But I have shewed you that this cannot be, therefore righteousness for justification must be imputed first. And here let me present the reader with two or three things. 1. That justification before God is one thing, and justification to the understanding and conscience is another. Now, I am treating of justification before God, not of it as to man’s understanding and conscience: and I say, a man may be justified before God, even then when himself knoweth nothing thereof; Isa. xl. 2; Mark ii. 5; and while he hath not faith about it, but is ungodly. 2. There is justification by faith, by faith’s applying of that righteousness to the understanding and conscience, which God hath of his grace imputed for righteousness to the soul for justification in his sight. And this is that by which we, as to sense and feeling, have peace with God “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ;” Rom. v. 1. And these two the apostle keepeth distinct in the 10th verse: that “while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son.” He addeth, “And not only so, but we joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement,” verse 11. Here you see, that to be reconciled to God by the death of his Son is one thing, and for us actually to receive by faith this reconciliation is another: and not only so, but we have “received the atonement.” 3. Men do not gather their justification from God’s single act of imputing of righteousness, that we might stand clear in his sight from the curse and judgment of the law; but from the word of God, which they understand not till it is brought to their understanding by the light and glory of the Holy Ghost. We are not, therefore, in the ministry of the word to pronounce any man justified, from a supposition that God has imputed righteousness to him (since that act is not known to us), until the fruits that follow thereupon do break out before our eyes; to wit, the signs and effects of the Holy Ghost indwelling in our souls. And then we may conclude it, that is, that such a one stands justified before God, yet not for the sake of his inherent righteousness, nor yet for the fruits thereof, and so not for the sake of the act of faith, but for the sake of Jesus Christ his doing and suffering for us.