Testimonies out of the evangelists considered — Design of our Saviour’s sermon on the mount — The purity and penalty of the law vindicated by him — Arguments from thence — Luke xviii. 9–14, the parable of the Pharisee and publican explained and applied to the present argument — Testimonies out of the Gospel by John, chap. i. 12; iii. 14–18, etc.
The reasons why the doctrine of justification by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ is more fully and clearly delivered in the following writings of the New Testament than it is in those of the evangelists, who wrote the history of the life and death of Christ, have been before declared; but yet in them also it is sufficiently attested, as unto the state of the church before the death and resurrection of Christ, which is represented in them. Some few of the many testimonies which may be pleaded out of their writings unto that purpose I shall consider, first, —
The principal design of our blessed Saviour’s sermon, especially that part of it which is recorded, Matt. v., is to declare the true nature of righteousness before God. The scribes and Pharisees, from a bondage unto whose doctrines he designed to vindicate the consciences of those that heard him, placed all our righteousness before God in the works of the law, or men’s own obedience thereunto. This they taught the people, and hereon they justified themselves, as he charges them, Luke xvi. 15, “Ye are they which justify yourselves before men; but God knoweth your hearts, for that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God,” — as in this sermon he makes it evident; and all those who were under their conduct did seek to “establish their own righteousness, as it were by the works of the law,” Rom. ix. 32; x. 3. But yet were they convinced in their own consciences that they could not attain unto the law of righteousness, or unto that perfection of obedience which the law did require. Yet would they not forego their proud, fond imagination of justification by their own righteousness; but, as the manner of all men is in the same case, sought out other inventions to relieve them against their convictions; for unto this end they corrupted the whole law by their false glosses and interpretations, to bring down and debase the sense of it, unto what they boasted in themselves to perform. So does he in whom our Saviour gives an instance of the principle and practice of the whole society, by way of a parable, Luke xviii. 11, 12; and so the young man affirmed that he had kept the whole law from his youth, — namely, in their sense, Matt. xix. 20.
To root this pernicious error out of the church, our Lord Jesus Christ in many instances gives the true, spiritual sense and intention of the law, manifesting what the righteousness is which the law requires, and on what terms a man may be justified thereby. And among sundry others to the same purpose, two things he evidently declares:— 1. That the law, in its precepts and prohibitions, had regard unto the regulation of the heart, with all its first motions and acting; for he asserts that the inmost thoughts of the heart, and the first motions of concupiscence therein, though not consented unto, much less actually accomplished in the outward deeds of sin, and all the occasions leading unto them, are directly forbidden in the law. This he does in his holy exposition of the seventh commandment, chap. v. 27–30. 2. He declares the penalty of the law on the least sin to be hell-fire, in his assertion of causeless anger to be forbidden in the sixth commandment. If men would but try themselves by these rules, and others there given by our Saviour, it would, it may be, take them off from boasting in their own righteousness and justification thereby. But as it was then, so is it now also; the most of them who would maintain a justification by works, do attempt to corrupt the sense of the law, and accommodate it unto their own practice. The reader may see an eminent demonstration hereof in a late excellent treatise, whose title is, “The Practical Divinity of the Papists Discovered to be Destructive of Christianity and Men’s Souls.”1 The spirituality of the law, with the severity of its sanction, extending itself unto the least and most imperceptible motions of sin in the heart, are not believed, or not aright considered, by them who plead for justification by works in any sense. Wherefore, the principal design of the sermon of our Saviour is, as to declare what is the nature of that obedience which God requires by the law, so to prepare the minds of his disciples to seek after another righteousness, which, in the cause and means of it, was not yet plainly to be declared, although many of them, being prepared by the ministry of John, did hunger and thirst after it.