A26977:173
Of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to believers in what sense [sic] sound Protestants…Of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to believers in what sence [sic] sound Protestants…
Of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to believers in what sense [sic] sound Protestants hold it and of the false devised sense by which libertines subvert the Gospel : with an answer to some common objections, especially of Dr. Thomas Tully whose Justif. Paulina occasioneth the publication of this / by Richard Baxter a compassionate lamenter of the Church's wounds caused by hasty judging ... and by the theological wars which are hereby raised and managed ...Of the imputation of Christ's righteousness to believers in what sence [sic] sound Protestants hold it and of the false divised sence by which libertines subvert the Gospel : with an answer to some common objections, especially of Dr. Thomas Tully whose Justif. Paulina occasioneth the publication of this / by Richard Baxter a compassionate lamenter of the Church's wounds caused by hasty judging ... and by the theological wars which are hereby raised and managed ...
London: printed for Nevil Simmons and Jonathan Robinson, 1675
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
39. Yet the Reatus Culpae is remitted to us Relatively as to the punishment, though not in it self; that is, It shall not procure our Damnation: Even as Christ's Righteousness is, though not in it self, yet respectively as to the Benefits said to be made ours, in as much as we shall have those benefits by it.
40. Thus both the Material and the Formal Righteousness of Christ are made ours; that is, Both the Holy Habits and Acts, and his Sufferings, with the Relative formal Righteousness of his own Person, because these are altogether one Meritorious cause of our Justification, commonly called the Material Cause.
Obj. But though Forma Denominat; yet if Christs Righteousness in Matter and Form, be the Meritorious Cause of ours, and that be the same with the Material Cause, it is a very tolerable speech to say, that His Righteousness is Ours in it self, while it is the very matter of ours.
Ans. 1. When any man is Righteous Immediately by ⟨p. 63⟩any action, that action is called the Matter of his Righteousness, in such an Analogical sense as Action, an Accident may be called Matter, because the Relation of Righteous is founded or subjected first or partly in that Action. And so when Christ perfectly obeyed, it was the Matter of his Righteousness. But to be Righteous and to Merit are not all one notion: Merit is adventitious to mere Righteousness. Now it is not Christs Actions in themselves that our Righteousness resulteth from immediately as his own did; But there is first his Action, then his formal Righteousness thereby; and thirdly, his Merit by that Righteousness which goes to procure the Covenant-Donation of Righteousness to us, by which Covenant we are efficiently made Righteous. So that the name of a Material Cause is much more properly given to Christs Actions, as to his own formal Righteousness, than as to ours. But yet this is but de nomine. 2. Above all, consider what that Righteousness is which Christ merited for us, (which is the heart of the Controversy.) It is not of the same species or sort with his own. His Righteousness was a perfect sinless Innocency, and Conformity to the preceptive part of the Law of Innocency in Holiness. Ours is not such. The dissenters think it is such by Imputation, and here is the difference. Ours is but in respect to the second or retributive part of the Law; a Right to Impunity and Life, and a Justification not at all by that Law, but from its curse or condemnation. The Law that saith, Obey perfectly and live, sin and die, doth not justify us as persons that have perfectly obeyed it, really or imputatively But its obligation to punishment is dissolved, not by it self, but by the Law of Grace. It is then by the Law