the real Merits of a Cause whether I have not very fairly and clearly expounded those places of St. Paul which I have produced upon this head together with all others of a like meaning and signification which it is not necessary accurately to insert so as that no advantage can be reaped from them to the Calvinistical Doctrine The Second Account which I shall give of the origine and progress of this Opinion and of its Continuance among us to this Day shall be taken from those Texts in the Epistles of St. Paul where he describes the Lucta or Contention which is to be found more or less in every man for it is not equal in all between the two principles of the Flesh and Spirit or between the natural tendencies and desires of the humane Soul as it moves from its self by an inward spring or principle of self activity abstracted from all Intanglement or Encumbrance from the Body which are all regulated by the sober and steady deliberations of right reason without any Prejudice Humour Interest or Passion and between those desires which are owing to the union of the intellectual or spiritual principle with matter from whence it comes to pass that our nobler part is perpetually sollicited and frequently overborn by the importunity of sensual Pleasures by yielding too frequently or too grosly to which it follows unavoidably that the natural strength and activity of the mind will be by degrees impaired as Elastical Bodies by moysture lose their Spring or as the Bodies of men or other Animals by want of exercise and too much ease are used to grow Scorbutick resty and unactive but on the contrary by constant breathing activity and motion they acquire new strength and arrive to an Athletical firmitude and vigour as it is also with the Mind which is not more impaired by a tame and cowardly submission to Animal and fleshly desires than it is improved and strengthned by a stout and resolute resistance of them In this continual combat between concupiscence and reason consists that spiritual Warfare which we are obliged to maintain with the World the Flesh and the Devil in the conquest of which Enemies or in our utmost endeavour towards it as being an effect of the natural strength and activity of the Soul shaking off the Cloggs and Encumbrances of the sensual or lower Life which is wholly governed by gross and corporeal Impressions from without the nature of Virtue consists a on the otherside Vice is nothing else but an unnecessary yielding to so mean impulses or it is that decay or infirmity of mind which is the consequence of such a yielding This Combat is excellently described by St. Paul in the Seventh Chapter of his Epistle to the Romans from the 14th verse to the end of that Chapter in these words We know that the Law is Spiritual but I am carnal sold under Sin For that which I do I allow not For what I would that do I not but what I hate that do I. If then I do that which I would not I consent unto the Law that it is good Now then it is no more I that do it but Sin that dwelleth in me For I know that in me that is in my Flesh dwelleth no good thing For to will is present with me but how to perform that which is good I find not For the good that I would I do not but the evil which I would not that I do now if I do that I would not it is no more I that do it but Sin that dwelleth in me I find then a Law that when I would do good evil is present with me For I delight in the Law of God after the inward man But I see another Law in my Members warring against the Law of my mind and bringing me into Captivity to the Law of Sin which is in my Members O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this Death I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord So then with my mind I my self serve the Law of God but with the flesh the Law of Sin Much such a Description as this we have likewise by the same Apostle in his Epistle to the Galathians c. 5. v. 17. The Flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the Flesh and these are contrary the one to the other so that ye cannot do the things that ye would Where he also acquaints us what are the distinct works of the Flesh and the Spirit the First consisting mainly in the gratification of sensual Appetites and desires or in an ambitious pursuit after the Pomp and Vanities of this world or in that turbulent and uneven constitution of mind in those either private or publick Mischiefs which are the usual consequences of Lust and Passion as the latter are chiefly discernible by such a calmness and serenity of Mind and Will as does perpetually accompany the Soul of man when it is moved from it self from an inward spring and principle of its own and when its streams are not troubled or turned back with violence upon their Fountain by the tempestuous winds of Passion such a calmness and serenity as makes a man most easie to himself most acceptable to others and most fit to enjoy an intimate Friendship and Communion with God Now the works of the Flesh saith he v. 18 19 20 21 22 23. are manifest which are these Adultery Fornication Uncleanness Lasciviousness Idolatry Witchcraft Hatred Variance Emulations Wrath Strife Seditions Heresies Envyings Murthers Drunkenness Revellings and such like of the which I tell you before as I have also told you in time past that they which do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God but the fruit of the Spirit is Love Joy Peace Long-suffering Gentleness Goodness Faith Meekness Temperance against such there is no Law And from this distinction of the Flesh and the Spirit men are denominated according to the respective Predominancy of either sometimes Carnal or Natural and sometimes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Spiritual men So in the next Chapter v. 1. Brethren if a man be overtaken in a fault ye which are Spiritual restore such an one in the Spirit of meekness considering thy self lest tho◠also be tempted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 ye which are Spiritual that is ye who have mortified the Flesh with its affections and Lusts ye who have given your selves up to the guidance and conduct of the inward-man whose Souls are as far as may be retired within themselves freed from the Dominion of Prejudice and Temptation and making no further account of any thing without than it is necessary to the support of Life or serviceable to the noble ends of Happiness and Virtue ye who measure all things by a steady and impartial reason according to their true estimate and value and not as they are falsly and unskilfully represented by the specious flatteries of a deluded fancy and so those things or truths of which
liberty of the Will but speaking of that famous Difficulty concerning the inconsistence of the Divine Prescience with it he says that we are not to deny the truth of a Proposition or Notion which we feel and of which we are intimately conscious to our selves for the sake of a Being whose Modes of operation and ways of scientifical Intuition by reason of his infirnity we cannot comprehend And I do appeal to any Man in the World let him be who he will and of what perswasion soever if Posidonius in a raging fit of the Gout or Stone should yet out of an affected piece of Stoicism pretend that all that while he feels no manner of Pain but that he is perfectly at ease and should not have suspected himself to be at all discomposed were it not for the Visits of his Friends and the formality of a Nurse and a Physician by his Bed-side that he is listning all this while with unspeakable Delight to the Tunefull and Melodious Musick of the Spheres when yet his Groans and wry Faces do sufficiently confess that he feels no such Harmony within would not every one say that he does not believe himself and that he has no reason to expect that any one else should believe him And shall we not with equal reason say the same of him who will needs argue and dispute himself into a necessary Agent notwithstanding he feels himself inwardly to be Free Or how is it possible for us ever to look on any Proposition as True when the universal Seemings and Appearances of Mankind and those not of things without us but such as if they be any thing at all are a part of our very Nature and are always most intimately present with and in us shall yet notwithstanding be looked upon as no better than Dreams and Delusions of a sickly Mind This is the first Answer to the first Advantage that may be taken from the consideration of that Lucta or Contention which there is between the two Principles of the Flesh and Spirit as that Contention is described by St. Paul But Secondly The second Answer may be that if this place of St. Paul or any other be to be understood of an absolute and uncontrollable Necessity overruling all actions and thwarting perpetually all our good Desires so as without the help of an irresistible Grace they can never produce their effect this will destroy not only the Necessity but the nature of Obedience for Obedience and Compulsion are inconsistent together to Obey is one thing and to be compelled is another not only of a quite different but of a quite contrary Nature Thirdly Since it is supposed at least from this very place of St. Paul that there are such good Desires implanted in us by Nature which yet for all that are everlastingly overborn without being able to attain that end to which they are directed what is this but to represent God as the most cruel and arbitrary Being that can possibly be conceived who does not only plague and torment us in the other World for no reason but his own arbitrary Will and Pleasure but to compleat the Torment of those whom he has predestined to Eternal Flames and to signalize his utmost Vengeance and Displeasure against them He begins the Tragedy in this Life and creates in them a longing after Happiness and Virtue only to make them the more exquisitely Miserable by an everlasting Frustration Fourthly and Lastly St. Paul himself in the beginning of the next Chapter hath these words For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made us free from the law of Sin and Death For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the Flesh God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful Flesh and for Sin condemned Sin in the Flesh that the Righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit In which words it is plain beyond all possible colour of Exception that we are capable by Nature of paying some sort of Obedience to the Laws of God and right reason for whatever is weak is acknowledged to have a comparative though imperfect Strength and whatever wants to be fulfilled or compleated is at the same time acknowledged to have something of its own And so St. Paul tells us elsewhere not that we cannot possibly do any good work or think so much as a good thought of our selves by our own natural ability and power but that we have all Sinned and come short of the glory of God that is that our Obedience though it is not nothing and though it may be syncere yet it is imperfect and stands in need upon account of its defects of some other Expiation than what we are able to make so that after all it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth though we may do both but of God that sheweth Mercy It is so far from being true that by reason of the Original corruption of our natures we are carried forth with such an irresistible violence to all manner of Evil that it needs a perpetual Miracle to hinder the most profligate wretches from being worse than they are which yet Mr. Calvin does expresly assert and I have shewn that by his principles he is bound to do it that on the contrary it is acknowledged by St. Paul himself that there are very strong desires and tendencies to Goodness very powerful inclinations and breathings after Virtue implanted in us by nature and it is manifest by experience that all manner of Wickedness even in those who are arrived at the utmost perfection of degeneracy and Lewdness is at first accompanied with a sensible regret and pain that every man in the cool and unprejudiced retirement of his thoughts condemnes it and finds always in it an harsh and grating Incongruity to the natural grain and byass of his mind Nemo repente fuit turpissimus it requires a great deal of exercise and practice for a man to arrive at such a desperate pitch of Madness and Folly as to sin without any reluctancy or pain without some inward blushing and secret shame without a silent Confession of his Guilt and an earnest though fruitless and impracticable Desire that his lost Innocence might be retrived Every man is naturally desirous of a good name and a good name in the common judgment of all Mankind not excepting those themselves who have most grosly forfeited their Title to it is only to be purchased by worthy Inclinations and virtuous Deeds and for what those Deeds and those Inclinations are we have the same unanimous and universal consent All men admire and envy the Virtues of those who are better than themselves they excuse their own Follies by comparing them with those of other men and they uphold their drooping Spirits which would otherwise be oppressed by the too heavy weight of guilt and shame either by such Intemperance as removes from
in peace according to thy word for mine Eyes have seen thy Salvation which thou hast prepared before the face of all people A light to lighten the Gentiles and the Glory of thy people Israel Was it for this the blessed and Immaculate Virgin the Royal consort of the Eternal Spirit the happy Mother of the Son of God broke out into that thankful Rhapsodie of Joy and gladness My Soul doth magnify the Lord and my Spirit hath rejoyced in God my Saviour for he hath regarded the low Estate of his Handmaiden for behold from henceforth all Generations shall call me Blessed and more to the same or like effect But to what purpose is all this joyful this triumphant Noise this sound of Peace and Happiness and Salvation what reason have all the Generations of the world to call the Virgin Mother Blessed how did the Angel bring good tidings of great Joy which were to be to all People how was he a light to lighten the Gentiles and how a Glory to his people Israel or is he not rather a Reproach to that Stock from which he is descended when he came into the World not so much to save as to destroy Mankind for if so vast a proportion of those miserable Mortals who are born into this world are irreversibly consigned to everlasting Torments without any offence or provocation given on their Parts and if Christ himself be that Unmerciful that Unrelenting Judge who at his second coming the Circuit of the world is to pronounce that cruel Sentence against it and if this second coming cannot be without the intervention of a first then what was his first appearance instead of bringing health and Happiness to men but the beginning of our Sorrows the Introduction to eternal Misery and Pain the mournful Prologue to the Tragedy of Hell and is he not more fitly stiled the Destroyer than the Saviour and the Redeemer of Mankind Again If it be demanded for what reason our ever blessed Lord is said to be the Saviour and Redeemer of the World I answer there are three ways especially by which he may be said to have purchased to himself those Glorious and Magnificent Titles First In that he came into the world to Redeem us from the more than Egyptian Bondage of Sin and Darkness of Ignorance by the precedent of his Example by the light of his Gospel and by the Grace of his Spirit working in the Hearts of his true and faithful Disciples now all Example is in vain of which there can be no Imitation and there can be no Imitation where there can be no Endeavour nor any Endeavour without an inward Principle of Self-activity and Self-motion nor any Self-activity without Freedom they being indeed but two words for one and the same thing Secondly He redeems us from punishment by his Satisfaction or by the merit of that propitiatory Sacrifice which he made of himself upon the Cross for the Sins of all Mankind the atonement of which Sacrifice is apply'd to all who by a lively Faith sincere Repentance and hearty endeavour to please God by obeying his Commandments fulfill those Conditions by virtue of which this application is made but now where there is no Sin there needs no satisfaction and where there is no Liberty there can be no Sin St. Paul himself tells us Rom. 4. 15. That where no Law is there is no Transgression And the 1 St. Joh. c. 3. v. 4. That whosoever committeth Sin transgresseth also the Law for Sin is the transgression of the Law but every Law does manifestly suppose a freedom in him to whom it is prescribed for Laws are given in vain to them that cannot Obey and where men must Obey whether they will or no there the promulgation of a Law is needless because our obedience is not paid to the Law it self but it is an unavoidable submission to that irresistable Grace by which our non-complyance is rendered an impossible thing if then there can be no Law without a supposition of Liberty nor any Transgression without a Law then it is manifest according to St. Paul's own Concession that without the same liberty there can be no Transgression which was the thing to be proved And indeed how can it ever seem a likely matter that the Blood of the daily morning and evening Sacrifice of the Sin and the Trespass Offerings of the Passovers the Peace-Offerings and the Holocausts or Burnt Offerings the Blood of Rams and Bulls and Goats the Blood of Beasts and of Birds should with so great cost and expence such indefatigable toyl and labour so much address and ceremony be streaming perpetually under the Mosaick Law as a pompous and magnificent Introduction to that great Sacrifice which was in the fulness of time to answer and abolish the shadows of the legal Administration and all this by way of expiation for those who never had offended Or did the Jews undergo all this troublesome and ceremonious Fatigue Did Christ himself suffer upon the Cross only for the Sin of our first Parent imputed without any proper guilt of ours to his Posterity No certainly God is too just to condemn all the World for what they could not avoid and the Blood of Christ was too precious to be spilt only for the single Transgression of one single Man How absurd How ridiculous is it to say that he dyed for those Sins which we never committed Or that he rose again for that justification which by reason of our innocence we did not need Or is it not better to acknowledge as the Scripture does that upon account of our own personal Guilt as well as that of our first Parent we all lay in Darkness and in the shadow of Death and that we all have sinned and come short of the Glory of God and that for this reason God himself took our Flesh and dwelt amongst us that he might be to us in the nature of a legal Redeemer who was always to be of the Kindred of the party to be redeemed Which custom of the Jews God could not any way so properly imitate as by taking our Flesh and our Nature upon him Neither will the intercession of Christ which is the third way of saving Mankind according to this Hypothesis make any better sense than his satisfaction does for if we will believe these very Writers themselves the satisfaction of Christ is alone available for all the Elect and for the Re-Probate it is in vain to make use of any intercession Therefore I speak it not only with a becoming reverence but scarce without trembling what a ridiculous thing do these Men make of the Mediatory Office of Christ in Heaven who spends so many Ages in a sollicitous but fruitless intercession at the right hand of God either for those that cannot do amiss or for those that cannot possibly be saved Whereas if we follow the truth it self rather than the fancies of particular Men of how great name or authority soever nothing