about the Imputation of Adam's Sin Dr. Gell Mr. Thorndike c. vehemently accusing the doctrine of Imputed Righteousness The Consent of all Christians especially Protestants about the sense of Imputed Righteousness 1. The form of Baptism 2. The Apostles Creed 3. The Nicene and Constantinopolitan Creed 4. Athanasius's Creed 5. The Fathers sense Laurentius his Collections Damasus his Creed 6. The Augustan Confession 7. The English Articles Homilies and Confession 8. The Saxon Confession 9. The Wittenberg Confession 10. The Bohemian Confession 11. The Palatinate Confession 12. The Polonian Confessions 13. The Helvetian Confession 14. The Basil Confession 15. The Argentine Confession of the four Cities 16. The Synod of Dort and the Belgick Confession 17. The Scottish Confession 18. The French Confession Whether Imputation of Passion and Satisfaction or of meritorious Perfection go first How Christ's Righteousness is called the formal Cause c. That it is confessed that Christ's Righteousness is imputed to us as our sin was to him Molinaeus Maresius Vasseur Bellarmine is constrained to agree with us A recommendation of some brief most clear and sufficient Treatises on this subject viz. 1. Mr. Bradshaw 2. Mr. Gibbon's Sermon 3. Mr. Truman's Great Propitiation 4. Placeus his Disput in Thes Salmur 5. Le Blank 's Theses And those that will read larger Mr. Watton John Goodwin and Dr. Stillingfleet Chap. 2. The opening of the Case by some Distinctions and many Propositions Joh. Crocius Concessions premised Mr. Lawson's Judgment Chap. 3. A further Explication of the Controversie Chap. 4. My Reasons against the denied sense of Imputation and personating The denied sense repeated plainly Forty three Reasons briefly named Chap. 5. Some Objections answered Chap. 6 7 8. Replies to Dr. Tully and a Defence of the Concord of Protestants against his Military Alarm and false pretence of greater discord than there is Of the Imputation of Christs Righteousness Material or Formal to Believers Whether we are Reputed personally to have suffered on the Cross and to have satisfied God's Justice for our own sins and to have been habitually perfectly Holy and Actually perfectly Obedient in Christ or by Christ and so to have merited our own Justification and Salvation And whether Christ's Righteousness Habitual Active and Passive be strictly made our own Righteousness in the very thing it self simply Imputed to us or only be made ours in the effects and Righteousness Imputed to us when we believe because Christ hath satisfied and fulfilled the Law and thereby merited it for us The last is affirmed and the two first Questions denied I Have said so much of this subject already in my Confession but especially in my Disputations of Justification and in my Life of Faith that I thought not to have meddled with it any more But some occasions tell me that it is not yet needless though those that have most need will not read it But while some of them hold that nothing which they account a Truth about the Form and Manner of Worship is to be silenced for the Churches peace they should grant to me that Real Truth so near the Foundation in their own account is not to be silenced when it tendeth unto Peace In opening my thoughts on this subject I shall reduce all to these Heads 1. I shall give the brief History of this Controversie 2. I shall open the true state of it and assert what is to be asserted and deny what is to be denied 3. I shall give you the Reasons of my Denials 4. I shall answer some Objections CHAP. I. The History of the Controversie § 1. IN the Gospel it self we have first Christ's Doctrine delivered by his own mouth And in that there is so little said of this Subject that I find few that will pretend thence to resolve the Controversie for Imputation in the rigorous sence The same I say of the Acts of the Apostles and all the rest of the New Testament except Pauls Epistles The Apostle Paul having to do with the Jews who could not digest the equalizing of the Gentiles with them and specially with the factious Jewish Christians who thought the Gentiles must become Proselytes to Moses as well as to Christ if they would be Justified and Saved at large confuteth this opinion and freeth the Consciences of the Gentile Christians from the Imposition of this yoke as also did all the Apostles Act. 15. And in his arguing proveth that the Mosaical Law is so far from being necessary to the Justification of the Gentiles that Abraham and the Godly Jews themselves were not Justified by it but by Faith And that by the works of it and consequently not by the works of the Law or Covenant of Innocency which no man ever kept no man could ever be justified And therefore that they were to look for Justification by Christ alone and by Faith in him or by meer Christianity which the Gentiles might have as well as the Jews the Partition-wall being taken down This briefly is the true scope of Paul in these Controversies § 2. But in Paul's own days there were somethings in his Epistles which the unlearned and unstable did wrest as they did the other Scriptures to their own destruction as Peter tells us 2 Pet. 2. And it seemeth by the Epistle of James that this was part of it For he is fain there earnestly to dispute against some who thought that Faith without Christian works themselves would justifie and flatly affirmeth that we are Justified by Works and not by Faith only that is as it is a Practical Faith in which is contained a Consent or Covenant to obey which first putteth us into a justified state so it is that Practical Faith actually working by Love and the actual performance of our Covenant which by way of Condition is necessary to our Justification as Continued and as Consummate by the Sentence of Judgment Against which sentence of James there is not a syllable to be found in Paul But all the Scripture agreeth that all men shall be Judged that is Justified or Condemned according to their works But it is not this Controversie between Faith and Works which I am now to speak to having done it enough heretofore § 3. From the days of the Apostles till Pelagius and Augustine this Controversie was little meddled with For the truth is the Pastors and Doctors took not Christianity in those days for a matter of Shcolastick subtilty but of plain Faith and Piety And contented themselves to say that Christ dyed for our sins and that we are Justified by Faith and that Christ was made unto us Righteousness as he was made to us Wisdom Sanctification and Redemption § 4. But withal those three first Ages were so intent upon Holiness of Life as that they addicted their Doctrine their Zeal and their constant endeavours to it And particularly to great austerities to their Bodies in great Fastings and great contemp◠of the World and exercises of Mortification to kill their fleshly
a congruous way of disputing for Truth and Righteousness nor indeed is it tolerably ingenuous or modest If not then why doth he all along carry his professed agreement with me in a militant strain perswading his Reader that I savour of Socinianism or Popery or some dangerous Error by saying the very same that he saith O what thanks doth God's Church owe such contentious Disputers for supposed Orthodoxness that like noctambuli will rise in their sleep and cry Fire Fire or beat an Allarm on their Drums and cry out The Enemy The Enemy and will not let their Neighbours rest I have wearied my Readers with so oft repeating in my Writings upon such repeated importunities of others these following Assertions about Works 1. That we are never justified first or last by Works of Innocency 2. Nor by the Works of the Jewish Law which Paul pleadeth against 3. Nor by any Works of Merit in point of Commutative Justice or of distributive Governing Justice according to either of those Laws of Innocency or Jewish 4. Nor by any Works or Acts of Man which are set against or instead of the least part of God's Acts Christ's Merits or any of his part or honour 5. Nor are we at first justified by any Evangelical Works of Love Gratitude or Obedience to Christ as Works are distinguished from our first Faith and Repentance 6. Nor are we justified by Repentance as by an instrumental efficient Cause or as of the same receiving Nature with Faith except as Repentance signifieth our change from Vnbelief to Faith and so is Faith it self 7. Nor are we justified by Faith as by a mere Act or moral good Work 8. Nor yet as by a proper efficient Instrument of our Justification 9. Much less by such Works of Charity to Men as are without true love to God 10. And least of all by Popish bad Works called Good as Pilgrimages hurtful Austerities c. But if any Church-troubling Men will first call all Acts of Man's Soul by the name of WORKS and next will call no Act by the name of Justifying Faith but the belief of the Promise as some or the accepting of Christ's Righteousness given or imputed to us as in se our own as others or the Recumbency on this Righteousness as others or all these three Acts as others and if next they will say that this Faith justifieth us only as the proper Instrumental Cause And next that to look for Justification by any other Act of Man's Soul or by this Faith in any other respect is to trust to that Justification by Works which Paul confuteth and to fall from Grace I do detest such corrupting and abusing of the Scriptures and the Church of Christ And I assert as followeth 1. That the Faith which we are justified by doth as essentially contain our belief of the Truth of Christ's Person Office Death Resurrection Intercession c. as of the Promise of Imputation 2. And also our consent to Christ's Teaching Government Intercession as to Imputation 3. And our Acceptance of Pardon Spirit and promised Glory as well as Imputed Righteousness of Christ 4. Yea that it is essentially a Faith in God the Father and the Holy Ghost 5. That it hath in it essentially somewhat of Initial Love to God to Christ to Recovery to Glory that is of Volition and so of Desire 6. That it containeth all that Faith which is necessarily requisite at Baptism to that Covenant even a consenting-practical-belief in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost and is our Christianity it self 7. That we are justified by this Faith as it is A moral Act of Man adapted to its proper Office made by our Redeemer the Condition of his Gift of Justification and so is the moral receptive aptitude of the Subject or the Dispositio materiae vel subjecti Recipientis Where the Matter of it is An adapted moral Act of Man by Grace The Ratio formalis of its Interest in our Justification is Conditio praestita speaking politically and Aptitudo vel Dispositio moralis Receptiva speaking logically which Dr. Twiss still calleth Causa dispositiva 8. That Repentance as it is a change of the Mind from Unbelief to Faith in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost is this Faith denominated from its Terminus à quo principally 9. That we are continually justified by this Faith as continued as well as initially justified by its first Act. 10. That as this Faith includeth a consent to future Obedience that is Subjection so the performance of that consent in sincere Obedience is the Condition of our Justification as continued Secondarily as well as Faith or consent it self primarily And that thus James meaneth that we are Justified by Works 11. That God judging of all things truly as they are now judgeth Men just or unjust on these Terms 12. And his Law being Norma judicii now vertually judgeth us just on these terms 13. And that the Law of Grace being that which we are to be judged by we shall at the last Judgment also be judged and so justified thus far by or according to our sincere Love Obedience or Evangelical Works as the Condition of the Law or Covenant of free Grace which justifieth and glorifieth freely all that are thus Evangelically qualified by and for the Merits perfect Righteousness and Sacrifice of Christ which procured the Covenant or free Gift of Universal Conditional Justification and Adoption before and without any Works or Conditions done by Man whatsoever Reader Forgive me this troublesom oft repeating the state of the Controversie I meddle with no other If this be Justification by Works I am for it If this Doctor be against it he is against much of the Gospel If he be not he had better have kept his Bed than to have call'd us to Arms in his Dream when we have sadly warred so many Ages already about mere words For my part I think that such a short explication of our sense and rejection of ambiguities is fitter to end these quarrels than the long disputations of Confounders 4. But when be saith Works make not a Man just and yet we are at last justified according to them it is a contradiction or unsound For if he mean Works in the sence excluded by Paul we are not justified according to them viz. such as make or are thought to make the Reward to be not of Grace but of Debt But if he take Works in the sense intended by James sincere Obedience is a secondary constitutive part of that inherent or adherent personal Righteousness required by the Law of Grace in subordination to Christ's Meritorious Righteousness And what Christian can deny this So far it maketh us Righteous as Faith doth initially And what is it to be justified according to our Works but to be judged so far as they are sincerely done to be such as have performed the secondary part of the Conditions of free-given Life 5. His According but not ex operibus at the
think I know better what they teach than his Book will truly tell me § 9. But he addeth Humane Justifying Works are in reality adverse to the free Mercy of God therefore to be accounted of no value to Righteousness Answ 1. But whose phrase is Justifying Works 2. Doth not the Holy Ghost say That a Man is justified by Works and not by Faith only Jam. 2. 3. Doth not Christ say By thy words thou shalt be justified 4. Do not I over and over tell the World That I hold Justification by Works in no sense but as signifying the same as According to Works which you own And so both Name and Thing are confessed by you to be Scriptural 5. I have before desired the Reader to turn to the words Righteous Righteousness Justification c. in his Concordance And if there he find Righteousness mentioned as consisting in some Acts of Man many hundred times let him next say if he dare that they are to be had in no price to Righteousness Or let him read the Texts cited by me in my Confession of Faith 6. Because Faith Repentance Love Obedience are that whose sincerity is to be judged in order to our Life or Death ere long I will not say that they are to be vilified as to such a Righteousness or Justification as consisteth in our vindication from the charge of Impenitency Infidelity Unholiness Hypocrisie c. The reading of Mat. 25. resolved me for this Opinion § 10. Next he noteth our detesting such Works as are against or instead of Christ's Sacrifice Righteousness Merits c. To this we have the old Cant The Papists say the like Reader I proved that the generality of Protestants are agreed in all those twenty Particulars even in all the material Doctrines about Man's Works and Justification while this warlike Doctor would set us all together by the ears still he is over-ruled to assert that the Papists also are agreed with us The more the better I am glad if it be so and will here end with so welcome a Conclusion that maketh us all herein to be Friends only adding That when he saith that such are all Works whatever even Faith it self which are called into the very least part of Justification even as a Condition or subordinate personal Evangelical Righteousness such as Christ and James and a hundred Texts of Scripture assert I answer I cannot believe him till I cease believing the Scriptures to be true which I hope will never be And am sorry that so worthy a Man can believe so gross an Opinion upon no better reasons than he giveth And yet imagine that had I the opportunity of free conference with him I could force him to manifest That he himself differeth from us but in meer words or second Notions while he hotly proclaimeth greater discord AN ANSVVER TO Dr. TULLIES Angry Letter By Rich. Baxter LONDON Printed for Nevil Simmons and Jonath Robinson at the Princes-Arms and Golden-Lion in St. Pauls Church-yard 1675. An Answer to Dr. Tullies Angry Letter Reverend Sir If I had not before perceived and lamented the great Sin of Contenders the dangerous snare for ignorant Christians and the great Calamity of the Church by making Verbal Differences seem Material and variety of some Arbitrary Logical Notions to seem tantum non a variety of Religions and by frightning Men out of their Charity Peace and Communion by Bugbear-Names of this or that Heresie or dangerous Opinion which is indeed but a Spectrum or Fantasm of a dreaming or melancholy Brain your Justificatio Paulina and your Letter to me might be sufficient means of my full Conviction And if once reading of your Writings do not yet more increase my love of the Christian simplicity and plain old Divinity and the amicable Communion of practical Christians upon those terms and not medling with Controversies in a militant way till by â—ong impartial studies they are well understood I must confess my non-proficience is very unexcusable With your self I have no great business I am not so vain as to think my self able to understand you or to be understood by you and I must not be so bold as to tell you why much less will I be so injurious to the Reader as by a particular examining all your words to extort a confession that their sense is less or worse than I could wish For cui bono What would this do but more offend you And idle words are as great a fault in writing as in talk If I have been guilty of too many I must not so much add to my fault as a too particular examination of such Books would be But for the sake of your Academical Youth whom you thought meet to allarm by your Caution I have answered so much of your Treatise as I thought necessary to help even Novices to answer the rest themselves For their sakes though I delight not to offend you I must say That if they would not be deceived by such Books as yours it is not an Answer to them that must be their preservative but an orderly studying of the Doctrines handled Let them but learn truly the several senses of the word Justificaâ—ion and the several sorts and what they are and still constrain ambiguous words to confess their sense and they will need no other Answer to such Writings And as to your Letter passing by the spume and passion I think these few Animadversions may suffice § 1. Between twenty and thirty years ago I did in a private Disputation prove our guilt of the sins of our nearer Parents and because many doubted of it I have oft since in other writings mentioned it About three years ago having two Books of Mr. William Allens in my hand to peruse in order to a Publication a Perswasive to Vnity and a Treatise of the Two Covenants in a Preface to the latter I said That most Writers if not most Christians do greatly darken the Sacred Doctrine by overlooking the Interest of Children in the Actions of their nearer Parents and think that they participate of no guilt and suffer for no original sin but Adam ' s only c. You fastened on this and warned seriously the Juniors not rashly to believe one that brings forth such Paradoxes of his or that Theologie which you added to your O caecos ante Theologos quicunque unquam fuistis The charge was expressed by aliud invenisse peccatum Originale multo citerius quam quod ab Adamo traductum est Hereupon I thought it enough to publish that old private Disputation which many before had seen with various Censures Now you send me in your Letter the strange tidings of the success You that deterred your Juniors by so frighful a warning seem now not only to agree with me that we are guilty of our nearer Parents sin and contract additional pravity from them as such which was my Assertion but over-do all others and Truth it self in your Agreement Now you take it for
are offended that I perswade you that by Melancholy Phantasms you set not the Churches together by the Ears and make People believe that they differ where they do not And you ask Who began the Fray Answ 1. Do you mean that I began with you You do not sure But is it that I began with the Churches and you were necessitated to defend them Yes if Gallus Ambsdorfius Schlusselburgius and Dr. Crispe and his Followers be the Church But Sir I provoke you to try it by the just Testimony of Antiquity who began to differ from the Churches In this Treatise I have given you some Account and Vossius hath given you more which you can never answer But if my Doctrine put you upon this Necessity what hindred you from perceiving it these twenty years and more till now O Sir had you no other work to do but to Vindicate the Church and Truth I doubt you had § VIII But pag. 15. You are again incredulous that All the Difference betwixt you and me or others of the same Judgment in the Point of Justification is meerly Verbal and that in the Main we are agreed And again you complain of your weak Legs Answ 1. I do agree with very many against their wills in Judgment because the Judgment may be constrained but with none in Affection as on their part Did I ever say that I differed not from you I tell you I know not what your Judgment is nor know I who is of your Mind But I have not barely said but oft proved that though not the Antinomians the Protestants are mostly here agreed in the Main If you could not have time to read my larger Proof that short Epistle to Mr. Allen's Book of the Covenant in which I proved it might have stopt your Mouth from calling for more Proof till you had better confuted what was given But you say Are perfect Contradictions no more than a difference in Words Faith alone and not Faith alone Faith with and without Works Excuse our Dulness here Answ 1. Truly Sir it is a tedious thing when a Man hath over and over Answered such Objections yea when the full Answers have been twenty years in Print to be put still to say over all again to every Man that will come in and say that his Legs are too weak to go see what was answered before How many score times then or hundreds may I be called to repeat 2. If I must pardon your Dulness you must pardon my Christianity or chuse who believe that there is no such perfect Contradictions between Christ's By thy Words thou shalt be Justified and Paul's Justified by Faith without the Works of the Law or not of Works and James's We are justified by Works and not by Faith only Must we needs proclaim War here or cry out Heresie or Popery Are not all these Reconcileable Yea and Pauls too Rom. 2. The Doers of the Law shall be justified 3. But did I ever deny that it is by Faith alone and without Works Where and when But may it not be by Faith alone in one sense and not by Faith alone in another sense 4. But even where you are speaking of it you cannot be drawn to distinguish of Verbal and Real Differences Is it here the Words or Sense which you accuse The Words you dare not deny to be Gods own in Scripture spoken by Christ Paul and James My Sense I have opened to you at large and you take no Notice of it but as if you abhorred Explication and Distinction speak still against the Scripture Words § IX Pag. 16. But you say Let any discerning Reader compare the 48 § of this Preface with the Words in pag. 5. of your Appeal to the Light and 't is likely he will concur with me in that Melancholy Phantasm or Fear For 't is worth the noting how in that dark Appeal where you distinguish of Popish Points i. e. some-where the Difference is reconcileable others in effect but in words we have no Direction upon which Rank we must bestow Justification nothing of it at all from you Name or Thing But why next to the All-seeing God you should know best your self Answ Alas Sir that God should be in such a manner mentioned I answered this same Case at large in my Confession Apologie Dispute of Justification c. Twenty years ago or near I have at large Opened it in a Folio Cathol Theol. which you saw yea in the very part which you take Notice of and now you publish it worth the Noting that I did not also in one sheet of Paper Printed the other day against a Calumnie of some Sectarian Hearers who gave me no Occasion for such a work Had it not been a Vanity of me Should I in that sheet again have repeated how I and the Papists differ about Justification Were you bound to have read it in that sheet any more than in many former Volumns It 's no matter for me But I seriously beseech you be hereafter more sober and just than to deal with your Brethren the Church and Truth in such a manner as this But by this Talk I suspect that you will accuse me more for opening no more of the Difference in this Book But 1. It is enough for to open my own Meaning and I am not obliged to open other Mens And my own I have opened by so many Repetitions in so many Books as nothing but such Mens Importunity and obstructed Minds could have Excused 2. The Papists minds sure may be better known by their own Writings than by mine The Council of Trent telleth it you What need I recite it 3. I tell you again as I did in my Confession that I had rather all the Papists in the World agreed with us than disagreed I like a Doctrine the better and not the worse because all the Christian World consenteth to it I am not ambitious to have a Religion to my self which a Papist doth not own Where they differ I am sorry for it And it pleaseth me better to find in any Point that we are agreed than that we differ Neither you nor any such as you by crying O Popish Antichristian shall tempt me to do by the Papists as the Dominicans and Jansenists and some Oratorians do by the Calvinists I will not with Alvarez Arnoldus Gibieuf c. make the World believe that my Adversaries are much further from me than they are for fear of being censured by Faction to be one of them If I would have been of a Church-Faction and sold my Soul to please a Party I would have begun before now and taken a bigger Price for it than you can offer me if you would Pag 17. You say Pile one Distinction or Evasion on another as long as you please as many several Faiths and Works and Justifications as you can name all this will never make two Poles meet Answ And do you cry out for War in the Darkness of Confusion
The Augustane Confession Art 3 4. Christ died that he might reconcile the Father to us and be a sacrifice not only for original sin but also for all the actual sins of men And that we may obtain these benefits of Christ that is Remission of sins justification and life eternal Christ gave us the Gospel in which these benefits are propounded To preach Repentance in his Name and Remission of sins among all Nations For when men propagated in the natural manner have sin and cannot truly satisfie Gods Law the Gospel reproveth sin and sheweth us Christ the Mediator and so teacheth us about Pardon of sins That freely for Christ's sake are given us Remission of sins Justification by Faith by which we must confess that these are given us for Christ who was made a Sacrifice for us and appeased the Father Though the Gospel require Penitence yet that pardon of sin may be sure it teacheth us that it is freely given us that is that it dependeth not on the Condition of our worthyness nor is given for any precedent works or worthyness of following works For Conscience in true fears findeth no work which it can oppose to the Wrath of God and Christ is proposed and given us to be a propitiator This honour of Christ must not be transferred to our works Therefore Paul saith ye are saved freely or of Grace And it is of grace that the promise might be sure that is Pardon will be sure when we know that it dependeth not on the Condition of our worthiness but is given for Christ In the Creed this Article I believe the Forgiveness of sins is added to the history And the rest of the history of Christ must be referred to this Article For this benefit is the end of the history Christ therefore suffered and rose again that for him might be given us Remission of sins and life everlasting Art 6. When we are Reconciled by Faith there must needs follow the Righteousness of good works But because the infirmity of mans nature is so great that no man can satisfie the Law it is necessary to teach men not only that they must obey the Law but also how this Obedience pleaseth lest Consciences fall into desperation when they understand that they satisfie not the Law This Obedience then pleaseth not because it satisfieth the Law but because the person is in Christ reconciled by Faith and believeth that the relicts of his Sin are pardoned We must ever hold that we obtain remission of sins and the person is pronounced Righteous that is is accepted freely for Christ by Faith And afterward that Obedience to the Law pleaseth and is reputed a certain Righteousness and meriteth rewards Thus the first Protestants VII The 11th Article of the Church of England to which we all offer to subscribe is Of the Justification of Man We are accounted Righteous before God only for the Merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by Faith and not for our own works or deservings Wherefore that we are justified by Faith only is a most wholsome doctrine and very full of Comfort as more largely is expressed in the Homily of Justification The said Homilies of Salvation and Faith say over and over the same thing As pag. 14. Three things go together in our Justification On Gods part his great Mercy and Grace on Christs part Justice that is the Satisfaction of Gods Justice or the Price of our Redemption by the offering of his body and shedding of his blood with fulfilling of the Law perfectly and throughly And on our part true and lively Faith in the Merits of Jesus Christ which yet is not ours but by Gods working in us And pag. A lively Faith is not only the common belief of the Articles of our Faith but also a true trust and confidence of the mercy of God through our Lord Jesus Christ and a steadfast hope of all good things to be received at Gods hand and that although we through infirmity or temptation do fall from him by sin yet if we return again to him by true repentance that he will forgive and forget our offences for his Sons sake our Saviour Jesus Christ and will make us inheritors with him of his everlasting Kingdom Pag. 23. For the very sure and lively Christian Faith is to have an earnest trust and confidence in God that he doth regard us and is careful over us as the Father is over the Child whom he doth love and that he will be merciful unto us for his only Sons sake and that we have our Saviour Christ our perpetual Advocate and Prince in whose only merits oblation and suffering we do trust that our offences be continually washed and purged whensoever we repenting truely do return to him with our whole heart steadfastly determining with our selves through his grace to obey and serve him in keeping his Commandments c. So also the Apology This is our doctrine of Imputation VIII The Saxon Confession oft insisteth on the free Pardon of sin not merited by us but by Christ And expoundeth Justification to be Of unjust that is Guilty and disobedient and not having Christ to be made Just that is To be Absolved from Guilt for the Son of God and an apprehender by Faith of Christ himself who is our Righteousness as Jeremiah and Paul say because by his Merit we have forgiveness and God imputeth righteousness to us and for him reputeth us just and by giving us his Spirit quickeneth and regenerateth us By being Justified by Faith alone we mean that freely for our Mediator alone not for our Contrition or other Merits the pardon of sin and reconciliation is given us And before It is certain when the mind is raised by this Faith that the pardon of sin Reconciliation and Imputation of Righteousness are given for the Merit of Christ himself And after By Faith is meant Affiance resting in the Son of God the Propitiator for whom we are received and please God and not for our virtues and fulfilling of the Law IX The Wittenberge Confession In Corp. Conf. pag. 104 A man is made Accepted of God and Reputed just before him for the Son of God our Lord Jesus Christ alone by Faith And at the Judgment of God we must not trust to the Merit of any of the Virtues which we have but to the sole Merit of our Lord Jesus Christ which is made ours by Faith And because at the bar of God where the case of true eternal Righteousness and Salvation will be pleaded there is no place for mans Merits but only for God's Mercy and the Merits of our Lord Jesus Christ whom we receive by Faith therefore we think our Ancestors said rightly that we are justified before God by Faith only X. The Bohemian Confession making Justification the principal Article goeth the same way Pag. 183 184. By Christ men are Justified obtain Salvation and Remission of sin freely by Faith in Christ through mercy without
any Work and Merit of man And his death and blood alone is sufficient to abolish expiate all the sins of all men All must come to Christ for pardon and Remission of Sin Salvation and every thing All our trust and hope is to be fastened on him alone Through him only and his merits God is appeas'd and propitious Loveth us and giveth us Life eternal XI The Palatinate Confession ib. pag. 149. I believe that God the Father for the most full Satisfaction of Christ doth never remember any of my sins and that pravity which I must strive against while I live but contrarily will rather of grace give me the righteousness of Christ so that I have no need to fear the judgment of God And pag. 155. If he merited and obtained Remission of all our sins by the only and bitter passion and death of the Cross so be it we embracing it by true Faith as the satisfaction for our sins apply it to our selves I find no more of this XII The Polonian Churches of Lutherans and Bohemians agreed in the Augustane and Bohemian Confession before recited XIII The Helvetian Confession To Justifie signifieth to the Apostle in the dispute of Justification To Remit sins to Absolve from the fault and punishment to Receive into favour and to Pronounce just For Christ took on himself and took away the sins of the World and satisfied Gods Justice God therefore for the sake of Christ alone suffering and raised again is propitious to our sins and imputeth them not to us but imputeth the righteousness of Christ for ours so that now we are not only cleansed and purged from sins or Holy but also endowed with the Righteousness of Christ and so absolved from sins Death and Condemnation and are righteous and heirs of life eternal Speaking properly God only justifieth us and justifieth only for Christ not imputing to us sins but imputing to us his Righteousness This Confession speaketh in terms neerest the opposed opinion But indeed saith no more than we all say Christs Righteousness being given and imputed to us as the Meritorious Cause of our pardon and right to life XIV The Basil Confession Art 9. We confess Remission of sins by Faith in Jesus Christ crucified And though this Faith work continually by Love yet Righteousness and Satisfaction for our Sins we do not attribute to works which are fruits of Faith but only to true affiance faith in the blood shed of the Lamb of God We ingenuously profess that in Christ who is our Righteousness Holiness Redemption Way Truth Wisdom Life all things are freely given us The works therefore of the faithful are done not that they may satisfie for their sins but only that by them they may declare that they are thankful to God for so great benefits given us in Christ XV. The Argentine Confession of the four Cities Cap. 3. ib. pag. 179. hath but this hereof When heretofore they delivered that a mans own proper Works are required to his Justification we teach that this is to be acknowledged wholly received of God's benevolence and Christ's Merit and perceived only by Faith C. 4. We are sure that no man can be made Righteous or saved unless he love God above all and most studiously imitate him We can no otherwise be Justified that is become both Righteous and Saved for our Righteousness is our very Salvation than if we being first indued with Faith by which believing the Gospel and perswaded that God hath adopted us as Sons and will for ever give us his fatherly benevolence we wholly depend on his beck or will XVI The Synod of Dort mentioneth only Christs death for the pardon of sin and Justification The Belgick Confession § 22. having mentioned Christ and his merits made ours § 23. addeth We believe that our blessedness consisteth in Remission of our sins for Jesus Christ and that our Righteousness before God is therein contained as David and Paul teach We are justified freely or by Grace through the Redemption that is in Christ Jesus We hold this Foundation firm and give all the Glory to God presuming nothing of our selves and our merits but we rest on the sole Obedience of a Crucified Christ which is ours when we believe in him Here you see in what sence they hold that Christs merits are ours Not to justifie us by the Law that saith Obey perfectly and Live but as the merit of our pardon which they here take for their whole Righteousness XVII The Scottish Confession Corp. Conf. pag. 125. hath but that true Believers receive in this life Remission of Sins and that by Faith alone in Christs blood So that though sin remain yet it is not Imputed to us but is remitted and covered by Christs Righteousness This is plain and past all question XVIII The French Confession is more plain § 18. ib. pag. 81. We believe that our whole Righteousness lyeth in the pardon of our sins which is also as David witnesseth our only blessedness Therefore all other reasons by which men think to be justified before God we plainly reject and all opinion of Merit being cast away we rest only in the Obedience of Christ which is Imputed to us both that all our sins may be covered and that we may get Grace before God So that Imputation of Obedience they think is but for pardon of sin and acceptance Concerning Protestants Judgment of Imputation it is further to be noted 1. That they are not agreed whether Imputation of Christ's perfect Holiness and Obedience be before or after the Imputation of his Passion in order of nature Some think that our sins are first in order of nature done away by the Imputation of his sufferings that we may be free from punishment and next that his perfection is Imputed to us to merit the Reward of life eternal But the most learned Confuters of the Papists hold that Imputation of Christs Obedience and Suffering together are in order of nature before our Remission of sin and Acceptance as the meritorious cause And these can mean it in no other sence than that which I maintain So doth Davenant de Just hab et act Pet. Molinaeus Thes Sedan Vol. 1. pag. 625. Imputatio justitiae Christi propter quam peccata remittuntur censemur justi coram Deo Maresius Thes Sedan Vol. 2. pag. 770 771. § 6 10. maketh the material cause of our Justification to be the Merits and Satisfaction of Christ yea the Merit of his Satisfaction and so maketh the formal Cause of Justification to be the Imputation of Christs Righteousness or which is the same the solemn Remission of all sins and our free Acceptance with God Note that he maketh Imputation to be the same thing with Remission and Acceptance which is more than the former said 2. Note that when they say that Imputation is the Form of Justification they mean not of Justification Passively as it is ours but Actively as it is Gods Justifying
this Faith the Condition of our Title and if we do this we shall be judged evangelically Righteous that is such as have done all that was necessary to their right in Christ and the said Benefits and therefore have such a Right This is plain English and plain Truth wrangle no more against it and against the very Letter of the Text and against your Brethren and the Churches Concord by making Men believe that there are grievous Differences where there are none Reader I was going on to Answer the rest but my time is short Death is at the door Thou seest what kind of Work I have of it even to detect a Learned Man's Oversights and temerarious Accusations The weariness will be more to thee and me than the profit I find little before but what I have before answered here and oft elsewhere And therefore I will here take up only adding one Chapter of Defence of that Conciliation which I attempted in an Epistle to Mr. W. Allens Book of the Two Covenants and this Doctor like an Enemy of Peace assaulteth CHAP. VIII The Concord of Protestants in the Matter of Justification defended against Dr. Tullies Oppositions who would make Discord under pretence of proving it § 1. WHile Truth is pretended by most that by envious striving introduce Confusion and every evil Work it usually falleth out by God's just Judgment that such are almost as opposite to Truth as to Charity and Peace What more palpable instances can there be than such as on such accounts have lately assaulted me Mr. Danvers Mr. Bagshaw c. and now this Learned Doctor The very stream of all his Opposition against me about Imputation is enforced by this oft repeated Forgery that I deny all Imputation of Christ's Righteousness Yea he neither by fear modesty or ingenuity was restrained from writing pag. 117. Omnem ludibrio habet Imputationem He derideth all Imputation Judg by this what credit contentious Men deserve § 2. The conciliatory Propositions which I laid down in an Epistle to Mr. W. Allens Book I will here transcribe that the Reader may see what it is that these Militant Doctors war against Lest any who know not how to stop in mediocrity should be tempted by Socinians or Papists to think that we countenance any of their Errors or that our Differences in the point of Justification by Faith or Works are greater than indeed they are and lest any weak Opinionative Persons should clamour unpeaceably against their Brethren and think to raise a name to themselves for their differing Notions I shall here give the Reader such evidences of our real Concord as shall silence that Calumny Though some few Lutherans did upon peevish suspiciousness against George Major long ago assert That Good Works are not necessary to Salvation And though some few good Men whose Zeal without Judgment doth better serve their own turn than the Churches are jealous lest all the good that is ascribed to Man be a dishonour to God and therefore speak as if God were honoured most by saying the worst words of our selves and many have uncomely and irregular Notions about these Matters And though some that are addicted to sidings do take it to be their Godly Zeal to censure and reproach the more understanding sort when they most grosly err themselves And though too many of the People are carried about through injudiciousness and temptations to false Doctrines and evil Lives yet is the Argument of Protestants thus manifested 1. They all affirm that Christ's Sacrifice with his Holiness and perfect Obedience are the meritorious Cause of the forgiving Covenants and of our Pardon and Justification thereby and of our Right to Life Eternal which it giveth us And that this Price was not paid or given in it self immediately to us but to God for us and so that our foresaid Benefits are its Effects 2. They agree that Christ's Person and ours were not really the same and therefore that the same Righteousness which is an Accident of one cannot possibly be an Accident of the other 3. They all detest the Conceit that God should aver and repute a Man to have done that which he never did 4. They all agree that Christ's Sacrifice and Merits are really so effectual to procure our Pardon Justification Adoption and right to the sealing Gift of the Holy Ghost and to Glory upon our Faith and Repentance that God giveth us all these benefits of the New-Covenant as certainly for the sake of Christ and his Righteousness as if we had satisfied him and merited them our selves and that thus far Christ's Righteousness is ours in its Effects and imputed to us in that we are thus used for it and shall be judged accordingly 5. They all agree that we are justified by none but a practical or working Faith 6. And that this Faith is the Condition of the Promise or Gift of Justification and Adoption 7. And that Repentance is a Condition also though as it is not the same with Faith as Repentance of Unbelief is on another aptitudinal account even as a willingness to be cured and a willingness to take one for my Physician and to trust him in the use of his Remedies are on several accounts the Conditions on which that Physician will undertake the Cure or as willingness to return to subjection and thankful acceptance of a purchased Pardon and of the Purchasers Love and future Authority are the Conditions of a Rebel's Pardon 8. And they all agree that in the first instant of a Man's Conversion or Believing he is entred into a state of Justification before he hath done any outward Works and that so it is true that good Works follow the Justified and go not before his initial Justification as also in the sense that Austin spake it who took Justification for that which we call Sanctification or Conversion 9. And they all agree that Justifying Faith is such a receiving affiance as is both 〈…〉 Intellect and the Will and therefore as in 〈…〉 participateth of some kind of Love to the justifying Object as well as to Justification 10. And that no Man can chuse or use Christ as a Means so called in respect to his own intention to bring him to God the Father who hath not so much love to God as to take him for his end in the use of that means 11. And they agree that we shall be all judged according to our Works by the Rule of the Covenant of Grace though not for our Works by way of commutative or legal proper merit And Judging is the Genus whose Species is Justifying and Condemning and to be judged according to our Works is nothing but to be justified or condemned according to them 12. They all agree that no Man can possibly merit of God in point of Commutative Justice nor yet in point of Distributive or Governing Justice according to the Law of Nature or Innocency as Adam might have done nor by the Works of the Mosaical
as long as you will you shall never tempt me by it to renounce my Baptism and List my self under the grand Enemy of Love and Concord nor to Preach up Hatred and Division for nothing as in the Name of Christ If you will handle such Controversies without Distinguishing of Faiths Works and Justifications I will never perswade any Friend of mine to be your Pupil or Disciple Then Simon Magus's faith and the Devils faith and Peters faith must all pass for the same and justifie accordingly Then indeed Believing in God the Father and the Holy Ghost yea and Christ as our Teacher King and Judg c. must pass for the Works by which no Man is Justified If Distinction be unsound detect the Error of it If not it is no Honour to a disputing Doctor to reproach it § X. But pag. 17. you set upon your great undeâ—eiving Work to shew the evil of ill using Words Words you say as they are enfranchised into Language are but the Agents and Factors of things for which they continually negotiate with our Minds conveying Errands on all occasions c. Let them mark that charge the vanity and bombast of Metaphors on others one word Signa should have served our turn instead of all this Whence it follows that their use and signification is Vnalterable but by the stamp of the like publick usage and imposition from whence at first they received their being c. Answ O Juniors Will not such deceiving Words save you from my Deceits But 1. Is there a Law and unalterable Law for the sense of Words Indeed the Words of the sacred Text must have no new Sense put upon them 2. Are you sure that it was Publick usage and Imposition from whence they first received their being How shall we know that they grew not into publick use from one Mans first Invention except those that not Publick use but God Himself made 3. Are you sure that all or most Words now Latine or English have the same and only the same use or sense as was put upon them at the first Is the change of the sense of Words a strange thing to us 4. But that which concerneth our Case most is Whether there be many Words either of Hebrew and Greek in the Scripture or of Latine English or any common Language which have not many Significations Your Reputation forbids you to deny it And should not those many Significations be distinguished as there is Cause Are not Faith Works Just Justice Justification words of divers senses in the Scripture and do not common Writers and Speakers use them yet more variously And shall a Disputer take on him that the use or signification of each is but one or two or is so fixed that there needeth no distinction 5. Is the change that is made in all Languages in the World made by the same publick usage and imposition from which at first they received their being 6. If as you say the same thing can be represented by different words only when they are Synonymous should we not avoid seeming to represent the same by Equivocals which unexplained are unfit for it Pag. 20. You tell me what sad work you are doing and no wonder Sin and Passions are self-troubling things And it 's well if it be sad to your self alone and not to such as you tempt into Mistakes Hatred and Division It should be sad to every Christian to see and hear those whom they are bound to Love represented as odious And you are still pag. 19. feigning that Every eye may see Men dealing Blows and Deaths about and therefore we are not wise if we think them agreed But doubtless many that seem killed by such Blows as some of yours are still alive And many a one is in Heaven that by Divines pretending to be Orthodox were damned on Earth And many Men are more agreed than they were aware of I have known a Knavish Fellow set two Persons of quality on Fighting before they spake a word to one another by telling them secretly and falsly what one said against the other Many differ even to persecuting and bloodshed by Will and Passion and Practice upon a falsly supposed great difference in Judgment I will not so suddenly repeat what Proof I have given of some of this in the place you noted Cath. Theol. Confer 11 12 13. There is more skill required to narrow differences than to widen them and to reconcile than to divide as there is to quench a Fire than to kindle it to build than to pull down to heal than to wound I presume therefore to repeat aloud my contrary Cautions to your Juniors Young-Men after long sad Experience of the sinful and miserable Contentions of the Clergie and consequently of the Christian World that you may escape the Guilt I beseech you whoever contradicteth it consider and believe these following Notices 1. That all Words are but arbitrary Signs and are changed as Men please and through the Penury of them and Mans imperfection in the Art of Speaking there are very few at all that have not various Significations 2. That this Speaking-Art requireth so much time and study and all Men are so defective in it and the variety of Mens skill in it is so very great that no Men in the World do perfectly agree in their interpretation and use of Words The doleful plague of the Confusion of Tongues doth still hinder our full Communication and maketh it hard for us to understand Words our selves or to be understood by others for Words must have a three-fold aptitude of Signification 1. To signifie the Matter 2. And the Speakers conceptions of it 3. And this as adapted to the hearers Mind to make a true Impression there 3. That God in Mercy hath not made Words so necessary as Things nor necessary but for the sake of the Things If God Christ Grace and Heaven be known believed and duly accepted you shall be saved by what Words soever it be brought to pass 4. Therefore Real Fundamentals or Necessaries to Salvation are more easily defined than Verbal ones For more or fewer Words these or other Words are needful to help some Persons to Faith and Love and Holiness as their Capacities are different 5. But as he that truly believeth in and giveth up himself to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost according to the sense of the Baptismal Covenant is a true Christian to be loved and shall be saved so he that understandeth such Words as help him to that true Faith and Consent doth know so much of the Verbal part as is of necessity to his Christianity and Salvation 6. And he that is such holdeth no Heresie or Error inconsistent with it If he truly love God it 's a contradiction to say that he holdeth an Error inconsistent with the Love of God 7. Therefore see that you Love all such as Christians till some proved or notorious inconsistents nullifying his Profession disoblige you 8.
Take your selves to be neither of Roman or any other Church as Vniversal which is less than the Vniversality of all Christians headed by Christ alone 9. Make this Love of all Christians the second part of your Religion and the Love of God of Christ of Holiness and Heaven the first and live thus in the serious practice of your Covenant even of Simple Christianity For it 's this that will be your Peace in Life and at Death 10. And if Men of various degrees of Learning or Speaking-skill and of various degrees of Holiness Humility and Love shall quarrel about Words and forms of Speech and shall hereticate and revile and damn each other while the Essentials are held fast and practised discern Right from Wrong as well as you can but take heed that none of them make Words a snare to draw you injuriously to think hatefully of your Brother or to divide the Churches or Servants of Christ And suspect such a Snare because of the great ambiguity of Words and imperfection of Mans Skill and Honesty in all Matters of debate And never dispute seriously without first agreeing of the Sense of every doubtful term with him that you Dispute with Dr. Tully's Allarm and other Mens militant Course perswaded me as a Preservative to commend this Counsel to you § XI Pag. 19. You next very justly commend Method ordering and expressing our Conceptions of which you say I seem to make little account in Comparison Answ 1. Had you said that I had been unhappy in my Endeavours your Authority might have gone for Proof with many But you could scarce have spoken a more incredible word of me than that I seem to make little account of Method I look for no sharper Censure from the Theological Tribe than that I Over-do in my Endeavours after Method You shall not tempt me here unseasonably to anticipate what Evidence I have to produce for my acquittance from this Accusation 2. But yet I will still say that it is not so necessary either to Salvation or to the Churches Peace that we all agree in Methods and Expressions as that we agree in the hearty reception of Christ and obedience to His Commands So much Method all must know as to know the Beginning and the End from the Effects and Means God from the Creature and as our true consent to the Baptismal Covenant doth require and I will thankfully use all the help which you give me to go further But I never yet saw that Scheme of Theologie or of any of its Heads which was any whit large and I have seen many which was so exact in Order as that it was dangerous in any thing to forsake it But I cannot think meet to talk much of Method with a Man that talketh as you do of Distinguishing and handleth the Doctrine of Justification no more Methodically than you do § XII But pag. 19. you instance in the difference between Protestants and Papists about the Necessity of Good works which is wide in respect of the placing or ranking of them viz. The one stretching it to the first Justification the other not but confining it to its proper rank and province of Inherent Holiness where it ought to keep Answ Wonderful Have you that have so loudly called to me to tell how I differ about Justification brought your own and as you say the Protestants difference to this Will none of your Readers see now who cometh nearer them you or I 1. Is this distinction our proof of your accurateness in Method and Order and Expression What meaneth a distinction between First-Justification and Inherent Holiness Do you difference them Quoad ordinem as First and Second But here is no Second mentioned Is it in the nature of the things Justification and Inherent Holiness What signifieth the First then But Sir how many Readers do you expect who know not 1. That it is not to the First Justification at all but to that which they call the Second or Increase that the Church of Rome asserteth the necessity or use of Mans meritorious Works See what I have fully cited out of them for this Cath. Theol. Lib. 2. Confer 13. pag. 267. c. saving that some of them are for such Preparatives as some call Merit of Congruity and as our English Divines do constantly preach for and the Synod of Dort at large assert though they disown the name of Merit as many of the Papists do They ordinarily say with Austine Bona opera sequuntur Justificatum non praecedunt Justificandum 2. But I hope the word First here overslipt your your Pen instead of Second But suppose it did so What 's the difference between the Papists first or second Justification and the Protestants Inherent Holiness None that ever I heard or read of Who knoweth not that the Papists take Justification for Inherent Holiness And is this the great difference between Papists and Protestants which I am so loudly accused for not acknowledging viz. The Papists place Good-Works before Justification that is Inherent Holiness and the Protestants more rightly place them before Inherent Holiness Are you serious or do you prevaricate The Papists and Protestants hold that there are some Duties and common Grace usually preparatory to Conversion or Sanctification which some Papists de nomine call Merit of Congruity and some will not The Papists and Protestants say that Faith is in order of nature at least before that Habitual Love which is called Holiness and before the Works thereof The Papists and Protestants say that Works of Love and Obedience follow our First Sanctification and make up but the Second part of it which consisteth in the Works of Holiness If you speak not of Works in the same sense in each part of your Assignation the Equivocation would be too gross viz. If you should mean Papists rank the necessity of preparatory Common Works or the Internal act of Faith or Love stretching it to the First Justification and Protestants rank other Works viz. The fruits of Faith and Love with Inherent Holiness All agree 1. That Common Works go before Sanctification 2. That Internal Love and other Grace do constitute Sanctification in the First part of it 3. That Special Works proceeding from Inward Grace are the effects of the First Part and the constitutive Causes of the Second Part of Sanctification as the word extendeth also to Holiness of Life And whilst Papists take Justâ—fication for Sanctification in all this there is De re no difference But your accurate Explications by such terms as Stretching Confirming Province c. are fitter for Tully than for Aristotle And is this it in the Application that your Zeal will warn Men of that we must in this take heed of joyning with the Papists Do you mean Rank Good-Works with Inherent Holiness and not with the First Sanctification and you then do widely differ from the Papists Will not your Reader say 1. What doth Inherent Holiness differ from the First
words to jeer away Conviction you tell me We must have some better account of you quem quibus than what you have given us yet I shall take leave to present our indifferent Readers with a more ingenuous and truer state of the Question far more suitable both to my plain meaning and the clear purport of your Direction Let the Case be this There is One who of late hath raised much dust among us about the grand Article of Justification Whether it be by Faith without Works or by Faith and Works too All our old Renowned Divines on this side and beyond the Seas are unanimously agreed that Justification is by Faith alone i. e. without Works This one Person hath often published his Judgment to the contrary so that a poor Academical Doctor may very rationally enquire of you Who in this case is to be preferred That one or those many Answ There was a Disputant who would undertake to conquer any Adversary When he was asked How He said he would pour out upon him so many and so gross untruths as should leave him nothing to answer congruously but a Mentiris and then all the World would judg him uncivil and condemn him for giving such an unreverent answer But you shall not so prevail with me but I will call your Reader to answer these Questions 1. Whether it be any truer that This is the clear purport of my Direction than it is that I say There is but one Star in the Firmament because I say that one Star is more Luminous than many Candles 2. Whether if a diseased Reader will put such a Sense upon my words his Forgery be a true stating of the Question between him and me with out my consent 3. Whether an intimation that this ONE is either Vnicus or Primus or Singular in the definition of Justification or the interest of Works be any truer than that he is the only ejected Minister in England While the writings of Bucer Ludov. Crocius Joh. Bergius Conrad Bergius Calixtus Placeus le Blank Dave Gatak Wott Prest Ball and multitudes such are visible still among us 4. Whether he deals truly wisely or friendly with the holy Scripures and the Protestants who would perswade the Ignorant that this is the true state of the Controversie Whether it be by Faith without Works or by Faith and Works too that we are justified While the Scripture speaketh both and all Protestants hold both in several senses And whether this easie stating of Controversies without more Explication or Distinction be worthy an Academical Disputant 5. Whether it be true or notoriously false that All our Renowned Divines on this side and beyond the Seas are agreed of that in this Question of the interest of Works which this one contradicteth 6. Whether this Doctors naked Affirmation hereof be better proof than that one Mans citation of the words of above an Hundred yea many Hundred as giving as much to Works as he doth is of the Contrary 7. Whether it be an ingenuous way beseeming Academics to talk at this rate and assert such a stating of the Question and such consent without one word of notice or mention of the Books in which I state the Question and bring all this evidence of consent 8. If such a Doctor will needs enquire whether the secret thoughts of the Writer meant not himself when he pretendeth but to accuse the Rule there given and should enquire but of the meaning of the words whether it savour more of Rationality or a presumptuous usurping the Prerogative of God § XVI Pag. 27. Though your approach be wrathful you are constrained to come nearer yet and you cannot deny my Rule of Direct in other Points but only those of High and difficult speculation And do you deny it there You will deal with it but as the application of that Rule to the Definition of Justification And shall we lose your favour by forcing you to lay by your Opposition as to all the rest But here you say you exceedingly differ from me Or else you would be ashamed of so much Combating in the dark Exceeding oft signifieth some extream Your Reasons are 1. You hold not the Doctrine of Justification to be properly of Speculative concern but wholly Practical Where yet you confess that in all Practical knowledg there be some antecedent contemplations of the Nature Properties End Object and that to know the certain number of Paces bâ—me-ward is a Speculative nicety Answ And can you find no fairer a shift for disagreement I would such as you made not the Doctrine of Justification too little Practical I am far from thinking that it is not Practical But is not a Logical definition the opening the Nature Properties End Object or some of these which you call Contemplations Make not plain things dark Sir The use of Art is not to shut the Windows and confound Mens Minds I take all Theologie to be together Scientia-affectiva-practica for our Intellect Will and Practice must be possest or ruled by it But it is first Scientia and we must know before we can will and practise And though all right knowledg tend to Practice yet forgive me for telling you that I think that many holy Persons in Scripture and Primitive times loved and practised more than you or I who knew not how to form an exact Logical Definition And that he that knoweth the things of the Spirit spiritually by Scripture Notions may practise them as fully as he that knoweth and speaketh them in the Notions of Aristotle or else the School-Men excel the Apostles Though ambling be an easie Pace which Horses are taught by Gives and Fetters it followeth not that a Horse cannot travel as far in his natural pace When you have said all Logical defining shall be a work of Art and the Church should not be torn and Souls shall not be damned for want of it He that Loveth Believeth Hopeth Obeyeth and by doing them hath a reflecting perception what they are and hath but such a knowledg of the Gospel as may be had without a proper Definition shall be saved Pag. 28 29. you say Nor is the Doctrine of Justification so high and difficult but that the meanest Christian may understand it sufficiently to Salvation so far as words can make it intelligible Answ Your own blows seem not to hurt you I thank you for granting so much hope to the meanest Christians But what 's this to your Case 1. Do the meanest Christians know how to define Justification and all the Grace which they have 2. Are they acquainted with all the Words that should make it intelligible Pag. 29. you add You have done little service to your weaker Christians to perswade them otherwise as well as to the great blessed Charter of Salvation and to lead them out of the plain road into Woods and Mazes to that one Man of extraordinary Judgment and Clearness no body must know what his Name is or where he dwells and
who am thus publickly by visible Calumny traduced truly to tell you where you mistake and how you wrong Gods Church and Truth more than me and if also I offer peaceably to wash my own face this is hard fronted Calumny dragging a Doctor in Scarlet at the Wheels of my Chariot which might occasion his degrading and turning out c. This over-tenderness of your honour as to other mens words and too little care of the means of it as to your own hath a cause that it concerneth you to find out Had you the tenth part as many Books written against you as are against me by Quakers Seekers Infidels Antinomians Millenaries Anabaptists Separatists Semi-separatists Papists Pseudo-Tilenus Diocesans Conformists and many Enemies of Peace to whom it was not I but your self that joyned you it would have hardened you into some more patience If you will needs be militant you must expect replies And he that will injuriously speak to the World what he should not speak must look to hear what he would not hear But you add Sir the Name and Quality of a DOCTOR and Master of a Literate Society might have been treated more civilly by you Answ 1. I am ready to ask you forgiveness for any word that any impartial man yea or your Reverend Brethren of that Academy themselves whom I will allow to be somewhat partial for you shall notifie to me to be uncivil or any way injurious 2. But to be free with you neither Doctorship Mastership nor â—carlet will Priviledg you to fight against Truth Right and Peace and to vent gross mistakes and by gross untruths in matter of fact such as is your Omnem ludibrio habet imputationem to abuse your poor Brethren and keep the longconsuming flà mes still burning by false representing those as Popish and I know not what who speak not as unaptly as your self and all this without contradiction Were you a Bp. my Body and Estate might be in your power but Truth Justice and the Love of Christians and the Churches peace should not be cowardly betrayed by me on pretense of reverence to your Name and Quality I am heartily desirous that for ORDER-sake the Name and Honour of my Superiours may be very reverently used But if they will think that Errour Injustice and Confusion must take sanctuary under bare Ecclesiastical or Academical Names and robes they will find themselves mistaken Truth and Honesty will conquer when they pass through Smithfield flames Prisons confine them not Death kills them not No siege will force an honest Conscience by famine to give up He that cannot endure the sight of his own excrements must not dish them up to another mans Table lest they be sent him back again And more freedom is allowed against Peace-Breakers in Frays and Wars than towards men that are in a quieter sort of Controversie § XX. P. 36.37 You say For your various Definitions of Justification Constitutive Sentential Executive in Foro Dei in foro Conscientiae c. What need this heap of distinctions here when you know the question betwixt us is of no other Justification but the Constitutive in foro Dei that which maketh us righteous in the Court of Heaven I have nothing to do with you yet in any else as your own Conscience will tell you when you please If you have not more Justice and civility for your intelligent Readers I wish you would shew more Compassion to your Ignorant Homagers and not thus abuse them with your palpable Evasions Answ Doth the question Whether the several sorts of Justification will bear one and the same Definition deserve all this anger and the much greater that followeth 1. Seeing I am turned to my Reader I will crave his impartial judgment I never received and agreed on a state of the question with this Doctor He writeth against my books In those Books I over and over and over distinguish of Justification Constitutive Sentential and Executive besides those subordinate sorts by Witness Evidence Apology c. I oft open their differences He writeth against me as denying all Imputation of Christs Righteousness and holding Popish Justification by works and never tells me whether he take the word Justification in the same sense that I do or in which of those that I had opened And now he passionately appealeth to my Conscience that I knew his sence What he saith my Conscience will tell me it is not true It will tell me no such thing but the clean contrary that even after all his Disputes and Anger and these words I profess I know not what he meaneth by Justification 2. What Constitutive in foro Dei that which maketh us Righteous in the Court of Heaven meaneth with him I cannot conjecture He denyeth not my Distinctions but saith what need they I ever distinguished Making Righteous Judging Righteous Executively useing as Righteous The first is in our selves The second is by Divines said to be in foro Dei an act of Judgment the third is upon us after both now he seemeth to confound the two first and yet denyeth not their difference and saith he meaneth Constitutive in foro He that is made Righteous is such in se and as such is Justifiable in foro We are Made Righteous by God as free Donor and Imputer antecedently to judgment We are in foro sentenced Righteous by God as Judg so that this by sentence presupposeth the former God never Judgeth us Righteous and Justifieth us against Accusation till he have first Made us Righteous and Justified us from adherent Guilt by Pardon and Donation Which of these meaneth he I ask not my Ignorant homagers who know no more than I but his Intelligent Reader He taketh on him to go the Commonest way of Protestants And the Commonest way is to acknowledg that a Constitutive Justification or making the man Just antecedent to the Actus forensis must need go first but that it is the second which Paul usually meaneth which is the actus forensis the sentence of the Judg in foro contrary to Condemnation And doth the Doctor think that to make Righteous and to sentence as Righteous are all one and that we are made Righteous in foro otherwise than to be just in our selves and so Justifiable in foro before the Sentence or do Protestants take the Sentence to be Constituting or Making us Righteous All this is such talk as had I read it in Mr. Bunnyan of the Covenants or any of my Ignorant Homagers I should have said the Author is a stranger to the Controversie into which he hath rashly plunged himself but I have more reverence to so learned a man and therefore blame my dull understanding 3. But what if I had known as I do not yet what sort of Justification he meaneth Doth he not know that I was then debating the Case with him whether the Logical Definitions of Justification Faith c. are not a work of Art in which a few well-studied
Lusts and deny their Wills and Worldly Interests to which end at last they got into Wildernesses and Monasteries where in Fasting and Prayer and a single life they might live as it were out of the World while they were in it Though indeed persecution first drove them thither to save themselves Into these Deserts and Monasteries those went that had most Zeal but not usually most Knowledg And they turned much of their Doctrine and discourses about these Austerities and about the practices of a Godly Life and about all the Miracles which were some really done and some feigned by credulous soft people said to be done among them So that in all these ages most of their writings are taken up 1. In defending Christianity against the Heathens which was the work of the Learned Doctors 2. And in confuting swarms of Heresies that sprung up 3. And in matters of Church-order and Ecclesiastical and Monastical discipline 4. And in the precepts of a Godly Life But the point of Imputation was not only not meddled with distinctly but almost all the Writers of those times seem to give very much to Mans free-will and to works of Holiness and sufferings making too rare and obscure mention of the distinct Interests of Christs Merits in our Justification at least with any touch upon this Controversie Yet generally holding Pardon and Grace and Salvation only by Christs Sacrifice and Merits though they spake most of Mans Holiness when they called men to seek to make sure of Salvation § 5. And indeed at the day of Judgment the Question to be decided will not be Whether Christ dyed and did his part but Whether we believed and obeyed him and did our part Not Whether Christ performed his Covenant with the Father but Whether we performed our Covenant with him For it is not Christ that is to be judged but we by Christ § 6. But Pelagius and Augustine disputing about the Power of Nature and Freewill and the Grace of Christ began to make it a matter of great Ingenuity as Erasmus speaketh to be a Christian Pelagius a Brittain of great wit and continence and a good and sober life as Austin saith Epist 120. stifly defended the Power of Nature and Freewill and made Grace to consist only in the free Pardon of all sin through Christ and in the Doctrine and Perswasions only to a holy life for the time to come with Gods common ordinary help Augustine copiously and justly defended God's special eternal Election of some and his special Grace given them to make them repent and believe and presevere For though he maintained that some that were true Believers Lovers of God Justified and in a state of Salvation did fall away and perish yet he held that none of the Elect did fall away and perish And he maintained that even the Justified that fell away had their Faith by a special Grace above nature Vid. August de bono Persever Cap. 8. 9. de Cor. Grat. Cap. 8 9. alibi passim § 7. In this their Controversie the point of Justification fell into frequent debate But no Controversie ever arose between them Whether Christ's personal Righteousness considered Materially or Formally was by Imputation made ours as Proprietors of the thing it self distinct from its effects or Whether God reputed us to have satisfied and also perfectly obeyed in Christ For Augustine himself while he vehemently defendeth free Grace speaketh too little even of the Pardon of sin And though he say that Free Pardon of sins is part of Grace yet he maketh Justification to be that which we call Sanctification that makes us inherently Righteous or new-Creatures by the operation of the Holy Ghost And he thinketh that this is the Justification which Paul pleadeth to be of Grace and not of works yet including Pardon of sin and confessing that sometimes to Justifie signifieth in Scripture not to make just but to judg just And though in it self this be but de nomine and not de re yet 1. no doubt but as to many texts of Scripture Austin was mistaken though some few texts Beza and others confess to be taken in his sence 2. And the exposition of many texts lieth upon it But he that took Justification to be by the operation of the Holy Ghost giving us Love to God could not take it to be by Imputation in the rigorous sence no question nor doth de re § 8. But because as some that it seems never read Augustine or understood not plain words have nevertheless ventured confidently to deny what I have said of his Judgment in the points of Perseverance in my Tract of Perseverance so it 's like such men will have no more wariness what they say in the point of Justification I will cite a few of Augustin's words among many to show what he took Justification to be though I differ from him de nomine Nec quia recti sunt corde sed etiam ut recti sint corde pretendit Justitiam suam quâ justificat impium Quo motu receditur ab illo fonte vitae cujus solius haustu justitia bibitur bona scil vita Aug. de Spir. Lit. Cap. 7. Deus est enim qui operatur in eis velle operari pro bona voluntate Haec est Justitia Dei hoc est quam Deus donat homini quum justificat impium Hanc Dei justitiam ignorantes superbi Judaei suam volentes constituere justitiae Dei non sunt subjecti Dei quippe dixit Justitiam quae homini ex Deo est suam vero quam putant sibi suficere ad facienda mandata sine adjutorio dono ejus qui legem dedit His antem similes sunt qui cum profiteantur se esse Christianos ipsi gratiae Christi sic adversantur ut se humanis viribus divina existiment implere mandata Epist 120. cap. 21. 22. Epist 200. Et de Spir. lit c. 26. Factores justificabuntur Non tanquam per opera nam per Gratiam justificentur Cum dicat Gratis justificari hominem per fidem sine operibus legis nihilque aliud velit intelligi in eo quod dicit Gratu nisi quia justificationem opera non precedunt Aperte quippe alibi dicit si gratiâ jam non ex operibus alioquin gratia non est gratia Sed sic intelligendum est factores Legis justificabuntur ut sciamus eos non esse factores legis nisi justificentur ut non justificatio factoribus accedat sed factores legis justificatio precedat Quid est enim aliud Justificati quam Justi facti ab illo scilicet qui justificat Impium â—t ex impio fiat justus Aut certe ita dictum est Justificabuntur ac si diceretur Justi habebuntur justi deputabuntur Et ibid. cap. 29. Gentes qua non sectabantur justitiam apprehenderunt justitiam Justitiam autem quae ex fide est impretrando eam ex Deo non
ex seipsis presumendo Israel vero persequens legem justitiae in legem justitiae non pervenit Quare Quia non ex fide sed tanquam ex operibus id est tanquam eam per seipsos operantes non in se credentes operari Deum Deus est enim qui operatur in nobis Finis enim legis Christus est omni credenti Et adhuc dubitamus quae sint opera legis quibus homo non justificatur si ea tanquam sua credederit sine adjutorio dono Dei quod est ex fide Jesu Christi Vt possit homo facere bona Sancta Deus operatur in homine per fidem Jesu Christi qui finis ad Justitiam omni credenti id est per Spiritum incorporatus factusque membrum ejus potest quisque illo incrementum intrinsecus dante operari justitiam Justificatio autem ex fide impetratur In tantum justus in quantum salvus Per hanc enim fidem credemus quod etiam nos Deus a mortuis excitet interim Spiritu ut in novitate ejus gratioe temperanter juste pie vivamus in hoc seculo qui in Resurrectione sibi congrua hoc est in Justificatione precedit c. 30. Fides impetrat gratiam qua Lex impleatur Cap. 28. pag. 315. Ibi Lex Dei non ex omni parte delata per injustitiam profecto scribitur renovata per gratiam Nec istam inscriptionem quae Justificatio est poterat efficere in Judaeis Lex in tabulis scripta Ibid. Cap. 9. pag. 307 308. Justitia Dei manifestata est non dixit Justitia hominis vel justitia propriae voluntatis sed justitia Dei Non qua Deus justus est sed qua induit hominem cum justificat impium Haec testificatur per Legem Prophetas Huic quippe testimonium perhibent Lex Prophetae Lex quidem hoc ipso quod jubendo minando neminem justificando satis indicat dono Dei justificari hominem per Adjutorium Spiritus Justitia autem Dei per fidem Jesu Christi hoc est per fidem qua Creditur in Christum sicut autem ista fides Christi dicta non est qua Credit Christus sic illa Justitia Dei non qua Justus est Deus Vtrumque enim Nostrum est sed ideo Dei Christi dicitur quod ejus nobis largitate donatur Justitia Dei sine lege est quam Deus per Spiritum Gratiae Credenti confert sine adjutorio legis Justificati gratis per gratiam ipsius non quod sine voluntate nostra fiat sed voluntas nostra ostenditur infirma per legem ut sanet Gratia Voluntatem sanata voluntas impleat Legem Et cap. 10. Confugiant per fidem ad Justificantem Gratiam per donum Spiritus suavitate justitiae delectati poenam literae minantis evadant Vid. Ep. 89. q. 2. Et lib. 3. ad Bonifac. c. 7. Et Tract 3. in Joan. when he saith that Omnes qui per Christum Justificati justi non in se sed in illo he expoundeth it of Regeneration by Christ Et Serm. 15. de verb. Apost Sine voluntate tua non erit in te Justitia Dei Voluntas non est nisi tua Justitia non est nisi Dei he expounds it of Holiness Traditus est propter delicta nostra resurrexit propter justificationem nostram Quid est Propter Justificationem nostram Vt justificet nos justos faciat nos Eris opus Dei non solum quia homo es sed quia Justus es Qui fecit te sine te non te justificat sine te Tamen ipse justificat ne sit justitia tua Dei justitiam dat non litera occidens sed vivificans Spiritus Vid. de Grat. Christi Cap. 13 14. Abundance such passages in Augustine fully shew that he took Justification to signifie Sanctification or the Spirits renovation of us and thinks it is called the Righteousness of God and Christ and not ours because by the Spirit he worketh it in us And when he saith that bona opera sequuntur Justificatum non precedunt Justificandum as in sence he often doth he meaneth that we are freely sanctified before we do good I would cite abundance but for swelling the writing and tiring the Reader And his followers Prosper and Fulgentius go the same way as you may easily find in their writings Johan Crocius in his copious Treatise of Justification Disp 9. p. 442. saith Augustinum Justificationis nomine utramque partem complecti id est tum Remissionem peccatorum quae proprie Justificatio dicitur tum Sanctificationem Cum quo nos sentimus quoad rem ipsam tantum dissidemus in loquendi formâ § 9. The Schoolmen being led by the Scholastick wit of Augustine fell into the same phrase of speech and opinions Lombard making Augustine his Master and the rest making him theirs till some began to look more towards the Semipelagian way § 10. And when Church-Tyranny and Ignorance had obscured the Christian Light the true sence of Justification by the Righteousness of Christ was much obscured with the rest and a world of humane inventions under the name of Good works were brought in to take up the peoples minds And the merits of man and of the Virgin Mary sounded louder than the merits of Christ in too many places And the people that were ignorant of the true Justification were filled with the noise of Pardons Indulgences Satisfactions Penances Pilgrimages and such like § 11. Luther finding the Church in this dangerous and woful state where he lived did labour to reduce mens minds and trust from humane fopperies and merits and indulgences to Christ and to help them to the Knowledg of true Righteousness But according to his temper in the heat of his Spirit he sometimes let fall some words which seemed plainly to make Christs own personal Righteousness in it self to be every Believers own by Imputation and our sins to be verily Christs own sins in themselves by Imputation Though by many other words he sheweth that he meant only that our sins were Christs in the effects and not in themselves and Christs personal Righteousness ours in the effects and not in it self § 12. But his Book on the Galatians and some other words gave occasion to the errours of some then called Antinomians and afterward Libertines when some additions were made to their errours Of these Islebius Agricola was the chief Whom Luther confuted and reduced better expounding his own words But Islebius ere long turned back to the Contrary extreme of Popery and with Sidonius and Julius Pflug three Popish Bishops made for that purpose promoted the Emperours Interim to the persecution of the Protestants § 13. The Protestant Reformers themselves spake variously of this subject Most of them rightly asserted that Christ's Righteousness was ours by the way of Meriting our Righteousness which was therefore said to be Imputed to us
save us from suffering but he obeyed not to save us from obeying but to bring us to Obedience Yet his Perfection of Obedience had this end that perfect Obedience might not be necessary in us to our Justification and Salvation 27. It was not we our selves who did perfectly obey or were perfectly holy or suffered for sin in the Person of Christ or by Him Nor did we Naturally or Morally merit our own Salvation by obeying in Christ nor did we satisfie Gods Justice for our sins nor purchase pardon of Salvation to our selves by our Suffering in and by Christ All such phrase and sence is contrary to Scripture But Christ did this for us 28. Therefore God doth not repute us to have done it seeing it is not true 29. It is impossible for the individual formal Righteousness of Christ to be our Formal personal Righteousness Because it is a Relation and Accident which cannot be translated from subject to subject and cannot be in divers subjects the same 30. Where the question is Whether Christs Material Righteousness that is his Habits Acts and Sufferings themselves be Ours we must consider how a man can have Propriety in Habits Acts and Passions who is the subject of them and in Actions who is the Agent of them To Give the same Individual Habit or Passion to another is an Impossibility that is to make him by Gift the subject of it For it is not the same if it be in another subject To make one man really or physically to have been the Agent of anothers Act even that Individual Act if he was not so is a contradiction and impossibility that is to make it true that I did that which I did not To be ours by Divine Imputation cannot be to be ours by a false Reputation or supposition that we did what we did not For God cannot err or lie There is therefore but one of these two ways left Either that we our selves in person truly had the habits which Christ had and did all that Christ did and suffered all that he suffered and so satisfied and merited Life in and by him as by an Instrument or Legal Representer of our persons in all this Which I am anon to Confute or else That Christs Satisfaction Righteousness and the Habits Acts and Sufferings in which it lay are imputed to us and made ours not rigidly in the very thing it self but in the Effects and Benefits In as much as we are as really Pardoned Justified Adopted by them as the Meritorious cause by the instrumentality of the Covenants Donation as if we our selves had done and suffered all that Christ did as a Mediator and Sponsor do and suffer for us I say As really and certainly and with a fuller demonstration of Gods Mercy and Wisdom and with a sufficient demonstration of his Justice But not that our propriety in the benefits is in all respects the same as it should have been if we had been done and suffered our selves what Christ did Thus Christs Righteousness is ours 31. Christ is truly The Lord our Righteousness in more respects than one or two 1. In that he is the meritorious Cause of the Pardon of all our sins and our full Justification Adoption and right to Glory and by his Satisfaction and Merits only our Justification by the Covenant of Grace against the Curse of the Law of Works is purchased 2. In that he is the Legislator Testator and Donor of our Pardon and Justification by this new-Testament or Covenant 3. In that he is the Head of Influx and King and Intercessor by and from whom the Spirit is given to sanctifie us to God and cause us sincerely to perform the Conditions of the Justifying and saving Covenant in Accepting and Improving the mercy then given 4. In that he is the Righteous Judge and Justifyer of Believers by sentence of Judgment In all these Respects he is The Lord our Righteousness 32. We are said to be made the Righteousness of God in him 1. In that as he was used like a sinner for us but not esteemed one by God so we are used like Innocent persons so far as to be saved by him 2. In that through his Merits and upon our union with him when we believe and consent to his Covenant we are pardoned and justified and so made Righteous really that is such as are not to be condemned but to be glorified 3. In that the Divine Nature and Inherent Righteousness to them that are in him by Faith are for his Merits given by the Holy Ghost 4. In that God's Justice and Holiness Truth Wisdom and Mercy are all wonderfully demonstrated in this way of pardoning and justifying sinners by Christ Thus are we made the Righteousness of God in him 31. For Righteousness to be imputed to us is all one as to be accounted Righteous Rom. 4.6 11. notwithstanding that we be not Righteous as fulfillers of the Law of Innocency 34. For Faith to be imputed to us for Righteousness Rom. 4.22 23 24. is plainly meant that God who under the Law of Innocency required perfect Obedience of us to our Justification and Glorification upon the satisfaction and merits of Christ hath freely given a full Pardon and Right to Life to all true Believers so that now by the Covenant of Grace nothing is required of us to our Justification but Faith all the rest being done by Christ And so Faith in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost is reputed truly to be the condition on our part on which Christ and Life by that Baptismal Covenant are made ours 35. Justification Adoption and Life eternal are considered 1. Quoad ipsam rem as to the thing it self in value 2. Quoad Ordinem Conferendi Recipiendi as to the order and manner of Conveyance and Participation In the first respect It is a meer free-gift to us purchased by Christ In the second respect It is a Reward to Believers who thankfully accept the free-Gift according to its nature and uses 36. It is an error contrary to the scope of the Gospel to say that the Law of Works or of Innocency doth justifie us as performed either by our selves or by Christ For that Law condemneth and curseth us And we are not efficiently justified by it but from or against it 37. Therefore we have no Righteousness in Reality or Reputation formally ours which consisteth in the first species that is in a Conformity to the Preceptive part of the Law of Innocency we are not reputed Innocent But only a Righteousness which consisteth in Pardon of all sin and right to life with sincere performance of the Condition of the Covenant of Grace that is True Faith 38. Our pardon puts not away our Guilt of Fact or Fault but our Guilt of or obligation to Punishment God doth not repute us such as never sinned or such as by our Innocency merited Heaven but such as are not to be damned but to be glorified because pardoned and adopted
person And if any will improperly call that the Personating and Representing of the sinner let them limit it and confess that it is not simply but in tantum so far and to such uses and no other and that yet sinners did it not in and by Christ but only Christ for them to convey the benefits as he pleased And then we delight not to quarrel about mere words though we like the phrase of Scripture better than theirs 21. If Christ was perfectly Holy and Obedient in our persons and we in him then it was either in the Person of Innocent man before we sinned or of sinful man The first cannot be pretended For man as Innocent had not a Redeemer If of sinful man then his perfect Obedience could not be meritorious of our Salvation For it supposeth him to do it in the person of a sinner and he that hath once sinned according to that Law is the Child of death and uncapable of ever fulfilling a Law which is fulfilled with nothing but sinless perfect perpetual Obedience Obj. He first suffered in our stead and persons as sinners and then our sin being pardoned he after in our persons fulfilled the Law instead of our after-Obedience to it Ans 1. Christs Obedience to the Law was before his Death 2. The sins which he suffered for were not only before Conversion but endure as long as our lives Therefore if he fulfilled the Law in our persons after we have done sinning it is in the persons only of the dead 3. We are still obliged to Obedience our selves Obj. But yet though there be no such difference in Time God doth first Impute his sufferings to us for pardon of all our sins to the death and in order of nature his Obedience after it as the Merit of our Salvation Ans 1. God doth Impute or Repute his sufferings the satisfying cause of our Pardon and his Merits of Suffering and the rest of his Holiness and Obedience as the meritorious cause of our Pardon and our Justification and Glory without dividing them But 2. that implyeth that we did not our selves reputatively do all this in Christ As shall be further proved 22. Their way of Imputation of the Satisfaction of Christ overthroweth their own doctrine of the Imputation of his Holiness and Righteousness For if all sin be fully pardoned by the Imputed Satisfaction then sins of Omission and of habitual Privation and Corruption are pardoned and then the whole punishment both of Sense and Loss is remitted And he that hath no sin of Omission or Privation is a perfect doer of his duty and holy and he that hath no punishment of Loss hath title to Life according to that Covenant which he is reputed to have perfectly obeyed And so he is an heir of life without any Imputed Obedience upon the pardon of all his Disobedience Obj. But Adam must have obeyed to the Death if he would have Life eternal Therefore the bare pardon of his sins did not procure his right to life Ans True if you suppose that only his first sin was pardoned But 1. Adam had right to heaven as long as he was sinless 2. Christ dyed for all Adams sins to the last breath and not for the first only And so he did for all ours And if all the sins of omission to the death be pardoned Life is due to us as righteous Obj. A Stone may be sinless and yet not righteous nor have Right to life Ans True because it is not a capable subject But a man cannot be sinless but he is Righteous and hath right to life by Covenant Obj. But not to punish is one thing and to Reward is another Ans They are distinct formal Relations and Notions But where felicity is a Gift and called a Reward only for the terms and order of Collation and where Innocency is the same with perfect Duty and is the title-Condition there to be punished is to be denyed the Gift and to be Rewarded is to have that Gift as qualified persons and not to Reward is materially to punish and to be reputed innocent is to be reputed a Meriter And it is impossible that the most Innocent man can have any thing from God but by way of free-Gift as to the Thing in Value however it may be merited in point of Governing Paternal Justice as to the Order of donation Obj. But there is a greater Glory merited by Christ than the Covenant of works promised to man Ans 1. That 's another matter and belongeth not to Justification but to Adoption 2. Christs Sufferings as well as his Obedience considered as meritorious did purchase that greater Glory 3. We did not purchase or merit it in Christ but Christ for us 23. Their way of Imputation seemeth to me to leave no place or possibility for Pardon of sin or at least of no sin after Conversion I mean that according to their opinion who think that we fulfilled the Law in Christ as we are elect from eternity it leaveth no place for any pardon And according to their opinion who say that we fulfilled it in him as Believers it leaveth no place for pardon of any sin after Faith For where the Law is reputed perfectly fulfilled in Habit Act there it is reputed that the person hath no sin We had no sin before we had a Being and if we are reputed to have perfectly obeyed in Christ from our first Being we are reputed sinless But if we are reputed to have obeyed in him only since our believing then we are reputed to have no sin since our Believing Nothing excludeth sin if perfect Habitual and Actual Holiness and Obedience do not 24. And consequently Christs blood shed and Satisfaction is made vain either as to all our lives or to all after our 〈◊〉 believing 25. And then no believer must confess his sin nor his desert of punishment nor repent of it or be humbled for it 26. And then all prayer for the pardon of such sin is vain and goeth upon a false supposition that we have sin to pardon 27. And then no man is to be a partaker of the Sacrament as a Conveyance or Seal of such pardon nor to believe the promise for it 28. Nor is it a duty to give thanks to God or Christ for any such pardon 29. Nor can we expect Justification from such guilt here or at Judgment 30. And then those in Heaven praise Christ in errour when they magnifie him that washed them from such sins in his blood 31. And it would be no lie to say that we have no sin at least since believing 32. Then no believer should fear sinning because it is Impossible and a Contradiction for the same person to be perfectly innocent to the death and yet a sinner 33. Then the Consciences of believers have no work to do or at least no examining convincing self-accusing and self-judging work 34. This chargeth God by Consequence of wronging all believers whom he layeth
Righteousness consisting in 1. perfect Innocency 2. And that in the Works of the Jewish Law which bind us not 3. And in doing his peculiar Works as Miracles Resurrection c. which were all His Righteousness as a conformity to that Law and performance of that Covenant which was made with and to him as Mediator But his Righteousness is the Meritorious Cause and Reason of another Righteousness or Justification distinct from his freely given us by the Father and himself by his Covenant So that here indeed the Similitude much cleareth the Matter And they that will not blaspheme Christ by making guilt of sin it self in its formal Relation to be his own and so Christ to be formally as great a sinner as all the Redeemed set together and they that will not overthrow the Gospel by making us formally as Righteous as Christ in kind and measure must needs be agreed with us in this part of the Controversie Object 9. When you infer That if we are reckoned to have perfectly obeyed in and by Christ we cannot be again bound to obey our selves afterward nor be guilty of any sin you must know that it 's true That we cannot be bound to obey to the same ends as Christ did which is to redeem us or to fulfil the Law of Works But yet we must obey to other ends viz. Ingratitude and to live to God and to do good and other such like Answ 1. This is very true That we are not bound to obey to all the same ends that Christ did as to redeem the World nor to fulfil the Law of Innocency But hence it clearly followeth that Christ obeyed not in each of our Persons legally but in the Person of a Mediator seeing his due Obedience and ours have so different Ends and a different formal Relation his being a conformity proximately to the Law given him as Mediator that they are not so much as of the same species much less numerically the same 2. And this fully proveth that we are not reckoned to have perfectly obeyed in and by him For else we could not be yet obliged to obey though to other ends than he was For either this Obedience of Gratitude is a Duty or not If not it is not truly Obedience nor the omission sin If yea then that Duty was made a Duty by some Law And if by a Law we are now bound to obey in gratitude or for what ends soever either we do all that we are so bound to do or not If we do it or any of it then to say that we did it twice once by Christ and once by our selves is to say that we were bound to do it twice and then Christ did not all that we were bound to but half But what Man is he that sinneth not Therefore seeing it is certain that no Man doth all that he is bound to do by the Gospel in the time and measure of his Faith Hope Love Fruitfulness c. it followeth that he is a sinner and that he is not supposed to have done all that by Christ which he failed in both because he was bound to do it himself and because he is a sinner for not doing it 3. Yea the Gospel binds us to that which Christ could not do for us it being a Contradiction Our great Duties are 1. To believe in a Saviour 2. To improve all the parts of his Mediation by a Life of Faith 3. To repent of our sins 4. To mortifie sinful Lusts in our selves 5. To fight by the Spirit against our flesh 6. To confess our selves sinners 7. To pray for pardon 8. To pray for that Grace which we culpably want 9. To love God for redeeming us 10. Sacramentally to covenant with Christ and to receive him and his Gifts with many such like which Christ was not capable of doing in and on his own Person for us though as Mediator he give us Grace to do them and pray for the pardon of our sins as in our selves 4. But the Truth which this Objection intimateth we all agree in viz. That the Mediator perfectly kept the Law of Innocency that the keeping of that Law might not be necessary to our Salvation and so such Righteousness necessary in our selves but that we might be pardoned for want of perfect Innocency and be saved upon our sincere keeping of the Law of Grace because the Law of Innocency was kept by our Mediator and thereby the Grace of the New-Covenant merited and by it Christ Pardon Spirit and Life by him freely given to Believers Object 10. The same Person may be really a sinner in himself and yet perfectly innocent in Christ and by imputation Answ Remember that you suppose here the Person and Subject to be the same Man And then that the two contrary Relations of perfect Innocency or guiltlesness and guilt of any yea much sin can be consistent in him is a gross contradiction Indeed he may be guilty and not guilty in several partial respects but a perfection of guiltlesness excludeth all guilt But we are guilty of many a sin after Conversion and need a Pardon All that you should say is this We are sinners our selves but we have a Mediator that sinned not who merited Pardon and Heaven for sinners 2. But if you mean that God reputeth us to be perfectly innocent when we are not because that Christ was so it is to impute Error to God He reputeth no Man to be otherwise than he is But he doth indeed first give and then impute a Righteousness Evangelical to us instead of perfect Innocency which shall as certainly bring us to Glory and that is He giveth us both the Renovation of his Spirit to Evangelical Obedience and a Right by free gift to Pardon and Glory for the Righteousness of Christ that merited it And this thus given us he reputeth to be an acceptable Righteousness in us CHAP. VI. Animadversions on some of Dr. T. Tullies Strictures § 1. I Suppose the Reader desireth not to be wearied with an examination of all Dr. Tullies words which are defective in point of Truth Justice Charity Ingenuity or Pertinency to the Matter but to see an answer to those that by appearance of pertinent truth do require it to disabuse the incautelous Readers Though somewhat by the way may be briefly said for my own Vindication And this Tractate being conciliatory I think meet here to leave out most of the words and personal part of his contendings and also to leave that which concerneth the interest of Works as they are pleased to call Man's performance of the Conditions of the Covenant of Grace in our Justification to a fitter place viz. To annex what I think needful to my friendly Conference with Mr. Christopher Cartwright on the Subject which Dr. Tullies Assault perswadeth me to publish § 2. pag. 71. Justif Paulin. This Learned Doctor saith The Scripture mentioneth no Justification in foro Dei at all but that One which is Absolution from
Maledictory Sentence of the Law but also that we are first made and then accounted Persons first meet for Absolution and next meet for God's Acceptance of us as just and as Heirs of Life Eternal and meet for the great Reward in Heaven For when the Apostle denieth Justification by Works it is not credible that he meaneth only that By the Works of the Law no Man is absolved from the Curse of the Law But also No Man by the Works of the Law is before God taken for a Performer of the necessary Condition of Absolution and Salvation nor fit for his Acceptance and for the Heavenly Reward Answ 2. But let the Reader here note that the Doctor supposeth James to mean that By Works a Man is absolved from the Maledictory Sentence of the Law and not by Faith only For that James speaks of Justification in foro Dei is past all doubt And who would have thought that the Doctor had granted this of the Text of James But mistakes seldom agree among themselves Answ 3. And would not any Man have thought that this Author had pleaded for such an Imputation of Christ's Righteousness as justifieth not only from the Maledictory Sentence of the Law but also from the very guilt of sin as sin we being reputed not only pardoned sinners but perfect fulfillers of the Law by Christ and so that we are in Christ conform to the Fac hoc or preceptive part commanding Innocency Who would have thought but this was his drift If it be not all his angry Opposition to me is upon a mistake so foul as reverence forbids me to name with its proper Epithets If it be how can the same Man hold That we are justified as in Christ conform to the Precept of perfect Innocency And yet that The Scripture mentioneth no Justification at all in foro Dei besides that one which is Absolution from the Maledictory Sentence of the Law But still mistakes have discord with themselves Answ 4. It is the judgment indeed of Mr. Gataker Wotton Piscator Paraeus Vrsine Wendeline and abundance other excellent Divines that as sins of omission are truly sin and poena damni or privations truly punishment so for a sinner for his sin to be denied God's Love and Favour Grace and Glory is to be punished and to be pardoned is to have this privative punishment remitted as well as the rest and so that Justification containeth our Right to Glory as it is the bare forgiveness of the penalty of sin because Death and Life Darkness and Light are such Contraries as that one is but the privation of the other But this Learned Doctor seemeth to be of the commoner Opinion that the Remission of Sin is but one part of our Justification and that by Imputation of perfect Holiness and Obedience we must have another part which is our Right to the Reward and I think a little Explication would end that difference But doth he here then agree with himself And to contradict the common way of those with whom he joyneth Do they not hold that Justification is more than an Absolution from the Maledictory Sentence of the Law Answ 5. But indeed his very Description by Absolution is utterly ambiguous 1. Absolution is either by Actual Pardon by the Law or Covenant of Grace which giveth us our Right to Impunity 2. Or by Sentence of the Judg who publickly decideth our Case and declareth our Right determinatively Or by execution of that Sentence in actual delivering us from penalty And who knoweth which of these he meaneth This is but confusion to describe by an unexplained equivocal word And who knoweth what Law he meaneth whose Maledictory Sentence Justification absolveth us from Doth he think that the Law of Innocency and of Moses and the Law of Grace are all one which Scripture so frequently distinguisheth Or that each of them hath not its Malediction If he deny this I refer him to my full proof of it to Mr. Cartwright and elsewhere If not we should know whether he mean all or which 3. And what he meaneth by the Sentence of the Law is uncertain Whether it be the Laws Commination as obliging us to punishment which is not a Sentence in the usual proper sense but only a virtual Sentence that is the Norma Judicis or whether he mean the Sentence of God as Judg according to the Law which is not the Sentence of the Law properly but of the Judg It 's more intelligible speaking and distinct that must edifie us and end those Controversies which ambiguities and confusion bred and feed Answ 6. But which-ever he meaneth most certainly it is not true that the Scripture mentioneth no other Justification in foro Dei For many of the fore-cited Texts tell us that it oft mentioneth a Justification which is no Absolution from the Maledictory Sentence neither of the Law of Innocency of Moses or of Grace but a Justification of a Man's innocency in tantum or quoad Causam hanc particularem Viz. 1. Sometimes a Justifying the Righteous Man against the slanders of the World or of his Enemies 2. Sometimes a justifying a Man in some one action as having dealt faithfully therein 3. Sometimes a judging a Man to be a faithful Godly Man that performeth the Conditions of Life in the Law of Grace made necessary to God's Acceptance 4. Sometimes for making a Man such or for making him yet more inherently just or continuing him so 5. Sometimes for Justification by the Apology of an Advocate which is not Absolution 6. Sometimes for Justification by Witness 7. And sometimes perhaps by Evidence As appeareth Isa 50.8 Rom. 8.33 and so God himself is said to be justified Psal 51.4 Rom. 3.4 and Christ 1 Tim. 3.16 1 King 8.32 Hear thou in Heaven and do and judg thy Servants condemning the Wicked to bring his way upon his Head and justifying the Righteous to give him according to his Righteousness where the Sentence is passed by the Act of Execution Is this absolving him from the Curse of the Law So 1 Chron. 6.23 so Mat. 12.37 Jam. 2.21 24 25. where Justification by our Words and by Works is asserted and many other Texts so speak Frequently to Justifie is to maintain one or prove him to be just It 's strange that any Divine should find but one sort of sense of Justification before God mentioned in the Scriptures I would give here to the Reader a help for some excuse of the Author viz. that by praeter unam illam quae est Absolutio he might mean which is partly Absolution and partly Acceptation as of a fulfiller of the Precept of Perfection by Christ and partly Right to the Reward all three making up the whole but that I must not teach him how to speak his own mind or think that he knew not how to utter it And specially because the Instances here prove that even so it is very far from Truth had he so spoken Answ 7. But what
Donation by the Gospel-Covenant or Grant And so that Grant or Gospel is the fundamentum of it But the Merits of Christ's Righteousness purchased that Gift and so those Merits are the remote fundamentum or efficient And thus my Justification by the Doctor 's confession is Evangelical 3. I must perish if I have not also a subordinate personal Righteousness consisting in my performance of those Conditions on which the New-Covenant giveth the former And the fundamentum of this Righteousness is the Reality of that performance as related to the Irrogation Imposition or Tenor of the Covenant making this the Condition This is my Heresie if I be heretical and be it right or wrong I will make it intelligible and not by saying and unsaying involve all in confusion § 6. He addeth Ex parte Termini Legalis est quia terminatur in satisfactione Legi praestanda Liberavit me à Lege mortis c. And hence he saith the denomination is properly taken Answ 1. The Reader here seeth that all this Zeal is exercised in a Game at Words or Logical Notions and the Church must be called for the umpirage to stand by in Arms to judg that he hath won the Day What if the denomination be properly to be taken from the Terminus Is it as dangerous as you frightfully pretend to take it aliunde 2. But stay a little Before we come to this we must crave help to understand what he talketh of Is it 1. Justificatio Justificans active sumpta Or 2. Justificatio Justificati passive 3. Or Justitia 1. The first is Actio and the Terminus of that Action is two-fold 1. The Object or Patient a believing Sinner 2. The Effect Justificatio passivè neither of these is the Law or its Malediction But which of these is it that we must needs name it from 2. The passive or effective Justification is in respect of the Subjects Reception called Passio In respect of the form received it is as various as I before mentioned 1. The Effect of the Donative Justification of the Law of Grace is Justitia data a Relation oft described 2. The Effect of the Spirits giving us Inherent Righteousness is a Quality given Acts excited and a Relation thence resulting 3. The Effect of Justification per sententiam Judicis is immediately a Relation Jus Judicatum 4. The Effect of an Advocates Justification is Justitia persona ut defensa seu vindicata 5. The Effect of Executive Justification is Actual Impunity or Liberation And are all these one Terminus or hence one name then These are the Termini of Justificatio Justificantis ut Actionis and nothing of this nature can be plainer than that 1. Remission of sin passively taken the Reatus or Obligatio ad poenam the first ad quem and the second à quo are both the immediate Termini of our Act of Justification 2. That the Terminus Justitiae as it is the formal Relation of a Justified Person as such is the Law as Norma Actionum as to Righteous Actions and the Law or Covenant as making the Condition of Life as to those Actions sub ratione Conditionis Tituli And the Promissory and Minatory part of the Law as Justitia is Jus praemii impunitatis First The Actions and then the Person are Just in Relation to the Law or Covenant by which their Actions and they are to be judged But the remoter Terminus is the malum à quo and the bonum ad quod And as à quo it is not only the evil denounced but also the Reatus or Obligation to it and the efficacious Act of the Law thus cursing and the Accusation of the Actor or Accuser real or possible that is such a terminus II. But when he saith Ex parte Termini Legalis est either still he taketh legal generally as comprehending the Law of Innocency of Works and of Grace or not If he do I must hope he is more intelligent and just than to insinuate to his Reader that I ever mention an Evangelical Justification that is not so legal as to be denominated from the Law of Grace as distinct from that of Works If not he was indebted to his intelligent Reader for some proof that no Man is justified against this false Accusation Thou art by the Law of Grace the Heir of a far sorer punishment for despising the Remedy and not performing the Conditions of Pardon and Life And also for this thou hast no right to Christ and the Gifts of his Covenant of Grace But no such proof is found in his Writings nor can be given III. But his Quia Terminatur in satisfactione Legi praestanda I confess it is a Sentence not very intelligible or edifying to me 1. Satisfactio proprie stricte sic dicta differâ— Ã solutione ejusdem quod sit solutio aequivalentis alias indebite Which of these he meaneth Satisfaction thus strictly taken or solutio ejusdem I know not Nor know what it is that he meaneth by Legi praestandâ Indeed solutio ejusdem is Legi praestanda but not praestita by us personally or by another For we neither kept the Law nor bare the full Penalty And the Law mentioned no Vicarium Obedientiae aut pâ—enae Christ performed the Law as it obliged himself as Mediator and as a Subject but not as it obliged us for it obliged us to Personal performance only And Christ by bearing that Punishment in some respects which we deserved satisfied the Law-giver who had power to take a Commutation but not the Law unless speaking improperly you will say that the Law is satisfied when the remote ends of the Law-giver and Law are obtained For the Law hath but one fixed sense and may be it self changed but changeth not it self nor accepteth a tantundem And Christ's suffering for us was a fulfilling of the Law which peculiarly bound him to suffer and not a Satisfaction loco solutionis ejusdem And it was no fulfilling the Penal part of the Law as it bound us to suffer For so it bound none but us so that the Law as binding us to Duty or Suffering was neither fulfilled nor strictly satisfied by Christ but the Law-giver satisfied and the remote ends of the Law attained by Christ's perfect fulfilling all that Law which bound himself as Mediator Now whether he mean the Law as binding us to Duty or to Punishment or both and what by satisfaction I am not sure But as far as I can make sense of it it seeneth to mean that Poena is satisfactio loco obedientiae and that Punishment being our Due this was satisfactio Legi praestandâ for he saith not Praestita But then he must judge that we are justified only from the penal Obligation of the Law and not from the preceptive Obligation to perfect Obedience And this will not stand with the scope of other Passages where he endureth not my Opinion that we are not justified by the fae hoc the Precept
from that Law that is from its Obligation of us to Innocency as the necessary terms of Life and from its Obligation of us to Death for want of Innocency But we are not justified by that Law either as fulfilled or as satisfied by us our selves either personally or by an Instrument substitute or proper Representative that was Vicarius Obedientiae aut poenae 3. And we grant that the Jews were delivered from the positive Jewish Law which is it that Paul calleth The Law of Works And if he please in all these respects to call Justification Legal we intend not to quarrel with the name though what I called Legal in those Aphorisms I chose ever after to call rather Justitia pro-legalis But we cannot believe him 1. That it is only Legal 2. Or that that is the only or most proper denomination § 8. He proceedeth thus And it will be vain if any argue That yet none can be saved without Evangelical Works according to which it is confessed that all men shall be judged for the distinction is easie which the Author of the Aphorisms somewhere useth between the first or Private and the last or Publick Justification In the first sense it is never said That Works justifie but contrary That God justifieth him that worketh not Rom. 4.5 In the latter we confess that Believers are to be justified according to Works but yet not Of or By Works nor that that Justification maketh men just before God but only so pronounceth them Answ 1. This is such another Consenting Adversary as once before I was put to answer who with open mouth calls himself consequentially what he calleth me if the same Cause and not the Person make the Guilt Nay let him consider whether his grand and most formidable Weapon So also saith Bellarmine with other Papists do not wound himself For they commonly say That the first Justification is not of Works or Works do not first justifie us Have I not now proved that he erreth and complyeth with the Papists If not let him use better Arguments himself 2. But why is the first Justification called Private Either he meaneth God's making us just constitutively or his judging us so and that per sententiam conceptam only or prolatam also 1. The common distinction in Politicks inter judicium Privatum Publicum is fetcht from the Judg who is either Persona privata vel publica a private Man or an authorized Judg judging as such And so the Judgment of Conscience Friends Enemies Neighbours mere Arbitrators c. is Judicium privatum and that of a Judg in foro is Judicium publicum yea or in secret before the concerned Parties only in his Closet so it be decisive If this Learned Doctor so understand it then 1. Constitutive Justification which is truly first is publick Justification being done by God the Father and by our Redeemer who sure are not herein private authorized Persons 2. And the first sentential Justification as merely Virtual and not yet Actual viz. as it 's virtually in the Justifying Law of Grace as norma Judicis is publick in suo genere being the virtus of a Publick Law of God or of his Donative Promise 3. And the first Actual Justification per Deum Judicem per sententiam conceptam which is God's secret judging the Thing and Person to be as they are is secret indeed in se yet revealed by God's publick Word but publick as to the Judg. 4. And the first sententia prolata the fourth in order is someway publick as opposite to secresie for 1. it is before the Angels of Heaven 2. And in part by Executive demonstrations on Earth But it is certainly by a publick Judg that is God 5. And the first Apologetical Justification by Christ our Interceding Advocate is publick both quoad personam and as openly done in Heaven And if this worthy Person deny any Justification per sententiam Judicis upon our first Believing or before the final Judgment he would wofully fall out with the far greatest number of Protestants and especially his closest Friends who use to make a Sentence of God as Judg to be the Genus to Justification But if by Private and Publick Justification he means secret and open 1. How can he hope to be understood when he will use Political Terms unexplained out of the usual sense of Politicians But no men use to abuse words more than they that would keep the Church in flames by wordy Controversies as if they were of the terms of Life and Death 2. And even in that sense our first Justification is publick or open quoad Actum Justificancantis as being by the Donation of a publick Word of God Though quoad effectum in recipiente it must needs be secret till the Day of Judgment no Man knowing anothers Heart whether he be indeed a sound Believer And so of the rest as is intimâ—ted Concerning what I have said before some may Object 1. That there is no such thing as our Justification notified before the Angels in Heaven 2. That the Sententia Concepta is God's Immanent Acts and therefore Eternal Answ To the first I say 1. It is certain by Luk. 15.10 that the Angels know of the Conversion of a Sinner and therefore of his Justification and publickly Rejoyce therein Therefore it is notified to them 2. But I refer the Reader for this to what I have said to Mr. Tombes in my Disputation of Justification where I do give my thoughts That this is not the Justification by Faith meant by Paul as Mr. Tombes asserteth it to be To the Second I say Too many have abused Theology by the misconceiving of the distinction of Immanent and Transient Acts of God taking all for Immanent which effect nothing ad extra But none are properly Immanent quoad Objectum but such as God himself is the Object of as se intelligere se amare An Act may be called indeed immanent in any of these three respects 1. Ex parte Agentis 2. Ex parte Objecti 3. Ex parte effectus 1. Ex parte agentis all God's Acts are Immanent for they are his Essence 2. Ex parte Objecti vel Termini God's Judging a Man Just or Unjust Good or Bad is transient because it is denominated from the state of the Terminus or Object And so it may be various and mutable denominatively notwithstanding God's Simplicity and Immutability And so the Sententia Concepta is not ab Aeterno 3. As to the Effect all confess God's Acts to be Transient and Temporary But there are some that effect not as to judg a thing to be what it is 3. Either this Militant Disputer would have his Reader believe that I say That a Man is justified by Works in that which he called making just and the first Justification or not If he would such untruth and unrighteousness contrary to the full drift of many of my Books and even that which he selected to oppose is not
by him Thus he states the Controversie And doth this Doctor fight for Truth and Peace by 1. passing by all this 2. Saying I am against Imputed Righteousness 3. And against the Reformed Were not all the Divines before named Reformed Was not Camero Capellus Placeus Amyrald Dallaeus Blondel c. Reformed Were not Wotton Bradshaw Gataker c. Reformed Were not of late Mr. Gibbons Mr. Truman to pass many yet alive Reformed Must that Name be shamed by appropriating it to such as this Doctor only 2. And now let the Reader judg with what face he denieth the Consequence that it supposeth us to have been in Christ legally c. When as I put it into the Opinion opposed and opposed no other But I erred in saying that most of our ordinary Divines hold it But he more in fathering it in common on the Reformed § 2. Dr. T. 2. Such Imputation of Righteousness he saith agreeth not with Reason or Scripture But what Reason meaneth he Is it that vain blind maimed unmeasurably procacious and tumid Reason of the Cracovian Philosophers Next he saith Scripture is silent of the Imputed Righteousness of Christ what a saying is this of a Reformed Divine so also Bellarmine c. Answ Is it not a doleful case that Orthodoxness must be thus defended Is this the way of vindicating Truth 1. Reader my words were these just like Bradshaws It teaâ—heth Imputation of Christ's Righteousness in so strict a sense as will neither stand with Reason nor the Doctrine of the Scripture much less with the PHRASE of Scripture which mentioneth no Imputation of Christ or his Righteousness 1. Is this a denying of Christ's Righteousness imputed Or only of that intollerable sense of it 2. Do I say here that Scripture mentioneth not Imputed Righteousness or only that strict sense of it 3. Do I not expresly say It is the Phrase that is not to be found in Scripture and the unsound sense but not the sound 2. And as to the Phrase Doth this Doctor or can any living Man find that Phrase in Scripture Christ's Righteousness is imputed to us And when he knoweth that it is not there are not his Exclamations and his Bug-bears Cracovian Reason and Bellarmine his dishonour that hath no better Weapons to use against the Churches Peace To tell us that the sense or Doctrine is in Scripture when the question is of the Phrase or that Scripture speaketh in his rigid sense and not in ours is but to lose time and abuse the Reader the first being impertinent and the second the begging of the Question § 3. Dr. T. The Greek word answering to Imputation is ten times in Rom. 4. And what is imputed but Righteousness we have then some imputed Righteousness The Question is only what or whose it is Christ's or our own Not ours therefore Christs If ours either its the Righteousness of Works or of Faith c. Answ 1. But what 's all this to the Phrase Could you have found that Phrase Christ's Righteousness is imputed why did you not recite the words but Reason as for the sense 2. Is that your way of Disputation to prove that the Text speaketh of the Imputation of Christ's Righteousness when the Question was only In what sense What kind of Readers do you expect that shall take this for rational candid and a Plea for Truth 3. But to a Man that cometh unprejudiced it is most plain that Paul meaneth by imputing it for Righteousness that the Person was or is accounted reckoned or judged Righteous where Righteousness is mentioned as the formal Relation of the Believer so that what-ever be the matter of it of which next the formal Relation sure is our own and so here said And if it be from the matter of Christ's Righteousness yet that must be our own by your Opinion And it must be our own in and to the proper Effects in mine But sure it is not the same numerical formal Relation of Righteousness that is in Christ's Person and in ours And it 's that formal Relation as in Abraham and not in Christ that is called Abraham's Reputed Righteousness in the Text I scarce think you will say the contrary § 4. Dr. T. But Faith is not imputed to us for Righteousness Answ Expresly against the words of the Holy Ghost there oft repeated Is this defending the Scripture expresly to deny it Should not reverence and our subscription to the Scripture sufficiently rather teach us to distinguish and tell in what sense it is imputed and in what not than thus to deny without distinction what it doth so oft assert Yea the Text nameth nothing else as so imputed but Faith § 5. If it be imputed it is either as some Virtue or Humane Work the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Credere or as it apprehendeth and applyeth Christ's Righteousness Not the first If Faith be imputed relatively only as it applyeth to a Sinner the Righteousness of Christ it 's manifest that it 's the Righteousness of Christ only that is imputed and that Faith doth no more to Righteousness than an empty hand to receive an Alms. Answ 1. Sure it doth as a voluntarily receiving hand and not as a mere empty hand And voluntary grateful Reception may be the Condition of a Gift 2. You and I shall shortly find that it will be the Question on which we shall be Justified or Condemned not only whether we received Christ's Righteousness but whether by Faith we received Christ in all the Essentials of his Office and to all the essential saving Uses Yea whether according to the sense of the Baptismal Covenant we first believingly received and gave up our selves to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost and after performed sincerely that Covenant 3. But let me defend the Word of God Faith is imputed for Righteousness even this Faith now described 1. Remotely ex materiae aptitudine for its fitness to its formal Office And that fitness is 1. Because it is an Act of Obedience to God or morally good for a bad or indifferent Act doth not justifie 2. More specially as it is the receiving trusting and giving up our selves to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost to the proper ends of Redemption or a suitable Reception of the freely offered Gift and so connoteth Christ the Object for the Object is essential to the Act in specie 2. But proximately Faith is so reputed or imputed as it is the performance of the Condition of the Justifying Covenant or Donation And to be imputed for Righteousness includeth That It is the part required of us by the Law of Grace to make us partakers of the Benefits of Christ's Righteousness which meriteth Salvation for us instead of a legal and perfect Righteousness of our own which we have not Or Whereas we fell short of a Righteousness of Innocency Christ by such a Righteousness hath merited our Pardon and Salvation and given title to them by a New Covenant of Grace which maketh
vocis mollitiem modestiam O stolidos Ecclesiae Reformatae Clarissimos Heroas Aut ignoravit certè aut scire se dissimulat quod affine est calumniae quid isti statuâ—nt quos loquitur stolidi Theologi Answ 1. How blind are some in their own Cause Why did not Conscience at the naming of Calumnie say I am now committing it It were better write in English if Latin translations must needs be so false we use the word fond in our Country in another sense than foolish with us it signifieth any byassed Inclination which beyond reason propendeth to one side and so we use to say That Women are fond of their Children or of any thing over-loved But perhaps he can use his Logick to gather by consequences the Title of the Person from the Title of his Opinion and to gather foolishly by consequence out of fondly To all which I can but answer That if he had made himself the Translator of my Words and the Judg of my Opinions if this be his best he should not be chosen as such by me But it may be he turned to Riders Dictionary found there fondly vide foolishly 2. The Stolidi Theologi then is his own phrase And in my Opinion another Mans Pen might better have called the Men of his own Opinion Ecclesiae Reformatae clarissimos Heroas compared with others I take Gataker Bradshaw Wotton Camero and his followers Vrsine Olevian Piscator Paraeus Wendeline and multitudes such to be as famous Heroes as himself But this also on the by § 5. But I must tell him whether I abhor the Scripture Phrase We are dead buried and risen with Christ I answer No nor will I abhor to say That in sensu forensi I am one political Person with Christ and am perfectly holy and obedient by and in him and died and redeemed my self by him when he shall prove them to be Scripture Phrases But I desire the Reader not to be so fond pardon the word as by this bare question to be enticed to believe that it is any of the meaning of those Texts that use that Phrase which he mentioneth that Legally or in sensu forensi every Believer is esteemed by God to have himself personally died a violent death on the Cross and to have been buried and to have risen again and ascended into Heaven nor yet to be now there in Glory because Christ did and doth all this in our very Legal Person Let him but 1. consider the Text 2. and Expositors 3. and the Analogy of Faith and he will find another sense viz. That we so live by Faith on a dying buried risen and glorified Saviour as that as such he dwelleth objectively in our Hearts and we partake so of the Fruits of his Death Burial and Resurrection and Glory as that we follow him in a Holy Communion being dead and buried to the World and Sin and risen to newness of Life believing that by his Power we shall personally after our death and burial rise also unto Glory I will confess that we are perfectly holy and obedient by and in Christ as far as we are now dead buried and risen in him § 6. And here I will so far look back as to remember That he as some others confidently telleth us That the Law bound us both to perfect Obedience and to punishment for our sin and therefore pardon by our own suffering in Christ may stand with the reputation that we were perfectly Obedient and Righteous in Christ Answ And to what purpose is it to dispute long where so notorious a contradiction is not only not discerned but obtruded as tantum non necessary to our Orthodoxness if not to our Salvation I ask him 1. Was not Christ as our Mediator perfectly holy habitually and actually without Original or Actual Sin 2. If all this be reputed to be in se our own as subjected in and done by our selves political or in sensu forensi Are we not then reputed in foro to have no original or actual sin but to have innocently fulfilled all the Law from the first hour of our lives to the last Are we reputed innocent in Christ as to one part only of our lives if so which is it or as to all 3. If as to all is it not a contradiction that in Law-sense we are reputed perfectly Holy and Innocent and yet sinners 4. And can he have need of Sacrifice or Pardon that is reputed never to have sinned legally 5. If he will say that in Law-sense we have or are two Persons let him expound the word Persons only as of Qualities and Relations nothing to our Case in hand or else say also That as we are holy and perfect in one of our own Persons and sinful unrighteous or ungodly in another so a Man my be in Heaven in one of his own Persons and on Earth yea and in Hell in the other And if he mean that the same Man is justified in his Person in Christ and condemned in his other Person consider which of these is the Physical Person for I think its that which is like to suffer § 7. pag. 224. He hath another touch at my Epistle but gently forbeareth contradiction as to Num. 8. And he saith so little to the 11 th as needeth no answer § 8. pag. 127. He assaulteth the first Num. of N. 13. That we all agree against any conceit of Works that are against or instead of the free Mercy of God And what hath he against this Why that which taketh up many pages of his Book and seemeth his chief strength in most of his Contest viz. The Papists say the same and so saith Bellarmine It 's strange that the same kind of Men that deride Fanatick Sectaries for crying out in Church-Controversies O Antichristian Popery Bellarmine c. should be of the same Spirit and take the same course in greater Matters and not perceive it nor acknowledg their agreement with them But as Mr. J. Humfrey saith in the foresaid Book of the word Schism Schism oft canted out against them that will not sacrilegiously surrender their Consciences or desert their Ministry The great Bear hath been so oft led through the streets that now the Boys lay by all fear and laugh or make sport at him so say I of this Sectarian Bugbear Popery Antichristian Bellarmine either the Papists really say as we do or they do not If not is this Doctor more to be blamed for making them better than they are or for making us worse which ever it be Truth should defend Truth If they do I heartily rejoyce and it shall be none of my labour any more whatever I did in my Confession of Faith to prove that they do not Let who will manage such ungrateful Work For my part I take it for a better Character of any Opinion that Papists and Protestants agree in it than that the Protestants hold it alone And so much for Papists and Bellarmine though I
him hereafter to use it in no other sense than the Scripture useth it 3. If that will not serve if the Masters of Language will agree yea to pass by our Lexicons if the Doctors of that University will give it us under their hands that the word ORIGINAL is unaptly and dangerously applyed to that sinful Guilt and Pravity which is in us ab Origine Nostrae existentiae and is the internal Radix vel Origo of all our Actual Sin in part of Causality I will use that Epithete so no more 4. If all this will not serve if he himself will give me a fitter Epithete I will use it And now we over-agree in Doctrine a word shall not divide us unless he will be angry because we are agreed as Jonas was that the Ninivites were spared because it seemed to disgrace his Word § II. pag. 4 5 c. You invite me to a full entire retractation of my Doctrine of Justification you add By Works and the secondary Original Sin 1. Will you take it well if I retract that which you profess now to hold and know none that denyeth then there is no pleasing you If I must be thought to wrong you for seeming to differ from you and yet must retract all What yours and all Mens 2. Do you mean the words or the sense of Justification as you call it by Works For the words I take you for a subscriber to the 39 Articles and therefore that you reject not the Epistle of St. James And for the sense I confess it is a motion suitable to the Interest of your Treatise though not of the Truth He that cannot confute the Truth would more easily do his Work if he could perswade the Defenders of it to an Entire Retractation Hereupon pag. 5. you recite my words of the difficulty of bringing some Militant Divines to yield Your Admonition for Self-Application of them is useful and I thank you for it But is it not a streight that such as I am in between two contrary sorts of Accusers When Mr. Danvers and Multitudes on that side Reproach me daily for Retractations and you for want of them How natural is it now to Mankind to desire to be the Oracles of the World and that all should be Silenced or Retracted which is against their Minds How many call on me for Retractation Mr. Tombes and Mr. Danvers for what I have Written for Infants-Baptism The Papists for what I have Written against them And how many more And as to what I have Retracted One reproached me for it and another either knoweth not of it or perswadeth others that it is not done You say pag. 6. A great out-cry you have made of me as charging you with things you have Retracted And pag. 7. What 's the reason you have not hitherto directed us to the particulars of your Recantation what when where You direct one indeed to a small Book above Twenty years a-go retracted All I can pick up of any seeming Retractation is that you say that Works are necessary at least to the continuation of our Justification Answ Either this is Written by a Wilful or a Heedless mistaking of my words The first I will not suspect it must therefore be the second for I must not judg you Vnable to understand plain English And is it any wonder if you have many such Mistakes in your disputes of Justification when you are so heedless about a matter of Fact Where did I ever say that I had Recanted Or that I Retracted any of the Doctrine of Justification which I had laid down Cannot you distinguish between Suspending or Revoking or Retracting a particular Book for the sake of several Crude and Incongruous Expressions and Retracting or Recanting that Doctrine of Justification Or can you not understand words that plainly thus Distinguish Why talk you of what and when and where and conjecture at the words as if you would make the Reader believe that indeed it is some confessed Errors of mine which you Confuted and that I take it for an Injury because I Retracted them And so you think you salve your Confutation whatever you do by your Candour and Justice But you have not so much as Fig-leaves for either It was the Aphorisms or Book that I said was above Twenty years a go Revoked When in my Treatise of Infant-Baptism I had craved Animadversions on it and promised a better Edition if I Published it any more I forbad the Reprinting it till I had time to Correct it and when many called for it I still deny'd them And when the Cambridg Printer Printed it a second time he did it by Stealth pretending it was done beyond Sea In my Confession Twenty years ago I gave the Reasons Preface pag. 35. I find that there are some Incautelous Passages in my Aphorisms not fitted to their Reading that come to suck Poyson and seek for a Word to be Matter of Accusation and Food for their Censuring opinionative Zeal And pag. 42. If any Brother understand not any word in my Aphorisms which is here Interpreted or mistake my sense about the Matter of that Book which is here more fully opened I must expect that they interpret that by this And if any one have so little to do as to write against that Book which is not unlikely if he take the Sense contrary to what I have here and else-where since then Published I shall but neglect him as a Contentious Vain Wrangler if not a Calumniator I Wrote this sharply to forwarn the Contentious not knowing then that above Twenty years after Dr. Tully would be the Man Pag. 43. If any will needs take any thing in this Book to be rather a Retractation than an Explication of what I have before said though I should best know my own Meaning yet do such commend me while they seem to blame me I never look to write that which shall have no need of Correction And Cap. 1. pag. 2. Lest I should prove a further Offence to my Brethren and a Wrong to the Church I desired those who thought it worth their Labour to vouchsafe me their Animadversions which I have spent much of these Three last years in considering that I might Correct what-ever was discovered to be Erroneous and give them an account of my Reasons of the rest I have not only since SVPPRESSED that Book which did offend them but also laid by those Papers of Vniversal Redemption which I had written lest I should be further offensive c. In my Apologie else-where I have such-like Passages ever telling Men that It was the first Book I wrote in my Vnexperienced Youth that I take the Doctrines of it to be sound and needful save that in divers places they are unskilfully and incautelously worded As the Word Covenant is oft put for Law c. And that I wrote my Confession and Disputes of Justification as an Exposition of it and that I Retracted or Suspended or Revoked not
the Doctrine but the Book till I had Corrected it and did disown it as too unmeet an Expression of my Mind which I had more fully exprest in other Books And is not this plain English Doth this warrant a Wise and Righteous Man to intimate that I accuse him of writing against that Doctrine of Justification which I Recanted and to call for the What and Where and When Yea and tell me that I refer you to a small Book when instead of referring you to it I only blame you for referring to that alone when I had said as before When many Divines have published the first Edition of their Works imperfectly and greatly corrected and enlarged them in a Second as Beza his Annotations Polanus his Syntagma and many such all Men take it for an Injury for a Neighbour twenty years after to select the first Edition to confute as the Author's Judgment Much more might I when I published to the World that I Suspended the whole Book and have these twenty four years hindred the Printing of it professing that I have in many larger Books more intelligibly and fully opened the same things Yea you fear not pag. 23. to say That I tell you of about 60 Books of Retractations in part at least which I have Written when never such a word fell from me If I say That one that hath published his Suspension of a small Book written in Youth not for the Doctrine of it but some unfit Expressions and hath since in al-most thirty Years time written about sixty Books in many or most of which is somewhat of the same Subject and in some of them he fullier openeth his Mind should be dealt with by an Adversary according to some of his later and larger Explications and not according to the Mode and Wording of that one Suspended Book alone Shall such a Man as you say that I tel you of about sixty Books of Retractations Or will it not abate Mens reverence of your disputing Accurateness to find you so untrusty in the Recitation of a Man's words The truth is it is this great Defect of Heed and Accurateness by hasty Temerity which also spoileth your Disputations But pag. 7. the Aphorisms must be The most Schollar-like and Elaborate though Erroneous Book in Controversie you ever Composed Answ 1. Your Memory is faulty Why say you in the next that I appeal to my Disputation of Justification and some others but you cannot Trudg up and down to every place I would send you your Legs are too weak Either you had read all the sixty Books which you mention the Controversal at least or not If not How can you tell that the Aphorisms is the most Elaborate If yea Why do you excuse your Trudging and why would you select a Suspended Book and touch none that were Written at large on the same Subject 2. By this I suâ—pose to make your Nibble to seem a Triumph you tell your Reader again how to value your Judgment Is it like that any Dunce that is diligent should Write no more Schollar-like at Sixty years of Age than at Thirty And do you think you know better what of mine is Elaborate than I do Sure that Word might have been spared When I know that one printed Leaf of Paper hath cost me more Labour than all that Book and perhaps one Scheme of the Distinctions of Justification which you deride If indeed you are a competent Judg of your own Writings Experience assureth me that you are not so of mine And pag. 25. you say You desire not to be preferred before your Betters least of all when you are singular as here I think you are § III. Pag. 9. You are offended for being put in the Cub with divers mean and contemptible Malefactors Answ O for Justice 1. Was not Bellarmin or some of the Papists and the Socinians as great Malefactors with whom as you phrase it you put me in the Cub 2. Are they Malefactors so far as they agree with you in Doctrine and are you Innocent What is the Difference between your Treatise in the part that toucheth me and that of Mr. Eyres Mr. Crandon and some others such Dr. Owen and Dr. Kendale indeed differed from you the latter seeking by Bishop Vsher an amicable Closure and the former if I understand his Book on the Hebrews less differing from me in Doctrine than once he either did or seemed to do And if any of us all grow no Wiser in thirty years Study we may be ashamed But to give you your due Honour I will name you with your Equals as far as I can judg viz. Maccovius Cluto Coccejus and Cloppenburgius I mean but in the Point in Question it 's no Dishonour to you to give some of them Precedencie in other things It may be also Spanhemius was near you But if I may presume to liken my Betters no Men seem to me to have been so like you as Guilielmus Rivet not Andrew Mr. George Walker and Mr. Roborough I hope this Company is no Dishonour to you And very unlike you are Le Blank Camero Davenant Dr. Hammond Mr. Gataker Mr. Anthony Wotton and in Complexion Scotus and Ockam and such as they If yet I have not Chosen you pleasing Company I pray you choo se so your self But you say on Had you not in your Memory many Scores of greatest Eminence and Repute in the Christian World of the same Judgment with me Know you not I speak the same thing with all the Reformed Churches c. For shame let it be the Church of England with all the rest of the Reformed c. Answ 1. I know not what you hold even when I read what you write I must hope as well as I can that you know your self How then should I know who are of the same Judgment with you 2. Yet I am very confident that all they whom you mention are of the same in some thing or other and in particular that we are Justified by Faith and not by the Works of the Law or any Works in the sence denied by St. Paul c. 3. Do not I with as great Confidence as you lay Claim to the same Company and Concord And if one of us be mistaken must your bare Word determine which it is Which of us hath brought the fuller Proofs I subscribe to the Doctrine of the Church of England as well as you and my Condition these thirteen or fourteen years giveth as much Evidence that I am loth to subscribe to what I believe not as yours doth of you And you that know which of my Books is the most Elaborate sure know that in that Book which I Wrote to explain those Aphorisms called my Confession I cite the Words of above an Hundred Protestant Witnesses that give as much to Works as I do And that of this Hundred one is the Augustine Confession one the Westminster Synod one the Synod of Dort one the Church of England
each one of which being Collectives contain many And here I tell you of more And have you brought more Witnesses Or any to the contrary Did you Confute or once take Notice of any of these 4. Do you not here before you are aware let your Reader know that it was and still is in the Dark that you Alarm the World about our dangerous Differences and run to your Arms undrest before your Eyes are open Qui conveniunt in aliquo tertio c. They that agree with the Church of England in the Doctrine of Justification by Faith do so far agree between themselves But Dr. Tullie and R.B. do agree with the Church of England in the Doctrine of Justification by Faith Ergo. The Article referreth to the Homilies where it is more fully Explained 5. May not I then retort your Argument and bid you For shame let it be no longer Bellarnine and R.B. but the Church of England and all the Reformed and R.B. Disprove the Witnesses twenty years ago produced by me in this very Cause or else speak out and say The Church of England and the rest of the Reformed hold Justification by Works just as Bellarmine and the Papists do which is it which you would fasten on me who agree with them as if you had never there read my Answer to Mr. Crandon objecting the same thing § IV. Your Censure pag. 10 11. of my Windings Clouds of Novel Distinctions Preambles Limitations c. is just such as your Treatise did bid me expect Till you become guilty of the same Crime and fall out with Confusion and take not equivocal ambiguous Words unexplained instead of Univocals in the stating of your Questions I shall never the more believe that Hannibal is at the Gates or the City on Fire for your Allarms § V. Pag. 11. Where you tell me that You have no Profit by my Preface I shall not deny it nor wonder at it you are the fittest Judge Where you say that I have no Credit You do but tell the World at what Rates you write Honor est in honorante And have all my Readers already told you their Judgment Alas How few In all London not a Man hath yet given me Notice of his Dislike or Dissent And sure your own Pen is a good Confuter of you It is some Credit that such a Man as you is forced to profess a full Consent to the Doctrine though with passionate Indignation You tell me of Nothing to the Question But will you not be angry if I should but tell you how little you did to state any Question and in Reason must be supposed when you assaulted my Doctrine to take it as I stated it which I have fully shewed you You tell me that You Charged me only with new Original Sin underived from Adam unknown unheard of before in the Christian World Answ De re is not our Guilt of nearer Parent 's Sins such which you and all that you know now at last confess De nomine 1. Tell the World if you can when I called it New Original Sin or underived from Adam or unknown or unheard of There are more ways than one of Derivation from Adam It is not derived from him by such Imputation as his first Sin but it is derived from him as a partial Causa Causae by many Gradations All Sin is some-way from him Either you mean that I said that it was not Derived from Adam or you gather it by some Consequence from what I said If the First shew the Words and the Shame shall be mine If not you know the old Law that to false Accusers it must be done as they would have done to the Accused But if it be your Consequence prove it and tell the World what are the Premises that infer it § VI. Pag. 12. You friendly help me to profit by my self however you profess that you profit not by me What I have said to you against Hasty Judging I have first said to my self and the more you warn me of it the more friendly you are If it be not against such as you but my self it is against my self that I have a Treatise on that Subject but I begin to think my self in this more Seeing than you for I see it both in my self and you and you seem to see it in me and not in your self But with all Men I find that to see the Spots in our own Face immediately is hard and to love the Glass which sheweth them is not easie especially to some Men that neither are low nor can endure to be so till there is no Remedy But Sir how easie a Way of Disputing have you happily light on Who instead of Examining the hundred Witnesses which I brought and my else-where oft proving the Doctrine opposed by me to be Novel and Singular do in few words talk of your holding the Doctrine delivered to the Saints and of the many Worthies that concur with you and of my pelting at their Heads and draging them by the Hoary-heads as a Spectacle and By-word to all by proving their consent by express Citations what Armies and of what Strength appear against me whose Names I defie and wound through yours Answ And is not he a weak Man that cannot talk thus upon almost any Subject But who be these Men and what be their Names Or rather first rub your Eyes and tell us what is the Controversie Tully sometimes talkt at this rate in his Orations but verily much better in his Philosophy And you see no cause to repent but you bless God that you can again and again call to all Youth that as they love the Knowledg of Truth they take me not for an Oracle in my bold dividing Singularities Answ That the Name of Truth is thus abused is no News I would the Name of God were not And I am sorry that you see no Cause to repent I am obliged to love you the better for being against dividing Singularities in the general Notion I hope if you knew it you would not be for them as in singular Existents But sure none at Oxford are in danger of taking me for an Oracle This is another needless Work So Spanhemius took that for a Singularity which Dallaeus in a large Catalogue hath proved the Common Judgment of the Church till Contention of late caused some Dissenters Will you cease these empty general Ostentations and choose out any one Point of real Difference between you and me about Justification and come to a fair Trial on whose side the Churches of Christ have been for 1500 years after Christ yea bring me but any two or one considerable Person that was for a thousand years for your Cause against mine and I will say that you have done more to confute me by far than yet you have done and if two only be against me I will pardon you for calling me Singular § VII Pag. 13 14 15. You again do keep up the Dividing Fear
Reasons and you presently feign a Retractation of the Doctrine and of about sixty Books of Retractions It 's well that pag. 23. you had the justice not to justifie your Nec dubito quin imputatam Christi justitiam incluserit But to confess your Injustice was too much It is not your own Retractation that you are for it seems § XIV Pag. 23 24. You talk as if my supposing that both Justice and Imputation are capable of Definitions which are not the Things were a Fallacy because or is a disjunctive viz. When I say that the Definition of the one or the other is not the Thing Do you grant it of them Disjunctively and yet maintain the contrary of them Conjunct Yes you say Imputed Justice cannot differ from its true definition unless you will have it to differ really from it self And pag. 34. you say I am ashamed you should thus over and over expose your self as if supposing Definitions true they were not the same Re with the Definitum Good Sir talk what you please in private to such as understand not what you say and let them give you a grand 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for your pains but you may do well to use more Civility to the reason of a Scholar though he hath not yet worn out his Freshmans Gown Answ This is no light or jesting Matter The comfort of Souls dependeth on it I see some Men expect that Reverence of their Scholarship should give them great advantage But if one argued thus with me for Transubstantiation I would not turn to him to escape the Guilt of Incivility If the Definition and the Definitum as in question now be the same Thing wo to all the Unlearned World and wo to all Freshmen that yet have not learnt well to define and wo to all Divines that differ in their Definitions except those that are in the right I know that a Word and a Mental Conception are not Nothing They may be called Things but when we distinguish the Things from their Signs Names or Definitions we take not the word Things so laxly as to comprehend the said Signs Names c. When we say that the Thing defined is necessary but to be able to Define it or actually to Define it is not necessary to Salvation it is notorious that we take Definition as Defining actively as it is Actus definientis and Definire sure is not the same with the Thing defined I have heard before your Letter told me that Definitum definitio idem sunt But I pray you let us not quibble almost all the World under a sentence of Damnation As long ago as it is since I read such words I remember our Masters told us I think Schibler in his Topicks for one that when they are taken Pro terminis Logicis definitio definitum non sunt idem but only when they are taken Pro rebus per eos terminos significatis and that there they differ in Modo significandi essentiam the definitum signifying the Essence confusedly and the Definition distinctly If you will take the Res definita for that which is strictly nothing but Rei conceptus inadaequatus seu partialis that is a Species and that not as the thing is Existent extra intellectum but as the conception is an operation of the Mind so I confess that he that hath a true Conception of a Species as meerly denominated or as defined hath the same conception of it And also the Thing named and the Thing defined is the same thing in it self Homo Animal rationale are the same that is it is the same essence which is denominated Homo and defined Animal rationale And it is the same Conceptus mentis which we have if true when we denominate and when we define But as Things are distinct from the knowledg and signs of Things nothing is Res that is not existent and nothing existeth but in Singulars or Individuals And as nothing can be defined but a Species so a Species or any Vniversal is nothing but a Notion or Ens rationis save as it existeth in the said Individuals And in the Individuals it is nothing but their being as partially or inadequatly taken or a Conceptus objectivus partialis whether it be of a thing really or only intellectually partible or any thing which our narrow Minds cannot conceive of Vno simplici conceptu activo Now if you take the word Definition for the Species as existent in Individuals it is really a part of the thing that is a Partial objective conceptus or somewhat of the Thing as Intelligible But this is to take Definition in Sensu passivo for the Thing defined which our Case distinguisheth But Sir I crave your leave to distinguish Real objective Beings from 1. The Knowledg 2. and the Names and other Logical Organs by which we know them and express our knowledg of them God Christ Grace Glory Pardon Justification Sanctification the Gospel-Doctrine Precept Promises Faith Hope Love Obedience Humility Patience c. are the Res definitae in our Case not as they are in esse cognito or in the notion or idea of them but in esse reali To Define properly is either 1. Mentally to conceive of these things 2. or Expressively to signifie such Conceptions agreeably to the nature of the things known or Expressively defined Which is if the Definition be perfect under the notions of a Genus and Differentia The Definition as in Words is but a Logical Organ as Names are also Notifying signs Mental defining is but the said distinct knowledg of the thing defined and is neither really the Thing it self nor usually of necessity to the Thing Which two I shall prove distinctly as to the sense of our Case 1. The Definition of Justification is either our Distinct knowledg or Expression of it Justification is not our Distinct knowledg or Expression of it Therefore the Definition of Justification and Justification are not the same Justification In sensu activo is not an Act of God and In sensu passivo is the Relative state of Man thereby effected But the Definition of Justification is neither The Definition of Justification is a work of Art but Justification is a Work of Grace A wicked damnable Man or a damned Devil may define Justification and so have the Definition of it but not Justification it self The Definition of Justification Faith Love c. is Quid Logicum but Justification Faith Love c. are things Physical and Moral A Man is Justified or hath Christs Righteousness imputed to him in his sleep and when he thinketh not of it but he hath not the Active definition of Justification in his sleep c. Other things be not the same Really with their Dâ—finition therefore neither is Justification Faith c. The Sun is not really the same thing with a Definition of the Sun nor Light Heat Motion c. A Brute can see taste feel smell that cannot
define them If you have a Bishoprick because you define a Bishoprick or have a Lordship a Kingdom Health c. because you can define them your Axiome hath stood you in good stead The Definition is but Explicatio rei But Rei explicatio non est ipsa res Individuals say most are not Definable But nothing is truly Res but Individuals Vniversals as they are in the Mind are existent Individual Acts Cogitations Nâ—tions As they are out of the Mind they are nothing but Individuorum quid intelligibile The Definition of Learning of a Doctor c. may be got in a day If Learning and Doctorship may be so what useless things are Universities and Books Perswade a hungry Scholar that he hath Meat and Drink or the Ambitious that he hath Preferment or the Covetous or Poor that he hath Money because he hath in his Mind or Mouth the Definition of it and quibble him into satisfaction by telling him that Definitio definitum sunt idem re We know and express things narrowly by Names and largely and distinctly by Definitions The Definition here is Explicatio nominis as Animal rationale of the name Homo and both Name and Definition as they are Verba mentis vel oris or Verborum significatio are surely divers from the things named and defined known and expressed unless by the Thing you mean only the Knowledg or Notion of the Thing Therefore though Cui competit definitio eidem quoque competit definitum contra quod convenit definitioni convenit definito Yet say not that Imputed Righteousness in Re is the same with the Definition as it is the Definers act By this time you have helpt Men to understand by an Instance why St. Paul so much warneth Christians to take heed lest any deceive them by vain Philosophy even by Sophistry and abused arbitrary Notions Remember Sir that our Case is of grand Importance As it is stated in my Direct 42. which you assaulted it is Whether if the Question were of the Object of Predestination of the nature of the Will 's liberty Divine concourse and determining way of Grace of the Definition of Justification Faith c. a few well studied Divines are not here to be preferred before Authority and the major Vote Such are my words I assert 1. That the Defining of Justification Faith c. is a work of Art 2. And I have many and many times told the World which you seem to strike at that Christians do not differ so much in their Real conceptions of the Matter as they do in their Definitions 1. Because Definitions are made up of Ambiguous words whose Explication they are not agreed in and almost all Words are ambiguous till explained and ambiguous Words are not fit to define or be defined till explained And 2. Because both selecting fit terms and explaining them and ordering them are works of Art in which Men are unequal and there is as great variety of Intellectual Conceptions as of Faces 3. And I have often said That a Knowledg intuitive or a Simple apprehension of a thing as Sensate or an Internal experience or Reflect act and a general notion of some things may prove the truth of Grace and save Souls and make us capable of Christian Love and Communion as being true saving Knowledg 4. And consequently I have often said that many a thousand Christians have Faith Hope Desire Love Humility Obedience Justication Adoption Vnion with Christ who can define none of these Unless you will speak equivocally of Definition it self and say as good Melancthon and as Gutherleth and some other Romists that Notitia intuitiva est definitio who yet say but what I am saying when they add Vel saltem instar definitionis If all are without Faith Love Justification Adoption who cannot give a true Definition of them how few will be saved How much more then doth Learning to Mens salvation than Grace And Aristotle then is not so far below Paul or the Spirit of Christ as we justly believe The Case is so weighty and palpable that you have nothing to say but as you did about the Guilt of our nearer Parents sins to yield all the Cause and with a passionate clamour to tell Men that I mistake you or wrest your words of which I shall appeal to every sober Reader that will peruse the words of mine which you assault and yours as they are an Answer to mine In a word you go about by the abuse of a trivial Axiome of Definitions 1. To sentence most Christians to Hell and cast them into Desperation as wanting the Grace which they cannot define 2. And to destroy Christian Love and Concord and tear the Church into as many Shreds as there be diversities of Definitions used by them 3. And you would tempt us to think much hardlier of your self than we must or will do as if your Faith Justification c. were unsound because your Definitions are so I know that Vnius rei una tantum est Definitio speaking 1. Not of the Terms but the Sense 2. And supposing that Definition to be perfectly true that is the truth of Intellection and Expression consisting in their congruity to the Thing while the thing is one and the same the conception and expression which is perfectly true must be so too But 1. Our understandings are all imperfect and we know nothing perfectly but Secundum quaedam and Zanckez saith truly that Nihil scitur if we call that only Knowledg which is perfect And consequently no Mental Definition is perfect 2. And Imperfections have many degrees 3. And our Terms which make up that which you know I called a Definition in my Dir. 42. as it is in words are as aforesaid various mutable and variously understood and used § XV. Pag. 24. Again you are at it Whom do you mean by that one rare Person whose single Judgment is to be preferred in the point of Justification and to whom Answ 1. No one that knoweth not the difference between an Invididuum vagum determinatum 2. No one that is of so hard Metal as in despite of the plainest words to insinuate to the World that these words A few well-studied Judicious Divines do signifie only one and that these words One Man of extraordinary understanding and clearness is to be preferred before the Rulers and major Vote in difficult speculations do signifie one individuum determinatum in the World and that the Speaker is bound to name the Man No one that thinketh that Pemble who in his Vind. Grat. hath almost the very same words said well and that I who repeat them am as criminal as you pretend No one who either knoweth not that almost all the World even Papists agree in this Rule or that thinketh his judgment fit herein to bear them all down No one who when his abuses are brought into the open Sun-shine will rather accuse the Light than repent But pag. 25. After some
earnestly presseth me with his Quem quibus who is the Man I profess I dreamed not of any particular Man But I will again tell you whom my Judgment magnifies in this Controversie above all others and who truly tell you how far Papists and Protestants agree viz. Vinc. le Blank and Guil. Forbes I meddle not with his other Subjects Placeus in Thes Salmur Davenant Dr. Field Mr. Scudder his daily Walk fit for all families Mr. Wotton Mr. Bradshaw and Mr. Gataker Dr. Preston Dr. Hammond Pract. Cat. and Mr. Lawson in the main Abundance of the French and Breme Divines are also very clear And though I must not provoke him again by naming some late English men to reproach them by calling them my disciples I will venture to tell the plain man that loveth not our wrangling tediousness that Mr. Trumans Great Propit and Mr. Gibbons serm of Justif may serve him well without any more And while this worthy Doctor and I do both concord with such as Davenant and Field as to Justification by Faith or Works judg whether we differ between our selves as far as he would perswade the World who agree in tertio And whether as he hath angrily profest his concord in the two other Controversies which he raised our Guilt of nearer Parents sin and our preferring the judgment of the wisest c. it be not likely that he will do so also in this when he hath leisure to read and know what it is that I say and hold and when we both understand our selves and one another And whether it be a work worthy of Good and Learned men to allarm Christians against one another for the sake of arbitrary words and notions which one partly useth less aptly and skilfully than the other in matters wherein they really agree 2 Tim. 2. 14. Charging them before the Lord that they strive not about words to no profit but to the subverting of the Hearers yet study to shew thy self approved unto God a workman that need not be ashamed rightly dividing the word of Truth Two Sparks more quenched which fled after the rest from the Forge of Dr. Tho. Tully § 1. DId I not find that some Mens Ignorance and factious Jealousie is great enough to make them combustible Recipients of such Wild-fire as those Strictures are and did not Charity oblige me to do what I have here done to save the assaulted Charity of such Persons more than to save any Reputation of my own I should repent that I had written one Line in answer to such Writings as I have here had to do with I have been so wearied with the haunts of the like Spirit in Mr. Crandon Mr. Bagshaw Mr. Danvers and others that it is a work I have not patience to be much longer in unless it were more necessary Two sheets more tell us that the Doctor is yet angry And little that 's better that I can find In the first he saith again that I am busie in smoothing my way where none can stumble in a thing never questioned by him nor by any Man else he thinks who owns the Authority of the second Commandment And have I not then good Company and Encouragement not to change my Mind But 1. He feigneth a Case stated between him and me who never had to do with him before but as with others in my Writings where I state my Case my self 2. He never so much as toucheth either of my Disputations of Original Sin in which I state my Case and defend it 3. And he falsly feigneth the Case stated in words and he supposeth in a sense that I never had do do with Saying I charge you with a new secondary Original Sin whose Pedegree is not from Adam I engage not a syllable further And pag. 8. You have asserted that this Novel Original Sin is not derived from our Original Father no line of Communication between them a sin besides that which is derived from Adam as you plainly and possitively affirm I never said that it had no Pedegree no line of Communication no kind of derivation from Adam 4. Yea if he would not touch the Disputation where I state my Case he should have noted it as stated in the very Preface which he writeth against and yet there also he totally overlooketh it though opened in divers Propositions 5. And the words in an Epistle to another Mans Book which he fasteneth still on were these Over-looking the Interest of Children in the Actions of their nearer Parents and think that they participate of no Guilt and suffer for no Original Sin but Adams only And after They had more Original Sin than what they had from Adam 6. He tells me that I seem not to understand my own Question nor to know well how to set about my Work and he will teach me how to manage the Business that I have undertaken and so he tells me how I MUST state the Question hereafter see his words Reader some Reasons may put a better Title on this Learned Doctors actions but if ever I write at this rate I heartily desire thee to cast it away as utter DISHONESTY and IMPUDENCE It troubleth me to trouble thee with Repetitions I hold 1. That Adams Sin is imputed as I opened to his Posterity 2. That the degree of Pravity which Cains nature received from Adam was the dispositive enclining Cause of all his Actual Sin 3. But not a necessitating Cause of all those Acts for he might possibly have done less evil and more good than he did 4. Therefore not the Total principal Cause for Cains free-will was part of that 5 Cains actual sin increased the pravity of his nature 6. And Cains Posterity were as I opened it guilty of Cains actual sin and their Natures were the more depraved by his additional pravity than they would have been by Adams sin alone unless Grace preserved or healed any of them The Doctor in this Paper would make his Reader believe that he is for no meer Logomachies and that the difference is not in words only but the thing And do you think that he differeth from me in any of these Propositions or how this sin is derived from Adam Yet this now must be the Controversie de re Do you think for I must go by thinking that he holdeth any other Derivation than this Or did I ever deny any of this But it is vain to state the Case to him He will over look it and tell me what I should have held that he may not be thought to make all this Noise for nothing He saith pag. 8. If it derive in a direct line from the first Transgression and have its whole Root fastened there what then why then some words which he sets together are not the best sense that can be spoken It is then but words and yet it is the thing What he may mean by a direct Line and what by whole Root fastened I know not but I have told the World
judicious Divines these were my words are to be preferred before Authority or Majority of Votes And Reader what Reason bound me to confine this Case to one only sort of Justification And why I say why must I confine it to a sort which Dr. Tully meaneth when my Rule and Book was written before his and when to this day I know not what he meaneth Though he at once chide at my Distinguishing and tell me that All Protestants agree in the Nature Causes and Definition and if all agreed I might know by other Mens words what he meaneth yet to all before-said I will add but one contrary Instance of many Cluto in his very Methodical but unsound Idea Theol. signalized in Voetii Biblioth defineth Justification so as I suppose best pleaseth the Doctor viz. Est Actio Dei Judicialis qua redemptos propter passiones justitiae Divinae satifactorias a Christo sustentatas redemptisque imputatas a peccatis puros consequenter a poenis liberos itemque propter Obedientiam a Christo Legi Divinae praestitam redemptisque imputatam justitia praeditos consequenter vita aeterna dignos ex miserecordia pronunciat In the opening of which he telleth us pag. 243. against multitudes of the greatest Protestants Definitions Male alteram Justificationis partem ipsam Justitiae Imputationem statui cum Justificatio non sit ipsa Imputatio sed Pronunciatio quae Imputatione tanquam fundamento jacto nititur And he knew no sense of Justification but Vel ipsam sententiae Justificatoriae in mente Divina prolationem sive Constitutionem vel ejus in Cordibus redemptorum manifestantem Revelationem And saith Priori modo factum est autem omnem fidem cum Deus omnes quibus passiones justitiam Christi imputabat innocentes justos reputaret cum ejus inimici adeoque sine fide essent so that here is a Justification of Infidels as innocent for Christs Righteousness imputed to them Quare etiam ut jam facta fide apprehendenda est The second which follows Faith is Faith ingenerating a firm perswasion of it Is not here sad defining when neither of these are the Scripture Justification by Christ and Faith And so § 32. the time of Justification by Faith he maketh to be the time when we receive the feeling of the former And the time of the former is presently after the Fall of all at once And hence gathereth that Ex eo quod Justificatio dicitur fieri propter passiones obedientiam Christi quibus ad perfectionem nihil deest nobis imputatas before Faith or Birth consequitur innocentiam justitiam in Redemptis quam primum perfectas ab omni macula puras esse and so that neither the pronunciation in mente Divina or imputation ullis gradibus ad perfectionem exsurgat But what is this pronunciation in mente Divina He well and truly noteth § 29. that Omnes actiones Divinae fi ex eo aestimentur quod re ipsa in Deo sunt idem sunt cum ipso Deo ideoque dependentiam a Causa externa non admittant Si tamen considerentur quoad rationem formalem hujus vel illius denominationis ipsis impositae in relatione ad Creaturas consistentem ipsis causae impulsivae assignare possunt c. This distinction well openeth how God may be said to justifie in His own Mind But what is that effect Vnde essentia vel mens Divina ita denominatur justificans Here he is at a loss neither truly telling us what is Justication Constitutive Sentential nor Executive but in the little part of Feeling God 's secret Act yet this dark Definer truly saith Ex sensu Scripturae verissime affirmetur hominem per fidem solam justificari quia ex nostra parte nihil ad Justificationem conferendum Deus requirit quam ut Justificationem in Christo fundatam credamus fide non producamus sed recipiamus If yet you would see whether all Protestants agree in the Definition of Justification read the multitude of Definitions of it in several senses in Learnrd Alstedius his Definit Theol. c. 24. § 2. pag. 97. c. Justificatio hominis coram Deo est qua homo in foro Divino absolvitur seu justus esse evincitur contra quemvis actorem Deo ipso judice pro eo sententiam ferente But what is this Forum Forum Divinum est ubi Deus ipse judicis partes agit fert sententiam secundum leges a se latas But where is that Est internum vel externum Forum divinum internum est in ipsa hominis Conscientia in qua Deus Thronum justitiae erigit in hac vita ibi agendo partes actoris judicis Forum Conscientiae But it is not this that is meant by the Justification by Faith Forum divinum externum est in qua Deus post hanc vitam extra hominem exercet judicium 1. Particulare 2. Vniversale This is true and well But are we no where Justified by Faith but in Conscience till after Death This is by not considering 1. The Jus ad impunitatem vitam donatum per foedus Evangelicum upon our Believing which supposing Faith and Repentance is our Constitutive Justification virtually only sentential 2. And the Judgment of God begun in this Life pronounced specially by Execution Abundance of useful Definitions subordinate you may further there see in Alstedius and some wrong and the chief omitted The vehement passages of the Doctors Conclusion I pass over his deep sense of unsufferable Provocations I must leave to himself his warning of the dreadful Tribunal which I am near it greatly concerns me to regard And Reader I shall think yet that his Contest though troublesome to me that was falsly assaulted and more to him whose detected Miscarriages are so painful to him hath yet been Profitable beyond the Charges of it to him or me if I have but convinced thee that 1. Sound mental Conceptions of so much as is necessary to our own Justification much differ from proper Logical Definitions And that 2. Many millions are Justified that cannot define it 3. And that Logical Definitions are Works of Art more than of Grace which require so much Acuteness and Skill that even worthy and excellent Teachers may be and are disagreed about them especially through the great ambiguity of Words which all understand not in the same sence and few are sufficiently suspicious of and diligent to explain 4. And therefore that our Christian Love Peace and Concord should not be laid upon such Artificial things 5. And that really the Generality of Protestants are agreed mostly in the Matter when they quarrel sharply about many Artificial Notions and Terms in the point of Justification And yet after all this I shall as earnestly as this Doctor desire and labour for accurateness in Distinguishing Defining and Method though I will not have such things to be Engins of Church-Division And lastly Because he so oft and