644. The reason why the leaders of the Christian churches, and thus their underlings, have understood imputation in the Word to mean the imputation of a faith with the righteousness and merit of Christ inscribed on it and so attributed to man, is that for fourteen centuries, that is, since the time of the Council of Nicaea, they have been unwilling to know about any other kind of faith. Thus that faith alone has settled in their memories and so their minds, as if systematised. From that time on their mind has borrowed the sort of light that comes from a house on fire at night. This light has made that faith seem like theological truth itself, and on it depends all the rest of theology like links in a chain; and these could fall apart if that headpiece or pillar were taken away. If therefore they had thought of any other kind of faith than that which is imputed, when they were reading the Word, that light together with their whole theological system would have been extinguished, allowing darkness to arise that would have blotted out the whole Christian church. That faith therefore was left, like a stump rooted in the ground, when a tree has been cut down and destroyed, until seven periods have passed (Daniel 4:23). Is there anyone among the established champions of the church at the present time who, when that faith is attacked, does not stop his ears as if with cotton-wool to avoid hearing a word spoken against it? Open your ears, my friend the reader, and read the Word, and you will clearly grasp a different faith and a different kind of imputation from the one of which you have so far been persuaded.
