N00347:174
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. Affirmatively; Faith justifies instrumentally, as it receives the Lord Jesus Christ, and his merits offered in the Covenant. It is before made clear that the Righteousness of Christ is the thing for which we are Justified: now the proper work of Faith in this affair, is to receive it unto Justification; and that because it is the term or condition of the new ⟨p. 99⟩Covenant. God hath in his good pleasure […] choice of this way to convey the […] to, and bestow an interest in the Righteousness of Christ upon sinners, viz. by their believing in his Son: He doth (as it […]) say, behold here is a Righteousness, […] which I am well contented, it exceedingly […] pleaseth me to bestow pardoning grace ••on sinful men upon the account of it, but […] if any desire to have the application of made unto them in particular, it is to be •ected only in this way, they must believe, […] if they so do, it shall be theirs: and ••eupon we may come at the right conception of what faith doth towards our being ••tified; this is all that can be with any truth ascribed to it, that it brings us under the Covenant condition, and thereupon it ••ders us the qualified Subjects of the promise of grace which is therein exhibited; and this […] doth by accepting, embracing, and placing its hope and trust in the Righteousness of Christ: and so it follows that we are justified […] for our faith, or believing, but for Christ; but yet it is by faith, or in a way of believing For cu• full satisfaction in the truth of this, it is good for us to take notice that the Scripture is pleased to ascribe our Justification to divers things, and that tells us that it ⟨p. 100⟩must have reference to divers respects, an• they are to be well understood by such […] would not be deceived, but ascribe to each of them, that which belongs to them, and no more or less: and the rather should […] labour to be distinct in our conception […] them, lest otherwise we should rob Christ […] his merits, and God of his grace, and lift […] selves up above our own place, and to […] it in one of the main and fundamental point of our hopes. Sometimes then it ascribes it […] grace,