the Maledictory Sentence of the Law Answ 1. If this be untrue it 's pity so worthy a Man should unworthily use it against peace and concord If it be true I crave his help for the expounding of several Texts Exod. 23.6 7. Thou shalt not wrest the Judgment of thy Poor in his Cause Keep thee far from a false Matter and the Innocent and Righteous slay thou not for I will not justifie the wicked Is the meaning only I will not absolve the wicked from the Maledictory Sentence of the Law of Innocency Or is it not rather I will not misjudg the wicked to be just nor allow his wickedness nor yet allow thee so to do nor leave thee unpunished for thy unrighteous judgment but will condemn thee if thou condemn the Just Job 25.4 How then can Man be justified with God or How can he be clean that is born of a Woman Is the sense How can Man be absolved from the Maledictory Sentence of the Law Or rather How can he be maintained Innocent Psal 143.2 In thy sight shall no Man living be justified Is the sense No Man living shall be absolved from the Maledictory sentence of the Law Than we are all lost for ever Or rather no Man shall be found and maintained Innocent and judged one that deserved not punishment Therefore we are not judged perfect fulfillers of that Law by another or our selves Object But this is for us and against you for it denyeth that there is any such Justification Answ Is our Controversie de re or only de nomine of the sense of the word Justifie If de re then his meaning is to maintain That God never doth judg a Believer to be a Believer or a Godly Man to be Godly or a performer of the Condition of Pardon and Life to have performed it nor will justifie any believing Saint against the false Accusations that he is an Infidel a wicked ungodly Man and an Hypocrite or else he writeth against those that he understood not But if the Question be as it must be de nomine whether the word Justifie have any sense besides that which he appropriateth to it then a Proposition that denieth the Existentiam rei may confute his denyal of any other sense of the word So Isa 43.9 26. Let them bring forth their Witnesses that they may justified Declare thou that thou mayest be justified that is proved Innocent But I hope he will hear and reverence the Son Matth. 12.37 By thy words thou shalt be Justified and by thy words thou shalt be Condemned speaking of Gods Judgment which I think meaneth de re nomine Thy Righteous or unrighteous words shall be a part of the Cause of the day or Matter for or according to which thou shalt be judged obedient or disobedient to the Law of Grace and so far just or unjust and accordingly sentenced to Heaven or Hell as is described Matth. 25. But it seems this Learned Doctor understands it only By thy words thou shalt be absolved from the Maledictory Sentence of the Law and by thy words contrarily condemned Luk. 18.14 The Publican went down to his House justified rather than the other I think not only from the Maledictory Sentence of the Law of Innocency but by God approved a sincere Penitent and so a fit Subject of the other part of Justification Acts 13.39 is the Text that speaketh most in the sense he mentioneth And yet I think it includeth more viz. By Christ 1. we are not only absolved from that Condemnation due for our sins 2. but also we are by his repealing or ending of the Mosaick Law justified against the Charge of Guilt for our not observing it and 3. Augustine would add That we are by Christ's Spirit and Grace made just that is sincerely Godly by the destruction of those inherent and adherent sins which the Law of Moses could not mortifie and save us from but the Spirit doth Rom. 2.13 Not the Hearers of the Law are just before God but the Doers of the Law shall be justified Is it only The Doers shall be Absolved from the Maledictory Sentence c. Or first and chiefly They shall be judged well-doers so far as they do well and so approved and justified so far as they do keep the Law which because no Man doth perfectly and the Law of Innocency requireth Perfection none can be justified absolutely or to Salvation by it Object The meaning is say some The Doers of the Law should be justified by it were there any such Answ That 's true of absolute Justification unto Life But that this is not all the sense of the Text the two next Verses shew where the Gentiles are pronounced partakers of some of that which he meaneth inclusively in doing to Justification Therefore it must include that their Actions and Persons are so far justified more or less as they are Doers of the Law as being so far actively just Rom. 8.30 Whom he justified them he also glorified And 1 Cor. 6. â—â— Ye are justified in the Name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God Many Protestants and among them Bezâ— himself expound in the Papists and Austins sense of Justification as including Sanctification also as well as Absolution from the Curse And so Arch Bishop Vsher told me he understood them As also Tit. 3.7 That being justified freely by his Grace And many think so of Rom. 4.5 he justifieth the Vngodly say they by Converting Pardoning and Accepting them in Christ to Life And Rom. 8.33 Who shall condemn it is God that justifieth seemeth to me more than barely to say God absolveth us from the Curse because it is set against Man's Condemnation who reproached slandered and persecuted the Christians as evil Doers as they did Christ to whom they were predestinated to be conformed And so must mean God will not only absolve us from his Curse but also justifie our Innocency against all the false Accusations of our Enemies And it seemeth to be spoken by the Apostle with respect to Isa 50.8 He is near that justifieth me who will contend with me Which my reverence to this Learned Man sufficeth not to make me believe is taken only in his sense of Absolution Rev. 22.11 He that is Righteous let him be justified still 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which not only our Translaters but almost all Expositors take as inclusive of Inherent Righteousness if not principally speaking of it To speak freely I remember not one Text of Scripture that useth the word Justifie in this Doctor 's sense that is Only for the said absolution from the Curse of the Law For all those other Texts that speak for Justification by Christ's Grace and Faith and not by the Works of the Law as Rom. 3.20 24 28 30. and 4.2 5 25. 5.1 9 16 18. 1 Cor. 4.4 Gal. 2.16 17. 3.8 11 24. 5.4 c. do all seem to me to mean not only that we are absolved from the
are offended that I perswade you that by Melancholy Phantasms you set not the Churches together by the Ears and make People believe that they differ where they do not And you ask Who began the Fray Answ 1. Do you mean that I began with you You do not sure But is it that I began with the Churches and you were necessitated to defend them Yes if Gallus Ambsdorfius Schlusselburgius and Dr. Crispe and his Followers be the Church But Sir I provoke you to try it by the just Testimony of Antiquity who began to differ from the Churches In this Treatise I have given you some Account and Vossius hath given you more which you can never answer But if my Doctrine put you upon this Necessity what hindred you from perceiving it these twenty years and more till now O Sir had you no other work to do but to Vindicate the Church and Truth I doubt you had § VIII But pag. 15. You are again incredulous that All the Difference betwixt you and me or others of the same Judgment in the Point of Justification is meerly Verbal and that in the Main we are agreed And again you complain of your weak Legs Answ 1. I do agree with very many against their wills in Judgment because the Judgment may be constrained but with none in Affection as on their part Did I ever say that I differed not from you I tell you I know not what your Judgment is nor know I who is of your Mind But I have not barely said but oft proved that though not the Antinomians the Protestants are mostly here agreed in the Main If you could not have time to read my larger Proof that short Epistle to Mr. Allen's Book of the Covenant in which I proved it might have stopt your Mouth from calling for more Proof till you had better confuted what was given But you say Are perfect Contradictions no more than a difference in Words Faith alone and not Faith alone Faith with and without Works Excuse our Dulness here Answ 1. Truly Sir it is a tedious thing when a Man hath over and over Answered such Objections yea when the full Answers have been twenty years in Print to be put still to say over all again to every Man that will come in and say that his Legs are too weak to go see what was answered before How many score times then or hundreds may I be called to repeat 2. If I must pardon your Dulness you must pardon my Christianity or chuse who believe that there is no such perfect Contradictions between Christ's By thy Words thou shalt be Justified and Paul's Justified by Faith without the Works of the Law or not of Works and James's We are justified by Works and not by Faith only Must we needs proclaim War here or cry out Heresie or Popery Are not all these Reconcileable Yea and Pauls too Rom. 2. The Doers of the Law shall be justified 3. But did I ever deny that it is by Faith alone and without Works Where and when But may it not be by Faith alone in one sense and not by Faith alone in another sense 4. But even where you are speaking of it you cannot be drawn to distinguish of Verbal and Real Differences Is it here the Words or Sense which you accuse The Words you dare not deny to be Gods own in Scripture spoken by Christ Paul and James My Sense I have opened to you at large and you take no Notice of it but as if you abhorred Explication and Distinction speak still against the Scripture Words § IX Pag. 16. But you say Let any discerning Reader compare the 48 § of this Preface with the Words in pag. 5. of your Appeal to the Light and 't is likely he will concur with me in that Melancholy Phantasm or Fear For 't is worth the noting how in that dark Appeal where you distinguish of Popish Points i. e. some-where the Difference is reconcileable others in effect but in words we have no Direction upon which Rank we must bestow Justification nothing of it at all from you Name or Thing But why next to the All-seeing God you should know best your self Answ Alas Sir that God should be in such a manner mentioned I answered this same Case at large in my Confession Apologie Dispute of Justification c. Twenty years ago or near I have at large Opened it in a Folio Cathol Theol. which you saw yea in the very part which you take Notice of and now you publish it worth the Noting that I did not also in one sheet of Paper Printed the other day against a Calumnie of some Sectarian Hearers who gave me no Occasion for such a work Had it not been a Vanity of me Should I in that sheet again have repeated how I and the Papists differ about Justification Were you bound to have read it in that sheet any more than in many former Volumns It 's no matter for me But I seriously beseech you be hereafter more sober and just than to deal with your Brethren the Church and Truth in such a manner as this But by this Talk I suspect that you will accuse me more for opening no more of the Difference in this Book But 1. It is enough for to open my own Meaning and I am not obliged to open other Mens And my own I have opened by so many Repetitions in so many Books as nothing but such Mens Importunity and obstructed Minds could have Excused 2. The Papists minds sure may be better known by their own Writings than by mine The Council of Trent telleth it you What need I recite it 3. I tell you again as I did in my Confession that I had rather all the Papists in the World agreed with us than disagreed I like a Doctrine the better and not the worse because all the Christian World consenteth to it I am not ambitious to have a Religion to my self which a Papist doth not own Where they differ I am sorry for it And it pleaseth me better to find in any Point that we are agreed than that we differ Neither you nor any such as you by crying O Popish Antichristian shall tempt me to do by the Papists as the Dominicans and Jansenists and some Oratorians do by the Calvinists I will not with Alvarez Arnoldus Gibieuf c. make the World believe that my Adversaries are much further from me than they are for fear of being censured by Faction to be one of them If I would have been of a Church-Faction and sold my Soul to please a Party I would have begun before now and taken a bigger Price for it than you can offer me if you would Pag 17. You say Pile one Distinction or Evasion on another as long as you please as many several Faiths and Works and Justifications as you can name all this will never make two Poles meet Answ And do you cry out for War in the Darkness of Confusion
of Justification to be the Remission of Sin Original and Actual or the Imputation of Christs Righteousness which he maketh to be all one or the Imputation of Faith for Righteousness Saith Bishop Downame of Justif p. 305. To be Formally Righteous by Christs Righteousness imputed never any of us for ought I know affirmed The like saith Dr. Prideâ—aux when yet very many Protestants affirm it Should I here set together forty or sixty Definitions of Protestants verbatim and shew you how much they differ it would be unpleasant and tedious and unnecessary And as to those same Divines that Dr. Tully nameth as agreed Dr. Davenants and Dr. Fields words I have cited at large in my Confes saying the same in substance as I do as also Mr. Scudders and an hundred more as is before said And let any sober Reader decide this Controversie between us upon these two further Considerations 1. Peruse all the Corpus Confessionum and see whether all the Reformed Churches give us a Definition of Justification and agree in that Definition Yea whether the Church of England in its Catechism or its Articles have any proper Definition Or if you will call their words a Definition I am sure it 's none but what I do consent to And if a Logical Definition were by the Church of England and other Churches held necessary to Salvation it would be in their Catechisms if not in the Creed Or if it were held necessary to Church-Concord and Peace and Love it would be in their Articles of Religion which they subscribe 2. How can all Protestants agree of the Logical Definition of Justification when 1. They agree not of the sense of the word Justifie and of the species of that Justification which Paul and James speak of Some make Justification to include Pardon and Sanctification see their words in G. Forbes and Le Blank many say otherwise Most say that Paul speaketh most usually of Justification in sensu forensi but whether it include Making just as some say or only Judging just as others or Nolle punire be the act as Dr. Twisse they agree not And some hold that in James Justification is that which is eoram hominibus when said to be by Works but others truly say it is thay coram Deo 2. They are not agreed in their very Logical Rules and Notions to which their Definitions are reduced no not so much as of the number and nature of Causes nor of Definitions as is aforesaid And as I will not undertake to prove that all the Apostles Evangelists and Primitive Pastours knew how to define Efficient Material Formal and Final Causes in general so I am sure that all good Christians do not 3. And when Justification is defined by Divines is either the Actus Justificantis and this being in the predicament of Action what wonder if they disagree about the Material and Formal Causes of it Nay it being an Act of God there are few Divines that tell us what that Act is Deus operatur per essentiam And Ex parte agentis his Acts are his Essence and all but one And who will thus dispute of the Definition and Causes of them Efficient Material Formal Final when I presumed to declare that this Act of Justifying is not an immanent Act in God nor without a Medium but Gods Act by the Instrumentality of his Gospel-Covenant or Promise many read it as a new thing and if that hold true that the First Justification by Faith is that which Gods Gospel-Donation is the Instrument of as the Titulus seu Fundamentum Juris being but a Virtual and not an Actual Sentence then the Definition of it as to the Causes must differ much from the most common Definitions But most Protestants say that Justification is Sententia Judicis And no doubt but there are three several sorts or Acts called Justification 1. Constitutive by the Donative Covenant 2. Sentential 3. Executive And here they are greatly at a loss for the decision of the Case what Act of God this Sententia Jucis is What it will be after death we do not much disagree But what it is immediately upon our believing It must be an Act as in patiente or the Divine essence denominated from such an effect And what Judgment and Sentence God hath upon our believing few open and fewer agreee Mr. Tombes saith it is a Sentence in Heaven notifying it to the Angels But that is not all or the chief some run back to an Immanent Act most leave it undetermined And sure the Name of Sentence in general signifieth no true Conception of it at all in him that knoweth not what that Sentence is seeing Universals are Nothing out of us but as they exist in individuals Mr. Lawson hath said that wihch would reconcile Protestants and some Papists as to the Name viz. that Gods Execution is his Sentence He Judgeth by Executing And so as the chief punishment is the Privation of the Spirit so the Justifying Act is the executive donation of the Spirit Thus are we disagreed about Active Justification which I have oft endeavoured Conciliatorily fullier to open And as to Passive Justification or as it is Status Justificati which is indeed that which it concerneth us in this Controversie to open I have told you how grosly some describe it here before And all agree not what Predicament it is in some take it to be in that of Action ut recipitur in passo and some in that of Quality and Relation Conjunct But most place it in Relation And will you wonder if all Christian Women yea or Divines cannot define that Relation aright And if they agree not in the notions of the Efficient Material Formal and Final Causes of that which must be defined as it is capable by its subjectum fundamentum and terminus I would not wish that the Salvation of any Friend of mine or any one should be laid on the true Logical Definition of Justification Active or Passive Constitutive Sentential or Executive And now the Judicious will see whether the Church and Souls of Men be well used by this pretence that all Protestants are agreed in the Nature Causes and Definition of Justification and that to depart from that one Definition where is it is so dangerous as the Doctor pretendeth because the Definition and the Definitum are the same § XX. P. 34. You say You tremble not in the audience of God and Man to suggest again that hard-fronted Calumny viz. that I prefer a Majority of Ignorants before a Learned man in his own profession Answ I laid it down as a Rule that They are not to be preferred You assault that Rule with bitter accusations as if it were unsound or else to this day I understand you not Is it then a hard-fronted Calumny to defend it and to tell you what is contained in the denying of it The audience of God must be so dreadful to you and me that without calling you to
earnestly presseth me with his Quem quibus who is the Man I profess I dreamed not of any particular Man But I will again tell you whom my Judgment magnifies in this Controversie above all others and who truly tell you how far Papists and Protestants agree viz. Vinc. le Blank and Guil. Forbes I meddle not with his other Subjects Placeus in Thes Salmur Davenant Dr. Field Mr. Scudder his daily Walk fit for all families Mr. Wotton Mr. Bradshaw and Mr. Gataker Dr. Preston Dr. Hammond Pract. Cat. and Mr. Lawson in the main Abundance of the French and Breme Divines are also very clear And though I must not provoke him again by naming some late English men to reproach them by calling them my disciples I will venture to tell the plain man that loveth not our wrangling tediousness that Mr. Trumans Great Propit and Mr. Gibbons serm of Justif may serve him well without any more And while this worthy Doctor and I do both concord with such as Davenant and Field as to Justification by Faith or Works judg whether we differ between our selves as far as he would perswade the World who agree in tertio And whether as he hath angrily profest his concord in the two other Controversies which he raised our Guilt of nearer Parents sin and our preferring the judgment of the wisest c. it be not likely that he will do so also in this when he hath leisure to read and know what it is that I say and hold and when we both understand our selves and one another And whether it be a work worthy of Good and Learned men to allarm Christians against one another for the sake of arbitrary words and notions which one partly useth less aptly and skilfully than the other in matters wherein they really agree 2 Tim. 2. 14. Charging them before the Lord that they strive not about words to no profit but to the subverting of the Hearers yet study to shew thy self approved unto God a workman that need not be ashamed rightly dividing the word of Truth Two Sparks more quenched which fled after the rest from the Forge of Dr. Tho. Tully § 1. DId I not find that some Mens Ignorance and factious Jealousie is great enough to make them combustible Recipients of such Wild-fire as those Strictures are and did not Charity oblige me to do what I have here done to save the assaulted Charity of such Persons more than to save any Reputation of my own I should repent that I had written one Line in answer to such Writings as I have here had to do with I have been so wearied with the haunts of the like Spirit in Mr. Crandon Mr. Bagshaw Mr. Danvers and others that it is a work I have not patience to be much longer in unless it were more necessary Two sheets more tell us that the Doctor is yet angry And little that 's better that I can find In the first he saith again that I am busie in smoothing my way where none can stumble in a thing never questioned by him nor by any Man else he thinks who owns the Authority of the second Commandment And have I not then good Company and Encouragement not to change my Mind But 1. He feigneth a Case stated between him and me who never had to do with him before but as with others in my Writings where I state my Case my self 2. He never so much as toucheth either of my Disputations of Original Sin in which I state my Case and defend it 3. And he falsly feigneth the Case stated in words and he supposeth in a sense that I never had do do with Saying I charge you with a new secondary Original Sin whose Pedegree is not from Adam I engage not a syllable further And pag. 8. You have asserted that this Novel Original Sin is not derived from our Original Father no line of Communication between them a sin besides that which is derived from Adam as you plainly and possitively affirm I never said that it had no Pedegree no line of Communication no kind of derivation from Adam 4. Yea if he would not touch the Disputation where I state my Case he should have noted it as stated in the very Preface which he writeth against and yet there also he totally overlooketh it though opened in divers Propositions 5. And the words in an Epistle to another Mans Book which he fasteneth still on were these Over-looking the Interest of Children in the Actions of their nearer Parents and think that they participate of no Guilt and suffer for no Original Sin but Adams only And after They had more Original Sin than what they had from Adam 6. He tells me that I seem not to understand my own Question nor to know well how to set about my Work and he will teach me how to manage the Business that I have undertaken and so he tells me how I MUST state the Question hereafter see his words Reader some Reasons may put a better Title on this Learned Doctors actions but if ever I write at this rate I heartily desire thee to cast it away as utter DISHONESTY and IMPUDENCE It troubleth me to trouble thee with Repetitions I hold 1. That Adams Sin is imputed as I opened to his Posterity 2. That the degree of Pravity which Cains nature received from Adam was the dispositive enclining Cause of all his Actual Sin 3. But not a necessitating Cause of all those Acts for he might possibly have done less evil and more good than he did 4. Therefore not the Total principal Cause for Cains free-will was part of that 5 Cains actual sin increased the pravity of his nature 6. And Cains Posterity were as I opened it guilty of Cains actual sin and their Natures were the more depraved by his additional pravity than they would have been by Adams sin alone unless Grace preserved or healed any of them The Doctor in this Paper would make his Reader believe that he is for no meer Logomachies and that the difference is not in words only but the thing And do you think that he differeth from me in any of these Propositions or how this sin is derived from Adam Yet this now must be the Controversie de re Do you think for I must go by thinking that he holdeth any other Derivation than this Or did I ever deny any of this But it is vain to state the Case to him He will over look it and tell me what I should have held that he may not be thought to make all this Noise for nothing He saith pag. 8. If it derive in a direct line from the first Transgression and have its whole Root fastened there what then why then some words which he sets together are not the best sense that can be spoken It is then but words and yet it is the thing What he may mean by a direct Line and what by whole Root fastened I know not but I have told the World
OF THE IMPUTATION OF Christ's Righteousness TO BELIEVERS In what sence sound Protestants hold it And Of the false devised sence by which Libertines subvert the Gospel With an Answer to some common Objections especially of Dr. Thomas Tully whose Justif Paulina occasioneth the publication of this By RICHARD BAXTER A compassionate Lamenter of the Churches wounds caused by hasty judging and undigested concâ—ptions and by the Theological Wars which are hereby raised and managed by perswading the World that meer verbal or notional Differences are material and such as our Faith Love Concord and Communion must be measured by for want of an exact discussion of the ambiguity of words London Printed for Nevil Simons and Jonathan Robinson at the Kings-Arms and Golden-Lion in St. Pauls Church-yard 1675. The Preface Reader IF thou blame me for writing again on a Subject which I have written on so oft and so lately specially in my Life of Faith and Disputations of Justification I shall not blame thee for so doing but I shall excuse my self by telling thee my reasons 1. The occasion is many loud accusations of my self of which I have before given an account I publish it because I see the Contention still so hot in the Church of Christ and mens Charity destroyed against each other one side calling the other Socinians and the other Libertines who are neither of them Christians and if I mistake not for the most part in the dark about one Phrase and that of mens devising rather than about the sence But if indeed it be the sence that they differ about it 's time to do our best to rectifie such Fundamental Errours I find that all of us agree in all the Phrases of Scripture And a Mans Sence is no way known but by his expressions The question is then Which is the necessary Phrase which we must express our sence by We all say that to Believers Christ is made our Righteousness We are made the Righteousness of God in him He hath ransomed redeemed us as a Sacrifice for our sins a price He hath merited and obtained eternal Redemption for us that Sin is remitted covered not imputed that Righteousness is Reckoned or Imputed to us that Faith is Imputed to us for Righteousness and any thing else that is in the Scripture But all this will not serve to make us Christians What is wanting Why we must say that Christs Righteousness is Imputed to us as ours and that Christ satisfied for our sins Well The thing signified seemeth to us true and good and needful though the Scripture hath as good words for it as any of us can invent We consent therefore to use these Phrases so be it you put no false and wicked sence on them by other words of your own Though we will not allow them to be necessary because not in Scripture And we are more against adding new Fundamental Articles of Faith to the Scripture than against adding new Orders Forms or Ceremonies But yet it will not serve what is yet wanting why we must hold these words in a right sense What yet are not your own devised words a sufficient expression of the matter When we have opened those words by other words how will you know that we use those other words in a right sence and so in infinitum Our sence is that Righteousness is Imputed to us that is we are accounted Righteous because for the Merits of Christs total fulfilling the Conditions of his Mediatorial Covenant with the Father by his Habitual Holiness his Actual Perfect Obedience and his Sacrifice or satisfactory Suffering for our sins in our stead freely without any merit or Conditional act of mans God hath made an Act of Oblivion and Deed of Gift pardoning all sin justifying and adopting and giving Right to the Spirit and Life eternally to every one that believingly accepteth Christ and the Gifts with and by and from him And when we accept them they are all ours by virtue of this purchased Covenant-Gift This is our short and plain explication But yet this will not serve Christianity is yet another thing What is wanting Why we must say that Christ was habitually and actually perfectly Holy and Obedient Imputatively in our particular Persons and that each one of us did perfectly fulfil that Law which requireth perfect Habits and Acts in and by Christ imputatively and yet did also in and by him suffer our selves Imputatively for not fulfilling it and Imputatively did our selves both satisfy God's Justice and merit Heaven and that we have our selves Imputatively a Righteousness of perfect Holiness and Obedience as sinless and must be justified by the Law of Innocency or Works as having our selves imputatively fulfilled it in Christ And that this is our sole Righteousness and that Faith it self is not imputed to us for Righteousness no not a meer particular subordinate Righteousness answering the Conditional part of the new Justifying Covenant as necessary to our participation of Christ and his freely given Righteousness And must all this go into our Christianity But where is it written who devised it was it in the ancient Creeds and Baptism Or known in the Church for five thousand years from the Creation I profess I take the Pope to be no more to be blamed for making a new Church-Government than for making us so many new Articles of Faith And I will not justifie those that Symbolize with him or imitate him in either But yet many of the men that do this are good men in other respects and I love their zeal that doth all this evil as it is for God and the honour of Jesus Christ though I love it not as blind nor their Errour or their Evil. But how hard is it to know what Spirit we are of But it is the doleful mischief which their blind zeal doth that maketh me speak That three or four of them have made it their practice to backbite my self and tell People He holdeth dangerous opinions He is erroneous in the point of Justification And his Books are unsound and have dangerous Doctrines He leaveth the old way of Justification he favoureth Socinianism and such-like this is a small matter comparatively Back-biting and false reports are the ordinary fruits of bitter contentious Zeal and the Spirit of a Sect as such doth usually so work yea to confusion and every evil work when it hath banished the Zeal of Love and of Good Works Jam. 3.14 15 16. Tit. 2.14 And I never counted it any great loss to their followers that they disswade them from the reading of my writings as the Papists do their Proselytes as long as God hath blest our Land with so many better But there are other effects that command me once again to speak to them 1. One is that I have good proof of the lamentable Scandal of some very hopeful Persons of quality who by hearing such language from these men have bin ready to turn away from Religion and say If they thus set
against and condemn one another away with them all 2. Because divers great Volumes and other sad Evidence tells me that by their invented sence of Imputation they have tempted many Learned men to deny Imputation of Christ's Righteousness absolutely and bitterly revile it as a most Libertine Irreligious Doctrine 3. But above all that they do so exceedingly confirm the Papists I must profess that besides carnal Interest and the snare of ill Education I do not think that there is any thing in the World that maketh or hardneth and confirmeth Papists more and hindreth their reception of the Truth than these same well-meaning people that are most zealous against them by two means 1. One by Divisions and unruliness in Church-respects by which they perswade men especially Rulers that without such a Center as the Papacy there will be no Union and without such Violence as theirs there will be no Rule and Order Thus one extreme doth breed and feed another 2. The other is by this unsound sence of the Doctrine of Imputation of Christs Righteousness with an unsound Description of Faith saying that every man is to believe it as Gods word or fide divinâ that his own sins are pardoned which when the Papists read that these men make it one of the chief Points of our difference from Rome doth occasion them to triumph and reproach us and confidently dissent from us in all the rest I find in my self that my full certainty that they err in Transubstantiation and some other points doth greatly resolve me to neglect them at least or suspect them in the rest which seem more dubious And when the Papists find men most grosly erring in the very point where they lay the main stress of the difference who can expect otherwise but that this should make them despise and cast away our Books and take us as men self-condemned and already vanquished and dispute with us with the prejudice as we do with an Arrian or Socinian They themselves that cast away our Books because they dissent from us may feel in themselves what the Papists are like to do on this temptation 4. And it is not to be disregarded that many private persons not studied in these points are led away by the Authority of these men for more than Papists believe as the Church believeth to speak evil of the Truth and sinfully to Backbite and Slander those Teachers whom they hear others slander and to speak evil of the things which they know not And to see Gods own Servants seduced into Disaffection and abuse and false Speeches against those Ministers that do most clearly tell them the truth is a thing not silently to be cherished by any that are valuers of Love and Concord among Christians and of the Truth and their Brethrens Souls and that are displeased with that which the Devil is most pleased and God displeased with These are my Reasons submitted to every Readers Censure which may be as various as their Capacities Interests or Prejudices My Arguments in the third Chapter I have but briefly and hastily mentioned as dealing with the lovers of naked Truth who will not refuse it when they see it in its self-evidence But they that desire larger proof may find enough in Mr. Gataker and Mr. Wotton de Reconcil and in John Goodwin of Justification If they can read him without prejudice From whom yet I differ in the Meritorious Cause of our Justification and take in the habitual and actual Holiness of Christ as well as his Sufferings and equal in Merits and think that pardon it self is merited by his Obedience as well as by his Satisfaction To say nothing of some of his too harsh expressions about the Imputation of Faith and non-imputation of Christs Obedience which yet in some explications he mollifyeth and sheweth that his sence is the same with theirs that place all our Righteousness in remission of Sin such as besides those after-mentioned are Musculus Chamier and abundance more And when one saith that Faith is taken properly and another that it is taken Relatively in Imputation they seem to mean the same thing For Faith properly taken is essentiated by its Object And what Christ's Office is and what Faith's Office is I find almost all Protestants are agreed in sence while they differ in the manner of expression except there be a real difference in this point of simple Personating us in his perfect Holiness and making the Person of a Mediator to contain essentially in sensu Civili the very Person of every elect sinner and every such one to have verily been and done in sensu civili what Christ was and did I much marvel to find that with most the Imputation of Satisfaction is said to be for Remission of the penalty and Imputation of perfect Holiness for the obtaining of the Reward Eternal Life and yet that the far greater part of them that go that way say that Imputation of all Christs Righteousness goeth first as the Cause and Remission of Sin followeth as the Effect So even Mr. Roborough pag. 55. and others Which seemeth to me to have this Sence as if God said to a Believer I do repute thee to have perfectly fulfilled the Law in Christ and so to be no sinner and therefore forgive thee all thy sin In our sence it is true and runs but thus I do repute Christ to have been perfectly just habitually and actually in the Person of a Mediator in the Nature of Man and to have suffered as if he had been a sinner in the Person of a Sponsor by his own Consent and that in the very place and stead of sinners and by this to have satisfyed my Justice and by both to have merited free Justification and Life to be given by the new Covenant to all Believers And thou being a Believer I do repute thee justified and adopted by this satisfactory and meritorious Righteousness of Christ and by this free Covenant-Gift as verily and surely as if thou hadst done it and suffered thy self For my own part I find by experience that almost all Christians that I talk with of it have just this very notion of our Justification which I have expressed till some particular Disputer by way of Controversie hath thrust the other notion into their mind And for peace-sake I will say again what I have elsewhere said that I cannot think but that almost all Protestants agree in the substance of this point of Justification though some having not Acuteness enough to form their Notions of it rightly nor Humility enough to suspect their Understandings wrangle about Words supposing it to be about the Matter Because I find that all are agreed 1. That no Elect Person is Justified or Righteous by Imputation while he is an Infidel or Ungodly except three or four that speak confusedly and support the Antinomians 2. That God doth not repute us to have done what Christ did in our individual natural Person 's Physically The
Controversie is about a Civil personating 3. That God judgeth not falsly 4. That Christ was not our Delegate and Instrument sent by us to do this in our stead as a man payeth his debt by a Servant whom he sendeth with the money 5. That therefore Christs Righteousness is not Imputed to us as if we had done it by him as our Instrument 6. That all the fruits of Christs Merits and Satisfaction are not ours upon our first believing much less before But we receive them by degrees we have new pardon daily of new sins We bear castigatory punishments even Death and Denials or loss of the greater assistance of the Spirit Our Grace is all imperfect c. 7. That we are under a Law and not left ungoverned and lawless and that Christ is our King and Judge And this Law is the Law or Covenant of Grace containing besides the Precepts of perfect Obedience to the Law natural and superadded a Gift of Christ with Pardon and Life but only on Condition that we thankfully and believingly accept the Gift And threatning non-liberation and a far sorer punishment to all that unbelievingly and unthankfully reject it 8. That therefore this Testament or Covenant-Gift is God's Instrument by which he giveth us our Right to Christ and Pardon and Life And no man hath such Right but by this Testament-Gift 9. That this called a Testament Covenant Promise and Law in several respects doth besides the Conditions of our first Right impose on us Continuance in the Faith with sincere Holiness as the necessary Condition of our continued Justification and our actual Glorification And that Heaven is the Reward of this keeping of the new Covenant as to the order of Gods Collation though as to the value of the Benefit it is a Free Gift purchased merited and given by Christ 10. That we shall all be judged by this Law of Christ 11. That we shall all be judged according to our deeds and those that have done good not according to the Law of Innocency or Works but according to the Law of Grace shall go into everlasting life and those that have done evil not by meer sin as sin against the Law of Innocency but by not keeping the Conditions of the Law of Grace shall go into everlasting punishment The sober reading of these following texts may end all our Controversie with men that dare not grosly make void the Word of God Rev. 20.12 13.22.12 2.23 12. That to be Justified at the day of Judgment is to be adjudged to Life Eternal and not condemned to Hell And therefore to be the cause or condition that we are Judged to Glory and the Cause or Condition that we are Justified then will be all one 13. That to be Judged according to our deeds is to be Justified or Condemned according to them 14. That the great tryal of that day as I have after said will not be whether Christ hath done his part but whether we have part in him and so whether we have believed and performed the Condition of that Covenant which giveth Christ and Life 15. That the whole scope of Christ's Sermons and all the Gospel calleth us from sin on the motive of avoiding Hell after we are reputed Righteous and calleth us to Holiness Perseverance and overcoming on the motive of laying up a good Foundation and having a Treasure in Heaven and getting the Crown of Righteousness 16. That the after-sins of men imputed Righteous deserve Hell or at least temporal punishments and abatements of Grace and Glory 17. That after such sins especially hainous we must pray for Pardon and repent that we may be pardoned and not say I fulfilled the Law in Christ as from my birth to my death and therefore have no more need of Pardon 18. That he that saith he hath no sin deceiveth himself and is a lyar 19. That Magistrates must punish sin as God s Officers and Pastors by Censure in Christs name and Parents also in their Children 20. That if Christs Holiness and perfect Obedience and Satisfaction and Merit had bin Ours in Right and Imputation as simply and absolutely and fully as it was his own we could have no Guilt no need of Pardon no suspension or detention of the proper fruits of it no punishment for sin specially not so great as the with-holding of degrees of Grace and Glory And many of the consequents aforesaid could not have followed All this I think we are all agreed on and none of it can with any face be denied by a Christian And if so 1. Then whether Christs perfect Holiness and Obedience and Sufferings Merit and Satisfaction be all given us and imputed unto us at our first believing as Our own in the very thing it self by a full and proper Title to the thing Or only so imputed to us as to be judged a just cause of giving us all the effects in the degrees and time forementioned as God pleaseth let all judge as evidence shall convince them 2. And then whether they do well that thrust their devised sence on the Churches as an Article of Faith let the more impartial judge I conclude with this confession to the Reader that though the matter of these Papers hath been thought on these thirty years yet the Script is hasty and defective in order and fulness I could not have leisure so much as to affix in the margin all the texts which say what I assert And several things especially the state of the Case are oft repeated But that is lest once reading suffice not to make them observed and understood which if many times will do I have my end If any say that I should take time to do things more accurately I tell him that I know my straights of time and quantity of business better than he doth and I will rather be defective in the mode of one work than leave undone the substance of another as great July 20. 1672. Richard Baxter The Contents CHap. 1. The History of the Controversie In the Apostles days In the following Ages Augustine and his followers Opinion The Schoolmen Luther Islebius The Lutherans Andr. Osiander The latter German Divines who were against the Imputation of Christ's Active Righteousness Our English Divines Davenant's sense of Imputation Wotton de Reconcil Bradshaw Gataker Dr. Crisp Jo. Simpson Randal Towne c. And the Army Antinomians checkt by the rising of Arminianism there against it Jo. Goodwin Mr. Walker and Mr. Roborough Mr. Ant. Burges My Own endeavours Mr. Cranden Mr. Eyres c. Mr. Woodbridge Mr. Tho. Warren Mr. Hotchkis Mr. Hopkins Mr. Gibbon Mr. Warton Mr. Grailes Mr. Jessop What I then asserted Corn. a Lapide Vasquez Suarez Grotius de Satisf Of the Savoy Declaration Of the Faith of the Congregational-Divines Their saying that Christs Active and Passive Obedience is imputed for our sole Righteousness confuted by Scripture Gataker Usher and Vines read and approved my Confession of Faith Placeus his Writings and trouble
about the Imputation of Adam's Sin Dr. Gell Mr. Thorndike c. vehemently accusing the doctrine of Imputed Righteousness The Consent of all Christians especially Protestants about the sense of Imputed Righteousness 1. The form of Baptism 2. The Apostles Creed 3. The Nicene and Constantinopolitan Creed 4. Athanasius's Creed 5. The Fathers sense Laurentius his Collections Damasus his Creed 6. The Augustan Confession 7. The English Articles Homilies and Confession 8. The Saxon Confession 9. The Wittenberg Confession 10. The Bohemian Confession 11. The Palatinate Confession 12. The Polonian Confessions 13. The Helvetian Confession 14. The Basil Confession 15. The Argentine Confession of the four Cities 16. The Synod of Dort and the Belgick Confession 17. The Scottish Confession 18. The French Confession Whether Imputation of Passion and Satisfaction or of meritorious Perfection go first How Christ's Righteousness is called the formal Cause c. That it is confessed that Christ's Righteousness is imputed to us as our sin was to him Molinaeus Maresius Vasseur Bellarmine is constrained to agree with us A recommendation of some brief most clear and sufficient Treatises on this subject viz. 1. Mr. Bradshaw 2. Mr. Gibbon's Sermon 3. Mr. Truman's Great Propitiation 4. Placeus his Disput in Thes Salmur 5. Le Blank 's Theses And those that will read larger Mr. Watton John Goodwin and Dr. Stillingfleet Chap. 2. The opening of the Case by some Distinctions and many Propositions Joh. Crocius Concessions premised Mr. Lawson's Judgment Chap. 3. A further Explication of the Controversie Chap. 4. My Reasons against the denied sense of Imputation and personating The denied sense repeated plainly Forty three Reasons briefly named Chap. 5. Some Objections answered Chap. 6 7 8. Replies to Dr. Tully and a Defence of the Concord of Protestants against his Military Alarm and false pretence of greater discord than there is Of the Imputation of Christs Righteousness Material or Formal to Believers Whether we are Reputed personally to have suffered on the Cross and to have satisfied God's Justice for our own sins and to have been habitually perfectly Holy and Actually perfectly Obedient in Christ or by Christ and so to have merited our own Justification and Salvation And whether Christ's Righteousness Habitual Active and Passive be strictly made our own Righteousness in the very thing it self simply Imputed to us or only be made ours in the effects and Righteousness Imputed to us when we believe because Christ hath satisfied and fulfilled the Law and thereby merited it for us The last is affirmed and the two first Questions denied I Have said so much of this subject already in my Confession but especially in my Disputations of Justification and in my Life of Faith that I thought not to have meddled with it any more But some occasions tell me that it is not yet needless though those that have most need will not read it But while some of them hold that nothing which they account a Truth about the Form and Manner of Worship is to be silenced for the Churches peace they should grant to me that Real Truth so near the Foundation in their own account is not to be silenced when it tendeth unto Peace In opening my thoughts on this subject I shall reduce all to these Heads 1. I shall give the brief History of this Controversie 2. I shall open the true state of it and assert what is to be asserted and deny what is to be denied 3. I shall give you the Reasons of my Denials 4. I shall answer some Objections CHAP. I. The History of the Controversie § 1. IN the Gospel it self we have first Christ's Doctrine delivered by his own mouth And in that there is so little said of this Subject that I find few that will pretend thence to resolve the Controversie for Imputation in the rigorous sence The same I say of the Acts of the Apostles and all the rest of the New Testament except Pauls Epistles The Apostle Paul having to do with the Jews who could not digest the equalizing of the Gentiles with them and specially with the factious Jewish Christians who thought the Gentiles must become Proselytes to Moses as well as to Christ if they would be Justified and Saved at large confuteth this opinion and freeth the Consciences of the Gentile Christians from the Imposition of this yoke as also did all the Apostles Act. 15. And in his arguing proveth that the Mosaical Law is so far from being necessary to the Justification of the Gentiles that Abraham and the Godly Jews themselves were not Justified by it but by Faith And that by the works of it and consequently not by the works of the Law or Covenant of Innocency which no man ever kept no man could ever be justified And therefore that they were to look for Justification by Christ alone and by Faith in him or by meer Christianity which the Gentiles might have as well as the Jews the Partition-wall being taken down This briefly is the true scope of Paul in these Controversies § 2. But in Paul's own days there were somethings in his Epistles which the unlearned and unstable did wrest as they did the other Scriptures to their own destruction as Peter tells us 2 Pet. 2. And it seemeth by the Epistle of James that this was part of it For he is fain there earnestly to dispute against some who thought that Faith without Christian works themselves would justifie and flatly affirmeth that we are Justified by Works and not by Faith only that is as it is a Practical Faith in which is contained a Consent or Covenant to obey which first putteth us into a justified state so it is that Practical Faith actually working by Love and the actual performance of our Covenant which by way of Condition is necessary to our Justification as Continued and as Consummate by the Sentence of Judgment Against which sentence of James there is not a syllable to be found in Paul But all the Scripture agreeth that all men shall be Judged that is Justified or Condemned according to their works But it is not this Controversie between Faith and Works which I am now to speak to having done it enough heretofore § 3. From the days of the Apostles till Pelagius and Augustine this Controversie was little meddled with For the truth is the Pastors and Doctors took not Christianity in those days for a matter of Shcolastick subtilty but of plain Faith and Piety And contented themselves to say that Christ dyed for our sins and that we are Justified by Faith and that Christ was made unto us Righteousness as he was made to us Wisdom Sanctification and Redemption § 4. But withal those three first Ages were so intent upon Holiness of Life as that they addicted their Doctrine their Zeal and their constant endeavours to it And particularly to great austerities to their Bodies in great Fastings and great contemp◠of the World and exercises of Mortification to kill their fleshly
Lusts and deny their Wills and Worldly Interests to which end at last they got into Wildernesses and Monasteries where in Fasting and Prayer and a single life they might live as it were out of the World while they were in it Though indeed persecution first drove them thither to save themselves Into these Deserts and Monasteries those went that had most Zeal but not usually most Knowledg And they turned much of their Doctrine and discourses about these Austerities and about the practices of a Godly Life and about all the Miracles which were some really done and some feigned by credulous soft people said to be done among them So that in all these ages most of their writings are taken up 1. In defending Christianity against the Heathens which was the work of the Learned Doctors 2. And in confuting swarms of Heresies that sprung up 3. And in matters of Church-order and Ecclesiastical and Monastical discipline 4. And in the precepts of a Godly Life But the point of Imputation was not only not meddled with distinctly but almost all the Writers of those times seem to give very much to Mans free-will and to works of Holiness and sufferings making too rare and obscure mention of the distinct Interests of Christs Merits in our Justification at least with any touch upon this Controversie Yet generally holding Pardon and Grace and Salvation only by Christs Sacrifice and Merits though they spake most of Mans Holiness when they called men to seek to make sure of Salvation § 5. And indeed at the day of Judgment the Question to be decided will not be Whether Christ dyed and did his part but Whether we believed and obeyed him and did our part Not Whether Christ performed his Covenant with the Father but Whether we performed our Covenant with him For it is not Christ that is to be judged but we by Christ § 6. But Pelagius and Augustine disputing about the Power of Nature and Freewill and the Grace of Christ began to make it a matter of great Ingenuity as Erasmus speaketh to be a Christian Pelagius a Brittain of great wit and continence and a good and sober life as Austin saith Epist 120. stifly defended the Power of Nature and Freewill and made Grace to consist only in the free Pardon of all sin through Christ and in the Doctrine and Perswasions only to a holy life for the time to come with Gods common ordinary help Augustine copiously and justly defended God's special eternal Election of some and his special Grace given them to make them repent and believe and presevere For though he maintained that some that were true Believers Lovers of God Justified and in a state of Salvation did fall away and perish yet he held that none of the Elect did fall away and perish And he maintained that even the Justified that fell away had their Faith by a special Grace above nature Vid. August de bono Persever Cap. 8. 9. de Cor. Grat. Cap. 8 9. alibi passim § 7. In this their Controversie the point of Justification fell into frequent debate But no Controversie ever arose between them Whether Christ's personal Righteousness considered Materially or Formally was by Imputation made ours as Proprietors of the thing it self distinct from its effects or Whether God reputed us to have satisfied and also perfectly obeyed in Christ For Augustine himself while he vehemently defendeth free Grace speaketh too little even of the Pardon of sin And though he say that Free Pardon of sins is part of Grace yet he maketh Justification to be that which we call Sanctification that makes us inherently Righteous or new-Creatures by the operation of the Holy Ghost And he thinketh that this is the Justification which Paul pleadeth to be of Grace and not of works yet including Pardon of sin and confessing that sometimes to Justifie signifieth in Scripture not to make just but to judg just And though in it self this be but de nomine and not de re yet 1. no doubt but as to many texts of Scripture Austin was mistaken though some few texts Beza and others confess to be taken in his sence 2. And the exposition of many texts lieth upon it But he that took Justification to be by the operation of the Holy Ghost giving us Love to God could not take it to be by Imputation in the rigorous sence no question nor doth de re § 8. But because as some that it seems never read Augustine or understood not plain words have nevertheless ventured confidently to deny what I have said of his Judgment in the points of Perseverance in my Tract of Perseverance so it 's like such men will have no more wariness what they say in the point of Justification I will cite a few of Augustin's words among many to show what he took Justification to be though I differ from him de nomine Nec quia recti sunt corde sed etiam ut recti sint corde pretendit Justitiam suam quâ justificat impium Quo motu receditur ab illo fonte vitae cujus solius haustu justitia bibitur bona scil vita Aug. de Spir. Lit. Cap. 7. Deus est enim qui operatur in eis velle operari pro bona voluntate Haec est Justitia Dei hoc est quam Deus donat homini quum justificat impium Hanc Dei justitiam ignorantes superbi Judaei suam volentes constituere justitiae Dei non sunt subjecti Dei quippe dixit Justitiam quae homini ex Deo est suam vero quam putant sibi suficere ad facienda mandata sine adjutorio dono ejus qui legem dedit His antem similes sunt qui cum profiteantur se esse Christianos ipsi gratiae Christi sic adversantur ut se humanis viribus divina existiment implere mandata Epist 120. cap. 21. 22. Epist 200. Et de Spir. lit c. 26. Factores justificabuntur Non tanquam per opera nam per Gratiam justificentur Cum dicat Gratis justificari hominem per fidem sine operibus legis nihilque aliud velit intelligi in eo quod dicit Gratu nisi quia justificationem opera non precedunt Aperte quippe alibi dicit si gratiâ jam non ex operibus alioquin gratia non est gratia Sed sic intelligendum est factores Legis justificabuntur ut sciamus eos non esse factores legis nisi justificentur ut non justificatio factoribus accedat sed factores legis justificatio precedat Quid est enim aliud Justificati quam Justi facti ab illo scilicet qui justificat Impium â—t ex impio fiat justus Aut certe ita dictum est Justificabuntur ac si diceretur Justi habebuntur justi deputabuntur Et ibid. cap. 29. Gentes qua non sectabantur justitiam apprehenderunt justitiam Justitiam autem quae ex fide est impretrando eam ex Deo non
Instrumental Intervention and Conveyance or Collation by this Deed of Gift or Covenant do confound themselves by confounding and overlooking the Causes of our Justification That which Christ did by his merits was to procure the new Covenant The new Covenant is a free Gift of pardon and life with Christ himself for his merits and satisfaction sake 44. Though the Person of the Mediator be not really or reputatively the very person of each sinner nor so many persons as there are sinners or believers yet it doth belong to the Person of the Mediator so far limitedly to bear the person of a sinner and to stand in the place of the Persons of all Sinners as to bear the punishment they deserved and to suffer for their sins 45. Scripture speaking of moral matters usually speaketh rather in Moral than meer Physical phrase And in strict Physical sence Christs very personal Righteousness Material or Formal is not so given to us as that we are proprietors of the very thing it self but only of the effects Pardon Righteousness and Life yet in a larger Moral phrase that very thing is oft said to be given to us which is given to another or done or suffered for our benefit He that ransometh a Captive from a Conquerer Physically giveth the Money to the Conquerer not to the Captive giveth the Captive only the Liberty purchased But morally and reputatively he is said to give the Money to the Captive because he gave it for him And it redeemeth him as well as if he had given it himself He that giveth ten thousand pounds to purchase Lands freely giveth that land to another physically giveth the Money to the Seller only and the Land only to the other But morally and reputatively we content our selves with the metonymical phrase and say he gave the other ten thousand pound So morally it may be said that Christs Righteousness Merits and Satisfaction was given to us in that the thing purchased by it was given to us when the Satisfaction was given or made to God Yea when we said it was made to God we mean only that he was passively the Terminus of active Satisfaction being the party satisfyed but not that he himself was made the Subject and Agent of Habits and Acts and Righteousness of Christ as in his humane nature except as the Divine Nature acted it or by Communication of Attributes 46. Because the words Person and Personating and Representing are ambiguous as all humane language is while some use them in a stricter sense than others do we must try by other explicatory terms whether we agree in the matter and not lay the stress of our Controversy upon the bare words So some Divines say that Christ suffered in the Person of a sinner when they mean not that he represented the Natural person of any one particular sinner but that his own Person was reputed the Sponsor of sinners by God and that he was judged a real sinner by his persecuters and so suffered as if he had been a sinner 47. As Christ is less improperly said to have Represented our Persons in his satisfactory Sufferings than in his personal perfect Holiness and Obedience so he is less improperly said to have Represented all mankind as newly fallen in Adam in a General sense for the purchasing of the universal Gift of Pardon and Life called The new Covenant than to have Represented in his perfect Holiness and his Sufferings every Believer considered as from his first being to his Death Though it is certain that he dyed for all their sins from first to last For it is most true 1. That Christ is as a second Adam the Root of the Redeemed And as we derive sin from Adam so we derive life from Christ allowing the difference between a Natural and a Voluntary way of derivation And though no mans Person as a Person was actually existent and offended in Adam nor was by God reputed to have been and done yet all mens Persons were Virtually and Seminally in Adam as is aforesaid and when they are existent persons they are no better either by Relative Innocency or by Physical Disposition than he could propagate and are truly and justly reputed by God to be Persons Guilty of Adams fact so far as they were by nature seminally and virtually in him And Christ the second Adam is in a sort the root of Man as Man though not by propagation of us yet as he is the Redeemer of Nature it self from destruction but more notably the Root of Saints as Saints who are to have no real sanctity but what shall be derived from him by Regeneration as Nature and Sin is from Adam by Generation But Adam did not represent all his posterity as to all the Actions which they should do themselves from their Birth to their Death so that they should all have been taken for perfectly obedient to the death if Adam had not sinned at that time yea or during his Life For if any of them under that Covenant had ever sinned afterward in their own person they should have died for it But for the time past they were Guiltless or Guilty in Adam as he was Guiltless or Guilty himself so far as they were in Adam And though that was but in Causâ non extra causam Yet a Generating Cause which propagateth essence from essence by self-multiplication of form much differeth from an Arbitrary facient Cause in this If Adam had obeyed yet all his posterity had been nevertheless bound to perfect personal persevering Obedience on pain of Death And Christ the second Adam so far bore the person of fallen Adam and suffered in the nature and room of Mankind in General as without any condition on their part at all to give man by an act of Oblivion or new Covenant a pardon of Adams sin yea and of all sin past at the time of their consent though not disobliging them from all future Obedience And by his perfect Holiness and Obedience and Sufferings he hath merited that new Covenant which Accepteth of sincere though imperfect Obedience and maketh no more in us necessary to Salvation When I say he did this without any Condition on mans part I mean He absolutely without Condition merited and gave us the Justifying Testament or Covenant Though that Covenant give us not Justification absolutely but on Condition of believing fiducial Consent 2. And so as this Vniversal Gift of Justification upon Acceptance is actually given to all fallen mankind as such so Christ might be said to suffer instead of all yea and merit too so far as to procure them this Covenant-gift 48. The sum of all lyeth in applying the distinction of giving Christs Righteousness as such in it self and as a cause of our Righteousness or in the Causality of it As our sin is not reputed Christs sin in it self and in the culpability of it for then it must needs make Christ odious to God but in its
Causality of punishment so Christ's Material or Formal Righteousness is not by God reputed to be properly and absolutely our own in it self as such but the Causality of it as it produceth such and such effects 49. The Objections which are made against Imputation of Christs Righteousness in the sound sense may all be answered as they are by our Divines among whom the chiefest on this subject are Davenant de Justit Habit Actual Johan Crocius de Justif Nigrinus de Impletione Legis Bp. G. Dowman of Justif Chamier Paraeus Amesius and Junius against Bellarm. But the same reasons against the unsound sence of Imputation are unanswerable Therefore if any shall say concerning my following Arguments that most of them are used by Gregor de Valent. by Bellarm. Becanus or other Papists or by Socinians and are answered by Nigrinâ—s Crocius Davenant c. Such words may serve to deceive the simple that are led by Names and Prejudice but to the Intelligent they are contemptible unless they prove that these objections are made by the Papists against the same sence of Imputation against which I use them and that it is that sense which all those Protestants defend in answering them For who-ever so answereth them will appear to answer them in vain 50. How far those Divines who do use the phrase of Christs suffering in our person do yet limit the sense in their exposition and deny that we are reputed to have fulfilled the Law in Christ because it is tedious to cite many I shall take up now with one even Mr. Lawson in his Theopolitica which though about the office of Faith he some-what differ from me I must needs call an excellent Treatise as I take the Author to be one of the most Knowing men yet living that I know Pardon me if I be large in transcribing his words Pag. 100 101. If we enquire of the manner how Righteousness and Life is derived from Christ being one unto so many it cannot be except Christ be a general Head of mankind and one Person with them as Adam was We do not read of any but two who were general Heads and in some respect virtually All mankind the first and second Adam The principal cause of this Representation whereby he is one person with us is the will of God who as Lord made him such and as Lawgiver and Judge did so account him But 2. How far is he One person with us Ans 1. In general so far as it pleased God to make him so and no further 2. In particular He and we are one so far 1. As to make him liable to the penalty of the Law for us 2. So far as to free us from that obligation and derive the benefit of his death to us Though Christ be so far one with us as to be lyable unto the penalty of the Law and to suffer it and upon this suffering we are freed yet Christ is not the sinner nor the sinner Christ Christ is the Word made flesh innocent without sin an universal Priest and King but we are none of these Though we be accounted as one person in Law with him by a Trope yet in proper sence it cannot be said that in Christ's Satisfying we satisfied for our own sins For then we should have been the Word made flesh able to plead Innocency c. All which are false impossible blasphemous if affirmed by any It 's true we are so one with him that he satisfied for us and the benefit of this Satisfaction redounds to us and is communicable to all upon certain termes though not actually communicated to all From this Unity and Identity of person in Law if I may so speak it followeth clearly that Christ's sufferings were not only Afflictions but Punishments in proper sense Pag. 102 103. That Christ died for all in some sence must needs be granted because the Scripture expresly affirms it vid. reliqua There is another question unprofitably handled Whether the Propitiation which includeth both Satisfaction and Merit be to be ascribed to the Active or Passive Obedience of Christ Ans 1. Both his Active Personal Perfect and Perpetual Obedience which by reason of his humane nature assumed and subjection unto God was due and also that Obedience to the great and transcendent Command of suffering the death of the Cross both concur as Causes of Remission and Justification 2. The Scriptures usually ascribe it to the Blood Death Sacrifice of Christ and never to the Personal Active Obedience of Christ's to the Moral Law 3. Yet this Active Obedience is necessary because without it he could not have offered that great Sacrifice of himself without spot to God And if it had not been without spot it could not have been propitiatory and effectual for Expiation 4. If Christ as our Surety had performed for us perfect and perpetual Obedience so that we might have been judged to have perfectly and fully kept the Law by him then no sin could have been chargeable upon us and the Death of Christ had been needless and superfluous 5. Christs Propitiation freeth the Believer not only from the obligation unto punishment of sense but of loss and procured for him not only deliverance from evil deserved but the enjoyment of all good necessary to our full happiness Therefore there is no ground of Scripture for that opinion that the Death of Christ and his Sufferings free us from punishments and by his Active Obedience imputed to us we are made righteous and the heirs of life 6. If Christ was bound to perform perfect and perpetual Obedience for us and he also performed it for us then we are freed not only from sin but Obedience too And this Obedience as distinct and separate from Obedience unto death may be pleaded for Justification of Life and will be sufficient to carry the Cause For the tenor of the Law was this Do this and live And if man do this by himself or Surety so as that the Lawgiver and supreme Judg accept it the Law can require no more It could not bind to perfect Obedience and to punishment too There was never any such Law made by God or just men Before I conclude this particular of the extent of Christs Merit and Propitiation I thought good to inform the Reader that as the Propitiation of Christ maketh no man absolutely but upon certain terms pardonable and savable so it was never made either to prevent all sin or all punishments For it presupposeth man both sinful and miserable And we know that the Guilt and Punishment of Adams sin lyeth heavy on all his posterity to this day And not only that but the guilt of actual and personal sins lyeth wholly upon us whilest impenitent and unbelieving and so out of Christ And the Regenerate themselves are not fully freed from all punishments till the final Resurrection and Judgment So that his Propitiation doth not altogether prevent but remove sin and punishment
to be such a Person and another thing to have the Act Passion Merit c. Accepted for that other Person And this latter signifieth either 1. That it was done by the other person mediately as being a cheif Cause acting by his Instrument 2. Or that it was done for that other Person by another The first is our denyed sence and the second our affirmed sence Among us Sureties and Sponsors are of several sorts Grotius de Jure Belli tells you of another sense of Sponsion in the Civil Law than is pertinent to the objectors use And in Baptism the same word hath had divers senses as used by persons of different intentions The time was when the Sponsor was not at all taken for the Political Person as you call it of Parent or Child nor spake as their Instrument in their name But was a Third person who because many parents Apostatized and more Died in the Childs minority did pass his word 1. That the Parent was a credible Person 2. That if he Dyed so soon or Apostatized he himself would undertake the Christian Education of the Child But the Parent himself was Sponsor for the Child in a stricter sense as also Adopting Pro-parents were as some take God-fathers to be now that is they were taken for such whose Reason will and word we authorised to dispose of the Child as obligingly as if it had been done by his own reason will and word so be it it were but For his good and the Child did own it when he came to age And so they were to speak as in the Childs name as if Nature or Charity made them his Representers in the Judgment of many Though others rather think that they were to speak as in their own persons e. g. I dedicate this Child to God and enter him into the Covenant as obliged by my Consent But this sense of Sponsion is nothing to the present Case They that lay all upon the very Name of a Surety as if the word had but one signification and all Sureties properly represented the person of the Principal obliged person do deal very deceitfully There are Sureties or Sponsors 1. For some Duty 2. For Debt 3. For Punishment 1. It is one thing to undertake that another shall do a Commanded duty 2. It 's another thing to undertake that else I will do it for him 3. It 's another thing to be Surety that he shall pay a Debt or else I will pay it for him 4. It 's another thing to undertake that he shall suffer a penalty or else to suffer for him or make a Valuable Compensation 1. And it 's one kind of Surety that becometh a second party in the bond and so maketh himself a debtor 2. And it s another sort of Surety that undertaketh only the Debt afterward voluntarily as a Friend who may pay it on such Conditions as he and the Creditor think meet without the Debtors knowledg Every Novice that will but open Calvin may see that Fidejussor and Sponsor are words of very various signification and that they seldom or never signifie the Person Natural or Political as you call it of the Principal Sponsor est qui sponte non rogatus pro alio promittit ut Accurs vel quicunque spondet maximè pro aliis Fidejubere est suo periculo fore id de quo agitur recipere Vel fidem suam pro alio obligare He is called Adpromissor and he is Debtor but not the same person with the Principal but his promise is accessoria obligatio non principalis Therefore Fidejussor sive Intercessor non est conveniendus nisi prius debitore principali convento Fidejussores a correis ita differunt quod hi suo proprio morbo laborant illi vero alieno tenentur Quare fideijussori magis succurrendum censent Veniâ namque digni sunt qui alienâ tenentur Culpâ cujusmodi sunt fidejussores pro alieno debito obligati inquit Calv. There must be somewhat more than the bare name 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 once used of Christ as Mediator of Gods Covenant or the name of a Surety as now used among men that must go to prove that the Mediator and the several sinners are the same Legal Persons in Gods account But seeing Legal-Personality is but a Relation of our Natural person to another Natural person that we may not quarrel and tear the Church when really we differ not 1. Let our agreement be noted 2. Our difference intelligibly stated 1. It is granted not only by Dr. Tullie but others that accurately handle the Controversie 1. That Christ and the Believer never were nor are our Natural person and that no union with him maketh us to be Christ or God nor him to be Peter John or Paul c. That we know of no third sort of Natural person which is neither Jesus nor Peter John c. But composed of both united which is constituted by our Union For though it be agreed on that the same Spirit that is in Christ is operatively also in all his Members and that therefore our Communion with him is more than Relative and that from this Real-Communion the name of a Real-Vnion may be used yet here the Real-Vnion is not Personal as the same Sun quickeneth and illuminateth a Bird and a Frog and a Plant and yet maketh them not our person Therefore he that will say we are Physically one with Christ and not only Relatively but tell us ONE What and make his words Intelligible and must deny that we are ONE PERSON and that by that time we are not like to be found differing But remember that while Physical Communion is confessed by all what VNION we shall from thence be said to have this Foundation being agreed on is like to prove but a question de realitione nomine 2. Yea all the world must acknowledg that the whole Creation is quoad praesentiam derivationem more dependant on God than the fruit is on the Tree or the Tree on the Earth and that God is the inseperate Cause of our Being Station and Life And yet this natural intimateness and influx and causality maketh not GOD and every Creature absolutely or personally One 3. It is agreed therefore that Christ's Righteousness is neither materially nor formally any Accident of our natural Persons and an Accident it is unless it can be reduced to that of Relation 1. The Habits of our Person cannot possibly be the habits of another inherently 2. The actions of one cannot possibly be the actions of another as the Agent unless as that other as a principal Cause acteth by the other as his Instrument or second Cause 3. The same fundamentum relationis inherent in One Person is not inherent in another if it be a personal Relation And so the same individual Relation that is one Mans cannot numerically be another Mans by the same sort of in-being propriety or adherence Two Brothers have a Relation in kind
the same but not unmerically 4. And it is agreed that God judgeth not falsly and therefore taketh not Christ's Righteousness to be any more or otherwise ours than indeed it is nor imputeth it to us erroneously 5. Yet it is commonly agreed that Christ's Righteousness is OVRS in some sense And so far is justly reputed Ours or imputed to us as being Ours 6. And this ambiguous syallable OVRS enough to set another Age of Wranglers into bitter Church-tearing strife if not hindred by some that will call them to explain an ambiguous word is it that must be understood to end this Controversie Propriety is the thing signified 1. In the strictest sense that is called Ours which inhereth in us or that which is done by us 2. In a larger Moral sense that which a Man as the principal Cause doth by another as his Instrument by authorizing commanding perswading c. 3. In a yet larger sense that may be called OVRS which a third person doth partly instead of what we should have done had or suffered and partly for our use or benefit 4. In a yet larger sense that may be called OVRS which another hath or doth or suffereth for our Benefit though not in our stead and which will be for our good as that which a Friend or Father hath is his Friends or Childs and all things are Ours whether Paul or c. and the Godly are owners of the World in as much as God will use all for their good 7. It is therefore a Relation which Christ's Righteousness hath to us or we to it that must here be meant by the word OVRS Which is our RIGHT or Jus And that is acknowledged to be no Jus or Right to it in the foresaid denied sense And it is agreed that some Right it is Therefore to understand what it is the Titulus seu Fundamentum juris must be known 8. And here it is agreed 1. That we are before Conversion or Faith related to Christ as part of the Redeemed World of whom it is said 2 Cor. 5.19 That God was in Christ reconciling the World to himself not imputing to them their sins c. 2. That we are after Faith related to Christ as his Covenanted People Subjects Brethren Friends and Political Members yea as such that have Right to and Possession of Real Communion with him by his Spirit And that we have then Right to Pardon Justification and Adoption or have Right to Impunity in the promised degree and to the Spirits Grace and the Love of God and Heavenly Glory This Relation to Christ and this Right to the Benefits of his Righteousness are agreed on And consequently that his Righteousness is OVRS and so may be called as far as the foresaid Relations and Rights import II. Now a Relation as Ockam hath fully proved having no real entity beside the quid absolutum which is the Subject Fundamentum or Terminus he that yet raileth at his Brother as not saying enough or not being herein so wise as he and will maintain that yet Christ's Righteousness is further OVRS must name the Fundamentum of that Right or Propriety What more is it that you mean I think the make-bates have here little probability of fetching any more Fuel to their Fire or turning Christ's Gospel into an occasion of strife and mutual enmity if they will but be driven to a distinct explication and will not make confusion and ambiguous words their defence and weapons If you set your quarrelsome Brains on work and study as hard as you can for matter of Contention it will not be easie for you to find it unless you will raze out the names of Popery Socinianism Arminianism or Solifidianism Heresie c. instead of real Difference But if the angriest and lowdest Speakers be in the right Bedlam and Billingsgate may be the most Orthodox places Briefly 1. The foresaid Benefits of Christ's Righteousness Habitual Active and Passive as a Meritorious Satisfactory Purchasing Cause are ours 2. To say that the Benefits are Ours importeth that the Causal Righteousness of Christ is related to us and the Effects as such a Cause and so is it self OVRS in that sense that is so related 3. And Christ himself is OVRS as related to us as our Saviour the Procurer and Giver of those Benefits And do you mean any more by OVRS If you say that we deny any Benefits of Christ's Righteousness which you assert name what they are If you say that we deny any true Fundamentum juris or reason of our title name what that is If you say that we deny any true Relation to Christ himself tell us what it is If you cannot say that you are agreed 1. If you say that the Benefit denied by us is that we are judged by God as those that habitually and actively have perfectly fulfilled the Law of Innocency our selves though not in our natural Persons yet by Christ as representing us and so shall be justified by that Law of Innocency as the Fulfiller of it we do deny it and say That you subvert the Gospel and the true Benefits which we have by Christ 2. If you say that we deny that God esteemeth or reputeth us to be the very Subjects of that Numerical Righteousness in the Habits Acts Passion or Relation which was in the Person of Christ or to have done suffered or merited our selves in and by him as the proper Representer of our Persons therein and so that his Righteousness is thus imputed to us as truly in it self our own propriety we do deny it and desire you to do so also lest you deny Christianity 2. If you blame us for saying That we had or have no such Relation to Christ as to our Instrument or the proper full Representer of each Believers particular Person by whom we did truly fulfil the Law of Innocency habitually and actively and satisfied merited c. We do still say so and wish you to consider what you say before you proceed to say the contrary But if you come not up to this where will you find a difference Object 2. Christ is called The Lord our Righteousness and he is made Righteousness to us and we are made the Righteousness of God in him 2 Cor. 5.21 c. And by the Obedience of one many are made Righteous Answ And are we not all agreed of all this But can his Righteousness be Ours no way but by the foresaid Personation Representating How prove you that He is Our Righteousness and his Obedience maketh us Righteous 1. Because the very Law of Innocency which we dishonoured and broke by sin is perfectly fulfilled and honoured by him as a Mediator to repair the injury done by our breaking it 2. In that he suffered to satisfie Justice for our sin 3. In that hereby he hath merited of God the Father all that Righteousness which we are truly the Subjects of whether it be Relative or Qualitative or Active that is 1. Our Right
to Christ in Union to the Spirit to Impunity and to Glory And 2. The Grace of the Spirit by which we are made Holy and fulfil the Conditions of the Law of Grace We are the Subjects of these and he is the Minister and the meritorious Cause of our Life is well called Our Righteousness and by many the material Cause as our own perfect Obedience would have been because it is the Matter of that Merit 4. And also Christ's Intercession with the Father still procureth all this as the Fruit of his Merits 5. And we are Related as his Members though not parts of his Person as such to him that thus merited for us 6. And we have the Spirit from him as our Head 7. And he is our Advocate and will justifie us as our Judg. 8. And all this is God's Righteousness designed for us and thus far given us by him 9. And the perfect Justice and Holiness of God is thus glorified in us through Christ And are not all these set together enough to prove that we justly own all asserted by these Texts But if you think that you have a better sense of them you must better prove it than by a bare naming of the words Object 3. If Christ's Righteousness be Ours then we are Righteous by it as Ours and so God reputeth it but as it is But it is Ours 1. By our Vnion with him 2. And by his Gift and so consequently by God's Imputation Answ 1. I have told you before that it is confessed to be Ours but that this syllable OVRS hath many senses and I have told you in what sense and how far it is OVRS and in that sense we are justified by it and it is truly imputed to us or reputed or reckoned as OVRS But not in their sense that claim a strict Propriety in the same numerical Habits Acts Sufferings Merits Satisfaction which was in Christ or done by him as if they did become Subjects of the same Accidents or as if they did it by an instrumental second Cause But it is OVRS as being done by a Mediator instead of what we should have done and as the Meritorious Cause of all our Righteousness and Benefits which are freely given us for the sake hereof 2. He that is made Righteousness to us is also made Wisdom Sanctification and Redemption to us but that sub genere Causae Efficientis non autem Causae Constitutivae We are the Subjects of the same numerical Wisdom and Holiness which is in Christ Plainly the Question is Whether Christ or his Righteousness Holiness Merits and Satisfaction be Our Righteousness Constitutively or only Efficiently The Matter and Form of Christ's Personal Righteousness is OVRS as an Efficient Cause but it is neither the nearest Matter or the Form of that Righteousness which is OVRS as the Subjects of it that is It is not a Constitutive Cause nextly material or formal of it 3. If our Union with Christ were Personal making us the same Person then doubtless the Accidents of his Person would be the Accidents of ours and so not only Christ's Righteousness but every Christians would be each of Ours But that is not so Nor is it so given us by him Object 4. You do seem to suppose that we have none of that kind of Righteousness at all which consisteth in perfect Obedience and Holiness but only a Right to Impunity and Life with an imperfect Inherent Righteousness in our selves The Papists are forced to confess that a Righteousness we must have which consisteth in a conformity to the preceptive part of the Law and not only the Retributive part But they say It is in our selves and we say it is Christ's imputed to us Answ 1. The Papists e. g. Learned Vasqueâ— in Rom. 5. talk so ignorantly of the differences of the Two Covenants or the Law of Innocency and of Grace as if they never understood it And hence they 1. seem to take no notice of the Law of Innocency or of Nature now commanding our perfect Obedience but only of the Law of Grace 2. Therefore they use to call those Duties but Perfections and the Commands that require them but Counsels where they are not made Conditions of Life and sins not bringing Damnation some call Venial a name not unfit and some expound that as properly no sin but analogically 3. And hence they take little notice when they treat of Justification of the Remitting of Punishment but by remitting Sin they usually mean the destroying the Habits As if they forgot all actual sin past or thought that it deserved no Punishment or needed no Pardon For a past Act in it self is now nothing and is capable of no Remission but Forgiveness 4. Or when they do talk of Guilâ— of Punishment they lay so much of the Remedy on Man's Satisfaction as if Christ's Satisfaction and Merits had procured no pardon or at least of no temporal part of Punishment 5. And hence they ignorantly revile the Protestants as if we denied all Personal Inherent Righteousness and trusted only to the Imputation of Christ's Righteousness as justifying wicked unconverted Men The Papists therefore say not that we are innocent or sinless really or imputatively no not when they dream of Perfection and Supererrogation unless when they denominate Sin and Perfection only from the Condition of the Law of Grace and not that of Innocency 2. But if any of them do as you say no wonder if they and you contend If one say We are Innocent or Sinless in reality and the other we are so by Imputation when we are so no way at all but sinners really and so reputed what Reconciliation is there to be expected till both lay by their Errour Object 5. How can God accept him as just who is really and reputedly a Sinner This dishonoureth his Holiness and Justice Answ Not so Cannot God pardon sin upon a valuable Merit and Satisfaction of a Mediator And though he judg us not perfect now and accept us not as such yet 1. now he judgeth us Holy 2. and the Members of a perfect Saviour 3. and will make us perfect and spotless and then so judg us having washed us from our sins in the Blood of the Lamb. Object 6. Thus you make the Reatus Culpae not pardoned at all but only the Reatus Poenae Answ 1. If by Reatus Culpae be meant the Relation of a Sinner as he is Revera Peccator and so to be Reus is to be Revera ipse qui peccavit then we must consider what you mean by Pardon For if you mean the nullifying of such a Guilt or Reality it is impossible because necessiate existentiae he that hath once sinned will be still the Person that sinned while he is a Person and the Relation of one that sinned will cleave to him It will eternally be a true Proposition Peter and Paul did sin But if by Pardon you mean the pardoning of all the penalty which for that sin is due damni
if the word Justification had been found only as he affirmed If Justice Righteousness and Just be otherwise used that 's all one in the sense and almost in the word seeing it is confessed that to Justifie is 1. To make Just 2. Or to esteem Just 3. Or sentence Just 4. Or to prove Just and defend as Just 5. Or to use as Just by execution And therefore in so many senses as a Man is called Just in Scripture he is inclusively or by connotation said to be Justified and Justifiable and Justificandus And I desire no more of the Impartial Reader but to turn to his Concordances and peruse all the Texts where the words Just Justice Justly Righteous Righteousness Righteously are used and if he find not that they are many score if not hundred times used for that Righteousness which is the Persons Relation resulting from some Acts or Habits of his own as the Subject or Agent and otherwise than according to his solitary sense here let him then believe this Author § 3. But he is as unhappy in his Proofs as in his singular untrue Assertion Rom. 8.2 4. The Law of the Spirit of Life hath freed us from the Law of Sin and of Death Gal. 3.13 God sent his Son thta the Righteousness of the Law might be fulfilled in us Christ hath redeemed us from the Curse of the Law and many more such Here is no mention of any but one legal Justification Answ 1. Reader do you believe that these two Texts are a perfect Enumeration And that if these mention but one sense or sort of Justification that it will follow that no more is mentioned in Scripture Or if many hundred other Texts have the same sense 2. Nay he hath chosen only these Texts where the word Justification or Justifie is not at all found By which I may suppose that he intendeth the Controversie here de re and not de nomine And is that so Can any Man that ever considerately opened the Bible believe that de re no such Thing is mentioned in Scripture 1. As making a Man a believing Godly Man 2. Or as performing the Conditions of Life required of us in the Covenant of Grace 3. Nor esteeming a Man such 4. Not defending or proving him to be such 5. Nor judging him such decisively 6. Nor using him as such 7. Nor as justifying a Man so far as he is Innocent and Just against all false Accusation of Satan or the World 3. The first Text cited by him Rom. 8.24 downright contradicts him Not only Augustine but divers Protestant Expositors suppose that by the Law of the Spirit of Life is meant either the quickning Spirit it self given to us that are in Christ or the Gospel as it giveth that Spirit into us And that by delivering us from the Law of Sin is meant either from that sin which is as a Law within us or Moses Law as it forbiddeth and commandeth all its peculiarities and so maketh doing or not doing them sin and as it declareth sin yea and accidentally irritateth it Yea that by the Law of Death is meant not only that Law we are cursed by and so guilty but chiefly that Law as it is said Rom. 7. to kill Paul and to occasion the abounding of sin and the Liâ—e of it And that by the fulfilling of the Law in us that walk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit is meant that by the Spirit and Grace of Christ Christians do fulfil the Law as it requireth sincere Holiness Sobriety and Righteousness which God accepteth for Christ's sake which the Law of Moses without Christ's Spirit enabled no Man to fulfil Not to weary the Reader with citing Expositors I now only desire him to peruse Ludov. de Dieu on the Text. And it is certain that the Law that Paul there speaketh of was Moses Law And that he is proving all along that the observation of it was not necessary to the Gentiles to their performance or Justification and Salvation necessitate praecepti vel medii for it would not justifie the Jews themselves And sure 1. all his meaning is not The Law will not absolve Men from the sense of the Law But also its Works will give no one the just title of a Righteous Man accepted of God and saved by him as judging between the Righteous and the wicked as Christ saith Matth. 25. The Righteous shall go into Everlasting Life c. 2. And if it were only the Maledictory Sentence of Moses Law as such that Paul speaketh of Absolution from as our only Justification then none but Jews and Proselites who were under that Law could have the Justification by Faith which he mentioneth for it curseth none else For what-ever the Law saith it saith to them that are under the Law The rest of the World were only under the Law of lapsed Nature the relicts of Adam's Law of Innocency and the Curse for Adam's first Violation and the Law of Grace made to Adam and Noah and after perfected fullier by Christ in its second Edition 2. His other Text Christ redeemed us from the Curse of the Law proveth indeed that all Believers are redeemed from the Curse of the first Law of Innocency and the Jews from the Curse of Moses Law which is it that is directly meant But what 's that to prove that these words speak the whole and the only Justification and that the Scripture mentioneth no other § 4. He addeth Lex est quae prohibet Lex quae poenam decernit Lex quae irrogat Peccatum est transgressio Legis Poena effectus istius trangressionis Justificatio denique absolutio ab ista poena Itaque câ—m Lex nisi praestita nenimem Justificat praestitam omnes in Christo agnoscunt aut Legalis erit omnis JUstificatio coram Deo aut omnino nulla Answ 1. But doth he know but one sort of Law of God Hath every Man incurred the Curse by Moses Law that did by Adams Or every Man fallen under the peremptory irreversible condemnation which the Law of Grace passeth on them that never believe and repent Doth this Law He that believeth not shall be damned damn Believers One Law condemneth all that are not Innocent Another supposeth them under that defect and condemneth peremptorily not every Sinner but the Wicked and Unbelievers 2. Again here he saith Justification is Absolution from that Penalty But is a Man absolved properly from that which he was never guilty of Indeed if he take Absolution so loosly as to signifie the justifying a Man against a false Accusation and pronouncing him Not-Guilty So all the Angels in Heaven may possibly be capable of Absolution Justification is ordinarily so used but Absolution seldom by Divines And his words shew that this is not his senses if I understand them But if we are reputed perfect fulfillers of the Law of Innocency by Christ and yet Justification is our Absolution from the Curse then no Man is
from that Law that is from its Obligation of us to Innocency as the necessary terms of Life and from its Obligation of us to Death for want of Innocency But we are not justified by that Law either as fulfilled or as satisfied by us our selves either personally or by an Instrument substitute or proper Representative that was Vicarius Obedientiae aut poenae 3. And we grant that the Jews were delivered from the positive Jewish Law which is it that Paul calleth The Law of Works And if he please in all these respects to call Justification Legal we intend not to quarrel with the name though what I called Legal in those Aphorisms I chose ever after to call rather Justitia pro-legalis But we cannot believe him 1. That it is only Legal 2. Or that that is the only or most proper denomination § 8. He proceedeth thus And it will be vain if any argue That yet none can be saved without Evangelical Works according to which it is confessed that all men shall be judged for the distinction is easie which the Author of the Aphorisms somewhere useth between the first or Private and the last or Publick Justification In the first sense it is never said That Works justifie but contrary That God justifieth him that worketh not Rom. 4.5 In the latter we confess that Believers are to be justified according to Works but yet not Of or By Works nor that that Justification maketh men just before God but only so pronounceth them Answ 1. This is such another Consenting Adversary as once before I was put to answer who with open mouth calls himself consequentially what he calleth me if the same Cause and not the Person make the Guilt Nay let him consider whether his grand and most formidable Weapon So also saith Bellarmine with other Papists do not wound himself For they commonly say That the first Justification is not of Works or Works do not first justifie us Have I not now proved that he erreth and complyeth with the Papists If not let him use better Arguments himself 2. But why is the first Justification called Private Either he meaneth God's making us just constitutively or his judging us so and that per sententiam conceptam only or prolatam also 1. The common distinction in Politicks inter judicium Privatum Publicum is fetcht from the Judg who is either Persona privata vel publica a private Man or an authorized Judg judging as such And so the Judgment of Conscience Friends Enemies Neighbours mere Arbitrators c. is Judicium privatum and that of a Judg in foro is Judicium publicum yea or in secret before the concerned Parties only in his Closet so it be decisive If this Learned Doctor so understand it then 1. Constitutive Justification which is truly first is publick Justification being done by God the Father and by our Redeemer who sure are not herein private authorized Persons 2. And the first sentential Justification as merely Virtual and not yet Actual viz. as it 's virtually in the Justifying Law of Grace as norma Judicis is publick in suo genere being the virtus of a Publick Law of God or of his Donative Promise 3. And the first Actual Justification per Deum Judicem per sententiam conceptam which is God's secret judging the Thing and Person to be as they are is secret indeed in se yet revealed by God's publick Word but publick as to the Judg. 4. And the first sententia prolata the fourth in order is someway publick as opposite to secresie for 1. it is before the Angels of Heaven 2. And in part by Executive demonstrations on Earth But it is certainly by a publick Judg that is God 5. And the first Apologetical Justification by Christ our Interceding Advocate is publick both quoad personam and as openly done in Heaven And if this worthy Person deny any Justification per sententiam Judicis upon our first Believing or before the final Judgment he would wofully fall out with the far greatest number of Protestants and especially his closest Friends who use to make a Sentence of God as Judg to be the Genus to Justification But if by Private and Publick Justification he means secret and open 1. How can he hope to be understood when he will use Political Terms unexplained out of the usual sense of Politicians But no men use to abuse words more than they that would keep the Church in flames by wordy Controversies as if they were of the terms of Life and Death 2. And even in that sense our first Justification is publick or open quoad Actum Justificancantis as being by the Donation of a publick Word of God Though quoad effectum in recipiente it must needs be secret till the Day of Judgment no Man knowing anothers Heart whether he be indeed a sound Believer And so of the rest as is intimâ—ted Concerning what I have said before some may Object 1. That there is no such thing as our Justification notified before the Angels in Heaven 2. That the Sententia Concepta is God's Immanent Acts and therefore Eternal Answ To the first I say 1. It is certain by Luk. 15.10 that the Angels know of the Conversion of a Sinner and therefore of his Justification and publickly Rejoyce therein Therefore it is notified to them 2. But I refer the Reader for this to what I have said to Mr. Tombes in my Disputation of Justification where I do give my thoughts That this is not the Justification by Faith meant by Paul as Mr. Tombes asserteth it to be To the Second I say Too many have abused Theology by the misconceiving of the distinction of Immanent and Transient Acts of God taking all for Immanent which effect nothing ad extra But none are properly Immanent quoad Objectum but such as God himself is the Object of as se intelligere se amare An Act may be called indeed immanent in any of these three respects 1. Ex parte Agentis 2. Ex parte Objecti 3. Ex parte effectus 1. Ex parte agentis all God's Acts are Immanent for they are his Essence 2. Ex parte Objecti vel Termini God's Judging a Man Just or Unjust Good or Bad is transient because it is denominated from the state of the Terminus or Object And so it may be various and mutable denominatively notwithstanding God's Simplicity and Immutability And so the Sententia Concepta is not ab Aeterno 3. As to the Effect all confess God's Acts to be Transient and Temporary But there are some that effect not as to judg a thing to be what it is 3. Either this Militant Disputer would have his Reader believe that I say That a Man is justified by Works in that which he called making just and the first Justification or not If he would such untruth and unrighteousness contrary to the full drift of many of my Books and even that which he selected to oppose is not
by him Thus he states the Controversie And doth this Doctor fight for Truth and Peace by 1. passing by all this 2. Saying I am against Imputed Righteousness 3. And against the Reformed Were not all the Divines before named Reformed Was not Camero Capellus Placeus Amyrald Dallaeus Blondel c. Reformed Were not Wotton Bradshaw Gataker c. Reformed Were not of late Mr. Gibbons Mr. Truman to pass many yet alive Reformed Must that Name be shamed by appropriating it to such as this Doctor only 2. And now let the Reader judg with what face he denieth the Consequence that it supposeth us to have been in Christ legally c. When as I put it into the Opinion opposed and opposed no other But I erred in saying that most of our ordinary Divines hold it But he more in fathering it in common on the Reformed § 2. Dr. T. 2. Such Imputation of Righteousness he saith agreeth not with Reason or Scripture But what Reason meaneth he Is it that vain blind maimed unmeasurably procacious and tumid Reason of the Cracovian Philosophers Next he saith Scripture is silent of the Imputed Righteousness of Christ what a saying is this of a Reformed Divine so also Bellarmine c. Answ Is it not a doleful case that Orthodoxness must be thus defended Is this the way of vindicating Truth 1. Reader my words were these just like Bradshaws It teaâ—heth Imputation of Christ's Righteousness in so strict a sense as will neither stand with Reason nor the Doctrine of the Scripture much less with the PHRASE of Scripture which mentioneth no Imputation of Christ or his Righteousness 1. Is this a denying of Christ's Righteousness imputed Or only of that intollerable sense of it 2. Do I say here that Scripture mentioneth not Imputed Righteousness or only that strict sense of it 3. Do I not expresly say It is the Phrase that is not to be found in Scripture and the unsound sense but not the sound 2. And as to the Phrase Doth this Doctor or can any living Man find that Phrase in Scripture Christ's Righteousness is imputed to us And when he knoweth that it is not there are not his Exclamations and his Bug-bears Cracovian Reason and Bellarmine his dishonour that hath no better Weapons to use against the Churches Peace To tell us that the sense or Doctrine is in Scripture when the question is of the Phrase or that Scripture speaketh in his rigid sense and not in ours is but to lose time and abuse the Reader the first being impertinent and the second the begging of the Question § 3. Dr. T. The Greek word answering to Imputation is ten times in Rom. 4. And what is imputed but Righteousness we have then some imputed Righteousness The Question is only what or whose it is Christ's or our own Not ours therefore Christs If ours either its the Righteousness of Works or of Faith c. Answ 1. But what 's all this to the Phrase Could you have found that Phrase Christ's Righteousness is imputed why did you not recite the words but Reason as for the sense 2. Is that your way of Disputation to prove that the Text speaketh of the Imputation of Christ's Righteousness when the Question was only In what sense What kind of Readers do you expect that shall take this for rational candid and a Plea for Truth 3. But to a Man that cometh unprejudiced it is most plain that Paul meaneth by imputing it for Righteousness that the Person was or is accounted reckoned or judged Righteous where Righteousness is mentioned as the formal Relation of the Believer so that what-ever be the matter of it of which next the formal Relation sure is our own and so here said And if it be from the matter of Christ's Righteousness yet that must be our own by your Opinion And it must be our own in and to the proper Effects in mine But sure it is not the same numerical formal Relation of Righteousness that is in Christ's Person and in ours And it 's that formal Relation as in Abraham and not in Christ that is called Abraham's Reputed Righteousness in the Text I scarce think you will say the contrary § 4. Dr. T. But Faith is not imputed to us for Righteousness Answ Expresly against the words of the Holy Ghost there oft repeated Is this defending the Scripture expresly to deny it Should not reverence and our subscription to the Scripture sufficiently rather teach us to distinguish and tell in what sense it is imputed and in what not than thus to deny without distinction what it doth so oft assert Yea the Text nameth nothing else as so imputed but Faith § 5. If it be imputed it is either as some Virtue or Humane Work the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Credere or as it apprehendeth and applyeth Christ's Righteousness Not the first If Faith be imputed relatively only as it applyeth to a Sinner the Righteousness of Christ it 's manifest that it 's the Righteousness of Christ only that is imputed and that Faith doth no more to Righteousness than an empty hand to receive an Alms. Answ 1. Sure it doth as a voluntarily receiving hand and not as a mere empty hand And voluntary grateful Reception may be the Condition of a Gift 2. You and I shall shortly find that it will be the Question on which we shall be Justified or Condemned not only whether we received Christ's Righteousness but whether by Faith we received Christ in all the Essentials of his Office and to all the essential saving Uses Yea whether according to the sense of the Baptismal Covenant we first believingly received and gave up our selves to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost and after performed sincerely that Covenant 3. But let me defend the Word of God Faith is imputed for Righteousness even this Faith now described 1. Remotely ex materiae aptitudine for its fitness to its formal Office And that fitness is 1. Because it is an Act of Obedience to God or morally good for a bad or indifferent Act doth not justifie 2. More specially as it is the receiving trusting and giving up our selves to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost to the proper ends of Redemption or a suitable Reception of the freely offered Gift and so connoteth Christ the Object for the Object is essential to the Act in specie 2. But proximately Faith is so reputed or imputed as it is the performance of the Condition of the Justifying Covenant or Donation And to be imputed for Righteousness includeth That It is the part required of us by the Law of Grace to make us partakers of the Benefits of Christ's Righteousness which meriteth Salvation for us instead of a legal and perfect Righteousness of our own which we have not Or Whereas we fell short of a Righteousness of Innocency Christ by such a Righteousness hath merited our Pardon and Salvation and given title to them by a New Covenant of Grace which maketh
out all sin that he might confirm what he said both from the Faith of Abraham by which he was justified and from our Saviours Death by which we are delivered from sin But this is on the by 2. But saith Dr. T. The Orthodox abhor the contrary in sensu forensi Answ How easie is it to challenge the Titles of Orthodox Wise or good Men to ones self And who is not Orthodox himself being Judg But it seems with him no Man must pass for Orthodox that is not in so gross an error of his Mind if these words and not many better that are contrary must be the discovery of it viz. That will not say that in sensu forensi God esteemeth Men to have done that which they never did The best you can make of this is that you cover the same sense which I plainlier express with this illfavoured Phrase of Man's inventing But if indeed you mean any more than I by your sensus forensis viz. that such a suffering and meriting for us may in the lax improper way of some Lawyers speaking be called Our own Doing Meriting Suffering c. I have proved that the Doctrine denied by me subverteth the Gospel of Christ Reader I remember what Grotius then Orthodox thirty years before his Death in that excellent Letter of Church-Orders Predestination Perseverance and Magistrates animadverting on Molinaeus saith How great an injury those Divines who turn the Christian Doctrine into unintelligible Notions and Controversies do to Christian Magistrates because it is the duty of Magistrates to discern and preserve necessary sound Doctrine which these Men would make them unable to discern The same I must say of their injury to all Christians because all should hold fast that which is proved True and Good which this sort of Men would disable them to discern We justly blame the Papists for locking up the Scripture and performing their Worship in an unknown Tongue And alas what abundance of well-meaning Divines do the same thing by undigested Terms and Notions and unintelligible Distinctions not adapted to the Matter but customarily used from some Persons reverenced by them that led the way It is so in their Tractates both of Theology and other Sciences and the great and useful Rule Verba Rebus aptanda sunt is laid aside or rather Men that understand not Matter are like enough to be little skilful in the expressing of it And as Mr. Pemble saith A cloudy unintelligible stile usually signifieth a cloudy unintelligent Head to that sense And as Mr. J. Humfrey tells Dr. Fullwood in his unanswerable late Plea for the Conformists against the charge of Schism pag. 29. So overly are men ordinarily wont to speak at the first sight against that which others have long thought upon that some Men think that the very jingle of a distinction not understood is warrant enough for their reproaching that Doctrine as dangerous and unsound which hath cost another perhaps twenty times as many hard studies as the Reproachers ever bestowed on that Subject To deliver thee from those Learned Obscurities read but the Scripture impartially without their Spectacles and ill-devised Notions and all the Doctrine of Justification that is necessary will be plain to thee And I will venture again to fly so far from flattering those called Learned Men who expect it as to profess that I am perswaded the common sort of honest unlearned Christians even Plowmen and Women do better understand the Doctrine of Justification than many great Disputers will suffer themselves or others to understand it by reason of their forestalling ill-made Notions these unlearned Persons commonly conceive 1. That Christ in his own Person as a Mediator did by his perfect Righteousness and Sufferings merit for us the free pardon of all our sins and the Gift of his Spirit and Life Eternal and hath promised Pardon to all that are Penitent Believers and Heaven to all that so continue and sincerely obey him to the end and that all our after-failings as well as our former sins are freely pardoned by the Sacrifice Merits and Intercession of Christ who also giveth us his Grace for the performance of his imposed Conditions and will judg us as we have or have not performed them Believe but this plain Doctrine and you have a righter understanding of Justification than many would let you quietly enjoy who tell you That Faith is not imputed for Righteousness that it justifieth you only as an Instrumental Cause and only as it is the reception of Christ's Righteousness and that no other Act of Faith is justifying and that God esteemeth us to have been perfectly Holy and Righteous and fulfilled all the Law and died for our own sins in or by Christ and that he was politically the very Person of every Believing Sinner with more such like And as to this distinction which this Doctor will make a Test of the Orthodox that is Men of of his Size and Judgment you need but this plain explication of it 1. In Law-sense a Man is truly and fitly said himself to have done that which the Law or his Contract alloweth him to do either by himself or another as to do an Office or pay a Debt by a Substitute or Vicar For so I do it by my Instrument and the Law is fulfilled and not broken by me because I was at liberty which way to do it In this sense I deny that we ever fulfilled all the Law by Christ and that so to hold subverts all Religion as a pernicious Heresie 2. But in a tropical improper sense he may be said to be esteemed of God to have done what Christ did who shall have the benefits of Pardon Grace and Glory thereby merited in the manner and measure given by the free Mediator as certainly as if he had done it himself In this improper sense we agree to the Matter but are sorry that improper words should be used as a snare against sound Doctrine and the Churches Love and Concord And yet must we not be allowed Peace § 4. But my free Speech here maketh me remember how sharply the Doctor expounded and applyed one word in the retracted Aphorisms I said not of the Men but of the wrong Opinion opposed by me It fondly supposeth a Medium betwixt one that is just and one that is no sinner one that hath his sin or guilt taken away and one that hath his unrighteousness taken away It 's true in bruits and insensibles that are not subjects capable of Justice there is c. There is a Negative Injustice which denominateth the Subject non-justum but no◠injustum where Righteousness is not due But when there is the debitum habendi its privative The Doctor learnedly translateth first the word fondly by stolide and next he fondly though not stolidè would perswade the Reader that it is said of the Men though himself translate it Doctrina And next he bloweth his Trumpet to the War with this exclamation Stolide O
vocis mollitiem modestiam O stolidos Ecclesiae Reformatae Clarissimos Heroas Aut ignoravit certè aut scire se dissimulat quod affine est calumniae quid isti statuâ—nt quos loquitur stolidi Theologi Answ 1. How blind are some in their own Cause Why did not Conscience at the naming of Calumnie say I am now committing it It were better write in English if Latin translations must needs be so false we use the word fond in our Country in another sense than foolish with us it signifieth any byassed Inclination which beyond reason propendeth to one side and so we use to say That Women are fond of their Children or of any thing over-loved But perhaps he can use his Logick to gather by consequences the Title of the Person from the Title of his Opinion and to gather foolishly by consequence out of fondly To all which I can but answer That if he had made himself the Translator of my Words and the Judg of my Opinions if this be his best he should not be chosen as such by me But it may be he turned to Riders Dictionary found there fondly vide foolishly 2. The Stolidi Theologi then is his own phrase And in my Opinion another Mans Pen might better have called the Men of his own Opinion Ecclesiae Reformatae clarissimos Heroas compared with others I take Gataker Bradshaw Wotton Camero and his followers Vrsine Olevian Piscator Paraeus Wendeline and multitudes such to be as famous Heroes as himself But this also on the by § 5. But I must tell him whether I abhor the Scripture Phrase We are dead buried and risen with Christ I answer No nor will I abhor to say That in sensu forensi I am one political Person with Christ and am perfectly holy and obedient by and in him and died and redeemed my self by him when he shall prove them to be Scripture Phrases But I desire the Reader not to be so fond pardon the word as by this bare question to be enticed to believe that it is any of the meaning of those Texts that use that Phrase which he mentioneth that Legally or in sensu forensi every Believer is esteemed by God to have himself personally died a violent death on the Cross and to have been buried and to have risen again and ascended into Heaven nor yet to be now there in Glory because Christ did and doth all this in our very Legal Person Let him but 1. consider the Text 2. and Expositors 3. and the Analogy of Faith and he will find another sense viz. That we so live by Faith on a dying buried risen and glorified Saviour as that as such he dwelleth objectively in our Hearts and we partake so of the Fruits of his Death Burial and Resurrection and Glory as that we follow him in a Holy Communion being dead and buried to the World and Sin and risen to newness of Life believing that by his Power we shall personally after our death and burial rise also unto Glory I will confess that we are perfectly holy and obedient by and in Christ as far as we are now dead buried and risen in him § 6. And here I will so far look back as to remember That he as some others confidently telleth us That the Law bound us both to perfect Obedience and to punishment for our sin and therefore pardon by our own suffering in Christ may stand with the reputation that we were perfectly Obedient and Righteous in Christ Answ And to what purpose is it to dispute long where so notorious a contradiction is not only not discerned but obtruded as tantum non necessary to our Orthodoxness if not to our Salvation I ask him 1. Was not Christ as our Mediator perfectly holy habitually and actually without Original or Actual Sin 2. If all this be reputed to be in se our own as subjected in and done by our selves political or in sensu forensi Are we not then reputed in foro to have no original or actual sin but to have innocently fulfilled all the Law from the first hour of our lives to the last Are we reputed innocent in Christ as to one part only of our lives if so which is it or as to all 3. If as to all is it not a contradiction that in law-Law-sense we are reputed perfectly Holy and Innocent and yet sinners 4. And can he have need of Sacrifice or Pardon that is reputed never to have sinned legally 5. If he will say that in law-Law-sense we have or are two Persons let him expound the word Persons only as of Qualities and Relations nothing to our Case in hand or else say also That as we are holy and perfect in one of our own Persons and sinful unrighteous or ungodly in another so a Man my be in Heaven in one of his own Persons and on Earth yea and in Hell in the other And if he mean that the same Man is justified in his Person in Christ and condemned in his other Person consider which of these is the Physical Person for I think its that which is like to suffer § 7. pag. 224. He hath another touch at my Epistle but gently forbeareth contradiction as to Num. 8. And he saith so little to the 11 th as needeth no answer § 8. pag. 127. He assaulteth the first Num. of N. 13. That we all agree against any conceit of Works that are against or instead of the free Mercy of God And what hath he against this Why that which taketh up many pages of his Book and seemeth his chief strength in most of his Contest viz. The Papists say the same and so saith Bellarmine It 's strange that the same kind of Men that deride Fanatick Sectaries for crying out in Church-Controversies O Antichristian Popery Bellarmine c. should be of the same Spirit and take the same course in greater Matters and not perceive it nor acknowledg their agreement with them But as Mr. J. Humfrey saith in the foresaid Book of the word Schism Schism oft canted out against them that will not sacrilegiously surrender their Consciences or desert their Ministry The great Bear hath been so oft led through the streets that now the Boys lay by all fear and laugh or make sport at him so say I of this Sectarian Bugbear Popery Antichristian Bellarmine either the Papists really say as we do or they do not If not is this Doctor more to be blamed for making them better than they are or for making us worse which ever it be Truth should defend Truth If they do I heartily rejoyce and it shall be none of my labour any more whatever I did in my Confession of Faith to prove that they do not Let who will manage such ungrateful Work For my part I take it for a better Character of any Opinion that Papists and Protestants agree in it than that the Protestants hold it alone And so much for Papists and Bellarmine though I
think I know better what they teach than his Book will truly tell me § 9. But he addeth Humane Justifying Works are in reality adverse to the free Mercy of God therefore to be accounted of no value to Righteousness Answ 1. But whose phrase is Justifying Works 2. Doth not the Holy Ghost say That a Man is justified by Works and not by Faith only Jam. 2. 3. Doth not Christ say By thy words thou shalt be justified 4. Do not I over and over tell the World That I hold Justification by Works in no sense but as signifying the same as According to Works which you own And so both Name and Thing are confessed by you to be Scriptural 5. I have before desired the Reader to turn to the words Righteous Righteousness Justification c. in his Concordance And if there he find Righteousness mentioned as consisting in some Acts of Man many hundred times let him next say if he dare that they are to be had in no price to Righteousness Or let him read the Texts cited by me in my Confession of Faith 6. Because Faith Repentance Love Obedience are that whose sincerity is to be judged in order to our Life or Death ere long I will not say that they are to be vilified as to such a Righteousness or Justification as consisteth in our vindication from the charge of Impenitency Infidelity Unholiness Hypocrisie c. The reading of Mat. 25. resolved me for this Opinion § 10. Next he noteth our detesting such Works as are against or instead of Christ's Sacrifice Righteousness Merits c. To this we have the old Cant The Papists say the like Reader I proved that the generality of Protestants are agreed in all those twenty Particulars even in all the material Doctrines about Man's Works and Justification while this warlike Doctor would set us all together by the ears still he is over-ruled to assert that the Papists also are agreed with us The more the better I am glad if it be so and will here end with so welcome a Conclusion that maketh us all herein to be Friends only adding That when he saith that such are all Works whatever even Faith it self which are called into the very least part of Justification even as a Condition or subordinate personal Evangelical Righteousness such as Christ and James and a hundred Texts of Scripture assert I answer I cannot believe him till I cease believing the Scriptures to be true which I hope will never be And am sorry that so worthy a Man can believe so gross an Opinion upon no better reasons than he giveth And yet imagine that had I the opportunity of free conference with him I could force him to manifest That he himself differeth from us but in meer words or second Notions while he hotly proclaimeth greater discord AN ANSVVER TO Dr. TULLIES Angry Letter By Rich. Baxter LONDON Printed for Nevil Simmons and Jonath Robinson at the Princes-Arms and Golden-Lion in St. Pauls Church-yard 1675. An Answer to Dr. Tullies Angry Letter Reverend Sir If I had not before perceived and lamented the great Sin of Contenders the dangerous snare for ignorant Christians and the great Calamity of the Church by making Verbal Differences seem Material and variety of some Arbitrary Logical Notions to seem tantum non a variety of Religions and by frightning Men out of their Charity Peace and Communion by Bugbear-Names of this or that Heresie or dangerous Opinion which is indeed but a Spectrum or Fantasm of a dreaming or melancholy Brain your Justificatio Paulina and your Letter to me might be sufficient means of my full Conviction And if once reading of your Writings do not yet more increase my love of the Christian simplicity and plain old Divinity and the amicable Communion of practical Christians upon those terms and not medling with Controversies in a militant way till by â—ong impartial studies they are well understood I must confess my non-proficience is very unexcusable With your self I have no great business I am not so vain as to think my self able to understand you or to be understood by you and I must not be so bold as to tell you why much less will I be so injurious to the Reader as by a particular examining all your words to extort a confession that their sense is less or worse than I could wish For cui bono What would this do but more offend you And idle words are as great a fault in writing as in talk If I have been guilty of too many I must not so much add to my fault as a too particular examination of such Books would be But for the sake of your Academical Youth whom you thought meet to allarm by your Caution I have answered so much of your Treatise as I thought necessary to help even Novices to answer the rest themselves For their sakes though I delight not to offend you I must say That if they would not be deceived by such Books as yours it is not an Answer to them that must be their preservative but an orderly studying of the Doctrines handled Let them but learn truly the several senses of the word Justificaâ—ion and the several sorts and what they are and still constrain ambiguous words to confess their sense and they will need no other Answer to such Writings And as to your Letter passing by the spume and passion I think these few Animadversions may suffice § 1. Between twenty and thirty years ago I did in a private Disputation prove our guilt of the sins of our nearer Parents and because many doubted of it I have oft since in other writings mentioned it About three years ago having two Books of Mr. William Allens in my hand to peruse in order to a Publication a Perswasive to Vnity and a Treatise of the Two Covenants in a Preface to the latter I said That most Writers if not most Christians do greatly darken the Sacred Doctrine by overlooking the Interest of Children in the Actions of their nearer Parents and think that they participate of no guilt and suffer for no original sin but Adam ' s only c. You fastened on this and warned seriously the Juniors not rashly to believe one that brings forth such Paradoxes of his or that Theologie which you added to your O caecos ante Theologos quicunque unquam fuistis The charge was expressed by aliud invenisse peccatum Originale multo citerius quam quod ab Adamo traductum est Hereupon I thought it enough to publish that old private Disputation which many before had seen with various Censures Now you send me in your Letter the strange tidings of the success You that deterred your Juniors by so frighful a warning seem now not only to agree with me that we are guilty of our nearer Parents sin and contract additional pravity from them as such which was my Assertion but over-do all others and Truth it self in your Agreement Now you take it for
him hereafter to use it in no other sense than the Scripture useth it 3. If that will not serve if the Masters of Language will agree yea to pass by our Lexicons if the Doctors of that University will give it us under their hands that the word ORIGINAL is unaptly and dangerously applyed to that sinful Guilt and Pravity which is in us ab Origine Nostrae existentiae and is the internal Radix vel Origo of all our Actual Sin in part of Causality I will use that Epithete so no more 4. If all this will not serve if he himself will give me a fitter Epithete I will use it And now we over-agree in Doctrine a word shall not divide us unless he will be angry because we are agreed as Jonas was that the Ninivites were spared because it seemed to disgrace his Word § II. pag. 4 5 c. You invite me to a full entire retractation of my Doctrine of Justification you add By Works and the secondary Original Sin 1. Will you take it well if I retract that which you profess now to hold and know none that denyeth then there is no pleasing you If I must be thought to wrong you for seeming to differ from you and yet must retract all What yours and all Mens 2. Do you mean the words or the sense of Justification as you call it by Works For the words I take you for a subscriber to the 39 Articles and therefore that you reject not the Epistle of St. James And for the sense I confess it is a motion suitable to the Interest of your Treatise though not of the Truth He that cannot confute the Truth would more easily do his Work if he could perswade the Defenders of it to an Entire Retractation Hereupon pag. 5. you recite my words of the difficulty of bringing some Militant Divines to yield Your Admonition for Self-Application of them is useful and I thank you for it But is it not a streight that such as I am in between two contrary sorts of Accusers When Mr. Danvers and Multitudes on that side Reproach me daily for Retractations and you for want of them How natural is it now to Mankind to desire to be the Oracles of the World and that all should be Silenced or Retracted which is against their Minds How many call on me for Retractation Mr. Tombes and Mr. Danvers for what I have Written for Infants-Baptism The Papists for what I have Written against them And how many more And as to what I have Retracted One reproached me for it and another either knoweth not of it or perswadeth others that it is not done You say pag. 6. A great out-cry you have made of me as charging you with things you have Retracted And pag. 7. What 's the reason you have not hitherto directed us to the particulars of your Recantation what when where You direct one indeed to a small Book above Twenty years a-go retracted All I can pick up of any seeming Retractation is that you say that Works are necessary at least to the continuation of our Justification Answ Either this is Written by a Wilful or a Heedless mistaking of my words The first I will not suspect it must therefore be the second for I must not judg you Vnable to understand plain English And is it any wonder if you have many such Mistakes in your disputes of Justification when you are so heedless about a matter of Fact Where did I ever say that I had Recanted Or that I Retracted any of the Doctrine of Justification which I had laid down Cannot you distinguish between Suspending or Revoking or Retracting a particular Book for the sake of several Crude and Incongruous Expressions and Retracting or Recanting that Doctrine of Justification Or can you not understand words that plainly thus Distinguish Why talk you of what and when and where and conjecture at the words as if you would make the Reader believe that indeed it is some confessed Errors of mine which you Confuted and that I take it for an Injury because I Retracted them And so you think you salve your Confutation whatever you do by your Candour and Justice But you have not so much as Fig-leaves for either It was the Aphorisms or Book that I said was above Twenty years a go Revoked When in my Treatise of Infant-Baptism I had craved Animadversions on it and promised a better Edition if I Published it any more I forbad the Reprinting it till I had time to Correct it and when many called for it I still deny'd them And when the Cambridg Printer Printed it a second time he did it by Stealth pretending it was done beyond Sea In my Confession Twenty years ago I gave the Reasons Preface pag. 35. I find that there are some Incautelous Passages in my Aphorisms not fitted to their Reading that come to suck Poyson and seek for a Word to be Matter of Accusation and Food for their Censuring opinionative Zeal And pag. 42. If any Brother understand not any word in my Aphorisms which is here Interpreted or mistake my sense about the Matter of that Book which is here more fully opened I must expect that they interpret that by this And if any one have so little to do as to write against that Book which is not unlikely if he take the Sense contrary to what I have here and else-where since then Published I shall but neglect him as a Contentious Vain Wrangler if not a Calumniator I Wrote this sharply to forwarn the Contentious not knowing then that above Twenty years after Dr. Tully would be the Man Pag. 43. If any will needs take any thing in this Book to be rather a Retractation than an Explication of what I have before said though I should best know my own Meaning yet do such commend me while they seem to blame me I never look to write that which shall have no need of Correction And Cap. 1. pag. 2. Lest I should prove a further Offence to my Brethren and a Wrong to the Church I desired those who thought it worth their Labour to vouchsafe me their Animadversions which I have spent much of these Three last years in considering that I might Correct what-ever was discovered to be Erroneous and give them an account of my Reasons of the rest I have not only since SVPPRESSED that Book which did offend them but also laid by those Papers of Vniversal Redemption which I had written lest I should be further offensive c. In my Apologie else-where I have such-like Passages ever telling Men that It was the first Book I wrote in my Vnexperienced Youth that I take the Doctrines of it to be sound and needful save that in divers places they are unskilfully and incautelously worded As the Word Covenant is oft put for Law c. And that I wrote my Confession and Disputes of Justification as an Exposition of it and that I Retracted or Suspended or Revoked not
the Doctrine but the Book till I had Corrected it and did disown it as too unmeet an Expression of my Mind which I had more fully exprest in other Books And is not this plain English Doth this warrant a Wise and Righteous Man to intimate that I accuse him of writing against that Doctrine of Justification which I Recanted and to call for the What and Where and When Yea and tell me that I refer you to a small Book when instead of referring you to it I only blame you for referring to that alone when I had said as before When many Divines have published the first Edition of their Works imperfectly and greatly corrected and enlarged them in a Second as Beza his Annotations Polanus his Syntagma and many such all Men take it for an Injury for a Neighbour twenty years after to select the first Edition to confute as the Author's Judgment Much more might I when I published to the World that I Suspended the whole Book and have these twenty four years hindred the Printing of it professing that I have in many larger Books more intelligibly and fully opened the same things Yea you fear not pag. 23. to say That I tell you of about 60 Books of Retractations in part at least which I have Written when never such a word fell from me If I say That one that hath published his Suspension of a small Book written in Youth not for the Doctrine of it but some unfit Expressions and hath since in al-most thirty Years time written about sixty Books in many or most of which is somewhat of the same Subject and in some of them he fullier openeth his Mind should be dealt with by an Adversary according to some of his later and larger Explications and not according to the Mode and Wording of that one Suspended Book alone Shall such a Man as you say that I tel you of about sixty Books of Retractations Or will it not abate Mens reverence of your disputing Accurateness to find you so untrusty in the Recitation of a Man's words The truth is it is this great Defect of Heed and Accurateness by hasty Temerity which also spoileth your Disputations But pag. 7. the Aphorisms must be The most Schollar-like and Elaborate though Erroneous Book in Controversie you ever Composed Answ 1. Your Memory is faulty Why say you in the next that I appeal to my Disputation of Justification and some others but you cannot Trudg up and down to every place I would send you your Legs are too weak Either you had read all the sixty Books which you mention the Controversal at least or not If not How can you tell that the Aphorisms is the most Elaborate If yea Why do you excuse your Trudging and why would you select a Suspended Book and touch none that were Written at large on the same Subject 2. By this I suâ—pose to make your Nibble to seem a Triumph you tell your Reader again how to value your Judgment Is it like that any Dunce that is diligent should Write no more Schollar-like at Sixty years of Age than at Thirty And do you think you know better what of mine is Elaborate than I do Sure that Word might have been spared When I know that one printed Leaf of Paper hath cost me more Labour than all that Book and perhaps one Scheme of the Distinctions of Justification which you deride If indeed you are a competent Judg of your own Writings Experience assureth me that you are not so of mine And pag. 25. you say You desire not to be preferred before your Betters least of all when you are singular as here I think you are § III. Pag. 9. You are offended for being put in the Cub with divers mean and contemptible Malefactors Answ O for Justice 1. Was not Bellarmin or some of the Papists and the Socinians as great Malefactors with whom as you phrase it you put me in the Cub 2. Are they Malefactors so far as they agree with you in Doctrine and are you Innocent What is the Difference between your Treatise in the part that toucheth me and that of Mr. Eyres Mr. Crandon and some others such Dr. Owen and Dr. Kendale indeed differed from you the latter seeking by Bishop Vsher an amicable Closure and the former if I understand his Book on the Hebrews less differing from me in Doctrine than once he either did or seemed to do And if any of us all grow no Wiser in thirty years Study we may be ashamed But to give you your due Honour I will name you with your Equals as far as I can judg viz. Maccovius Cluto Coccejus and Cloppenburgius I mean but in the Point in Question it 's no Dishonour to you to give some of them Precedencie in other things It may be also Spanhemius was near you But if I may presume to liken my Betters no Men seem to me to have been so like you as Guilielmus Rivet not Andrew Mr. George Walker and Mr. Roborough I hope this Company is no Dishonour to you And very unlike you are Le Blank Camero Davenant Dr. Hammond Mr. Gataker Mr. Anthony Wotton and in Complexion Scotus and Ockam and such as they If yet I have not Chosen you pleasing Company I pray you choo se so your self But you say on Had you not in your Memory many Scores of greatest Eminence and Repute in the Christian World of the same Judgment with me Know you not I speak the same thing with all the Reformed Churches c. For shame let it be the Church of England with all the rest of the Reformed c. Answ 1. I know not what you hold even when I read what you write I must hope as well as I can that you know your self How then should I know who are of the same Judgment with you 2. Yet I am very confident that all they whom you mention are of the same in some thing or other and in particular that we are Justified by Faith and not by the Works of the Law or any Works in the sence denied by St. Paul c. 3. Do not I with as great Confidence as you lay Claim to the same Company and Concord And if one of us be mistaken must your bare Word determine which it is Which of us hath brought the fuller Proofs I subscribe to the Doctrine of the Church of England as well as you and my Condition these thirteen or fourteen years giveth as much Evidence that I am loth to subscribe to what I believe not as yours doth of you And you that know which of my Books is the most Elaborate sure know that in that Book which I Wrote to explain those Aphorisms called my Confession I cite the Words of above an Hundred Protestant Witnesses that give as much to Works as I do And that of this Hundred one is the Augustine Confession one the Westminster Synod one the Synod of Dort one the Church of England
as long as you will you shall never tempt me by it to renounce my Baptism and List my self under the grand Enemy of Love and Concord nor to Preach up Hatred and Division for nothing as in the Name of Christ If you will handle such Controversies without Distinguishing of Faiths Works and Justifications I will never perswade any Friend of mine to be your Pupil or Disciple Then Simon Magus's faith and the Devils faith and Peters faith must all pass for the same and justifie accordingly Then indeed Believing in God the Father and the Holy Ghost yea and Christ as our Teacher King and Judg c. must pass for the Works by which no Man is Justified If Distinction be unsound detect the Error of it If not it is no Honour to a disputing Doctor to reproach it § X. But pag. 17. you set upon your great undeâ—eiving Work to shew the evil of ill using Words Words you say as they are enfranchised into Language are but the Agents and Factors of things for which they continually negotiate with our Minds conveying Errands on all occasions c. Let them mark that charge the vanity and bombast of Metaphors on others one word Signa should have served our turn instead of all this Whence it follows that their use and signification is Vnalterable but by the stamp of the like publick usage and imposition from whence at first they received their being c. Answ O Juniors Will not such deceiving Words save you from my Deceits But 1. Is there a Law and unalterable Law for the sense of Words Indeed the Words of the sacred Text must have no new Sense put upon them 2. Are you sure that it was Publick usage and Imposition from whence they first received their being How shall we know that they grew not into publick use from one Mans first Invention except those that not Publick use but God Himself made 3. Are you sure that all or most Words now Latine or English have the same and only the same use or sense as was put upon them at the first Is the change of the sense of Words a strange thing to us 4. But that which concerneth our Case most is Whether there be many Words either of Hebrew and Greek in the Scripture or of Latine English or any common Language which have not many Significations Your Reputation forbids you to deny it And should not those many Significations be distinguished as there is Cause Are not Faith Works Just Justice Justification words of divers senses in the Scripture and do not common Writers and Speakers use them yet more variously And shall a Disputer take on him that the use or signification of each is but one or two or is so fixed that there needeth no distinction 5. Is the change that is made in all Languages in the World made by the same publick usage and imposition from which at first they received their being 6. If as you say the same thing can be represented by different words only when they are Synonymous should we not avoid seeming to represent the same by Equivocals which unexplained are unfit for it Pag. 20. You tell me what sad work you are doing and no wonder Sin and Passions are self-troubling things And it 's well if it be sad to your self alone and not to such as you tempt into Mistakes Hatred and Division It should be sad to every Christian to see and hear those whom they are bound to Love represented as odious And you are still pag. 19. feigning that Every eye may see Men dealing Blows and Deaths about and therefore we are not wise if we think them agreed But doubtless many that seem killed by such Blows as some of yours are still alive And many a one is in Heaven that by Divines pretending to be Orthodox were damned on Earth And many Men are more agreed than they were aware of I have known a Knavish Fellow set two Persons of quality on Fighting before they spake a word to one another by telling them secretly and falsly what one said against the other Many differ even to persecuting and bloodshed by Will and Passion and Practice upon a falsly supposed great difference in Judgment I will not so suddenly repeat what Proof I have given of some of this in the place you noted Cath. Theol. Confer 11 12 13. There is more skill required to narrow differences than to widen them and to reconcile than to divide as there is to quench a Fire than to kindle it to build than to pull down to heal than to wound I presume therefore to repeat aloud my contrary Cautions to your Juniors Young-Men after long sad Experience of the sinful and miserable Contentions of the Clergie and consequently of the Christian World that you may escape the Guilt I beseech you whoever contradicteth it consider and believe these following Notices 1. That all Words are but arbitrary Signs and are changed as Men please and through the Penury of them and Mans imperfection in the Art of Speaking there are very few at all that have not various Significations 2. That this Speaking-Art requireth so much time and study and all Men are so defective in it and the variety of Mens skill in it is so very great that no Men in the World do perfectly agree in their interpretation and use of Words The doleful plague of the Confusion of Tongues doth still hinder our full Communication and maketh it hard for us to understand Words our selves or to be understood by others for Words must have a three-fold aptitude of Signification 1. To signifie the Matter 2. And the Speakers conceptions of it 3. And this as adapted to the hearers Mind to make a true Impression there 3. That God in Mercy hath not made Words so necessary as Things nor necessary but for the sake of the Things If God Christ Grace and Heaven be known believed and duly accepted you shall be saved by what Words soever it be brought to pass 4. Therefore Real Fundamentals or Necessaries to Salvation are more easily defined than Verbal ones For more or fewer Words these or other Words are needful to help some Persons to Faith and Love and Holiness as their Capacities are different 5. But as he that truly believeth in and giveth up himself to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost according to the sense of the Baptismal Covenant is a true Christian to be loved and shall be saved so he that understandeth such Words as help him to that true Faith and Consent doth know so much of the Verbal part as is of necessity to his Christianity and Salvation 6. And he that is such holdeth no Heresie or Error inconsistent with it If he truly love God it 's a contradiction to say that he holdeth an Error inconsistent with the Love of God 7. Therefore see that you Love all such as Christians till some proved or notorious inconsistents nullifying his Profession disoblige you 8.
words to jeer away Conviction you tell me We must have some better account of you quem quibus than what you have given us yet I shall take leave to present our indifferent Readers with a more ingenuous and truer state of the Question far more suitable both to my plain meaning and the clear purport of your Direction Let the Case be this There is One who of late hath raised much dust among us about the grand Article of Justification Whether it be by Faith without Works or by Faith and Works too All our old Renowned Divines on this side and beyond the Seas are unanimously agreed that Justification is by Faith alone i. e. without Works This one Person hath often published his Judgment to the contrary so that a poor Academical Doctor may very rationally enquire of you Who in this case is to be preferred That one or those many Answ There was a Disputant who would undertake to conquer any Adversary When he was asked How He said he would pour out upon him so many and so gross untruths as should leave him nothing to answer congruously but a Mentiris and then all the World would judg him uncivil and condemn him for giving such an unreverent answer But you shall not so prevail with me but I will call your Reader to answer these Questions 1. Whether it be any truer that This is the clear purport of my Direction than it is that I say There is but one Star in the Firmament because I say that one Star is more Luminous than many Candles 2. Whether if a diseased Reader will put such a Sense upon my words his Forgery be a true stating of the Question between him and me with out my consent 3. Whether an intimation that this ONE is either Vnicus or Primus or Singular in the definition of Justification or the interest of Works be any truer than that he is the only ejected Minister in England While the writings of Bucer Ludov. Crocius Joh. Bergius Conrad Bergius Calixtus Placeus le Blank Dave Gatak Wott Prest Ball and multitudes such are visible still among us 4. Whether he deals truly wisely or friendly with the holy Scripures and the Protestants who would perswade the Ignorant that this is the true state of the Controversie Whether it be by Faith without Works or by Faith and Works too that we are justified While the Scripture speaketh both and all Protestants hold both in several senses And whether this easie stating of Controversies without more Explication or Distinction be worthy an Academical Disputant 5. Whether it be true or notoriously false that All our Renowned Divines on this side and beyond the Seas are agreed of that in this Question of the interest of Works which this one contradicteth 6. Whether this Doctors naked Affirmation hereof be better proof than that one Mans citation of the words of above an Hundred yea many Hundred as giving as much to Works as he doth is of the Contrary 7. Whether it be an ingenuous way beseeming Academics to talk at this rate and assert such a stating of the Question and such consent without one word of notice or mention of the Books in which I state the Question and bring all this evidence of consent 8. If such a Doctor will needs enquire whether the secret thoughts of the Writer meant not himself when he pretendeth but to accuse the Rule there given and should enquire but of the meaning of the words whether it savour more of Rationality or a presumptuous usurping the Prerogative of God § XVI Pag. 27. Though your approach be wrathful you are constrained to come nearer yet and you cannot deny my Rule of Direct in other Points but only those of High and difficult speculation And do you deny it there You will deal with it but as the application of that Rule to the Definition of Justification And shall we lose your favour by forcing you to lay by your Opposition as to all the rest But here you say you exceedingly differ from me Or else you would be ashamed of so much Combating in the dark Exceeding oft signifieth some extream Your Reasons are 1. You hold not the Doctrine of Justification to be properly of Speculative concern but wholly Practical Where yet you confess that in all Practical knowledg there be some antecedent contemplations of the Nature Properties End Object and that to know the certain number of Paces bâ—me-ward is a Speculative nicety Answ And can you find no fairer a shift for disagreement I would such as you made not the Doctrine of Justification too little Practical I am far from thinking that it is not Practical But is not a Logical definition the opening the Nature Properties End Object or some of these which you call Contemplations Make not plain things dark Sir The use of Art is not to shut the Windows and confound Mens Minds I take all Theologie to be together Scientia-affectiva-practica for our Intellect Will and Practice must be possest or ruled by it But it is first Scientia and we must know before we can will and practise And though all right knowledg tend to Practice yet forgive me for telling you that I think that many holy Persons in Scripture and Primitive times loved and practised more than you or I who knew not how to form an exact Logical Definition And that he that knoweth the things of the Spirit spiritually by Scripture Notions may practise them as fully as he that knoweth and speaketh them in the Notions of Aristotle or else the School-Men excel the Apostles Though ambling be an easie Pace which Horses are taught by Gives and Fetters it followeth not that a Horse cannot travel as far in his natural pace When you have said all Logical defining shall be a work of Art and the Church should not be torn and Souls shall not be damned for want of it He that Loveth Believeth Hopeth Obeyeth and by doing them hath a reflecting perception what they are and hath but such a knowledg of the Gospel as may be had without a proper Definition shall be saved Pag. 28 29. you say Nor is the Doctrine of Justification so high and difficult but that the meanest Christian may understand it sufficiently to Salvation so far as words can make it intelligible Answ Your own blows seem not to hurt you I thank you for granting so much hope to the meanest Christians But what 's this to your Case 1. Do the meanest Christians know how to define Justification and all the Grace which they have 2. Are they acquainted with all the Words that should make it intelligible Pag. 29. you add You have done little service to your weaker Christians to perswade them otherwise as well as to the great blessed Charter of Salvation and to lead them out of the plain road into Woods and Mazes to that one Man of extraordinary Judgment and Clearness no body must know what his Name is or where he dwells and
liberal Dictates The Reformed Divines are all I think before you agreed about the nature of Justification its Causes c. and consequently cannot differ about the Definition Answ 1. But what if all Divines were so agreed So are not all honest Men and Women that must have Communion with us Therefore make not Definitions more necessary than they are nor as necessary as the Thing 2. You must be constrained for the defending of these words to come off by saying that you meant That though they agree not in the Words or Logical terms of the Definition but one saith This is the Genus and this is the Differentia and another that it is not this but that one saith this and another that is the Formal or Material Cause c. yet de re they mean the same thing were they so happy as to agree in their Logical defining terms and notions And if you will do in this as you have done in your other Quarrels come off by saying as I say and shewing Men the power of Truth though you do it with never so much anger that you must agree I shall be satisfied that the Reader is delivered from your snare and that Truth prevaileth what ever you think or say of me 3. But because I must now answer what you say and not what I foresee you will or must say I must add that this passage seemeth to suppose that your Reader liveth in the dark and hath read very little of Justification 1. Do all those great Divines who deny the Imputation of Christs active Righteousness and take it to be but Justitia Personae non Meriti and that we are Justified by the Passive only agree with their Adversaries who have written against them about the Definition and Causes of Justification Will any Man believe you who hath read Olevian Vrsine Paraeus Scultetus Piscator Carolus Molinaeus Wendeline Beckman Alstedius Camero with his followers in France Forbes with abundance more who are for the Imputation of the Passive Righteousness only Were Mr. Anth. Wotton and Mr. Balmford and his other Adversaries of the same Opinion in this Was Mr. Bradshaw so sottish as to write his Reconciling Treatise of Justification in Latine and English to reduce Men of differing minds to Concord while he knew that there was no difference so much as in the Definition Was he mistaken in reciting the great differences about their Senses of Imputation of Christs Righteousness if there were none at all Did Mr. Gataker agree with Lucius and Piscator when he wrote against both as the extreams Did Mr. Wotton and John Goodwin agree with Mr. G. Walker and Mr. Roborough Doth Mr. Lawson in his Theopolitica agree with you and such others Doth not Mr. Cartwright here differ from those that hold the Imputation of the Active Righteousness What abundance of Protestants do place Justification only in Fogiveness of Sins And yet as many I know not which is the greater side do make that Forgiveness but one part and Imputation of Righteousness another And how many make Forgiveness no part of Justification but a Concomitant And many instead of Imputation of Righteousness put Accepting us as Righteous for the sake or merit of Christs Righteousness imputed viz. as the Meritorious Cause And Paraeus tells us that they are of four Opinions who are for Christs Righteousness imputed some for the Passive only some for the Passive and Active some for the Passive Active and Habitual some for these three and the Divine And who knoweth not that some here so distinguish Causes and Effects as that our Original Sin or Habitual say some is pardoned for Christs Original and Habitual Holiness Our Omissions for Christs Active Obedience and our Commissions for His Passive Or as more say that Christs Passive Righteousness as Satisfaction saveth us from Hell or Punishment and His Active as meritorious procureth Life as the reward When many others rejecting that Division say That both freedom from Punishment and right to Glory are the conjunct effects of His Habitual Active and Passive Righteousness as an entire Cause in its kind as Guil. Forbes Grotius Bradshaw and others truly say Besides that many conclude with Gataker that these are indeed but one thing and effect to be Glorified and not to be Damned or Punished seeing not to be Glorified is the Paena damni and that the remitting of the whole Penalty damni sensus and so of all Sin of Omission and Commission is our whole Justification And I need not tell any Man that hath read such Writers that they ordinarily distinguish of Justification and give not the same Definition of one sort as of another nor of the Name in one Sense as in another Many confess whom you may read in Guil. Forbes and Vinc. le Blanck that the word Justifie is divers times taken in Scripture as the Papists do as including Sanctification And so saith Beza against Illyricus pag. 218. as cited by G. Forbes Si Justificationem generaliter accipias ut interdum usurpatur ab Apostolo Sanctificatio non erit ejus effectus sed pars aut species And as I find him mihi pag. 179. Quamvis Justificationis nomen interdum generaliter accipiatur pro omni illius Justitiae dono quam a patre in Christo accipimus c. And how little are we agreed whether Reconciliation be a part of Justification or not Yea or Adoption either Saith Illyricus Hoc affirmo recte posse dici Justificationem esse Causam omnium beneficiorum sequentium Nam justificatio est plena Reconciliatio cum Deo quae nos facit ex hostibus filios Dei To which Beza ibid. saith distinguishing of Reconciliation Neutro modo idem est Reconciliatio ac Justificatio Si Remissio peccatorum est Justificationis Definitio quod negare non ausis c. Of the three sorts or parts of Christs Righteousness imputed to make up three parts of our Justification see him de Predest pag. 405. Col. 2. which Perkins and some others also follow Olevian as all others that grosly mistake not herein did hold that God did not judg us to have fulfilled all the Law in Christ and that our righteousness consisteth only in the Remission of Sin and right to Life as freely given us for anothers Merits But Beza insisteth still on the contrary and in his Epistle to Olevian pag. 248. Epist 35. saith Quid vanius est quam Justum arbitrari qui Legem non impleverit Atqui lex non tantum prohibet fieri quod vetat verum praecipit quod jubet Ergo qui pro non peccatore censetur in Christo mortem quidem effugerit sed quo jure vitam praeterea petet nisi omnem justitiam Legis in eodem Christo impleverit This is the Doctrine which Wotton and Gataker in divers Books largely and Bradshaw after many others do Confute Yet saith he Nâ—que vero id obstat quominus nostra Justificatio Remissione peccatorum apte recte
who am thus publickly by visible Calumny traduced truly to tell you where you mistake and how you wrong Gods Church and Truth more than me and if also I offer peaceably to wash my own face this is hard fronted Calumny dragging a Doctor in Scarlet at the Wheels of my Chariot which might occasion his degrading and turning out c. This over-tenderness of your honour as to other mens words and too little care of the means of it as to your own hath a cause that it concerneth you to find out Had you the tenth part as many Books written against you as are against me by Quakers Seekers Infidels Antinomians Millenaries Anabaptists Separatists Semi-separatists Papists Pseudo-Tilenus Diocesans Conformists and many Enemies of Peace to whom it was not I but your self that joyned you it would have hardened you into some more patience If you will needs be militant you must expect replies And he that will injuriously speak to the World what he should not speak must look to hear what he would not hear But you add Sir the Name and Quality of a DOCTOR and Master of a Literate Society might have been treated more civilly by you Answ 1. I am ready to ask you forgiveness for any word that any impartial man yea or your Reverend Brethren of that Academy themselves whom I will allow to be somewhat partial for you shall notifie to me to be uncivil or any way injurious 2. But to be free with you neither Doctorship Mastership nor â—carlet will Priviledg you to fight against Truth Right and Peace and to vent gross mistakes and by gross untruths in matter of fact such as is your Omnem ludibrio habet imputationem to abuse your poor Brethren and keep the longconsuming flà mes still burning by false representing those as Popish and I know not what who speak not as unaptly as your self and all this without contradiction Were you a Bp. my Body and Estate might be in your power but Truth Justice and the Love of Christians and the Churches peace should not be cowardly betrayed by me on pretense of reverence to your Name and Quality I am heartily desirous that for ORDER-sake the Name and Honour of my Superiours may be very reverently used But if they will think that Errour Injustice and Confusion must take sanctuary under bare Ecclesiastical or Academical Names and robes they will find themselves mistaken Truth and Honesty will conquer when they pass through Smithfield flames Prisons confine them not Death kills them not No siege will force an honest Conscience by famine to give up He that cannot endure the sight of his own excrements must not dish them up to another mans Table lest they be sent him back again And more freedom is allowed against Peace-Breakers in Frays and Wars than towards men that are in a quieter sort of Controversie § XX. P. 36.37 You say For your various Definitions of Justification Constitutive Sentential Executive in Foro Dei in foro Conscientiae c. What need this heap of distinctions here when you know the question betwixt us is of no other Justification but the Constitutive in foro Dei that which maketh us righteous in the Court of Heaven I have nothing to do with you yet in any else as your own Conscience will tell you when you please If you have not more Justice and civility for your intelligent Readers I wish you would shew more Compassion to your Ignorant Homagers and not thus abuse them with your palpable Evasions Answ Doth the question Whether the several sorts of Justification will bear one and the same Definition deserve all this anger and the much greater that followeth 1. Seeing I am turned to my Reader I will crave his impartial judgment I never received and agreed on a state of the question with this Doctor He writeth against my books In those Books I over and over and over distinguish of Justification Constitutive Sentential and Executive besides those subordinate sorts by Witness Evidence Apology c. I oft open their differences He writeth against me as denying all Imputation of Christs Righteousness and holding Popish Justification by works and never tells me whether he take the word Justification in the same sense that I do or in which of those that I had opened And now he passionately appealeth to my Conscience that I knew his sence What he saith my Conscience will tell me it is not true It will tell me no such thing but the clean contrary that even after all his Disputes and Anger and these words I profess I know not what he meaneth by Justification 2. What Constitutive in foro Dei that which maketh us Righteous in the Court of Heaven meaneth with him I cannot conjecture He denyeth not my Distinctions but saith what need they I ever distinguished Making Righteous Judging Righteous Executively useing as Righteous The first is in our selves The second is by Divines said to be in foro Dei an act of Judgment the third is upon us after both now he seemeth to confound the two first and yet denyeth not their difference and saith he meaneth Constitutive in foro He that is made Righteous is such in se and as such is Justifiable in foro We are Made Righteous by God as free Donor and Imputer antecedently to judgment We are in foro sentenced Righteous by God as Judg so that this by sentence presupposeth the former God never Judgeth us Righteous and Justifieth us against Accusation till he have first Made us Righteous and Justified us from adherent Guilt by Pardon and Donation Which of these meaneth he I ask not my Ignorant homagers who know no more than I but his Intelligent Reader He taketh on him to go the Commonest way of Protestants And the Commonest way is to acknowledg that a Constitutive Justification or making the man Just antecedent to the Actus forensis must need go first but that it is the second which Paul usually meaneth which is the actus forensis the sentence of the Judg in foro contrary to Condemnation And doth the Doctor think that to make Righteous and to sentence as Righteous are all one and that we are made Righteous in foro otherwise than to be just in our selves and so Justifiable in foro before the Sentence or do Protestants take the Sentence to be Constituting or Making us Righteous All this is such talk as had I read it in Mr. Bunnyan of the Covenants or any of my Ignorant Homagers I should have said the Author is a stranger to the Controversie into which he hath rashly plunged himself but I have more reverence to so learned a man and therefore blame my dull understanding 3. But what if I had known as I do not yet what sort of Justification he meaneth Doth he not know that I was then debating the Case with him whether the Logical Definitions of Justification Faith c. are not a work of Art in which a few well-studied
justified that is Righteous by that Imputation 3. And how unable is my weak Understanding to make his words at peace with themselves The same Man in the next lines saith Lex nisi praestita neminem justificat and all Justification before God must be legal or none so that no Man is justified but as reputed Innocent or a performer of the Law And yet Justification is our Absolution from the Punishment and Malediction of the Law As if he said No Man is justified but by the pardon of that sin which he is reputed never to have had and Absolution from that Curse and Punishment which he is reputed never to have deserved or been under Are these things reconcileable But if really he take Absolution for justifying or acquitting from a false Accusation and so to be absolved from the Malediction of the Law is to be reputed one that never deserved it or was under it then it 's as much as to say that there is no pardon of sin or that no Man that is pardoned or reputed to need a Pardon is justified 4. All this and such Speeches would perswade the Reader that this Learned Disputer thinketh that I took and use the word Legal generally as of that which is related to any Law in genere and so take Evangelical contrarily for that which is related to no Law whereas I over and over tell him that speaking in the usual Language that I may be understood I take Legal specially and not generally for that Righteousness which is related to the Law of Works or Innocency not as if we had indeed such a Righteousness as that Law will justifie us for But a pro-Legal-Righteousness one instead of it in and by our perfect Saviour which shall effectually save us from that Laws condemnation And that by Evangelical Righteousness I mean that which is related to the Law of Grace as the Rule of Judgment upon the just pleading whereof that Law will not condemn but justifie us If he knew this to be my meaning in my weak judgment he should not have written either as if he did not or as if he would perswade his Rsaders to the contrary For Truth is most congruously defended by Truth But if he knew it not I despair of becoming intelligible to him by any thing that I can write and I shall expect that this Reply be wholly lost to him and worse 5. His Lex nisi praestita neminem justificat is true and therefore no Man is justified by the Law But his next words praestitam omnes in Christo agnoscunt seemeth to mean that It was performed by us in Christ Or that It justifieth us because performed perfectly by Christ as such Which both are the things that we most confidently deny It was not Physically or Morally or Politically or Legally or Reputatively take which word you will fulfilled by us in Christ it doth not justifie us because it was fulfilled by Christ as such or immediately and eo nomine It justified Christ because he fulfilled it and so their Law doth all the perfect Angels But we did not personally fulfil it in Christ it never allowed vicarium obedientiae to fulfil it by our selves or another Therefore anothers Obedience merely as such even a Mediators is not our Obedience or Justification But that Obedience justifieth us as given us only in or to the effecting of our Personal Righteousness which consisteth in our right to Impunity and to God's Favour and Life freely given for Christ's Merits sake and in our performance of the Conditions of the Law of Grace or that free Gift which is therefore not a co-ordinate but a sub-ordinate Righteousness and Justification to qualifie us for the former This is so plain and necessary that if in sense it be not understood by all that are admitted to the Sacramental Communion excepting Verbal Controversies or Difficulties I doubt we are too lax in our admissions § 5. Next he tel's us of a threefold respect of Justification 1. Ex parte principii 2. Termini 3. Medii I find my self uncapeable of teaching him that is a Teacher of such as I and therefore presume not to tell him how to distinguish more congruously plainly and properly as to the terms And as to the Principle or Fountain whence it floweth that is Evangelical Grace in Christ he saith It is thus necessary that in our lapsed State all Justification be Evangelical Answ Who would desire a sharper or a softer a more dissenting or a more consenting Adversary Very good If then I mean it ex parte principii I offend him not by asserting Evangelical Righteousness The Controversie then will be only de nomine whether it be congruous thus to call it And really are his Names and Words put into our Creed and become so necessary as to be worthy of all the stress that he layeth on them and the calling up the Christian World to arrive by their Zeal against our Phrase Must the Church be awakened to rise up against all those that will say with Christ By thy words thou shalt be justified And with James By Works a Man is justified and not by Faith only and we are judged by the Law of Liberty and as Christ Joh. 5.22 The Father judgeth no Man but hath committed all Judgment to the Son and that shall recite the 25 th Chapter of Matthew Even now he said at once There is no Justification in foro Dei but Absolution c. The Law of the Spirit of Life hath freed us c. Here is no mention of any Justification but Legal And now All our Justification ex parte principii is only Evangelical So then no Text talks of Evangelical Justification or of Justification ex parte principii And Absolution which defineth it is named ex parte principii And yet all Justification is Evangelical Is this mode of Teaching worthy a Defence by a Theological War 2. But Reader Why may not I denominate Justification ex parte principii Righteousness is formally a Relation To justifie constitutively is to make Righteous To be Justified or Justification in sensu passivo is to be made Righteous And in foro to be judged Righteous And what meaneth he by Principium as to a Relation but that which other Men call the Fundamentum which is loco Efficientis or a remote efficient And whence can a Relation be more fitly named than from the fundamentum whence it hath its formal being Reader bear with my Error or correct it if I mistake I think that as our Righteousness is not all of one sort no more is the fundamentum 1. I think I have no Righteousness whose immediate fundamentum is my sinless Innocency or fulfilling the Law of Works or Innocency by my self or another and so I have no fundamentum of such 2. I hope I have a Righteousness consisting in my personal Right to Impunity and Life and that Jus or Right is mine by the Title of free Condonation and