. . . it is not sought after between
[Catholics and Protestants] whether Christ’s obedience removed our sins
imputatively or truly. For we had asserted clearly and eloquently that Christ’s
obedience truly—I say truly, but not imputatively—removed our sins. . . . the antecedent
of the argument has a vicious exposition of the Pauline statement. For that
antecedent of the argument, which Paul says that we are established sinners by
the obedience of Adam, explains that the disobedience of Adam impressed sin on
us not imputatively, but truly. But that is a very improper and obscure way of
speaking. Our opinion is true and clear: by the disobedience of Adam, we
were established sinners—that is, that the disobedience of Adam, the head
and root of our race, in which, his will turned away from the will of God, he
willed to eat from the forbidden fruit against the commandment of God and
really ate it—is most justly imputed by God to us as his members. And
therefore, that first disobedience did not indeed cross over to us in act so
that we could truly be said to have sinned in him actually because we did not
yet exist to act, but only in potentialty (δυναμει) and originally in his lions. But it crossed
over to us in guilt and liability. (Amandus Polanus, “The Free Justification of
Man the Sinner before God” (1615), in Justification by Faith Alone: Selected
Writings from Theodore Beza (1519-1605), Amandus Polanus (1561-1610), and
Francis Turretin (1623-1687) [trans. Casey Carmichael; Classic Reformed Theology
6; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Reformation Heritage Press, 2023], 143, comment in square
brackets added for clarification)
