A47601:85
A medium betwixt two extremes wherein it is proved that the whole first Adam…
A medium betwixt two extremes wherein it is proved that the whole first Adam was condemned and the whole second Adam justified : being a sermon lately preached on Rom. 8:1 and now published to prevent the further controversy (in one main point) about justification : to which are added reflections on some passages in Mr. Clark's new book called Scripture-Justification / by Benjamin Keach.
London: printed for Andrew Bell, 1698
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
Brethren, Where is it said in the Scripture that any Person was justified that believed not, or whilst an Unbeliever, or before he believed? And is it not good, nay best, to keep to the form of sound Words? For tho it is said that God justifies the Ungodly, 1yet they are not ungodly when justified: true, that excludes all previous Qualifications to Faith; but not that God justifies an Unbeliever that is in his Sins in the first Adam,
Brethren, Where is it said in the Scripture that any Person was justified that believed not, or whilst an Unbeliever, or before he believed? And is it not good, nay best, to keep to the form of sound Words? For tho it is said that God justifies the Ʋngodly, 1yet they are not ungodly when justified: true, that excludes all previous Qualifications to Faith; but not that God justifies an Unbeliever that is in his Sins in the first Adam,
- 1Rom. 4.5.
Obj. Is it not Christ and his Righteousness that which justifies us, or is the matter of our Justification? Will ye make Faith to be a Cause, or the condition of our Justification before God?
Answ. No, by no means;1 tho I know some Learned Men, and sound in the Faith, seem to hint as if Faith was a condition of our Justification. But how that which God himself gives to us by his free and absolute Promises, can be a condition of the Covenant, or of our Justification, I see not: that which is part of the Covenant on God's part, can't be the Condition of it on our part. Also they call Faith the instrumental cause of Justification, which we must leave them to explain (they mean, I think, but as the Hand that applies a Plaster is a cause of the Cure.) We must say with a late learned Author, Faith is no qualifying Condition, nor any procuring Cause of our Justification; tho without Faith God declares no Man a justified Person.