A Treatise of Justifying Righteousness, Book 2 · Aphorism 88 – Aphorism 95
Aphorism.
I Take Love to be some degree of justifying Page 266.Faith, and not properly a fruit of it.
Animadvers.
I think it is properly a fruit of justifying Faith. We love him, because he loved us first, 1 John 4. 19. His love apprehended by us, which is by Faith, doth work in us love towards him again. For otherwise, though God love us never so much, yet if we do not apprehend it, we shall not therefore love him. B. Davenant de Just. act. c. 30. p. 387. reckons amare Deum, inter effecta à side Justificante necessario manantia.
Reply.
To your Argument I answer:
1. The Text may argue, not à ratione objectivâ; but à ratione efficiente; q. d. Because he first loved us, therefore hath he prevented us by his Grace, and given us hearts to love him again.
2. If you were sure it argued à ratione objectivà, yet you endeavour to prove no more, but that the assenting act of Faith goes before love; which I affirm as much as you, while I say, it goes before Consent, Acceptance, Election.
3. Your Argument, as you urge it, tends to prove that Love, even in time follows Faith: Yet you never yet denied that Acceptance and Election is a justifying act: And can you think, that Acceptatio vel Electio boni, hath no love in it, but is wholly antecedent? or that the Apostles foreign, embracing, Heb. 11. 13. which you cited, containeth no love in it? Your Friend and mine Mr. Leigh thought it did. See what he citeth, Crit. Sacr. out of Davenant, and Beza, and Paraeus, Est amanter amplecti, & salutare & osculari.
4. The first orderly love to God in the Soul ariseth not from our belief or assurance, that he loves us in particular more than others of the World, but from the apprehension of his natural excellency, goodness, and common love to mankind in giving Christ for them, and in him offering to be freely reconciled to them, and tendring Christ, and Pardon, and Salvation to them; upon the belief of which, they lovingly accept Christ offered, which is the compleat act of justifying Faith, being the Marriage between Christ and the Soul. And so as you may say, the compleat act of Faith, is a fruit of the incompleat act: So you may say, that this love is a fruit of this belief.
5. And I need not again tell you, that I neither speak of any other love here, but love to the accepted Redeemer, or Head and Husband Christ (whom we do not accept or marry first, and only after love him, but do lovingly accept) nor of the following acts of love in our lives, which may be called the fruits of our first loving acceptance. Chamier. Panstrat. de Fide, l. 12. c. 4. (mihi) p. 375. Omnis amor est actus voluntatis: At fides est amor: ergo, &c. minor probatur. Vera fides est ea quae credit in Deum: At credere in Deum est amare Deum, &c.
6. Aquinas, and others ordinarily say, That Love, as it is in the rational part, is nothing but Velle, 1, 2. q. 22. a. 3. 3. & 1. q. 20. a. 1. so Zanchius very oft. So Tolet. de Anima. in l. 3. c. 9. q. 27, 28. Circa bonum prima passio est amor. Amor est omnium prima & ipsarum parens, &c. Amor est, 1. Concupiscentiae. 2. Benevolentiae vel amicitiae. Ille est velle bonum ad se ordinando, &c. Alter est velle bonum propter seipsum, &c. Vid. ultra. So Gerson part. 4. fol. 27. de Passionibus animae, Ames. contr. Grevinchov. pag. 16. Abundance more I could cite, specially Philosophers, to the same purpose, but that I will not so trouble you and my self in vain. Now certainly Acceptance is velle bonum; and certainly before velle there is no act of the Will to good.
7. I deny not amare Deum to be an effect, in the sense oft explained already.
Aphorism.
THe Will's apprehension of a thing good, Ibid.which we call an earnest willing of it, and accepting it, is (in my judgment) the same thing as Love, &c.
Animadvers.
You speak of a thing present and enjoyed; and so distinguish justifying Faith from Desire and Hope: [Desire and Hope (say you, p. 267.) as such, do properly consider their Object as absent, which this justifying Faith doth not.] Now Christ must be received by Faith, that so he may be present and enjoyed, and consequently, that he may be loved as such. And therefore Love in this sense is rather a fruit of Faith, than a part of it, as you endeavour to prove.
Reply.
1. As Desire and Hope consider their Object as Absent, so they are only, quoad accidentalem hunc respectum, different from love, and not from any real essential objective difference.
2. Faith and Love here do consider their Object as alike present. There is no need of Faith to make it present before it can be accepted and loved; it is God's offer that makes it present: And he offers it me to be at once lovingly accepted, and not to be first accepted, and then loved only.
3. We look not at Christ as [enjoyed] when we first love him; but as bonum conveniens offered to be enjoyed.
4. If by [receiving by Faith,] you mean, [Assent to the truth of the Word,] then it is true, that this must go before Love: But it is as true, that it must go before Acceptance.
Aphorism.
IF Love be an act of the same Will, and Page 267.have the same Object with Consent, Election, Acceptance, &c. Why should it not then be the same Act?
Animadvers.
Love, as you take it, considereth its Object as present and enjoyed; therefore it differs from Consent, Election and Acceptance, which go before Enjoyment: So much your self confesses immediately, saying, [Acceptance considereth its Object as offered; Election considereth it as propounded with some other Competitor; Consent considereth it as we are perswaded and invited to it.]
Reply.
Neither so, nor so.
1. I never thought that all Love considereth its Object as present, much less as enjoyed; but only amor complacentiae. I only said, that Love considereth it not as absent (as Desire and Hope do;) that is, It is not necessary to the denomination of Love, that we consider the Object as absent: I spoke negatively, not that I ever thought it necessary, that therefore it must consider it as present and enjoyed: Love considereth it more simply than other Passions do, that is, as bonum conveniens: It is accidental to it, to consider it as absent, or as present. Therefore Desire and Hope are Love with such an accidental variation.
2. As the said accidental differences of the Object in mere extrinsick respects, do not make the Object to be divers: (It is not one good that is offered, and another that is deliberated on, and another that we are fore-invited to;) so they make not Acceptance, Election, Consent, to be several acts, much less one to follow another as their fruit: No more doth it make Love to differ from them. All is but velle bonum, viz. Christum oblatum. Cannot mine eye see at once this wall as it is white, as it is quantum, as it is unum, as it is thus or thus scituate, standing East or West, facing that other Wall, near to this Wall, and like to it, &c. Must all these be several acts in the substance, and one the fruit of another?
Aphorism.
BƲt all these are extrinsick Considerations: Ibid.They consider their Object as good, and so doth Love.
Animadvers.
But that is not enough to make them and Love all one. For so Desire and Hope consider their Object as good, yet are not therefore the same with Consent, Election, Acceptance, nor yet with Love, as the Object of it, is Good-enjoyed: For the Object of Desire and Hope, is Good-absent.
Reply.
It is not enough to give Love the name of Acceptance or Consent, &c. But it is enough to prove Acceptance and Consent to be Love. Love is the substance of the Act; the other are the same Act, as respecting the same Object, but not simply as good, but with the addition of some respects extrinsecal. The Genus is truly in the Species, though the Species is not the Genus, nor the Genus to be called by the name of the Species. Amare & velle bonum, is all one. Acceptance, Election, Consent are all velle; but not velle bonum simpliciter, sed cum hoc vel illo respectu superaddito: And therefore omne velle non est acceptare, sed omne acceptare est velle. Et ita dicendum de Amore.
Aphorism.
IT is not said, that Love justifieth, but Page 268.Faith that worketh (even in its essential work of accepting) by Love.
Animadvers.
So Love must needs be taken for Desire, not for that Love which is carried out towards a thing enjoyed, which is Amor complacentiae. But I do not conceive that to be the Apostle's meaning, Gal. 5. 6. Quantum ad praesentem locum attinet, Paulus nequaquam disputat, an charitas ad justificandum co-operatur fidei, sed tantum indicat quae nunc sint vera fidelium exercitia, &c. ergo cum versaris in causa Justificationis cave ullam charitatis vel operum mentionem admittas, sed mordicus retine particulam exclusivam. Calv. ad loc.
Reply.
1. Amor desiderii, vel concupiscentiae, is as common a phrase as Amor complacentiae.
2. It is as proper to say, Desire is Love, or Complacency is Love; as to say, Amor concupiscentiae, & Amor complacentiae. Both phrases express that there is Love, with an additional respect.
3. I love to interpret Scripture in the most comprehensive sense: To say the Apostle excluded this operation, may be sooner done, than to prove it: But of that, judg as you see meet.
4. James took not Calvin's counsel in his phrase of Speech.
Aphorism.
CHrist doth propound it (viz. Love) Page 269.in the Gospel, as of the same necessity, &c.
Animadvers.
Love, and all obedience, are propounded as necessary, but not as necessary to Justification. They flow from justifying Faith, but are not properly parts of it.
Reply.
(1.) John 16. 27. & 14. 21. Makes Love the antecedent Condition of God's Love and Christ's Love to the person. And that goeth with Remission, and is a Love of Reconciliation: And Reconciliation comprehendeth Remission. At least, you will never shew out of Scripture, that the procuring God's Love, and the procuring Remission and Reconciliation, have not the same Conditions.
(2.) Love is confessed a Condition of our Glorification, Jam. 1. 12. & 2. 5. John 14. 21, &c. And it is to me past doubt, that Glorification, and sentential Justification at judgment, have the same Conditions.
3. I easily acknowledge, that Obedience is a fruit of Faith, and not a part of it, properly taken: And so is other Love.
Aphorism.
THat both (viz. Faith and Love) Page 270, 271.are necessary to Justification, is doubtless, and that they are concurrent in apprehending Christ.
Animadvers.
This which you say is doubtless, is generally not doubted, but denied by our Divines. Love, as distinguished from Desire, presupposeth Christ already apprehended, and so Justification already obtained; and therefore it doth not concur with …aith in apprehending Christ, nor is it necessary to Justification.
Reply.
1. Either you or I mistake the common judgment of Divines. How many have answered me (besides It is not true, that all Complacence supposeth the Object, either present or enjoyed; but only that in esse cognito, as apprehended good, it be complacential to the will of the person who thinketh of it. And there is Complacency in all Desire and Hope, yea, in our grief, for not enjoying the good.all that I have read) that Love is necessary quoad praesentiam, sed non quoad Instrumentalitatem, vel Causalitatem. Nay how many have told me of Works themselves (much more of Love) that they are indeed Conditions of our Justification, but not Instruments: (so Mr. Ball of the Covenant;) and chiefly blame me, that I bring them so near together, by not giving more to Faith, than merely to be a Condition; which (say they) Works are as well as Faith. Nay, how commonly do ours on James 2. and against the Papists say, that Fides solum justificat, sed non sola: Faith without Works in Causality, but not in Concomitancy. And if it be not sola without Works, sure not without Love. Though for my part I affirm, that as to Works of external Obedience, it is solum & sola in our first Justification.
2. You intimate a Concession, that Amor concupiscentiae is pre-requisite. And I speak not of Amor complacentiae, as respecting the Object enjoyed: But indeed of Amor acceptationis vel electionis, as properly so called as either of the other.
3. Acceptance presupposeth the Promise to be believed as true, and Christ to be known to be good; and yet Justification is not attained before that Acceptance or Love. But all Love doth not presuppose Acceptance, Consent, Election or Affiance, no more than velle presupposeth them. The names plainly evince this.
Aphorism.
AS the accepting of Christ for Lord Page 286.(which is the hearts Subjection) is as essential a part of justifying Faith, as the accepting him for Saviour: So consequently, sincere Obedience (which is the effect of the former) hath as much to do in justifying us before God, as (some) Affiance, *Yet no doubt but trust in Christ is an essential act of Faith: And I spake not here distinctly enough of Affiance; but meant only a quieting trust: But all true belief is a trusting to his Word or Veracity; that is, to his Wisdom, Goodness and Power whom we believe.which is the fruit of the latter.
Animadvers.
(1.) This accepting of Christ for Lord, is as essential a part of justifying Faith, as the accepting him for Saviour; but not of Faith as justifying. Christ is our Saviour in satisfying for us, and in that respect doth Faith apprehend Christ, as it justifieth.
(2.) For Faith justifieth, as it apprehendeth Christ's Satisfaction, which is that Righteousness whereby we are justified.
Reply.
(1.) I have already answered this of fides quae & qua. I take your Concession for the quae, and stay till you either prove the quâ as contradistinct, or this distinction to have tolerable sense, when well scan'd.
(2.) I mainly differ with you in the last point, which is your ground-work in other differences. Faith justifieth not directly, as it apprehendeth Christ's Satisfaction (you should say, Righteousness which was merited by it: For the Satisfaction it self was never offered to us, but given to God for us; unless by apprehending, you mean only assenting to the truth of it:) But Faith justifieth directly or formally, as the Condition of the Gift; and materially or aptitudinally, as the receiving of Christ himself: And then his Righteousness is to follow our Union or Marriage to him. Doth not Union go before Justification? Remember I distinguished before ex parte actus & ex parte objecti.