founded upon expresse Apostolical practise and implicite Apostolical precept which we are sufficiently able to prove and evince by the collation of foure Scriptures if we were put upon that argument But this would be too larg a digression from the matter in hand Next you come to shew the sense of the commination And here you tell us that Adam did not dye the same day if the day be taken for the space of twelve or twenty four houres This is in plain termes to contradict the scope and sense of the text For there it is expressely said in the very same moment and instant of time in which our first parents did eat the forbidden fruit their eyes were opened and they saw that they were naked Gen. 3.7 If you take this for the eyes of their mind it is most clear that their eyes were opened not onely to see their inward nakednesse in the losse of the image of God but also to feel the guilt of sinne as the just fruit of their disobedience If the opening of the eyes be taken for the eyes of the body then their eyes were opened to see that which they did not nor could see before Their nakednesse before was a nakednesse of honour innocency and righteousnesse but their nakednesse after was a nakednesse of dishonour of misery of sinne of provocation to sin And for the particular time it is expressed in the Comination in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt dye the death And accordingly in the same instant of time when they had eaten the forbidden fruit the eys of them both were opened they knew that they were naked Therefore death misery did seize upon them the same day according to the Commination But because you are so peremptory in it that Adam did not dye the same day if the day be taken for an ordinary day of twelve houres long For the clearing of this I would intreat you to answer me this question why did God appear to Adam in the evening in the cool of the day If you shall say it was to call the man and his wife to account for their disobedience I grant this to be true but it doth not satisfie the question for the particular time He might have called him to account at any other time and what necessity was there that it should be left upon record that he came to judgment the very same day The Lord had said in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt dye the death and the same day that the forbidden fruit was eaten at evening in the cool or wind of the day as the Hebrew hath it the Lord came to inquire after the fact to give sentence and to execute judgment In Scripture where promises or threats are declared to be fulfilled in such a particular time there the Holy Ghost is punctuall in the observation of the time The children of Israel should be in bondage soure hundred years according to the promise Gen 15.13 14. And when that time was fulfilled the very same day they came out of the land of Egypt with their Armies Exod. 12. 41 42. So our Lord and Saviour did signifie to his Disciples that he should be crucified and slain and the third day rise again Mat. 16.24 And how careful are all the Evangelists to repeat the time of the resurrection that it was on the first day of the week the third day after his passion And so in the present case when it is said in the day that thou eatest thereof shalt thou dye the death to the fulfilling of this the eyes of our first parents were opened the very first day And the Lord came to execute judgment upon them for their disobedience the evening of the same day After all this let us now hear what exposition you do give of the text Though Adam say you did not dye the same day as he did eat of the forbidden fruit yet he forfeited his life to the Lord of the great Charter of the world he was then in a capacity to dye he did then fall under the expectation of death As in the English such a man is a dead man because he is condemned by the sentence of the Law That which you say is true and it is in effect that which I teach but according to your sense it is not the whole truth For when the Lord saith in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt dye the death he doth not speak this onely of a capacity of dying but of an actual seizing of death for he was struck with spiritual death the very same day he sinned And for a temporal death likewise though there was not a present dissolution of the soul from the body yet presently he fell under the curse to conflict with Armies of diseases which should never leave him till they had brought him to his grave In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread untill thou return unto the ground for out of it was thou taken for dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return Chap. 3. ver 19. But now you further adde If Adam had dyed the same day he could not have tilled the ground he could not have lived so long as to see a son of his own To all this I agree if you take death in the most strict sense for the actual dissolution of the soul from the body but what ground have we so to limit the words of the text I have said before that God did smite him the same day with spiritual death and for a temporal death he came under the dominion and reign of it In that famous place when the Apostle saith by one man sinne entred into the world and death by sinne and death hath passed over all men to condemnation Rom. 5.12 He doth here speak of the immediate reign of death Death reigned from Adam to Moses over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adams transgression ver 14. And in the close of all as sinne hath reigned to death so might grace reign thorough righteousnesseunto eternal life v. 21. Therfore the same day that Adam sinned though he lived to till the ground and to beget children after his own image yet he and all his fell immediately under the reign of death so that all who are now born into the world infants as well as others are under the reigne of death by the disobedience of the first man Having given the true sense of the Scripture we will take a view of your interpretation And here you say ☞ that Adam did dye the same day though he lived nine hundred thirty nine yeares after And to make good this strange glosse of yours you tell us that God did not prescribe any quantity of houres but hath declared that a thousand yeares are as one day in his account page 118. I must indeed acknowledge that a day is taken sometimes for a year sometimes for a greater revolution of time as may be seen
uncircumcised It is therefore a poor and a weak shift of the Examiners who to illude the force of that Scripture I was conceived in sinne and born in iniquity do not shunne to tell us that Davids father was a pious man in Israel and his mother was a godly Matron and being both of them well grown in grace before they begat this their youngest sonne they were more like to convey grace and holinesse if that be communicable than sinne unto him Be like then these new Divines think the grace of God runnes in a blood at least wise that it is a more probable truth than to beleeve the propagation of the sin of the nature Now you come to open the text and here say you If we had all committed sinne in Adam then of what use were these words by the offence of one I do not finde such a saying parallelled viz that one mans offence can be called all mens act that followed him and that without their knowledge and consent page 131. If in this point you would seriously ponder the Scripture you will have your doubts resolved The words of the Apostle are plain by the disobedience of one many were made sinners How came they to be sinners to have the guilt of sinne imputed and original sinne derived with all the effects and fruits thereof but by the disobedience of one man If that be true which is affirmed by you that one mans disobedience cannot be called all mens act by the strictnesse and rigour of such a position you will take away the very ground and strength of the Apostles argument and destroy the parallel which he doth draw between Adam and Christ The whole tenor of his discourse is turned upon this hing as the disobedience of one man is the act of all the posterity that came after him so the obedience of one man is the act of all the posterity that beleeve in him And whereas you say you cannot finde such a passage as this parallelled in Scripture I would entreat you to consider the temporal judgments of God as they have been poured upon several families The house of Eli were to suffer for many generations when all that came of that linage did not know what Eli did neither did they give consent to the sinnes of Hophni and Phinehas yet for all this it is clear that the sinne did redound to the posterity 1 Sam. 2.32 Now you come to acquaint us with some of your observations and you tell us I have heard say and true it is that what being we had in Adam we had it assoon as himself and so if we had done the same actions he had done nothing before us page 131. In this I do agree with you that it is true that the whole nature of man as it hath in time subsisted in thousands and millions did originally subsist in Adam as in the common root I do agree also that what Adam did as the first publick man he did it in our stead yet if you will go to moments and scruples of time we must say also that in order of existence Adam had a being before us we must say that Adams personal sinne was before the pollution of nature but our nature is first polluted in the corrupted masse before we come to commit sin in person nay before we come personally to exist You have a second answer to the words of the text you say If we had all committed that sinne in Adam that he was called to account for then we should have sinned after the same similitude but we sinned not after the same similitude and so we committed not the same sinne And here also I yield according to the strictnesse of termes that we could not siune after the similitude of Adams transgression for Adam sinned by a deliberate will and by a free choyce so could not we Yet neverthelesse though we could not sinne after the same similitude we might sinne in him as the first publick man For proof of this read but the words of the text Neverthelesse death reigned from Adam to Moses even ever them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adams transgression verse 14. The Apostle speaketh of Infants for two thousand five hundred years from the fall of Adam to the giving of the Law upon Mount Sinai Here I demand how could death reign over the Infants aforesaid No Law was then publickly given upon Mount Sinai and the Infants had no understanding neither could they give any consent of will How then could death justly reign over them seeing they never committed any sinne in their own persons Though they did not yet they sinned in the first man and by the reign of death universally over all men over Infants as well as others the Apostle proveth this assertion How weakly then do the Examiners of the late Confession argue when they say surely If the Apostle had beleeved any such thing as the reigning of death over all men by the first mans sinne he would not have omitted that and onely mentioned from Adam to Moses page 81. Though he doth mention the reign of death from Adam to Moses this doth not imply any thing to the contrary but that death hath reigned ever since The words are plain death hath passed over all men to condemnation But there was lesse reason for it that death should reigne from Adam to Moses when the Law was not publickly delivered especially over Infants that never sinned after the similitude of Adams transgression But seeing experience hath plainly shewed in this whole interval of time that death hath reigned over Infants by this medium the Apostle proveth them to have been guilty of sinne How guilty of sinne Not in their own persons for they never committed any but onely in Adam the common root of all mankind And so that universal affirmation is made good by one man sinne entred into the world and death by sinne and death hath passed over all men to condemnation The universality of death doth prove the universality of sinne in the first man But you further stand upon a priviledge to interpret the words of the text why in such a case as this say you may not I have the same priviledge to give an exposition of these words in whom all have sinned seeing no sound Scripture can be given to evince the conscience of any certainty of committing sinne in Adam page 133. For that freedome of expounding one Scripture by the accounts of another ☜ by my consent you shall have it for I think the strongest Demonstration in divine matters is drawn from the harmony of Scripture And upon these grounds we do proceed because the whole Gospel in a manner is concerning the regenerating work of the Spirit Hence we do argue that the nature is defiled And because the promise is to beleevers and their seed in the last dispensation we do hereupon conclude the right to the seal as I have already proved against you in
my Treatise of Infant Baptisme But seeing you are so confident in it that no sound Scripture can be given to evince the conscience of any certainty of our committing sinne in Adam I pray you deal ingenuously and according to your own principles do you not beleeve that Infants do bear he punishment of Adams sinne How could they justly bear the punishment and be no way guilty of the transgression The scope of the Apostle is plainly to the contrary because death reigneth over all over Infants as well as others from hence he concludeth that in one all have sinned If you do well consider by denying original sinne and by taking away the corruption of nature as derived from the first man you do in effect call in question whether there be any regenerating grace to be had from the second man And so when you tell us that no sound Scripture can be given to prove the certainty of our committing sinne in Adam you do as good as say no sound Scripture can be given to evince the certainty of satisfaction made to the justice of God by the suffering of Christ In this matter the Apostle sheweth that the first man is the figure of him that is to come If that be true then which you and the Examiners teach that the guilt of the first mans sinne doth not redound to his posterity you must say also that the obedience of the second man and the free guilt do not redound to those that appertain to him And this is point blank to go against the scope of Scripture Now let us hear what your interpretation is and what account you do give of the Apostles meaning I will repeat your own expressions more largely that the world may both read and give sentence These are your words I shall take some pains in opening that place 2 Cor. 5.21 He made him to be sinne for us who knew no sinne By this meanes we may more fully understand in what sense we were made sinners in Adam and knew no sinne Wherein it will appear that we were as guiltlesse of that act with reference to the fact committed by us as Christ was guiltlesse in committing the sinnes of the world Therefore take notice that Christ was said to be made sinne for us in no other sense but this viz. He hath laid upon him that punishment which was due for sinne he was wounded for our transgressions he was reckoned amongst transgressors But for any man so to affirme it would be as large an untruth as men and Divels could devise For it is one thing to be made sinne and another thing to act sinne Now Christ was said to be made sinne as one that had taken upon him such losses as did accompany sin So those dammages that were to befall the world for Adams sinne Christ is said to bear them not in their essence or being but in the demerit of them As he was made sinne not knowing a deceiving heart in himself so we were made sinners by Adam who knew no such sinne And many such passages you have to the same purpose page 133 134. Now I leave it to the Reader to judge to what passe you are come And here so farre as you affirme that Christ himself was free from sinne when he did bear the penalties of our sins we do agree with you And we further also assent that all the Children of Adam do bear the punishment of his disobedience But whereas you say that we are onely made sinne in Adam after the same manner as Christ was made sinne for us I do here admire at your boldnesse in many respects First when Christ was made sinne for us by his own voluntary undertaking he was made a surety and a propitiation for to satisfie the justice of God for our sinnes Will you say the like of all the Infants that come of Adam that by the merit of their sufferings they should propitiate his transgression Secondly when Christ was made sinne for us he knew no sinne he never committed sinne he had no natural pollution from the birth Now it is not so with us we bear the guilt of Adams sinne as copartners with him in the common pollution of nature Thirdly when the Apostle saith he made him sinne for us that knew no sinne here you must necessarily understand that he speaks of the peculiar prerogative of the Lord Jesus Christ that he did bear the burden of sinne when he knew no sinne in himself Now then if that be true which the Examiners and you do affirme that Infants are free from the natural pollution and you here mainly stand upon it that they onely bear the burden of Adams sinne when they knew no such sinne I would entreat you to judge in your own conscience whether by such a position of the purity of the natural birth you do not make all Infants equal with Christ and if it be true as you affirme that they bear the burden of Adams sinne when they knew no sinne why doth the Apostle speak so peculiarly so emphatically so singularly of Christ above all other men that he was made sinne for us when he knew no sinne By this error you do intrench upon the sovereign prerogative of the Lord Jesus and I fear unlesse you and the Examiners repent you may one day dearly answer for it But you have an evasion for say you we are as guiltlesse of that act with reference unto the fact committed by us as Christ was guiltlesse in committing the sinnes of the world But this restriction as the act committed by us will not mollifie the matter For though the sinne of Adam was not committed by any act or will of ours immediately in our own person ☞ yet it was mediatly committed by the free act of our first parent In this case according to Scripture the will of the first man doth passe for the will of the whole nature and of all that do partake of the nature And this is the meaning of the Apostle by one man sinne-entred into the world By sinne he meaneth original sinne or the sinne of the nature and this saith he entred into the world but how not by the proper private and particular will of every individual man but by the common parent of all mankind And for that expression of yours that we are as guiltlesse of Adams sinne as Christ is guiltlesse of the sinnes of the world I do admire that you did not tremble when you wrote such things as these ☞ For we can plainly prove from the scope of the Scripture that Adam by his disobedience did not only fasten guilt upon his posterity but by that act of his he did taint and defile the whole nature of mankind Will you say the like of Christ that he did not onely bear the guilt of the sinnes of the world but that his nature was also defiled with the lusts of the world This were to use your own language as large an untruth
this Scripture First seeing they will not have the nature of man to be defiled in Adam how is this common nature called by the title of one man seeing it containeth such an infinite number of men Secondly how did sin by this one man enter into the world For this common nature of one man must either be nature pure or nature impure If they will have this to be meant of nature pure then this necessarily must be the meaning of the text by one common pure natural man sin entered into the world and death by sin c. As this is a strange and wild interpretation in it self so it doth cast the blame only upon God for making such a nature that by it generally death should passe upon all men to condemnation But if to amend the matter they shall say that he made the nature of Adam in creation and the nature of every man pure in natural generation but it is their own fault that they corrupt themselves Here the plaister is not wide enough for the sore for the Apostle gives the reason why death passeth upon all men because in one all have sinned But now if it be true as these Censors say that in one common nature all have not sinned but those only that fall through their personal disobedience Here I would have them to shew why doth death passe upon all men and how will this satisfie the sense of the Apostle By their account then only they should be lyable to death who were guiltie of disobedience in their pure nature But let us suppose that they say by one common nature impure sin entred into the world and then this will be a grosse tautologie Besides if the whole nature of man be impure there must be some cause of the general depravation of nature which will bring us to the disobedience of the first man and so they will lose their cause Further I demand if by one man they understand the common nature of all how will they preserve the Emphasis of the Apostle in opposing one man to all men He plainly saith that death hath passed upon all men but how thorough the means of one man Again how will they make it good that by the disobedience of one many were made sinners in case they take one man for the common nature of men The acts of obedience or disobedience are usually attributed to particular persons that live under some Law But they have a better faculty to cavil at the truth than positively to maintain their own heterogeneal doctrines Let us hear then what cavils they have against the true interpretation of the words First say they this one by whom sinne entred into the world is not meant by our first parent Adam for the Apostle shews that he was not the original or first sinner 1 Tim. 2.14 For Adam was not deceived but the woman being deceived was in the transgression According to your doctrine then the Apostle should have said by one woman sinne entred into the world page 78. Indeed the scope of his doctrine in that text is to shew that the woman was more immediately tempted by Satan and she was first in the transgression yet in the matter of propagating original sinne it is as true also that by one man sinne entred into the world For Adam and Eve make but one root in the propagation of the kind and therefore in the institution of marriage it is said for this cause shall a man leave father and mother and cleave to his wife and they twain shall be one flesh Gen. 2 24. In the case then of Propagation Adam and Eve go but for one and Adam is here immediately opposed to Christ so farre forth as he is the root of all his posterity Secondly say they these words And death passed upon all men 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are thus to be rendred in as much or so farre forth as all have sinned page 78. Well let the words be rendred which way they will the scope of the text and the connexive particle for do plainly shew that they contain the reason of the general passage of death upon every individual man And therefore we must necessarily and unavoidably come to the disobedience of the first man in whom as in the common root all have sinned Thirdly they thus except If the Apostle had beleeved any such thing as the reigning of death upon all men by the first mans sinne he would not have omitted that and onely mentioned from Adam to Moses page 81. Though he doth speak of the reign of death from Adam to Moses he doth not hereby restrain it to that particular time onely For he plainly saith that death passed upon all men absolutely and universally in all times but he doth mention the time from Adam to Moses in special because then it seemed to be more rational and congruous that sinne should not be imputed because no Law was then publickly delivered yet in this time he affirmeth that all universally were under the reign of death not onely Cain the builders of Babel the people of the old world and the Cities of Sodom all which were destroyed for their personal sinnes but he plainly affirmeth that death reigned over infants in all that interval of time though they never sinned after the similitude of Adams transgression If infants be under the raign of death we must necessarily suppose that sinne must be the cause thereof but infants cannot commit any sinne personally Therefore they must be supposed to be guilty of sinne through the disobedience of Adam And this makes good the main argument of the Apostle by one man sinne entred into the world he doth argue from the effect to the cause because death hath universally past upon all by the disobedience of one therefore all were involved in the guilt of that disobedience Fourthly say they the nineteenth verse is more plain against universal corruption by the first mans disobedience for there the Apostle useth the word many and saith by one mans disobedience many not all were made sinners therefore all did not fall in the first individual Adam page 82. Though the word many be equivocal yet in the sense of the text it must necessarily be meant of every individual man because death hath absolutely passed upon every man no one excepted therefore it necessarily followeth that this passage by the disobedience of one many were made sinners must be meant of every individual man But here they have a cavil the word many in the latter part of the verse must have the same latitude allowed for the Apostle setteth down a full comparison of equals in that verse Here the verse must be thus interpreted that as by one mans disobedience all were made sinners so by one mans obedience all were made righteous page 82. Neither will this help the matter for it is not necessary that there should be the same latitude in the collation betwixt the first and the second
a sense as he understands it the old Pelagians may make good that position of theirs that original sinne is by imitation they that come after do onely imitate the ensample of him that went before Of the entrance of death by sin he speaketh as followeth Death by sinne that is death which at the first was the condition of nature became a punishment upon that account just as it was with the Scrpent to creep upon his belly and the woman to be subject to her husband Answ In these words of his he doth distinguish between death as a meere condition of nature and death as a punishment The former he will have to be in the state of innocency latter only to be introduced by the fall But against this I have many things to alledge First if Adam should have dyed in innocency and that meerely by the condition of his nature what can we possibly make of the sense of that commination in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt dye the death what propable interpretation can we give of those Scriptures by one man sinne entred into the world and death by sinne The wages of sinne is death Rom. 6. Vlt Surely all this plainly sheweth that death came into the world meerely by the sinne of man and if he had not sinned he had not dyed Further the Apostle said the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death 1 Cor. 15.16 The question is when did death begin to be an enemy and from what time are we to fetch the date thereof If Adam should have dyed in innocency than the enmity of death must begin in Paradise we must fetch the date of it from the creation and not from the fall And so consequently death will be rather the work of God than the fruit of sinne But let it be supposed in this low and dimunitive sense that death came into the world as a punishment and began to be penal at the fall onely If we take the matter in this sense it will not serve his turn neither nor will other passages of his doctrine abide the rigour of this interpretation For how often doth he plead after this manner In other cases saith he Lawes be not given to Ideots infants and persons uncapable why should they be given here In all cases of the world it is unjust to lay the sinne of the father upon the children and is it otherwise in this case onely And if the answer may be admitted any man may suffer for the sinne of any father because it may be said here as well as there that although the innocent must not perish for anothers fault yet the son is not innocent as being in the fathers loynes when the fault was committed and the Law calls him and makes him guilty Many such Aphorismes he hath where he sheweth or at least endeavours to shew how contrary it is to the justice and mercy of God any way to burthen the posterity of Adam with the guilt of his sinne And yet here he confesses plainly and openly that death quatenus a punishment in the penalty of it came into the world by the disobedience of the first man How he can make one part of his doctrine to agree with the other it passeth all understanding of mine to discerne In his answer to the Bishops letter he seemeth to me to let fall a strange contradiction I have saith he the plain words of Saint Paul death passed upon all men forasmuch as all have sinned all men that is the generality of mankind all that lived till they could sinne Others that dyed before dyed in their nature not in their sinne neither Adams nor their own save onely that Adam brought it upon them or rather left it to them himself being disrob'd of all that could hinder it Answ let page 49. Here in the former part of his words he saith that infants dye in their nature not in their sinne neither Adams nor their own and yet he tells us again that Adam brought in death upon them and through his disobedience they were disrobed of all that could hinder it If he did bring in death upon them then they did not dye purely in their own nature they must some way die in or by his sinne Again if they dyed purely in their own nature and not at all in his sin how can he be said to bring in death Can he bring in death and can he not bring in death and all this upon one sort of people at one and the same time Neither can I see how he will acquit himself if it should be put upon him to shew the true reason why infants are lyable to burning feavours convulsion fitts and passe through the pangs of death at last Are these the infelicities of nature Then God hath made them in this state and their misery will be purely the work of his own hands Are these the punishment of Adams sinne then the innocent child will bear the burden of his fathers iniquity in such a case where it is not possible for the son to follow the fathers ensample which is plainly to give up the cause Now let us consider what he saith of the quality of the persons upon whom there hath been such a passage of death Death saith he passed upon all men that is upon all the old world who were drowned in the flood of divine vengeance and who did sinne after the similitude of Adam and therefore the Apostle St. Paul addes that for a reason inasmuch as all men have sinned Ans Though the word all in it self hath an ambiguity in it yet the scope of the text the condition of the subject doth plainly demonstrate that the passage of death from Adam as a common root must be absolutely upon all men as men so farre forth as they are his sonnes and not upon all to the flood only But concerning this matter we have his meaning more fully in the next passage If all men saith he have sinned upon their own account as it is certaine they have then these words can very well mean that Adam first sinned and all his sonnes and daughters sinned after him and so dyed in their own sinne by a death which at the first and in the whole constitution of affaires is natural and a death which their own sinne deserved but yet was hastned and ascertained upon them for the sin of their Progenitor Answ In these words of his as plausibly as he seems to speak of the cause of death he puts that for the cause which is not the cause and where he speaks of the true cause it doth not answer the sense of the text First he puts that for the cause that is not the cause For from what Scripture or from what consequence of Scripture doth he prove it that Adam and his sonnes in the whole constitution of affiaires should have dyed a death that is natural The Scripture doth every where make death to be the fruit of sinne
interval between Adam and Moses And so we that live in the latter ages of the world shall have nothing to do with the Gospel nor the Gospel with us But of this I have formerly spoken in my answer to Mr. Everard and the Examiners There I have shewed the reason why the Apostle doth mention the reigne of death in the interval between Adam and Moses He goes on This death saith he was brought upon them by Adam that is death which was threatned to Adam only went forth upon them also who indeed were sinners but not after the similitude of Adams transgression that is who sinned not so capitally as be did Answ This expression death threatned only to Adam hath some ambiguity in it If he speaks of Adam as a particnliar person death was not only threatned to him for in the present case he is to be looked upon as the common roote of the nature when he fell all mankind fell in him from him death passed upon all not only as sinners in their own person but in that formality as made sinners or sinful by his disobedience Of infants it is true as well as others in Adam all dye and so death passeth upon all Next he telleth us what it is to sin like Adam To sin like Adam saith he is used as a tragicall and high expression so it is in the Prophet they like men have transgressed so we read it but in the Hebrew it is they like Adam have transgrest and yet death passed upon them that did not sin after the similitude of Adam Answ For the text in Hosea our English translation may well passe by an Enallage of the number They like man that is like fickle and inconstant men have transgrest my Covenant Or if this will not satisfie that of Tremellius may obtaine Tanquam hominis transgressi sunt faedus They have played fast and loose with me as if it were no other but a meer Covenant of man But let us take the words in the sence that is most propitious to him viz. that the Prophet here looks to Adam as the head of all Apostates and that the Israelites had sinned in as tragical a manner as Adam did what doth he infer from hence he tells us that death reigned from Adam to Moses over those that had not so tragically sinned as Adam had done Truely the old world that was drowned in the flood Sodom and Gomorrah that were burnt with fire the builders of Babel whose language was confounded these and such like sinners though they lived in the interval between Adam and Moses were none of the least But let us take it in his own sence that death reigned over Abel Seth Noah and others that did not sin so capitally as Adam did If this be well considered it doth make more for our purpose than it doth for his For these holy men that lived in the interval between Adam and Moses were under the reigne of death Here I demand how came they to be under this reigne If he will say their own sinne was the principal cause how will he answer the words of the Apostle who expressely tells us by one mans offence death reigned over all ver 17. Againe if he shall say they came under this power by the sinne of Adam then he makes good the interpretation given by us that by the sinne of Adam infants as well as others in all that interval between Adam and Moses came under the power and sovereignty of death He further addeth God saith he was so exasperated with mankind that being angry would still continue that punishment even to lesse sinnes and sinners which he only had first threatned to Adam and so Adam brought it upon them They indeed in rigour did themselves deserve it but if it had not been for that provocation by Adam they who sinned not so bad and had not been so severely and expressely threatned had not suffered so severely Answ By the tenour of the Doctrine we may understand that men by their own sins do deserve death as for the sin of Adam by this account it is only an aggravating circumstance and a cause meerly of the severity of the sentence Now if this be so how shall we expound the meaning of the Apostle By one man sin entred into the world and death by sin and death passed upon all men He speaketh of the entrance of sinne of the entrance of death of the entrance of sin and death upon all by the sin and disobedience of one man Is all this only to make Adams sin a meer accessory or aggravating circumstance away with such a conceit The text doth pitch upon it as the principal and general cause of death Againe the Apostle saith by the offence of one death reigned by one If all men fall under the reigne of death by the offence of one then certainly his offence is not the cause alone why they are more severely dealt with but it is the very cause why they fall under the power and dominion of death it selfe Shall we make a circumstance of that which is the principal cause Further what is the reason that infants dye seeing personally and individually they are guilty of no sin of their own to deserve death in his answer to the Bishops letter he doth not shunne to affirme that death comes upon infants meerly by right of dominion But then saith he the evil of punishment may passe further than the action If it passes upon the innocent it is not a punishment to them but an evil inflicted by right of dominion yet by reason of the relation of the offlicted to him that sinned to him it is a punishment But if it passeth upon others that are not innocent then it is a punishment to both to the first principally to the descendants or relatives for the others sake his sinne being impured so far and more he hath to the same purpose pag. 43. Here he plainly delivers his opinion that death is inflicted upon others because they do partake with Adam in his sinne but it descends and comes upon infants meerly by way of prerogative and absolute dominion And if their death be a punishment it is so only to Adam in as much as they stand related to him as being his descendants and relatives Against this I have some things to oppose First in his Vnum necessarium pag. 403. He layeth down this as a sure axiom When Godnsing the power and the dominion of a Lord and the severity of a Judge doth punish posterity it must be so long as the Parents may live and see it and so out of Chrysostome he doth expound it to be to the third and fourth generation and no longer Now here I argue if God punisheth Adam in his infant children this is not to the third and fourth but to the hundreth generation Againe why should he be punished in his infant-children when he hath been dead many hundred nay certaine thousand years agoe
shall he only be punished and never survive or live so long as to see the punishment againe the words of the Apostle are cleare as by the offence of one judgement came upon all men to condemnation ver the 18. If it came upon all men it came upon infants as well as others and if it came upon all to condemnation then infants beare the guilt of sin the infelicities miseries and paines of death not by way of sovereignty but as a punishment and judgement laid upon them for their sin and disobedience of the first man But to colour the matter he hath a restriction in his answer to the Bishops letter Now then your Lordship saith he sees that what you note of the meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I admit and is indeed true enough and agreeable to the scope of the Apostle and very much in justification of what I taught The word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies a punishment for sin and this sin to be theirs upon whom the condemnation comes I easily subscribe to it but then take in the words of St. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by one sinne or by the sin of one the curse passed upon all men to condemnation that is the curse descended from Adam for his sake it was propagated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to a real condemnation viz. when they should sin for though this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or curse of death was threatned only to Adam yet upon Gods being angry with him God resolved it should descend and if men did sin as Adam or if they sin at all though lesse than Adam yet the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the curse threatned to them should passe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unto the same actual condemnation which fell upon him that is it should actually bring them under the reigne of death pag. 45 46. By these words of his it is cleare that the curse doth descend upon infants not when they are borne in sin for he doth own no such sin of the nature but it descends only to their real condemnation when they come to act sinne Here I would entreat him to consider the words of the Apostle so by the righteousnesse of one man the free gift came upon all men to justification of life If it came upon all men it came upon infants if the blessing of Christ doth come upon infants surely the curse also must descend upon them For we cannot imagine any to be made partakers of the blessing benefit grace and life by the second man but he must be some way involved in the guilt misery death and condemnation brought in by the first On the contrary if he will say that the curse doth not descend upon infants by the rule of proportion it will follow that infants shall have no part in the comforts priviledges and blessings that come by the Gospel And truely this must be the upshot of this dismal doctrine Now let us consider what exposition he giveth of those words by the disobedience of one many were made sinners But that saith he which I dwell and rely upon is this sinne is often used in Scripture for the punishment of sinne and they that suffer are called sinners though they be innocent so it is in this case by Adams disobedience many were sinners that is the sinne of Adam passed upon them and sate upon them with evil effect Answ We do not deny but the word sinne may be taken for the punishment of sinne and to that purpose what he speaketh of Bathsheba I and my sonne Solomon shall be sinners but more especially that of our Saviour he made him sinne for us that knew no sinne These and such like passages which he hath page 368 c. We do not deny the truth of them in the general Only this we say that we are not onely made sinners by imputation but also we derive a sinful nature from Adam by propagation and by contagion For First If there were onely an imputation of guilt and no inherent corruption men would bear the burthen and punishment of sinne without cause and God would punish sinne where none is Our Saviour indeed was made sin who knew no sinne because he came in the nature of a Surety But the sonnes of Adam are no sureties they must be some way sinners themselves if they will righteously bear the burthen of Adams sinne Again the words of the Apostle are most emphatical by the disobedience of one many were made sinful for the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doth note one that hath the habit of sinne that is a sinful man as I have proved in the former part of the Treatise from whence we collect that the sonnes of Adam are not onely made sinners by imputation but sinful also by hereditary contagion Further the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are constituted sinners or sinful This expression if it be seriously considered is set in immediate opposition to the constitution of things in the creation If a reason be demanded concerning the Sun Moon and Starres of the ebbing and the flowing of the Sea of the vicissitude of Winter and Summer The answer is easie all these things have their being because God made them and constituted them so in the beginning But if a reason be demanded how all men came to be sinners by imputation and sinful by propagation the answer is as easie They are made and constituted as by the disobedience of the first man so by the just judgment of God upon that disobedience If the sinfulnesse of nature be not by the fall it must come by creation or some other reason must necessarily be assigned to make all men so unanimous and universal in matter of sinning Lastly the Apostle draweth a parallel between both the Adams as by the disobedience of one many were made sinners so by the obedience of one many shall be made righteous Now it is evident none are made righteous by imputation in the ordinary way but they do in some measure or other partake of the life and spiritual nature of Christ as the seccond Adam Therefore we say on the contrary part there are none that have the guilt of the sinne of Adam imputed to them but they must also derive the pollution of nature from him as the root of corruption But to this he hath a solution as he pretends at least in his answer to the Bishops letter This is sufficient saith he for the Apostles argument and yet no necessity to affirme that we are sinners any more than by imputation for we are by Christ made just no other wise than hy imputation page 38 c. To which we reply the question is not about the formal reason of our justification which we acknowledge to be by the alone imputation of the righteousnesse of Christ But the point in hand is whether any be justified by the blood which are not sanctified by the Spirit So in the present case we say
only He did shed his blood not onely to obtain a possibility for them but that they may be certainly and insallibly brought to glory Hence is it that he speaketh concerning his sheep for whom he dyed in a special manner My Father that gave them me is greater then all and none can take them out of my Fathers hands Joh. 10.29 And in another place who shall lay any thing to the charge of Gods elect it is God that justifieth who is he that condemneth it is Christ that dyed Rom. 8 33 34. The death of Christ for the elect is not only to obtain salvation upon termes of repentance and faith or other general fruits of his death but it is certainly and infallibly to bring them to salvation In relation to this peculiar love the Apostle saith Who shall separate us from the love of Christ Rom. 8.35 And our Saviour John 10.28 I will give them eternal life and they shall never perish neither shall any man be able to take them out of my hand He speaketh these things of his sheep for whom he had layed down his life in that special sense mentioned before Having thus cleared all your Objections in this Chapter we proceed to the next CHAP. XI Whether Adams sinne or any other mans sinne doth produce death or condemnation in a natural way TOuching the manner of the thing how sinne doth cause death whether death be the natural fruit of sinne or whether it doth meerly depend upon the will of him who hath threatned to punish sinne with death is much disputed But Mr. Everard leaving that which may be supposed it is too too plain in this Chapter that you mainly drive at this to prove that sinne is not the meritorious cause of death and that Adams sinne was no cause of his condemnation And then afterwards going to discover the causes of judgment you tell us for the efficient cause God is onely the contriver who doth inflict punishments For the material cause the creatures are the onely instruments For the formal it is the manner of judgment coming upon men the fire by burning the water by drowning For the final it is the declaration of the justice of God upon the contemners of his grace And so you conclude That sin sinne is no cause of punishment neither efficient material formal nor final page 95. 96. And for the meritorious cause You say also that sinne doth not merit death but it doth onely prepare fit and qualifie a man for death as grace doth for eternal life page 106 107 108. You do not shunne to tell us in the last two lines of the Chapter speaking of eternal life and eternal death That God is as simply and entirely the Author of the one as of the other Page 108. In opposition to all this I do affirme that sinne is the meritorious cause of death and death is the fruit of sin Let us consider the Scriptures and let us vindicate them from your cavils First it is said the wages of sinne is death but the gift of God is eternal life Rom. 6.23 From hence it is plain that eternal life sanctification of the Spirit belief of the truth and all other things that tend to salvation are the meer gift of God but the wages of sinne is death If death be the wages of sin then sinne must be the meritorious cause of death But say you Though death be the wages of sinne yet it is not the fruit thereof page 91. Though in some cases we may call that the fruit which is not the wages yet in the sense of the text the wages and the fruit are all one Read but the words going before What fruit had you then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed the wages of sinne is death The fruit and the wages are all one and the sense of the whole text is this that sinne is the meritorious cause of damnation For the second Scripture Rom. 8.6 To be carnally minded is death but to be spiritually minded is life and peace Here say you If it be death it self it cannot be the cause of death But Sir you are to look to the sense and not to the strictnesse of the letter In strict termes you cannot say that to be spiritually minded is life and peace In this life many that are truly spiritual that have the reality of grace in their heart have not the peace of grace The meaning of the text is briefly this that as peace and life doth follow a spiritual mind so death doth follow the carnal mind as the wages and fruit thereof But here you shew your skill at catch-ball I confesse say you that he who walketh carnally to his end shall receive eternal death so he that lives a spiritual life shall enjoy everlasting life But neither the death nor the life were any branches produced by either for they came both from God And as God hath no desire that any man should sinne so sinne hath as little desire to receive punishment pag. 92. Still you go on in the same way of sophistry We willingly agree that he who walketh spiritually to the end shall receive eternal life because such walking is the way to eternal life But the carnal walking is not only the way that leadeth to death but by a Metonymie the effect being put for the cause it is death it self or in the way of causality a carnal mind is that which produceth death and death is the fruit thereof But whereas you affirme that neither death nor life are branches produced either by carnal or spiritual walking in this you erre For though a godly walking is not the meritorious cause of eternal life yet a carnal and sinful walking is the meritorious cause of eternal death Why else should it be said The wages of sinne is death Masters use to pay their servants their wages at night in relation to that which they have deserved in the day and for a weeks work they pay them commonly at the end of the week The payment of wages hath near relation to the labour of the hireling that hath deserved it And therefore the Scriptures do use this expression the wages of sinne is death shewing that sinne is the meritorious cause of death and death is the desart of sin And for that expression of yours that death is no branch produced by sin ☞ but it cometh meerly from God who inflicteth death this I think no pious man can look upon but with a great deal of horror What is this but to transfer the cause of death upon God onely But if to mend the matter you shall say that God doth inflict death as the just punishment of sin in so saying you contradict your self and blow up your own position For if God doth inflict death as the punishment of sin then it will follow that sinne is the meritorious cause of death and death doth not onely come from God but also from the sinner who hath
deserved it And so you lose your cause Thirdly the Apostle saith Lust when it hath conceived it bringeth forth sinne and sinne when it is finished bringeth forth death Jam. 1.13 14. To avoid the force of this Scripture you tell us That sinne doth not bring forth death as lust doth bring forth sinne sinne is lusts natural seed but death hath no conceptions by any seed of sinne page 94. But Sir I would entreat you to leave all windings and shifts deale plainly with the words of the text The Apostle saith sinne when it is finished bringeth forth death I do here put it upon you to give a down-right answer seeing the words of the Apostle are so plain If sinne doth any way bring forth death then we must needs conclude that sinne is the cause of death and this is the true meaning of the Apostle But seeing you bind so much upon the Lords institution who hath threatned death to the sinner let us come to the original text In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt dye the death And here setting the Lords prohibition aside I do willingly yield that there was no evil in the tree of knowledge of good and evil if we go to evil in the intrinsecal nature thereof but the Lord having forbidden it it was evil to go against his Command In this sense I say though death was threatned by God yet Adams own personal sinne was the meritorious cause of death to himself and to all his posterity And this is the ground of the Apostles speech By one man sinne entred into the world and death by sinne and death hath past over all men unto condemnation You labour in many pages together to prove that Adams sinne was no cause of his condemnation and when all comes to all This is your chief ground that the Lord in his institution did ordain to punish sin and sinners with death and therefore sinne is not the meritorious cause of death Good Sir may not both stand together as social causes what do you think of the two Malefactors that were hanged upon the Cross the one on the right hand and the other on the left hand of our Saviour Were they not both put to death by the sentence of the Law yet for all this they were the cause of their own condemnation The converted thief will tell you as much Doest thou not fear God seeing thou art in the same condemnation And we indeed justly suffer for we receive the due reward of our deeds Luke 23.40 41. In like manner I say though death was inflicted upon Adam as the just judgment of God yet Adams sinne was the cause of his own condemnation Now whereas you call death a righteous branch It is true if you look to the sentence of the just Judge who hath appointed death as the punishment of sinne yet if you look unto the nature of death he is an enemy The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death 1 Cor. 15.26 Further in the book of the Revelation we read that after the Beast the false Prophet and the Dragon were cast into the lake of fire then death it self was cast into the lake of fire Rev. 20.14 What is the meaning of this but that the Lord Christ is Head and King of the Church and will tread down all his enemies in the several and respective times appointed for their destruction and then last of all death it self shall come to be destroyed If death then be an enemy the last enemy and shall be destroyed as an enemy how can you affirme that it is a righteous Branch Further you argue That death cannot be the fruit of sinne seeing God hath pleased to punish sinne with death sinne and punishment for sinne agree no more than light and darknesse page 91. If this be your opinion I pray you tell me what do you think of that case where God doth punish one sinne with another He gave up the Gentiles to vile affections that they might receive in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet Rom. 1.23 24. If one sinne may be the punishment of another why do you put such a difference betwixt sinne and punishment as betwixt light and darknesse you have another evasion to help you our you say The very voice or death is enough to scare a sinner from his sinnes therefore death is not the natural fruit of sinne page 95. Give me leave to observe the same way of reasoning The Devil if he should visibly appear the very sight of him would be enough to scare a sinner from his sins Therefore a wicked sinner when he doth commit sinne doth not fulfill the lusts of his father the Devil which is to go point blank against the Scripture John 8.44 After this you come to answer a weak and incongruous objection of your own making you feign an adversary to reason in this wile If there had been no sinne there had been no punishment therefore pun shmext must be produced by sinne page 949. In this you deceive your self we do not argue so loosely to make every antecedent a necessary cause of that which cometh after for then by the like reason you might argue as you do If there had been no Law there had been no transgression therefore transgression is produced by the Law We say that sin doth not go before death as a meet antecedent or occasion only but as the meritorious cause of death the Apostle saith sinne bringeth forth death as the cause doth the effect and the wages of sinne is death when the work is done the wages is to be paid Last of all you come to the particular examples of Corah of Herod of Ananias and Sapphira and from thence you reason If death be the natural fruit of sinne why are not all Rebels punished as Corah all proud men as well as Herod all guilty of the sinne of equivocation as well as Ananias This is the substance of your argument page 99 100. To all which I make this answer unlesse they repent they shall meet with the same righteous judgment of God The Lord is free in the execution of judgment as upon those eighteen on whom the Tower in Siloah fel yet that it may appear to you that death is the natural fruit of sinne and that sinne is the meritorious cause of death our Saviour shuts up the matter with these words unlesse you repent you shall all likewise perish Luke 13.1 2 3 4 5. But you go on and strike still upon the same string If I should allow as much demerit in Adams disobedience to bring death as Christ had merit in his obedience both active and passive to bring life into the world yet it would not amount to such a pitch to be the onely cause For though the obedience of Christ was the cause of the coming of life into the world yet the appointment of God was as principal a cause as the obedience of Christ And so though sinne
had been ten thousand times more sinful yet without an Ordinance from God death could never have seized upon the world page 101. 102 103. What is all this but a palpable and grosse mistake of the question or as Logicians call it an ignorance of the elench We do confesse as shrist brought life into the world he brought it in by the institution of his Father so when sinne brought death into the world it was by the just appointment of God to punish sinne with death The question that is in debate betwixt us is whether sinne be the 〈◊〉 cause of death as the obedience of Christ active and passive is the meritorious cause of life If you yield this as yield it you must we have as much as we do desire Next you enquire how sinne may be the cause of condemnation supposing that it cannot be the principal cause you demand whether it may be a cause in subordination And here you tell us that sinne will not be found neither seeing such causes are good in their own nature Well then what is the cause you tell us seeing sinne is an invention of man and the Devil a meere accident that cleaveth to the subject man we may call sinne an accidental cause of condemnation seizing upon man found sinful page 105. If this way of reasoning be good why may not I proceed in the like manner Heat is an accident in the subject fire therefore the heat of the fire is a meere accidental cause of the boyling of the water The force of your reason is no better when you say sinne is a meere accident in the subject man therefore it is onely the accidental cause of condemnation If you well observe the expression you shall find it to be very absurd to call sin a meere accidental cause of condemnation Condemnation is alwayes set in relation to the guilt of some sinne that doth deserve it how then can you call sinne an accidental cause of condemnation The Scriptures say that the Lord will render to every one according to his works that they who commit such things are worthy of death And many passages of the like kind What will you say to all this Here you have a pretty shift to help you out Sinne say you puts a man in a sutable disposition and qualification for death page 106. Indeed our Divines when they speak of eternal life that the Lord will render to every man according to his works they take the word worthy onely for a sutable qualification According to that of the Apostle he hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the Saints in light Col. 1.12 Though this may be affirmed of the Saints that they are made meet for eternal life it were too short and too diminuent an expression to affirme that wicked men onely are made suitable to receive vengeance for then the wicked are no more worthy of eternal death then the Saints are worthy of eternal life ☞ which is plainly to crosse the Apostle the wages of sinne is death but the gift of God is eternal life I cannot then but mention your words with a kind of horrour with which you close the Chapter speaking of the wicked they are say you a sutable matter to receive vengeance as Gods people are sutable to receive all the joyes of eternal life Now the joyes of eternal life are the free-gift of God All qualifications dispositions frames of spirit though never so evangelical in the abundance thereof do not abate the worth of an hair of eternal life to be the free-gift of God For there was not the least desarts in a holy life to the procuring of eternal salvation but onely it was the will of God to make eternal life as a Crown to put upon the head of those men that lived holy here which were fit or sutable for the Crown of honour So men that have lived never so notoriously wicked rebeling and blaspheming against God day after day to their lives end are no otherwise worthy than persons fitted as the true subjects sutable for wrath and God is as simply and intirely the authour of the one as the other And so farre you Now I leave it to all tender consciences to understand and to give sentence We do willingly confesse that we cannot merit any thing by our own works in the way to salvation there being such a disproportion between them and the glory to come But I do detest and abhorre that speech of yours when you say that the greatest sinner who continues so all his life long is no otherwise worthy of death than a person fitted or a subject made sutable for wrath and that God is as much the cause of the damnation of the one as the salvation of the other If this doctrine of yours be sound and Orthodox why may not the wicked in hell cast all upon God as the sole Authour of their misery as well as the Saints in heaven ascribe all to the glory of his free grace I will use your own words though to farre better purpose If a man should study many years for a destroying Principle to dishonour his Creator he could not parallel this which is the sharpest Sword that was ever drawn against the righteousnesse of God I have staid the longer upon this point because you have used so many arguments to prove sin to be no meritorious cause of condemnation I have more carefully endeavoured to vindicate the truth because this is one of the first fundamentals that is put into the heart of the Gentiles They knowing the judgment of God against them which do such things that they are worthy of death not only do the same but have pleasure in them that do them Rom. 1.32 That sinne is the meritorious cause of death and that a sinner is worthy of death is graven in the heart of every man alive and God at seasons doth stirre up the confideration of the guilt of sinne in the conscience of the Gentiles to look after pardon and to make their peace with God The first convictions of the Spirit do begin with considerations of the Godhead and the guilt of sinne that so men may be brought to see their misery And yet you teach us here in this Chapter that sinne is not the meritorious cause of condemnation Now we proceed to your next Chapter CHAP. XII What Adam retained of his forfeiture till his death HERE also you teach such things as do little lesse then strike at the foundation You tell us that Adam after the fall for his body had all the parts and lineaments thereof He had his senses and retained his knowledge And further you adde I make no question but God had so ordered the imployments that he had for Adam some of them to be more spiritual than ever he had to do before his fall and then that he should utterly disable him from the performance thereof will never be made good by any man under
the words of the Apostle Rom. 5.12 by one man sinne entred into the world c. You should finde that all then were in one publick man and sinned in him and this is the reason which the Apostle giveth why death passed universally upon all men because in one all have sinned his one act was the act of all But for more abundant confirmation let us consider the scope of the text The drift of the Apostle is to draw a parallel between both the Adams Frist in those points wherein they do agree Secondly in those wherein they do disagree For the points of agreement the most remarkable to the purpose in hand are these First the two Adams are described as two persons which are the roots to their several and respective posterities The first Adam is a root to all his branches and the second Adam is a root to all branches I marvail then what delusion hath seized upon the Examiners who do positively maintain that the first Adam is not here intended as he was the Father of us all Secondly they are described by the plurality of branches as the first Adam had a multiplicity of branches out of him so the second Adam had a plurality of branches out of him And therefore the Apostle doth elegantly proceed in the collation as by the offence of one many be dead so the gift of grace which is by one man Jesus Christ hath abounded unto many As by one mans offence death reigned by one much more they which receive abundance of grace shall reign in life by one Jesus Christ And so the Apostle doth compare one Adam to one Christ Adam the root of all his branches Christ the root of all his branches Thirdly they are set forth by the passage of the common sap out of each root into its branches respectively And therefore the Apostle speaketh concerning the first Adam by one man sinne entred into the world and death by sinne and death passed over all men The common sap then that passed out of the first man into all his branches is first sinne and then death by sinne By sinne is here principally meant original sinne and all other sinnes that flow from this as the fountain But if further enquiry be made concerning the passage of sin death into all the branches that come of Adam the passage is not all at one and the same instant It is now five thousand six hundred years since the fall of Adam and in all this time original sinne hath been in continual flux and succession As in several generations men come to be born so they actually participate of the sap that comes from the first root The like may be said of the second Adam and of his branches They which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousnesse shall reigne in life by one Jesus Christ ver 17. The sap then that cometh from Christ as the common root is grace and spiritual life this doth flow out of him into all his branches And for the passage thereof it is not all at one time but as men come to receive the gift of righteousnesse and to be born anew they come to the actual fruition thereof For let the death of Christ be never so largely tendred to the lost sonnes of men there is no actual participation of him till he be received by faith The words of the text are most emphatical and significant They which receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousnesse shall reigne in life As who would say in plainer termes they only shall reign in life by one Jesus Christ who do particularly receive the gift of righteousnesse which is generally offered This is the undoubted meaning of the text And therefore for you to say that we could not sinne in Adam our soules and bodies not being in him how do you answer the scope of the text by the disobedience of one many were made sinners by one man sinne entred into the world Adam is here set forth as the root of all his branches and al the branches were in him as the first publick man What can you or the Examiners say to this 2ly you say that we had no Law in Adam Now where there is no Law there is no transgression if we had received any Law it must have been made known to us but there was none made known to us and therefore there was no Law page 127. To this I rejoyn ☜ if there was no Law given to us in Adam how come we to be guilty of his transgression how come we to bear the burden of his sinne why doth the Apostle speak so plainly by the disobedience of one many were made sinners We must then necessarily come to affirme this for a truth that the Law was given to Adam as a publick man and in him to all his posterity And whereas you say that there was no Law made known to us at that time therefore we had no interest in the Law why do not you infer by the like reason when the second Adam the Lord Jesus Christ suffered death upon the Crosse because at that very time the merit of his death was not made known you had no part or portion in that death which was one thousand six hundred years before you were born If you will be loth to stand to the latter to lose your priviledge by the second Adam I pray you give us leave to maintain the dammage that was brought in by the first Adam And yet further to take away all scruples from tender consciences if it might seem harsh for all the sonnes of men to perish by the disobedience of one man especially when the Law was not made known to them in their own individual persons but in the common root of all mankind let us consider how the second man came as a remedy to free the same miserable sonnes of men from the state of sinne and death especially when they neither thought nor knew any thing concerning the means of their salvation The greatnesse of our misery by Adam doth amplifie and set forth the merrit of Christ in the fulnesse thereof Now then when the Examiners and you both go about to extenuate the misery of the fall you do rob Christ of the glory of his grace You say The branch hath not any thing but what it hath by dependance upon the tree Now it is not so with us for that which we call the Principal part of man his soul or spirit was not dependant upon Adam but had his dependancy from the very same fountain from whence Adam received his even from God himself p. 128. Here I confess there is a great question concerning the manner of the propagation of Original sin and men do wearie themselves very much to find out whether the soul be by infusion or by traduction But I see no cause why we should intangle our selves in that difficultie ☞ For whether the soul be infused or
too much and to these the exhortation is given in special that they should be humbled and become as little children There lyeth then a palpable and grosse fallacy in your whole discourse when you take the words absolutely that all infants are free from sinne when our Saviour speaketh in a particular sense only of the act and execution of this or that particular evil Now you proceed and tell us it was never heard that children had any sinne by way of act and by way of omission you cannot make it good that they ever received a command or were capable of any command from God page 138. Answ What we have learned we are willing to acknowledge and though we never heard that infants had any sinne in them by any act of their own yet we have learned from Scriptures yea from the very first principles of the faith that they have it by contagion and the disobedience of the first man The words of our Saviour are plain Joh. 3.8 That which is born of the flesh is flesh And that of the Apostle Rom. 5.12 By one man sinne entred into the world and death by sinne And many such places there are to prove infants to be guilty of sinne by the disobedience of the first man and to be involved in the pollution of nature by hereditary contagion But because you and the Examiners are so strict upon the point I pray you resolve me in this one case When the promise was made the seed of the woman shall break the Serpents head was not this the promise of Christ to Adam after his fall If infants therefore are absolutely acquitted from the guilt of Adams sinne as being another mans act if they be free from the pollution of nature to what end was the promise of Christ How did he come in the nature of a Physician to cure when there was no disease Where there is no malady there needs no remedy And whereas you go about to free infants from the sinne of omission because they are not capable of a command I pray you shew the reason why the Lord was so strict in his command to the Jewish infant that he should be circumcised upon the eighth day and that the uncircumcised man-child should be cut off from his people Gen. 17.11.12 c. For my part I know no reason of the strictnesse of this Law but that the Lord would signifie to beleevers under this dispensation that there infants were born in original sinne and that it was not safe to omit the remedy for that disease And though in strictnesse of termes we will yeeld so farre to Corvinus and to Julian the Pelagian that there is no particular command that forbids an infant to be born in original sinne yet for all this they must needs allow that the Law was given to reveal to convince and to discover the sinne of the nature and by the discovery thereof to drive a man to Christ to look to him onely for sanctifying and regenerating glrace S. Paul saith the Law is spiritual and I am carnal sold under sinne And in the same text I had not known sinne except the Law had said thou shalt not covet Rom. 7. You go on for this sinne called original if infants had committed it God would have called them to repentance for it when they had come to years at least wise but I can safely say that there is no man living that to this day ever made it appear to be the mind of God for any man to repent of that sinne Truly Sir your confidence is very great and you have more boldnesse than truth on your side For we may beleeve that you never heard of the promises nor the commands mentioned in Scripture when you dare affirme such things as these When the Lord promiseth in the new Covenant I will take out of their bowels a heart of stone and will give them a heart of flesh Ezek. 36. By the heart of stone he means a hard heart and a sinful nature that every infant did bring into the world he doth promise to take away the corruption of nature and that he will sanctifie his people by his Spirit So for the commands of God we read every where that men are exhorted to put off the Old Adam-like disposition That ye put off concerning the former conversation the Old man which is corrupt according to the deceivable lusts Ephes 4.22 By the Old man he doth mean the carnal disposition which we have from Adam by natural generation This corrupted disposition of the flesh he would have the beleeving Ephesians and in them all others to subdue and mortifie And further if you look to the right use of Baptisme now as of circumcision of old you shall finde that the institution of these things doth primarily intend the doing away of the sinne of the nature as I have already shewed in my Treatise of Infant Baptisme Therefore I cannot but admire at your boldnesse when you stand so much upon it that you can safely say that God never called men to repentance for original sinne I am so farre from your judgment that I think the greatest part of repentance lyes in the mortification of the sinne of the nature But you have an evasion this sinne called original sinne if infants had committed it God would have called them to repentance Here you put that upon us which we do not speak and I know no solid Writer in the world that doth use such an expression of committing original sinne It is proper onely to men of ripe years to commit sinne For original sin we say that is onely by propagation thorough the disobedience of the first man and when men come to be sanctified by the Spirit of God they are qualified with inward principles to purge out the sin of the nature Neither doth your argument drawn from the example of Christ any whit promote your cause You say If this principle should finde a being in the world that every infant was born in sinne because lineally derived from Adam then where will you get water to wash your hands of that grand absurdity to wit that Jesus Christ was not free from original sinne for then he must have a share because he came from the loynes of a woman the Daughter of Adam page 139. To this I answer if you will make Christ and all Infants to run parallel in the purity of their natural birth then why did Christ die for them why did he sanctifie their nature There is no need of salvation by the merit of Chri st where there is no guilt of sinne There needs no sanctification of the Spirit where there is no pollution of nature Why do not you exclude all Infants from these as you do from the water of baptisme For your Argument drawn from the example of Christ If you build so much upon that I would entreat you to consider two things First why he did assume our nature Secondly assuming our
the emproving of nature to those ends to which God had assigned it These are the Chimera's and fictions of mens own devising For if we will go to the utmost that a natural man can do at seasons he hath ability to judge himself this is not from himself but from the convictions of the Spirit And it is never better with him in the way to attain salvation than when he is beaten off from all his own abilities when in the sight of his own misery and emptinesse he doth rely upon the mercy of God Now we will go on to the meaning of that expression and were by nature the children of wrath as well as others Here you distinguish betwixt that wrath which is due by the appointment of God for Adams sinne and the wrath which is due for despising the riches of grace Concerning this text say you we were by nature the children of wrath as well as others if it be universal it must be meant of the first condemnation which came by Adam But if it be meant of the second wrath then it belongs to such persons onely as are dead in trespasses and sinnes that is such as have been in actual defiance which walked after the course of the world after the Prince of the power of the aire in opposition to the Spirit of truth page 150. Here I do agree with you that distinction is to be made between the wrath due for the sinne of Adam and the wrath due for the actual refusal of Christ in the tender of grace Though this distinction be admitted yet it doth not disanul that truth we were by nature the children of wrath as well as others For infants so farre forth as they come out of Adams loynes in that precise and single consideration they may be the children of wrath by nature though the cause why wrath doth not seize upon them is from the shedding of the blood of Christ Secondly let us take this expression and were by nature the children of wrath as well as others that it is meant onely of those who have been in actual defiance this will avail nothing so long as it is clear from the text that men by nature can do no other than live in actual defiance against God Neither do the Examiners mend the matter by their Intepretation when they say it is one thing to be sinners from our first nativity and another in time to become the children of wrath by our personal fall and actual disobedience which also coming to pass in our natural man and by his default we may truly be said to be by nature the children of wrath especially when sinne by custome becomes a second nature to us page 78. Here we will be no adversaries to them so farre as they say that men become the children of wrath by their own personal falls and actual disobedience But the question is whether this disobedience doth not radically and originally proceed from the default of the nature They seem to say so much in sense when they do oppose it Secondly though it be true which they say that the evil doth come upon men throught heir personal fall yet the Apostle doth especially look unto the sinne of the nature And therefore doth amplifie the grace of God in quickning and enlivening again when he saith you hath he quickned that were dead in trespasses and sinnes They were not onely truly dead in sinne thorough custome and sinful conversation but also thorough the state and condition of their natural birth they were by nature the children of wrath as well as others Upon these grounds he tells them that God who was rich in mercy did quicken them when they were dead in trespasses and sins Next you come to open the meaning of the expression dead in trespasses and sinnes You say a spiritual death must be meant of a declining from spiritual things which is a resistance of the spirit or a dying that is a forsaking the truth of God made manifest in them Now such a death as this cannot befall any who never had that spiritual life for it is the losse of life that must prove a death or otherwise we may say that all other creatures besides man are spiritually dead page 151. In this point you and I do agree that the losse of life must prove a death and this to me is the great reason why not only the Ephesians but also all mankind had sometimes spiritual life before they became to be dead in trespasses and sinnes It is plaine from the scope of Scripture and the Analogy of faith as I have proved before that this death came in by the fall of Adam therefore he had spiritual life before his fall And for that expression of yours otherwise we may say as well that all other creatures are spiritually dead I answer not so neither other creatures can not properly be said to be spiritually dead because they never had a capacity of spiritual life And though men are dead in trespasses and sinnes they are not dead as stocks and stones and other sencelesse creatures but they are dead as they who sometime had spiritual life and may have the return of the same life again in and thorough Christ the way the truth and the life So also the Examiners in the Chapter of free will page 130. do but calumniate when they say that we teach that a man is a meere passive block or a dead trunck without a willing or a nilling faculty This is an odious imputation of their own devising we hold that man is a rational creature and he hath those natural and essential properties of the soul though in spiritual things he be altogether dead And for spiritual things also he may be said to have a remote capacity when blindnesse shall be taken away from his understanding and perversenesse from his will It is an excellent speech of Augustine posse credere naturae est hominum to have a remote ability to beleeve is of the nature of men for stocks and stones have no such capacity And in opposition to natural men he saith velle credere gratiae est fidelium to have a will to beleeve is of the grace given to beleevers shewing that no natural man hath an immediate power to beleeve till he come inwardly to be enlivened by the Spirit Let us hear then what you can say how the sonnes of men may be said to be dead in trespasses and sinnes If you shall mean that every man or all mankind in that sense is dead before the light or the life of the Gospel is made known to them then I shall grant it But I shall deny that such a death is any sinne For where no Law is made manifest there is no transgression But all children if you mean infants have no Law or Law made known page 152. This is true in the case of actual sinne that there must be a Law and a Law made known or else there can be
as we have formerly proved Againe it is most true that men dye because by their own sinne they deserve death but the scope of the Apostle is here onely concerning the disobedience of the first man and the passage of death upon all by the account of his sinne That which is the principal cause of death at least to the purpose in hand he looks upon it as a businesse by the by In the next words he cometh to deliver himself more clearly for speaking of the fall of Adam he addeth Sin propagated upon that root and vicious ensample or rather from that beginning not from that cause but dum ita peccant similiter moriuntur If they sin so then so shall they die so Saint Hierom. Answ This passage though it be clothed with the words of Hierom it hath the sense of the Pelagians For observe what he saith sin is propagated from that vicious ensample it doth descend from Adam not so much as a cause but as a beginning and so far as men tread in his steps they are lyable to the same punishment In his answer to the Bishops letter he brings in an ensample to confirme this way of exposition these are his own words To this purpose we have an ensample of Gods transmitting the curse from one to the other Both were sinners but one was the Original of the curse or punishment So said the Prophet to the wife of Jeroboam 1 Kings 14.16 He shall give Israel up because of the sins of Jeroboam who did sinne and made Israel to sinne Joroboam was the roote of the sin and of the curse here it was also that I may use the words of the Apostle that by the sin of one man Jeroboam sin went into all Israel and the curse captivity or death by sinne and so death went upon all men of Israel 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 inasmuch as all men of Israel have sinned So far he page 32. By this instance of his it is cleare that Original sin must passe into the world not so much by propagation as by imitation The Kings of Israel did walke in the wayes of Jeroboam that made Israel to sin and thereupon the curse captivity and death came upon all the whole succession and upon all Israel so far forth as they did walk in his waies and did follow his ensample If this be a parallel case we must say sin the guilt of sin and the curse for sin came into the world only by the institution and command of the first man and all his posterity are so far forth involved in his sinne as they walk after such an injunction and imitate that ensample Now if this be so I will leave it to any man to judge whither this gloss will go at last The Apostle saith that the first man is the figure of him that is to come If therefore we are implicated in the sinne of Adam no otherwise but by obeying his command and following his ensample Our salvation by Christ will chiefly consist in our imitating of him and in obedience to his commands As for the merit of his blood the worth of his passion the imputation of his righteousnesse all this must be set apart as a matter of little use and small profit Having done with his own he cometh to paraphrase upon the exposition given by us They think these words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 forasmuch as all have sinned ought to be expounded thus death passed upon all men in whom all have sinned meaning that in Adam we really sinned and God doth truely and justly impute his sin to us to make us as guilty as he that did it and as much punished and lyable to eternal damnation and all the force of this great fancy relyes upon this exposition of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to signifie in him Answ We do in substance own the interpretation to be ours but that all the force of it doth depend upon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to signifie in him this we plainly deny Our interpretation is grounded upon the scope of the text For let us suppose the words to be construed in his sence Forasmuch as all have sinned when he hath done all that he can he must come to the interpretation given by us For the drift of the Apostle in the former words is not only to shew that sinne hath past upon all men and death by sin but he speaks of such a passage of sinne and death upon all men out of one man If therefore there be such a general passage of sin and death upon all out of one man then virtually and interpretatively all must sin in one man Againe in the subsequent verses the Apostle saith that the first Adam is the figure of him that is to come If you ask how and wherein we must needs say from the whole series of the text that they are two publick persons and two representatives of the kind By this account then the disobedience of the first man must be virtually the act of all and what he did they did in him and by him So then our interpretation is founded upon the whole scope of the context As for his Critiscismes we will leave them to such who have more leasure to busy themselves about words we will follow him as he goes on in expounding the sense of the Apostle Neverthelesse death reigned from Adam to Moses even over them that bad not sinned after the similitude of Adams transgression who is the figure of him that is to come By which discourse it appears that St. Paul doth not speak of all mankind as if the evil occasion by Adams sin did discend for ever upon that account but it had a limited effect and reached onely to those that were in the interval between Adam and Moses Answ But if the matter be well considered there is no such collection to be made from the discourse of the Apostle Indeed he speaketh of the reigne of death over those that lived in the interval between Adam and Moses but shall we argue from thence that the evil occasioned by the fall did discend to them onely and go no further This cannot be for afterwards the Apostle drawing a parallel between both Adams hath these words If through the offence of one many be dead much more the grace of God and the gift by grace which is by one man Jesus Christ hath abounded unto many Now then if we shall say by the offence of one many be dead and understand this many or multitude in a limited sence namely of such only that lived in the interval between Adam and Moses by this account such a number alone will stand opposite to the many that have life and grace by Christ Nay that which is more the fore-mentioned number might in their time only look to one man the Lord Jesus for recovery out of sin and death and so the Gospel will be delivered to the consolation of such only that lived in the forementioned
greater caution The Treatise of Luther de servo arbitrio is questionlesse in it self a worthy work yet I think that Calvin in his answer to Albertus Pighins did not speak amisse This also is true some things which Luther wrote in a Scholastical kind of way and in a lesse popular style Philip Melancthon by his prudent and dextrous bending it to the milder part did more fitly apply to the ordinary capacity of men and to the common use of life Yet for all this in other places that great instrument of reformation doth so abundantly speak of the freenesse of the grace of Christ to every broken-hearted sinner that he doth satisfie all tender consciences and leave a solid foundation for the endeavour of man Now every one cannot do this for they that follow the asperity and the rigour of Luther in some positions of his cannot with the same spiritual evidence set forth the grace of the Gospel And so it comes to passe that the harshnesse and the incongruity imputed to the doctrine is indeed and in truth no other but the sole defect of the Teacher By right spiritual truths should have spiritual Teachers and spiritual hearers and then a true judgment may be made of the real excellency and worth of them These things considered I do intend to observe these rules in the ensuing discourse First laying aside all nice and curious speculations to retain so much of the termes of the School-men that will serve onely to explaine the doctrine of the Gospel that spiritual things may be set forth in a spiritual manner Secondly my scope the Lord enabling shall be as to speak the pure truth so likewise the whole truth of God When I speak of the impurity of the natural birth then I will take occasion to shew also how this doth referre immediately to the grace that doth regenerate and when I shall have occasion to speak of Adam as a root of corruption to all his branches I shall as carefully remember that this is a counterpane to Christ being a root of grace and spiritual life also to all his branches When it shall come in my way to mention the imperfection of man and the spirituality of the command I shall be as careful to inculcate that which doth answer to it viz. that all help is to be had from the Word of promise When I shall say that a man hath no free-will by nature to that which is spiritually good I shall be as willing to recite the true cause where the freedome is to be had to wit from the Son of God if the Sonne will make you free you shall be free indeed Further where I shall speak of a certain number of elect which the Lord doth decree curtainly and infallibly to bring to glory I shall demonstrate also that this necessity of infallibility doth not nor cannot whatsoever men may think overturne the liberty of the will For those that the Lord hath certainly appointed to salvation he will as certainly first or last sooner or later draw their wills so effectually that they shall freely choose the way and meanes that lead to salvation as the end Those and such liketruths that are usually misunderstood through inconsiderate handling I shall endeavour to represent them in their true beauty For as it is with the members of the body so it is with these myseries of salvation Being considered apart they seem to be deform'd but being put together there is an excellent correspondence and symetry in the whole Finally according to our Saviours rule I shall endeavour I hope without detriment to either part to give to grace that which doth belong to her and to the will that which doth belong to her I would not take the least dramme from the true grace of God so on the otherside I would have the will to work under the grace received These are the reasons of publishing the treatise in these times I rest thine in the Lord N. S. The Arguments of each Book The first Book in Mr. Everards Method Chap. 1. WHat were the causes that gave Adam his being Chap. 2. Wherein Adams abilities did consist Chap. 3. Whether righteousnesse and holinesse be Gods image Chap. 4. Wherein that image did consist that God did create Adam in Chap. 5. Concerning the power that God gave Adam and what is the definition thereof Chap. 6. Adams entertainment in the garden Chap. 7. Free-will in the nature thereof unfolded Chap. 8. How far God assisted Adam or assisteth other men that they might be such free-willers as hath been described Chap. 9. Though God gives power he gives not the actions of obedience Chap. 10. Concerning divers questions with their solutions Chap. 11. Whether Adams sinne or any other mans sinne doth produce death in a natural way Chap. 12. What Adam retained of his forfeiture till his death Chap. 13. Whether Adam did dye the same day that he eate of the forbidden fruit Chap. 14. Whether Adam did dye a spiritual death yea or no Chap. 15. Whether Adams posterity were guilty of his transgression This point is more fully debated The Second Book in the method of the Examiners Sect. 1. WHat places of Scripture they bring to prove the purity of the natural birth Sect. 2. What answer they endeavour to make to the texts alledged by us The third Book in the method of Dr. Taylor Sect. 1. OF Concupiscence and Original sin and whether or no and how far we are bound to repent of it Sect. 2. A consideration of objections against the former doctrine Sect. 3. How God punishes the fathers sinne upon the children Sect. 4. Of the causes of the universal wickedness of mankind Sect. 5. Of the liberty of election remaining after Adams fall The first Book containing the Answer to Master EVERARD concerning the Creation and fall of Man SIR OCcasion being given to me to read over your Treatise concerning the creation and the fall of Adam I shall now endeavour to give you an account what I judge of your doctrine I shall not stand upon every point but onely upon that which is of special moment In the end of your Introduction you signifie the cause of your undertaking in these words Whereby we may be the more enabled to vindicate the Righteous Creatour from many misconstructions which have been for a long time nourished for want of due consideration For the vindicating of the Righteous Creator I shall be no enemy to you so farre as you go according to the rule of the Word and the analogy of faith But I fear under the colour of this pretended Vindication you drive a designe to put Christ out of place Through the whole body of your Treatise you stand upon the purity of nature the denial of Original sin and the improvement of natural abilities We will go in your method and begin with your first Chapter CHAP. I. What were the causes that gave Adam his being HEre you debate the efficient material formal and final
causes of that being which he had in the beginning and tell us that God saw all that he had made and behold it was very good Gen. 1.32 From whence you draw this Conclusion doubtlesse these words were spoken to take off some future objections or to prevent mens sayings that Adam consisted in creation of two sorts of people one being assigned for heaven the other for hell And lest we should judge that God made any part of him for damnation at that time he assures us that he made all things very good When I read this passage of yours I do call to minde a kinde of torment used in the Primitive times when the persecutors would expose the bodies of Christians to wilde beasts they did sometimes cover and disguise them with the skins of other living creatures So do you here and in other parts of your book with the doctrine of Gods free election When you see that there is such a Majesty in the truth it self that you cannot well oppose it you do draw an ugly visage and forme over it to the end that you may baite and encounter it more easily at your own pleasure The Lords making all good in the beginning doth not infringe the election of some and the non-election of others if these things be rightly construed And therefore whether you consider men in that first state made after the image of God or in that state as fallen in both these I conceive all mankinde to be equal The difference of elect or non-elect is immanent onely in the Decree of God and election doth onely so farre forth begin to be manifest as men living under the meanes come to be called justified sanctified by the Spirit Rom. 8.30 2 Thess 2.13 We have no other way to take notice of election but this onely For that saying of yours that Adam consisted of two sorts of people in creation the one part being assigned for heaven and the other for hell We willingly acknowledge that the number of the elect were known to God before the foundation of the world yet this difference between man and man in the Lords secret intention did make no difference between man and man in the creation or in the fall The nature of all men elect and others was equally good before the fall as it was equally corrupted and depraved after the fall As in the like case Jesse was the father of many sons of which one was designed in the secret counsel of God to rule the Kingdom of Israel As they were the sons of one parent they were all equal made of one blood partakers of the same education though one was specially designed for the Kingdome So in the present case the nature of all men may be equally good before the fall all may have one and the same image of God all may fall in one and the same parent yet God may in a special manner intend to bring some to salvation and to leave others voluntarily to run their own ruine he may have mercie on whom he will have mercie and he may have compassion on whom he will have compassion You do then plainly impose upon us with your sophistrie when you fetch arguments from some temporal acts to overturne the Lords eternal Decrees But this is a passage onely by the way we will go to the next Chapter CHAP. II. Wherein Adams abilities did consist HEre you define ability that it is a fitnesse in the subject commanded every way answerable to performe any action that the Creator is pleased to call the creature to pag. 5. In this I do agree that originally God did proportion the abilities of Adam to the commands that he gave him I do also willingly acknowledge with you that he had first a capassity to receive intelligence secondly directions thirdly abilities in present possession and fourthly time But whereas you say p. 7. that our Lord the Creator afforded all these aforenamed accommodations as a sufficient means for every man to obey his commands In this I beleeve you do not onely equal but go beyond Pelagius himself For you say in effect that man hath as great abilities after the fall as before But lest that any may think that these are the consequences of mine own making and that they are not the true result of your doctrine let him go to the fourteenth chapter of your book and there let him see how you do expedite the question You propound the quere what Adam retained of his forfeiture after his death and here you determine that his power was inwardly as great to keep the commands of God as before You say if in that service of God which Adam had to do he was compleatly furnished by God why should I judge that he would employ him in a more hard service and not aford him sutable accommodations seeing God was as willing that his commands should be obeyed after as he was before the fall For I judge the work that God set Adam about before the fall he had ability to do after the fall if God had given him a command to returne into the garden page 110. Let any man who readeth these words judge in his own heart whether Pelagius himself could have spoken more to the derogation of the free grace of God in Christ then you have done To this if we adde the several passages in your Treatise concerning the improvement of nature and the freedome of infants from original sin and compare all together we shall finde the whole tenour of your doctrine to be manifestly destructive to the Covenant of Grace We will therefore endeavour on the contrary to shew the positive truth And therefore seeing God doth require obedience of man after the fall I do freely assent that he doth give sutable accommodation But how the accommodation doth not consist in the presence of any natural ability but in the promise since the fall there is an ability to obey the Lords commands but that ability is out of man in Christ onely To him they must go to supply all their wants and he must help them to performe all the duties enjoyned If you stand upon the proportion of abilities to commands then say that the ability is in Christ onely to be had and we shall easily agree He of God is made to us wisdome righteousnesse sanctification and redemption 1 Cor. 1.30 In him all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hid Col. 2.3 Of his fulnesse have we all received grace for grace John 1.16 It shall never be denied by me nay I will maintain it that now since the fall there is a proportion betwixt the ability and the command but then the ability must be had from Christ onely and the immediate supply of his Spirit In this sence Saint Paul had abilities in a meet temper and correspondence to his duties for he saith I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me Phil. 4.11 12 13. And in another place my grace
have you to assigne the difference between the power appertaining to a Magistrate and the power belonging to every private man for if that be true as you say that Rulers are to be obeyed so far forth only as they bring the Word I pray you tell me must not every man be obeyed upon the same termes what do you make then of the power of the Magistrate when Pilate boasted Knowest thou not that I have power to crucifie thee and power to release thee The Lord made him this answer Thou hast no power but it is given thee from above John 19 10 11. It is plain then that Pilate as a Magistrate and a Judge had a power given him of God Now then if that be true which you say that the Magistrate hath no power but the Word it self then it will follow that these are co-incident termes For to speak properly the power of the Magistrate and the Word are not one and the same but the Authority of the Magistrate doth depend upon the Word from whence it hath its Original and Institution You go on and argue Are not all men Gods creatures if so how cometh it to passe that one should be in subjection to anothers will and that upon such sore punishment page 30 31. Here in these words you come very near the doctrine of the Levellers Can you make no distinction between subjection to the lawful power and mans illegal will And then turning off from this digression you conclude that the Command of God is the Power and therefore so far as the Lords Command did extend so much power Adam had But for this matter we are content to let you passe with your own peculiar way of expression Let us now see how you describe Adams entertainment in the Garden CHAP. VI. Adams entertainment in the Garden IN this Chapter you discourse how Adam was placed in the Garden how Eve was made an helper meet for him and how the Lord brought all the creatures to him that he might give them their several names and titles Because these are Plain Scripture-truths I will not be an adversary to you here But then two questions are to be demanded First whether was his chief emploiment in these externals Secondly whether he did act in them as a meer carnal man For the first if you shall say that Adam was only employed in these externals then shew why was the Law of God written in his heart None can imagine but that it was engraven and written there to that end that he should yield proportionable obedience he had spiritual abilities that he might be proportionable to a spiritual Law If you shall deny this you will unavoidably be cast upon that rock that Adam had the Law put into his heart for no use or end at all Secondly though he was taken up in externals in giving names to all creatures and in tilling of the ground yet in this you must look upon him as a man that was spiritual able to do these things in a spiritual manner These two points I thought good to re-minde you of because you did a little before affirme that Adam was a meer carnal man before his fall and that his occupation and employment was only in externals Let us go to the next Chapter CHAP. VII Free will in its nature unfolded HEre in the beginning you define free-will to be a cheerful putting forth of those abilities which the Lord hath given us to action And this you prove by many Scripture-instances to clear the nature of freedome By this account it will follow that a natural man as such without the help of the Spirit hath no free-will at all he is so far from a free voluntary and cheerful putting forth of abilities that in spiritual things he is utterly void and destitute of all ability But as in the former Chapter you had your digression to turne out against the Magistrate when you spake of the power of Adam before the fall so now speaking of his free-will you have your vagaries and excursions against the Ministry These are your words Paul preached the Gospel freely he stood not upon such punctilio's to have the tenth of the labours of the people page 40. The Separate Congregations also agree with you here For say they the maintenance of the Ministers which labour in the Word of God ought to be the free and charitable benevolence or the cheerful contribution of those that acknowledge themselves members of the same fellowship page 22. And the ground they have to prove it is from that place of the Apostle while by the experiment of this ministration they glorifie God for your professed subjection unto the Gospel of Christ and for your liberal distribution unto them and unto all men 2 Cor. 9.13 It is clear that the Apostle in these words speaketh of the distributions and the voluntary benevolences of the Churches to the necessities of the poor Saints at Hierusalem But by what Logick the brethren of the Separation can apply this to the maintenance of the Ministry in the time of the New Testament for my part I cannot discern Sure I am when you and they shall go about to make the people free-willers in so doing you will make a servile and a slavish Ministry As for the due in the payment of the tenth it doth as truly appertain to the Ministers as any mans possession or inheritance doth belong to him And therefore if either you or any man else shall endeavour to take away the tenth from the Ministry it is all one as to endeavour to take away the proprietie from other men Having gone so far along with you in your digression let us now come to that freedome of will which Adam had before his fall And here I do agree with you that he had libertie to put himself forth chearfully and freely to action by vertue of such abilities as he had received from God yet when you come to the negative part to pluck that down which is built by other men you plainly shew that your definition is not proper to the case in hand For thus you conclude Now some have conceived that free will had been a mans being left to his choice whether he would do the Will of God or no. But I know no such freedom given by God that a man should have liberty to dispose of himself unlesse you will call that freedom of will which a man is prohibited from upon penalties of death but God gives no man freedom to sin but preventions To this I answer though the Lord gave Adam no freedom to sin but rather tied up his liberty by a contrary command yet it is a sure rule that he made him in such a pendulous estate that he might stand or fall And though in that state he had freedom and power to will that which was good nay chearfully to put forth his ability to act yet for all this his condition was but mutable he might fall
they should believe them and prepare themselves for the tryal upon the supposal of this what should a believer do living upon the borders of the Anti Christian desolation should he build the Church according to Gods general Command of preaching the Gospel or should he believe that the Church should be destroyed according to the Prophecies Here are two crosse wills in appearance yet it is certain that it is the duty of such a one to preach the Gospel according to the Commandment and to leave the vicissitudes and changes of time unto the Lord himself The Apostle saith We are a sweet savour in them that are saved and in them that perish 2 Cor. 2.15 And the Prophet Jeremy foreseeing the captivity of Babylon that it should certainly come to passe did himself believe it and blame the people for their incredulity Yet neverthelesse in the ordinary way he did exhort them to repent and to turn from their Idolatry and other sins that would be the cause of their captivity By all that hath been spoken I now leave to your own conscience to judge what cause you had to raise such tragical out-cries against the contrariety of the two wills and the inevitable misery of man which will soever he obeyed When wise men shall come to the hearing of the matter I believe they will judge that it is rather a pang of your ignorant and blind zeal then of right knowledge And such an horrid expression you have That if a man should study many years for a destroying Principle to dishonour his Creator he could not parallel this which is the sharpest Sword that ever was drawn against the righteousnesse of God pag. 80. Pray Sir be pacified there is no harm done As I have told you before so I say again leave it to God to reconcile his own wills and let us follow that which he hath revealed in his Word But you say The voice of this destroyeth all the testimonies which God giveth of himself What shall we do with those Scriptures where he saith he alters not if there be a secret will of his that controuls his revealed page 81. In this also you may hold your self content for the Scriptures which say God alters not are understood concerning his will of Decree which for the most part is secret to us But for his revealed will in the declaration of mercies and judgments he doth many times and upon sundry occasions alter his promises or threats For these are not made according to his absolute and eternal Decrees but are suspended upon outward conditions as in the case of the Ninevites Hezekiah forealledged In this case the outward revelations of the will of God are but subservient to his eternal Decree And though they seem to our understanding to differ yet they do excellently agree among themselves Now last of all you come to your chiefest argument You cannot see say you how such a wil can agree with the death of Christ and the general tenders of grace These are your words I fear me too many have a hand in nourishing and maintaining this opinion and then no marvail that so many cannot beleeve the record that God gave of his Son So when God sweareth by himself as he liveth he desireth not the death of him that dyeth and that he would have no man to perish but that he gave his Son a light unto the world that all men thorough him might beleeve for which purpose he tasted death for every man and not for the Saints onely but also for the sinnes of the whole world But these sayings are but the revealed will and the same people that hold this revealed will to be a guide to themselves do yet hold a contradiction in the wills of God saying it is true God saith so but his meaning is not so Now this sort of people should not beleeve the revealed will at all if they hold his secret will to be the Superiour pag 81 82. I say the same as formerly though the secret will of God be the Superiour yet we are to look to that which is revealed As for those who affirme that the Lord hath chosen a peculiar number of people from the beginning to salvation If you go to them man by man I think you will scarce finde any one of solid judgment that will tell you we must begin at the knowledge of the secret will of God They all say that you must begin first with the general threats and the general promises and when men are once brought thorough the convictions of the spirit to see their miserable and lost condition then they say they are sit auditors of the doctrine of the Gospel in the tenders and the offers of grace When the promise is apprehended by a true and a lively faitht he next work they say i to attain the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and full assurance of faith And then last of all after many experiences cometh the assurance of election In this method they proceed in the discovery of this mystery and not otherwise Though election be first in the Lords intention yet they hold that the assurance thereof is and ought to be the last in our feeling And so they expound the words of the Apostle give all diligence to make your calling and election su e 2 Pet. 1.10 And further though they maintain an assurance of election yet they do not hold an absolute certainty but such a one as is lyable to many temptations desertions and eclipses Neither do they hold such an immediate assurance as though the elect by intuition did look into the Decrees of God onely they stand for a mediate and discursive knowledge of the grace of election by the necessary effects and fruits thereof As you know the rising of the Sunne by the dawning of the day What other knowledge is this of the secret will of God but that which he himself hath first made discovery of by the fruits As for the secret will of God in the Decree of non-election though they do beleeve according to the Scriptures that there are a great multitude of men that the Lord doth intend to passe by yet if you come to singulars neither you nor any man living can shew who they are in special If you shall say that such and such a one is a notorious evil doer and therefore a reprobate Ananias thought but little better of Paul Lord I have heard of this man how much evil he bath done But the answer was go thy way I have made him a chosen vessel unto me Act. 9.14 If such a one hath continued many years under the means of grace and doth yet stand out in impenitency and hardnesse of heart this is no infallible argument of non-election for men may come into the Vineyard at all houres So farre forth as men live wickedly we may preach hypothetically and conditionally according to the revealed will of God that their courses are damnable and as long as
in the Prophetical Scriptures But the scope of the text is plainly to be taken for a literal ordinary day as we have formerly proved And strange it is that the Lord in the denunciation of judgment should go to the typical and parabolicall expressions used in Daniel and the Revelation and Peters Epistle After this you come to enquire whether Christ by his suffering did not prevent the falling of death upon Adam And you resolve it in the negative For say you either Adam must suffer or the Word of God seeing God had once declared the sentence thou shalt surely dye In case then he should give his Son to prevent the death of Adam there had been a clear contradiction page 119. In the commination there are some things which I do acknowledge to be infallible as the Laws of the Medes and Persians which alter not and therefore to make good the sentence all that are now born into the world after the course of natural generation are borne in the state of spiritual death subject to the miseries of nature and shall inevitably be brought to temporal death at last All these things do hold by vertue of the first sentence yet you must take heed that you go no further because the second man hath all fulnesse of grace to repair the losses brought in by the first By his intervening patience and long-suffering is extended to all the sonnes of men And therefore whatsoever you suggest to the contrary there is indeed and in truth no contradiction between the sentence in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt dye the death and the delay thereof in a qualified sense In some particulars long-suffering may be extended and yet in others there may be a speedy execution of the sentence But you go on seeing God would not have Adam to come near the tree of life therefore he would not have him to be free from death that way page 119. Neither do we maintain that it was the purpose of God to free Adam in that manner that he should not taste of a temporal death He came under the dominion of that death the same day he sinned and the most holy Saints that are must all dye before they can be raised again to set forth the truth and certainty of the Lords commination Yet for all this at present the stroke was stayed by the Mediators blood and long-suffering was extended to men that salvation might be had by the Covenant of grace As for the tree of life it is most true that God did forbid Adam accesse to that tree not absolutely because he would not have him to recover life but because he had provided another way for the restoring of man by Christ the promised seed He would not come to the most extream and final execution of the sentence because his purpose was to have a posterity upon the earth and a seminary for the Church Further you argue there was a necessity for Adam to dye otherwise Christ could not make him alive page 119. Here you mistake the state of the question we agree that Christ did not dye simply to free man that he should not fall into the dust but only to raise him from the dust again It was necessary to fulfill the truth of the commination that Adam should return to dust but it was not necessary that he should return to dust the very same day It was necessary that he should fall under the reign of death and under a necessity of dying the same day he sinned and this to continue to the resurrection of the just Then this mortal shall put on immortality and this corruptible shall put on incorruption 1 Cor. 15.53 The Apostle also saith when he shall change these vile bodies that they may be made like his glorious body Phil. 3.21 All the bodies of the Saints shall be made like the body of Christ as now it is in glory But how did the bodies of the Saints begin to be vile bodies By vile bodies he doth mean these corruptible tabernacles of the soul lyable to diseases and to all the miseries of nature But when did this vilenesse and misery begin seeing they were not made vile by creation They began to be vile bodies the same day that Adam did sin they have been so ever since and they must continue such unto the resurrection and then the bodies of the Saints shall be made conformable to the bodie of Christ in glory Philip. 3 Vlt. CHAP. XIV Whether Adam did dye a spiritual death yea or no IN the discovery of this point you observe this method First you shew what spiritual life is Secondly you resolve upon the question For your description of spiritual life though you miserably confound the Scriptures we will take it in the best sense for such a life as hath the Spirit for the cause Gal. 4.19 John 6.63 Col. 33. But you erre in your application when you use such an expression as this that Adam had not such a cup of water in all his foure Rivers You say also that he could not savour the voice of the resurrection from the dead for the goodnesse of a Saviour must be resented by those that are lost but Adam knew no such need page 122. Your argument is fallacious because Adam had not spiritual life in the same way as the Saints now have therefore he had no spiritual life at all He might have ability to love Christ as Lord Creator Further you say that the voice of forgivenesse of sinne was a stranger to him Well let this be admitted it doth not prove the point neither Sicknesse it self was a stranger to Adam before his fall will you inferre then that there were no herbs for medicine and that the Lord did not create the herb of the field with a medicinal vertue So in the like case what if remission of sinne and the way of pardon of sinne by Christs blood was a thing hidden from Adam as being not compatible with his condition will you inforce from hence a want of capacity in him to understand the mystery of salvation by Christ or will you affirme from hence that he was a meere carnal man before his fall Take heed that by these and such like positions you do not reflect upon God himself The Apostle saith the carnal mind is enmity against God for it is not subject to the Law of God neither indeed can be Rom. 8. ver 6 7. If you go to the Original of this enmity or non-subjection and say it did proceed from the fall of Adam you do agree with us But if you go higher and stand upon it that Adam was a meere natural man by the condition of his creation then you will lay the blame upon God that set him in such a state of enmity and whither will you go in the issue if you maintain such positions as these But to make good your assertion you argue The first man is of the earth earthy the
second man is the Lord from heaven So though Adam was the first man a living man yet it was not a living soul that proveth that Adam had a quickned Spirit page 12◠But in this you do miserably soobisticate For though the Apostle doth draw a parallel between both the Adams If you do well ponder the Scripture you shall finde that the parallel doth not stand so much between Adam before his fall as between the first Adam the second after the fall 2ly upon good consideration you shall finde that the Apostle in this Scripture doth not speak so much concerning the Spirit of God in the soules of the Saints as concerning the spirituality of their bodies that shall be at the resurrection It is sown in corruption it is raised in incorruption it is sown in dishonour it is raised in glory it is sown a natural body it is raised a spiritual body There is a natural body and there is aspiritual body 1 Cor. 15.43 44. If then you will needs conclude Adam to be a carnal man before his fall because his body was not made a spiritual body by the same reason you must conclude all the Saints that have ever been since the creation of the world to be carnal men and absolutely destitute of the work of the Spirit For the bodies of the Saints are yet carnal and must abide in their incarnality till the resurrection of the dead But whereas you build so strongly upon that expression the first man Adam was made a living soul the last man Adam was made a quickning Spirit verse 45. This doth not prove the first man to have been meerely carnal or absolutely void of the Spirit before his fall For it is not the scope of the Apostle in this Scripture to speak of the excellency of man made after the image of God but onely of the corruptible state of the body as it standeth in immediate relation to that immortal condition which it shall have at the resurrection of the dead And whereas it is said the second man was a quickning Spirit this is meant principally of the divinity of Christ by and thorough which he will raise the dead So then if you will build upon this ground and argue from hence that the first man was a meere carnal man because he was not a quickning Spirit by the same principle you must conclude that all the Saints living are carnal men For of what one of them may it be affirmed that he is a quickning Spirit who by his power and divinity is able to raise the dead But if you will make a right analogy let us compare the things that ought to be compared First let us consider what the first man was before his fall and what the Saints are as renewed by grace Secondly let us compare what the first man might have been if he had eaten of the tree of life and what the Saints shall be at the resurrection of the dead For the first of these if you speak of the Saints as renewed by grace though their bodies be natural they are spiritual in respect of the inward man The same may be said of Adam before his fall though his body was made of the dust yet by grace and special favour he did carry the image of God For the second if you shall affirme that all the bodies of the Saints shall be made immortal and spiritual at the resurrection consider what the body of Adam might have been if he had continued in his obedience and eaten of the tree of life If you would make a right collation between state and stat ethe parallel should runne in these termes But because you stand so strongly upon this expression that the first man is of the earth earthy the second man is the Lord from heaven seeing you will have all this to be applied to Adam before his fall I pray you resolve me this question seeing the Apostle saith as we have born the image of the earthy so shall we bear the image of the heavenly Who are they that bear the image of Adam before his fall I think if you were put to it you could not produce any one instance in all Europe Asia Africa or America that ever stood up after this similitude The scope of the text is onely concerning man after the fall and how the resurrection of the dead doth take away that death which is brought in by the fall In the close of the Chapter you propound this question whether was not Adam to have dyed an eternal death for eating of the forbidden fruit For the clearing of the question let us distinctly set down how the three kinds of death did seize upon Adam and how they come upon all his branches First for spiritual death it is evident that he died this death as soon as he did eat of the forbidden fruit For the temporal death he fell under the reign of it the same day he sinned And for eternal death though according to the truth of the commination Adam and his posterity should have dyed the Lord Christ stepping in did set a stop to the sentence And therefore for the cause of the condemnation of man it is now principally and immediately for the neglect of the grace of God that should lead him to repentance But you adde further I can safely say that if Adam was to have dyed an eternal death and that by the appointment of God then Christ neither would nor could have stept in nay he could not have lifted up his little finger to have helped Adam or his posterity page 125. I answer If God had decreed in his secret purpose that Adam and all his posterity should have dyed the death in such a case Christ neither would nor could have stept in to cross the Decree of God but Sir who is the man that doth maintain that position For my part I take the Decree of God to be one thing and the outward denunciation of judgment to be another For the Decree that cannot be changed but the sentence may recieve alteration according to divers outward circumstances and conditions that may occurre Besides if you should build never so strongly upon the letter of the text we can easily reconcile the truth of the commination in saying that Adam might dy the death the same day he sinned ☞ though the Lord was not pleased presently to inflict death in all its kinds From all which we do conclude if the Lord Christ came to free men from the reign of death Heb. 2.14 15. We may easily gather that Adam brought himself and all his posterity under the dominion of that syrant and so he and all his should have dyed that kind of death if the Lord Christ had not stepped in But you go about to deface this speech in the end of the Chapter for if in case that Christ had not stepped in there had been no recovery this were to exclude all other means and to limit
obedience of one many were made righteous Rom. 5.19 The comparison would be of no value at all if that which is peculiarly spoken to Adam might be applied to any other parent whatsoever in respect of his posterity And of the sinnes which Adam did commit we are not to admire why all are set upon the score of the first sinne When he received original righteousnesse in the beginning he received it not onely for himself but also for his whole posterity And therefore if he had stood he had conveyed it to all his branches but falling he lost it from himself and all his off-spring And this is the reason why all is charged upon the first sinne because that was the sinne of a fiduciary or trustee The parent was entrusted with the whole stock which was not only his own peculiar but also the publick losse of all his posterity If we might suppose that Adam did commit ten thousand sinnes afterward the hurt could not redound to any other but to himself onely For how could he bring dammage to small or great by any disobedient act seeing he was trusted no more You now come to declare your judgment why say you might we not have thought it more safe that that which gave the first occasion to sinnes being was yet the original cause of all other sins committed by him What need we yet to say that sin had any other father or mother than its first parents viz the Devil and temptation Joh. 8.44 Answ I do not deny but in a sense the Devil and temptation may be called the parents of sinne because wicked men are led by the temptations of Satan and do imitate his example But strange it is that you would have no other parents but the Devil and temptation This is in plain termes to excuse men and to make them without blame when any sinne is committed The Apostle doth otherwise state the true cause of sinne every man is drawn away with his own lust and enticed and lust when it hath conceived bringeth forth sinne Jam. 1.13 The sinful will of man and the lust of his heart may be a cause that doth procreate sinne as well as the Devil and temptation And more specially to speak in the case we are now upon concerning the sinne of the first man and the traducing of original sinne to all posterity I do not doubt but the Devil and temptation had a great stroak in the fall of man but we must go to other causes as well as to them Adams own defective will was a chief cause And therefore we read of the great judgments that were inflicted upon him for his disobedience to the command And for that place of Scripture which you alledge Joh. 8.44 He that committeth sinne is of the Devil it is most true that men commit sin by the temptation of the Devil but how doth this prove the point which you undertake that the Devil is the onely parent of sinne and that we need go to no other but to him onely Besides in the case of original sinne as the corruption of nature doth passe by propagation the Apostle saith we must go to one man as the fountain by one man sinne entred into the world and death by sinne c. And therefore if to salve your Tenet you shall alledge that speech you are of your Father the Devil the lusts of your father will you do By this I do confesse that the Devil is proved the first parent of sinne by infusion and suggestion but he is not the father by generation And therefore when the Apostle saith put off as concerning the former conversation the Old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts Ephes 4.22 Here by the Old man we are to understand the Old Adam like disposition as it hath passed from Adam to all his posterity This old disposition the Saints are to put off and they are to endeavour to put on the Christ-like nature So then if you will say that the Devil was the first father of sinne by temptation and seduction we will not gain-say it Onely we do intreat you to remember that Adam is the cause of the conveying of original sinne to all his posterity by generation and traduction You have yet more evasions if it might be possible to illude the truth If Adam say you had sinned afterwards how can we say that he had a way to communicate it to all his posterity It is more then the Devil can do to infuse sinne into any man without a mans consent page 142. This is true if you speak in the case of actual sinne onely but for the derivation of original sinne the case is otherwise The corruption of nature is derived from the disobedience of the first man His personal disobedience was sufficient to deprave and vitiate the whole nature ☞ This may be proved by the harmony of Scripture and there is no harshnesse in the point so long as there is such an effectual remedy prepared by the second man for the lost sonnes of men And yet further though the first man by his fall did vitiate the nature without any individual or personal consent of ours yet the lying and living in the sinfulnesse of nature is not without our deliberate and free consent This is the condemnation that light is come into the world and men love darknesse more than light Joh. 3.18 19 20. God doth at sundry seasons open the eyes of men that they may see their natural pollution but they have not a desire to see that which they may see Further you adde some say the want of pure nature is the cause of our sinne but it is plain that the purity of nature exempts not a man from sinne for if it had then Adam had not sinned page 142. We would not have you to mistake our meaning we do not stand so much upon the want of the purity of nature as upon the pollution and depravation of nature And this since the fall is no onely the cause of sinning but also is the true cause why we can do nothing else but sinne And this begins to appear to those who are sanctified by the Spirit and therefore the Apostle saith in me that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing For other kind of men they do not feel the burden of a carnal mind As a bucket of water weighs nothing in the Well but when it is removed from its proper element then the weight thereof is discerned Pride of heart and other secret lusts are not burdensome to a carnal man who is in his proper element but a spiritual man feels the enmity of these against the command of God and sees by experience that according to the flesh he can do nothing else but sin Further you alledg that it is like that Adam would not have sinned again because he sped so ill page 142. I beleeve it was with him after his fall as it was with David after
such a polluted birth they may have the remainders of that image which was by creation and a possibility of the recovery of the same image by Christ That this truth may more clearly appear we will distinguish betwixt the image of God which is external and the image which is internal For the image that is external and stands in Lordship and dominion over the creature man hath not this image by natural generation but by covenant promise and the Mediators blood And therefore we read that the Lord after the flood did revive the great Charter once given to man before the fall Be fruitful and replenish the earth and the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every fowle of the aire upon all that moveth upon the earth and upon all the fishes of the Sea into your hand are they delivered Gen. 9.2 The same priviledge is here granted to Noah and his sons which was given to Adam before his fall But how did Noah his sonnes and in them all mankind come to partake of it Not by generation but by the promise and Covenant In the former Chapter we read that Noah offered up a Sacrifice and the Lord smelt a savour of rest in and thorough the Mediators blood Hereupon he made a solemn promise that he would no more curse the ground for mans sake though the thoughts of the imaginations of his heart were evil from his childhood By vertue of the promise doth man come to be re-invested with that part of the Image of God which stands in Lordship over the creature and he hath not this priviledge in respect of his natural birth Secondly if we look to that part of the Image of God which is internal in the soule in this sense though man be born in original sinne and though he hath lost the spiritual knowledge righteousnesse and holinesse wherein he was most like his Creator and doth now carry the image of Satan yet neverthelesse he hath still some remainders and reliques of the former Image he hath an immortal soul an understanding will and other natural powers and in and thorough Christ he hath a capacity to receive that spiritual part of the Image of God which was lost According to the tenor of this doctrine we may expound the precept that doth inhibit the shedding of mans blood whoso sheddeth mans blood by man shall his blood be shed for in the Image of God made he man The same answer may be given to that text which they alledge in the twelfth and last place therewith curse we men which are made after the similitude of God Jam. 3 9. Here we say the same in substance that though men are born in original sinne yet they have some reliques and remainders of the former Image that was lost and a possibility by Christ to come to the fulness of that glory The second Scripture to be considered is that place Deut. 32.4 5. Where say they we have two argnments more to prove Israel and consequently all men to be still created innocent The first is from the perfection of all Gods works ver 4. He is the rock his work is perfect for all his wayes are judgment a God of truth and without iniquity just and right is he How then can he who is holy righteous and pure create any thing that is unrighteous unclean or impure The second is taken from Gods complaint there against mens personal fall and corrupting themselves whom God had not brought forth with any such spots ver 5. They have corrupted themselves their spot is not the spot of his children they are a perverse and crooked generation page 67. But neither of these two arguments will prove the purity and the innocency of mans natural birth For though all infants through the fall of Adam are born in original sinne this is no impeachment to God he both is and ever was righteous in all his works Though all mankind hath fallen through the disobedience of the first man yet he was pure righteous and holy in the work of creation And though the greater part of the Israelites did rebell in the Wildernesse this did not diminish the goodnesse of God to that people in bringing them out of Egypt Secondly whereas it is said that they did corrupt themselves by their own personal disobedience this must needs be so because they were a rebellious generation Moses speaketh remarkably to this purpose in the latter end of the former Chapter I know that after my death you will utterly corrupt your selves and turn aside from the way which I have commanded you ver 29. When he saith I know that ye will utterly corrupt your selves shall we argue from hence that they were free from all corruption for the present and that the corrupting of themselves should meerely be their own personal act for the future This cannot be the force of the argument For Moses did conclude that they would shew the fruits of their corruption after his death because he did perceive such a rebellious and corrupted nature in them for the present Behold while I am yet alive with you this day ye have been rebellious against the Lord How much more after my death And for that expression their spot is not the spot of his children it is true indeed Gods children have many staines and spots as Noah David Peter But because they have a living fountain of grace within they do daily purge out the sinne and corruption of nature 2 Cor. 7.1 Now it is not so with others or with those Apostates to whom Moses spake because they had no living principle within they would totally fall from that good which they seemed to have This is the sence of the text and how doth this prove the purity of the natural birth A third place they bring to assert the innocency of man is the eighth Psalm where ver 4.5 6. the Psalmist speaks thus of all mankind what is man that thou art mindful of him and the sonne of man that thou visitest him for thou hast made him a little lower than the Angels and hast crowned him with glory and honour Say they the Psalmist shewes that man is still set in honour by his first state of production though he doth not long retain the same but falls therefrom But if a man had been created so corrupt as you speak he had not onely been lower than the Angels but below all ereatures here page 67. For the general sence of this Scripture we do agree that man hath still dominion Lordship preheminence over the creature in this dignity honour he doth carry the lively effigies resemblance and Image of God as he is his vicegerent upon the earth There is none who doubts of the truth of this in general but the main question is about the ground of the vicegerency whether it be from the state of man in his natural production as these Censors do affirme This we deny for according to
Mr. Everard hath in substance spoken before we are content to let them pass in this matter From the eleventh place they do conclude absolutely that infants are free from all kind of sinne These are their words doth not the Apostle remove not onely from children malice but also all evil of iniquity when he would have the Corinthians in that behalf conformed to them 1 Cor. 14.20 saying Brethren be not children in understanding howbeit 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in malice or iniquity be children page 70. Here as I have formerly touched is a palpable sophisme a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter as Logicians terme it For though the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the general notion thereof may signifie all evil of iniquity yet in the sense of the text it noteth the particular evil of malice onely and therefore he saith in malice be ye children Neither is it his purpose to acquit children from all kind of malice or envy for they have seminally and vertually the seed of all this in their hearts Do ye think that the Scripture saith in vain the spirit that is in us lusteth unto envy Jam. 4.5 We see by experience that this is no fable that envy is naturally seated in the heart of man one child many times doth envy another for a little coat And though God doth give to the Regenerate more grace to purge out the sinne of the nature as it is afterward expressed in the next verse but he giveth more grace wherefore he saith God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble Notwithstanding all this the nature of man doth lust to envy and it is vertually and eminally in infants You will say then why doth the Apostle exhort in malice be ye children His meaning is this that they should do as children who are apt to forget the wrongs and injuries that are done to them and to look-upon them as though they had never been And therefore the Apostle saith be angry but sinne not let not the Sun go down upon your wrath Ephes 4.26 This is all one with that expression in malice be ye children that is do not retain heart-burnings and hatred one against another but forget the wrongs and injuries that are done to you as children do It is but a comparative speech These are all the places of Scripture which are alledged by these Censors to prove the purity of the natural birth and how well they have done it we leave to any indifferent understanding to judge and yet how do they glory when they utter such words as these page 71 Thus we have proved that neither the guilt of our first parents sinne was imputed nor their spiritual death in sinne and corrupted nature was conveyed to all their posterity or to any one of them by ordinary generation And directing their speech to the Assembly after this manner do thus insult though this your doctrine say they hath gone from hand to hand a long time by tradition yet neither did the Scribes and Pharisees nor yet the disciples of Christ and much lesse Christ himself hold forth any such doctrine nor were any of them leavened with this opinion of yours and your long mistaken Predecessors For the Pharisees with the Jewes being highly displeased with him who was borne blinde and whose eyes Christ had opened for defending his Saviour and blessed Oculist said thus unto him John 9 34. Thou wast altogether born in sinne and doest thou teach us Whence it is evident that they did neither conceive all men in general nor yet themselves to be by propagation conceived and born in sinne page 71. What apprehensions and conceptions soever the Pharisees and other Jews had I will not dispute Sure I am they who do rightly understand the doctrine of the Jewish Church could not well be ignorant of the sinne of the nature For when our Saviour did discourse of the necessity of regeneration and Nicodemus did admire at the strangnesse of that doctrine our Saviour made him this answer Art thou a Master in Israel and knowest not these things John 3.7 In which words it is plain that the pollution of the natural birth and the necessity of regeneration were then points easie to be known and a wonder it was to our Saviour that any could be ignorant of such fundamentals And I cannot but admire that these men Mr. Everard and the thirty separate Congregations should professe themselves to be members of the Christian Church and be ignorant of these things But our Examiners build upon our Saviours words neither hath this man sinned nor his parents but that the works of God should be made manifest in him Where according to your doctrine say they our Saviour should have answered positively that both he and his parents with all his progenetors even as farre as Adam had sinned What need was there at all that our Saviour should speak of the common cause of the misery of all mankind seeing the Disciples question was more immediately touching the particular blindnesse of this man They were not ignorant that original sinne was the common cause of all diseases onely they did put the question what was the proper cause of the blindnesse of this individual man whether it did lie in himself or in his parents that he was born blind In relation to this particular question for any eminency or singularity of sinne above other men the answer is plaine that neither he nor his parents have sin'ned This was the presumption and singular opinion of the Pharisees as it appeareth in the aforementioned words Thou wast altogether born in sinne and dost thou teach us The whole Processe of this argument is a meere fallacy à dicto secundum quid addictum simplicietr They go on and from the Lords appointing the Cities of refuge for the Man slayer to flee unto when he had killed his Neighbour unawares they reason The Lord commanded by Moses that Cities of refuge should be set apart in all the coasts and habitations of Israel for such to flee to and will he pursue the innocent seed of Adam and hold them guilty for their fathers sinne perpetrated ere they were born Yea will he himself be the avenger of the blood against these innocents page 70. In answer to this I say did these men seriously consider the whole truth they would not raise such tragical cryes against this doctrine The Cities of refuge anciently appointed for the Man-slayer were types and figures of Christ to come To him only the soul is to fly when she is pursued by the curse of the Law as by an avenger of blood So then if all the children of Adam were lyable to the guilt of his sinne perpetrated before they were born there is no harshnesse in the saying if we beleeve that the fall of Adam doth open a door to the grace that comes by Christ and that the grace of Christ is a City of refuge for the lost sinner to fly to
spirit He did desire that his defilement by natural generation might be done away by the work of the new creation And whereas these confident men would desire to know whether it be not Davids scope in his confession to aggravate his sinne I answer it is and therefore he doth cry out against the sinne of the nature he doth use the same expression in effect as Paul doth Rom. 7. I know that in me that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing ver 18. And O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death ver 24. Where we may observe these three points First they who are inwardly and truly enlightned do feel the burden of a carnal mind which they have by natural generation whereas other men account the liberty of lust their greatest freedome Secondly they feeling the propension of their nature wholly to sinne do hereupon aggravate the sinfulnesse of their nature Thirdly by this means they do more highly prize the grace of Christ and that freedome which he doth bring to set them at liberty from the bondage of corruption and the reigne of their lusts Joh. 8.31 32 33. Isa 61.1 2 3. Mat. 12.20 The promise of Christ is that a bruised reed he will not break and the smoaking flax he will not quench untill he have brought forth judgment unto victory By judgment is here meant deliverance from under the tyranny and reign of original sin when men serve divers lusts and pleasures The deliverance from the power of corruption is the judgment meant in the text This deliverance is not wrought in an instant but by degrees and our Saviour is ready to help the weakest that flie to him in a sense of their own misery There is nothing more weak than a bruised reed and the least degree of fire will make flax to smoak Even so if there be the least grace to feel the bondage of corruption the Lord Christ is ready to cherish it and never to leave till he have brought forth judgment unto victory to make men conquerors of their lusts But the ground of all this is to feel the burden of a carnal mind which it is most probable these Censors are strangers to or else they would not so extenuate the sin of the nature as they do Now let us heare what interpretation they give of the Psalmists words It was say they the lie or lying promises of Sathan with the folly therein contained by which he was shapen in iniquitie or conceived in sin pag. 74. And they ground themselves upon that passage that the devil is the father of sin These are their words besides our natural parents we have spiritual fathers and mothers whether for our begetting in evil and iniquity or for our regeneration in grace and goodnesse Concerning our procreation in sin our Saviour speaks thus unto the Jewes Joh. 8.44 Ye are of your father the Devil and his lusts will ye do Now this father makes use of a twofold mother to beget men in wickednesse besides their own lust which when it is enticed and drawn away by temptation conceiveth and bringeth forth sin Jam. 1.14 15. And here first they reckon the lying word or promise by which Sathan deceiveth men and secondly the false Synagogue which thorough Sathans helps begets men in a false faith Page 75. 76. But this glosse will not serve their turn neither for though the Devil be the father of sin he is so onely by temptation and suggestion but the Psalmist speaketh of sin by derivation and propagation I was shapen in iniquitie and in sin did my mother conceive me And for that which they alledge out of the Epistle of St. James he doth onely speak of the order of generation of sin in the heart every man is drawn away of his own lust and enticed and lust when it hath conceived bringeth forth sin But what is this to the purpose of the Psalmist he doth not speak of the generation of lust or of sin in his heart but he doth speak of his own generation This is evident from the words themselves I was shapen in iniquitie and in sin did my mother conceive me Secondly it is manifest from the words that follow because he was defiled with the pollution of the natural birth by way of opposition he prayeth unto the Lord to create in him a clean heart because his old was defiled therefore he did beg a new nature Fourthly to that place Eph. 2.3 And were by nature the children of wrath as well as others they answer by a distinction It is one thing say they to be sinners from our first nativity and another thing in time to become the children of wrath by our personal fall and actual disobedience which also coming to passe in our natural man and by his default we may truly be said by nature to be the children of wrath when sin by custome becomes a second nature to us Page 78. Here I yield that the Ephesians before their conversion and all other natural men do thorough their own actual disobedience serve divers lusts and pleasures This is the truth but it is not the whole truth If they were only defiled by custome which in a sense may be called a second nature by good custome then they need onely a remedy of the evil of their nature and we need not the knowledge of Divinity but onely of Moral Philosophie toward the recovery out of our misery For that which is now the judgment of these Censors was sometimes the opinion of Aristotle He did beleeve that man in his birth was like a white sheet of paper and that thereupon the habit of vertue was attainable by many acts But the Apostle doth not deal upon such weak beggerly and Ethical grounds because the Ephesians were not only sinners by conversation but by nature also were the children of wrath hereupon in relation to their natural corruption he saith you hath he quickened which were dead in trespasses and sinnes Their quickening by the spirit a posteriori doth shew the pollution of their natures a priori But if they were the children of wrath only by custome a second nature by breaking off old customes they might reduce themselves to their ancient purity of nature And this is the Moral Philosophie of these Censors and the separate Churches of this way Fifthly for that place of the Romans by one man sin entred into the world and death by sin Chap. 5. v. 12. That we may more orderly proceed let us consider how they plant their own interpretation and then how they oppugne ours This one man say they by whom sinne entred into the world is not our first parent Adam but our own earthly or natural man which is called Adam and Edom from the earth of his foundation pag. 78. Here I do plainly and openly confesse I do not know what they meane by this Adam neither can I see how possibly they can apply such a sense to
principally stand in the divineness of the light Some differences there are between the knowledge which Adam had before his fall and the knowledge that is renewed in the Saints Adam had it by creation they have it by inspiration Adam could propagate it to his posterity they cannot propagate it to posterity Adams knowledge was without the sight of his misery their knowledge when they do begin to know as they ought to know doth begin with the sight of their misery Lastly Adams knowledge was not so perfect but the Saints knowledge shall be most perfect in degree when they come to live in the state of glory These circumstances considered respecting the manner there is some difference to be made yet in substance both kinds of knowlege is one and the same For though it did not belong to Adam to know his misery and to believe in a Christ yet the righteousness of the moral law did appertaine to him It did belong to him to love God to feare him to trust in him to obey him c. Now how could all this possibly be done but he must know him and believe him therefore his knowledge must needs be spiritual before his fall We come now to the next point he endeavours to prove that infants by the sinne of Adam are not heires of damnation We need not in this matter be careful to give him an answer If it be a question de jure we say the sin of Adam is such and Original sin in its own nature is such that it doth deserve damnation But if it be a question de facto there is no such need that we should possitively affirme the actual damnation of infants They that be saved we may safely affirme are saved by the mercy of God and they that are damned God can cleare his justice in their condemnation though in all things the reason of his proceeding is not so intelligible to us And our Author himselfe I beleeve when he hath well pondred the businesse will finde it to be more safe to rest in such a determination But as for his arguments they are fallacious in many particulars For most of them I have answered in the former part of the treatise And for the residue I shall have occasion to speak of them afterwards Here only foure things are to be noted in the general First by the same reasons as he doth overturne damnation by the sin of Adam any Jew or Turk may overthrow salvation by the merit of Christ For why may not such a one argue the death of Christ was an act of his and none of ours he suffered many hundred yeares ago What he did we cannot be said to do either vertually or interpretively in him or by him we had no being at all that our wills should be contained in his His sufferings were without any knowledge and consent of ours and wherefore should any benefit arise to us If there be any such thing why should it so many ages together be concealed from the greatest part of mankind Most of his arguments do go after this way and by the same reasons that he takes away the guilt of sin by the disobedience of the first man by the same he doth destroy all possibility of salvation by the second Secondly other of his reasons do go too far in questioning the absolute power justice and sovereignty of God As he would have men to be temperate in such speeches that seem to condemn infants to hell for the fault of another so he also should be more moderate in those sayings that question the power and the justice of God What is or what shall be the whole course of the Lords proceeding against infants that dye in original sin is variously disputed some speak of a Limbus infantum whither those infants go that dye without baptisme Others speak of the penalty of losse without a penalty of sense A third sort dreame of I know not what common receptacle where infants as well as the souls of others do still remaine in expectation of the resurrection But sure I am none do speak more dangerously and desperately than they that except against the justice and the mercy of God now in this our Author is too bold Thirdly in all his reasons he goes against that which he teacheth elsewhere For in sundry places he sheweth that without the infusion of supernatural grace no man neither infant nor other can enter into the Kingdome of heaven Againe he saith that by the fall of Adam mankind came to be divested and disrobed of those supernatural excellencies that formerly he had Now by the position of these two I leave it to any man to judge infants as now borne in their natural condition whether are they capable of salvation whatsoever he may say in words he and we as to this point may agree in the same principles But in his answer to the Bishops letter he seems to be of opinion that infants went neither to heaven nor hell at least such a collection may be drawn from his words Just so it is saith he in infants Hell was not made for man but for devils and therefore it must be something besides meere nature that must beare any man thither meer nature neither goes to heaven nor hell pag. 17. In which words of his we acknowledge it to be true in a sense that meer nature doth not carry a man to heaven or hell for that which is not true at all cannot carry a man any whither The Sophisters do indeed speak of the creation of man in puris naturalibus in his pure naturals but I no where finde that God did ever make or did intend to make any man in such estate that was neither good nor evil I know no such meer nature to be found in any part of the habitable earth and therefore it is some way a truth in this abstract consideration that a pure nature carries a man no whether But he hath another meaning in which he is greatly mistaken for under that notion and consideration as infants are now borne this nature depraved carryeth only to hell We were by nature the children of wrath as well as others Eph. 2.2 3. But here perhaps he will except by such a tenet as this all infants will be necessitated to damnation Not so neither they will be borne only in a nature lyable to damnation But by our doctrine we do not say that they must be all damned I see nothing to the contrary but Christ is as well able to save them from the pollution and corruption of the natural birth as well as if they were all reduced to that imaginary state that he speaks of Concerning this matter he delivers his judgement in his answer to the Bishops letter When I affirme that infants being by Adam reduced and left to their meer natural estate fall short of heaven I do not say they cannot go to heaven at all but they cannot go thither by their natural
powers they cannot without a new grace and favour go to heaven But then it cannot presently be inferred that therefore they go to hell but this ought to be inferred which indeed was the real consequent of it therefore it is necessary that Gods grace should supply this defect if God intends heaven to them at all and because nature cannot God sent a Saviour by whom it was effected so far he pag. 15. Now I leave it to any man to judge whither the same mutatis mutandis may not be said of our opinion though infants are borne in Original sin and are by nature the children of wrath yet they may be saved by grace By all this it is evident that we are as faire for the salvation of infants as he is and by the same doore as he goes out we will go out at the same And for the sayings of our writers I have three things to answer First some speak more mildly in the point rather inclining to the salvation than the damnation of infants Junius in his collation de naturâ gratiâ hath these words Nemo nostrum it a fuerit aut furere compertus est c. There is none of ours that is so mad or was ever found so void of reason who would simply affirme infants to be damned They which teach otherwise let themselves look to it by what right they moy do it and by what authority it may be done For although in respect of their own selves and that common nature of ours they may be in a state lyable to damnation it follows not that we should passe the sentence of damnation upon them c. In the processe of his discourse he giveth sundry reasons First the promise of God to believers and their natural seed Secondly his mercy to thousands and that through many descents where the Ancestors have sometimes belonged to the Covenant Thirdly The judgement of charity seeing it is the Lords pleasure to take them away in their infancy we may presume that by that fatherly act of his he intends to receive them to mercy Other testimonies may be brought of such that have gone in the milder way but these shall suffice A second sort of our Expositiors there are that do pitch more hard They say that some infants may go to hell yet they moderate their sentence as Chamier Non abhorret a verisimilitudine paenas eorum esse mitissimas It is very probable their punishments are most mild A third sort leave the matter wholly in suspence they think it sufficient to believe that all infants are borne in a state lyable to damnation they have in them the seeds of all evil yet for all this they conceive that God may shew mercy in and through Christ specially to the infants of such that do belong to the Covenant specially where conscience is made to enter them into the outward visible Church by baptisme And this is all that we will say of this question Leaving this businesse of the state of infants and reserving to God the secrets of election or non-election we will come to the point that is more useful and more easie to be understood And here he questions whether Adam did debauch our nature and corrupt our will and manner by his fall And if he did it he further enquires after the manner how it was done First whether it was done by a natural or physical efficiency of sin it selfe Secondly whether was it because we are all in the loynes of Adam or Thirdly whether was the sentence and the decree of God the cause thereof he hath foure arguments against a physical efficiency which we have in part handled already and shall have occasion to speak afterwards And therefore to avoid repetition we will come to the second branch whether Adam did debauch our nature because we are all in his loynes Against this he hath sundry reasons that follow in order By the same reason saith he we are guilty of all the sins that he committed while we were in his loynes there being no imaginable reason why the first should be propagated and not the rest Answ As I have formerly shewed so I declare againe the pollution of nature can only be propagated from the first sin because in that only Adam did act as a publick man in which sence the Apostle calls him the figure of him that is to come But of this I have spoken already Secondly upon this account saith he all the sins of all our progenitours will be imputed to us because we were in their loynes when they sinn'd them Answ Not so neither for though we were in their loynes when they sinned yet in a strict sence they are only vehicula so many conduit pipes of the conveyances of the nature from the first root To speak properly there are only two roots of the nature Adam the root of corruption to all his branches Christ the root of grace and spiritual life to all his branches If any question be made of the truth of this there is every where in the doctrine of St. Paul an antithesis between the flesh and the spirit between the old man and the new betwixt generation and regeneration betwixt Adam and Christ Between these two there is a plaine opposition in three things in point of justification Secondly in point of sanctification Thirdly in point of the resurrection from the dead And therefore whereas the first man by his act brings us under the guilt of sin the second washes away the guilt of sin by his blood and whereas the first man pollutes our nature and is the root of the corruption of nature the second man sanctifies our nature and is the root of a new nature to all his branches And whereas the first man did bring in death and all the miseries of nature upon our bodies that lead to death the second man frees us from all these by the resurrection from the dead But he further alledgeth Thirdly Sin saith he is seated in the will it is an action and so transient and when it dwels or abides it abides no where but in the will by approbation and love to which is naturally consequent a readinesse in the inferiour faculties to obey and act accordingly and therefore sin doth not infect our meer natural faculties but the will only and not that in the natural capacity but in its moral only Answ Though it be true that sin is principally seated in the will yet we shall finde all along that the Scriptures do lay great weight upon the blindnesse and the perversity of the judgement and as in the old creation so it is in the new The first work that is done is the creation of light Besides the Christ-like disposition is begun and carried on by degrees and all this by the renovation of light The understanding is first enlightned and then the will comes to choose the things of God Further let it be supposed that sin is only seated in the will
conversation of evil customes of evil acts of evil desires he must come to an evil nature that lies at the bottome and that which is worst of all he will find it to be the very root and cause of the the mischief The Apostle doth very elegantly call all lusts the works and effects of the flesh because they are the effects that the flesh doth produce in opposition to the effects and fruits of the Spirit Gal. 5.19 20 21. This ground being laid let us come to his exceptions as they follow in their order First saith he I know Saint Paul reckons concupiscence to be one of the works of the flesh and consequently such as excludes from heaven Col. 3.5 Evil concupiscence concupiscence with something superadded but certainly that is nothing that is natural for God made nothing that is evil and whatsoever is natural and necessary cannot be mortified Repl. That which is natural and necessary by creation we confesse cannot nor ought not to be mortified Of this kind is the lust after meat drink sleep c. but that which is natural and necessary by corruption ought chiefly to be mortified nay it is the prime work of Christianity to put off the Adam-like and by degrees to put on the Christ-like disposition Gal. 5.24 He proceedeth I come saith he to consider that by concupiscence either must be meant the first inclinations to their object or the proper acts of Election which are the second acts of concupiscence If the first inclinations be meant then certainly that cannot be a sinne which is natural and necessary Repl. We do willingly admit such a distinction concupiscence is sometime taken for the habit or the root it self and sometimes for those second acts that do flow from the root Now in such a case it is to me a great wonder that any should own the second acts of concupiscence to be sinne and yet own no sinfulnesse in the concupiscence that is more radical and fundamental Acts do flow from the nature and therefore where acts be bad the nature cannot be good It is our Saviours own argument Men do not gather grapes of thornes nor figs of thistles And whereas he stands upon this subtilty that the first inclinations are unavoidable therefore they are not sinful If he means that they are absolutely unavoidable this we deny For that which is unavoidable by nature may be avoided by grace The guilt of concupiscence may be taken away that it be not imputed the power of it may be broken by the Spirit and the remainders of it may be clean extinguished in the life of glory Now he proceedeth To desire that to which all men tend naturally is no more a sin than to desire to be happy is a sin Desire is no more a sin than joy or sorrow is Repl. If he speak of the natural tendency of desire as it is by creation We willingly subscribe and so it is no sinne to desire to eat drink or to long after an happy estate But if he speak of natural desires as they are now since the fall The desires of the flesh do wholly rend to evil The flesh lusteth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 against the Spirit and the works of the flesh are manifest adultry fornication c. Gal. 5.18 c. He further argues Then there can be no reason told why it is more a sin to will evil than to understand it and how doth that which is moral differ from that which is natural For the understanding is first and primely moved by his object Rep. The Scripture doth testifie of the blindnesse of the minde and the perversity of the judgement as well as of the pravity of the will Not to go far for an instance the words of the text are plaine The Ephesians are said to be the children of wrath under this title and formality because they did fulfill the lusts of their minde or according to the original the wills of their cogitations and their reasonings They are tearmed the wills of the cogitation because the choise of the will and the disorder of that choise doth arise commonly from the blindnesse of judgement As for his question how doth that which is natural differ from that which is moral We need not trouble our selves in the businesse For the blindnesse of the judgement and the perversity of the will are natural and moral both They are natural so far forth as they come by propagation from the first root they are moral in respect of the anomy and irregularity as being contrary to the spiritual holy and pure law of God He goeth on I cannot but wonder saith he why men are pleased where-ever they finde the word concupiscence in the new Testament presently to dreame of original sinne and make that to be the summe total of it whereas concupiscence if it were the product of Adams fall is but one small part of it Rep. There is a double reason may be given as I conceive where men finde mention made of concupiscence they do thereby understand original sinne First because that sinne is commonly called by the title of concupiscence Secondly Those derivative concupiscences as I may so say which are by choice and election do all flow from the mother concupiscence and do exceedingly symbolize with her As in that famous passage of the Apostle Every man is drawn away with his own lust and enticed and lust when it hath conceived it bringeth forth sinne and sinne when it is finished bringeth forth death Jam. 1.14 15. By sinne he must needs meane the open act of sinne as it is in the publick view of man After this he speaks of finishing of sinne when men have filled the measure of their iniquity then death comes at last as the wages of sin Though this be so in the end yet at the first all sin is brooded in the lust of the heart All secondary acts of concupiscence do spring from the original concupiscence which is the cause of all Upon these grounds The sinful disposition of the nature may well passe under the name and notion of concupiscence because the operations within do chiefly consist in lusting and all the acts of sinne do flow from the lust of the heart within Concupiscence saith he is but one of the passions and in the utmost extension of the word it can be taken but for one halfe of the passions for not only all the passions of the concupiscible faculty can be a principle of sinne but the irascible doth more hurt in the world that is more sensual this more devilish pag. 94. Rep. It is true in moral Philosophy the usual distinction is into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 et 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the irascible and concupiscible faculty but what need is there of such a difference in the case that we now speak for the Apostle reckons up the lusts of the flesh adultery fornication uncleannesse hatred variance emulation c. Gal. 5.19 There is no man will
cannot understand the justice of it because we were not personally guilty why by the same reason doth he not wholly exclude us from having any part of share in the benefit of the death of Christ For what personal act or concurrence have we to the suffering of that death And whereas he alledgeth the ensamples of Pausanias the Grecian General Avidius Cassius and others that would not punish the children for the fathers offence We acknowledge the rationality and the equity of such proceedings but what is this to the case in hand The Law was so given to Adam that was never given to any else but to Christ alone It was given to him as the Headman and the root of the nature If he fell all must fall with him Neither is there any hardnesse or harshnesse in this doctrine as long as the misery by one doth open a door for the grace by the other He goes on If God saith he inflicts this evil upon Adams posterity by using his own right of power and dominion which he hath over his creatures then it is a strange anger which God had against Adam that he still retaines so fierce an indignation as not to take off his hand from striking after five thousand six hundred years and striking him for that of which he repented him and which in all reason we beleeve he then pardoned or resolved to pardon when he promised the Messiah to him Answ If he would but remember himself what he speaks elsewhere he shall finde that he saith the same in effect as we do For though in his further explication page 453. He affirmeth that Adam was made mortal and proves it by his eating and drinking his sleep and recreation by ingestion and egestion by breathing generating and the like which immortal substances never do Though by these and such like mediums he endeavours to prove the mortality of the state in which he was made yet in the same and other places he doth acknowledge that the untimelinesse and infelicity of death came in by the fall By the fall he tells us that Adam was cast into a place of labour and uneasinesse of bryars and thornes ill aire and violent chances The woman was condemned to hard labour and travell and that which troubled her most obedience to her husband c. Now let us take the misery brought in by the fall in such a low and diminutive sense that he would take it It is now above five thousand six hundred yeares that mankind hath been under the miseries and infelicities of death all this while they have continued in a place of labour and uneasinesse of ill aire and hard chances the woman also besides the paines and peril of child-birth hath been subject to her husband for five thousand six hundred years and yet she knows no end of her apprentiship As strange as the anger is against Adam and his posterity he must needs say the same in effect as we do But to give a positive answer These miseries brought in by the fall of Adam have continued and must continue to the end of the world Neither is it a strange thing that the Lord should continue his anger seeing by the continuation thereof he doth continue to drive men to Christ If he pleased he could immediately take away all these miseries brought in by the fall But for most excellent ends to humble men to pluck down their pride to beat them out of their carnal security he doth rather suffer them to abide And for the case of the woman The Apostle doth not deny her pains and perill of child-birth to come in by the fall but then he addeth they shall be saved in child-bearing if they continue in the faith 1 Tim. 2. last Notable to this purpose is that speech of Augustine to Julian the Pelagian est enim aliquid in â—bdito alto ejus consilio c. There is therefore a reason in his hidden and deep counsel why so long as we live in this mortal flesh there is something in us against which our mind may conflict there is something that we may say forgive us our trespasses And a little after therefore it is done in the place of our infirmity that we should not live proudly but should live under a daily need of remission of sinnes Much more to the same purpose What he addes is monstrous false It is not easily saith he to be imagined how Christ reconciled the world unto his Father if after the death of Christ God is so angry with mankind so unappeased that the most innocent part of mankind may perish for Adams sinne and the other are perpetually punished with a corrupted nature a pronenesse to sinne a servile will a filthy concupiscence and an impossibility of being innocent that no faith no Sacrament no prayers no industry can obtain pardon from this punishment Answ It were a very happy thing if this learned man would once think that there were a ninth commandment and that he would make conscience of bearing false-witnesse against his neighbour We say as the case now standeth men are pestred with a corrupted nature with a pronenesse to sinne with a servile will but that there is no remedy to bring us out of this evil this was never affirmed by us There is in the blood of Christ that which will take away the guilt of sinne in the Spirit of Christ to free us from the bondage of corruption and also in his power to raise our bodies at the last Onely it is the good will and pleasure of God in the whole Oeconomy of the salvation of man that we should wait till all these things be fulfilled That is a most sweet passage of Bede taken from some ancienter Authour No man saith he taketh away sinne which the Law although holy and just and good could not take away but he in whom there was no sin Now he taketh away sinnes by pardoning those that are done and by assisting us that they may not be done and by bringing of us to the life where they cannot at all be done and so we are come to an end of this Section SECT 4. Of the causes of the universal wickednesse of mankind In the beginning he doth take upon him to propound an objection If there were not some common principle of evil introduced by the sinne of our parents upon all his posterity how should all men be so naturally inclined to be vicious To this he endeavours to frame many answers First saith he if we will suppose that there must be a cause in our nature determining us to sinne by an unresistible necessity I desire to know why such a principle should be more necessary to us than it was to Adam Repl. As I have said before Adam had onely a possibility to sinne he did sinne so that he had liberty and freedome not to sin But as the case now standeth we can do nothing else but sin It is true in the particular