act it self and therefore it is not faith as faith that is as it is an apprehension of Christ or recumbency on him that Justifyeth nor yet as an Instrument thus acting The nature of the act is but its aptitude to its office or justifying Interest and not the formal cause of it Proposition 6. No work or act of man is any true proper cause of his justification as Justification is commonly taken in the Gospel neither Principal or Instrumental The highest Interest that they can have is but to be a condition of our Justification and so a Dispositio moralis which therefore some call cansa dispositiva and some causa sine qua non and it s indeed but a Nominall cause and truly no cause at all Proposition 7. Whatsoever works do stand in opposition to Christ or disjunct from him yea or that stand not in a due subordination to him are so far from Justifying even as conditions that they are sins which do deserve condemnation Proposition 8. Works as taken for the Imperate Acts of Obedience external distinct from the first Radical Graces are not so much as conditions of our Justification as begun or our being put into a Justified state Proposition 9. Repentance from dead works denying our our selves renouncing our own Righteousness c. much less external Obedience are not the receptive condition of our Justification as faith is that is Their nature is not to be an actual Acceptance of Christ that is they are not faith and therefore are not designed on that account to be the Condition of our Justification Proposition 10. God doth not justifie us by Imputing our own faith to us in stead of perfect Obedience to the Law as if it were sufficient or esteemed by him sufficient to supply its place For it is Christs Righteousness that in point of value and merit doth supply its place nor doth any work of ours justifie us by satisfying for our sins for that 's the work of Christ the Mediator Our faith and love and obedience which are for the receiving and improving of him and his Righteousness and so stand in full subordination to him are not to be made co-partners of his office or honor Affirm Proposition first We are justified by the merits of a perfect sinless Obedience of Christ together with his sufferings which he performed both to the Law of nature the Law of Moses and the Law which was proper to himself as Mediator as the subject obliged Proposition 2. There is somewhat in the nature of faith it self in specie which makes it fit to be elected and appointed by God to be the great summary Condition of the Gospel that it be Receptive an Acceptance of Christ is the nature of the thing but that it be a condition of our Justification is from the will and constitution of the Donor and Justifier Proposition 3. There is also somewhat in the nature of Repentance self-denyal renouncing all other Saviours and our own righteousness desiring Christ loving Christ intending God and Glory as our end procured by Christ confessing sin c. which make them apt to be Dispositive Conditions and so to be comprized or implyed in faith the summary Receptive condition as its necessary attendants at least Proposition 4. Accordingly God hath joyned these together in his Promise and constitution making faith the summary and receptive Condition and making the said acts of Repentance self-denyal renouncing our own righteousness disclaiming in heart Justification by the works of the Law and the renouncing of all other Saviours also the desiring and loving of Christ offered and the willing of God as our God and the renouncing of all other Gods and so of the world flesh and devil at least in the resolution of the heart I say making these the dispositive Conditions which are ever implyed when faith only is expressed some of them as subservient to faith and perhaps some of them as real parts of faith it self Of which more anon Proposition 5. The Gospel promiseth Justification to all that will Believe or are Believers To be a Believer and to be a Disciple of Christ in Scripture sense is all one and so is it to be a Disciple and to be a Christian therefore the sense of the promise is that we shall be justified if we become true Christians or Disciples of Christ and therefore justifying faith comprehendeth all that is essential to our Discipleâ—ship or Christianity as its constitutive causes Proposition 6. It is not therefore any one single Act of faith alone by which we are justified but it is many Physical acts conjunctly which constitute that faith which the Gospel makes the condition of Life Those therefore that call any one Act or two by the name of justifying faith and all the rest by the name of works and say that it is only the act of recumbency on Christ as Priest or on Christ as dying for us or only the act of apprehending or accepting his imputed Righteousness by which we are justified and that our Assent or Acceptance of him as our Teacher and Lord our desire of him our love to him our renouncing other Saviours and our own Righteousness c. are the works which Paul doth exclude from our Justification and that it is Jewish to expect to be justified by these though but as Conditions of Justification these persons do mistake Paul and pervert the Doctrine of Faith and Justification and their Doctrine tendeth to corrupt the very nature of Christianity it self Though yet I doubt not but any of these acts conceited meritorious or otherwise as before explained in the Negative if men can believe contradictories may be the matter of such works as Paul excludeth And so may that one act also which they appropriate the name of justifying faith to Proposition 7. Sincere obedience to God in Christ is a condition of our continuance in a state of Justification or of our not losing it And our perseverance therein is a condition of our appearing in that state before the Lord at our departure hence Proposition 8. Our Faith Love and Works of Love or sincere Obedience are conditions of our sentential Justification by Christ at the particular and general Judgement which is the great Justification And so as they will prove our Interest in Christ our Righteousness so will they materially themselves justifie us against the particular false Accusation of being finally impenitent Unbelievers not Loving not obeying sincerely For to deny a false accusation is sufficient to our Justification Proposition 9. As Glorification and Deliverance from Hell is by some called Executive pardon or Justification so the foresaid acts are conditions of that execution which are conditions of Justification by the sentence of the Judge Proposition 10. As to a real inherent Justice or Justification in this life we have it in part in our Sanctification and Obedience and in the life to come we shall have it in perfection So much for the
hereabout are such as if they were held practically and after the proper sense of their expressions would be a great hinderance to salvation if not plainly hazard it And therefore the question is not to be cast by as needless or unprofitable It is so neer the great matters of our Redemption Justification and the nature of faith that it is it self the greater And if Amesius say true that truths are so concatenated that every Error must by consequence overthrow the foundation then it must be so in this The consequents shall be mentioned anon in the Arguments where it will be more seasonable And in great matters it is not a contemptible Error which consisteth but in mis-naming and mis-placing them It is a very great help to the clear and full understanding of Truths to have right Notions and Methods And the contrary may prove dangerous to many others when the particular Patrons of those mistakes may be in no danger by them For perhaps their first Notions may be righter than their second and they may not see the consequents of their mistakes and yet when such mistakes in terms and methods shall be commended to the world other men that hear and read their words and know not their hearts and better apprehensions are like enough to take them in the most obvious or proper sense and by one disorder to be led to more and to swallow the Consequents as well as the misleading Premises And therefore I must needs say that this point appeareth of such moment in my eyes that I dare not desert that which I confidently take to be the Truth nor sacrifice it to the honor or pleasure of man For the explication of the terms it is needless to say much and I have neither time for nor mind of needless work By Justification here we mean not either Sanctification alone or sanctification and remission conjunct as making up our Righteousness as the Papists do though we deny not but sometime the word may be found in Scripture in some such sense For thus it is past controversie that our justification that is our sanctification as to all that followeth faith is as much if not much more from our belief in Christ as Teacher and King as from our belief in him as a Ransome But by Justification we mean that Relative Change which Protestants ordinarily mean by this word which we need not here define The Preposition By when we speak of being justified by faith is not by all men taken in the same sense First Sometime it s used more strictly and limitedly to signifie only an efficiency or the Interest of an Efficient cause And thus some Divines do seem to take it when they say that we are justified by faith in Christs blood and Righteousness and not by faith in him as a Teacher or a Lord which occasioneth the Papists to say our difference is wider then indeed it is For the word By hath an ambiguity and in their sence we yield their Negative though not their Affirmative in the last-mentioned conclusion Secondly Sometime the word By is used to signifie a Conditionality or the Interest of a condition only in special And thus we take it when we explain our selves in what manner it is that we are justified by faith and by these questioned acts in particular And therefore those Protestants that dispute against us who are for the Affirmative do if I understand them deny only the propriety of the phrase which we use but not the thing or sense which we express by it for they grant that these acts of faith are Conditions of our Justification when they have never so much disputed that we are not justified by them and so a small syllable of two letters is much of the matter of their controversie Thirdly sometime this word is used to signifie the Interest of any other cause as well as the Efficient and that either generally or especially of some one This Paper is white By the whiteness as the formal cause we are moved to a godly life By God and salvation as the final cause c. Fourthly Sometime the term By is taken yet more largely and fitly enough for all or any Means in General or the interest of any means in the attainment of the End And so it comprehendeth all Causes even those Per accidens and Conditions as well as Causes and all that doth but remove impediments And in this comprehensive sense we take it here in the Question though when we come to determine what is the special Interest of faith in Justification I take it in the second sense Take notice also That I purposely here use this phrase we are Justified by Believing or by Faith rather than these justifying faith or Faith doth justifie us And I here foretell you that if I shall at any time use these last expressions as led to it by those with whom I deal it is but in the sense as is hereafter explained The Reasons why I choose to stick to this phrase rather then other are First Because this only is the Scripture phrase and the other is not found in Scripture that I remember It is never said that Faith doth justifie us though it be said that we are justified by faith And if any will affirm that I may use that phrase which is not found in Scripture he cannot say I must use it And in a Controverted case especially about such Evangelical truths the safety of adhering to Scripture phrase and the danger of departing from it is so discernable and specially when men make great use of their unscriptural phrases for the countenancing of their opinions I have the more reason to be cautelous Secondly Because the phrases are not alwaies of one and the same signification The one is more comprehensive then the other if strictly taken To be justified by faith is a phrase extensive to the Interest of any Medium whatsoever And there are Media which are not Causes But when we say that Faith doth justifie us or call it justifying Faith we express a Causality if we take the word strictly Though this last phrase may signifie the Interest of a bare Condition yet not so properly and without straining as the former The Reverend Author of the seond Treatise of Justification is of the same mind as to the use of the terms but he conjectures another reason for the Scripture use then I shall ever be perswaded of viz. that it is because Credere is not Agere but Pati to Believe is to Suffer and not to Act that it is a Grammatic all Action but Physically a Passion Though I think this no truer then that my brains are made of a looking glass and my heart of marble yet is there somwhat in this Reverend mans opinion that looks toward the truth afar off For indeed it intimateth that as to Causality or Efficiency faith is not Active in the justifying of a sinner but is a meer condition or
as that any acts of our own must interpose but they are in eodem instanti and differ only in order of nature In sum we prove a promise of pardon to all that receive Christ himself and believe in him If any will affirm the necessity of any other act before we can be justified it is incumbent on them to prove it This was the substance of my Answer to which the Reverend Bishop said no more whether satisfied or not I cannot tell But I thought meet to recite his Judgement both because it comes so neer the matter and because I know not of any other that saith the same or so much of seeming strength against us Against all these seven particular Opinions I am now to defend the Thesis when I have first told you in certain distinctions and propositions how much I grant and what I deny which I shall in short dispatch And here I need but to rehearse what I have said already to Mr. Blake pag. 3.4 or to give you some short account of my thoughts to the same purpose First We must not confound Justification by Constitution or Guift and justification by the Sentence of the Judge and the Execution of that sentence which are three distinct things Secondly We must not confound Justification with the assurance or feeling of Justification Thirdly We must distinguish between our first Justification from a state of sin and our daily Justification from particular Acts of sin Fourthly Between that which is necessary on Christs part and that which is necessary on our part to our Justification Fifthly Between Christs purchasing our Justification and his actual justifying of us Sixthly Between these two senses of the phrase justified by Fatih viz. as by an efficient Cause or as a meer Condition Seventhly Between the Causality of faith in the Physical effects of sanctification on the soul and its conducing to the efficacy of the Promise in our Justification Proposition 1. Ex parte Christi We easily grant that it is not his Teaching or Ruling us but his Ransome and Obedience that are the Meritorious cause of our Justification and Salvation Proposition 2. Therefore if Christ did justifie us per modum objecti aprehensi in the nearest sense as the Belief of sacred Truths doth make a Qualitative impression on the soul in our Sanctification and the exciting and acting of our Graces then I should confess that it is only that Act of Faith which is the apprehension of this Object that doth help us directly to the benefit of the Object Proposition 3. But it is not so For the Object justifieth us causally by way of Merit and Moral procurement and the benefit of that Merit is partly the Promise conveying to us Justification and partly Justification conveyed by that Promise not to speak now of other benefits and the Promise conveyeth Justification by Moral Donation as a deed of Gift or a Pardon to a Traytor Therefore the Gift flowing purely from the Will of the Giver and the Promise or deed of Gift being the Immediate Instrumental efficient Cause of it as it is signum voluntatis Donatoris our Belief or Apprehension qua talis cannot justifie us nor have any nearer or higher interest in our Justification then to be the Condition of it as it is a free Gift And therefore the Condition must be judged of by the will of the Donor expressed in his Promise and not immediately by the conceits of men concerning its natural agreeableness to the Object in this or that respect Proposition 4. Yea Even ex parte Christi though he Merit Justification by his Ransome and Obedience yet he actually justifieth us as King of his Church and that in regard of all the three sorts or parts of Justification He giveth it constitutively by his Promise as Lord and Legislator and Benefactor on these terms of Grace He sentenceth us Just as our Judg and he executeth that sentence as a Just Judge governing according to his Laws So that if Faith did justifie ex natura rei which they call its Instrumentality I see not yet but that the apprehension of Christ as Lord and Judge must justifie us because the Object apprehended doth thus justifie us Proposition 5. I easily grant that in our Sanctification or the exciting and exercise of our Graces the case standeth as the Opponents apprehend it to do in Justification This Interest of the Act must be judged of by the Object apprehended For it is not the Belief of a Promise that feareth us but of a Threatning nor the Belief of a Threatning that Comforteth us but of a Promise For here the Object worketh immediately on our minds per modum objecti apprehensi But in Justification it is not so where God is the Agent as a Donor and there can be nothing done by us but in order to make us fit Subjects and the change is not Qualitative by an Object as such but Relative by a Fundamentum which is without us in the Gospel and nothing within us but a qualifying Condition without which it will not be done Proposition 6. Accordingly I easily grant that the Sense or Assurance of Justification in our Consciences is wrought by the Object as an Object Because this Assurance is a part of our Sanctification But that Object is not directly Christs Ransome but the Promise through his blood and our own Faith which is the condition of that Promise Proposition 7. I easily grant that Faith in Christ as Lord or Teacher of the Church is not the Instrumental efficient Cause of our Justification They need not therefore contend against me in this But withall I say that faith in his Priest-hood is not the Instrumental efficient Cause neither though I allow it to have a nearer Physical Relation to the Ransome which meriteth our Justification Proposition 8. Though there is a greater shew of Reason to assert the Interest of the single Belief in Christs Priest-hood for a particular Pardon then for our first general Pardon yet indeed it is but a shew even there also For it is not only the applying our selves to his blood or Ransome but it is also the applying our selves to whole Christ to make up the whole breach that is the Condition of our particular Pardon so far as a particular Act of saith is a Condition which though it be not a Receiving Christ for Union with him as we did in the beginning yet is it a receiving him ad hoc et secundum quid and a renewed Consent to his whole Office and adhesion to him as our special remedy for recovery from that fall by freeing us both from the guilt and stain of Sin Proposition 9. It is undoubtedly the duty of every Sinner in the sense of his guilt and misery to fly to the Ransome of Christs blood and the Merit of his Obedience as the satisfaction to Gods Justice and the Purchaser of our Justification And he that doth not this how willing soever he may seem
to learn of Christ as a Master or to be ruled by him yet cannot be justified or saved by him Proposition 10. I easily grant that Faith qud Christum Prophetam et Dominum recipit doth not justifie but only fides quâ Christum Prophetam Dominum recipit quâ est promissionis Conditio praestita But then I say the same also of Faith in Christ as Priest or in his Righteousness Having explained my meaning in these ten Propositions for preventing of Objections that concern not the Controversie but run upon mistakes I shall now proceed to prove the Thesis which is this Thesis We are justified by God by our Believing in Christ as Teacher and Lord and not only by Believing in his blood or Righteousness Argument 1. My first Argument shall be from the Concession of those that we dispute with They commonly grant us the point contended for Therefore we may take it for granted by them If you say What need you then dispute the point if they deny it not whom you dispute with I Answer some of them grant it and understand not that they grant it us because they understand not the sense of our Assertion And some of them understand that they grant it in our sense but yet deny it in another sense of their own and so make it a strife about a syllable But I shall prove the Concession left some yet discern it not If it be granted us that Believing in Jesus Christ as Lord and Teacher is a real part of the Condition of our Justification then is it granted us that by this believing in him we are justified as by a Condition which is our sense and all that we assert But the former is true Therefore so is the later For the proof of the Antecedent which is all First Try whether you can meet with any Divine that dare deny it who believeth that Faith is the Condition of the Covenant Secondly And I am sure their writings do ordinarily confess it Their Doctrine that oppose us is That Faith is both a Condition and an Instrument but other Acts as Repentance c. may be Conditions but not Instruments And those that have waded so far into this Controversie seem to joyne these other Acts of Faith with the Conditions but not with the Instrument Thirdly They expresly make it antecedent to our Justification as of moral necessity ex constitutione permittentis and say it is the Fides quae justificat which is the thing desired if there be any sense in the words Fourthly They cannot deny to Faith in Christ as Lord and Teacher that which they commonly give to Repentance and most of them to many other Acts. But to be a Condition or part of the Condition of Justification is commonly by them ascribed to Repentance therefore they cannot deny it to these acts of faith So that you see I may fairly here break off and take the Thesis pro Concessa as to the sense Nothing more can be said by them but against our phrase whether it be proper to say that we are justified By that which is but a bare Condition of our Justification which if any will deny First We shall prove it by the consent of the world that apply the word By to any Medium And Dr. Twiss that told them contr Corvinum over and over that a condition is a Medium though it be not a cause and I think none will deny it Secondly by the consent of many Texts of Scripture But this must be referred to another Disputation to which it doth belong viz. about the Instrumentality of faith in justifying us which God willing I intend also to perform Argument 2. The usual language of the Scripture is that we are justified by faith in Christ or by believing in him without any exclusions of any essential part of that faith But faith in Christ doth essentially contain our believing in him as Teacher Priest and King or Lord therefore by believing in him as Teacher Priest and Lord we are justified The Major is past the denial of Christians as to the first part of it And for the second part the whole cause lyeth on it For the Minor also is past all controversie For if it be essential to Christ as Christ to be God and man the Redeemer Teacher Priest and Lord then it is essential to faith in Christ by which we are justified to believe in him as God and man the Redeemer Teacher Priest and Lord. But the Antecedent is most certain therefore so is the Consequent The reason of the Consequence is because the act here is specified from its Object All this is past further question All the Question therefore is Whether Scripture do any where expound it self by excluding the other essential parts of faith from being those acts by which we are justified and have limited our justification to any one act This lyeth on the Affirmers to prove So that you must note that it is enough for me to prove that we are justified by faith in Christ Jesus for this Includeth all the essential acts till they shall prove on the contrary that it is but secundum quid and that God hath excluded all other essential acts of faith save that which they assert The proof therefore is on their part and not on mine And I shall try anon how well they prove it In the mean time let us see what way the Scripture goeth and observe that every Text by way of Authority doth afford us a several Argument unless they prove the exclusion First Mark 16.15 16 17. Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every Creature he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved and he that believeth not shall be damned and these signs shall follow them that believe c. Here the faith mentioned is the believing of the Gospel and the same with our becoming Christians and therefore not confined to one part or act of saving saith That Gospel which must be preached to all the world is it that is received by the faith here mentioned But that Gospel doth essentially contain more then the doctrine of Christs Priesthood therefore so doth that faith Object It is not Justification but Salvation that is there promised Answ It is that Salvation whereof Justification is a part It is such a Salvation as all have right to as soon as ever they believe and are baptized which comprehendeth Justification And the Scripture here and everywhere doth make the same faith without the least distinction to be the condition of Justification and of our Title to Glorification and never parcels out the several effects to several acts of faith except only in those Qualities or Acts of the soul which faith is to produce as an efficient cause To be justified by faith or Grace and to be saved by faith or Grace are promiscuously spoken as of the same faith or Grace Secondly John 3.15 16 18. He that believeth in him
by sentence in Judgement Thirdly The Execution of the former by actuall Liberation from penalty The last is oftener call'd Remission of sin the two former are more properly called Justification First As for the first of these I argue this If Christ do as King and Benefactor on supposition of his antecedent Merits Enact the Law of Grace or promise by which we are justified then doth he as King and Benefactor justifie us by Condonation or constitution For the Promise is his Instrument by which he doth it But the Antecedent is certain therefore so is the Consequent As the Father by Right of Creation was Rector of the new created world and so made the Covenant of Life that was then made so the Son and the Father by Right of Redemption is Rector of the new Redeemed world and so made the Law of Grace that gives Christ and Life to all that will believe As it is a Law it is the Act of a King As it is a Deed of Gift it is the Act of a Benefactor as it is founded in his death and supposeth his satisfaction thereby it is called his Testament In no respect is it part of his satisfaction or Humiliation or Merit itself but the true effect of it So that Christs merit is the Remote Moral Cause of our Justification but his granting of this promise or Act of Grace is the true natural efficient Instrumental Cause of our Justification even the Immediate Cause Secondly Justification by sentence of Judgement is undeniably by Christ as King For God hath appointed to Judge the World by him Act. 17.31 and hath committed all Judgement to him John 5.22 And therefore as Judge he doth justifie and Condemn This is not therefore any part of his Humiliation or Obedience by which he ransometh sinners from the Curse To deny these things is to deny Principles in Politicks Thirdly And then for the Execution of the sentence by actual liberation there is as little room for a doubt this being after both the former and the act of a Rector and not of a Surety in the form of a servant So that it is apparent that as the Merit of our Justification is by Christ in his Humiliation So our actual Justification in all three senses is by Christ as King And therefore Faith in order to Justification must accordingly respect him Secondly As the Teacher of the Church Christ doth not immediately justifie but yet mediately he doth and it is but mediately that he justifieth by his Merits The Gospel is a Law that must be promulgate and expounded and a Doctrine that must be taught and pressed on sinners till they receive it and believe that they may be justified And this Christ doth as the Teacher of his Church And Faith must accordingly respect him Thirdly The Resurrection of Jesus Christ was part of his exaltation by Power and Conquest and not of his Humiliation and yet we are justified by his Resurrection as that which both shewed the perfection of his satisfaction by which he entred upon that state of Glory in which he was to apply the benefits Fourthly The Intercession of Christ is a part of his office as he is a Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedeck but it is no part of his Humiliation or Ransome And yet we are justified by his Intercession And therefore Faith must respct it for Justification Let us now hear what The Scripture saith in these cases Mattthew 9.6 But that you may know that the Son of man hath Power on earth to forgive sins c. Here it is plainly made an Act of Power and not of Humiliation to forgive sins Mat. 11.27 28 29. All things are delivered unto me of my Father c. Come to me all ye that are weary c. so Mat. 28.18 19. compared with Mark 16.15 16. shew that it is an act of Christ exalted or in Power to pardon or grant the promise of Grace John 1.12 To give power to men to become the Sons of God must be an act of Power John 5.22 23 24. it is express of the sentence Acts 5.31 Him hath God exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour for to give Repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins He forgiveth as a Prince and Saviour Act. 10.42 43. he is preached as the Judge of quick and dead and so made the Object of the faith by which we have Remission of sins Rom. 4.25 Who was delivered for our offences and raised for our justification And this Resurrection as is said was part of his Exaltation And the Apostle thence concludes as is aforesaid that this is the faith that is Imputed to us for Righteousness If we believe in him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead vers 26. Rom. 8.33 34. Who shall lay any thing to the charge of Gods Elect it is God that justifieth who is he that condemneth it is Christ that died yea rather that is risen again who is even at the right hand of God who also maketh intercession for us Here God and the Resurrection and Session at Gods right hand and the intercession of Christ are all made the grounds or causes of our Justification and not only Christs death Yea it is exprest by it is Christ that died yea rather that is risen c. 1 Cor. 15.1 2.3 4. The faith by which Paul tells them they were saved had Christs Resurrection for its object as well as his dying for our sins Phil. 3.8.9 10. Pauls way of Justification was first to win Christ and be found in him and so to have a Righteousness of God by faith in Christ whole Christ and not that of the Law that he might know the power of his Resurrection c. The true Nature of this faith is described 1 Pet. 1.21 Who by him do believe in God that raised him from the dead and gave him Glory that your Faith and Hope may be in God 1 Pet. 3.21 The like Figure whereunto even Baptism doth now also save us by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ who is gone into Heaven and is on the right hand of God Angels and Authorities and Powers being made subject to him It is certain that the salvation of Baptism consisteth very much in Remission of sin or Justification In a word it is most evident in Scripture that merit and satisfaction are but the moral remote preparatory Causes of our Justification though exceeding eminent and must be the daily study and everlasting praise of the Saints and that the perfecting nearer efficient causes were by other acts of Christ and that all concurred to accomplish this work And therefore even ex parte Christi the work is done by his several acts though merited by him in his humiliation only And therefore it is past doubt on their own principles that faith must respect all in order to our Justification And the faith by which we are justified must be that of the Eunuch Acts 8.37 that believed with all
him is the means of Receiving all 1 John 5.11 12. God hath given us eternal life and this life is in his son He that hath the son hath life and he that hath not the son hath not life So that accepting Christ as Christ makes him ours by way of condition and then our life of Justification and sanctification is in him and comes with him Coming to Christ as Christ is the sole undivided condition of Life John 5 40. Ye will not come to me that ye may have Life Yet here I must crave that Ingenuous dealing of the Reader that he will observe once for all and not expect that I should on every call recite it that though I maintain the unity of the condition not only in opposition to a separating division but also to a distributive division of Conditions yet I still maintain these three things First that quoad materiale Conditionis that faith which is the condition doth believe all the essential parts of Christ office distinctly and so it doth not look to his Exaltation in stead of his Humiliation nor è Contra but looks to be Ransomed by him as a sacrifice and meritoriously justified by his Merits and actually justified by him as King Judge and Bnefactor c. And that it eyeth also distinctly those Benefits which salvation doth essentially consist in at least And it takes Christ finally to Justifie Adopt Sanctifie Glorifie c. distinctly But still it s but one condition on which we have Title to all this Secondly That I maintain that in the Real work of sanctification the several acts of faith on several objects are distinct efficient causes of the acting of several Graces in the soul The Belief of every attribute of God and every Scripture truth hath a several real effect upon us But it is not so in Justification nor any receiving of Right to a benefit by Divine Donation for there our faith is not a true efficient cause but a Condition and faith as a condition is but One though the efficient acts are divers The Belief of several Texts of Scripture may have as many sanctifying effects on the soul But those are not several conditions of our Title thereto God saith not I will excite this Grace if thou wilt believe this Text and that grace if thou wilt believe that Text. In the exercise of Grace God worketh by our selves as efficient causes but in the Justifying of a sinner God doth it wholly and immediately himself without any Co-efficiency of our own though we must have the disposition or Condition Thirdly I still affirm that this One undivided condition may have divers appellations from the Respect to the Consequent benefits for I will not call them the effects This one faith may be denominated importing only the Interest of a condition a justifying faith a sanctifying faith an Adopting faith a saving faith preserving faith c. But this is only if not by extrinsick denomination at the most but a Virtual or Relative distinction As the same Center may have divers denominations from the several lines that meet in it Or the same Pillar or Rock may be East West North or South ad laevam vel ad dextram in respect to several other Correlates Or plainly as one and the same Antecedent hath divers denominations from several Consequents So if you could give me health wealth Honor Comfort c. on the condition that I would but say One Word I thank you that one word might be denominated an enriching word an honouring word a comforting word from the several Consequents And so may faith But this makes neither the Materiale nor the Formale of the Condition to be divers either the faith it self or condition of the Promise Argument 9. If there be in the very nature of a Covenant Condition in general and of Gods imposed Condition in specicial enough to perswade us that the benefit dependeth usually as much or more on some other act as on that which accepteth the benefit it self then we have reason to judge that our Justification dependeth as much on some other act as on the acceptance of Justification but the Antecedent is true as I prove First As to Covenant Condition in general it is most usual to make the promise consist of somwhat which the party is willing of and the condition to consist of somewhat which the Promiser will have but the Receiver hath more need to be drawn to And therefore it is that the Accepting of the benefit promised is seldome if ever expresly made the Condition though implicitly it be part because it is supposed that the party is willing of it But that is made the express condition where the party is most unwilling So when a Rebel hath a pardon granted on condition he come in and lay down arms it is supposed that he must humbly and thankfully accept the pardon and his returning to his allegiance is as truly the condition of his pardon as the putting forth his hand and taking it is If a Prince do offer himself in maraiage to the poorest Beggar and consequently offer Riches and Honors with himself the accepting of his person is the expressed condition more then the accepting of the riches and honors and the latter dependeth on the former If a Father give his son a purse of gold on condition he will but kneel down to him or ask him forgiveness of some fault here his kneeling down and asking him forgiveness doth more to the procurement of the gold then putting forth his hand and taking it Secondly And as for Gods Covenant in specie it is most certain that God is his own end and made and doth all things for himself And therefore it were blasphemy to say that the Covenant of Grace were so free as to respect mans wants only and not Gods Honor and Ends yea or man before God And therefore nothing is more certain then that both as to the ends and mode of the Covenant it principally respecteth the Honor of God And this is it that man is most backward to though most obliged to And therefore its apparent that this must be part yea the principal part of the condition Every man would have pardon and be saved from hell God hath promised this which you would have on condition you will yield to that which naturally you would not have You would have Happiness but God will have his preeminence and therefore you shall have no Happiness but in him You would have pardon but God will have subjection and Christ will have the honour of being the bountifull procurer of it and will be your Lord and Teacher and Sanctifier as well as Ransom If you will yield to one you shall have the other So that your Justification dependeth as much on your Taking Christ for your Lord and Master as on your receiving Justification or consenting to be pardoned by him Yea the very mode of your acceptance of Christ himself and the benefits
alone be questioned but thus branded Does not every man that undergoes various relations variously act according to them And do not men that make address address themselves in like variety He that is at once a Husband a Parent a Master a School-master a Physician acts variously according to all of these capacities Some come to him as a Father some as a Master some as a Teacher all of them come to him as a Physician But only they that come to him as a Physician are cured by him Believers through faith go to Christ that hears all the Relations mentioned But as they seek satisfaction in his blood-shedding which is an act of his Priesthood they are justified Repl. I ever granted that we are justified by trusting in Christs blood But not only by that Secondly It was God that sought satisfaction in Christs blood the Believer seeks for the fruit of that satisfactition Thirdly But now to the distinction I shall tell you freely my thought of it and the reasons of my resisting your use of it and then answer your reasons for it And first We must understand what it is that is distinguished whether the Habit of faith or the Acts As far as I am able to understand them they that understand themselves do intend to distinguish of the Habit by a virtual distinction and their meaning is The Habit of Faith which produceth both these acts doth justifie but not as it produceth the act of believing in Christ as Lord Teacher c. but as it produceth the Act of believing in his blood that is The habit is the remote cause and the act is the nearer cause and the habit justifieth by this Act and not by the other I verily think this is their meaning I am sure this is the most probable and rational that I can imagine But then first This contradicteth their ordinary assertion that it is not the Habit of faith but the act by which we are justified Secondly Then they do not mean that the act of believing in Christ as Lord c. is so much as the fides qua which if they will speak out and make no more ado the controversie will be much better understood For then it is a question that 's easily apprehended Whether only the act of faith in Christs satisfaction do justifie or the believing in Christ as King Priest and Prophet or all that is essential to Christian faith This is a plain case which fides qua and qua do not illustrate But then I must add that this begs the question as used by them but decideth it not And as qua respecteth but the Matter of the condition q. d. The habit as it produceth this act and not that is the condition of Justification for else it justifieth neither as it produceth the one or the other so it is the very Question between us Whether it be one act or the whole essence of the Christian faith that is the Condition And this supposeth the determination of other controversies that are not yet determined There are three opinions of the Habit of faith First that the several acts of faith have several habits Secondly that the divers acts have but one habit of faith distinct from the habits of other graces Thirdly That faith love and all graces have but one habit If the first hold then the distinction as before explained hath no place If the last hold then the Habit of Love or Fear may be on the same ground said to justifie If I have before hit on their meaning then the distinction of the Habit is virtualis and the distinction of the acts is realis and they totally exclude all acts save that which they fix upon not from being present but from a co-interest But from what interest Of a Cause that we deny even to all Of a Condition that they grant to these which they exclude Next we must understand the members of their Distinction And sometime they express one branch to be fides qua justificat and sometime fides qua apprehendit Christum satisfacienrem c. As to the former it cannot be contradistinct from faith in Christ as Lord but from faith as sanctifying c. it being but a denominative or virtual distinction of one and the same faith from the several consequents And so I easily grant that fides qua justificat non sanct ficat vel glorificat and so of all the consequents of it As it is the condition of one it is not the condition of the other which is no more then to say that there is between the consequents Distinctio realis from whence the antecedent Really the same may be denominatively or virtually distinguished As the same man that goeth before a hundred particular men hath a hundred distinct Relations to them as Before them all The very same condition in a free Gift may be the condition of many hundred benefits and accordingly be Relatively and denominatively distinguished when yet it is as truly the condition of all as of one and hath equal interest as to the procurement And as for the other phrase that fides qua recipit Christum satisfacientem justificat properly it is false Docrine if qua signifie the nearest Reason of faiths interest in procuring justification for then it is but to say that fides qua fides justificat which is false The denomination and the description express but the same thing fides is the denomination and Receptio Christi is the description if therefore it justifie qua Receptio Christi then it justifieth qua fides that is qua haec fides in specie which is to ascribe it to the ◠credere with a witness And elsewhere I have disproved it by many Arguments But if qua be taken less properly as denoting only the aptitude of faith to be the condition of Justification then still the Question is begged For we say that as the act of believing in Christs blood-shed hath a special aptitude in one respect so the act of believing in his Resurrection Intercession c. and receiving him as King Teacher c. hath a special aptitude in other respects upon which God hath certainly made them the Conditions of our Justification with the other But if any should distinguish of the act of faith and not the Habit and say that fides qua credit in Christum ut Regem justificat sed non quâ credit in Christum ut Regem I accept the former as being all that I desire and grant the latter But then I say the like of the other act of faith that fides quâ credit in Christum satisfacientem non justificat because fides quà fides non justificat sed fides quâ conditio praestita And I think I need to say no more for the opening the Fallacy that this distinction useth to cover And now I come to peruse all that I can find that is produced to support this distinction And the most is certain pretended
similitudes that have little or no similitude as to this The common similitude is A man that is oculatus heareth but not qua oculatus but qua auritus c. Repl. First If you take quà strictly the affirmative is not true For then à quatenus ad omne every man that is auritus would hear whereas he may stop his ears and be where is no sound c. And a man that hath eyes may wink and be in the dark c. Secondly If quà signifie the aptitude or causal interest I deny the similitude It is dissimile and the reason of the difference is evident for a mans eyes are Physical efficient causes of his sight and his ears of hearing naturally in their aptitude and potentiality determined to their proper objects but saith is no efficient cause of our Justification or of our interest in Christ at all much less a Physical efficient cause But the Interest it hath is Moral which dependeth on the Donors will and it is no higher then that of a condition and therefore the act that Physically hath least respect to the object may in this case if the Donor please do as much to procure a Title to it as that which hath the nearest physical respect to it As if you have a deed of Gift of a Countrey on Condition you will discover a Traitor or marry one that oweth it here the alien act hath more interest in procuring your Title then your Apprehending or treading on the soil or taking possession yea or accepting the deed of Gift it self So God hath made our Accepting of whole Christ to be the condition of life and pardon and consequently the Accepting him in other Relations in which he destroyeth sin advanceth God c. doth as much to our Justification as the accepting him at our Ransome Now to Mr. Blakes Reasons when he saith that this distinction would pass every where else as necessary he is much mistaken for as he doth not tell us at all what sort of distinction it is whether Realis Rationis Modalis Formalis Virtualis c. so I could give him an hundred instances in which it will not pass in any tolerable sense but what are his own select instances from a mans various Relations to the variety of his actions and their effects But is it Christ or the believer that you put in these various Relations It s plain that you mean Christ But that 's nothing to the question I maintain as well as you that Christ performeth variety of works according to the divers parts of his office and that he meriteth not Justification as King but as a Sacrifice as he effectively justifieth not as a sacrifice but as a King and he teacheth as a Teacher c. this was never denyed by me But the question is whether the Interest of the several acts of our faith be accordingly distinct which I deny and confidently deny In the works that Christ doth in these several Relations there is distincti◠realis and Christ is the proper efficient cause of them But though our faith must accept Christ in all these Relations and to do the several works in the several Relations yet it is no proper cause of the effects and as I said the interest it hath in the procurement is meerly moral and that but of a condition and therefore it is to be judged of by the will of the Donor But you say that only they that come to Christ as a Physician are cured by him Repl. Very true I never denyed it But not only By coming to him as a Physitian especially as the Worker of this one part of the cure You add Believers through faith go to Christ that heareth all ◠the Relations mentioned But as they seek satisfaction in his blood-shedding they are Justified Repl. Very true if by as you understand only the aptitude of the act to its office and the certain connexion of the effect otherwise it is not as they believe at all that they are justified but it is not only as they seek satisfaction in his blood but also as they believe in him as King Teacher Rising Interceding c. Though it be Christs blood and not his Dominion that Ransometh us yet his promise giveth the fruit of that blood as well on the condition of believing in him as King as of the believing in his blood Hitherto we have come short of your proofs which next we shall proceed to and freely examine Mr. Blake I shall take the bodlness to give in my Arguments to make good that faith in Christ qua Lord doth not justifie First That which the types under the law appointed for atonement and expiation lead us unto in Christ our faith must eye for atonement expiation and reconciliation this cannot be denyed These Levitical Types lead us doubtless to a right object being Schoolmasters to lead us unto Christ and shaddows whereof he is the substance As also to that office in him who is the object of faith which serves for that work But those types lead us to Christ in his Priestly office for the most part as sacrificing sometime as interceding John 1.29 2 Cor. 5.21 1 Pet. 1.18 A great part of the Epistle to the Heb. is a proof of it Reply I grant you both Major and Minor but the question is a meer stranger to the Just conclusion First it will not follow because our faith must eye Christ as Priest for Reconciliation that therefore it must eye him only as Priest for Reconciliation And if only be not in your exclusion of other acts of faith follows not Secondly No nor if it were in neither for ex perte Christs for Reconciliation only Christs Priesthood is to be eyed as the meritorious cause speaking in their sense that take the priestly office to comprehend not only Christ as Sacrificer but as sacrifice yea as obeying in the form of a servant the sicness whereoff now pass by but ex parte nostri the so eying him is not the only act of faith by which we are justified so that for is ambiguous and either signifieth Christs procurement of our Justification or ours In the former sense grant as aforesaid these Types shew us that Christ only as Priest and sacrifice doth satisfie for us But as to the procuring Interest of our faith these Types shew us not that only this act procureth our Interest Nor is there a word in the texts you mention to prove any such thing Jo. 1.19 saith that Christ the Lamb of God taketh away the sin of the world but it doth not say that only believing in him as the Lamb of God is the faith upon which we have part in his blood and are justified by him 1 Pet. 1.18 tels us we were Redeemed by his precious blood but it doth not tell us that only believing in that blood is the faith by which we have interest in it but contrarily thus describes that faith ver 21. Who by him
his flesh Ephe. 5.23 24 25 30. Sixthly We are to do it as in remembrance of his death so also in expectation of his comming which will be in Kingly Glory when he will drink with us the fruit of the Vine new in the Kingdome of his Father Object But Christ doth not pardon sin in all these respects Answ First But in the Sacrament he is represented to be believed in entirely in all these respects Secondly And he pardoneth as King though he merit it as a sacrifice And as his Sacrifice and Merit are the cause of all that following so therefore it is specially represented in the Sacrament not excluding but including the rest Thirdly Believing in Christ as King and Prophet even as his offices respect his Honor and our sanctity may be as truly the condition of our Justification as believing in his blood Mr. Blake As the spirit of God guides faith so it must go to God for propitiation and â—â—tonement But the Holy Ghost guides faith to go the blood of Christ for attonement Rom. 3.25 5.9 Eph. 1.7 1 John 1.7 Reply Concedo totum The conclusion can be but this therefore faith must go to the blood of Christ for attonement Who ever questioned this I But your Thesis which you set at the Head of your Arguments was Faith in Christ qua Lord doth not justifie which is little kin to any of your Arguments But in the explication you have here at last the term Only and therefore I may take that to be supposed in the Argument But then with that Addition I deny your Minor The texts mentioned say nothing to prove it Rom. 3.25 hath no only in it nor any thing exclusive of the other acts of Christ And if it had yet it would not follow that all other acts of our faith were excluded As his blood is the meritorious cause and so the foundation of all the benefits and so all the Applying Causes are supposed in the mention of it and not excluded so are all other acts of our faith in the mention of that act Rom. 5.9 saith not that we are justified only by his blood Nâ—r is it any adding to the Scripture to add more unless you can prove that these texts are the whole Scripture or that the other Scriptures add no more Ephe. 1 7. and 1 John 1.7 do neither of them exclude either the other acts of Christ or other acts of faith Nay John seems to make somewhat else the condition on our part then the belief in that blood only when he saith there If we walk in the Light as he is in the Light we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin Or if you think this if denoteth but a sign yet other texts will plainly prove more To conclude If I were to go only to the blood of Christ for atonement yet it would not follow that going to that blood only for it is the only act of Faith on which Justification is promised or given me in the Gospel as is before declared Mr. Blake You demand Will you exclude his Obedience Resurrection intercession To which I only say I marvell at the question If I exclude these I exclude his blood His shedding of blood was in Obedience John 10.18 Phil. 2.8 his Resurrection was his freedom from the bands of death and an evidence of our discharge by blood His Intercession is founded on his blood He intercedes not as we by bare petition but by merit He presents his blood as the high Priest in the Holy of Holies Repl. It was the thing I had to do to prove that Rom. 3.24 and those other texts are not exclusive of all but his blood and that the word Only is no more meant then it is expressed in them And now you grant it me And needs must do it while Scripture tells us that by the Obedience of one many are made Righteous Rom. 5.19 and that he is Risen for our Justification Rom. 4 â—5 and that Righteousness shall be imputed to us if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead ver 24. and It is God that justifieth who is he that condemneth it is Christ that dyed yea rather that is risen again who is even at the right hand of God who also maketh Intercession for us Rom. 8 33 34. he that believeth all these texts will not add only to the first at least if he understand them for they do not contradict each other Well! but you marvell at my question I am glad of that Are we so well agreed that you marvell at my supposition of this difference To satisfie you my question implyed this Argument If the Resurrection Intercession c. be not in those texts excluded nor faith in them then we may not add only to interpret them but c. Ergo. But let us hear the reasons of your marveling First As to Obedience you say His shedding of blood was in Obedience Answer But though all blood-shed was in Obedience yet all Obedience was not by blood-shed nor suffering neither And the text Rom. 5.19 seems to speak of Obedience as Obedience and not only as in blood shed Secondly You say His Resurrection was his freedom c. Ans But Suffering is one thing and freedom from suffering is another thing I herefore faith to our justification must eye Christs conquest and freedom from death as well as his death it self Moreover Resurrection was an act of Power and his Entrance on his Kingdom and not a meer act of Priesthood Nor will you ever prove that faith to Justification must only look at the Resurrection as connoting the death from which he riseth Thirdly You say His Intercession is founded on his blood c. Answer So is his Kingdom and Lordship Rom. 14 9. Mat. 28.18 Phil. 2.9 10. It seems then faith in order to Justification must not only look at Christs blood but that which is founded on it His Government in Legislation Judgement Execution is all founded in his blood c. because he hath drank of the brook in the way therefore did he lift up the Head Psalme 110.7 You add He Interceeds by Merit Answer Not by new purchasing Merit but by the virtue of his former Merit and the collation of the effects of it from the Father And so he Reigneth and Governeth both by virtue of former Merit and for the applying that Merit and attaining of its Ends. Whereas therefore you say If I exclude these I shall exclude his blood It is a weighty Answer And the like you may say also of his Kingly and Prophetical office The operation of them are so woven and twisted together by infinite wisdom that all do harmoniously concur to the attainment of the ends of each one and if you lay by one you lay by all you exclude Christs blood as to the end of Justification if you include not his Kingly and Prophetical
Covenant made to Christ upon the Gospel invitation And thus it is expiated by Christ 4ly Or as it hath respect to the Gospel commination so as to make a man the object of the actuall curse of this New Covenant or the person to whom its proper penalty is become actually due as every sin made the penalty of the first Law actually due to us This is it that I have said that Christ doth not expiate and none but this Some Divines say the Gospel hath no proper curse or commination penalty I am past doubt that it hath even non-liberation a privation of all the salvation offered them and the Remedilesness of their state c. and I have oft opened this and proved that only final Impenitency and Infidelity or the finall non-performance of the conditions of life are thus peremptorily threatned and make a man the Subject of the proper actual curse of this Law of Grace And if after all explications you will still carry it in confusion or intimate that men hold intolerable Doctrine omitting their explications and by generals making that theirs which they disclaim our next reply shall be patience or if you think indeed either that the Law of Grace doth oblige any under the penalty of remediless non-liberation besides the finally Impenitent and Unbelievers or that Christ dyed to expiate any mans predominant final Impenitency or Unbelief I will not trouble you with any other consutation then a denyal of it Treat p. ibid. Repentance is not an ingredient to our Justification as faith is Repentance qualifieth the Subject but faith immediatly receiveth it Answer The Word Ingredient is more ambiguous then to be worthy the labour of discussing But your assigned difference I ever did allow And yet must we voluminously differ when I have told you that I allow it But then I add that this difference is in the nature of the acts and in their aptitude to their office But in the general nature of being Conditions of pardon which is the nearest reason of their interest they agree though upon several reasons they are made conditions Treat We are not justified by the Habit of faith but by the Act. Answer I said so too in my Aphorisms But the reasons of a learned man Dr. Wallis in his friendly animadversions have perswaded me that it is unsound Treat p. 129. It is asserted that Justification called in Titulo or virtual is nothing but the Grant of it in the Gospel But I see not how that can be called our Justification Answ First That which is asserted is first That the Gospel is the Instrument justifying Secondly That the moral act of the Gospel-Grant and Gods Will by it is Justification in sensu activo Thirdly That the Relation resulting there-from is our passive Justification Secondly Can you see how a Princes pardon under his hand-writing can be the Instrument of a Traitors pardon and how the moral or civil Action of that Instrument and of the Prince by it can be active pardon and how the Relation effected by it can be passive pardon If you can see it there you may see it here And if you cannot many a one can Treat It is the sign or Instrument declaring it not justification it self An. Who ever said and where that passive Justification yea or active is the Gospel it self or the sign The Letter is the sign The actual signification of Gods will thereby is the justifying act The Relation thence resulting on us is our passive Justification These have been oft recited Treat As the grant or promise of our Sanctification is not our Sanctification Answ Good reason The difference is not to you unknown Sanctification passive being a Physical effect must have a Physical cause and therefore a bare moral cause cannot produce it But pardon or justification being but a Relative effect may be produced per nudam resultantiam à fundamento 2. But suppose God had made a promise of Sanctification on condition of faith would not the Right to Sanctification have resulted immediately from this promise the condition being performed And that Right hath the same Relative nature as constitutive Justification and pardon it self hath Treat And as on the contrary our condemnation while we abide in sin or Gods anger against the sinner is not the threatning promulged but that which comes from God himself Answ 1. Our Condemnation per sententiam Judicis is not the thing in question not yet the explication of it but our constitutive condemnation And that it is not indeed the Letter of the Law whoever said so but activè it is the action of the Law passivè sumpta it is the Relative effect of the Law 2. From your own Argument reverst I unresistibly make good my Cause against you Condemnation active is the Laws act and condemnation Passive is the Laws immediate effect therefore Justification is alike produced by the Promise or Gift in the Gospel The Antecedent is proved Iohn 3.18 he that believeth on him is not condemned for the Obligation is dissolved but he that believeth not is condemned already Which must be by some Law it being before Judgement and Execution 2 Cor. 3 9. The Law in its delivery is called the ministration of condemnation and that of the Gospel the ministration of righteousness Iam. 2.9 men are said to be convinced of the Law as transgressors Though Paul confute the false conceits of Justification by the Law yet he took them for no unfit phrases to speak of the Law working wrath Rom. 4.15 The curse of the Law Gal. 3.13 And saith Whatsoever the Law saith it saith to them that are under the Law Rom. 3.19 When the Law comes sin reviveth and we die Rom. 7.8 9. therefore we are said to be delivered from the Law Rom. 8.2 Gal. 3.13 Rom. 7.6 And Gal. 3.21 If there had been a Law given which could have given life righteousness should have been by the Law Hence then is mention of being Iustified by the Law Gal. 5.4 and mens being debtors to the Law Gal. 5.3 And somewhat this way is implyed by Nicodemus Iohn 7.51 doth our Law judge any man before c. In a word what more common among Divines then to say the Law curseth or condemneth sinners And then it is not abhorrent from the nature of a Law of Grace an act of Oblivion to absolve and justifie sinners Treat Neither then could we say that we are justified by Christ given to us but by the proposition laid down in the Scripture whereas all say that the objectum quod of our faith is ens incomplexum not the promise of Christ but Christ himself promised Answ It s no impossible thing to be justified both by Christ and by the Promise There is no ground to suppose co-ordinates to be contraries Why may not Christ given us justifie us as the meritorious cause and a principal efficient and his Gospel-grant as his Instrument And accordingly each of them may be the
Opinionists I confess I begin to have charitable thoughts of a man that is but freed from the charge of gross Popery and if those tongues should free him also from the imputation of all the finer Popery I should begin to suspect that somewhat is amiss Treat ib. 2. Although to maintain faith and Obedience to be the conditions and a causa sine qua non of our Justification be the professed and avowed Doctrine of the Socinians yet some of late have asserted the same Doctrine that yet abhor Socinianism Answ For this also I give you the thanks which you expected on the foresaid grounds But if we assert the same Doctrine with the Socinians either it is the same false Doctrine or the same sound Doctrine If the later you might as well have said the Socinians assert that there is a God and so do we But to what purpose If the former then either it is false quoad terminos or quoad sensum The former cannot be said without absurdity the words can have no other falsness but an unfitness distinct from the sense And if the terms be any part of Socinianism then Christ and James were guilty of Socinianism quod absit If it be the sense First I crave no other favour of the impartial Reader before he judge then to read the Socinians explication of themselves and to read my explication here and in my confession Secondly And if he will also peruse the Allegations in the end of that confession let him judge whether the Orthodox be not guilty of Socinianism Or if he be tempted to believe Dr. Owens intimations as if I had dealt injuriously with the Authors there alleadged I only desire him to turn to the places cited and peruse them in the Authors and freely censure me Treat 220. Neither is the question about the necessity of holiness c. Only the question is upon what account these are required in justified persons whether in some causality or concurrence as faith is only not with such a degree of excellency Whether good works be required as well as faith so that we may say justifying Repentance justifying Law Love it should be as well as justifying faith This is positively and vehmently affirmed by some but certainly those Arguments and Reasons they bring are too weak to gainsay the Torrent of the Orthodox Divines Answ Upon the reading of this I complained of hard measure in the Preface to my confession to which you reply somewhat in your Preface to Sermons on John 17. I shall recite the reasons of my complaint First I did both at large in private writings to your self and publiquely to the world profess that I took neither faith nor works for any causes at all of our Justification was it just then to make this the state of the Question and say I positively and vehemently affirmed it for you deny not that it is me that you mean and I know it by passages here agreeable to your private letters Secondly I never once imagined the difference between faith and holy obedience or sanctification to lie in order to Justification in the degree of excellency I never to my remembrance so thought or wrote or spoke But the difference I laid here first That as to actual obedience yea and Repentance faith hath a peculiar aptitude to this office as being a Receptive act and fited to the object as that object is fitted to our necessity Secondly That as to assent desire of Christ love to Christ offered accepting him as Teacher and Lord they are essential acts of faith and so differ not at all as they are by many supposed to do Nay I rather expected that some should have charged me with preferring Holiness before faith in excellency while I made faith but the seed and holyness as the fruit faith to be but the covenanting and Obedience the performance of what we consented to and in a word while I made perfect holiness the end of faith because the end is better then the means And I was glad when I found you saying the like Vindic. Legis Lect. 4. pag. 45. 13. Holiness and Godliness inherent is the end of Faith and Justification But little did I think to have been charged and that by you for making the difference to lie in faiths higher degree of excellency and only in that Thirdly I never owned the phrase of justifying Repentance justifying Love nor ever said that we may as well use these as justifying faith And when none of these things were ever said or written by me ought you to have left on record to Generations that this is positively and vehemently affirmed On the consideration of this dealing I must say again O what is man and what a sad case were we in if the best of men were our Judges when they will not stick deliberately to publish to the present and future Ages that we positively and vehemently affirm those things which we never thought nor wrote but have by Letters and in printed books both positively and vehemently very frequently professed the contrary Is here any room for further disputing yea when I have told you of this dealing you own it still and defend it in your Preface to your Sermons on John 17. I shall therefore before I proceed examine that Defence Preface pag. 3. Now when I had endeavoured to state the Question in a most candid and fair way between those that deny a Condition sine qua non of our Justification and those who affirm A Reverend and Learned Brother judging himself concerned in this opinion likewise doth complain of the want of Candor and truth in my stating of the Question when I rather expected thanks for my Ingenuity Now let any judicious Reader that is acquainted with controversie decide wherein any and or truth may be desired here For I say causality which is a general word not efficiency or merit Again I say some causality Causalitas quaedam which is terminus diminuens yea I added the word Concurrence which might satisfie any how low I brought the Question Answer Will you call to any judicious Reader to tell you that which I particularly exprest to you Again Then let the judicious Reader judge whether you should have said to the world any of the forementioned particulars First That I give any Causality to works as to Justification Secondly Or that I difference them only in degree of excellency Thirdly Or that I affirm that we may say justifying Repentance justifying Love as well as justifying faith Fourthly And this is affirmed positively and vehemently and all this when I had positively and vehemently denyed them Fifthly Yea and that only this is the question between us And what do your defences do to justifie such dealing you said only Causality in general and not Efficiency or Merit And did not I openly and privately to you deny Causality in general and not only Merit or Efficiency and is that positive or vehement affirming it Secondly you
said Causalitas quaedam which is terminus diminuens If quoad esse causalitatis it be terminus diminuens then the meaning is that I make them no causes But do you think any Reader will English Causalitas quaedam by no Causality But doubtless you mean that it is Terminus diminuens as to the quality or nobility of the cause But first I never heard before that quaedam was terminus diminuens and if no Readers must understand you but those that know this to be true I think it will be but few Secondly But what if that were so Did you not know that I denyed even all causality how diminute soever quaedam can express if it be but real Thirdly But you added Concurrence But it was in Concurrence with the several unjust passages before mentioned and sure the neighbour-hood of that word hath not force enough to make them all true Preface My Reverend Brother saith He vehemently disclaimeth all Causality of works in Justification surely his meaning is all Proper causal efficiency and so did I in the stating of it But to deny Causality in a large sense is to contradict himself Answer If so what hope of Justice Must I in paper after paper disclaim all true Causality and will you not only perswade the world of the contrary but persist in it whether I will or not and say I mean a proper causal efficiency Reader I have no other remedy left but to advise thee that if yet after this it be affirmed the next time that I disclaim not all true causality or mean not as I say thou believe not the affirmation Preface For in his Aphoris 74. Thes They both viz. Faith and Works justifie in the same kind of causality or mediate it should be media and improper causes or as Dr. Twiss causae dispositivae but with this difference Faith as the principal Obedience as the less principal Here is causality though improper Here is a causa dispositiva and yet shall I be blamed after I had removed Efficiency and Merit Answer This is but to add injustice When I have written at large that faith and works are no true causes of Justification and after tell you that a condition is commonly called causa sine qua non which is causa fatua and no cause at all but meerly nominal having by custom obtained that name and that Dr. Twiss calls this causa dispositiva when I say that they have only a causality improperly to called which indeed is no causality Is it justice for you still to perswade the world that I mean some causality though not efficiency The thing I renounce the name is not it that you only charge me with if you had I was not the maker of it It was called causa sine qua non before I was born I must comply with common language or be silent especially when I tell you I take it for no Cause You give me such justice as the hoast of the Crown Tavern in Cheap-side had who as Speed saith was hanged for saying merrily that his Son was Heir of the Crown and his exposition would not save his life I pray you hereafter remove more then Efficiency and Merit I take not works to be either the material or formal cause of Justification no nor the final though you in the words before cited affirm it such Who then gives more to works you or I The final cause is so called because it causeth us to choose the means to it Justification is not a means of our using but an act of God Therefore works are not properly the end of it as to us And yet let me say this to you lest you should mistake me As vehemently as I disown all true causality of works to our Justification I intend not to fall out with all men that call them causes As first Not with Piscator nor such other that call them causes of our final absolution and salvation Secondly Nor with those that call them meritorious in the same sense as the Fathers did though they unfitly use the word Thirdly Nor with those that will say that because they please God and so are the object of his complacency and will they may therefore speaking after the manner of men be called Procatarctike causes of his act of Justification and so that the Amiableness and desirableness of faith and holiness is the cause why he assigned them to this Noble place and office Fourthly Nor with them that say faith is a moral or a Metaphorical passive or active Instrument of Justification Though I say not as these men I will not quarrel with them Preface But I need not run to this for my Arguments militate against works at works justifying under any pretended Notion whatsoever Answer By the help of this I shall interpret all your Arguments And if so then they militate against the act of faith justifying under the pretended notion of an Instrument unless you will say that faith is no Act or Instrumentality is no pretended notion Preface And this maketh me admire how my learned Brother could let fall one passage wherein he may be so palpably and ocularly convinced to the contrary by the first looking upon my Arguments that which he saith is the strength of my Arguments lies upon a supposition that conditions have a moral efficiency There is no one of these ten Arguments brought against Justification by works as a Condition sine qua non that is built upon this supposition or hath any dependance on it only in the fourth Argument after their strength is delivered I do ex abundanti shew that a Condition in a Covenant strictly taken hath a moral efficiency Answer First you confess it is your Assertion that such Conditions have a moral efficiency Secondly I never said that you made that a Medium in all your Arguments nor that you intended that as their strength but that their strength lyeth on that supposition and if I have mistaken in that I will not stand in it But I think to shew you that without that supposition your Arguments have no strength which if I do then judge at what you marvailed But it s a farther act of injustice in you in alleadging me Apol. pag. 8. saying that some conditions are impulsive causes when I told you it is not qua conditions but only as materially there is somewhat in them that is meritorious I doubt not but the same thing may be the matter of a cause and a condition I shall now return to your Lect. of Justification and there speak to the other passage in your preface about justifying Repentance and Love c. Treat pag. 220. This therefore I shall God willing undertake to prove that good works are not a condition or a cause sine qua non of our Justification Answer But remember that it is Justification either as begun in constitution or continued or as pronounced by the Judges Sentence that the Question comprehendeth and not only the
grace yet his works would have been a causall Condition of the blessedness promised In the Covenant of Grace though what man doth is by the gift of God yet look upon the same gift as our duty and as a Condition which in our persons is performed This inferreth some Moral Efficiency Answ 1. See then all you that are accounted Orthodox the multitude of Protestant Divines that have made either Faith or Repentance Conditions what a case you have brought your selves into And rejoyce then all you that have against them maintained that the Covenant of Grace hath on our part no Conditions for your Cause is better then some have made you believe and in particular this Reverend Author Yea see what a case he hath argued himself into while he hath argued you out of the danger that you were supposed in For he himself writeth against those that make Repentance to be but a sign and deny it to be a Condition to qualifie the subject for Iustification Treat of Iustif part 1. Lect. 20. And he saith that in some gross sins there are many Conditions requisite besides humiliation without which pardon of sin cannot be obtained and instanceth in restitution pag. 210. with many the like passages 2. Either you mean that Adams works would have been Causall quatenus a Condition performed or else quatenus meritorious ex natura materia or some other cause The first I still deny and is it that you should prove and not go on with naked affirmations The second I will not yield you as to the notion of meritorious though it be nothing to our question The same I say of your later instance of Gospel Conditions Prove them morally efficient qua tales if you can Treat ib. And so though in words they deny yet in deed they do exalt works to some kind of causality Answ I am perswaded you speak not this out of malice but is it not as unkind and unjust as if I should perswade men that you make God the Author of sin indeed though you deny it in words 1. What be the Deeds that you know my mind by to be contrary to my words Speak out and tell the world and spare me not But if it be words that you set against words 1. Why should you not believe my Negations as well as my supposed affirmations Am I credible only when I speak amiss and not at all when I speak right A charitable judgementi 2. And which should you take to be indeed my sense A naked term Condition expounded by you that never saw my heart and therefore know not how I understand it further then I tell you Or rather my express explication of that term in a sense contrary to your supposition â—ear all you that are impartial and judge I say A Condition is no Cause and Faith and Repentance are Conditions My Reverend Brother tells you now that in word I deny them to be efficient Causes but in deed I make them such viz. I make them to be what I deny them to be Judge between us as you see cause Suppose I say that Scripture is Sacred and withall I add that by Sacred I mean that which is related to God as proceeding from him and separated to him and I plead Etymologie and the Authority of Authors and Custom for my speech If my Reverend Brother now will contradict me only as to the fitness of the word and say that sacer signifieth only execrabilis I will not be offended with him though I will not believe him but should so good and wise a man proclaim in print that sacer signifieth only execrabilis and therefore that though in word I call Scripture Sacred yet in deed I make it execrable I should say this were unkind dealing What! plainly to say that a Verbal controversie is a Real one and that contrary to my frequent published professions What is this but to say Whatever he saith I know his heart to be contrary Should a man deal so with your self now he hath somewhat to say for it For you first profess Repentance and Restitution to be a Condition as I do and when you have done profess Conditions to have a Moral Efficiency which I deny But what 's this to me that am not of your mind Treat pag. 229. A fifth Argument is that which so much sounds in all Books If good works be the effect and fruit of our Justification then they cannot be Conditions or Causa sine qua non of our Iustification But c. Answ 1. I deny the Minor in the sense of your party Our first Repentance our first desire of Christ as our Saviour and Love to him as a Saviour and our first disclaiming of all other Saviours and our first accepting him as Lord and Teacher and as a Saviour from the Power of sin as well as the guilt all these are works with you and yet all these are not the effects of our Relative Justification nor any of them 2. As to External acts and Consequent internal acts I deny your Consequence taking it of continued or final Justification though I easily yield it as to our Justification at the first 1. All the acts of justifying faith besides the first act are as truly effects of our first Justification as our other graces or gracious acts are And doth it therefore follow that they can be no Conditions of our continued Justification Why not Conditions as well as Instruments or Causes Do you think that only the first instantaneous act of faith doth justifie and no other after through the course of our lives I prove the contrary from the instance of Abraham It was not the first act of his faith that Paul mentioneth when he proveth from him Justification by faith As it s no good Consequence Faith afterward is the effect of Iustification before therefore it cannot afterward justifie or be a Condition So it s no good Consequence as to Repentance Hope or Obedience 2. It only follows that they cannot be the Condition of that Justification whereof they are the effect and which went before them which is granted you But it follows not that they may not be the Condition of continued or final Justification Sucking the brest did not cause life in the beginning therefore it is not a means to continue it It followeth not You well teach that the Justification at the last Judgement is the chief and most eminent Justification This hath more Conditions then your first pardon of sin had yea as many as your salvation hath as hath been formerly proved and may be proved more at large Treat pag. 230. By this we may see that more things are required to our Salvation then to our Iustification to be possessors of heaven and than it should be to entitle us thereto Answ 1. It s true as to our first Justifying and its true as to our present continued state because perseverance is still requisite to salvation But it s not true as to
Either you ask this question as of a penitent Believer or the finally impenitent Vnbeliever If of the former I say First All his sins Christs righteousness pardoneth and covereth and consequently all the failings in Gospel duties Secondly But his predominant final Impenitency and Infidelity Christ pardoneth not because he is not guilty of it he hath none such to pardon but hath the personal righteousness of a performer of the conditions of the Gospel And for the finally impenitent Infidels the answer is because they rejected that Righteousness which was able to satisfie and would not return to God by him and so not performing the condition of pardon have neither the pardon of that sin nor of any other which were conditionally pardoned to them If this Doctrine be the avoiding the good known way there is a good known way besides that which is revealed in the Gospel And if this be so hard a point for you to receive I bless God it is not so to me And if it be far more easie to maintain one single righteousness viz. imputed only it will not prove so safe as easie If one righteousness may serve may not Pilate and Simon Magus be justified if no man be put to prove his part in it and if he be how shall he prove it but by his performance of the conditions of the Gift Treat pag. 232. Argu. 8. That cannot be a condition of Justification which it self needeth Justification But good works being imperfect and having much dross cleaving need a Justification to take that guilt away Answ First Again hearken all you that have so long denyed the Covenant to have any conditions at all Here is an Argument to maintain your cause for it makes as much against faith as any other acts which they call works for faith is imperfect also and needs Justification a pardon I suppose you mean I had rather talk of pardoning my sins then justifying them or any imperfections what ever Secondly But indeed it s too gross a shift to help your cause The Major is false and hath nothing to tempt a man to believe it that I can see Faith and Repentance are considerable First As sincere Secondly As imperfect They are not the conditions of pardon as imperfect but as sincere God doth not say I will pardon you if you will not perfectly believe but If you will believe Imperfection is sin and God makes not sin a condition of pardon and life I am not able to conceive what it was that in your mind could seem a sufficiennt reason for this Proposition that nothing can be a condition that needs a pardon It s true that in the same respect as it needs a pardon that is as it is a sin it can be no condition But faith as faith Repentance as Repentance is no sin Treat ibid. It s true Justification is properly of persons and of actions indirectly and obliquely Answ The clean contrary is true as of Justification in general and as among men ordinarily The action is first accusasable or justifiable and so the person as the cause of that Action But in our Justification by Christs satisfaction our Actions are not justifiable at all save only that we have performed the condition of the Gift that makes his righteousness ours Treat pag. 233. This question therefore is again and again to be propounded If good works be the condition of our Justification how comes the guilt in them that deserveth condemnation to be done away Is there a further condition required to this condition and so another to that with a processus in infinitum Answ Once may serve turn for any thing regardable that I can perceive in it But if so again and again you shall be answered The Gospel giveth Christ and life upon the same condition to all This condition is first a duty and then a condition As a duty we perform it imperfectly and so sinfully for the perfection of it is a duty but the perfection is not the condition but the sincerity Sincere Repentance and faith is the condition of the pardon of all our sins therefore of their own Imperfections which are sins Will you ask now If faith be imperfect how comes the guilt of that Imperfection to be pardoned is it by a further condition and so in infinitum No it is on tht same condition sincere repentance and faith are the conditions of a pardon for their own Imperfections Is there any difficulty in this or is there any doubt of it Why may not faith be a condition as well as an Instrument of receiving the pardon of its own Imperfection I hope still you perceive that you put these questions to others as well as me and argue against the common Judgement of Protestants who make that which is imperfect to be the condition of pardon Repent and be baptized saith Peter for the remission of sin Of what sin is any excepted to the Penitent Believer certainly no It is of all sins And is not the imperfection of faith and repentance a sin The same we say of sincere obedience as to the continuance of our Justification or the not losing it and as to our final Justification If we sincerely obey God will adjudge us to salvation and so justifie us by his final sentence through the blood of Christ from all the imperfections of that obedience what need therefore of running any further towards an infinitum Treat ibid. The Popish party and the Castellians are so far convinced of this that therefore they say our good works are perfect And Castellio makes that prayer for pardon not to belong to all the godly Answ It seems they are partly Quakers But they are unhappy souls if such an Argument could drive them to such an abominable opinion And yet if this that you affirm be the cause that Papists have taken up the doctrine of perfection I have more hopes of their recovery then I had before nay because they are some of them men of ordinary capacities I take it as if it were done already For the Remedy is most obvious Understand Papists that it is Faith and Repentance and Obedience to Christ in Truth and not in Perfection that is the Condition of your final Justification at Judgement and you need not plead for perfection any more But I hardly believe you that this is the cause of their error in this point And you may see that if Protestants had no more Wit then Papists they must all be driven by the violence of your Argument to hold that Faith and Repentance are perfect And seeing you tell us of Castellio's absurdity I would intreat you to tell us why it is that you pray for pardon your selves either you take Prayer to be Means to obtain pardon or you do not If not then 1. Pardon is none of your end in praying for pardon 2. And then if once it be taken for no means men cannot be blamed if they use it but accordingly But if you
Instrument 4. And Repentance under the notion of a preparative or condition 5. But if you mean only that he excludes the co-operation or efficiency of works I yield as before 6. Paul expresly excludes only the works of the Law that is such as are considered in opposition to Christ or co-ordination as required by the Law of Works and not such as Christ himself enjoyneth in subordination to himself so they keep that place of subordination 7. Pauls Question is What is the Righteousness which must denominate a sinner just at the Bar of the Law And this he saith is no Works under any notion no not Faith but only Christs Righteousness and so faith must be taken relatively for certainly it is Christ and not Faith that is that Righteousness Is not this all that our Divines say or require and so say I over and over But Paul doth not resolve there what is the Condition on which Christ makes over this Righteousness of his so directly but collaterally 8. Or if you say he do yet if Paul speak of our first possession of Justification I say it is without not only the operation but the presence of works which is more then you say 9. Or whether he speak of begun or continued Justification I say we are justified without works in Pauls sense yea that they are not so much as a condition of the continuance of Justification For works in Pauls sense relate to the reward as of debt and not of Grace As a man that works to yearn wages as Paul plainly saith Rom. 4.4 To him that worketh the Reward is not of Grace but of Debt These works I disclaim as sinfull in their ends But obeying the Gospel or being willing that Christ who hath redeemed us should rule over us and running that we obtain and fighting the good fight of faith and suffering with Christ that we may be glorified with him and improving our Talent and enduring to the end and so doing good works and laying up a good foundation against the time to come I think Paul excludes not any of these from being bare conditions or causae sine quibus non of our Justification at Judgement or the continuance of it here Abrahams faith excluded works in Pauls sense as before but not works in this sense or in James his sense When you say my sense for reconciling Paul and James cannot be admitted 1. I would you had told me what way to do it better and answered what I have said in that 2. Your reason appears to me of no seeming force For first you say the one saith a Justification by faith without works you make Faith as well as works c. Answer 1. Paul saith not barely without works but without the works of the Law And I have shewed you what he means by works Rom. 4.4 2. I say no more then James that a man is justified by works and not by faith only I believe both these Scriptures are true and need no reconciling as having no contradiction in the terms And yet I speak not so broad usually as James doth Where you say that the Orthodox do sweetly reconcile them I know not who you mean by the Orthodox For I doubt not but you know the variety of interpretations to reconcile them Piscator and Pemble have one Interpretation and way of Reconciliation Calvin Paraeus and most Divines another Camero confuteth the best esteemed and hath another Brochmond with most of the Lutherans have another Jac. Laurentius Althemor and many more tell us of divers which of these you mean by the Orthodox I know not But if you exclude all those from the Orthodox that say as I say in this you will exclude as Learned Divines and well reputed of as most Europe hath bred viz. excellent Conrad Bergius Ludov. Crecius Johan Crocius Johan Bergius c. Who though they all dispute for Justification by faith without works understanding it of the first Justification for most Divines have taken Justification to be rigidly simul semel till Dr. Downam evinced that it is a continued Act yet they both take works for meriting works that respect the reward as of Debt and they say that otherwise Obedience is a Condition or cause as they make it of continuing or not losing Justification once attained And is not that to say as much as I And many more I can name you that say as much And you approve of Mr. Bals book which saith that works or a purpose to walk with God do justifie as a passive qualification of the Subject capable of Justification You add that we may dispute c. but you know not how a godly man at his death can look on his Graces as Conditions of the Covenant fulfilled by him c. Which speech seems strange to me I confess if I be so I am ungodly For I have been as oft and as long in the expectation of death as most men and still am and yet I am so far from being afraid of this that I should live and dye in horror and desperation if I could not look upon the conditions of the Covenant of Grace fulfilled by my self through goes workings If by our Graces you mean Habits I think it more improper to call them the fulfilling the conditions of the Covenant For what you say of the Papists you know how fundamentally almost they differ from me in this confounding the Covenants Righteousness c. If it were not to one that knows it better then my self I would shew wherein For your question How come the imperfections in our conditions to be pardoned You know I have fully answered it both in the Aphorisms and Appendix And I would rather you had given me one discovery of the insufficiency of that answer then asked the Question again Briefly thus Guilt is an obligation to punishment as it is here to be understood Pardon is a freeing from that Obligation or Guilt and Punishment All Punishment is due by some Law According to the Law or Covenant of Works the imperfection of our Faith Love Obedience c. deserve punishment and Christ hath satisfied that Law and procured forgiveness of these imperfections and so acquit us from Guilt and punishment The new Law or Covenant of Grace doth not threaten death to any but final Unbelievers and so not to the imperfection of our Faith Love Obedience where they are sincere And where the Law threatneth not Punishment there is no obligation to Punishment or Guilt on the party from that Law and so no work for Pardon Imperfect believers perform the conditions of the new Covenant truly and it condemneth none for imperfection of degree where there is sincerity No man is ever pardoned whom the new Law condemneth that is final Unbelievers or Rejecters of Christ So that Christ removeth or forgiveth that obligation to punishment which by the Law of Works doth fall on us for our imperfections And for the Law of Grace where it obligeth not
judgement of the Orthodox that they go eadem via et si non eadem semita I answer you may understand your distinction as you please but I have shewed the difference some understand it of justification before God others before men c. And if you please to make the way wide enough you may take me among the Orthodox that go eadem via if not I will stand out with James When you say they exclude works under any notion in the act of justification I answer 1. Your self include them as antecedents and concomitants thought I do not 2. I have shewed before that in the act c. is ambiguous If you mean as Agents of Causes so do I exclude them If you mean as conditions required by the new Law to the continuing and consummating our justification I have shewed you that Divines do judge otherwise My next answer was If works under any notion be excluded then faith is excluded You reply 1. Thus Bellarmine c. Answ I knew indeed that Bellarmine saith so But Sir you speak to one that is very neer Gods tribunal and therefore is resolved to look after naked truth and not to be affrighted from it by the name either of Bellarmine or Antichrist and who is at last brought to wink at prejudice I am fully resolved by Gods grace to go on in the way of God as he discovereth it to me and not to turn out of it when Bellarmine stands in it Though the Divels believe I will by Gods help believe too and not deny Christ because the Divels confess him You say Non sequitur I prove the consequence If all works or acts be excluded under any notion whatsoever and if faith be a work or act then faith is excluded But c. Ergo c. By the reason of your denyal I understand and nothing that you deny but that faith is a work or act which I never heard denyed before and I hope never shall do again The common answer to Bellarmine is that faith which is a work justifieth but not as it is a work Which answer I confess to be sound and subscribe to it But then according to that faith which is a work justifieth under some notion suppose it were under the notion of an instrument though not under the notion of a work But you go another way and say 1. Faith is passive in its instrumentality and though to believe be a grammatical action its verbum activum yet its physicè or huper physice passive A man by believing doth not operari but recipere As videre audire are Grammatical actions but physical or natural passions c. Answer 1. These are very sublime Assertions quite past the reach of my capacity and of all theirs that I use to converse with and I dare say it is no Heresie to deny them nor can that point be neer the foundation that stands upon such props which few men can apprehend 2. What if Faith were passive in its Instrumentality Is it not at all an Act therefore If it be Then that which is an Act or Work is not excluded under the notion of a passive Instrument and so not under every notion I speak on your grounds But because you told me before that I should have spent my self against this Instrumentality of Faith if I would hit the mark I will speak the more largely to it now And 1. Enquire whether videre audire be only Grammatical Actions as you call them and natural passions 2. Whether Believing be so only verbum activum but Physically passive And so to Believe is not agere but pati or recipere 3. Whether faith be passive in its Instrumentality 4. Whether the same may not be said as truly of other Graces 5. Whether Faith be any proper Instrument of our Justification 6. If it were Whether that be the primary formal Reason of its justifying vertue 7. Whether your Opinion or mine be the plainer or safer And for the first I should not think it worth the looking after but that I perceive you lay much upon it and that Philosophers generally suppose that the Sence and Intellect in this are alike and for ought I discern it is such a Passiveness of the Intellect that you intend and therefore we may put all together and enquire whether videre intelligere be only Passions And here you know how ill Philosophers are agreed among themselves and therefore how slippery a ground this is for a man to build his Faith upon in so high point as this in hand you know also that Hippocrates Galen Plato Plotinus with the generality of the Platonists are directly contrary to you you know also that Albertus Magnus and his followers judge sensation to be an action though they take the potentia to be passive You know also that Aquinas with his followers judge the very potentia to be active as well as passive passive while it receiveth the species and active Dum per ipsam agit sensationem producit And Tolet saith that this is Scotus his sentence 2. de Anima q. 12. Capreol ferè communis I know Aquinas saith that intelligere est quoddam pati but he taketh pati in his third wide improper sense as omne qu d exit de potentia in actum potest dici pati 1. q. 79 a. 2. C. And no doubt every second cause may be said to suffer even in its acting as it receiveth the Influx from the first which causeth it to act but it will not thence follow that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 videre intelligere est for maliter pati I cannot think that you deny the intellectum agentem and you know that generally Philosophers attribute Action to the possible Intellect and that Jandun Apollina c. do accordingly make an Agent and patient sence and if the reception of the species were formaliter visio intellectio which I believe not yet how hardly is it proved that the Organ and Intellect are only passive in that reception Yea how great a controversie is it what the sensible and intelligible species are Yea and whether there be any such thing Whether they be an image or similitude begotten or caused by the Object as Combacchius and most which yet Suarez c. denyeth And whether they stick in the air and have all their Being first there as Magyrus and other Peripateticks Or whether their Being is only in the eye as some later Or whether it be Sir Ken. Digbyes Atomes or number of small bodies which are in perpetual motion I doubt not you know that Ockam and Henricus quod lib. 4. q. 4. reject all species as vain and make the Intellect the only active proper cause of intellection And Hobs of late in his book of humane Nature saith that visible and intelligible species is the greatest Paradox in the world as being a plain Impossibility And indeed it is somewhat strange that every stone and clod should be
answer 1. Righteousness is but a relation And therefore a thing which is naturally uncapable of being of it self physically apprehended This is past doubt 2. If it be physically received then either as a principle and quality or as an object Not the former For so we receive our first and after grace in sanctification but none ever said so in justification Nor indeed can that righteousness which is formally but a relation dwel in us as a principle or quality If we receive it as an object then by an Act Or if the soul were granted to be passive in reception of an object I have shewed that 1. It is but in apprehensione simplici None pleadeth for more But faith is not such 2. And so it would receive Christ no otherways then it receiveth any object whatsoever it thus apprehendeth 3. And this is not to receive Christ or his righteousness but the meer species of it according to your own Philosophers and if righteousness be but a relation and a relation as Durandus Dr. Twiss and many another thin be but Ens Rationis then the species of an Ens Rationis is a very curious Web Knowledge as D'Orbellis saith in 2. sent Dis 3. q. 3. is twofold i. e. sensitive and intellective and each of these twofold Intuitive and Abstractive Intuitive knowledge is indeed de objecto ut in se praesens quando scilicet res in propria existentia est per se motiva Exemplum de sensitiva est ut visus videt colorem yet this is but Recepiendo speciem non rem and this is not it in question Exemplum de intellectiva est ut visio Divinae essentiae à beatis This is utterly denyed to be at all by Doctor Stoughton Camer and other solid Divines against the School-mens judgement And if it be yet doubtless as we know not how so it is not such as faiths apprehension which we enquire after Cognitio Abstractiva est quando species rei movet ad cognoscendum rem ipsam hoc siveres sit in se praesens sive absens sive existat sive non Exemplum in sensitiva est ut phantasia imaginatur colorem Exemplum in intellectiva est ut intellectus cognoscit quidditatem coloris medicante ejus specie So that if it be either of these it were at the utmost but a passive reaception of the species and not of Christ or his righteousness 2. By what physical contact faith doth receive this might be enquired and 3. By what physical act of the Agent to neither of which questions can I imagine what tolerable answer can be given in defence of this cause 2. And if faith be a passive physical instrument it must have a Physical Efficiency and what is that to justifie why even God himself in this life doth that but by a Moral Act by his word and not by a physical as to particulars 3. But that which driveth me to the greatest admiration is How faith should Efficere patiendo If I should rip up this or require a demonstration of it in respect to the justification at judgement yea or in this life yea or of any effect I should lay such an odium on it from its absurdities that in dealing with you modesty doth forbid me to insist on it 4. The fourth requisite will be enquired after in the next Question save one The fourth Question is Whether other Graces may not be as properly called physical passive Instruments as Faith is your sense And I doubt not but they may though its true of neither For 1. If there be no physical reception of Christs righteousness imaginable but that which is per modum objecti and if other gratious acts have Christs righteousness for their object as well as that which you call faith then other Acts do receive Christs righteousness as well as saith but both branches of the Antecedent are true therefore the consequence the bare knowledge or simple apprehension of Christs righteousness per modum objecti may better pretend to this then recombency or affiance Yea and love it self more fitly then affiance may be said to receive or embrace its object which is not therefore false neither because Bellarmine hath it and you know he brings Austines plain words affirming love to be the hand by which they received him c. I confess if I first renounce not the concurrent Judgement of Philosophers I cannot approve of the common Answer which our Divines give to Bellarmine in this viz. That Faith receiveth Christs Righteousness first to make it ours but Love only to retain it and embrace and enjoy it when first we know it to be ours For though this say as much as I need to plead for acknowledging Love to be as properly a physical Reception for retention as Faith is for first Possession yet if affiance be taken in any proper ordinary sence it cannot thus hold good neither for so Affiance must signifie some act of the will in order of nature after love or at least not before it I acknowledge that so much of Faith as lyeth in the understanding is before Love in order of nature sicut ipse intellectus est simpliciter prior voluntate ut motivum mobili activum passivo ut Aquin. 1. q. § 2. a. 3.2 and 12. q. 13. a. 1. C. For as he Intellectus est primum motivum omnium potentiarium animae quoad determinationem actus voluntas verò quoad exercitium actus Aquin 12. q. 17. a. 1. C. But for the acts of the will toward Christ I could give you but to avoid tediousness I must forbear at large the Testimony of Aquinas Tolet Gerson Camero Amesius Zanchius Rob. Baronius Bradwardine Ravio Viguerius c. That Love is not only the first of all the Passions but even the first motion of the Will towards its Object and little or not at all different from Volition diligere being but intensive velle I have much more to say to this which here I must pretermit But still I speak not of Love as a Passion but a true closure as it were of the will with its Object as Good and expect love to be proper to the sensitive and strange to the intellective soul we must make it the same with Velle For Amor gaâ—dium in quantum significant Actus appetitus sensitivi passiones sunt non autem secundum quod significant Actus appetitus intellectivi inquit Aquinas 1. q. 2. a. 1.1 The fifth Question is Whether Faith be any Instrument of our Justification Answer Scotus gives many sences of the word Instrument and so doth Aquinas Schibler and most Philosophers that meddle with it and they give some so large as contain all causes in the world under God the first cause In so large a sence if any will call faith an Instrument of Justification I will not contend with him though yet I will not say so my self as judging faith to be no kind of cause of it at
all but in the proper ordinary sence as an Instrument signifieth Causam quae influit in effectum per virtutem inferioris rationis as Suarez Stierius Arnisaeus c. Vel Instrumentum est quod ex directione alterius principalis agentis influit ad produceâ—dum effectum se nobiliorem ut Schibler c. So I utterly deny Faith to be an Instrument But I will first question whether it be a physical Instrument 2. Whether a moral 1. And for the first I have done it already for seeing our acute Divines have ceased to lay any claim to it as an active Instrument but only as a Passive therefore having disproved what they claim I have done enough to that 2. Yet I will add some more And 1. If it be a physical active Instrument it must have a physical active Influx to the producing of the Effect but so hath not Faith to the producing of our Justification Ergo c. The Major is apparent from the common definition of such Instruments The Minor will be as evident if we consider but what Gods Act in Justification is and then it would appear impossible that any act of ours should be such an Instrument 1. At the great Justification at Judgement Christs act is to sentence us acquit and discharged and doth our Faith activè sixae influere ad hunc effectum Doth it intervene between Christ and the effect and so actively justifie us Who will say so 2. And the act by which God justifieth us here is by a Deed of Gift in his Gospel as I Judge Now 1. That doth immediately produce the effect only supposing Faith as a condition 2. And it is but a moral Instrumental cause it self and how faith can be a Physical I know not 3. Nay the act is but a moral act such as a Statute or Bond acteth and what need Faith to be a physical Instrument 2. My second Reason is this It is generally concluded that Tota instrumenti causalit as est in usu applicatione It ceaseth to be an Instrument when it ceaseth to be used or acted by the principal cause But faith doth most frequently cease its action and is not used physically when we sleep or wholly mind other things Therefore according to this Doctrine faith should then cease its Instrumentality and consequently either we should all that while be unjustified and unpardoned or else be justified and pardoned some other way and not by faith All which is absurd and easily avoided by discerning faith to be but a Condition of our Justification or a Causa sine quae non 3. If Faith be a physical Instrument then it should justifie from a reason intrinsecal natural and essential to it and not from Gods meer ordination of it to this office by his Word of Promise but that were at least dangerous Doctrine and should not be entertained by them who truly acknowledge that it justifies not as a work much less then as a Physical reception which they call its Instrumentality The consequence of the Major is evident in that nothing can be more intrinsecal and essential to faith this faith then to be what it is viz. a Reception or acceptance of Christ or his Righteousness therefore if it justifie directly as such then it justifieth of its own Nature 4. It is to me a hard saying that God and Faith do the same thing that is Pardon and justifie and yet so they do if it be an Instrument of Justification For eadem est Actio Instrumenti principalis causae viz. quoad determinationem ad hunc effectum ut Aquinas Schibler c. I dare not say or think that Faith doth so properly effectively justifie and pardon us 5. It seems to me needless to feign this Instrumentality because frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora 6. Yea it derogateth from the work for as Scotus saith in 4. dist 45. q. 1. pag. mihi 239. D. Actio sine instrumento est perfectior quà m actio cum instrumento 7. And this Doctrine makes man to be the causa proxima of his own Pardon and Justification For it is man that believes and not God God is the causa prima but man the causa proxima credendi and so of justifying if Faith be an Instrument Or at least man is a cause of his own Pardon and Justification Yea faith being by Divines acknowledged our own Instrument it must needs follow that we justifie and forgive our selves Dr. Amesius saith Bellar. Enervat To. 4. li 6. p. mihi 315. Plurimum refert quia sicut sacramenta quamvis aliquo sâ—nsu possint dici Instrumenta nostra c. proprie tamen sunt Jnstrumenta Dei sic etiam fides quamvis possit vocari Instrumentum Dei quia Deus justificat nos ex fide per fidem proprie tamen est Instrumentum nostrum Deus nos baptizat pascit non nosmet ipsi Nos credimus in Christum non Deus Whether faith may be a moral Instrument I shall enquire when I have answered the next question which is Q 6. If faith were such a Physical Passive or Active Instrument whether that be the formal direct reason of its justifying and whether as it is it do justifie directly and primarily quatenus est apprehensio Christi justitioe vel Justificationis And this is it that I most confidently deny and had rather you would stick to in debate then all the rest for I ground many other things on it I affirm therefore 1. That faith justifieth primarily and directly as the condition on which the free Donor hath bestowed Christ with all his benefits in the Gospel-conveyance 2. And that if it were a meer Physical apprehension it would not justifie no nor do us any good 3. And that the apprehension called the receptivity which is truly its nature is yet but its aptitude to its justifying office and so a remote not the direct proper formal cause These three I will prove in order 1. And for the first it is proved 1. From the Tenor of the justifynâ—g Promise which still assureth Justification on the condition of Believing He that believeth and whosoever believeth and if thou believe do plainly and unquestionably express such a condition upon which we shall be justified and without which we shall not The Antinomians most unreasonably deny this 2. And the nature of Justification makes it unquestioinable for whether you make it a law-Law-act or an act of Gods own Judgement and Will determining of our state yet nither will admit of any intervening cause especially any act of ours but only a condition 3. Besides Conditions depend on the will of him that bestoweth the Gift and according to his Will they succeed but Instruments more according to their own fitness Now it is known well that Justification is an act of Gods meer free Grace and Will and therefore nothing can further conduce to Gods free act as on our part but by way
of Condition 4. And I need not say more to this it being acknowledged generally by all our Divines not one that I remember excepted besides Mr. Walker that faith justifieth as the condition of the Covenant Mr. Wotton de Reconcil part 1. l. 2. cap. 18. brings you the full Testimony of the English Homilies Fox Perkins Paraeus Trelcatius Dr. G. Downam Scharpius Th. Matthews Calvin Aretius Sadeel Olevian Melancth Beza To which I could add many more and I never spoke with any solid Divine that denyed it 2. Now that a physical apprehension would not justifie as such is evident 1. Else Mary should be justified for having Christ in her womb as I said before 2. Else justification as I said should be ascribed to the nature of the act of faith it self 3. You may see what is the primary formal reason why faith Justifies by its inseparablility from the effect or event and which is the improper remote cause by its separability Now such a physical apprehension may be as such separated from the effect and would still be if it had not the further nature of a condition We see it plainly in all worldly things Every man that takes in his hand a conveyance of land shall not possess the land If you forcibly seize upon all a mans evidences and writings you shall not therefore possess his estate If a traytor snatch a pardon by violence out of anothers hand he is not therefore pardoned But more of this under the next 4. And for your passive faith I cannot conceive how it should as passive have any Moral good in it as is said much less justifie us And so when God saith that without faith it is impossible to please God we shall feign that to be justifying faith which hath nothing in it self that can please God and how it can justifie that doth not please I know not I know in genere entis the Divels please God They are his creatures and naturally Good as Ens bonum convertuntur but in genere moris I know not yet how pati quatenus pati can please him For it doth not require so much as liberty of the will The reason of Passion is from the Agent As Suarez dis 17. § 2. Secundum praecisas rationes formales loquendo Passio est ab Actione non è converso Ideoque vera est propria haec causalis locutio Quia agens agit materia recipit Now sure all Divines as well as the free-will-men do acknowledge that there can be no pleasing worth or vertue where there is not liberty And Suarez saith truly in that T. 1. disp 19 pag. mihi 340. Addimus vero hanc facultatem quatenus libera est non posse esse nisi Activam seu è converso facultatem non posse esse liberam nisi sit activa quatenus activa est Probatur sic Nam Paisso ut Passio non potest esse Libera patienti sed solum quatenus Actio à qua talis Passio provenit illi est libera Ergo Libertas formaliter ac praecise non est in potentia patiente ut sic sed in potentia Agente Vide ultra probationem 5. Yea I much fear lest this Passive Doctrine do lay all the blame of all mens infidelity upon God or most at least For it maketh the unbeliever no otherwise faulty then a hard block for resisting the wedge which is but by an indisposition of the matter and so Originall indisposition is all the sin For as Aquinas saith Malum in Patiente est vel ab imperfectione vel defectu agentis vel indispositione Materiae 1. q. 49. a. 1. c. 3. My third proposition is that the Receptivity or apprehension which is truly of the nature of faith is yet but its aptitude to its Justifying office and so a remote and not the direct proper formal reason And this is the main point that I insist on And it is evident in all that is said already and further thus If faith had been of that apprehending nature as it is and yet had not been made the condition in the gift or promise of God it would not have justified but if it had been made the condition though it had been no apprehending but as any other duty yet it would have justified therefore it is evident that the nearest proper reason of its power to justifie is Gods making it the condition of his gift and its receptive nature is but a remote reason 1. If faith would have justified though it had not been a condition then it must have justified against Gods will which is impossible It is God that justifieth and therefore we cannot be a cause of his Action 2. It is evident also from the nature of this moral reception which being but a willingness and consent cannot of its own nature make the thing our own but as it is by the meer will of the donor made the condition of his offer or gift If I am willing to be Lord of any Lands or Countreys it will not make me so but if the true owner say I will give them thee if thou wilt accept them then it will be so therefore it is not first and directly from the nature of the reception but first because that reception is made the condition of the gift If a condemned man be willing to be pardoned he shall not therefore be pardoned but if a pardon be given on condition he be willing or accept it then he shall have it If a poor woman consent to have a Prince for her husband and so to have his possessions it shall not therefore be done except he give himself to her on condition of her consent If it were a meer physical reception and we spoke of a possession de facto of somewhat that is so apprehensible then it would be otherwise as he that getteth gold or a pearl in his hand he hath such a possession But when it is but a moral improper reception though per actum physicum volendi vel consentiendâ— and when we speak of a possession in right of Law and of a relation and Title then it must need stand as aforesaid Donation or Imputation being the direct cause of our first constitutive justification therefore conditionality and not the natural receptivity of faith must needs be the proper reason of its justifying This is acknowledged by Divines Amesius saith Bellarm. Enervat T. 4. p. mâ—hi 314. Apprehensio justificationis per veram fiduciam non est simpliciter per modum objecti sed per modum objecti nobis donati Quod enim Deus donaverit fidelibus Christum omni â—cum eo Scriptura disertis verbis testatur Rom. 8.32 2. And that if any other sort or act of faith as well as this or any other grace would have justified if God had made it equally the condition of his gift is also past all doubt 1. Because the whole work of Justifying dependeth meerly on Gods free Grace and
reign is part of that faith which justifies Even willingness of his Reign as well as to be pardoned justified and saved from Hell by him or else few among us would perish For I never met with the man that was unwilling of these 3. And then it will easily appear Whether your Doctrine or mine be the more safe 1. Yours hath the many inconveniences already mentioned It maketh man his own justifier or the causa proxima of his own Justification and by his own Act to help God to justifie us for so all instruments do help the principal cause And yet by a self-contradiction it maketh faith to be of no Moral worth and so no vertue or grace Yea I think it layeth the blame of mans infidelity on God Many such wayes it seemeth to wrong the Father and the Mediator 2. And it seemeth also to wrong mens souls in point of safety both by drawing them so to wrong God and also by laying grounds to encourage them in presumption For when they are taught that the receiving of Christs righteousness or of Christ for justification or the confident expectation of pardon or resting on Christ for it or a particular perswasion of it c. Is justifying faith and when they find these in themselves as undoubtedly they may will this much or else they cannot presume Is it not easie then to think they are safe when they are not As I said I never yet met with the man that was not willing to be Justified and saved from Hell by Christ and I dare say Really willing and but with few that did not expect it from Christ and trust him for it Now to place Justifying faith only in that which is so common and to tell the men that yet they believe not truly when they have all that is made essential to faith as Justifying is strange For knowing that the godly themselves have fowly sinned and that no man can perish that hath Justifying faith how can they choose but presume when they find that which is called Justifying faith undoubtedly in themselves And to tell them it is not sincere or true because they receive not Christ also as King and Prophet and yet that such receiving is no part of justifying faith This is to tell them that the truth of their faith lyeth without it self a strange Truth in a signal concomitant and who will doubt of his faith for want of a concomitant sign when he certainly feeleth the thing it self Will not such think they may sin salva fide When as if they were rightly taught that justifying saving faith as such is the receiving of Christ for Saviour and Lord and so a giving up themselves both to be saved and guided by him then they would find that faith in Christ and sincere obedience to Christ have a little neerer relation and then a man might say to such a presumer as I remember Tertullian excellently doth De poenitent Operum pag. mihi 119. Caeterum non leviter in Domixum peccat qui quum amulo ejus Diabolo poenitentiâ renunciasset hoc nomine illum Domino subjecisset rursus â—undem regressusuo erigit exultatione ejus seipsum facit ut denuo malus recuperata praeda sua adversus Dominâ—m gaudeat Nonne quod dicere quoque periculosum est sed ad adificationem proferendum est dâ—abolum Domino praeponit Comparationem enim videtur egisse qui utrumque cognoverit judicato pronunciasse â—um meliorem cujus se rursus esse maluerit c. Sed aiunt quidam satis Deum habere si corde animo suspiciatur licet actu minus fiat itaque se salvo metu Fide peccare Hoc est salva castitate Matrimonia violare salva pietate parenti venenum temperare sic ergo ipsi salva venia in Gehennans detrudentur dum salvo metu peccant Again your Doctrine seemeth to me to overthrow the comfort of Believers exceedingly For how can they have any comfort that know not whether they are justified and shall be saved and how can they know that who know not whether they have faith and how can they know that when they know not what justifying saith is and how can they know what it is when it is by Divines involved in such a cloud and maze of difficulties some placing it in this act and some in that and some in a Passive instrumentality which few understand If any man in the world do For the Habit of faith that cannot be felt or known of it self immediately but by its acts for so it is concluded of all Habits Suarez Metap T. 2. disp 44 § 1. pag 332. and instead of the act we are now set to enquire after the passion and so in the work of examination the business is to enquire how and when we did passively receive righteousness or justification or Christ for these which let him answer for himself that can for I cannot But now on the other side what inconvenience is there in the Doctrine of faith and justification as I deliver it As it is plain and certain saying no more then is generally granted so I think it is safe Do I ascribe any of Christs honour in the work to man No man yet hath dared to charge me with that to my knowledge and no considerate man I believe will do it I conclude that neither faith nor works is the least part of our legal righteousness or of that righteousness which we must plead against the accuser for our justification which is commonly called by Divines the matter of our justification The Law which we have broken cannot be satisfied nor God for the breach of it in the least measure by our faith or obedience nor do they concur as the least degree of that satisfaction But we must turn the Law over wholly to our Surety Only whereas he hath made a new Law or Covenant containing the conditions on our part of the said justification and salvation I say these conditions must needs be performed and that by our selves and who dare deny this and I say that the performance of these conditions is our Evangelical righteousness in reference to that Covenant as Christs satisfaction is our legal Righteousness in reference to that first Covenant or as perfect obedience would have been our legal righteousness if we had so obeyed And for them that speak of inherent Righteousness in any other sense viz. as it is an imperfect conformity to the Law of works rather then as a true conformity to the Law or Covenant of grace I renounce their Doctrine both as contradictory to it self and to the truth and as that which would make the same Law to curse and bless the same man and which would set up the desperate Doctrine of Justification by the works of the Law For if men are righteous in reference to that Law then they may be so far justified by it Nor do I ascribe to works any part of the office or
honour of faith Though that were not so dangerous as to derogate from Christ For I acknowledge faith the only condition of our first Remission and justification and the principal part of the condition of our justification as continued and consummate And if faith be an instrumental cause I do not give that honor from it to works for they are not so Nay I boldly again aver that I give no more to obedience to Christ then Divines ordinarily do that is to be the secondary part of the condition of continued and consummate justification Only I give not so much as others to faith because I dare not ascribe so much to man And yet men make such a noise with the terrible name of Justification by works the Lords own phrase as if I gave more then themselves to man when I give so much less And thus Sir I have according to your advice spent my self as you speak in aiming at that mark which you were pleased to set me And now I shall proceed to the rest of your exceptions My next answer to you was that If works under every notion are excluded as you say they are then repentance is excluded under the notion of a condition or preparative But repentance under that notion is not excluded Therefore not works under every notion To this you reply that Repentance is not excluded as qualifying but as recipient which what is it but a plain yielding my Minor and so the cause For this is as much as I say If repentance be a work or act of ours and not excluded under the notion of a qualification or as you elsewhere yield a Medium ordinatum and a condition then works are not under every notion excluded And that repentance is not recipient how easily do I yeild to you But do you indeed think that when Paul excludeth the works of the Law that he excludeth them only as Recipient and not as qualifying If so as this answer seems to import seeing you will not have me here distinguish between works of Law and of Gospel or New Covenant then you give abundance more to works of the Law then I do or dare For I aver that Paul excludeth them even as qualifications yea and the very presence of them and that the Jews never dreamt of their works being Recipient To my next you say Whether Paul dispute what is our righteousness or upon what terms it is made ours it doth not much matter But I think it of very great moment they being Questions so very much different both in their sense and importance And whereas you think Paul speaks chiefly of the manner I think he speaks of both but primarily of the quasi materia and of the manner or means thereto but secondarily in reference to that So that I think the chief Question which Paul doth debate was Whether we are Justified by our own works or merits or by Anothers viz. the satisfaction of a surety which yet because it is no way made ours but by believing therefore he so puts the Question whether by works of the Law or by faith and so that he makes them two immediate opposites not granting any tertium I easily yield But of that before To the next you say that I cannot find such a figure for faith Relatively in my sense Answ And I conceive that faith in my sense may be taken Relatively full as well as in yours Doubtless acceptance of an offered Redeemer and all his benefits doth relate as properly to what is accepted viz. by the assent of the understanding initially and by the election and consent of the will consummately as a Physical Passive reception or instrumentality can do And also as it is a condition I make little doubt but it relateth to the thing given on that condition and that the very name of a condition is relative So that in my sense faith relateth to Christ two ways Whereof the former is but its very nature and so its aptitude to its office The later is that proper respect in which it immediately or directly justifieth Yet do I not mean as you seem to do as I gather by your phrase of putting Love and Obedience for Christs Righteousness For I conceive it may be put relatively and yet not strictly loco correlati for the thing related to when I say my hands or teeth feed me I do not put them instead of my Meat and yet I use the words relatively meaning my Meat principally and my teeth secondarily Neither do I mean that it relateth to Christs righteousness only or principally but first to himself And I doubt not but Love to Christ and Obedience to him as Redeemer do relate to him but not so fully clearly and directly express him as related to as Faith Faith being also so comprehensive a grace as to include some others It is a true saying that a poor woman that is marryrd to a Prince is made honourable by love and continued so by duty to her husband But it is more obscure and improper then to say she is made honourable by Marriage or taking such a man to her husband which includes love and implyeth duty and faithfulness as necessarily subsequent I conceive with Judicious Doctor Preston that faith is truly and properly such a consent contract or marriage with Christ Next to your similitude you say that I hold that not only seeing this brazen Serpent but any other Actions of sense will as well heal the wounded Christian To which I answer Similitudes run not on all four Thus far I believe that this holds 1. Christ was lift up on the Cross as the brazen Serpent was lift up 2. He was lift up for a cure to sin-stung souls as the brazen Serpent for the stung bodies 3. That as every one that looked on the Serpent was cured an easie condition so every one that believeth Christ to be the appointed Redeemer and heartily Accepteth him on the terms he is offered and so trusteth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life 4. That as the cure of their bodies came not from any natural reason drawn from the eye or from any natural excellency or efficacy of seeing above hearing or feeling but meerly from the free will and pleasure of God who ordained that looking should be the condition of their cure So all those Acts usually comprized or implyed in the word believing which justifie do it not from any natural excellency efficacy or instrumentality but meerly from the good pleasure of the Law-giver And therefore the natural Receptivity of Faith that is its very formal essence must not be given as the proper direct cause of its Justifying But that is its conditionality from the free appointment of God But on the other side 1. It was only one Act of one sense which was the condition of their cure but you will not say I believe that it is only one act of one faculty which justifieth however I will not 2. It
Evangelical as declared and given by the Gospel But the thing in question you now fully confess Mr. W. pag. 171. That we our selves are not the subjects of Evangelical righteousness I shall endeavour to prove by thesâ— Arguments 1. If our Evangelical righteousness be out of us in Christ then it is not in â—â— consisting in the habit or Acts of faith and Gospel obedience but it is out of us in Christ Answ We shall have such another piece of work with this point as the former to defend the truth against a man that layeth about him in the dark 1. I have oft enough distinguisht of Evangelical righteousness The righteousness conform to the Law and revealed and given by the Gospel is meritoriously and materially out of us in Christ The righteousness conform to the Gospel as constituting the condition of life He that believeth shall not perish Repent and be converted that your sins may be blotted out This is in our selves materially and not out of us in Christ Mr. W. 2. If satisfaction to Divine Justice were not given or caused by any thing in us but by Christ alone then Evangelical righteousness is in Christ alone But Ergo without blood no remission Answ Your proof of the consequence is none but worse then silence Besides the satisfaction of Justice and remission of sin thereby there is a subservient Gospel righteousness as is proved and is undeniable Mr. W. 3. If Evangelical righteousness be in our selves then perfect righteousness is in our selves But that 's not so Ergo. Answ Still you play with the ambiguity of a word and deny that which beseems you not to deny that the fulfilling of the condition Believe and Live is a Gospel-righteousness particular and subservient and imperfect The Saints have an Inherent righteousness which is not Legal therefore it is Evangelical If you say it s no righteousness you renounce the constant voice of Scripture If you say it is a Legal righteousness imperfect then you set up Justification by the works of the Law the unhappv fate of blind opposition to do what they intend to undo For there is no righteousness which doth not justifie or make righteous in tantum and so you would make men justified partly by Christ and partly by a Legal righteousness of their own by a perverse denying the subservient Evangelical righteousness without any cause in the world but darkness jealousie and humorous contentious zeal Yea more then so we have no worKs but what the Law would damn us for were we judged by it And yet will you say that faith or inherent righteousness is Legal and not Evangelical Mr. W. 4. If Evangelical righteousness were in ourselves and did consist either in the habit or act of faith and new obedience then upon the intercision of those acts our Justification would discontinue But Answ If you thought not your word must go for proof you would never sure expect that we should believe your Consequence For 1. What shew is there of reason that the intercision of the act should cause the cessation of that Justification which is the consequent of the Habit which you put in your Antecedent The Habit continueth in our sleep when the acts do not 2. As long as the cause continueth which is Christs Merits and the Gospel-Grant Justification will continue if the condition be but sincerely performed For the Condition is not the cause much less a Physical cause But the condition is sincerely performed though we believe not in our sleep I dare not instance in your payment of Rent left a Carper be upon mâ— back but suppose you give a man a lease of Lands on condition he come once a moneth or week or day and say I thank you or in general on condition he be thankful Doth his Title cease as oft as he shuts his lips from saying I thank you These are strange Doctrines Mr. W. 5. If Evangelical righteousness were in our selves and faith with our Gospel obedience were that righteousness then he who hath more or less faith or obedience were more or less justified and more or less Evangelically righteous according to the degrees of faith and obedience Answ I deny your Consequence considering faith and repentance as the Condition of the Promise because it is the sincerity of Faith and Repentance that is the Condition and not the degree and therefore he that hath the least degree of sincere faith hath the same title to Christ as he that hath the strongest 2. But as faith and obedience respect the Precept of the Gospel and not the Promise so it is a certain truth that he that hath most of them hath most Inherent Righteousness Mr. W. 6. That opinion which derogates from the Glory and Excellency of Christ above all Graces and from the excellency of Faith in its Office of justifying above other Graces ought not to be admitted But this opinion placing our Evangelical Righteousness in the habit act or Grace of faith and Gospel obedience derogates from both Christ and Faith Answ Your Minor is false and your proof is no proof but your word Your similitude should have run thus If an Act of Oblivion by the Princes purchase do pardon all that will thankfully accept it and come in and lay down arms of Rebellion it is no derogating from the Prince or pardon to say I accept it I stand out no longer and therefore it is mine If you offer to heal a deadly sore on condition you be accepted for the Chyrurgion doth it derogate from your honour if your Patient say I do consent and take you for my Chyrurgion and will take your Medicines Your proof is as vain and null that it derogates from faith What that Faith should be this subservient Righteousness Doth that dishonour it Or is it that Repentance is conjoyned as to our first Justification and obedience as to that at Judgement When you prove either of these dishonourable to faith we will believe you but it must be a proof that is stronger then the Gospel that is against you We confess faith to be the receiving Condition and repentance but the disposing Condition but both are Conditions As for Phil. 3.9 Do you not see that it is against you I profess with Paul not to have a righteousness of my own which is of the Law which made me loth to call faith and repentance a legal righteousness but that which is through the faith of Christ the righteousness which is of God by faith Faith you see is the means of our Title to Christs Righteousness And if you deny faith it self to be any particular Righteousness you must make it a sin or indifferent and contradict the Scriptures And presently contradicting what you have been arguing for that Evangelical Righteousness is not in us and we are not the Subjects of it You profess pag. 178. That Inherent Righteousness is in us It seems then either Inherent righteousness is not righteousness or it is
causes of our Justification For you say Faith is a Total cause and there can be but one Total Cause unless you lose the honor of your Philosophy 2. Faith is no proper cause at all 3. Did you not see what must needs be answered you That Faith is interrupted as well as Obedience and yet no intercision of our Justification When we sleep we do not at least alway act faith no more then obedience if so much And the habit of both continueth together sleeping and waking And if you should give over love and sincerity of obedience you would cease to be justified His last Argument is Because for sins after Conversion we must have recourse only by faith to Christ as our Advocate Answer 1. That speaks only of renewed pardon for particular sins but not of our Justification at Judgement nor the non-omission here 2. We must have recourse to Christ with Repentance and esteem and self-denial and desire c. as well as that act of faith which you plead for as the total cause And when you would set Zanchy against Zanchy you do but mis-understand him He saith truly with Paul that neither in whole or part are our own works such as Paul speaks of our Righteousness that is to answer the Law as Paul mentioneth or any way to merit or satisfie or stand in co-ordination with Christ But Zanchy never thought that Repentance and Faith in Christ as Head and Lord and Desire and Gratitude c. might be no means or Conditions of any sort of Justification or of that which we assert them to be means of I would answer much more of this Disputation but I am perswaded the judicious Reader will think I have done him wrong in troubling him with this much See pag. 298 299. how he answereth the Objection that pardon is promised to Repentance c. I will not disparage the Readers understanding so much as to offer him a Confutation of that and much more of the Book Only his many Arguments on the Question of my first Disputation I must crave your Patience while I examine briefly and I will tire you with no more Mr. W. pag. 411 412. I will rally up my Arguments against the foresaid Definition of Faith to be an accepting of Christ as Lord and Saviour proving that Christ only as Saviour and Priest offering himself up to the death of the Cross for our sins is the proper Object of justifying Faith as justifying Argument 1. If the Faith of the Fathers under the old Testament was directed to Christ as dying Priest and Saviour then also the Faith of Believers now ought so to be directed But. Ergo. Answ 1. I grant the whole and never made question of it But what kin is the conclusion of this Argument to that which you had to prove unless Only had been added Did we ever deny that Faith must be directed to Christ as Priest 2. A Saviour is a term respecting our whole Salvation and so Christ saveth by Teaching Ruling and judicial justifying as well as dying 3. The Fathers faith did not respect Christ as dying or satisfying only which you should prove but cannot Mr. W. Argument 2. If Christ as dying and as Saviour do satisfie Gods Justice and pacifie a sinners conscience then as dying and Saviour he is the Object of justifying Faith But Ergo. Answ The same answer serveth to this as to the last The conclusion is granted but nothing to the Question unless Only had been in 2. Christ as obeying actively and Christ as Rising and as interceding and as judging as King doth also justifie us Rom. 5.19 Rom. 4 24 25. Rom. 8.33.34 Mat. 12.37 and 25.34 40. Peruse these Texts impartially and be ignorant of this if you can 3. And yet the Argument will not hold that no act of faith is the condition of Justification but those whose object is considered only as justifying The accepting of Christ to sanctifie us is a real part of the condition of Justification Mr. W. Argument 3. If Christ as Lord be properly the Object of fear then he is not properly the Object of Faith as justifying But Ergo. Answ 1. If Properly be spoken de proprio quarto modo then is Christ properly the Object of neither that is he is not the object of either of these Only 2. But if properly be opposed to a tropical analogical or any such improper speech then he is the Object as Lord both of fear and faith and obedience c. 3. The deceit that still misleads most men in this point is in the terms of reduplication faith as justifying which men that look not through the bark do swallow without sufficient chewing and so wrong themselves and others by meer words Once more therefore understand that when men distinguish between fides quae justificans and qua justificans and say Faith which justifieth accepteth Christ as Head and Lord but faith as justifying taketh him only as a Priest The very distinction in the later branch of it qua justificans Is 1. Either palpable false Doctrine 2. And a meer begging of the Question 3. Or else co-incident with the other branch and so contradictory to their assertion For 1. The common Intent and meaning is that Fides quae credit in Christum justificat And so they suppose that Faith is to be denominated formally justificans ab objecto qua objectum And if this be true then fides qua fides justificat For the object is essential to faith in specie And so in their sense fides quae justificans is but the implication of this false Doctrine that haec fides in Christum crucifixum qua talis justificat Which I never yet met with sober Divine that would own when he saw it opened For the nature and essence of faith is but its aptitude to the office of justifying and it is the Covenant or free Gift of God in modo promittendi that assigneth it its office The nature of faith is but the Dispositio materiae but it s nearest interest in the effect is as a condition of the Promise performed 2. But if by the quâ justificans any should intend no more then to define the nature materially of that faith which is the condition of Justification then the qua and the qua is all one and then they contradict their own Assertion that fides quâ justificans non recipit Christum ut Dominum 3. If the quâ should relate to the effect then it would only express a distinction between Justification and other Benefits and not between faith and faith For then quâ justistcans should be contradistinct only from qua sanctificans or the like And if so it is one and the same Faith and the same acts of faith that sanctifie and justifie As if a King put into a gracious act to a company of Rebels that they shall be pardoned honoured enriched and all upon condition of their thankfull acceptance of him and of this act
neither this act nor that act nor any act but qua justificans noteth only its respect to Justification rather then to Sanctification or other benefits As when I kindle a fire I thereby occasion both Light and Heat by putting to the fewel And if you speak of that act of mine qua calefaciens or qua illuminans this doth not distinguish of the nature of the act but of the Respect that the same Act hath to several effects or consequents Mr. W. Argument 10. If Christ only as crucified be the Meritorious Cause of our Redemption and Justification then Christ crucified is the only object of faith as Justifying But Ergo. Answ 1. The consequence of the Major is vain and an proved More then the Meritorious Cause of our Redemption is the object of justifying faith 2. The Minor is no small errour in the Judgement of most Protestants who maintain that Christs active Obedience and suffering life are also the Meritorious cause of our Justification and not only his Crucifixion Mr. W. Argument 11. If Christ as a servant did satisfie Gods Justice then he is so to be believed on to Justification But as a servant he did satisfie Gods Justice Ergo. Answ 1. I grant the conclusion Christ as a servant is to be believed in 2. But if only was again forgotten I further answer 1. I deny the consequence of the Major because Christ is to be believed on for Justification in other respects even in all essential to his Office and not only as satisfying I instanced before in Obeying Rising Judging from express Scripture 2. If the conclusion were granted it s against you and not for you For 1. Active obedience is as proper to a servant as suffering 2. Christ Taught the Church as a servant to his Father and is expresly called A Minister of the Circumcision So that these you yield the objects of this faith Mr. W. Argument 12. If none can call Christ Lord before he be justified by faith then faith as justifying is not an Accepting him as Lord. The Minor is true because none can call him Lord but by the Spirit and the Spirit is received by the hearing of faith after we believe Answ Any thing must serve 1. Both Major and Minor are such as are not to be swallowed in the lump If by Call you mean the call of the voyce then the consequence of the Major is vain and groundless For a man may believe in Christ with the heart as Lord and Saviour before he call him so with the mouth But if by Call you mean Believe then the Minor is false so confessed by all Protestants and Christians that ever I heard from of this point till now For they all confess that faith in Christ as Lord and Teacher and Head c. is the fides quae justificat or is of necessity to be present with the believing in his blood that a man may be justified Never did I hear till now that we first believe in Christ as dying only and so are justified before we believe in him as Lord and it seems before we are his Subjects or Disciples and that is before we are Christians 2. To your proof of the Minor I answer 1. It is no proof because the Text saith only that No man can call him Lord but by the Spirit but our question is of Believing and not of Calling which is Confessing 2. Many Expositors take it but for a common gift of the Spirit that 's there spoken of and do you think Justification must needs precede such common gifts 3. But if it had been Believe in stead of Call it s nothing for you For I easily grant that no man can believe in Christ as Lord but by the Spirit but I deny that this gift of the Spirit is never received till after that we believe and are justified And because it seems you judge that Believing in Christ to Justification is without the Spirit I pray answer first what we have said against the Arminians and Augustine against the Pelagians for the contrary Who would have thought that you had held such a point 4. How could you wink so hard as not to see that your Argument is as much against your self as me if you do but turn it thus If none can call Christ Jesus or the Saviour or believe in him to Justification before he be justified by faith then faith as justifying is not the accepting him as a Saviour The Minor is proved because none can call him Jesus or believe to Justification but by the Spirit This is as wise and strong an Argument as the other and all one See 1 Iob. 4.15 5.5 Believing in Christ as Saviour is as much of the Spirit is believing in him as Lord. 5. The Text makes against you 1 Cor 12.3 For there when Paul would denominate the true Christian faith or Confession he maketh Christ as Lord the Object Mr. W. Argument 13. If the promise of Salvation be the proper object of justifying faith then not the commands of Christ as Lord and Law-giver But Ergo Answ 1. The conclusion is nothing to our Question which is not of Commands but of Christ as Lord. It may be you know no difference between the Relation and subsequent Duties between the Authority and the Command between subjection and obedience 2. The Minor is false If by proper you mean Only and if not the consequence is vain and null For the Person of Christ and his Office and the fruits of his Office even Pardon yea and Glory are the true Objects of justifying Faith Mr. W. Argument 14. If we are not justified both by Righteousness Inherent and Imputed then not by obeying Christ as Lord and Law-giver But Ergo. Answ What 's this to the Question 1. About Justification by Righteousness Imputed or Inherent we spoke before 2. The conclusion never was acquainted with our Question Again it seems you cannot or will not distinguish between Relative subjection and actual obedience A man may become your servant and so have the Priviledges of a servant by covenant before he obey you A woman in Marriage may subject her self to you and have Interest in your estate even by that Marriage which promiseth subjection as well as Love without excluding the first from being any condition of her Interest and all this before she obey you 3. Your consequence would follow as much against your self as me For Believing in Christ as a Ransom is as truly a particular Inherent Righteousness as believing in him as Lord. 4. We are justified by Righteousness Inherent as a particular righteousness though not as a Universal as subordinate to Christs Righteousness that it may be ours though not in co-ordination with it Mr. W. Argument 15. If our accepting of Christ as Lord and Law-giver be not properly or formally faith nor properly to be called obedience then we are not formally justified by faith in him as Lord nor by our obedience to him as
For it fell out that I first saw your Book without the Epistle and Preface 2. Because I thought it fittest to follow the Method that my Subject and the Readers â—â—dification did require 3. Yet did I once purpose to have answered all that was of moment in your Book against the Truth but upon trial I found your Reasons so inconsiderable that weariness interrupted me and put an end to my Reply and withal I grew confident that my labour would be to little purpose For I dare venture any Judicious Divine upon your Book without the help of a Reply And for the rest it is not replying that will serve turn but either prejudice will hold them to the side that they have taken or else they will think him in the right that hath the last word when they have read mine they will think that I am in the right and when they have again read yours they will think that you carry the cause and when they read my Reply again they will say you were mistaken but usually they will go with the party that is in greatest credit or hath most interest in them or advantage on them But yet I think you will find that none of your strength against me is neglected For I can truly say that when I think not meet to Answer all that a man hath said I never pass by that which I take to be his strength but purposely call out that and leave that which I think is so grosly weak as to need no answer So much of your ten Demands or Laws as I apprehended necessary I have here answered supposing what I had said of the same points in my first Disputation which I saw no Reason too often to Repeat I am none of those that blame you for too much of the Metaphysicks but rather mervail that you feared not lest your Metaphysical Reader will wrong you by mis-applying your cited Schegkius contrary to your better opinion of your self and take both your Schegkius and your Scaliger for Prophets that could speak as if they had read your Book and been acquainted with your arguings But it seems you are not the first of that way By your Arguments in your Preface I perceive you think it a matter of very great moment to your cause to prove that there are divers acts of Faith whereas I am so far from denying it that I am ready to demonstrate that even the faith by which we are Justified is liker to have twenty acts then one only but many certainly it hath Your first Argument is from the different objects because the Objects specifie the Acts. A sufficient Argument which no man can confute But 1. This is no proof that one act only is it that we are justified by 2. Where you add that Justifying Faith hath not respect to Christ as Lord formaliter you beg the Question and assert no light mistake But where you add in its act of Justifying you do but obtrude upon us your fundamental Error which leadeth you to the rest by naked affirmations Faith hath properly no justifying act Justificare est efficere Faith doth not effect our Justification we are justified by faith indeed but not as by an efficient cause unless you will take Justification for Sanctification For real qualitative Mutations it doth effect but the Jus or Title to any mercy in the world it cannot Effect but Accept when offered If you â—â—nâ— see so plain a Truth in its Evidence yet observe by the words of the Reverend Brother that is my Opponent in the second Disputation and by your Prefacers Dr. Kendals course that its a passive instrumentality that the Defenders of your cause at last are driven to and therefore talk not of its act of Justifying unless you will mean Gods act of Justifying which faith is the Condition of And whereas you make unbelief to be formally a slighting and neglecting Christ as a Saviour and effectively you must mean only effective non formaliter a denying subjection to him as Lord. You err so great but so rare an error that I suppose it needless to confute it All Christians as far as I can learn have been till now agreed that Believing in Christ as Prophet and King is a real part of faith and that unbelief or rejecting him as Prophet and King is a real part of unbelief Your second Argument is from the different subjects where you give us two such palpable Fictions that its a wonder you can make your self believe them much more that you should lay so great a stress on such absurdities The first is that the Act of Faith is in several faculties and you elswhere give us to understand that it is one Physical Act that you mean And do you think in good sadness that one single Physical act can be the act of both the faculties The second is that the fear love and obedience to Christ as King is but in the Will But 1. That Readers do you expect that will take an Assertion of Fear-Love and Obedience in stead of an assertion concerning Faith Were you not comparing faith in Christ as King with faith in Christ as Priest only And why speak you not of faith in one part of your comparison as well as in the other Your conclusion now is nothing to the Question 2. Or if you mean that Faith in Christ as King is not in both faculties as well as Faith in Christ as Priest or sacrifice did you think that any man of ordinary understanding would ever believe you without any proof or that ever such a thing can be proved Your third Argument is Because they are in a different time exerted the one that is Faith as Justifying being precedaneous to the other and to other Graces Answ Wonderfull Is that man justified that believeth not in Christ as the King and Prophet of the Church Do you believe this your self why then an Infidel is justified by Faith The ' Belief in Christ as a Sacrifice or Priest only is not the Christian faith it is not faith in Christ properly because it is not faith in Christ as Christ For Christ as Priest only is not Christ A Heart only is not Corpus humanum A Body only is not a Man where there are three essential parts one of them is not the Thing without the rest The name Jesus Christ signifieth the office as well as the person It is essential to that Office that he be Prophet and King And hereby you shew that you do not only distinguish but divide For where there is a distance of time between the Acts there is a division Do you think that we are Christs enemies or followers of them unless we will believe you that a man is Justified by Believing in Christ only as a Priest or Ransom or in his Righteousness before ever be believe in him as King and Lord and so as Teacher c. If I had said that you are Christs enemy for such Doctrine
which think you had had the fairer pretence for his censure But I am far from saying so or thinking it I know that the Assent to the essential Articles of Christianity containeth many Acts and that our Consent and Affiance are many Physical Acts as the parts of Christs Office are many Objects But yet I do not think but am certain that all these physical Acts concur to make up that Moral Aâ— which is called Christian or saving or Justifying Faith and that he that believeth not in Christ as to all that is essential to Christ is no Christian And a man is not justified by Faith before he is a Christian And truly Sir men that are loth to flie from the Light and that love the Truth and diligently seek it as heartily if not as happily as you must yet needs tell you that if you produce your Mormolucks an hundred times and cant over and over a Papist a Socinian an Arminian and an Arminian a Socinian and a Papist their understandings will never the more be perswaded to embrace your Delusions though you should say that the Kingdom of God doth consist in them Your fourth Argument is that There is a difference in Nature Efficacy Energy and Operation therefore the Acts are not the same Answ 1. I maintained the conclusion that faith hath different Acts before ever I heard of your name and have no reason now to denie it 2. The difference of Nature I grant you between many Acts of faith but what you mean by the Efficacy Energy and Operation be that knows can tell for I cannot But still desire you to know that I deny faith to have any efficient operation in justifying us or that it is an efficient cause of our Justification especially it s no Physical efficient you add a strange proof of your Assertion viz. For faith as Justifying makes a mystical Union and relative change on the person but faith as working and sanctifying produceth a moral union with Christ c. Answ 1. Faith as justifying doth only Justifie and produce no Vâ—ion the same faith as uniting is the means of Vnion 2. The question is of Faith in Christ as Priest and faith in Christ as Prophet and King also And you talk of faith as justifying and as working and sanctifying A small alteration 3. What Mystical Relative Union is that which is not a Moral Union 4. Faith in Christ as Christ and not as a Ransom only is the means of our Justification And you give us nothing like a proof of the contrary restriction In the same Preface you tell the world of as threefold Artifice that we use the first is to set up a second Justification Ans Is it the Name or the Thing that you mean If the name 1. cite the words where we use that Name 2. If it answer the subject you may bear with the name If it be the Thing then tell us what Religion that it that denyeth 1. a Justification by sentence at Judgement 2. Gods continual justifying us to the Death 3. And his particular pardoning or justifying us from the guilt of renewed particular sins 4. And that faith is not only in the first act but through all our lives the means of our Justification Or justifying faith is more then one instantaneous Act or a man ceaseth not to have justifying faith after the first Act or moment Tell us who those be and what Religion they are of that deny all these that Christians may be acquainted with them if they be worthy their acquaintance Our second Artifice is to require Works only as Gospel-Conditions Answ Would you have us say more of them or less If less I have said enough of it in the second Disputation Our third Artifice is To include works in the Definition of Justifying faith making it a receiving of Christ as Saviour Lord and Law-giver to Justification as also confounding our consummate Salvation or Glorification with our Justification Ans Gross untruths contrary to large and plaine expressions of my mind in several Volumes if you mean me as you know I have reason to judge 1. I ever took works to be a fruit of faith and no part of it unless you take the word Faith improperly and laxely unless by Works you mean Acts And you take faith for such a work your self that is an Act. 2. I expresly distiguished what you say I confound Consummate Sanctification or Glorification and consummate Justification But yet as I do in the Definition include Consent to Christs Lordship though not Obedience that 's only implyed to be a necessary consequent so I still say that much of your Justitication is yet to come And if your Religion teach you to say that you will be beholding to Christ for no more Justification so doth not mine And whereas you cite some that say that all our sins are pardoned in our first believing as if I had questioned any such thing I must tell you that I easily grant it that every sin is then forgiven and so far as that Justification is perfect but what have you yet said to prove 1. That we are never justified be faith but in that one instant 2. That we need no particular Justification from particular sins that after shall be committed 3. Nor no sentential Justification at Judgement which Mr. Burgess will tell you is the chief You and others use to say that that at Judgement is but Declarative But 1. It is no common Declaration but a Declaration by the Judge 2. And the Sentence doth more then meerely declare for it doth finally decide acquit and adjudge to Glory 3. And methinks this Declarative should be no term of Diminution but of Aggravation with those that still use to say that Justification is a judicialâ— Term. Alas That these matters among the friends of Christ and Truth should need so many words Some more I had to say to you but you may find it in the Preface to these Disputations I only add that if indeed it be true which you write to that Honourable person to whom you dedicate your Labors viz. That the Subject of your Discourse is so excellent and necessary to be known and that He who is Ignorant of the Object and Office of Faith doth neither know what he believeth nor how he is justified I should think it is high time that you call your Vnderstanding once more to an account and review the Fabrick that you have built on a qua justificans not understood or upon a specificative quatenus where there is no such thing And if you think me unfit to be hearkned to in this as being one of the men of perverse minds that there you mention its more worthy your industry to seek the advice of the learned Oxford Divines herein then that they should be sought to approve and midwife such a Book into the world and its likely that their Charity will provoke them to be serviceable to you in this though I
Whether if Magistrates be Officers of Christ as King by Office they be not in his Kingdom and so Infidel Magistrates in Christs Kingdom contrary to Col. 1.14 4. If it be maintained That Christ died for every Child of Adam conditionally It would be well proved from Scripture that the procuring of such a conditional Law or Covenant was the End or Effect of Christs death and whether the so Interpreting Texts that speak of his dying for all will not serve for Evasions to put by the Arguments drawn from them to prove Christs Satisfaction aad Merit proper to the Elect. For if they may be Interpreted so He died to procure the conditional Covenant for every one this may be alledged justly then you can prove no more thence for that is the sense and then we cannot prove thence he died loco nostro c. It is a matter of much moment and needs great Circumspection Yours Sir BEsides what hath been formerly suggested to you these words in your Scripture proofs pag. 323. And where he next saith that in the aged several dispositions are required to fit a man to receive pardon and so justification viz Catholike faith hope of pardon fear of punishment grief for sin a purpose against sining hereafter and a purpose of a new life all which dispose the Receiver and I agree to him though all do not are so like the Doctrine of the Trent Council sess 6. c. 6. that it will be expected you declare whether by avowing that speech of Dr. Ward you do not join with the Papists contrary to Bishop Downam of Justification l. 6. c. 7. § 1.2 Mr. Pemble vindict fidei § 2. c. 3. And when you make Justification a continued Act upon condition of obedience it s to be considered how you will avoid Tompsons opinion of the Intercifion of Justification upon the committing of a sin that wasts the conscience refuted by Dr. Rob. Abbot but vented after by Moutague in his appeal and opposed by Dr. Preston and others As for Justification by Law-Title by the Covenant upon actual Believing without any other act of God consequent on Faith if it were so 1. Then it should be by necessary Resultancy But Justification is an Act of Will and no act of Will is by necessary Resultancy 2. If the Covenant justifie without any other Act of God then it Adops Glorifies Sanctifies c. without any other Act which is not to be said The reason of the Sequel is because the Covenant of it self doth in the same manner produce the one as well as the other 3. The Justification of the Covenant is only conditional therefore not Actual Actual Justification is not till Faith be put and then Posit â conditione it is Actual A conditional is only a possible Justification it s only in potentia till the Condition be in act Now the Covenant doth only assure it on condition as a future thing not therefore as actual or present 4 The Covenant is an Act past Tit. 1.2 Gal. 3.7 8. so not continued and consequently the Justification barely by it without any other Act must be past long since and not continued and he neither Justification Actual and in purpopse or virtual will be confounded or an effect shall be continued without the cause Jan. 17 1651. Yours I.T. Reverend Sir I AM more thankfull to you for these free candid rational Animadversions then I can now express to you yet being still constrained to dissent from you by the evidence of Truth I give you these Reasons of my dissent 1. First You think that the Scriptures cited are not to be intepreted of Justification in Title of Law because this is only an Act of God prescribing or promising a way of Justification not the Sentence it self and is general and indeterminate to particular persons c. To which I answer 1. That I am past doubt that you build all this on a great mistake about the nature of Gods Law or Covenant Promise the moral action thereof For you must know that this Promise of God 1. is not a bare Assertio explicans de futuro animum qui nunc est as Grotius speaks Nor yet that which he calleth Pollicitatio cum voluntas seipsam pro futuro tempore determinat cum signo sufficientè ad judicandam perseverandi necessitatem But it is Perfecta Promissio ubi ad determinationem talem accedit signum volendi jus proprium alteri conferre quae similem babet effectum qualem alienatio Dominâ—i Est enim aut via ad alienaâ—ionem rei aut alienatio particulae cujusdam nostrae libertatis c. Vid. ultra Grot. de jure Bellili 2. c. 11. § 2.3 4. 2. This Promise or Covenant of God is also his Testament and who knoweth not that a Testament is an Instrctment of proper Donation and not only a Prediction 3. Moreover this same which in one respect is a Covenant and Promise and in another a Testament is also truly part of Gods Law even the New constitution of Christ the Law-giver and King But â—ndoubtedly a Law which conferreth Right either absolutely or conditionally is the true and proper Instrument of that Effect and not only the presenting or promising away thereto The proper Effect or Product of every Law is Debitum aliquod Et de hoc debito determinare is its proper Act. Now therefore this Promise being part of Christs Law doth determine of and confer on us the Debitum or Right to sentential Justification having first given us an Interest in Christ and so to the Benefit of his satisfaction and this is Justificatio constitutiva You know a Deed of Gift though but conditional is a most proper Instrument of conferring the Benefits therein contained And is not the Promise undoubtedly Gods Deed of Gift And doth he not thereby make over as it were under his hand the Lord Jesus and all his Benefits to them that will receive him So that when you say that his Promise to justifie upon condition is not justifying You may see it is otherwise by all the forementioned considerations of the nature of the Promise You may as well say a Testament or deed of Gift conditional doth not give or a Law doth not confer Right and Title And in these Relative benefits to give Right to the thing and to give the thing it self or right in it is all one still allowing the distance of time limited for both in the Instrument It is all one to give full right to son-ship and to make one a Son or at least they are inseparable Yea which weigheth most of all with me it being the proper work of Gods Laws to give Duness of or Right to Benefits it cannot be any other way accomplished that is within our Knowledge I think For Decree Purpose and so Predestination cannot do it they being Determinations de eventu and not de debito as such And the sentential declaration presupposeth this Debitum or true Righteousness an
it tell you that this is usual with moral causes that they may have all their absolute Entity and vim agendi long before they produe their effects and may be Actu primo etsi non secundo effectum producente in being long before The Law that determineth of your right to your Possession or that doth give a Reward to every man that killeth a wild hurtfull beast or that condemneth every man that murdereth or committeth Felony c. was in Being before those persons were born perhaps And yet it did not hoc agere it did not Praemiare Punire Praecipere c. as to this man before A pardon from a Prince to a Traytor on condition doth not perform the moral act of his discharge till he perform the condition though it were in being before The like I may say of a Testament or Deed of Gift But what need many words in a case where the Truth is so obvious If some moral causes may be causes and Agere moraliter or produce their effects even before they are naturally in Being much more may they suspend it and so produce it long after they are in Being Causae enim moralis ea ratio est ut etiam cum non est actu sit efficax modò habe at ut loquuntur in scholis esse cognitums inquit Rivetus Disput 13. de satisfact Christi pag. 282. Next you say Yea it is the same though none were actually justified Answer This requires no other answer then what is given to the former It is the same Physice considerata vel in Entitate naturali But the moral action of pardoning and justifying is not the same nor is at all A conditional Pardon Deed of Gift Testament c. doth not at all pardon or Give till you perform the condition For it is the proper nature of a condition to suspend the act of the Grant so that till it be absolute or equal to Absolute it is not Actual Remission Justification c. The reason of all this is because these Laws Testaments or Promises are but the Law-makers Testators or Donors Instruments and therefore act when and how he pleases and it is his pleasure that they should act no otherwise then as is aforesaid and as in the Tenor of them he shall express Next you add To be justified notes a passion which presupposeth an Action transient not immanent or only Gods purpose to justifie Answer 1. So far as the Reception of a Relation may be called a Passion this is true And no doubt you are in the right that it is not Actus immanens But now What transient Act it is I remember very few Divines that once tell us but only in general say It is a Transient Act. Now you and I that have adventured to enquire do happen to be both singular from others and differing between our selves only Mr. Rutherford and some few others I find saying oft that we are pardoned and justified by the Gospel by which they seem to mean as I But for your way of Justification by a sentence before the Angels as I never met with any that judged that to be our Justification by Faith so as I have said it seems to me very groundless and strange And then if yours stand not mine only must for any thing that is yet discovered that I have seen for I know of none that tells us of any third Your next Objection is the same before answered that God 's Promise to justifie is only a declaration what he will do and therefore a man is not by Covenant without a further Act justified but justifiable Answer Grotius de satisfact will tell you that Promises give right to him to whom they are made and that therefore they cannot be reclaimed though threatnings may But if these were only Promises that God will by another Act do this or that for us then it were to the purpose that you say but that you cannot prove Nor needs there any other Act but the moral Action of the Instrument it self to change our Relations here Et frustra fit pro plura c. Indeed an Act of ours Believing must come in before the effect but you and I are agreed that this is but conditional and not effective These Promises therefore being also Gods Law Testament of Christ Deed of Gift Covenant c. they do not only foretell an Event to come to pass by some other Action but they do confer a Right or make due the benefit or relation and so effect it only the Author is pleased to suspend the effect of his Instrument till we perform the Condition As if by a Lease or Deed of Sale there be some Office or Dignity made over to you or some command in Army or Court or Country or by a Law a Foraigner be Naturalized or Enfranchized on such or such a Condition This Lease or Deed or Law doth not only foretel but effect the thing You add that Justification is a Court-term importing an Act of God as Judge whereas his promising is not his Act as Judge but Rector Answer 1. If by a Court-term you also mean a Law-term verbum forense or judiciarium in the full sense I agree with you But if you confine it to the sentence as pronounced I require Proof as also proof of any such sentence before Judgement particular or general A Rector is either Supremus or Subaliernus A Judge is either supreme above all Laws as being the Law-giver or sub lege God is both Rector and Judge only in the first senses and by judging he Ruleth and Rector is but the Genus whereof Judex is a species As Rector supremus God is the Legislator and so acteth and justifieth by his Laws Grants c. as Judge he sentenceth and absolveth those that were first made just A man is accused for killing another in fight at the command of the Soveraign Power Is it not as fit and proper a saying to say The Law doth justifie this man for so doing against all Accusers as to say The Judge will justifie him Nay Is it not more ordinary And in a sort the Supream or Soveraign may be said to be though in a different sense justified as well as an Inferior when yet the said person in Supremacy hath no Judge nor is to have any by Law and so cannot be justified by sentence God will be justified in his sayings c. as he hath in a sort bound himself by his own Laws that is signified his Resolution to observe them so in the sense of these Laws his works are now just and shall be hereafter so be manifested but not by any sentence of a Superior But this I confess differeth from our Justification Next you say You know not whence it should be that Angels should judge us righteous and rejoice therein but by a sentence passed in Heaven Answer If you think and prove that Angels cannot know us to be righteous then I will not affirm that
neither a continued Act nor renewed or repeated neither Faith nor Repentance afterwards performed are any conditions of our Justification in this Life This may seem a heavy charge but it is a plain Truth For that Justification which we receive upon our first believing hath only that first Act of faith for its condition or as others speak its Instrumental cause We are not justified to day by that act of Faith which we shall perform to Morrow or a Twelvemonth hence so that according to your opinion and all that go that way it is only one the first Act of Faith which justifies and all the following Acts through our whole life do no more to our Justification then the works of the Law do I would many other Divines that go your way for it is common as to the dispatching of Justification by one Act would think of this foul absurdity You may add this also to what is said before against your opinion herein Where then is the Old Doctrine of the just living by faith as to Justification I may bear with these men or at least need not wonder for not admitting Obedience or other Graces to be conditions of Justification as continued when they will not admit faith it self Who speaks more against faith they or I When I admit as necessary that first act and maintain the necessity of repeated acts to our continued Justification and they exclude all save one Instantaneous act 2. And what reason can any man give why Repentance should be admitted as a condition of our first Justification and yet be no condition of the continuance of it or what proof is there from Scripture for this I shall prove that the continuance of our Justification hath more to its condition then the beginning though learned men I know gain-say it but surely less it cannot have 4. But why do you say only of Repentance that it is the condition of Remision and of forgiving others that it is the condition of entring into life Have you not Christs express words that forgiving others is a condition of our Remission if ye forgive men their trespasses your heavenly Father will forgive you but if you forgive not men c. Nay is not Reformation and Obedience ordinarily made a condition of forgiveness I refer you to the Texts cited in my Aphorisms Wash you make you clean put away the evil of your doings c. then if your sins be as crimson c. He that confesseth and forsaketh his sin shall have mercy And I would have it considered if Remission and Justification be either the same or so neer as all Divines make them whether it be possible that forgiving others and Reformat on or new Obedience should be a condition of the continuance or renewal of a pardoning Act and not of Justification Doubtless the general Justification must be continued as well as the general pardon and a particular Justification I think after particular sins is needfull as well as particular pardon or if the name should be thought improper the thing cannot be denyed Judicious Ball saith as much as I yet men were not so angry with him Treat of Covenant pag. 20.21 A disposition to good works is necessary to Justification being the qualification of an active lively faith Good works of all sorts are necessary to our continuance in the state of Justification and so to our final Absolution if God give opportunity but they are not the cause of but only a precedent qualification or condition to final forgiveness and Eternal bliss And pag. 21. This walking in the light as he is in the light is that qualification whereby we become immediatly capable of Christs Righteousness or actual participants of his propitiation which is the sole immediate cause of our Justification taken for Remission of sins or actual approbation with God And pag. 73. Works then or a purpose to walk with God justifie as the passive qualification of the subject capable of Justification or as the qualification of that faith which justifieth So he 5. How will you ever prove that our Entering into Life and our continued remission or Justification have not the same conditions that those Graces are excluded from one which belong to the other Indeed the men that are for Faiths Instrumentality say somewhat to it but what you can say I know not And for them if they could prove Faith Instrumental in justifying co nomine because it receives Christ by whom we are justified they would also prove it the Instrument of Glorifying because it Receives Christ by and for whom we are saved and Glorified And so if the Instrumentality of Faith must exclude obedience from justifying us it must also exclude it from Glorifying us And I marvel that they are so loose and easie in admitting obedience into the work of saving and yet not of continuing or consummating Justification when the Apostle saith By Grace ye are saved by Faith and so excludes obedience from Salvation in the general as much as he any where doth from Justification in particular 6. But lastly I take what you grant me in this Section and profess that I think in effect you grant me the main of the cause that I stand upon For as you grant 1. That faith is not the whole condition of the Covenant 2. That Repentance also is the condition of Remission which is near the same with Justification 3. That obedience is the condition of Glorification which hath the same conditions with final and continued Justification 4. So you seem to yield all this as to our full justification at Judgement For you purposely limit the conditionality of meer faith to our Justification in this Life But if you yield all that I desire as you do if I understand you as to the last justification at Judgement then we are not much differing in this business For I take as Mr. Burges doth Lect. of Justification 29 our compleatest and most perfect Justification to be that at Judgement Yea and that it is so eminent and considerable here that I think all other Justification is so called chiefly as referring to that And me thinks above all men you should say so too who make Justification to lie only in sententiâ— judicis and not in sententia Legis And so all that go your way as many that I meet with do If then we are justified at Gods great Tribunal at Judgement by obedience as the secondary part of the condition of the Covenant which you seem to yield 1. We are agreed in the main 2. I cannot yet believe that our Justification at that Bar hath one condition and our Justification in Law or in this Life as continued another He that dyeth justified was so justified in the hour of dying on the same conditions as he must be at Judgement For 1. There are no conditions to be performed after death 2. Sententia Legis sententia judicis do justifie on the same terms Add to all
come nearer our use of the word when they expound it by Moderatio Circumscriptio determinatio limitatio In Naturals the word Condition is oft used pro ratione formali per quam alicujus disciplina subjectum adaquatuÌ„ constitui solet As e. g. Physicus considerat corpus cum conditions mobilitatis Geometer considerat quantitatem cum conditions continuitatis Arithmaticus cum conditions disjunctionis Modicus considerat humanuÌ„ corpus cum conditions fâ—iâ— quatenus agretare sanari potest Sometimes also any quality or action which is sine qua non to an effect or event is in meer Naturals called a Condition as the dryness of the wood and the approximation of it to the fire c. are conditions of its burning the non-impedition of a more powerful Agent is a Condition of the efficacious action of every lower cause c. Many other acceptions of the word in Physicks by Zabarel Claudius Alberius and others you may see in Goclenii Lexic Philosoph in nom conditio But we are not in a Physical but a moral discourse and therfore must be understood according to the subject matter It is therfore a Civil or Legal Condition that we have to enquire after and must fetch our descriptions from Lawyers and not from Physicks and therefore it is but deceitful equivocation in some Opponents to fetch their opposition from Physical instances The Lawyers give us divers Definitions of Condition but for the most part they come all to one in sense Some say conditio est Lex adposita hominum actionibus eas suspendens Prat. Conditio say others est modus qui suspendit actum donec co existente confirmetur Vult in Instit de haere instit § 3. n. 6. Accursus faith Conditio est suspensio cujus de futuro effectus vel confirmatio pendet Bart. Conditio est futurus eventus in quem dispositio suspenditar Cuiacius Conditio est Lex addita negotio quae donec praestetur eventum suspendit These are of conditions de futuro But those that are de praesenti vel de praeterito suspend not the obligation unless as they are yet futurae quoad cognitionem though not quoad esse and so the knowledge of a Right may be suspended They are commonly divided into Casuaeles Potestativas mixtas The moral operation of Conditions as such is not in causing the effect when performed but in suspending the effect till performed The reason of the appointing of them for such suspensions is various sometime it s because the person Giving promising or otherwise constituting the condition is uncertain of the event of the performance and would not have the effect come to pass without it But that 's not alwaies sometime though he might be sure of the event of performance yet if he that is to perform the Condition be uncertain it may make way for this constitution It is therefore a vain Plea of them that say God appointeth no conditions of his Promises because the event is not to him uncertain Saith Mat. Martin in nom Cond Defimri solet Dispositionis suspensio ex eventu incerto futuro ei opposito Sic sane apud homines quo futura non norunt sed Deus jub certis conditionibus etiam nobiscum agit at omnium eventuum ipse gnaâ—us pro infinita sua sap entia qua praevidet quid occur urum nobis quid nos amplexuri vel declinaturâ— simâ—s Confer Deut. 28 29 30 31. 32. Capitobus Commonly the reason of appointing Conditions is the desireabâ—ness of the thing to be performed conjoyned with some backwardness or possibility of backwardness in the person that is to perform it and therefore he is drawn on by the promise of that which he is more willing to receive But many other reasons there may be The first cause of the Condition is the Requirer whether he be Testator Donor Stipulator Legislator c. And so the Condition of the Law or Covenant of Grace is first Gods condition as the Imposer Secondly And its the condition of each Subject as obliged to perform it Thirdly And the condition of each professing Christian as having Promised the performance Fourthly And the condition of true Christians only as actual Performers of it The condition of the Gospel hath several respects according to the various respects of the Law that doth impose it It s the Condition of a free Gift for the Gospel is a free Gift of Christ and Life It is the Condition of a Promise because much of the Gospel benefits are future It is the Condition of a Testament because Christ dying did leave this to the Church as his last Will and it was confirmed by the death of the Testator It is the Condition of a premiant Law and Act of Grace and oblivion because God made it as Legislator and Rector of the world in order to the conducting of his people to their happines It is the condition of a Minatory Law in that it is a duty commanded on pain of death and for the avoiding of that death Fourthly The preposition by in our present question may signifie either the use and Interest of any Medium in General or else of a true cause constitutive or efficient So much of the terms Proposition 1. Since Adams fall it is impossible for man to be justified by a perfect sinless Obedience of his own except Christ only and consequently impossible for him to be justified by the Law considered in that form and tenor as it was given to Adam for all men are sinners and that Law will ustifie no sinner Proposition 2. By the works of the Mosaical Law no man can be justified And therefore the Jews seek Righteousness where it is not to be found while they think that pardon of sin and acceptance with God are to be obtained by the bare works of that Law while they overlook or reject Christ who is the end of that Law for righteousness to every Believer Specially now that Law is Abrogated or ceased it were a double error to expect Justification by its works Proposition 3. Much less can they be justified by the foresaid Law who in stead of fulfilling it do but falsely imagine that they fulfill it Proposition 4. No man can be justified by works properly meritorious because no man hath any such at all nor may we once imagine that we have any such works as Paul speaks of and the Jews thought they had which make the reward to be not of Grace but of Debt Rom. 4.4 much less that we are justified by such even Gospel works and faith it self do not justifie on this account and a conceit that they are thus meritorious would but turn them into condemning sins Proposition 5. No act of mans no not faith it self can justifie as an act or work nor as This act in specie that is the nearest and formal reason of its justifying Interest must not be fetcht either from the General or special nature of the