Christian Doctrine, with all its vicissitudes and fluctuations, from the Apostolic age down to the present times, teaches this great lesson, that, invariably, among all parties, in all lands, and in all ages, the views which men held of the evils in their condition and character which required to be redressed, affected their views of the nature, necessity, and value of the remedy proposed to them in the Gospel; that their estimate of the guilt and power of sin determined their estimate of the freeness and efficacy of divine grace; and this in regard alike to their Regeneration by the agency of the Spirit, and their Justification by the Mediatorial work of Christ. A Pelagian or semi-Pelagian Anthropology has been the latent, but prolific, root underground of all the heresies respecting both, which have sprung up in those ages of declension, when conscience slumbered, and a sense of sin decayed; and every revival of sound evangelical doctrine has been accompanied, or preceded, by a work of conviction, produced by a closer application of the Law to the conscience. Such has been the experience of the Church as a collective body; and such also has been the personal experience of individuals. Their views of the nature, necessity, freeness, and efficacy of divine grace, have uniformly varied with their more or less vivid apprehensions of the evil and malignity of sin. No change is more striking or more instructive than that which is often produced instantaneously on all a man's views of the method of salvation, when from being a careless, he becomes a convinced, sinner. As a careless sinner, he presumed on mercy; as a convinced sinner, he can scarcely dare to hope for it: once he reckoned on pardon, or rather on impunity; now 'his own heart condemns him,' and he knows that God is greater than his heart' formerly he imagined that reformation of life

would be sufficient to secure his welfare; now he feels that a radical heart-change is necessary, such as he is altogether unable to work in himself,-and immediately on this change of his views in regard to sin, there follows a change in all his views of salvation, and those very doctrines of free and efficacious grace, which he once despised or rejected as "foolishness,' are found to be the 'wisdom of God.' (1)

Р

LECTURE VIII.

JUSTIFICATION; THE SCRIPTURAL MEANING OF THE TERM.

PRO

ROPOSITION I. Justification is a legal, or forensic, term, and is used in Scripture to denote the acceptance of any one as righteous in the sight of God.

As God has been pleased to employ this term, and its cognates, in revealing His will in regard to the method of our acceptance with Him, it is our first duty to ascertain their precise import, and it cannot be a matter of slight importance to determine it aright. Erroneous or confused views of the scriptural meaning of these terms, must exert an injurious influence on our conception of the doctrine which they are designed to teach; while the right interpretation of many passages of Scripture can only be satisfactorily established by a careful inductive inquiry into the 'usus loquendi' of the sacred writers; and it is far from being a mere verbal discussion, since it has an important bearing on the substance and evidence of the truth itself.

The scriptural meaning of these terms is to be determined, neither by their mere etymology, nor by the sense which they bear in classical literature, but by the usage of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, including the Septuagint version of the Old Testament. So far as etymology is concerned, the verb to 'justify' might possibly mean to make righteous inherently, just as the verb to 'sanctify' often means to 'make holy' in that way; but this can in no case be determined by the mere derivation or com

position of the term,—as is manifest from the fact, that to glorify God' does not mean to make God glorious, and to sanctify the Lord God in our hearts,' does not mean to make Him holy, but only to account and declare Him to be glorious, in the one case, and holy, in the other. In this sense, God is said to be 'justified,' and Christ also,— not that they were, or could be, made righteous,-—but that they were respectively declared to be righteous,—the one by His judgments, the other by His resurrection from the dead. The mere etymology of the term cannot determine, therefore, the question in regard to its scriptural meaning; and this can only be ascertained from the usage of the sacred writers. (1)

In order to determine its scriptural meaning, it is not necessary to undertake the burden of proving, either that it might not be used, or that, in point of fact, it has never been used, in the sense of making one righteous; for, although Popish divines and their followers have generally attempted to show that, in some passages, it is used in an 'efficient, moral' sense, and some Protestant writers have maintained, in opposition to them, that these passages do not necessarily require that construction, it is enough to establish the only point which is of essential importance in the argument,-namely, that, wherever it is used with reference to our acceptance with God, it can only be understood in a judicial or forensic sense. (2)

Some recent writers, in assailing the Protestant doctrine, have proceeded on the supposition that, if the term could be proved to bear in some instances, or even to be capable of bearing, an 'efficient, moral sense,' Justification could no longer be regarded as 'forensic.' But it is an egregious error, to imagine that the 'forensic,' or 'judicial,' nature of Justification is at all affected by the ground on which it is supposed to rest. It would bear that character,

and could only be correctly described by these terms, in the case even of a perfectly righteous man; and were it possible for a sinner to be justified on the ground of an infused and inherent, but imperfect, righteousness, his acceptance as righteous on that ground would still be a forensic and judicial sentence, recognising his righteousness and reputing him accordingly. This is virtually admitted when the 'reputative' idea is said to be involved in the meaning of the term Justification: and yet, with singular inconsistency, the doctrine of a 'forensic,' is contrasted with that of a 'moral,' Justification, as if the two epithets'forensic' and 'moral'-related to the same point, and did not refer the one to the nature of Justification,-the other to the ground on which it is supposed to rest. The real question at issue is,-not whether Justification be judicial or moral,—for it must be judicial even when it rests on moral grounds, but whether a sinner is accepted on the ground of a righteousness vicarious and imputed, or of a righteousness infused and inherent? It may be added, that this being the point on which the discussion really turns, the question is not fully stated when it is asked whether the term signifies to 'make righteous' or to 'account righteous;' for all parties must be held to admit that, when a sinner is justified, he is, in some sense, both made and accounted righteous; and the real difference between them becomes apparent only when they proceed to explain in what way he is made righteous, and adjudged so to be. When the question is thus stated, Justification must be regarded as involving a forensic or judicial sentence, on whatever ground it may be supposed to rest; and the two distinct alternatives are clearly presented to us,-Justification by Christ's vicarious righteousness imputed, or by man's personal righteousness infused. Which of these alternatives is the true scriptural doctrine must