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…

A great question it is, Whether Remission and Justification be immanent or transient Acts of God? The mistake of this one point was it that led those two most excellent, famous Divines. Dr. Twice and Mr. Pemble to that error and pillar of Antinomianism, viz. Justification from Eternity. For (saith Dr. Twice often) All Acts immanent in God, are from Eternity: but Justification and remission of sin are immanent Acts: therefore, &c. by [immanent in God] they must needs mean Negatively, not Positively. For Acts have not the respect of an Adjunct to its subject, but an effect to its cause. Now whether all such immanent Acts are any more eternal then transient Acts, is much questioned: As for God to know that the world doth now exist; That such a man is sanctified, or just, &c. Gods fore-knowledge is not a knowing that such a thing is, which is not; but that such a thing will be, which is not. Yet doth this make no change in God: no more then the Sun is changed by the variety of Creatures which it doth enlighten and warm; or the Glass by the variety of faces which it represents; or the eye by the variety of the colours, which it beholdeth: (For whatsoever some say, I do not think that every variation of the object maketh a real change in the eye, or that the beholding of ten distinct colours at one view, doth make ten distinct acts of the sight, or alterations ⟨p. 113⟩on it: Much less do the objects of Gods knowledge make such alterations.) But grant that all Gods immanent Acts are Eternal (which I think is quite beyond our understanding to know:) Yet most Divines will deny the Minor; and tell you that Remission and Justification are transient Acts; Which is true: But a Truth which I never had the happiness to see or hear well cleared by any. For to prove it a transient act, they tell us no more, but that it doth transire in subjectum extraneum, by making a moral change on our Relation, though not a real upon our persons, as Sanctification doth. But this is only to affirm and not to prove; and that in general only; not telling us what Act it is that maketh this change. Relations are not capable of being the Patients or subjects of any Act: seeing they are but mere Entia Rationis, and no real Beings. Neither are they the immediate product or effect of any Act: but in order of Nature are consequential to the direct effects.

A great question it is, Whether Remission and Justification be immanent or transient Acts of God? The mistake of this one point was it that led those two most excellent, famous Divines. Dr. Twisse and Mr. Pemble to that error and pillar of Antinomianism, viz. Iustification from Eternity. For (saith Dr. Twisse often) All Acts immanent in God, are from Eternity: but Justification and remission of sin are immanent Acts: therefore, &c. by [immanent in God] they must needs mean Negatively, not Positively. For Acts have not the respect of an Adjunct to its subject, but an effect to its cause. Now whether all such immanent Acts are any more eternall then transient Acts, is much questioned: As for God to know that the world doth now exist; That such a man is sanctified, or just, &c. Gods fore-knowledg is not a knowing that such a thing is, which is not; but that such a thing will be, which is not. Yet doth this make no change in God: no more then the Sun is changed by the variety of Creatures which it doth enlighten and warm; or the Glass by the variety of faces which it represents; or the eye by the variety of the colours, which it beholdeth: (For whatsoever some say, I do not think that every variation of the object maketh a reall change in the eye, or that the beholding of ten distinct colours at one view, doth make ten distinct acts of the sight, or alterations