A26977:393
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.
Object. 8. As Christ is a Sinner by imputation of our sin, so we are Righteous, by the imputation of his Righteousness. But it is our sin it self that is imputed to Christ: Therefore it is his Righteousness it self that is imputed to us.
Answ. 1. Christ's Person was not the Subject of our personal Relative Guilt, much less of our Habits or Acts.
2. God did not judg him to have been so.
3. Nay, Christ had no Guilt of the same kind reckoned to be on him; else those unmeet Speeches, used rashly by some, would be true, viz. That Christ was the greatest Murderer, Adulterer, Idolater, ⟨p. 126⟩Blasphemer, Thief, &c. in all the World, and consequently more hated of God, (for God must needs hate a sinner as such). To be guilty of sin as we are, is to be reputed truly to be the Person that committed it: But so was not Christ, and therefore not so to be reputed. Christ was but the Mediator that undertook to suffer for our sins, that we might be forgiven; and not for his own sin, real or justly reputed: Expositors commonly say that to be [made sin for us], is but to be made [a Sacrifice for sin]. So that Christ took upon him neither our numerical guilt of sin it self, nor any of the same species; but only our Reatum Poenae, or Debt of Punishment, or (lest the Wrangler make a verbal quarrel of it) our Reatum Culpae non qua talem & in se, sed quatenus est fundamentum Reatus poenae: And so his Righteousness is ours; not numerically the same Relation that he was the Subject of made that Relation to us; nor yet a Righteousness of the same Species as Christ's is given us at all, (for his was a Mediators Righteousness, consisting in, 1. perfect Innocency; 2. And that in the Works of the Jewish Law, which bind us not; 3. And in doing his peculiar Works, as Miracles, Resurrection, &c. which were all His Righteousness as a conformity to that Law, and performance of that Covenant, which was made with, and to him as Mediator). But his Righteousness is the Meritorious Cause and Reason of another Righteousness or Justification (distinct from his) freely given us by the Father and himself by his Covenant. So that here indeed the Similitude much cleareth the Matter; And they that will not blaspheme Christ by making guilt of sin it self in its formal Relation to be his own, and so