The life of faith in three parts, the first is a sermon on Heb.…

If they say that God did first impute the satisfaction for sin, then there was no room after for the imputation of perfect obedience. We cannot feign God to receive all the debt, or inflict all the penalty, and then to say, now I will esteem thee one that never didst deserve it.

If they say that he doth neither impute the obedience or the suffering to us simply, and to all effects, but in tantum ad hoc, or secundum quid only: so that we shall be pardoned for his ⟨p. 324⟩suffering, and then judged worthy of Heaven for his obedience: this is but to come up towards the truth before you are aware, and to confess that neither of them is given us in it self, but in the effects, as being it self paid to God to procure those effects.

But withal, the matter must be vindicated from their unsound inventions, and it must be said, that Christ dyed not only for our sins of commission, but of omission also; and that he that is pardoned both his sins of commission and omission, is free from the punishment both of sense and loss; yea and is reputed as one that never culpably omitted any duty; and consequently fell short of no reward by such omission: so that there remaineth no more necessity of Righteousness in order to a reward where the pardon is perfect, save only (N. B.) to procure us that degree of reward which must be superadded to what we forfeited by our sin; and which we never by any culpable omission deserved to be denied. And thus much we do not deny that somewhat (even Adoption) which is more than mere Pardon and Justification must confer on us. But withal, as we hold not that the Sun must bring light, and somewhat else must first banish darkness; that one thing must cure death, and another cause life; that satisfaction must procure the pardon of sins of omission and commission, as to the poenae damni & sensus, and make us esteemed and used as no sinners, and then imputed obedience must give us right to that reward, which the poenae damni, deprived us of; so (N. B.) we maintain that Christs sufferings have merited our eternal salvation, and our Justification and Adoption; and that his obedience hath merited our forgiveness of sin: And that both go together, the merit of the one and of the other, to procure all that we receive, and that the effects are not parcelled out as they have devised: Though yet we believe that Christs sufferings were paid to God, as for our sins, to satisfy Justice, and that in the Passive Obedience, it is first satisfactory, and then and therefore meritorious, and in the active it is merely meritorious.