the Doctrine but the Book till I had Corrected it and did disown it as too unmeet an Expression of my Mind which I had more fully exprest in other Books And is not this plain English Doth this warrant a Wise and Righteous Man to intimate that I accuse him of writing against that Doctrine of Justification which I Recanted and to call for the What and Where and When Yea and tell me that I refer you to a small Book when instead of referring you to it I only blame you for referring to that alone when I had said as before When many Divines have published the first Edition of their Works imperfectly and greatly corrected and enlarged them in a Second as Beza his Annotations Polanus his Syntagma and many such all Men take it for an Injury for a Neighbour twenty years after to select the first Edition to confute as the Author's Judgment Much more might I when I published to the World that I Suspended the whole Book and have these twenty four years hindred the Printing of it professing that I have in many larger Books more intelligibly and fully opened the same things Yea you fear not pag. 23. to say That I tell you of about 60 Books of Retractations in part at least which I have Written when never such a word fell from me If I say That one that hath published his Suspension of a small Book written in Youth not for the Doctrine of it but some unfit Expressions and hath since in al-most thirty Years time written about sixty Books in many or most of which is somewhat of the same Subject and in some of them he fullier openeth his Mind should be dealt with by an Adversary according to some of his later and larger Explications and not according to the Mode and Wording of that one Suspended Book alone Shall such a Man as you say that I tel you of about sixty Books of Retractations Or will it not abate Mens reverence of your disputing Accurateness to find you so untrusty in the Recitation of a Man's words The truth is it is this great Defect of Heed and Accurateness by hasty Temerity which also spoileth your Disputations But pag. 7. the Aphorisms must be The most Schollar-like and Elaborate though Erroneous Book in Controversie you ever Composed Answ 1. Your Memory is faulty Why say you in the next that I appeal to my Disputation of Justification and some others but you cannot Trudg up and down to every place I would send you your Legs are too weak Either you had read all the sixty Books which you mention the Controversal at least or not If not How can you tell that the Aphorisms is the most Elaborate If yea Why do you excuse your Trudging and why would you select a Suspended Book and touch none that were Written at large on the same Subject 2. By this I suâ—pose to make your Nibble to seem a Triumph you tell your Reader again how to value your Judgment Is it like that any Dunce that is diligent should Write no more Schollar-like at Sixty years of Age than at Thirty And do you think you know better what of mine is Elaborate than I do Sure that Word might have been spared When I know that one printed Leaf of Paper hath cost me more Labour than all that Book and perhaps one Scheme of the Distinctions of Justification which you deride If indeed you are a competent Judg of your own Writings Experience assureth me that you are not so of mine And pag. 25. you say You desire not to be preferred before your Betters least of all when you are singular as here I think you are § III. Pag. 9. You are offended for being put in the Cub with divers mean and contemptible Malefactors Answ O for Justice 1. Was not Bellarmin or some of the Papists and the Socinians as great Malefactors with whom as you phrase it you put me in the Cub 2. Are they Malefactors so far as they agree with you in Doctrine and are you Innocent What is the Difference between your Treatise in the part that toucheth me and that of Mr. Eyres Mr. Crandon and some others such Dr. Owen and Dr. Kendale indeed differed from you the latter seeking by Bishop Vsher an amicable Closure and the former if I understand his Book on the Hebrews less differing from me in Doctrine than once he either did or seemed to do And if any of us all grow no Wiser in thirty years Study we may be ashamed But to give you your due Honour I will name you with your Equals as far as I can judg viz. Maccovius Cluto Coccejus and Cloppenburgius I mean but in the Point in Question it 's no Dishonour to you to give some of them Precedencie in other things It may be also Spanhemius was near you But if I may presume to liken my Betters no Men seem to me to have been so like you as Guilielmus Rivet not Andrew Mr. George Walker and Mr. Roborough I hope this Company is no Dishonour to you And very unlike you are Le Blank Camero Davenant Dr. Hammond Mr. Gataker Mr. Anthony Wotton and in Complexion Scotus and Ockam and such as they If yet I have not Chosen you pleasing Company I pray you choo se so your self But you say on Had you not in your Memory many Scores of greatest Eminence and Repute in the Christian World of the same Judgment with me Know you not I speak the same thing with all the Reformed Churches c. For shame let it be the Church of England with all the rest of the Reformed c. Answ 1. I know not what you hold even when I read what you write I must hope as well as I can that you know your self How then should I know who are of the same Judgment with you 2. Yet I am very confident that all they whom you mention are of the same in some thing or other and in particular that we are Justified by Faith and not by the Works of the Law or any Works in the sence denied by St. Paul c. 3. Do not I with as great Confidence as you lay Claim to the same Company and Concord And if one of us be mistaken must your bare Word determine which it is Which of us hath brought the fuller Proofs I subscribe to the Doctrine of the Church of England as well as you and my Condition these thirteen or fourteen years giveth as much Evidence that I am loth to subscribe to what I believe not as yours doth of you And you that know which of my Books is the most Elaborate sure know that in that Book which I Wrote to explain those Aphorisms called my Confession I cite the Words of above an Hundred Protestant Witnesses that give as much to Works as I do And that of this Hundred one is the Augustine Confession one the Westminster Synod one the Synod of Dort one the Church of England
consider whether the Calumny be not notoriously yours I heartily desire any judicious person to help me to see that I am here guilty if it be so But you add You know not what the Event of all this may be For suppose now being drag'd in my Scarlet a habit more suitable for him that Triumphs at the Wheel of your Chariot in the view of all men I should happen to be degraded and turned out of my literate Society would it not trouble you no doubt but then it might happen to be too late Answ 1. It would trouble me because though I know you not our fame here saith that you are an honest and very modest man and those that are Nicknamed Calvinists prefer you before most others of your rank But alas what is Man and what may Temptation do 2. did you think that your Scarlet or Mastership did allow you to write copiously as you did against your Neighbour who never medled with you and made it a crime in him whom you accuse to defend himself and a righteous cause I see in this age we deal on hard unequal terms with some Men that can but get into Scarlet 3. You would make your Reader believe by these words that you are really Melancholly and fear where no fear is A Reverend Doctor whose Book hath the Patronage of one of the greatest Bps. of England writeth against one of no Academical degree who hath these 13. years and more been judged unworthy to preach to the most ignorant Congregation in the Land and by the Contrived distinction of Nonconformists from Conformists goeth under the scorn and hatred of such as you pretend to be in danger of and hath himself no security for his liberty in the open Air that this Learned man in his honour should conceit that an Answer from this hated person might endanger his degradation and turning out of his place is so strange a fancie as will make your Readers wonder 4. But whether you are Melancholly or no I know not but if you are not unrighteous I know not what unrighteousness is Will you bear with the diversion of a story When the Moors were sentenced to ruin in Spain one of the Disciples of Valdesso a Scholar fell into the displeasure of the Bp. of Toledo A Neighbour Doctor knowing that the Bps. favour might bestead him whether accidentally or contrivedly I know not hit upon this happy course The Scholar and he being together in a solemn Convention the Scholar was taking Tobacco and the Dr. seeing the smok threw first a Glass of Beer in his face and cryed Fire Fire The Scholar wiped his face and went on The Doctor next threw an Ink-bottle in his Face crying still Fire Fire The Scholar being thus blackt perceived that he was like to be taken for a Moor and ruined and he went out and carefully wash'd his face the Doctor charged him openly for affronting him yea and injuriously calumniating him by the fact For saith he there was necessary Cause for what I did There is no smoak without some fire that which fired you might next have fired the House and that the next House and so have burnt down all the City and your action intimateth as if I had done causelesly what I did and done you wrong The Scholar answered him I knew not Sir that it was unlawful to wash me but I will take no more Tobacco that I may no more offend you But if in this frosty weather the thickness of my breath should be called smoak may I not wash my face if you again cast your Ink upon it No saith the Doctor It is not you nor any private man that must be judg whether you are on Fire or not in a publick danger Must the City be hazarded if you say that it is not Fire The Scholar asketh may I not refer the case to the standers-by and wash my face if they say It was no Fire No saith the Dr. that is but to call in your Associates to your help and to add Rebellion and Schism to your disobedience I perceive what principles you are of Why then saith the Scholar if I must needs be a Moor my face and I are at your mercy But pardon this digression and let you and I stand to the judgment of any righteous and competent Judge whether you deal not with me in notorious injustice so be it the Case be truly stated The person whom you assaulted is one that attempted with success the subversion of Antinomianism and the clearing of truth their Ignorance of which was the Cause of their other Errours But having let fall for want of use in writing some incongruous words as Covenant for Law c. and that somewhat often and some excepting against the Book he craved their animaversions and promised to suspend the Book till it were corrected and purposely wrote a far greater Volumn in explication of what was dark and defence of what was wrongfully accused and many other Volumns of full defence No man answereth any of these but after twenty years or thereabout though I protested in print against any that would write against the Aphorisms without regard to the said Explications you publish your Confutation of part of those Aphorisms and that with most notorious untruth charging me to deny all Imputation of Christs Righteousness when I had there profest the Contrary and taking no notice of any after-explication or defence and parallelling me with Bellarmine if not with Hereticks or Infidels for I suppose you take the denyers of all Imputation to be little better This Book you publish without the least provocation with other quarrels dedicating it to that R. Rd. B. who first silenced me as if I must go write over again all the Explications and Defences I had before written because you that are bound to accuse me are not bound to read them and this you do against one that at that time had been about 13 years silenced ejected and deprived of all Ministerial maintenance and of almost all his own personal Estate desiring no greater preferment than leave to have preached for nothing where is notorious necessity could I have obtained it sometimes laid in the common Jail among Malefactors for preaching in my own house and dwelling within five miles of it after fined at forty pound a Sermon for preaching for nothing looking when my Books and Bed are taken from me by distress though I live in constant pain and langour the Constable but yesterday coming to have distrained for sixty pound for two Sermons hunted and hurryed about to Justices at the will of any ignorant Agent of that will be an Informer and even fain to keep my doors daily lockt if it may be to save my Books a while Yet the exciting of wroth by publick Calumny against one so low already and under the persecuting wrath of your friends was no fault no injustice in you at all nor indeed did I much feel it But for me
of a name of your own introduction for illustration If we were playing at a Game of Tropes I could tell you that the Healing of Mens Vnbelief is applicatory for the healing of their Guilt And the healing of Men's Ignorance Pride and Wrangling about words and frightning Men into a Conceit that it is about Life and Death is applicatory as to the healing of the Churches Wounds and Shame But I rather chuse to ask you Whether it was never heard that a particular subordinate personal Righteousness even Faith and Repentance was made by God the Condition of our Right to Pardon and Life by Christ's Righteousness Did you never teach your Sholars this in what words you thought best And yet even our Faith is a Fruit of Christ's Righteousness but nevertheless the Condition of other Fruits If you say that our Faith or Performance is not to be called Righteousness I refer you to my Answer to Mr. Cartwright And if the word Righteousness be not ofter ten to one used in Scripture for somewhat Personal than for Christ's Righteousness imputed then think that you have said something If you say But it justifieth not as a Righteousness but as an Instrument I Answer 1. I have said elsewhere so much of its Instrumentality that I am ashamed to repeat it 2. It justifieth not at all for that signifieth efficiency but only maketh us capable Recipients 3. We are justified by it as a medium and that is a Condition performed as aforesaid And when that Condition by a Law is made both a Duty and a Condition of Life the performance is by necessary resultancy a Righteousness But we are not justified by it as it is a Righteousness in genere nor as a mere moral Virtue or Obedience to the Law of Nature but as it is the performance of the Condition of the Law of Grace and so as it is this particular Righteousness and no other § 13. In Legal Justification saith he taken precisely either there is Remission of sin or not If not What Justification is that If yea then Evangelical Justification is not necessary to the application of it because the Application is supposed c. Answ 1. What I usually call Evangelical Righteousness he supposeth me to call Justification which yet is true and sound but such as is before explained 2. This is but the same again and needeth no new answer The performance of the Condition is strangely here supposed to follow the Right or Benefit of the Gift or Covenant If he would have the Reader think I said so he may as ingeniously tell that I deny all Justification If not what meaneth he CHAP. VII Dr. Tullies Quarrel about Imputation of Christ's Righteousness considered § 1. CAp. 8. pag. 79. he saith Because no Man out of Socinus School hath by his Dictates more sharply exagitated this Imputation of Righteousness than the Author of the Aphorisms and it is in all mens hands we think meet to bring into a clearer Light the things objected by him or more truly his Sophistical Cavils whence the fitter Prospect may be taken of almost the whole Controversie Answ That the Reader may see by what Weapons Theological Warriours wound the Churches Peace and profligate brotherly Love let him consider how many palpable Untruths are in these few Lines even in matter of Fact 1. Let him read Dr. Gell Mr. Thorndike and by his own confession the Papists a multitude of them and tell me true that No Man out of Socinus School hath c. To say nothing of many late Writings near us 2. If I have 1. never written one word against Imputation of Righteousness there or elsewhere 2. Yea have oft written for it 3. And if those very Pages be for it which he accuseth 4. Yea if there and elsewhere I write more for it than Olevian Vrsine Paraeus Scultetus Wendeline Piscator and all the rest of those great Divines who are for the Imputation only of the Passive Righteousness of Christ when I profess there and often to concur with Mr. Bradshaw Grotius and others that take in the Active also yea and the Habitual yea and Divine respectively as advancing the Merits of the Humane If all this be notoriously true what Epithets will you give to this Academical Doctors notorious Untruth 3. When that Book of Aphorisms was suspended or retracted between twenty and thirty years ago publickly because of many crude Passages and unapt Words and many Books since written by me purposely fully opening my mind of the same things all which he passeth wholly by save a late Epistle what credit is to be given to that Man's ingenuity who pretendeth that this being in all mens hands the answering it will so far clear all the Controversie § 2. Dr. T. He hence assaulteth the Sentence of the Reformed because it supposeth as he saith that we were in Christ at least legally before we believed or were born But what proof of the consequence doth he bring The rest are but his Reasons against the Consequences and his talk against me as pouring out Oracles c. Answ 1. Is this the mode of our present Academical Disputers To pass by the stating of the Controversie yea to silence the state of it as laid down by the Author whom he opposeth in that very place and more fully elsewhere often Reader the Author of the Aphorisms pag. 45. and forward distinguishing as Mr. Bradshaw doth of the several senses of Imputation and how Christ's Righteousness is made ours 1. Beginneth with their Opinion who hold That Christ did so obey in our stead as that in God's esteem and in point of Law we were in Christ dying and suffering and so in him we did both perfectly fulfil the Commands of the Law by Obedience and the Threatnings of it by bearing the Penalty and thus say they is Christ's Righteousness imputed to us viz. His Passive Righteousness for the pardon of our sins and deliverance from the Penalty His Active Righteousness for the making of us Righteous and giving us title to the Kingdom And some say the Habitual Righteousness of his Humane Nature instead of our own Habitual Righteousness Yea some add the Righteousness of the Divine Nature The second Opinion which he reciteth is this That God the Father accepteth the sufferings and merits of his Son as a valuable consideration on which he will wholly forgive and acquit the Offenders and receive them into his favour and give them the addition of a more excellent happiness so they will but receive his Son on the terms expressed in the Gospel And as distinct from theirs who would thus have the Passive Righteousness only imputed he professeth himself to hold with Bradshaw Grotius c. that the Active also is so imputed being Justitia Meriti as well as Personae and endeavoureth to prove it But not imputed in the first rigid sense as if God esteemed us to have been and done and suffered our selves in and by Christ and merited
him hereafter to use it in no other sense than the Scripture useth it 3. If that will not serve if the Masters of Language will agree yea to pass by our Lexicons if the Doctors of that University will give it us under their hands that the word ORIGINAL is unaptly and dangerously applyed to that sinful Guilt and Pravity which is in us ab Origine Nostrae existentiae and is the internal Radix vel Origo of all our Actual Sin in part of Causality I will use that Epithete so no more 4. If all this will not serve if he himself will give me a fitter Epithete I will use it And now we over-agree in Doctrine a word shall not divide us unless he will be angry because we are agreed as Jonas was that the Ninivites were spared because it seemed to disgrace his Word § II. pag. 4 5 c. You invite me to a full entire retractation of my Doctrine of Justification you add By Works and the secondary Original Sin 1. Will you take it well if I retract that which you profess now to hold and know none that denyeth then there is no pleasing you If I must be thought to wrong you for seeming to differ from you and yet must retract all What yours and all Mens 2. Do you mean the words or the sense of Justification as you call it by Works For the words I take you for a subscriber to the 39 Articles and therefore that you reject not the Epistle of St. James And for the sense I confess it is a motion suitable to the Interest of your Treatise though not of the Truth He that cannot confute the Truth would more easily do his Work if he could perswade the Defenders of it to an Entire Retractation Hereupon pag. 5. you recite my words of the difficulty of bringing some Militant Divines to yield Your Admonition for Self-Application of them is useful and I thank you for it But is it not a streight that such as I am in between two contrary sorts of Accusers When Mr. Danvers and Multitudes on that side Reproach me daily for Retractations and you for want of them How natural is it now to Mankind to desire to be the Oracles of the World and that all should be Silenced or Retracted which is against their Minds How many call on me for Retractation Mr. Tombes and Mr. Danvers for what I have Written for Infants-Baptism The Papists for what I have Written against them And how many more And as to what I have Retracted One reproached me for it and another either knoweth not of it or perswadeth others that it is not done You say pag. 6. A great out-cry you have made of me as charging you with things you have Retracted And pag. 7. What 's the reason you have not hitherto directed us to the particulars of your Recantation what when where You direct one indeed to a small Book above Twenty years a-go retracted All I can pick up of any seeming Retractation is that you say that Works are necessary at least to the continuation of our Justification Answ Either this is Written by a Wilful or a Heedless mistaking of my words The first I will not suspect it must therefore be the second for I must not judg you Vnable to understand plain English And is it any wonder if you have many such Mistakes in your disputes of Justification when you are so heedless about a matter of Fact Where did I ever say that I had Recanted Or that I Retracted any of the Doctrine of Justification which I had laid down Cannot you distinguish between Suspending or Revoking or Retracting a particular Book for the sake of several Crude and Incongruous Expressions and Retracting or Recanting that Doctrine of Justification Or can you not understand words that plainly thus Distinguish Why talk you of what and when and where and conjecture at the words as if you would make the Reader believe that indeed it is some confessed Errors of mine which you Confuted and that I take it for an Injury because I Retracted them And so you think you salve your Confutation whatever you do by your Candour and Justice But you have not so much as Fig-leaves for either It was the Aphorisms or Book that I said was above Twenty years a go Revoked When in my Treatise of Infant-Baptism I had craved Animadversions on it and promised a better Edition if I Published it any more I forbad the Reprinting it till I had time to Correct it and when many called for it I still deny'd them And when the Cambridg Printer Printed it a second time he did it by Stealth pretending it was done beyond Sea In my Confession Twenty years ago I gave the Reasons Preface pag. 35. I find that there are some Incautelous Passages in my Aphorisms not fitted to their Reading that come to suck Poyson and seek for a Word to be Matter of Accusation and Food for their Censuring opinionative Zeal And pag. 42. If any Brother understand not any word in my Aphorisms which is here Interpreted or mistake my sense about the Matter of that Book which is here more fully opened I must expect that they interpret that by this And if any one have so little to do as to write against that Book which is not unlikely if he take the Sense contrary to what I have here and else-where since then Published I shall but neglect him as a Contentious Vain Wrangler if not a Calumniator I Wrote this sharply to forwarn the Contentious not knowing then that above Twenty years after Dr. Tully would be the Man Pag. 43. If any will needs take any thing in this Book to be rather a Retractation than an Explication of what I have before said though I should best know my own Meaning yet do such commend me while they seem to blame me I never look to write that which shall have no need of Correction And Cap. 1. pag. 2. Lest I should prove a further Offence to my Brethren and a Wrong to the Church I desired those who thought it worth their Labour to vouchsafe me their Animadversions which I have spent much of these Three last years in considering that I might Correct what-ever was discovered to be Erroneous and give them an account of my Reasons of the rest I have not only since SVPPRESSED that Book which did offend them but also laid by those Papers of Vniversal Redemption which I had written lest I should be further offensive c. In my Apologie else-where I have such-like Passages ever telling Men that It was the first Book I wrote in my Vnexperienced Youth that I take the Doctrines of it to be sound and needful save that in divers places they are unskilfully and incautelously worded As the Word Covenant is oft put for Law c. And that I wrote my Confession and Disputes of Justification as an Exposition of it and that I Retracted or Suspended or Revoked not