before we believe. Else, why is faith given him at this instant for Christ's sake, and not to another, for whom also he died? That it is done then, is, because the appointed time is come; that it is done then for Christ, is because Christ is first given to him. I cannot conceive how any thing should be made out to me for Christ, and Christ himself not be given to me; 'he being made unto us of God, righteousness;' 1 Cor. i. 30.

[2.] The apostle holds out this very method of the dispensation of grace; Rom. viii. 32. He that spared not his Son, but delivered him up to death for us all, how shall he not with him freely give us all things?'

First, Christ is given for us, then to us, then with him (he having the pre-eminence in all things) all things; and this being, also, for him; Phil. i. 29. he is certainly in the order of nature given in the first place. He being made we receive the atonement by him ;' Rom. v. 11.

ours,

How Christ is said to be received by faith, if he be ours before believing, is easily resolved. Christ is ours before. and after believing in a different sense. He who is made ours in an act of God's love, that for him we may have faith, may be found and made ours in a promise of reconciliation by believing.

I offer also, whether absolution from the guilt of sin, and obligation unto death, though not as terminated in the conscience for complete justification, do not precede our actual believing. For, what is that love of God which through Christ is effectual to bestow faith upon the unbelieving? And how can so great love, in the actual exercise of it producing the most distinguishing mercies, consist with any such act of God's will, as at the same instant should bind that person under the guilt of sin?

Perhaps also this may be the justification of the ungodly mentioned, Rom. iv. God's absolving a sinner in heaven, by accounting Christ unto him, and then bestowing him upon him, and for his sake enduing him with faith to believe.

That we should be blessed with all spiritual blessings in Christ, and yet Christ not ours in a peculiar manner before the bestowing of those blessings on us, is somewhat strange. Yea he must be our Christ, before it is given to us for him to believe; why else is it not given to all others so to do;

I speak not of the supreme distinguishing cause; Matt. xi. 25, 26. but of the proximate procuring cause, which is the blood of Christ. Neither yet do I hence assert complete justification to be before believing, Absolution in heaven, and justification, differ as part and whole.

Again, absolution may be considered, either as a pure act of the will of God in itself, or as it is received, believed, apprehended, in and by the soul of the guilty. For absolution in the first sense, it is evident it must precede believing; as a discharge from the effects of anger, naturally precedes all collation of any fruits of love, such as is faith.

But if God account Christ unto, and bestow him upon, a sinner before believing, and upon that account, absolve him from the obligation unto death and hell, which for sin he lies under, what wants this of complete justification? Much every way.

1. It wants that act of pardoning mercy, on the part of God, which is to be terminated and completed in the con-. science of the sinner; this lies in the promise.

2. It wants the heart's persuasion concerning the truth and goodness of the promise, and the mercy held out in the promise.

3. It wants the soul's rolling itself upon Christ, and receiving of Christ, as the author and finisher of that mercy, an all-sufficient Saviour to them that believe.

So that by faith alone we obtain and receive the forgiveness of sin; for notwithstanding any antecedent act of God. concerning us, in and for Christ, we do not actually receive a complete soul-freeing discharge, until we believe.

And thus the Lord Christ hath the pre-eminence in all things. He is the author and finisher of our faith.

This then is that which here we assign unto the Lord. Upon the accomplishment of the appointed season, for the making out the fruits of the death of Christ unto them, for whom he died; he loves them freely, says to them, Live; gives them his Son, with and for him all things, bringing forth the choicest issue of his being reconciled in the blood of Jesus, whilst we are enemies, and totally alienated from him.

It will not be requisite at all, as to our purpose in hand, to make particular inquiry into the state and condition of them, towards whom such are the actings of God, as we be

fore described. What it is that gives them the first real alteration of condition, and distinguishment from others, I have now no occasion to handle.

So far as advantage hath been offered, I have laboured to distinguish aright those things, whose confusion and misapprehension lies at the bottom of very many dangerous mistakes; how the foregoing discourse may be accommodated and improved for the removal of those mistakes, I shall leave to the consideration of others.

CHAP. XIII.

The removal of sundry objections to some things formerly taught about the death of Christ, upon the principles now delivered.

HAVING fully declared, not only what was my intendment in the expressions so exceedingly mistaken by Mr. Baxter, as hath in part already been made manifest, and will instantly more fully appear; I shall now take a view of what is imposed on me as my judgment, and the opposition made thereunto, so far as may be needful for the clearing of the one, and removing of the other, at least in what they may really concern what I did deliver in the treatise impugned. In P. 146. of his Appendix, Mr. Baxter endeavours to vindicate a thesis of his from some exceptions, that he was by his friend pointed to, unto which it seemed liable and obnoxious.

The thesis he lays down, is, That no man is actually and absolutely justified upon the mere payment of the debt by Christ, till they become believers.'

Against this article, as he calls it, he produceth some objections of Maccovius, censuring his assertions to be senseless, his positions strange and abhorred, his arguments weak and ineffectual; with some other expressions to the same purpose.

1. I am now by the providence of God in a condition of separation from my own small library, neither can here attain the sight of Maccovius's disputations; so that I shall not at all interpose myself in this contest; only I must needs say,

(1.) I did not formerly account Maccovius to be so.

senseless and weak a disputant, as here he is represented -to be.

(2.) That for Mr. Baxter's answer to that argument, where the debt is paid, there discharge must follow; by asserting the payment made by Christ to be refusable, and the interest of sinners in that payment to be purely upon the performance of a condition; I have fully before in both parts of it demonstrated to be weak, and inconsistent with itself and truth. That the interesting of sinners in the payment made by Christ, at such and such a season, is from the sovereignty of God, and his free engagement sub termino for this end; hath been also fully manifested.

2. But Mr. Baxter affirms, that to these arguments of Maccovius, Mr. Owen adds some in the place against Grotius whereunto he was referred.

To what end, you will say, doth Mr. Owen add these arguments? Why to prove that men are actually, and absolutely, justified upon the mere payment of the debt by Christ before believing.

But, fidem tuam! Is there any one argument in my whole book used to any such purpose? Do I labour to prove that which I never affirmed? never thought? never believed? In what sense I affirmed that by the death of Christ, we are actually, and ipso facto, delivered from death, that is wç πos siπw, we have in due time, the time appointed, free and full deliverance thereby, without the intervention of any condition on our part, not absolutely procured for us by his death; I have before declared. How much this comes.

short of actual and absolute justification, I need not now. mention; I shall therefore, only so far consider the answers given by Mr. Baxter, as they may seem to impair or intrench upon the main truth I assert, and that in the order by him laid down.

'These,' saith he, 'Mr. Owen layeth down.'

1. By death he delivereth us from death.' To which he answers: Not immediately nor absolutely, nor by his death alone, but by that as a price, supposing other causes on his part and conditions on ours, to concur before the actual deliverance.'

1. To what end I mention that place of the apostle was before declared.

2. By the death of Christ we are immediately delivered from death with that immediation which is proper to the efficiency of causes, which produce their effects by the way of moral procurement: that is, certainly, without the intervention of any other cause of the like kind.

And,

3. Absolutely, no condition being interposed between the cause and the effect, Christ's death, and our total deliverance, but such as is part of our deliverance, and solely procured by that death: though that death of Christ be not considered as alone, that is separated from his obedience, resurrection, and intercession, when the work of redemption is assigned to it in the Scripture.

4. By the death of Christ as a price: I suppose you understand his purchase, as well as his payment; his merit as well as his satisfaction; or else this is a false notion of the death of Christ, as the cause of our deliverance.

5. All other causes concurring on the part of Christ for our deliverance, are, first, Either not of the same kind with his death: or, secondly, Bottomed on his death and flowing from thence; so that summarily all may be resolved thereinto.

6. The conditions on our part, in the sense intended, are often mentioned, never proved; nor I am persuaded will never be. But he adds:

2. 'He saith the elect are said to die, and rise with Christ:' saith he,

(1.) Not in respect of time, as if we died and rose at the same time, either really or in God's esteem.

(2.) 'Not that we died in his dying, and rose in his rising. But,

(3.) It is spoken of the distant mediate effects of his death, and the immediate effects of his Spirit on us, rising by regeneration to union and communion with Christ.' So he.

1. I pass the first and second exceptions, notwithstanding that of God's not esteeming of us as in Christ, upon his performance of the acts of his mediation for us, might admit of some consideration.

2. The inference here couched, that these things are the immediate effects of Christ's Spirit on us, therefore the distant and immediate effects of his death for us, is very weak and unconcluding. The death of Christ procureth these