The true doctrine of justification asserted and vindicated, from the errors of Papists, Arminians,…The true doctrine of justification asserted and vindicated, from the errours of Papists, Arminians,…

4. We do not only pray for preservation in this estate, ¹but for daily renewed acts of pardon, and imputation of Christs righteousness. Howsoever, as in the controversial part is to be showed, Justification is not reiterated, but is a state in which we were at first believing put into, without Apostasy from it, either total or final: yet those particular acts of pardon, and imputing of Christs righteousness, are continually by God communicated unto us: neither may we think, That our sins past, present and to come, are all taken away by one sentence, so that there is no new or iterated pardon. Then indeed Bellarmines Argument would have strength in it, That it were as absurd to pray for forgiveness of sin, ²as to have Christ new incarnated; or that we might be predestinated, according as some have falsely said, Si non sis praedestinatus, ora, ut praedestineris, If thou art not predestinated, pray that thou mayest be. We might indeed pray for the believing of these things in a more settled manner, but not for the things themselves. But this is the proper answer to Bellarmines Objection, We pray for pardon of sin, and not for the Incarnation of Christ, or the making of the world, because these were so once done, that they are never to be done more. The Incarnation of Christ was once done, and is not to be done again; but remission of sin is so done, ⟨p. 114⟩as that it is continually to be done for us, and the ultimate complete effect of it will then only be, when sin shall be quite taken away, so that a total and full remission will be only at the day of Judgement, as appeareth Act. 3.19. That your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come: Not but that every sin here forgiven is fully and perfectly forgiven, but because we renew sin daily, therefore there is need of a daily pardon: Away therefore with all such opinions, as shall either plead such an inherent righteousness in the Pelagian way, or such an imputed righteousness in the Antinomian way, that will overthrow this Petition for forgiveness of sins. If all thy former sins be forgiven, and no pardon for future, thy case would be desperate, for sin like Samsons hair, though it be cut, yet it will grow again, and come to great strength.