N00347:139
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.
2. In the next place we are to take notice that this imputation of Christs Righteousness to our Justification, is an act of Gods fre• grace; in order to the evidencing of this, let me here premise;
1. That the freeness of Imputation doth no shut out the condition of believing which is required in the Gospel Covenant, as will appear more fully under the next general head. All conditions do not destroy the freeness of […] gift; nay there are some which do properly and purposely make it the more manifest, and of this nature is Faith, which is the Gospel condition; God confined it to this, that so through it his rich grace might shine out the more conspicuously, Rom. 4. 16. Therefore it is of Faith, that it might be by grace; as a man that bequeaths a Legacy, on condition that the Legatee shall receive it as a kindness: and much less then doth it obscure the riches of grace, when we consider that he himself who makes, doth also give the condition, as well as the gift of Justification ⟨p. 73⟩following upon it; and we are assured that he doth so, Eph. 2. 8, 9. by grace are ye saved through Faith, and that (namely faith) not of your selves, it is the gift of God; and indeed we are no more able to believe of our selves, than we are able to justify our selves, for none can come unto Christ without the Father draw him: So that it is evident, that a gracious vocation doth not destroy, but contrarily establish the grace of Justification, it being nothing else but an Antecedent Grace bestowed upon us in order to our being made to participate in one that follows.
1. That the freeness of Imputation doth no shut out the condition of believing which is required in the Gospel Covenant, as will appear more fully under the next general head. All conditions do not destroy the freeness of gift; nay there are some which do properly and purposely make it the more manifest, and of this nature is Faith, which is the Gospel condition; God confined it to this, that so through it his rich grace might shine out the more conspicuously,