after him and find him though he be not far from every one of us For in him we live and move and have our being For we are also his off-spring Act. 17. 25 26 27 28 29. For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek For the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him For whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved But have they not heard Yes verily their sound went into all the earth and their words unto the ends of the world Rom. 10. 12 13 18. Despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and long suffering not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to Repentance Who will render to every man according to his deeds To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for Glory and Honour and Immortality Eternal life Glory honour and peace and to every man that worketh Good to the Jew first and also to the Greek For there is no respect of persons with God For not the hearers of the Law are just before God but the doers of the Law shall be justified For when the Gentiles which have not the Law do by Nature the things contained in the Law these having not the Law are a Law unto themselves which shew the work of the Law written in their hearts their Consciences also bearing witness and their thoughts in the mean while accusing or else excusing one another In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ according to my Gospel If the uncircumcision keeps the righteousness of the Law shall not his uncircumcision be counted for circumcision He is a Jew which is one inwardly and circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit and not in the letter whose praise is not of men but of God Rom. 2. SECT III. Of Christ's Incarnation and our Redemption 36. In the fulness of time God sent his Son made of a Woman made under the Law to redeem them that were under the Law Rom. 4. 4. But not them only for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life Joh. 3. 16. He was made sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him He redeemed us from the Curse of the Law being made a Curse for us For he is the Saviour of the world and the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world He is the Propitiation for our sins and not for ours only but for the sins of the whole world 1 Joh. 2. 2. For he tasted Death for every man Heb. 2. being the Saviour of all men but especially of those that believe 1 Tim. 4. 10. For if one dyed for all then were all dead And he dyed for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves but unto him that dyed for them and rose again 2 Cor. 5. 14 15. 37. As the eternal Word and Wisdom of the Father in his Divine nature only was the interposing Redeemer by undertaking before his Incarnation and governed the faln world by the fore-described Law of Grace so upon his Incarnation initially and upon his performance plenarily all things are delivered into his hands even all the world so far as it was defiled and cursed by Man's sin Man as the Redeemed the Creatures as his utensils and goods and Devils as his and our Enemies All Power in Heaven and Earth was given him Matth. 26. 19. Joh. 13. 1 3. and 17. 2 3. All judgment was committed to him and the Father judgeth no man but by him But hath given him to have life in himself and to raise the dead Joh. 5. 22 23 24 25. For he hath made him Head over all things to his Church Eph. 1. 22 23. And for this end he dyed rose and revived that he might be the Lord of the dead and the living Rom. 14. 9 10. For God hath exalted him and given him a name above every name that in the name of Jesus every knee should â—ow Phil. 2. 7 8. And as in Adam all die even so in Christ shall all be made alive 1 Cor. 15. 22. 38. Christ upon his Incarnation performed but what God had Decreed before the foundations of the world and had obscurely and generally promised after the fall at the first making of the Covenant of Grace Which Decree of God is after the manner of men called by some a Covenant between the Father and the Son especially because the Prophets have sometimes as Isa 53. described it by way of prediction as a Covenant between the Father and Christ incarnate If we conceive of it properly under the notion of a Decree first and a Promise after unto the world so the Will and Mercy of God the Father and Son with the Holy Spirit are the cause of mans Redemption Pardon and Salvation even the fundamental Principal total Cause And the Promise was man's security and Christ as promised was the primary great meanâ— which was to procure us the rest by doing that upon the fore-sight and fore-decree whereof God did before-hand pardon and save Sinners But if you had rather mention it as in the form of a Covenant which before the Incarnation must be improperly taken being only of God to himself or a promise of and to Christ as to be incarnate then the undertaking of the Father and the Son herein must be carefully distinguished and described The Father giveth up to Christ as Redeemer the whole lapsed cursed reparable world the several parts to several uses and especially his chosen to be eventually and infallibly saved and promiseth to accept his Sacrifice and performance and to make him Head over all things to his Church and by him to establish the Law of Grace in its perfect Edition and to give him the Government respectively of the Church and world and to Glorifie him for this work with himself for ever And the second person undertaketh to assume man's Nature to do and suffer all that he did in perfect obedience to his Fathers Will and Law of Redemption to fulfill all Righteousness conquer Satan and the world to suffer in the flesh and be a Sacrifice for sin and to conquer Death and teach and rule and purifie and raise and justifie and glorifie all true believers 39. Before the Incarnation Christ's future death and obedience being * * * Eadem suit sides in antiquis patribus modernis qui alio modo credebant in specialia alia credibilia quam nos Immo aliquid eredebant quod nunc est salsum Alliaco in 3. q. 1. not existent were no real existent Causes in themselves of men's Justification But that Wisdom which foresaw them and that Will of God which Decreed them as such and not they without that fore-sight and Decree as existent were the cause 40. Nor were they either before
a Liberty and not Gibieufs Amplitude It is not possible for a Creature to have any thing that 's good but of God nor any good from God but by meer free Gift as to the Good or Value though it be by rewarding Justice quoad ordinem conferendi and comparatively why this man hath it rather than that § 24. M. S. There is no stinting or determining unless you stop here at the first act An. I deny it There are three Opinions more that are all more probable The first which supposeth the Reward of life eternal due upon the over coming of the Devils first temptation which would have drawn from the Love of God And so Love and Conquer once was the Condition The second which supposeth that the Condition was the Conquest of this particular Temptation to eat of the forbidden Fruit and the after eating of the Tree of Life The third which supposeth the only Condition of life eternal to the personal perfect perpetual Obedience or perseverance till God of his own pleasure should translate Adam and end his life of trial I take this last to have far most probability for all the Reasons before given I am sure that the tenor of the Law of Nature made it Adam's Duty still to love God and obey him and resist all that was against it And I find no Promise that his Nature or the Law of Nature should be changed for this or that act or for conquering some one temptation I find that Christ's own Covenant-Condition was more than one act And the Condition of our Glory is overcoming and being faithful to the death and continuing in Christ And I will not add to the Covenant of God § 25. M. S. Arg. 4. From the nature of an obediental act which includeth the approving of the whole Law An. 1. Approving the things that are excellent is made consistent with wickedness Rom. 2. But I will suppose you to mean a full consent to the Covenant of Innocency But 2. How prove you that such consent was the whole condition of life and that it might not be fallen from and that Adam never did consent before his Fall and yet not sin 3. All the godly approve of Gods Law and consent to it and love it and yet merit not as keepers of it for they break it Rom. 7. 4. Yea Covenant-keeping to the last as well as Covenant-consent the first moment is now to us the condition of immutable Glory § 26. M. S. Adam would not obey at first but suspend while he looked about the World to see if there were any good sufficient for him below God Therefore he sinned not then An. This is before confuted He could not in that Integrity and after such divine Revelation be unresolved one hour whether he must first love and obey his Maker without sin § 27. God cannot freely give eternal life to a Creature without Reward for doing because the reasonable Creature was made for the Glory of Justice An. 1. You may say that God will not to man but not that he cannot nor that he doth not to any Angel For man was not made only for the Glory of Justice but of Power and Love or Goodness also 2. It 's certain that God as a free Benefactor giveth many good things freely and â—â— as a Reward for doing As 1. He so freely made all things good in the Creation and gave man all his antecedent good He so gave Adâ—â— his primitive Holiness and Helps and Paradise and all the Creatureâ— 2. He so gave Christ to the World without desert and so far pardoned the first sin as that cometh to 3. He so far gave man the Covenant of Grace 4. He so gave all Christ's Miracles Resurrection Doctrine the Scripture c. 5. He so gave Apostles and Ministry to the World 6. He so sendeth the Gospel to some Nations and Persons above others 7. He so giveth to many the first special Grace as he did to Paul 8. He so giveth to many Kingdoms and Persons Wealth and Health and Strength and such other mercies above others 9. He so giveth greater measures of Grace to some than to others 10. And it seemeth that he so in part giveth the same Glory to some that came in but at the last hour of the day It is certain that all in quantum tale is from God only as a free Benefactor or as the Amor primus And the order of distributing it is two-fold Some antecedent to mans merit or acts and independent on it And this is no Reward though sometime it is an antecedent act of Justice such as is the making of a good Law or Promise And some consequent juxta morman legis And these are Rewards And though God hath assured us now that no man shall have Heaven but by rewarding Justice yet that may be because he thought meet to place man first on Earth in a life of trial and undetermined Liberty But that he hath no Angel that was made Immutable or that Christ was not made immutably holy let them say that can prove it for I cannot § 28. M. S. It 's like that the Angels that stood and they that fell had unequal help for unequal Effects are of an unequal Cause But Adam and the Devils had sufficient Grace and God forsook them not till they forsook him An. 1. This last I accept as true and more than some will grant 2. The first is above our reach only we can say both that God giveth more Grace to some than to others freely 3. And yet he himself is simple and immutable in causing of various and mutable Effects § 29. M. S. By Christs passive Obedience imputed we are pardoned and â—ustified and by his active imputed we deserve the Reward and are under Gods approving Will. An. 1. By the merit of his habitual active and passive that is of his performing all his mediatorial Covenant with the Father we are pardoned and justified and adopted to eternal life principally as a Reward to Christ not to us as meriting by him and subordinately according to Gospel-Justice or Order as a Reward to Believers for their Faith and Obedience by him who will Reward every man according to his Works and will be glorified in his Saints and admired in Believers because they believed 2 Thess 1. 6 to 12. We are under Gods approving Will principally as united to Christ reconciled justified adopted and subordinately as sanctified and obedient For the Father loveth us because we have loved Christ and believed Joh. 16. 27. And it is life eternal to know the Father and the Son Joh. 17. 3. And because we do those things that are pleasing in his sight what-ever we ask we receive 1 Joh. 3. 22. § 30. M. S. By Christs imputed suffering we are but where we were For the Law to have nothing against us will not justifie us unless it have something for us An. This great question needeth distincter handling Adam's Law doth not
as is said were in a state of Salvation when under Christ's own teaching they believed not many great Articles now essential to the Christian Faith So that all set together will tell us that the conclusion of the certain damnation of all without the Jewish and the Christian Church seemeth not very desirable either as to the Glory of the good and gracious God nor as to the good of Mankind And therefore we should not propend that way in a case of doubtful arguing And I desire the Reader impartially to consider though Abraham knew not till God told him how bad Sodom was yet when he asketh of God to spare it if there were but fifty Righteous in it whether he do not imply that he thought most other Cities of that bigness had at least fifty righteous if not more For when God told him that he would destroy it for the cry of their sins he must needs judge it worse than ordinary And was Abraham more ignorant than we the Father of the Faithful a Prophet that saw Christ's day and rejoyâ—ed 93. It is a certain truth that as God the Creator so Christ the Redeemer doth extend his mercy farther than he himself is known And as the Sâ—â— sendeth some light to the world before it riseth and is seen it self so doth Christ send many excellent Gifts of his Grace to those that know him not as Incarnate And when all the world is delivered into his hand we have reason to believe that the mercies which Philosophers and all others in the world had were communicated by him as the second Person or Wisdom and Word undertaking mans Redemption first and as the Word Incarnate after 94. Those ancient Fathers of the Church who lived near the Apostles times as Clem Alex. c. who believed that some without the Church were saved were never condemned for it as Hereticks no not by the busie condemning Ages SECT VI. Of Universal Redemption 95. By what hath been said it appeareth how far Christ may be said to have died for all Certainly de re all that Christ giveth to all which is the fruits of his Death he procured for all by his death whatever we say of conditional Intentions he certainly intended to give all that he giveth But all these following particulars are given by Christ either to all or to more than the Elect. 1. The Humane Nature common to all is advanced and brought nigh to God in Christ's Incarnation 2. Christ's Sacrifice for Sin and his perfect Holiness are so far satisfactory and meritorious for all men as that they render Christ a meet Object for that Faith in him which is commanded men and no man shall be damned for want of the satisfactoriness of Christ's Sacrifice or for want of a Saviour to die for him and fulfil all Righteousness but only for the abusing or refusing of his Mercy 3. Christ's conquest of the Devil and the World hath made man's conquests of them the more easie or possible And his Victory over Death and his Resurrection hath procured a Resurrection to all the World 4. All men are his Subjects by Obligation as he is the Redeemer and so are under his healing saving kind of Government 5. A clearer revelation of Life and Immortality is made by him even to those that perish And they have far greater helps than else they would have had to set their hearts on a better World 6. Especially a Law of Grace is made by Christ for all the world In the last Edition to all Joh. 1. 11 12. 3. 16 17 18 19. 1 Joh. 5. 10 11. that hear the Gospel and in the first to all the rest By the Promise of which as by an Act of Oblivion or Instrument of Donation God hath Enacted and Given a full Pardon of all Sin to all Mankind with Reconciliation Adoption and Right to Christ and Heaven on condition of their acceptance of it as offered them So that men are pardoned and justified by that Instrument or Gift if they will believe and will not unthankfully reject their Mercies 7. Apostles and ordinary Ministers were appointed to preach this Gospel to all the World and make the Offer of Christ and Life to all men without exception 8. The Matth. 28. 19. Mark 16. 16. execution of the violated Law of Innocency is forborn to all men in the greatest part Judgments kept off and they kept out of Hell while they have time and means to prepare for their Salvation 9. Many and great Mercies which signifie Gods goodness and lead towards Repentance are given to all the world even mercies forfeited by sins against the Law of Innocency and given by the Grace of our Redeemer 10. It is made all mens duty to believe the Revelation made to theâ— to repent to accept more mercy and to seek their own Salvation And such duty is not the smallest mercy 11. He hath recorded his Word and Grace in the holy Scriptures which all are allowed to use for their good He hath filled his Doctrine or Gospel with such powerful convincing Reasons and Perswasions which have a tendency to convince men and convert them 12. He secondeth his Word by many such Providences in his Works his Mercies his Afflictions as greatly Act. 14. 17. 17. 27 28. Rom. 1. 19 21. Rom. 2. tend to win mens Souls 13. He hath left his excellent Example to the world which greatly tendeth to mens Conviction and Salvation 14. He hath appointed several Church-Ordinances which are mercies to more than the Elect as is the visible communion also which they have with the Upright and their examples prayers c. 15. To all these he addeth an obligation on all Christians to do their best to convert and save all others 16. And the Office of Magistrates under Christ is appointed for these saving uses to promote the Salvation of the people 17. Death it self is now turned into a medicinal means by the prospect of it to convert and save men 18. Usually Gods patitience alloweth men time of Repentance and taketh them not at the first denial that they may consider and correct their former error 19. Remedies are offered men fetcht from Satan and Sin it self The Tempter by the malice of his temptations oft detecteth his owâ— fraud and mens danger A natural enmity against Devils and all that is known to be of them is put into all Mankind And Sin hath a sting to the Flesh it self and is madâ— such a misery to Sinners even in this life as may much tend to alienate and deter them from it And the world it self is made such a palpable vanity and smart vexation as tendeth to drive men to look out for a better and not to love it above God 20. Lastly To all these means there are certain internal motions and strivings of the Spirit of Christ which he commonly vouchsafeth mâ—â— in some degree and which irritate Conscience to do its office and which if men will
cause Moral Good and hinder Moral Evil and by which as our Lover and End he will draw mans soul to himself in Love § 20. God as Rector though he vary his Laws in some things to several ages and places and promulgate the same Gospel with inequality on several accounts yet according to the respective Laws that they are under dealeth with all men in a certain equality which is called Justice that is His Laws antecedently to mans acts make not difference and as Judge he maketh none but what mans different actions require according to the said Laws and Justice But yet as Owner and as Benefactor he is free not against but above his Laws to make many inequalities which are no injustice they being not acts of formal Government and so he may do with his own as he list And thus though God give all their due according to his Law of Grace yet he giveth to his Elect such proportions of Grace as he gave them no antecedent Right to by his Law or at least to many of them passing by the controversie now whether he do so to them all § 21. God could cure and sanctifie all men if it were his Absolute will but he doth not and will not being no way obliged And he will be no loser nor sufferer by the creatures sin § 22. Gods absolute will is as fully accomplished by mans free acts as if they were all necessitated and Natural And mans actions are as free as if God had made no Absolute Decree of their futurity as in Good he hath done if we may so ascribe futurity to his Decrees § 23. It seemeth that all sin beginneth in the wills omission of what it was able to have done Even when Adams appetite was to the forbidden fruit and some think that this was the first part of the sin it seemeth that it was rather in the Wills not restraining that appetite when it could have done it And then positive sins do follow thereupon § 24. There is more Brutishness in sin and consequently more privative and less positive faultiness of the Reason and Will than many do consider which Paul partly meaneth Rom. 7. For it is certain 1. That a passion e. g. anger or fear may be forced on a man suddenly as â—n a Brute without Reason As if you come behind one and affright him or strike him suddenly no Reason raised that passion and consequently no Rational Will 2. It is certain that this passion without Reason can cause despotically a corporal motion as the fearful will start and run and the angry strike without any reason or rational will but as a Beast doth 3. It is certain that it is the office of the Will to Rule this passion and these motions 4. And that it must have due information from the understanding that so to do is good and best 5. If this information of the understanding did never miss of determining the Will then man would never sin but when the understanding failed of its necessary office before the will which would resolve all sin into the will of God as much as if he directly moved the will to it by necessitating unresistible predetermination For the Intellect as such hath no Liberty but is necessitated by objects further than it is under the Empire of the Will And the Objects and Intellect are made by God 6. Therefore it followeth that there is a certain measure of Intellecâ—â—â—l true apprehension according to which the will can excite and determine it self without â—â—y thing which it hath not and yet can forbear And that this not-willing what and when it should is the beginning of all sin § 25. God is no Efficient or Desicient cause of this first Omission of the will For efficient it hath none And deficient God is not who gave man power to have done it But man is the deficient Cause § 26. Man 's not believing not knowing not loving not obeying not desiring trusting fearing c. being the far greatest part of the sins of his life * * * Which made the worthy Bishop Usher dye with these words as his last But Lord in special forgive my â—â—â— of omission we see by this are not at all of God § 27. Though multitudes of positive Acts of sin do follow such omissions and go before some of them yet they being not sinful as Acts but as Disordered against the Rule and End and upon undue objects and especially comparatively preserring the wrong object before the right it seemeth that in their first instances they are all Omissive and Positive in the second only which maketh the Schoolmen so commonly say that sin is a Privation § 28. Yet the Moral formal Relation of sin is not only Privative but a Positive Disobedience or Disconformity And so as Quid Morale formaliter sin hath as much Relative being as Duty hath viz. 1. As contra Legem significantem 2. Contra Voluntatem Dei significatam 3. Et contra Jâ—â— Divini Dominii Imperii Amoris § 29. If any be unsatisfied in this it is certain that in the Velle hoc prohibitum potius quam hoc imperatâ—m there is no more physical entity than in the Velle imperatum no nor than there is in the Velle indefinitely considered as on any object Or if any deny that it is certain that there is no such addition of Entity it being but ordo modi in any such sinful Act from which as such the formal obliquity or sin resulteth but what man can do and doth without Gods causing the Act as so ordered and terminated So that God is no way the cause of formal sin § 30. †††Bradwardiâ— dealeth more plainly and maketh Gods effectual Volition to be the total immediate cause that man sinneth though it be no sin in God to do so and saith that God willeth it for good uses as the sinner doth or if he do not it is because God maketh him unavoidably do otherwise They that say He causeth all that man causeth and that as the first necesâ—itating or insuperable cause but yet is not the cause of the form of sin contradict themselves seeing that form is but a Relation which resulteth ipso facto from its fundamentam and terminus and nè per divinam potentiam cannot but do so And hath no other cause but what causeth them § 31. And they that say that yet God is not the Author of sin because he is under no Law do but sport with dreadful things And they mean that God is the chief Cause of all mens sins in the world but not of any sin of his own which is none of the question § 32. God doth neither Cause the sin nor the futurity or existence of it as some vainly distinguishing maintain especially Dr. Twisse and Rutherford For as Estius and others truly say to cause the sin is nothing but to cause the existence of it And sin as sin Dr. Twisse often
better than themselves Look not every man on his own things but every man also on the things of others Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus Who made himself of no reputation 1 Cor. 1. 10 11 12 13 14. Now I beseech you brethren by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that ye speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you but that ye be perfectly joyned together in the same mind and in the same judgement For it hath been declared to me of you brethren that there are contentions among you that every one of you saith I am of Paul and I of Apollos and I of Cephas and I of Christ Is Christ divided Was Paul crucified for you or were you baptized into the name of Paul I thank God that I baptized none of you c. 1 Cor. 3. 1 2 3 4. I could not speak to you as unto spiritual but as unto carnal as to babes in Christ For whereas there is among you envying and strife and divisions are ye not carnal and walk as men See Eph. 4. 1 c. after John 17. 20 21 22 23. I pray for them which shall believe on me that they all may be one as thou Father art in me and I in Thee that they also may be One in us that the world may believe that thou hast sent me And the glory which thou gavest me I have given them that they may be one even as we are one I in them and thou in me that they may be made perfect in one and that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them as thou hast loved me Matth. 5. 9. Blessed are the Peace-makers for they shall be called the children of God Rom. 12. 18. If it be possible as much as in you lyeth live peaceably with all men 2 Cor. 12. 20 21. I fear lest when I come I shall not find you such as I would lest there be debates envyings wraths strifes backbitings whisperings swellings tumults Lest God will humble me among you and I shall bewail many c. Gal. 5. 19 20. The works of the flesh are manifest hatred variance emulations wrath strife seditions heresies envyings 1 Cor. 14. 33. God is not the Author of Confusion but of Peace as in all Churches of the Saints Acts 20. 30. Of your own selves shall men arise speaking perverse things to draw away disciples after them Phil. 1. 15 16. Some indeed preach Christ even of envy and strife and some also of good will The one preach Christ of contention not sincerely Rom. 16. 17 18. Now I beseech you brethren Mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which you have learned and avoid them For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ but their own bellies and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple Luke 9. 55. Ye know not what manner of Spirit ye are of The Angelical Gospel of the Ends of Christs Incarnation Luke 2. 19. GLORY TO GOD IN THE HIGHEST ON EARTH PEACE GOOD WILL TO MEN or WELL-PLEASEDNESS IN MEN. John 20. 26. Peace be unto you Grace Mercy and Peace with all that are in Christ and Love Gal. 6. 16. Eph. 6. 23. 1 Pet. 1. 2. 5. 14. 2 Pet. 1. 2. 1 Thess 5. 13. 2 Cor. 13. 11. Finally brethren farewell be perfect be of good comfort be of one mind Live in Peace and the God of Love and Peace shall be with you Amen 1. Assert THe BAPTISMAL COVENANT expounded in the antient CREED is the summ and Symbol of Christianity by which Believers were to be distinguished from unbelievers and the outward Profession of it was mens Title to Church-communion and the Heart-consent was their Title-condition of Pardon and Salvation And to these ends it was made by Christ himself Matth. 28. 19 20. Mark 16. 16. 2. All that were baptized did profess to Believe in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost and devoted themselves to him with profession of Repentance for former sins and renouncing the Lusts of the Flesh the World and the Devil professing to begin a new and holy life in hope of everlasting glory 3. This form of Baptismal Covenanting and Profession begun with Christianity and called our Christening or making us Christians hath been propagated and delivered down to us to this day by a full and certain tradition and testimony and less alterations than the holy Scriptures 4. The Apostles were never such formalists and friends to ignorance and hypocrisie as to encourage the baptized to take up with the saying I believe in the Father Son and Holy Ghost without teaching them to understand what they said Therefore undoubtedly they expounded those three Articles And that exposition could be no other in sense than the Creed is And when Paul reciteth the Articles of Christ 1 Cor. 15. and mentioneth the Form of sound words we may be sure that they all gave the people one unchanged exposition as to the sense Christianity was one unchanged thing 5. Though I am not of their mind that think the twelve Apostles each one made an Article of the Creed or that they formed and tyed men to just the very same syllables and every word that is now in the Creed yet that they still kept to the same sense and words so expressing it as by their variation might not endanger the corrupting of the faith by a new sense is certain from the nature of the case and from the Agreement of all the antient Creeds which were ever professed at baptism from their dayes that cited by me Append. to the Reformed Pastor out of Irenaeus two out of Tertullian that of Marcellus in Epiphanius that expounded by Cyril that in Ruffinus the Nicene and all mentioned by Usher and Vossius agreeing thus far in sense And no one was baptized without the Creed professed 6. As Christ himself was the Author of the Baptismal Creed and Covenant so the Apostles were the Authors of that Exposition which they then used and taught the Church to use And they did that by the Holy Ghost as much as their inditing of the Scripture 7. Therefore the Church had a Summary and Symbol of Christianity as I said before about twelve years before any Book of the New Testament was written and about sixty six years before the whole was written And this of Gods own making which was ever agreed on when many Books of the New Testament were not yet agreed on 8. Therefore men were then to prove the truth of the Christian Religion by its proper Evidences and Miracles long before they were to prove that every word or any Book of the New Testament was the infallible perfect Word of God 9. Therefore we must still follow the same Method and take Christs Miracles to be primarily the proof of the Christian Religion long before the New Testament Books were written 10. Therefore if a man should be
the believing sinner may stand before this righteous and holy God is to affirm the eternal damnation of all the World VII The Covenant mentioned justifieth not but declareth our Justification which is the immediate proper effect of Christ's righteousness VIII Never any man in his wits affirmed that the righteousness of Christ is the formal cause of our Justification Give us but leave to call it the material cause or the meritorious cause immediately and properly of Justification c. Some will think that they are great and heinous errors which either these words or some of mine that seem contrary import But I must crave leave here to follow my usual method in separating the Controversies de re de nomine and then I think that even these strange words prove not him and me at so great a distance as they seem to intimate For I grant him as followeth de re 1. That God hath such a decree of Election or eternal purpose as he describeth and calleth the Constitution of the Covenant 2. That God doth wisely and graciously execute this Decree 3. That all Grace and Mercy is given by Christ And therefore so far as Mercy is common Christ is the common cause of it 4. That Christ himself is a blessing or gift decreed and also freely given by God even from his love to the World Joh. 3. 16. 5. That God's electing Act or Decree as in him hath no condition nor his purpose to give Christ as a Saviour to mankind 6. On our part no condition is required either that God may elect us or that the first promise of a Saviour be made or that Christ come into the World or that he fulfill all righteousness or that he obey or die or rise or be glorified or come to judgment or raise the dead or that he enact it as his Law of Grace that he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved and he that believeth not shall be damned 7. Nor is any condition on our part necessary absolutely necessitate medii that the Gospel or the first Grace yea the first special Grace be given us 8. That Christ by his suffering and merits hath procured to his elect not only pardon and life if they believe and obey him but Grace to cause them effectually and infallibly to believe repent obey and persevere 9. That no man can or will believe and repent but by his Grace 10. That to give men a promise of pardon and life if they will believe repent and obey the Gospel is not the whole of Christ's Grace to any but where-ever he giveth this he giveth also much means and gracious help by which men may do better than they do and so be more prepared for his further Grace 11. That if God only gave men a promise of pardon if they believe and gave them no Grace to enable or help them to believe it would be no saving Covenant 12. God did not repeal his Law of Innocency or as he had rather call it of Perfection nor did properly dispense with or relax the preceptive part of it Nor is it absolutely ceased as to a capable subject And therefore Christ was bound to perfection 13. God would not have his Law to be without the honour of the perfect performance of mans Mediator though it be violated by us all 14. No man is saved or justified but by the proper merit of Christ's perfect obedience yea and his habitual holiness and satisfactory sufferings advanced in dignity by his divine perfection 15. This merit as related to us supposeth that Christ as a Sponsor was the second Adam the Root of the justified the reconciling Mediator who obeyed perfectly with that intent that by his obedience we might be justified and who suffered for our sins in our room and stead and so was in tantum our Vicarius poenae as some phrase it or substitute and was made a curse for us that we might be healed by his stripes as he was obedient that his righteousness might be the reason as a meritorious cause of our Justification which supposeth the relation of an undertaking Redeemer in our nature doing this and in our stead so far forth as that therefore perfect obedience should not be necessary to be performed by our selves And righteousness therefore is imputed to us that is we are truly reputed righteous because we as believing members of Christ have right to impunity and life as merited by his righteousness and freely given to all penitent believers And Christ's own righteousness may be said so far to be imputed to us as to be reckoned or reputed the meritorious cause of our right or justification as aforesaid Thus far we are agreed de re And then de nomine I willingly leave men to their way of speech 1. If he will call God's Decree his Covenant in Constitution 2. If he will call the execution of his Decree his Covenant in execution 3. If he will call nothing else the Covenant of Grace or at least nothing of narrower extent but what comprehendeth God's eternal Decrees and the promise and gift of a Redeemer and so of the rest I cannot help it his language is his own But I shall tell you further my thoughts de re de nomine 1. De re 1. God's eternal decrees purposes or election give no one right to Christ Pardon or Life and so justifie no man 2. The execution of God's Decrees yea of Election hath many Acts besides Justification 3. It must therefore be some transient Act done in time ad extra by which God justifieth men 4. There are divers such acts concurring in several sorts of causality or respect 5. Christ's meritorious righteousness and satisfaction are the sole proper immediate causemeritorious of all the Grace or Mercy procured and given by him there being no other meritorious cause of the same kind either more immediate or at all co-ordinate and copartner with him 6. As Christ giveth us Holiness qualitative and active by the real operation of his Spirit though he merited it immediately himself so doth he give us right to impunity to the further Grace of the Spirit and to Glory by the instrumentality of his Covenant as by a Testament Deed of Gift or Law of Grace Which by signifying God's donative will doth not first declare us justified or to have the foresaid right to Christ and Life but doth first give us instrumentally that right and so immediately justify us And God's will giveth us not right as secret or of it self but by such instrumental signification 7. God hath signified his will to us partly by absolute gifts and promises and partly by conditional that such there are he that denieth must deny much of the Scripture Christ was absolutely given to fallen mankind for a Redeemer and so was the Conditional Law or Covenant of Grace and many other mercies But he hath made and recorded a conditional Gift of Christ as in special Union to be our
manifest 412. 2. God having made man did give him a Law both Natural and Positive This was next done and therefore decreed to be next done 413. 3. Man having broke this Law God judged him and laid on him some indispensible penalties This was decreed to be done in the third place 414. 4. At the same time God promised Man the victory by the Womans Seed and giving him pardon of the destructive penalty became his Redeemer and put him under a Covenant of Grace first given to mankind in Adam and afterwards in Noah And this was decreed to be so done 415. 5. Though all were thus put under this Covenant and God forsook none that first forsook not him yet did he give more Grace to some than to others to Abel e. g. than to Cain so that those that did actually repent and believe and live to God were justified and adopted and made heirs of life And thus he decreed to do 416. 6. Perseverance also was the effect of his special Grace which accordingly is Decreed to be given 417. 7. The Cainites Canaanites and others that were the wicked Seed of wicked Parents who forsook him and his Grace he accordingly judged punished and forsook And so decreed 418. 8. The Seed of the faithful he eminently blessed especially of Abraham whom he took by reward into a further special Covenant superadded to the common Covenant of Grace taking his Seed into a peculiar political and gracious relation to him promising the multiplication and prosperity of them and that the Saviour should come out of them All which was so decreed to be done 419. 9. The Messiah came in the fulness of time and did and suffered all that is mentioned in the Gospel And gave us a more perfect Edition of the Covenant of Grace and greater grace with it even more of the Spirit with a better Ministry Ordinances and Church-state Which were so decreed to be done 420. 10. To some Nations of the Earth this second Edition of the Covenant of Grace that is the Gospel is freely promulgate or Preached who deserved it no more than others while others for sin are left under the first darker Edition and under desertions and grievous punishments for their fore-fathers and their own violation of it 421. 11. Where the Gospel cometh among many that all deserve rejection for the resisting of grace God giveth to some that grace which infallibly Converteth them and consequently justifieth adopteth and sanctifieth them All which he decreed 422. 12. Giving also Perseverance as aforesaid he finally justifieth all such in Judgement and Glorifieth Christ first and them with Christ singly and conjunctly at the final consummation And he Decreed to do all this accordingly 423. If the Decree of God be called but One for the Reasons before given the Controversie is then at an end But if it must be distinguished and called Many Decrees or parts it must be either from the Effects oâ— from the supposed objects 424. 1. If from the Effects there will be no Controversie about the Decrees but what is first about the Effects themselves And most of them now named are uncontroverted 425. 2. And we cannot well denominate and distinguish the Decrees from any thing else but the Effects even as we do his operations as Creation Redemption c. But the objects then are past doubt such as follow 426. Viz. 1. The object of the Decree of Creation as such distinct from the Effect is Nothing that is There is no object 427. 2. The object of the Decree of Legislation is man considered meerly in his Being and Naturals as such 428. 3. The object of the Decree of the first Judgement was man newly faln 429. 4. The object of the Decree of the giving of the Promise of Christ the New Covenant in the first Edition and pardon and grace by it was faln man first judged 430. 5. The object of the Common grace of that Covenant from first to last is faln judged man brought under that Covenant of grace ut norma officii judicii beneficii 431. 6. The object of the Special grace of God at first viz. for effectual Conversion to men under that Covenant was the same as last mentioned Man brought under the Covenant of grace of whom 1. Some were prepared and disposed by Common grace for Special 2. And it 's like some not but suddenly surpirzed by mercy 432. 7. The object of Abrahams special promise besides the Common Covenant of grace was Abraham eminent in faith and self-denying obedience to God And afterward his Seed for his sake 433. 8. The Object of the actual gift of Christ incarnate and the perfect Edition of the New Covenant by him was the sinful world that had transgressed both the Law of Innocency and the first Edition of the Covenant of grace and the Jews that had broken Moses's Law 434. 9. The object of the gift of the Gospel as promulgate or published is the same adding the world as now Redeemed by the Actual sacrifice Merits and Resurrection of Christ incarnate 435. 10. The object of the Commonest grace of the Gospel Covenant is Redeemed man brought under this Covenant as the Norma officii judicii beneficiorum quoad jus or subditi obligati 436. 11. The object of the grace of this Covenant proper to the Visible Church and common to its members are Visible Christians or Baptized Professours 437. 12. The object of the first effectual grace of saving Conversion saith and repentance is certain persons Redeemed and brought under the obligation of this new Covenant Of whom some are prepared by common grace and it's like some are not 438. 13. The object of the gift pardon justification adoption the spirit of sanctification and right to life and all this in Christ by union is a Penitent Believer and the seed of such dedicated in Covenant to God 439. 14. The object of many acts of auxiliary grace and of higher degrees of grace is ordinarily such as have well used former degrees of special grace But also who God is freely pleased to give it to 440. 15. The object of the grace of Perseverance is the same last mentioned If not all the Justified which I reserve as almost our only real Controversie to handle in its proper place in the next Chapter 441. 16. The object of the Act of Raising the dead is all the world as appeareth in Joh. 5. 22. to 32. 442. 17. The object of the Justification of the soul alone at the first appearance is the soul of a member of Christ or one faithful and persevering August ad Simplic lâ— â— qu. 2. Quia non invâ—â—â—â— Deus opera in hominibus quâ—â—ligâ—t idâ—o manâ—â— propositum justification is ipsâ—us sâ—d quia illâ—d â—â—â—â— ut justifiâ—â—t credâ—ntâ—s idâ—o invâ—nit opera quae jam â—ligat ad râ—gnum câ—lorâ—â— in his Covenant or a Saint 443. 18. The object of the final justification of the whole man is a Saint â—isen from
case 661. I intreat the Reader that is inclining to any extreams but to read â—over first those short answers of Prosper ad Capitulâ— Gallorum and ad Objectiones Vincent And most of the Sententiae de Capit. I shall think it worthy my labour to recite to force them on the Readers observation and let him see the highest old Doctrine of Gods Decrees Sent. 1. Whoever saith that by Gods Predestination as by fatal necessity men compelled into sins are constrained to death is not a Catholick For Gods Predestination doth by no means make men bad nor is the cause of any mans sin Sent. sup 2. He that saith that the Grace of Baptism received doth not take away Original sin from them that are not predestinated to life is not a Catholick For the Sacrament of Baptism by which all sins He meaneth that those that sincerely covenanted with God in Baptism were truly pardoned though he thought some of them fell away and perished are blotted out is true even in them who will not remain in the truth and for them that are not predestinated unto life Sent. sup 3. He that saith that they that are not predestinated to life though they were in Christ regenerated by Baptism and have lived piously and justly it profitteth them nothing but they are so long reserved till they fall to ruine and they are not taken out of this life till this happen to them as if the ruine of such men were to be referred to Gods constitution is not a Catholick For God doth not therefore prolong the time of any mans age that by long living he should fall to ruine and in his long living fall from the right â—aith seeing long life is to be numbered with the gifts of God by which a man should be better and not worse Sent. sup 4. He that saith that all are not called to Grace if he speak of such as Christ is not declared to is not to be reprehended Sent. sup 5. He that saith that they that are called are not equally called but some that they might believe and some that they might not believe as if to any man the Vocation were the cause of his not believing saith not right For though faith be not but by Gods Gift and Mans Will yet Infidelity is by mans will alone Sent. 6. He that saith that Pree-will in Man is Nothing but it 's Gods predestination which worketh in men whether it be to good or to evil is not a Catholick For Gods Grace doth not abolish mans choice or free-will but perfecteth it and revoketh and reduceth it into the way from error that that which was bad by its own liberty may by the operation of Gods Spirit be made right And Gods predestination is alwayes in Good which knoweth how either to pardon with the praise of mercy or punish with the praise of Justice the sin which is committed by mans will alone Sent. 7. He that saith that God for this cause giveth not Perseverance to some of his Children whom he regenerated in Christ to whom he gave faith hope and Love because by Gods fore-knowledge and predestination they were not differenced from the mass of perdition If he mean that God endowed these men in Goodness but would not have them remain in it and that he was the cause of their tâ—rning away he judgeth contrary to the Justice of God For though Gods Omnipotence could have given the grace of standing to them that will fall yet his grace doth not first forsake them before they have forsaken it And because he foresaw that they would do this by a Voluntary desertion therefore he had them not in the Election of Predestination Sent. 8. He that saith that God would not have all men saved but a certain number that are predestinate speaketh hardlier of the altitude of Gods unsearchable grace than he should speak Who would have all men to be saved and to come to the acknowledgement of the truth and fulfilleth the purpose of his will on them whom being foreknown he predestinated and being predestinate he called being called he justified and being justified he glorified Losing nothing of the fulness of the Gentiles and of all the seed of Israel for whom the eternal Kingdom was prepared in Christ before the foundation of the World For all the World is chosen out of all the World And out of all men all men are adopted So that they that are saved are therefore saved because God would have them saved and they that perish do perish because they deserve to perish Sent. 9. He that saith that our Saviour was not Crucified for the Redemption of the whole World looketh not to the Virtue of the Sacrament that is Sacrifice but to the part or participation of the unbelievers When as the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ is the Price of the whole World From which Price they are Aliens who being either delighted in their Captivity will not be redeemed or when they are redeemed return again to the same Captivity For the Word of the Lord falleth not nor is the redemption of the World evacuated For though the World in the vessels of wrath knew not God yet the World in the vessels of mercy knew him Which God without their preceding Merits took out of the power of darkness and translated into the Kingdom of the Son of his Love Sent. 10. He that saith that God substracteth from some the preaching of the Gospel lest perceiving the preaching of the Gospel they should be saved may decline the envy of the objection by the paâ—â—onage of our Saviour himself who would not work Miracles with some that he saith would have believed had they seen them And he forbad his Apostles to preach to some people and now suffereth some Nations to live without his Grace Sent. 11. He that saith that God by his Power compelleth men to sin is deservedly reprehended For God who is the Author of Justice and Goodness and all whose Statutes and Commands are against sin is not to be thought to compell any to sin and precipitate them from innocency into crimes But if there be any of so profound impiety as that they are reckoned to be beyond the remedy of correction they receive not an increase of their iniquity from God but are made â—â—â—â— by themselves because they deserved to be left of God and given up to themselves and to deceivers for their former sins that so their sin should be a punishment of their sin Sent. 12. He that saith that obedience is withdrawn from some that are called and live piously and righteously that they may cease to obey doth think ill of Gods Goodness and Justice as seeming to constrain the godly to ungodliness and to take away good mens innocency from them When as He is the Giver and Keeper of godliness and innocency He therefore that adhereth to God is acted by the Spirit of God but he that departeth from God doth fall from his obedience
loving obeying and overcoming and so to justifie us primarily by his Merits and Covenant and subordinately by our performance of the Conditions And 10. He that believes that instead of all this we our selves did by Christ as our legal Person both keep all the Law of Works from first to last and merit Life and also satisfie Gods Justice for not keeping the Law and so redeem our selves or suffer in Christ for our own Sins and purchase Pardon and Salvation for our selves 11. Or that God accounteth us so to have done what we did not 12. And so that it is the Law of Works and Innocency by which we our selves are justified 13. And that for meriting in Christ we are fixed presently in the immutable state of eternal life which is the Reward 14. And that this is not a Reward to Christ only but to us as Meriters in him He that can believe all this with abundance more of the Libertine new Gospel-Doctrine commonly called Antinomian which dependeth on it doth quite differ from my Faith who believe that Christ suffered satisfied fulfilled the Law and merited in the Person of a free Mediator only fulfilling all his own mediatorial Law or Covenant and receiving his Reward and freely upon these Merits and his Power received making a Deed of Gift of Himself and Life Pardon Adoption Spirit and Glory to all that truly consent to his Covenant and overcoming do persevere therein and perform sincere Obedience to the last by which Law or Covenant he will judge men at last that is will justifie or condemn them And this short and plain Doctrine of Faith is it which I am constrained by the full and plain testimony of the Scriptures to embrace And I never yet saw any thing against it which is not easily confuted though my life is not like to be long enough nor am I idle enough to write against all that have written against me In conclusion I must give notice to the Reader that there are many great and weighty Points of great difficulty concerning our LOVE to GOD and the order of it in respect to Faith Repentance the love of our selves and our felicity and our love to Creatures c. which I pass by in this Treatise as having spoken with some care of them in my Christian Directory in the Appendix to the Chap. Of loving God in Tom. 1. And if that seem too intricate to any as being too long in brief I suppose that the Thomists grosly err in placing beatitude chiefly in the Intellect and their Reasons especially as Medina useth them are very weak and the Scotists are more sound who place it in the Will and those other most sound who place it in the perfection of the whole man actively but objectively in God And most plainly that very plain judicious School-man Aegidius Romanus Quodlib 3. Qu. 18. p. 187 188. who saith in short 1. That God is the final Object simply 2. That the love of God or velle is the final act or beatitude formaliter 3. That beatitude or rather the ratio finis is principally in the Object and next in the Act 4. That subserviently or quodam genere the visio Dei is the Object and the velle videre Deum the Act. See also Aegidius Quodl 4. qu. 11. clearly proving three ways that we must love God above our selves yea and not properly for our selves but for himself and our selves and all things for him But 1. I think he mistaketh in saying that the Act of the Will is not the Object of the Will and so that Visio and not Amor are felicity objective For as Amesius saith Dicimus omnium gentium consensu volo velle and one Act may be the Volition of the next and a complacency in that past And what doth a Believer will more than perfectly to love God next to God himself And Amo Amore is an Act that we have full experience of 2. And I am past all doubt that Beatitudo nostra qua talis is not the principal end of man but God 1. In his own Perfection or God-head 2. The fulfilling or pleasing of the Divine Will 3. The Glory of Gods Image or Perfections as shining 1. In the Universe 2. And therein most eminently in the glorified Society 3. And therein most eminently in the Person of Christ 4. And next in all those that are most excellent in their Order 5. And among them in our selves our holiness and felicity And this but in our own rank and place For our Perfection and Unity with Christ and the glorified will end all that narrow corrupt selfishness which now maketh men dream that they are chiefly their own ends that is their own gods and that their Beatitude is the highest final notion as if God were to be loved chiefly for our selves as the means of our Beatitude It being worth the considering whether it be not a wrong to God to love him at all sub ratione medii to our selves as an end though we must love him as the first Efficient of all our Good and our Great Benefactor our selves and benefits being but means to Him though yet not He but many of his Gifts may be loved as means to our Happiness and that and all things for God himself Among the Scotists Rada well openeth this Case and the worst of them all in 4. Sent. de Beatitud is far better than Dr. Stern the Dublin Physitian in his Medela Animae and too many more novel immature Disputers who would make our Happiness the chiefest end both of our selves and God meerly because that God can have no addition of Felicity A reason vainly excluding such other respects as men that write of such Subjects should not be ignorant of especially when they reproach the School-men and save themselves the labour of understanding them when though they are too presumptuous and curious yet one Rada one Aegid Column Rom. one Joseph Angles c. hath more clear explication of such Difficulties as they presumptuously tamper with than an hundred of our late Oratorical Novelists who are proud of their undigested new Philosophy and their unripe daring Wits THE Second Part. OF GODS GOVERNMENT AND MORAL WORKS SECT I. The first Law 1. GOd the free Creator Lord and Benefactor of the world was pleased to make his Creatures of various ranks and among the Rational to make Man a free undetermined self-determining Agent not fixed by Necessity in Love and Obedience but left with a Power of Loving and Obeying which he could use or not use that so he might be a fit subject of Gods Moral Government by Laws and perswasions in this world in order to a more fixed state of holiness Not but that Angelical Confirmation had been better for us But it pleased not God to compose the universe of Creatures only of the noblest order 2. When God exerciseth only a Moral not-determining operation upon this world of Free Agents it is not any dishonour to his
received but by degrees and upon certain terms And with pardon a free gift of Life Spiritual and Eternal and so of the Spirit and Communion with God on the said conditions 15. The Promise Gen. 3. 15. is plain as to Mercy and Salvation and darker as to the promised seed and his mediation and dark as to the Condition on man's part But by Sacrifices c. it is like that Adam had it more explained to him than those short words make it to us But this is clear that by this new Covenant God becometh man's Merciful Redeemer and Pardoner and Ruler on terms of Grace in order to recovery and Salvation And that man was to Believe in God as such and accorâ—ingly to devote himself in Covenant to him 16. This Law or Covenant was made with all Mankind in Adam For all were in his loins and God hath given us no more proof that the first Covenant was made with Adam as the Father of Mankind than that the second was so made 17. Gods dealings with Mankind are a certain confirmation of this truth and an exposition and promulgation of this Law and Covenant of Grace as extended to all Mankind For God doth not use them according to the rigor of the violated Law of Innocency but giveth them abundant merâ—ies and means which tend to their Repentance and recovery and obligeth them all to Believe that he is merciful and their case is not desperate and to Repent and use his means and mercies in order to their return to God and their Salvation There are no Nations in the world that even to this day are not under such mercies means and obâ—â—gations and therefore none that are left as the Devils in Despair under the unremedyed Covenant of Innocency alone 18. But though the Law of Grace made to Adam be it which the world was then put under and to be Ruled by and the tenor of it extended to all Mankind yet those that would partake of the Blessingâ— of it were to consent to it as Covenanters with God and to Belieâ—â— in and obey God their Redeemer pardoner and restorer in the thankful sence of all this mercy which because the ungodly did not they and their posterity fell under a double guilt and curse both as violateâ—â—s of the Law of Innocency and of Grace and therefore incurred a specâ—â—â— penalty Cain and his off-spring being first thrust out further from the believing obedient people of God and at last the whole world except eight persons perishing in the deluge 19. Noah with his house being saved to be the Root of all Mankind that should succeed him God renewed with him and Mankind in him the same Law or Covenant of Grace which he had made with us in Adam with some additionals To shew us that though the wicked and their seed had forfeited the benefits yet the Covenant was not altered but stood in its first sence in force to all and would pardon and save all true Consenters 20. C ham for his transgression brought a new Curse on himself and his posterity besides the meer fruit of Adam's Sin So that thougâ— God altered not his Law of Grace yet they became a cursed Generation 21. By multiplyed transgressions the Sons of men did still more degenerate and revolt from God till Nimrod and others by wickedneâ—â— and presumptions brought down the new and grievous penalty of confounded tongues the great hinderance of the propagation of the truth to thâ—â— day And at last the most fell to odious Idolatry not knowing the true God but given up to sensuality and wickedness 22. Abraham being faithful and escaping the Idolatry and wickednest of the world was eminently favoured and beloved of God and beâ—â—â—ving Abraham's Promise and trusting God in his promises and in the great tryal of his Sâ—â— is honoured with the name of the Father of the Faithful And God renewed with him the Covenant of Grace which he had made to all men in Adam and Noah with special application to his comfort and addedâ— special peculiar Promise to him that his Seed should be a holy Nation chosen out of all the world to God and that of him the Messiah should come of both which Promises the common and the special Circumcision was a Seal 23. Yet this was no repealing of the Law of Grace which had been made to all the world nor was it an excommunicating or rejecting of all others or a confining of Gods Grace and Church to him and his posterity alone but only an exalting them above all others in these peculiar dignities and priviledges For at that time holy Sem was living and long after who in all likelyhood was a King and its like that the Posterity of him and Japhet were not all faln away from God and Melcâ—â—zedek was such a King of Righteousness and Peace and Priest of the most high God as was a great type of Christ's own Heavenly Priesthood and therefore it 's like had some Subjects that feared and worshipped God The Scripture giving us the History of the Jewish Nation and affairs â—â— the principal and of the rest of the world but a little on the by we cannot know by it the full state of all other Nations nor what Religion and Worshippers of God were there But the History of Job and his Friends the probability that all the Children of Ismael of Keturah of Esau forsook not God for they were circumcised and therefore were Covenanters with the Case of Nineve after and Abraham's thoughts that even a Sodom had at least had fifty righteous persons in it c. assureth us that the Jews were not God's only Church but a peculiar people and a Nation holy above the rest And as the Covenant of Grace was still the Governing Law to the rest of the world though most rejected it by rebellion so it is not to be thought that none consonted to it and were faithful 24. The special promise to Abraham of the Messiah to be his seed which was more than was made to Adam and Noah as it belonged not to Mankind in general so was it not promulgate or known to them but only to the Jews and the few that conversed with them Therefore the rest of the world were not obliged to know and believe it who never heard of it 25. What Conditions of pardon and life were necessary to all Mankind The terms of the Universal Covenant then in general is most probably gathered out of these Texts of Scripture Exod. 34. 6 7. And the Lord-proclaimed the Name of the Lord The Lord the Lord God Merciful and Gracious long suffering and abundant in Goodness and Truth keeping Mercy for thousands forgiving iniquity transgression and sin and that will by no means clear the guilty visiting the iniquity of the Fathers upon the Children and to the Childrens Children unto the third and to the fourth Generation This is the description of God given by his own mouth as he is to
all his Benefits are ever free Gifts â—â— to the matter and value first and then the relation of a Reward is bâ— secondary as to the Order of collation and the reason comparative whâ— one man hath them rather than another as a thankful Child hath the Gift which the Contemner goeth without 2. And that here Not to have this Gift forfeited by our sin is to be punished And so hâ—â—â— non-donari is puniri materially though the relations differ 3. And that it is the same Righteousness of Christ which meriteth our Impunity quoad damnum sensum and which meriteth our Right to the Gift of Life both sub ratione doni as a Gift and sub ratione condonationis as a forgiveness of the forfeiture and of the poena damni So that here â—â— no room for the conceit that Christ's death was only to purchase Pardon and his Righteousness to merit Life That which confoundeth men here is their taking the divers Respects and Connotations and Coâ—ceptions of one and the same thing to be divers separable things Thâ— same Law hath the Preceptive part to do and not do and the Retributing part penal and rewarding The same Obedience of Adam was â—â— doing what was commanded and a deserving what was promised â—â—â—â— more was promised to persevering Perfection than to the first act of Obedience One Sin deserved death but one act of Obedience desernâ—â— not immutable Glory And as the same Act is formally Obedience related to the Command and formally meritorious or praemiandus â—â— related to the Promise And the same Act is sin and punishable as related to the Precept or Prohibition and Threatening so the same Glory is a free Gift in one respect as related ut bonum to God as Benefactor and a Reward in another as related quoad ordinem conferendi to God â—â— Rector And the same loss of Glory is poena related to the Threatening and it is the loss of a Reward as related to the Promise And so the sâ—â—â— Merits of Christ's active and passive and habitual Righteousness because our Glory both by giving us pardon of our forfeiture and by Covenant-Donation and as a Reward to Christ and to us when â—â— perform the conditions of his Gift 133. And it is certain that Christ's Sufferings are first satisfactory and then meritorious being a part of his Active that is voluntary Oâ—dience And Christ's Holiness and Obedience are meritorious of pardon â—â— Sin as well as of Salvation 134. If there be as there is any thing which is given us througâ—â— Christ more than our own Innocency or Obedience would have mâ—â—â—ted the Gift of that is more than remission of Sin And is to be ascribeâ— accordingly to the Purchase of Christ's Merits But yet both his Holiness and Sufferings though not as sufferings did merit it And that was not a fulfilling of the Law in our stead 135. This superadded Gift what-ever it is seemeth in Scripture to be included in Adoption and not in Justification But yet it may in this sense be called Justification in that when our Right to that Gift is questioned that Right must be justified by the Covenant-Donation and by Christ's meritorious Purchase of it But this is only de nomine We are agreed of the thing 136. It is greatly to be noted that as a Reward is in the formal notion more than not punishing where materially they are the same so Christ hath not at all merited that eternal Life should be ours by way of Reward for our fulfilling the Law in him but that it should ours by his free Gift as a Reward to Christ for his own Merits So that the Relation of a Reward for Perfection belongeth only formally to Christ who taketh it as his benefit that we are saved through his love to Souls but not at all to us And to say as too many hold that Heaven is our Reward for our perfection of Holiness and Obedience in and by Christ is a Humane Invention subverting Christ's Gospel or unfit speech if better meant 137. Yet a Reward it is to us to be glorified but that is not for our fulfilling the Law of Innocency by Christ but for our believing in Christ and performing the conditions of the Covenant of Grace which giveth us Life as a free Gift but yet in the order of the condition it hath the relation and name of a Reward to us in the Scripture 138. So that here are three rewarding Covenants before us 1. The Covenant or Law of Innocency rewarding man for perfection to the end And this rewarded none but Christ And it is false that we are rewarded by that Covenant or justified by it for Christ's fulfilling it But it All the stir of the Papists is to prove that we have inherent Righteousness as well as pardon which Protestants are as much for as they The rest is de nomine justificationis Malder 1. 2. q. 113. a. 2. p. 572. Apostolus 2 Cor. 5. non aliud vult quam Christum cui nullum debebatur supplicium factum fuisse hostiam pro nostro peccato ut nos qui apud Deum nihil merebamur praeter supplicium justitia Dei fieremus in ipso id est gratis sine nostris operibus consequeremur per ipsius merita justitiam coram Deo What doth this differ from the Doctrine of the Reformed Churches Idem ibid Quando Apostolus dicit multos constitui justos per unius obedientiâ—â— significatur causa meritoria non autem formalis And so say we But some call Christ's Righteousness the causa materialâ—s meaning no more but that it is the matter of that Merit for which we are justified As if Adam had perfectly fulfilled the Law his fulfilling it had been meritorious of his sentential Justification and yet the matter of his constitutive Justification that is of his Righteousness And some uâ—â—ptly call it the formal cause But an unapt logical notion is not an error in Faith or Theology Idem ib. p. 573. Quamvis â—x omnino rigida justitia solus Christus Dominus satisfactat de condigno tamen ita ut merces operi â—ono debeatur post Dei promissionem meretur justus coronam justisiâ— quam reddet in illa die justus judex Est nostra justitia tota totum meritum tota satisfactio dependens a meâ—ito satisfactione Christi Still here is a wordy Controversie justified Christ 2. The Law or Covenant made only to and with Christ the Mediator And this Covenant further rewarded Christ as Mediator giving him all that it promised to himself and us for his performing the mediatorial conditions And so our Life is Christ's Reward 3. The Covenant or Law of Grace for it is the same thing in several respects that 's called the Law and the Covenant which giving Life on the condition of Faith doth justifie and reward Believers And we are justified and rewarded by no other Law 139. When Rom. 4. oft saith and other Texts that we are
hatred and other punishment God then is reconciled because they are not objects of his hatred And to take away the Reatum poenae and the Reatum culpae non in se sed quoad poenam is all one and all that both sides mean if they understand what they say But to all eternity it will be true that we once sinned which none deny obedience 5. Or as if there were any obedience whose end is not Righteousness and Justification against the change of the contrary disobedience Do not these men obey that they may be so far righteous Or is not every man so far Righteous as he doth Righteousness Is not every man that loveth God justifiable as a Lover of him for so far as he loveth him 6. And is not Gratitude an end and a thing commanded by the Law If we obeyed perfectly in Christ we were perfectly thankful in Christ 7. But if they say that Christ fulfilled only the Law made to Adam for us and not his own Law of Grace and therefore that he obeyed for us only to the ends of that Law I answer 1. If the ends and matter of that Law be fulfilled by us in him our obedience to any other must be needless For he that is supposed never to have sinned need not use any means for pardon or remedy 2. By this rule Christ only fulfilled the Law for Adam and Eve and for us only as we were in them which is only Virtually and not Actually at all but not at all for us according to any obligation that ever fell upon our persons For 1. We were never personally bound to perfect personal perpetual obedience as the Condition of life For that Covenant as to the promise and condition ceased before any man was born 2. And all the duty in the world which â—â— are bound to is to be done for Evangelical ends for recovering Grace and unto Gratitude c. To say therefore that we are perfectly Righteous as having perfectly obeyed all Gods Law in Christ and yet that we are bound to obey all that Law that ever we were under to another end and that Christ obeyed for us only as to that which we were never under personally but virtually in Adam this is to say and unsay 8. Lastly they see not that their own answer implyeth the truth of what we assert and is the same that we give which their cause is uncapable of â—â— We say that Christ did indeed most perfectly obey the Law of Innocency so far for us and in our stead though not in our persons as that he hath vindicated the truth and glory of God and his Law by doing that which we should have done and did not And hath merited for us a better Covenant which obligeth us not at all to obey for the ends of the first Covenant viz. that our perfection might be our Righteousness or the condition of life but only to obey for the ends of the new Covenant for the obtaining and improving of Recovering Grace and Salvation by Christ freely given us which we our selves must do or perish 190. And whereas they tell us that We may as well say that man must not dye because Christ dyed for us as not obey because Christ obeyed for us They strangely use our reason against themselves and know it not For we say that we must dye because we did not perfectly either obey the Law or suffer all its penalty by Christ as our legal person But he suffered only to satisfie Justice in tantumâ— to this end that man himself suffering death and temporal afflictions and obeying the Law of Grace might be saved from all the rest of the punishment But if we had so fulfilled the Law as aforesaid by Doing or suffering we could not have dyed nor suffered the least affliction as a penalty For all punishment in the essence of the â—elation is for sin 191. And when they say that It is no more inconvenient to say that Christ was perfect in our person than that he satisfied in our person and we by him I answer 1. Both are false and subvert the Gospel as aforesaid 2. But yet we may fitly say that Christ suffered in the person of a Sinner but mark the sence 1. Suffering as penal belongeth to a Sinner as such But Satisfaction is an Effect of Christ's suffering which resulteth not from the meer suffering nor from the person of a Sinner but from the Will and Covenant of God made to that excellent person who was God and perfect Man So that it is not so aptly said He satisfyed as it is that he suffered in the person of a Sinner 2. Note that it is not any other man's person that we mean that Christ suffered in but his own And we mean that he took upon him the person of a Sinner himself in as much as he consented to suffer for Sin And so personating here is not meant becoming any other man's person in Law sense so as that other legally suffered what he did But it is only his own persons becoming a sufferer in the stead of Sinners for their Sins As the Apostle saith He was made sin for us so he might as truly have said He was made a sinner for us that is so far by Imputation as that he undertook to suffer as Sinners suffer and for their sins But because wordy controversies seeming real are the great troubleâ—s of the world lest any should think that we differ more than indeed we do I would fain bring the matter as far from under the ambiguity of words as possibly I can To which end I further add 1. That as we hold that Adam was the Natural Root or Parent of Mankind so also that Christ was the Foederal Root of all the saved and in several respects though not all a second Adam 2. Adam was but one single Natural person nor did God by error or arbitrary reputation esteem or account him to be any other than he was None of our persons were distinct persons in Adam nor those persons that now they are Therefore we were not so personally in him at his fall But all our persons are in time and mediately by our Progenitors derived lineally from him yet we deny not all Souls to be from God and all Bodies an accretion of the common Elements not as having been Persons existent in him but being Persons caused remotely by him Our present Persons were seminally or virtually in him which is as much as to say that not the Person but the Semen Personae vel virtus causalis was in him To be only Virtually or Causally or Seminally in Adam is in proper speech for that Person not really to have been in him For Causa non est effectus Virtus generativa non est Persona generata To be only Virtually in Adam is terminius diminuens as to personal inexistence and denyeth it And as Dr. Twisse hath oft well asserted It is our natural relation to Adam
in the heart and so maketh the Creed to be more properly this Law than the Scriptures as being written only on particular occasions But though we thankfully confess that the essentials of Christianity are so plain and few as may be remembred yet the Creed is contained and explained in the Scripture and without written Records our Faith would have been but ill preserved as experience and reason prove 7. That their Law as such discovered sin but gave not the Spirit of Grace to overcome it Insomuch as though he himself desired perfectly to fulfil it without sin yet he could not but was under a captivity that is a moral necessity of imperfection or sins of infirmity from which only the Grace of Christ could as to guilt and power deliver him 8. That no man ever came to Heaven by that way of merit which they dreamed of but all by the way of Redemption Grace free Gift and pardoning Mercy Therefore their conceit that they were just in the main and forgiven their sins and so justifiable by the meer dignity of Mose's Law which they kept and by the Works of the Law and not by the free Gift Pardon and Grace of a Redeemer and by the Faith and practical belief of that Gift and acceptance of it with thankful penitent obedient hearts was a pernicious errour But the true way of Righteousness was to become true Christians that is with such a penitent thankful accepting practical belief or affiance to believe in God as the Giver of Salvation in Christ as the Redeemer and his Spirit as our Life and Sanctifier and to accept Christ and all his procured Benefits Justification and Life as purchased by his Sacrifice and meritorious Righteousness and given in the New Covenant on this condition and so to give up our selves to his whole saving-work as to the Physician of our Souls and only Mediator with God This is the sum of Paul's Doctrine on this point 363. I say again therefore for any man to say that some one physical act either assent or consent or affiance upon one particular Object Christ's Righteousness as offered us is the instrumental cause of our Justification and that to look to be justified by any other act of Faith on Christ or on the Father or Holy Ghost or on Heaven the final Object God in Glory or secondarily as subsequent parts of the condition of Salvation by Repentance by praying for Pardon by forgiving others by Obedience to Christ c. is to look to be justified by Works in the sense that Paul excludeth them this is but to abuse the Gospel and the Church by a scandalous misinterpretation of a great part of the New Testament 364. St. James therefore having to do with some who thought that Leg. Placeum in Thes Salvin de hâ—sce Vol. 1. Conrad Bergium in Prax. Cathol â— e Blank Thes de Just and our Mr. Gibbon's Serm. Of Justif in the Morning-Exercises at Giles in the Fields Paraeus de Justif Cont. Bellarm. l. 2. c. 7. p. 469. Nos imputari nobis Christi justitiam ut per â—am formaliter justi nominâ—mâ—r simus neque diximus unquam neque sentimus ut aliquoties jam ostendimus Id enim pugnaret non minus cum recta ratione quam si reus in judicio absolutus diceret se clementia judicis donantis sibi vitam formaliter justum esse c. the bare profession of Christianity was Christianity and that Faith was a meer assent to the Truth and that to believe that the Gospel is true and trust to be justified by Christ was enough to Justification without Holiness and fruitful Lives and that their sin and barrenness hindered not their Justification so that they thus believed perhaps misunderstanding Paul's Epistles doth convince them that they were mistaken and that when God spake of Justification by Faith without the Works of the Law he never meant a Faith that containeth not a resolution to obey him in whom we believe nor that is separated from actual Obedience in the prosecution But that as we must be justified by our Faith against the charge of being Infidels so must we be justified by our Gospel personal holiness and sincere Obedience against the charge that we are unholy and wicked or impenitent or Hypocrites or else we shall never be adjudged to Salvation that is justified by God 365. All this then is past controversie among considerate understanding men 1. That Works justifie us not as perfect according to the Covenant of Innocence because we have them not 2. That the Works or keeping of Mose's Law as conceited sufficient or as set in opposition against or competition with a Saviour or free Gift or any otherwise than as the exercises of meer Obedience under Christ as Mary â—â—chary Elizabeth Simeon John Baptist David c. used them could justifie no man 3. That consequently no other Works set up either in the said opposition or competition or as any thing of Merit or worth is ascribed to them which is proper to Christ or any part of the honour of Gods free Gift can justifie no man nor any other way than as meer conditions and exercises of thankful obedience or acceptance in pure subordination to God's Mercy and Christ's Merits and the free Gift But that Works are not excluded from being conditions of our justification or the matter of it in any of these following respects 1. That Faith it self which is our act and an act of Obedience to God and is the â—iducial accepting belief in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost for the benefits of the Covenant is the condition of our first Covenant-right to these Benefits 2. That this Faith is not actual Obedience to Christ as Christ at first but only to God as God But it is the Souls subjection to Christ as Christ which is our Covenant-consent to our future Obedience and virtually though not actually containeth our future Obedience in it 3. That there is somewhat of love consent or willingness of Desire of Hope of Repentance which goeth to make up this moral work of Faith as it is the condition even our first Christianity it self 4. That as the making of a Covenant is for the performing of it and subjection is for Obedience and Marriage for conjugal Duties so our said first Covenanting-Faith is for our future Faith Hope Comfort and grateful Obedience and Holiness And these are the secondary parts of the condition of Salvation And so are the secondary parts of our Justifications condition as continued or not-lost and consummate For to justifie us is as is said to justifie our Right to Impunity and Glory â— That as is said our own performance of the condition of the free Gift of Impunity and Glory by the New Covenant purchased by Christ's Righteousness is the thing to be tried and judged in Gods judgment And therefore we must so far be then justified from the charge of â—ot performing that condition of
of the great alterations in the World being admirably fetcht from the various Passive or Receptive dispositions of matter no wonder Cum Thomistae dicunt Deum suo auxilio efficaci physice praedeterminare Voluntatem ad actum bonum non excludunt Motionem Moralem sed eam praesuâ—â—â—â—â—â— Alvarez de Aâ—xil disp 23. p. 108. â—â— if it be so with mans soul also A spark of fire which long was unseen if you put Straw Gunpowder or other fuel to it may burn a City or Kingdom when yet the fuel is not an efficient cause save the fire that is in it but an objective Matter What work doth a Student find all his life among Books What abundance of knowledge doth he learn by them which he had none of in his Infancy And so do Travellers by viewing the actions of the World And all these are but fuel to the fire The soul only is the Agent and all these are signs and objects that do nothing really on the soul at all You may lead a Beast up and down and govern them by objects which yet act nothing on them So Satan doth by the Drunkard Glutton Fornicator Gamester Covetous c. What Reputed work do objects make on them by doing nothing Thus Verâ—m Bonum are said to work And the case is this The Active Spirit is not only Naturally Active but Essentially Inclined to some certain objects Truth and Goodness And this Inclination being their very Nature when the object is duly presented to it and it self delivered from all false objects and erroneous Action on them and ill habits thence contracted it will Naturally work accordingly And therefore duly externally and internally to bring God and Holy objects to the prospect of the soul is the way of working them to God And sure the World would never make such a stir about Preaching to get fit men and to perswade them to diligence and to keep sound doctrine c. if these objective causes as fuel to the fire did not do much by occasioning the Active soul to do its proper work 9. Yet still remember again that Jesus Christ is the Political Head of Influx if not more who sendeth forth the Spirit as he please but ordinarily upon his setled Gospel terms to work on souls by his threefold fore-mentioned influx with and by these means according to them but in an unsearchable manner As God doth in Nature by the Sun and other Natural Causes SECT XI What Free-Will Man hath to Spiritual Good c. § 1. THe understanding of the Nature of the Power and Liberty of the Will is the very key to open all the rest of the controverted difficulties in these matters But having spoken of it so much before in the former part of this Book and more elsewhere I shall no further weary the Reader with repetitions than to note these few things following § 2. If any like not the name of Free-will Libera Voluntas let them but agree about these two the Power of the Will and Free-choice * * * Nolite esse adeo delicati ut abhorreatis ab usâ— vocabuli Lib. arbit Hypocritarum propriâ—m est rixari de vocabulis Nemo offendatur hoc titulo quia August in multae Volum singulis fere pagellis ad fastidium Lectoris hoc vocabulum inculcat Melancth Loc. Com. de lib. arb c. 1. Liberum arbitrium and they need not contend about Free-will § 3. 1. As to the first It is the very Essence of the Will to be a natural Power or faculty of Willing Good and Nilling evil apprehended by the Intellect and commanding the inferiour faculties either politically or despotically difficultly or easily perfectly or imperfectly according to its resolution and their Receptivity § 4. 2. The Liberty of choice is not only Libertas Voluntatis but Libertas Hominis when a man may have what he chooseth or willeth Here the Act of choosing is the Wills but the object is somewhat else either an Imperate act of some inferiour faculty or some extrinsick thing So we say truly that the unbeliever or unconverted sinner may believe may repent may have Christ and life if he will as Dr. Twisse frequently asserteth § 5. 3. But the Liberty of the Will it self is but the mode of its self-determination as without constraint it is a self-determining principle in its elicite Acts considered comparatively § 6. The Liberty of the Will is threefold 1. Liberty of Contradiction or exercitii 2. Of †††Note that the Papists confess that by Christs Case it is proved that Libertas specificationis inter bonum malum is not necessary to merit So Pet. â— S. Joseph Thes Univers pag. 90. Contrariety or specification in the Act 3. Of objective specification which is Liberty of Competition 1. The first Liberty is to will or not will to nill or not nill 2. The second is Liberty to will or nill this 3. The third is Liberty to will This object or That or to nill This or That * * * Of the real difference of these three see Rob. Baron Metaphys I take not that which many Schoolmen call Liberty of Complacence to be another sort of Liberty Though I distinguish Liberty of simple Complacence from Liberty of election as being a prior distribution And I deny not but that Liberty of Complacency specially may stand with necessity of immutable disposition yea and with some sort of necessitating operation of God as is in Christ and the Glorified And in this large essential sense Liberum and Voluntarium are all one supposing Voluntarium to be the act of a self-determining unconstrained will So that the word Free-will being so exceeding ambiguous as my foresaid Scheme sheweth we must be sure that we pretend not the Controversies de nomine to be de re But it is the Indifferency of a Viators will that we have now to do with and not that state of perfect determination or that Amplitude or advancement of the will which Gibieâ—f and such others talk of And note that by Posse agere vel non agere which we put into the definition of free-will we must not mean that Potentia moralis metaphorica which is nothing but the wills moral disposition or habit but the Potentia Naturalis And so it may be said of Christ and the glorified that their not sinning or not willing sin is not ex impotentia naturali but ex perfectione § 7. The Will hath not all these sorts of Liberty about every object For it cannot will known evil as such c. But it hath all these about several objects § 8. By this power and Liberty the Will is made of God to be a kind of Causa prima secundum quid of the Moral ORDER or specification of its own acts Not simply or strictly a Causa prima For 1. It was God the first Cause that gave man this self-determining Power 2. It is God that upholdeth it And so it
to the work of Redemption his notions are too floridly or ambiguously delivered for me to undertake with confidence to unriddle But this seemeth the summ 1. That God is the fountain of Being by Emanation as the Sun of light And that his eternal Wisdom is Jesus Christ in the first instant or nature 2. That the first â—reature that he made or emaneth from him is a perfect universal mind the platform of all the rest of the Creation such as the old Philosophers called the soul of the world or an universal Intelligence And that this is Jesus Christ in his second nature and notion which Arius knew but did ill deny his divine nature 3. That this Universal Spirit or Mind maketh all the world besides and is in them all And so the whole Creation else was Christs first shadowy Image or body 4. That the Angels are the noblest parts of this and that the Deity first and Christs superangelical nature next is one in them all and they one with him as the beams with the Sun and as the lower part of the Sun-beams with the parts next the Sun 5. That the soul of man is the next part of Christs shadowy Image into which he descended 6. And so into all Bodies 7. And as into a special Branch into that Body born of the Virgin Mary 8. And in that and in other Bodies he dyeth and descendeth to his lowest state and 9. Then as the Sun doth rise again and bring all back to the state of pure spirituality in his superangelical nature whence all sprang And this is their Redemption which is most floridly set forth § 13. This doctrine seemeth to reconcile Philosophy or Gentilism and Christianity For what is it almost but names that are left in difference That which a Philosopher will call an universal Intelligence or soul of the world he calleth Christ And if such a soul there be no one will deny but that it floweth into all particular souls and bodies and is united to them or is to individuals as the soul in the head to the soul in the hand and foot § 14. And if I did believe that sin death hell and holiness life Glory are in the world but as Winter and Summer Night and Day and as Origen that the wicked are but in a state of Revolution and shall come about again into a state of hope or as he here seemeth that their sin and misery is but like the dying of a flower in the fall that shall in the Spring again be as before or rather another in its stead and that it is but the retiring of Christ from the Creature as the spirit of the Tree in Autumn from the Leaves I should then be ready to receive his Necessitating Predetermination to sin and fit all the rest of my opinions hereunto § 15. There is among many others one Joh. Jessenius à Jessen Doctor Eques Hungarus who in a Tract de Anima Corpore Universi hath written much to the like purpose save as being a Peripatetick he differeth from the Platonists viz. The world is one Animal and hath one soul and body which all Creatures are parts of That Stars are Intellectuals or Angels and all intuitively know each others minds loving the good and hating the evil here and are our chief friends and Keepers That Death befalleth only us lower Creatures Mors continua singulis nulli tamen aeterna Nam post longissimum temporis excursum quem Plato triginta insuper aliquot annorum millibus determinare ausus est removebitur factâ iterum aliquâ secundùm naturam solutione redintegratione And the Intellectus Agens he describeth as Mr. Sterry doth Christ in his second or middle nature pag. 165. Intellectum agentem substantia primae atque Dei fulgorem esse Non accidens sed substantiam Intelligeâ—tem quaeprimò propriéque Intellectus dicitur agens Primae substantiae adhaerens ab ea excurrens indivisus indivisibilis non aliter ac Lumen à Lucido emanat and so in many other particulars § 16. To all this my short time will allow me to give you but these short observations following 1. The doctrine of Redemption is so much of meer supernatural Revelation as that we must not easily receive that concerning it which is not in the Scriptures And where Christs person hath such a description in Scripture as he giveth I am not satisfied e. g. in pag. 232. where he thus saith The Word made flesh is the whole Tree of Being Uncreated and Created the Root the Body with all the Branches putting forth themselves into one little top branch now withering that through its death they may renew all to a fresh and flourishing spring I am loth to say that the Universe is Christ that his Divinity is the soul and the world his body and every Man and Beast and substance part of it and that he dyeth in all that dye and that his body born of the Virgin Mary was but one top branch of the Tree which Christ thus animateth and so that all other bodies are as truly personally united to the Word as that § 17. I will not deny that the Opinion of a Threefold nature in Christ looketh very plausibly viz. that the Divine eternal word the first nature produced and united it self to the prime created superangelical Mind the second nature and that this second nature in the fulness of time produced and united it self to the humane third nature 1. There are many texts which seem to countenance it 2. It seemeth to give Christ the greatest honour as being the most excellent of all Gods Creatures which is not so easily believed of him as Man 3. It seemeth to expound those texts of the Old Testament which mention such appearances of God to Adam Abraham and others which many of the Ancients say was Christ And it seemeth to some more probable that some pre-existent created nature should assume a body than the Divine nature only and immediately 4. And it smileth on us as an opinion likely to reduce and reconcile the Arians once too great a part of the Christian World as called Christians as not only Philostorgius and Saudius shew but also Petavius de Trinit who holding the prime-created super-angelical nature and denying the Divine it 's like would the more easily be brought to acknowledge the Union of the Divine Nature with the super-angelical if the super-angelical it self were first granted them For they might the sooner be convinced that the eternal wisdom or word which made that first creature was intimately united to it I know some pious worthy persons who upon such reasons incline to this opinion of a threefold nature in Christ Though some of them think that this second nature was the humane soul assuming only a body and others that it assumed both soul and body I am not forward to take men for unsufferable Hereticks that differ from me or hold that which seemeth to me hard and
his overlooking and undervaluing Gods Design in Making and Governing free Intellectual agents by his Sapiential Moral Directive way He supposeth this way to be so much below that of Physical Motion and Determination as that it is not to be considered but as an instrument thereof As if it were unworthy of God to give any creature a Meer Power Liberty Law and Moral Means alone and not to Necessitate him Positively or Negatively to Obey or Disobey And this looking only at Physical Good Being and Motion and thereby thinking lightly of Sapiential Regency is the summ as of his so of Hobbes Spinosa's Alvarez Bradwardines Twisses Rutherfords and the rest of the Predeterminants errors herein And had not I other thoughts of this one thing I should come over to their Opinion For I confess the case to be of very great difficulty § 28. I think that as the Divine Life and Power glorifieth it self eminently in the Causation of the Being Motion and Life of the creatures so the Divine Wisdom eminently glorifieth it self in the Order of all things and in the Moral Directive Sapiential Regiment of Intellectual free agents And that Gods Laws and Doctrine are the Image of his Wisdom and an admirable harmonious and beautiful frame And that all would think so and be wonderfully delighted in them were they compleatly printed on our Minds and Hearts § 29. II. And accordingly I think that the glory of his governing Wisdom and Punishing and Rewarding Justice is a great and notable part of that glory which man must give him now and for ever And that this Justice is not his physical using all things according to their physical aptitude only But his Judging and Executing according to that moral aptitude commonly called Merit by Punishments and Rewards And that to deny God the glory of all this is no small error in a Philosopher or Divine § 30. III. Accordingly I think that God made man a free self-determining agent that he might be capable of such Sapiential Rule And that it is a great Honour to God to make so noble a Nature as hath a Power to determine its own elections And though such are not of the highest rank of Creatures they are far above the lowest And that God who we see delighteth to make up beauty and harmony of diversities doth delight in the Sapiential Moral Government of this free sort of Creatures And though man be not Independent yet to be so far like God himself as to be a kind of first-determiner of many of his own Volitions and Nolitions is part of Gods Natural Image on Man § 31. IV. Accordingly I take Duty to be Rewardable and Laudable and sin to be odious as it is the Act of a free agent And that the Nature of Moral Good and Evil consisteth not in its being the meer effect of physical premotion but in being a Voluntary Conformity or Disconformity to the Sapiential Rule of duty by a free agent that had Power to do otherwise § 32. V. Free-will then is not only the same with willing it self or a meer agency according to Nature by the premotion of the first determining necessitating Mover It is not only such a freedom as Fire Water Beasts and every moved thing hath to be moved according to the first Moyers action which is in the will of man But it is a Power to be a first determining Specifier of its own acts as Moral Not that it is never predetermined but that it can do this § 33. VI. Accordingly I judge of Guilt and Shame and the Accusation of Conscience which will not be a bare discerning what God made us do or be but what we voluntarily did or were when we could do otherwise § 34. VII And I am past all doubt that he grosly mistaketh the nature and distinction of Law and Gospel 1. To think that Gods Law when it is not accompained with physical predetermination is but to shew us that we are creatures that cannot but sin 2. Yea hereby he wrongeth the glory of the Creator that made no creature with a power to do any thing but evil unless predetermined physically thereto 3. It 's gross to say that all the Doctrine of Redemption and Faith and Justification by Christ as a meer signum Letter or Law is the Law or Covenant of Works and so that every Command is the Covenant of Works and Physical Efficiency of Good in us is the Gospel or Covenant of Grace For that which we call the Gospel is not true if this be true For this Gospel is a preached word spoken by mans mouth which some believe and some believe not but reject and disobey and therefore perish Matth. 4. 23. 11. 5. 24. 14. 26. 13. Mark 16. 15. Luke 4. 18. 1 Cor. 9. 14 16 18. Heh 4. 2. 1 Pet. 1. 25. 1 Pet. 4. 6. 2. Thess 1. 8 10 11. Matth. 13. 10. Acts. 13. 7. It is a Law by which men shall be judged to life or death Rom. 2. 16. Mar. 16. 15 16. 2 Thes 1. 8. Rom. 10. 16. John 3. 19 20 21. 2 Cor. 4. 3 4. It is a word which some pervert Gal. 1. 7. and many sin against Gal. 2. 14. 1 Pet. 4. 17. The rejecters of it are to speed worse than Sodom and Gomorrah and they cannot escape that neglect so great salvation Whereas by his description 1. No man ever yet sinned against the Gospel or Covenant of Grace For it is not that Covenant or Gospel further than it is a physical effect on the soul 2. And every Heathen that hath any good effect on his soul by Common Grace hath so much Gospel 3. Yea why is not then all Gods Creation being a physical effect the Covenant of Grace if that he doth be it and all that he commandeth as such be the Law of Works 4. And how then can the Law of Works and Grace be two if every proper Law be the Law of Works For a Law is sub genere signi and a produced event is another thing 5. And what sense will be found throughout the Scripture if we must hold that It is the Covenant or Law of Works which telleth us that the Law of Works is abolished and calleth us to believe in Christ for free Justification and not to expect Justification by the Works of the Law and offereth us pardon and life in Christ c. But I will add no more seeing the plainness of the matter makes it needless § 35. The truth is he distinguisheth between the Law and the effect of the Law and Spirit of God and calleth one the Law of Works and the other the Gospel whereas the Scripture only maketh it the excellency of the Gospel that by it the Spirit effectually worketh on the soul more usually and more excellently and no meer Law of Works or Grace will renew us without the Spirit § 36. VIII And if Redemption be nothing but Physical efficiency by Christ who as a creating Mediator
God had for 4000 years till Christ's Incarnation but willed and given his mercy equally to all the World even so much as might leave the matter meerly to their wills and after that had given greater mercy to the Christian Churches taking nothing from the rest Had this been any injury or diminution to the rest Suppose now God should fetch half the damned out of Hell is this any more hurt or wrong to the rest than if he had delivered none But all these things are here anticipated and cannot be fully answered till we come to the Article of Grace where we must shew how God doth differ his Operations on mens Souls For none can deny but as he differenceth them so he decreed to difference them and no otherwise The tenth Crimination A. At least you make Gods Decrees and Ways unequal and make him a Saith Vasqueâ— in 1. Tho. â— 2â— â— 3. d. 95. c. â— Nullam dari causam Reprobationis ex parte reprebi dicunt Durard in 1. d. 41. q. 2. â— 14. Greg. Armi. q. 1. a. 2. con 1. 5. Marsâ—l 1. q. 4â— a. 2. con 4 c. Driedâ— 1. p. de concord c. 3. con â— 3. Adam in c. 9. ad Roman Ferrar. 3. cont Gent. c. 161. Aquin. 1. q. 23. â— 5. ad 3. â—x his tamen Doctoribus Tâ—om Driedo Durand non dicunt absolute Reprobationis nullum dari causam ex parte reprobi sed nullam esse causam ob quam hic potius quam alius reprobetur aut quod idem est cur hic praedestinetur et discernatur a mossa perditionis ille vero in ea relinquatur reprobetur vid. Laetera Respecter of persons as decreeing to save one and not another or to give â—â—re Grace to one than to another of equal demerit B. You may shew your ignorance about this your self but this is no difference between the parties For 1. No man can deny but that God standing towards us in a three-fold Relation as our Owner and the Lord of all as our Ruler and as our Benefactor so he is free in the first and third Relation A Proprietary may do with his own as he list And a Benefactor may unequally give his benefits as he seeth meet For he is supposed to give only that which is no mans Right till he give it them by promise or collation But as God is a Rector and governeth Mankind by a Law which hath Rewards promised and Punishments threatned to promote Obedience and as he is Judge according to that Law and as he is a Benefactor already obliged by promise thus God doth keep an equality in his Judgments and Executions and ever proceedeth according to his Word or Law He will in just equity and equality forgive justifie and adopt all penitent Believers and no others how great soever He will glorifie all persevering Saints and no others just according to his Word Because his Law is Norma judicii or that which he will observe in judging If God forgive and save one penitent Believer and not another you may say that he ruleth not in equity and equality But in cases of other disposals and benefits which no man hath right to by any Law or Covenant the case is otherwise 2. And full experience tells us this God made not every Man an Angel nor every Stone a Star nor every Star a Sun nor every Beast a Man nor every Toad a Bird nor the Dirt and Water Fire Wonderful is the Variety of his Works through all the World No two Birds Beasts Men Stones Trees are perfectly equal and like No two mens Faces Constitutions Parts Dispositions Virtues are perfectly equal With what various temperaments come we into the World And is God a Respecter of persons for this or are his ways unequal As a free Owner and Benefactor he will diversifie his Gifts and do with his own as he list though Sinners quarrel at it You dare not say that God giveth his Benefits equally to all that are of equal demerit 3. The sin of respecting persons belongeth to a Judge obliged by rules to equal distribution By a Judge I mean any judging and executing Governour or obliged distributer of Rights And it consisteth in partiality and injustice because of something in the person as Greatness Riches Learning Relation Flattery c. which is no just cause of that inequality But this is nothing to God who regardeth no mans person for any such thing nor denieth to any man his proper due The eleventh Crimination A. * Both sides charge this on each other Malderus 1 2. q. 111. a. 3. p. 519. Vocarâ—t illusorie Deus si talem gratiam sufficientem solum ideo daret quia non est efficax c. It is prophaneness thus to venture on blasphemous charges against God if 〈…〉 done by him â—â—â—â— You make God play the Hypocrite to send abroad Ministers to intreat men to repent and be saved when he hath decreed that they shall be damned and not repent And you make all the preaching and means that are used for such mens Conversion a meer mockery B. No more than you do For there is no difference as to this 1. Do not you say that God fore-knoweth from eternity that Judas e. g. will not repent or be saved yea that upon such fore-knowledge he hath decreed before he was born to damn him And doth this make God play the Hypocrite or his Word to be a mockery We say but the very same of all that perish 2. To help you to rescue both your selves and us from this accusation consider that Gods Decree hath several parts As 1. That the lapsed World shall have a Covenant of Grace and be intreated to be saved 2. That Judas one of this world shall have his part among the rest 3. Whereas Judas will not receive this offered Grace for rejecting it he shall be condemned These are the material parts of Gods Decree And is there any hypocrisie or mockery in this God decreed not to condemn Judas but for rejecting offered Grace And this presupposeth the offer He cannot reject that which never was offered him What would you have had God rather say I fore-see if I offer Judas Grace that he will not accept it and therefore I will offer him none but condemn him because he would have refused it had it been offered By this rule the sin of all the World against mercy and means of life should have been prevented by offering them no means or mercy and yet men perish and be damned for that which they never did because God fore-saw that they would have done it Are not these ways unequal in comparison of Gods which vain men quarrel with 2. But again I tell you that your feigning to hold that God decreed that Judas should not repent is not true of those that you now talk with It is enough that God did not decree that Judas should eventually repent The twelfth Crimination A. *
this to their own sense And do they not use such violence with Gods Word and their Consciences as that on these terms they may make their own Religion and believe what they list Do they not plainly shew that they take not their Faith from God but from their Teachers and believe as the Church believeth which they joyn with Had it been but one or two Texts or had they been obscurely uttered a good man might have thought that he must reduce their sense to the many and more plain But to oppugn the plain Gospel it self hath no exâ—use B. You are sharp against other mens Errors and other men against yours But I have proved to you that the Synod and the generality of the Protestant Churches in their Confessions deny not any thing which these Texts say They hold a common Redemption as well as you our very Children are taught in their Catechism distinctly to believe 1. In God the Father who made them and all the World 2. In God the Son who redeemed them and all Mankind 3. And in God the Holy Ghost who sanctifieth them and all the Elect People of God This is the good old Doctrine plain and true and that which Austin taught A. I am sure many of their Writers expresly oppugn common Redemption and even Jasenius the Papist who joyneth with them denieth it and saith that Augustine denied it Therefore we stand not to his authority B. 1. As for Augustine and some Protestants they oft deny that Christ redeemeth any but the Faithful because the word Redemption is ambiguous and sometimes taken for the price or ransome paid and often for the very liberation of the captive Sinner And when ever Austin denieth common Redemption he taketh Redemption in this last sense for actual deliverance But he asserteth it in the first sense that Christ died for all Yea he thought his death is actually applied to the true Justification and Sanctification of some Reprobates that fall away and perish though the Elect only are so redeemed as to be saved Read your self Augustine Prosper and Fulgentius and you will see this with your own eyes 2. I have oft told you it is our Protestant Confessions and not some singular or private Writers that you must know their Doctrine by 3. Even those few Writers differ more from you in terms than in sense For 1. Many of them will confess all the same benefits by Christ to men in common which you assert Few of them will deny that Salvation is tendered to all mens acceptance and brought to the choosing or refusing of their own Wills And you seem to them to say no greater matters as for the Elect. But they say that Christ purchased Faith it self for the Elect only of which in due place 2. And so with them the Controversie is 1. About Gods Decree or Intent of saving men by Christ 2. And of giving them Faith Tell me one word that you except against in the Synod in this Article A. I except against sect 8. where they say that Fuit hoc Dei patris liberrimum consilium gratiosissima voluntas atque intentio ut mortis pretiosissimae filii sui vivifica salvifica efficacia sese exereret in omnibus electis ad eos solos fide justificante donandos per eam ad salutem infallibiliter perducendos hoc est voluit Deus ut Christus per sanguinem crucis quo novum foedus confirmavit ex omni populo gente tribu lingua eos omnes solos qui ab aeterno ad salutem electi a patre ipsi dati sunt efficaciter redimeret fide donaret ab omnibus peccatis sanguine suo mundaret ad finem usque fideliter custodiret tandem absque omni labe macula gloriosos coram se sisteret B. Very good This is all in the Canons that you can except against And 1. You see that this is only about Gods Intention or Decree And so you differ not at all by your own confession in the Article of Redemption as distinct from that of the Decrees 2. Is it the inclusion of the Elect in this Intention that you except against So will no sober Jesuite Do you think that Christ was resolved certainly to justifie and glorifie no man at all The Semipelagians will not say so You say not so your selves Only some of you say it is but upon fore-sight of Faith and by the consequent will of which I have said enough before But do you think that Christ when he was on the Cross had no full purpose to save those infallibly * Episcopius in Institut Theol. li. 4. cap. 5. pag. 410. confesseth that the opinion of Election may consist with that of universal Grace which he propugned who he fore-knew would believe yea and to cause some men to believe Those that come to him are drawn by the Father and Faith is the Gift of God Ephes 2. 8. Who giveth us all things pertaining to life and godliness 2 Pet. 1. 3. Even to will and to do of his good pleasure Phil. 2. 13. To some it is given to believe Phil. 1. 29. But of this enough before 3. But I suppose it is only the word Solos in all the Canons that you except against And dare or will you say that God did absolutely intend and decree to sanctifie and glorifie all men by Christ or any one that is not glorified A. But their meaning is that all the rest which are most of the World are left out of Gods Election even unto sin and damnation meerly because God would so have it and not from any ill desert of theirs any more than was in the Elect which appeareth in that as Episcopius noteth †Instit Theol. l. 4. cap. 5. sect 5. p. 410. They that say the Fall or Sin is quid praevisum fore-seen in Reprobation yet deny that it is any * The Jesuites themselves as Vasquâ—z and many others ordinarily say that nothing in man can be any cause of Gods Decrees cause of Reprobation And then all cometh to one whether God reprobate a Sinner or an innocent person as to the cause B. You have nothing about Redemption I perceive still to controvert but about Gods Decrees If we must go back to them review your words and see how you cheat your selves into distast of you know not what by meer confusion for want of accurate Scholastick Heads I except not Episcopius himself notwithstanding men of his own measure think otherwise 1. Whereas you talk of leaving out either you mean non-Election or positive exclusion If the last it 's false not only the Scotists but some Protestants as Ferrius in Scholast Orthodox and others assert but a negation here And Davenant and the Synod assert but a negative Decree quoad objectum which is but as much as Arminius propugneth who while he maintaineth that God decreeth not sin but only his own permission of sin which is the Synods sense
Universal Grace which is the very express Covenant of Grace it self that all men are already through Christs satisfaction reconciled to God and pardoned if they will believe or that a conditional pardon is already given to the World And to deny this is to deny the Gospel and Christianity it self and to be no Christians B. You would make your selves and others believe that they deny that which they never dreamed of denying Like him that dreamed that he was wounded and call'd out for something to stop the blood Do not all Protestaents profess to believe that Covenant and conditional Pardon as well as you Do they not preach it constantly and administer Baptism in the same terms as you do who denieth that all are reconciled if they will believe A. But by that they mean only exclusively that all are not reconciled or pardoned because all believe not And not inclusively that all men are conditionally pardoned already B. You mistake and slander them Do they not read the very express pardon made already in Gods Word That Whoever believeth shall not perish c. Joh. 3. 16. Mark 16. 16 Do they not all acknowledge that this is a Law of God an Act of Oblivion Enacted long ago by God And is not this visible written Promise or Law of Grace an existent conditional pardon of all No man of sense and understanding and faith denieth it A. But they say that in making it Gods secret intent was that none but the Elect should have any saving benefit of it * What say others less Malderus in 1. 2. q. 111. a. 3. d. 5. p. 486. Cum de Redemptore dando Deus constituisset ut secerneret illos quos elegit eum rerum ordinem elegit in quo certi quos voluit homines a reliquis discernerentur cosque pro beneplacito suo ad nullum bonum usum liberi arbitrii respiciens ad vitam aeterâ—am praedestinavit talemque tis gratiam decrevit cum qua certissimo infallibiliter ad regnum pervenirent Reliquos autem qui ex illo numero non sunt reliquit non quidem sint omni auxilio Gratiae sicut juste potuisset propter Adae peccatum sed cum auxiliis gratiae secundi Adae ad ipsos derivandis in ordine ac cursu rerum jam electo Et videns scieâ—tia visionis hos in peccato vitam finire reprobavit eos statuit in aeternum punire a regno excludere Thus the Jesuites ordinarily And what is here considerably different from the Synod of Doâ—t If the name of sufficient Grace be the quarrel call it Gratia efficax ad posse and all is ended B. 1. Still you are returning to the dispatched Controversie of the Decrees which is a confession that you disser not otherwise about Redemption 2. Do not you your selves hold the same which you quarrel with 1. Inclusively they hold that the Elect shall be saved by Christ And do you deny it 2. As to the exclusion of others they hold that God decreed not any mans Infidelity and Sin but fore-seeing their Infidelity and Sin decreed that they should not be saved by Christ but perish And do not you say the same Away with these contentious dreams A. I am sure I can name you divers that say otherwise B. It is the Synod still and the common Confessions and Doctrine of the Churches which you have to do with Tell not me of singular men The Doctrine of the Church of England I told you out of the Catechism The Synods words I recited And remember as Dallaeus tells Spanhemius that Davenant with the rest of the British Divines Martinius and the other Breme Divines who all gave their suffrages and writ for Universal Redemption did yet all subscribe in the Synod And therefore undoubtedly understood that no words of the Canons were contrary to their sense of Universal Redemption The later famous Helvetian confession saith We teach and believe that this Jesus Christ our Lord is the only and eternal Saviour of Mankind yea and of the whole world upon which words the English Collector of the Confessions giveth us a ridiculous Observation that he thinks they meant the restoring of the world at last contrary to the context As if he had not known that Musculus Bullinger c. were for Universal Redemption But that I be not over-tedious I pray you peruse in Dallaei Apolog. To. 2. the citations out of the Confessions and Catechisms and Liturgies of the Reformed Churches viz. Of Berne August Bohem. Helvert Saxon. Anglic. Palatin Synod Dord Colloq Torun with a multitude of Protestant Divines The fourth Crimination A. They make it impossible for any man to believe in Christ at first by a rational and true Faith For his dying for men being the Object of Faith must be before the Act. And no man by their way can know that Christ died for him till he is a Believer and yet they say that our first saving Faith must be a believing and trusting in Christ as one that died for us So that men must stay till they believe that Christ died for them that they may have reason to believe that he died for them For before the first Faith or belief of it they can have none B. You still make the world believe that men hold that which they do not This concerneth not the Churches but some singular men The common Protestant Doctrine is That Christ by his Death hath procured the universal conditional Gift of Pardon and Life contained in the Covenant of Grace Mark 16. 16. Joh. 3. 16 c. And that his death was thus far efficient by which it is sufficient for the actual Justification and Salvation of penitent Believers And that this is it that men must first believe and so accept of an offered Saviour for Justification and Life and give up themselves to him in the baptismal Covenant which when they do they are justified and adopted having right to and union with Christ and in him right to the Covenant-benefits And then Christ's death which was sufficient by its efficiency of Satisfaction Merit and the Covenant-grant becometh efficient of Justification c. And are not you and they agreed in this I confess that many singular Divines have given you this occasion But what 's that to the Churches The fifth Crimination A. They tell men that they must believe a Lye or an unrevealed thing that by believing it it may become true and they may be saved and ese they shall be damned For they say that Christ died for none but the Elect And yet that others also are bound to believe that he died for them And because they believe not this Lye God will damn them But if they did believe it it would be true As if the Objective Truth were not before the belief of it B. This also is but your quarrel with singular men and not with the Churches unless you wrong them Their common Doctrine is that no man
in his first act of Faith is bound to believe that he is Elect or that Christ died for him any more than for lost Mankind But that he must first believe that Christ by his Death hath so far satisfied and merited for Mankind in general as to procure the universal conditional Gift of Christ Pardon and Life And that they must believe that this is procured for and offered to themselves as well as other Sinners And hereupon they are to accept this free Gift and so it is theirs What lye or unrevealed matter is in this or what difference about it among the Churches The sixth Crimination A. They disable Ministers rationally to preach the Gospel For if Christ died for none but the Elect and no Minister know the Elect they know not whom to offer and preach Christ to For the objective Gift must go before the offer And that which is to be offered to every Sinner is A Christ that hath already died and satisfied for him and not one that is to die and satisfie for him yet if he will believe Therefore the very offer is as much as to say Accept Christ as one that hath satisfied for thee And so they make the very preaching of the Gospel a lye to most B. I will not answer you as some that say they tell not men that they are Elect and that Christ died for them but that if they will believe then it is a sign that they are Elect and Christ died for them And they may offer him to all that some may accept him For I say as you do that it is a Christ that hath already made satisfaction and thereby is become a sufficient Saviour who is to be offered to men And the being of the Gift is before the offer of it in nature But I say again that you fight against straglers in a Cause which the Churches are not concerned in They say that it is a Christ who died for all as to sufficiency who is to be offered to men that he may efficiently save them The seventh Crimination A. They leave most men in the World as remediless as the Devils who had no Redeemer whereas God judgeth the wicked at last as Rejecters of his remedying Grace If Christ died not for them what differ they from the Devils in point of hope B. I will not answer you as some that though Christ died not for them yet they know it not and the offer differenceth their Case For still I confess that none is to be offered to men but a Christ that was already offered to God for them and hath made satisfaction But again I tell you that you fight with a shadow and feign the Churches to differ from you because some singular persons do so The eighth Crimination A. They harden men in impenitency for the most damning sin even denying the Lord that bought them For they tell all the Reprobates that they never sinned against a Christ that died for them B. All this is the old fiction and concerneth only some singular men The ninth Crimination A. They would exempt the Infidel World from much of the torments of Hell For he that in Hell knoweth that Christ never died for him especially adding that God unresistibly predetermined him to sin and unbelief cannot rationally have an accusing Conscience for his not accepting a Gift that never had a Being B. I will not repeat the same answer as oft as you call for it by the same false supposition Let them answer it that are concerned The tenth Crimination A. They teach the World abominable Ingratitude and reproachfully deny a great deal of the Grace and Mercy of Christ and the fruits of his Death and Sacrifice For they teach men that all the Mercies given to any besides the Elect were no fruits of the death of Christ for them nor were at all by him purchased for them yea that they are no Mercies to them at all because God eternally decreed that they should turn them into sin and suffer the more for the abuse of them for ever And so all the rest of the World may say that they are not at all beholden to the death of Christ for their Lives Liberties offers of Grace and all other Mercies B. Let them answer you that are concerned in the Charge The Reformed Churches hold That Mercy is to be judged of by its nature and tendency in it self and not by mans abuse and that God decreed no mans abuse of it and that all the Mercies given to Mankind since the forfeiture of all by Adam's sin are procured and given by Christ as the Intercessor and Redeemer of the World and that wicked men justly are deprived of life for rejecting it and suffer Hell for abusing Mercy and refusing Heaven The eleventh Crimination A. They are Anti-christian half-Infidels For they deny Christs Kingdom as to its far greatest part For when the Scripture telleth us That to this end he both died rose and revived that he might be Lord both of the dead and living Rom. 14. 9. And that the Father hath committed all Judgment that is Government to the Son Joh. 5. 22. And given him all power in Heaven and Earth Matth. 28. 18. And that his dying for all obligeth all men not to live to themselves but to him that died for them 2 Cor. 5. And so that he hath by his death acquired a jus Dominii Imperii over all Mankind they deny him his Crown and Dignity even this Right of Dominion and Empire as Redeemer and deny the World to be obliged to subjection to him as their Redeemer And so make that Rebellion for which they shall perish Luke 19. 27. to be no sin B. The Protestant Churches hold all that you charge them with denying It 's a pitiful work to caluminate that you may divide Tell those singular men of all this that are guilty of it The twelfth Crimination A. They make Christ to come on so narrow a design into the World as if they would tempt Unbelievers to despise him Even to die for none in all the World for 4000 years save a very few of the little Country of Judaea which was mostly wicked and even since the Church was Catholick but for a few called the Elect. B. 1. If you and they differ about the conditions of Salvation say so and tell the World the difference If you do not but are agreed that it is Faith Repentance and Holiness what are all these Objections but fighting by fictions against Concord and Peace They never held that none out of Judaea were saved And how many in the World are holy Believers they pretend not to judge They believe that all that are holy are saved by Christ in all Ages and Nations of the World And that all the Order and Government and common Mercies of the World with the offers of Grace and Salvation to them that wilfully refuse it are all to be ascribed to the death and procurement
of Christ And that his common Redemption is presupposed to our Faith and special Grace * See my Direction to sound Conversion Dir. 6. And now if this be all you have to say review it and tell me what disagreement you have found out about the commonness of Redemption THE Fourth Days Conference WITH a CALVINIST Of Common and Special REDEMPTION B. We are now to try what difference you can find between the Lutheran and Calvinist Churches or the Synodists and the moderate Arminians in the Article of Redemption by the death of Christ Name all that you have against them in this Point alone The first Crimination C. * These Objections are answered by Dallâ—us Amyrald Camero and Davenant Dissert de Morte Christi at large And I have a full disputation on this Subject by it self Lege Ephrem Syri Sermon de Passione Salvatoris Ambros in Psal 118. Serm. 8. Sol justitiae omnibus ortus est omnibus venit omnibus passus est omnibus resurrexit si quis autem non credit in Christum generali beneficio ipse se fraâ—dat Ut si quis clausis fenestris radios solis excludat Prosper de Vocat Gent. l. 2. c. 16. Nulla ratio dubitandi est Jesum Christum pro impiis mortuum â— quorum numero si aliquis liber inventus est non est pro omnibus mortuus Christus sed prorsus pro omnibus mortuus est Christus They make Christ to have shed his Blood in vain even for them that he knew were to perish for ever B. How prove you it to be in vain and that God can have no end in it but actual Salvation de eventu to each person for whom Christ died 1. When the Scripture most clearly telleth us de facto That Christ died for all even for them that perish and that he bought them that denied him be afraid of blaspheming God by telling him If Christ died for any that perish he died in vain I accuse you not but ex natura rei warn you I durst not tell God so 2. God made man in Adam capable of Salvation as the very perfection and end of his faculties and nature and put him under a conditional Covenant accordingly And will you say that God made Adam in vain in this capacity and made the first Promise of Life and the Tree of Life also in vain because Adam and all of us in him did sin and come short of the Glory of God Nay God made not the Devils in vain in a state of blessedness or the way thereto though he knew that they would forsake that state and perish It is dangerous reproaching the Counsels and unsearchable Works of God 3. By your own reckoning it is not in vain For you say that Gods Justice is glorified on Unbelievers and that this is his end And what is that Justice but the punishing of men for rejecting a Christ that died for them and Grace that was procured and tendered to them 4. But if you add all the other benefits and ends you will see that it was not in vain God demonstrated and so glorified his Love and Mercy to lost Mankind in the very greatness of the Gift of Christ Pardon and Glory which the Impenitent do refuse And Mercy is glorified notwithstanding the refusal God giveth the Covenant aforesaid or the conditional Grant of Pardon and Life to the World He reprieved them and gave them time of Repentance and exercised Patience toward them to that end Rom. 2. 3 4 5 6. Act. 17. Rom. 1. 19 20 21 c. Joh. 3. 16 18 19. He governeth the World on terms of Grace He giveth all men abundance of Mercies and Means of recovery and life He keepeth the World in order hereby and maketh the wicked serviceable to the Salvation of Believers In a word he will lose nothing by any mans sin against Nature or Grace Where then is the vanity of the Death of Christ if in a common degree it be for all The second Crimination C. They make Christ an imperfect Saviour by pretending that he died Cyril Hierosol Catech. 18. Multas aeternae vitae januas aperuit ut omâ—es quantum in ipso est absque impedimento illo potiri possent for some to some lower ends whom yet he saveth not B. This needeth no other answer than the last Is God an imperfect God to Adam because he saved him not by the way of Innocency at first made by God the way of Life Or was he an imperfect God and Salvation to the Angels because they kept not their first Estate Or is the Holy Ghost an imperfect Sanctifier because he giveth some but such common and temporary Grace and Faith as is mentioned in Heb. 6. 5 6. Matth. 13 c. Or dare you say that no man that perisheth had any Grace or Gifts of the Holy Ghost when some prophesied and cast out Devils in Christ's Name Must Christ do all that our muddy brains will dictate to him or else be reproached as an imperfect Saviour O take heed The third Crimination C. They cast that absurdity on Christ as to die for those that were in August de Symbol ad Catech l. 2. c. 8. saith Perhaps Christ keepeth his wounds to shew the wicked at the day of Judgment and say Videtis vulnera quae infixistis agnoscitis latus quod pupugistis quoniam per vos propter vos apertum est neque tamen intrare voluistis Hell when he was dying for them and to make a Medicine for the dead and desperate B. 1. As you would state the Supposition it would be as liable to your charge of absurdity to say That he died for them that were long ago pardoned and saved and to purchase Heaven for them that had possession of it long before 2. But when we speak of Christ's Death as a Sacrifice for the Sins of all the World we mean no more but that in esse cognito volito the undertaking was so far for all as that all should have the conditional Promise or Gift of Life by the Merits of it And so as all that were saved before Christ's Death had actual Salvation by it before-hand as undertaken so all that perished had a Gift of conditional Pardon and Salvation and perished for refusing it But at the time when Christ was dying we say that he was not then intending to offer the second Edition of his Covenant either to those in Hell or in Heaven But only that he purposed to do what he from the beginning undertook for the undertaken ends The fourth Crimination C. They make Christ to die for those that he would not pray for Joh. 17. I pray not for the world but for those that thou hast given me out of the world B. He maketh himself to die for them It is ofter and plainer said that he died for all than it is that he prayed not for all And many plain Texts yea the
doth not only give all men leave and liberty to be holy but offereth them Life and giveth every man his choice whether he will repent and live or refuse Grace and perish And much more then Liberty he giveth them by Commands Threatnings Promises Mercies Means Helps Intreaties Afflictions c. urging them to repent and live XVII And this political Liberty containeth a freedom from all punishment from God to those that cause it not by wilful sin And more than so a certainty of the Reward of Glory XVIII Besides these fore-mentioned Liberties natural and political there is also an ethical or moral Liberty from sinful Habits and Acts And of that we hold that every man is delivered from these sinful Habits and Acts so far as he hath and useth Gods Grace And so that the sanctified are delivered from the reign or servitude of sin XIX And we hold that yet the habits of Grace do not necessitate this or that particular act of Obedience or Love but it is too possible to sin by Omission or Commission notwithstanding these habits XX. And we hold that the ordinary habits of Vice in the wicked do not absolutely necessitate them to this or that sinful Commission in particular at least not to very many sins but that it is possible for them to do some Duties and forbear many sins notwithstanding Original and superadded pravity XXI I add to the XI Sect. before as an instance that mans Will is not by any natural necessity determined to will it s own felicity by the comparate electing Act of the Will but hath Power and Liberty to refuse or nill it This many will think strange but I am sure that it is true For man was made and redeemed and is sanctified for a higher End than his own felicity yea more than one even the Glory and Pleasing of God and the common Good And reason telleth me undoubtedly that I ought to love that best which is best in it self and that if my annihilation would conduce to the saving or happiness of the World or of one Kingdom or of thousands of Persons I ought to consent to it for such ends yea were it but to keep the Earth from perishing and the Sun from being useless to this World And though God in mercy hath so united my felicity with his Glory and the common Good that there never will be use for such an option or choice yet it followeth not thence that I may not say that hypothetically if I were put to it such a thing is possible and would be due And as Paul said I could wish my self accurst from Christ for my Brethrens sake the Jews not I do wish it but would this save them I could wish it because the salvation of thousands and their Service to God is better than Ours even so may we Annihilation is inconsistent with Felicity But Annihilation might and should be chosen before the Annihilation of the World or the perdition of millions if God had called us to it Yea Christ that saith It were good for that man that he had never been born implyeth that a damned man would choose it as a minus malum yea many a one that I have known my self desired it Therefore it is a thing that the Will may do XXII And as another Instance I need not prove that the bonum sensibile which is necessarily loved or willed by some complacency or simple Volition is not necessarily chosen but may freely be rejected Otherwise no sin scarce could be avoided All these sorts or Acts of Free-will we hold and are agreed on And are we yet unfit for concord and coalition for want of acknowledging the freedom of the Will A. I must confess that you have acknowledged much B. And I confess that so have you on the other side I pray you now tell me where lieth our disagreement A. You overwhelm me with Distinctions and numerous particulars so that I suspect you do but by this dust intend to blind our eyes A man may make any thing good by such minute distinguishing and atomizing matters to make them imperceptible Did you deal plainly I could answer you B. Is this an answer fit for a learned or ingenuous man Is confusion plainness with you such plainness too many plani have deceived the Church with and set well-meaning Christians together by the ears so that the Christian World hath long pleased the Devil and found him sport as fighting-Dogs and Cocks do to men and all by the cheats of ignorant confusion Kingdoms and Factions fight about words which they never understood Like the consulting Physicians who could not agree whether their Patieâ—ts Ischury should be cured by Succinum or by Electrum or by Carabe or by Ambarum and the poor man died because they could not consent If I distinguish vainly or falsly sine differentia cannot you shew where the vanity or falshood is How can you tell it is false or vain if you know not where the falshood or vanity is Will you say It is somewhere but I know not where Let that answer from others then to all your reasonings seem sufficient Your reason is false and your argument naught but we know not were the falshood lyeth A ready confutation fit for our Church-troublers I have purposely in the First Book given you all the distinctions about Liberty which I use in an orderly Table that you may easily understand them by seeing them together so that if there be falshood or vanity in them they are open to your easie search and view Tell me what freedom is denied you or else for shame contend no more A. They hold that Original Sin doth necessitate all the unregenerate to do evil and to forbear good so that they cannot possibly forbear Sins of Commission or Omission II. They hold that Grace doth irresistibly neâ—â—ssitate the Elect to believe and love God and forbear Sin so that they cannot do otherwise B. I. Stay a little 1. You must distinguish of several sorts of Good and Evil 2. And of several sorts of Necessity 1. I hope you will not think it false vain or curious to distinguish between 1. An ungodly course of Life and some one particular act of Sin 2. The omission of the predominant Love of God and a course of holy living and special saving acts and the omission of this or that commanded act 2. And I hope I may advise you to distinguish between 1. A constrained Necessity against our Will and a voluntary Necessity of diseased vicious inclination 2. And between a necessity in sensu composito and in sensu diviso 3. And between an uncurable and a curable necessity And then I answer I. We hold that an ungodly man by his Original and superadded pravity is so strongly and fixedly inclined to a sensual ungodly life that in sensu composito while he is such he will certainly live such a life in the main course of it And do not you think so too
Deum quoque Affectus nostros partem illam sensitivam corrigere bonis desideriis quorum objecta monstrat intellectuo actus vero imperat voluntas afficere Quibus affectibus magis magisque correctis castigatis in ordinem redactis promptior facilior ac minus impedita postmodum redditur voluntas ad exerâ—endos pietatis actus non usque adeo ut ante reluctantibus affectibus lege illa in membris belligerante Qui asserunt eum quem Deus movet ad actum bunc necessario aut illum necessario agere Alij vero pertendunt nulla proprie dicta necessitate illum ad agendum impelli Verbis quidem discrepant idem autem reipsa seâ—tiunt Blank de Libertat Absol Thes 22. See his proof following They deny the Unregenerate to have any power to believe repent or to do any good And so they feign God to command men things impossible and to condemn men for that as Sin which they could not possibly avoid and for not doing that which they could no more do than make a World and so to put men under a necessity of sinning and being damned B. This is in sense the same with that about Liberty fore-going though under the other notion of Power But the truth is it is the very core and true sum of all our Controversies and if I prove this to be nothing but words I shall prove them all so about the four first Articles I will here take it for granted that you speak not of any meer Passive or Obediential Power as it 's called but of a proper active Power and that truly so called and not only hypothetically on supposition of things to make it up which are not existent nor to be supposed I know of nothing in the Soul of man for our enquiry but 1. The natural-faculties or virtues inclined naturally to their necessary Objects 2. The right disposition or adventitious inclination or habits of these faculties 3. And the Acts. Tell me first Do you know of any more A. Not that I can remember B. It is therefore the Faculties or Dispositions that we differ about or nothing For it is not the Acts Tell me then Quest. 1. Do you â—now of any that deny all mens Souls to have the three faculties of Active Power or Life Intellection and Volition which the Thomists say are Accidents immediately and inseparably emaning from the Essence and the Scotists better say are the very formal Essence of the Soul it self without one of which a man is no man A. No none doubt of this in sense though some number them as three and some but as two B. Do we differ about the second Do you believe that a Drunkard hath the habit of Sobriety or a Fornicator of Chastity or at least that an ungodly man hath a holy habit or disposition to love God and trust him above all and to believe in Christ and repent of Sin and live in Holiness A. No no man saith that he hath such a habit But he hath a power to do them though not a habit B. Is it any thing that you call a power besides the natural faculties and their habits or dispositions A. No but the natural faculty is still a power to believe love God live holily c. without a habit B. Do you not believe that an ungodly man is disposed yea habituated to the contrary viz. To a fleshly and worldly mind and life and against a life of Faith and holy Love A. Yes at least some are And I will not deny Original Sin and therefore grant such a dispositive pravity in all though not so much as in some is superadded But yet these ill dispositions and habits are not so strong but that the Sinner can for all that believe and repent c. B. No doubt but if he believe not it is not for want of natural faculties He hath an Intellect a Will and a vital and executive power And these all have that force or strength of natural activity which is necessary to Faith Love and every holy Duty For these are the unalterable Essence or Properties of man as man And if Sin deprived us of them it should change our Species And if Grace gave them it should restore our Species and we should be men by Grace only and not by Nature But you confess that these powers want their right disposition to act A. But yet I say that this undisposed ill-disposed Soul is able to act contrary to its accidental disposition B. I tell you once for all that the shaming and ending of all the Controversies between the Synodists and moderate Arminians or Jesuites lieth in the true opening of the ambiguity of this one syllable Can And unhappy is the Church when its Pastors have neither skill nor love enough to forbear torturing and distracting it by one poor ambiguous syllable not understood by the Contenders But to compel you to conviction Quest. 1. Do you mean by Can or Able or Power any thing besides the natural faculty and the disposition A. No I mean the natural faculty as related to this Act or Object now in question e. g. believing and loving God B. Quest 2. Is not natural strength or power a thing belonging to man as man which Sin destroyeth not and Grace restoreth not And have not all the Churches disowned Illyricus * Beâ—a angrily calleth him Turpis iste Illyricus and Peucer and Strigelius and other Disciples of Melanchthon have defended the moral causation of Grace against him and such Lutherans who went too much the other way though a very learned laborious godly Divine for making Original Sin the substance of the Soul it self A. All this is granted you B. Quest 3. Therefore if Adam had natural power to love God and if the sanctified have it yet doth it not follow that all men have it Because it belongeth to man as man and is not changed by Sin and Grace except in its Dispositions and Acts A. Thus you make all the wicked able to love God B. Yes As to that sort of Ability which is but the natural faculty they are all able but there is somewhat else they want A. But the Name Power you confess your self is Relative to something that is to be done or to an Act with its Object And when the natural faculty is not changed but is the same in all men yet the Relation of Power in it may be changed as by a change of the Object * Casp Peucer Histor Carcerum against the Lutherans physical motion asserteth pag. 720. That Concurrentibus in conversione his tribus causis verbo spiritu S. volantate hominis agentibus suo loeo ordine viribus in homint quamqam ex se natura sua prorsus invalidis ad spiritualia rationalibus tamen inter se differentibus eoque ordine quo conditae sunâ— a sp sancto per media verbi sacramentorum in ordinato Legitimo singulorum
that die unbaptized they â—â—â—â—only declare See â—â—â—â— in 12. q. 111. â—â—â—â— 7. p. 496. of being damned A. This answereth the fourth Question as to the Adult But what remedy is there for Infants especially among Heathens and Unbelievers B. The same that is for their Parents They have no sin but by their Parents and God hath told us of no remedy but that they be the Children of Believers dedicated to God It is meet that their remedy come as their sin did They have no Wills of their own but be at the will of others They are in Infancy as if they were members of their Parents And as the Hand and Heart doth fare as the Head conducteth them so may Infants here A. But it 's sad that all Infants shall be unsaved if the Parents consent not B. It is sad that men destroy themselves And it is sad that they corrupt their Infants But what way else would you wish God to save them A. Certainly to save all dying in infancy B. 1. And why not as well all at Age 2. Then men would be tempted to think it the greatest act of mercy in the World to go with an Army and kill all the Children of Infidels and Heathens certainly to save them A. So you may say by the Children of Believers then if they be saved B. No for they have holy Education under Gods Promise Ordinances and Blessing and so are in great hope of being publickly serviceable to the Church and also of attaining a greater degree of Glory But it 's an hundred to one but the Children of Heathens and Infidels are bred up to be also such themselves The fifth Crimination A. They suppose that no man can do any more good than he doth nor Quod Reproâ—us non possit gratiam adipisci non est intelligendum secundum impossibilitatem absolutaâ— sed conditionatam quiâ— reprobatio non subtrabit aliquid de potentia reprobati Idem dicendum est de praedestinato quem salvari necesse est Carbo Thom. Compend 1. q. 23. â— 3. Bradwardine and some Dominicans are liable to this Objection but so are few Protestants and the Synod of Dâ—rt rejecteth it forbear any more evil than he forbeareth Because he is not only predestinated to do just what he doth and no more or less but also predetermined physically in the practice so that he cannot possibly do more or less than God predetermineth him to And 1. Gods Decrees having fixed all future events all that man can do will not alter them Beverovicius may tire the World of Divines with his question de termino vitae before he will ever get satisfaction how Physick can prolong a predestinated term of life And 2. By this means God who set man upon a course of impossibilities or vain means with great and urgent exhortations is made a dissembler and his revealed Will and his secret supposed contradictory and the latter false And how then can such a God be believed B. These are but the bold effusions of a misunderstanding contentious temerarious passion Here are set together several things which must distinctly be considered I. Whether man can do no more good and forbear no more evil than he doth II. Whether means to lengthen life or save Souls be vain III. Whether Gods secret and revealed Will be contrary and the revealed false I. As to the first this unhappy syllable CAN by its ambiguity is the cause of all our silly quarrels 1. If by CAN you mean a physical power or faculty man can not only do more good than he doth but he can repent and believe who doth not 2. If you mean a moral power that is such a degree of disposition to good as may be excited or such an indisposition as may be overcome as to the act without any more supernatural Grace than he hath so all men can do more good and less evil than they do And therefore the Synod of Dort rejecteth your accusation as a calumny And men should know their own minds best 3. If by Cannot you mean only a logical impossibility that these two Propositions be both true Judas will believe and be saved or Herod will not be eaten with Worms And God decreeth that Judas shall not be saved and that Herod shall be eaten by Worms I confess your charge and say that Arminius saith the same upon the supposition of Gods fore-knowledge And how are you concerned to prove God to be either fallible in his fore-knowledge false in his Predictions or mutable in his Purposes By this rule all Prophesies take away mens power and make it impossible to do the contrary But you mistake For they assert mans power He that fore-knoweth and fore-telleth that Judas will abuse his power and decreeth to damn him only for abusing his power doth imply that he hath such power But Ergo. II. Beverovicius and other mens question de utilitate mediorum Aegid Col. Quodl 1. q. 2. Precibus sanctorum potest juvari praedestinatio Non tamen sic ut hae Divinum propositum immutent sed quod taedem velut media illud ipsum propositum adimpleant mediantibus enim talibus orationibus fit de nobis quod Deus disposuit Si Divina praedestinatio dicat Divinum propositum in se acceptum non juvatur precibus quia nullum aeternum juvatur per aliquod temporale sed si dicant divinum propositum non absolute sed ut impletur mediantibus causis in effectu sic praedestinatio juvatur precibus operibus sanctorum need no very learned Pens to determine it He did well to make that learned and pious Lady Maria Van Schurman one of his Casuists What can be plainer than that means are made most necessary and also the liberty of our Wills in the use of means when God doth make this one Decree e. g. Peter shall hear believe repent freely but certainly and be saved Noah shall make an Ark freely but certainly and be saved from the deluge Noah shall plant a Vineyard and water and dress it in due season freely but certainly and it shall bear him fruit And fore-seeing that Judas will freely betray his Lord I will condemn him Such a Sluggard will not plow and sow and therefore shall have no crop Such a man will not use any meet remedy against his Disease and shall die by it It 's strange that nothing can please you unless God be ignorant or mutable and over-rule not all the World III. I have made it plain that there is no shew of contradiction between Gods secret and revealed Will. What contradiction is it to say Judas I command thee do not murder thy self and I know that Judas will betray his Lord and will dispair and do that which tendeth to his own murder and for his sin he shall be so self-murdered Or Judas will betray Christ and shall be damned for it and I forbid Judas to betray Christ Plainly 1. About punishment Gods revealed Will in
proportion of gracious means * Protestant Divines do commonly conjoyn the operation of the Spirit and Word as well as Papists and in some cases more Thom. docet q. 22. de Ver. a. 8. Deum inclinare Voluntatem ad aliquid appâ—tendum eam â—fficaciter physice praedeterminando non solum immediate sed etiam mediate aliqua entitate recepta in voluntate ex mente D. Tho. Deus movet omâ—â—s causas secundas eas applâ—â—a ' ad suas operatioâ—â— ita ut etiam quando â—â—â—â—â—t voluntatem aliquid â—â—â—imit in illam per moâ—â—â— transeuntis Alvaâ—ez de Aux disp 23. p. 114. and helps than to others but leaveth them under the common helps which convert the more prepared Souls Not that God always doth so For oft times to his Elect he doth as he did by Paul or the Eunuch vouchsafe them extraordinary means For as a Benefactor he is free and may do with his own as he list and may make Vessels of Mercy and Honour of them that deserved worst And the case of the Tyrians and Sidonians compared with theirs of Capernaum and Bethsaida doth prove that less means are proportionable to some as being less ill-disposed when greater to others may be uneffectual III. And then as to objective Grace it being the same God the same Heaven the same Christ and the same Promise which is set before all that have the Gospel this cannot be the Controversie Though the revealing means be divers with many so is not the Object nor the Means to all IV. All that remaineth then to be questioned is the Effect which is subjective Grace whether that Grace in one man which is but sufficient be efficient in another or in the same man at several times And here by this subjective Grace is meant either 1. The vis impressa 2. Or the Power 3. Or the Act produced 4. Or the Disposition or Habit. The two latter are shut out of the question which is not whether the Act or Habit be sufficient and effectual but whether the Grace be so that is to cause them Whether this vis impressa be always caused by means with Gods Power set home as the impress of a Signature by the Arm and Seal or be caused immediately by God without any proper means the word being but a Concomitant and not mediate Operator is made a Controversie by some But he that well considereth the Scripture here abouts and the experience of man will be likelier to think that it is God by means that ordinarily maketh the impress on the Soul and that the same impress is the effect of both though extraordinarily God can do without means For 1. It is most likely that God should work on man most agreeably to his nature and to his subject state under God his Governor 2. And Christ himself as our Teacher and Example and all his Gospel are appointed to this use 3. The Ministry and Ordinances are appointed to the same end And Ministers commanded to fit their teaching to that end 4. No man can prove that ever any came to actual Knowledge Faith or Love but by some means Experience telleth Gods Servants that he worketh by them 5. The most apt and powerful usually have best success and those prosper most in Grace that use means best and those speed worst that use them least 6. God strictly commandeth the use of the means as means for that end that his Grace may be wrought by them 7. God promiseth his blessing on the means Act. 26. 17 18. 1 send thee to open their eyes c. Rom. 1. 16. The Gospel is the Power of God to Salvation 2 Tim. 4. 16. Thou shalt save thy self and them that hear thee Jam. 6. last He that converteth a Sinner saveth a Soul from death c. 8. When God forsaketh a Nation by taking away the means he usually forsaketh them as to further Grace 9. The Devil seemeth to know this by his earnest opposition to a holy powerful Ministry and other means throughout the World so that we may say with Cypriam Epist. 69. ad Pupian Ut etiam qui non credebant Deo Episcopum Constitâ—enti vel Diabâ—lo credebant Episcopum proscribenti But whether it be by means or not it must be somewhat different from Gods own Essence which is imprinted or communicated And to get a formal conception of it what it is if it be not the Power Disposition Act or Habit is past mans reach Whatsoever it is this is certain 1. That God doth not give an Act as a thing pre-existent but giving Faith is but causing us to believe or do that act our selves which was none till we performed it 2. That quoad effectum disposed Power and Act also are more than Power and Disposition without the act 3. Undoubtedly Dr. Fairfax Of the Bulk c. of the World pag. 5. 6 7 c. Though God be the Maker of every Being that is physicaly so it follows not that he is so of every Being that is morally so It is enough that God is the Maker of the Power to do evil which being good may spring from him c. All that God doth towards sin is to leave us to our selves to bring it forth if we will and instead of driving on to it as a fellow-helper or procatarktick cause he draws from it and towards the good with unspeakable endearments of wooing and drives from it by forbidding the Evil with all that earnestness of threatning which may beget in man the utmostness of dread Nor is he any nearer the physical cause of it than to give that good power which is not the cause at all as it looks towards him for by giving this power he is at the same time the evil is done as much the cause of the good that is not done therefore he is not the cause at all Besides this power is not only good but also needful For though the the perfection of the Will in the next life will not be in a wavering alike towards Good and Evil but only in a selfwillingness to Good yet in this life I think it mainly does and must For this is a life of doing or believing as it looks on to reward in that to come and that is a life of rewarding as it looks back to doing or believing here c. Hence we may answer the old 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For â—s sin is a moral thing c. unbounded Wisdom and Goodness having â—aid out endless happiness as a reward for Obedience and endless wretchedness as punishment for sin without this Obedience there could be no Heaven without Sin no Hell And without a power not to do in both there could be neither So then that God may have leave to make man happy for holiness man must needs have power to make himself wretched for sin That evil should always flow from evil in a chain of Breeders is a great misunderstanding Object Then man may
B. Great is this mystery of Godliness there is more in Christ than you take notice of even the Spirit which must work Grace in mens souls is two ways given first to Christ 1. In that as Administrator general the power of giving out the Spirit to mankind is now given to Him even in his humane Nature And he giveth it out in manner and measure suitable That Grace habitual is participatio naturae divinae and how and in what sense Vide Caceres sum Theol. 2. 2. cap. 1. And abundance of Jesuites and other School-men go as far in asserting its supernaturality and some in ascribing it to Christ as Protestants do But Vasquez and many go farther than many Protestants in supposing Christ the cause not only of Grace but of our Election to Grace And yet even there the difference is most if not only in words The Thomists maintain even that Christs humanity is the Instrument of the Deity in operating Grace in us which the cause of the Eucharist leadeth them to 1. To himself 2. To us 3. To his established means and Ordinances by which he worketh So that now the Spirit with its aid common or special is not given to any sinner immediately from God as Creator and as it was given to Adam before his fall but by the Mediation of Christ the Redeemer I mean not only the moritorious and procuring mediation but also the powerful conveying mediation Though God the Holy Ghost be still proximately the cause of Grace yet Christ as Mediator is made by office the Mediator and authorized giver of that Spirit and all its Grace and so the measurer and orderer of his helps and appointer of the conditions 2. And Christ is first filled with this Spirit personally himself that he may be a fit Head of vital Influence to all his Members who by the previous operations of his Spirit are drawn and united to him C. How prove you all this universal power in Christ B. You have heard the express proof And study further 1 John 5. 11 12. And this is the record that God hath given us eternal life and this life it in his Son He that hath the Son hath life and he that hath not the Son hath not life Rom. 8 9. If any man have not the Spirit of Christ the same is none of his Mark that it is The Spirit of Christ John 15. 26. The Comforter or Advocate whom I will send to you from the Father John 16. 7. If I depart I will send him to you John 14. 26. The Comforter whom the Father will send in my name Gal. 4. 6. And because ye are Sons God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts crying Abba Father Gal. 2. 20. I live yet not I but Christ liveth in me and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the Faith of the Son of God who loved me John 5. 21 22. The Son quickneth whom he will for the Father judgeth no man but hath committed all judgment to the Son 26. For as the Father hath life in himself so hath he given the Son to have life in himself And that you may see that he giveth the Spirit with and by means he saith Verse 24. Verily verily I say unto you He that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting life John 6. 27 32 33. Labour for that meat which endureth to everlasting life which the Son of man will give you For him hath God the Father seated that is openly owned as appointed to this Office He giveth life unto the world Whoso eateth my Flesh and drinketh my Blood hath eternal Life Dwelleth in me and I in him My Flesh is meat indeed As the living Father hath sent me and I live by the Father so he that eateth me even he shall live by me Verse 63. It is the Spirit that quickneth the Flesh profiteth nothing John 3. 34. God giveth not the Spirit to him by measure John 7. 39. This he spake of the Spirit which they that believe in him should receive John 1. 5. 4 5. Abide in me and I in you As the branch cannot bear fruit of it self except it abide in the vine no more can ye except ye abide in me I am the vine ye are the branches He that abideth in me and I in him the same bringeth forth much fruit for without me or out of me ye can do nothing Matth. 28. 20. I am with you always to the end 1 Cor. 6. 17. He that is joyned to the Lord is one Spirit 2 Cor. 3. 17. The Lord is that Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty Phil. 1. 19. Through the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ. Col. 3. 3 4. For ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God when Christ who is our life shall appear then shall ye also appear with him in glory Ephes 1. 22 23. And gave him to be head over all things to the Church which is his body the fulness of him that filleth all in all Do you need more to prove this great Office of Christ C. Here is more than I have well thought on But I find more to prove Christ the vital Head to his Church than to prove him the universal dispenser of all Grace whatever is given to the world B. Read them over again what would you have more than all Power all things all Judgment given or committed to him And to be by Office the Redeemer Saviour and light of the world coming as such even to them that neither comprehend him know him or receive him I add another Text Prov. 1. 20. to the end Wisdom crieth without she uttereth her voice How long ye simple ones will you love simplicity and the scorners delight in their scorning and fools hate knowledge Turn you at my reproof behold I will pour out my spirit unto you I will make known my words unto you Because I have called and ye refused see the rest Ver. 32. For the turning away of the simple shall slay them And two things more I offer for your conviction 1. That to shew both his Power and that he will exercise it orderly by means Christ impowred his Apostles and Ministers under him to give the Spirit And if the extraordinary Gifts were given by the laying on of their hands no wonder if the ordinary were given by their Doctrine 2. That on this ground Christ shall be the universal Judge of all the world as he was the universal Law-giver and light to all But what need I more when it is his very Office as Christ as Prophet to be the universal Teacher by Spirit and Word and as Priest to sanctifie by Spirit and Word and as King to rule by Spirit and Word C. I am amazed to think how little we well understand of our very Fundamentals and Catechism which we teach the ignorant Methinks in this universal Light
equality with the wise Do we not see that as man is so is his strength and work operari sequitur esse The strong do as the strong and the weak judge and do as the weak Why else doth God give men strength of Grace sure they that think the habit of Grace must needs be before any act will not hold that all our lives after the Acts from immediate divine production go beyond the degree of the habits We know that God is the chief cause of our perseverance and all our works that are good But he causeth them by disposing and quickening strengthening illuminating and sanctifying our faculties to do them which is habitual Grace B. What is your own judgment in this point A. Our judgment is 1. That he that truly at the present preferreth the pleasing of God and his Salvation before all this World is sincere and justified 2. That of these some have well setled apprehensions and resolutions but others have such shallow Conceptions and weak Resolutions as that a very strong Temptation would change their minds and overcome them 3. But if they escape such Temptation and be not overcome they shall be saved For God will not damn men for possible Sin and Apostacy which they were never guilty of but only for that which they did commit 4. And that it is no certain sign of hypocrisie that they would have fallen away had their Temptations been great but only a proof that they were weak 5. Else to pray Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil should be rather discover not our sincerity or hypocrisie by temptation 6. Therefore God useth to proportion mens trials to their strength And that young and weak Believers may persevere he exposeth them not antecedently to their provocation to great Temptations as he doth the strong Even as while a young Tree hath little rooting it hath also but a little top else had it the top of a great Tree and but the roots of a Plant the first great Wind would overturn it 7. Even strong Christians might possibly have some Temptations which would over-match their strength and turn them from Christ if God should not keep them from such Temptations 8. Therefore there are some Temptations so far above the very nature of man by such Grace as is not a meer Miracle to be overcome as that God doth not suffer Mankind to be tried with them As to be most exquisitely tormented many moneths or a longer time And in that unusual trial of the poor Christians in Japon though many endured those torments many weeks yet nature could not sustain them to the last but when they had suffered as much as many Smithfield burnings to death at last almost all denied Christ so that Christianity is now there extirpated Now if Rogers Bradford Hooper shewed sincerity by suffering death why should we not think that these did so that suffered far more than they though afterward the degree was greater than their strength 9. We hold that Gods Punishments and Mercies to men in this World are very much exercised in either permitting or not permitting great Temptations * The same Bradwardine l. 2. c. 16. holdeth that the cause of the damneds obstinacy in sin is not only themselves and Gods not-willing to cure and save them but also Gods positive Will by which their obstinate wills are for ever continued in the act But I see not why we should assert Gods positive Will of Sin in Hell or Earth when his not-effectual willing to cure it is enough And that for great sin he oft delivereth men up to Satan and giveth him the greater power over them Yea that the nature of sin it self is such as giveth greater advantage to the Tempter As he that will with Achan look on the wedge of Gold or that will please his tast with delicious Drinks and Meats or that will permit his eyes immodest Spectacles hath thereby let in the Devil into his Imagination and will not easily thence cast him out And on the other side he that pleaseth God and conquereth one Temptation obtaineth that Grace by which he is much saved from the next and the Tempter is the more disadvantaged and restrained 10. Lastly We therefore hold That seeing Temptations do not only try our sincerity or hypocrisie else we should desire them for self-examination but also tend to change mens minds and make them worse the way to persevere is to pray against and avoid Temptations and resist those that cannot be avoided This is our judgment In which you see that we hold that all weak Christians that are sincere may have assurance of their present Justification though they are not strong enough to stand the greatest trials And that they may well hope that God will save them from over strong Temptations while they sincerely do his Will B. But Christ saith That he that forsaketh not all that he hath and hateth not his own life cannot be his Disciple And what greater trial can there be than the loss of life it self A. Though some taking it to be hard that none are true Christians that would not be Martyrs were they tried have said that this Text speaketh de necessitate praecepti non medii You must grow up to this at last if you will be my Disciples yet I will not so force the Text but say as you do But 1. There are far stronger Temptations than the love of Life Though not from Interest yet from false reasonings which may deceive the judgment And one that would die for Christ while he believeth in him may possibly have so strong Temptations to unbelief as shall exceed in danger his fear of death 2. And all men that at the present would forsake Life and all for Christ yet have not the same fixedness of Resolution nor the same degree of Faith and Love No doubt but the Martyrs in the same flames had various degrees of Grace Now a less firm and fixed measure may be loosened by degrees or shaken by Seducers and mutable man may after be overcome by that same Temptation which once he could have overcome So that I accuse their Doctrine as utterly inconsistent with true Christian Comfort on both these account And such is the success of those men that will overdo and devise means of their own for extraordinary comforts which God never gave them B. The comfort of poor Christians it seems standeth but on slippery terms in the Opinion of both sides while each Party thinks that there is no true comfort in the others way * Whether we may be morally sure of our present Justification the Papists Doctors agree not among themselves Bellarmine and many others affirm it and others deny it as Aureolus cited by Brianson in 4. q. 4. fol. 36. and others that say no man can know whether his Habits are infused But doth not experience confute you Do you not see that many have true Christian comfort that are not of
Christ as a Saviour to effect it and bring them home to God And believing that he is freely offered to them they next thankfully Accept him by consent and Trust him and give themselves to him And all this is Christs own work upon them but in this order and by these degrees So that coming to Christ signifieth divers acts of which one is preparatory to the other And whereas he tells you that we keep men off from Christ till they are prepared judge you whether he speak truth or falshood Do we use to call to sinners and say Do not believe that Christ Reconcileth God and man till you first believe that there is a God Do not make haste and believe that Christ will save you from misery before you believe that you are miserable Or that he will wash away and pardon your sin before you believe that you are sinners and need a pardon Do not consent that Christ shall be your Saviour before you are willing to be saved or before you believe that he hath dyed rose c. and is offered you What need we perswade men from Impossibilities Is it we or their own necessity that keepeth them from Consenting before they Believe and from believing before they Understand We do as it were intreat poor sinners who love their dungeon to open the windows that the Light may come in And these men rail at us and say that we perswade men not to let in the light till they have first opened the windows What need we do that when it is impossible to do otherwise We perswade men to believe that they are sick that they may go to the Physicion And they rail at us for perswading men to delay going to the Physicion till they think they are sick We exhort sinners that are asleep in sin to awake and run the Christian race And they rail at us as if we perswaded them not to run it till they are awake So that the preaching of these men according to their Doctrine must be thus Come presently to Christ stay not to hear the Gospel or to consider of it or to understand the meaning of it before you Trust Christ as your Saviour Presently cast your selves upon him before you know who he is or what he hath done for you and trust him for the pardon of your sin before you perceive that you are sinners or feel any need of pardon Stay not for a will but Take him or Accept him for your Saviour before you are willing of him or willing to be saved Do you think this is the only Gospel-preaching I pray you Sir tell me your self How would you preach to the Indians if you were Mr. Eliots assistant or to any other Heathens Would you at the first word call them to cast themselves upon Christ for salvation before you taught them to know that there is a God or a Law or sin or punishment c Lib. The Apostle called men presently to Believe in the Lord Jesus without delay Acts 2. and Acts 16. and Acts 8. c. And so should we P. 1. What talk you of Delay Are we for Delay any more than you The Angel Acts 12. that smote Peter and bid him arise and go forth was not for his delay because he bid him not go forth before he arose and before his fetters were off 2. And you forget that the Apostles spake to Jews who had the Preparatory belief of a God and of the Law and of the promise of the Messiah before 3. And yet they first humbled them for sin Acts 2. 37. till they were pricked at the heart And the Jaylor first trembleth and both say What must we do Is this your kind of proof And why did all the antient Churches from the Apostles dayes teach men the Creed or Christian Doctrine and Catechise them long before they baptized them And I think the Anabaptists will do so now And I think you would be loth your selves to gather your Churches from among Heathens Mahometans or Infidels till you had taught and prepared them as much at least as we require But let us hear whether in the second point you have any better or wiser Doctrine to teach us CHAP. II. Lib. II. You should teach men to believe that all our own Righteousness is as filthy rags abominable to God and to be cast away with our sins And that we are neither to trust to nor to look at any thing in our selves for justification or acceptance with God or to procure eternal life But that Christ hath both satisfied for our sins and fulfilled the Law of Innocency for us God imputed our sins to him and he was by Imputation the greatest sinner in all the world the greatest murderer thief fornicator perjured person rebell and ungodly man For the sins of all the Elect did meet upon him and were his Therefore he was forsaken of God and suffered the same Hell that we deserved And God imputeth all his satisfaction and righteousness so to us as that in Gods account all the Elect or at least All believers did satisfie and fulfill all the Law in and by Christ For he was our surety and our Legal Person though not our Natural person So that what Christ was we were and what Christ did we did and what Christ suffered we suffered in Gods â—â—count or imputation And so we are as righteous as Christ himself because all Christs righteousness is ours And we have no other nor need no other Righteousness at least in order to our Justification This Righteousness of Christ is it by which we are Justified by the Law of works which saith Obey perfectly or Do this and Live For we Did all that is required in and by Christ In this Righteousness only God accepâ—â—th us We have Right to it from eternity by Gods Decree of Election and our Consciences perceive our right upon our Believing And to set men on Doing themselves for Life when they should only Do from Life is to deceive them and undo them P. If these words did offer me any Light which we had not before received I should gladly learn and give you thanks But if such talk as this be all that must show you to â—e wiser than your neighbours and â—â—â—â—rant you to rail at them as Legal Preacherâ— and such as â—â—â—â—â—â—â—â— on by works my soul must pitty you and all such poor sinners â—â—â—â—â—â—â—bled or seduced by you But because this Head containâ—â—â— many particular doctrines I pray you let us speak to them in order I. And first about our own Righteousness And seeing I am the Leaâ—â—er I must crave your answer as fiâ—ted to my own doubts And Quest 1. Do you know how many times the words Just Righteous and Righteousness are used in the Bible Lib. No I have not taken such an account as to tell you P. Let us see the Concordance Here you find it about six hundred and twelve times used besides the words Justifie Justifying and
faith mentioned so oft in Scripture that is Upon and by believing we are first made just by free-given pardon and right to life and true sanctification with it and we are sentenced just because so first made just But this is not without our Faith and Repentance 2. And that Faith and Repentance are a Righteousness Evangelical that is a performance of the conditions on which the Covenant of Grace doth freely give us right to Christ pardon and life and so are the Constitutive causes of that subordinate Justification Lib. But your subordinate Righteousness hath no hand in our Justification P. This is but singing over the old Song by one that will not consider what is answered Have you thought on all the Texts even now cited Hath faith no hand in our Justification Hath the performance of a Condition and the Moral Disposition of the Receiver no hand in the Reception of a Gift What think you is the meaning of Christs words Matth. 12. By thy words thou shalt be justified and by thy words thou shalt be condemned What meaneth St. James that a man is justified by works and not by faith only Are men justified by that which hath no hand in their Justification Lib. Christ meaneth before men and so doth James and not before God P. This is notoriously false as contrary to the plain Text Christ speaketh of the Account to be given of our words in the day of Judgement vers 36. And James speaketh of that which men are saved by vers 14. and that Justification which Abraham had and that in an instance where Man did not justifie him and of that which was faiths life and perfection vers 17 22. and of Gods imputing faith for righteousness as to a friend of God vers 23. And is this nothing but Justification before men Lib. This is not the justifying of the man but of his faith P. 1. You contradict the Text which saith Abraham Rahab A man is justified by Works 2. You contradict your self For if the faith be justified the man is justified to be a true believer For how could a man that fulfilled the Law as Christ and Angels did be justified but by justifying his actions And how can he that fulfilleth the Gospel conditions be justified in that point but by justifying that he fulfilled them Lib. At least I may say that this is not the great and notable Justification which is only by Christs Righteousness P. We are not contending for its preheminence but its truth and necessity in a subordinate place Indeed we have one Justification by our Judges sentence which hath many parts and causes God as Donor is one cause and God as Judge another And Christ as meriting is the only meritorious cause of the Justifying Gift and Covenant and Christ as Intercessor another cause and Christ as Judge another And our Righteousness as it is our Right to Impunity and life another and our faith and Repentance are conditions All this is sure Lib. But the Justification by faith is our Universal Justification and that can be only by Christs Righteousness And we are not to trust to a Righteousness mixt of Christs and ours nor doth Christs Righteousness need to be patcht up with our menstruous rags P. 1. No question but Christs Righteousness is perfect and ours imperfect and ours is no patch or supplement to Christs He is not made righteous by our righteousness but we by his 2. But that which is perfect in him is not made perfectly ours nor formally ours in it self as distinct from its merited effects It is not ours as it is Christs Christ that is our Righteousness is also made of God to us wisdom and sanctification And will you say therefore that we are not to be Wise or Holy by any Wisdom or Holiness of our own for fear of adding our patch to Christs 3. You use to say that Christs Righteousness is ours as Adams sin is ours and say some as Adams Righteousness would have been had he persevered But 1. Adams Righteousness would have indeed made an Infant initially just by propagation that is the innocent Child of an innocent Parent But as soon as that Infant had the use of Reason and Choice he must also have a Righteousness of his own or perish And this is no patch to Adams righteousness And indeed in his Infancy he must have a seminal Holiness of his own to justifie him as well as the relation of a Son of Adam 2. So also though we are guilty of Adams sin by propagation yet we have with that guilt 1. An inherent pravity of our own 2. And at age our actual sin And both these are our unrighteousness as well as Adams sin imputed to us Even so Christ the second Adam is a Root of a righteous seed Our Contract by faith is as to him what our Natural propagation is as to Adam that is the Condition of our Interest in his merits We have as believers an initial righteousness in our relation to Christ But we have also from him 1. Inherent habitual righteousness 2. The actual righteousness of faith and true obedience and love And these have their proper use and office without which we must perish 4. And I must tell you that the word Universal is too big to be properly given to any mans justification or righteousness but Christs Properly he only is Universally justified or righteous who hath no unrighteousness at all imputable to him and is justifyable in all things But the best believer 1. Was once a sinner originally 2. Did oft sin actually 3. Hath still sin in him 4. And for some sin may be punished by the Magistrate 5. And for sin is judged and punished by chastisements and death by God 6. And the earth still cursed for our sake 7. Yea which is worst of all we are still under the penaâ—ty of some privations alas how great of Gods Spirit and its Grace and our Communion with God And all this must be confessed And such a one is not Universally justified or just Lib. But still our own Righteousness doth but make us such as thankful persons must be for their Justification by Christ and is no part of that Justification by faith For if faith it self be that Righteousness we have not faith by faith and faith is not imputed to faith but Christs Righteousness is it that is imputed P. Of Imputation in due place 1. What need you talk against that which none of us assert Do we not all hold that our personal Gospel-Righteousness is subordinate to Christs and is by his Gift as ouâ— Wisdom and Sanctisication is Who dreameth that our faith is any part of Christs Righteousness But why do you waste time in vain cavilling against plain certain truth Is there any thing in Name or Thing asserted by us that you can deny or question Quest 1. Do you deny that Scripture commandeth us to Believe that we may be justified Lib. No. P. Quest 2. Or
from their lawfuiler imployments that they may hear in season and call Martha to choose Maries part and those that say They cannot come because of their Oxen Farms and Business to change that mind Lib. Yes no doubt of it Zaccheus must be in Christs way P. Quest 4. Must we not perswade them to take heed how and what they hear and to set their hearts to all Gods Words and to see that they despise not him that speaketh but he that hath ears to hear let him hear and to consider of the truth and weight of all and to search the Scriptures to see whether the things be so Lib. I deny none of this P. Quest 5. May we not perswade them to come and talk and reason the case with Friends or Ministers that we may convince them Lib. Yes no doubt as well as to hear in publick P. Quest 6. May we not Catechise them and teach them the Principles of Christianity that they may understand them Lib. Yes as to the Matter but to teach them your forms of Questions and Answers is but formality and deceit P. What May we not teach them the words of Christ and Scripture How shall the matter be understood without words And what better words than the words of Scripture Lib. But a Form of the same words is but formality P. Hath God forbid us to use the same Are Children and ignorant people fit to understand the mysteries of God if you speak them every time in new or other words or can they so remember them And when the use of words is to signifie Things and the Matter is one and the same for we have but one God and Christ and Gospel what wild work will you make of it if you speak the same things every time in other words Are all those words equally fit to signifie the same Things Certainly some particular words are more fitted to each matter than other And should not the fittest be most used Doth not Christ deliver us a form of Baptism and a form of the administration of his last Supper and a form of Prayer Are there not forms prescribed in Gods Word of the Priests Benediction and what the people shall say when they offer Sacrifice Are not all the Psalms forms of Prayer and Praise and were indeed the Liturgie of the Jews Doth not Joel put a form of prayer into the mouths of Penitents Doth not Paul teach us to use Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs singing and making melody in our hearts to the Lord Eph. 5. 19. Doubtless it is not only Davids Psalms that are meant by these three words but Hymns and Songs fitted to Gospel Worship And if you would have none of them premeditated nor be twice the same words you would soon make your self ridiculous to the world If you say that this Precept was for them that could do so being filled with the Spirit I answer 1. It 's true that they had their extraordinary endowments which made a difference in the manner as also in Praying and Preaching But shall we dream that therefore the same duties belong not to us to be performed in the best manner that we can 2. A man may from the Spirit pour out his soul to God in forms of Prayer and Praise though the words were premeditated In a word if you would have all forms of Creeds Prayer Praise and administration of Sacraments and Catechisms cast away you are an enemy to Gods true Worship and the safety and edification of the Church yea you must cast away all the Scriptures which are Gods form of instruction recorded for the Churches use to the end of the World Quest 6. But I further ask you May we not perswade bad men to examine themselves and to find know and confess that they are bad and ungodly and to lament it Lib. Yes that cannot be denyed P. Quest 7. And may we not perswade them to believe that there is a God and that the Scripture is his Word and true and that Christ is the Messias Lib. Yes the Devils believe all this P. Quest 8. And may we not exhort them to Repent and Turn to God and so to believe in Christ as to receive him and give up themselves unto him Lib. Yes you may exhort them but they cannot do it of themselves P. Must we exhort them to nothing but what they can do of themselves Quest 9. Is not Exhortation Gods means to bring them to Repentance and Faith in Christ Lib. Yes I deny none of this But that which you abuse men by 1. Is bidding the ungodly pray when the prayers of the wicked are abominable to God And 2. In that you do not first call them to believe and come to Christ before they do any other duty P. 1. You granted me before that hearing and considering and searching the Scripture and other things named are to be done before Believing in Christ by those that are yet unbelievers He that believeth that there is a God must behave himself accordingly in obeying God 2. Men that believe in Christ but by Assent that he is truly the Christ and the Gospel true and that there is a life to come surely if they love themselves must do somewhat in order to a fuller Justifying Belief 3. And are you so much against the very Law of Nature worse than the Seamen that bid Jonas call upon his God worse than the Ninevites and than almost all mankind as that you would have no men pray but godly men Did not Peter bid Simon Magus repent and pray Acts 8. And doth not God command the wicked Isa 55. to seek the Lord while he may be found and call upon him while he is near Should no graceless man ask Wisdom of God who giveth liberally to all men and upbraideth not James 1. and giveth his Spirit to them that ask it Must they not pray for Grace Faith and Repentance that want them 4. But yet let me remember you that we use not to exhort men to draw nigh to God with the lips alone nor to pray without Desire For Praying is but Desiring and presenting that Desire to God And when we bid men pray for Grace we bid them desire it And so bid them Repent and Pray Believe and Pray for Praying is a Returning act And if we may not call them to pray we may not call them to Turn to God Mr. Eliot in New England teacheth the Indians another lesson whose great work is to call them to pray and the title that his Converts have is the Praying Indians Lib. But without faith it is impossible to please God or do any thing which is not abominable to him P. 1. But it is not impossible for one to have a common and temporary faith and another a saving faith 2. And one that believeth that God is and that he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him and this not savingly may yet less displease God and be less abominable than
that we are commanded not only Thankfully to Accept but Thankfully to obey our Lord Redeemer and Saviour Lib. No. P. Quest 3. Date you deny that life or death eternal dependeth on this as a Condition or Moral means and that we shall be judged according to it Lib. No. I deny it not P. Quest 4. Is it not a Law that thus commandeth us and by which we must be judged Lib. Yes If it were no Law there were no duty and sin in belief and unbelief P. Quest 5. Is not a man so far just and justifyable by that Law as he keepeth it and justifyable against the charge of being one that must be Damned by producing the Condition of pardon and life performed Lib. Yes I deny it not P. Quest 6. And doth not the same Law virtually justifie the performer now whom it will justifie as the Rule of Judgement at last Lib. Yes no doubt P. Quest 7. And is not the Name of Righteousness many score times given in Scripture to our own actions done by Grace and measured by the New Covenant Lib. Yes I cannot deny it P. Why then while you deny neither Name nor Thing what wrangle you about And let me plainly tell you that such men as you by indiscreet ever-doing are not the least of Satans instruments to bring the Gospel under scandal and harden the world in Infidelity and the scorn of Christ while you would so describe the Christian Religion as if this were the very heart and summ of it Believe that all the Elect have fulfilled perfectly all Gods Law by another and that Christ did it as personating each of them and therefore no crime of their own is imputable to them nor any kind or degree of Goodness or Righteousness in and of themselves is at least required of God as any means or condition of their present or future justification by their Judge or as having any hand therein As if God were become indifferent what we all are so that Christ be but Righteous for us when as it was Christs grand design to restore lapsed man to God which he doth not only by Relative benefits but by Renewing them to his Image in love and holy obedience Lib. Have you not lately and oft been told that holiness and obedience are necessary now but it is to other Ends than to justifie us as for Cratitude c. P. 1. We easily grant it is for other Ends than Christs Merits were and not to justifie us as they do nor in that Causality They are not to purchase for us a free gift of pardon and life nor the Holy Ghost c. as Christ did 2. But again tell me Hath not Christ a Law that commandeth our obedience to those ends as Gratitude which you mention And is not the keeping that Law a thing that the same Law will so far justifie us for Yea a Condition that life dependeth on And if the Cause in Judgement be Have you kept it or not must you not in that be accordingly Justified or Condemned Give over cavilling against plain necessary truth Lib. By this you will fall in with the Papists who take Justification to be partly by Christs Righteousness and partly by our own and partly in pardon and partly in faith and holiness P. Tell not me of the Names of Papists or any to frighten me from plain Scripture truth 1. Why may not I rather say Why go you from all the antient Writers and Churches even Augustine himself by your new and contrary opinion Was true Justification unknown for so many hundred years after the Apostles 2. The most zealous Antipapists do confess that some Texts of Scripture do so take the word Justification And multitudes of Texts so take the words Righteous and Righteousness And he that will impartially consider them may find that more Texts than are by us so confessed do by Justifying mean Making us Just and so Accounting us on all these causes conjunct 1. As being Redeemed by Christs Merits 2. And freely pardoned 3. And having Right to life 4. And renewed to Gods love and Image 5. And so justifyable at the Bar of Grace by the Law of faith and liberty 3. And the reality of all the Matter of this Doctrine is past doubt if the Controversie de nomine Justificationis were not so decided CHAP. IV. Whether the Gospel be a Law of Christ Lib. III. YOu bring in your doctrine of personal Righteousness to Justification by feigning Christ to have made a new Law whereas the Gospel is but a Doctrine History and Promise and not a Law and so no Rule of Righteousness and Judgement And this many Protestants have asserted P. I have read some such sayings in some men And some I think meant no more but that Christ did only expound and not add to the Law of Nature called by them the Moral Law And these I have excused for their unhappy kind of expression But for the rest that mean as the words sound universally they subvert Christianity and as the Arrians denyed Christs Godhead so do they his Office and Government and are somewhat worse than the Quakers who say that the Spirit within us is the Law and Rule of Christ which is better than none I pray answer me Quest 1. Is Christ the King and Ruler of the Church Lib. Yes P. Quest 2. Is not Legislation the first and principal part of Government Lib. Yes P. Quest 3. Do not they then that deny Christs Legislation deny his Government Lib. Yes P. Quest 4. Is it not essential to Christ as Christ the name signifying Relatively his Office to be King Lib. Yes P. Quest 5. Do they not then by this deny Christ to be Christ Lib. No for they confess that he hath a Law but not that he made any since his birth P. We grant 1. That the Law of Nature now is His Law 2. And that the first Edition of the Law of Grace to Adam after the fall was his Law 3. And Moses Law was partly his But you will not say that we are under this last nor I hope that he hath no other than the two first Lib. Why what other can you prove P. It is the Name or the Thing that you deny for you use to confound the cases 1. Whether the name be fit judge by these Texts Gal. 6. 2. Bear ye one anothers burdens and so fulfil the Law of Christ James 1. 25. The perfect Law of Liberty Rom. 8. 2. The Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus c. Rom. 3. 27. Boasting is excluded By what Law Of Works Nay but by the Law of faith Mic. 4. 2. For the Law shall go out of Zion c. So Isa 2. 3. 8. 16 20. 42. 41. The Isles shall wait for his Law 1 Cor. 9. 21. We are under the Law to Christ Heb. 8. 10 16. I will put my Laws into their minds and hearts James 4. 12. There is one Law-giver c. Isa 33.