Wherefore I cannot but judge it best (others may think of it as they please), for those who would teach or learn the doctrine of justi- fication in a due manner, to place their consciences in the presence of God, and their persons before his tribunal, and then, upon a due consideration of his greatness, power, majesty, righteousness, holiness, — of the terror of his glory and sovereign authority, to inquire what
20 ON JUSTIFICATION.
the Scripture and a sense of tlieii' own condition direct them unto as their relief and refuge, and what plea it becomes them to make for themselves. Secret thoughts of God and ourselves, retired medi- tations, the conduct of the spuit in humble supplications, death-bed preparations for an immediate aiDpearance before God, faith and love in exercise on Christ, speak other things, for the most part, than many contend for.
Thirdly. A clear appreheoision and due sense of the greatness of our apostasy from God, of the depravation of our natures thereby, of the power and guilt of sin, of the holiness and severity of the law, are necessary unto a right apprehension of the doctrine of justi- fication. Therefore, unto the declaration of it doth the apostle pre- mise a large discourse, thoroughly to convince the minds of all that seek to be justified with a sense of these things, Rom. i. ii. iii. The rules which he hath given us, the method which he prescribetli, and the ends which he designeth, are those which we shall choose to fol- low. And he layeth it dowTi in general, " That the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith;" and that " the just shall live by faith," chap. i. 17. But he declares not in particular the causes, na- ture, and way of our justification, until he hath fally evinced that all men are shut up under the state of sin, and manifested how de- plorable their condition is thereby; and in the ignorance of these things, in the denying or palliating of them, he layeth the foundation of all misbelief about the grace of God. Pelagianism, in its first root, and all its present branches, is resolved thereinto. For, not ap- prehending the dread of our original apostasy fi'om God, nor the consequence of it in the universal depravation of our nature, they dis- own.! any necessity either of the satisfaction of Christ or the efiicacy of divine grace for our recovery or restoration. So upon the matter the principal ends of the mission both of the Son of God and of the Holy Spirit are renounced; which issues in the denial of the deity of the one and the personality of the other. The fall which we had being not great, and the disease contracted thereby being easily curable, and there being little or no evil in those things which are now unavoidable unto our nature, it is no great matter to be freed or justified from all by a mere act of favour on our own endeavours ; nor is the efficacious grace of God any way needful unto our sancti- fication and obedience; as these men suppose.
When these or the like conceits are admitted, and the minds of men by them kept off" from a due apprehension of the state and guilt of sin, and their consciences from being affected with the terror of the Lord, and curse of the law thereon, justification is a notion to be dealt withal pleasantly or subtilely, as men see occasion. And hence arise the differences about it at present, — I mean those which
GENEEAL CONSIDERATIONS. 21
are really such, and not merely the different ways whereby learned men express their thoughts and apprehensions concerning it.
By some the imputation of the actual apostasy and transgi-ession of Adam, the head of our nature, whereby his sin became the sin of the world, is utterly denied. Hereby both the ground the apostle j^roceedeth on in evincing the necessity of our justification, or our being made righteous by the obedience of another, and all the argu- ments brought in the confirmation of the doctrine of it, in the fifth chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, are evaded and overthrown. Socinus, de Servator. par. iv. cap. 6, confesseth that place to give great countenance unto the doctrine of justification by the im.puta- tion of the righteousness of Christ; and therefore he sets himself to oppose, with sundry artifices, the imputation of the sin of Adam unto his natural posterity. For he perceived well enough that, upon the admission thereof, the imputation of the righteousness of Christ unto his spiritual seed would unavoidably follov.^, according unto the tenor of the apostle's discourse.
Some deny the depjxivation and corruption of our nature, which ensued on our apostasy from God, and the loss of his image ; or, if they do not absolutely deny it, yet they so extenuate it as to render it a matter of no great concern unto us. Some disease and dis- temper of the soul tliey will acknowledge, arising from the disorder of our affections, whereby we are apt to receive in such vicious habits and customs as are in practice in the world ; and, as the guilt hereof is not much, so the danger of it is not great. And as for any spiri- tual filth or stain of our nature that is in it, it is clean washed away from all by baptism. That deformity of soul which came upon us in the loss of the image of God, wherein the beauty and harmony of all our faculties, in all their actings in order unto their utmost end, did consist; that enmity unto God, even in the mind, which ensued thereon ; that darhness which our understandings were clouded, yea, blinded withal, — the spiritual death which passed on the \i\\o\e soul, and total alienation from the life of God; that impotency unto good, that inclination unto evil, that oeceitfulness of sin, that poAver and efficacy of corrupt lusts, which the Scriptures and experience so fully charge on the state of lost nature, are rejected as empty notions or fables. No wonder if such persons look upon imputed righteousness as the shadow of a dream, who esteem those things Avhich evidence its necessity to be but fond imaginations. And small hope is there to bring such men to value the righteousness of Christ, as imputed to them, who are so unacquainted with their OAvn un- righteousness inherent in them. Until men know themselves better, they will care very little to know Christ at all.