A Vindication of Justification

Robert Traill's 'Vindication' was written to defend ministers from the accusation that preaching justification by faith alone would lead to antinomianism-believing that God's law holds no binding authority for those in Christ. Traill argued that the imputed righteousness of Christ is the only ground of the believer's acceptance before God, and that sanctification necessarily follows from union with Christ. The two cannot be separated, so those who preach free justification are not undermining the law but rightly ordering the relationship between grace and obedience.

According to Traill, confusion about antinomianism usually traces back to confusion about what justification is and what it does. The charge he addressed has proven persistent. The same suspicion-that strongly preaching grace leads to moral laxity-surfaced again in the Marrow Controversy, in nineteenth-century debates over revivalism, and more recent discussions about justification.

Robert Trail (1642-1716) was a Scottish Presbyterian minister. This essay was originally written as a letter to a fellow minister, and later published in 1692 as a theological tract titled A Vindication of the Protestant Doctrine concerning Justification, and of its Preachers and Professors, from the Unjust Charge of Antinomianism. This audiobook follows the edition of 1840, which was edited and supplemented with an appendix by J. H. Thornwell.