The Doctrine of Justification by Faith

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; ⟨p. 285⟩and besides, the guilt of his actual sin is imputed unto them, as if it had been committed by every one of them. But yet his particular personal sin, neither ever did, nor ever could become the personal sin of any one of them, any otherwise than by the Imputation of its guilt unto them. Wherefore our sins neither are, nor can be so imputed unto Christ, as that they should become subjectively his, as they are a Transgression of the Preceptive part of the Law. A Physical Translation or Transfusion of sin is in this case naturally and spiritually impossible; and yet on a supposition thereof alone, do the horrid consequences mentioned depend. But the guilt of sin is an external respect of it, with regard unto the sanction of the Law only. This is separable from sin, and if it were not so no one sinner could either be pardoned or saved.