Of free justification

And I know the adversaries will ¹not deny that Christ is the only ⟨p. 74⟩Serpent, who being made a Curse for us, makes a Medicine for our Wounds. But if you ask, how? They will answer one thing, and the holy Scriptures another: they affirm that this is performed on this account, because Christ being punished for us on the Cross, hath by his Merits obtained for us the infusion of Charity. Which because it is the perfection of the Law, therefore being acquired by the Merit of Christ, and received by our free-will, it brings forth righteousness, not that, ²whereby we are accounted for just, but whereby we are both truly just, and deserve life. But verily this Sophism neither agrees with the History of the Israelites, nor satisfies the argument propounded. For if those that were then wounded by the Serpents, by only beholding the Serpent without any other intermediate cause, received present health: verily either this type bears not the similitude of Christ, or Christ heals us by faith in his name only without interposing the remedy of Charity. Otherways the mutual proportion of similitude between us and them, between Christ and the Serpent, will not rightly agree. They lifted up their outward eyes, we our inward, they to the serpent, we to Christ. Both by beholding obtain health through the Promise of God; they the health of their Bodies, we of our Souls. They presently in beholding at the first sight, were healed in the same moment, by no endeavour of their own, but only upon the account