteousness in the Saints and the necessity of this righteousness to Salvation So that this can be no part of our Controversie Prop. 3. Consequently all must confess that Christs righteousness imputed is not our only righteousness Yea that the righteousness of Pardon and Justification from sin is no further necessary then men are sinners and therefore the less need any