them, and the promise thereof made irreversibly sure to them as the seed. But that this was not their own proper justification is clear from the example of those, who, by faith in the Savior to come, were justified before his appearing to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 5. If the elect were justified from eternity, and of course came justified into the world, it is undeniable that every elect person is regenerated and sanctified from the womb; or else that justification and sanctification may be, and often are, separated: so that a person in favor with God, and an heir of life, may notwithstanding be, for years and scores of years, under the dominion and wallowing in the filth of sin. The former is contrary to notorious fact, and the latter, exploding satisfaction as the necessary concomitant and test of justification, destroys our Lord's rule, that the tree is known by its fruit. 6. The notion of eternal justification overthrows the whole doctrine of the scripture concerning the office of the grace of faith. This is, pre-eminently, to receive Christ Jesus the Lord as Jehovah our righteousness; for he is made of God unto us, righteousness; and with the heart man believeth unto righteousness. But if the use of faith be merely to manifest our eternal justification, it can in no sense be said to receive Christ for righteousness, which implies that previously the person exercising it had none. In addition to which it is obvious, according to this scheme, (1.) That faith can no otherwise justify than works; because holiness, being the effect of cleansing by the blood of Christ, manifests our justification; yet the scriptures attribute justification to faith, and positively deny it to works. (2.) That no person can be a believer who has not a comfortable sense of his justification, for faith manifests it; and he loses his faith as often as he loses the manifestation of his justification; so that there are either no believers in the world, or else men are believers or unbelievers, as their comfortable sense of their justification comes and goes. (3.) That no sinner can be called by the ministry of the word to believe, or be condemned for unbelief. Not to believe; because the use of faith being to manifest justification, the call if general must be addressed to many who never were and never will be justified, and therefore have no justification to be manifested; and if restricted, must be grounded on election; the objects whereof no man knows, or can know. Nor could any be condemned for unbelief; for faith, not being a receiving of Christ for justification, but only manifesting our eternal justification, embraces no offer; and therefore unbelief, which is the reverse of faith, rejects none; and if sinners be condemned for their unbelief, they will be condemned for a non-manifestation of what never existed. 7. The people of God, when enabled at first to believe, never do it as already justified; but feeling themselves accurst and perishing sinners, shut up under the most righteous condemnation of the law, flee to the Lord Jesus that they may be pardoned, and may be saved from the wrath to come. These views are absolutely inconsistent with the idea and the doctrine of eternal justification. To say that they are erroneous, seeing the elect sinner was eternally justified, though he does not know it, is, on the matter, to say that the Holy Ghost fills his people with groundless terrors, and leads them to lying exercises; for it is he who convinces them of sin by applying to their consciences both the precept and the curse of the law. Nor will it be any relief to plead, that the elect considered as in Christ are justified, but considered in Adam are children of wrath; for this not only silences the challenge of the apostle, Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? but supposes them to remain under the very condemnation from which justification in Christ was intended to deliver them. And as, on this plan, there is no inconsistency now between their being justified in Christ, and at the same time condemned in Adam, there can be none at any future period: so that the elect may continue to all eternity in VOL. III. 44 the heavens, in the presence and in the enjoy ment of God-children of wrath! From this pernicious tenet, as from a root of bitterness and poison, spring many noxious errors, which at various times have infected the church of Christ, and which a regard to her spiritual health has compelled the synod, however reluctant in severity, to aim at extirpating from their bounds. Hence the infatuated notions that Christ is offered in the gospel to the elect onlythat ministers have nothing to do with the reprobate-that the immediate duty of the hearer of the gospel is to believe, first of all, his personal election to eternal life-that one may be for a series of years in a gracious state without knowing it, or bringing forth the fruits of grace, and yet ought not to question it, with other of a like nature and tendency; all of which do necessarily arise out of the doctrine of eternal justification. The synod do therefore bear this their explicit and public testimony against it; and do solemnly warn and enjoin both ministers and people under their care, as they regard the glory of the Lord Jesus and the welfare of their own souls, to discountenance it and every one, who, in any manner, inculcates it, as subverting the very foundations of the gospel, leading sinners to a false and ruinous confidence, and ministering powerful incentives to all ungodliness. |