if they are righteous and not sinners whom Christ helps What need have the Righteous of a Redeemer What need have the whole of a Physician Moreover how will that saying of Paul hold true whereby Christ being made Man is said to have come into the World not to save the Righteous but Sinners I beseech you now O ingenuous Man according to your Modesty that I may deal very modestly with you If any Man treat with you on this manner in disputing about the Doctrine of Iustification what would you answer him if he should ask these things of you If any such Man should come to you who being affrighted in his mind and astonished at the greatness of his sins and burdened with horrour of Conscience and almost dead with the fear of the Iudgment of God should ask the help of counsel and comfort from you of which sort there are found not a few Examples in the Folds of the Lord's Flock what Remedy would you reach forth unto him Perhaps you will send him to those Books of yours concerning Righteousness and what will he find there whereby his afflicted and cast down Mind may be refreshed and recover it self what will you send him to the Law but what will he draw from thence fit for healing his wounds especially seeing that Law of Righteousness can only bring us in guilty because we have not kept the Law and oblige us thereunto as by bond at least it cannot by any means restore Righteousness that was once lost or satisfie the Iudge It remains then that you should bring over the miserable Soul of a Sinner from the Law in which there appears no hope of defence unto Christ seeing it is He only by whose Wounds and Stripes we are healed and who hath taken upon himself all the Impieties of us all that he might communicate unto us his own Righteousness That is very true indeed and upon that account I think you and yours are to be commended who though you seem not to have a clear enough sight of the genuine Office of Christ and his Divine Greatness in procuring our Salvation yet ye refuse not to profess his Name and a certain external reverence of Faith But because at present you have to do with men that are troubled and to whom it is not sufficient to retain only the Name of a Saviour unless we have also a right understanding of the Efficacy of his Death which he suffered for us and of the Power that he hath to save and the great benefits he hath bestowed upon us and his exceeding great Love and Good-will towards us and the infinite Riches that are promised to us in him Therefore you must proceed further and help the afflicted Minds of the Godly as much as may be that they may know and believe not only that there is eternal and durable Life in Christ but also that they may be taught the way and means and manner how that Life comes to us and to whom it belongs and what we must observe in attaining unto it What the power and efficacy of Faith is whom it justifies and how IN which matter there is great variety of Sentiments and Opinions amongst Divines For whereas Paul proclaims with a very audible Voice That Man is justified by Faith without the Works of the Law Those Men by the additions of their Comments do not explain the most evident meaning of the Apostle but render it obscure they do not expound but cavil So that some take the word Faith not as Paul for that Faith only which is in Christ Iesus but which is formed by Charity and Works Others interpret that which Paul saith of Faith without Works to be understood concerning Ceremonial Works Some interpret it of the Works of the Law in this sense that those works are undertaken not by Faith but by the command of the Law without Grace Others expound it otherwise without antecedent works only Some think it should be understood of the first Iustification only which they attribute to Faith alone as in little Children that are Baptized but the second in men come to years they attribute to Faith indeed but not without Works The scope of all which dispute is that Faith being adorned with Works may do something and on the contrary that if Works are not joyned with it it may seem a kind of rude matter void of life and form not only unprofitable to purchase Righteousnes but a certain dead and destructive thing Which if it be true I would know this of them and chiefly I would ask of you Osorius in what Common-wealth in what Church in whose Kingdom do you coyn this new piece of Divinity If it is the Church of Christ that is not yours It is his Kingdom in which you are only a servant What Shall not Christ have a free power permitted to him of administring his own affairs as in his own lawful Common-wealth And whence is this your great boldness in anothers Dominion in a Church that ye never founded to alter and change as you list the appointments and institutions of your Prince contrary to Law and Right Or by what authority do you oppose your selves but that every man may act in his own possession according to his own right and freedom of command What if it seems good in the Eyes of Christ to communicate freely the glory of his Kingdom to whom he will Will ye forbid him What if the most Gracious Lord will pay a full reward to those that come to work at the last hour of the day and make all equal by making the like agreement with them all should your Eye therefore be evil because he is good But now the Lord himself the Prince and Author of the Church professes in very evident words that eternal life shall be given to them that believe in his name What can be said more evident in signification or more clear to be understood He that believeth in me saith he hath eternal life And again repeating the same in the same words He that believeth in the Son hath everlasting life And chap. 11. He that believeth in me though he were dead yet he shall live And lest he should seem to testifie this of himself without the consent of his Father he adds This is saith he the will of him that sent me that every one that seeth the Son and believeth in him should have life eternal Who doth no less most evidently confirm these things by performances which he expresses in word adding also miracles thereunto For how great a multitude do ye meet with every where through all the Evangelists whom you see saved and healed by no other thing but faith only which relied on Christ. How often do we hear from the mouth of the Lord in the Gospel thy Faith hath made thee whole without hearing any mention of works And what Christ performed to faith will Osorius attribute that to Works
also a faith that is often taken for hope and so defined As in the Epistle to the Hebrews Where Faith is called the substance of things not seen but hoped for and the evidence of things not appearing but future Moreover there are those that divide the use of this Word into many forms Andreas Vega reckons in the general Nine Significations of the word of Faith Put because in these which I have hitherto reckoned there is no mention made of that person from whom all the Vertue of Iustifying proceeds therefore I see not how it can be that Iustification should rightly agree to the same VVherefore this seems less strange to me in Osorius Hosius and others of that School if their Opinion is not so right about the Iustification of Faith for they seem not to have clearly enough discerned or at least not to have fitly defined that Faith which the Evangelical VVritings propose unto us But if this Faith that we profess contained no other thing in it but that which they pretend to in their Books I would be of the same Opinion which they Preach To wit That it avails little to the procuring of Righteousness That this may be the more evident I would have Pious Readers listen to what those Men teach concerning Faith and how they define it And so they define it that either through blindness they know not or by dissimulation they make as if they knew not what is the true Faith proposed to us in the Gospel for Righteousness And that we may begin first at the Tridentines they so define it That it is a firm assent unto those things that are revealed and made manifest by God And Osorius following these Men Collects the Universal Nature of Faith after a manner not much differing from them That it is a firm and constant assent of the mind stirred up by the Authority of the Speaker But what this Faith is which Osorius describes after this manner let him look to that Verily any Man may think it is not this Faith which Paul speaks of in disputing of Righteousness or to which we from the Authority of Paul affirm that Righteousness should be attributed properly Though in the mean while we deny not that this Faith is true which is asserted by Osorius and others whereby for the Authority of the Church teaching we believe whatsoever things belong to Religion which though they are not seen as Lombard says yet they are believed whether they are past or expected to come As he that gives credit to the things contained in the Articles of the Creed and that are expresly mentioned in the Scriptures He that believes and professes that the World was made by the Word of God and that God is and that he Created all things of no thing Moreover that he believes and professeth that he is powerful and very good That I may proceed in the very words of Osorius endued with boundless and infinite virtue and bounty watching over all parts of the World and passing through them beholding and taking notice of all things and looking well to every thingaccording as the dignity and condition of each thing requires and whatsoever else belonging to the profession of Faith is taught in the Writings of the Prophets Verily that Man is not at all mistaken in believing For the things that are seen by an Internal light of Faith are very true though they are very remote from the Senses But yet this is not the Faith though it be true that justifies us who are miserably defiled and wretched Sinners before God For what Circumcised Iew or hateful Turk is there but believes all these things which Osorius with a long multiplication of words Preaches of God and his Power and Iustice and Immensity For they together with us confess one God and rely on his promises with great hope call upon his Name observe his commands as well as we and also flatter themselves with the Title of the true Church Yea also they are not Ignorant that the Dead shall be restored to Life and promise Eternal Life to themselves Moreover many things which they see not with their Eyes they retain by Faith and pursue by hope Briefly they do no less believe God themselves and confess God But if the Christian Faith according to the Magisterial position of Lombard should be placed in nothing else but a solid apprehension of things to be hoped for and a sure expectation of those things which do not appear what hinders but that both Iews and Saracens may be reckoned faithful upon this account What then you will say Doth not Paul writing to the Hebrews expresly comprehend Faith in that same definition To wit That it is the substance of things hoped for c. Verily I neither reject Paul the Author of this Epistle nor disapprove the definition neither do I examin that nor do so much as enquire for it which is enquired for in Lombard Whether this description be more agreeable to Faith than Hope But this I answer That we may confess this Faith to be true which is here defin'd But surely that is not the Faith which properly justifies the wicked in the sight of the Lord. Why so Because there is wanting to the definition the Genus Property and difference which distinguishes Faith from Hope Also there is wanting the true and proper object of Faith which should by no means have been omitted To wit The person of him in whom only all the promises of God and the whole cause of our Iustification is contained Who unless he comes in in vain other things are either believed or hoped for by us neither will all that substance of things hoped for avail us any whit unto Salvation What then you will say Hath not the most gracious Father promised us his mercy Hath he not engaged himself by an inviolable Covenant that he would pardon our Sins Must we not give credit to those things which are promised by God He hath promised indeed I confess but how Only in Christ his Son To whom Only to them that believe in the Son I know and acknowledge that the promises of God are most sure in which he promises as Osorius rehearses Infinite Riches excellent Pleasure an immortal Kingdom great Dignity everlasting Glory But yet these good things are neither so promised or given by God that in the mean while he exacts nothing of us for the obtaining of these good things which he promises Therefore this is not the state of the question whether we should believe God promising which is common to us with the Iews themselves and Turks Neither do I ask that what the Lord hath promised For Salvation is promised Pardon of Sins is promised But this is it which properly comes in question here Upon what account and for what cause this Salvation and Pardon of Sins is promised whether there is no condition interposed Or whether there is
be necessarily joyned with the Promise Now that we may set the thing more evidently before your eyes God promises Salvation to his own and that freely and for Christ's sake That indeed is most certain and beyond all controversie Go on And you put trust in the Promise of God You do very well in doing so and I commend the constancy of your confidence When Salvation is promised freely for Christ's sake shall therefore an absolute Promise save all men promiscuously for Christ's sake without any restriction of condition I suppose God will not save all promiscuously Now then this Promise belonging not to all but some certain persons only upon some certain condition I would know who those are to whom this Promise properly belongs You say Believers and in that you say well but how or believing in whom Are they not those that believe in Christ himself Is it not he only for whose sake only Salvation is promised to Believers Doth not this Faith only in the Person of the Son of God make us partakers of the promise Doth not this Faith only justifie before God Moreover is not this the only condition which every where the voice of Christ and the Apostles in the Gospel and the voice of the Prophets inculcate which the appointment of the Father especially requires that we should hear his beloved Son that we should receive Christ that we should believe in his Name that we should flie to him by Faith and betake our selves wholly to him that we should believe in him whom he hath sent whom the Father hath sealed that we should digest him inwardly in our minds that we should be ingrafted into him and should grow in him that we should know Iesus and him crucified only that we should behold him only as the Israelites of old beheld the Serpent in the Wilderness that we should put on Christ. Hence come these so frequently repeated Sermons in the Gospel concerning the Person of Christ He that believeth in me hath Life Eternal As many as received him They that believe in his Name He that believes in the Son of God That every one that seeth the Son and believes in him He that believeth in me shall never Die Do ye believe in God Believe also in in me We believe and know that thou art Christ the Son of the living God He that believes in him who justifies the Ungodly Iustifying him that is of the faith of Iesus Christ. If thou confess with thy Mouth the Lord Iesus c. That we may believe that 〈◊〉 is the Son of God and believing may have Eternal Life If thou believe with all thy Heart c. Believe in the Lord Iesus and thou shalt be saved and thy House The Righteousness which is of the Faith of Christ. We have access through the faith of him The promise of the faith of Iesus Christ. By faith which is in me By his Name all that believe in him If ye do not believe that I am he Except ye eat my flesh Except ye abide in me If ye abide in me Ibid. Ye are all the Sons of God by Faith in Iesus Christ. What is the True and Genuine Definition of Faith BY Which so many and so evident places of Scriptute there is no Man that cannot be most sure what is properly the Object of that Faith which justifies us To wit no other thing but the person of the Son of God As again the object of Confidence is the promise of God Which things being so it will not be difficult to gather from these Notions of Scripture what is the true and genuine definition of justifying Faith concerning which we are making enquiry which seems that it ought to be defined according to the right rule of the Gospel after this manner To wit That it is a right knowledge of the Son of God planted in our minds whereby we acknowledge a promised Christ and receive him being held forth and with our Mouth profess him to have dyed for us and rose again Worship him in Spirit and embrace him with all our mind together with all his benefits And this Faith as it is a singular gift of God so of all the gifts of God we believe this faith is that only which justifies believers in the sight of God To which though assurance and confidence of the grace of God is most nearly joyned which is it self also sometimes called by the name of Faith yet this confidence doth not properly infer the cause of Iustification but receives it being brought neither doth it cause Iustification but is rather caused by it and renders those assured who are justified by the Faith of Christ but doth not it self justifie For God doth not therefore forgive thee and receive thee for a Son because thou embracest the Mercy of God with a Holy confidence but because thou embracest his Christ with a right Faith and confessest and lovest him he loveth thee neither do we therefore believe in Christ because we are assured of Salvation and trust the promises but because we believe in Christ therefore we attain unto a certain hope of those things that are promised in Christ for Eternal Life is promised to him that believes in the Son And from hence arises that clear Distinction between Faith and Assurance for they differ in Subjects and Objects The Faith of Christ which brings forth Righteousness takes its place in the higher part of the Soul wherein the understanding is Assurance hath relation to those powers of the Soul in which hope and the like affections are placed As touching the Objects Assurance hath respect to the Mercy or the promise in Christ faith is directed to Christ himself because he obtains Mercy for Believers But perhaps too much hath been said of those things which being clear enough of themselves would not at this time need any Explication unless I were forced thereunto by the Calumnies of Hosius Osorius and such Others whose Opinion seems to me to be faulty upon a Twofold account First in that they think this Doctrine of Christian Assurance which we Establish in Christ should by no means be endured in the Church and which they call Confidence and Presumption than which they affirm that nothing is more hurtful and pernicious to the Salvation of the Godly Hosius adds his own Iudgment that to him no Abomination as he expresses himself seems greater in the sight of God than this so great presumption of the Hereticks Neither wants he here his Authorities wrested from the Scriptures What saith he doth not the command of the Gospel teach us to confess our selves to be unprofitable Servants in all respects yea when we have performed all that God commanded us From whence Hosius presently gathers that he who assures himself that he is in a State of Grace he doth as much as if contrary to the command of the Lord he called himself a profitable Servant O Wise Headpiece
the cause of blessedness this manner of arguing will appear to be more forcible by an evident Testimony of Scripture Argument Ma. That which is the cause of blessedness the same is the cause of Iustification Mi. Remission of Sins is the cause of blessedness and Salvation Con. Theresore Remission of Sins is the cause of Iustification But you may say What must then be answered to the Words of Christ who seems to promise the blessedness of the Kingdom as a reward of Works You may find an answer to this objection in the Book of Iacobus Cartusiensis who hath written on this manner Men do accept and love the persons of others for their Works that are acceptable and profitable to them but God accepts the Works for the sake of the person c. Therefore here there is need of a distinction between the Work and the person of the Worker But you may say Are not Works that are performed in Charity for the relief of the Poor pleasing and acceptable to God We deny not that our selves But we enquire into the cause wherefore they become acceptable Which that it may appear the more evidently let us examine these words of Scripture I was an hungred said Christ and ye gave me Meat I was thristy and ye gave me Drink c. I ask in the first place who is it here that was an hungred You will say Christ either himself in his own Body or in a Member of his Body Did you then feed Christ when he was an hungred That was Piously done indeed Therefore I see and commend what you have done But I ask what was it that stirred you up to do it Whether was it Charity setting Faith a work or was it not rather Faith setting Charity a work But what if some other that was no Member of Christ whether Heathen or Turk had need of your Meat Would you in your Charity have fed him I doubt of that But suppose you your self had not believed in Christ but had been an Enemy to him if you had seen one that belonged to Christ almost ready to perish for hunger would you have relieved him I do not believe so Why Because it is only believers that feed Christ but Infidels persecute him The Lord was thirsty on the Cross and he had Vinegar given him for drink which was a Hellish wickedness But why did they give him Vinegar Was it want of Love or was it not rather want of Faith in those unbelieving Pharisees Who if they had not wanted Faith they would not have wanted Charity to administer help and Charity would not have been unrewarded But let us proceed Suppose one that is not a believers whether Turk or Heathen should refresh a hungry Christian by giving him of his Meat as old Simon the Pharisee entertained Christ with a Dinner And many of the Heathens have been Eminent in offices of kindness and Love Can the giving of Meat and Drink by any such without Faith merit Eternal Life Surely not But if a believer gives his Christian Brother so much as a Cup of cold Water in his necessity shall he lack his Reward Christ himself says he shall not Hereby you may see whence it is that our Vertues and good deeds are acceptable to God and dignified with Rewards not for themselves but for the Faith of him that works them which first justifies the person before all works And after the person is justified his performances are accepted and though they are of small value in themselves yet they are looked upon as great and rewarded plentifully Wherefore we deny not that sometimes in the Scriptures the name of Reward is joyned with Eternal Life and that the works of Brotherly Charity may in some sense be called meritorious if so be these works are performed by persons who are already justified and received into favour by remission of sins and have obtained a right unto the promise of Eternal Life Not that their works are of such value that they should make satisfaction to the Law of God or merit any thing with God ex congruo or condigne as they phrase it either by congruity or worthiness But they are imputed as Merit by Grace Not that Eternal Life is due to the works themselves but because there are consolations laid up in Heaven for Saints and persons in a justified state to support them in their afflictions Eternal Life not being due to them for their works but by right of the promise just as a Son and Heir to whom his Father's Inheritance is due doth not merit the right of Sonship by any duties that he performs but he being born a Son his duties upon that account are meritorious so that he wants not a due reward and recompence Therefore in this Popish Argument there is a fallacy Another Argument taken from the words of Christ Matth. 25. Da. HE that doth the will of the Father shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven Ti. It is the will of the Father that we should do good works that are commanded in his Law Si. Therefore an entrance into Heaven is obtained by the works of the Law Answer Suppose we grant all contained in this Argument what will these Roman Iusticiaries infer from thence Therefore as Vega speaks Faith is not sufficient to Salvation without the keeping of the Commandments It is easie to answer him in a word Let him keep the Commandments according to the exact Rule of the Divine Will and he shall be saved But neither he nor any other man can perfectly keep the Commands of God in this Life From whence we infer this by necessary consequence That either there is no hope of obtaining the Kingdom or else that it lies not in the works of the Law Now if it be so what remains but that finding this is not the way to Heaven we should seek for another way and because there is no door of Salvation opened to sinners in the Law of Commandments therefore we must flie to another Refuge But what that Refuge is appearing to us from Heaven it self the Divine Will declares unto us which is not set forth in the Old Law but in the New Testament of the Gospel And this is his Will that every one who believeth in the Son should not perish but have Eternal Life For whereas the Law was weak because of the flesh God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin condemned sin in the flesh that the Righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us that walk not after the flesh but after the spirit Objection But here some may object Will the Faith of Christ justifie us in such a manner that there may be a Legality and Impunity for us to disobey the Will of his Father God forbid The Liberty of the Gospel allows not that for it openly affirms That they who are justified by the Faith of Christ walk not after the flesh but
them that are justified but these things have no union with Faith in the concernment of Iustification And first as touching Repentance abundance hath been said before for seeing Repentance is nothing but a mourning for sins committed it may indeed of it self afflict the guilty person and fit him for receiving of Grace but it cannot obtain a pardon for the sins committed before a Secular Iudge and much less before the Iudgment Seat of God For that is the Office of Faith which as it only obtains a pardon so it obtains it for none but them that are afflicted and repent and believe in Christ. For for their sakes chiefly Christ was sent by his Father into this World that he may help all them that being in distress flie to him by Faith In which three things are to be considered and placed each of them in their own bounds and territories First that we may see what the Mediatour does what Faith performs what sorrow for sin produces All our Salvation flows from the Mediatour as from a Spring and Fountain But if you ask how or for what cause he saves I answer by Faith And if you ask whom he saves I answer those that repent of their wickedness or whom he draws unto himself by an inward Call Doth the Lord then save those for their Repentance No verily Suppose a man is greatly grieved at the remembrance of his by-past life but yet comes not to Christ will grief for his sins save him No surely Yea who can come to Christ unless he first hear and understand who he is from whom Salvation must be sought Now it is Faith and not Repentance that does this For it is not the grief and sorrow of a broken hearted sinner but Faith that discovers a Saviour to us and guides us to him and obtains Salvation from him Yea which is Salvation to them that are in distress for thus it is written This is the will of God That every one that seeth and believeth in him should have Eternal Life By which it is evident enough what should be attributed unto Repentance and what to Faith in the case of Iustification for sin is not therefore pardoned because he that sinned hath repented but because he that sinned not at all hath died for sin therefore the sinner is forgiven not for his Repentance but for Faith whereby he believes in him that died for our sins rose again for our Iustification Where Faith is joyned with Works and where it is not joyned AND hitherto we have been speaking of Repentance But as touching the Reformation of the Life in other respects though I know that nothing is more convenient than that Faith which is rightly instructed in Christ should have Charity and other Offices of Piety suitable to the Christian Profession joyned with it Yet it must be considered what manner of Union this is and of how large an extent for Faith and Charity have that wherein they are of necessity united And they have that also wherein they must of necessity be separated Where we deal with God about Salvation Iustification and the Expiation of sins here Faith only without Works is powerful and overcomes But in dealings with men in the Lives of the Iustified in popular duties in the exercise of Vertue there is a very near Union between Faith and Vertue of which the one cannot consist without the other Therefore these things should be measured by their own bounds that we may attribute unto Faith its due and to Works their due and unto both that which is meet For as that poisonous Errour of Eunomius should be abhorred who is reported to have been so great an Enemy to godly works that he thought it was not a matter of any concernment how any man led his life So also great care should be taken lest in shunning the Soylla of Eunomius we fall upon the other Carybdis of the Papists which is no less pernicious being mis-led by the Popish Doctors who make such a confused Union between Faith and Works that neither Faith without Works nor Works without Faith procure Iustification But this Union is easily confuted by the Authority of Scripture For if Faith only doth not bring Believers into a state of Salvation unless it be joyned with great Holiness of life why did not Christ joyn these together when he said simply He that believeth in me hath Eternal Life Why did not Peter joyn them together when according to the Testimonies of the Prophets he proclaimed remission of sins to all that believed in his Name Why did not Paul joyn them together when instructing the Iaylor in the Faith he said unto him Believe in the Lord Iesus and thou shalt be saved and thy house Many other such like things may be mentioned The History of the Galatians is well known who being led aside by the false Apostles did not wholly cast off Christ nor excluded Faith in Christ but they would have had the good Works of Believers joyned with Faith in the Article of Iustification before God unto Eternal Life for which cause how angry the Apostle was at them his Epistle bears witness But here again a place of St. Paul out of the same Epistle is objected where writing to the Galatians he speaks of Faith that works by Charity From hence the Tridentine Divines infer a necessary connexion between Faith and Charity so that Faith without Charity like matter without form avails nothing to the perfection of Righteousness And they say of Charity which they call Righteousness inherent in us That it is so impossible that it should be separated from Faith in the concernment of Iustification that they assert it only to be the formal cause of our Iustification But it is not difficult to answer to this place of Paul For in that Epistle the Apostle endeavours with great diligence to call back his Galatians to the Righteousness of Faith from which they had swerved In the mean while lest they should be seduced by a counterfeit Faith by these words he intimates what Faith it is that he speaks of Not such a Faith as is idle and dead without Works but which worketh by Love And in this sense we deny not that Faith is not alone But what consequence is that Lively Faith is not alone without Charity It is a lively Faith that justifies Therefore in Iustifying Faith is not alone without Charity This Argument is disproved in the Schools of Logicians for it is a Sophism a non causa ut causa Therefore I answer to the Major The Faith that is lively is not alone without Charity That is true in working but not in justifying Therefore as touching the Cause and Office of Iustifying this is not the consequence thereof Therefore in Iustifying Faith is not alone without Charity But as for the the Minor though Faith that justifies is called lively in respect of good Works yet it doth not justifie in respect
righteousness can Christ deliver the unrighteous What way and in what manner the benefits of Christ are derived to us A threefold question 1 Tim. 1. 1. In a desperate condition Christ only can help It is not sufficient to retain the 〈◊〉 of Christ only unless also we learn the Greatness of his office and his Power to save Rom. 3. The various Interpretation of the Papists concerning Iustifying Faith Roffen contra lut Articul 31. Ioh. 6. Ioh. 3. Ioh. 11. Only Faith in Christ is proved to jastisie by example Mat. 11. Isa. 55. Proof by examples Mat. 15. Mat. 9. How Prayers are heard * From whence is liberty salvation and righteousness to be sought Ioh. 1. Wherein consists the use and scope of the Law Charity is justified by Faith not Faith by Charity For what cause the power of Iustifying is attributed unto Faith An unjust complaint against Luther Osor. de justit lib. 2. p. 29. Osorius against Luther An Answer for Luther against Osorius The unjust slander of Osorius and Andradius against Luther A defence of Luther A twofold manner of Righteousness mention'd by Paul the one received the other rejected Philip. 3. Righteousness of the Law Righteousness of Faith in Faith of God The Argument of Osorius drawn from dictum secundum quid to dictum simpliciter Making that to be true in the general which is only so in particular Osor. lib. 2. p. 28. The Reproaches of Osorius cast upon Luther The deceitful connexion of Osorius Exod. 23. Luther separates charity from faith and the Law from the Gospel not simply but in such a manner as things should be distinguished each by their own bounds Where and how Faith works by love What is the union of Faith with Charity and again what is the difference of both Trust in works is excluded There is nothing can be opposed to the judgement of God but Christ only What doth faith without works perform and from whence doth it receive its efficacy in acting The form of faith is not charity but rather the form of charity is faith Objection Answer Confirmation by Examples One condition of Sons another of Servants A comparison of Sons and Servants Rom. 4. Christ a Son by Nature we by Christ. Christ is born a Son by nature we by faith are born again Sons not by works in the Son The cause why God adopts us for Sons Gal. 4. Gal. 3. 1 Ioh. 3. Osorius The servile and mercenaly doctrine of the Papists The Kingdom of God is an Inheritance therefore not a reward it belongs to Sons therefore not to Servants August lib. de haeres The cause which makes us the Sons of God the same also makes us Iust but faith only makes us Sons therefore the same also makes us Iust. The cause which justifies on God's part is his Predestination Ephes. 1. Rom. 8. Vocation the Donation of Christ his Obedience Death and Merits What the cause of justification is on Man's part Lib. 2. de just Osorius Faith Hope and Charity in what 〈◊〉 they are joyned together Rom. 4. Gal. 2. Arg. If righteousness comes by the Law Christ dyed in vain Gal. 2. Christ dyed 〈◊〉 in vain therefore righteousness is not by the Law The 〈◊〉 between Paul and Osorius Roman 4. Galat. 2. Lib. 2. pag. 46. Osor. lib. 2. p. 39. Answer Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven c. Psal. 1 Cor. 5. Rom. 8. Whence this righteousness of Osorius shall be found Who are called righteous in a Gospel sense Osor. de just lib. pag. 39 40. Of what sort is the Osorian righteousness A false and lying accusation of Osorius Dejust lib. 2. Repentance Repentance proves a man to be a sinner but takes not away sin it causeth not remission nor satisfies justice The violation of Infinite majesty cannot be expiaced but by an infinite price The death of Christ 〈◊〉 none but believers and hence arises the diguity of Faith The benefit and necessity of Repentance The lying calumny of Andradius against Chemaitius What Repentance doth by it self what together with Faith Repentance consistsof two parts How far the fruit of Repentance 〈◊〉 Faith in Christ justifies Charity but Charity doth not justifie Faith Augustin in quinquage Prolo Psal. 31. Ezek. 18. Ionah 3. 2 Sam. 12. 2 Kings 21. Osor. lib. de just p. 42. An 〈◊〉 of Osorius An Answer Ier. 11. Ezek. 33. Ezek. 18. Legal Promises Blessings proposed in the Law The Preaching of repentance belongs to the Gospel Moses was a certain earthly Christ Christ is a certain heavenly Moses The object of Faith We are justified in the New Testament after the same manner that the Hebrews were healed when they were stung by the Serpents Ioh. 3. That every one that sees the Son and Believeth in him may have eternal life Ioh. 8. Unless ye believe that I am he ye shall dye in your sins The Papists deny not Christ to be a Saviour but they do not well agree in the manner how he Saves The Council of Trent Hosius Andradius Canisius A typical similitude between Christ and the Serpent healing wounds Ioh. 3. Isa. 53. Isa. 53. An objection of the Adversaries Inherent righteousness Argument Answer The Material of Sin The Formal of Sin How sin in this Life is abolished and how it remains The guilt of sin The frailty of sinning Hugo A similitude Argument Christ by dying upon the Cross did bear only the punishment of Sin but not our Sins and afterwards by raising us up again he will destroy both the punishment and the whole matter of Sin in due time Works tho' they do not justifie yet are not denied to be necessary The calumnies of the Adversaries against Pious Doctors Luther is unjustly reviled as a despiser of Good Works It is fatal to the Gospel to suffer violence and undergo calumnies Mat. 2. Mat. 26 27. Act. 8. Eusebius See the History of Huss The shameless reproaches of Osorius cast upon Luther Osor. lib. 2. de justit Pag. 30. Pag. 43. A defence of Luther The Confessions of the Saxon Churches presented at Augusta Ann. 1530. offered afterwards Trid. Coun. 1551. Osor. lib. 3. de just num 70. Why works are said to be not of the Law but of Faith A description of the Osorian Righteousness Osor. l. 2. p. 31. Lib. 2. p. 34. Pag. 39. b. Andrad lib. 6 de just p. 459 Andrad ibid. page 461. Tapper Artic. 8. de justit pag. 18. An Answer whereby the definition of Osorius is confuted A two-fold sort of righteousness Aug. de tempore Serm. 49. Osor. lib. 5. pag. 114. a. b. Aug. de tempore Serm. 49. Isaiaeb 1. 64. Isa. 64. Phil. 3. Luke 17. Psel 115. Romans 3. Iohn 1. Iames 3. Aug. de perfect justitiae Luke 18. Tertul. lib. de paenitentia Apoc. 3. August in Iohn Hom. 48 Romans 3. Rom. 3. Psalm 51. Rom. 3. God is justified one way and men are justified before God another way Nothing hinders us to be both Righteous
we must see how they are done away He does them away in this Life he will also do them 〈◊〉 in the Life to come but not after one and the same manner For Iniquity is taken away and Sin receives an end as is evident by the Prophecy of Daniel But if you ask how in this Flesh Augustin will answer you None saith he takes away Sin but Christ who is the Lamb of God that takes away the Sins of the World And he takes them away both by removing the Sins that were done and by helping that they may not be done and by bringing to the Future Life where they cannot be done at all Therefore in this Life there is only a race to Righteousness and in the other Life will be the prize This then is our Righteousness now whereby we run Hungering and Thirsting to the perfection and fulness of that Righteousness wherewith we shall afterward be satisfied in the other Life Hence the Apostle saith Not that I have already attained or am already perfect Brethren I do not think that I have apprehended but one thing I do forgetting the things that are behind and being stretched forth to those things that are before I press forward to the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Iesus c. Therefore according to Augustin here is the Race here is the Progress there will be the Perfection Here as running in a Race we proceed from Vertue to Vertue There we are perfected Now we have only the Seeds of Vertues begun then in that fulness of Charity when that shall be perfected in us which now is imperfect that precept shall be fulfilled Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy Heart and with all thy Soul For whilest there is yet any Carnal concupiscence which may be restrained by continency God is not in all respects loved with all the Soul for the Flesh doth not Lust without the Soul though the Flesh is said to Lust because the Soul Lusteth Carnally c. Therefore as long as the Saints are burthened with this Flesh which they cannot shake off verily Sin dwelling in the Flesh cannot be absent Objection But how say you is Sin taken out of the World If the Corruption of Sin yet does reign in the Saints Answer I will tell you briefly to wit after the very same manner that the death of Christ hath driven 〈◊〉 from our necks and yet we dye The same comes to pass in the destroying of sin that being freed from Sin by Christ yet we are not without sin for these two things come always together being tied to one another by a very near connexion That where sin is there by necessary consequence death follows wherefore if the flesh is yet held in bonds by the cruelty of death by the same reason it is proved that the relicks of sin remain also in the flesh But now where is then that righteousness which Christ hath purchased for us Would you know O Osorius where our life is there is also our righteousness Not in this flesh which we put off but in that body which we shall in due time put on uncorrupted For such are all the benefits of Christ purchased for us that the promise of them being shewed afar off as of old the Holy Land to the Hebrews it is apprehended by Faith and the Spirit in this life but the full possession belongs only peculiarly and in the whole to the other life Christ begins his Benefits in this Life and perfects them in the Life to come Now these great Benefits of the Son of God consist chiefly in this that sin being totally abolished death being destroyed he restores us being plucked out of the Kingdom of the Devil unto the possession of eternal Life in which God communicates himself wholly to us and is wholly all in all And this most glorious work of his most full of the highest dignity he begins in this miserable life and will compleat it in the other life when that shall come to pass which is written Death is swallowed up in Victory O Death where is thy Victory O Death where is thy Sting Howbeit these things are not said upon this account as if there were nothing in the interim or but little in this life which the help of the grace of Christ does for us As of old the help of the Eternal God was never wanting to the Israelites in the waste Widerness whom he was to bring into the habitations of promise so verily neither are Christs benefits towards us little and the riches of his bounty are not small which the present Grace of Christ pours daily upon us with a full hand when in this sinful Nature he often helps our infirmities forgives our sins instructs us with his word refreshes us with hope supports us by Faith feeds and strengthens us by the Sacraments and refreshes us by his own Spirit adorns us with his gifts renews our hearts and stirs them up to spiritual motions of better life and obedience restrains vitious affections by whose guidance there increase in us the beginnings of eternal life the knowledge of God invocation fear faith true repentance a new law and the image of him who Created us c. And seeing Christ works these things in us with continual care daily more and more promoting and bringing unto maturity that which he hath begun in us there is therefore no cause why the Graces of Christ here should seem needless to any Man But these beginnings of Divine Grace must be distinguished from that perfect and compleat renovation of Nature which shall be seen in the glorified after this life For though it should not be doubted but great advantages are communicated to Believers by the Divine help of the Holy Spirit both to shun those things that are grievously offensive and also to exercise the Offices of Piety of which Paul Rom. 8. They who are led saith he by the Spirit of God are the Sons of God Yet there is not given to the regenerate in this life a compleat conformity to the Law of God but it is reserved for the other life for the life of the Saints in this World should not be called a life of the flesh but of Faith rather not a life of perfect but of begun love and mortification as being not so much discerned in justice as in justification not in perfect holiness but in sanctification not in perfect purity but in purification not in perfection but in going forward But this good Friend ours thinks this should by no means be suffered Who so fights against us as if all the Nature of Salvation consisted not in Iustification the name whereof he doth not account worthy of any mention but in Iustice it self not in the growth but in the perfection of Vertues And as if it were not allowable otherways to aspire to those just rewards of Felicity but
vain They according to their subtilty divide the manifold efficacy of grace most of them into two parts and some of them into three or more To wit into grace freely given and that which makes acceptable And again they subdivide this latter as it were by an Anatomical Dissection into more Veins into Operative grace which again they divide into three Rivulets Preventing Beginning delivering and afterwards into cooperating which likewise is threefold Following promoting assisting O holy Christ with what study with what labour what Cobwebs do these Praters here weave that they may darken the wholesome Doctrine of Grace with Smoke and Soot of their idle Talk for if we speak of that Grace unto which our whole Salvation is referred who is there but understands by the Writings of the Evangelists and Apostles that it is thus described to wit that it is the only thing which being placed in the free Indulgence of God towards miserable sinners doth with dear Love in Christ the Son of God embrace all that believe in him and forgive their sins and for the sake of his own Son bestows his Spirit and Eternal Life and Felicity upon them tho' otherways they are unworthy And tho' the Operation of this Grace is not one and the Effects are divers and the Gifts various according to the diversity of donations yet the Divine Grace it self is only one which is both freely given to us for Salvation and makes those acceptable to God whom it saves and is one and the same Cause both of Salvation and Renovation Wherefore their distinction is justly found fault with who by grace making men grateful or acceptable understand habits and gifts communicated by God and they do most frivolously conclude that men are made acceptable to God by these whereas it is only Mercy in Christ the Mediatour which doth not only account us dear to it self but also chose us before we were adorned with any Ornaments of gifts Moreover if the matter be so as those men define that not only Faith in Christ but gifts and habits of vertues infused by God make us acceptable to God What then shall be said of those who also out of Christ have possessed many such excellent gifts as well as we in which many of them are not only equal to us but some of them also excel us such as are variety of Tongues gifts of Healing Prophecy excellent Powers sharpness of Wit strength of Body Ornaments of Mind The Iews have a strong hope in God The Turks maintain Love towards one another But what shall we affirm that those men also are by these things made acceptable to God which is absurd and unreasonable Therefore that we may conclude we confess that such gifts are things which adorn this Life beautifie Nature and declare the liberal Bounty of God but which nevertheless neither regenerate nor justifie us in the sight of God For that is due to Christ only by Faith neither is it convenient to attribute it to any other Creatures whatsoever According to that of St. Paul Being justified therefore by Faith we have peace with God through our Lord Iesus Christ. Though in the mean while I am not ignorant what they answer here that they treat not of those Works which the Heathen perform by the strength of Nature nor those Works which are done by the Iews without Faith by the guidance of the Law only but those Works which are of the Faith of Christ. What then say they are not such excellent performances of Works pleasing to God Is not that very pleasing and acceptable to God whatsoever is right whatsoever is joyned with vertue and honesty whatsoever being undertaken with Faith is rightly performed according to Duty and Piety That I may answer this three things by the by must be observed First What manner of Works these are which are discoursed of whether perfect or not And then how they please of themselves or upon the account of Faith Thirdly How much they please whether so much as to deserve Eternal Life and obtain the pardon of violated Righteousness and being set against the wrath of God to turn away all vengeance and be effectual to satisfie Iustice without any remission of sins For all these must be regarded with necessary attention First Because God the great Creatour of the World is perfectly holy in his own Nature and the Perfection of all Goodness it is evident that nothing is of it self acceptable to him and well-pleasing which being defiled with any spot of imperfection doth not agree in all respects to the most exact Purity But now seeing it is most true which neither Osorius himself denies That there is no man hath led his life so exactly that in the whole course of his life he hath not been guilty of any gross offence And that there is not any state of Mind so framed by Divine Grace although it abounds with Divine Benefits in which nothing was ever violated by perfidiousness or offensive through errour of mind or omitted through negligence or which doth not more consist of the remission of sins than the perfection of vertues What remains then but that it should either be false which this Osorius of ours cracks of an humane perfection or at least it behoveth that something should be searched for besides the vertues themselves which may commend these first beginnings of our imperfections to the Divine Perfection and reconcile them to his favour And now then this remains to be searched into What it is that reconciles sinners to God and restores them to his favour and because this Reconciliation cannot be perfected by the Righteousness of our vertues therefore we must confess that all the Office of reconciling consists in the Grace of God only which the Papists themselves will not deny unto us who agree with our Party in this That Man is justified by Grace for so we hear it testified expresly by Osorius himself in these words Therefore saith he They that give Heaven to the Merits of holy men do not weaken the Grace of God as some ignorant men say but they celebrate the wonderful effect of his Grace with due praises for we are such as judge all the Morits of the Saints should be referred to the Bounty and Grace of God so that it should always be said Not unto us Lord not unto us but unto thy Name give glory c. I hear indeed very good words if you had not already imposed upon us sufficiently with words O Osorius But he that will with judicious attention consider the matters themselves and the Arguments and the whole tenour of your discourse will find it to be far otherways that you do not at all intend what your words pretend and that you drive at nothing more in all your endeavours than to hide under the plausible title of grace so hidden an adversary of grace that I may speak with Augustin together with the other
some condition But I think there is none can say there is no condition Therefore it remains that we confess there is necessarily some condition Which of what manner it is let us examin by the Scriptures But in the mean while perhaps some Man will object If the promise of God be confined to certain conditions how then shall we with Paul make the mercy of God free whereby he freely justifies the Wicked Yea verily I both judge and hold that the Mercy of God is most free Free I say in Christ. Otherways without Christ there can be no hope of Mercy nor promise of Salvation nor remission of Sins And the Sons of the Papacy will not deny this that all the riches of the Divine promise and of our Salvation stand in Christ. And indeed in so much they are in the right For hereby I understand the Mediatour by whom God dispenses his Heavenly gifts to us That 〈◊〉 Christ. But I do not yet perceive well enough how he dispenses by this Mediatour For tho I acknowledge him to be Mediatour to whose merit only we are beholden for all our Salvation yet because this Salvation by the Merit of Christ is not Communicated unto all neither is it derived to us but upon a certain Condition I would gladly learn of those Men what is that Condition prescribed unto us by God to obtain Salvation or how this meritorious Efficiency of the Mediatour Works in us And here presently Answers Lombard and others that favour the Lombardick Discipline that it comes to pass this way To wit by Charity infused through the Merits of Christ which being received by our voluntary taking it in we are incontinently not only named just but are really so O Divines As if Christ had been given to us and had come from the Father for no other purpose but that he might procure unto us the Divine Infusion of Charity as they call it And why could he not by Prayers obtain this same infusion from his most bountiful Father when he was present here what was the Father so hard and so inexorable that he could not be mitigated by any Prayers to communicate the benefit of grace to any Man without the death and Blood of his own dearly beloved Son But what hindered Because he was not willing who by nature is Charity it self Or because he was not able who is in Majesty Omnipotent But now being endued with the gift of Charity what will you obtain by that You say Salvation and Righteousness Upon what account will you obtain that Because Charity being the fulfilling of the Law thereby it comes to pass that Charity being spread abroad in our Hearts by the Holy Ghost and inflaming us to the Obedience of the Law it easily performs all those things which are the duties of life so that we are now not only accounted but in reality are called and are indeed Righteous That is right indeed Therefore if I am not mistaken this is it which I see those Men drive at that all our hope of Salvation is placed in the performance of the Law And that the Summary of the Divine promise is contained in that condition if we perform the things that pertain to the Law Which because they cannot be performed without Supernatural Infusion of Charity therefore Charity informing the mind with the love of the Divine Law is called by them Righteousness Ingenuous Reader you have the Summary of this Sophistical Divinity briefly described Concerning which that you may judge more rightly look now at this wonderful Order of Causes Concerning the Threefold cause of Iustification 1. Conditional 2. Formal 3. Meritorious 1. FIrst they place the end of all Righteousness and the Salvation promised to us in the observance of the Law upon this condition that if the Law be performed we may live but if not there should remain no other way of obtaining Life 2. But because this perfect performance of the Law according to the due manner of doing as they speak is not in the power of Nature nor in the Law it self without a special Supplement of grace as they call it therefore they necessarily require Charity spread abroad in our Hearts which they define the formal cause of Iustification 3. But now by what ways and means this infusion of Grace and Charity is obtained they assign two causes chiefly of which the one is placed in the Death of Christ as the Meritorious cause The other they place in the voluntary acceptance of our Will which because it could reject this grace which it accepts according to its liberty therefore they Attribute unto it the Merits of Meriting at least de congruo or Agreeableness and in the mean while Faith amongst those Men is nothing valued or accounted of And it is no wonder for they do not understand by the Gospel what Gospel Faith is neither do they seem to have had any experimental knowledge what the power and efficacy thereof is But that I may answer the Sophistical talks of these Men First as touching the next and last cause of Iustification which they say consists in the perfection of the Law how false it is and contrary to the Gospel who is so void of the knowledge of the Gospel but clearly perceives it For tho' the voice of the Law confines us by a most rigid necessity to the perfect condition of performing all Righteousness yet the meek voice of the Evangelical promise sounds far otherways Which requires no other condition to obtain Salvation but Faith only whereby we believe in the Son of God But what should you say to those Men who know scarcely any more difference between the Law and Gospel than Night Owls that are dimsighted at Noon-day Concerning the Formal cause of Iustification AND that is no less false which they most vainly dream concerning a formal cause which is easily confuted after this manner First that we may grant this that Charity should be reckoned amongst the chiefest gifts of God which being so often praised by the Apostle cannot be praised enough by any Man yet never was there given to any Man in this life so great an excellency therein that he should fulfill all the Righteousness of the Law Whence because charity of life as they call it is imperfect for we love in part according to theMagisterial Sentence that can neither be called Righteousness nor be the form of Faith Unto this there is added another reason because when it is given most largely yet Charity is never given for this end that it may justifie us in the sight of God nor that it may inform faith but rather that it self may be informed by faith and may be subservient to faith for Works of Charity are fruits of faith not the cause of faith they follow but do not go before faith For Magdalen did not therefore believe in Christ because she loved Christ but because she
believed in Christ therefore she loved much Now if that be called the formal cause by Philosophers which furnishes matter with Life and Soul and if Divines account this the life whereby we live to God what then will they say to the Prophetical Scripture whereby the Iust is said to live not by Charity but by faith What also will they answer to the Words of Christ in which he teaches that life Eternal consists in this that we should know the Father the true God and Iesus Christ whom he hath sent And again where in very evident Speech he Attributes life to faith only and not to Charity He that believeth in the Son faith he hath Eternal Life Concerning the Meritorious cause of Iustification BUT in the mean while because these things have been already largely discoursed of there follows after this that which is next in this Series of causes that we should now examine with the like briefness the Meritorious cause of Iustification which those Men by the Authority of Trent comprehend only and wholly in Christ. And now what then will those Scribes and Disputers of this World answer here What do the Works of the Iust Merit nothing in the sight of God Do they help nothing towards the obtaining of Righteousness And where then is that Merit de Gongruo and condigno Where are the Works of Supererogation that are above due Where is that grace which the Sacraments confer upon us ex opere oper ato By what Argument now will Andrew Vega defend this Axiom of his Faith says he and other good Works whereby we are disposed unto grace that makes us acceptable and whereby we are formally justified and made acceptable to God are Meritorious by the way of agreeableness of such grace and of our Iustification c. Whence it is evident that either Christ is not the only Meritorious cause of such grace or that all the other helps of Merits are of no value Though in the mean while I do not deny that the death of Christ is truly Meritorious but let the adversaries consider diligently what it hath merited That the spiritual help say they of Divine Grace and Charity to perform the Law might be diffused into us What then Dyed Christ for no other cause but that he might obtain the gift of Charity for Mortal Men to perform the Law Did he not rather dye upon this account that he might blot out the Hand writing which was against us in the Law having nailed it to his 〈◊〉 that he might take away the Enmity and might destroy Death for ever might dispossess the Devil of his Kingdom that there might be food and sustenance for our hunger that he might make Principalities and Powers subject to his Triumpham Dominion that he might take possession of all Power in Heaven and in Earth What if the power of Charity to perform the Law is so great as they preach could not this Charity otherways get entrance unless the Son of God dyed Yea were not the Patriarchs Prophets and many others of the Saints adorned with the same supernatural gifts Moreover since the Death of Christ is there so great an influence of Grace present with any man that he is able to fulfil all Righteousness Because the Merit of Christ is perfect it is necessary that those things also should be perfect which he hath merited for us by his most perfect price But on the contrary my Opinion is that I think Christ to be indeed the meritorious cause of our Iustification and that he is not so much the meritorious as the efficient cause of our Renovation seeing it is he that baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with Fire Suppose we grant that this Charity flows in upon us by the Merit of Christ yet I do not therefore call this same infusion of Grace a cause of meriting Iustification nor any part of a cause thereof but it seems rather fit to be reckoned amongst the effects and fruits of Iustification which follow from thence neither doth it follow because the works of Grace and Charity come to us by the Merit of Christ that therefore the same do merit Iustification before God for it relies upon no condition of works at all but only the promise and that a free one also and so free that it implies no condition except one only And because in this place we enquire what is that only and peculiar condition the Doctrine of the Gospel will easily teach us if so be we are more willing to hearken to the Gospel than to the Opinions of Trent On what condition properly doth the Promise of Iustification rely BUT the condition whereby we are properly justified is this That we should believe in Christ and adhere to him by a constant confession In which Faith in the mean while a diligent Caution should be observed that this Faith should be directed unto a proper and legitimate Object which I wonder that it hath not yet been taken notice of by those School Doctors hitherto Of whom some place the Object of Faith in the first Truth Others take for its Object all things that are written in the holy Scriptures Others do esteem for the Object of Faith all things that are laid before us to be believed by the Authority of the Catholick Church And they say not amiss for I deny not that all these things are both truly and necessarily to be believed by every man For he that believes the whole Architecture of this World was framed by the handy-work of God in the space of six days he is indeed led by a right Faith as all Truths are to be believed with a most sure Faith whatsoever are mentioned in the Books of the Scripture which Faith of every particular Truth as I suppose doth not therefore justifie a man For the sense of our question is not what is truly believed by us but what Faith that is which justifies the wicked before God from his sins and that we should search by the Gospel what is the proper Object of this Faith In the mean while that is a very ridiculous thing and too barbarous that the Pope in his Decretals reduces the Object of Faith to the Keys and Succession of the Roman Chair and that as necessary to Salvation but away with this Deceiver and his Cheats Concerning Faith and Assurance and what is the proper Object of Faith NOW let us discourse of others who reasoning with more sound Iudgment about Faith do not fetch the proper and genuine Object of Faith whereby we are justified so far off from the very first Truth as Thomas nor reduce it to every particular Truth of Scripture as the Colonienses nor define it by the Decrees of the Church as the Duacene Doctor and Iesuits of that Place and Order nor place it in the Infallible Authority of the Roman Chair as Boniface but coming much nearer to Evangelical Truth do
Argument There are also many other Scriptures which they have wrested abominably for the defence of their Opinion about Inherent Righteousness As for example where the Lord says That he came not to destroy the Law but to fulfil it Hence they infer that all that would be saved must of necessity keep the Law That I may answer this Objection I acknowledge that saying of the Lord to be very true and I know what he professed in words he performed in the practice of his Life For he came not to destroy the Law but perfectly to fulfil it and that not so much upon his own account as upon ours But it is not therefore a right consequence which they draw from an ill formed Argument Argument Christ came not to destroy the Law but to fulfil it Therefore there is no Salvation to any but those that perform the Law This is a false consequence for there is more in the conclusion than in the antecedent For this should have been the conclusion Therefore should we diligently endeavour to fulfil the Law according to his Example especially in those things that belong to us for we are not subject to the same Ceremonies of the Law that he was As when he was circumcised and went to the Feast at Ierusalem thrice a year abstained from things that were ceremonially unclean and from things strangled and blood and celebra-ted the Passover according to the Law and many things of that kind whereunto we are not now obliged But though it be very true that he came to fulfil the Law yet we are not therefore obliged to the fulfilling of the Law as a thing necessary to our Salvation For the Office of Christ is distinguished by a twofold end For he was sent by his Father partly for this purpose that in our stead he might yield perfect Obedience unto the Law to which impossibility we our selves had a woful Obligation and that he might stir us up unto Vertue by his own Example but the Office of the Mediatour consists chiefly in this That he hath delivered us from the dreadful Curse of the Law and by his Death made full satisfaction to Divine Iustice for all our Debts and translated us from our bondage and slavery into a blessed state of liberty Which makes us now to rejoyce in the hope of the glory of God Therefore it is seasonable here to give notice that they who upon this account take Christ for a Law-giver as if he had been sent by God for no other cause but to make new Laws in the World are in a great Errour For though he made a sound and right Interpretation of his Countrey Laws which were commanded by God and given by the Ministry of Moses yet he was not sent principally for this purpose to make new or old Laws but rather to bring help to those that were under the Curse of the Law and thereby in peril of damnation Another Argument Unless Christ had kept the Law he had neither saved himself nor others Therefore we cannot be saved unless we keep the things that are commanded in the Law Answer Under this similitude there lies hid a great disparity For there is no small disproportion between us and Christ. If he had failed in any thing commanded by the Law there was no other Redeemer that could have interposed for him The same may be said of the Angels if they had sinned But if we through infirmity go astray the blood of our Lord Iesus Christ is in readiness for our Redemption to raise us up when we are fallen to procure the pardon of our offences and to restore us unto a blessed state Argument Unless a man be born of Water and the holy Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God Iohn 3. Unless ye eat the flesh of the Son of God and drink his blood ye shall have no life in you Iohn 6. Therefore Faith only is not sufficient for Salvation Answer Verily there is no other Weapon put into our hands that we can retort with greater advantage upon Enemy than this very Argument For the Mystical signification of both these Sacraments Baptism and the Lord's Supper is nothing else but Faith in Christ Iesus for as Baptism is called a Sacrament of Faith and therefore is sometimes by Augustin put for Faith so those that are well instructed in the knowledge of Christ understand that to eat the flesh of Christ is the same with believing in him If we rightly consider the nature of this Sacrament there cannot be a more evident demonstration that we are justified by no other thing but Faith only For by what Argument could it be more manifestly set before our Eyes how great benefit redounds to us from the shedding of the blood of Christ than by the Institution of the Sacramental Bread and Wine for a memorial of his Body and Blood Or by what other thing could he more effectually represent unto our Faith the powerful efficacy of his Death than by the Institution of this Sacrament First Pious Reader call to mind and consider with your self this miserable and mortal Nature which how void and destitute it is of all things and how empty of Divine Grace and laden with iniquities you cannot be ignorant Thou who in thy self art a wretched and destroyed man comest to the Banquet where thou art commanded to take the Sacramental Bread and Cup in the name of him that was slain for thee and then thou art bid Eat for otherwise to what purpose should you hold the Bread in your hands when it is broken and reached forth unto you unless it be received inwardly for digestion Eat saith he and drink ye all of it for this is my Body and this is my Blood that was shed for you What was his design in expressing himself thus but to make us understand that his Death would be like a great Supper to his whole Church in which sinners that in themselves were wretched and miserable and empty and hunger-bitten might be refreshed with an everlasting Feast of fat things according as the Lord had long since promised by the Prophet Isaiah For as this mortal Life cannot continue without daily nourishment so neither hope of Eternal Life nor any other Grace can endure unless it be supported by Faith in the Lamb of God and thereby receive spiritual nourishment And therefore unless ye eat saith he the flesh of the Son of Man c. Whence it is evident that there is no Iustification for miserable sinners but that which consists in Christ only who was slain for us Yea there is no Iustification in him neither but by Faith which receives inwardly and digests this Bread that came down from Heaven according as we are taught in the Gospel He that believes in me hath Life eternal that believing ye may have life through his name Unless ye believe that I am he c. Thy Faith hath made thee
defilements of the mind and all the roots of filthiness and impurity I say where will that man be found who performs these and all other duties of true Piety and so performs them that nothing in his Life seems superfiuous nothing is unequal in his duties nor defective in his manners I think he may be found in the Books of Osorius but not in the Life in the daily Confessions or in the Holy Absolutions of Osorius There was of Old I confess the Image of this most perfect righteousness seen and known upon the Earth But that Phoenix hath long since left the Earth and departed hence to Heaven and now sits at the right hand of Majesty drawing all to himself and I wish that at length he may draw Osorius also to himself What if the Lord himself looking down from Heaven upon the Sons of Men is affirmed in the Prophetical Psalm to have found all their ways corrupted and depraved if the Mystical and Royal Holy Psalmist durst not in confidence of his own righteousness enter into judgment with his God or present himself to be tryed by him and condemns all other mortal men of unrighteousness without excepting so much as one If Paul writing to the Romans in a very serious debate confirms the same and stops the mouths of all men that he may bring men over having called them away from a vain trust in their own works and convinced them of the vanity thereof to the help of the Son of God only which is placed in the faith of him If Iohn the Apostle yea and if that powerful proclaimer and defender of humane righteousness could not himself deny but that in many things we offend all I pray you O Osorius Will you now rise up after them not the eighth but the ninth Proclaimer of Righteousness being a mortal and sinful man who dare affirm to others that which you cannot perform your self after this manner That it is either righteousness or nothing which obtains us the favour of God and makes us acceptable and like unto him Qu. What do I hear is there nothing else I beseech you What then Is Faith nothing Is Grace nothing Is the Mercy and Promise of God nothing Do the Merits of Christ profit nothing to Salvation So that now there is nothing which reconciles us to God but the righteousness of works What Do you so place all righteousness in works that you think there is no righteousness of Faith Then you think perhaps that the righteousness of faith and works is one and the same and you make no difference between the Law and the Gospel whereas Paul teaches you far otherwise who openly and with great fervency of Spirit deprecates that other righteousness which is of works that he may be found in him not having the righteousness which is of the Law but that which is of the Faith of Christ which is of God righteousness by Faith Do you not perceive here a manifest opposition between these two To be justified by the Law and to be justified by Faith yea and those very things which Paul removed far away from him as Dung in respect of obtaining Salvation Will you pave that only way for us to Heaven And in the mean while disputing about works I discourse of these things with you as if there were any such strength of so great vertues in this life as could deserve not only the reward of righteousness but also the name thereof What will you say if the most holy performances and endeavours undertaken in whatsoever manner by the most perfect men in this corrupted nature are so unprofitable to the immortality of Life that they are rejected by Christ as things without profit yea that they are despised and utterly contemned in the sight of God like a menstruous cloth as the Prophet Isaiah witnesseth unless they be underproped with better Grace and the commendation of Faith What if in Isaiah we are all said and that truly to have gone astray like Sheep every one in his own way from whom so great a Prophet doth not separate himself What do you suppose should be judged of our virtues and righteousness But you will say this complaint of the Prophet belongs not to all in the general but only to the Iews who in those times wickedly forsook their duty but by the same reason you may affirm that all the diseases of all men and times were not healed by the Death of Christ but theirs only who in those times had gone astray out of the way as lost Sheep But how frivolous this cavilling is it appears evident by the context of this Prophetical Prediction Whereby you see Osorius being convinced by Sacred Testimonies that those merits of our greatest vertues if they be looked upon in themselves are far from the perfection of that righteousness which your Philology Cloaths with very beautiful Colours Which yet I would not have to be so said by me nor underslood by you as if those that live vertuosly did nothing aright and praise worthy in this life Or as if the Godly Works of the Saints were not acceptable to God which God himself hath commanded to be done for thus you reason concerning Works that they come not indeed without Faith and the Grace of God but yet so that when they come you affirm that the Kingdom of Eternal Salvation is due to them by the best right not only as a recompense and reward but also as a lawful Patrimony as if the promise of Salvation depended not on Evangelical Faith but on the Righteousness of the Law and not on Christs merits only unless a Covenant of Works be joined together with it or as if faith it self profited nothing for the obtaining of Life upon any other account but that it may procure Grace which may stir us up to the praise-worthy performances of works by which works we attain unto eternal Life Faith Iustifies no otherways but upon the account of good works according to the opinion of Osorius For so your words do manifestly signifie where treating of Faith and enquiring why we are said to be saved by it you presently add a cause because say you we obtain the Divine protection only by faith and so very easily observe the precepts of the law and obey Divine Institutions and again concluding to the same purpose No man that is in his right wits shall obtain Salvation except he keep the Law or which is equivalent thereunto except he be ready and prepared in his mind te keept it And again in the same place discoursing of the Salvation of Christians Do you ask how a man is Saved Is there another way prepared for Salvation but what is eontained in the Law of God none at all Therefore we miserable mortals have a way to the Immortal Kingdom laid out and shewed unto us and that a very easie one you Osorius being our guide and teacher which is
much more cause to fear than his vertues give him to hope And what remedy then shall remain for the perplexed consciences of Men if the Righteousness of Christ being hid from their Eyes you leave nothing for hope or consolation but the righteousness of the Law Or with what comfort will you raise up the Spirit of a fallen and afflicted Sinner when the Law useth to shew what every Man should do aright but can pardon no Man what is done amiss must you not here of necessity be compelled to leave the Righteousness of the Law and presently to appeal to the Righteousness of Christ And I think you will not at all deny that but say you seeing this righteousness of Christ is no other but that which is the righteousness of the Law yea and the very perfection of the Law therefore it is not necessary that we should make a twofold Righteousness but one only both of Christ and of the Law But 't is not a difficult thing to answer to this objection Indeed it must be confessed if you consider the things by themselves and compare the one with the other by a mutual relation there seems not to be any difference between the Righteousness of Christ and of the Law Because there is nothing in the Law so Holy and perfect but it appears as evident in the Life of Christ But if you consider the efficacy and manner of working which the Righteousness of Christ and of the Law exercises in others if you consider the effect and end of both there is a great difference For though Christ is no otherwise just in himself than the Law it self is Holy and Iust But yet this which is called the Righteousness of Christ acts in us much otherwise than that which is called the Righteousness of the Law so that nothing seems more unlike or more contrary The difference between the Righteousness of the Law and the Gospel FIRST as touching the Law what the Nature Vertue and Efficacy thereof is it is unknown to no Man To wit that it is of it self a Holy and Perfect Rule and Mistress to teach how to lead the Life made for this purpose by the most Holy God that Creatures might certainly know what they should fly and what they should follow as it contains in it self the very Rule of all perfection in all respects compleat so it requires perfect obedience in all respects and upon all accounts upon this condition that he that doth these things shall live in them But on the contrary he that doth otherwise and abides not in all the Law pronounces a Curse against him and inflicts the vengeance of Death and heaps up anger and indignation upon him For by the Law the Wrath of God is declared from Heaven being justly kindled against all Men that are wicked and unjust upon any account Whereby it comes to pass that the Law indeed being it self Holy and Good was not given for this that it should bring Destruction but Salvation but yet the same being hindred by the infirmity of our flesh it cannot but kill us but cannot at all save us by its own means not for any default or tyranny of its own but by taking just occasion from the refractory rebellion of our flesh which as it naturally hath an enmity against God so it cannot avoid being contrary to his Sacred Will and Divine Institutions And hence break forth so many and so great calamities that fall upon this sinful Nature of ours hence so many proofs of the Divine Indignation and Anger hence also that dreadful and unavoidable necessity of dying which when it passes promiscuously through all ages and kindreds which none of the most Holy Men could ever drive away from themselves verily that one thing proves us all to be guilty of unrighteousness and that there is not any perfection of righteousness in our most righteous works for if the Wages of Sin be Death it cannot be that there should be any extinction of Life there where no unrighteousness is seen Therefore O Osorius if the Law cannot defend thee in this Life with all thy works from Death will the same save thee after Death and restore thee to Life when thou art Dead Concerning Evangelical Righteousness AND hitherto these things have been explained by us concerning the Righteousness of the Law as it is considered out of Christ. Now let us again turn our eyes unto Christ and consider what his Righteousness without the Law worketh in us And here first of all a wonderful and most manifest difference between the Law and Christ presents it self unto us For seeing the Law as hath been said can give no Life according to the rigour of its Iustice but only to perfect Men Therefore it comes to pass that because it finds nothing perfect in us it being hindered through the infirmity of our flesh can give no help nor work any thing in us but wrath Therefore being repulsed by the Law and destitute of the help of Works let us seek another Patron of Salvation whosoever he be who may help us But there is none who doubts that He is no other but Christ the only Son of God whom we all alike profess through all Churches There is therefore no Controversie remaining between us and our Adversaries concerning the Author of Salvation Nevertheless there remains here another ambiguity or question perhaps not yet cleared enough by all Divines For whereas there is no man but confesses that Righteousness is in Christ in its highest perfection And we have already heard from the Law that there is no fellowship of Righteousness with Unrighteousness here some difficulty comes in how it comes to pass that the Lord Christ all whose Iudgments are most just can or ought against Righteousness favour those who having forsaken their duty have turned aside to Unrighteousness For if the Law of God according to the nature of Righteousness cannot avoid condemning of those that are guilty of wickedness some perhaps may ask What way Christ who doth not any thing but what is most righteous can procure Salvation to those without the violation of his Righteousness whom the Law of Righteousness justly condemns Or if he do it how for what cause and in what manner he does it by Faith or by Works If by Faith whether by Faith only or by the help of Works joyned with it if upon the account of Works whether before Works or after Works or in the very Works But if by Faith only without Works hence ariseth a threefold question 1. What then do good Works avail 2. What Faith that is and of what sort it is which is said to justifie 3. Whom this Faith justifies for they must be either sinners or righteous if sinners they are either penitent or stubborn if you say both you will speak against Righteousness which cannot be well called Righteousness unless it reward according to every mans deeds and merits But
Christ invites unto himself Consciences that are afflicted and burdened with sin Isaiab calls all that are athirst to come without price or any exchange to the Fountains of Christ that they may be refreshed Osorius will bestow the Kingdom which God hath promised upon none but righteous men and eminent good works I beseech you Sir according to your righteousness what excellent good work brought that sinful Woman with her in the Gospel out of whom seven Devils were cast What righteousness appeared in the Thief on the Right Hand of Christ except faith only why he should after the commiting so many evil deeds enter in together with Christ on the same day into Paradise what other thing did the Woman of Canaan that was a stranger bring to Christ but an importunate cry of faith so that she carried home not Crumbs but whole Loaves of Divine Grace What deserved the miserable Woman with the bloody Issue or Iairus the Governour of the Synagogue or Zacchaeus of Matthew or other Publicans with them why they being perferred before the Pharisees who seemed so much more righteous should obtain the benefit of free favour being so obvious and exposed unto them There is almost an infinite number of others of the like condition that may be discoursed of after the same manner in whom you can find nothing worthy of so great bounty of Divine Grace but faith only Blind Bartimeus cried the Lepers cried Iesus Master thou Son of David have mercy on us and they were heard For nothing cries louder than faith nothing is more effectual to prevail Let Osorius also cry and let us all cry with the like noise of Faith and we shall be heard alike I speak of that faith which is in Christ Iesus besides which there is not any passage into Heaven nor access unto God nor way of prevailing with God Therefore that we may be heard let us come and knock but let us do it aright to wit by Faith and in the name of only begotten Otherways it is in vain to cry to God who hears not sinners but drives them away who regards not servants and guilty persons unless they come to the Son or in the name of the Son Now by what way we are heard by the same we are Iustified For the Divine reward is always joyned with righteousness Seeing then all of us mortal men are by nature sinners and servants of sin therefore we must see what that is which makes us of servants free men of guilty persons sons of sinners righteous For this is the whole subject matter of the debate this is the question on which the whole controversie depends which is not so difficult to be judged of if the authority of Sacred Scripture may prevail upon impartial judgments For the testimony of the Gospel remains sure and eternal which no mortal man can weaken at any time instructing our faith thus As many as received him to them he gave power to become the Sons of God and that he may teach what it is to receive him he presently explains the same to them saith he that believe in his name c. Whereby it appears evidently what it is to which we are beholden for all that splendor and dignity wealth and riches yea and the possession of Heaven and Life I know that in those excellent offices of good works which you so much cry up in the exercise of charity and observance of Righteousness there is great weight and also great benefit as I consess also that the law it self hath great efficacy if a man use it lawfully Now the use of the law consists in this that it should bring us to Christ and be subservient to his glory But when you have heaped all these things together into one whatsoever were by God either prescribed to us in his Law or written within us they are far from restoring perfection to a mans deeds that are altogether imperfect or to a mans person that is wholly destroyed and ruinated They are far from making us of servants freemen of Slaves of Satan Sons of God heirs of his Kingdom co-heirs of Christ fellow Citizens of the Saints and Domesticks of the highest Father Verily that is not the Office of the Law but of Christ And it is not righteousness but grace that does this This is not the efficacy of works but of Faith which relying not upon works but being strengthned only by the promise of God brings us from bondage to liberty from death to life adopts us being reconciled unto God makes us Sons of the promise which is so far from being joyned with Charity and Works that it reconciles Charity it self and all works of life unto God and justifies them without which they could not have place in Heaven in the presence of the great God Upon what account and how Faith justifies Fallen Sinners NOW because I have demonstrated what the power of Faith is and what it performeth I must of necessity explain upon what account and for what cause Faith procureth unto it self so great efficacy and power of Iustifying how it is said to Iustifie alone without Works and what Men the same Iustifies whether the righteous or the wicked If the righteous what need is there now of Iustification or Faith when the Law is sufficient If the wicked whether those that are penitent and converted or the impenitent and rebellious If the Faith of Christ justifies the penitent frees them from guilt and makes them righteous of unrighteous which neither you your self can deny Why then do you inveigh against Luther so unmodestly and undeservedly Does Luther either say or teach any other thing Where does he at any time let loose the Reins to sin or promise liberty to the wicked or preach Iustification otherways than to those who being reformed by Repentance breathe after Christ and joyn themselves to him by Faith What Will you shut out those from all hope of pardon I trow not And what remedy then will you shew them Will you send us to the Faith of Christ or to the Sentence of the Law to heal our wounds What if the Law gives no help here and there is not any other thing in man that can help righteousness once violated except Faith only placed in Christ which neither you your self can deny And if this very Faith brings Salvation to none but those that deplore the sins they have committed which together with you Luther affirms to what purpose are those out-cries against Luther so Tragical and raised without any cause Wherefore then dost thou deceive us O Luther For when thou d'dst condemn pious tears and didst cast reproaches upon wise sorrowfulness and didst plead that all works were not only unprofitable but pernicious And presently going on in the same stile and waxing more violent For when say you thou didst put so much in faith that thou saidst there was help enough in that only the sense of thy
unreasonable so to do as if a man disputing concerning Osorius should thus conclude that because he hath no power of governing in the Kings Chamber therefore he hath nothing he can do at home amongst his own family Or because he is not at all excellent in military vertue to gain a victory that therefore he hath no faculty or dexterity in managing the affairs of his own business Luther separates charity from faith and the Law from the Gospel and does it not without cause But it must be considered where in what place and for what cause he does it Not to cause the godly works of good men to be despised nor to discourage the exercise thereof but that the power of justifying should not be attributed to the performance of them Not that faith should not work by love before Men but that it should not work before God For it is one thing to work before Men and another thing to work before God Therefore one and the same faith acteth both ways but one way before God and another way before men for before men it works by love that it may perform obedience to the will of God and be serviceable for the benefit of our Neighbour but before God it works not by any love but by Christ only that it may obtain the pardon of sins and eternal life By which you see what is the difference between faith and vertue and wherein they both agree and how different the working of both is How faith is alone without works and again how the same is not alone for in the mean while Godly works are not therefore condemned because they are not admitted to the justification of life but the trusting in works is only overturned Here then a wise and suitable division should be used that things may be distinguished each by their own places and bounds lest one thing should rashly rush into the possession of another and disturb the order of its station Therefore let the praise-worthy merits of the greatest vertues have their own honour and dignity which no man withholds from them Nevertheless by their dignity they will never be so available in the presence of the Heavenly Iudge as to redeem us from our sins to satisfie Iustice to deliver us from the wrath of God and everlasting destruction to restore us that are so many ways ruinated unto grace and life to unite us as Sons and Heirs to God and to overcome Death and the World These things cost a far dearer price than that we should ever be able to pay so many and so great debts by any works or merits or means of our own For so great is the severity of Iustice that there can be no reconciliation unless Iustice be satisfied by suffering the whole punishment that was due The wrath is so very great that there is no hope of appeasing the Father but by the price and death of the Son And again so great is the mercy that the Father grudged not to send his own Son and bestow him on the World and so to bestow him that he gives Life Eternal to them that believe in him Moreover so great is the loving kindness of the Son towards us that he grudged not for our sakes to bring upon himself this infinite load of wrath which otherways our frailty however assisted with all the help of moral vertues had never been able to sustain Whence Faith hath received its efficacy BEcause Faith alone with fixed eyes looks upon this Son and Mediator and cleaves unto him who only could bring about this Atchievement of our Redemption with the Father therefore it is that it alone hath this vertue and power of justifying not with works nor for works but only for the sake of the Mediator on whom it relies Therefore that is false and worthy to be rejected with disdain which some unhappy and wicked School-Divines affirm in discoursing of Charity to wit that it is the form of Faith and that it must not by any means be separated from faith no more than the vital Soul can be separated from the body or the essential form from matter which otherwise is a rude and unweildy Mass. In answering of whom I think there is no need of many words seeing the whole meaning and drift of Scripture if rightly understood the very end of the Law seeing Christ and the instruction of the Apostles and the whole nature of the Gospel seem to be manifestly against them and wholly to overturn that most absur'd Opinion by so many Oracles so many Signs Examples and Arguments to the contrary Now if that be form which gives subsistence to a thing how much more truly must it be said that faith is the form of charity without which all the works of charity are base and contemptible as again the form of faith is not charity but Christ only and the promise of the word But what say they are not the pious works of Charity acceptable to God being so many ways prescribed unto us and commanded by him Are not these also remunerated with plentiful fruits of Righteousness and heaped up with manifold Rewards in the Gospel I was hungry says he and ye fed me I thirsted and ye refreshed me with drink so that not so much as a cup of cold water shall want a reward when it is given in the name of Christ besides an infinite number of other things of that kind which being taken out of the Scriptures are enlarged upon to the praise of Charity Indeed no man denys that pious and holy works of Charity are greatly approved of God and it is an undoubted truth that the love of God and of our Neighbour as it comprehends the Summary of both Tables and is the greatest complement of the whole Law so it hath excellent promises annexed unto it Neither is there any Controversie between us about that But when we affirm that Charity pleases God we ask this how it pleases whether simply of it self in respect of the very work or upon the account of faith and the Mediatour and then whether the same Charity so pleases that it justifies us before God and obtains the pardon of sins and overcomes the terrours of death and sin that it may be opposed to the judgment and anger of God Moreover whether it hath the promises of Eternal Life annexed unto it If without a Mediatour and the faith of him there is nothing which can please God and it is impossible that works should please him before the person of him that worketh be reconciled it follows that Charity depends on Faith and not Faith on Charity But that it rather goes before Love and is so far from being joyned with it for justification that it also justifies Charity and makes all the works of Charity acceptable to God The matters appear more evident by Example Suppose a Iew or Turk does daily bestow great gifts upon the poor with very great cost
contained in Christ only who is the only begotten Son of God And because our Faith only lays hold on him and he cannot profit any but Believers therefore it comes to pass that faith only without works that is without any merits of works compleats all our Righteousness before God Concerning the Praise of Repentance the Dignity and Benefit and Peculiar Office thereof BUT you will say to what purpose then is it to repent and to amend evil deeds or what shall be answered to these Scriptures which promise in more places than one the pardon of all sins to those that lament their sins and are converted unto a better life That I may answer these I would have you take notice of this in the first place When we attribute the vertue of justifying to Faith and in this case place it alone being helped by no addition of our works Let no man so mis-understand as if we did drive away and 〈◊〉 all saving Repentance and other holy Offices of Duty and Charity from every action of life as Andradius falsly gathers against Chemnitius For that we may openly confess the truth what else is this whole life of Godly Men but a continual repentance and a perpetual detestation and condemnation of sin whilst we are forced by the Gospel with daily groans to breath forth this Petition Forgive us our sins as if we were conflicting in a continual place of wrestling in which sometimes we stand by the Spirit sometimes we fall through the infirmity of the Flesh and sometimes we again make new repentance yet we always overcome and triumph by Faith to wit obtaining the pardon of our faults and we obtain true righteousness for ever Therefore away with impudent slanders let just judgment be exercised and let things be comprehended each in their own places and bounds Pious tears a serious deploring of former destruction and a just care of living a better life with all other pious exercises are things which we do not thrust away nor put out of their place only we search what is the place what is the peculiar office of those things And in the first place this is a thing that should not be doubted of by any Man that Repentance as it is an excellent gift of God so it brings forth fruits not to be repented of according to its Office the Office or duty whereof I reckon to be twofold The first is that which duly detests the sins committed The other that which diligently endeavours the Reformation of the life from which follows both great praise and greater fruits and also very great incitements to vertue For he that being weary of his former wickedness applys his mind wholly to amend his ungodly Life by a future reformation verily he hath made a great progress towards Salvation but he is not therefore as yet put into a certain possession of Salvation or because of that taken up with the Penitent Malefactor into Paradise For it is one thing to weep for the things that one hath done amiss and another thing to obtain the pardon of them Verily he that seriously purposes with himself to amend his life I judge that he ought justly to be praised but yet that is not enough as I suppose to turn away the anger of an offended God to put away the heinous nature of Sin to procure a clear tranquility of Conscience and to shake off the tyranny of death for to obtain that Victory we will need another Panoply or compleat Armour than Repentance or the forces of our vertues for nothing that we can do is sufficient to bring this to pass but only faith in the Son of God And therefore Repentance with Charity and other Offices of that kind have a necessary connexion with faith not that they may give form to this as to a dead matter but that rather they may receive life and Spirit from it not that Faith hath need of these for justification but that they themselves may be justified by the value received by Faith in Christ which unless they were recommended upon the account of that Faith would all be abominable in the sight of God and though they may be call'd works yet cannot be call'd good works in Gods account unless they are supported by Faith Whence Augustin admonishing not without cause commands us to believe in him that justifies the Wicked that our very good works may be good works for those deserve not to be called good as long as they proceed not from a good root c. But here you object approved Testimonies and Examples rehearsed out of the Sacred Oracles of Divine Scripture in which without any mention of Faith Salvation is assuredly promised to them that Repent as in Ezekiel I de sire not the death of a Sinner but that the wicked should turn from his way and live There are set before us the Examples of the Ninivites of David Manasseh and others and lest I should weary you with Rehearsing of every one of them which are infinite I will make a short Collection of the whole inatter You say that thus the Prophets proclaim and openly avouch this thing that there is no hope of Salvation shewed unto any but only those who are with their whole heart brought back from an unclean and wicked life to the practise of Holiness c. And presently concluding with this Opinion you teach us that there is no other way at all either to avert destruction or procure salvation Lest I should speak many things in vain there is one Answer abundantly sufficient for all such Objections that there is indeed necessarily required a sincere reformation of heart and life in these who are to obtain life as in an Heir for whom there is appointed the possession of an Inheritance to be enjoyed there is necessarily required dutifulness towards his Father which dutifulness nevertheless when it is most exactly performed is not any cause of obtaining the inheritance And in like manner there is nothing that can be more certain than that Repentance and Renovation do much commend the life of Christians to God yet it makes them not Christians neither doth it so much commend the person of the Penitent as it is it self commended by the dignity of the man who if he is a Christian his Repentance is approved But if he be an Alien from the faith the lamenting of sin doth not at all profit for the obtaining of Righteousness neither doth it take away Sin But as you say Repentance hath Divine Promises and indeed I am not against your Opinion in that for God doth not desire the death of a Sinner promising also life to him that repents That 's right But let us see how he promises it and by pondering the Circumstances of things times and persons let us consider what is promised and to whom and what is the true cause of promising Indeed the old Law hath dark promises the Gospel
thing and the holy Scriptures another they affirm that this is performed on this account because Christ being punished for us on the Cross hath by his Merits obtained for us the infusion of Charity Which because it is the perfection of the Law therefore being acquired by the Merit of Christ and received by our free-will it brings forth righteousness not that whereby we are accounted for just but whereby we are both truly just and deserve life But verily this Sophism neither agrees with the History of the Israelites nor satisfies the argument propounded For if those that were then wounded by the Serpents by only beholding the Serpent without any other intermediate cause received present health verily either this type bears not the similitude of Christ or Christ heals us by faith in his name only without interposing the remedy of Charity Otherways the mutual proportion of similitude between us and them between Christ and the Serpent will not rightly agree They lifted up their outward eyes we our inward they to the serpent we to Christ. Both by beholding obtain health through the Promise of God they the health of their Bodies we of our Souls They presently in beholding at the first sight were healed in the same moment by no endeavour of their own but only upon the account of the Object and by vertue of the Promise And what other thing doth this mystical adumbration signifie but Iustification freely prepared and promised to us by the sole contemplation of the Object whereby we apprehend Christ by Faith Will you hear the Promise That every one who seeth him may not perish but have eternal Life And elsewhere And this righteous servant of mine by his knowledge shall Iustifie many But what is it to see him but to believe in him What is the knowledge of that righteous one but the Faith of Christ which Iustifies from sin Therefore what external aspect was to them that the light of Faith is to us What Health was to them Iustification is to us whereby we are delivered from the Curse of sin and are absolved without punishment But if you ask what way There is an answer in readiness to wit according to the very similitude of the Serpent not by any labour of ours but by contemplation of the Object only and by vertue of the Promise I pray you what is more evident What more agreeable And what then should be said to those ill-employed men who by their new doctrine translate Free Iustification which is due only to Faith by vertue of the Promise of God unto works of Charity Of Sin and the healing thereof by Christ. FOR Andradius Hosius Vega the Spaniard and those others of the same Faction confederate with these seem so to contend about the Righteousness of Charity that having almost banished Faith out of the City of Rome they place all the parts of our Salvation or at least the chiefest in Charity and Sanctification And now by what Scriptures will they demonstrate that What say they doth not Christ heal us just as the Brazen Serpent healed the Wounds of those that were hurt Were we not all healed by his stripes Is not he the Lamb that takes away the sins of the World Is not he the Life-giving Serpent who gives cure for our wounds And what are our Wounds say they but Sin What is the healing of Wounds but the puting away of Sins What then shall the Serpent be more powerful in fixing his sting than Christ in taking it out Shall Alam be more powerful to infect Nature than Christ to cleanse it But how is nature purged if yet the contagion of sin remains As in a diseased body unless the hurtful humours are purged off health is not recovered and as the Air being surrounded on every side with black darkness begins not to shine before the brightness of the Sun being returned the darkness vanishes In like manner in the inward diseases of minds the causes of maladies must first be taken away before health is restored But the causes of evils are sins which if they are taken away by Christ how can they remain in the Saints But if they abide not by necessary consequence then it follows that the roots of all sins being cut away they are righteous in the sight of God by that righteousness not which is imputed but which properly inheres in them which is free of all spot of sin which carefully observes the Law which informs the mind with Charity and beautifies it with Divine Ornaments and makes us partakers of the Divine Nature But let us put all these together for brevities sake into the exact form of an argument Sin abolished doth not remain In the Baptized and in those that are come to years who are converted sin is abolished Therefore After Baptism and in those that are come to years after true conversion there remains no more sin This argument having a bad connexion doth evidently destroy it self First there is no man that denies that actual sin is not abolished in Baptized Infants in whom it is not committed In those come to years if all sins are so extinguished that no relicks remain what need is there of any conversion For what place is there for repentance where nothing is committed contrary to duty What if the Life of the Saints is nothing else but almost a daily conversion and mourning for sin how can a daily frailty of sinning be wanting there But let us look upon the parts of the Argument Sin abolished say they doth not remain That is true indeed if perfect and compleat abolishment of sin be understood both as to the Material of Sin and as to the Formal as the Schools speak Therefore as touching the Major in so much I acknowledge sin doth not remain in how much it is abolished in the Saints But after what manner and in what order it is abolished in the Baptized and in the adult it follows next that this should be enquired into in the Minor Therefore I answer to the Minor with a distinction that sin is said to be abolished in the Adult that are Regenerate it is partly true and partly false with a different respect had to divers circumstances But how that is understood it must be explained first as touching the death of the Mediatour which brings Salvation there is no defect in that but it hath abundantly recovered whatsoever perished by Adam yea it hath brought us much greater benefits than the evils which Adam procured unto us But if it be asked how and in what order the Death of Christ effects this I answer not by denying but by distinguishing For seeing two things are considerable in every sin the guilt obliging or the punishment of damnation which Lombard calls passive corruption and then active corruption or the very act of sin or the infirmity of corrupted nature Therefore there is again a twofold remedy prepared for this twofold evil guilt
Obliging to eternal punishment is not only taken away in the life to come but also in this life by the holy laver and continual remission of sins for the sake of a Mediator But the infirmity of sinning which is concupiscence in the flesh and ignorance in the mind that I may speak with Hugo it also is abolished in the regenerate but yet after its own order and by its own degrees For it is daily diminished in this Life by the renewing of the Spirit and it shall be abolished in the Life to come by the Resurrection of the Flesh. In the interim the relicks of infirmity stick yet in the Flesh as both Death and Temporal punishments stick yet in the Flesh to exercise the Saints unto Combat not to condemn them to destruction Iust as the Land of Canaan was promised to the Hebrews a great while before which yet they did not suddenly take possession of Neither was the frame of this World made immediately in one moment but the Works of God were perfected in distinct intervals of Days So neither is the whole Flesh suddainly renewed but by degrees and daily increases it is going on unto perfection An example may be conveniently taken from him whom being Wounded the Samaritan cap. 10. Luc. doth not suddainly cure but first pours Wine into his Wounds washes off the Blood afterwards he adds Oyl that he may mitigate the grief and the Wound may begin to cleave together Afterwards the Wound being bound up he puts the Sick-man upon the Beast and afterwards commands him to be cured in the Inn. Iust so Christ suffering the punishment of our Sins in his Body by remission immediately takes away the guilt from us pouring into our Wounds the gladning Oyl of the Gospel joined together with the Wine of serious Repentance whereby whatsoever is deadly in the Wounds is washed away with a health restoring Pardon But the Wounds are not yet altogether healed But health will be compleat in Eternal Life In the interim he will have diseases cured in the Church by Godly Exercises the Cross and constant Prayer Briefly if those Men desire to know what that is which Christ hath abolished in us by his Death I will say it in a word Whatsoever was laid upon Christ on the Cross to be carried away for our sakes that is taken away from us in this Flesh. Only the guilt and punishment of Sin not the matter it self of our actions was laid upon Christ to bear upon the Cross. The act or substance of sin is not wholly abolished by the Death of Christ in this flesh but only the guilt and punishment of sin Or more briefly let them take it thus Whatsoever Christ by dying did bear for us that only he took away by his death in this Life Christ by dying did bear only the punishment of our Sins not the Sins themselves in his Body whereof he had none Therefore Christ in this Life took away only the punishment not the matter it self of sin by his Death But afterwards by his power he shall also take away the whole matter of Sin in the Glory of the Resurection to come Concerning the necessity of the practice and care of good Works THerefore in this place something hath been said of Faith and all that manner of Righteousness which the Divine Authority attributes to Faith only without Works More things elsewhere have been explained by us in other Books From which things just conclusions being drawn it evidently appears if I am not mistaken wherein all our righteousness consists not in Works without Faith nor joined together with Faith but wholly in Faith without Works that is without the merits of Works or any condition of meriting For if Faith which is nothing else but an internal and illuminated contemplation and receiving of Christ the Son of God receives a free promise of Life in him I do not well see what the good deeds of our Life thought excellent can perform in this part of justification Yet it doth not follow from hence that the Holy practice of good Works for necessary uses that I may speak with Paul is not upon any account necessary Neither is it a reason forcible enough if any Man teaches that no trust should be put in Works that therefore there is no need of any care to do good For what Logick is this Works should not be trusted in when they are performed Therefore there is no need to endeavour to perform Good and Holy Works We are no other ways justified but upon the account of Faith which is in Christ Iesus Therefore Offices of Piety are not necessary in those who are justified by Faith Faith only not upon the account of Love but of the Mediatour promotes us to righteousness Therefore it profits nothing to repent and to weep and mourn for sins committed It is of no concernment after what manner every one leads his Life for so you seem to gather and not you only O Osorius but also as many as being like to you bear an enmity to Luther And hence such fierce out-cries of yours against him such odious and bitter ragings reproaches evil reports and outragious invectives being filled not so much with Evil Speeches as most filthy Lyes But this is no new nor strange thing either because you are of your old temper and disposition or because it is and always was the condition of the Gospel which hath already been accustomed enough to such like Enemies and reproaches So Saul persecuted David a most moderate Prince by whom he had never been hurt So when Christ was born Herod was troubled and all Ierusalem with him By the like fury Christ himself the Prince of the Church was slain So of Old Stephen was Stoned The same also did the Ancient Martyrs of all Times hear from their own People which Luther now and other Ministers of Gods Word are forced to hear 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 take away these Enemies of the god's yea also that Divine Martyr Iohn Huss of latter memory was brought forth to Death in a manner not unlike that whereby Luther is brought forth by you after his Death For they Cloathed him with odious Pictures of Devils and abominable Titles Neither is Luther here handled much more handsomly by you being Cloath'd with most vain Lyes and set forth by you in such Colours not as he really was nor as his Writings had persuaded you concerning him which it seems you have not read but as other accusers to whom you use to give too much credit have described him For what other thing declares this your narrative which is curiously fitted for calumny whereby you make him liker a Monster than a Man as if he brought in a certain new kind of Faith that was not heard of before and was unknown in former times as if he were an example of Wickedness an encourager of Slothfulness an Turbulent Person and disturber of
the internal Skill they have in those Arts and wherewith they are endued as saith Tapperus which would not seem very blame-worthy to me if they understood this of the Divine Righteousness whereby God is Righteous or wherewith Angels are accomplished But as touching our Righteousness who are Men and Sinners this definition hath no place here at all Therefore that I may answer you Osorius and yours to these things first I think you are not a little deceived in examining the nature of Righteousness not that any thing is put in the definition that I call false or that it doth not agree to the thing defined For he that governs all his actions with such constant reason and equity that in no part of his life he starts aside from truth and righteousness him I do esteem to be truly Righteous yea to be God rather or next to God verily I find no mortal man such Therefore herein is your errour that whereas there is a two-fold and divers sort of Righteousness set before us in Scripture the one which is of the Law and peculiar to God the other which is of Faith and peculiar to us you are only so taken up in defining the one that you do not at all touch upon the other about which the chiefest matter of Controversie is here And so you proceed in setting forth the perfect excellency of the Divine Righteousness and justly so indeed to be accounted of that in the mean while you leave no Righteousness to Man at all For what Righteousness shall Man have if Righteousness be so strictly defined that it cannot consist but of works of perfect Righteousness nor be communicated but only to perfect men For now seeing no men are so perfect in this World but that this miserable depravation of our Nature is far from this exactness and there is none as Augustine witnesseth as long as he is in this life who pretends himself to be just in the sight of God By necessary Consequence it follows that either there is no Righteousness of ours at all in this life or it must be another than that which your definition thus circumscribes to us for thus you define it That it is an excellent state of mind conformed by the Divine Law founded upon Divine Prescription free from all wickedness and coming near in its resemblance to the Divine Nature C. And indeed in that state we were Created in the beginning But we have lost it long since neither are we yet perfectly restored but we shall be restored at length by the Divine power and bounty of Christ on the day that this our corruption shall put on incorruption and this mortal body shall rise again to immortality In which state of Resurrection we believe with Augustin that we shall fulfill Righteousness that is we shall have compleat Righteousness In Comparison of that Resurrection saith he the whole life that we now live is but dung c. And where now is that excellent habit of mind coming so near in its resemblance to the Divine Nature Where is that constant equity of reason and moderation of mind free from all sin Or what do you think of this life which Isaiah calls a menstruous cloth and Augustin calls dung if it be compared with that which is true Righteousness Whereby you do evidently discern as I suppose what comes of this your famous Theological Theory of Righteousness for if there is no way of entring into the Kingdom of life but by Righteousness and no Righteousness according to your Opinion can consist but of a perfect observance of the Divine Law and dignity of works what follows then You must either deny that we are sinners in this life and assert that we are righteous by works or if according to Scripture you confess us to be sinners you must despoil us of all righteousness and shut us out of the Kingdom of God And what will you say to Augustin who esteems all the Righteousness of this life as dung What will you say to Isaiah who says it is as a menstruous cloth What will you say to Paul who accounted it as loss What will you say to Christ who calls them that acquit themselves most righteously not only Servants but also unprofitable Servants if the Scripture evidently testifies that every man is a Lyar If the beloved Evangelist condemns him for a Lyar who would seem to himself to be free from sin If according to the Testimony of Paul we have come short of the glory of God If as Iames testifies in many things we offend all if most holy Men in Prayer cry daily forgive us our sins if Augustine doth manifestly deny that any man after he hath obtained the remission of sins hath lived so righteously in this flesh or that he doth live so righteously that he hath no sin at all If with one mouth the publick consent of the most approved Fathers testifies the same if moreover continual private confessions if Conscience it self which is as a thousand Witnesses convince even thy self to be a perpetual sinner darest thou who art a sinful man confuted by thy own works dream yet of the righteousness of works and promise Heaven to thy self and others by works And doth not the example of the Pharisee in the Gospel affright you who having been deceived by a false Opinion of his own Righteousness and who whilst flattering himself he thought he was not like other men c. He was yet so far from that which he perswaded himself concerning himself that he went away worse than those whom he most despised in Comparison of himself But how much more modestly would you behave your self if with a humble meekness restraining that insolency of Spirit you would either frame your self to the Example of David who durst not come forth into the presence of God or would put on that most humble mind of Tertullian who comparing his Life with another Man thou art a Sinner saith he like me yea a less Sinner than I for I acknowledge a pre-eminence in my sins c. At least you might and ought to be admonished by the sharp rebuke of the Laodiceans who when they had highly flattered themselves with a false perswasion of their own righteousness which they took upon them by works They did not in any other thing more displease the Divine Iudgment therefore Augustin said right let no man flatter himself Let Man take Sin which is his own and let him leave Righteousness to God c. But what is that let him leave Righteousness to God but abandoning all Righteousness of works to confess our selves to be that which we are sinners and God only to be just Which also Saint Paul doth more evidently confirm in these words to declare his Righteousness that he may be just and the justifier of him who Believe in Iesus In which a twofold manner of Righteousness presents
Vertue c. Who ever denied that it is God only that can do those things But what say you O good friend Is our whole Salvation and Righteousness in the sight of God contained in that only in driving out of the Mind those little Heats of all evil Lusts whereof you speak in abolishing the roots of all vices and in maintaining duely and constantly the office of perfect Vertue How far the Works of Human Life are from the perfection of Righteousness But now do you your self perform all these things which you require in us for the perfection of righteousness Hath the great Husbandman watered the happy ground of your mind with so great a vigor and verdure of his bounty that no wild Vines nor Briars do any where appear in all your life That no Lust draws you aside from your duty No perturbation of affections throws you down from your state of constancy No concupisence of the eyes defiles the purity of your mind He that seeth a Woman saith he to lust after her hath already committed adultery with her in his Heart What if a man is accounted unchast before God if so much as his Eyes are Adulterous if he is next to a Murtherer that is so much as rashly angry at his Brother if he that calls his Brother Racha or bespatters the name of his Neighbour with the smallest reproach is in danger of the Council what shall be said to him who hath poured forth not only volumes of reproaches but Cart-loads of spiteful speeches against his Brethren and fellow Servants with so much virulency and gall of bitterness So that I need not here go through all the Precepts of the Divine Law as concerning loving God above all concerning the strictest love to our Neighbour concerning shunning offences puting up injuries praying for enemies the abdication of this World the framing the Life to a Dove-like simplicity and other such like things Which things seeing they are so various in kind and so difficult in the observation I would know of you not what ought to be done but what you your self do express in deeds Not what the Divine Grace is able to do in you but what it does in effect Whether he heaps you up with so many and so great gifts of his that you are able to perform all things that are written in the royal Law Which if you can avouch so to be I willingly congratulate your happiness and I am not at all against your obtaining by way of merit that which your works do merit but that you may go up to the Kingdom and may take your self Unpinioned Wings as Arnobius saich wherewith you may go happily to Heaven and ' may fly to the Stars where you may reign with Christ and you only all other sinners being shut out may with God overcome when you are judged But in the interim here it comes into my mind to ask you a thing How will this consist with that which the Church sings in a holy Hymn and sings so aright Thou only art holy For how shall he only have the praise of that thing as saith Hierom which he hath common to himself with many What if you think there is no difference between his Righteousness and ours and you suppose there is no Righteousness but what proceeds chiefly from Works either let your life shew to us the same Works which Christ wrought or if you cannot let him only have the honour of this Title that Christ only may be righteous and Osorius may confess himself to be unrighteous and à sinner that now that saying may truely have place here which just now I cited out of Augustine Let man take sin to himself which is his own and leave Righteousness to God But you will say what then is there no Righteousness which belongs to men I do not deny that there is but it is such a righteousness as must be sought elsewhere than in works But you may say where then Not only I but also St. Paul will tell you the Righteousness of God saith he to all and upon all that believe And again in the same Epistle The Gentiles which followed not after Righteousness laid hold on Righteousness to wit the Righteousness of Faith On the contrary Israel which followed after the Law of Righteousness attained not unto the Law of Righteousness Why so Because they sought it not by Faith but as by the Works of the Law And writing to the Galatians knowing saith he that a man is not justified by the Works of the Law but by the Faith of Iesus Christ we also believe in Iesus Christ that we may be justified by the Faith of Iesus Christ and not by the Works of the Law because no flesh shall be justified by the Works of the Law c. who is so dim-sighted but he may clearly see what the meaning of the Apostle is in these words Wherefore I the more wonder with my self how great a stupidity darkens the minds of some of our own Country-men and especially those Iesuits who in a thing so perspicuous yield not unto Apostolick Authority so that they seem to have sallied out of some Trophonian Den for no other purpose but that waging War with St. Paul they may differ wholly from him in their opinion For what things can more fiercely encounter than such an opposition as this Christ is our Righteousness Faith is imputed for Righteousness If of Work then Grace is not Grace The Iust lives by Faith And after this manner doth the Apostle and Prophet instruct us What say they We are Iustified by Works and yet Grace is no less Grace The Iust doth not live by Faith but the Believer Liveth by the righteousness of Works And whereas Paul doth so attribute our Righteousness to Faith only that he attributes nothing to Works so often repeating these exclusive words without works apart from works not according to works If it is Grace then it is not of Works That I may be found in him not having my own Righteousness which is of the Law but that which is of the Faith of Iesus Christ To him that believeth in him that Iustifies the Ungodly Faith is imputed unto Righteousness also placing Iews and Gentiles as in a Scheme that by experience it self it may be evident how hazardous it is to seat the hope of Salvation any otherways than in the Faith of Christ only On the contrary those men overthrowing all these sayings of Paul endeavour this only by all the means they can that they may measure the whole sum of our Iustification by the performance of Works and not by Faith that they may take away all imputation of the Righteousness of another from us that Faith may no more contribute any thing to Righteousness but that it may render us worthy and fit on whom the Divine Grace should confer freely for the Merit of Christ the first infusion of inherent Righteousness By
condemnation due to Sinners I speak of those Sinners who being turned from their sins by serious Repentance fly to Christ by Faith But methinks I do already hear what your Divinity in this case will mutter against us you will not deny that Christ died for us and that our righteousness is placed in him but yet so that these benefits of his and rewards of justice come not to us by Faith nor by imputation but by the study of Works and Holiness which being given to the Merits of Christ we receive in this Life by the free gift of God Therefore that we who were of old shut up in darkness And even extinct by the strength of death now we do escape the tyranny of Death that we do now recover the gifts of divine righteousness formerly lost and slipt out of our hands and that we obtain the reward of life proposed to vertue all that consists in this that we should wholly abdicate and forsake whatsoever we have from our first Father and transfer our selves wholly to the similitude and imitation of our second Father and so it will come to pass that we shall purchase immortal and divine riches and eternal glory and true righteousness with everlasting praise not by our merits but only by the vertue of Christ Who works all these things in us Therefore according to this sort of Divinity the merits of Christ do nothing else in Heaven but that they obtain unto us Divine Grace whereby we may by way of imitation more easily resemble the most holy footsteps and similitude of Christ our second Father and lead our lives well in this World according to his Laws But now what if we cannot exactly follow the footsteps of his holiness What if imitation falter sometimes and stagger What if the servency of charity and the care of our most holy Religion and the observance of Iustice becomes too remiss Yea what if somewhere a defilement of sin creeps in as infirmity may occasion Or what if that I may use the words of Hierom he that rows a Boat against the stream slacken his hands a little doth he not presently slide back and is carried by the stream whither he would not and who is not remiss sometimes Seeing Paul also confesses that he is sometimes drawn thither whither he would not And then where is the righteousness which was hoped for by Works where is the immortality proposed to vertue Verily unless the greater mercy of our most gracious Father had so taken care for us that our whole Salvation should be laid up in the righteousness of his Son and if faith and imputation did not help us more than imitation of life our condition had stood on a miserable enough and too broken foundation But eternal thanks be to Almighty God the Father of all mercies who according to his unspeakable Wisdom which reaches from end to end strongly and disposes all things sweetly hath not settled our estate by any law of works but by faith that according to Grace the Promise may be sure to all the Seed that though we our selves are weak and void of all righteousness yet it is sufficient that there is one in our Nature which hath fulfilled all righteousness and that he only is righteous for all How say you for all Why not as well as the unrighteousness of one Adam of old was sufficient to bring ruine upon all Therefore let us behold Christ in Adam and compare the one with the other Who though they are very unlike to one another yet agree in this that both being First Fathers of Propagation by an equal similitude something came from both as Progenitors which hath spread abroad upon all Men. To wit Death and Life Sin and justice Therefore one Man destroyed all Men And in like manner one Man saves all Men neither do you your self deny this But let us see how the one destroys and how the other saves those that are destroyed Through his fault say you not our own we contracted the pollution of Sin in our Birth these are your very words Which as I entertain willingly so if they are true and if he in this respect was a Type of Christ which is shewed out of Paul what hinders but that we also in like manner in Regeneration may obtain the reward of Righteousness not for our own Obedience but his The one sinned and by his wickedness ruinated all Men the other obeyed and by his righteousness saves all You say it is true if so be we lead our Life well according to the Imitation and Example of him And where then is the agreement of similitude between Christ and Adam if the one destroyed us in our being Born as you your self confess but Christ cannot save us in our Regeneration except Imitation be joyned And where now is the Grace of Imputation and the Imputation of Faith unto Righteousness so oft repeated in the Scriptures taught by the Apostles testified by the most Ancient Fathers received and delivered by the Church Shall it be sufficient cause to inflict Death upon thy Body that thou wast propagated from Adam and shall it not have cause enough for the justification of thy Soul that thou art born again in Christ What say you Do none dye but they that Sin after the Example of Adam Are none saved but those that by a due imitation attain unto the most Holy Vertues of Christ And what then doth Baptism the Sacrament of Faith in Regeneration if Salvation is purchased by no other thing but by treading in the Footsteps of Christ The Objection of Osorius is Answered where the Imitation of Christ is discoursed of at large BUT you will say what is it not an excellent thing is it not a Pious thing is it not very necessary for every Man who counts his Life and Salvation dear to him who looks for Immortal Glory who seeks stable and eternal pleasures that he separate himself as much as he can from theImitation of the Earthly Father and frame himself wholly to the imitation of the Heavenly Who denies or is Ignorant of that O Osorius Who is so void of all Religion and Sense but is ready of his own accord and with his whole Heart to confess that very thing to you which that you may persuade you do not only explain but also draw forth all the force and efficacy of Speech that you can upon it with so much earnestness and vehemency First who is so Ignorant but knows what we received from both our Parents of which you dispute so prolixly The thing it self and the experience of all things does abundantly make it evident into what deceits and straits into what a gulf of miseries the former hath brought us into So on the contrary how many and how great good things have proceeded from the other Father I think it is unknown to no Man Whose acts for us if we consider what is more excellent If the
greatness of his benefits what more Divine If his Life it self every way perfect with all purity of the greatest Vertues what more admirable Unto whose example as the most perfect rule for imitation seeing you invite us so earnestly I must needs both willingly approve of your Piety therein and also give you thanks upon this account for your diligence And so much the more upon the account that the unhappy calamity of these times does so greatly need such incitements which I know not by what means having obliterated the footsteps of the Heavenly Adam seem to have degenerated again unto the Earthly Father with a perfect conspiracy Wherefore I could the rather with to these manners and times that those things which are very well discoursed of by you concerning following the Example of Christ concerning the resembling of his Death concerning imitating his Divine Life may pierce not only the Ears of Men but also the most inward parts of their minds For what is more solid for Advice or more seasonable for the Time than that which you so much enlarge upon with a plentiful amplification of Words that every Man according to his power should propose unto himself Christ the chiefest Example of all Vertue and Master of Life for Imitation and Resemblance That having rooted out the filth and relicks of the Old Nature He may drive away very far from him with a resolved and magnanimous Spirit all Taints of impurity And because as you say we cannot be in the middle between the two therefore it remains that having forsaken the party of the body we should so fight under the banner of Christ our Prince we should so subdue the body it self by the power of his saving Crosi all rebellion of the body should so be overcome in us that this unbridled lust which maintains everlasting enmity against God may at length yield to his command and that we may not lessen any endeavour or labour howsoever great in this most holy observance of Iustice and imitation of Christ. As these things are proposed by you most excellent Osorius no less Holily than Eloquently so I would that in like manner your Rhetorick might make a suitable Harmony concerning the Imitation of Christ in the Ears of the Roman Bishops and Cardinals That these Men having abdicated the perishing and transitory Wealth of this World with which they overflow beyond all measure of their own profession and also above royal magnificence may at length think of the poverty of Christ that they may diminish their Possessions and large Inheritances heaped together their Diadems and their other regalities I say not according to the example of the Ancient Philosophers but according to the contentation of the most Holy Apostles that seriously rejecting the luxury and superfluity of this Life their vain glory their needless vanities and trifles may at length cease to be conform to the wicked fashions of this World And that laying aside all haughtiness and pride of Life they may submit themselves to the humility of Christ and restrain and compose the exorbitancy of their Minds and Spirits And laying down this Popish Cruelty and Tyranny learn to become meek of Christ that most perfect pattern of meekness Learn saith he of me because I am meek and lowly of Spirit I do not require that those Roman Priests should wash the Feet of the Poor according to the example of Christ but that they should not embrue their cruel Hands in the Blood of their Brethren neither do I require that they should give Water to refresh the Disciples of Christ but that they should not heap up Flames and Faggots to burn their Bodies nor lay Snares for them or devise to entrap them privily design their ruine and destruction furnish Darts and Weapons to slay them for whom Christ was Sacrificed and by whom they themselves were never hurt If Example should be taken from Christ I pray you what doth the Divine Father and Creator commend more unto us what else doth his whole life breath but mutual Charity both towards Friends and also towards Enemies Who not only doth not break the shaken and bruised Reed but upon the Cross prays for his very Crucifiers Therefore we have an example singularly excellent which we may imitate We have also together with an example a commendation by the mouth of the Apostle by whom Charity is called the bond of perfection Moreover there is not wanting the Preaching of Divines who in their Books in their Exercises in their Sermons do attribute so much to Charity that they call It the form the perfection and the very life of faith without which there is no other vertue that can be helpful to Salvation And now I need not here in many words declare what agreement there is between the Doctrine of those great extollers of Charity and the practice of their lives seeing there are so many proofs before our eyes so many ten thousands of men slain do witness it and so great abundance of Christian blood shed there is so great outrage of Persecution every where there is nothing safe from slaughter fury tumult snares contentions dangers articles of Inquisition bonds and imprisonments In some places the Turk makes havock with the Sword and elsewhere with flames and smoak And the Fathers of the Roman Court exercise Cruelty First they make Laws written with blood which afterwards they commit to Political Monarchs to be promulgated and to the other Officers to be executed by Law On the sudden Citizens of good repute and Learned Ministers are violently haled to examinations and afterwards to death if any Man dare but open his mouth against the manifest abuses of errours they spare neither Age nor Sex nor Condition Thus forsooth those perfect Roman Catholick Nobles imitate the Charity of Christ so they follow his Divine Life so they resemble his death so they shew forth his meekness so they bear the Image of the Divine Father so they wholly and more than wholly form and fashion themselves from the imitation of the earthly Father to the example of the Heavenly Who justly deserve to hear from the Lord ye are those that justifie your selves before men but God knoweth your hearts for that which is of high account before Men is abominable before God What if the most Holy Popes and purple Cardinals those Chiefest Dignitaries of the Church with all this your Order of Bishops and the most strict Orders of Monks who by Place Dignity and Profession seem to approach nearest unto Christ and to supply his place upon earth differ so much from him what cause is there why we should hope better of the whole body of the common people or that any Man should promise himself Salvation in following the footsteps of Christ but God willing I shall elsewhere make enquity into this just matter of complaint Now let us return to you Osorius whose so godly and eloquent exhortations about putting on and imitating Christ
Augustine will Ingeniously Confute this Fallacy for us in his Book The Title whereof is concerning the Perfection of Righteousness Where he speaks after this manner That the state of this Controversie about the perfection of Love is exercised about two Questions To wit By whom And when First as if the Question be by whom a Man may attain unto such perfection that he may be without Sin He answers that comes not to pass by the strength of Free Will but by the Grace of God And so far there is no debate betweeen us and the opposite party But if there be enquiry made about the time when such a perfection is attained Augustine speaks expresly that this comes not to pass in this Life but in that which is to come And this same Augustine no less oppositely in another Book dispels the mists of this Argument with very evident Words This precept of Righteousness saith he concerning loving the Lord with all the Heart and with all the Soul And also that of loving our Neighbour we shall fulfil in that Life where we shall see Face to Face But here some will object wherefore is it commanded if it is not fulfilled here Augustine Answers To wit That we may be Instructed what we ought to ask by Faith and whither to send Hope before and unto what things that are before us we should press forward not being satisfied with any thing that is behind Therefore according to my opinion saith he that Man hath made a great progress in this Life in that Righteousness which is to be perfected who by profiting knows how far he is from the perfection of Righteousness c. What is that Which writing to Bonifacius he thus reasons about Divine Grace The Grace of God saith he gives in this Life an endeavour to keep the commands And here you have the Obedience begun as we call it and the same if any thing is not fully observed in the precepts Pardons c. And so all commands of God are reckoned as performed because whatsoever is not performed is pardoned By which as I suppose you see that our Righteousness in this Life is of such a sort that it consists rather of the remission of Sins than the perfection of Vertues which perfection must be looked for by us in the Life to come Moreover there is another thing that must not be paffed by in this place that the same Augustine writing to Hierom in the 29th Epistle saith Charity is a Vertue whereby that which should be beloved is beloved This in some is greater in others lesser in others none at all But the fullest that cannot be increased as long as Man lives here is in no Man But as long as it can be increased verily that which is less than it ought to be is faulty by reason of which default there is not a just Man upon the Earth that doth good and sinneth not Because of which default no Man living shall be justified in the sight of God By reason of which viciousness if we say that we have not sin we deceive our selves and the Truth is not in us because of which how much soever we have profited it is necessary for us to say For give us our debts The Books of the Antient Orthodox Divines are full of very Authentick Testimonies confirming this Opinion It is an excellent and grave saying of Cyprian speaking of the Regenerate Let no man saith he flatter himself upon the account of a pure and unspotted heart that trusting to his own Innocency he should suppose that his wounds need no medicine seeing it is written Who shall glory that he hath a chast heart or who shall glory that he is clean from sins But if no Man can be without sins whosoever shall call himself unblameable is either a proud man or a fool c. For this saith Hierom shall every one that is godly pray unto thee if he is godly how doth he pray for pardon of iniquity if he hath iniquity how is he called holy There is not so great a Harmony found in any one man saith Ambrose that the Law which is in the Members doth not oppose the Law of the mind Therefore that which the Apostle Iohn said is true of all Saints in the general If we say that we have no sin we deceive our selves and the truth is not in us I may also add that of Bernard which is very agreeable to this matter Who dare arrogate to himself saith he that which Paul himself confesses he had not attained unto Indeed he that gave the command was not ignorant that the weight thereof exceeded the strength of men but he judged it useful that by this very thing they should be convinced of their own insufficiency and that they should know what end of Righteousness they should endeavour with all their might to attain unto Therefore by commanding things impossible he did not make men transgressors but humble that every mouth might be stopped and all the World might lie under the Iudgment of God I can bring innumerable Testimonies of the like sort out of well approved Authors But why do I take up my time in rehearsing the Names of Men or reckoning their approbations when that I may speak it in one word all the Antiquity of former Ages the publick consent of the former Church and the choicest Writers out of all Eldest Time as many as ever rejected the Antient Pelagianism all those with one mouth agree in this matter against you That there is no integrity of Righteousness in this Life which is not imperfect which needs not forgiveness That there is not so great an Innocency here which is without any wound which needs no Medicine and that none of all the Saints have so lived that a great deal was not wanting to him to compleat Righteousness and who needed not daily to pray for the pardon of his iniquity As Augustine testifies Because saith he there is daily offending therefore there must be also daily remission Which things being confirmed by most evident Testimonies of very Learned Witnesses Where 〈◊〉 is that Salvation which according to your description is placed in Righteousness Holiness Religion and the excellent Merits of all Vertues Where is that Righteousness of Works which reconciles us to God and makes us like God Where is that Way which is paved to Heaven for us with the excellent Merits of Works Where is that Ascent into the Heavenly Kingdom which is opened by the Merits of the greatest Vertues Where are the Mansions of the Everlasting Kingdom which you assert are justly and deservedly given to holy and pure men Where is also that Immortal Kingdom which you conclude is due by best right not only as a Recompence and Reward but also as a Legal Patrimony founded by the wisdom and bounty of the Father What if according to your Discipline there is
their own default as if a Prince send forth an Ambassador any whither very sound and whole to whom afterwards he had commanded some things which he could easily have performed unless he had made himself Cripple lame thro' his own default Now if in performing the Commands the Ambassador wants ability is there cause why this impotency should be imputed to the Prince and not rather to the Ambassador who deprived himself of his own soundness And that is it which Augustine signifies lib. de Iustic perfect Yea therefore saith he it is man's fault because it came to pass by the will of Man only that he is come to that necessity which the will of Man only cannot shake off Therefore that representation which is brought in by you of a Servant in Bonds is nothing to the purpose unless you likewise prove this that this impediment was cast upon him not thro' any fault or cause in himself which seeing it cannot be denied by you what cruelty should there be reckoned to be in it if a Lord require just punishment to be inflicted on a Servant that is corrupt and flagitious Yea behold rather singular Clemency in the Lord who is so far from inflicting upon the Servant the punishment which he deserved that he receives him into favour without any merit yea moreover exposes his dearly beloved Son to undergo punishment for the Servant Go now Osorius and when you have sufficiently considered with your self about this matter then tell who those are that are enraged with so great fury that so impudently cast such a filthy blot of Injustice and Cruelty upon Eternal Goodness What if you judge so of Luther and Calvin of whom you speak so bitterly what other thing do they but proclaim according to the Gospel the free pardoning grace of God to all that by Faith embrace Christ who was slain for us They are so far from being guilty of this Calumny which you most unjustly cast upon them that you can no where find any who with greater earnestness do declare the infinite Riches of Divine Grace to Mortal Men. How Christ takes away Sins With an Answer to the Objections of Osorius BUT this goodly Antagonist rushes upon us again with another caption which at the first sight may somewhat puzzle the mind of the Reader For he asks of those that deny Sin to be utterly extirpated by the Grace of Christ in this Life Whether they distrust his Power or his Clemency For if Christ doth not abolish all Sins in them whom he receives into favour that comes to pass either because he cannot or because he will not If you say he cannot you take away his Power If you plead that he is not willing you rob him not only of the praise of his Clemency but also of his Faithfulness Therefore whatsoever way you defend your Opinion you trample upon the Son of God and cast great reproach upon him Well said most excellent Man And now by what confirmation do you prove this For seeing his Infinite Power cannot be hindered by any difficulties from performing suddenly the things which he willeth And seeing his Love is so great that of old he bath engaged his Faithfulness that through Christ he would abolish Sins and would deliver Mankind from all wickedness what boldness then is this of most impure men who deny that Sin is utterly destroyed in those whom he hath joyned to himself with a holy Love and assert that Sin is not wholly cut off nor plucked up by the roots that all the remainders thereof are not extirpated These things said he Argument Ma. Nature can shut out all Sin being helped by the Grace of God Mi. The Grace of God helps those who are born again in Christ. Concl. Therefore all necessity of sinning is excluded in those that are born again If you understand it of the perfect help of of Grace which is hindered by no difficulties but that the infirmity of Nature may be taken away so the Major is true but the Minor false For though I confess that the Riches of Divine Grace are infinite and that the Gifts are excellent which God bestows upon his own yet this grace of God doth not so perfect any man in this Life but that oft in small things we offend all and pray daily that our debts may be forgiven us Yea what is all the discourse of the Saints to God but a continual praying and deprecating as Hierom witnesses whereby it extorts the Clemency of the Creatour that we who cannot be saved by our own strength may be saved by his Mercy Concerning which there is also heard a Mystical Song of the Psalm For this saith he shall every Saint pray unto thee in a time when thou mayest be found Whence Hierom infers not without reason If he is a Saint saith he how doth he pray for the pardon of sin If he hath iniquity upon what account is he called holy to wit after that manner whereby it is elsewhere said A just man falleth seven times a day and riseth up again And again A just man is an accuser of himself in the beginning of his speech c. Therefore the Grace of God helps our infirmities that they may be diminished But we deny that he so helps them that they are wholly taken away It helps indeed infirmities as hath been said but yet it leaves us infirm that it may always help us No man is ignorant how great power of Christ appeared in the holy Apostles which yet did not fully compleat their strength but it was rather perfected by their infirmity We know saith he in part and we prophesie in part But when that which is perfect is come then that which is in part shall be done away We now see darkly through a Glass but then face to face Now I know in part but then I shall know as I am known Therefore that I may answer in a word If you suppose there is that help of Divine Grace which makes Obedience in this Life to be wholly unblameable and perfect Augustine will presently deny that Who discoursing of the first Precept of Righteousness whereby we are commanded to love God with all our heart and our Neighbour as our selves We shall fulfil that saith he in that Life where we shall see face to face and presently And therefore that man hath profited much in this Life in that Righteousness which is to be perfected who by profiting knows how far he is from the perfection of Righteousness Moreover that which is argued from the power of Divine Grace is not sufficient to exclude the necessity of sin They say indeed that by the perfect Grace of God it is possible that a man may not sin at all in this life Be it so Yet all things are not made which can be made by the singular power of God So by the power of God helping us we could flie yet
by performing these Offices of Life which are contained in the Law O miserable condition of Mortal Men if those things are true which you Evangelize to us But by what Authority of the Gospel do you confirm those things which you assert You say There is no reason that any Man should be joyned to God unless he be a Friend to him I hear you What then But no Man can be his friend unless he be like him That is harder Let the induction proceed But the Divine similitude consists wholly of the study and exercise of true Vertue From all this therefore it is concluded That there is no other way that joyns us to God but what consists in the performance of Vertue and in worthy Offices And now what will become of those who being Iust Men fall seven times a Day and yet rise up again What also will become of all those concerning whom Iames speaking saith in many things we offend all Moreover what will become of those whom Christ bids Pray Lord forgive us our debts Moreover whereas you say that no Man is joyned to God or received into favour but he that is his Friend If that be so How then doth God agree to his own Law which commands not only to love Friends but to pray for Enemies I beseech you when God so loved the World that he gave his only begotten Son what else was this World then but an Enemy to God which yet he had so great a favour to Yea Paul expresly testifies that we were reconciled to God not when we were Friends but Enemies and therefore he says the love of Christ is commended in this that he dyed for Enemies And again if whilst we were Enemies we were reconciled unto God by the Death of his Son much more being reconciled we shall be saved by his Life See I beseech you how great a difference is between Paul's Assertion and yours Osorius He affirms we were reconciled to God when we were Enemies you admit no Man unto favour but him that is a Friend to him and conform to him in the whole fimilitude of his Life And how then will that command of Christ consist concerning loving Enemies and that by the example of his Father's bounty who bestows the benefit both of Sun and Rain not only on Friends but also on Enemies if so be the Grace of Divine favour is accessible to none but Friends and those that are like himself And that I may by the by touch something here of the Mysteries of Prophetical Scriptures tell me what else is pointed at unto us by the reception of Iacob and his Sons into the Land of AEgypt Gen. chap. 47. Whom that very loving King being brought unto him to whom they had not been so much as known before received for Inhabitants of Foreigners and for dear Subjects of Men unknown not only into the Common Wealth but into Friendship not at all for their own sakes who brought nothing with them but hunger and poverty But only for the sake of Ioseph whom the King had a very dear love for What else doth Ioseph represent to us but the sublime Son of God dearly beloved of him What else should you understand in the Brethren Father and the whole Kindred but us miserable Sinners whom being dead in Sins Christ hath quickned and of Enemies reconciled us in Friendship to his Father not for any merit of our Works or Conformity but only by that favour whereby he is powerful with the Father But now let us briefly bring the Osorian Argument into a regular form that we may the better view each part thereof Argument Ma. Those only are joyned in friendship with God who are like unto him Mi. They who are infected with the pollution of Sins are not like God Concl. Therefore none of those to whom pollution of Sin cleaves have any Union with God And thence on the contrary sense it is gathered that it must be concluded by necessary consequence that all spots of Sins being abolished That man who desires Union with God should agree with him by a certain eminent resemblance I Answer First to the major which is not always true Though the similitude of manners hath oftimes no small strength to procure Friendship in the common use of Life as Cicero says yet all things that are any way unlike are not so opposed that they cannot consist together without fighting one against another As there are many differences in things yet every difference doth not unty the bond of love As again neither do all Men every where cleave to one another by a firm bond of Friendship whosoever do some way agree in endowments and Ingeny Verily in the Divine Love this agreement of Conformity hath no place That they should be received into favour who came nearest to his Image For so it would come to pass that all other Creatures being excluded Almighty God would embrace only Angelical Vertues with his Divine Favour Though neither here if you look to Angels themselves doth any proportion of similitude unite into one with the Divine Holyness according to the Testimony of Roffensis Who says that the Righteousness of Men is another than that of Angels and again that their Righteousness is another than that of God As therefore this Righteousness of Angels if you compare it with the Righteousness of God will seem imperfect and beyond all comparison coming short of that highest Righteousness and which yet perhaps is without Sin So if you compare Human Perfection with Angelical it will have some Imperfection yet so that all its works are not subject to Sin Hitherto spake Roffensis Augustin also comes to this Point who comparing our Righteousness which now is with that which is to come hath these words concerning its dissimilitude when that Righteousness saith he according to which they live shall be and where no evil concupiscence shall be let every Man measure himself what he is now and what he shall be then and he will find in comparison of that Righteousness that all his works now are loss and dung c. And presently after In the Resurrection we believe we shall fulfil Righteousness that is that we shall have full Righteousness In comparison of that all the Life we live now is dung c. And now Osorius what Agreement of similitude will you find between this Life of dung and that highest Author and Prince of all Holiness The Assertion of Osorius whereby he proves that there can be no Reconciliation to God unless all the Relicks of Sin be utterly cut off BUT perhaps some Osorian will here again object Though dissimilitude doth not divide the connexion of friendship but yet things that are so different that they are opposed to one another by a mutual repugnancy it cannot by any means be that those things should be joyned together of which sort are Virtue and Vice Righteousness and Sin Love and Hatred
which every man must endeavour according to his power to attain by industry and diligent labours and the merits of the greatest Vertues And when the former Pelagians affirmed that we could do that by the strength of Nature there were not wanting others at the same time who valiantly opposing the help of the Grace of God to Free-will successfully rejected and exploded this wicked Opinion by the Scriptures After this came another kind of Divines who having followed Augustine disputed thus against the Pelagians that we cannot so much as will good by Free-will without Grace or merit Eternal Life by any means without Grace And that is true indeed But that those same men joyning Grace again deny not that we can merit Life by Works and that ex condigno according to their worth I do not see what difference is between these and the Pelagians in that except that in the manner of working they somewhat differ for those work without grace these no otherways but by grace but both do equally err from the scope of true Iustification For as untrue as that is that it is in our power to perform any thing aright without the Grace of God It is again as false that this grace of working was not given by God for any other purpose but to produce meritorious works whereby we may be justified Though I deny not that by any means that the Divine grace of the Spirit is both fruitful and abounding with the greatest Vertues which can never be idle but it doth not therefore follow by sufficient strength of Reason that the reward of Eternal Salvation is due to the merits of these Vertues as the generality of Sophisters chatter with a great noise in Schools For thus Thomas the Prince of this Faction and the others that are partakers of his Discipline discourse of grace and in their Summularies do define this grace as if it were nothing else but a certain habitual infusion of the heavenly gift in the essence of the Soul because as they suppose it is a principle of meritorious works for so Thomas defines it And Guillermus not much differing from him calls this grace a form freely given to us by God without merits which makes him that hath it acceptable and makes his work good and meritorious Of these then is a vulgar definition made up and it thus defines grace unto us that it is a gift of good will freely given making its possessor acceptable and rendring his work good And Albert shews the manner how it makes a man good in as much as by infused Vertues as he says it perfects the will of man for act c. By these things I suppose it appears evident enough what Opinion hitherto hath been usual amongst those men in the Popish School In which neither their Divines themselves are well enough agreed with one another for some place this habitual gift of influencing grace in the essence of the Soul subjectively that I may speak in their own Dialect amongst whom is Thomas and Bonaventure Others chose rather to refer it not to the essence but the powers of the Soul as its proper subject of whom is Scotus and the Allies of that Order Again There are those who think grace is nothing else but a Vertue which is the thing that Osorius strongly defends in his Books But Thomas confutes this Heresie with much greater strength and bears it down with suitable Reasons But the summ of all their summs drives at this that Faith only may be excluded from Iustification and that they may not acknowledge any other Iustification but what consists in exercising of Works Neither do they think this grace to be given to us upon any other account but for this end to fulfil as they say the Commands of God according to the due manner without which the fulfilling of them cannot otherways be meritorious The Errour of the Tridentines in defining Grace is examined I Have explained the sayings of some Divines which differ several ways from one another yet they are all wonderfully agreed in this one thing as it were by a common Conspiracy that they may take away from sinners that saving Grace which only justifies us Let us joyn also unto these if you please the Sophisters of later times and especially the Nobles of Trent and the Hereticks of that Council whose Writings Opinions and Decrees when they are read what do they declare I will say in a word and truly nothing that is sound nothing that is not full of Errour nothing that does not disagree with the genuine verity of the Word But what that Errour is lest we should seem to accuse them without cause let us explain in a few words but true to wit seeing there is a twofold Testimony of the Grace of the Father towards us in the Scriptures the one whereby in a free gift he bestowed his Son upon us 〈◊〉 the other whereby he bestowed his Spirit The Son to die for us the Spirit to 〈◊〉 our Life there is not any man but should confess that they are both great gifts He gave his Son than whom nothing was dearer to him he bestows his Spirit than which nothing is higher in Heaven But for what purpose doth he bestow both how does he give them for our advantage for what end with what fruit what did he design in so doing by what Reason was he persuaded by what necessity by what mercy was the most gracious Father and maker of the World moved I would very willingly ask this first either of Thomas Aquinas or rather of those Tridentine fellow-Priests for if Free-will being helped by the grace of the Sprit of God as they say could do so much by meriting through the infused Vertues even as much as was sufficient for obtaining Salvation what cause then was there why all this charge should be put upon Christ the Son of God What need was there of his blood Why did not the most gracious Father spare his Life But if so be that all other helps of grace could afford no help to expedite the business of our Redemption Then it remains to be asked of those men what they affirm of Christ whether they acknowledge him the only Saviour or not And indeed I know that they will not deny that Christ is the only Saviour But in the mean while it remains that they should answer me this after what manner this only Saviour saves his own whether only by his Innocency and Death or by adding other helps besides Now if they judge that other securities are necessarily required it must be known what sort of Securities these are Aquinas with his Associates answers that those are gifts procured by the Holy Spirit and habitual Infusions of Charity and the like faculties of exercising Righteousness which helps unless they are added the Death of Christ according to his Opinion is not of such efficacy that it should be able
thus define Faith unto us that they place its Object in the Mercy of God only For thus is Faith defined by most of our Divines at this day to wit That it is a firm and constant relyance on the Mercy of God promised freely for the sake of Christ. Which definition if it be true by this means it appears that the Object of Faith is placed no otherways nor in any other thing but in the free Mercy of God laid hold upon which neither I my self deny to be true in this sense as Faith in this place is taken for a relyance as it is often used in this signification because it hath a respect to Mercy and brings forth Assurance in the mind of Believers But whether this relyance properly justifies us before God it may here be enquired not without profit A Question Whether only relyance on Mercy justifies of it self Verily as for my part I am not nor ever was the man that would be prejudicial to another man's Opinion I allow that every man should be persuaded in his own mind I hinder it not But if I am permitted freely to profess in a free Church what my Opinion is my reason leads me to think that this relyance on Mercy and assurance of Salvation promised must be a thing very nearly joyned with Faith and which every man ought to apply to himself but then when it is most applied it is not that which properly and absolutely unloads us of our sins and justifies us before God but that there is some other thing proposed in Gospel which by Nature should in some respect go before this assurance and justifie us in the sight of God For Faith in the person of the Son which reconciles us to God doth necessarily go before And then relyance on most assured Mercy follows this Faith concerning which none of those that believe in Christ can doubt Objection But you may say What doth not Mercy promised in Christ go before the vocation of Faith doth not the same Mercy freely justifie Believers Moreover seeing the Promises of God are most sure may not the same be safely and constantly trusted in That I may answer these men Indeed the Mercy of God moves first no man doubts of that which is the cause and original of all good things But it is not that which is matter of Controversie in this place Whether Mercy on God's part is the Mother of our Iustification but what that is on our part which hath power with God for our Reconciliation whether relyance on Mercy or Faith in the Person of the Son I know that the Mercy of God is immense and infinite in which is comprehended all the Election of the Saints Neither am I ignorant that those things are most sure which are proposed to be believed in the Articles of the Creed than which as nothing is more sure so neither is there any thing which any man ought to doubt of about the assurance of those things which are promised or concerning the faithfulness of the Promiser For what is more sure than the Promises of God what more stable than the faithfulness of the Promiser what more free than Mercy freely proposed in Christ Wherefore the rather this unsavoury and no less reproachful barking of Hosius Andradius and such like men should be hissed away out of the Society of Christians who kicking against the pricks bring all things into doubt and uncertainty with the Academicks and they look upon it as a thing unsufferable for a man to take upon him to rely upon the promise of Salvation which they of Trent condemn with an Anathema Hosius detests it as vain and unprofitable arguing as if this assurance of Divine Grace did nothing but open to the Consciences of men a door to a certain slothful laziness and dissolute life Therefore saith he as prudent Fathers and Masters sometimes do they hide their Love towards their Children and Servants that they might keep them the more in fear and in their duty So God doth also towards his Servants that being kept wavering between hope and fear he may by that means the more easily drive them from security and negligence c. Concerning the Assurance of Christian Reliance against Hosius A Worthy comparison for sooth of God and Men which disannuls and destroys all the Promises of God the whole Doctrine of the Gospel yea and the foundations of all Religion For to what purpose should God promise by his Word if he would not have us assured of those things which are promised A Son was promised to Abraham and he believed not at all distrusting him that promised and it is accounted a praise to him What then Do you praise the undaunted confidence of Abraham and do you dispraise ours In like manner the Seed to come was promised to miserable Adam To what purpose that he might stick in a trembling wavering diffidence or rather that he might support his mind with the expectation of the promised consolation There are so many engagements of promises in both Covenants which if the Divine Truth would not have made sure unto us why then would he have them written in the Word and recorded in Books Briefly why are we commanded in the Christian Articles of Faith to believe the remission of sins the Resurrection of the flesh and Life Eternal but that we might reckon those things to be most sure unto us which are inserted in the Articles Therefore that is false which Hosius affirms That no man is bound to believe firmly or to hold assuredly either concerning himself or this man or that man that his sins are forgiven him for Christ's sake that he is in a state of grace and that he is assuredly to possess the Kingdom of Heaven c. And again neither is that less false which he fathers upon men of our persuasion as if we held thus that every man is a partaker upon that account only because he hath determined himself to be a person that will be accepted of God which is not true and is not without an impudent calumny For we are not of such an Opinion as to believe that an assured persuasion of Mercy should by any means be separated from Iustifying Faith which the Divines of the Popish way do abominably neither again do we transfer properly the very cause of Iustification into this confidence and naked application of Marcy as they falsly slander us Why so because yet some other thing is wanting which must needs go before this application of the Promise and which is necessarily required to the true cause of Iustifying The cause of Iustification depends not on confidence or the application of Mercy only YOU will say What then Is not the free Promise of God a most true cause on which our whole Iustification depends If you say on God's part it is true if you ask on our part you must go further and something seems to
perfect to day whilest he always endeavours after better things the morrow he finds it imperfect These things said Hierom. Therefore if Paul being in perpetual motion could find no ftate of Righteousness in which he could rest It follows by consequence from hence that either there is no Iustification of a Christian in this Life or that surely it is not defined by its right terms by Thomas or the Thomists whence a just connexion is framed on this manner Argument Ma. Where there is a perpetual Race there is no station nor term of motion Mi. There is a perpetual Race in this Life towards obtaining Life Con. Therefore there is no station of attaining to Righteousness in this Life and end of notion which Thomas sets down By these things I think it is sufficiently evidenced what is the Iustification of a Wicked Man in the Scriptures and in what thing it chiefly consists not in a transmutation of inherent qualities by a voluntary receiving of Grace as they of Trent would have it but in the judiciary absolution of the Iudge whereby he that is guilty is sent away free and indemnity is given to him Whence Iustification seems to be defined not amiss by some That it is an action of God whereby he absolves the condemned Sinner from the Law in his free mercy for the sake of Christ justifies him from his Sins and glorifies him being justified Though in the mean while it is not denied that it is a matter of great concernment how every Man leads his Life and amends it But yet it is one thing to speak of Righteousness and another thing to speak of Iustification And again it is one thing to be exercised in the common use of Life and another thing to be exercised in judicatories There the amendment of Life hath praise but in judicatories no regard uses to be of what you are to do but of what you have done not what new qualities better Grace hath brought but by what remedy former Sins may be done away And now I pray you what then must be said and looked for in that most strict Iudgment of the most high God where the scene and sink of the wholeLife comes to be brought forth from its lurking places to the light where impurity of Life Deceits Injuries Filthiness of Lusts the Defilement of Conscience and Concupiscence the Wickedness of Words Works Counsels and Thoughts the Ambition of a pust up Mind the stubborness of Hatred Love Envy and the other Affections Rebelling against Reason the Love of the World Earthly Desires the Contempt and Ignorance of God The neglect of Duty Moreover the whole sink of things formerly done will be all at once laid open What will the miserable Sinner say here What will he bring To what will he fly Will he fly to his secret Confessions and Expiatory Penances and Satisfactions that will not be sufficient These things may declare thee to be a Sinner and a Penitent but not at all Righteous What then you will say hath not God promised to the Penitent the pardon of their Sins Be it so but where then is the Tridentine Iustification which is denied to consist of Remission only whereas you bring nothing into Iudgement but Confessions Penances and Deprecatory Tears For what need is there of any Satisfaction or Repentance when you have committed no Sin But if otherways Where then is your Righteousness whereof you boast To wit say you Remission of Sins being once received by Repentance together with Remission it self flows in Sanctification and the Renovation of the inner Man and the other gifts of Grace by the Holy Spirit whence Man of Unjust becomes Iust and of an Enemy a Friend c. What and dare you trusting in this Righteousness of yours enter the lists with the Majesty of so great a Iudgment And think you that your Vertues are such that they will overcome at this Iudgment Seat when they are Iudged Not by the Righteousness say you of my Vertues but by those works which the efficacious Grace of God works in me Which Righteousness is not mine but God's Not of my own Free will but of Grace acting in me Now then wherein will this Righteousness of yours differ from that Pharisee in the Parable of the Gospel Whose Life if you look into you see it is honest enough and unblamable if you look upon Grace he seems no less to acknowledge it and to attribute all his Vertues to it Otherways why did he with so much reverence and so carefully give thanks to God that he was not like other Men unless he had thought that whatsoever good Works he had were received of his gift and bounty For his Prayer doth sufficiently declare that wherein he seems not so much to Glory in his own good deeds as in the grace of God which he had received to which he ascribes all these things which he had done Therefore if it be true that these Roman Catholicks define That true Iustification consists in no other thing but in Works of Righteousness done by the grace of God what then doth hinder but this Catholick Pharisee according to their Catholick Opinion should be sent away to his House justified Which not being so it remains therefore that another manner of Iustification should be sought for by us than in VVorks of Righteousness which inheres and is planted in us by the grace of God But here the Roman Legions fight with all vehemency for their Catholick Righteousness as for their Camp First by Natural Reason that it is contrary to Nature for any Man to receive the Name or Essence of Righteousness from the Righteousness of another Moreover that it is much less reasonable for God who is the highest perfection of Righteousness and the Eternal Verity to will or be able to pronounce Men Iust that are impure and defiled with wickedness and Evil deeds and who are not truly righteous That I may answer these men two things offer themselves to be considered one which belongs to the cause of Iustification and another which belongs to the explication of the word In both of which the Adversaries are greatly mistaken First in this that treating of the cause of Iustification they seem to place it in no other thing next and immediately but in every man 's own Righteousness not which is imputed being received from another but which every one hath within himself trusting to this foundation That because every thing receives its name and essence only from the form that is inherent hence they gather that none should be accounted just but those only whom their own life and not another's makes righteous If they understand it of Formal Righteousness only and not Iudicial it hath no absurdity and may without any inconvenience be granted to them But what then what is this so much to the purpose for this is not the matter of debate what we are or are not formally in our selves
upon the Mercy of God only forgiving us our sins for Christ's sake Let us add hereunto the reckoning of Oecumenius lest we should not be too sufficiently guarded with Witnesses who commenting on the words of Paul Rom. chap. 3. Wherefore says he all after they believed in Christ are justified freely bringing Faith only with them and also intimating what that is wherein all the assurance of our Salvation is placed he introduces the remission of sins only in these words Being washed from our sins by Iesus Christ c. And again confirming this same and asking how this Iustification is brought to pass he makes answer himself saying By remission of sins which we have in Christ Iesus And soon after demonstrating the same more evidently viz. wherein Righteousness or the Iustifying Grace of God chiefly consists Herein says he that men who are dead in sins may be justified by the remission of sins Behold a demonstration of Righteousness set before you that not only God himself is righteous but also justifies his People by the Faith of Iesus By which there are two things which you may see to be very evident First That all power of justifying is placed in Faith only according to this man's Opinion where he says bringing Faith only with them and then That against the Tridentines he teaches that all this Iustification received by us from God consists in the remission of sins For what is more evident than this speech All Iustification which proceeds to us from God consists either in the forgiving of iniquities or in the covering of the same or in their not being imputed c. And these things we have said hitherto are taken out of Oecumenius to whom if we must agree what credit then should be given to those Catholick Tridentines who deny that they are justified by the remission of sins only which how contrary it is to all reason I need not plead against them with many Arguments because they ought to be convinced of falshood by nothing more than by their own Actions For who looks into the Lives of those Popes Cardinals Bishops Monks but he may easily perceive by those things which he daily sees that there is nothing whereof they stand in greater need or desire more ardently than the gracious Clemency of God in forgiving those sins which they have committed This doth appear both many other ways and also it is most evidently testified by their publick and daily wishes suffrages and prayers In their Temples in their Liturgies in the Solemnities of their Masses in their Antiphonies what other thing do they cry for what do they request of God but that they may obtain the pardon of their own sins and the sins of their Parents and Benefactors Otherways what is the meaning of those words daily repeated in the Prefaces of their Masses Let the Almighty and Merciful Lord give unto us the indulgence absolution and remission of all our sins C What is the meaning of so many Advocates in Heaven Patrons and Favourites to obtain Mercy from God Moreover to what purpose are those words wherewith they daily confess to God and blessed Mary and all Saints And again when they days and nights without measure and end vehemently call upon the He-Saints and the She-Saints and chiefly the blessed Mary with such sort of cryes By thy pious interposing wash away our faults O most holy Virgin Mother of Grace I am unworthy of Grace and less than all thy Mercies My sins 〈◊〉 anding in opposition O most holy I deserve not to be heard by 〈◊〉 O immaculate hide not thy face from me so 〈◊〉 a sinner O Star of the Sea suffer me not to wander from the way but by the guidance of thy Light deliver me from the darkness of sins O Queen of Mercy do not lose the renown of thy Antient Mercy in me a miserable sinner Hail Saviouress Redeem me O Redeemeress My sins burden me The World wraps me up I have sins I know not Merits O most bountiful take away my sins draw me from the World c. I beseech you good men what is the meaning of these Monsters of Religion If those things be true which your prayers declare how is not your Doctrine false with what Solder or Glue will these things so dis-joyned cleave to one another that they who by an assiduous deploring of their sins confess themselves to be sinners the same men should seem to themselves to be formally just and perfect men in the sight of God by inward Renovation that they should say they are less than the Mercies of the holy Virgin and in the mean while the Mercy of God should be less than that it can justifie alone That they know not Merits and yet bring in no other thing but Merits to make Iustification perfect What a contradiction is this of the Divines Or who should suppose them worthy to be believed who contradict in their Temples that which they dispute for in their Schools For they pray so as if they were void of all Righteousness But in Councils they so behave themselves as if no Unrighteousness were inherent in them and as if nothing were wanting to perfection of Righteousness Now these things being so what remains to be said to these Men but that with Hierom we should say this Let those Men either defend what they say or forsake what they cannot defend The Prophet cries It is the Lord's Mercy that we are not consumed and those Men hope that they shall not be saved by Mercy only but shall be Righteous before God by the Righteous performance of Works Isaiah so great a Prophet or rather Evangelist under the sense of his sins confesses his lips are unclean And the same elsewhere says We have all gone astray like Sheep Daniel in his Prayer laments We have sinned we have done wickedly we have behaved our selves unrighteously and departed from thy Commandments c. And lest any Man should pretend that these things were signified by the Prophets not in their own Name who were Saints but in the person of the People the Prophet presently made confession of himself adding Whilst I was yet praying and confessing my sins and the sins of my People c. Abraham and Sarah though praised upon the account of their Faith were rebuked in their laughter and their very thought was rebuked as a point of unbelief and their silent Motion of Heart was not hid from the knowledge of God though they were not Condemned of distrust because they laughed Moses than whom none was more familiar with God after he had received so great a power of grace yet he offended at the waters of strife and did not obtain to enter with his Brother Aaron into the Land of promise Peter the Apostle in whom so great gifts of grace received shined forth yet he is almost drowned and deserved to hear O thou of little Faith wherefore didst thou doubt If
there was little Faith in him I know not in whom it is great Except in those successors of Peter and the Fathers of Trent Paul himself though he was taken up into the third Heaven yet writing to the Philippians openly professes that he had not yet attained unto that which he sought for but having forgot those things that were behind he pressed forward with all his might towards those things that were before And does any in this life hope to attain unto that which Paul with all his endeavours was not able to attain unto But why should I prosecute this matter any further The Moon shall be confounded said the Prophet and the Sun ashamed when the Lord of Hosts shall reign before his Ancients gloriously and in another place the Heavens are not clean in his sight and he charged his Augels with folly The Moon is ashamed and the Sun consounded and the Heaven is covered with Sack-cloth Wherefore then are not the Tridentines affraid to appear in the presence of so great a Iudge as if they were free from all guilt whilst they have nothing to trust to but their own Inherent Righteousness The frivolus Objection of the Adversaries is more largely exa mined and confuted BUT what shall be said to those unruly Persons and Deceivers who though they have undertaken a cause that they cannot defend being convinced by so many Testimonies of Scripture and Examples Yet such is their obstinacy they do not submit to the Truth when they are overcome by its Evidence What then have they to say for themselves By one you may understand what they all are 〈◊〉 Tiletanus a Commentator upon the Council of Trent arguing against Chemnitius thinks his cause is well enough defended by this curiously contrived Sophistry Whereas the Holy Scriptures reser all the concernments of Man's Iustification to the Grace of Remission only he interprets it thus by the Authority of the Council To wit he acknowledges it to be true in the first Iustification or in respect of the beginning of Iustification For they say when a wicked Man is first Iustified by Faith no Works or Merits of Works go before but by the free grace of God for Faith and the Merit of the Son of God the Mediatour he is received into favour obtains a Pardon and is made an Heir Well said But what then Sirs do ye think that this is not sufficient to Establish a Man in everlasting Felicity No indeed if your Opinion be true unless there be added hereunto in the lives of those that are come to years a perfect Obedience to the Law of Righteousness which they affirm to be easie and possible to every Man And because Human frailty can by no means attain unto this Therefore there is need of the assisting grace of God which being altogether infused at once as Alphonsus affirms doth so renew a Man in the Spirit of his Mind and endues him with so great Charity that there is nothing so hard in the Law of Commandments but he can perform it with ready Obedience Whence it comes to pass that he is called Righteous not only by Name and by Imputation But is in very deed and as they speak really Righteous and Merits Eternal Life Ye have here briefly set before you a Summary of Catholick Divinity concerning the perfection of Righteousness which though there is no Man but sees how absurd and unreasonable it is yet that it may appear the more evidently it will not be a miss to reduce all the debates of the Adversaries into a short form of argument The Tridentine Argument Ma. Whosoever perform all the Commands of God they are truly Righteous not by Imputation but by true Vertue and Merit Eternal Life Mi. The Regenerate by renewing grace obtained through Faith and the Merits of Christ perform all the Commands of God Conolu Therefore the Regenerate 〈◊〉 not only accounted but also are really madeRighteous by grace and Merit Eternal Life In this one Syllogism if it be attentively considered as in a little Map all the Polution and Deceit of the Popish Doctrine is comprehended and it is no hard thing to answer it And first I would not unwillingly grant them that which they assume in the Major for the Laws appointed by God comprehending all Righteousness within the limits of their Circumference if there were any Man whose life was exactly squared according to the strict Determinations of this Law and defective in no Circumstance I should esteem him to be worthy not only of the Title of Righteousness but also of the Rewards that are due to a Righteous Man Let us proceed to the other parts of the Argument The Minor follows next But the Regenerate in Christ whom Faith hath once justified having just now received Divine grace they attain unto such a degree of Charity that they are wanting in nothing that is requisite to the most perfect Obedience of the Law But I would fain know where those Regenerate Men are and who they are for it is abundantly evident that they who are the maintainers of this Doctrine are no such Men themselves Their lives are so well known that there is no need of other Arguments to prove it They brag of so many and great things 〈◊〉 Righteousness Grace and Charity whose Vertues whereof they so much boast and manner of life if they be compared with their profession what is more disagreeing What more differing from Righteousness Whereby hath Peace and Grace less flourished and Iniquity more abounded in manners In what times hath the love if not of all at least of most Men waxed so cold It is needless here to complain of the vulgar This complaint chiefly concerns those that sit in the Chair of Hierarchy and are employed in Ecclesiastical Functions and I wish there were 〈◊〉 as just cause thereof as we see in most of 〈◊〉 But perhaps they will defend themselves 〈◊〉 the example of the Pharisees Of whom 〈◊〉 is said that they sat in the Chair of Moses 〈◊〉 taught that which was true though they 〈◊〉 not act according to what they taught And indeed the Example whereunto they compare themselves would please me well 〈◊〉 unless I judged them to be worse then 〈◊〉 Pharisees of those days For though the lives of those Men are Condemned yet their manner of Doctrine was not so contrary to Divine Institutions but the case is otherways with them For not only their lives are far from that Righteousness which they teach but their Doctrine also concerning this Righteousness and many other things is without any Foundation from Scripture But you may say what then Doth Christ the Bride-groom forsake his Bride Or is his grace lessened that he is unwilling or unable to help his Servants What think you of Charity Which being the fulfilling of the Law according to the Testimony of the Apostle will it do nothing in the Hearts of those in whom it is shed abroad towards the fulfilling of
these consequences from them Seeing such a Iudgment is approaching as will bring every one to render an account of their Lives therefore no Man should flatter himself with hopes that any of his offences either in words or deeds will go unpunished but every Man should so frame his Life that Faith and Holiness may be jointly united together and not separated from one another And this is a truth which many now a days have need to be admonished of not only Papists but also Protestants who make profession of the Name and Faith of Christ but yet notwithstanding they so behave themselves as if they thought an-outside shew of Religion were sufficient and as if they did not look for Iudgment to come they are so void of care to walk worthy of that Holy profession giving themselves up against their Conscience to all uncleaness with greediness whereby they both greatly provoke the wrath of God and put themselves in dreadful danger of the loss of Eternal Salvation Against such Men as run on into open wickedness without measure or remorse we may by better consequence draw this inference We must appear all of us before the Iudgment seat of God where account will be taken of all the Actions and Practice of our Lives Therefore let every one that hath regard to his own Salvation endeavour according to his power to lead a Life suitable to his Profession and without Hypocrisie to join a good Conscience with a good Faith For the word of Truth hath told us They that have done Evil shall come forth unto the Resurrection of Damnation But are such Scriptures contrary to Iustification by Faith in such as together with the profession of faith in Christ joyn the fruits of Obedience which though it is not perfect upon all accounts yet it is yielded in sincerity and uprightness of Heart according to their weak power and capacity Which though it comes far short of the compleat perfection of the Law yet nevertheless our Iustification is full and perfect in the sight of God For what is defective in our Works he supplies by his own imputation thro' faith in his Son which Faith is imputed to us for Righteousness not for our working but for our believing for though the abominable rebellion of wicked Men who walk not after the Spirit but after the flesh brings upon them the Iudgment of Condemnation yet this continues to be a truth The Iust shall live by Faith And he that believeth in me shall never perish But you may say The Sentence of the Iudge remains evident and uncontroulable which promises the Resurrection of Life to them that lead a Godly Life I answer It is very true which the Lord says but the conclusion drawn from hence is very false For in these Words Christ joyning the Fruit and the Tree Persons and things together gives the comfortable hope of Eternal Life unto his own Servants who according to their power labour diligently in the Gospel Not thereby determining what their Works deserve but shewing with how many and great rewards he will crown their labours who have suffered any thing for his Name But those Men contrariways arguing from the concrete to the abstract and dividing things from persons conclude amiss by this Enthymema They that are believers in Christ exercising themselves diligently in all Holiness shall be received into Eternal Life Therefore Good Works are the cause of Eternal Life To this I may make a brief and easie Answer Answer I deny the consequence for it is a Fallacy a non causa pro causa for in the antecedent the works of the godly are brought in as effects but in the conclusion as a cause whence there is no sound conclusion from the concrete to the abstract For it is no rational arguing because believers living Holily receive the gift of Eternal Life therefore their deeds merit Eternal Life Iust as if a Man should reason on this manner a Wife being Obedient to her Husband is admitted to be a partaker of all his Goods Therefore her Obedience is worthy of a share in all his Possessions A Son being Obedient to his Father is received for his Heir therefore his Obedience deserves the Inheritance VVorks are evidences of faith in Christ but not the cause of Salvation Iust as a Tree that brings forth Fruit if it hath any goodness in it receives it not from the Fruit but the Fruit hath all its goodness from the Tree In like manner the works of the Godly have nothing that they can claim a right unto in Iudgment If they find any favour or reward that is not due to them but partly to Mercy and partly to Imputation for the sake of the Mediatour to Mercy which pardons Evil deeds to Imputation which puts a great value upon good VVorks though of very little worth in themselves and crowns them with rewards So that all the praise belong not to Men but to God Not to Righteousness but Grace not to Works but Faith not to Iudgment but Mercy But you will say Shall we not all come to Iudgment Must we not all appear before the Tribunal of God It is true we shall all come But Augustin tells us of a twofold Iudgment one of condemnation and another of discretion whereby the Goats shall be separated from the Lambs and not Lambs condemned with the Goats It is an Article of my faith that we shall all of us come to Iudgment but I do hope the Elect of God will not come into the Iudgment of Condemnation And here we must carefully distinguish between the Lambs and the Goats between those that are united to Christ by Faith and the damned crew of Unbelievers For though in this just Iudgment of God every one shall give account to God of all their Works And there is no doubt but a reward will be given suitable to every man's Works but in a far different manner to the one and the other For they who seek for Salvation not by Faith nor the Imputation of Christ's Righteousness only but by the Works of the Law they shall receive a reward according to the desert of their deeds upon this condition that they shall live by the Sentence of the Law if they fulfil the Law as they ought but if not what else must they expect but that according to the just Decree of the Law no violation thereof should be found so small as not to make the sinner liable to Condemnation and justly so For he that hath no power in himself to obtain Righteousness and is not willing to receive it when it is offered by another if he suffer the punishment due to his sins let him not accuse the Law of unjustice but himself of unbelief On the contrary they that by sincere Faith are converted unto Christ if they have committed any evil thing for who among the holiest that is can run through his Race without a fall Their sins
can do them no hurt in the Iudgment which are already done away and pardoned before the Iudgment by Faith and Repentance And besides this if they did any thing well and worthy of praise they receive an everlasting Reward not for the merit of the Work but according to free Imputation whereby God in his Infinite Mercy sets such a value on the works of them that believe in his Name though they are vile and contemptible in themselves that he rewards them with the recompence of the promised Inheritance not for any merit of theirs but according as he hath promised it freely in his Son Now there being a twofold manner of Divine Iudgment as we have shewed out of Augustine one belonging to the Iustice of condemnation and another to the Mercy of Separation According to this diversity of Iudgment we must distinguish between those that are to be called before this Tribunal of the great Iudge for all of us must be called and presented before it but the distinction between those that shall appear must be observed For though we are all sinners by Nature and in the practice of our Lives yet we are not all sinners after the same manner There are some whose sins are already forgiven by Faith and the free Grace of God and there is no doubt but the Mercy of Separation will deliver such from the Iudgment of Condemnation because there is nothing that can be justly alledged against them For who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's Elect it is God that justifies who is he that condemns Or how can they in Righteousness be called to Iudgment for these things that were pardoned by the Iudge himself before they were brought under the Tryal of Iudgment For the offence being taken away the offender is not liable to Iudgment Wherefore no Sentence of Condemnation should affright those that are in Christ Iesus What Law can hold them guilty that are not under the Law but under Grace And again there are others that having passed their days in all manner of wickedness and abominations at their departure out of this Life carry with them a guilty self-condemning Conscience unto Iudgment Of which sort of Monsters this World hath been very fruitful Such as Epicurus Diagoras Lucian Sardanapalus vain glorious Boasters implacable Persecuters and Murderers of the Saints and such like Who though they may flatter themselves in this Life as if they were safe and out of danger yet they will find to their sorrow that there is a Iudge before whom they must unavoidably appear and give a strict account of all the actions of their Lives Therefore as touching the Iudgment of the Evil and the Good as I deny not that it is certainly true the Lord will judge the Living and the Dead in Righteousness and Equity So if they understand it of the Iudgment of Condemnation I answer as the Lawyers use to say The Exception limits the Rule For though this Iudgment is to be general yet if it be taken for the condemnatory Iudgment the general Rule is of force excepting those things that should be excepted But what this Exception is and to whom it belongs it appears evident enough by the distinction of separation mentioned by Christ in several places He that hears my Word and believes in him that sent me shall not come into condemnation but shall pass from death to life And again where the Lord fore-telling the time of his coming to Iudgment says thus When these things begin to come to pass look up and lift up your heads And presently gives the reason thereof for your Redemption draweth near Wherefore did it please him to make mention of Redemption to his Disciples without naming of Iudgment Certainly it was because as Paul speaks There is no Condemnation to them that are in Christ Iesus as on the contrary there is no Redemption to those who live without the Faith of Christ in slavery to this World and the Flesh. And elsewhere the Lord when he turned himself to his Disciples and could promise them nothing that was more glorious and magnificent he said unto them Ye also shall sit upon Thrones judging the Twelve Tribes of Israel Moreover Paul writing to the Corintbians says Know ye not that the Saints shall judge the World And yet breathing forth something more glorious he exalts Saints above the highest pitch of worldly dignity adding further Know ye not that we shall judge the Angels If the Saints shall be judges how should they be judged in this Court of Iudicature in which they have something to do but nothing to fear Whether the Iudgment of God is terrible to the Saints THerefore let Canisius produce what he can answer unto these Scriptures for it is his Opinion that all men should be possessed with fear of Iudgment These are his words Not only Sinners but also Saints themselves are oft-times affrighted at the fore-thoughts of Iudgement Thus the Iesuit speaks in his own Dialect But let us hear what Scripture-proofs he brings to maintain his Assertion Hence saith he David feared and with great fervency breathed forth this Petition Lord enter not into Iudgment with thy Servant In like manner Iob feared though he was innocent What shall I do said he when God ariseth to judge and when he visiteth What shall I answer For destruction from the Almighty was a terrour to me and because of his greatness I could not endure I was afraid of all my sorrows for I knew thou wouldest not hold me innocent c. To this Objection I answer in short Who knows not that in us and our Works there is nothing whereof we ought not to be greatly afraid So David and Iob and all the Saints the more they call to mind the actions and practice of their Lives the more they are surprized with the fear of Divine Iudgment and repose the less confidence in themselves But this doth not at all abate our rejoycing in Christ Iesus so that relying upon the never failing Promise of God and being assured of the remission of our sins we strive against this fear as much as we can Howbeit we cannot be so perfectly rid of this fear which is placed in our Nature but that it will sometimes return and cause trouble to the most eminent Saints But that which sometimes happens through infirmity is one thing and that which always becomes the Saints to do is another So David and Iob before the return of spiritual comfort were in terrour but after God had restored unto them the joy of his Salvation all fear vanished away Canisius in saying the Saints should be possessed with the fear of Iudgment does what in him lies to root out all the assurance of Faith out of the minds of the godly and to make the Promise of God and our fiducial relyance on him utterly void and of none effect Does Christ encourage us to lift up our
whole Wherefore there can be no surer demonstration that Faith only justifies than is held forth in these very words of the Sacrament whereby the flesh and blood of Christ is represented in that holy Banquet under the similitude of Bread and Wine Another Argument Unless your Righteousness exceed the Righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees ye cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven Therefore not Faith only but also Works of Righteousness exalt us to the Kingdom of Heaven I answer By these words the Lord gives us serious Instruction what manner of lives they ought to live that are justified But he doth not thereby signifie what is the proper cause of Iustification one Iudgment should be made of the causes of things and another of their effects If you enquire for the cause of Iustification the Lord hath resolved that doubt Thy Faith hath saved thee This is Life eternal that they should know thee the only true God and Iesus Christ whom thou hast sent In like manner Paul expressed himself If thou confess the Lord Iesus with thy mouth and believe with thy heart that God raised him from the dead thou shalt be saved But if you enquire what manner of lives they ought to live that make sincere profession of the Faith of Christ we are taught in this place and many other sayings of Scripture that they ought to differ much from the lives of the Scribes and Pharisees to wit that they who are created in Christ Iesus should behave themselves without a Pharisaical Vizard of external Holiness or a proud conceitedness of their own Righteousness but that they should be adorned and beautified with sincerity and uprightness of mind and persevere in the practice of good Works which God hath prepared that we should walk in them he said not that we should be justified by them but that being justified by his Grace we should walk in them bringing forth fruits worthy of our Vocation Another Argument Every Tree that bears not good fruit shall be cut down and cast into the fire Luke 3. Therefore Faith only is not sufficient to Salvation without Repentance I acknowledge the Divine Authority of that Prophecy which is true as it is generally known to all that have heard of the Gospel For who would endure an Unfruitful Tree that cumbers the ground and beares either no Fruit at all or such as is hurtful to the Husbandman But suppose it brings forth good Fruit and beautiful to look upon I would ask them whether the abundance of Fruit be the cause or whether it is not rather the demonstration of the Tree's Fruitfulness and whether the Fruits do not rather receive their growth from the Root whence they come Therefore if Repentance is reckoned amongst Fruits it doth not make the Man in whom it receives its first beginning perfect and good but only evidences what manner of Man he is now and hath formerly been For unless a wicked Life had gone before no Repentance had followed after Moreover Repentance could do no good unless Faith be joyned therewith by which a broken hearted Sinner may get access to the Throne of Grace But you may say Are not grief and remorse for Evil deeds and resolutions to the contrary things very acceptable to God and are not only conducible to the amendment of former miscarriages but also a great cause of future Reformation I Answer The sorrow of an afflicted Conscience which we call Repentance is a lovely effect but it proceeds from an Evil cause yet I deny not that it is a very excellent thing and never too late but always acceptable to God if so be it is accompanied with Faith in Christ. Neither do I deny that by means thereof Men are deterred from their customary Evil courses and stirred up to the exercise of Vertue Which though we grant to be true what doth all this avail towards the justifying of a sinner from those Sins that he hath formerly committed If a Man hath transgressed the Laws of the Commonwealth and being arraigned before a Iudge is forced to give account of all the actions of his Life will it be enough for him to say I was in an errour or I repent of my fault Will fear of judgment or shame set a Man free from the condemnation due to sin unless the Righteousness of a bleeding Saviour apprehended by faith do interpose and ward off the stroke of Divine vengeance from the guilty Sinner Without shedding of Blood saith the Apostle there is no remission Now then if neither Holiness of Life nor Prayers nor Tears nor the Blood of all the Saints can avail any thing towards the mitigation of the bitterness of this Iudgment and the only remedy be the death of the only begotten Son of God what will your Repentance do in this case Indeed I acknowledge that the Scripture attributes much to Repentance and there are glorious promises annexed thereunto but two things must be considered here First Of how large an extent the Promises are and next to whom they do belong for there are some rewards given in this Life and others that are reserved for Life Eternal Verily Eternal Life which is the benefit of Redemption as it could not be purchased by any works of ours so likewise it is not promised as the reward of Repentance or if in any Scripture it seems to be so promised it is not simply upon the account of Repentance but for another cause To wit the faith of the worker and not the work it self Therefore these things should be put each of them in their own places and comprehended within their own bounds That it may be understood aright what Faith does and what Repentance and what efficacy is in both and how they are distinguished from one another and also how they being joyned together do contribute mutual assistance to one another in the Iustification of the Ungodly For though we deny not that both are very pleasing to God yet the one is acceptable to him one way and the other another way For faith is acceptable through Christ but Repentance only upon the account of Faith And it is also a certain truth that though by faith only as the procuring cause we obtain Iustification in the sight of God Yet this very faith doth not put forth its power of Iustifying upon any but penitent and broken-hearted Sinners and therefore in the Gospel we are so often invited to Repentance Not that it is not true faith only which justifies without Repentance but because faith if it be true justifies no others but them that have turned from their Sins in sincerity and are converted unto God by Repentance For such as have no trouble of Conscience nor sorrow for Sin but run on obstinately against their Conscience and continue in their Evil courses it is a vain thing for them to hope for Iustification by Faith whereof they falsely boast for all such stout-hearted Sinners
and Sinners insa different account Sinners in our selves Righteous in Christ. Isaiah 9. Whole Christ is ours Christ bears our publick person before the Father What is our Righteousness according to Paul Osor. de just lib. 2. lib. 7. p. 187. lib. 9. p. 228. Osor. de just lib. 2. lib. 7. p. 187. lib. 9. p. 228. God commands not any thing which cannot be observed by men according to the opinion of Osorius it is no fault in God if he command those things which cannot be kept by us Rom. 3. There had been no need for God to Iustifie us by Faith if we could be justified by works de justit lib. 4. pag. 90. Pag. 105. Preparation for Righteonsness Mat. 5. Whatsoever things the law 〈◊〉 it saith to those that are in the law that every mouth may be stopped and all the World may be guilty before God R. 3. Rev. 15. 4. The Ecclesiastical Hymn thou only are holy Hierom. ad Ctesiphontem Dial. 2. Aug. in Io. Hom. 49. Rom. 3. Rom. 9. Gal. 2. 1 Cor. 1. Rom. 4. Rom. 11. Hab. 2. Rom. 4. Gal. 3. 2 Tim. 1. Ephes. 2. Tit. 3. Rom. 11. Phil. 3. Rom. 4. Rom. 9. Concil Trident Sess. 6. A definition of rig hteousness according to the Iesuits of Colonia Censur Coloniensis 186 frat Alpbonsus Philip 4. p. 34. Argum. ex Topicis Aristot. 1 Cor. 1. 2 Cor. 5. Rom. 4. 3. Answer to the Iesuitical quibbles Men judge by qualities but God judgeth otherwise 2 Cor. 5. Prov. cap. 8. Aug. ad Boniface lib. 3. cap. 7. Bernard in Dominic Serm. 3. By what Righteousness they are justified before God by Christs or our own Aug. in Psal. 31. Christ is wholly ours with all his good things As Christ was made sin so we are made righteous But Christ was not made sin by inherent sin Therefore we also are not made righteous by inherent rightcousness The Righteousness of Faith Internal and inherent righteousness whereby we are justified according to the Gospel Faith is a most internal and inherent righteousness This is the work of God that ye should believe in him whom he hath sent Iohn 6. Augustine Iohn 3. So God loved the World that he gave his only begotten Son that all that believe in him c. Rom. 8. 1 Cor. 1. A rule of Law that which a Man doth by another he seems to have done by himself A comparison of Adam and Christ. The former Adam a Type of the second Rom. 5. As Evil was 〈◊〉 ed by the Sin of one so good is propagated by the Iustification of one by the Disobedience of one many were made Sinners Rom. 5. As many dyed by the Sin of one so by the grace of one many are justified Rom. 5. After what manner the sin of one is imputed unto all in like manner also the Righteonsness of one is imputed to all Otherways there would be no resemblance between Christ and Adam Adam a Type of Christ. Wherein the similitude of Adam and Christ consists A Imitation of Life Christ to be seen in Adam The severity of the Iudgment of God in Adam again the excellency of Mercy in Christ. The Type is compared with the Archetype Death took its beginning of making havock from the Sin of one not of many The heaviness of Iustice was again made amends for and over-balanced by as great mercy 2 Cor. 5. Isaiah 53. The Blood of Redemption encountering with Righteousness yet not violating Righteousness but Redeeming it An Answer The singular providence of the Eternal God in governing the business of our Redemption Rom. 6. Christ Iustifies Sinners but what Sinners Oso dejust lib. 7. The whole nature of our Salvation consists in nothing else but in the imitation of Christ and expressing a resemblance of him according to Osorius In what respect the similitude of Christ and Adam agrees Death and Sin from Adam Osor. de just lib. 7. p. 179. Osorius is opposed to Osorius Only by being propagated from Adam we perish And why are we not as well saved by being born again from Christ Object Osor. pag 180. Answer The imitation of Christ is very necessary for all Matt. 11. Charitv the bond of perfection Colos. 3. How no sign of Charity appears in the Roman Tyranny The Laws of the Popes are written with blood 1 Cor. 15. 1 Pet. 2. The promises of God are not tyed to the imitation ofChrist but to Faith A comparison of the First and Second Adam Christ the external cause of justification Faith in Christ the Internal Effects causes De just lib. 7. pag. 186. An argument from like things Luk. 18. Baptism a Sacrament of Faith Galat. 3. what Faith in Christ performs according to Paul Galas 3. Chrysostom Oso de just lib. 7. de just 1. 9. p. 232. de just 1. 6. p. 148. Iames. 2. Mat. 12. What the renewing of the Holy Ghost makes in us Oso de just lib. 9. P. 233. De just lib. 9. P. 234. Rom. 5. Ephes. 3. Rom. 4. De just lib. 9. pag. 234. We are beholden to the grace of God for all benefits and what that is which his singular favour towards us is ehiefly seen Luke 12. Daniel 7. Romans 5. Romans 4. Titus 3. Romans 8. On what foundation doth the free Promise of God chiefly stand Theassurance of confidence and persuasion from the free promise of God Osor. de just 1. 9. pag. 234. Ibid. p. 233. Lib. 9. p. 232. Two Paradoxes of Osorius both of which are false Ier. 31. 〈◊〉 11. Osor. l. 9. No man denies that the works of new Obedience proceed from the fountain of Divine Grace and the Merits of Christ. Every faithful man that is truly born again in Christ is a Law to himself or ought so to be Works of Faith Osor. de Iust. lib. 3. p. 71. Ier. 32. Ezek. 11. How far the Spirit of renovation promised and given by God reaches Ier. 31. Ezek. 36. Deut. 30. Hier. cont Pelag. Dial. 1. A twofold perfection or a twofold righteousness according to Hierome August cont duas Epistolas Pela l. 3. cap. 8. A twofold sort of Obedience according to Augustine Aug. de peccat merit remiss lib. 2. cap. 15. Aug. de peccat merit remis lib. 1. cap. 7. Aug. ad Bonifac lib. 3. cap. 7. Hierom. Advers pelag lib. 1. Hierom. ibid. Prover 18. Hierom. ad Ctesiphontem Deut. 30. I will Circumcise the Foreskin of thy Heart that thou mayst love me with all thy Heart and with all thy Soul Pelagianism August of the Perfection of Righteousness By whom Righteousness is obtained When Perfection is attained Aug. of the Spirit and Letter Aug ad Bonifac. lib. 3. cap. 7. Begun Obdience Imputation of Righteousness according to Augustine Augustine to Hierom. Epist. 29. Cpprian cited by Augustine Hierom. adversus Pelagi Ambros. lib. 10. Epist. 84. Aug. lib. 10. Epist. 84. Bernard super Cantic Serm. 50. Why God commanded things impossible Hieron Augustin Cyprian Orig. hom 21. on 〈◊〉 Cyprian de
promulgation of the Law I would ask him What the Law is which if it is nothing but the Rule of Righteousness how can any man be just where there is no Law But what man was there ever in the World but he carried about with him the Law of God if not written in Tables yet written on his heart and engraven on his conscience But the Decalogue was not yet engraven on Tables of Stone But what was contained in the Moral Decalogue which that holy man did not already comprehend within his own heart both of loving God and his Neighbour of not Murthering of not committing Adultery or honouring Parents c. 3. As touching the scope of this Epistle how greatly is campian mistaken For who is so void of sense that he doth not clearly perceive that the drift of the Apostle is not that which those Iesuits dream of to attribute our Salvation or Iustification to any Works either going before or following after Neither was this Office of an Ambassadour committed unto him that he might contend with the Iews about Ceremonies or with the Gentiles about Moral Duties but as Peter was entrusted with the Apostleship of the Circumcision so also the Preaching of the Gospel to the Uncircumcision was committed unto Paul not that he should Preach the Law but the Faith which before he opposed Not that he might declare the Righteousness of Works in which there is no Salvation but that God by him might reveal his Son amongst the Gentiles and might manifest unto the World that heavenly Trophy and glad Tydings of Peace and Victory obtained in Heaven by Christ and spread abroad far and wide through the Churches the boundless riches of Divine Grace which he had experienced in himself For he was called for this purpose to the Apostleship that the infinitely gracious Lord and Redeemer Christ Iesus might first exercise his Mercy towards him and afterwards by him declare his great Mercy towards Sinners not only by hisExample but also by his Ministry For thus he bears witness of himself that the Ministry of Reconciliation was committed to him for which he was appointed to be a Preacher and Apostle and Teacher of the Gentiles in Faith and Truth that he being an Ambassadour in Christ's stead might invite all men yea and beg of them that they would be reconciled unto God And this seems to be the principal scope that Paul aims at not only in the Epistle to the Romans but also in all his Doctrine to proclaim amongst the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ and that he might set before the view of all men what is the Communion of the Mystery that was hidden with God in former Ages c. But now in the Righteousness of Works no such Mystery lay hidden with God from former Ages Therefore it is false and abominable which Campian the Iesuit and such like Sophisters assert concerning the scope and sense of Paul's Epistle to the Romans For by the Law which Paul excludes from Iustification they understand that part thereof which comprehends Ceremonial and Iudicial Works wherein the Iews gloried or Works purely Moral performed before Faith on which the Gentiles relied Yea on the contrary when Paul removes the Law from Iustification he doth not only exclude it upon the account of Iewish Ceremonies or Moral Works performed before Faith but also upon the account of its weakness through the flesh both in Iews and Gentiles both in the regenerate and the unregenerate so that it cannot make sufficient satisfaction to the Iustice of God And Paul affirms That for this cause God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh What did God do but what flesh could not do For sin he condemned sin in the flesh In what flesh ours or his own Sons Who of all the Regenerate though endued with great habitual Faith and Grace hath so led his life walking not according to the flesh but according to the spirit but he always carries about with him flesh that is weak in many respects and vicious and subject to sin Concerning which every one may complain with the Apostle I know that in me that is in my flesh dwells no good thing And again I find a Law that when I would do good evil is present with me c. For what they speak of Works following Faith and Grace how little that helps their cause appears not more evident by any Argument than by the Lives of those that maintain this Controversie if they be strictly enquired into If that be true which Campian with his Iesuits pleads for That Righteousness is not obtained in men come to years but by Works that follow after Faith Let us behold then what excellent Works this Faith of the Mother Church of Rome brings forth seeing they so much glory in the Title of Catholick Faith and Preach so many things about Charity which is the fulfilling of the Law Let us look into the Life and Works of the Roman Popes Cardinals and Bishops and the whole Crew of the Monks and Iesuits Where can you find more of the flesh or less of true holiness than in those false-hearted and painted Hypocrites whose whole profession of Religion consists in Purple Gowns high topped Mitres Purple Caps Rings adorned with Iewels solemn Vows Ceremonies which in reality are rather Stage-playes than Exercises of Piety This appears to be too true by the unhappy Tumults raised in the World the Wars and Persecutions that are stirred up by none more than by those very men that call themselves Spiritual and Catholick whom it should become to be the chiefest encouragers of Concord and Messengers of Peace But having so much enlarged upon this sort of men with their Works and Merits let us return to the Examples of those of whom we spake before who were freely admitted unto Baptism and received into favour by Faith without any commendation of Merits at all yea without mention of any Works except such perhaps as were evil Amongst which number those Iews may be reckoned of whom three thousand at one time were Baptized by Peter Likewise also the Eunuch whom Faith only without Works made not only meet for Baptism but also an Heir of the Heavenly Kingdom And the Iaylor whom Paul Baptized Moreover Paul himself and all the Apostles and Publicans the family of Cornelius Zacehaeus Mary Magdalen and the Thief on the Cross If Faith without Works was sufficient to them for the Grace of Baptism why not also for the obtaining of Iustification and Life Eternal Vega and those of his Association answers after his usual manner that in all these Repentance was joyned with Faith and other things also belonging to good Manners and a godly Life But it easily appears how vain and insignificant this Answer of Vega is He says Repentance and other Vertues are joyned with Faith Which tho' I confess to be in some sense true in the lives and persons of