The Doctrine of Justification by Faith

and it may on as good grounds be charged with absurdities as the other. It is not therefore said that God judgeth that we have in our own persons done those very Acts, and endured that penalty of the Law which the Lord Christ did and endured. For this would overthrow all Imputation; But what Christ did and suffered, that God imputeth unto Believers unto the Justification of Life, as if it had been done by themselves; and his Righteousness as a public person is made theirs by Imputation, even as the sin of Adam whilst a public person, is made the sin of all his Posterity by Imputation.

and it may on as good grounds be charged with absurdities as the other. It is not therefore said that God judgeth that we have in our own persons done those very Acts, and endured that penalty of the Law which the Lord Christ did and endured. For this would overthrow all Imputation; But what Christ did and suffered, that God imputeth unto Believers unto the Justification of Life, as if it had been done by themselves; and his Righteousness as a publick person is made theirs by Imputation, even as the sin of Adam whilst a publick person, is made the sin of all his Posterity by Imputation.

Hereon none of the absurdities pretended, which are really such, do at all follow. It doth not so, that Christ in his own person performed every individual Act that we in our circumstances are obliged unto in a way of Duty; nor was there any need that so he should do. This Imputation, as I have showed, stands on other Foundations. Nor doth it follow, that every saved Persons Righteousness before God is the same identically and numerically with Christs in his public capacity as Mediator; For this Objection destroys it self, by affirming that as it was his, it was the Righteousness of God-Man; and so it hath an especial nature as it respects or relates unto his Person. It is the same that Christ in his public capacity did work or effect. But there is a wide difference in the consideration of it, as his absolutely and as made ours. It was formally inherent in him, is only materially imputed unto us. Was actively his, is passively ours; was wrought in the Person of God-man; for the whole Church, is imputed unto each single Believer, as unto his own concernment only. Adams sin as imputed unto us, is not the sin of a Representative, though it be of his that was so; but is the particular sin of every one of us. But this Objection must be further spoken unto where it occurs afterwards. Nor will it follow, that on this supposition we should be accounted to have done, that which was done long before we were in a capacity of doing