Notes: Sect. 6. — Justification before Faith refuted.
Notes: Sect. 6. — Justification before Faith refuted.
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“The sentence of justification was, as it were, conceived in the mind of God by the decree of justifying. Gal. 3.8, ‘The Scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith.’” Ames. Med. cap. 37. sec. 9, — “In this sense, grace is said to be given us in Christ before the world began.” 2Tim. 1.9. Turret., loc. 16. q. 9. th. 11.— “Sins were pardoned from eternity in the mind of God.” Rutherford’s Exer. Apolog. ex. 1. cap. 2. sec. 21. p. 53. The same Rutherford adds, “It is one thing for a man to be justified in Christ, and that from eternity: and another for a man to be justified in Christ in time, according to the gospel-covenant. Faith is [merely] the instrument of eternal and immanent justification and remission of sins.” Ibid. p. 55.
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“Justification may be considered as to the execution of it in time; and that again, either as to the purchase of it, which was made by the death of Christ on the cross, concerning which it is saidin Rom. 5.9, 10 that, ‘we are justified and reconciled to God by the blood of Christ;’ and that Christ ‘reconciled all things to God by the blood of the cross,’ Col. 1.20. And elsewhere, Christ is said to be ‘raised again for our justification,’ Rom. 4.25. Because, just as in him dying, we died, so in him being raised again and justified, we are justified; that is, we have a certain and undoubted pledge and foundation for our justification. Or as to the application of it,” etc., Turret., ubi sup. “The sentence of justification was pronounced in Christ our head, risen from the dead,” 2Cor. 5.19. Ames, ubi sup. — “We were virtually justified, especially when Christ having finished the purchase of our salvation, was justified, and we in him as our head,” 1Tim. 3.16; 2Cor. 5.19. Essen. Comp. cap. 15. sec. 25.
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“Actual justification is done in time, and it follows faith.” Turret., loc. 16. q. 9. th. 3. — “Justification is done formally when an elect man, effectually called, and so apprehended by Christ, apprehends Christ in return,” Rom. 8.30. Essen., ubi supra. — “The sentence of justification is pronounced virtually from that first relation which arises from faith,” Rom. 8.1. Ames, ubi supra.
On the whole, it is evident that our author keeps the path trodden by orthodox divines on the subject; and though, in order to answer the objections of his adversary, he uses the school terms of being justified in respect to God’s decree, — meritoriously and actually, agreeably to the practice of other sound divines — yet otherwise he “begins and ends his decision of this controversy, by asserting in plain and simple terms, without any distinction at all, that “a man is not justified before he believes, or without faith.” So his answer amounts to just this, “That God did, from all eternity, decree to justify all the elect; Christ, in the fulness of time, died for their sins, and rose again for their justification: nevertheless, they are not justified until the Holy Spirit in due time actually applies Christ to them.” Westm. Confess., cap. 11. art. 4.