Archive for October 28th, 2009
Fuller:
LETTER II
ON IMPUTATION.
Jan. 8, 1803.
My DEAR Brother, While Mr. B[ooth] refuses to give any explanation of his conduct, there can be no intercourse between me and him. I have no objection to give the most explicit answers in my power to the questions on Imputation and Substitution. I shall therefore address them to you ; and you are at liberty to show them to whom you please.
To impute1 signifies, in general, to charge, reckon, or place to account, according lo the different objects to which it is applied. This word, like many others, has a proper and a figurative meaning.
First: It is applied to the charging, reckoning, or placing to the account of persons and things THAT WHICH PROPERLY BELONGS TO THEM. This, of course, is its proper meaning. In this sense the word is used in the following passages:–”Eli thought that she (Hannah) had been drunken.”–”Hanan and Mattaniah, the treasurers, were counted faithful.”–”Let a man so account of us as the ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.”–”Let such a one think this, that such as we are in word by letters, when we are absent, such will we be also in deed, when we are present.”–”I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.”2
Reckoning or accounting, here, is no other than forming an estimate of persons and things, according to what they are, or appear to be. To impute sin, in this sense, is to charge guilt upon the guilty in a judicial way, with a view to his being punished for it. Thus Shimei besought David that his iniquity might not be imputed to him. Thus the man is pronounced blessed to whom the Lord imputes not iniquity: and thus Paul prayed that the sin of those who deserted him might not be laid to their charge.3
In this sense, the term is ordinarily used in common life. To impute treason or any other crime to a man is the same thing as charging him with having committed it, and with a view to his being punished.