Then you think perhaps that the 1righteousness of faith and works is one and the same, and you make no difference between the Law and the Gospel. whereas Paul teaches you far otherwise, who openly and with great fervency of Spirit deprecates that other righteousness, which is of works, that he may be found in him, not having the righteousness, which is of the Law, but that which is of the Faith of Christ, which is of God, righteousness by Faith. Do you not perceive here 2a manifest opposition between these two: To be justified by the Law, and to be justified by Faith, yea and those very things which Paul removed far away from him as Dung in respect of obtaining Salvation, Will you pave that only way for us to Heaven? And in the mean while disputing about works, I discourse of these things with you, as if there were any such strength of so great virtues, in this life, as could deserve not only the reward of righteousness, but also the name thereof. What will you say, if the most holy performances 3and endeavours, undertaken in whatsoever manner by the most perfect men, in this corrupted nature, are so unprofitable to the immortality of Life, that they are rejected by Christ as things without profit, yea ⟨p. 17⟩that they are despised and utterly 4contemned in the sight of God, like a menstruous cloth, as the Prophet Isaiah witnesseth, unless they be underpropped with better Grace, and the commendation of Faith? What if in Isaiah we are all said, and that truly, to have gone astray like Sheep every one in his own way, from whom so great a Prophet doth not separate himself: What do you suppose should be judged of our virtues and righteousness? But you will say, this complaint of the Prophet belongs 5not to all in the general, but only to the Jews who in those times wickedly forsook their duty: but by the same reason you may affirm, that all the diseases of all men and times were not healed by the Death of Christ, but theirs only, who in those times had gone astray out of the way as lost Sheep. But how frivolous this cavilling is, it appears evident by the context of this Prophetical Prediction.
Then you think perhaps that the 1righteousness of faith and works is one and the same, and you make no difference between the Law and the Gospel. whereas Paul teaches you far otherwise, who openly and with great fervency of Spirit deprecates that other righteousness, which is of works, that he may be found in him, not having the righteousness, which is of the Law, but that which is of the Faith of Christ, which is of God, righteousness by Faith. Do you not perceive here 2a manifest opposition between these two: To be justified by the Law, and to be justified by Faith, yea and those very things which Paul removed far away from him as Dung in respect of obtaining Salvation, Will you pave that only way for us to Heaven? And in the mean while disputing about works, I discourse of these things with you, as if there were any such strength of so great vertues, in this life, as could deserve not only the reward of righteousness, but also the name thereof. What will you say, if the most holy performances 3and endeavours, undertaken in whatsoever manner by the most perfect men, in this corrupted nature, are so unprofitable to the immortality of Life, that they are rejected by Christ as things without profit, yea ⟨p. 17⟩that they are despised and utterly 4contemned in the sight of God, like a menstruous cloth, as the Prophet Isaiah witnesseth, unless they be underproped with better Grace, and the commendation of Faith? What if in Isaiah we are all said, and that truly, to have gone astray like Sheep every one in his own way, from whom so great a Prophet doth not separate himself: What do you suppose should be judged of our virtues and righteousness? But you will say, this complaint of the Prophet belongs 5not to all in the general, but only to the Iews who in those times wickedly forsook their duty: but by the same reason you may affirm, that all the diseases of all men and times were not healed by the Death of Christ, but theirs only, who in those times had gone astray out of the way as lost Sheep. But how frivolous this cavilling is, it appears evident by the context of this Prophetical Prediction.
- 1Osorius confounds the righteousness of faith and works without any distinction.
- 2Phil. 3. It is one thing to be justified by faith, and another thing to be justified by the Law.
- 3There are no performances of the most perfect men, that are without some imperfection in the sight of God.
- 4We are all as unclean, and all our righteousness as a menstruous cloth. Isa. 64.
- 5All we like Sheep have gone astray. Isa. 5. 3. A frivolous exception of Osorius.
