them And if I had that as theirs first I must by the same reason have more of theirs And who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean And David's Mother is said to conceive him in sin Psal 51. 8. Let it be noted for answer to the objections from Ezek. 18. c. 1. That there is by the Covenant of Grace a pardon with right to Christ and Life freely given to all the faithful and their infant-seed as by them having full power thereto in Covenant given up to Christ Now no one is damned for pardoned sins The infant is at once guilty of Adam's and his Parents sin and at once his nature receiveth pravity from both but immediately only by the immediate Parents and at once both are pardoned to him and this pardon solemnly sealed and delivered in Baptism Therefore well may God say to the pardoned to the penitent and to the innocent that he shall not die for his Parents sins no not for Adam's 2. For the Text speaketh to the adult and to men that thought themselves innocent and that they suffered for their Parents sins and not their own And God assureth them 1. that if they are innocent they shall not die 2. yea if they be repenting persons and pardoned and obedient evangelically hating all the sins of their wicked Parents they shall live 3. yea this is true of their children also for their sakes But this is not because the Law never judged them guilty and worthy of death but because the Grace of Christ forgiveth it else the Text would exempt all infants from the guilty of death for Adam's sin But there is not a word in the Text to prove 1. that children need no pardon for their guilty of Parents sins 2. or that those that are not pardoned being themselves unsanctified or if adult live wickedly as their Parents did shall not die for them 3. or that such sins of Parents are not the cause of such guilt and pravity in the child as that he is truly said to die for his own sin Sect. 43. XIII Yet further methinks to a conformable Doctor the judgment of the Church of England in her Liturgy should not be insignificant Remember not Lord our offences nor the offences of our fore-Fathers neither take thou vengeance on our sins In what sense do men subscribe this and daily use it 1. Do they think that the Church meaneth only Adam's sin by our fore-Fathers 2. Or that by not-remembring they mean not-pardoning and not-punishing 3. Or do they think that they pray for the dead in Purgatory Hell or Heaven Or rather do they not imitate David and the Jewish Church and Ezra Nehemiah Daniel c. who confessed that they were punished for their Fathers sins Sect. 44. I conclude this subject with a second request to the Christian Reader to pity and pray for the poor distressed Church of Christ which is distracted and distressed thus even by such as are most devoted to its service through the great weakness of our judgments and the unhappy passions and strivings that thence follow Either I or this worthy person are mistaken or else we differ not When I look to the Person only and not to the Evidence nor to the Consenters I have far greatest reason to suspect that I am liker to erre than he And if it prove so the evidence yet seemeth to me so full for what I hold that I am almost hopeless of being otherwise perswaded And my judgment is not at my command How then shall I avoid the injury of souls But yet I think that to hold our selves more guilty of our Parents sins than we are is no dangerous damning error it may molest us but not undo us and I never saw many much molested by it But if either we differ not when yet he giveth you so loud an Alarm or if it be he that erreth indeed alas what must the Church expect from the too great number of ignorant and ungodly Teachers when it must be thus used by the Learned and the Godly My thoughts are 1. that it deserveth tears from faithful Ministers to observe that so considerable a part of the common guilt and misery of all mankind should by godly men be no more confessed and lamented 2. And that by those that for any denial or extenuation of our original sin as from Adam are so heinously and justly offended with the erroneous yea ready to vilifie men as Arminians if not Socinians that they think come near it 3. That ever the stream of a Party Reputation Interest Example or whatever else of that kind should with so many good men have so great a power in making truth or error duty or sin good or evil orthodox or heretical in their conceits and so much faction he found in their Religion 4. That ever so many millions should be taught impenitency in so plain a case when repentance and confession have so considerable a place among the requisites to remission 5. That ever so many millions should by Preachers be taught that they have no need of a Saviour nor of Pardon nor to pray for Pardon for so much of their guilty and punishment 6. That ever so much of the plain stream of Scripture-evidence can be denied and made light of by good men that cry up the Scripture authority and sufficiency even when they can lay a great stress in some unprofitable hurtful controversie upon some one Text whose sense is not to be certainly understood 7. That ever good and learned Teachers should be so conceited of their own conceptions as in their confidence in such a cause to brand God's truth with the name of error and their brethren as dangerous men for not erring as they do 8. And finally that the poor people must be under such grievous perplexing temptations as I before mentioned and that the Papists should be thus hardened in their opinion that we shall never be at peace and concord unless we unite in their usurping tyrannical Peace-maker And that Poor Scholars and young Ministers must be thus frightned from Truth Duty Charity and Peace and men made believe that the Church is about to be set on fire if we are told of that which is contrary to our former opinions This must be lamented if it be not I but others that here erre Sect. 45. But yet before I end he calls me so loud to consider of another matter that I must not deny his invitation In my Direct for Cure of Church-Divisions Dir. 42. I said Your belief of the necessary Articles of Faith must be made your own and not taken meerly on the authority of any And in all points of belief and practice which are of necessity to salvation you must ever keep company with the universal Church for it were not the Church if it erred in these And in matters of peace and concord the greater part must be your guide that is caeteris paribus In matters of humane obedience
in original sin because they are more fully voluntary and in our power Yet the confirmed sinful habits of the adult where original sin is strengthened by actual are worst of all so that as Accidens is said to be called Ens but by analogy of attribution as having a less participation of the kind and yet it is truly Ens so the original sin of infants is called sin by such an analogy as having a less participation of the common nature of sin in the form and culpability 4. In such a degree as infants are subjects of Christ's Kingdom in such a degree also their original pravity is properly sin 5. In such a degree as their Parents righteousness would have been imputable to them if none of their Ancestors from the creation had sinned and as their own inherent holiness is imputable to the sanctified infants as a moral good in such a degree also is their progenitors sin imputed to them and their original pravity imputed to them as a moral evil 6. We do not assert that any of the adult are damned for original sin alone nor that their original sin is a remediless evil but that a remedy is provided and means appointed for men to use in order to their deliverance from the guilt and pravity which if they refuse they lie under a double guilt 7. Original sin and the misery deserved and due to the subject is a remediable evil in infants themselves As their Parents have propagated a sinful guilty nature to them so if their Parents will unfeignedly dedicate them to Christ and offer and engage them to God in the holy Covenant which Baptisme is the sign and seal of they shall be accepted by God according to the tenor of his promise 8. Our question extendeth not to the degree of infants punishment whether they shall have more or less whether pain of loss only or of sense also or how far 9. An ordinary occasion of seducing many into the denial of original sin is the equalling God's Laws with the Laws of man which yet afford much matter for their confutation Man's Laws meddle not so much with the heart and are not a rule for mens secret thoughts dispositions and inclinations as God's Laws are for man knoweth not the heart nor is made the judge of it further than it is manifested by words or deeds but the heart is as open to God as the actions and the distempers of it as loathsome to him and go his Laws condemn even vitious dispositions and habits as such 10. The will is the first defiled faculty and seat of sin and all the rest of the faculties are capable of sin but secondarily and by participation from the will and there is a threefold voluntariness 1. There is an actual voluntariness or volition 2. An habitual or dispositive voluntariness 3. A moral that is a reputative voluntariness This last may be in several cases distinct from the two former 1. In case a man by contract engage himself to stand to what another doth though that other do somewhat that is against his will in the thing yet his consent to the general hath made him guilty as being reputatively willing of it 2. In case a man will the cause of a necessary effect or any way promote that effect when he should not he is reputatively willing of the effect 3. In case a man by consent be a member of a society whose constitution engageth all the members in a participation of their acts and the consequents so that what is done by a major vote is taken as the act of all as to the good or evil consequents here every member is reputatively an offender when the society offendeth so far as that constitution engaged them 4. In case of a natural power that another hath to choose or refuse for us and this is the case of Parents and their infants and ideot children that having no capacity themselves to choose or refuse their Parents wills are reputatively their wills in all cases wherein their Parents have power to dispose of them as it is in cases of inheritance among us So in Baptism the Parents have power to engage the child to Christ as all the Jews had power and were bound to engage their children in covenant to God where the child reputatively consenteth So Adam having power to retain or reject that righteousness of nature which then he was possessed of and might have derived to his posterity and to choose life or death for himself and in some sort for his posterity we reputatively refused life in his refusal or rejection III. I come now to the proof of the Thesis that infants have original sin Arg. 1. From Rom. 5. 12 13 14 15 16 17 18. If all have sinned then infants have sinned and that can be only by original sin But all have sinned go infants have sinned Whether 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be in whom or in that or forasmuch as I make no great matter of Though I see no reason but with the vulgar Latin and others we should turn it in quo If infants have sin it is as much as I am proving The minor is expresly affirmed in ver 12. all have sinned which is rendred in other words ver 19. many were made sinners The consequence of the major can have nothing said against it but that by All is meant only All the adult and infants are excluded But this is such wilful violence to the Text as that all Scripture may by such interpretation be eluded and words shall signify nothing 1. The express universal affirmation may not be expounded by restraining terms without some cogent reason but here is no cogent reason brought nor can be all the reason of the adversaries is but the point now in question which if they may beg they may thence deny all Texts that be against them because they are against them 2. It is all men that die that the Apostle speaketh of but infants die go he speaks of infants The major is plain v. 12. Death by sin and so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned Here the sinners and dyers are made the same and more than so death is the effect of their having sinned it go passeth upon all men for that all have sinned go not without their sin And the next verses fullier prove it purposely Where death reigneth there sin is imputed but death reigneth on infants go sin is imputed to infants and also the All before mentioned includeth them for it is the same persons that the Apostle speaks of in these verses 12 13 14. The major is proved from the 13 and 14 verses else the Apostle's argument were vain for this is his medium to prove that sin was imputed before the Law viz. because death reigned before the Law even from Adam to Moses go the reign of death will prove the imputation of sin which is the same with having sinned mentioned ver 12. It is the
to fear they know but whom to trust they know not unless they must be of the side and Religion which is uppermost and think their Rulers always in the right and so that there are as many right Religions in the World as there are Rulers of different Religions And what now shall the poor people do Can they hope to be wiser than all these Teachers to discern which of them is in the right What is their remedy Sect. 5. In this streight I am ready yea resolved so far to abate my reverence to learned Contenders as to hope that we are more agreed than they seem willing that the people should believe and therefore than they understand themselves All true Christians are agreed in that which made a Christian when the name of Christians was first known and in that which was then thought necessary to their mutual love and communion They are united in those many necessary things which I long ago mentioned in a popular discourse called Catholick Vnity And Protestants are agreed in much more than absolutely necessary things And as it is not the part of a good man to set the Churches together by the ears and to make people believe that they differ where they do not or further than they do and thereby to tempt them to suspect censure reproach or hate each other so it is not the part of a wise Teacher to think himself that agreeing men are not agreed and that different terms or orders of expression make different or contrary Doctrines or Religions and to be skilful in making one difference to seem many and verbal ones to seem real and small ones to seem great instead of being skilful by discussing ambiguity of words in helping men better to understand one another And for my part I have so much experience of the commonness of the mistake both of the matter and of each others minds by reason of the lamentable ambiguity of words and the common weakness of mankind in the ordering digesting and expressing their conceptions and also in the reception of other mens expressions that I am resolved to be still suspitious of ambiguities and not to be easily and negligently deceived by a word unexplained though men of never so great name or self-esteem should deride me for it as a troublesome distinguisher And I am resolved to endeavour to the utmost of my little skill and opportunity to undeceive them that think a different name or method is a different or contrary Doctrine and that all are Hereticks that speak not in their language and sing not in their tune or pray not in their form of words though for so doing the over-orthodox zeal do accuse me of tepidity noxious Syncretism Arminianism yea or of as much complyance with Popery or Socinians as this excellent Doctor doth Sect. 6. Though I know that Heresy may as Arianism once did creep in and hide it self in the addition of one letter yet I know also that the confusion of tongues hath made it hard to express our selves so as easily to be understood unless by such with whom we have had long leisure to open our meaning and hard to understand the mind of others And that they who agree in all that Christ his Apostles and the ancient Symbols of Faith and Concord made necessary to the agreement of Believers should not too hastily be condemned as heretical and that Church-tyranny and Schism while they cry out against each other are neerer kin in principles and effects than their owners are well aware of And that over-doing as for orthodox Concord by introducing things arbitrary difficult and numerous as the necessary terms hath been Satan's great engine to tear the Churches And had I been at Jerome's elbow when he complained so much of them that accused him of Heresy for rejecting the term Hypostasis and when he spake himself so much against it I might perhaps have ventured to say to that learned angry Father that it is possible that neither his adversaries nor he were Hereticks nor erroneous in the matter or sense at all but that they meant by Hypostasis the same that he did by Persona and that he mistakingly accused an innocent word and they mistakingly accused his innocent sense and that the time might come when those that then contended were in the dust that the Churches should indifferently without mutual condemnation use either of the terms Sect. 7. Melancholy is a suspicious humour Many a one have I known that could not be perswaded but that their best and neerest friends did plot their death or to poison them or cut their throats and every thing and person that is neer them seemeth against them and a cause of fear As a good woman yet living caetera sana dare let none come neer her till the spiders be brusht off them which she thinks she seeth on them having once been affrighted by a spider And some otherwise worthy men do so causelesly and frequently cry out This is Popery and That is Arminianism as if they were perswading the World that the contumelious saying is true Spiritus Calvinianus est spiritus melancholicus and that orthodox mens hearts must meditate terror and fear where no fear is and their charity must suspect all things and hardly believe or hope of any good in others And we have not been yea yet are not without some Sectaries carried so swiftly in the the stream of prejudice that before they can stay to weigh and understand it they cry out O Antichristian Popish Arminian of many an unquestionable truth of God as if they were perswading men that the prophane reproach is true that A Puritan is a Protestant frightened out of his wits Sect. 8. But to come to my present business This worthy Dr. and Mr. Danvers the fervent defender of the Anabaptists having both newly published their suspicions and accusations of me for my doctrine of Original sin and both called aloud to the World to take heed of me I take my self obliged to give them both some account of the reasons of what I hold and humbly to leave them to their leisurely judicious censure And because God calleth me by the messengers of death to other kind of thoughts and works than needless tedious ungrateful contending for my own vindication against the suspicions and words of others I must take it as a sufficient discharge of this duty to publish an old Country disputation on that subject used above twenty years ago in one of our by some derided meetings of those humble peaceable laborious godly Ministers neer Kederminster in Worcestershire who have most of them been silenced these fourteen years And though I am much to be blamed if my maturer thoughts since then have not helped me to clearer conceptions than I had so long ago yet finding by a hasty perusal that I am still of the same mind as then I was I must crave the Readers acceptance of it as it is from one that hath not