The Doctrine of Justification by Faith

1. From the Experience of all that are justified, or do seek for Justification according unto the Gospel. For under this notion of seeking for Justification, or a Righteousness unto Justification, they were all of them to be considered, and do consider themselves as [Greek or Hebrew], guilty before God, subject, obnoxious, liable unto his wrath in the curse of the Law; as we declared in the Entrance of this Discourse, Rom. 3.19. They were all in the same state that Adam was in after the Fall, unto whom God proposed the Relief of the Incarnation and Suffering of Christ, Gen. 3.15. And to seek after Justification, is to seek after a discharge from this woeful ⟨p. 162⟩state and condition. Such persons have and ought to have other designs and desires also. For whereas the state wherein they are antecedent unto their Justification, is not only a state of Guilt and Wrath, but such also as wherein through the Depravation of their Nature, the power of sin is prevalent in them, and their whole Souls are defiled, they design and desire not only to be justified, but to be sanctified also. But as unto the Guilt of sin, and the want of a Righteousness before God, from which Justification is their Relief, herein I say they have respect unto Christ as set forth to be a Propitiation through Faith in his Blood. In their Design for Sanctification they have respect unto the Kingly and Prophetical Offices of Christ, in their especial exercise. But as to their freedom from the Guilt of sin, and their Acceptance with God, or their Justification in his sight, that they may be freed from condemnation, that they may not come into judgment; it is Christ crucified, it is Christ lifted up as the brazen Serpent in the Wilderness, it is the Blood of Christ, it is the Propitiation that he was, and the Atonement that he made, it is his bearing their sins, his being made sin and the curse for them, it is his Obedience, the End which he put unto sin, and the Everlasting Righteousness which he brought in, that alone their Faith doth fix upon and acquiesce in. If it be otherwise in the Experience of any, I acknowledge I am not acquainted with it. I do not say that Conviction of sin is the only antecedent Condition of actual Justification. But this it is that makes a sinner subjectum capax Justificationis.