Evangelical Righteousness or Obedience as do not take place till long after he first believes and believes to Justification And thus Abraham's believing mentioned Gen. 15.6 which was not until some years after he first believed is said to be imputed to him for Righteousness And many years after that again he was justified by yielding obedience to God's Command about offering his Son James 2.21 And somewhat of like nature is also said of Noah Heb. 11.7 compared with Gen. 6.9 22. But these things are said I conceive in reference to the continuance of their Justification and not to their Justification at first For as those acts of believing repenting c. which do first constitute a man a new Creature are at first imputed to him for Righteousness so all after-acts of Evangelical Obedience and of Faith it self are still imputed to him for Righteousness to the continuance of his Justification To which agrees that reading of Revel 22.11 which runs thus let him that is righteous be justified still and the Righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith Rom. 1.17 But otherwise if the righteous turneth away from his Righteousness and committeth iniquity and doth according to all the abominations that the wicked man doth all the Righteousness which he hath done shall not be mentioned In his trespass which he hath trespassed and in his sin that he hath sinned in them shall he die Ezek. 18.24 Again when I say to the righteous he shall surely live if he trust to his own Righteousness i. e. his former Righteousness and commit iniquity all his Righteousness shall not be remembred Ezek. 33.13 Now the just shall live by faith but if he draw back my soul shall have no pleasure in him Hebr. 10.38 If then you do but consider upon what terms men are at first justified and upon what terms they continue to be so afterwards you will easily perceive it to be a great and most important truth to say That we are justified by believing and obeying the Gospel These things Sir which I have thus done by way of Essay without regard to method I submit to your consideration I know right-well it 's in vain if I had a mind to it which yet I am far from to impose upon you or to perswade you to receive any thing for truth farther than it brings it's evidence to be so along with it And it were to wished that every one were able to discern when it doth so But that 's a thing rather to be desired than expected in this our present state in this World But it 's Argument enough to treat one another so almost as if we did if we have not apparent reason to think we are but insincere and dissembling friends to Truth and love it not for it self nor any further than it will accommodate us in some secular or carnal respect or other and it is not easie to determine when we have apparent reason so to think And therefore I conclude it safest for our selves rather to err in treating one another in our differences better than we deserve than worse And so to do is better for them also that differ from us so far as they differ from Truth yea and better for the Truth it self too For it is often seen that when a prejudice is taken up against the persons of men be the Cause never so just the Truth it self is the less esteemed if not shrewdly suspected because held by them especially when its evidence is not written as with a Sun beam So that when we by an undue behaviour in pleading the Cause of Truth draw upon our selves disrespect from them whom we would draw from Errour we prevaricate in the matter and act cross to our own design A thing which some engaged in Controversies have been to blame in However it will be our wisdom in reading of Books of this nature to mind the Argument and to take little notice of any unbecoming girds or reflections unless it be to bewail them and to endeavour to follow as indeed there is need that saying of our Saviour let him that readeth understand Mark 13.14 Thus desiring that you and I and all other Christians may speak the truth in love in love both to it and men and receive it in the love of it that we may be benefitted by it I take my leave and remain as ever Your most affectionately to serve you in all offices of Christian love and respect c. 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being justified by Faith alone as abstracted from it's effect of renewing us And if either of these Doctrines were true we might have an immediate title to Pardon and Salvation without Repentance and without being born again unless we will suppose that Justification does not immediately entitle us to these which to suppose is as absurd as any of the rest For what I pray you would such a Justification signisie And then as concerning the other thing viz. That if we have not by the Imputation of Christ's perfect Righteousness a Rightteousness to answer the demands of the Law that then as Mr. F. infers we can have no Justification but what consists in the remission of Sins I answer That for the same reason that we are accounted Righteous upon our performing the Condition of the promise pardon cannot be our Justification but a benefit consequent upon it For if God's owning or avouching the Condition to be performed on our part as he does when it is performed on which he hath promised Pardon and Salvation be his justifying of us or his accounting us righteous according to the tenour of the Covenant of Grace as indeed it is then Pardon is not our Justification it self but one of the benefits unto which our Justification by vertue of the New Covenant doth entitle us for the one is promised but on condition of the other And as the thing promised and the Condition on which it is promised are not the same so neither is the reckoning or accounting us righteous as having performed the Condition of the Promise of Pardon and the actual Pardon it self the same but so much as these differ so much does Justification and Pardon differ But yet for all that I do not deny but that in a large sense as Justification is opposed to Condemnation it may comprehend remission of Sins That is if by Condemnation you understand both conviction of impenitency which is the opposite to Justification properly and the obligation or obnoxiousness thereby to suffer the pains of the second Death And by Justification both a vindication from impenitency and unbelief which is Justification properly and also a discharge thereby from obnoxiousness to eternal punishment then as I said Justification thus opposed to condemnation does indeed include in it remission of Sin though when strictly and most properly considered Justification seems to be one thing and Pardon of Sin another It is wont to be alledged That when St. Paul saith in Rom. 4.6 that God imputeth Righteousness without Works the meaning is That he imputeth the Righteousness of Christ to us without any Works of ours at all Legal or Evangelical External or Internal And because great stress is laid on it by some I will briefly shew how the Context directs us to another sense of those words The Scope of the Apostle in this and the former Chapter is to prove that Justification proceeds from God of Grace and favour and not of Debt To make this good he shews here that it must needs be so because it is vouchsafed not unto such who have been alwayes righteous for he had proved before Chap. 3. that there are none such but that all both Jews and Gentiles have sinned but to such as have been ungodly when once they believe and therefore cease to be so and become sincerely righteous And the Apostle's reason depends upon this manifest truth That such as have once sinned can never by any after-works which they can do merit the Divine favour as a Debt due to them by desert of their Works nor are capable of that favour upon any other terms than what God of his mere Grace is pleased to appoint as the Condition of it as he hath done that of Faith For to him that worketh not saith he but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly his faith is counted to him for righteousness ver 5. And to prove as well as to assert that God justifieth none upon account of their having been alwayes righteous and in his favour as some Jews fancied themselves to have been upon account of their observing the Law of Moses as he in the Gospel who said All these have I kept from my youth up he shew's out of the Psalms of David how that the ancient godly Jews did alwayes esteem their happiness of being in God's favour not to proceed from the merit of their Works in observing the Law of Moses but from the Grace and Mercy of God in forgiving their Sins and accepting their sincere endeavours to please him Even as David saith he describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputeth righteousnes without works saying Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are covered ver 6 7. And you may easily discern if you observe it that what is said in this sixth and seventh verses is to back and make good what he had said in vers 5. touching God's justifying men upon their believing notwithstanding they had been in a state of ungodliness before And to shew that if he justifie such men upon such terms Justification must needs proceed of Grace and not of Debt or merit of Works of which he had spoken vers 4. saying Now to him that worketh the reward is not reckoned of Grace but of Debt So that in making a Judgment of what Works St. Paul speaks when he saith Righteousness is imputed without Works vers 6. if you do but take your rise from what 's said in vers 4. touching such Works the reward of which is reckoned not of Grace but of Debt and so follow the discourse and the design of it to vers 6. you will find that you cannot fairly turn aside to another but must needs understand him to this sense to wit That the Righteousness which is by Faith of which he had spoken in vers 5. is imputed without such Works as make the reward to be not of Grace but of Debt mentioned v. 4. His Argument runs thus in other words They to whom God imputed Righteousness heretofore were such as stood in need of forgiveness from God therefore they could not possibly merit his favour And although St. Paul doth not improve the words of the Psalmist further than to prove that no man is restored to the Divine favour and the blessedness consequent upon it without forgiveness of Sins and that therefore it must needs be of Grace and not of Debt and Merit that any man attains it by being justified this being his end in alledging them Yet it 's also evident by the words immediately following those the Apostle here recites That Godly sincerity is the conditional qualification required of such to whom the favour of forgiveness is vouchsafed For it 's there said Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity and in whose Spirit there is no guile No guile notes the Sincerity I speak of Psal 32.2 And it 's to the same sense when in the writings of the New Testament Faith as the
any other Grace is said to be imputed to us for Righteousness For we are told expresly that it is of Faith that it might be by Grace Rom. 4.16 That is to cut off all pretence of merit the same saving benefits are promised and on the same Condition to wit that of Faith to Heathen Idolaters Sinners of the Gentiles as was to the strictest observers of the Law of Moses The reason in the close of the verse gives that to be the meaning And accordingly Faith whether it be in one that hath been a great sinner or in one of a more inoffensive life hath God's Grace not Man's merit for its object on which it doth depend for all and accordingly attributes and ascribes all to it Gal. 2.15 16. Which is one reason we see of God's electing of it to be the Condition on which his great and precious promises are made and may well be a reason also of his imputing it to men for Righteousness when they do believe For by the account we have why Abraham's Faith was imputed to him for Righteousness we have reason to believe that our giving to God the glory of his Grace and Goodness Truth and Power by this belief and affiance and to Christ the honour of his undertaking is of such high acceptation with God as that he of his goodness is pleased to honour and reward it by imputing it to us for Righteousness For we see when Abraham's Faith in God's promise touching a numerous Issue had nothing to lean upon but the Goodness Veracity and Power of God and that these carried it with Abraham against all doubts and objections that might arise from the utmost humane and natural improbabilities of ever coming to pass so that he gave glory to God in being fully perswaded that what he had promised he was able also to perform that St. Paul hath told us that therefore or for this very cause his Faith was imputed to him for righteousness Rom. 4.21 22. But the glorifying the riches of his Grace was not all that God had in design in our recovery but also the Renovation of our nature and the restoring us to happiness thereby And Faith is as necessary and useful for the accomplishing this part of God's design as it was to effect the other and therefore secondly this may be another Reason why Faith is imputed for Righteousness and why it 's said to be so rather than any other Grace Without believing we cannot comply with the terms and condition on which Pardon and Salvation are promised and without which they are not to be had and that is in being renewed in our nature For without believing those Motives that tend to perswade us to comply with and submit to the terms or condition on which God for Christ's sake hath promised to pardon us to receive us into favour and finally to save us we can never actually comply with those terms or that condition and consequently without that can never be capable of receiving the benefits promised on that condition For it is Faith as it takes in those Motives in their strength and perswasive efficacy that becomes a vigorous and operative principle of all other Graces Repentance Love Obedience and the like by which our nature becomes renewed All which depend upon our believing And therefore well may our Faith be named and put for all the rest as comprehending them in it when it rather than any other Grace is said to be imputed for Righteousness To make this evident I shall suggest two things to you 1. That they are the great Motives of the Gospel the Grace of God and Love of Christ to lost man the good hoped for and the evil feared the good promised to those that are good and the evil threatned to those that are evil that operate upon the mind and will in men to the producing that change in them by which they become new men sincerely good men If we love God it is because he loved us first 1 John 4.19 If we live to Christ that died for us it is because the love of Christ constrains us 2 Cor. 5.14 If we are made partakers of a Divine Nature it is by the great and pretious promises that we are so 2 Pet. 1.4 And 2. the operation of these Motives of the Gospel upon the mind depends upon our believing and so consequently do all those happy effects in heart and life which are produced by the operation of those Motives For until the reality of those Motives are believed they have no existence or being in the Soul and where they have no being they have no operation The Word preached did not profit them not being mixed with Faith in them that heard it Heb. 4.2 The Love Grace and Favour of God to Sinners in giving Christ for us and of his Love in giving himself for us and intending and promising us the benefit of pardon and salvation thereby only upon condition of our Repentance and Conversion unto God being all of them things invisible and not objects of sense do not affect us or perswade us to repent and in good earnest turn to God that we may be pardoned and saved until we really believe these things It is our Faith or the credit we give to the Revelation which God hath made of these things that gives them an existence or being in the Soul and upon that depends the efficacy and power of their prevailing with us to become new men Faith is the substance or subsistence of things hoped for and the evidence or conviction of things not seen Heb. 11.1 Unless men first believe that God is so good merciful and gracious to men notwithstanding they have sinned against him as to pardon and save them if they repent and become sincerely obedient for the future and not otherwise they will never deny ungodliness and worldly lusts when they are sollicited thereby to gratifie the flesh Men must first believe that God is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him indeed before they will seek his Grace and Favour by becoming such and doing that upon which and not without which he hath more or less declared his Grace and Favour is to be obtained and found Without this Faith it is impossible to please God it is impossible to leave off those things by which they have displeased him and to betake themselves to do those things that are pleasing in his sight Heb. 11.6 It was the belief that all good men had before the Law and under the Law that God would keep Covenant and mercy with those that love him and keep his Commandments and not otherwise that brought them so to love him and to keep his Commandments It was their belief that there is forgiveness with him that he might be feared as an encouragement to men to fear him that prevailed with them to fear him indeed Psal 130.4 It was the hope which even the Heathen Ninevites had from the natural