The sound believer. A treatise of evangelical conversion. Discovering the work of Christ's spirit,…

5. Who are the Persons the Lord doth justify?

Answ. They are Believers; we are justified by Faith, Rom. 5. or, for Christ's Righteousness apprehended by Faith, Phil. 3.9. it is by Faith not as a Work of Grace, but as by an Instrument appointed of God for this End. Christ did not die that our Sins should be actually and immediately pardoned, but mediately by Faith, John 3.16. and 17.20. and the Lord in Wisdom hath appointed this as the only Means of applying Righteousness, because this above all other Graces casts down all the Righteousness of ⟨p. 197⟩Man in Point of Justification, and so all Cause of Boasting, and advanceth Grace and Mercy only, Rom. 3.27. & 4.16. & 4.5. & 9, 30, 31, 32. The Faithful account themselves ungodly in the Business of Justification, and thence it is said, that Abraham (tho' a godly Man in himself, yet) believed in him that justifies the Ungodly: He only is Righteous whom God pronounceth and saith is Righteous. Now Faith above all other Graces believes the Word; and a Believer saith, I believe I am Righteous before God, not because I feel it so in my self, but because God saith I am so in his Son, so that you are not justified before you believe; nor then only, when you have performed many holy Duties, but at the first Instant of your closing with Christ, you are then to see it, and by Faith to admire God's rich Grace for it.