: The law of Christ not twofold but one. STRICTURE XII. ON I. DISS. iii. § 4. p. 21. 89 XII. After having treated at length of the law of Christ, by the STRIC. rule of which all Christians are to be judged, and having proved that that law was no other than the moral law, the observance of which, joined with faith in Christ, proceeding from faith and tempered with the grace of God and the great indulgence revealed in the Gospel, is required by all as a necessary condition to the obtaining justification and salvation, I form my argument against the Antinomians. My words are: "These things being premised, there arises at length an unanswerable argument, in my opinion at least, against these Antinomians and Solifidians. Whoever is justified by God through Christ is acquitted by the law of Christ but by faith alone without works no one is acquitted by the law of Christ: therefore, &c. The minor proposition alone of this syllogism wants proof, which may be thus given it. Whoever is acquitted by the law of Christ, must necessarily fulfil that law; but by faith alone without works no one fulfils the law of Christ. Therefore by faith alone without works no one is acquitted by the law of Christ." You meet these remarks thus: "In this argument which you cry out is unanswerable there is a great ambiguity of expression, unworthy of a theologian. The fraud lies in the words, 'the law of Christ.' The law of Christ means two things: 1. The moral law of God, which is not done away by Christ, but confirmed, and is enjoined on our consciences as the rule of obedience, with an obligation to follow it: but this is not put forward as the rule of our justification, as St. Paul declares in the plainest words Gal. ii. 16, 21. 2. The law of faith, as the Apostle calls that way of justifying a sinner which God has shewn forth in the Gospel through Christ. Now you Rom.3.27. confound these two things; and because the minor premiss of the former syllogism is diametrically opposed to St. Paul's words, Rom. xiv. 28, you strive to prove it by playing with equivocal terms. Whoever is acquitted by the law of Christ, (suppose, by the righteousness of faith,) must fulfil that law. But by faith alone without works no one fulfils the law of 90 Christians to be judged by this law. STRIC. Christ, (i. e. the moral law). Therefore by faith alone withXII. out works, no one is acquitted by the Gospel-law of Christ.' Who does not see the equivocation and fallacy? although by faith alone without works no one fulfils the moral law, nay, though no one absolutely fulfils the moral law, and no one therefore can attain righteousness by the moral law, yet whosoever believes in God through Christ fulfils the Gospellaw of Christ concerning justification by faith in the blood of Christ, and on that ground is acquitted of the guilt of his sins. True and living faith is the sole condition of justification according to the Gospel-law of Christ. He who denies this after having seriously read through St. Paul's argument, is as impious as he is mad.” ANSWER TO STRICTURE XII. § 1. This stricture of yours is a mere atrocious calumny. Candour in controversy, especially theological controversy, I have always desired and sought after, keeping as far as possible from equivocations, deceits, and underhand practices in all cases, more especially those on which the salvation of souls turns. Of such artifices the cause you have undertaken against the plainest truth may stand in need: but truth, which I am defending, has no need of such corners and hiding places. In this chapter I lay down first by way of foundation, (which is allowed by all the reformers,) that the word justification is a forensic or law term, and so in its first notion bears with it an idea of a law proceeding. Whence I infer, that in our justification, as in every law proceeding, before every thing else the law must first be laid down by the rule of which we are to be judged; consequently that no one is properly justified or acquitted who has not fulfilled the law by the rule of which he is judged. This being laid down, I go on to enquire what the law is, by the judgment of which we Christians must stand? By the plainest testimony of St. James the Apostle, I shew that the law by which we are to be judged is 'the law of liberty,' or 'the ἐλευθερίας. royal law,' i. e. of Christ our king, which among other things Baoxikós. has this command, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." At length I conclude, that the royal law of which νόμος νόμος The moral law the law of Christ. 91 XII. St. James speaks, and by which he declares we shall be STRIC. judged, is no other than the moral law as Christ set it forth and completed it, and delivered it from the Mount (standing in the place of Sinai) as His law to His disciples. I say and prove, that the observance of this law attempered by the grace of the Gospel is demanded by Christ of all Christians, as an absolutely necessary condition of His covenant. All this being premised and established, I then argue thus against the Antinomians, (whose cause I should be sorry to see defended by a divine of the English Church): Whoever is justified by God through Christ, &c. as above. In each proposition of each syllogism I meant the same law of Christ (without any equivocation): but not being able to overturn the grounds of my argument, you have feigned an equivocation at your own pleasure, that by this last resource you may escape the point of my weapon. § 2. But, my Censurer, the charge recoils on your own head. By a wretched and that a manifold fraud, you cheat and deceive your reader, or else you are yourself cheated and deceived. For 1st. you hold a twofold law of Christ as laid down in the Gospel, and imposed on us Christians. Hitherto I should have thought (following the great mass of divines) that there was but one law for Christians, as there is but one legislator. May I ask what divine in his senses ever dreamt of the distinction between the moral law of Christ, and the Gospel law of Christ? Is not the moral law, as far as it is a law of Christ, i. e. set forth by Christ, and imposed on Christians by the Gospel, (under which relation alone we have considered it in this chapter), the Gospel law? § 3. You say, 2ndly, that the moral law is not done away, but confirmed by Christ, and enjoined on our consciences as the rule of obedience, together with an obligation on us to go by it; but what that obligation is you do not explain. Pray tell me, tell me plainly, Are we bound to obey the moral law, as confirmed by Christ, at the hazard of our soul, or only by the bond of gratitude? If you affirm the latter, you embrace the pestilent heresy of the Antinomians, and with them all those absurd dogmas which you just now professed to abhor. But if you hold the former, you must confess that this law is put forth by Christ as the rule of our XII. 92 Observance of this law twofold. STRIC. justification; i. e. that the sincere observance of that law is a condition absolutely required in the Gospel to our justification. The ground of the conclusion is, that as far as any thing is required at the hazard of the soul and as necessary to salvation, so far the same is required as necessary to justification; which I have proved above clearly in the exami-, nation of the Seventh Stricture, § 2-5. That the reader however may be better able to judge how what was there said may be applied to the present question, it must be observed that there is as it were a twofold observance of the moral law given to us by Christ, one which is conceived by the will and firm purpose of mind, and is fulfilled by the inward affection of the mind at least; the other which is perfected in very deed, or in holy living. An observance of the former kind is absolutely necessary to salvation; and consequently is necessary in order that a man may obtain the grace of the first justification. For God holds no one accepted to salvation, and consequently justifies no one who has not yet attained to that love of God and his neighbour TEXOS TS which is "the end of the commandment," (i. e. the end Tapayye- which God intends in His law, and in which, however 1 Tim. 1.5. attained, He acquiesces,) or again to use the words of λίας. St. Paul, who is not yet endued "with faith perfected by "Law of works" the Mosaic law. 93 XII. therefore, turn any way you can, you must either yield on S TRIC. this point to my argument, or secede (which God forbid) to the camp of the Antinomians. § 4. 3rdly. Very unsoundly is the passage of the Apostle, Gal. ii. 16, 21, adduced by you to support your supposition. For the Apostle there is treating not of the moral law confirmed by Christ, the sincere observance of which joined with faith in Christ and proceeding from faith is required in the Gospel as a necessary condition for obtaining salvation; but either of the ritual law, the observance of which the Judaizing false Apostles taught was to be necessarily joined with faith in Christ, if a man would be saved, or of the whole Mosaic covenant which had been broken up by Christ the Mediator, and faith in Him. It pains one to repeat these things so often, which are so clear and evident, and which have been proved at length again and again. § 5. 4thly. Very dangerously do you interpret the law of works of which the Apostle speaks, (and which he opposes to the law of faith Rom. iii. 27,) as the moral law given by Christ to His disciples. Nay, I know not that any thing has ever been uttered or put forward by the most profligate Libertine, which is more absurd, more harmful and dangerous, than this interpretation of yours. See what I said in examination of Stricture X. § 3, whence it will be seen that this interpretation of yours is confined entirely to yourself, neither can it be defended by the authority of any approved writer, even among the latter divines, for they, when they call the moral law a law of works, mean the moral law not as it has been set forth and imposed by Christ on His disciples, as recited in the sermon by St. Matthew; (they were never so foolish ;) but as, viewed without reference to Christ, it demands from man, at the peril of his soul, an exactness of most perfect virtue and unattainable obedience. But these also (if I may be allowed to say so) seem to me to have mistaken the Apostle's meaning. "The law of works vópos ἔργων. or deeds" (as an old interpreter excellently hath it) is in truth nothing else with the Apostle than the Mosaic law viewed carnally and according to the letter, which requires many external and ritual works (more properly called epya); and which as far as regards morality itself is content with |