delusion to pretend that you are accused for making God a sinner We charge no such thing on you But only for making him the chief insuperable cause of all the sins of men and Devils 655. Pag. 400. he plainly professeth that the Will as a physical agent is the cause of the act as physical and as under a Law and that act is against the Law so he is the cause of the Malitia actûs and culpablo So that God causing by his own confession both Act and Law there is no modest subtersuge left for his not openly professing that he asserteth God to be the cause of all sin the principal cause both as to matter and form 656. The rest of that Disputation striketh me with such horror in the reading that I confess I have not the patience to proceed any further â—n it nor shall further thus exercise my Readers patience The case is plain Either Hobbs or Free-will permitted must carry the cause in the case of sin There is no middle way He that will read Ruiz and Rutherfords answer impartially needeth no more of mine for the confutation of his vain responses 657. But cap. 29. p. 484. he falleth also on our most Learned and Judicious Dr. Field because in his lib. 3. c. 3. of the Church he contradicteth his opinion and it must move just indignation in the Reader that he addeth idque probare conatur contra reformatas Ecclesias Unworthy injury to the Reformed Churches more than to the worthy Dr. Field How falsly are they interessed in your unhappy cause See the Synod of Dort where there is not a word for it Is one Twiss with his Rutherford or Maccovius or a few such the Reformed Churches Let the Reader peruse the Articles of the Churches of England Scotland France and all the rest and see where he can find your Doctrine of Predetermination unto sin Even Jansenius himself is against it among the Papists when his Dominican Predecessors are the Fathers of it Nothing more common with English Divines than as you did before your self to explicate Gods causing the acts of sinners by the similitude of the Riders spurring a halting Horse or the Suns making a Dunghill stink which only speak the cause which we call universal and is the very thing which we assert And it is most unsavourily done to get into the Chair and magisterially say Fieldus vir alioqui doctus in his controversiis minime se versatâ—â— esse prodit Zumelem * * * Zumel in Disp 1. Thom. de Voluntat hom lib. arb pag. 219 220. Quod Dâ—â—s non sit causa peccati though he speak cautesously and as in other mens names yet concludeth plainly that God is but the Causa Universalis of sin and that man is the specifying determining cause even que universalem determinat ad speciem concursus actus ipsius sive solum determinet eam formaliter ad speciem c. Yet this is a high Thomist and defender of absolute grace non satis intelligit quippe non satis gâ—â—rus controversiarum Arminianarum scripsit dum aulam Arminiâ—â— plus aequo faventem haberent †††Thus magisterially did good Dr. Twisse censure Junius and Vossius his Son-in-law as men unskilled in Scholastick Divinity who were both most excellent men and hit upon the reconciling truth above most in their age Junius his Discourse of predetermination is one of the first that ever I found that excellency in and with his Irenicon is most worthy of great esteem But how easie is it for a man to overvalue himself and contemn another I highly value the piety in Mr. â—â—therfords Letters I am no fit arbiter ingeniorum But when I hear other men say that one Field was more Judicious than many Rutherfords I câ—â—fess by reading their several writings I find no temptation to deny it And why should Field and consequently Davenant Usher Carlton Mâ—ton Hall the Synod of Dort and I think the far greatest part of Protestants I verily think fifty if not an hundred for one who are against you be made odious by the supposition of being not far enough from Arminians rather than Maceovius Twisse and Rutherford take it for a disgrace to hold the same opinions against Gods Holiness which the Dâ—â—nican Fryars hold who have been the bloody Masters of the Inquisition and murdered so many thousand Protestants or Waldenses and Alligenses And that which he saith of Fields writing when the Court favoured Arminianism is notoriously false and such insinuations unworthy of so good a man as the speaker Fields Works were printed singly before they were printed together in Folio And his fifth Book was printed Aâ—no 1610. and the words cited are in the third printed before And the Synod of Dort was called An. 1618. and sate 1619. also And King James was a zealous suppressor of Arminianism and sent five or six Divines thither to that end And long after in King Charles his dayes Pet. Heylin in the life of Archbishop Laud will tell you that the Arminiâ—â— Bishops then were but five Neale Laud Buckeridge Corbet and Howsâ—â— to whom Learned Montague was after added So that they durst not trust their Cause with a Convocation Field then shall be a most Judicion worthy Divine when partiality hath said its worst 658. And what is his error Why he saith that it 's a contradiction to say that God causeth the Act in all its state which is the Materialâ— peccati and causeth not the formale which is inseparable A foul error indeed to tell you that he that causeth the subjectum fundamentâ—â— rationem fundandi terminum causeth the relation and that he that maketh an European white and an African black causeth the dissimilitâ—de and so doth he that maketh the straight Rule and the crooked line thâ— forbidding Law and the forbidden act 659. Were it not that the necessity requireth such work because such Books are in mens hands I should think I had injured the Reader by thâ—â— much For my work is not to confute Books but to assert sure reconciling truths Otherwise the confutation of the rest of that Book for Gods willing and causing all forbidden acts in their full state and the existence of sin is most easily answered SECT XX. The old Reconciling Doctrine of Augustine Prosper and Fulgentius And first Prosper ad Gallorum Qu. 660. IT is a strange thing to me that when Pelagius Julian Faustus c. thought Augustine a Novelist and as Usher asserteth would have fastned the title of Predestination-Hereticks on his followers and almost all confess that Augustine was if not the first yet the most notable publick Vindicator of absolute Predestination and Grace yet the Judgement of Austin with his Disciples Prosper and Fulgentius doth not serve turn to quiet if not to end these controversies among those who profess to be their followers when as they have so copiously and plainly written upon the
si tamen Deus solus illâ—â— causaret sicut potest illum causare solus non esset actus neque odiâ—m Deâ— vel mendacium But whatever he thought I have before answered this difficulty of the Entity of the acts of sin I mention Ariminensis judgement the rather because the Learned Calvinists commend him And I remember when I once askt Arch-Bishop Usher which of the Schoolmen he most valued as the soundest he said Greg. Ariminensis 714. Is not all this doctrine from these men cited conformable to the doctrine of the Synod of Dort Who in the conclusion name many positions which they and all the Reformed Churches with them do toto pectâ—re detestari abhorr with all their hearts Among which one is Deum nâ—â—â— puroque Voluntatis arbitrio absque omni peccati ullius respectu vel intuitâ— maximam mundi partem ad aeternam damnationem praedestinasse creasse And another is Eodem modo quo electio fons est causá fidei ac bâ—norum operum reprobationem esse causam infidelitatis impietatu Another is Multos fidelium infantes ab uberibus matrum innoxios abriâ—â— tyrannice in Gehennam praecipitari adeo ut iis nec Baptismus nec Ecclesiae in corum baptismo preces prodesse queant And it is much to be noted that in conclusion they desire all men to judge of the Doctrine of the Reformed Churches not by Calumnies nor by the Private sayings of some Dâ—ctors antâ—ent or later but by the publick Confessions of the Churches â—â—â— and by the Declaration of this Synod Therefore not by the extreams of Beza Piscator Spanhâ—mâ—â—s Twisse and Rutherford but by what the Articles of the Churches subscribed by the Pastors do contain Otherwise we shall be far more foolish than the Papists who will not expose their Church to obioquy or division by standing to the sayings of Alvarez or Molina or any private Doctor whosoever 715. And it is notorious to any impartial-peâ—user that the whole foâ—â— of the Doctrine of the Church of England in the Articles Catechism Liturgie Homilies and all their publick Writings was drawn up by men of Augustines judgement who were for absolute Election and Universal sufficient Redemption and Grace ad posse but for no Reprobation but on foresight of sin 716. And it is greatly to be noted with grief of heart that among Good men it is partly General prejudice but chiefly the Interest of their Reputation with those among whom they live which is the great impediment of the Churches Concord The name of a Calvinist is so hateful among the Papists that even the Predeterminant Dominicans who go higher than ever Calvin did and the Jansenists who go as high in the main cause and higher than the Synod of Dort do yet find it a matter of necessity to rail at Luther Zuinglius Calvin c. lest their party should think that they are turned Hereticks And the Protestants that agree in some points with the Papists are fain to rack the Papists words to a worse sense than is meant lest their fierce opposers should make men believe that they are half Papists or err with them And the moderate Calvinists are fain to stretch hard that they may seem to differ more from the Arminians than they do lest a self-conceited reviler should blot their names with the suspicion of Arminianism O doleful case of all the Churches But where Protestants are few and made odious by the Papists as differing from them further than they do there Reputation is not so great a temptation And there they freely confess their concord where they do not differ And so in Colloquia Torunensi c. 4. de grat depuls Calum sect 5 6. all the Reformed Churches of Poland with Joh. Bergius the Duke of Brandenburgs Chaplain and others did profess Falso accusamur quasi Mortis Meriti Christi prâ— omnibus sufficientiam negemus aut virtutem imminuamus cum potius idem hic quod ipsa Synodus Tridentina ses 6. cap. 3. doceamus viz. Etsi Christus pro omnibus mortuns sit non omnes tamen mortis ejus beneficium recipere sed eos duntaxat quibus meritum passionis ejus communicatur Causam etiam seu culpam cur non omnibus communicetur nequaquam in merito morte Christi sed in ipsis hominibus esse fatemur Here was no partial interest to make them afraid of being suspected to comply with Papists 717. I end with this request to all my Brethren who by their averseness to the Doctrine of Common or Universal Grace do keep open the Churches dangerous wounds 1. That they will give Scripture leave to rule their judgements and try whether it be possible to build special Grace on any other foundation than presupposed common Grace and whether to deny this be not to deny the very tenor of the Gospel and pull up the foundations of our Religion 2. That they will but read over Davenants two dissertations and the second Tome at least of the Learned Dallaeus his Apology against Spaâ—hemius that is The words of an hundred and twenty antient Writers and Councils beginning at Clemens Romanus and ending with Theophylact and sixty three Protestant Divines and Synods to which I think I could add as many more that speak more plainly to the point or near it And if after all this they have so great a zeal to contract the Glory of Gods Mercy and deny his Grace as that they will cast off the judgement of all the antient Churches of Christ and so many later rather than acknowledge it I shall cease disputing with them and seek to quench the fire which they kindle in the Churches of Christ by Prayers and Tears The End of the First Part. THE Second Part OF GODS GOVERNMENT AND MORAL WORKS WHEREIN Of his Laws or Covenants of Redemption of sufficient and effectual Grace of Faith Justification Works Merits Perseverance certainty of Salvation c. so far as the Church-troubling-Controversies do require LONDON Printed for Nevil Simmons at the Princes Arms in St. Pauls Church-Yard 1675. The CONTENTS of these THESES cannot be well given you without reciting too great a part of them But rather than none take this imperfect summary following Sect. I. OF mans first State and the first Law and its penalty Whether Adam had a promise of Life and whether that Promise or Covenant be now ceased as to all men Page 27. Sect. II. Of the first Edition of the Law or Covenant of Grace that it was made with all Mankind in Adam and Noah Of the Promise to Abraham Of the Terms of the first Edition of the Universal Covenant of Grace How far it is a Law of Nature How far those without the Israelitish Church were under it Of the Israelites Covenant pag. 31. Sect. III. Of Christ's Incarnation and our Redemption The Law of Mediation What Christ undertook for us How far he represented usâ— The true nature of his Satisfaction Of his Righteousness and Merits pag.
in the threatning And that we cannot say that Justice made it necessary to God to punish the least vain thought or remissness with the greatest punishment or damnation But as to the uncertainties 1. With what degree of punishment God in Justice must or would have punished a vain thought or any sin consistent with his habitual prevalent love 2. Or whether a vain ☞ thought must needs have separated Soul and Body or caused that which we call Hell 3. Or whether God could in Justice have pardoned that vain thought upon less satisfaction than the sufferings of Christ These with many others are questions too hard for me what ever they may be to wiser men But I am satisfied that God would never have damned in Hell any Soul that had the habitual predominant love of God though culpably remiss and otherwise sinful while he remained such yea that Hell and such love of God are inconsistent And therefore if any such sin would have damned Adam it must be by further quenching and expelling the Spirit of Grace or forfeiting and losing Divine assistance and so first losing that habit of love The rest I leave to the more illuminated II. Now as to the M. S. said to be written by a young man of New England deceased M. W. it hath so much accurateness that in reading it I greatly lament the Authors death before maturity and converse had rectified some of his notions and he had longer improved his excellent understanding for the Church And because my Doctrine is particularly opposed in it I shall stay to animadvert on the substance of the Book And it may be reduced to these Propositions 1. The great fundamental point of it is That man was made to glorifie Gods Justice for ever Animad This is a great truth not well considered by many But it is but a part of the truth which is That man was made to glorifie Gods Vitâ—â— Power Wisdom and Love and is governed eminently by Wisdom making ORDER and justly keeping it together with mercy because the glory of Holiness and Love also is the end Which I have more carefully opened hereafter § 2. M. S. The reason of special government is That man is causa consilip Though as he desireth and seeketh good in general he is but a natural Agent And therefore Twisse erreth in saying that God â—iay punish an innocent man because he may afflict a beast Ans 1. By causa consilio he meaneth a rational free Agent having an Intellect and Free-will This indeed maketh and proveth man a subject made to be morally governed But when he had laid all his stress on this Free-will under the name of causa consilio he went too far in seeming with Gibieuf whom he citeth and followeth as his great Light to confine the name of true liberty to the Amplitude and Holiness of the Will which is another kind of Liberty And as Armatus truly saith Gibieuf was fitter for a scraphick pious Discourse in a Platonick strain than for such Controversies 2. As Rada and other Scotists well prove there is no Act of the Will even to good in general which is not free though some be necessary and the inclination is natural and not free 3. Yea he proveth that there is no such thing as a Volition of any good ingenere saving as the generical nature of good is found in some particular in esse cognito 4. Twisse was not so weak as to call that pâ—nishment which is not for sin but calleth it Affliction or Cruciatum only And he speaketh not what God may do by his ordinate Will But I think that you are in the right and he in the wrong because the very making us men and so governed Subjects is a declaration of Gods ordinate Will not to make us miserable but for sin 3. M. S. Adam's whole man was sanctified and so fitted to obey and to glorifie Justice His free-will was not an indifferency but as Gib that noble virtue of his Soul by which he could go above all created good so that Liberty and Eupraxy or Obedience are all one But we cannot stir an inch to God above the Creature Liberty is to imitate God whose Will closeth with himself and resteth in himself for ever And mutability is but an adjunct of our Liberty An. I have better opened and distinguished Liberty before Lib. 1. Natural Liberty is to be distinguished from moral which you describe and vehemently assert the former under the name of causa consilio that cannot be forced But meer indifferency or mutability is no Liberty it self 4. M. S. Adam was not made with notions in his Mind no more than with colours in his Eyes but he was made able and fit to see God in the frame of Nature especially in his own Will as inclined to universal good An. Scaliger and others think that Idea's are born in us which maketh the Chicken fly at the shadow of the Kite c. But I rather say as you that it is but a Disposition which will so easily act that some call it an Idea and it is the same thing that they mean while they differ about the name § 5. M. S. Do this and live is the way that Justice will be glorified in And that doing would merit life Adam either knew by nature or supernaturally at least was confirmed in it by supernatural revelation An. This is all true § 6. M. S. Do this and live as the only terms of life are a Catholick and Theological axiom Not the words but Energetick Wisdom printed on the frame And the meaning is close with the last end or with the true Universal God as such which is the sum of the Decalogue Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart c. The Wills closing with God And Obedience is in the subordinate faculties executing the pleasure of the Will An. 1. Obedience is first in the Will it self 2. Tou do not intelligibly acquaint us whether by Do this you mean any sincere closing with God as God and our End above all Creatures as the godly now do though with culpable remissness and imperfections or only the most perfect Love and Obedience without any imperfection or remissness or vain irregular thought that is culpable But by Do this I perceive you mean Take God for thy God and love adore and trust him § 7. M. S. This was to be expressed by eating of the Tree of Life and not of that of Good and Evil sacramentally to acknowledge also the Soveraignty of God An. 1. All Obedience formally respecteth Gods Soveraignty 2. No doubt the Trees were symbolical and the remembrance of them should yet teach us to prefer living to God before a selfish disturstful needless knowledge the increase of which increaseth sorrow 3. But that Adam was commanded to eat of the Tree of Life I cannot prove unless the general obligation to choose the best was as a Command § 8. M. S. To be
tempted to doubt of the certainty of this or that Book words or reading it followeth not that he must therefore doubt of the Christian Faith 11. A thousand Texts of Scripture may be not known and understood by one that is Justified but all the Baptismal Articles and Covenant must be understood competently by all that will be saved 12. Those Church-Tyrants Dogmatists or superstitious ones who deny the sufficiency of this Test and Symbol made by Christ and his Spirit to its proper use to be the Symbol of such as in Love and Communion we are to take for Christians do subvert the summ of Christs Gospel and Law and do worse than they that add to or alter the lesser parts of the Word of God 13. Therefore our further Additional Confessions must be only to other subordinate ends As 1. To satisfie other Churches that doubt of our right understanding the faith 2. To be an enumeration of Verities which Preachers shall not have leave to preach against though they subscribe them not 14. Object Hereticks may profess the Baptismal Creed Answ 1. And Hereticks may profess any words that you can impose on them taking them in their own sense All the Councils are not large enough to keep out subscribing Hereticks We must not make new Symbols Rules and Laws as oft as Knaves will falsly profess or break the old ones there being none that may not be falsly professed and violated 2. Many subscribe to the whole Scriptures that yet are Hereticks 3. Church Governours are for this to cast out those or punish them who preach teach and live contrary to the certain and sufficient Rule which they profess Judicatures are not to make new Laws but to punish men for breaking Laws A heart-Heretick-only is no Heretick in foro Ecclesiae He that teacheth Heresie must be proved so to do and judged upon proof which may be done without new additional Symbols Rules or Laws of faith So that all this contradicts not the sufficiency of the Baptismal Creed as the Symbol of Christian Love Communion and Concord I thought meet to add this more fully to what I said in the Epistle to convince men of the true terms of Union and of the heinous sin of all the sorts of Adding and Corrupting overdoers that divide us THE PREFACE AGAINST CLERGIE MENS Contentions AND Church-distracting Controversies THAT the Churches of Christ are dolefully tempted and distracted by Divisions no man will deny that knoweth them That the Clergie is not only greatly culpable herein but the chief cause cannot be hid But which part of the Clergie it is and what be their dividing Errors and Crimes and how they should be cured is indeed easie for the truly faithful and impartial Spectators to perceive but exceeding hard as experience tells us to make the Guilty throughly know and harder to do much effectually for the cure For the error and sin which is the true cause is its own defence and repelleth and frustrateth the Remedies And so each party layeth it from themselves on others and hate all that accuse them while they are the sharpest and perhaps most unjust accusers of the rest I shall here freely tell the Reader the History of my own Conceptions of these matters and then my present thoughts of the Causes of all these Calamities and the Cure I. I was born and bred of Parents piously affected but of no such knowledge or acquaintance as might engage them in any Controversies or disaffect them to the present Government of the Church or cause them to scruple Conformity to its Doctrine Worship or Discipline In this way I was bred my self but taught by my Parents and God himself to make conscience of sin and to fear God and to discern between the Godly and the notoriously wicked For which my Parents and I were commonly derided as Puritans the Spirit of the Vulgar being commonly then fired with hatred and scorn of serious godliness and using that name as their instrument of reproach which was first forged against the Nonconformists only And the Clergie where I lived being mostly only Readers of the Liturgie and some others that rather countenanced than reproved this course I soon confined my Reverence to a very few among them that were Learned and Godly but Conformists and for going out of my Parish to hear them my reproach increased About eighteen or nineteen years of age I fell acquainted with some persons half Conformists and half Non-conformists who for fear of severities against private Meetings met with great secresie only to repeat the publick Sermons and Pray and by Pious Conference edifie each other Their Spirits and Practice was so savoury to me that it kindled in me a distaste of the Prelates as Persecutors who troubled and ruined such persons while ignorant Drunkards and Worldlings were tolerated in so many Churches yea and countenanced for crying down such persons and crying up Bishops Liturgie and Conformity Before I was aware my affections began to solicite my understanding to judge of the Things and Causes by the Persons where the difference was very great But yet my first Teachers kept my judgement for Conformity as Lawful though not Desirable had we Liberty till I was ordained But soon after a new acquaintance provoked me to a deeper study of the whole Controversie than I had undertaken before which left me perswaded that the use of Liturgie and Ceremonies was lawful in that case of necessity except the Baptismal use of the Cross and the subscription to all things c. But in 1640. the Oath called Et Caetera being offered the Ministry forced me to a yet more searching Study of the case of our Diocesane Prelacie which else I had never been like to have gainsaid At a meeting of Ministers to debate the case it fell to Mr. Christopher Cartwrights lot and mine to be the Disputers and the issue of all that and my studies was that I setled in the approbation of the Episcopacy asserted by Ignatius yea and Cyprian but such a dissent from the English frame as I have given account of in my Disputations of Church Government My genius was inquisitive and earnestly desirous to know the truth my helps for Piety were greater than my helps for Learning of which I had not much besides Books sickness helpt my seriousness keeping me still in expectation of death All my reverenced acquaintance save one cryed down Arminianism as the Pelagian Heresie and the Enemy of Grace I quickly plunged my self into the study of Dr. Twisse and Amesius and Camero and Pemble and others on that subject By which my mind was setled in prejudice against Arminianism without a clear understanding of the case whereupon I felt presently in my mind a judgement of those that were for Arminianism as bad or dangerous adversaries to the Church and specially of the then ruling Bishops which yet I think I had not-entertained had I not taken them withal for the great Persecutors of Godly able
Ministers and serious Christians not only for Ceremonies but for holy practices of life Being under these apprehensions when the Wars began though the Cause it self lay in Civil Controversies between King and Parliament yet the thoughts that the Church and Godliness it self was deeply in danger by Persecution and Arminianism did much more to byass me to the Parliaments side than the Civil interest which at the heart I little regarded At last after two years abode in a quiet Garrison upon the Invitation of some Orthodox Commanders in Fairfax's Army and by the Mission of an Assembly of Divines I went after Naseby Fight into that Army as the profest Antagonist of the Sectaries and Innovators who we all then too late saw designed those changes in the Church and State which they after made I there met with some Arminians and more Antinomians These printed and preached as the Doctrine of Free Grace that all men must presently believe that they are Elect and Justified and that Christ Repented and Believed for them as Saltmarsh writeth I had a little before engaged my self as a Disputer against Universal Redemption against two antient Ministers in Coventry Mr. Cradock and Mr. Diamond that were for it But these new notions called me to new thoughts which clearly shewed me the difference between Christs part and Mans the Covenant of Innocency with its required Righteousness and the Covenant of Grace with its required and imputed righteousness I had never read one Socinian nor much of any Arminians but I laid by prejudice and I went to the Scripture where its whole current but especially Matth. 25. did quickly satisfie me in the Doctrine of Justification and I remembred two or three things in Dr. Twisse whom I most esteemed which inclined me to moderation in the five Articles 1. That he every where professeth that Christ so far dyed for all as to purchase them Justification and Salvation conditionally to be given them if they believe 2. That he reduceth all the Decrees to two de fine de mediis as the healing way 3. That he professeth that Arminius and we and all the Schoolmen are agreed that there is no necessity consequentis laid on us by God in Predestination but only necessity consequentiae or Logical but in Election I shall here suspend 4. That the Ratio Reatus in our Original Sin is first founded in our Natural propagation from Adam and but secondarily from the positive Covenant of God 5. That Faith is but Causa dispositiva Justificationis and so is Repentance These and such things more I easilier received from him than I could have done from another But his Doctrine of Permission and Predetermination and Causa Mali quickly frightned me from assent And though Camero's moderation and great clearness took much with me I soon perceived that his Resolving the cause of sin into necessitating objects and temptations laid it as much on God in another way as the Predeterminants do And I found all godly mens Prayers and Sermons run quite in another strain when they chose not the Controversie as pre-engaged In this case I wrote my first Book called Aphorisms of Justification and the Covenants c. And being young and unexercised in writing and my thoughts yet undigested I put into it many uncautelous words as young Writers use to do though I think the main doctrine of it sound I intended it only against the Antinomians But it sounded as new and strange to many Upon whose dissent or doubtings I printed my desire of my friends Animadversions and my suspension of the Book as not owned by me nor any more to be printed till further considered and corrected Hereupon I had the great benefit of Animadversions from many whom I accounted the most judicious and worthy persons that I had heard of First my friend Mr. John Warren began next came Mr. G. Lawson's the most judicious Divine that ever I was acquainted with in my judgement yet living and from whom I learned more than from any man next came Mr. Christopher Cartwright's then of York the Author of the Rabbinical Comment on Gen. chap. 1 2 3. and of the Defence of King Charles against the Marquess of Worcester Answers and Rejoinders to these took me up much time next came a most judicious and friendly MS. from Dr. John Wallis and another from Mr. Tombes and somewhat I extorted from Mr. Burges the answers to which two last are published To all these Learned men I owe very great thanks and I never more owned or published my Aphorisms but the Cambridge Printer stole an Impression without my knowledge And though most of these differed as much from one another at least as from me yet the great Learning of their various Writings and the long Study which I was thereby engaged in in answering and rejoyning to the most was a greater advantage to me to receive accurate and digested conceptions on these subjects than private Students can expect My mind being thus many years immerst in studies of this nature and I having also long wearied my self in searching what Fathers and Schoolmen have said of such things before us and my Genius abhorring Confusion and Equivocals I came by many years longer study to perceive that most of the Doctrinal Controversies among Protestants that I say not in the Christian World are far more about equivocal words than matter and it wounded my soul to perceive what work both Tyrannical and unskilful Disputing Clergie-men had made these thirteen hundred years in the world And experience since the year 1643. till this year 1675. hath loudly called to me to Repent of my own prejudices sidings and censurings of causes and persons not understood and of all the miscarriages of my Ministry and life which have been thereby caused and to make it my chief work to call men that are within my hearing to more peaceable thoughts affections and practices And my endeavours have not been in vain in that the Ministers of the Countrey where I lived were very many of such a peaceable temper though since cast out and a great number more through the Land by Gods Grace rather than any endeavours of mine are so minded But the Sons of the Coal were exasperated the more against me and accounted him to be against every man that called all men to Love and Peace and was for no man as in a contrary way And now looking daily in this posture when God calleth me hence summoned by an incurable Disease to hasten all that ever I will do in this World being uncapable of prevailing with the present Church disturbers I do apply my self to posterity leaving them the sad warning of their Ancestors distractions as a Pillar of Salt and acquainting them what I have found to be the cause of our Calamities and therein they will find the Cure themselves II. I Have oft taken the boldness constrainedly to say that I doubt not but the Contentions of the Clergie have done far more
will be an universal Concord in very MANY or UNCERTAIN UNNECESSARY things And O that I could write it on all mens hearts or doors at least that The Christian world will never have Concord but in a FEW CERTAIN NECESSARY things Therefore Paul said to the Corinthians 2 Cor. 11. 2 3. I am jealous of you with Godly jealousie For I have espoused you to one husband c. But I fear lest by any means as the Serpent beguiled Eve though his subtilty so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in or towards Christ O mark these words all ye contentious Church TYRANTS DOGMATISTS and SUPERSTITIOUS ones Read and study them well God laid down the terms of the Churches Concord in seven Unities 1. One Body or Church Catholick 2. One Spirit or Holy Ghost as the soul of that Church 3. One Hope or Heavenly felicity hoped for 4. One Lord of the Church our Head and Saviour 5. One Faith or Creed or Symbol of our belief and Belief thereof 6. One Baptismal Covenant 7. And one God and Father of us all who is above all through all and in us all Eph. 4. 3 4 5 6. And it is the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace that on these terms we are charged to keep v. 2 3. with all lowliness and meekness with long-suffering forbearing one another in love But now cometh the Serpent note 1. The author and by subtilty 2. Note the means even as he beguiled Eve 3. Note the precedent which was by promising her more knowledge and exaltation to be as God and he corrupteth mens minds 4. Mark the effect though it is knowledge and advancement of mind that he promiseth and pretendeth Even by drawing them as to higher POWER KNOWLEDGE or HOLINESS from the Christian simplicity 5. Mark what the Corruption of Religion is And what is this Christian SIMPLICITY which they forsake and how are they thus Corrupted from it I. The Church TYRANT departeth from the SIMPLICITY of Church Government first and will not hear Christs vehement charge Luk. 22. With you it shall not be so He cannot understand such Texts because he would not Hence how unlike is the Secular-Papal and Patriarchal state to the Ministry appointed and described by Christ To reduce them to that they think is to be enemies to the Church And do they not then take Christ for their Capital enemy because they are enemies to humility mortification and the Cross Phil. â— 18. To cross bearing not to cross making The Papists think that Greg the seventh that took down Princes was the most glorious instrument of the Churches exaltation And by turning all to corporeal Glory they lose hearts and destroy the souls whom they profess to save And having first corrupted GOVERNMENT from the Primitive simplicity and made Princes their Lictors as Grotius speaks in that excellent Epistle newly translated by Mr. Barksdale they next corrupt DOCTRINE and WORSHIP consequently For TYRANTS must have their Wills in every thing and numerous and needless Laws and Canons must be made to shew their power and fulfil their wills that they may be Law-givers and a Rule to all the World And when they have made a seeming Necessity of doing things unnecessary then to plead the Necessity which they have made is the summ of all their arguments And they that are against strict and precise adhering to the Scriptures or observance of Gods own commands are yet so strict for obedience to their proud imperious wills that they perswade themselves and others that without it there can be no order no unity no peace but rebellion and confusion And so they cry up Obedience Obedience that their Idol wills may be bowed to by all without controul And when they are meer Usurpers and use no Power given them by God they yet get the advantage of making all odious that obey them not in the least and greatest matters by the names of schism unruliness or such like O say the Papal Usurpers The Church must be obeyed or there will be no order Disobedience in small matters is no small sin when they have set up an Idol power against Christ as if to disobey him whose Laws they make void by their Traditions and Usurpations were a lesser fault And when they have departed as far from the Christian simplicity in Doctrine Government and Worship as their voluminous Councils and Decretals and Missals differ from the ancient simple Christianity and have made as many snares and engines to divide and tear the Church of Christ as there are noxious that I say not Needless Laws Canons and Decrees imposed as necessary to peace and concord then no mens mouths are more opened against schism when they have unavoidably caused it yea are the greatest schismaticks And no men call so loud for Unity and Concord as they that have first made it a thing impossible Let none think that I am speaking against any true Church-Government or faithful Pastors But I appeal to the Consciences of these Papal Tyrants 1. Whether it would not be far easier for Christians to Agree in A FEW PLAIN and NECESSARY things of Christs own Institution than in a multitude of humane decrees and articles composed in words more lyable to Controversie Will not more subscribe to the Creed than to all the Councils 2. Have they not room enough to shew their Power and work enough to do in seeing to the execution of Christs own Universal Laws and preserving meer Order and Decency in undetermined circumstances that all may be done to edification 3. Doth not every needless Oath and Subscription by which they would tye men faster to themselves in controvertible cases plainly tend to undermine themselves and keep up still a conscientious party against them For while men have nothing to do but live quietly under a Government they will be glad of peace But when they are put to Subscribe Declare Covenant and Swear that all this is good or lawful or that they will never be against it it sets men unavoidably on the deepest studies of the case and so all the people are set on trying and judging of that which else they would never have meddled with For what honest man will say swear or promise he knoweth not what Even as some crafty Rebels would undermine Princes by drawing them to put the controverted parts of their Prerogative into the Subjects Oaths that so they may make all the people Students and Judges of the cause and unavoidably make factions and dissenters that else would have lived quietly if they might so do the Papal Clergie ruine themselves by such over-doing impositions I remember Lampridius tells us that Alexander Severus that great enemy of injustice was so severe that he would have made a Law to regulate mens Apparel But Ulpian changed his mind by telling him that Many Laws cause Divisions and make occasions of disobedience They cry out There will be no order if Ministers and people be
left to their own discretion in such and such circumstantials But do they dream of Perfect Concord on earth and that men of such various Interests tempers educations converse and degrees of knowledge should not differ in a word or gesture Our English Rulers make no Laws what Gesture shall be used in singing Psalms or in Hearing Sermons and there is no division or great disorder in them But if on pretence of nearer Concord they should tye all to one Gesture this or that we should presently find it an engine of division And O how many such Engines have the Papal Clergie made and used long and to what purpose To silence faithful Ministers to torment faithful Christians in the Inquisitions to brand the best men with the names of Hereticks and Schismaticks to gratifie all profaneness and malignity to quench brotherly love and to tear the Church into pieces And no experience will make them wiser II. And the DOGMATISTS also have done their part by departing from the Simplicity of the Christian Doctrine to set the Christian world together by the ears Of which Hilary hath written sharply against the Making of new Creeds not sparing to tell them that even the Nicene Fathers led others the way And Hierome wonders that they that were for the word hypostasis questioned his Faith as if he that had been Baptized had been without a Faith or Creed which all at Baptism do profess But this will not serve turn to these Corrupters Councils Doctors and Schoolmen have been led by the temptation of more subtle-knowledge to be Wise and Orthodox over-much till the Churches Faith is as large as all the Decrees of General Councils de side at the least and the Churches Laws a great deal larger And what abundance of dubious Confessions Declarations or Decrees are now to be subscribed or believed and justified before a man can have his Baptismal birth-right even the Love peace and Church-Communion bequeathed to him as a Christian by Christ And now controversal writings fill our Libraries by Cart-loads And a Use of Confutation is a great part of most Sermons among the Papists Lutherans and many others And men are bred up in the Universities to a Militant striving kind of life that their work may be to make Plain Christians seem unlearned dolts and dissenters seem odious or suspected men and themselves to be the wise and Orthodox persons and triumphant over all the erroneous that were it not for these Contenders would destroy the And so Ministers are armed against Ministers Churches against Churches Christians against Christians yea Princes against Princes and Countreys against Countreys by wrangling contentious Clergie men And O what an injury is â—t Young Students are almost necessitated to waste much of their lives which should be spent in preparing them to promote faith holiness and Love in reading over multitudes of these wrangling writers to know which of them is in the right And most readers catch the disease hereby themselves And those few that at great cost and labour come to the bottom of the differences do perceive that the Proud Opiniators have striven partly about unrevealed or unnecessary things but chiefly about meer ambiguous words and arbitrary humane notions and multitudes condemn and revile each other while they mean the same things and do not know it One writeth a Learned Book against such a party and another confuteth such an Adversary especially about Predestination Redemption Free-will Humane Power Grace Merit Justification Pardon Imputation c. and then many read and applaud all as excelently done Alas for the low estate of the Clergie that while when a truly discerning man perceiveth that it is but a striving about unexplained words for the most part And thus being Over-wise in pretences of Zeal for Truth and under-wise in understanding it and departing from Christian simplicity of doctrine and even deriding the Christian Creed hath made even some honest men become dividing Engineers and their Articles and Controversies the Churches calamity III. And what Practical misguided zeal about worship hath done almost all Sects Novatians Anabaptists in Germany and here and the various sort of Churches that refuse Communion with one another and that condemn or cast out dissenters from them and preach and talk and backbite their brethren into the odium or distaste of their seduced auditors the bitter invectives in Pulpit talk and press of the several Pastors and people against each other and worse than words where they have power all these speak so loud as may spare me the labour of any further discovery and calls us all to make it the matter of our lamentation And what shall I say in the conclusion now I am near to my departure from this contentious world but sound a Retreat to all these unhappy militants that will not let Holiness prosper by the necessary advantage of Peace Cease your Proud contendings O vain-glorious Militant Clergie Learn of the Prince of peace and the holy Angels that preached him to give Glory to God in the highest who giveth Peace on Earth and well-pleasedness in or towards men Did Christ or his Apostles make such work for Christians as you do The great Shepherd of the flock will take your pretences of ORDER ORTHODOXNESS or Truth and PIETY for no excuse for your corrupting ORDER FAITH and PRACTICE by your TYRANNY SELF-CONCEITEDNESS and blind ZEAL and SUPERSTITION and for using his name against himself to the destroying of that Love and Concord and Unity which he hath bequeathed to his Church and for serving his enemy and dividing his people and hardning Infidels and ungodly ones by these scandals Return to the primitive simplicity that we may return to unity Love and peace Dream not of them upon your own corrupting terms And read and read over again and again Jam. 3. which doth describe you condemn you and instruct you If you say Physicion heal thy self Who hath wrote more of Controversies I answer peruse what I have written and you will see it is of Controversies but against Controversies tending to End and reconcile If any thing be otherwise except necessary defence of certain necessary faith or duty I retract it and condemn it Let it be as not written I have meddled much with Controversies in this Book but it is to end them The God of Peace give Wisdom and peaceable principles minds and hearts to his servants that though I shall not live to see it true Love and Piety may revive in the Christian world by the endeavours of a healing Ministry and the shaming restraint and reformation of the CONTENTIOUS CLERGIE whether TYRANNICAL DOGMATICAL or SUPERSTITIOUS Amen Jan. 25. 167â— Of DIVISIONS and CONTENTIONS among Christians Consider I. The EFFICIENT I. PERSONS 1. The Devils 2. Men 1. A Contentious Clergie 2. Unwise and wicked Rulers instigated by them 3. The deceived people that follow them II. QUALITIES viz. I. Remotely 1. Selfishness in Carnal hypocrites who prefer worldly interest 2.
Slothfulness in Students in seeking truth 3. Hastiness in Judging before digested conceptions and proof II. Nearly Want of 1. Humility and self-acquaintance Pride 2. Knowledge Ignorance and Error 3. Love to others Envy Malice and Bitterness III. Instruments or Engines 1. In General Corrupt departing from Christian Simplicity 2. Particularly 1. From Simplicity of Doctrine by DOGMATISTS Words Notions 2. From Simplicity of Practice by SUPERSTITIOUS additions 3. From Simplicity of Discipline by CHURCH-TYRANNY II. CONSTITUTIVE Causes viz. DISCORD 1. In JUDGMENT of things necessary ALIENATION 2. In WILL and AFFECTION viz. 1. Privative by denying due Communion 2. Positive 1. By Contention 2. Malice 3. Hurtfulness to each other DIVISION 3. In Necessary PRACTICE III. The EFFECTS viz. I. On THINGS viz. on Church 1. Doctrine Preaching and Writing turning it into vain and hurtful wrangling 2. Worship Prayer Sacraments corrupting them by faction partiality and wrath 3. Discipline corrupting it into Secular or factious Tyranny or a dead Image II. On PERSONS viz. I. Particular 1. Themselves 2. Their followers 1. The Guilt and Deceit of false-Religious zeal 2. The Death of true Holiness and Heavenly Conversation 3. The Death of Love and Life of Wrath and injuries 3. Rulers viz. 1. Corrupting them by factious clamours against their Subjects 2. Tempting them unto persecuting Laws and Executions 3. Engaging them in bloody Wars abroad 4. The Innocent viz. Injuries to 1. Private persons 1. By censures slanders backbitings making them hated 2. Denying them due Love Communion and help 3. Persecution silencing and other mischiefs 2. Princes 1. Weakning and grieving them by the Subjects discords 2. Dishonouring them by defaming Excommunications 3. Urging them to be the Clergies Lictors or Executioners 5. Enemies and Strangers scandalizing and hardning them in Infidelity sin II. Societies I. Churches 1. Corrupting them in Doctrine Worship and Order 2. Weakning them by discord and division 3. Shaming them before the World 4. Making them less fit for Gods Love and Communion II. Kingdoms Weakning them dishonouring them and drawing them into the Guilt of Feuds Wars and Persecutions IV. The REMEDIES I. Persons 1. Christ the Prince of Peace and the Churches Head and Center 2. Wise Princes who understand the Interest of 1. Christ 2. Their people 3. Themselves 3. Able Wise Holy and Peaceable Pastors 4. The Mature Experienced Mellow Peaceable sort of the people II. Qualities 1. Diligent Study under wise Teachers 2. Sincere Holiness A dying life 1. Humility 2. Knowledge 3. Love to others as our selves 3. Deliberate Judging upon tryal III. Means 1. Returning to Christian Simplicity 1. In Doctrine The antient Creed c. 2. In Worship 3. In Discipline 2. Magistrates forcing the Clergie to keep the peace and forbear strife 3. Subjects obedience in all lawful things required by Authority V. HEALTH or Cure 1. Rulers Pastors and people of one MIND 2. One HEART in Love 3. One MOUTH and practice in things Necessary in Communion and mutual help And mutual loving forbearance in Infirmities and things unnecessary edified in Love VI. The EFFECTS hereof I. GLORY to God 1. In the Hallowing of his Name and Honour of Religion 2. In the increase of his Kingdom and Conversion of the World 3. In the Doing of his Will on Earth as it is done in Heaven II. Peace on Earth 1. Increase of Holiness Heavenliness and Love 2. Mutual Delight herein The Joy of Health and Concord 3. The Churches Strength and Glory III. Gods WELLPLEASEDNESS in MEN His Church will be meet for his Love Delight and Communion and be liker to Heaven and enjoy its foretastes An Appendix to this Premonition SInce the Printing of this the World hath seen a specimen of such contention as I lament in a contest between a young insulting Assailant and a jocular contemptuous Defendant in my judgment both running into extreams whether verbal or real their own explications must further tell us The extreams of the former are reprehended by many By the later a person of great wit and piety I perceive that some men have such conceptions of the Covenants of God as will give occasion to some Readers to think that by mis-describing them I have erred and misled men through this and many other Writings And men that are not able to conquer the obscuring and tempting notions of their Authors are still calling for Answers to every inconsiderable objection or contradicting word that is suggested to them and little things puzzle and stop such Readers though otherwise pious and worthy persons who have not by long and accurate studies methodized and digested the matter that is disputed of Not therefore to offend any man by opposition or to defend other mens extreams but to prevent the frustration of some of these Writings and the scandal or trouble of my Reader I must take notice I. That some think that the Covenant of Grace must be considered 1. in its Constitution and 2. in its Execution The Constitution of the Covenant is God's firm and unchangeable purpose of saving his Elect to the praise of his glorious Grace For the word signifieth a disposition appointment or ordering of matters whether there be a restipulation or no the English word Covenant seduceth our understandings The fixed purpose and determinate counsel of God in Scripture is called a Covenant Jer. 33. 20. II. The execution of this fixed Constitution is God's wise and gracious managing of all things for the accomplishment of that glorious design which he had in the prospect of his eternal counsel which he steadily and regularly pursueth through all the vicissitudes that his mutable creatures are obnoxious to c. pag. 718 719. 1. On God's part whatever grace and mercy was in his eternal purpose that is given out to us by Christ c. III. 1. Christ cannot be the foundation of the Covenant because Christ himself is promised in the Covenant as the great comprehensive blessing Isa 49. 8 9. 2. Free Grace is given as the true reason of the Covenant Heb. 8. 8. IV. The Constitution of the Covenant in God's purpose and counsel hath no condition at all nor is that the Condition of the Covenant required of us on our part which God promiseth to work in us on his part nor that which God in Covenant bestoweth nor that which presupposeth other Covenant mercies antecedent c. V. A promise of pardon and life on condition of believing and obeying is no Covenant of Grace at all and neither better nor worse than a threatning of condemnation c. It 's no more a Covenant of Grace than a Covenant of Wrath. It 's no great matter where it is founded p. 584 586. VI. God hath not dispensed with one jot or title of the moral Law but Do this and live is as strictly exacted as ever so that unless a Surety be admitted and the righteousness of another owned the case of all the sons of Adam is deplorable and desperate To deny the righteousness wherein
all his Benefits are ever free Gifts â—â— to the matter and value first and then the relation of a Reward is bâ— secondary as to the Order of collation and the reason comparative whâ— one man hath them rather than another as a thankful Child hath the Gift which the Contemner goeth without 2. And that here Not to have this Gift forfeited by our sin is to be punished And so hâ—â—â— non-donari is puniri materially though the relations differ 3. And that it is the same Righteousness of Christ which meriteth our Impunity quoad damnum sensum and which meriteth our Right to the Gift of Life both sub ratione doni as a Gift and sub ratione condonationis as a forgiveness of the forfeiture and of the poena damni So that here â—â— no room for the conceit that Christ's death was only to purchase Pardon and his Righteousness to merit Life That which confoundeth men here is their taking the divers Respects and Connotations and Coâ—ceptions of one and the same thing to be divers separable things Thâ— same Law hath the Preceptive part to do and not do and the Retributing part penal and rewarding The same Obedience of Adam was â—â— doing what was commanded and a deserving what was promised â—â—â—â— more was promised to persevering Perfection than to the first act of Obedience One Sin deserved death but one act of Obedience desernâ—â— not immutable Glory And as the same Act is formally Obedience related to the Command and formally meritorious or praemiandus â—â— related to the Promise And the same Act is sin and punishable as related to the Precept or Prohibition and Threatening so the same Glory is a free Gift in one respect as related ut bonum to God as Benefactor and a Reward in another as related quoad ordinem conferendi to God â—â— Rector And the same loss of Glory is poena related to the Threatening and it is the loss of a Reward as related to the Promise And so the sâ—â—â— Merits of Christ's active and passive and habitual Righteousness because our Glory both by giving us pardon of our forfeiture and by Covenant-Donation and as a Reward to Christ and to us when â—â— perform the conditions of his Gift 133. And it is certain that Christ's Sufferings are first satisfactory and then meritorious being a part of his Active that is voluntary Oâ—dience And Christ's Holiness and Obedience are meritorious of pardon â—â— Sin as well as of Salvation 134. If there be as there is any thing which is given us througâ—â— Christ more than our own Innocency or Obedience would have mâ—â—â—ted the Gift of that is more than remission of Sin And is to be ascribeâ— accordingly to the Purchase of Christ's Merits But yet both his Holiness and Sufferings though not as sufferings did merit it And that was not a fulfilling of the Law in our stead 135. This superadded Gift what-ever it is seemeth in Scripture to be included in Adoption and not in Justification But yet it may in this sense be called Justification in that when our Right to that Gift is questioned that Right must be justified by the Covenant-Donation and by Christ's meritorious Purchase of it But this is only de nomine We are agreed of the thing 136. It is greatly to be noted that as a Reward is in the formal notion more than not punishing where materially they are the same so Christ hath not at all merited that eternal Life should be ours by way of Reward for our fulfilling the Law in him but that it should ours by his free Gift as a Reward to Christ for his own Merits So that the Relation of a Reward for Perfection belongeth only formally to Christ who taketh it as his benefit that we are saved through his love to Souls but not at all to us And to say as too many hold that Heaven is our Reward for our perfection of Holiness and Obedience in and by Christ is a Humane Invention subverting Christ's Gospel or unfit speech if better meant 137. Yet a Reward it is to us to be glorified but that is not for our fulfilling the Law of Innocency by Christ but for our believing in Christ and performing the conditions of the Covenant of Grace which giveth us Life as a free Gift but yet in the order of the condition it hath the relation and name of a Reward to us in the Scripture 138. So that here are three rewarding Covenants before us 1. The Covenant or Law of Innocency rewarding man for perfection to the end And this rewarded none but Christ And it is false that we are rewarded by that Covenant or justified by it for Christ's fulfilling it But it All the stir of the Papists is to prove that we have inherent Righteousness as well as pardon which Protestants are as much for as they The rest is de nomine justificationis Malder 1. 2. q. 113. a. 2. p. 572. Apostolus 2 Cor. 5. non aliud vult quam Christum cui nullum debebatur supplicium factum fuisse hostiam pro nostro peccato ut nos qui apud Deum nihil merebamur praeter supplicium justitia Dei fieremus in ipso id est gratis sine nostris operibus consequeremur per ipsius merita justitiam coram Deo What doth this differ from the Doctrine of the Reformed Churches Idem ibid Quando Apostolus dicit multos constitui justos per unius obedientiâ—â— significatur causa meritoria non autem formalis And so say we But some call Christ's Righteousness the causa materialâ—s meaning no more but that it is the matter of that Merit for which we are justified As if Adam had perfectly fulfilled the Law his fulfilling it had been meritorious of his sentential Justification and yet the matter of his constitutive Justification that is of his Righteousness And some uâ—â—ptly call it the formal cause But an unapt logical notion is not an error in Faith or Theology Idem ib. p. 573. Quamvis â—x omnino rigida justitia solus Christus Dominus satisfactat de condigno tamen ita ut merces operi â—ono debeatur post Dei promissionem meretur justus coronam justisiâ— quam reddet in illa die justus judex Est nostra justitia tota totum meritum tota satisfactio dependens a meâ—ito satisfactione Christi Still here is a wordy Controversie justified Christ 2. The Law or Covenant made only to and with Christ the Mediator And this Covenant further rewarded Christ as Mediator giving him all that it promised to himself and us for his performing the mediatorial conditions And so our Life is Christ's Reward 3. The Covenant or Law of Grace for it is the same thing in several respects that 's called the Law and the Covenant which giving Life on the condition of Faith doth justifie and reward Believers And we are justified and rewarded by no other Law 139. When Rom. 4. oft saith and other Texts that we are
being Infidels unsanctified impeniâ—ent Hypocrites Apostates and so of having no part in Christ and the free Gift even by our personal Evangelical Faith Holiness Repentance â—incerity and Perseverance And all this justification by Works St. James â—s for and it is undeniable by any thing but prejudice ignorance and â—ding pievishness Let the Reader of quick understanding pardon my â—epeating the same thing which others will not yet understand 366. Christ's Sermons Matth. 5. 6. 7. 10. 13. 18. 21. â—nd Luk. 6. 11. 12. 16. 18. 19. and Joh. 1. 3. 5. 6 c. with all the Sermons in the Acts and all the Catholick Epistles of Peter James Jude and John and Paul's Epist to the Rom. Chap. 1. 2. 4. 6. 7. 8. â—2 c. Gal. 5. 6. and a great part of the rest of his Epistles are â—ade up of this Doctrine of * * * Me-thinks Jansenius greatly wrongeth his Cause when he saith To. 2. c. 13. that Primus Augustinus intelligentiam divinâ— gratiâ— novi Testamenti fide crediti a peruit fidelibus ecclesiae If we should say that Primus Lutherus they would take it for a note of novelty and errour was the Church for 400 years ignorant of Grace and fundamental Verities Contrarily I think that Christ's plain Doctrine in his Sermons and the old Churches for 300 years in their plainer uncurious Writings plainly delivered all the necessary Doctrine of Grace yea even the Creed it self containeth it Grace which I have asserted And the â—eading of them will better instruct you in the true sense of Remission and â—ustification than most Treatises written on that Subject which I have seen 367. The perfection of Justification and Pardon will be by the final executive act the taking the justified into Glory SECT XXVII Of the fewness of the glorified and the many that perish 368. Though it be comparatively but a little Flock and part of this world to whom God will give the heavenly Kingdom yet the number will in it self be exceeding great And it 's very probable that this Earth being a very little punctum of the Creation that taking all God's rational Creatures together the number of the damned will be found a very small number in comparison of the blessed even as the Malefactors in the Jailes are to the Subjects of the Kingdom For the worlds above us are incomprehensibly vast and glorious And the Text telleth us Heb. 22. 22. That we are come to an innumerable company of Angels Though the proportions be unknown to us I speak this again that mistakes tempt not men to unworthy thoughts of the infinite amiable goodness of God or of the Christian Faith 369. And what the Saints do want in number they shall have in excellency to glorifie the goodness of God The little Flock which shall have the Kingdom shall be all Kings and Priests and shall judge the world Judgment in Scripture is much put for Government They shall be equal with Angels and shining Stars in our Fathers Firmament and shall sit with Christ upon his Throne And shall in a word in the perfection of their Natures perfectly know love and praise obey and delight in God in a perfect society in the sight of Christ's Glory and be assured of this to all eternity Amen And we see in Gods Works of Nature high Excellencies are rare There are not so many Suns as Stars nor Stars as Stones or Leaves or Trees nor so much Gold as Earth nor so many Men as Flies Fishes and other Animals nor so many Kings as Subjects nor so many Teachers as Learners nor so many men of learning and wisdom as ignorance And we see there are not so many godly as ungodly 370. And as I told you before that as Israel was not all Gods people in the world before Christ's Incarnation and that the Chatholick Church now succeedeth them in their high and rare Peculiarities and Priviledges above the rest of the world and far exceedeth them in the greatness of our Mercies and that Christ's Incarnation hath put the rest of the world into no worse a condition than they were before and that all the world is under a Law of Grace and none under the Law and Covenant of Innocency only So I now add that all shall be judged by that Law which they were under They that have sinned without a written Law shall be judged without that Law And what state each particular Rom. 2. Soul is in the Judge only knoweth and not we who are insolently arrogant if we will step up into his Throne and judge his Subjects without his Commission But this we know that God hath various degrees of Rewards and Punishments as to Infants and Adult so to the Adult among themselves And that he that gained but two Talents shall be Ruler of two Cities And he that had but one might have improved one though he could not have improved more than he had And that they that have done good shall go into everlasting life and those that have done evil to everlasting punishment And the kinds and degrees of their different Matth. 25. last punishments hereafter how great and how far involuntary they are beyond the very miserable case of their sinfulness it self are things that are unknown to us But certain we are that the Judge of all the world will do righteously and that all wise and righteous mens judgments when they shall see what the number of Sufferers and the sorts and degrees of their punishment are shall be fully satisfied of the Goodness Clemency Wisdom and Justice of God and never once wish it had been otherwise And that the Servant that knew his Lords Will and prepared not himself nor did according to his Will shall be beateâ— with many stripes But he that knew not and did commit things worthy Luk. 12. 47 48. of stripes shall be beaten with few stripes For unto whomsoever much is given of him shall he much required and to whom men have committed much of him will they ask the more 371. It is little understood by most how much man by sin it self is effectively his own Tormenter which tempteth man to doubt of Hell as if it were Gods too much severity so to punish How Sin is a punishment it self and how God antecedently made mans nature such that if he would sin it should torment him and undo him of it self like poyson to the Body I have opened in the first Chapter See Gabr. Biel in 2. d. 36. that Omne peccatum est poena and the four Reasons of Bonavent recited by him 372. The Stoicks and Platonists Revolution and the Pythagorean Re-incorporation are so like the Christian Doctrine of the Resurrection that though we must not with Origin seek to make them liker than they are yet those Infidels are unexcusable who take this for incredible and yet take the other for the most rational conjecture
much as that the form exist C. Dr. Twisse saith No. B. And if it were but the Act that existed doth not Gods Law make it sin by forbidding it and so cause the Essence C. Yes B. And if you say that God willeth the existence of the form of Sin why say you that he doth not cause it Is not his Will effective or is it any more contrary to his Holiness to cause it than to will or love it C. He causeth the existence but not the form or existence B. What jugling is this in such tremendous matters 1. What is it to cause the form but to cause that it exist To cause it to be is all the causing that it can have 2. And you confess that Gods Law by forbidding it maketh it sin in specie when it existeth Remember that you say that it is not only the matter but the form of sin which God willeth and causeth to exist And is it not a contradiction to call it evil and yet say that God willeth it when his Will is the Rule of Goodness C. It is not evil to God but to us B. So Dr. Twisse saith And to be evil to us even mans sin or damnaâ—â—â—n is not evil to God And so God is the great Lover of Sin and Damnation But why then is he said to hate it And is it not an Enemy to God and contrary to his Holiness Why did Christ die for that which God so loved C. Sin is nothing and therefore God causeth it not B. 1. Relations and Privations have their Causes and so hath Sin 2. Else man cannot be condemned for causing it The Synod of Dort and Reformed Churches teach no such Doctrine But it â—â— such as you that tempt the Arminians to revile them and say that you describe God in the shape of the Devil and much worse as loving and causing sin and misery more than he that so the love of God may be extinguished C. I think we must leave these Mysteries to God B. But good Brother though I have stopt your mouth and censures of your Brethren in this and such matters do you expect that every â—onest Christian must be able to discuss all your Logical Fallacies or else go with you for unsound and heterodox And have you dealt fairly by the Church of God to borrow from the School-men such snares for mens Consciences And must every man be perswaded that God is the greatest lover and willer from eternity of every wicked Act that is not able to answer your smoaky Sophisms about futurition and its eternal cause with such like I tell you the Serpent hath beguiled us as Eve and turned men from the simplicity that is in Christ C. I pray briefly give me the sum of what you drive at B. The sum is That though every Party and almost every person of each Party have odd notions of his own and peculiar weapons to wound his Brothers Reputation with and militate against Love and Concord and manifest the Pride of his self-conceited Understanding yet all sober Christians I think are agreed in all this Controversie of Gods Decrees in all that is truly necessary to our brotherly love and peace That is All grant that God decreed to do all that he doth and to give all the Grace and Mercy which at any time he giveth whether to all or some And that he absolutely and properly decreed no more But improperly he may be said to will an event in tantum when he willeth only to do so much or so much which naturally conduceth towards it though he know that it will never come to pass But what it is that God actually doth or giveth in time is all the controversie which is to be spoken of in the third Chapter And were it not for your tenaciousness of contentious notions I needed to have said no more than these few words here of Gods Decrees THE Third Days Conference With an ARMINIAN of Universal and Special REDEMPTION A. The second Article of our Difference is so fundamental and â—omen tous and our distance so great that I cannot believe that you can say any thing sufficient to reconcile us B. They that study Controversie as such are apt every where to finâ— matter of Quarrel and weapons of Contention but they that seeâ— peace do find out the terms and means of peace as sure and easie in them selves which Contenders cannot see Tell me in a word Are not all Parties agreed that Christ by his Merits and Sufferings procured for men all mercies which he giveth them â—â—â—â— and no more but as he may be said to procure them that which he offereth and bringeth to their choice which is properly to procâ—re them that offer or the benefit as offered A. Yes I think both sides will grant this that he purchased all that he giveth and absolutely or fully no more B. Why then all the Controversie is what he giveth men and that belongeth to the third and fourth Articles And so I might dismiss this at the beginning but for your expectations But what is it that maketh you think the difference so great The first Crimination A. 1. The Calvinists and Synodists deny Christ's very Office as he is the Saviour of the World and the second Adam the Redeemer of Mankind and the Mediator between God and Man And all this they confine to a small part of the World * Malderus in 1. 2. q. 111. a. 3. d. 5. m. 1. p. 487. Non existimo opinionem illam Calvinisticam quae negat pro omnibus singulis Christâ—m mortuum esse tolerandam esse nec inter studiosos varitaris debere obtinere locum opinionem qui non perinde admittunt quod omnibus in Adamo lapsis iterum sit via salutis facta possibilis per Christum quod habeant per Christum in actu primo paratum vel in actu secundo datum sufficiens auxilium gratiae quo saltem media'e salvari possint c. B. Have you never read what Musculus hath written in Loc. Commun and Bullinger in his Decades for universal Redemption Have you not read the plain words of Calvin cited by Amyraldus in Defens Doct. Calvin though Petavius rail at him for it most furiously Have you not read the writings of Joh. Bergius Conrad Bergius Lud. Crocius Calixtus of Camero and his Followers at Saumers of Testardus Dallaeus Blondel's Preface c. for Universal Redemption Have you not read in the writings of Bishop Rob. Abbots Bishop Carelton Arch-bishop Usher Bishop Hall Dr. Sam. Ward c. their judgments for it Have you not read Bishop Davenant's excellent Dissertation for it de morte Christi Know you not that it was the judgment of Dr. Preston Mr. W. Whateley Mr. W. Fenner and many excellent Divines among us Know you not that Dr. Twisse himself I believe twenty if not forty times over in his Works saith That Christ so far died for all as to procure and give them
Universal Grace which is the very express Covenant of Grace it self that all men are already through Christs satisfaction reconciled to God and pardoned if they will believe or that a conditional pardon is already given to the World And to deny this is to deny the Gospel and Christianity it self and to be no Christians B. You would make your selves and others believe that they deny that which they never dreamed of denying Like him that dreamed that he was wounded and call'd out for something to stop the blood Do not all Protestaents profess to believe that Covenant and conditional Pardon as well as you Do they not preach it constantly and administer Baptism in the same terms as you do who denieth that all are reconciled if they will believe A. But by that they mean only exclusively that all are not reconciled or pardoned because all believe not And not inclusively that all men are conditionally pardoned already B. You mistake and slander them Do they not read the very express pardon made already in Gods Word That Whoever believeth shall not perish c. Joh. 3. 16. Mark 16. 16 Do they not all acknowledge that this is a Law of God an Act of Oblivion Enacted long ago by God And is not this visible written Promise or Law of Grace an existent conditional pardon of all No man of sense and understanding and faith denieth it A. But they say that in making it Gods secret intent was that none but the Elect should have any saving benefit of it * What say others less Malderus in 1. 2. q. 111. a. 3. d. 5. p. 486. Cum de Redemptore dando Deus constituisset ut secerneret illos quos elegit eum rerum ordinem elegit in quo certi quos voluit homines a reliquis discernerentur cosque pro beneplacito suo ad nullum bonum usum liberi arbitrii respiciens ad vitam aeterâ—am praedestinavit talemque tis gratiam decrevit cum qua certissimo infallibiliter ad regnum pervenirent Reliquos autem qui ex illo numero non sunt reliquit non quidem sint omni auxilio Gratiae sicut juste potuisset propter Adae peccatum sed cum auxiliis gratiae secundi Adae ad ipsos derivandis in ordine ac cursu rerum jam electo Et videns scieâ—tia visionis hos in peccato vitam finire reprobavit eos statuit in aeternum punire a regno excludere Thus the Jesuites ordinarily And what is here considerably different from the Synod of Doâ—t If the name of sufficient Grace be the quarrel call it Gratia efficax ad posse and all is ended B. 1. Still you are returning to the dispatched Controversie of the Decrees which is a confession that you disser not otherwise about Redemption 2. Do not you your selves hold the same which you quarrel with 1. Inclusively they hold that the Elect shall be saved by Christ And do you deny it 2. As to the exclusion of others they hold that God decreed not any mans Infidelity and Sin but fore-seeing their Infidelity and Sin decreed that they should not be saved by Christ but perish And do not you say the same Away with these contentious dreams A. I am sure I can name you divers that say otherwise B. It is the Synod still and the common Confessions and Doctrine of the Churches which you have to do with Tell not me of singular men The Doctrine of the Church of England I told you out of the Catechism The Synods words I recited And remember as Dallaeus tells Spanhemius that Davenant with the rest of the British Divines Martinius and the other Breme Divines who all gave their suffrages and writ for Universal Redemption did yet all subscribe in the Synod And therefore undoubtedly understood that no words of the Canons were contrary to their sense of Universal Redemption The later famous Helvetian confession saith We teach and believe that this Jesus Christ our Lord is the only and eternal Saviour of Mankind yea and of the whole world upon which words the English Collector of the Confessions giveth us a ridiculous Observation that he thinks they meant the restoring of the world at last contrary to the context As if he had not known that Musculus Bullinger c. were for Universal Redemption But that I be not over-tedious I pray you peruse in Dallaei Apolog. To. 2. the citations out of the Confessions and Catechisms and Liturgies of the Reformed Churches viz. Of Berne August Bohem. Helvert Saxon. Anglic. Palatin Synod Dord Colloq Torun with a multitude of Protestant Divines The fourth Crimination A. They make it impossible for any man to believe in Christ at first by a rational and true Faith For his dying for men being the Object of Faith must be before the Act. And no man by their way can know that Christ died for him till he is a Believer and yet they say that our first saving Faith must be a believing and trusting in Christ as one that died for us So that men must stay till they believe that Christ died for them that they may have reason to believe that he died for them For before the first Faith or belief of it they can have none B. You still make the world believe that men hold that which they do not This concerneth not the Churches but some singular men The common Protestant Doctrine is That Christ by his Death hath procured the universal conditional Gift of Pardon and Life contained in the Covenant of Grace Mark 16. 16. Joh. 3. 16 c. And that his death was thus far efficient by which it is sufficient for the actual Justification and Salvation of penitent Believers And that this is it that men must first believe and so accept of an offered Saviour for Justification and Life and give up themselves to him in the baptismal Covenant which when they do they are justified and adopted having right to and union with Christ and in him right to the Covenant-benefits And then Christ's death which was sufficient by its efficiency of Satisfaction Merit and the Covenant-grant becometh efficient of Justification c. And are not you and they agreed in this I confess that many singular Divines have given you this occasion But what 's that to the Churches The fifth Crimination A. They tell men that they must believe a Lye or an unrevealed thing that by believing it it may become true and they may be saved and ese they shall be damned For they say that Christ died for none but the Elect And yet that others also are bound to believe that he died for them And because they believe not this Lye God will damn them But if they did believe it it would be true As if the Objective Truth were not before the belief of it B. This also is but your quarrel with singular men and not with the Churches unless you wrong them Their common Doctrine is that no man
believe so that Faith is a fruit of the Death of Christ in a remoter secondary sense And in all this Name me any Christian Churches that are disagreed C. To bring it only to a mans free will whether he will believe or not is not to give him Faith and to purchase no more is not to purchase it B. Do you not perceive that here you divert to the Controversies of the Decrees and of effectual Grace Of the first we have said enough already of the other after in due place The sixth Crimination C. They feign Christ to purchase only a conditional Pardon Justification and Salvation and so to leave it uncertain to the corrupt Will of man whether any shall be saved or not B. This also concerneth the Decrees and is fully answered before 1. That Christ hath purchased and God given a conditional Act of Oblivion or Pardon and Life to all is the very Gospel it self and to be questioned by no Believers 2. None of them all do suppose Christ to die at uncertainties as to the success for they suppose that he fore-knew the success from eternity 3. They suppose not that the success was undecreed For they that presuppose fore-sight of mans concurrence yet assert an * Episcop Instit Theol. l. 4. sect 5. cap. 6. Certum est posito decreto conditionato omnes ac singulos qui vel ad vitam electi sunt vel ad mortem reprobati recte ab aeterno praedestinatos dici posse debere eternal Decree of his Conversion upon such fore-sight And it is not on the fore-sight of Faith that they say God decreeth to give men Faith but on fore-sight that the will of the Sinner will concur or not obstinately resist the Spirit that is drawing him to believe And the Jesuites and Arminians by their Scientia media do hold God to be the chief cause of mens believing For they say That God foreseeing that man will believe if he have such a measure of help and such means and circumstances doth freely decree to give him that help of the Spirit and those means by which he knoweth it will be done So that here is no uncertainty but different thoughts of the ascertaining decrees and ways 4. And lib. 1. I have shewed you that not only the Schoolmen but Bellarmine Ruiz Suarez and many of the most famous Jesuites do assert effectual Grace to be such both ex voluntate operantis and ex vi operationis absolutely And where then is this feigned difference The seventh Crimination C. They make Christ to do no more for Peter than for Judas for those in Heaven than for those in Hell while they say that he died equally for all B. * Vasq in 1. Thom. q. 23. a. 8. disp 94. c. 2. Perantiqua Theologorum sententia quam ego Catholicam existimo est non solum Christum nobis meritum ut a Deo diligeremur praedestinaremur per gratiam ejus ad gloriam sed etiam ut eligeremur ex massa perditionis electione gratiae suae Note that he speaketh only of the effect of Gods Decree and so it is all one as to say that differencing Grace is merited by Christ which is that which you would have Equality here is meant either of his Intention or of the benefits given Those benefits are of several sorts 1. No doubt but they err who feign God equally to decree and Christ to intend the eventual absolute Salvation of all 2. And they err that say that he bestoweth equal benefits on all even in this life yea antecedently to mans Will But the New Covenant or conditional Promise doth equally as to the tenor of it give Pardon and Right to Life to all But who is it that holdeth this equality of Intention or Benefit Not the greater part of the School-men or other Papists no not the learnedst Jesuites Not the Lutheran Churches But some few Arminians that run into one extream as you do into the other Nay how can they hold an equality of Intention when they confess that upon foreknowledge of their Unbelief the condemnation of many was eternally decreed C. Yes they hold that antecedently to fore-sight Gods Intention is equal B. 1. That fore-sight it self is from eternity 2. Who can frame out Orders of antecedency in the mind of God between his fore-sight and his Will without confessing great darkness and impropriety of Speech 3. And he that first giveth man to believe and will doth not first foresee that he will believe and will before he decree to give it him The eighth Crimination C. They make Christ's sheep to know him before he know his sheep that is to believe before he decree to give them Faith B. This is but the same in sense with what is before answered And it belongeth to the controversie of Gods Decrees They all say that God decreeth to give them sufficient Grace to enable them to believe before he fore-seeth their belief And most say more as is aforesaid The ninth Crimination C. Some of them say that Christ's Death did actually deliver * Vid. Episcop Resp ad qu. 64. qu. 38. supposing the Salvation of all that die in Infancy all men in the World from the guilt of Original Sin and so that none perish for Original Sin because what Adam did Christ undid B. You can name no Church that doth hold such Doctrine And we have nothing to do with singular odd Persons 1. Millions were unborn when Christ died and were not guilty of Original sin till afterwards and therefore were not capable of Pardon 2. The Papists who damn unbaptized Infants cannot be of that Opinion 3. What Adam brought upon us Christ did deliver us from upon his terms and in his way and by his degrees but not immediately He hath given all men a conditional Pardon of Original Sin as he hath done of Actual and no other The Unregenerate are under the guilt of all Sin whatsoever 4. But it is certain that no man except Infants doth perish for Original Sin alone For all men at age have other sins And it being certain that God offereth all men a recovery or remedy mediately or immediately it is certain that Infants perish not meerly for Adam's sin iâ—puted as a remediless evil but that their non-liberation or not being pardoned and saved is long of their Parents Unbelief and not entering them into the Covenant of God who is the God of the Faithful and their Seed The tenth Crimination C. They make Christ to have died for the Serpents Seed against whom the enmity is proclaimed when the new Covenant was first made Gen. 3. 15. B. 1. If by the Serpents Seed you mean such as are Gods Enemies no doubt but Christ died for them Rom. 5. 1. to 12 c. What need reconciliation else 2. If by the Serpents Seed you mean Reprobates as such you can never prove it to be the meaning of the Text. 3. If you mean fore-seen final
thank himself too for all the good he does that Being as much of him as the other c. Answ It follows not For 1. Of all the good that man doth God is still the moral Cause egging on to it by all c. 2. And the same Almighty Hand that barely upheld while Sin was done doth over and above further the thing that good is by enlightning the Mind renewing the Will healing the spring in man of that all which inbred Sin hath brought upon it and in a word making it every way more it self God must be more an Owner than man And thence the thing done falls in with the Divine Will because it flowed from Divine Goodness That which is good in man by way of Off-spring being so in God by way of Well-spring Ibid. p. 10. the same degree of impress or influx or force which causeth one man to believe or act is not sufficient to cause any other worse disposed man to believe or act nor the same man when he is more ill disposed and hindered 4. If we put the case of men equally disposed it is impossibly to prove that any two men in the world are equally disposed Nay it is most probable that they are not Their minds having far greater variety of thoughts to cause a difference than their countenances have of particles making the wonderful diversity which we see Nor is the same man long equally disposed 5. Men equally disposed if such there were may have unequal impediments without and in their bodies and temptations which may cause them to need unequal help of Grace 6. The same individual Impress which causeth no more than a Power causeth not the Act also For that is a contradiction to cause the Act and not to cause it 7. But a less degree of impulse or help may cause the act in one when a greater degree causeth it not in another 8. A wonderful difference therefore is made in this as well as in â—ll other diversities in the World by the diverse receptive dispositions of the Patient Which made Johan Sarisberiensis in Nugis Curial and many School-men to liken God with some acknowledged difference in his Operations to the Sun which by one invaried efflux of motive illuminative and calefactive power causeth innumerable varieties of effects as all the particular Creatures have various Natures and receptive Dispositions 9. But all good disposition or preparation is of God But by such ways of operation as we are searching after But all ill disposition is from our selves 10. To conclude God giveth men sometimes as much power to Will or Act when they do not as they have when they do But usually not an equal predisposition some having more indisposed themselves which is to be changed by contrary acts But whether de facto men equally enabled predisposed helped and hindered do yet without any cause but their own free-will it self act or will variously is a question that these Controversies need not come to That such were there such in the World could do it I take for granted what-ever they do The Controversie is well known which Hobbes hath raised in the World who saith That to be free and to be willing is all one and that every act of the Will is as truly necessitated by physical premotion as the motions of any Engine are And that we talk of liberty and contingency in the dark not that there is any such thing indeed but when we know not the train of Causes we use those names which signifie but our ignorance And that the first Cause and other superior Causes do by premotion as much necessitate each Volition as the Archer doth the motion of his Arrow And the Dominicans predetermination and Camero's necessitation by a train of second Causes is the same I think But I think God hath made a very good use by his over-ruling ordination of the Doctrine of Hobbes learnedly and timerously or cautelously seconded by Gassendus and improved by Benedictus Spinosa an Apostate Jew in his Tractatus Politico-theologicus For the goodness and learning of such worthy men as were Alvarez Twisse Camero in all other points moderate and admirably judicious hath been the grand temptation to the Church to receive that Doctrine which Hobbes and Spinosa having plainly and nakedly propounded is now detested by almost all good men For from thence they have plainly inferred the subversion of all morality as distinct from physical motion and consequently of all true Religion I deny not that I find my self the Controversie in it self exceeding difficult and that I have not been without temptations to their Opinion nor yet am And that indeed all pretended middle ways between Hobbes his Necessitation Physical and true Free-will are but fancies as far as I can perceive And if I leave true Free-will I must turn to their necessitation I confess their arguing is very plausible that there is no Effect without a Cause and that when ever the Will chooseth one thing and refuseth another there is some antecedent Cause in the power disposition or external things and that the same Cause in the same state and mode having no difference in it self doth always produce the same effect Otherwise the diversity should have no cause And that the Will being in the same disposition and having all the same objects helps impediments and other circumstances will have the same acts All this is plausible But 1. If I receive it I must let go almost all Religion as well as Christianity of the truth of which I have a better proof than they can give for their Opinion And we must not reduce certainties to the obscurest unsearchable uncertainties 2. And in God himself their foundation is confuted For he that is the first Cause eodem modo se habens sine ulla diversitate unicus plurima immo omnia causat Therefore their Principle is false 3. And finding man made after the Image of God not only as holy but as man Gen. 6. I have great reason to think that Free-will is part of his natural Image and that as God is a causa unica plurimorum so may Free-will be And that as a God is causa prima entium so Free-will may be a kind of causa prima not actionis qua talis but of the comparative moral species of its own acts as choosing this thing rather than that which is no addition to real entity but a wonderful mode of it which man cannot tell whether he should call something or nothing 4. I say therefore that here is no Effect without a Cause Free-will may be the cause of various Effects without a various predisposition C. Doth not the Will act as it is disposed to act B. That it acteth not always according to Habits which are more than dispositions is certain by experience For objects oft prevail against habits and habits do not necessitate C. That is because the Will is otherwise disposed by some contrary stronger habits As either
by it self anon Before we come to that these things I here conclude of 1. That the Diversity of Nature or Receptive Dispositions being presupposed God hath an established order of means and a congruous established universal Concurse which quantum in se as far as belongeth to it to do worketh equally on all 2. That this established measure of aid or concurse recipitur ad modum recipientis and operateth variously as to the effects according to the various disposition of the Recipients from whom the ratio diversatis is to be fetcht and not from it 3. That this established measure of Concurse or aid may by the greatness of the Passive and Active Indisposition and Illdisposition of the Recipient be both resisted and overcome or frustrate 4. That as Adam did resist and overcome such Grace so do all wicked Hi praecedanâ—i effectus virtute verbi spiritusque in hominum mentibus producti rebellis voluntatis vitio suffocari penitus extingui pâ—ssuâ—t in multis solent adeâ— ut nonnulli in quorum mentibus virtute verbi spiritusque impressâ— fuit aliqualis notitia veritatis divinae c. mutentur plane in contrarium c. And even Alvarez Disp 18. n. â—0 saith Si non operatur actione qui est in praeceptâ— imputabitur illi ad culpam eo quod suâ— culpa se impedivit ne dareter illi auxilium efficax quod necessarium erat ut actualiter operaretur sicut si Deus imponeret homini prâ—ceptum volandi quantum est ex parte sua offerret illi alas adjutorium necessarium uâ— volaret ipse autem responderet Dâ—mine nec vâ—lâ— alas accipere nec volâ—re meritâ— reputaretur reus etiamsâ— non possit absque alis volare qâ—ia sua culpaâ—se impedirit ne illi dâ—narentâ—r a Deâ— men in some cases now And so do all godly men in most of the sins if not all which they commit 5. As God rarely worketh Miracles and we hardly know when he violateth his established course of nature though we may know when he worketh beyond the power of any second cause known to us and when he leaveth his ordinary way but ordinarily keepeth to his established course and use of the second causes even in his wonders So it is very probable that in the Works of Grace Recovery and Salvation he ordinarily keepeth to his established order his Ordinances and fixed degree of Concurse 6. Yet as God is still above all his Works and a free Agent and is no further tied to one constant order and measure of Concurse than he tieth himself by his Wisdom and Free-will so God is free in the conveyance of his Grace and can when he please forsake that order and work Miracles by Grace as well as on natural things above nature He can strike down Saul and convert him by a voice from Heaven and in a word can do what he will 7. And as in most wonders its past our power to know whether and when God doth indeed forsake his established order and work contrary to it or without such second causes as are unknown to us though we can tell when he acteth unusually So is it in this case about his works of Grace A Comet or Blazing Star is an unusual thing whose necessary antecedent cause we know not And yet it is but a natural effect of second causes operating in their established course so are ecclipses better known and unusual Tempests and terrible Lightnings c. So great and sudden unusual and wonderful changes may be made by Grace on sinners and yet all in Gods established course of working and by those second causes which are to us unknown C. But God is not a natural but a voluntary Agent and Grace is hiâ— immediate work or off-spring B. 1. He is a voluntary Agent in Creation Preservation and in all the works and changes of nature and yet he operateth constantly in his appointed course 2. It s unknown to us what means he useth out of our reach in his operations upon souls as well as in nature 3. We find that Grace keepeth a harmony with nature yeâ— as morality is but the modality of things natural so we may conceive that God may possibly work it by the modifying of physical Agents and their actions and the recipients 4. Immutability and constancy is one of Gods perfections and the expression of it in the constant order of his Works is part of his glory in the world Though our mutable Free-wills are better than the fixed or necessitated appetite of Bruits that is not as they are mutable and the acts contingent but as they have a higher object But the fixed unchangeable wills of the Glorified Angels and Saints are far better than ours And why should we think unsetled mutability of efficiency to be the best discovery of Gods Immutability 5. But yet we grant that God is free to do what he please C. But it is by fixed second causes that God keepeth a fixed order of natural productions and alterations in the world But you can name no such universal second cause of Grace affording under God a resistible Influx as the Sun doth in Nature B. What will you say if I name you such a second universal cause though if I could not it followeth not that therefore there is none such I think I can name you one that all Christians should know and yet it seems is not well by Divines themselves considered JESUS CHRIST as MAN and MEDIATOR is Gods Administrator General of the humane world and is compared to the Rising Sun which illuminateth all the world with a light suitable to it and them So Christ is the light of the world the Sun of Righteousness that ariseth with healing Grace and enlightneth every man that cometh into the world or as Crotius and Hammond render it which coming into the world enlightneth every man supposing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be the Nominative Case and Neuter Gender and not the Accusative Masculine In him was Life and the Life was the light of men not only to the sanctified who received but uneffectually though quoad se sufficiently the light shined in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not The world that was made by him knew him not He came to his own and his own received him not yet he came to them But as many as received him to them gave he power to become the sons of God John 1. 3 10 11. It is apparent in Scripture that all power in Heaven and Earth is given to Christ Matth. 28. 19 20. that all things are delivered into his hands John 13. 3. and God hath given him power over all flesh John 17. 2. and he is head over all things to the Church Ephes 1. 22 23. C. We all grant that Christ is an universal light and Saviour 1. Objectively 2. And as to his Doctrine Covenant and Example But what 's that to internal efficient Grace which is immediately from God
have followed thereupon The just Extenuation of this last Controversie IN all these things following the parties are agreed for the most considerable 1. That Adam fell from true Righteousness and Holiness and lost the Spirit 2. That therefore we cannot argue from the Nature of Holiness alone to prove that it cannot be lost 3. That as the word Possible relateth to man's Power to do evil and omit good it is not only Possible to fall away but too easie yea it is not opus potentiae sed Impotentiae except as Natural Power is exercised in the meer Act with Moral Impotency 4. Yea without Gods preserving Grace it is not possible to persevere 5. God hath appointed us much duty to be done that we may not fall away And among the rest to discern and fear the danger of falling away and in that fear to depart from evil and temptations 6. God hath promised us Salvation on Condition that we persevere 7. God oft threatneth the faithful with damnation if they fall away and describeth to us the sin and misery of Apostates 8. The Justified may lose many degrees of true Grace and dye with far less than once they had and so become uncapable of that Greater Glory which they were morally capable of before 9. It 's too possible for them to fall into heinous sin They are not certain that they shall never commit Adultery Incest the Murther of Parents Wife or Children c. nor certain just how oft they may so fall or not 10. Such Sins make them so far morally uncapable of Glory as that See the Brittish Divines Suffrages at Dort of perseverance a sound Repentance for them and from them and a renewal of Faith are necessary to full right or moral capacity 11. God doth not decree any man's perseverance let him live never so securely negligently or vitiously For those that do so are faln already It is a contradiction to persevere in holiness and to live unholily But Gods Decree is ever entire that such a one shall fear danger fly temptations live holily in the use of means and therein persevere unto the end He never separated these in his Decrees 12. Except Hierome truly accuse Jovinian with it there is not that I know of any Father Christian or Heretick that hath written that Lege Vossi Histor Pelag de Perseverant no truly Justifyed persons fall finally away from Grace and perish for above a thousand years after Christ And it 's commonly granted that generally they held the contrary Even Augustine Prosper and Fulgentius not excepted 13. It is confessed to be a sad clog to the contrary opinion that it is held against the Judgment of the Universal Church for above a thousand years and so seemeth to bear the imputation of novelty and singularity Though that be not a sufficient confutation of it 14. It is confessed that the Greek and Roman Church the Lutherans and Arminians and most Anabaptists are against this Doctrine 15. It is confessed that all these Fathers and Churches of old and all these Churches and Christians of late are not void of the Christian comforts of the Gospel even of faith and hope of Glory 16. It is confessed that the Scripture hath many passages so much seeming to favour both the opinions as hath made the controversie thus difficult to so many Learned Godly Men And what the Scripture is it will be to the worlds end 17. It is confessed that none can be sure of Salvation or perseverance who are not first sure of their Sincerity and Justification 18. And to be uncertain whether one be a true believer and justified is more uncomfortable than to be sure of that and uncertain of his perseverance 19. No man can ordinarily be certain that he is Sanctified and Justified that is not certain of the truth of the Gospel and hath Grace somewhat strong and active not clouded by great Soul-wounding Sins nor frightful or melancholy passions nor any that through Ignorance is uncertain of the true Nature of the conditions of the Covenant of Grace 20. Certain experience of the defect of these qualifications and of mens own Consessions assureth us that not one of a multitude of the strict Religious sort have that which we call proper certainty of their Sincerity Justification and Salvation though they hold against the Arminians that certainty of perseverance must be asserted as that which may be attained by them that are first certain that they are in a state of life 21. Yet the fore-mentioned knowledge of Gods Mercy Christ's Love and Covenant with experience and many evidences of great probability may cause even such as are uncertain of their Justification to live in some good measure of true Christian peace though mixed with some doubts and fears Because their Probability is much greater than their cause of fear And much more may they do so that doubt only of their perseverance 22. It must be confessed that the Doctrine that none fall from Justification hath its temptation also to discomfort as in the two or three fore-mentioned particulars which I 'll not repeat 23. It is confessed that if God should condemn those whom he before Justified it would argue no change in Him or his Word but in them alone 24. It is confest that some Justified persons who live in as much sin as will stand with sincerity are at present unfit for assurance of perseverance and salvation For it would not stand with that humbling correction which they are then most fit for 25. Lastly it is confest that this point is no Article of our Creed nor is an agreement in it necessary to Church-communion or Christian Love but difference in it must be accounted tolerable In all this the moderate are commonly agreed On the other side 1. It is commonly granted that all that are elected to salvation shall persevere though how far that election is upon foresight they quarrel Cur ergo id quod Apostolis tunc fecit Christus non concedemus pro omnibus praedestinatis fecisse ut peculiari modo sua merita illis applicaret perseverantiam eis obtineret nam si multi sancti pro aliis orantes conversionem eorum perseverantiam impetrarunt cur dicemus Christum pro omnibus praedestinatis non orasse peculiari suâ oratione tantam gloriam gratiam illis obtinuisse Vasquez in 1 Tho. q. 23. a. 8. d. 94. c. 3. 2. It 's granted by all that not only such election but fore-knowledge of salvation and perseverance maketh it Logically Impossible quoad consequentiam not to persevere that is It Necessarily followeth God foreknoweth it Therefore it will come to pass 3. It is commonly granted that God forsaketh none till they forsake him 4. And that so great is his Goodness that no willing â—oul that solidly understandeth the Grounds of the Christian faith and hope and is in Love with God and Holiness and willing to use means and avoid temptations hath any
Christ as a Saviour to effect it and bring them home to God And believing that he is freely offered to them they next thankfully Accept him by consent and Trust him and give themselves to him And all this is Christs own work upon them but in this order and by these degrees So that coming to Christ signifieth divers acts of which one is preparatory to the other And whereas he tells you that we keep men off from Christ till they are prepared judge you whether he speak truth or falshood Do we use to call to sinners and say Do not believe that Christ Reconcileth God and man till you first believe that there is a God Do not make haste and believe that Christ will save you from misery before you believe that you are miserable Or that he will wash away and pardon your sin before you believe that you are sinners and need a pardon Do not consent that Christ shall be your Saviour before you are willing to be saved or before you believe that he hath dyed rose c. and is offered you What need we perswade men from Impossibilities Is it we or their own necessity that keepeth them from Consenting before they Believe and from believing before they Understand We do as it were intreat poor sinners who love their dungeon to open the windows that the Light may come in And these men rail at us and say that we perswade men not to let in the light till they have first opened the windows What need we do that when it is impossible to do otherwise We perswade men to believe that they are sick that they may go to the Physicion And they rail at us for perswading men to delay going to the Physicion till they think they are sick We exhort sinners that are asleep in sin to awake and run the Christian race And they rail at us as if we perswaded them not to run it till they are awake So that the preaching of these men according to their Doctrine must be thus Come presently to Christ stay not to hear the Gospel or to consider of it or to understand the meaning of it before you Trust Christ as your Saviour Presently cast your selves upon him before you know who he is or what he hath done for you and trust him for the pardon of your sin before you perceive that you are sinners or feel any need of pardon Stay not for a will but Take him or Accept him for your Saviour before you are willing of him or willing to be saved Do you think this is the only Gospel-preaching I pray you Sir tell me your self How would you preach to the Indians if you were Mr. Eliots assistant or to any other Heathens Would you at the first word call them to cast themselves upon Christ for salvation before you taught them to know that there is a God or a Law or sin or punishment c Lib. The Apostle called men presently to Believe in the Lord Jesus without delay Acts 2. and Acts 16. and Acts 8. c. And so should we P. 1. What talk you of Delay Are we for Delay any more than you The Angel Acts 12. that smote Peter and bid him arise and go forth was not for his delay because he bid him not go forth before he arose and before his fetters were off 2. And you forget that the Apostles spake to Jews who had the Preparatory belief of a God and of the Law and of the promise of the Messiah before 3. And yet they first humbled them for sin Acts 2. 37. till they were pricked at the heart And the Jaylor first trembleth and both say What must we do Is this your kind of proof And why did all the antient Churches from the Apostles dayes teach men the Creed or Christian Doctrine and Catechise them long before they baptized them And I think the Anabaptists will do so now And I think you would be loth your selves to gather your Churches from among Heathens Mahometans or Infidels till you had taught and prepared them as much at least as we require But let us hear whether in the second point you have any better or wiser Doctrine to teach us CHAP. II. Lib. II. You should teach men to believe that all our own Righteousness is as filthy rags abominable to God and to be cast away with our sins And that we are neither to trust to nor to look at any thing in our selves for justification or acceptance with God or to procure eternal life But that Christ hath both satisfied for our sins and fulfilled the Law of Innocency for us God imputed our sins to him and he was by Imputation the greatest sinner in all the world the greatest murderer thief fornicator perjured person rebell and ungodly man For the sins of all the Elect did meet upon him and were his Therefore he was forsaken of God and suffered the same Hell that we deserved And God imputeth all his satisfaction and righteousness so to us as that in Gods account all the Elect or at least All believers did satisfie and fulfill all the Law in and by Christ For he was our surety and our Legal Person though not our Natural person So that what Christ was we were and what Christ did we did and what Christ suffered we suffered in Gods â—â—count or imputation And so we are as righteous as Christ himself because all Christs righteousness is ours And we have no other nor need no other Righteousness at least in order to our Justification This Righteousness of Christ is it by which we are Justified by the Law of works which saith Obey perfectly or Do this and Live For we Did all that is required in and by Christ In this Righteousness only God accepâ—â—th us We have Right to it from eternity by Gods Decree of Election and our Consciences perceive our right upon our Believing And to set men on Doing themselves for Life when they should only Do from Life is to deceive them and undo them P. If these words did offer me any Light which we had not before received I should gladly learn and give you thanks But if such talk as this be all that must show you to â—e wiser than your neighbours and â—â—â—â—rant you to rail at them as Legal Preacherâ— and such as â—â—â—â—â—â—â—â— on by works my soul must pitty you and all such poor sinners â—â—â—â—â—â—â—bled or seduced by you But because this Head containâ—â—â— many particular doctrines I pray you let us speak to them in order I. And first about our own Righteousness And seeing I am the Leaâ—â—er I must crave your answer as fiâ—ted to my own doubts And Quest 1. Do you know how many times the words Just Righteous and Righteousness are used in the Bible Lib. No I have not taken such an account as to tell you P. Let us see the Concordance Here you find it about six hundred and twelve times used besides the words Justifie Justifying and
by the free disposition of a gift Scotus holdeth our acts are called Merit as relating to Gods free Covenant or Promise to reward them and not otherwise but he absolutely denyeth yet that God is thereby made our Debtor 4. d. 46. Major 2. d. 27. not only followeth him but saith God may deny Glory to good works but he meaneth as the rest Richard 2. d. 27. q. 3. a. 2. ad 3. seemeth to deny even Debt upon the title of promise Bonâ—vent 2. d. 27. a. 2. q. 3. saith but that God is quodammodo in some sort obliged to glorifie them that love him Ruiz who is against all this and maketh Gods Promises to be proper promises and Covenants and more than bare assertions and that God is become a kind of Debtor by his Promise and so it is not his Veracity only that is our security as Suarez thinketh yet holdeth that It is but the Things promised that are Due or obliged to us and that Gods obligation is properly to Himself that he hath indeed true Governing or Legal Justice but tanquam objectum Formale primarium respicit universalissimum bonum praestantissimum quod est Ipse tanquam Materiale secundarium objectum respicit universale bonum totius mundi constantem ex omnibus creaturis quod praeponit particularibus bonis singularum creaturarum Indeed he saith that this Justice in God is that Quae solo naturâ— lumine demonstrari potest ac proinde nullam supponit liberam Dei promissionem aut pactum nullumque supernaturalem concursum aut gratiam But this is meer confusion by ambiguous words These men talk as if they considered not that Creation was a free act of God and made man a Law in the Nature of himself and the circumstant creatures And in this Law of Nature is a signification of Gods will to do good to the good and reward the obedient and this is a Natural promise There could be no obedience and so no merits were there no Law And if there be a Law of Nature and so God even by making us Rational free Governable Creatures was himself our Governour these things supposed to be done by the very act of Creating it is a contradiction to say that God is our Governour and not a Just Governour being perfect as he is God or to be Just and yet not Resolved to use the obedient better than the disobedient To be Governour is to be the Orderer of Moral Agents And what Moral Order is there where the good and bad are not differenced in retributions But the Papists conceits of all Promises to Adam and his merits being meerly supernatural confound them in many such dispuâ—atiâ—â—s L. But do they not hold that a man may merit the remission of his own sins yea and of the sins of others and justification also R. Let Medina answer you in 12. q. 113. a. 1. p. 651. Ad authoritates sonantes quod non meremur Remissionem peccatorum nec vero justificationem non oportet satisfacere Nam omnes convenimus in hanc sententiam Catholicam irrefragabilem quod non meremur remissionem peccatorum ut Augustin Nulláne sunt merita justorum Sunt plane quia justi sunt sed ut justi fierent merita non fuere None merit Remission or Justification with them L. Not by merit of Condignity but they say that by merit of Congruity a man may merit Remission and Conversion and Justification R. Medina ibid. p. 652. Sed cum Meritum de Congruo non innitatur Justitiae sed Congruentiâ— proprie appellationem meriti non meretur And so say many others of them L. But at least they hold that we may prepare our selves for Justification or Conversion without Grace or special Grace R. Preparatory Grace is not the same that the Grace to which it prepareth us But let the same Medina answer you q. 109. p. 592. Deus expectat nostrum consensum inquit Pelagius ut nos convertat ergo ex parte voluntatis nostra est prâ—paratio ad gratiam suscipiendam Sed hâ—c sententia est haeretica contra Scripturas Concilia Veritas Catholica est quod Gratia Justificans datur sine meritis quod nemo se valet ad â—am praeparare sine auxilio speciali Et p. 593. Ultima dispositio ad gratiam ad quam infallibiliter se quitur Gratia non habetur ex facultate naturae sed tantum dono Dei speciali Do you say any more against Preparation for Grace without Grace or against mans power to prepare himself or against merit than all this L. But sure Luther and his fellow Reformers had never so much inveighed against the Papists in the point of Works Merits and Justification if they had all taught no worse than these which you have cited There are sure many others that say worse R. No question but the Ignorance of the Priests was so great and the carnal ends so powerful with covetous proud men which were served by the abuse of the Doctrine of Merits and Good Works that multitudes of such did ordinarily abuse it If all Protestants taught the Protestant Doctrine uncorruptly we should not have had so many differences and divisions as we have had nor would one condemn another as you do us L. But though the old Schoolmen might mean better those that Luther had to do with did sure speak much worse R. I tell you the Carnal and Ignorant sort of Priests and Fryers did each man talk according to his model and so do all Sects Few had the Wit and Skill to open aright the common Doctrine But 1. Our Dr. Field of the Church undertaketh to prove that excepting the tyrannical Papal faction and the carnal and ignorant that served their ends and by violence bore down the rest the chief of the Doctors in the Church of Rome it self did hold the great Doctrines which the Protestants against the Papists do assert 2. To tire you now with no more I will cite but two of Luthers own adversaries in his dayes 1. The first is the Learned Cardinal Contacenus who lived in the time of Luthers Reformation Read but his Notes on Luthers Articles and his Tract of Justification Free-will and Predestination and you will see that he saith almost as much for what you plead as you would do your self I am loth to tire the Reader with the citation of his words at large Turn to them and read them and see where he differeth from us I confess the man was moderate but never accused as differing herein from the Church of Rome as in an Article determined of by their Councils But their Doctors variously express themselves The other is Fisher Bishop of Rochester one of the chief Martyrs of the Roman Cause beheaded by Henry the Eighth for denying his Supremacy in Causes Ecclesiastical who in Opuscul de fiducia misericordia Dei Printed Colon. 1556. speaketh as much and plainly for the interest of Faith and
into on the pretence of avoiding and abhorring Popery Between S. A Sectary and P. A Peacemaker P. NEighbour I understand that you are one of those that divulge your desamatory Lamentations of me as inclining to Popery for some passages which I lately Preached in the City I pray you speak that to my face which you so freely speak behind my back S. Sir the City ringeth of you as one that greatly wrongeth the cause of God And my own ears heard you say that the difference between us and the Papists is little more than in ambiguous words and points unsearchable P. And this I hear you are one that have divulged and so it is by such as you that the City is made to ring of it But if this be an untruth of great aggravation do you then deserve the title you assume or are you a fit defender of the truth or can your Conscience tolerate you herein That which I said was this I distinguished the Controversies between us and the Papists into such as depend on a Carnal Interest and Mind and such as do not but arise from the meer difficulty of the subject In the former sort I said our difference is very great and like to be so and such are the differences about their Papal power and Church state their Government and worship as fitted hereunto and many doctrines as that of Purgatory Indulgences Auricular Confession abused by them Transubstantiation c. But the other sort of doctrinals are made by many the matter of greater difference than there is cause such as I named Predestination Providence the cause of sin mans power and fre-will Grace certainty of salvation and I might have added Justification and Merit as held by their Church and most of the Schoolmen not that here is no difference indeed but that long study hath made me certain that it is more in words than is commonly conceived And this Truth is fit to be spoken though the mistaken be offended by it Yea in these matters the Papists differ among themselves as much as with us Dare you deny that these were my words If you do you are a falsifier S. When you speak so clowdily who can remember every word you say P. Is not this plain English Peruse it and consider And dare you carry false reports abroad on pretence of pious zeal and then say You cannot remember Why would you report that which you cannot remember Why would you not stay till you had helpt your memory by speaking with me or some one that could have informed you But are not we in a hard case with such hearers as you when we must look to be as oft belyed as your understanding or your memory faileth because your loose Conscience faileth with them which is very oft S. I am not alone in judging thus of you City and Countrey ring of it what company can one come into where you are not talkt of I daily hear good people lament you and the best they say is that God useth to let those men fall fouly in some things who have been extraordinarily serviceable that men may not idolize them P. They that know me but half as well as I know my self will know that I have enough to abase me before God and man But will that warrant a course of lying and backbiting in others Do you partly receive and partly make and propagate false reports and then plead the Commonness for your excuse He that set London on fire might so have excused himself because the flame was common when he had caused it The effect and prospering of your sin should humble you and not seem to justifie you But yet I must tell you that Backbiting Sectaries are not the greater part of London There are many sober people that are ashamed of your sin and folly I will make this friendly motion to you Instead of backbiting Let us here to one anothers faces so friendly admonish each other of that which we take to be sin as may help to bring each other to repentance And do you begin Tell me of all the evil that you know by me S. I have nothing to accuse you of but that your Principles are too large and you vent them too freely and thereby you harden Papists and dishonour the Protestant cause and wrong free grace and the Righteousness of Christ by your doctrine of Justification and mans Righteousness And by coming so near Conformity you grieve the hearts of good people and may bring persecution on those that cannot do as you can P. 1. About Conformity forbear me here for I must deal with you of that by it self elsewhere 2. As to my doctrine of Justification if I have not fully justified it elsewhere I shall not now on this occasion 3. But whether you or I be righter about Popery let us now debate Have you read my Safe Relig. and my Key for Catholicks and my Treatise of the Certainty of Christianity without Popery and my late Dialogue and my Treat against Johnson of the Visibility of the Church and others against Popery S. I have somewhat else to do than read all your Writings P. Why have you not then somewhat else to do than hear me and backbite me and judge of things which you have not leisure to understand Do we not still deal on hard terms with such men as you that neither speaking nor writing can make them know our minds Have all your party that revile me done more each one against Popery than I have done But if this be all that you have to call me to repentance for I have a great deal more to say against my self And now I will deal faithfully with you I beseech you try whether it be not necessary that you speedily repent of all these following sins 1. What a shame is it for one that would be taken for a Religious man to be so Ignorant as you are and no better know the truth of Christ from the errors of Popery than it appeareth you do 2. What a sin for one so Ignorant to be so rash and bold in venturing to judge of that which he understandeth not 3. What a sin is it for one so Ignorant to be so proud of his pretended knowledge as to venture to defame his Teachers for contradicting him in his erâ—oneous conceits Have you studied these things as long and hard as I have done or are you sure that you have done it more in partially and that God hath illuminated you so much more as your confidence would import 4. What an unchristian crime is it to make lyes and carry them abroad of your Teachers and then be forced to confess that it was the failing of your memory as to what you heard 5. What a sin is it to be a backbiter Neither you nor any one of your quality did ever come to my face either to know my meaning or to hear what I had to say nor to reprove my sin or convince
against those things which their ignorance misrepresenteth to themselves And so Gods ordinances are made a snare to souls which are appointed for their salvation and the man that can kindle in his hearers a transporting passion against this or that opinion or form as Popish is cryed up for an excellent preacher and seemeth to edifie the people while he destroveth them 11. And by this means you seem to justifie the Papists lyes and calumnies against the Protestants by doing as they do They belye Luther Zuinglius Calvin Beza c. with just such intentions and such a kind of zeal as some over doing Sectaries belye them And is it bad in them and good in you 12. You teach the people a dangerous and perverse way of reasoning à minùs notis which will let in almost any errours From a dark text in the Revelations or Daniel or from the supposition that the Pope is the Antichrist and all Papists have received the mark of the beast you gather conclusions against the notorious duties of Love and peace which the light of nature doth commend to all Not that I am perswading you that the Pope is not Antichrist but that all things be received but according to their proper degree of evidence S. Now you open your self indeed All that revolt to Popery begin there with questioning whether the Pope be the Antichrist and telling men of the darkness of the Book of Revelations P. I tell you I will abate no certainty that you have but increase my own and yours if I could but I would not have any falsly to pretend that they are certainer of any thing than they are And no certainty can go beyond the ascertaining evidence And if all Scriptures be equally plain St. Peter was deceived that tells us of many things hard to be understood which the unlearned wrest as other Scriptures to their own destruction And if the Revelations be not one of the hardest I crave your answer to these questions 1. Why are five Expositors usually of four opinions in the expounding of it when it is those that have spent much of their lives in studying it as Napier Brightman c. who are the Expositors 2. Why will none of you that find it so easie at last write one certain Commentary which may assure which of all the former if any one of them was in the right 3. Why did Calvin take it to be too hard for him and durst not venture to expound it 4. And if you take it to be so necessary as you pretend tell me whether it was so necessary and so taken by all those Churches that for a long time received it not as Canonical Scripture Surely they were saved without believing it Though no doubt but the book of Revelation is a great mercy to the Church and all men should understand as much of it as they can But all that I blame you for here is the perverting of the order of proof in arguing à minùs notis 13. And these over-doers that run things into the contrary extreams do most injuriously weaken the Protestant cause by disabling themselves and all men of their principles to defend it and arming the Papists against it by their errors When it cometh to an open dispute by Word or Writing one of these mens errors is like a wound that lets out blood and spirits and puts words of triumph into the adversaries mouth A cunning Papist will presently drive the ignorant disputant to resolve his cause into his mistake and then will open the falshood of that and thence inferr the falshood of all the rest And what an injury is that to the souls of the auditors who may be betrayed by it and to the cause it self For instance If one of our over-doers hold that we are reputed to have kept all the Law of Innocency and merited salvation our selves by Christ or that no act of faith is Justifying but the accepting of his righteousness or that faith Justifieth only as the efficient instrumental cause or that we have no righteousness which hath any thing to do in our Justification but only Christs imputed Merits or that mans faith Love or obedience are not rewardable c. how easily will a Papist open the falshood of such an opinion to the hearers and then tell them that they may see by this who is in the right And alas what work would one Learned Papist make in London by publick disputing if we had no wiser men to deal with him than these over-doers They may call Truth and Sobriety Antichristian and talk nonsence as against Popery successfully to their own party but I hope never to see the cause managed by their publick disputes lest half the Congregation turn Papists on it at once If Chillingworth had not been abler to confute a Papist than those that used to calumniate him as Popish or Socinian he had done less service of that kind than he did 14. And it is an odious injury that these Over-doers do to the ancient and the universal Church while in many cases they ignorantly or wilfully reproach and condemn them as if they were all the favourers of Popery and call their ancient doctrine and practice Antichristian Some of them ignorantly falsifie the Fathers doctrine and upon trust from their Leaders aver◠that they held that which they plainly contradict and that which they held indeed they cry out against as Popery Such an instance we have newly in a Souldier Major Danvers an Anabaptist which I have detected And will Christ take it well to have almost all his Church condemned as Antichristian 15. And hereby what an honour is done to Popery and what a dishonour to the Reformed Churches when it shall be concluded that all the Churches heretofore even next after the age of the Apostles and almost all the present Churches were and are against the doctrine of the Protestants and on the Papists side And yet how many do us this injury and the Roman Church this honour About the nature of Justifying faith and its office to Justification and about the nature of Justification it self and Imputation of Righteousness and free-will and mans Works and Merits and about assurance of salvation and perseverance how many do call that Popery which the whole current of Greek and Latine Fathers do assert and all the ancient Churches owned and most of all the present Churches in the world And those that call all forms of prayer Popery or the English Liturgie at least when almost all the Christian world have forms and most such as are much worse do but tell men that the Christian world is on the side that they oppose and against their way 16. And it is a crime of infamy to be taken for Separatists from the universal Church And in doctrines and forms of Worship not only to avoid what we take to have been a common weakness but also to condemn them as Antichristian or as holding pernicious errours is but
to perswade men that we are not of the same body and to own a sinful dishonourable separation 17. And by all these means these Over-doers do greatly increase Atheism and Infidelity and prophaneness among us while their zeal against Truth and reproaches of sound doctrine do make men think that our Religion is nothing but proud humour and self-conceit and while they see us so boldly condemn almost all the world except our selves they will think that so few as we deserve not to be excepted 18. By this injurious extremity against the Papists we do but kindle in them a bitterer enmity to us and hatred of them breedeth hatred in them of us and so we set them on plotting revenge against us as implacable injurious enemies when we should deal soberly and righteously with all men and seek to win them by truth and gentleness 19. I And such dealings with them do draw Persecution on the Protestants that live under their Dominions and if we refuse to use them here as Christians no wonder if abroad they use not the Protestants as Men. 20. And by such great abuses of Reformation men hinder Reformation for the time to come and do their part to make it hopeless while they discourage such attempts by dishonouring the Reformation which is past Even as David George and Muntâ—er and the Munster Doâ—ages and Rebellions do hinder the â—eviving of Anabaptistry in the world and the shame of their old practices and successes is as a Grave stone upon the Sepuleher of their Cause so do these men do their part to make it with the whole Reformation that none hereafter may date to own or meddle with such work These that I have opened briefly to you are the real fruits of false injurious and ignorant zeal and over-doing against the Papists And if Popery revive it 's like to be by such men S. But Popery is an heinous evil and corrupt nature is so prone to evil thaâ— you need not thus disswade men from going too far from it or from over-doing against it no more than from being overmuch religious P. You may say the same as truly of the errors on the contrary extream All of them are evil and men are prone to evil But 1. Little know you how common it is in the world to spend mens zeal against the real or supposed evil of other mens Opinions and thereby to strengthen the mortal evil of their own carnal affections and passions and worldly lives and to take a zeal for Truth and Orthodoxness for real Holiness while usually such miss of Truth it self 2. And you know not the wiles of Satan how ordinarily he betrayeth a good Cause by the ill management of its most zealous friends and doth undo by over-doing When he will play the Devil indeed with Eve he will seem to be more than God himself for Knowledge of Good and Evil and for the advancement of mankind to be like God and God shall be accused by him as if he were untrue and envyed our perfection When he will play the Devil indeed with Christ he will seem to be more for valiantness and trusting God than Christ was and pleadeth Scripture for tempting God When he will play the Devil indeed in the Pharisees he will be stricter for the â—abbath and for Discipline in avoiding the company of the Publicans and sinners and stricter in fastings and dyet and other observations than Christ himself And he will be a zealous enemy to Blasphemy and a zealous Royalist for Caesar and a zealous honourer of the Temple and the Law when Christ or Paul or other Apostles are to be destroyed by it And when he will play the Devil in the Nicolaitans Simonians and Gnostick Hereticks he will seem to be for higher knowledge and greater liberty than the Apostles were And so when he would sow discord among Christians and would kill their Love and divide Christs Church and set them in a mental and oral War against each other he will aggravate the errors and faults of others and he will seem a more zealous friend of Truth and enemy to Popery Heresie Error Superstition false Worship or other faults than Christ is But he knoweth why S. But God telleth us himself that he is jealous about his Worship and hath in Scripture more severely executed his Justice upon the corrupters of his Worship than almost any other crime P. No doubt but God is jealous against Idolatry He that knoweth not the true God from Idols cannot honour him And he that worshippeth him not as a most Great and Holy God dishonoureth or blasphemeth him on pretence of worshipping him And to worship him by an Image is to perswade men that God is like that which that Image doth represent which is to deny him to be God And no doubt but the Jews great temptations to Idolatry from the Nations about them were to be oppugned by great severities of God And no doubt but Moses Law was to be honoured by Gods severe executions on the breakers of it But when you come to Christs preaching you find how oft he teacheth the Pharisees to go learn what that meaneth I will have Mercy and not Sacrifice When he conferreth with the Woman of Samaria John 4. she presently turneth from the doctrine of faith as Sectaries do among us to the Controversies of the times Our Fathers say In this Mountain and you say At Jerusalem men ought to worship But Christ calleth her off such low discourse and teacheth her to worship God as a Spirit in spirit and truth if ever she would be accepted of him S. But it is a time now when Popery is striving to rise again and how unseasonably would you abate mens zeal against it P. No more than he was against his Lawyers Zeal who grew hoarse with senseless bawling for him saying I am glad he hath lost his voice or else I might have lost my Cause I am so much against Popery that I wish it wiser and abler adversaries than self-conceited unstudied Zealots who will honour Popery by entitling it to the Truths of God and the Consent of the Antient or Universal Church or would make people believe that it consisteth in some good or indifferent things as in some Doctrines Forms or Government which others can see no harm in And so teach men to say If this be Popery we will rather be Papists than of them that rave as in their sleep against they know not what Could these men be perswaded to lay out their Zeal and diligence in propagating the practical knowledge of Christianity it self and let things alone which they understand not and SUSPEND TILL THEY HAVE THROUGHLY STUDIED or at least to forbear hindering wiser men and calumniating and backbiting those that would by wisdom defend that truth which by folly and rashness they go about to betray they might be meet for their share of that honour which now they forfeit S. You strive against Gods Judgements by which he
the Wisdom from above is first pure and then peaceable and gentle c. James 3. 17. and it ever takes in both And I am sure that Christ first and his Apostles after him make Love the summ of our Religion I think it not amiss to tell you of this what an old Non-conformist saith in a Latin Treatise called De vera genuina Jesu Christi Religione Authore Ministro Anglo p. 36 37 38 39. The words are too large to recite but in short he laboureth to prove that next Faith in God and the Redeemer Love is the Christian Religion it self and set up instead of Ceremonies and penal Jewish Laws as the Great Law of Christ and the fulfilling of all Laws answering his own Office and so his new and great Commandment and the Character of his people and so the Communion of the Saints is our faith and life And that to believe in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost and Love him and one another is the Gospel and our true Religion And that when it cometh to Ceremonies Rituals and externals this still is Christs voice Go learn what this meaneth I will have Mercy and not Sacrifice But know you not that you come up to the worser part of Popery when you imitate the bloodiest men among them in your degree by pleading for Sacrifice against Mercy A cruel Religion and burning and destroying men and setting Kingdoms on fire on pretence of keeping out Heresie and Schism and preserving the right Faith and Government and Worship is the malignity of Popery When either They or You grow wrathfully zealous against your Brethren on pretence of purity of Faith or Worship and to make you a Religion which quencheth Love you know not what manner of Spirit you are of S. Is not the Church of Ephesus commended Rev. 2. 3. that could not bear them that were evil and that tryed false Apostles and found them lyars and are they not blamed that did bear with the woman Jezabel and the doctrine of the Nicolaitans And if God hate such doctrine so must we P. All this is true and good but do not you misapply it to defend your uncharitableness or error I am not perswading you to Indifferency as to truth and falshood good and evil nor to abate your hatred of Idolatry or such doctrine of wickedness and uncleanness as the Nicolaitan's was nor yet to corrupt the Churches by neglecting Discipline We would have a man that is an Heretick rejected after the first and second admonition Bear not with any such evil in your Church Communion which should be cast out and maketh men uncapable of Communion so far as it is in your power regularly to cast out such But as you must not take such for enemies but still afford them a common sort of Charity so you must not on this pretence in your ignorance and rashness rave against truth or harmless things or your Brethren that think not in all things as you do nor call that Popery which sober wiser men than you yea almost all Christs Church on earth do take to be sound doctrine or laudable practice It is the shame of the party among us that most inclineth to separation when sober understanding men shall hear an ignorant fellow or woman with confident boldness rail at a controverted Doctrine or a Form of Prayer or Ceremony as Popery and admonish their Teachers not to receive the Mark of the Beast when they do but shew their pride and ignorance in overvaluing their own conceptions and unfurnished understandings and vilifying the knowledge of others in their dark presumption If you would bring such lesser errors under Church Discipline or Separation on pretence of not bearing with them that are evil it is you your selves that would soonest be found worthy to be separated from or cast out who credit Popery by placing it in sound good decent or harmless things and corrupt Doctrine and Worship by your Errors and Superstitions which you run into on the contrary extream S. Your laxe and loose principles would cast out all Discipline out of the Church P. You know not how much in your pretences to over-much strictness of Discipline you agree with those Papists and Prelatists whom you seem to be most averse from How hath the Pope subdued Emperours and Princes to himself and captivated the World but by the pretence of Discipline by his Excommunications and Absolutions How else have his Prelates disturbed this Kingdom in former Ages And I my self had lately to do with one of the greatest Clergie-men that hath had a hand in our ejection silencing and present Church-state against whom I am fain to defend that Kings and Chief Magistrates are not to be excommunicated And I find the aforesaid English Non-conformist in the said Latin Tract de Vera Genuina Relig. pag. 280 281. put upon the same task and performing it by the same arguments which I used I confess the Papists and Worldly Tyrannical Clergie do corrupt Discipline and cast out the true cleansing useful exercise of it but for so much and such use as is conducible to maintain the interest of their Sect and Party and Carnality no men are more hot and is it not so with you FINIS