Cap. VII §6: Effects compared — Pareus; reatus follows corruption; Sed pergamus

Next, he says, the effects of those causes are compared, namely sin and righteousness. What reaches us from Christ is not only inhering righteousness and ours subjectively, but also righteousness outside us, and another's, and ours only imputatively. Therefore what reaches us from Adam is not only inhering and habitual corruption, but also sin and disobedience outside us, and another's, and ours only by imputation. First there is no such consequence: for it rests on an omitted major proposition which, however conceived, will be — if universal — false; if particular — unfit to effect this conclusion. Next I confess that we have from Christ not only moral but also forensic righteousness, of which that is opposed to inhering corruption, this to the guilt which follows corruption; and so there has reached us from Adam not only moral but also forensic injustice, namely corruption and guilt. So far there is likeness. But D. Garissoles mixes in certain falsehoods. First it is false that Christ's righteousness is not ours except imputatively. For it is ours by the gift of God and of Christ, and also by our acceptance through faith. Therefore gift, donation by grace, overflow of grace, gift of righteousness is what the Apostle calls it. Who does not see that those names set a difference between the righteousness which reaches us from Christ and the sin which reaches us from Adam, in the mode by which they are ours? This gift is offered to us by the preaching of the Gospel and is received through faith. Therefore we are justified by faith. Pareus therefore speaks better: That the gift may be ours, it is received with a bought hand: so the gift of righteousness is ours when by faith we apply it to ourselves.

Next, which righteousness of Christ does he understand? Habitual? Then Adam's habitual injustice will have to be understood, not his actual sin. Actual of the whole life? Then likewise the actual injustice of Adam's whole life will have to be understood — which yet no one has said. The passive, as they call it, which in a moral sense is not righteousness but in a forensic? This is properly opposed only to guilt. But guilt is born from corruption. Therefore from Adam there reaches us a guilt following corruption, which is ours through that corruption, not through imputation only. Whoever denies this will depart from Scripture and from the doctrine of all the Protestant Churches, declared in confessions of faith and in disputations against Pelagius and Pighius. But if anyone not content with that says another guilt reaches us from Adam which precedes corruption and is ours only by imputation, he both posits two guilts — one before, one after corruption — contradicting D. Garissoles in places already noted by me at page 27 of this book, and will make God the author of our sin: inasmuch as by his judicial imputation he makes us sinners who otherwise would not be sinners: and, to be silent about the rest, will bring a new dogma into the Church beyond Scripture and the ancient faith. But let us go on.