John Diodati on Final Justification

Commenting on James 2:21, Diodati writes:

We must of necessity distinguish the meaning of this word justifie, which is used by St. Paul, for absolving a man as he is in his natural state, bound to the law, and subject to damnation for his sin, which God doth by a rigid act of justice, that requireth full satisfaction, which seeing he could not get of man Rom. 8.2, he hath received at Christ’s hand (who was the Surety) imputed to man by God’s grace, and apprehended by a lively faith. Whereas St. James takes the same word for the approving of man, in a benigne and fatherly judgment, as he is considered in the quality of God’s child, and living in the covenant of grace, as having the two essentiall parts of that covenant joyned together, faith to receive God’s grace and Christ’s benefit, and works to yield him the duties of service and acknowledgement; and this justification is no longer opposite to the condemnation of a sinner in generall, but to the particular one of an hypocrite, who rending asunder these two inseparable parts, sheweth that he hat neither the one nor the other: see Luke 17.19.

~ Pious and learned annotations upon the Holy Bible 3^rd ed. (London : Printed by James Flesher for Nicholas Fussell, 1651).