Part 2 — Chapter 2: Wherein Stands Our Right to Christ and His Satisfaction

Our right to Christ must be considered more accurately than ordinarily it is. Whether it flows from 1. the merit of Christ: Or 2. from the grace of predestination: Or 3. faith in Christ.

1. Conclusion. Grace is either objective, out of us as the free love of God having mercy on whom he will; or subjective, merited by Christ to us and bestowed upon us.

As touching our right to God as incarnate. 2. As dying for us. 3. As his satisfaction is made ours, are of diverse considerations. For if God out of free love sent his Son in the world (John 3:16), and if he, out of free grace that separates the race of man from Angels, took upon him the nature of man, to wit, of Abraham, and not the nature of Angels (Hebrews 2:16), then sure by the merits of Christ's death it cannot come that God came in the flesh to save sinners. For the effect cannot but come from the cause; but the cause flows not from the effect, nor is the effect, to wit, Christ's Incarnation and his dying, the cause of that love and free grace of God which moved God to send his Son in the flesh, but posterior to, and later than that love: for because he loved us, he sent his Son in the flesh to die for us.

2. This cannot then be true (Christ by his dying for the Elect, merited and deserved, that God should be made Man for us) for this should be true also (by the blood of Christ, and by the redemption that is in Christ, God sent his Son in the flesh, and the Son took on him our nature, by the blood of the Covenant) nor can this be true (Christ merited by his death, that he should die for us) for so it should be true, that Christ by his blood shed his blood for us: whereas because he loved his Church freely, he gave himself for her (Ephesians 5:15). Who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20). Hence 1. though grace be the cause of grace, as because he of grace ordained us to glory, therefore of grace he calls, and because of free grace he calls, of free grace he carries on his work, and gives of grace, perseverance and glory. Yet there is a fountain grace of election to glory, which has no cause nor merit, not the merit of Christ for its cause; but is the cause of causes and of Christ's merits. As one fire may produce another, but the element of fire was not produced by another element of fire, but by God in creation. And one vine tree brings forth another, but the first vine tree was created by the Lord only.

2. Conclusion. Nor have we (to speak accurately) right to Christ's satisfaction nor to his righteousness by faith. 1. Because the Lord's free grace in laying our sins on Christ (Isaiah 53:6), and his making him sin for us (2 Corinthians 5:21), does rather give the right to his satisfaction. God would have Christ to stand for so many chosen of God upon the Cross, and for no other. (1 Corinthians 1:30) You are of him through Jesus Christ, who is made 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 of God, to us, wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. Nor is there any act of faith intervening by which Christ became our surety and ransom-payer upon the Cross, and not the surety of others.

2. It is ordinary to our divines to say, by faith we do apply Christ and his righteousness: but if we speak properly, application is possession and a putting on of Christ and his righteousness. Now title or law-right to an inheritance, and possession of it, are different natures, and have different causes: but faith gives not law-right to Christ and his righteousness not so much as instrumentally. My receiving with my hand gold, my eating and drinking the flesh and blood of Christ by faith (John 6:53-54, etc.) does presuppose some right to that gold: but no man can say that receiving of gold, and eating of bread and putting on of garments, gives a man right to gold, bread or garments. He that possesses an inheritance has some right to the inheritance by birth, buying, purchase or gift: the possession in its nature and causes may be unjust, yet it is possession. Nor can it be shown what causative influence, even instrumental faith, has in our law-right to Christ's satisfaction and righteousness, except it were a meritorious cause of our right by way of instrument, which can hardly be said.

We may ask how Christ so died for the reprobate, as his death is a remedy applicable to them by the ordination of God, so as they shall have life eternal, if they believe. For 1. there is either a jus and a law-right to pardon and life eternal merited by Christ's death to the reprobate, or no such thing is merited. If neither be procured by Christ's merit, the patrons of this way shall say there is no serious offer made to them: Indeed there is a jus, a title to life eternal and remission, which all the reprobate may challenge, even a right to remission and life eternal, so they believe. Well then, it is the same right conditional to life and pardon which is purchased to the elect: Indeed this must be purchased whether they believe or not. Then there is no more in the kind of the law-right to redemption and life eternal and remission of sins purchased to Peter, than to Judas or Cain; And therefore has Christ bestowed as much tender love in dying for the reprobate as in dying for his friends. And Christ says there is no greater love than this (John 15:13). As for the efficacious intention of applying of Christ's death to Peter, when as God had no such intention of applying it to Judas, that is an act of eternal predestination, not a fruit of Christ's death, and as for the grace of believing, it was purchased to all, reprobate and elect, only the Lord applies not his death, and bestows not the grace of believing upon the reprobate, but for right to faith, to remission, to perseverance, to life eternal, this right must be purchased, but faith itself is never bestowed upon them. But there is a ransom of blood given for faith, and purchased by Christ's merit: But Christ is never called the head of all men, elect and reprobate, but the head of the body the Church (Ephesians 1:22; Colossians 1:18). And whereas the head has merited faith to the reprobate, and that absolutely (for a condition is not possible) he should bestow it absolutely, else there is no seriousness in the command of believing. And since faith is no meritorious cause of right to remission and life eternal, nor a cause in part, or in whole, of our complete and actual reconciliation, it may well be said, that they all are completely reconciled, pardoned, justified, washed in Christ's blood, when nothing is wanting, that completes the nature of remission and justification, for faith is only a condition applying, not a cause buying, nor satisfying for us, and no cause giving in part, or in whole, any new right.

Should we, by faith, have right to the promise of a new heart, by believing, we should have a new heart before we have a new heart, for none can believe savingly any promise, and so neither can he believe that promise that God shall give a new heart, until the habit of faith, which is a special part of the new heart, be infused: For actual faith must flow from habitual faith. Therefore right to that promise must be absolutely purchased by the death of Christ to the elect before they believe.

Question. How is it that not only penally, but intrinsically and formally we sinned in Adam, and are inherently sinners in him, but we are righteous in Christ only imputatively, and why should not Christ be named formally the sinner, since he is made by imputation the sinner? As Adam's sin is ours by imputation, and we formally and inherently are sinners in Adam?

Answer. How we sinned in Adam is a point of greater difficulty: For this first sin the tottering and reeling of the specific common nature in Adam is ours, not because he is our father [in non-Latin alphabet] by nature (though that be a ground of the imputation also) but because he is such a father by covenant, and law, the law and covenant of works being laid in pawn in his hand. There be three parts of original sin: A partaking of the first sin of Adam, we all sinned in him (Romans 5:12, 14, 15); (2.) the want of the image of God, called the glory of God (Romans 3:23); (3.) concupiscence and a bentness of nature to sin (Romans 7:7, 14, 17, 18, 23, 24). As to the first, Adam's sin is ours really and truly, not so much because it is ours, as because it is imputed to be ours by God, who so contrived the law of works, as it should be made with Adam, not as a single father, but with Adam as a public person representing all mankind, and having our common nature as a father both by nature and law, which came from the mere free-will of God.

Who might so have contrived the first covenant of works, that sin should only have been Adam's own sin, not the sin of his posterity. For by no necessity of nature, which is antecedent to the free decree of God, are all mankind legally in Adam's loins, though naturally they be.

But children are as naturally in their nearest fathers' loins, as we are all in the loins of Adam, and all men are equally of that same specific nature with their nearest parents, as with their first parents: Yet the sins of the nearest parents, by no necessity, are always charged upon the children, but now all have sinned in Adam (Romans 5:12, 18).

Where a sin is inherently and personally, there is no need of imputation, which is a free act of God, had Christ been inherently and personally the sinner, God needed not make him, or impute our sins to him, as (Isaiah 53:6; 2 Corinthians 5:21) and if we had been intrinsically sinners in Adam, his sin had been ours as intrinsically as it was Adam's; and as Adam was not the first who sinned by imputation, but personally and intrinsically, so neither should Adam's sin have been our sin by imputation, but intrinsically and personally, now the Scripture says (Romans 5:19) By one man's disobedience, many were made sinners, [in non-Latin alphabet], then they were not intrinsically sinners, before they were made, that is, before they were reputed sinners in Adam, or before Adam's sin was imputed to them: as we are not intrinsically righteous in Christ, before we be justified, and made or reputed righteous in Christ: When therefore our divines say, we are as guilty of eating the forbidden fruit, as if our hands were there and our teeth, and we did eat in him, the speech cannot be taken physically, personally (for we were not then born) but morally and legally: but our nature was legally there. But when the elect does sin, Christ is not said to have been in our loins legally, but he was made sin, he was punished so as if he had been the sinner; though there was in Christ no formal guiltiness, no reatus culpae, but reatus paenae.

But we are deprived of the image of God, and inclined to all sin, not by imputation, as the young lion and the young serpent have not the bloody and the stinging nature of the old lion and the old serpent by imputation, but by natural and intrinsical inherency. Now our holy, harmless, and undefiled High Priest has no sin in him by inherency.

3. A legal satisfaction and paying of a sum, yea more than the debtor was owing, can never take away a morally inherent guiltiness, nor inherently justify and make innocent the sinner and make him one, who has never borrowed the money and wasted it, or one who has never sinned in Adam, and who has never sinned in his own person: indeed the Law of Works standing, as it is most spiritual and holy; it is impossible that he who has once broken the Law, though he be made inherently most holy, and perfectly sanctified, can be made righteous, which requires there shall never be one the least sin committed, and what is done cannot be undone.

2. The suffering of another, as of the Man Christ, may well stand for what we should have suffered, but cannot remove the inherent blot of sin, and remove fundamental guiltiness. The paying a thousand crowns for him who borrowed five hundred crowns and spent them on harlotry and drunkenness, may free the debtor from being in law, liable to pay the five hundred crowns, but can never free him from being an unjust borrower, and a profuse waster.

3. The two Covenants of Works and of Grace standing, it's impossible that the active obedience of Christ can make us actively and inherently righteous, or restore to us our lost innocency.