A survey of the spiritual antichrist opening the secrets of familism and antinomianism in…A survey of the spirituall antichrist opening the secrets of familisme and antinomianisme in…

Object. 9. If God justify no man but a believer, then he doth not, as the Scripture saith, justify the sinner and the ungodly: for a believer is godly, holy, and clean from sin.

Object. 9. If God justifie no man but a beleever, then hee doth not, as the Scripture saith, justifie the sinner and the ungodly: for a beleever is godly, holy, and cleane from sinne.

Answ. We grant, the Lord doth not justify an ungodly man, as an ungodly man, and as void of faith, for by order of nature, he is first a believer, and in Christ, and then he is justified, though there be no ordinary time between his ungodliness and his justification, the Lord justifieth the ungodly, in sensu diviso, not in sensu composito, as the Scripture saith, The lame man shall ^hleap, the tongue of the dumb shall sing, and ⁱthe blind ⟨p. 111⟩see, the deaf hear; but no man dreamed that the lame as lame remaining lame, does leap, and that the dumb remaining dumb can sing, and that the blind, as blind, and wanting eyes and organs do see. I confess, if Christ had caused the blind, as blind, to see; and the dead, as dead, and lying in their graves, to live; the miracle should put all Divines to School again, to try their contradictions, if one, and the same man, at the same time, in the same sense, [Greek or Hebrew], as Aristotle taught us, be both lame and whole in the legs, blind and seeing, deaf and hearing, dead and living; it may be Antinomians who will have the believers Adultery no Adultery, have a way of Logic of their own, to go with Libertines, who said, knowing sin to be sin, holiness to be holiness, was a work of the flesh, and of old Adam, who through eating the forbidden fruit, knoweth good and evil. But so you will say, If God justify the ungodly, believing, which is an act of sanctification, must go before justification, then are we sanctified, and can do that which is pleasing to God, before we be justified, and be in Christ, then must we please God, as believers, ere we be in Christ, and so exercise acts of the life of grace, before we be in the Vine tree, and before we be branches engrafted in Christ; for sure, to believe is an act of the life of Christ in us.