Page:A Compendium of the Chief Doctrines of the True Christian Religion.djvu/88

84 and conscientiously, according to the divine precepts, in every employment and situation of life, and thus in abstaining from the evils of the world, while we are necessarily conversant with it, agreeably to these words of the Lord, "I pray not that thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil," John xvii. 15.

IN those churches, which have adopted an erroneous faith in three divine persons existing from eternity, it is held, that justification and salvation are effected by God the Father through the imputation of the merits and righteousness of his Son Jesus Christ; and that such imputation is when and with whom he pleases, without any other respect to the objects of election, than what flows from an arbitrary, unconditional pre-determination, and sovereign pleasure. But as the faith, which gave birth to such a delirium of the mind, is itself opposed to the divine unity, and in it's consequences cannot be contemplated by any truly rational mind, without a kind of horror and justifiable indignation, it shall be no further noticed in this place, than as an occasion given, in the way of contrast, to state the true doctrine of the imputation of good and evil, according to the nature of every man's life. The merit and righteousness of our Lord Jesus Christ consisted in the various acts of redemption, which he performed while on earth: and as the redemption wrought by him was a work purely divine, as already explained in a former article, any imputation of his merit to a mere creature, to an insignificant worm, must be a thing plainly impossible, and in