there be true liberty in the world we know well whereunto to impute all these disorders but if there be no true liberty in the world free from antecedent necessitation then they all fall directly upon God Almighty and his Providence The last question is concerning his definition of contingent That they are such Agents as work we know not how Against which I gave him two exceptions in my defence One was this Many Agents work we know not how as the Loadstone draweth iron the Jet chaff and yet they are known and acknowledged to be necessary and not contingent Agents Secondly many Agents do work we know how as a stone falling down from an house upon a mans head and yet we do not account it a necessary but a contingent event by reason of the accidental concurrence of the causes I have given him other instances in other parts of this Treatise And if need be he may have twenty more And yet though his definition was shewed formerly to halt down-right on both sides yet he good man is patient and never taketh the least notice of it But onely denyeth the consequence and over-looketh the proofes His objection about the indetermination of the causes That indetermination doth nothing because it maketh the event equal to happen and not to happen is but a flash without any one grain of solidity For by indetermination in that place is clearly understood not to be predetermined to one by extrinsecal causes but to be left free to its own intrinsecal determination this way or that way indifferently So the first words By reason of the indetermination have referrence to free Agents and free Events And the other words Or accidentall concurrence of the causes have referrence to casuall Events And both together referendo sigul◅ singulis do include all contingents as the word is commonly and largely taken by old Philosophers Castigations of the Animadversions Num. 17. REader I do not wonder now and then to see T. H. sink under the weight of an absurdity in this cause A back of steel were not able to bear all those unsupportable consequences which flow from this opinion of fatall destiny But why he should delight to multiplle needlesse absurdities I do not know Allmost every Section produceth some new monster In this seventeenth Section I demonstrated clearly that this opinion of universal necessity doth take away the nature of sinne That which he saith in answer thereunto is that which followeth First it is true he who taketh away the liberty of doing according to the will taketh away the nature of sinne but he that denieth the liberty to will doth not so This answer hath been sufficiently taken away already both in the defence and in these Castigations Inevitable and unresistible necessity doth as much acquit the will from sin as the action Again whereas I urged That whatsoever proceedeth essentially by way of physicall determination from the first cause is good and just and lawfull he opposeth That I might as well have concluded that what soever man hath been made by God is a good and just man So I might What should hinder me to conclude that every man and every creature created by God is good qua talis as it is created by God but being but a creature it is not immutably good as God himself is If he be not of the same opinion he must seek for companions among those old Hereticks the Manichees or Marcionites So he cometh to his main answer Sin is not a thing really made Those things which at first were actions were not then sins though actions of the same nature with those which were afterwards sins Nor was then the will to any thing a sin though it were a will to the same thing which in willing now we should sin Actions became then sins first when the Commandemens came c. There can no action be made sin but by the law Therefore this opinion though it derive actions essentially from God it derives not sins essentially from him but relatively and by the Cōmandement The first thing I observe in him is a contradiction to himself Now he maketh the anomy or the irregularity and repugnance to the law to be the sinne before he conceiveth the action it self to be the sin Doth not the Bishop think God to be the cause of all actions And are not sins of commission actions Is murther no action And doth not God himself say there is no evil in the City which I have not done And was not murther one of those evills c. I am of opinion that the distinction of causes into efficient and deficient is Bohu and signifieth nothing This might have been pardoned to him But his second slip is worse That the World was I know not how long without sin I did demonstrate That upon his grounds all sins are essentially from God and consequently are lawfull and just He answereth That the actions were from God but the actions were not sins at the first untill there was a law What is this to the purpose It is not materiall when sin did enter into the World early or late so as when it did enter it were essentially from God which it must needs be upon his grounds that both the murther and the law against murther are from God And as it doth not help his cause at all so it is most false What actions were there in the World before the sinne of the Angell He charged the Angels with folly And if God spared not the Angels that sinned but cast them down to hell and the Angels which kept not their first estate What were those first actions that were before the sinne of Adam By one man sinne entred into the World and death by sinne Thirdly he erreth most grossely in supposing that the World at first was lawlesse The World was never without the eternall law that is the rule of justice in God himself and that which giveth force to all other laws as the Divine Wisdom saith By me Kings raign and Princes decree justice And sinne is defined to be that which is acted said or thought against the eternall law But to let this passe for the present because it is transcendentally a law How was the World ever without the law of nature which is most properly a law the law that cannot lie not mortal from mortal man not dead or written in the paper without life but incorruptible written in the heart of man by the finger of God himself Let him learn sounder doctrine from St. Paul For when the Gentiles which have not the law do by nature the things contained in the law these having not the law are a law unto themselves which shew the work of the law written in their hearts their consciences also bearing witnesse and their thoughts the mean while accusing or excusing one another I passe by those Commandements of God which were delivered by tradition from hand to
without appointing or constituting a subjection without subjection an authorising without authorising What is this He saith that it cannot be said honourably of God that he hath parts or totality which are the attributes of finite things If it cannot be said honourably of God that he hath parts or totality then it cannot be said honourably of God that he is a body for every body hath parts and totality Now hear what he saith Every part of the Universe is body And that which is no body is no part of the Universe And because the Universe is all that which is no part of it is nothing Then if God have no parts and totality God is nothing Let him judge how honourable this is for God He saith We honour not God but dishonour him by any value lesse than infinite And how doth he set an infinite value upon God who every where maketh him to subsist by successive duration Infinite is that to which nothing can be added but to that which subsisteth by successive duration something is added every minute He saith Christ had not a Kingly authority committed to him by his Father in the World but onely consiliary and doctrinal He saith on the contrary That the kingdom of Iudaea was his hereditary right from King David c. And when it pleased him to play the King he required entire obedience Math. 21. 2. Go into the village over against you and streightway ye shall find an assetied and a colt with her loose them and bring them unto me And if any man say ought unto you ye shall say The Lord hath need of them He saith The institution of eternal punishment was before sin And if the command be such as cannot be obeyed without being damned to eternal death then it were madnesse to obey it And what evil hath excommunicatien in it but the consequent eternal punishment At other times he saith there is no eternal punishment It is evident that there shall be a second death of every one that shall be condemned at the day of Iudgement after which he shall die no more He who knoweth no soul nor spirit may well be ignorant of a spiritual death He saith It is a doctrine repugnant to civil society that whatsoever a man does against his conscience is sin Yet he himself saith It is a sin whatsoever one doth against his conscience for they that do that despise the Law He saith That all power secular and spiritual under Christ is united in the Christian Common-wealth that is the Christian Soveraign Yet he himself saith on the contrary It cannot be doubted of that the power of binding and loosing that is of remotting and retaining sins which we call the power of the keyes was given by Christ to future Pastours in the same manner as to the present Apostles And all power of remitting sin which Christ himself had was given to the Apostles All spiritual power is in the Christian Magistrate Some spiritual power that is the power of the keyes is in the successours of the Apostles that is not in the Christian Magistrate is a contradiction He confesseth That it is manifest that from the ascension of Christ until the conversion of Kings the power Ecclesiastical was in the Apostles and so delivered unto their successours by imposition of hands And yet straight forgetting himself he taketh away all power from them even in that time when there were no Christian Kings in the World He alloweth them no power to make any Ecclesiastical laws or constitutions or to impose any manner of commands upon Christians The office of the Apostles was not to command but teach As Schoole-Masters not as Commanders Yet Schoole-Masters have some power to command He suffereth not the Apostles to ordain but those whom the Church appointeth nor to excommunicate or absolve but whom the Church pleaseth He maketh the determination of all controversies to rest in the Church not in the Apostles And resolveth all questions into the authority of the Church The election of Doctours and Prophets did rest upon the authority of the Church of Antioch And if it be inquired by what authority it came to passe that it was received for the command of the Holy Ghost which those Prophets and Doctors said proceeded from the Holy Ghost we must necessarily answer By the authority of the Church of Antioch Thus every where he ascribeth all authority to the Church none at all to the Apostles even in those times before there were Christian Kings He saith not tell it to the Apostles but tell it to the Church that we may know the definitive sentence whether sin or no sin is not left to them but to the Church And it is manifest that all authority in spiritual things doth depend upon the authority of the Church Thus not contented with single contradictions he twisteth them together for according to his definition of a Church there was no Christian Church at Antioch or in those parts of the World either then or long after Hear him A Church is a company of men professing Christian Religion united in the person of one Soveraign at whose command they ought to assemble and without whose authority they ought not to assemble Yet there was no Christian Soveraign in those parts of the World then or for two hundred years after and by consequence according to his definition no Church He teacheth That when the civil Soveraign is an infidel every one of his own subjects that resisteth him sinneth against the Laws of God and rejecteth the counsel of the Apostles that admonisheth all Christians to obey their Princes and all children and servants to obey their Parents and Masters in all things As for not resisting he is in the right but for obeying in all things in his sense it is an abominable errour Upon this ground he alloweth Christians to deny Christ to sacrifice to idols so they preserve faith in their hearts He telleth them They have the license that Naaman had and need not put themselves into danger for their faith That is they have liberty to do any external acts which their infidel Soveraigns shall command them Now hear the contrary from himself When Soveraigns are not Christians in spiritual things that is in those things which pertain to the manner of worshipping God some Church of Christians is to be followed Adding that when we may not obey them yet we may not resist them but eundum est ad Christum per martyrium we ought to suffer for it He confesseth That matter and power are indifferent to contrary forms and contrary acts And yet maintaineth every where that all matter is necessitated by the outward causes to one individual form that is it is not indifferent And all power by his Principles is limitted and determined to one particular act Thus he scoffeth at me for the contrary very learnedly
the calling of God that is to determine it self by the power of grace To 1 Cor. 4. 7. I answer whether we understand the text of saving grace or of graces freely given both waies it is the grace of God that makes the discrimination But all the debate is of the manner how it is made whether morally by perswasion or physically by determination of the will to one and destroying the liberty of it Of which this text is silent The next place 1 Cor. 12. 6. is understood of those miraculous graces freely given such as the gift of tongues of healing of prophecying c. and if it were understood of saving grace yet it did not at all exclude our cooperation The same Apostle who teacheth us that it is God who worketh in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure in the same place exhorteth us to work out our own salvation with fear and trembling God worketh in us both the will and the deed not by physicall determination of the will not by destroying the nature of his Creature but sweetly morally by illumination perswasion and inspiration We are said to be the workmanship of God created in Christ Iesus unto good works 2 Eph. 10. because without Christ we can do nothing No man can have the actuall will to believe and to be converted but by the preventing grace of God Our indeavous are in vain except he help them and none at all except he excite them Gods calling and illumination and inspiration is not in our power and we are brought by his grace as it were for nothing to a new being in Christ in which respect a regenerated Christian is called a new Creature Metaphors do not hold in all things when David praied Create in me a new heart O Lord his meaning was not that his heart should be annihilated and a new substance crated but to have his heart purged and cleansed The main body of his forces is dispersed yet his reserve remains untouched Even all the places that make God the Giver of all graces and wherein men are said to be dead in sin for by all these saith he it is manifest That although a man may live holily if he will yet to will is the work of God and not eligible by man Let him reduce his argument into what form he will there is more in the conclusion than in the premises namely these words and not illigible by man Who ever argued from the position of the principall cause to the removall of all second Agents and means It is most true That all grace is from God but it is most false that God hath not given man a will to receive it freely This is plain boyes play to jump over the backs of all second causes As all grace is from God so the elective power to assent to the motions of grace is from God likewise To shew him the weaknesse of his consequence he argueth thus All light is from the sun therefore though a man may see if he will open his eyes yet to open his eyes is the work of God and not eligible by man It is usuall iâ—… Scripture to call an habituall sinner a dead man but it is a weak argument which is drawn from a metaphor beyond the scope of him that useth it And if it be insisted upon too much involves men in palpable contradictions as not to step aside from the same metaphor This thy brother was dead and is alive again and was lost and is found If he was but lost then he was not absolutely dead If he was absolutely dead then he was more than lost So in another place Awakâ—… thou that sleepest and arise from the dead To sleep and to be dead are inconsistent but sleep is an image of death So is idlenesse Hic situs est Vaccia Here lieth Vaccia was written upon an idle persons door So is old age He considered not his own body now dead nor the deadnesse of Sarahs womb So is habituall sin And you hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins In some wheresover there is no appearance of life as in the trees in winter there is an image of death To leave Metaphors this death in sinne is not a naturall but a spiritual death and therefore no utter extinction of the naturall powers and faculties of a man Such are the understanding and the will which though they were much weakened by the fall of Adam yet they were not they are not utterly extinct either by originall or actuall sin but being excited and as it were enlived by preventing grace they may and do become subservienâ—… to grace the understanding being illuminated by those raies of heavenly light and the will enabled to consent as freely to the motions of grace in supernaturall acts as it did formerly to the dictates of reason in naturall and civill acts So every way T. H. is gone First the will is able and free without preventing grace to determine it self in naturall and civill acts which is enough to prove my intention against the universall necessity of all Events Secondly the will being excited and assisted by grace hath power to put in practise its naturall freedom in suprernatural acts as to consent to the motions of grace and to reject the suggestions of the flesh the devill without any physical determination of it self without it self Even as the dead body of Abraham the dead womb of Sarah being as it were new quickened by God did truely beget Isaac so even in the act of conversion it self the will is free from physicall determination That Physicall determation of all causes and events whatsoever to one by an outward flux of naturall causes which T. H. maintains doth as much necessitate all the actions of free Agents as their wills or more because volition is an inward immediate act of the will but all other acts of a free Agent are externall and mediate acts of the will over which the will hath not so absolute a dominion as over the volition whence it followeth irrefragably That if there be no freedom to will much lesse is there a freedom to do He saith a man may live holily if he will but to will is the work of God and not eligible by man Can a man then live holily without the grace of God Or is not an holy life the work of God as much as a sanctified will If he can not shew this let him never mention this vain destinction any more of freedom to do without freedom to will May not a man be so bold to put him himself in mind of that Iargon which he objected to the Schoolmen unlesse perhaps he thinks nonsense is more intelligible in English than in Latin Hitherto I have traced T. H. his steps though he be wandred quite out of the lists or rather in plain terms fled away from his cause to take sanctuary under the sacred
finite and consists of parts and consequently is no God This That there is no incorporal spirit is that main root of Atheisme from which so many lesser branches are daily sprouting up When they have taken away all incorporal spirits what do they leave God himself to be He who is the fountain of all being from whom and in whom all creatures have their being must needs have a real being of his own And what real being can God have among bodies and accidents for they have left nothing else in the universe Then T. H. may move the same question of God which he did of devils I would gladly know in what classis of entities the Bishop ranketh God Infinite being and participated being are not of the same nature Yet to speak according to humane apprehension apprehension and comprehension differ much T. H. confesseth that natural reason doth dictate to us that God is infinite yet natural reason cannot comprehend the infinitenesse of God I place him among incorporeal substances or spirits because he hath been pleased to place himself in that rank God is a spirit Of which place T. H. giveth his opinion that it is unintelligible and all others of the same nature and fall not under humane understanding They who deny all incorporeal substances can understand nothing by God but either nature not naturam naturantem that is a real authour of nature but naturam naturatam that is the orderly concourse of natural causes as T. H. seemeth to intimate or a fiction of the brain without real being cherished for advantage and politick ends as a profitable error howsoever dignified with the glorious title of the eternal causes of all things We have seen what his principles are concerning the Deity they are full as bad or worse concerning the Trinity Hear himself A person is he that is represented as often as he is represented And therefore God who has been represented that is personated thrice may properly enough be said to be three Persons though neither the word Person nor Trinity be ascribed to him in the Bible And a little after to concludethe doctrine of the Trinity as far as can be gathered directly from the Scripture is in substance this that the God who is alwayes one and the same was he person represented by Moses the person represented by his Son incarnate and the person represented by the Apostles As represented by the Apostles the holy spirit by which they spake is God As represented by his son that was God and Man the Son is that God As represented by Moses and the High Priests the Father that is to say the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ is that God From whence we may gather the reason why those names Father Son and Holy Ghost in the signification of the Godhead are never used in the Old Testament For they are persons that is they have their names from representing which could not be till diverse men had represented Gods person in ruling or in directing under him Who is so bold as blind Bayard The emblime of a little boy attempting to lade all the water out of the sea with a Coccleshel doth fit T. H. as exactly as if it had been shaped for him who thinketh to measure the profound and inscrutable mysteries of religion by his own silly shallow conceits What is now become of the great adorable mysterie of the blessed undivided Trinity it is shrunk into nothing Upon his grounds there was a time when there was no Trinity And we must blot these words out of our Creed The Father eternal the Son eternal the Holy Ghost eternal And these other words out of our Bibles Let us make man after our image Unlesse we mean that this was a consultation of God with Moses and the Apostles What is now become of the eternal generation of the Son of God if this Sonship did not begin until about four thousand years after the creation were expired Upon these grounds every King hath as many persons as there be Justices of Peace and petty Constables in his kingdom Upon this account God Almighty hath as many persons as there have been Soveraign Princes in the World since Adam According to this reckoning each one of us like so many Gerious may have as many persons as we please to make procurations Such bold presumption requireth another manner of confutation Concerning God the Son forgetting what he had said elsewhere where he calleth him God and man and the Son of God incarnate he doubteth not to say that the word hypostatical is canting As if the same person could be both God and man without a personal that is an hypostatical union of the two natures of God and man He alloweth every man who is commanded by his lawful Soveraign to deny Christ with his tongue before men He deposeth Christ from his true kingly office making his kingdom not to commence or begin before the day of judgement And the regiment wherewith Christ governeth his faithful in this life is not properly a kingdom but a pastoral office or a right to teach And a little after Christ had not kingly authority committed to him by his Father in this World but onely consiliary and doctrinall He taketh away his Priestly or propitiatory office And although this act of our redemption be not alwayes in Scripture called a Sacrifice and oblation but sometimes a price yet by price we are not to understand any thing by the value whereof he could claim right to a pardon for us from his offended father but that price which God the Father was pleased in mercy to demand And again Not that the death of one man though without sin can satisfie for the offences of all men in the rigour of iustice but in the mercy of God that ordained such Sacrifices for sin as he was pleased in mercy to accept He knoweth no difference between one who is meer man and one who was both God and man between a Levitical Sacrifice and the all-sufficient Sacrifice of the Crosse between the blood of a Calf and the precious blood of the Son of God And touching the Prophetical Office of Christ I do much doubt whether he do believe in earnest that there is any such thing as prophecy in the World He maketh very little difference between a Prophet and a mad-man and a demoniack And if there were nothing else saith he that bewrayed their madnesse yet that very arrogating such inspiration to themselves is argument enough He maketh the pretence of inspiration in any man to be and alwayes to have been an opinion pernicious to peace and tending to the dissolution of all civil government He subjecteth all Prophetical Revelations from God to the sole pleasure and censure of the Soveraign Prince either to authorize them or to exauctorate them So as two Prophets prophesying the same thing at the same time in the dominions of two different Princes