Gen. xv. 6.
Rom. iv. 3.

22.

ART. And it was imputed to him for righteousness. These promises XI. were freely made to him by God, when by no previous works of his he had made them to be due to him of debt; therefore that covenant which was founded on those promises, was the justifying of Abraham freely by grace. Upon which St. Paul, in a variety of inferences and expreffions, affumes, that Rom.iii.24. we are in like manner juftified freely by grace through the redemption in Chrift fefus. That God has of his own free goodness offered a new covenant, and new and better promifes to mankind in Christ Jefus, which whofoever believe as Abraham did, they are juftified as he was. So that whofoever will obferve the fcope of St. Paul's Epiftles to the Romans and Galatians, will fee that he always uses justification in a fenfe that imports our being put in the favour of God. The Epiftle to the Galatians was indeed writ upon the occafion of another controverfy, which was, whether, fuppofing Chrift to be the Meffias, Chriftians were bound to obferve the Mofaical Law, or not: whereas the scope of the first part of the Epiftle to the Romans is, to fhew that we are not justified nor faved by the Law of Mofes, as a mean of its own nature capable to recommend us to the favour of God, but that even that Law was a difpenfation of grace, in which it was a true faith like Abraham's that put men in the favour of God; yet in both thefe Epiftles, in which juftification is fully treated of, it ftands always for the receiving one into the favour of God.

In this the confideration upon which it is done, and the condition upon which it is offered, are two very different things. The one is a difpenfation of God's mercy, in which he has regard to his own attributes, to the honour of his laws, and his government of the world: the other is the method in which he applies that to us; in fuch a manner, that it may have fuch ends as are both perfective of human nature, and fuitable to an infinitely holy Being to purfue. We are never to mix thefe two together, or to imagine that the condition upon which juftification is offered to us, is the confideration that moves God; as if our holiness, faith, or obedience, were the moving caufe of our juftification; or that God juftifies us, because he fees that we are truly just : for though it is not to be denied, but that, in fome places of the New Teftament, juftification may stand in that fenfe, because the word in its true fignification will bear it; yet in thefe two Epiftles, in which it is largely treated of, nothing is plainer, than that the defign is to fhew us what it is that brings us to the favour of God, and to a ftate of pardon and acceptation fo that juftification in those places ftands in oppofition to accufation and condemnation.

The

XI.

The next term to be explained is faith; which in the ART. New Testament ftands generally for the complex of Chriftianity, in oppofition to the Law, which stands as generally for the complex of the whole Mofaical difpenfation. So that the faith of Chrift is equivalent to this, the Gofpel of Chrift; because Chriftianity is a foederal religion, founded on God's part, on the promises that he has made to us, and on the rules he has fet us; and on our part, on our believing that revelation, our trusting to thofe promifes, and our fetting ourselves to follow thofe rules: the believing this revelation, and that great article of it, of Chrift's being the Son of God, and the true Meffias that came to reveal his Father's will, and to offer himself up to be the facrifice of this new covenant, is often represented as the great and only condition of the covenant on our part; but ftill this faith muft receive the whole Gospel, the precepts as well as the promifes of it, and receive Chrift as a Prophet to teach, and a King to rule, as well as a Priest to fave us.

Rom. ii. 12

By faith only, is not to be meant faith as it is feparated from the other evangelical graces and virtues; but faith, as it is oppofite to the rites of the Mofaical Law for that was the great question that gave occafion to St. Paul's writing fo fully upon this head; fince many Judaizing Chriftians, as they acknowledged Chrift to be the true Meffias, fo they thought that the Law of Mofes was ftill to retain its force: in oppofition to whom St. Paul fays, that we are justified by Rom.iii.28. faith, without the works of the Law. It is plain that he Gal. ii. 16. means the Mofaical difpenfation, for he had divided all mankind into thofe who were in the Law, and those who were without the Law: that is, into Jews and Gentiles. Nor had St. Paul any occafion to treat of any other matter in those Epifties, or to enter into nice abstractions, which became not one that was to inftruct the world in order to their falvation: thofe metaphyfical notions are not eafily apprehended by plain men, not accuftomed to fuch fubtilties, and are of very little value, when they are more critically diftinguished: yet when it seems fome of thofe expreflions were wrested to an ill fenfe and ufe, St. James treats of the fame matter, but with this great difference, that though he fays exprefsly, that a man is juflified by his works, and not by faith only; James ii. 24 yet he does not fay, by the works of the Law; fo that he does not at all contradict St. Paul; the works that he mentions not being the circumcifion or ritual obfervances of Abraham, but his offering up his fon Ifaac, which St. Paul had reckoned a part of the faith of Abraham: this fhews that he did not intend to contradict the doctrine delivered by St. Paul, but only to give a true notion of the faith that juflifies; that it

XI.

ART. is not a bare believing, fuch as devils are capable of, but fuch a believing as exerted itself in good works. So that the faith mentioned by St. Paul is the complex of all Christianity ; whereas that mentioned by St. James is a bare believing, without a life fuitable to it. And as it is certainly true, that we are taken into the favour of God, upon our receiving the whole Gospel, without obferving the Mofaical precepts; fo it is as certainly true, that a bare profeffing or giving credit to the truth of the Gospel, without our living fuitably to it, does not give us a right to the favour of God. And thus it appears that these two pieces of the New Teftament, when rightly understood, do in no wife contradict, but agree well with one another.

In the last place, we must confider the fignification of good works: By them are not to be meant fome voluntary and affumed pieces of feverity, which are no where enjoined in the Gofpel, that arife out of fuperftition, and that feed pride and hypocrify these are so far from deferving the name of good works, that they have been in all ages the methods of impofture, and of impoftors, and the arts by which they have gained credit and authority. By good works therefore are meant acts of true holiness, and of fincere obedience to the laws of the Gospel.

The terms being thus explained, I fhall next diftinguish between the queftions arifing out of this matter, that are only about words, and those that are more material and important. If any man fancy that the remiffion of fins is to be confidered as a thing previous to juftification, and diftinct from it, and acknowledge that to be freely given in Christ Jefus; and that in confequence of this there is fuch a grace infufed, that thereupon the perfon becomes truly just, and is confidered as fuch by God: this, which must be confefled to be the doctrine of a great many in the Church of Rome, and which feems to be that established at Trent, is indeed very vifibly different from the ftyle and defign of thofe places of the New Teftament, in which this matter is moft fully opened: but yet after all it is but a queftion about words; for if that which they call remiffion of fins, be the fame with that which we call juftification; and if that which they call juftification, be the fame with that which we call fanctification, then here is only a ftrife of words: yet even in this we have the Scriptures clearly of our fide; fo that we hold the form of found words, from which they have departed. The Scripture fpeaks of fanctification, as a 1 Cor. vi. thing different from and fubfequent to juftification. Now ye are washed, ye are fanclified, ye are justified. And fince juftification, and the being in the love and favour of God, are in the New Teftament one and the fame thing, the remiffion of fins must

11.

be

XI.

be an act of God's favour: for we cannot imagine a middle AR T. ftate of being neither accepted of him, nor yet under his wrath, as if the remiffion of fins were merely an extinction of the guilt of fin, without any special favour. If therefore this remiffion of fins is acknowledged to be given freely to us through Jefus Chrift, this is that which we affirm to be juftification, though under another name: we do alfo acknowledge that our natures must be fanctified and renewed, that so God may take pleasure in us, when his image is again visible upon us; and this we call fanctification; which we acknowledge to be the conftant and infeparable effect of juftification: fo that as to this, we agree in the fame doctrine, only we differ in the ufe of the terms; in which we have the phrase of the New Teftament clearly with us.

But there are two more material differences between us it is a tenet in the Church of Rome, that the use of the facraments, if men do not put a bar to them, and if they have only imperfect acts of forrow accompanying them, does fo far complete those weak acts, as to justify us. This we do utterly deny, as a doctrine that tends to enervate all religion; and to make the facraments, that were appointed to be the folemn acts of religion, for quickening and exciting our piety, and for conveying grace to us, upon our coming devoutly to them, become means to flatten and deaden us: as if they were of the nature of charms, which if they could be come at, though with ever fo flight a preparation, wouldmake up all defects. The doctrine of Sacramental Juftification is justly to be reckoned among the moft mifchievous of all those practical errors that are in the Church of Rome. Since therefore this is no where mentioned, in all these large difcourfes that are in the New Testament concerning juftification, we have just reafon to reject it: fince alfo the natural confequence of this doctrine is to make men reft contented in low imperfect acts, when they can be fo eafily made up by a facrament, we have juft reason to deteft it, as one of the depths of Satan; the tendency of it being to make those ordinances of the Gofpel, which were given us as means to raife and heighten our faith and repentance, become engines to encourage floth and impenitence.

There is another doctrine that is held by many, and is ́ftill taught in the Church of Rome, not only with approbation, but favour; that the inherent holiness of good men is a thing of its own nature fo perfect, that, upon the account of it, God is fo bound to efteem them just, and to justify them, that he were unjuft if he did it not. They think there is fuch a real condignity in it, that it makes men God's adopted children. Whereas we on the other hand teach, that God is indeed

ART. pleafed with the inward reformation that he secs in good men, XI. in whom his grace dwells; that he approves and accepts of their fincerity; but that with this there is ftill fuch a mixture, and in this there is ftill fo much imperfection, that even upon this account, if God did ftraitly mark iniquity, none could ftand before him: fo that even his acceptance of this is an act of mercy and grace. This doctrine was commonly taught in the Church of Rome at the time of the Reformation, and, together with it, they reckoned that the chief of thofe works that did juftify, were either great or rich endow ments, or exceffive devotions towards images, faints and relicks; by all which, Chrift was either forgot quite, or remembered only for form fake, esteemed perhaps as the chief of faints; not to mention the impious comparisons that were made between him and fome faints, and the preferences that were given to them beyond him. In oppofition to all this, the reformers began, as they ought to have done, at the laying down this as the foundation of all Chriftianity, and of all our hopes, that we were reconciled to God merely through his mercy, by the redemption purchased by Jefus Chrift; and that a firm believing the Gospel, and a claiming to the death of Chrift, as the great propitiation for our fins, according to the terms on which it is offered us in the Gospel, was that which 'united us to Chrift; that gave us an intereft in his death, and thereby juftified us. If, in the management of this controversy, there was not fo critical a judgment made of the fcope of feveral paffages of St. Paul's Epiftles; and if the dispute became afterwards too abftracted and metaphyfical, that was the effect of the infelicity of that time, and was the natural confequence of much difputing: therefore though we do not now ftand to all the arguments, and to all the citations and illuftrations used by them; and though we do not deny but that many of the writers of the Church of Rome came infenfibly off from the most practical errors, that had been formerly much taught, and more practised among them; and that this matter was fo ftated by many of them, that, as to the main of it, we have no juft exceptions to it: yet after all, this beginning of the Refor mation was a great bleffing to the world, and has proved fo, even to the Church of Rome; by bringing her to a jufter fenfe of the atonement made for fins by the blood of Chrift; and by taking men off from external actions, and turning them to confider the inward acts of the mind, faith and repentance, as the conditions of our juftification. And therefere the approbation given here to the homily, is only an approbation of the doctrine aflerted and proved in it; which ought not to be carried to every particular of the proofs or explanations that are in it. To be justified, and to be accounted righteous,