John Owen on Virtual Pardon: Textual Dependance

Thomas Gilbert's Learned and Accurate Discourse Concerning the Guilt of Sin was published in 1695, a year after his death. In the work, Gilbert distinguishes between legal and gospel guilt, arguing that all legal guilt of past sins is formally remitted upon believing and that all future sins have their legal guilt virtually remitted inasmuch as justification places one in a state where one is unable to contract new legal guilt. When we pray for the forgiveness of our sins, Gilbert argues, we are praying for the removal of gospel guilt expressed through fatherly chastisements as well as "God’s continuance indeed (or non-Revocation) of such his gracious pardon" relating to the remission of legal guilt. The postscript to Benjamin Keach's Short Confession of Faith (https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo/A47606.0001.001?view=toc) cites Gilbert's work to explicate Keach's 13th article about the remission of future sins. Keach says that he met with Thomas Gilbert, presumably to discuss this matter, and also notes that he sees Gilbert's position on virtual pardon as in agreement with Ames as well as others. We know that Gilbert's work was written sometime prior to 1678 (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1885-1900/Gilbert,_Thomas_(1613-1694). Virtually all of our information about Thomas Gilbert comes from Edmund Calamy, who described him as “an ancient Divine; an excellent Scholar, of extraordinary Acuteness, and Conciseness of Style, and a most Scholastical Head. He had all the School-men at his Finger-ends” and that he “had a nice metaphysical head, and was the completest schoolman I ever was acquainted with.” Calamy's fullest comments on Gilbert can be read here: https://archive.org/details/historicalaccoun01cala/page/268/mode/2up?view=theater Gilbert wrote a short work responding to John Owen's Dissertation on Divine Justice, which he discussed with Calamy for only a short time as, in Calamy's words, "he could not apprehend that any thing he could add to it, would be able to satisfy. He desired, therefore, that he and I might have no farther discourse upon that subject; nor had we; though we had frequent altercations about another notion of his, of which he was very fond, and upon which also he had somewhat in print: viz. that all sins, past, present, and to come, were pardoned at once, which I must own I never could tell how to digest." As Gilbert's national biography entry states, "Calamy speaks as if it had been first printed in Gilbert's lifetime." We know that sometime between 1665 and 1670, Richard Baxter wrote some animadverions on Gilbert's paper (or what would become Gilbert's paper) in a letter to a friend (https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/archives/dd1499d1-654a-300d-9668-ee6405a72273?component=00a1b1dc-a3ae-38f2-9be3-ad5ee8ddc095). Thus we know that some manuscript from Gilbert on the topic existed (hereafter called "Q") and was being read by 1670 at the latest. This timeline fits with what we are told in the preface to Gilbert's published work, namely, that:

THE Light held out in these Papers is accounted so clear and so useful, that it hath been thought great Pity it hath not been set up upon a Candlestick. They have pas∣sed up and down in Manuscript about Thirty Years, being much valued by those who were Possessors of them. It is Credibly reported that a very great and Learned Man (whom for some Reasons I will not name, though his Commendation would have great weight with Persons of different perswasions) did upon the perusal of them, speak to the Learned Author to this purpose, That it was worth a Mans Living a great while, though he did nothing else but bring forth such a Composure.

I would like to further suggest that we can narrow down the existence of Q to sometime either in or prior to 1668. The reason for this is because of the very close parallels between page 208 of Robert Ferguson's Justification Onely Upon A Satisfaction (https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/eebo2/B22921.0001.001/1:3.9?rgn=div2;subview=detail;type=simple;view=fulltext;q1=legal+guilt) published 1668 with pages 6 and 20 of Gilbert's published work:

Ferguson, pg. 208	Gilbert, pg. 6
1. Sin shall never be charged upon us in the legal guilt of it, Rom. 8. 1, 33, 34. The legal guilt of all sins past is removed formally, and the legal guilt of all sins to come is removed virtually: That is thus, justification takes of legal guilt where once it was, and keeps it of where else it would be.	This Actual Pardon of the Legal Guilt of Believers Sins is twofold. 1. Formal, of all their Sins past, removing their Legal Guilt. 2. Virtual, of all their Sins to come, preventing their Legal Guilt. Formal Pardon takes off Legal Guilt, where once it was. Virtual Pardon keeps it off, where else it would be.

Ferguson, pg. 208

Gilbert, pg. 20

And (1.) It is no more harsh that sins should be legally disim∣puted to us before committed, than that they should be legally imputed to Christ before com∣mitted, which all the sins of the elect, who have lived, and are yet to live, since the death of Christ, were. (2.) Because the guilt of sin may be as well disimputed to be∣lievers before committed by them, as the satisfaction of Christ was imputed to believers before made by him, which it was to all the Old Testament Saints.

The Legal Guilt of their Sins may (at least) as well be Virtually dis∣imputed to Believers,* 1.3 before com∣mitted by them, as the Satisfaction of Christ, Formally Imputed to Be∣lievers, before wrought by Him. This, before wrought by Him, was Formally Imputed to all Believers before Christ. Ergo, &c. Reason of the Major: For if the Acts of Moral Causes may be Morally put forth before such Causes are them∣selves Actually in Being (as it was in that Case of Christs Satisfaction not then wrought, when putting forth its Moral Act, in its Formal Imputation to the Formal Pardon of the Legal-Guilt of Sins past, to Believers before Christ) much more may such Moral Impediments be laid in before such Causes are in Be∣ing, as shall effectually hinder theputting forth of such their Acts, when such Causes come Actually to be (as it is in this Case of Christs Satisfaction now wrought, Formally Imputed to the Virtual Pardon of Believers Sins to come, effectually hindering the putting forth of their Moral Act, the deriving of any Legal Guilt upon such Persons, when such Sins are come) Or with any who conceive the Satisfaction of Christ, not yet Formally wrought by Him, could not be Formally, but only Virtually imputed to Belie∣vers, before Christ Incarnate, Let the Argument run thus.That which, but Virtually Im∣puted, was efficacious to the Formal Pardon of the Legal Guilt of their Sins past, who believed in Christ yet to come, cannot, being Formally Imputed, be inefficacious to the Virtual Pardon of the Legal Guilt of their Sins to come, who believe in Christ already come. But the Satisfaction of Christ, &c. Ergo, &c. And then let the Reason in the Form of Argument before used, be accordingly applyed.

1668 fits right in the ballpark of when we know that Q must have existed. Furthermore, it seems less likely that Gilbert would have drawn from Ferguson rather than the other way around since Gilbert's entire discourse is dedicated to the issue, whereas Ferguson only brings this up as a side-issue in a much larger work against Socinianism. Furthermore, Ferguson's 208 reads like a summary of Gilbert's 20. It seems likely then that Ferguson had access to Q, as we know Baxter did by, at the earliest, 1665. Therefore, we can say with a high degree of confidence that Q was being passed around at least by 1668.

Now, how does all of this relate to John Owen? The relevant section of his Doctrine of Justification (1677) is as follows:

In the first justification of believing sinners, all future sins are remitted as unto any actual obligation unto the curse of the law, unless they should fall into such sins as should, ipso facto, forfeit their justified estate, and transfer them from the covenant of grace into the covenant of works; which we believe that God, in his faithfulness, will preserve them from. And although sin cannot be actually pardoned before it be actually committed, yet may the obligation unto the curse of the law be virtually taken away from such sins in justified persons as are consistent with a justified estate, or the terms of the covenant of grace, antecedently unto their actual commission. God at once in this sense “forgiveth all their iniquities, and healeth all their diseases, redeemeth their life from destruction, and crowneth them with loving-kindness and tender mercies,” Ps. ciii. 3, 4. Future sins are not so pardoned as that, when they are committed, they should be no sins; which cannot be, unless the commanding power of the law be abrogated: but their respect unto the curse of the law, or their power to oblige the justified person thereunto, is taken away. (Doctrine of Justification, pg. 202-203).

I have placed the phrases I did above in bold as they seem to me to be very clearly articulating Gilbert's position that virtual remission of sins has to do with the disobligation to the cure of the law such that persons justified cannot ever have actual (legal) guilt contracted from their sins and thus be actually obliged to undergo the curse of the law.

That Owen would have been aware of Gilbert is a virtual certainty. Besides having directly responded to Owen on the necessity of the satisfaction, Gilbert was "the common epitaph-maker for dissenters," having composed epitaphs for Thomas Goodwin, Ichabod Chauncy, and, most importantly, for John Owen himself. It is not at all improbable that Owen would have been in possession of Q at the time he wrote his Doctrine of Justification and thus the passage of Owen quoted above very well might be directly influenced by Gilbert. Perhaps it was Owen himself who was the learned man who said of Gilbert's work "That it was worth a Mans Living a great while, though he did nothing else but bring forth such a Composure" (Nobody, of course, has any way of proving this, but I like to imagine this is the case in my own mind because it would be cool).

Finally, I thought it also worthwhile to show that Owen's comments on virtual remission very closely parallel John Brown of Wamphray in chapter XX of his The Life of Justification Opened, which Melichor Leydekker had published in 1695. Brown himself died in 1679, which would mean either that Wamphray wrote the following in the last 2 years of his life, or that Owen was influenced not only by Gilbert but also by Wamphray and had access to his writings sometime before 1677. Or, perhaps both Owen and Wamphray are dependent upon some third source I am yet unaware of. I am not sure who is dependent upon who here.

Owen, pg. 202

Wamphray, pg. 274

In the first justification of believing sinners, all future sins are remitted as unto any actual obligation unto the curse of the law, unless they should fall into such sins as should, ipso facto, forfeit their justified estate, and transfer them from the covenant of grace into the covenant of works; which we believe that God, in his faithfulness, will preserve them from.

2. As for such sins, as we may suppose, if committed, would ipso facto, as they say, forfeit the transgressour of the state of Justification, & destroy all interest in Christ, in the Covenant of grace, & so transferre them into their former state of Nature, while they were under the Curse; as being sins, inconsistent with a state of Grace & Reconciliation with God; such as be sin against the Holy Ghost, or of full & final Apostasie: as for such sins, I say, the faithfulness of God, Mediation of Christ, & the Operation of the Spirit of Grace, are, as it were, engadged, to keep the Justified from falling into them; as all the Arguments, proving the perseverance of the Saints, do abundantly evince.

Owen, pg. 202

Wamphray, pg. 274

And although sin cannot be actually pardoned before it be actually committed, yet may the obligation unto the curse of the law be virtually taken away from such sins in justified persons as are consistent with a justified estate, or the terms of the covenant of grace, antecedently unto their actual commission. God at once in this sense “forgiveth all their iniquities, and healeth all their diseases, redeemeth their life from destruction, and crowneth them with loving-kindness and tender mercies,” Ps. ciii. 3, 4. Future sins are not so pardoned as that, when they are committed, they should be no sins; which cannot be, unless the commanding power of the law be abrogated: but their respect unto the curse of the law, or their power to oblige the justified person thereunto, is taken away.

Though every sin, being a transgression of the Law of God, which still remaineth in force to oblige the beleever, as all others, unto obedience in all points, doth, in its own nature, deserve God's wrath & curse, according to the threatning & penalty of the Law: yet these sins do not annul the state of justification, nor interupt it (1) because notwithstanding thereof, all their former sins, of which they were pardoned, remaine pardoned, & do not bring them againe under the curse, & their Right to the Inheritance remaineth finne, through Jesus Christ. (2) Because all these after sins were virtually pardoned, & their obligation to the suffering of the penalty upon the account of these, virtually removed, in their Justification; for therein was there a legal security laid down & given, that all future sins should not actually bring them under the curse, or into the state of condemnation.

Interstingly, Wamphray's "such as sin against the Holy Ghost, or of full & final Apostasie" very neatly explicates what Owen means by "such sins as should ipso facto, forfeit their justified state andtransfer them from the covenant of grace into the covenant of works." This consideration almost makes me want to posit that it is Owen who is reliant upon Wamphray, which raises many iinteresting questions: how did Owen get access to Wamphrays writings? Are there other parallels between Wamphray's Life of Justification and Owen's Doctrine of Justification? What are the implications of this as far as it relates to Owen's targeting of Baxter in his Dcotrine of Justification? What does this tell us about the textual history of Brown's Life of Justification (which, by the way, is apparently incomplete in its published form, as elipses throughout the work show)?

A very similar position to that of Thomas Gilbert's is further elucidated in Brown's chapter XXXVI in that Brown does not see repentance as absolutely necessary in order of nature to the remission of sins.