The Method of Grace

These four illustrious benefits are conveyed from Christ to us in three different ways and methods: his righteousness is made ours by imputation: his wisdom and sanctification by renovation: his redemption, by our glorification.

These four illustrious benefits are convey'd from Christ to us in three different ways and methods: his righteousness is made ours by imputation: his wisdome and sanctification by renovation: his redemption, by our glorification.

I know the Communication of Christs righteousness to us by imputation, is not only denied, but * scoffed at by Papists; who own no righteousness, but what is (at least) confounded ¹with that which is inherent in us: and for imputative (blasphemously styled by them putative) righteousness; they flatly deny it; and look upon it as a most absurd doctrine, every where endeavouring to load it with these and such like absurdities. That if God impute Christs righteousness to the believer, and accepts what Christ hath performed for him; as if he had performed it himself: then, we may be accounted as righteous as Christ. Then we may be the Redeemers of the world. False and groundless consequences: as if a man should say, my debt is paid by my surety, therefore I am as rich as he: when we say the righteousness of Christ is made ours by imputation, we think not it's made ours according to its universal value, but according to our particular necessity: not to make others righteous, but to make us so: not that we have the formal intrinsical righteousness of Christ in us, as it is in him; but a relative righteousness, which makes us righteous even as he is righteous, not as to the quantity but as to the truth of it: ²nor is it imputed to us, as though Christ designed to make us ⟨p. 14⟩the causes of Salvation to others, but the Subjects of Salvation ³