N00347:122
A brief discourse of justification. Wherein this doctrine is plainly laid down according to…
A brief discourse of justification. Wherein this doctrine is plainly laid down according to the Scriptures. : As it was delivered in several sermons on this subject. / By Samuel Willard, teacher of a church in Boston. ; [Ten lines of quotations]
Boston: printed by S for Samuel Phillips, 1686
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
1. When a mans own personal Righteousness, being proved, and made legally to appear, and all the grounds of suspicion alleged against it are removed and confuted, […] judicially declared to be his, and also to be sufficient to answer the demands of the Law and thus if Adam had perfectly obeyed, and kept the Law in all its parts, that Righteousness of his should have been imputed to him and he have been justified by it; and this would truly have been that which the Scripture calls a being justified by Works.
1. When a mans own personal Righteousness, being proved, and made legally to appear, and all the grounds of suspicion alledged against it are removed and confuted, 〈…〉 judicially declared to be his, and also to be sufficient to answer the demands of the Law and thus if Adam had perfectly obeyed, and kept the Law in all its parts, that Righteousness of his should have been imputed to him and he have been justified by it; and this would truly have been that which the Scripture calls a being justified by Works.
2. When another person hath done this for a man, and is accepted in which he hath done upon this account, and the man is ⟨p. 57⟩thereupon declared to be looked upon as if he had done it himself, and is on this very account acquitted; now is the other persons doing imputed to him. That there is such a kind of imputation as this is, […] evident and very well known among men. If a man be sued for a Debt, if he can prove that another hath paid it for him, and is able to produce the acquittance given for it, it is accepted, and the Law can take no place against him. If another man offer himself to bear the punishment of an Offender, and the Judg hath consented to such an exchange, and accordingly inflicted the penalty upon him instead of the other, he now imputes this to the prime Offender, and so he is delivered from the sentence of the Law, as having thus satisfied it: though in the latter case there is this difference from the former; viz. That such a proffer to bear the punishment in exchange is not of it self sufficient, except the Judg shall see cause to accept of it, but if he doth, it sufficeth: and this is that which is done when God justifieth a Sinner, viz. to accept of the righteousness of Christ, his active and passive obedience for him, and accounts it to be as really and truly the Sinners, as if he had personally wrought it: and in this sense some Divines take notice