not deliver him in the day of his transgression as for the wickedness of the wicked he shall not fall thereby in the day that he turneth from his wickedness Ezek. xxxiii 12 13 14 15. The result of these places is this That particular men or the persons of men from time to time come under the Eternal Decrees of Love or Hatred according to their actual and present state of righteousness or unrighteousness For if God decreed life and death upon the consideration of future sin and holiness he may as well decree a reward and punishment respectively for that which men would have been engaged in had they lived in this World to all eternity which directly contradicts that Scripture wherein we are said to give an account for the things which we have already done not which we should have done had we continued longer in the body And hence it is that the righteous man who is now in the love and favour of God being hardned again through his own negligence and the deceitfulness of sin may relapse into that state which the Decree of death takes hold of and of such a man is that of St. Peter to be understood 2 Peter ii 21. It had been better for such a man not to have known the way of righteousness then after he hath known it to turn from the holy commandment delivered to him And when the righteous man degenerates from his former faith and the enemy takes advantage and oppresses the Divine life through his carelessness and folly God charges all his past sins upon him and recals his justification whereby he was before esteemed as righteous in his sight which is intimated in the Parable Matth. xviii where he that had the debt forgiven him because he dealt so harshly and ungently with his Fellow-servant was again called in question and the whole summe charged upon him and Christ applies it to our present purpose verse 35. So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his Brother their trespasses For we must know that God pardons our iniquities by parts and as we grow in Virtue and Holiness so his displeasure decreases and is taken off and he that is justified becomes yet more justified and walks in the light and the breath of God enkindles the heavenly fire and fans it into flames and ardors and so long the man is safe but if he return to folly the anger of God is renewed as at the beginning and the last state of that man is worse then the first 2. That true and real Believers may relapse and be confined and brought in bondage to the strait and narrow laws of their own self-wills and fall from the life of God and become settled and radicated in a life of self-seeking and guided by the parsimonious principles of Pleasure and Interest is the voice of Scripture and Reason the former of which palpably and undeniably concludes and determines the case Heb. x. 38 39. Now the just shall live by faith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but if he not any man as our Translation improperly supplies it i. e. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the just man who before is said to live by his faith if he draw back Gods soul shall have no pleasure in him and what this drawing back is we may collect from the subsequent words But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition So again Heb. vi 4 5 6. For it is impossible i. e. very difficult and hard for the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 those who were once enlightned i.e. Baptized for Baptism was called by the Ancients 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 illumination and have tasted of the heavenly gift and were made partakers of the holy Ghost and have tasted the good word of God and the Powers of the world to come if if they shall fall away to renew them again to repentance seeing they crucifie to themselves the Son of God afresh and put him to an open shame And if this were to be understood of Hypocrites what need the expression of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For unto what should they be renewed and reinstated their former condition being in it self so deep an unregeneracy and from what is it they do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fall away when their distempered natures were never recovered by the practice of any real and substantial holiness Wherefore this must necessarily be meant of those who had in a good measure subdued the motions of the inferior life and left 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the principles and rudiments of Christianity and were arising 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to perfection For the tasting the heavenly gift and the good word of God and the powers of the world to come are no more to be understood of a slight touch and transient perception then the same phrase when it is used of the Lord Christ that he tasted death for every man Chap. ii 9. But that as he did really feel and experience the effects of death conquering his mortal life so these here spoken of did truly rellish and apprehend the sweetness of Christianity from a clear discriminating sense of it's native excellency and felt the Divine Spirit destroying the irregular appetites of the inferior life and sanctifying their Natures by a blessed inhabitation To these we may add Ezek. xviii 24. But when the righteous turneth away from his righteousness and committeth Iniquity and doth according to all the abominations that the wicked man doth shall he live All his Righteousness that he hath done shall not be mentioned What can be more manifest than this if men would clear up their apprehensions and look upon things as things and not content themselves with bare names and shadows For that the righteous man in the Text should signifie an Hypocrite and one seemingly righteous is the most distorted gloss that can be put upon it 1. Because the righteous is here opposed to the wicked person but if it were to be expounded of one seemingly righteous who is so much worse then an open profane person in that he acts impiety under the cover of Religion the words must run thus When the righteous man i. e. the Hypocrite turns away from his Hypocrisie and acts according to the abominations of the wicked man and if by the righteous be meant an Hypocrite what is to be understood by the wicked to which 't is opposed 2. This righteous man is said to live by his righteousness but the Scripture no where sayes That the Hypocrite shall live by his counterfeit holiness but directly the contrary The hope of the Hypocrite shall perish And I must confess I do not at all understand the intent and purpose of God in inserting so many Cautions and Exhortations to Watchfulness and Diligence in the Gospel if there be no possibility of a true Believer's desertion of the Faith which questionless the Illustrious Compilers of the Church of England's Confession of Faith
of an unlimited Will and Power how and when he pleaseth and declaring their effluxes and emanations to be the rule of reason and measure of all Moral Actions and the grand Law of the whole Creation or else in those Hymns and Hallelujahs which are offered up to him by intellectual Beings from all quarters of the Universe Whereas in truth his Glory is nothing without himself nor any acquisition and purchase to augment his happiness for he being an Infinite Plenitude of all Perfection is incapable of receiving any complement of Glory or Blessedness but then he most of all elevates and raises his glory and lustre when he most of all communicates his Nature and shines in with a full and uninterrupted light of Truth and Goodness upon all the intellectual Creation He never seeks his Glory in respect of us in any other way than by dispreading and imparting those Soveraign Attributes of Love Mercy Patience Wisdom and Justice And we in the most proper sense do then advance the Glory of God highest and discover it to the World in the most ample and transcendent manner when the life of God becomes a Vital Principle in us carrying us beyond the reach of corporeal exsudations and defilements which render the soul inept for a conformity to his blessed Image and when Truth Holiness and Righteousness in which the Divine Nature is copyed out become not empty and insignificant Names and sounds of words but actuating and quickning Principles and we studiously endeavour to engrave those beautiful Forms in our minds and spirits In a word then do we glorifie God when we converse with him in the Temple of an unspotted heart and derive from him in whom there is no blemish of iniquity such an Universal Holiness as lives within us and pervades and sanctifies all our actions And this the Lord Christ who best knew how to glorifie God hath intimated to us Joh. xv 8. Herein is my Father glorified that ye bear much fruit I have now finished this Argument from the consideration of the Divine Nature and have deduced such genuine and legitimate Conclusions that if rightly estimated and weighed cannot but implant for the future in every unprejudic'd mind more generous and serene Apprehensions of the Deity then are offered in any Scheme of the Supralapsarian or Sublapsarian Doctrins both which concurr in that which appears most deformed to every pure and defecate eye viz. The Eternal Reprobation and Confusion of the greatest part of Mankind the one upon pretence of Gods sole Will and Pleasure and the other under the mantle and cover of Adam's transgression in whose loins the whole race of Mankind was included when he fell and lost his Paradise Both which opinions though never so fairly guilded over do really make God put on the mask of cruelty and rigour that he might appear just in his Oeconomy and Administration of the affairs of the World and that which is most barbarous and infamous in the eye of reason is made to speak the glory of the Deity And that God might bring about this dismal and black design of Damning his Creatures he must compass it by injurious artifices and tyrannical contrivances rot unlike that inhumane fraud Tiberius used to Brutus and Nero the sons of Germanicus Suet. in Vit. Tâ—…b c. 54. Variâ fraude induxit ut concitarentur ad convitia concitati perderentur How deep a stain doth this cast upon the lovely rayes and efflorences of the Divine Goodness and Mercy making him to become the Executioner to his own off-spring and rend that dear life in pieces which his own hands gave Being to And although the Sublapsarian Dogma be entertained of some on purpose to mollifie that harsh decree of the Supralapsarian Reprobation yet if we divest it of those terms and artifices of words wherewith it is mantled over to appear more specious to the World we shall find it cast as great a blot upon the Divine Nature as the other For whether is it better to say That God by his Eternal Prerogative of Absolute Dominion over all his Creatures has adjudged the greatest part of Mankind to inevitable misery for no other reason but upon the impulse of his own Will and to shew the glory of his Power Or to say That God for the sin of one Man whom he made the Representative of the succeeding Generations of Men to the end of the World committed some thousands of years ago and imputed only to his Posterity who were no more able to help it than to hinder their being born into the World should take the advantage of his lapse and decree the greatest number of Mankind to Everlasting destruction And if we impartially view this latter it will appear no less precarious and absurd than the former For though it be true that we are really and formally guilty of Original Sin yet to say that God did physically predetermine Adam's fall or in the mildest sense That he looked upon man as fallen for the Reprobationists are not consistent with themselves and so took the opportunity which he foresaw would offer it self by his lapse to bring about his design of ruining the greatest number of Mankind is to bring Almighty God the Father of compassions upon the stage of the World speaking unto the calamitous Off-spring of Adam like the Wolfe when he intended to devour a Lamb Ante hos sex menses ait maledixisti mihi Respondit agnus Equidem natus non eram Pater hercule tuus inquit maledixit mihi Atque ita correptum lacerat injustâ nece Should God take the souls of men being yet innocent so soon as he set them upon acting in the World according to those Principles and Powers he bestowed upon them at their first production and cast them into everlasting burnings they would have this comfort left to them that they suffered innocently and never in the least measure violated any of the sacred Laws of Heaven But when they shall hear that their Creator and Father who upon that very account could not inflict a greater evil than the good he bestowed on them hath contrived their death and drawn them into sin that he might with the fairer shew of equity punish them with infinite tortures both in body and soul this injustice must needs appear unspeakably grievous For although some would seem to excuse this Oeconomy from all harshness iniquity and rigor by substituting the softer termes of Preterition or negative Reprobation yet if they will unmask their apprehensions and speak plain sense the difference will appear only in words not in the thing it self and is all one as if a man should seek to alleviate the calamity of a condemned Malefactor by telling him he should not die by Common but Noble hands For the event declares Gods intention and the denial of his help to extricate them from misery is equivalent to a positive Reprobation Let us consult a little our own faculties and reason
the case Is it at all consentaneous to that communicative Goodness wherein God takes most delight to glorifie himself to make those souls the desolate Victims of enraged Vengeance who never had any more then a capability of Existence when their first Parent sinned against heaven and could no more prevent their defilement by that diffusive contagion then hinder themselves from being first made Arrian makes a very near cognation and affinity of the souls of Men with God Cap. 14. lib. 1. in Epictet as if they were 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 particles and avulsions from him and when Moses made intercession for the Israelites upon the Rebellion of Korah he uses this Title or Appellation Numb xvi 22. The God of the spirits of all flesh as the most prevalent Argument to induce him not to be wrath with the whole Congregation for one mans sin forasmuch as he was their Creator and therefore could not but pity the works of his own hands And the Author to the Hebrews styles this everblessed Being Chap. xii 9. The Father of Spirits who for that very reason can never cast of that Relation and become unpitiful to his own lovely Off-spring who in their lowest state and greatest degeneracy were vouchsafed to be called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Sons of God Joh. xi 52. And now what other can these things signifie but that there is a very near alliance and consanguinity between God and the souls of Men and that it is only the corrupt imaginations of men which introduced those horrid Decrees and represented God as a hater of Mankind and desirous of the death of his Creation But to carry on this a little further That God should hang the everlasting interest of millions of souls upon the frail and mutable Will of a single Person whom he foresaw would lapse and by it ruin and undo the greater part of his yet uncreated Posterity is an Oeconomy too harsh and rigid ever to be put in execution by the God of Love and unworthy the Nature of him who is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ and in him the Father of Mercies and Compassions Let us be wise unto sobriety and act like men who care not for Words and Names but Things Suppose an hundred Persons condemned to die equally culpable equally criminal and it be in the Power of some Good Man to save ten twenty or all if he please will he not rather deliver all than only redeem twenty or a less number especially when he may do it with the same expence and cost and shall we imagine God to be less Good than a charitable and kind-hearted Man Do God and his holy Angels take an infinite complacency and delight and rejoyce at the Conversion of one sinner and can we think they take pleasure in the destruction of Myriads even before they ever actually offended This made Mr. Calvin betake himself to the defence of the Supralapsarian cause because he knew not how the Personal sin of Adam should be derived upon his Posterity and make them formally guilty so as God might Salvâ bonitate justitiâ Reprobate them as sinners and cast them into the lowest hell Wherefore he ascribes all to the Divine Preordination and doubts not to say In Resp ad Calumn Nebul. ad Art 1. Nihil ad nos unius hominis culpa nisi nos coelestis judex aeterno exitio addiceret But let us hear him speak out his mind more fully to this purpose Instit lib. 3. cap. 23. § 7. Disertis verbis hoc extare negant decretum fuisse à Deo ut sua defectione periret Adam Quasi verò idem ille Deus quem Scriptura praedicat facere quaecunque vult ambiguo fine condideret nobilissimum ex suis Creaturis Liberi arbitrii fuisse Dicunt ut fortunam ipse sibi fingeret Deum verò nihil destinasse nisi ut pro merito eum tractaret Tam frigidum commentum si recipitur ubi erit illa Dei Omnipotentia quâ secundum arcanum consilium quod aliunde non pendet omnia moderatur Atqui Praedestinatio velint nolint in posteris se profert Neque enim factum est naturaliter ut à salute exciderent omnes unius parentis culpâ Quid eos prohibet fateri de uno homine quod inviti de toto humano genere concedunt Quid enim tergiversando luderent operam Cunctos mortales in unius hominis personâ morti aeternae mancipatos fuisse Scriptura clamat Hoc cùm naturae ascribi nequeat ab admirabili Dei consilio profectum esse minime obscurum est Bonos istos justitiae Dei Patronos perplexos haerere in festu â altas verò trabes superare nimis absurdum est Iterum quaero Unde factum est ut tot gentes unà cum liberis eorum infantibus aeternae morti involveret lapsus Adae absque remedio nisi quia Deo ita visum est Hic obmutescere oportet alicqui tam dicaces linguas Decretum quidem horrible fateor inficiari tamen nemo poterit quin praesciverit Deus quem exitum esset habiturus homo antequam ipsum conderet ideo praesciverit quia decreto suo sic ordinarat It cannot be denyed then but that the Scripture abundantly testifies and our dayly experience asserts the Lapse and Apostacy of Men from God and that they are really guilty of an Original contagion but that it came by any Ordination and Decree of God neither Scripture not Reason will assent unto And for this Degeneracy God might justly have punished all the World since that every man had made himself obnoxious by departing from him and violating his Sacred Law But God whose Goodness never fails was so far from taking advantage of the deplorable state of Mankind that he had a design of Good towards them and sent the Lord Christ into the World who taking upon him to become a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or expiatory Sacrifice for the sins of men took of all that displeasure which was conceived against them according as the Apostle tells us 2 Cor. v. 19. Col. i. 19 20. God was in Christ reconciling the World unto himself And again It pleased the Father that in Christ should all fulness dwell and having made peace through the bloud of his Cross by him to reconcile all things unto himself whether they be things in Earth or things in Heaven By which Reconciliation is meant Gods taking into grace and favour lapsed Man and forgiving their foul degeneracy from him and assuring them that their past obliquities shall never ruine them if now they will endeavour to become New-creatures and that now he hath entred upon a Covenant of Peace wherein he promises to them all the assistance that possibly can be given Rational Beings so that now no man is damned for his Original but Actual Transgressions otherwise it cannot be understood how God through Christ should reconcile the World unto
himself or how the Grace of God which came by Christ did abound and was made more efficacious then sin For if the sin of Adam destroyed and slew more than the Death and Passion of the Lord Christ made alive then were Sin of a larger extent and more potent than Grace 〈◊〉 v. and the Apostle could not truly affirm That where Sin abounded Grace did much more abound CHAP. IV. A fourth Argument against the Doctrine of Inconditionate Reprobation taken from the Evangelical Dispensation wherein is shown the purport and design of the Gospel which is to reinstate all men into the Participation of the Divine Nature and that that Rigid Doctrine is destructive of so high and glorious an end THere is no Man that knows himself and discerns the true frame of his own Being what sublime and noble perfections the soul is capable of and withal reflects upon the weak and imperfect state of the Sons of men how uncertain and fluctuating their judgments are at the best and how frequently obscured with prejudice how impotently stubborn their wills to the election of substantial good and how broken and disordered the faculties of their whole man but will assuredly conclude that all Mankind however it comes to pass are extremely alienated and apostatiz'd from that innate purity and excellent state in which they were created for no Man that believes himself made by an Alwise and infinitely perfect Author can imagine that he came thus lame and maimed out of his hands and sunk as low as the capacities of their Nature will permit being only vivacious and active to trifling low and bodily interests and concernments carrying on such poor and momentary designs as are unworthy the native generosity of their minds in a word so devoid of that life in the possession of which consists their true felicity that they are past hopes of recovering by their own solitary endeavours their pristine and ancient glory But although Man by that venturous and bold revolt from the blessed Kingdom of Light dispossessed himself of Gods favour and forfeited all right and title to his ordinary care and Providence yet that ever-to-be-magnified Goodness which made him at first Lapsable beheld him as a calamitous object of compassion and designed the erecting and reedifying that glorious Temple which sin and unrighteousness had miserably defaced and ruined and the repossessing his own life of it's rightful Government and Dominion in the Souls of Men which however they come into the World the subjects of bruitish lusts and passions are yet capable of Angelical accomplishments and a Vital Union with the Creator of all things God therefore being the highest and most perfect life and feeling and knowing his Nature to be the most pretious thing in all the World and the utmost perfection of every Rational Being could not but intend graciously to his lapsed Creatures and seek the extension and dispreading of his goodly Attributes over all capable subjects of the World of life For he that shall look upon the diligence and activity of the dark Powers in enlarging the bounds of their usurped Kingdom and consider the contagious and disseminating Nature of every pitiful and degenerate lust how every crazie and sickly vice attempts and offers at a further explication of it self and every small Exarchat of that Hellish Principality endeavours dayly to make new additions and take in fresh supplies to maintain the general cause of unrighteousness and augment their petty Royalties can never think that God will sit as a disinteressed spectator but promote and advance his own good life to the command of the whole Creation and brake down the power of that great Arimanus who captivates the sons of Men in the fetters and shackles of Mortality and Death The life of God is a strong and powerful principle and hath alwayes the arme of Heaven to aid and assist it but all sin and unrighteousness is a meer poverty and deficiency not able to exist in the World did not the self-wills of men uphold it and can never stand against the potent assaults of the Heavenly Nature Which holy life that God might reestablish in the World he hath delivered the Gospel the last and most perfect dispensation that ever was or shall be communicated to Men which consists not in an external and dead form of words nor is it a meer systeme and compendium of such precepts that like the Mosaical Law sanctifie only to the purifying of the flesh but cannot 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Perfect him that doth the service as pertaining to the Conscience that is Purge and cleanse his mind from dead Works and make way for the consummation of the life of God within him whereby he shall no longer be in bondage and servility to every caitive lust but act spontaneously under a free and generous principle and become a law to himself but such a Method of perfect Righteousness and Virtue as shall purifie refine and exalt the spirits of Men from all feculent concretions and subdue every irregular motion and unruly desire that would tempt and sollicit their choice of corporeal joyes and beget in them so true a relish of unblameable Goodness and Holiness as should at the end of their mortal life instal them in the full possession of everlasting Tranquility and Peace Of which glorious contrivance though we have a Scheme and Model drawn out in the Holy Gospels yet there is a life and spirit in Christianity that cannot be blotted on paper but lives and acts in such hearts as are framed and squared according to those Rules contained in the Sacred Writings And this he who is the Author of our Faith and Blessedness testified when he said that his Words were Spirit and Life such as were able and designed to revive the dead and sensless minds of Men and propagate a vital heat and motion through the torpid and benummed World and accordingly the Apostle St. Paul tels us that Christianity is indeed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Law of the Spirit of life Rom. viii 2. 2 Cor. 3. and in another place 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The ministration of the Spirit and the ministration of Righteousness in opposition to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The dispensation of Death and Condemnation intimating that under the Gospel men shall not have a Mechanical and Artificial Religion but such as frames the life and spirit of God in their hearts and becomes a Vital forme tuning their souls into an Universal consent with Gods own Will whereby they send forth most harmonious and Divine accents not only when they are stricken and beaten upon by an external hand like Memnon's statue whose Musical notes ceased so soon as the Sun-beams were withdrawn from it but from an internal Power incorporated and made one with their own spirits It is true when God at first made Man and sent him into this lower World he left him to be governed by those innate prescriptions and rules of Righteousness
of the reach of danger and if he fall he shall not be utterly cast down for God will raise him up The gates of hell shall never pluck him out of Gods hands nor separate him from his eternal Love for having loved his own he loveth them unto the end The thickest cloud of sin and darkness arising from his polluted and rotten heart though it may suspend for a while yet can never totally divest him of Gods paternal Love and favour because he is one of Christ's Sheep of his little flock and he knows him and is confident he is known of him and though he have lived in vice and rolled in the dirt and mire of the Earth till the utmost Period of his life yet the holy Spirit will infallibly and irresistibly at the very Exit of his soul change and renew it and cast the robes of Christ's spotless Righteousness upon it and then 't is impossible the man should miss of heaven And is this a Doctrine adapted to the carrying on the design God intended in the Gospel namely the Reduction of the world to a conformity to the Divine will to forsake and abandon all their sinful and false wayes and to live in a universal submission and resignation to his holy Laws and Commands What proof or evidence doth it bring that it aims at any such thing Is it in that it declares to a man that Faith and Repentance and every good motion of the soul is the irresistible work of God and that 't is no more in his Power to confer any thing to his being a good Christian a just and Righteous person than to add one cubit to his bodily stature but if he be not as yet regenerated he must stay and wait till that good time come wherein the Spirit of the Lord shall enter into him and make him a New Creature for the wind bloweth where it listeth Or is it in that it affirms That Christ dyed for the Elect and though the value of his Satisfaction were infinite and sufficient to redeem the whole World for them only and that his death hath satisfied for all their sins and that now God imputes the Righteousness of the Lord Christ to them and upon his account they are esteemed as righteous as if in their own Persons they had fulfilled the whole Evangelical Law though in the mean time their hearts are very corrupt and unsound Are these the Demonstrations by which this Doctrine of Irrespective Decrees manifests it self to come from God If it bear the Superscription and Image of God upon it it is then as he himself is Light and there is no Darkness no mixture of impurity and humane imagination in it for God cannot patronize any thing but what is holy as he is holy and pure as he is pure But if we consider well such Positions will appear very obscure and frightful horrid and amazing savouring of the Prince of Darkness by whom they were breathed into the minds and spirits of unsanctified Persons and by them communicated to the World as the Arcana of Christianity but tending in reality to the eversion of it and the augmentation and increase of the Devils Kingdom For when Men shall hear that upon such and such Pulpit-signs which their Impertinent Preachers deliver to them they may gather their Election from all Eternity and that maugre all the Oppositions of Men and Devils they shall never fall quite away by a final Impenitence but assuredly recovered by an uncontrollable and peremtory power when they shall be told likewise That Gods calls are at certain times and seasons and that till they perceive themselves forcibly inacted and carryed away by the impulse of the Divine Spirit all their previous actions are to no purpose Will not these things cause them to sit down in laziness and take their ease without troubling themselves with the renovation of their minds sith that God will take care for that and soak themselves in terrestrial joyes and pleasures till the dead-awakening trump which when it will be they know not call them from the Grave of sin and death as Christ did Lazarus and bid them come forth Will not the imputation of Christs Righteousness and the mantle of his Satisfaction damp the endeavours of men after real and inward Righteousness and inherent Holiness by which they attain to a participation of the Divine Nature since they can have anothers at so cheap a rate which will likewise be as beneficial and stand them in as much stead as if they had of their own Men are prone to palliate their sin and take hold of any pretence to stop the mouth of their accusing consciences and need no such artifices to lead them into those paths that go down to Hell and the comfortless chambers of death Their evil Natures and the examples of others and temptations of Satan are sufficient to draw them into Vice and Irreligion that none need disseminate such doctrins as shall invite them to immorality and iniquity from the Authority and Countenance of Gods word But it is supposed that every Christian Mâ—stagogus who acknowledges himself to have a Master in heaven to whom he must give an account for the souls committed to his charge if not for theirs yet for his own felicities sake will have so much prudence and circumspection as not to build on the foundation of the Gospel Wood Hay or stubble any such Doctrins as will not abide the test of Reason but prove both to God and Mens souls very mischievous and injurious for though he does it ignorantly his work shall be burnt but he himself shall be saved 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yet so as by fire that is with extreme difficulty as he that hardly escapeth out of the fire 2. The second Instance wherein the Doctrin of Irrespective Decrees inverts and destroyes the end and purpose of God in the Gospel is by leading Men into desperation I do not mean that they should despair of mercy so long as they continue in their sins for this every Criminal ought to do that he may be induced to come out of them the sooner but by Desperation here I mean a disbelief of Gods will or power to save them whereby they go on carelesly and resolutely in a course of Rebellion and Iniquity For being perswaded on the one hand that the number of the Elect is but small in comparison of Reprobates and that both the one and the other are particularly designed and marked out by name for the Lord knows who are his and that all the labours of men after the Kingdom of Heaven will prove unsuccessful and abortive till God by a high and mighty hand come upon them and powerfully convince them of the evil of their wayes and astonish them with the weight and multitude of their sins laying them low and bringing them down as they phrase it to the gates of Hell and shewing them the worm that never dies and the fire which never shall