BISHOP BEVERIDGE.

Bishop Beveridge, in his discourse on the eleventh article of the English Church, supports the very same idea of imputation which we have seen in the writings

an acquittance from its condemnation, but from the imputation of offences of which he had been accused, but which accusation was not substantiated by legal proof. Such is the sense of justification, considered as a forensic term in the practice of civil courts,-a justification in which there is no room for the forgiveness of guilt, still less for the imputation of righteousness. But how different is the justification of sinners by God! How unlike are the ways of mercy and truth towards man in the gracious counsels of the Majesty on High! How dissimilar the case of our rebellious race under the law of condemnation, and the inexorable sentence of its penalty!

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"So far indeed from our being accounted at any time as innocent in his sight according to the law, we have all by its power become unprofitable servants; there being none that doeth good,'' no not one;' having been already weighed in its balance and found wanting. The supplicating language of the man after God's own heart is, that the Lord would hearken unto him' for his truth and righteousness' sake,' and not enter into judgment with him; for in God's sight, according to the judgments of the law, shall no man living be justified.' All, therefore, who are not justified by their faith from the law of Moses, are still sitting in darkness' under the shadow of its death, and the curse of its righteous judgment. For we are ever to bear in mind that those who are justified by God are accounted by his law as condemned criminals, upon whom its sentence has already been pronounced, whose own lives are already forfeited to the divine justice, and who have nothing to hope for from the law, but only mercy through the grace of a compassionate Father and Redeemer. Now, as these are the things from which we could not be justified by the law of Moses, which worketh wrath,' how can it, with any shadow of propriety, be said that God justifies the ungodly in conformity with the analogies of man in relation to his fellow-man, according to the sense of the forensic or legal term in a court of civil jurisprudence; and this, too, when the Scriptures so unequivocally declare our justification to be by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law?"

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To the above we now add, that if there be a fact more distinctly made known to us, above all others, in the Sacred Writings, it is that Jesus Christ did not come into the world to justify us, according to a forensic principle of the law, but that he came to suffer for us as an innocent substitute, under the sentence of its penalty, in order that we might be justified by an inherent work of His Spirit, according to the new law of his own body, which is the Church of the Living God.

of Archbishop Usher. He says that the righteousness of Christ is accounted to us in the same manner as is the sin of Adam. And, therefore, we add, that, as neither the Protestant nor the Catholic denies that "sin is accounted by law," so while the former imputes the merits of Jesus Christ in this way, the latter altogether rejects such a system of accounting, as a fatal innovation upon the primitive and catholic faith of the Christian church.

Bishop Beveridge again says, that the righteousness of Christ is accounted to us, not by the "inhesion (or infusion) of grace in us," as at all necessary for our justification; but, simply, by a mere external imputation of its merit. But while he maintains that the justice of our Redeemer is so accounted, it is, nevertheless, he admits, only "by the inhesion of grace in us that we are sanctified." In this, he testifies with Archbishop Usher, to the unanimous Protestant recognition on this their cardinal distinction between justification and sanctification; affirming it to consist, not simply in a difference as to the modus operandi, but as being also essentially distinct in the unity of their principle, or in the substance of their graces. In this manner it was, he maintains, that the faith of Abraham was accounted to him for righteousness, "not as a principle in him," but simply by an external act, or judicial sentence of the law.

"Which also," he continues, "further appears, in that justification is here said, (Rom. iv. 3,) to be of the ungodly, who justifieth the ungodly. For, as long as a man is ungodly, he cannot be said to be justified by any inward and inherent, but only by an outward and imputed righteousness;* so that justification is properly opposed to accusation. So, St. Paul plainly, 'who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? it is God that justifieth; who is he that condemneth? it is Christ that died.'-(Rom. viii. 33, 34.) Who shall accuse or lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? The Devil, their own consciences ; but it is God that will justify

* But as man is, always, according to the Scriptures, accounted to be ungodly in this life through the sentence of the law, notwithstanding he may be sanctified by inward grace, it is perfectly plain he never can be truly accounted just by a mere outward righteousness which has never been given to him. Since it is, then, a mysterious fact that man is actually made just no otherwise than by a gift of inward grace; so, on the other hand, is it palpable nonsense to suppose that he can be accounted as justified, and considered, at the same time, as destitute of all internal virtue and true justice. + Their consciences will, undoubtedly, accuse them rightly of

and pronounce them righteous. How? because they are righteous in themselves? No; but because Christ's merits are imputed to them, who is therefore said to be made sin for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him,'* (2 Cor. v. 21) How was Christ made sin for us? Not by our sins inherent in him— that is horrid blasphemy ; but by our sins imputed to him—that is true divinity. (!) And as he was made sin for us, not by the inhesion of our sins in him, but by the imputation of our sins to him, 80 are we made the righteousness of God in him by the imputation of his righteousness to us, not by the inhesion of his righteousness in us. He was accounted as a sinner, and therefore (!) punished for us; we are accounted as righteous, and therefore glorified in him." "And thus we are accounted as righteous in him, as he was accounted as a sinner for us. He was accounted as a sinner for us, and, therefore, he was condemned: we are accounted as righteous in him; and so we are justified. And this is the right notion of justification, as distinguished from sanctification.” (!)

And thus Bishop Beveridge affirms it to be "true divinity" to hold that we are accounted just in the very sume judicial manner and by the same law of condemnation by which Christ "was," as he maintains, "accounted as a sinner." But is it, we ask, any thing less, to use his own words, than "horrid blasphemy," to make and defend so vain a declaration ? For, as it is obvious that He was considered simply as a substituted or vicarious offering for sin, how preposterous is it to assert that He was, in any sense, accounted as a sinner!

many things in which they have offended, and it is, therefore, worse than useless, or rather, sheer trifling, to refer to the testimony of "the Devil," for that purpose; but neither will God, nor can any creature whatever with truth, pronounce the elect to be righteous by a law which has already condemned us. And hath not God, moreover, distinctly made known to us throughout the whole of his written revelation, that " by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified?"

"The righteousness of God in him," then, is a direct contradiction to the assertion of an imputed and justifying righteousness without him; or to the illusive notion of a "double or two-fold righteousness," as Hooker terms it; consisting, according to him, of one kind for a legal imputation without, and another kind for a spiritual infusion within; thus reckoning the first for justifying without sanctifying, and the latter for sanctifying without justifying!

+ And how far short of blasphemy is it to affirm that we are accounted just by the very same law through which he was put to death as our substitute, instead of our being so accounted by the merits only of his own righteousness, and the purchased gifts of his atonement?

Adam, without question, was justly accounted by the law as a sinner; but no hypothetical argument of this nature can ever, for a moment, be admitted in the case of the Son of God. He was truly made a curse and a sin-offering, and, moreover, most maliciously and unjustly accounted by wicked men as a sinner; but the very law itself by which he was put to death, testified to the contrary, and confounded them with shame. Even the heathen centurion bure approved evidence to the falsity of such a revolting imputation. But notwithstanding that all Scripture, the holy law itself, nay, even the voice of nature speaking through the Roman soldier, indignantly repels the thought that the Son of God could, in any wise, be accounted as a sinner, it is, nevertheless, held by Bishop Beveridge that " we are," to repeat his own words, accounted as righteous in him, as he was accounted as a sinner for us." (!)

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Again, Bishop Beveridge says, that when we are made righteous or just in ourselves, (!) as he says we are by the infusion of grace within, then are we not accounted righteous; for this, according to him, would interfere, in the one case, with our accounted righteousness by the merits of Christ, and, in the other, with the infusion of grace through the agency of the Spirit. For, unless this distinction were strictly preserved, it would, according to him, be an entire abandonment of the cardinal feature of the Protestant faith, in its judicial imputation to man of the mere external merits of the atonement.

And this doctrine, such as is maintained by Bishop Beveridge, is also called, by Protestantism itself, "true divinity," and true imputation, agreeably to the reformned faith, viz. "that Christ was accounted as a sinner, and therefore punished for us," notwithstanding that He is ever spoken of in the inspired volume in no other way than as "holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners ;" and when it is, in fact, nothing short of blasphemy to consider him otherwise than as an unspotted victim, an immaculate offering, and a holy sacrifice for the sins of the world. Such, then, is the fatal consequence of the doctrine of a legal imputation, which, not content with its denial of the sacramental and inward matter of baptism, and of the sacred substance of the Eucharist itself,

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even "accounts" the holy and unspotted victim of the cross as a sinner!" And while some, moreover, retain the names of sacrament, of altar, and of priest, they, in like manner, reject their blessed substance, as a blasphemous superstition of Romish transubstantiation." Thus, while they ostensibly hold the forms of faith, do they vainly reject their sacred matter and their "holy thing."

Now it is never to be forgotten, in the argument, that both Catholics and Protestants agree in their professions that we are justified by faith and the righteousness of Christ. This, then, is not the actual difference or the turning point of the controversy between them; but it consists in the mode and manner of imputing to man the merits of the justice by which he is accepted, and the meaning which they respectively annex to the righteousness which is accounted. The Catholic says it is no less than blasphemy to impute to us the righteousness by which God alone is righteous in himself. But the Protestant, on the other hand, maintains that this, only, is the righteousness which is imputed to man for justification. The question, therefore, between them, is not whether we are justified by faith, but what is the kind or sort of faith which enters into the account, and what is the way by which the merits of Christ are truly imputed.

Now, the "true divinity" and "right notion of (Protestant) justification" on this point is, according to Bishop Beveridge, that we are accounted as righteous in Christ, in the same way or manner "as he was accounted as a sinner for us."-And here let not the reader suppose that this is only or merely the private opinion or notion of Bishop Beveridge. It is, in fact, the Protestant system itself of "imputed righteousness," and so maintained by every divine* in the English Church, as well as by every other sect in Christendom. Indeed, to hold the reverse of such an imputation of the merits of Christ, extraordinary as it may appear, is branded by all Protestant writers on the subject, as the leading impiety of "Anti

* With the exception, perhaps, of the learned Bishop Bull, who, with a Catholic conviction on this point, remained, nevertheless, within the Protestant communion.