William Cunningham: Justification is not a legal fiction

“The righteousness of Christ, including the whole of His perfect and meritorious obedience to the law, as well as His suffering, was a great and infinitely important reality. It was intended to effect and secure the salvation of all those whom God had chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. It is in due time, and in accordance with the arrangements which God in His infinite wisdom has laid down, bestowed upon each of them, through his union to Christ by faith, not in any mere fiction of law, but in actual deed; and being thus really, and not merely putatively or by a fiction, bestowed upon them, it is, of course, held or reckoned as theirs, and thus becomes the ground - the full and adequate ground - on which God further bestows upon them the forgiveness of their sins, and a right to the heavenly inheritance, and to all the privileges of sonship.” (Cunningham, Historical Theology, vol. II, pp. 55-56; quoted by Lee Irons)