The Poems of John Byrom :: :: University of Virginia Library

“Imputed Righteousness!”—Belovèd Friend,
To what Advantage can this Doctrine tend,
If, at the same Time, a Believer's Breast
Be not by real Righteousness possest;
And if it be, why Volumes on it made
With such a Stress upon “imputed” laid?

Amongst the Disputants of later Days,
This, in its Turn, became a fav'rite Phrase;
When, much divided in religious Schemes,
Contending Parties ran into Extremes.
And now it claims th' Attention of the Age,
In Hervey's elegant and lively Page;
This his Aspasio labours to impress,
With ev'ry Turn of Language and Address;
With all the Flow of Eloquence that shines
Thro' all his (full enough) embellish'd Lines.

Tho' now so much exerting to confirm
Its vast Importance, and revive the Term,
He was himself, he lets his Theron know,
Of diff'rent Sentiments not long ago;

487

And Friends of yours, it has been thought, I find,
Have brought Aspasio to his present Mind.
Now, having read (but unconvinc'd, I own,)
What various Reason for it he has shown,
Or rather Rhetoric,—if it be true
In any Sense that has appear'd to you,
I rest secure of giving no Offence,
By asking how you understand the Sense;
By urging in a Manner frank and free
What Reasons, as I read, occur to me,
Why “Righteousness” for Man to rest upon
Must be a “real,” not “imputed,” one.

To shun much novel Sentiment and nice,
I take the Thing from its apparent Rise.
It should seem, then, as if “imputed Sin”
Had made “imputed Righteousness” begin;
The one suppos'd, the other, to be sure,
Would follow after—like Disease and Cure.
Let us examine, then, “imputed Guilt,”
And see on what Foundation it is built.

As our first Parents lost an heav'nly State,
All their Descendents share their hapless Fate,

488

Forewarn'd of God, when tempted, not to eat
Of the forbidden Tree's pernicious Meat;
Because incorporating mortal Leav'n
Would kill of course in them the Life of Heav'n.
They disobey'd, did Adam and his Wife,
And died of Course to their true heav'nly Life.
That Life thus lost, the Day they disobey'd,
Could not by them be possibly convey'd.
No other Life could Children have from them
But what could rise from the parental Stem,—
That Love of God alone Which we adore
The Life so lost could possibly restore;
Their Children could not, being born to Earth,
Be born to Heaven but by an Heav'nly Birth.
God found a Way, explain it how we will,
To save the human Race from endless Ill;
To save the very disobeying Pair;
And made their whole Posterity His Care.

Has this great Goodness any thing akin
To God's “imputing” our first Parents' Sin
To their unborn Posterity?—What Sense
In such a strange and scriptureless Pretence?
For the Men feel—so far we are agreed—
The Consequences of a sinful Deed;
Yet where ascrib'd by any sacred Pen
But to the Doers is the Deed to Men;
Where to be found in all the Scripture thro'
This “Imputation,” thus advanc'd anew?

Adam and Eve, by Satan's Wiles decoy'd,
Did what the kind Commandment said “avoid.”
To them with Justice, therefore, you impute
The Sin of eating the forbidden Fruit;
And ev'ry Imputation must in Fact,
If just, be built on some preceding Act;

489

Without the previous Deed suppos'd the Word
Becomes unjust, unnatural, absurd.

If, as you seem'd to think the other Day,
All Adam's Race in some mysterious Way
Sinn'd when he sinn'd, consented to his Fall,—
With Justice then impute it to them all!
But still it follows, that they all contract
An Imputation founded upon Fact;
And “Righteousness of Christ” in Christian Heirs
Must be as deeply and as truly theirs,
An Heav'nly Life in order to replace
As was the Sin that made a guilty Race;
So that “imputing” either Good or Ill
Must presuppose a correspondent Will;
Or else “Imputers” certainly must make
Thro' Ignorance or other Cause Mistake.

Old Eli thus, not knowing what to think,
“Imputed” Hannah's silent Pray'r to Drink;
Little supposing that it would prepare
A Súccessor to him, her silent Pray'r.
There may be other Meanings of the Phrase,
To be accounted for in human Ways;
But God's “imputing” to the future Child
The Sin by which his Parents were beguil'd,
Seems to establish an unrighteous Blame
That brings no Honour to its Maker's Name.

490

God's Honour, Glory, Majesty and Grace,
I grant, is your Intention in the Case;
But wish revolv'd in your impartial Thought,
How far the Doctrine tends, when it is taught,
To such an honest Purpose, and how far
Justice and Truth may seem to be at War,
If God “impute” to guiltless Children Crimes,
Committed only in their Parents' Times.

Pious Aspasio, I imagine, too,
Had God's “resistless Sov'reignty” in View;
The Charge of Puritan or other Name
He scorn'd aright and, making Truth his Aim,
Found it, he thought, in eminent Divines,
Of whose Opinion these are the Outlínes.—
They think, at least they seem to represent,
That God in Honour upon Sin's Event
Could not forgive the Sinners that had stray'd
Without a proper Satisfaction made
To His Offended Justice, and, because
Upon their Breach of the Almighty's Laws
None else was adequate to what was done,
The Vengeance fell on His Belovèd Son,
Who gave Himself to suffer in our Stead,
And thus to Life again restor'd the dead;
Because consistently with Justice then
God could bestow His Mercy upon Men.

491

Man had contracted in that fatal Day
Debt so immense, that Man could never pay;
He Who was God as well as Man, He could,
And made the Satisfaction thro' His Blood,—
Paid all the just Demand, “imputed” thus
Our Sin to Him, His Righteousness to us.—
This sets the Doctrine, if I take aright
Their Words and Meaning, in the plainest Light.

Now, since accounting for the Truth amiss
May give Distaste in such an Age as this,
And be a stumbling-block to them who might
Receive an Explanation that was right,—
Not as a captious Foe, but hearty Friend,
May one entreat such Teachers to attend,
And reconcile their System, if they can,
To God's Proceeding with His Creature Man,—
To that Paternal, Tender Love and Grace
Which at Man's Fall immediately took Place,—
That Inward, Holy Thing, inbreathèd then,
Which would re kindle Heav'n in him again?
Does “Wrath,” or “Vengeance,” or a “Want” appear
“Of Satisfaction” or “of Payment” here
In Man's Creator? For Mankind had He
A purchas'd Grace, which contradicts a Free?
Is it not plain, that an Unalter'd Love
Sent Help to poor fall'n Creatures from Above,
Unbargain'd, Unsolicited, Unmov'd
But by Itself, as Its Exertion prov'd;—
No foreign Promise, no “imputed” Ease,
But Remedy as Real as Disease,
That would, according to true Nature's Ground,
Bring on the Cure, and make the Patient sound?

492

That Christ, that God's becoming Man, was it,
Your Friends with highest Gratitude admit;
Whose utmost Talents are employ'd to show
The Obligations that to Him we owe,—
To press the Object of our Faith and Trust,
Christ all in all, the Righteous and the Just,
The “True Redeeming Life,”—essential this
To ev'ry Christian who aspires to Bliss!
Why not subjoin—I cite the Hero Paul,
And make Appeal to Christians—“in you all,”—
Form'd in you, dwelling in you, and within
Regenerating Life, dethroning Sin;
Working in more and more resignèd Wills
The gradual Conquest of all selfish Ills;
Till the true Christian to true Life revive,
“Dead to the World, to God, thro' Him, alive?”

What num'rous Texts from Paul, from ev'ry Saint,
Might furnish our Citations, did we want,
And could not see that Righteousness or Sin
Arise not from without, but from within;
That “Imputation,” where they are not found,
Can reach no further than an empty Sound,—
No further than “imputed” Health can reach
The Cure of Sickness, tho' a Man should preach
With all the Eloquence of Zeal and tell
How Health “imputed” makes a sick Man well!
Indeed, if Sickness be “imputed” too,
“Imputed Remedy,” no Doubt, may do;
Words may pour forth their entertaining Store,
But Things are—just as Things were just before.

493

In so important a Concern as that
Which good Aspasio's Care is pointed at,
A small Mistake which at the Bottom lies
May sap the Building that shall thence arise.
Who would not wish that Architect so skill'd
On great Mistake might not persist to build,
But strictly search and for sufficient While,
If the Foundation could support the Pile?

This “Imputation,” which he builds upon,
Has been the Source of more Mistakes than one.
Hence rose, to pass the intermediate Train
Of growing Errors and observe the main,
That worse than pagan Principle of Fate,
Predestination's partial Love and Hate;
By which, not tied like fancied Jove to look
In stronger Destiny's decreeing Book,
The God of Christians is suppos'd to will
That some should come to Good, and some to Ill,—
And for no Reason but to show, in fine,
Th' Extent of Goodness and of Wrath Divine.

Whose Doctrine this? I quote no less a Man
Than the renownèd Calvin for the Plan;

494

Who having labour'd with Distinctions vain
“Mere Imputation” only to maintain,
Maintains, when speaking on another Head,
This horrid Thought, to which the former led:
“Predestination here I call,” says he,
Defining, “God's Eternal, Fix'd Decree,
“Which having settl'd in His Will He pass'd,—
“What ev'ry Man should come to at the last.”
And lest the Terms should be conceiv'd to bear
A Meaning less than he propos'd severe:
“For all Mankind,” he adds to Definition,
“Are not created on the same Condition;”—
(“Pari Conditione” is the Phrase,
If you can turn it any other Ways;)—
“But Life to some eternal is restrain'd,
“To some Damnation endless pre-ordain'd.”

Calvin has push'd the Principle, I guess,
To what your Friends would own to be Excess;
And probably Aspasio, less inclin'd
To run directly into Calvin's Mind,
Would give “imputing” a more mod'rate Sense,
That no “Damnation” might arise from thence;
But how will mollifying Terms confute
The fam'd Reformer's Notion of “impute”?
If it confer such arbitrary Good,
The dire Reverse is quickly understood,—
So understood, that open Eyes may see
'Tis Calvin's Fiction, and not God's Decree,—
Not His Whose Forming Love and Ruling Aid
Ceaseless extends to all that He hath made;
Who gave the Gift which He was pleas'd to give,
That “none might perish, but that all might live,”—

495

His Only Son, in Whom the Light That guides
The born into the World to Life, resides,—
A real Life, that by a real Birth
Raises a Life beyond the Life of Earth
In all His Children.—But no more to you,
Better than me who know it to be true.
And, if Aspasio's really humbl'd Soul
Be by a touch of Garment-Hem made whole,
He might, as I should apprehend, be sure
That “Imputation” could not cause the Cure.
When the poor Woman, in the Gospel, found
“Touch of the Saviour's Clothes” to make her sound,
We know the Virtue did from Him proceed
That mix'd with Faith restor'd her, as we read.
“Gone out of Him” obliges to infer,
That 'twas by Faith attracted into her.