fused, the degree of holiness imparted, does not render us the ob- jects of divine complacency and love. His love to us is of the nature of grace ; love for the unlovely. We are reconciled to God by the death of his Son. That removes the obstacle arising from justice to the outflow toward us of the mysterious, unmer- ited love of God. We are accepted in the beloved. We are not in ourselves fit for fellowship with God. And if driven to de- pend on what is within, on our subjective righteousness, instead of peace we should have despair.
Again, justification according to the Scriptures gives a title to eternal life. For this our own righteousness is utterly inade- quate. So far from anything in us being meritorious, or entitled to reward, the inward state and the exercises of the holiest of men, come so far short of perfection as to merit condemnation. In us there is no good thing. When we would do good, evil is present with us. There is ever a law in our members warring against the law of the mind. Indwelling sin remains. It forced even Paul to cry out, " O wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the body of this death." (Rom. vii. 24.) " Nullum unquam exstitisse pii hominis opus, quod, si severo Dei judicio examinaretur, non esset damnabile." 1 Ignoring this plain truth of Scripture and of Christian experience expressing itself in daily and hourly confession, humiliation, and prayers for forgiveness, the doctrine of subjective justification assumes that there is no sin in the believer, or no sin which merits the condem- nation of God, but on the contrary that therp is in him what mer- its eternal life. The Romanists make a distinction between a first and second justification. The first they admit to be gratuitous, and to be founded on the merit of Christ, or rather, to be gratui- tously bestowed for Christ's sake. This consists in the infusion of habitual grace (i. e., regeneration). This justifies in render- ing the soul subjectively just or holy. The second justification is not a matter of grace. It is founded on the merit of good works, the fruits of regeneration. But if these fruits are, as our con- sciousness testifies, defiled by sin, how can they merit eternal life ? How can they cancel the handwriting which is against us ? How can they be the ground of Paul's confident challenge, " Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect ? " It is not what is within us, but what is without us ; not what we are or do, but what Christ is and has done* that is the ground of confidence and of our title to eternal life. This is the admitted doctrine of the
1 Calvin, Institution m. xiv. 11 ; edit. Berlin, 1834, part ii. p. 38.
132 PART in. Ch. XVII. — JUSTIFICATION.
Protestant Reformation. " Apud theologos Augustanae confessio- nis extra controversiam positum est," says the " Form of Con- cord," " totam justitiam nostram extra nos, et extra omnium homi- num'merita, opera, virtutes atque dignitatem quserendam, eamque in solo Domino nostro, Jesu Christo consistere." As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high is a hope founded on the work of Christ for us, above a hope founded on the merit of any- thing wrought in us. Calvin teaches the same doctrine as Lu- ther.2 He quotes Lombard as saying that our justification in Christ may be interpreted in two ways : " Primum, mors Christi nos justificat, dum per earn excitatur caritas in cordibus nostris, qua justi efficimur : deinde quod per eandem exstinctum est pec- catum ; quo nos captivos distinebat diabolus, ut jam non habeat unde nos damnet." To which Calvin replies, " Scriptura autem, quern de fidei justitia loquitur, longe alio nos ducit : nempe ut ab intuitu operum nostrorum aversi, in Dei misericordiam ac Christi
perfectionem, tantum respiciamus Hie est fidei sensus, per
quern peccator in possessionem venit suae salutis, dum ex Evan- gelii doctrina agnoscit Deo se reconciliatum : quod intercedente Christi justitia, impetrata peccatorum remissione, justificatus sit : et quanquam Spiritu Dei regeneratus, non in bonis operibus, qui- bus incumbit, sed sola Christi justitia repositam sibi perpetuam justitiam cogitat."
That justification is not merely pardon, and that it is not the infusion of righteousness whereby the sinner is made inherently just or holy, but a judgment on the part of God that the de- mands of the law in regard to the believer are satisfied, and that he has a right to a righteousness which entitles him to eternal life, has been argued, (1.) From the uniform usage of Scripture both in the Old and New Testament. (2.) From the constant opposition between justification and condemnation. (3.) From equivalent forms of expression. (4.) From the whole design and drift of the Apostle's argument in his Epistles to the Romans and to the Galatians. (5.) From the ground of justification, namely, the righteousness of Christ. (6.) From the immutability of the law and the justice of God. (7.) From the nature of our union with Christ. (8.) From the fact that peace, reconciliation with God, and a title to eternal life which according to Scripture, are the consequences of justification, do not flow either from mere par- don or from subjective righteousness, or from sanctification. That
1 Solida Declaratjio, in. 55; Hase, Libri Symbolic!, 3d edit. Leipzig, 1846, p. 695.
2 rnstitutio, m. xi. 15, 16; ut supra, p. 17.