A27029:146
The Scripture Gospel defended, and Christ, grace, and free justification vindicated against the libertines…
The Scripture Gospel defended, and Christ, grace, and free justification vindicated against the libertines ... in two books : the first, a breviate of fifty controversies about justification ... : the second upon the sudden reviving of antinomianism ... and the re-printing of Dr. Crisp's sermons with additions ... / by Richard Baxter ...
London: printed for Tho. Parkhurst, 1690
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.
Cont. 8. Whether Christs righteousness be the efficient, material or formal cause of our Righteousness and Justification.
Ans. Its pity that poor people must be thus tempted with Controversies of Logic. But what remedy? Christs righteousness as materially and formally his, merited our Justification: But for the accidental relation of righteousness in Christ, to be the accidental relation of righteousness to every believer, is impossible unless the Subject be the same: If Christ be the believing sinner, and as many persons as there be such, or all these be the same person with Christ, then his individual righteousness is formally theirs, else not. For as noxa caput sequitur, so no accident is the same numerically in various Subjects. They that deny this wanted but the same advantages to have believed Transubstantiation, and renounce the common principles.
Ans. Its pity that poor people must be thus tempted with Controversies of Logick. But what remedy? Christs righteousness as materially and formally his, merited our Justification: But for the accidental relation of righteousness in Christ, to be the accidental relation of righteousness to every believer, is impossible unless the Subject be the same: If Christ be the believing sinner, and as many persons as there be such, or all these be the same person with Christ, then his individual righteousness is formally theirs, else not. For as noxa caput sequitur, so no accident is the same numerically in various Subjects. They that deny this wanted but the same advantages to have believed Transubstantiation, and renounce the common principles.
But that Christs righteousness is the meritorious cause of ours, is past doubt. And therefore they that affirm and they that deny it to be the material cause (which is the common Doctrine of Protestant disputers) do but differ about a name. For if Adam had merited his own glorification had not his works been both the meritorious cause, and the material? that is, the matter of that meritorious righteousness: And why may we not say so of Christ? It is therefore the material because it is the meritorious, that is, the meriting matter. For righteousness being a Relation hath strictly no