Selected quad for the lemma: spirit_n
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A26977
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Of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to believers in what sence [sic] sound Protestants hold it and of the false divised sence by which libertines subvert the Gospel : with an answer to some common objections, especially of Dr. Thomas Tully whose Justif. Paulina occasioneth the publication of this / by Richard Baxter a compassionate lamenter of the Church's wounds caused by hasty judging ... and by the theological wars which are hereby raised and managed ...
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Baxter, Richard, 1615-1691.
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1675
(1675)
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Wing B1332; ESTC R28361
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172,449
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320
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the least punishment upon For he that hath perfectly obeyed or hath perfectly satisfied by himself or by another in his person cannot justly be punished But I have elsewhere fully proved that Death and other Chastisements are punishments though not destructive but corrective And so is the permission of our further sinning 35. It intimateth that God wrongeth believers for not giving them immediately more of the Holy Ghost and not present perfecting them and freeing them from all sin For though Christ may give us the fruits of his own merits in the time and way that pleaseth himself yet if it be we our selves that have perfectly satisfied and merited in Christ we have present Right to the thing merited thereupon and it is an injury to deny it us at all 36. And accordingly it would be an injury to keep them so long out of Heaven if they themselves did merit it so long ago 37. And the very Threatning of Punishment in the Law of Grace would seem injurious or incongruous to them that have already reputatively obeyed perfectly to the death 38. And there would be no place left for any Reward from God to any act of obedience done by our selves in our natural or real person Because having reputatively fulfilled all Righteousness and deserved all that we are capable of by another our own acts can have no reward 39. And I think this would overthrow all Humane Laws and Government For all true Governours are the Officers of God and do what they do in subordination to God and therefore cannot justly punish any man whom he pronounceth erfectly Innocent to the death 40. This maketh every believer at least as Righteous as Christ himself as having true propriety in all the same numerical Righteousness as his own And if we be as Righteous as Christ are we not as amiable to God And may we not go to God in our Names as Righteous 41. This maketh all believers at least equally Righteous in degree and every one perfect and no difference between them David and Solomon as Righteous in the act of sinning as before and every weak and scandalous believer to be as Righteous as the best Which is not true though many say that Justification hath no degrees but is perfect at first as I have proved in my Life of Faith and elsewhere 42. This too much levelleth Heaven and Earth For in Heaven there can be nothing greater than perfection 43. The Scripture no-where calleth our Imputed Righteousness by the name of Innocency or sinless Perfection nor Inculpability Imputed Nay when the very phrase of Imputing Christs Righteousness is not there at all to add all these wrong descriptions of Imputation is such Additions to Gods words as tendeth to let in almost any thing that mans wit shall excogitate and ill beseemeth them that are for Scripture-sufficiency and perfection and against Additions in the general And whether some may not say that we are Imputatively Christ himself Conceived by the Holy Ghost Born of the Virgin Mary suffered under Pontius Pilate Crucified c. I cannot tell To conclude the honest plain Christian may without disquieting the Church or himself be satisfied in this certain simple truth That we are sinners and deserve everlasting misery That Christ hath suffered as a Sacrifice for our sins in our room and stead and satisfied the Justice of God That he hath by his perfect Holiness and Obedience with those sufferings merited our pardon and Life That he never hereby intended to make us Lawless have us Holy but hath brought us under a Law of Grace which is the Instrument by which he pardoneth justifieth and giveth us Right to life That by this Covenant he requireth of us Repentance and true Faith to our first Justification and sincere Obedience Holiness and Perseverance to our Glorification to be wrought by his Grace and our Wills excited and enabled by it That Christs Sufferings are to save us from suffering but his Holiness and Obedience are to merit Holiness Obedience Happiness for us that we may be like him and so be made personally amiable to God But both his Sufferings and Obedience do bring us under a Covenant where Perfection is not necessary to our Salvation CHAP. V. The Objections Answered Obj. 1. YOV confound a Natural and a Political person Christ and the several believing sinners are not the same natural Person but they are the same Political As are with us saith Dr. Tullie the Sponsor and the Debtor the Attorney and the Clyent the Tutor and the Pupil so are all the faithful in Christ both as to their Celestial regenerate nature of which he is the first Father who begetteth sons by his Spirit and seed of the Word to his Image and as to Righteousness derived by Legal Imputation Vid. Dr. Tullie Justif Paul p. 80 81. It 's commonly said that Christ as our surety is our Person Ans 1. The distinction of a Person into Natural and Political or Legal is equivoci in sua equivocata He therefore that would not have contention cherished and men taught to damn each other for a word not understood must give us leave to ask what these equivocals mean What a Natural Person signifieth we are pretty well agreed but a Political Person is a word not so easily and commonly understood Calvin tells us that Persona definitur homo qui caput habet civile For omnis persona est homo sed non vicissim Homo cum est vocabulum naturae Persona juris civilis And so as Albenius civitas municipium Castrum Collegium Vniversitas quod libet corpus Personae appellatione continetur ut Spigel But if this Definition be commensurate to the common nature of a civil person then a King can be none nor any one that hath not a civil head This therefore is too narrow The same Calvin in n. Personae tells us that Seneca Personam vocat cum prae se fert aliquis quod non est A Counterfeit But sure this is not the sence of the Objectors In general saith Calvin Tam hominem quam qualitatem hominis seu Conditionem significat But it is not sure every Quality or Condition Calvin therefore giveth us nothing satisfactory to the decision of the Controversie which these Divines will needs make whether each believer and Christ be the same Political Person Martinius will make our Controversie no easier by the various significations gathered out of Vet. Vocab Gel. Scaliger Valla Which he thus enumerateth 1. Persona est accidens conditio hominis qualitas quâ homo differt ab homine tum in animo tum in corpore tum in externis 2. Homo qualitate dictâ proditus 3. Homo insigni qualitate praeditus habens gradum eminentiae in Ecclesia Dei c. 4. Figura seu facies ficta larva histrionica c. 5. Ille qui sub hujusmodi figura aliquam representat c. 6. Figura eminens in aedificiis quae ore aquam fundit
if the word Justification had been found only as he affirmed If Justice Righteousness and Just be otherwise used that 's all one in the sense and almost in the word seeing it is confessed that to Justifie is 1. To make Just 2. Or to esteem Just 3. Or sentence Just 4. Or to prove Just and defend as Just 5. Or to use as Just by execution And therefore in so many senses as a Man is called Just in Scripture he is inclusively or by connotation said to be Justified and Justifiable and Justificandus And I desire no more of the Impartial Reader but to turn to his Concordances and peruse all the Texts where the words Just Justice Justly Righteous Righteousness Righteously are used and if he find not that they are many score if not hundred times used for that Righteousness which is the Persons Relation resulting from some Acts or Habits of his own as the Subject or Agent and otherwise than according to his solitary sense here let him then believe this Author § 3. But he is as unhappy in his Proofs as in his singular untrue Assertion Rom. 8.2 4. The Law of the Spirit of Life hath freed us from the Law of Sin and of Death Gal. 3.13 God sent his Son thta the Righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us Christ hath redeemed us from the Curse of the Law and many more such Here is no mention of any but one legal Justification Answ 1. Reader do you believe that these two Texts are a perfect Enumeration And that if these mention but one sense or sort of Justification that it will follow that no more is mentioned in Scripture Or if many hundred other Texts have the same sense 2. Nay he hath chosen only these Texts where the word Justification or Justifie is not at all found By which I may suppose that he intendeth the Controversie here de re and not de nomine And is that so Can any Man that ever considerately opened the Bible believe that de re no such Thing is mentioned in Scripture 1. As making a Man a believing Godly Man 2. Or as performing the Conditions of Life required of us in the Covenant of Grace 3. Nor esteeming a Man such 4. Not defending or proving him to be such 5. Nor judging him such decisively 6. Nor using him as such 7. Nor as justifying a Man so far as he is Innocent and Just against all false Accusation of Satan or the World 3. The first Text cited by him Rom. 8.24 downright contradicts him Not only Augustine but divers Protestant Expositors suppose that by the Law of the Spirit of Life is meant either the quickning Spirit it self given to us that are in Christ or the Gospel as it giveth that Spirit into us And that by delivering us from the Law of Sin is meant either from that sin which is as a Law within us or Moses Law as it forbiddeth and commandeth all its peculiarities and so maketh doing or not doing them sin and as it declareth sin yea and accidentally irritateth it Yea that by the Law of Death is meant not only that Law we are cursed by and so guilty but chiefly that Law as it is said Rom. 7. to kill Paul and to occasion the abounding of sin and the Liâ—e of it And that by the fulfilling of the Law in us that walk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit is meant that by the Spirit and Grace of Christ Christians do fulfil the Law as it requireth sincere Holiness Sobriety and Righteousness which God accepteth for Christ's sake which the Law of Moses without Christ's Spirit enabled no Man to fulfil Not to weary the Reader with citing Expositors I now only desire him to peruse Ludov. de Dieu on the Text. And it is certain that the Law that Paul there speaketh of was Moses Law And that he is proving all along that the observation of it was not necessary to the Gentiles to their performance or Justification and Salvation necessitate praecepti vel medii for it would not justifie the Jews themselves And sure 1. all his meaning is not The Law will not absolve Men from the sense of the Law But also its Works will give no one the just title of a Righteous Man accepted of God and saved by him as judging between the Righteous and the wicked as Christ saith Matth. 25. The Righteous shall go into Everlasting Life c. 2. And if it were only the Maledictory Sentence of Moses Law as such that Paul speaketh of Absolution from as our only Justification then none but Jews and Proselites who were under that Law could have the Justification by Faith which he mentioneth for it curseth none else For what-ever the Law saith it saith to them that are under the Law The rest of the World were only under the Law of lapsed Nature the relicts of Adam's Law of Innocency and the Curse for Adam's first Violation and the Law of Grace made to Adam and Noah and after perfected fullier by Christ in its second Edition 2. His other Text Christ redeemed us from the Curse of the Law proveth indeed that all Believers are redeemed from the Curse of the first Law of Innocency and the Jews from the Curse of Moses Law which is it that is directly meant But what 's that to prove that these words speak the whole and the only Justification and that the Scripture mentioneth no other § 4. He addeth Lex est quae prohibet Lex quae poenam decernit Lex quae irrogat Peccatum est transgressio Legis Poena effectus istius trangressionis Justificatio denique absolutio ab ista poena Itaque câ—m Lex nisi praestita nenimem Justificat praestitam omnes in Christo agnoscunt aut Legalis erit omnis JUstificatio coram Deo aut omnino nulla Answ 1. But doth he know but one sort of Law of God Hath every Man incurred the Curse by Moses Law that did by Adams Or every Man fallen under the peremptory irreversible condemnation which the Law of Grace passeth on them that never believe and repent Doth this Law He that believeth not shall be damned damn Believers One Law condemneth all that are not Innocent Another supposeth them under that defect and condemneth peremptorily not every Sinner but the Wicked and Unbelievers 2. Again here he saith Justification is Absolution from that Penalty But is a Man absolved properly from that which he was never guilty of Indeed if he take Absolution so loosly as to signifie the justifying a Man against a false Accusation and pronouncing him Not-Guilty So all the Angels in Heaven may possibly be capable of Absolution Justification is ordinarily so used but Absolution seldom by Divines And his words shew that this is not his senses if I understand them But if we are reputed perfect fulfillers of the Law of Innocency by Christ and yet Justification is our Absolution from the Curse then no Man is