Aphorisms of justification, with their explication annexed wherein also is opened the nature of…Aphorismes of justification, with their explication annexed wherein also is opened the nature of…

The other opinion about our Participation of Christs Righteousness is this, That God the Father doth accept the sufferings and merits of his Son as a full satisfaction to his violated Law, and as a valuable consideration upon which he will wholly forgive and acquit the offenders themselves, and receive them again into his favour, and give them the addition of a more excellent happiness also, so they will but receive his Son upon the terms expressed in the Gospel.

The other opinion about our Participation of Christs Righteousness is this, That God the Father doth accept the sufferings and merits of his Son as a full satisfaction to his violated Law, and as a valuable consideration upon which he will wholy forgive and acquit the offenders themselves, and receive them again into his favour, and give them the addition of a more excellent happiness also, so they will but receive his Son upon the terms expressed in the Gospel.

This Opinion as it is more simple and plain, so it avoideth all the fore-mentioned inconveniences which do accompany the former. But yet this difference is betwixt the maintainers ⟨p. 36⟩of it: Most of them think, that Christs Passive Righteousness (in the latitude before expressed) is the whole of this Satisfaction made by Christ, which they therefore call Justitia Meriti, and that his Actual Righteousness is but Justitia Personae, qualifying him to be a fit Mediator. Of this judgment are many learned and godly Divines, of singular esteem in the Church of God, (the more to blame some of the ignorant sort of their adversaries, who so reproach them as Heretics: I have oft wondered when I have read some of them, (as M. Walker, &c.) to see how strongly they revile, and how weakly they dispute.) Sure if those two famous men Paraeus and Piscator, beside Olevian, Scultetus, Cargius, learned Capellus, and many other beyond Sea, be Heretics, I know not who will shortly be reputed Orthodox; and if they be not mistaken all antiquity is on their side, beside Calvin, Ursine, and most other modern Divines that writ before this Controversy was agitated; and sure they are neither unlearned nor ungodly that have in our own Country maintained that opinion; witness Mr Anthony Wotton, Mr Gataker, Mr John Goodwin, and (as I am informed) that excellent Disputant and holy, learned, judicious Divine Mr John Ball, with many other excellent men that I know now living.