The Method of Grace

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 ³our selves; it is inhesively in him, communicatively it becomes ours: by imputation the sin of the first Adam became ours, and the same way the righteousness of the second Adam becomes ours: Rom. 5. 17. This way the Redeemer became sin for us, and this way we are made the righteousness of God in him, 2 Cor. 5. 21. This way Abraham the Father of believers was justified, therefore this way all believers, the children of Abraham must be justified also, Rom. 4. 22, 23. And thus is Christs righteousness made ours.