have there is none no not Polagius himself that in plain terms ever durst deny He will … if pressed for shame acknowledge and subscribe unto the necessity of Grace in shew of words but as the manner of all Hereticks is he doth but equivocate making terms in themselves plain by secret reservation false and fraudulent that so he might have a back-door at a time of need whereat to deceive and abuse both himself and his reader For secretly within his own mind he desires Grace by quicquid gratis datur that by this means under the name of Grace he might hedge in free-will and abilities of Nature Nay if this fraud be detected he will come yet closer for he will not refuse to confess a necessity of true internal Grace such as the Gospel mentions the Grace of Christ and of his Holy Spirit and that it is the gift of God yea a special gift which all have not yet still he keeps this secret in the deep of his Heart that all might have it and that it is their own faults if they have it not since as he holds this Grace is given and withheld according to the merits or demerits of Men by a former good or evil use of their free will ut gratia sonaret meritum delitescret that so grace might sound in their words and yet they retain merit in their minds Such shift doth proud slime and dust make to magnifie the arm of flesh and so unwilling is it to give the true and whole glory unto God whose it is Yet this is not all Men have more subtilties to rob God or rather to deceive themselves Arminius and his followers the late Semi-pelagians step one Step farther and with the Catholick truth acknowledge not only a true and internal Grace but a liberal free and preventing Grace a Grace given not deserved But for all this he understands only such a Grace as is common to both to Elect and Reprobate upon the good or evil use whereof it is that Men become either For according to these Election doth not provide or prepare according to St. Austin any special Grace for particular Men but some particular men are specially elected upon foresight of their well-husbanding of that Grace which is common so that Man must still have the preheminence For however it be from Gods Grace that they have ability to obtain Salvation yet that they are saved when others who received the same Grace are not this must needs be not from his help but their own will An old rancid opinion long since broached by Faustus and Cassianus whose Books for this were condemned by Gelasius and a Council of seventy Bishops more for erroneous and Apocryphal and now lately again revived by Arminius and others who are not the Authors and Inventors but only strenuous Advocates requiring a relief after Judgment of a dead and rotten a damned and long since condemned Heresie So that it is a good judgment of a Reverend Bishop Faustum Cassianum quasi per Metempsyohosin in Arminio Bertio revixisse That the Souls of Faustus and Cassianus do as it were live again in Arminius and Bertius they do so justly jump and conspire with their Doctrine of universal Grace and Election upon foresight than which no opinion can be more injurious unto God or more grossly and demonstratively false in it self For however it retains the name it perverts the end and destroys the very Nature of Election causing that Predestination which the Apostle unto the Ephesians tells us was ordained in laudem gloriae gratiae suae to the praise of the glory of his Grace to serve and tend only unto the honour of our own propension and will since he that reigns in Heaven hath no more whereof to thank God than he that lies burning in Hell because from equal Grace they have wrought out these their unequal fortunes And therefore say St. Paul what he will Salvation is rather of him that willeth and runneth that believeth and worketh than of God that sheweth mercy whereas it is not neither doth it less pervert the End than the Nature thereof converting the cause into the effect and the effect into the cause making Election a consequent of Faith and Repentance when these are the true fruits of Election which is the well-head of Grace and all the rest of Gods favours and our good deeds but streams issuing from that Fountain who have all obtained mercy with St. Paul not because we were but that we should be faithful Non vos me elegistis for you have not chosen me but I have chosen you saith our Saviour and have ordained you for what that you should go and bring forth and that your fruit should remain for I have ordained I that do both begin and perfect the good deed that do work in you both to will and to do do work in you also to do and to persevere and that by my free Election and absolute decree Ego posui for I have ordained that you go and bring forth fruit and that that fruit remain It were an endless work and a bootless expence of Travel to heap up places of Scripture for the enforcing of this point they are every where obvious the Glory of Gods grace through a free and undeserved Election being a main branch of the Gospel and therefore often inserted but by St. Paul purposely disputed and proved in a set discourse wherein these new oppugners are so directly confuted as if the Holy Ghost had especially looked on them when he spake by his mouth for there is no other intent or purpose in that place but to demonstrate that the Adoption of the Sons of God doth not depend upon the carnal Generation of Abraham as the Jews conceived nor yet upon our own or our Forefathers works but simply upon the Eudochie the meer good will and pleasure of God This he makes manifest in all in a Type under the names of two Jacob and Esau Brethren equal in all things only unequal in the favour of God both begotten by the same parents and both born at the same birth on either side no advantage by blood and as little in quality they had done neither good nor evil nor could do at that time wherein notwithstanding that the purpose of God might be known to stand according to Election it was said I have loved Jacob and hated Esau No difference in the Persons and yet a different respect of God who is no respecter of persons which moves the Apostle to a strange interrogation but natural unto the place Nunquid iniquitas apud Deum what then is there iniquity with God God forbid but how doth he answer it doth he with these reply that though they had then done neither good nor evil yet God elected the one and rejected the other upon foresight of the good and evil which they afterwards would do This had been an acute and brief answer Quis iftum acutissimum
hope I may have good leave so to order it setting the first last and the last first as in Nature and dignity they deserve And therefore reserving the second place and ending of this discourse unto the destruction of the wicked that shall never end we will begin through the help of God with that help and salvation which the Elect receive of God by a Decree that never had beginning but is as Eternal as he himself who for this respect here saies In me is thy help At the feet of whose Divine Majesty I now cast my self humbly beseeching and imploring his aid and assistance unto my Heart and Tongue in these high and secret Mysteries that I may speak nothing but what is agreeable unto his holy word and that with such reverence as becomes his Majesty and this Sacred Place Since this whole sentence as I said is appliable unto either sort of people it followeth that before we speak of this special help of the Elect we say something of that destruction whereunto this help doth relate wherein notwithstanding we shall not need to spend much time for that the Elect of God have destroyed themselves that is were and are in themselves worthy of destruction none I think do either doubt or deny Only concerning the order and precedence question hath been made some giving the priority unto Election affirming that they were first elected who afterwards through sin came to deserve destruction as thinking it impossible that the merit of destruction as being a temporal Act should preceed the free mercy of God established by an eternal Decree and thereby which is the cause of no few errours inverting and perverting both the order of my Text and the nature of the things strangely presupposing help or salvation without supposing any former destruction which such relative terms must of necessity respect As strange a contradiction as if they should say that punishing Justice did precede the fault which it doth punish or acts of mercy might be extended on those that never were in misery For since the decrees of Election and Reprobation are made and ordained by the same properties in God whereby men are punished or saved it follows that as Reprobation must needs be an act of punishing Justice so Election an effect of contrary Mercy And herein doth consist the special difference between the Predestination of Men and Angels For their Election was a mercy preserving them from falling into the pit of destruction But ours a mercy raising us up and drawing us out of that destruction whereinto we were faln Theirs may better be termed Goodness than Mercy because it is not opposite unto Justice as ours is and therefore is not goodness but strictly and properly the mercy of God now Misericordiae propria sedes miseria est the proper seat or object of Mercy is misery saith St. Bernard And therefore Qui non ponit primò miseriam in lapsâ— hominis ponere ill misericordiam in Electione non potest He that first grants not misery in the fall can never place mercy in the Election of man said a late worthy Bishop both agreeing with that of Esdras after his confession unto God But because of us senners thou shalt be called merciful To make this yet more manifest by the definition of Election It is saith St. Austin Praeparatio benoficiorum Dei quâ—bus certissimè liberantur quieunque liberantur A preparation of those benefits of God whereby they are certainly saved whosoever are saved And what are these benefits but a new heart and a new Spirit begotten through effectual grace and a powerful vocation unto sincere repentance and to lively faith in the death and blood of the Son of God Now what have any of these to do with Innocency To whom else may they belong but a sinner but to one subjected and devoted unto that destruction from whence he could not be delivered but by the mercy of such a Redeemer As for the reason drawn from the time of sin and the Decree of Salvation before all time the deceit and errour of that doth apparently consist in a wrong comparing of an external Act of mans with an internal Act of Gods when the comparison should have been if rightly made between two internal acts of God for mans work is here to be considered not as it was done by him but as it was foreseen by God and then if thus taken you shall easily find the temporary sin of man to be no less eternal in Gods prescience than the deliverance from it or punishment for it could be in his Decree For as Gods Electing doth in order of necessity presuppose the foresight of their being that are elected though they be elected before they be quia objectum prius est in se quà m objiciatur actus in ipsum tendenti So for the same reason that it doth presuppose this positive foresight of their being it must also the permissive of their being miserable because Election is from mercy and mercy as is said doth always presuppose its object which is misery It follows therefore to conclude this point that the very Elect of God acknowledge to the praise of the riches of his exceeding free compassion that when he in his secret determination set it down Those shall live and not die they lay as ugly spectacles before him as Lepers covered with dung and mire as Ulcers putrified in their Fathers Loins miserable and worthy of nothing but to be had in detestation In the proof whereof I have made the longer stay partly because it opens a passage for some things that must follow anon but especially that the truth of St. Austins opinion might more clearly appear affirming that in the search of Election and Reprobation no mans wit should presume to ascend above the miserable mass of corruption Mans Nature at first was by Creation Gold but Sin was the poysonous menstruum the aqua regis more than Chymical that dissolved it and drew off the purer parts leaving unto us nothing but this earth and these faeces of that Gold Thus was his fall a great fall indeed from the purity of Gold to the vility of Clay and this Clay is that impure lump meant by St. Austin over which he grants with the Apostle that the Potter hath power thereout to frame Vessels either to dishonour or honour as it pleaseth him best The one being their desert the other his own mercy Huic fit misericordia tibi nou fit injuria saith the same Father God chuseth one he refuseth another to him he sheweth mercy to thee he doth no injury since the one doth receive but what all do deserve But enough of the desert of destruction now of the undeserved help For Man might fall of himself but rise again he could not without the help of another nor of any other but him who here saith In me is thy help And that we have help from God and that we need so to
sensum Apostolo defuisse non miretur Who can chuse but wonder the Apostle should not see this subtilty saith St. Austin For had he known it to have been so eodem modo solveret istam quaestionem he would soon have answered the question immo nullam quam solvi opus esset faceret quaestionem Nay he had then never made any such question that should need an answer For there had not remained so much as any shew of injustice where Love or Hatred doth proceed according to good or evil deserts But now that there should be a different judgment where there is no difference in merit there cannot but seem a just occasion of making the demand Nunquid iniquitas Whereunto leaving this vain gloss as directly contrary unto his purpose he reduceth all unto the meer will of God I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion An answer sounding to this effect That since both were equally conceived in original sin deserved his Justice his Love unto one was an act of Mercy and in Mercy there is no cause of his will but his will nor of his Mercy but his Mercy I will have mercy c. And then quis nisi insipiens Deum iniquum putet sive judicium poenale ingerat digno sive misericordiam praestet indigno Because as before was noted though the one obtain free favour yet the other receives no injury By which answer he doth at once free God from all injustice towards the Reprobate and withal withdraws all merit from the Elect who have that Name and Grace for no other cause but only because he had a will to shew Mercy special Mercy unto them which he did not unto others to whom notwithstanding they were of themselves in all things equal and with whom they were in like sort obnoxious unto the revenge and power of Justice False therefore and vain and very derogatory unto the goodness of that God in whom is our help are their conceipts that build Election upon a foreseen good or evil use of a general and sufficient Grace to the prejudice of that which is special and particular For however we deny not but rather piously believe that his Providence doth sufficiently help all those whom his mercy doth vouchsase to call yet withal we acknowledge it to be such an help as whereâ— withal God when he looked down from Heaven saw there was none did good no not one A help therefore which in effect doth not give Salvation but takes away excuse and seems not so much to justify them as to make their Condemnation more just who notwithstanding that they might not all perish and that he might yet shew his Mercy of his infinite goodness freely elected some to such special Grace whereby they should not perish a Grace effectual receiving the rest unto endless punishment for abusing that which was sufficient So that God doth not only give such Grace whereby we may be able to do and then elect us for doing what we were able but contrarily foreseeing that we would not do what we were able with that sufficient Grace to do of his absolute Mercy did decree to give us such powerful and efficacious Grace whereby we certainly should do what otherwise without this special help he knew we should not For had not he by this means as the Scripture testifies reserved unto himself a Remnant notwithstanding the former Grace we had been all as Sodom and perished as Gomorrha And therefore Reliqui mihi saith God unto Elias It is not there are or there remains unto me but I have reserved unto my self seven thousand which never bowed the knee unto Baal And from this Reliqui they are termed Reliquiae secundùm electionem gratiae salvae factae sunt A Remnant only are saved according to the Election of Grace And if of Grace surely not of foreseen works yea so far is God from respecting the will or work of Man in the dispensation of his Grace as he sometimes denies that help unto those that would use it well which notwithstanding he offers and exhibits unto others that he knew before would reject it Had those great works saith our Saviour upbraiding the Jews been done in Tyre and Sidon they had repented in Sackcloth and Ashes Lo how God ploughs the Sand and scatters his good seed upon the dry and barren hearts of the Jews fitter for salt and in the mean time withholds it from another soil that would have fructified and brought forth the fruit of Repentance unto eternal life What shall we say unto this Two things occur which I only am willing to answer saith St. Austin in the like case and are very fit for this nunquid iniquitas apud Deum And O alâ—itudo divitiaerum An Interrogation and an exclamation the one out of the ninth and the other out of the eleventh to the Râ—m And both joined tend unto this That being assured there is no injustice with God we should not search the cause but admire the depth of his Wisdom whose judgments are unsearchable and his ways past finding out For he often treads on water that leaves no path or impression behind He walks upon the great deep saith Daâ—id and his footsteps are not known And whom this will not satisfy I must advise with the same Father Quaerat doctiorer seâ—b caveat nè inoeniat praesumptiores Let him seek those that are more learned but take heed he doth not meet with those that are too presumptuous Such surely as these conditional Electioners are who as if they were fore runners of the second coming of Christ endued with the Spirit of Elias have cast down every Hill and filled up every Valley made whatsoever seemed crooked streight and whatsoever was rough smooth and plain and by this means they though but lambs can easily wade where those Elephants the Fathers of the Primitive Church found such Pits and Pools as they were glad to swim For what is there in their Doctrine not easie and even obvious and open if God hath diversly determined of none but such as are of divers and different merits what room then is there left for O altitudo For they that give a cause of Election take away all cause of the Apostles exclamation because none do admire an effect but they that are ignorant of the cause as here all must needs be when of those that have one and same cause there is not one and the same regard but the one is justly exposed unto hatred the other vouchsafed love without all cause at least that we can search out and inquire The head of Nilus may be sooner found than the Spring and Fountain of Election the eye of the Eagle that looks on the Sun cannot discover it because it remains in his bosom that dwells in inaccessible light And yet notwithstanding we do not make the will of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 irrational For
Men yet I shall not our own present Church nor the learned Fathers of former whose voice unto their dissolute flocks hath ever been the same with this here of God O Israel thou hast destroyed thy self The inference and issue of all that which hath been already said in this point doth reach only to this That that Destruction which fell upon the world through the sin and fall of the Protoplast Adam ought to be ascribed unto his own free and voluntary fault and not unto any irresistable appointment and Decree of God's all whose Ordinations unto Destruction do not precede but of necessity foresee and suppose this offence Not that this or any other sin is the absolute cause why God doth but the desert and merit why he justly may reject and reprobate whom he please It now remains that we proceed and step one step farther and enquire whether God as he may so he actually doth reprobate immediately out of the Mass of corruption upon the foresight of this and no other sin Otherwise I shall fall short of giving full satisfaction unto my Text wherein God seems not so much to relate unto the original misery wherein they were conceived and born as unto their particular and actual sin and disobedience refusing his love and rejecting his mercy when he so passionately bursteth out O Israel And if this be rightly spoken in regard of their own Acts and Actions they must be such also as are willingly and wilfully done For surely they that are destroyed for sins which by natural Corruption they could not chuse but commit they may be pitied but cannot be blamed and then it will stand firm and good that it is not Israel that have destroyed themselves but their fore-Father only that hath destroyed Israel since necessary crimes are not to be imputed to the Doers but to him that contracted the necessity Unto these and many more difficulties as I conceive unanswerable must they be lyable who make the Decree and Reprobation peremptorily to proceed immediately upon foresight only of original sin without any other respect of disobedience and contempt of the Grace of God or Gospel of Christ neither of which they say was ever provided for them For first it will from hence follow that though they allow an especial favour of God unto some few particular men yet they bereave him of his philanthropie his grace and benevolent affection unto the kind which the scripture frequently mentions and so make him to exercise upon the far greater part of men meer severity without all mercy as he did upon the Devils whereby they clearly remove the main difference between the Reprobation of men and of Angels which the Fathers place in this that is afforded them means of recovery but the evil Spirits none because the Devil sinned of his own proper motion and instinct but man at the instigation of the Devil Nay farther that God deals in much more severity with these miserable men who only sinned in the Loyns of another than with those powers of darkness that wilfully transgressed for that all their life long he still presseth them with impossible commands for no other end but to heighten that damnation whereunto they were before unavoidably denoted Surely a heavy case and I verily believe unbefitting the great compassion and mercy of God which the Scriptures mention that he should be so far from pitying the Case of his own Creature in an involuntary misery as he should lay new loads on their backs and then whip and scourge them here and torment them in perpetual fire hereafter for sinking under those burthens which they were no way able to bear Besides how doth this make God seem to flout and delude poor Souls in the deep of their distress calling unto them who lie in anguish have all their bones and joints bruised and broken with a deadly fall to rise and come unto him and he will help them and in the mean time affording them not one jot of his help to rise who he knows notwithstanding are not able to stretch forth so much as a finger in their own help Nay how should our blessed Saviours words yea his Tears over Jerusalem seem to be false and counterfeit O Jerusalem Jerusalem c. if at the same instant notwithstanding he had no purpose either to die for them or to give them grace whereby they might believe in him So that his Commandment of Faith in his Blood should want both verity in him because he did not die for such and possibility to be performed by them for that he gives them no means to do it who have none in themselves From All this Conclusion will result besides that they either make God a hard man like the lazy fellow in the Gospel reaping where he doth not sow or a cruel man with Pharaoh withdrawing the Straw and yet still demanding the full tale of Brick requiring works and withholding the Grace whereby they should be done For if without giving a Saviour or providing any Grace there be a rejection and reprobation of all mankind immediately out of the Mass of Corruption Who sees not the necessity of all these strange consequences so reproachful unto God and so full of severity if not cruelty unto men who lying under more than fatal Necessity being not able to go any other way must needs run headlong in those paths that lead into Hell A Position so absurd as Zeno a Philosopher derided and confuted with blows rather than words His Servant being examined upon an error he had committed acknowledgeth the fault but lays the blame on his Fate desiring his Master to pardon him because it was his destiny and he could not avoid it Zeno falls on his Man and Cudgels him most severely when he had done tells him he had indeed beaten him something extremly but he must be content it was his destiny so to beat him and he could not help it And this by him was well and wittily done But had this Philosopher's Man served some Antient Divine that had been of this Modern opinion his excuse and Plea had been good and unreprovable because according to the Rules of his Masters Doctrine who therefore could have no cause to correct or beat him unless it were for anger that he hath nothing else to answer as you may see none of them have if we consider the replies which they make to the like impious and idle Dilemmas If I be Elected God will not fail to bring me to his Kingdom if Reprobated there is no means to shift his decree and therefore what need I take much care of Religion An objection often proposed by themselves but which never was nor possibly can be by their Doctrine justly refuted The answer of all that I have ever read or heard is but one and that briefly to this effect That Men may not imagine they may sit idlely and have the Kingdom of Heaven brought home unto them it is not at a lower
it hath not wanted manuring and culture sepsi elapidavi I enclosed hedged it in and threw the stones and weeds out after all I built a Tower and a Vine-press therein expecting Grapes fecit mibi labrùscas and it brought forth wild grapes now judge I pray you Quid amplius debui facere vineae meae what I ought more to have done unto my Vine This was enough to convince them but these times are more acute Had some Men of our Israel been made Judges they would quickly have stopt the mouth of this Plantiff Why you have withheld the first and the latter rain the dew of Grace and the influence of Heaven no marvel if your Plants thrive not if you would needs plainly know this you ought not to have done if you would have expected grapes Give but that blessing and your earth will bring forth its encrease As if in the enumeration of some few particulars those that these speak of and whatsoever else is simply necessary for this rational Vine were not virtually included Surely the Lords Vineyard was not planted upon those cursed Mountains of Gilboa on which there fell neither dew nor rain for certainly the influence of Heaven hath not been restrained the Sun of righteousness hath risen and shined upon this Vine but it hath loved darkness more than light the dew of Divine Grace was not wanting to the branches thereof but they have turned his grace into wantonness quenching and grieving his holy Spirit And therefore a little before the utter rooting up and casting out these degenerate Plants St. Stephen frames the Inditement unto their just destruction why ye are a stiff-necked people and a stubborn generation as your Fathers did so do ye ye have always resisted the Holy Ghost And this leads us unto the third and last point That God reprobates none but after the often abuse of his grace for as they were cut and cast off so are all other also rejected and reprobated for first rejecting and resisting the same Holy Ghost My people would not bearken unto my voice and Israel would none of me saith the Lord So I gave them up unto their own hearts lufts and they walked in their own counsels Psal. 81. 11. And this is the first external act of Reprobation when God gives Men up unto a Reprobate sense withdrawing his abused Grace and leaving them unto the counsels and lusts of their own hearts A Judgment never denounced in Scripture but for contempt of Mercy Now by the external act Man must judge of the internal and eternal decree for what God in time doth that before all time he did decree to do for they that imagine that difference between the decree and the execution of the decree that the one hath respect unto Sin but the other none must either make a decree that is never executed or an execution that varies from the decree as if God did ordain one thing and do another And therefore if he doth now give up and reject a people for their obstinate sins for the same cause in his Eternal Reprobation he did order so to reject them And as it is in rejection from Grace so it fares in exclusion from Glory from which no Man is irrecoverably abdicated but for long and wilful grieving of that God who would have brought them to it Forty years long was I grieved with this generation and then I sware they should not enter into my rest Than which I know no sentence that doth so clearly represent and express the true nature of Reprobation for what is it but Gods eternal oath of rejecting wicked Men from his Glory into that destruction they have deserved And this he doth not suddenly in a passion of choler upon every light occasion but in his wrath his wrath urged and provoked by a long Rebellion even forty years long was he grieved and then he sware in his wrath he resolutely determined they should not enter into his rest A decree that seems not to proceed but when by extremity of injury it is as it were violently extorted so loth and unwilling he is to be brought unto it as he doth not so much as think or speak of it without passionate interjections of sorrow O Israel thou hast destroyed thy self And upon these exhibitions of Gods mercies and goodness unto the Reprobate depends the verity and truth and justice of this complaint against them for they that never received any means of Salvation can by no means ever be termed the authors of their destruction But now since God and his favours have not been wanting unto them but they unto God since they have wilfully forsaken his mercy they can rightly blame none but themselves for their own misery for as the antient Father Irenaeus hath it Judicium justum recipient quoniam non sunt operati bonum cum possent operari illud The judgment of God is just which they shall receive because they did not do well when they might have done it Whereunto Clemens Alexandrinus doth agree All impenitents saith he shall be judged aliqui quidem quod cum possent noluerunt Deo credere alii vero quod cum vellent non elaboraverunt ut fierent fideles Some because when they might believe they would not others because when they would yet they did not labour truly to become what they desired And it were easie that no man might conceive the Doctrine to be new to shew the like out of the Fathers yea generally out of all both before the Pelagian heresy and after but left the time should fail me to those already mentioned I will only add the Judgment of the third Synod of Arles assemblged for the defining of these very questions wherein what you have now heard is not only affirmed but a Curse and an Anathema laid upon those that shall think the contrary Anathema illi qui dixerit quòd Christus non pro omnibus mortius sit Cursed be he that says that Christ died not for all And Anathema illi qui dixerit illum qui periit non accepisse ut salvus esse posset Cursed be he that says he that perished did not receive means whereby he might be saved But unto this and whatsoever else in this kind may be said that in the ix to the Romans of Jacob and Esau before ever they had done good or evil that the purpose of God might stand according to Election it was said The elder shall serve the younger according to that of the Prophet I have loved Jacob but Esau have I hated like Medusa's head is ever objected though seldome or never understood But that it may be besides theirs of absolute Reprobation I will first shew you the several interpretations of others The ancient Fathers both Greek and Latin before St. Austin yea and St. Austin for a while until the Pelagian heresy arose interpret these words of the Election of some unto salvation upon prevision of their future faith and
satisfaction He is the eternal wisdom of the Father and indeed none but the Fathers wisdom could have found out a way to shew mercy unto Man and yet give full satisfaction unto his own justice For Justice and Mercy Man offending were as it were at variance either pretending who should have him Justice demands him to be given to her for revenge Mercy opposeth and with all her might pretends for a pardon both strugling in the bowels of the Almighty that dearly affects both Justice proposeth but few only two arguments but they are powerful The first urgeth the Almighty with his own verity and truth Thou hast spoken the word the day that thou eatest thou shalt die the death And with thee there is no shadow of change therefore thou must not alter the thing that is gone out of thy lips The second with a precedent drawn from his former actions The Angels sinned and thou didst not spare them why be alike then unto all For why shouldest thou afford earthly men that favour which thou deniedst unto Celestial Spirits of far more excellent Nature But now Mercy on the other side cries out pitifully with that cry in the Psalm wherefore hast thou made all men for nought what though thou hast said the word it was but the word of legislation and thou art Lord of the Law the supream Lawgiver and therefore maist dispense with the Law which thou givest and in doing so thou dost but remit thine own right thou wrongest none other which therefore is without all wrong to thy Justice And for the Angels they were but some of them not all the Angels that sinned and they sinned willingly and wilfully of their own accord and without a Tempter their sin remaining in themselves not propagated to others and therefore they perished worthily in thy wrath and I made no intercession for them But Man was deceived and seduced by the subtlety of the Serpent his sin besides not cleaving to himself alone but passing forth upon all his posterity that pass from him And shall the whole generation and kind who sinned not of their own will but by being in his loins be eternally destroyed for one and that anothers transgression It is sufficient that Justice hath triumphed in those evil Spirits let me have my victory now in these Good reason there should be some regard had of me as well as of her she is thy Daughter indeed yet she is but thy Daughter-in-law I am thy natural it is thy nature and property to have Mercy and compassion Thus these two the very favourites and darlings of the Divinity contend together and who or what wit shall decide the controversy or give both content when they have contrary demands Herein then shines the infinite wisdom of God that in so difficult a case and perplext as Damascen terms it could discover a way find out an issue that should give full satisfaction unto either and not only so but manifest the glory of the rest of his Attributes of his power wisdom goodness and all and all at once and in one action by informing a piece of our clay and contriving himself and his whole Divinity into a trunk of Earth that so one person might be made of both A person on whom Justice might take her full revenge that Mercy afterwards might be shown unto the offender that so both death might be inflicted as the one urged and a pardon granted as the other intreated For being Man he could die and being God his temporary death could satisfy for an eternal And being God and Man he could dye and with conquest having satiated revenge rise again from the dead and proclaim life and grace unto the whole world So by the infinite wisdom of this work all strife ends and both are well pleased Mercy and Truth are met together Righteousness and Peace do kiss each other Yea so great is the wisdom of it that the blessed Angels themselves desire to pry into it profoundly Sure it exceeds the natural understanding of the wise and subtle Lucifer himself who for all his wit and cunning was clearly deceived and foil'd in this mystery whereby he was drawn on to bite at that heel which he little dreamt would crush his head even whilst he bit it For supposing to swallow the humanity which he saw he was suddenly choaked with the divinity which he could not comprehend So wisely God by Man restored Man and vanquisht Satan in theself-same nature he had conquered before And therefore who shall declare the wisdom of his generation But above all either power or wisdom the wonderful love and goodness of the Lord in this act shown unto the whole world especially unto wretched Man may well drink up admiration and confound the understanding of both Man and Angel For what an astonishing consideration would it be could we consider it as it deserves that such vile worms and wretches as we should receive such high and undeserved favour from that God whom we had so grievously offended and having offended never notwithstanding so much as sought or regarded That he for all this should seek us yea and assume our nature and become as one of us that he might the better find us That instead of hurling such rebellious sinners into the depth of Hell as they well deserved he descended from his own glory in the highest Heavens and took on him the infirmity and baseness of our earth that he might carry it thither and into that glory from whence he descended O the infinite goodness of this God to undergoe the wretchedness of Man that Man might be assumed to the blessedness of God that sinful Man to the blessedness of that God against whom he sinned and delighted only to sin O Lord saith David what is man that thou didst so regard him or the son of man that thou didst so visit him Surely homo est res nihili Man is a thing of nought of no worth no value yet such the eternal Son of God vouchsafed to become that he might advance this thing of nought far above all Principalities and Powers and Crown him with Worship and Glory Neither did he by this act glorify that particular humanity alone which he assumed but the benefit shall redound though not in that manner nor yet so fully yet in a marvellous degree unto all others that shall but glorify him for in him they shall be made partakers too even of the Divine Nature 1 Pet. 1 4. He was anointed indeed with the Oyl of gladness above his fellows not alone then anointed but above and more abundantly than any others As that precious Oyntment which was poured forth on Aarons head so Divine honours and graces by this union descended upon His which it most plentifully drenched but drencht not it alone for of his fulness we have all received and therefore it trickles down upon his beard and all men living that shall adhere unto him and not so only but from