with God 5. It is as absurd to imagine that ' Paul preached not as wel repentance as faith to the Jayler because there is no expres mention of repentance in the Text as to suppose that Peter preached not as wel faith as repentance to the Jews because in his Sermon there is no expresse mention of it or that our Saviour preached not faith but repentance onely in his first Sermons because * Matthew makes mention of this latter alone what if I should ad or that the twelv preached not faith as wel as repentance because Mark saith no more but that p they went out preaching that men should repent Such negative arguments proov nothing 6. If we shall demand of Paul what his constant cours of teaching was in his preaching of the Gospel and publishing the covenant of grace he wil tel us that it was the very same both for matter and method that his master began with and not one way to some and another way to others as this Autor seems q sometime to imply but the same for substance both to Jew and Gentile r Testifying saith he both to Jews and Gentiles s Repentance towards God and t Faith on Christ and he putteth repentance therein following u his Masters method in the front And yet more fully relating both his commission from Christ and his putting of it in execution for the former he saith that x Christ sent him to the Gentiles to open their eyes and to turn them from darknes to light and from the power of Satan to God that they might receiv remission of sins and a share among those that are sanctified by faith on Christ and for the latter that y out of obedience to Christs command and in pursuance of this his commission which I suppose he understood as wel as this Autor and kept as close to it as any Antinomian of these times yea as any that ever preached Christ z he preached or published both to the Jews and to the Gentiles that they should repent and turn to God doing works beseeming repentance such as might shew them to be truly penitent and their repentance to be sound and sincere And thus Pauls preaching to the last comes home to John Baptists preaching at first and is the very same you see with that which this Autor makes to be the very character of a Legall Teacher Oh but the pressing of these things as a duties without which a man can have no interest in Christ that is it that argues a legal Teacher I might for warrant hereof alledge that of our Saviour as b Vnlesse you believ that I am he you shal die in your sins so c unlesse ye also repent ye shall perish and that of the Autor to the Hebrews d without holines no man shal ever see God but that Mr. Eaton e tels us that that of our Saviour f Blessed are the pure in heart for they shal see God is not Gospel but Law tho therein I beleeve him not and that of John g He that saith he is in Christ is h indebted is obliged to it as a debt as a duty for what is duty but du debt to walk as Christ walked to live as he lived But I wil insist onely upon Paul as zealous and as precise a preacher of free grace as ever any he albeit he affirm confidently that i there is no condemnation to those that are in Christ yet he subjoyneth withall and that is I suppose a qalification at least k who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit and yet further a litle after l Therefore brethren we are m debtors we stand obliged and bound to it as a du debt if ever we look to be saved not to live after the flesh but as before he said to be thence supplied here to live after the Spirit and that this is his meaning and it is in nature of a condition on mans part reqired it is apparent by what followes n For if ye live after the flesh ye shal die but if by the Spirit ye mortifie the deeds of the body ye shal live Which tho it be pure Gospel and life even upon such terms propounded free grace for no Law ever promised life unto mortification of the flesh no more then the sight of God to such imperfect purity as our blessed Saviour above spake of yet if the Minister of Christ shall in these daies pres he shal not escape the odious and opprobrious brand of a deep and down-right Legalist Howbeit we need not be ashamed a whit of our teaching when we can vouch such precedents as these are for it in regard either of this or any the like aspersions or ignominious terms that presumptuous and self-conceited persons shal endeavor to fasten upon us and must light upon them as well as upon us who have in their teaching taken that cours before us and with whom if we must be deemed erroneous we shal not blush so to be but shal o esteem it p a grace to be disgraced with them and for doing as they did To draw all to a hed if the Gospel propound and promise pardon of sin and salvation q without any condition at all as this Autor tels us required on our parts and all conditions and qalifications which he is so r oft girding at destroy the freenes of grace then neither John the Baptist nor Christ nor the Apostles of Christ from the s first to the t last did any of them preach either Gospel or free grace and if the Gospel and free grace that this Autor and other his coasserters of free grace hold out to us be such as admits not nor acknowledgeth any such conditions or qalifications as have been above-recited then we may boldly conclude that it is another Gospel and another free Grace then ever John or Christ or his Apostles preached But this Autor a if he have erred in any thing he saith it is in filling out that Wine too freely which the Master of the feast if he mistake not hath bidden him saying Drink yea drink abundantly O beloved Can. 5. And b if he must erre he would erre rather with those that pas for Antinomians then with those that go for Legall Teachers c the former whereof he must prefer before the Latter for that they being jealous least free grace loose her â— cry down men to exalt Christ whereas those other being jealous lest bolines should be sleighted to exalt men cry down Christ and the danger here it seems therefore also he supposeth the lesse because d Free grace can not of it self tempt any to sin Where first for the filling out of this Wine TOO freely let me advise him in sober sadnes to be wel advised what he doth and to take heed how he contract the guilt of so
had laid open their sin of shedding the blood of Christ were prickt to the heart for it and being inwardly troubled and wounded said Men and brethren what shall we do m Exhorted them to repent yet these Legal Preachers when they take the like cours n They run saith this Autor to the Law in their dealing with such souls for their thorow humiliation as they say or pretend for such sinister ends as before you heard and not to the Gospel and faith in Jesus Christ and who ever severs these and so o bring fier and not water to quench them but kindle them the more and setting the everlasting burnings of the Law before their souls put them all into a spirituall flame and vexation And that he may not pretend that this is spoken but by way of supposition if they do so and so which yet the whole drift of his discours wil easily unmaske he telleth us a litle after in expresse terms that p The Divinity of some former ages to these present times he knows it hath made up all their receipts for distempered souls of so much Law and so much Gospel and usually but a grain or dram of Gospel to a pound of Law not being cleer enough in judgement to unmingle things that Antichrist hath confounded and put together as the two Testaments and two Covenants and not rightly discerning Christs manner or way of preaching and the Apostles both in their holding out Law and Gospel Who belike then q making a miscelan and mixture of the Law and the Gospel as Mr. Eaton saith of these Legalists preached neither good Law nor good Gospel but a miscelan and marring of both And we do no other now then they did But thus saith this Autor r They would make the Law the ministery of life and of the Spirit being not of such a spiritual discerning as the Lord hath now reveiled Reveiled to whom think we but to himself and those of the Antinomian strain by some dream or enthusiasm sure it must be for not by the word which holds out that cours that the Legalists take pressing men upon repentance and sorrow for sin and humiliation which these men can not abide And I would gladly know of them whether of the two is s the streit gate and the narrow way that leads to life and few list to take ours or theirs But saith this man t Such put a soul upon a legall method of conversion or comming to Christ First they must be kept so long under the Law for humiliation and contrition and confession and then brought to the Gospell as many books and Teachers do Thus he describes the dealing of our Ministers with men for the bringing of them to repentance as if he were painting out some Popish Priest pressing men to shrift and putting them upon hard penance as ye shal anon heare him resembling their preaching remission of sins unto the penitent to the Popes giving out his pardons But that which follows is far wors u Who like some Chirurgians that keep their Patients from healing too soon that they may make the cure the more admired do accordingly keep such souls with their wounds open and if they pour in any thing it is rather Wine then Oyl rather something of the Law then of the Gospel so as they are not onely long in healing and getting peace through Jesus Christ but they carry a scar with them still and are as it were lame in their consciences a long time after like some poor Patients that have had as much of the sound flesh cut away as the rotten and so have been healed tho but to a bodily infirmity all their life time And what is all this indeed but meer Mountebank practise to tell men that the Physitians and Chirurgeons they have formerly made use of do but vex them by plying them with purges and pils and searching their sores and searing them and cutting them to the quick and with their causticks and corrosives put them poor souls to a world of needles pain and all this they do but to lengthen the cure and hold them long in their hands whereas they wil give them that that shal put them to no pain and yet shall perfectly heal them without all that ado But it may justly be feared that these new waies of cure that these men professe will in the end proov little better then such Qacksalvers receipts but stupifying pils or palliating remedies or topicall playsters which tho they may give some ease of pain for the present yet effect no sound cure leaving the root of the disease the same still that they found it But to free men from further trouble of daily craving pardon of their sins according to x our Saviours prescript he telleth them that y The consideration of the pardon of sin in this sense that our Divines have commonly taught and preached it not minding the spirituall analogy of the Word concerning the righteousnes of a believer breeds all this distraction while they deale out Christs blood as the Pope his pardons for one sin after another never stating a believer in the righteousnes of Christ and in a fully pardoned condition So that I wonder not now why your Antinomians should be charged and that with good proof brought of it to deliver that z A child of God need not nay ought not to aske pardon for sin and that it is no les then blasphemy for him so to do But I shall onely for the present demand of this Autor whether believers before Christs appearance in the flesh such as Abel Noah Abraham Moses David and the rest were stated in the righteousnes of Christ or no and whether it be not a profane scof unfit to come out of any Christian mans much more any Minister of the Gospels mouth to say that Nathan and other the Seers of those times dealt Christs blood out to David and other believers then overtaken with some sin as the Pope doth his pardons But any base comparison is scarce bad enough to spend upon these unchristian Legalists that a to exalt men cry down Christ Mean while as the Persian that was scuffling with the Magician in the dark b bad one that stood by with his weapon in his hand but forbearing to make use of it for fear of smiting the wrong party thrust at all adventure so he slew the Magician he cared not though it were thorough his own side so this man therein not unlike c others of the same strain litle regards how he asperse Gods Prophets and his dispensations by them so he may break some broad jest upon his Legall brethren their doctrine and dealings But all this and much more this man of peace that moves to have the name of Legalist laid down and yet not onely commonly so stiles them that are not of his strain but lays load on them as you see to make them
haynous an exces it is liqor too * precious to be wastfully spilt If the Master have choice Wine reserved for his reconciled friends that are willing tho before at ods yea at dedly fewd with him yet now to come in and entertain terms of amity with him and the servant shal pour out of it to dogs and swine or serv it out to sturdy rogues and idle vagrants at the dore such as either scorn and curs his Master or refuse all commerce and acqaintance with him tho invited thereunto because they like not his disposition nor can endure his demeanour I suppose such a servant would have litle thanks from his Master for his labour And had not this Autor clipt off the first words of the Text which he points us to for his warrant herein it would alone have been sufficient to check this his professed profusenes and have enformed him withall what manner of persons they are unto whom this Wine is to be dispensed Eat O friends f saith he and drink yea drink abundantly O beloved But what speciall warrant by revelation or enthusiasm matters now a daies much pretended he may profes to have for this I know not Wel I wot and am sure that neither the place alledged nor any other Scripture the onely sure touchstone we have now to try truths by for the Spirit speakes not but according to it doth or can warrant much les enjoyn any such exorbitant exces either in this particular or in ought els 2. For the crying down of Christ it is a foul and fals calumny which together with many others of the same stamp this Autor here would fasten on the faithful Ministers of Christ men as jealous of and zealous for the honour of Christ their Master I may boldly say it for their labours shew it as himself 3. It is true indeed that Free grace cannot of it self have such an effect as he speakes of but this brother may remember what a zealous preacher as g his name imports and assertor of Free grace telleth us that there are not wanting and those not a few that h turn Gods grace i into wantonnes or lasciviousnes and men may preach and publish free grace in that manner that they may by such their preaching pave a path to that foule abuse which that many of our Antinomian tenents do is to me beyond controversie and I shal leave it to the consideration of others religious and judicious to deem and determine whether some assertions scattered here and there in this discours do not warp too much that way among the rest whereof take these for a tast 1. k The promises belong to sinners as sinners l not as repenting or bumbled sinners Whereas our Saviour saith that m he came to call sinners to re pentance and to save consequently not all but penitent sinners onely for n unlesse they do repent he tels them expresly they shal perish 2. o All that ever received Christ reeeived him in a sinful condition Yet the Apostle enformes us that that faith whereby we receiv Christ for p to receiv him the Evangelist tels us is to believ on him is not an holy onely but q a most holy faith nor can a man be said to be in a sinful condition whose r heart is possessed of so holy an habite or disposition term it whether you please nor can the heart act to the receiving of Christ until it be thereof possessed For how can a man put forth an holy act while he remains stil altogether unholy 3. They are but weak beleevers and like melancholy people who think things far otherwise then they truly are right smoking Flax wherein there is more smoke then light more ignorance then tru discerning Which among other things t think poor souls that tho God be reconciled with them and love them at some times yet he may be provoked again angry again for new sins and failings and are then much troubled how to come at any peace again as they were before u they suppose they can not sin so as they do and yet not be accountable x and think that afflictions are sent upon them for their sins Yet the Apostle telleth the Corinthians that they might and did a provoke God by som unadvised courses and carriages and that b for some such Gods afflicting hand was upon them and I suppose God called them then to account But what is this but to encourage men freely to offend and sin without feare of offending of God or provoking him to wrath or being ever called to any account or chastised at all for it making God like a fond indulgent father an other Ely if not more regardles then c he of his childrens cariage not affected at all with it tho it be never so scandalous and disgraceful to their Christian profession Of the same or the like stamp is that which followeth tending to beat men off from being troubled at all for their sins as d David or e Peter were and from seeking to make up the breaches made between God and them by their sins and to make their peace again with him by their renewed practice of repentance 4. f All worship and spirituall obedience is to run in the way of this dispensation not for procuring love or peace with God nor for pacifying 5. g There is nothing but the taking in of the Law and accusings and condemnations of it that can trouble the quiet and peace of any soul for where there is no law there is no transgression and where there is no transgression there is no trouble for sin all trouble arising from the obligement of the Law which demands satisfaction of the soul for the breach of it and such a satisfaction as the soul knows it cannoe give and thereby remains unqiet as a debter that hath nothing to pay Yet David albeit h having from the mouth of God by a special expresse received a release from the condemnations of the Law was i troubled and that not a little for his sin if we may believ him or the Spirit of God speaking by him nor was that therefore the ground of his trouble for his sin nor is it the onely ground of such trouble that this Autor here affirms But proceed we 6. k No sin can make one les beloved of God Had he added but or les liked he had spoken full out in plain terms after the usuall Antinomian strain but he is somewat more cautions herein then some other Yet being a scholler he need not be minded of that distinction so common in the schools of a love of benevolence and a love of complacence tho God never loved David the les in regard of wishing wel to him for any sin committed by him yet was he not so wel pleased l with him when he committed some sins nor was
he in regard of his paternall displeasure after the committing of them m reconciled unto him until he repented of them and humbled himself for them But his reason 7. n Nothing in us can make God love us les because he loves us not for any thing in our selvs but in and through Christ Yet God doth love us also by his good leav for his own graces in us and our exercises of the same o The Father himself loves you saith our Savior to his Disciples because ye love me and believ that I came out from God 8. p If he should love us more or les as we sin more or les he should be as man And in some things he is as man for q man bears Gods image and r a good man resembles God God is in somethings as a natural father himself saith it s As a father pitieth his children so the Lord pitieth those that fear him Yea in this particular he is like a discreet parent who tho he love his child deerly as wel when he doth amisse as when he doth well yet is he not so wel pleased with him nor can take that delight in him when he seeth him take some evil course as otherwise he might and should yea therefore is he then angry with him because he loves him and chastiseth him for this end to reclaim him from the same Thus the Antinomians themselves confes that God caried himself toward his in the times of the Old Testament And the like Christ himself professeth of himself in the New Testament t As many saith he as I love I rebuke and chasten be zealous therefore and repent To these may be added those other his assertions concerning Faith 1. a Faith is truly and simply this a being perswaded more or les of Christs love And what prophane wretch almost is not prone enough hereunto or may not nourish such a perswasion more or les upon groundles grounds we may wel say of such perswasions as himself elswhere of desires b Who is there that have not a desire All the World of common believers are carried on by this principle of a desire and are they not by the like principle of a perswasion 2. c Men cannot believe too suddenly Yes they may believ too sodainly as did Simon the sorcerer suretoo soon and if too soon then too sodainly presume and be perswaded they may of Christs love if that be faith 3. e None can beleev too hastily on Jesus Christ Tru. but to beleev on Jesus Christ and to have some perswasion more or les of Christs love are divers things 4. f We ought not to stay the exercise of our Faith for repentance or humiliation or any other grace As much as to say beleev we may tho we do not repent directly contrary to g Christs own and h his Apostles method Yea but can we have tru faith then without repentance and without any other grace 5. i None ought to qestion whether they beleev or no Yet the Apostles incite men to try their faith and the sincerity of it both k Paul and l James 6. m In the Gospel all are immediately called to beleev To day if ye wil heare his voice Were they called on so in the Gospel and were they not called on in like manner under the Law I suppose those words were the n Psalmists before they were the o Apostles And are not men called upon in the Gospel to repent immediately as wel as to beleev p Paul was mistaken sure if it were not so and our Saviour himself saith q Repent and beleev 7. r Christ commands to beleev and this is his commandement that we should beleev in the name of his Son Jesus Christ Now commands of this nature must be obeyed not disputed Gods servants do not reason their duty out first with themselves but fall to doing as they are commanded And doth not Christ command s to repent as wel as to beleev yea doth he not t command first to repent and then to beleev for in that order his words run And had this Autor but writ or red out the text he cites he had found somewhat more then faith in it u This is his command that we beleev in his Son Jesus Christ and that we love one another as he gave us commandement But why commands of this nature is not the commandement of repentance and charity and conversion and humiliation of the same nature with that of faith and belief or are there any of Gods Commandements then that because not of this nature may be disputed and not obeyed for some such matter do these terms of restriction import to wit that some of Gods commands are of that nature that they must be obeyed and not disputed others of that nature that they may not be obeyed but disputed No servant indeed of God ought to reason his duty why God should command him to do this or that either with God or with himself but when he doubteth what it is that God enjoyneth him he may x examine and search what the good will of God is that he may not be mistaken in it and so think that he hath done what he should when he hath done nothing les like those that y thought they did God good service when they did that that he utterly abhorred and when they have done what they supposed they should do they may without wrong or disparagement to their Master unles the Apostle were mistaken z try and examine their work whether it were so done as it should be Yea but saith this Autor 8. a We ought no more to question our faith which is our first and foundation graee then we ought to question Christ the foundation of our faith 9. b I find not any in the whole cours of Christs preaching or the disciples when they preached to them to beleev asking the qestion whether they beleeved or no or whether their faith were tru faith or no I find one saying c I beleev Lord help mine unbelief but not Lord whether do I believ or no and d Lord increase my faith but not Lord whether is this tru faith or no It would be a strange qestion to ask the Master of the feast whether his dainties were reall or a delusion would not such a question disparage him for a sorcerer So in the things of the Spirit to be over-jealous of the truth of them as in my tempted poor souls are doth not become the faithfulnes of Jesus Christ Why Faith should be called the first and foundation grace I know not tho e many of our Divines so speake I suppose with f others and without prejudice to any of contrary judgement that as there is the * seed and spawn of all sin together in mans heart from the time of his
say his meaning was to make it sure to others rather then to themselvs may as wel assay to bear men in hand that it is * midnight stil at mid-day But f All other assurances saith this Autor his own onely excepted these mixt gros and carnall ones as before he stiled them tho not denied to be * found in Gods Word are but rotten conclusions from the Word and such things as tru Legall preachers have invented not understanding the mystery of the Kingdom of Christ g nor being cleer enough in judgement to unmingle things that Antichrist had confounded and put together thereby h like some Chirurgeons who keep their Patients from healing too soon that they may make the cure the more admired keeping wounded souls accordingly with their wounds open Thus our Ministers he makes no better then meer Mountebanks for so to lengthen his cure that he may seem to have done some great matter saith a grave Physician in a Chirurgeon is but i a Player-like or a Mountebanks part and what is it think we then in a Divine But why did he not adde and to draw the more Fees from them as the Orator complains of some Teachers of youth in his time that k kept their Schollers longer in their rudiments then was needfull as wel to draw the more money from their parents as to make that they taught them seem a more difficult matter For sure as good ground he might have had for the one as the other None good at all I assure my self for either For whose spectacles hath this brother borrowed or what prospective glas hath he gotten by which he is able thus to pierce and pry into mens hearts to descry what their secret intents and ayms are in the courses they take as before he described them tho I suppose not very faithfully neither for the satisfying of such as repayr unto them for direction or for comfort Herein therefore this Autor as he transgressed the bounds of l charity so he encroacheth too much upon the m royall prerogative both which the Lord in mercy n remit to him whether he suppose he need remission of any sin or no which according to his own principles * he deems he doth not Besides that in these passages he seems more then once to cros and contradict himself For 1. he charges these points on the Legall Teachers as their own inventions and yet as verifying therein the old Greek Proverb o The tripping toung sometimes tels truth he confesseth them to be conclusions drawn from Gods Word for if conclusions fetcht from Gods Word how then the inventions and devices of men or how conclusions from the Word if inventions of men not to insist upon that unsavory term that may seem to cast an aspersion on Gods sacred Oracles when conclusions from the Word so confessed to be are styled rotten conclusions Again he ascribeth those preposterous courses that these Legall Physitians take with their spirituall patients one while to unskilfulnes an other while to unfaithfulnesse Sometime he makes them a company of sely ignoramusses blind blundering bussards men of no understanding or judgement unable to dive into those deep mysteries that he and his are so wel seen in or so to distingvish those things that Antichrist hath blended and jumbled together as they do or p to give a troubled soul any sound satisfaction whom yet in q this dim light such as it is that they have he says he doth not wholy despise and contemn and that upon condition too so that they contend not against the more glorious light of truth that he and those of his strain hold out r whereof some sleight glimerings yet he hath observed in some of their discourses Sometime on the other side he makes them a crew of cunning I might wel say cheating companions that have subtilly for sinister ends invented and devised these courses of cure s under a pretence of thorough humiliation to keep their patients in pain the longer under their hands for their own admiration and advantage not regarding the whilst what they poor souls indure while their wounds are on purpose kept from closing All the help he can have to salv this contradiction for if it be of meer ignorance for want of better and cleerer light then not of set purpose for by-ends or if of this then not of that all I say that I can think on to reconcile this contradiction must be to say that some of them are failing in the one kind and some faulty in the other or that all of them generally do in some things erre by mistake in others wilfully transgres But leaving him to make his cros and uncharitable censures of his brethren good as he shal think good himself let us in steed of that rotten stuffe as he is pleased to style it that these Legall Teachers have yet from Gods Word invented see what stays and supports for mens souls this Autor himself therein t like the Spider that weaves her web out of her own bowels hath spun us not out of Gods Word as the Legalists that u spin out he saith such fine threds in Divinity as are not strong enough to bind up a broken spirit but out of his own brains x We must believ saith he that Christ hath believed perfectly he hath repented perfectly he hath sorrowed for sin perfectly he hath obeyed perfectly and he hath mortified sin perfectly and y that our repentance is tru in him who hath repented for us our new obedience tru in him who hath obeyed for us our mortification tru in him through whom we are more then conqerours and why he altered his style more in this then in the rest or why he spake not here the same of belief as before he did that he doth of repentance I wot not But these I may truly say are not conclusions from Gods Word but groundles assertions wrought out of his own curious head and fancy without warrant from Gods Word For where findeth he in the whole book of God that ever Christ repented for us or that he mortified sin not in us but for us in himself as in himself or in his own person he obeyed for us and yet not to free us from obedience neither but to set us a a copy to give us a precedent that we might tread in his steps as for matter of patienee so for matter of b obedience tho that neither the principall end with him of either These glorious lights therefore set up to dazel mens eyes and amuse their minds we can not admit until they can be shewed to be rays of that light that the Law and Testimony holds out according to which unles men speak we are taught and warranted by the Spirit of God speaking in his Prophet to deem that there is no d spark of true light in them And indeed what