Under Construction

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Subsection

On Justification’s Continuation

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Order of Contents

Against  2
Historical
Writings of  2

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Against Neonomianism

See also ‘Contra Baxter & Neonomianism on Justification’.

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Books

Chauncy, Isaac

Neonomianism Unmasked, or, The Ancient Gospel Pleaded Against the Other, called a New Law or Gospel in a Theological Debate, occasioned by a book lately wrote by Mr. Daniel Williams, entitled, Gospel-Truth Stated & Vindicated  (London: Harris, 1692-1693)  ToC

Chauncy (1632–1712) was an English, congregationalist minister.  Isaac Watts was his assistant for two years before succeeding him.

A Rejoinder to Mr. Daniel Williams’s Reply to the First Part of Neomianism [sic] Unmasked, wherein his Defence is Examined & his Arguments Answered: whereby he endeavors to prove the Gospel to be a New Law with Sanction, & the Contrary is Proved  (London, 1693)  ToC

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Historical

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Writings of Neonomians

See also, ‘Writings of Neonomians on Justification’.

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Quotes

1600’s

Richard Baxter

Richard Baxter’s Confesssion of his Faith…  (London: 1655), ch. 3, pp. 56-57

“The sum of my doctrine which I bring them [Scriptures] to confirm, I contract into these heads.

1. That faith justifies not as an instrumental efficient cause, but as conditio applicans et disponens, the applying and disposing condition: its applicatory nature being the aptitude to the office, and its being the condition of the promise being the formal or nearest reason of its interest.

2. That repentance is conditio disponens, a dispositive condition of our first justification.

3. That Covenant-keeping by sincere love, thankfulness and obedience to God Redeemer is a condition of the continuing, or not-losing our state of justification.

4. That the renewal of our faith and repentance, upon our lapses into discerned wounding sins, is a condition of the particular pardon of those sins, and our discharge or justification from the guilt of them.

5. That all the foresaid conditions, faith, repentance, love, thankfulness, sincere obedience, together with final perseverance, do make up the condition of our final absolution in judgment, and our eternal glorification.

6. That in the Day of Judgement, seeing we must be Judged by the Gospel or New Covenant, and it will be no small part of the work of the day to enquire whether we have performed the conditions of that Covenant which gives us Christ, and life and pardon, or not; we must therefore against the accusation of non-performance (real or supposed) be justified by our own performance as our particular righteousness: and this is the judging or jusiifying us according to our works, which Scripture mentions.  And upon this will our universal and final justification depend, as upon its condition.  And therefore whoever will be justified at that day, must have a Justitia prolegalis or a righteousness of remission of sin through the blood of Christ, to plead against the Law, and also a personal evangelical righteousness, consisting in a performance of the conditions of the Gospel or new Covenant, which is the condition of our interest in the first; or else he cannot be justified (yet is this latter but subordinate to the former, as to that sentential absolution).

7. Seeing this twofold righteousness is necessary to our justification in judgment, therefore it must needs follow that it is necessary to the making us righteous, or our constitutive justification in this life (in the order before laid down): For the Law is the rule of judgment; and God judges men to be as they are; and therefore He makes them righteous, both by remission of all sin and by giving them to perform the conditions of the New Covenant, before He judge them so.”

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Richard Baxter’s Admonition to Mr. William Eyre of Salisbury  (London, 1654), sect. 5, pp. 25-26

“1. That God’s universal law of nature requires of us perfect obedience, on pain of eternal death if we perform it not.

2. We all sinned, and so were liable to that death.

3. Christ became the mediator, and stepped between us and the full execution, and took the penalty upon Himself, and became a sacrifice to offended justice, and a ransom for the sinners.

4. Upon this he acquired novum jus dominii [a new lordly right] and novum jus imperii [a new commanding right] over all men, being now the sovereign of the world as redeemer, as superadded to the former dominion and sovereignty which the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost had as Creator.

5. As Christ the anointed and sovereign redeemer, He made legem remediantem [a law that remedies], an act of oblivion [in granting free pardon of sins], a new law, viz. a law of grace; thereby granting free pardon, justification, adoption, and right to glory to all that will sincerely repent and believe in him, and peremptorily concluding those to everlasting death that will not.

6. This repenting and believing is nothing but assenting so heartily to the truth of the Gospel, as thereupon to accept the Lord Jesus Christ and life in Him, as He is offered, viz. as a pardoner by grateful consent and confidence, as good to us, by love; as sovereign, by giving up ourselves to Him for guidance, and to take Him for the physician of our souls, to rest on Him, and apply his sharpest plasters, and take his bitterest medicines, and which are most ungrateful to flesh and blood (and not to believe that the cure is done already); and, as a free gift, we must accept this grace, with confession of our own utter undeserving, and our desert of eternal wrath, and therefore with repentance to the glory of Him that freely saves us; and lastly, as He is the purchaser, giver, and conductor to the unseen everlasting glory, which is the great end for which we do receive Him; without respect to which end, faith were no saving faith.

7. Remission and justification by Christ’s satisfaction and merit, being given us by a new law, which has its precepts and penalty, we are obliged by this law to perform these conditions, and shall be judged by this law whether we have performed them or no.  In which judgment, he that is accused not to have performed them, i.e. to be an unbeliever and rebel against the Lord redeemer, must plead his own actual performance, and deny the accusation.  And therefore that performance is the justitia causae, ‘the righteousness of that his cause’, and of his person so far.

8. In respect to this personal new covenant righteousness, the Scripture does many times call men righteous; yea even in the description of the judgment, Mt. 25.

9. As this new law is but lex particularis remedians, properly subordinate to the law of nature, so this personal righteousness is not our justitia universalis, but a particular righteousness, subordinate to the righteousness of the Lord Jesus.

10. There being therefore a twofold justification or righteousness, principal and subordinate—one which answers the law of nature, the other which answers the false charge of not performing the condition of the law of grace; one in Christ’s satisfaction and merit, the other in our faith and repentance; one consisting in the pardon of all our sin and the right to impunity and the kingdom, the other in our having the true condition of pardon and right

—it follows that when the question is of justification in the first sense, and of the matter (as we call it) of that justification, i.e. the thing for which we are justified meritoriously, we must then conclude that it is only Christ’s righteousness that is our justification or our righteousness, and that faith or repentance is not the least part of it.

But if the question be only of the mere subordinate righteousness and justification, then we must say that our own faith and repentance, and not Christ’s satisfaction, is that righteousness; for it is a debasing of Christ’s righteousness to bring it so low, and it is no other exalting of faith than God has in his covenant exalted it, to raise it so high as to be thus subordinate to Christ’s righteousness, that it may become ours.

11. In regard of the first great justification of a sinner, consisting in remission of sin (constitutive) and sentential absolving him from guilt, faith or any work of man is but the condition sine qua non, and not the least part of that righteousness (as is said).  But in regard of that subordinate justification, which is but a means to the former, faith and repentance are our righteousness itself; so that faith is first in order of nature but a condition, but secondarily, when the case at judgment is whether we have performed that condition or not, then consequentially it is our subordinate particular righteousness.

12. No man can perform this condition without God’s special grace.

13. It was the intent and absolute will, yea and undertaking, of Christ dying, to cause all the elect of God infallibly to perform this condition.”

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Aphorisms of Justification (1655), pp. 195-97

“How this [my teaching] differs from the Papists’ doctrine, I do not need to tell any scholar who has read their writings:

1. They take justifying for sanctifying, yet I do not.

2. They quite overthrow and deny the most real difference between the old covenant [of works] and the new [of grace] and make them, in a manner, all one. But I build this exposition and doctrine chiefly upon the clear differencing and opening of the covenants.

3. When they say that we are justified by works of the gospel, they mean only that we are sanctified by works that follow faith and are bestowed by grace, they meriting our inherent justice at God’s hands.  In a word, there is scarce any one doctrine wherein even their most learned schoolmen are more sottishly ignorant than this of justification, so that when you have read them with profit and delight on some other subjects, then they come to this, you would pity them and admire their ignorance.

4. They take our works to be part of our legal righteousness, I take them not to be the smallest portion of it, but only a part of our evangelical righteousness, or of the condition upon which Christ’s righteousness shall be ours.

But what difference is there between it and the Socinian doctrine of justification?  In some men’s mouths, Socinianism is just a word of reproach, or a stone to throw at the head of any man that does not say the same thing they do. Mr. Wotton is a Socinian, and Mr. Bradshaw, and Mr. Gataker, and Mr. Goodwin, and why not Piscator, Paraeus, etc. if some zealous divines know what Socinianism is?  But I had rather study what Scripture-truth is than what Socinianism is. I do not think that Faustus was so infaustus as to hold nothing true.  That which he held according to Scripture is not Socinianism.  For my part, I have read little of their writings, but that little gave me enough and made me cast them away with abhorrence.

In a word, the Socinians acknowledge not that Christ had satisfied the law for us and consequently is none of our legal righteousness, but only has set us a copy to write after, and has become our pattern, and that we are justified by following him as a Captain and Guide to heaven.  And so all of our proper righteousness is in this obedience.  Most accursed doctrine!

So far am I from this that I say, the righteousness which we must plead against the law’s accusations is not one grain of it in our faith or works, but all out of us in Christ’s satisfaction.  Only our faith, repentance, and sincere obedience are the conditions upon which we must partake of the former.  And yet such conditions as Christ works in us freely by his Spirit.”

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