praising of Gods Holy Name the hearing of his Word the receiving of his Sacraments I leave to the judgement of the Reader The next thing which I disliked was his description of repentance It is a glad returning into the right way after the grief of being out of the way Who ever heard before this of gladnesse or joy in the definition of repentance he telleth us That it is not Christian repentance without a purpose of amendment of life That is true a purpose of amendment was comprehended in the old definition of repentance A godly sorrow for sinnes past with a stedfast purpose to commit no more sinnes to be sorrowed for St. Peter found no great sense of joy when he went out and wept bitterly And some tell us that so long as he lived he did the same so often as he heard the cock crow Nor Mary Magdalene when she washed the feet of Christ with her tears and wiped them with her hairs yet she was a true penitent and purposed amendment Nor David when he washed his bed night by night and watered his couch with his tears St. Paul reckoneth all the parts of the repentance of the Corinthians Godly sorrow carefulnesse clearing of themselves indignation fear vehement desires zeal revenge here is no word of joy or gladnesse in all this Joy is a consequent of repentance after reconciliation but it is not of the essence of repentance no more than a succeeding calme is of the essence of a storm or the prodigals festival joy after his re-admission into his fathers house was a part of his conversion He is afraid that this doctrine of fasting and mourning and teares and humicubation and sackcloth and ashes pertaineth to the establishment of Romish pennance Or rather they were natural expressions of sorrow before Rome was builded Turn ye to me with all your heart with fasting and weeping and mourning Neither the Ninevits nor the Tyrians and Zidonians did learn their sackcloth and ashes at Rome But many men love to serve God now adayes with as much ease as they can as if God Almighty would be satisfied with any thing vel uva vel faba either with a grape or with a beane And with the same measure they mete to God he measureth to them again He chargeth me that I labour to bring in a concurrence of mans will with Gods will and a power in God to give repentance if man will take it but not the power to make him take it Hola It is one question utrum possit what God can do another utrum sit what God will do God can determine the will irresistibly but he doth not do it ordinarily Ye stiff necked and uncircumcised in heart ye do alwayes resist the Holy Ghost And I have called and ye refused c. The concurrence of God and man in producing the act of our believing or conversion to God is so evident in holy Scripture that it is vanity and lost labour to oppose it If God did not concurre the Scripture would not say It is God that worketh in us both the will and the deed If man did not concurre the Scripture would not say Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling If our repentance were Gods work alone God would not say to man Turn ye unto me with all your heart And if repentance were mans work alone we had no need to pray Turn us O Lord and we shall be turned We are commanded to repent and to believe In vain are commandments given to them who cannot at all concur to the acting of that which is commanded Faith and Repentance are proposed unto us as conditions to obtain blessednesse and avoid destruction If thou shalt confess with thy mouth believe with thy heart c. thou shalt be saved And except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish To propose impossible conditions which they to whom they are proposed have no power either to accept or to refuse is a meer mockery Our unbelief and impenitence is imputed to us as our own fault Because of unbelief thou wert broken off And after thy hardnesse and impenitent heart thou treasurest up unto thy self wrath Their unbelief and impenitence were not their own faults if they neither had power to concur with the grace of God to the production of faith and repentance nor yet to refuse the grace of God The holy Scripture doth teach us that God doth help us in doing workes of piety The Lord is my helper And the Spirit helpeth our infirmities If we did not co-operate at all God could not be said to help us There is therefore there must be co-operation Neither doth this concurrence or co-operation of man atall intrench upon the power or honour of God because this very liberty to co-operate is his gift and this manner of acting his own institution Those words Behold I stand at the door and knock are not understood onely of the Ministers outward knocking at the door of the ear with perswasive words but much more of God Almighties knocking at the door of the heart by his preventing grace To what end doth he knock to have it opened if he himself had shut it by an irresistible decree God first knocks at the door of our hearts by his preventing grace without which we have no desire to open unto Christ And then he helps us by his adjuvant or assisting grace that we may be able to open Yet the very name of Gods adjuvant or assistant or helping grace doth admonish us that there is something for us to do on our parts that is to open to consent to concur Why should our co-operation seem so strange which the Apostle doth assert so positively We are labourers together with God And I laboured more abundantly than they all yet not I that is not I alone but the grace of God which was with me The last part of his Section is concerning prayer which he mesnageth no better than the rest First he accuseth me for saying that prayer is a signification that we expect that which we pray for from God which he calleth a presumption in me and a detraction from the honour of God But it is so far from being a presumption that it is a necessary requisite in prayer S. James will have us pray without wavering Let him ask in faith nothing wavering S. Paul will have men to lift up holy hands without wrath or doubting And our Saviour commands What things soever ye desire when ye pray believe that ye shall receive them and shall have them I cited many Texts of Scripture to prove the efficacy of prayer whereof he is pleased to take notice of three and to deny that helping means efficacy availing do signifie any causation contrary both to the words and scope of those Texts and contrary to the tenor of the whole Scripture The prayer of faith shall save the sick And I
to sinne by his temptations There are many kinds of motions besides moving from place to place He himself confesseth in this Section that we are moved to prayer by outward objects In the next place supposing there were no other motions than local motions yet he erreth in attributing no motion to any thing but bodies The reasonable soul is moved accidentally according to the motion of the body The Angels are spirits or spiritual substances no bodies by his leave and yet move locally from place to place Jacob sees the Angels of God ascending and descending The Angels came and ministred unto Christ The Angels shall gather the elect from the one end of Heaven to the other The soul of Lazarus was born by the Angels into Abrahams bosom God sent his Angel to deliver Peter out of prison and every where useth his Angels as ministring spirits Thirdly he erreth in this also That nothing can move that is not moved it self If he mean that all power to move is from God he speaketh truly but impertinently But if he mean as he must mean if he mean sense that nothing moveth which is not moved of some second cause he speaketh untruly The Angels move themselves all living creatures do move themselves by animal motion The inanimate creatures do move themselves heavy bodies descending downwards light bodies ascending upwards according to their own natures And therefore nature is defined to be an internal cause or principle of motion and rest c. And even they who held that whatsoever is moved is moved by another did limit it to natural bodies and make the form to be the mover in natural motion and the soul in animal motion His last errour in this Animadversion and a dangerous one is That it is not truly said that acts or habits are infused by God for infusion is motion and nothing is moved but bodies I wish for his own quiet and other mens that he were as great an enemy to errours and innovations as he is to metaphors and distinctions Affectation of words is not good but contention about words is worse By such an argument a man might take away all Zones and Zodiack in Astronomy Modes and Figures in Logick Cones and Cylindres in Geometry for all these are borrowed termes as infusion is What Logician almost doth not distinguish between acquired habits and infused habits If all infusion be of bodies then he never infused any paradoxical principles into his Auditours When any difference doth arise about expressions the onely question is Whether there be any ground in nature for such an expression He himself telleth us That faith and repentance are the gifts of God To say they are the gifts of God and to say they are infused by God is the same thing saving that to say they are infused by God is a more distinct and a more significant expression I hope he will not controle the language of the Holy Ghost I will powre out my spirit upon all flesh No saith T. H. that cannot be nothing can be powred out but bodies Saint Peter telleth us otherwise This Iesus being exalted by the right hand of God hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear That was the gift of tongues an act or habit infused That which was shed forth or effused on Gods part was infused on their part So saith Saint Paul The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost Again He saveth us by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost which he shed on us abundantly through Iesus Christ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the word is still the same signifying an effusion from God and an infusion into us All those graces freely given which were infused by the Holy Ghost and are recited by the Apostle to the Corinthians are either permanent Habits or transient Acts. In the remainder of this Section is contained nothing but relapses and repetitions of his former Paradoxical errours still confounding the intellectual will with the sensitive appetite Liberty with Spontaneity the Faculty of the will with the Act of willing the liberty of reasonable Creatures with the liberty of mad men and fools Before he told us That he that can do what he will hath no liberty at all Now he telleth us of the liberty of doing what we will in those things we are able to do Before he limitted the power by the will now he limitteth the will by the power I affirmed most truely That liberty is diminished by vitious habits which he saith cannot be unnderstood otherwise then that vitious habits make a man lesse free to do vitious actions There is little doubt but he would expound it so if he were my Interpreter But my sense and my scope is evident to the contrary that vitious habits make a man lesse free to do virtuous actions He will take notice of no difference between the liberty of a man and the bias of a bowl Yet in the midst of all these mistakes and Paradoxes he hath not forgotten his old Thrasonicall humour Where I say liberty is in more danger to be abused than to be lost he telleth me It is a meer shift to be thought not licenced I had not thought him such a dangerous Adversary metuent omnes jam te nec immerito well if it be a shift it is such a shift as all conscionable men do find by experience to be true And for his silencing of men impavidum ferient ruinae I do not fear silencing by him except his arguments have some occult quality more than he or I dream of If a fish could speak a fish would not be silenced by him in this cause Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 23. THere is a double question discussed in this Section First Supposing that the will doth alwayes follow the last judgement of the understanding whether this do take away the liberty of the will Secondly Whether the will doth alwayes follow the last judgement of the understanding both which questions have formerly been discoursed of in this Treatise For clearing of the former question it ought to be considered That although men do ordinarily speak of the understanding and of the will as of two distinct Agents or individual substances subsisting by themselves whereof the one understandeth and the other willeth partly for the eminence of these two powers and partly for the clearer and more distinct conception and comprehension of them And although the practise of all former Divines and Philosophers do warrant us in so doing yet if we will speak properly and in rigour of speach the understanding and the will are but two powers flowing from the reasonable soul. And that the acts of willing and understanding are predicated most properly of the man whilest the soul and body are united Actiones sunt suppositorum and of the reasonable soul after its separation And because he suggesteth that this is done for
and with the mouth is confession made unto salvation If a man deny Christ with his mouth the faith of the heart will not serve his turn Sixthly Christ denounceth damnation to all those who for saving of their lives do deny their Religion and promiseth eternal life to all those who do seale the truth of their Christian faith with their blood against the commands of heathenish Magistrates Who soever will save his life shall lose it and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it Christ doth not promise eternal life for violation of true Religion Lastly no Christian Soveraign or Common-wealth did ever assume any such authority to themselves Never any subjects did acknowledge any such power in their Soveraigns Never any Writer of Politicks either waking or dreaming did ever phansie such an unlimitted power and authority in Princes as this which he ascribeth to them not onely to make but to justifie all doctrines all laws all religions all actions of their Subjects by their commands as if God Almighty had reserved onely Soveraign Princes under his own Jurisdiction and quitted all the rest of mankind to Kings and Common-wealths In vain ye worship me teaching for doctrine the commandments of men that is to say making true religion to consist in obedience to the commands of men If Princes were heavenly Angels free from all ignorance and passions such an unlimited power might better become them But being mortal men it is dangerous least Phaeton-like by their violence or unskilfulnesse they put the whole Empire into a flame It were too too much to make their unlawful commands to justifie their Subjects If the blind lead the blind both fall into the ditch He who imposeth unlawful commands and he who obeyeth them do both subject themselves to the judgements of God But if true religion do consist in active obedience to their commands it justifieth both their Subjects and themselves True religion can prejudice no man He taketh upon him to refute the distinction of obedience into active and passive As if a sin against the law of nature could be expiated by arbitrary punishments imposed by men Thus it happeneth to men who confute that which they do not understand Passive obedience is not for the expiation of any fault but for the maintenance of innocence When God commands one thing and the soveraign Prince another we cannot obey them both actively therefore we chuse to obey God rather than men and yet are willing for the preservation of peace to suffer from man rather than to resist If he understood this distinction well it hath all those advantages which he fancieth to himself in his new platform of government without any of those inconveniences which do attend it And whereas he intimateth that our not obeying our Soveraign actively is a sin against the law of nature meaning by the violation of our promised obedience it is nothing but a grosse mistake no Subjects ever did nor ever could make any such pact to obey the commands of their Soveraign actively contrary to the law of God or nature This reason drawn from universal practise was so obvious that he could not misse to make it an objection The greatest objection is that of the practice when men ask where and when such power has by Subjects been acknowledged A shrewd objection indeed which required a more solid answer then to say That though in all places of the World men should lay the foundation of their houses on the sand it could not thence be inferred that so it ought to be As if there were no more difficulty in founding and regulating a Common-wealth then in distinguishing between a loose sand and a firm rock or as if all Societies of men of different tempers of different humours of different manners and of different interests must of necessity be all ordered after one and the same manner If all parts of the World after so long experience do practise the contrary to that which he fancieth he must give me leave to suspect that his own grounds are the quick-sands and that his new Common-wealth is but a Castle founded in the aire That a Soveraign Prince within his own dominions is custos utriusque tabulae the keeper of both the Tables of the Law to see that God be duely served and justice duely administred between man and man and to punish such as transgresse in either kind with civil punishment That he hath an Architectonical power to see that each of his Suctjects do their duties in their several callings Ecclesiasticks as well as Seculars That the care and charge of seeing that no doctrine be taught his Subjects but such as may consist with the general peace and the authority to prohibit seditious practices and opinions do reside in him That a Soveraign Prince oweth no account of his actions to any mortal man That the Kings of England in particular have been justly declared by Act of Parliament Supreme Governours in their own kingdoms in all causes over all persons as well Ecclesiastical as Civil is not denyed nor so much as questioned by me Otherwise a kingdom or a Common-wealth should be destitute of necessary means for its own preservation To all this I do readily assent all this I have vindicated upon surer grounds than those desperate and destructive principles which he supposeth But I do utterly deny that true religion doth consist in obedience to Soveraign Magistrates or that all their injunctions ought to be obeyed not onely passively but actively or that he is infallible in his laws and commands or that his Soveraign authority doth justifie the active obedience of his Subjects to his unlawful commands Suppose a King should command his Judges to set Naboth on high among the people and to set two sons of Belial before him to bear witnesse against him saying Thou didst blaspheme God and the King and then carry him out and stone him that he may dye The regal authority could neither justifie such an unlawful command in the King nor obedience in the Judges Suppose a King should set up a golden Image as Nebucadnezar did and command all his Subjects to adore it his command could not excuse his Subjects from idolatry much lesse change idolatry into true religion His answer to the words of Peter and John do signifie nothing The High Priest and his Councel commanded the Apostles not to teach in the name of Jesus Here was sufficient humane authority yet say the Apostles Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God judge ye The question was not what were the commands that was clear enough what God commanded and what man commanded but who was to be obeyed which could admit no debate He asketh What has the Bishop to doe with what God sayes to me when I read the Scriptures more than I have to do with what God sayes to him when he reads them
the one shall be a true Prophet the other a false And Christ who had the approbation of no Soveraign Prince upon his grounds was to be reputed a false Prophet every where Every man therefore ought to consider who is the Soveraign Prophet that is to say who it is that is Gods Vicegerent upon earth and hath next under God the authority of governing Christian men and to observe for a rule that doctrine which in the name of God he hath commanded to be taught and thereby to examine and try out the truth of those doctrines which pretended Prophets with miracle or without shall at any time advance c. And if he disavow them then no more to obey their voice or if he approve them than to obey them as men to whom God hath given a part of the spirit of their Soveraign Upon his principles the case holdeth as well among Jews and Turks and Heathens as Christians Then he that teacheth transubstantiation in France is a true Prophet he that teacheth it in England a false Prophet He that blasphemeth Christ in Constantinople a true Prophet he that doth the same in Italy a false Prophet Then Samuel was a false Prophet to contest with Saul a Soveraign Prophet So was the man of God who submitted not to the more divine and prophetick spirit of Jeroboam And Elijah for reproving Ahab Then Micaiah had but his deserts to be clapt up in prison and fed with bread of affliction and water of affliction for daring to contradict Gods Vicegerent upon earth And Jeremiah was justly thrown into a Dungeon for prophesying against Zedekiah his Liege Lord. If his principles were true it were strange indeed that none of all these Princes nor any other that ever was in the World should understand their own priviledges And yet more strange that God Almighty should take the part of such rebellious Prophets and justifie their prophesies by the event if it were true that none but the Soveraign in a Christian the reason is the same for Jewish Common-wealth can take notice what is or what is not the word of God Neither doth he use God the holy Ghost more favourably than God the Son Where S. Peter saith Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the holy Spirit He saith By the Spirit is meant the voice of God in a dream or vision supernatural which dreams or visions he maketh to be no more than imaginations which they had in their sleep or in an extasie which in every true Prophet were supernatural but in false Prophets were either natural or feined and more likely to be false than true To say God hath spoken to him in a dream is no more than to say He dreamed that God spake to him c. To say he hath seen a vision or heard a voice is to say That he hath dreamed between sleeping and waking So S. Peters holy Ghost is come to be their own imaginations which might be either feined or mistaken or true As if the holy Ghost did enter onely at their eyes and at their eares not into their understandings nor into their minds Or as if the holy Ghost did not seale unto their hearts the truth and assurance of their Prophesies Whether a new light be infused into their understandings or new graces be inspired into their heart they are wrought or caused or created immediately by the holy Ghost And so are his imaginations if they be supernatural But he must needs fall into these absurdities who maketh but a jest of inspiration They who pretend Divine inspiration to be a supernatural entering of the holy Ghost into a man are as he thinks in a very dangerous dilemma for if they worship not the men whom they conceive to be inspired they fall into impiety And if they worship them they commit idolatry So mistaking the holy Ghost to be corporeal something that is blown into a man and the graces of the holy Ghost to be corporeal graces And the words impowered or infused virtue and inblown or inspired virtue are as absurd and insignificant as a round qnadrangle He reckons it as a common errour That faith and sanctity are not attained by study and reason but by supernatural inspiration or infusion And laieth this for a firm ground Faith and sanctity are indeed not very frequent but yet they are not miracles but brought to passe by education discipline correction and other natural waeyes I would see the greatest Pelagian of them all flie higher Why should he trouble himself about the holy Spirit who acknowledgeth no spirit but either a subtile fluide invisible body or a ghost or other idol or phantasme of the imagination who knoweth no inward grace or intrinsecal holinesse Holy is a word which in Gods kingdome answereth to that which men in their kingdoms use to call publick or the kings And again wheresoever the word holy is taken properly there is still something signified of propriety gotten by consent His holinesse is a relation not a quality but for inward sanctification or reall infused holinesse in respect whereof the third person is called the holy Ghost because he is not onely holy in himself but also maketh us holy he is so great a stranger to it that he doth altogether deny it and disclaim it We are taught in our Creed to believe the Catholick or Universal Church But T. H. teacheth us the contrary That if there be more Christian Churches than one all of them together are not one Church personally And more plainly Now if the whole number of Christians be not contained in one Common-wealth they are not one person nor is there an Universal Church that hath any authority over them And again The Universal Church is not one person of which it can be said that it hath done or decreed or ordained or excommunicated or absolved This doth quite overthrow all the authority of general Councils All other men distinguish between the Church and the Common-wealth Onely T. H. maketh them to be one and the same thing The Common-wealth of Christian men and the Church of the same are altogether the same thing called by two names for two reasons For the matter of the Church and of the Common-wealth is the same namely the same Christian men And the form is the same which consisteth in the lawful power of convocating them And hence he concludeth That every Christian Common-wealth is a Church endowed with all spiritual authority And yet more fully The Church if it be one person is the same thing with the Common-wealth of Christians called a Common-wealth because it consisteth of men united in one person their Soveraign And a Church because it consisteth in Christian men united in one Christian Soveraign Upon which account there was no Christian Church in these parts of the World for some hundreds of years after Christ because there was no Christian
Soveraign Princes are often contradictory one to another One commandeth to worship Christ another forbiddeth it One forbiddeth to offer sacrifice to idols another commandeth it Yea the same person may both forbid idolatry in general and yet authorise it in particular Or forbid it by the publick laws of the Country and yet authorise it by his personal commands Thirdly true Religion is alwayes justified in the sight of God But obedience to the commands of Soveraign Princes is not always justified in the sight of God This is clearly proved out of his own expresse words Whatsoever is commanded by the Soveraign power is as to the Subject though not so alwayes in the sight of God justified by their command VVhence it is evident by his own confession that the wicked commands of Soveraigne Princes are not justified by their Royal authority but are wicked and repugnant to the Law of God And consequently that of the Apostle hath place here Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God judge ye True Religion hath alwayes reference unto God Fourthly true Religion doth not consist in obedience to any laws whatsoever which are repugnant to the Moral Law of God or to the law of Nature This Proposition is granted by himself The laws of nature are immutable and eternal And all Writers do agree that the law of nature is the same with the moral Law Again Soveraigns are all Subjects to the law of nature because such laws be Divine and cannot by any man or Common-wealth be abrogated And in all things not contrary to the moral Law that is to say to the law of nature all Subjects are bound to obey that of Divine Law which is declared to be so by the laws of the Common-wealth But the commands of a Soveraign Prince may be repugnant not onely to the Moral Law or the law of nature but even to the laws of the Common-wealth This assumption is proved four wayes First by his own confession It is manifest enough that when a man receiveth two contrary commands and knows that one of them is Gods he ought to obey that and not the other If there can be no such contrary commands then it is not manifest nor yet true Secondly this is pâ—…oved by his resolution of two queres The fist is this Whether the City or the Soveraign Prince be to be obeyd if he command directly to do any thâ—…ng to the contumely of God or forbid to worship God To which he answereth directly non esse obediendam that he ought not to be obeyed And he gives this reason Because the subjects before the constitution of the Common-wealth had no right to deny the honour due unto God and therefore could transferre no right to command such things to the common-wealth The like he hath in his Leviathan Actions which do naturally signifie contumely cannot by humane power be made a part of Divine Worship As if the denial of Christ upon a Soveraigns command which he justifieth were not contumelious to Christ or as if subjects before the constitution of the common-wealth had any right themselves to deny Christ. But such palpable contradictions are no novelties with him How doth true Religion consist in obedience to the commands of a Soveraign if his commands may be contumelious to God and deny him that worship which is due unto him by the eternal and immutable law of nature and if he be not to be obeyed in such commands His second question is If a Soveraign Prince should command himself to be worshipped with Divine Worship and Attributes whether he ought to be obeyed To which he answereth That although Kings should command it yet we ought to abstain from such attributes as signifie his independence upon God or inmortality or infinite power or the like And from such actions as do signifie the same As to pray unto him being absent to aske those things of him which none but God can give as rain and fair weather or to offer sacrifice to him Then true Religion may sometimes consist in disobedience to the commands of Soveraign Princes Thirdly that the commands of Soveraign Princes in point of Religion may be contrary to the law of nature which needeth no new promulgation or reception doth appear by all those duties internal and external which by his own confession nature doth injoyn us to perform towards God and all which may be and have been countermanded by Soveraign Princes as to acknowledge the existence of God his unity his infinitenesse his providence his creation of the World his omnipotence his eternity his incomprehensibility his ub quity To worship him and him onely with Divine worship with prayes with thanksgivings with oblations and with all expressions of honour Lastly this is proved by examples Nebuchadnezar commanded to worship a golden image And Darius made a decree that no man should ask any petition of any God or man for thirty dayes save of the King onely Yet the transgression of both these commands of Soveraign Princes was justified by God as true Religion Fiftly Christ will deny no man before his Father for true Religion But those who deny Christ before men to fulfil the commands of an earthly Prince he will deny before his father which is in Heaven And therefore Christ encourageth his Disciples against these dangers which might fall upon them by disobedience to such unlawful commands Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul but rather fear him which is able to destroy both body and soul in hell But Mr. Hobs hath found out an evasion for such Renegadoes Whatsoever a Subject is compelled to in obedience to his Soveraign and doth it not in order to his own mind but in order to the lawes of his country that action is not his but his Soveraigns nor is it he that in this case denieth Christ before men but his Governour and the law of his Country If this Fig-leafe would have served the turn Shedrach Meshach and Abednego needed not to have been cast into the fiery Furnace For though they had worshipped the golden image by this doctrine they had not been idolaters but Nebuchadnezar onely and his Princes If this were true Daniel might have escaped the Lions Den If he had forborne his praises to God Darius had been faulty and not he But these holy Saints were of another minde I hope though he might in his baste and passion censure the blessed Martyrs to be fooles which were so many that there were five thousand for every day in the year except the calends of January when the Heathens were so intent upon their devotions that they neglected the slaughter of the poor Christians yet he will not esteem himself wiser than Daniel Behold thou art wiser than Daniel was an hyperbolical or rather an ironical expression With the heart man believeth unto righteousnesse