A53686:554
The Doctrine of Justification by Faith
The doctrine of justification by faith through the imputation of the righteousness of Christ, explained, confirmed, & vindicated by John Owen ...
London: printed for R. Boulter, 1677
Chapter 8: Imputation of the sins of the Church unto Christ. Grounds of it. The Nature of his Sure…
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.
2. None ever dreamed of a Transfusion or propagation of sin from us unto Christ, such as there was from Adam unto us. For Adam was a common person unto us, we are not so to Christ; yea he is so to us; and the Imputation of our sins unto him, as a singular Act of Divine Dispensation, which no evil consequent can ensue upon.
3. To imagine such an Imputation of our sins unto Christ, as that thereon they should cease to be our sins, and become his absolutely, is to overthrow that which is affirmed. For on that supposition Christ would not suffer for our sins, for they ceased to be ours, antecedently unto his suffering. But the Guilt of them was so transferred unto him, that through his suffering for it, it might be pardoned unto us.
These things being premised, I say,
1. There is in sin a Transgression of the Preceptive part of the Law, and there is an obnoxiousness unto the Punishment from the Sanction of it. It is the first that gives sin its formal nature, and where that is not subjectively, no person can be constituted formally a sinner. However, any one may be so denominated as unto some certain end or purpose, yet without this, formally a sinner none can be, whatever be imputed unto them. And where that is, no non-imputation of sin as unto punishment, can free the person in whom it is, from being formally a sinner. When Bathsheba told David that she and her Son Solomon should be [Greek or Hebrew] sinners, by having crimes laid unto their charge; and when Judah told Jacob, that he would be a sinner before him always on the account of any evil that befell Benjamin, (it should be imputed unto him) yet neither of them could thereby be constituted a sinner formally. And on the other hand, when Shimei desired David not to impute sin unto him, whereby he escaped present punishment yet did not that non-imputation free him formally from being a sinner. Wherefore sin under this consideration as a Transgression of the Preceptive part of the Law, cannot be communicated from one unto another, unless it be by the propagation of a vitiated Principle or Habit. But yet neither so will the personal sin of one as inherent in him, ever come to be the personal sin of another. Adam hath upon his personal sin communicated a vicious, depraved, and corrupted nature unto all his Posterity;