but a perpetual warefare with bad desires from within with importuning Temptations from without with our own frailties and with the Solicitations of others and with the crafty inveiglements of the Devil who will be sure to accost us on that side which is weakest and least defensible in us by motives of Pleasure profit applause or Power or whatever else he shall judge most likely to prevail upon us But now I beseech you who is there or who ever was there or will ever be of humane race so perfectly pure and untainted that he could not yeild to the importunity of any Temptation or what Combate could there be if he could not resist Besides it is necessary there should be such a thing as the Schools are pleased to call libertatem contrarietatis a liberty of determining either way in an Action or Case given one of which said determinations shall be Culpable the other meritorious or praiseworthy because to suppose otherwise is to deprive the divine Justice of any Foundation to exercise it self upon Justice in the person punishing and liberty in the person offending do naturally suppose one another for to Condemn one who could not avoid what he did or to reward another who could not so much as endeavour to merit what he enjoys may be called Arbitrary but can never be just For what Judgment is there where there is no difference And what Justice can there be where there is no Judgment made of the merit of the persons that appear before it Both of which reasons of the divine permission of Sin are excellently pointed at by an ancient Writer published among the works of Justin Martyr 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is God permits us to commit those evils which we wilfully chuse not that he is not able to hinder it but because we have a liberty of doing otherwise and because by this means he displays his own patience and forbearance with us But yet notwithstanding though it be true that God does and must be supposed to permit Sin in the world yet to interpret all those places which are the Subject of our present debate only of a bare Permission will appear very harsh and uncouth to any that shall peruse the places themselves wherein a great deale more than this seems manifestly to be contained and is ascribed to God in as plain words as it is possible for any Language to speak Besides that it is needless to the design for which it is done because necessity destroys the nature of Sin and just so much as there is of freedom in any Action so much of moral good or evil there may be in it but no more he that is necessitated is passive in what he does neither are those Actions which he commits in such a state to be considered as his but they are the Actions of that Agent by whom he himself is Acted The case is this one man kills another lying in wait for him out of Malice forethought because he bore him a grudge and had vow'd Revenge or being in a cooler humour than this he does it out of a wicked frolick resolving for a jest to kill the next man he meets now it so happens that this man himself is afterwards destroyed by the goring of a mad Bull in his passage through the Streets or by the fall of a Beam from an House all on fire or the like here is the same event on both hands a man kill'd but yet to the Destruction of the one there is a guilt belonging to the other there is not what is the reason of this why the reason is plain because the first is the effect of a free the latter of a necessary Agent If therefore a man by some external impulse be so far overrul'd that he is not himself his Actions are not his own neither but he is in the nature and quality of the mad Bull or the Beam he does these things because he cannot help it and therefore they are no Sins Or if sometimes there be a Complexion of the free Cause and of the necessary together as I have shown there may be yet the common Action resulting from them both partakes only of so much guilt as it borrows of Causality from the Free It is impossible therefore that God should be the Authour of Sin in any other Sense than as he is the Authour of that freedom by virtue of which we commit it but yet to speak properly it is not the freedom it self which is the cause of Sin but it is the abuse of that freedom which is wholly owing to our selves and God is no otherwise concurring to it than as a causa sine quâ non in as much as we could not have sinned if we had not abused our freedom and we could not have abused our freedom if God had not made us free From all which it appears that to talk of God's being the Authour of Sin in men is to talk not only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 things that neither can nor ought to be believed but also 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 things that are utterly impossible to be done For my part I am so far from favouring any such opinion that if any man should by way of excuse lay his Sins to the charge of God Almighty as necessitating him to what he did I think it is a plain Argument he is sensible of his having done amiss and consequently might have done better if he had pleased and shall therefore very heartily joyn in Philo's imprecation against him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. He that shall presume in his own excuse to lay his misdeeds to the charge of God Almighty let him be punished without mercy and let no Sanctuary afford him its protection Sanctuaries not being intended for such as defend their Sins but for such as do humbly acknowledge and bewail them The second Reason if indeed it may be called a second and be not rather the same why some have been so extreamly scrupulous in the interpretation of such places of Scripture as are now under Consideration is to be taken from their deserved hatred and utter Abomination of Calvinistical Doctrines by which God is represented to be so cruel and sanguinary a being but the exposition of these texts according to their first and most natural sense is so far from bordering upon Calvinism that it perfectly destroyes it since every such Text is a new Argument for the liberty of the humane nature and will in as much as it would be ridiculous to say God hardens or blinds men by a particular Judgment if before that in their natural and best Estate they had neither the use of their reason nor the liberty of their will There be four instances made use of in the ensuing Papers for the Confirmation of this Doctrine which it will be requisite for the more compleat satisfaction of all those scruples which either too much nicety or too
so far bear with one another as is consistent with the peace of the world and every man ought to endeavour so far as Religion and virtue will permit to render his humour and his manners as agreeable as he can to those with whom he converses for the greater comfort of Humane life for the preservation of friendship and charity in the world and for the mutual benefit and advantage of Mankind And now I see nothing that remains which hath not been sufficiently considered upon this Argument of Liberty and Necessity either in this introduction or in the book it self unless it be one of these three things which I shall pass over very briefly The first is the case of the divine Prescience which is pretended to be inconsistent with humane freedom To which it is sufficient to answer that extend the foreknowledge of God as wide as you please yet knowledge is but knowledge all this while and can have no external Physical causality for this were to confound the notions of knowledge and of power together so that the only reason why there can be no such thing as a free agent is not because this freedom is inconsistent with the divine Prescience which can have no Physical influence upon it and there is no other influence in the nature of things but because the notion of a free agent considered by it self is an impossible notion that is it is impossible there should be any such thing as an immaterial being for I have proved at large in one Part of this Discourse that an immaterial and a free agent are the same and this being a point upon which all Religion depends I leave the Calvinists to consider of it Secondly Mr. Hobs his Arguments against Freedom are objected and those Arguments as I remember for I have not his Book by me are these two which follow the first is contained in this syllogism Every Cause is a sufficient cause Every sufficient cause is a necessary cause Therefore every cause is a necessary cause Which is no more then to say in fewer words Every cause is a cause Which being an Identical Proposition must needs be true for nothing is a cause till it have produced an effect and then indeed it is necessary that the effect should have been because that which is past can never be to come but yet it does not follow but that there might be a causality or causability residing in a subject or substance though it do not yet exert it self by any express or actual operation and Mr. Hobs in this sence might have been said to be a cause of the Leviathan and the book de Cive many years before he wrote the Books themselves His second argument is taken from the nature of a disjunctive proposition concerning an action which is supposed to be future and contingent as thus Either Socrates shall dispute to morrow or he shall not dispute to morrow and it is certain that this Proposition is unquestionably true because it consists of contradicting parts which contain the whole circuit of things within themselves for everything in the world besides disputing is not disputing and if Socrates should dye or should be annihilated to morrow yet to be annihilated or to dye is not to dispute so that the whole Proposition is unavoidably true but it does not follow that either of its parts are so determinately at this time and that was Mr. Hobs his mistake as I will prove by altering the Proposition a very little Either Socrates shall dispute freely to morrow or he shall not dispute freely Now the nature of a Disjunctive Proposition is this that all the parts taken asunder cannot be true at the same time because they are supposed to be incompetible and inconsistent with one another otherwise there is no disjunction further it is certain that there can but one part of a Disjunctive Proposition which concerns the present be true at the same time and in a Proposition de futuro there can be but one part eventually true but this depends upon the nature of the thing and upon the issue of the expected event not upon the nature of the Proposition to which it is necessary that it should consist of several parts and therefore the truth of it as such must depend upon the just and full enumeration of all those parts of which it ought to consist so that whatever becomes of the nature of the thing the Disjunctive Proposition hinders not but Socrates may be free since freedom is supposed in one of its members but yet if it be necessary that he shall dispute freely to morrow as Mr. Hobs must own if he will be consistent to himself then he will be free and necessary at the same time which is absurd The third and last thing which may be and is usually objected concerns those places of Scripture wherein the days of a man are said to be numbred and the time of every respective personalities continuance upon the earth predetermined and preordained which if it be true then it will follow unavoidably that the actions of a mans life are necessary and fatal for there may be a thousand several actions that may conspire to bring a man into a Chronical distemper which shall be the cause of his death if he be predetermined to dye at such a time of the Plague it must likewise be so ordered that he shall necessarily reside there where it is or repair thither that he may catch it and if his fate be to be knockt on the head by the fall of any Stone or Timber from an House it is necessary that he be abroad and passing by that place where the Stone or Timber may be sure to meet him in its fall and the like But I do absolutely deny that the days of a man are any where in Scripture affirmed to be thus limited or predetermined but that which is called the appointed time is the utmost distance of time from the day of a mans birth to which the stamina vitae will extend or to which the respective constitutions will last if they be well used and what that time is God certainly who is the Author of nature and hath all causes and effects perpetually present to him and always in his sight cannot chuse but understand very well but yet it does not follow but a man may anticipate this time by intemperance or by want of skill or want of care nay I suppose we may affirm it for a certain truth that no man ever did yet live so long as he might possibly have done had he understood his own constitution and the respective usefulness or annoyance of all other things to it together with the true proportions in which they are to be taken and avoided and had he lived a life answerable to so exact a knowledge and yet after all humane life would be but of short continuance and after all we should have reason to pray with the Prophet David that
Divine Grace by considering only in a Philosophical way the power of God and his ability to produce those effects which exceed any humane Efficiency or Skill and by attending to the nature of that Doctrine which Christ is said to have Taught which conduced so much to the Benefit and advantage of Mankind compared with that human or traditionary Testimony which has been handed down to us through so many Centuries of years by Men of unquestionable Credit and Virtue who neither had nor could propound any design of temporal advantage to themselves but on the contrary met with Trouble and Persecution and expcted to meet with no other for their Pains I say upon these Grounds any reasonable Man may of himself believe that there was such a Person as Jesus Christ Born of a pure Virgin who lived a most Holy and Exemplary Life wrought very many and very great Miracles and Wonders among Men who was the Promulger and Preacher of a most wise useful and Glorious Gospel to the World who Died upon the Cross to Seal and ratifie that Covenant which he had made between God and Men and who after his Crucifixion arose again from the Dead and ascended in a Glorious and Triumphant manner into Heaven having obtained a compleat Victory over Death and Sin where he still continues performing the Office of an everlasting Mediator and making a perpetual Intercession for us all This may be believed barely upon the Credit of that Historical Testimony which is given to it but if by Faith we mean a practical and saving Belief of these Truths which by being set home upon our hearts and being always present upon our Minds shall have a lasting and a powerful influence upon our Lives this as I conceive cannot be had or hoped for without the special influence of the Grace of God for the same Reasons upon which I have already asserted an habitual Goodness not to be obtained without the assistance and influence of the same Spirit And therefore when Peter made that Confession Matth. 16. 16. Thou art Christ the Son of the living God Jesus answered v. 17. Blessed art thou Simon Bar-jona For Flesh and Blood hath not revealed it unto thee but my Father which is in Heaven Not that it was Impossible to come to the Knowledge of this in any degree without asupernatural Revelation For several of the Jews did from the greatness of his Miracles and the Wisdom of his Doctrine suspect and partly believe him to be the Prophet that was to come by which they meant either the Messias or his Forerunner and the Centurion who cannot be thought to have received his Information by any such Miraculous way when he saw our Saviour giving up the Ghost and considered the dreadful Agony of Nature at the instant of his Passion said of a truth this was the Son of God But such a Belief as Peter had of this Truth that is a practical and deeply rooted Sense of the Truth of what he said whereby his heart was changed and his affections subdued and his whole Man captivated into the Obedience of Christ and his Gospel this cannot be revealed by Flesh and Blood which is apt to suggest thoughts and invite to practices of a quite contrary Nature but it is owing to the Grace of God and to the supernatural Illuminations and Influences of the Divine Spirit working upon those who have experienced the new Birth and are become Regenerate and Born again into newness of Life by the adoption of Grace Thus have I endeavoured to explain the operations of the Holy Spirit upon the hearts of Men and especially of the Faithful so as neither to make them useless with Pelagius nor irresistable with Calvin nor unintelligible with some of our Modern Writers who are cry'd up by their Adherents for nothing more then that they understand not what they say or Write nor the other what they Read or hear and who do on both hands exactly fulfil that witty and Judicious Character which Lucretius gives of Heraclitus and his admirers Clarus ob obscuram linguam magis inter Inanes Quam de grates inter Graias qui vera requirunt Omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur amantque Inveris quae subverbis latitantia cernunt Veraque constituunt quae bellè tangere possunt Aures lepido quae sunt fucata sonore But now that I may not seem in what I have Written upon this weighty Question to depart from the Sentiments of the Church of England to whose Authority I shall always pay as I am in Duty obliged a most profound respect I will here Transcribe those Articles of Hers in which this point is Concerned which are these three which follow ARTICLE X. Of Freewill The Condition of Man after the fall of Adam is such that he cannot Turn and prepare himself by his own natural Strength and good works to Faith and calling upon God Wherefore we have no Power to do good Works pleasant and acceptable to God without the Grace of God by Christ preventing us that we may have a good will and working with us when we have that good will In which Article it is plainly imply'd both that we have some natural strength and that we are capable of performing some good Works though that strength be so imperfect that we cannot by the sole Power and Virtue of it prepare and turn our selves to Faith and calling upon God neither are those Works pleasant and acceptable to God in themselves by reason of that mixture of imperfection with which they are attended and because they are interwoven with many bad ones of both which Causes of their non-acceptation I have already spoken without the assistances of Grace by which the Crudities of the carnal and concupiscible Life in us are attenuated and exalted which would otherwise ascend in gross and malignant Fumes darkning the understanding and depraving the will so as neither the one could discern its Duty with that Clearness nor the other execute it with that entire Resignation of it self to the conduct and governance of Reason and with that inward Fervo◠Chearfulness and Sincerity which is necessary to make our performances acceptable and well-pleasing in the sight of God and which is that which this Article calls a good will to which as well in its Being as continuance and preservation the Grace of God is of necessity required Neither would our good works though assisted and improved by these supernatural auxiliaries from above be acceptable and pleasant in his sight that is so as to be subservient to the great ends of Happiness and Salvation because in themselves they are no more than what by the Laws of Reason and self-Preservation we are obliged to do and because they are allay'd and tempered by so many Misdemeanours whose Guilt all our after-amendment can never wash away if it were not for the Blood of Christ which God has accepted as an Attonement and Propitiation for our Sins and for the
125 to 130 The insufficiency of those reasons to justify or excuse the Jewish prejudices together with the plain demonstration which his Birth his Miracles and his Doctrine compared with the time of his coming into the world the Sacrifices and ceremonies that were Typical of him and the prophecies that had been uttered and revealed concerning him did afford to the undenyable assurance of that weighty truth that he was indeed the very Christ and the Messias that was to come and that he was to be not a Triumphant but a suffering person from p. 130 to 135 But yet the fatality was not yet so strong but that it might have been overcome had not the Jews provok'd God by new impieties to inflict a farther degree of obduration p. 135 Nothing less than such an obduration can give an account of that execrable derision of Christ upon the Cross when in the bitter Agonies of his body and soul he called out with a loud and mournful Voice Eli Eli lamasabachthani saying he calleth for Elias p. 136 Other instances to prove that if could be nothing less than a judicial hardning with which the minds of the Jews of that Age were generally possest from p. 136 to 139 But yet notwithstanding after all this the Jews are not perfectly given over all this while but on the contrary the Apostles in pursuance of their Masters Instructions did make the first offers of Salvation to the Jews by whom though it is true they were scornfully rejected yet this is only to be understood generally speaking for there were some on whom the light of the Gospel did shine as brightly as in the Gentile world and in who in fruitful influences of the Sun of Righteousness did produce an acknowledgment of the cause from whence they proceeded by Faith Repentance and obedience to the Gospel and lastly of those that were hardned or infatuated by a positive act of the Divine will yet all were not in an irreversible or irrecoverable estate as is manifest from several passages of St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans and particularly in those Chapters viz. 9 10 11. which are thought to give such ample testimony but without any ground or colour of reason to the Calvinistical reprobation from p. 139 to 144. From this account of God's dealing with the Jews as it is stated in the Gospel and in the Epistle to the Romans the Author raises the Four following observations First that the design of the 9th 10th and 11th to the Romans is only to give an account of the rejection of the Jews and the reasons upon which it depended p. 145 Secondly that one reason of their rejection was owing to themselves which is so far from favouring the doctrine of reprobation that it perfectly destroys it p. 145 146. Thirdly that the Jews notwithstanding their blindness and the hardness of their hearts had all this while a zeal for God and out of that very principle Persecuted Christianity from whence the Author inferrs that zeal is not always according to knowledge that there may be zeal where there is not truth and that the zeal or heat of a Party is by no means a certain and conclusive argument that they are in the right From p. 146 to 148 Fourthly the Author thinks it very reasonable to believe that the judgment of hardness and blindness which was inflicted upon the Jews was after the Crucifixion still greater more strong more universal more nigh to irreversible in some and in others more certainly and irrecoverably irreversible than it was before from p. 148 to 154 But after all he thinks it very unreasonable to believe that any one Jew is or ever was so hardly dealt with that he never was under any the least possibility of Salvation but was concluded under an insensible and irrecoverable hardness or blindness from the day of his Birth to that of his Death p. 154 155 But yet this hinders not but God may justly withdraw the more special and peculiar assistances of his Grace which he is not obliged to vouchsafe to any and much more to those that have abused them as well from the Posterity of those that have so abused them as from the Criminals themselves and he may take the advantage of their proper sins which it is at his pleasure to punish when ever he will much sooner then otherwise he would have done as on the contrary for the sake of pious and obedient Parents be does often deferr and protract the punishment of their disobedient posterity giving them farther time and more opportunities greater assistances and more powerful convictions that they may Repent or to render them the more in excusable if they do not and that this is the true meaning of his Visiting the iniquities of the Fathers upon the Children to the Third and Fourth Generation and his shewing mercy unto Thousands of them that love Him and keep his Commandments Exod. 20 5 6. from p. 155 to 158 Or else this place of Exod. and others of the same import may be understood of those effects or acts of the Divine Will which are despotical and arbitrary and which as it is lawful at any time that is not inconsistent with the justice and goodness of his nature for God to inflict upon any person and without any occasion extrinsique to the positive determination of his own mind that it should be so so he may the sooner exert them as a Testimony of his displeasure for the disobedience of those of whom we are descended as on the contrary for the sake of their obedience he may and doth suspend even those acts of his despotical power which it is at all times lawful for him to exert p. 158 There are some things which God may do by vertue of his despotical power as he is supream Lord and others which he may do as an exercise of his justice or which belong to him as he is the great Judge or Justiciary of the World p. 158 To the first head there are two things belonging first the substracting all but so much necessary Grace as without which it is impossible either to withstand Temptations or to repent so effectually for having yielded to them as is necessary for the attainment of Eternal happiness or for the avoiding of Eternal torment Secondly the inflicting all those Calamities whether in body mind or fortune which are not less eligible than non-entity it self and both of those as they may be inflicted for no reason at all but only the arbitrary determination of the divine will so much more when there is a reason for it though that reason be not founded in our selves but our Parents or Progenitors of whom we are descended in which case notwithstanding these inflictions are arbitrary with respect to us yet they are not so with respect to those of whom we are immediately born or at a farther distance mediately descended by the intervention one or more of Generations betwixt our selves and