shall be sufficient for thee my strength shall be seene in thy weaknesse 2 Cor. 12.7.8 9 But the way to come by this ability is not in your method to set up nature but to die to a mans self and to be emptied of all natural abilities Most gladly therefore will I glory in mine infirmities that the power of Christ might rest upon me 2 Cor. 12.9 The Authors of the Confession do seeme to speak more fairly for the grace of God then you do They do not shun to affirme that we have all from Christ and that of our selves we have not ability to think a good thought and much to the same purpose But by this affirmation of theirs how can they possibly agree with their own principles of the purity of nature For where there is no depravation of the natural birth what need or what use is there of the grace of regeneration They conceale themselves and you openly professe your judgment they seeme to speak more fairly but you are more true to the principles and positions of the Separate Churches CHAP. III. Whether righteousnesse and holinesse be Gods Image HEre you endeavour to prove the Negative to wit that righteousnesse and holinesse in man was not the image of God in the first creation Because this is not your own single opinion but also the doctrine of the thirty Congregations who place the image of God onely in dominion over the creature we will debate the point more fully And so much the rather because you did urge me at Earle-Shilton in Leicestershire Anno 1650. Decem. 26. before a multitude of people to answer this question what place of Scripture have you to prove that Adam had the Spirit of God or that he was a spiritual man before his fall I did then cite three several texts the natural sence and import of all which is to shew that God made man after his own Image and that this Image did principally consist in spiritual and inward holinesse For that place Gen. 1.26 Come let us make man after our Image in our own likenesse There is none doth doubt but this is the speech of the three persons in Trinity Onely the question is wherein did this Image principally consist The separate congregations and you also affirme that it did appear onely in Dominion and Lordship over the creature these words do immediately follow in the text let them have dominion over the fish of the sea over the fowle of the aire and over the cattel and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth But herein both they and you are deceived for primarily and properly the Image of God was resplendent in the conformity of the soule to the spiritual Law of God Secondarily the Image of God was resplendent in that external priviledge of rule and dominion over the creature Now that it may appear that the principal part of the Image of God is in inward holinesse and that the soule so inwardly and spiritually endowed doth more lively expresse his similitude for this reade that Scripture Put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the Image of him that created him Col. 3.10 Here note what it is that the Apostle would have the Colossians to put on Put on the new man By this he doth mean the Christ-like and spiritual disposition set in immediate opposition to the old carnal disposition of the flesh which they had already in good measure begun to put off Secondly the word renewed doth note a repaire or renovation of that which formerly was decayed So the Psalmist prayeth Create in me a clean heart and renew within me a right spirit Psal 51.10 He doth pray for the returne of the same spirit which formerly he had but now seemingly had lost So thy youth is renewed like the Eagles Psal 103.5 As much in sense as that he makes thee vigorous like an Eagle who by casting her beak and feathers renews her former agility And so in the present case wherein it is said Put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge this noteth the repaire and renovation of that spiritual disposition which Adam had but lost it by his fall Thirdly for the matter of the renovation venewed in knowledge doth signifie spiritual knowledge in the nature thereof and that which comes from the Spirit of God as the cause Fourthly for the pattern of the renovation it is expressely said after the image of him that created him Therefore the first man must be made in a state of spiritual knowledge and holinesse If this be not so how could the beleeving Colossians be renewed after this example as the Prototype Let us go to the next Scripture that ye put on the new man which after God is created in rigteousnesse and true holinesse Eph. 4.24 This Scripture also doth plainly shew that Adam had the Spirit of God before his fall For first why is it said be renewed in the spirit of your minde This implieth that we were sometimes such Secondly the expression of righteousnes and true holinesse is opposed to feigned and hypocritical sanctity Thirdly the whole tenour of the speech is to this end that the Ephesians should put off the old Adam-like disposition with all the deceitful lusts thereof and that they should put on the Christ-like nature which is renewed after the similitude and pattern of the image of God in man before the fall The argument is thus grounded upon the text What the Saints are by renovation such Adam was by creation But by renovation the Saints are just and holy From all which we do conclude that Adam was a spiritual man and had the Spirit of God before his fall Now to the Scriptures let us adde a few reasons First it is a Maxime generally received that the Law was made for man before his fall Now how the first man could be conformable to so spiritual and divine a Law and he himself be destitute of the Spirit it is not within the compasse of my understanding to discerne If we will argue a posteriori from the event we must necessarily conclude that he must not only be spiritual but also have a great measure of spirit to keep such a divine and spiritual Law Secondly the Apostle saith you hath he quickned that were dead in trespasses and sinnes Ephes 2.1 2. If all be dead in trespasses and sinnes this spiritual death must begin at the fall and so by consequence the first man must have the spirit and spiritual life before his fall For what is spiritual death but a privation of the life of the Spirit of God These and many more reasons might be brought to prove Adam to be a spiritual man as long as he stood in that state in which God had placed him Now let us hear your arguments to the contrary You say that Adams righteousnesse and holinesse was not in beleeving a Saviour because be was not in a lost condition pag.
10 Suppose all this be granted that Adam was not to beleeve a Saviour because he was not in a lapsed or fallen condition how doth this prove that he was absolutely carnal and destitute of the Spirit He was to beleeve the Father as Lord Creator he was bound to love him to delight in him and how could he possibly do all this but he must have some measure of Spirit Therefore Adam had the Spirit and was a spiritual man before his fall You go on and say whatsoever qualifications the children of God have attained unto in and through Jesus Christ their Lord by remission of sinne or the hope of a resurrection and the attainment of a better life Adam was not capable of To this I answer though the difference may be in circumstances the substance is the same For if you reckon all that Adam had in present possession and all that he might have had if he had stood if you compare his whole state with the state of the Saints with that which they have and that which they shall have you shall finde an excellent correspondence betwixt both For what if Adam was not capable of remission of sinne by Christs blood it is all one if he be made in a state free from sinne What if he was not capable of regeneration because he had no pollution of nature yet he was created with a pure and spiritual nature in original righteousnesse What if he was not capable of the resurrection from the dead because he died not a natural death yet he was capable to eate of the tree of life to keep himself from death and so to live for ever Your whole way of reasoning is meerly fallacious because Adam had not spiritual life every way the same in circumstance therefore he had not the spirit in the substance and being thereof You go on and tell us If men will hold this opinion that righteousnesse and true holinesse is the Image of God which the Lord created man in and is not to be found there residing then it is very requisite that this holinesse and righteousnesse be released But how do you prove that this holinesse and righteousnesse did not reside in Adam If you shall say that he was not capable of such Evangelical holinesse as is set forth in the second Covenant what of all this notwithstanding the difference in circumstance he may have the same in substance Saint Paul saith I delight in the Law of the Lord after the inward man Rom. 7.22 He had the same spiritual delight in the Law by Renovation which Adam had before his fall by Creation where then is the difference Adam had no rebellion no law of the flesh warring against the law of his minde as Saint Paul had There was the same spirit of love in both but in the one it was with the love of the flesh and with conflict with the love of the flesh but the other was absolutely free He did not know by experience what it was to have the flesh rebel against the spirit Because the Law requires entire obedience of bodie and soule inward and outward throughout all the parts of our life because it is spiritual it self and requires that the thoughts words and deeds be spiritual we must necessarily conclude that the first man must be spiritual in a large degree seeing the Law was tempered and proportioned in the beginning to that ability he had But you have another evasion you say that at the Creation Adam was not made conformable to the Image of the Sonne seeing he had no such lawes to be conformable to Here you still harp upon the same string Because Adam was not conformable in the same manner therefore he had not the conformity to the Image of Christ in substance I pray you tell me the meaning of this Scripture Come let us make man after our own Image Is not this the speech of Father Sonne and Holy Ghost You cannot deny it No more can you deny that Adam was made after the Image of Christ as Lord Creator In this point we must necessarily say that Adam had the same Image of God and the same spirit in the general nature of it as the Saints have in the state of Regeneration only the difference lies in some circumstances He might also have the same faith in the general nature of faith though it was impossible for him in that state he stood to have justifying faith Seeing he was absolutely without the guilt of all sin he needed no pardon by Christs blood Suppose all this be granted that Adam was not to beleeve in a Saviour because he was not in a lapsed or fallen condition yet all this doth not prove him to be a carnal man or absolutely destitute of the Spirit before his fall He might beleeve in God the Father as Lord Creator to prevent that misery which should ensue by the fall And to such a kind of faith it is necessary that he should have some measure of spirit Upon this ground also we may conclude him to be spiritual and to have the Spirit before his fall But whereas the Scripture saith That God made man righteous you put off all with this shift That God made Adam without any stain or blemish in the beginning page 13. This we willingly confesse to be true but it is not the whole nor the principal part of truth For uprightnesse in the Scripture-language doth not only signifie a freedome from evil but also a positive habit of righteousnesse and holinesse and in this state did God make man in the beginning But admit that be granted What do you gather from hence you say If those that would have holinesse and righteousnesse to be entituled the Image of God and shall mean by it a condition without sin simply so considered then the whole Creation of God might be said to bear the Image of God page 13. Answ Your consequence will not hold That Adam was without sin at the time of his Creation it was from hence that God made him a holy creature after his own Image That other creatures are without sin is meerly from incapacity seeing they have neither an understanding to know the Law of God nor a will to embrace good or evil therefore they cannot sinne For that speech of yours page 14. It will appear that the Image which Adam did bear wherein he represented God lieth in some other place where none of the creatures are in acapacity to come it being beyond them all Though in the general I do acknowledge this to be a solid truth yet you do not rightly apply it What think you of that saying of our Saviour There are some Eunuches that are so borne from their mothers wombe and there are some made Eunuches of men and there are some that have made themselves Eunuches for the Kingdom of Heaven Mat. 19.12 Here are three sorts of Eunuches but one sort only is so made by grace and the mortifying work of
fallaciously coupled together The Ephesians before their conversion were naturally wicked they were by nature the children of wrath as well as others But will any man say that they were inevitably wicked how then could they be quickned and made alive againe by the infusion of a new life Further it is not destructive to all laws to say a man is naturally wicked for by the help of restraining grace he may outwardly sorbeare many evils which are forbidden in the law onely his sinfulnesse lyes in this that of himselfe he cannot come up to the purity and spirituality of the law in the denyal of his lusts Againe though naturally he be under the reign of lust he doth not inevitably lye under that bondage That reign may be broken when he shall come to be acquainted with the liberty of the Spirit The law of the Spirit of life which is in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sinne and death Rom. chap 8 2. Neither upon such a supposal is it true that precepts of holiness may be given to a wolfe as well as a man A wolfe is no way capable of precepts for want of faculties he hath neither understanding will nor any other power of the soul as a man hath That of Augustine is true A man doth not believe the impedement is not in the faculty but in the vicious habit that doth hinder the faculty Posse credere naturae est hominum velle credere gratiae est fidelium to have a remote power to believe is of the nature of men to have a will to believe is of the grace of believers But a wolfe hath neither nature nor grace to believe and therefore he hath no precepts given to him to believe Upon this account saith he it is so far from being true that a man after his fall did forfeit his natural power of election that it seems rather to be encreased For as a mans knowledge grows so his will comes to be better attended and ministred unto But after his fall his knowledge was much more than it was before he knew what madnesse was and had experience of the difference of things he perceived the evil and mischief of disobedience Answ I willingly yield that as a mans knowledge grows his will comes to be better attended and ministred unto But that his knowledge should be much more after his fall than it was before this goes against the whole scope of Scripture For one chief cause of the servility and vassallage of the natural man under sin doth arise from the blindnesse and darknesse of his judgement This is most lively set forth in the words of the Apostle The wisdome of the flesh is enmity against God because it is not subject to the law nor can be Rom. 8.7 We will explaine the particulars in order The wisdome of the flesh in the Original is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Saplence prudence and minde of the flesh That which the eye is to the body to direct and guide it the same is this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or minde of the flesh to the will and other faculties it teacheth them what to choose and what to refuse what to love and what to hate Now a man cannot choose the things of God till he doth see the excellency of them Further to shew the misery of the natural man the wisdome of his flesh is said to be enmity against God He doth not say an enemy in the concrete but enmity it selfe in the abstract that is an enemy in the highest degree God is an enemy to such a minde and such a minde is an enemy to God And therefore in the third place he gives a reason of the enmity it is not subject to the law of God for the chief designe of the minde of the flesh is to set up other Gods in place of the true God other Lords in direct opposition to the law of the Spirit When men should trust in the Lord alone this wisdome doth prompt them to trust in horses and armies for victory in good husbandry for riches in friends for preferment in the world c. And this is the reason wherefore the wisedome of the flesh is called enmity against God because it is alwayes tempting and alluring men to love the things of the world to delight in them and to trust in them more than the true God Nay the Apostle goes a step further he doth not say that it is not subject but it cannot be subject to the law of God He doth not deny only an actual subjection but that which is more he denyes a potential subjection also Among several kinds of birds and beasts there are many that are not actually subject to man yet there is nothing doth exclude but they may be brought under subjection But the wisdome of the flesh is such that it cannot be made subjection by art or industry or any outward meanes till grace comes If this be so it is strange to me that any man should so far forget himself to affirme that a mans knowledge is more after his fall than it was before seeing a great part of his misery lyeth in the blindnesse of his judgement And therefore as in the old creation so it is in the new The first work is in making of light God that commanded the light to shine out of darknesse hath commanded the light of his grace to shine in your hearts in the face of Jesus Christ 2 Cor. 4 6. By the same argument as he proves Adams knowledge to be greater after than it was before his fall he may prove us to have more knowledge than Christ Of Christ it is peculiarly said he made him sin that knew no sin we have an experimental knowledge of sin that Christ never had so Adam had an experimental knowledge of sin and misery after which he never had before his fall But he further addeth We may saith he as well suppose an understanding that can never understand and passions that can never desire nor refuse and a memory that can never remember as a will that cannot choose Answ Though it be a preposterous thing to imagine a will that cannot choose yet there is no strangenesse to conceive of a will that cannot choose the things of the Spirit To choose is natural to the will as it is to fire to burne to the memory to remember but to choose the things of the Spirit of God this must be from supernatural operation When the rich Marchant found the pearle hid in the field for joy he went and sold all that he had Mat. 13.44 But he saith As sin is the action of a free faculty it can no more take away the freedome of that faculty than vertue can for that also is the action of the same free faculty Answ Neither do we say that sin takes away the freedome of the faculty for all that do commit sin do freely commit it only it takes away the freedome
the Spirit So in the present case the creatures were free from sin as well as Adam but their freedom was meerly from incapacity because they were not able to receive a spiritual Law And Adams freedome was from the holinesse of that state in which the Lord had made him Therefore in the point of nontransgression Adam was put into such a state as none of the creatures could come to Next you enquire Whether the Image of God did consist in light These are your words If the light that Adam had was the Image then it must be a light spiritual or natural or both Now that it was not the light of the Gospel that Adam had is clear there being neither malady nor remedy which were in being in the time of this light page 15. Though there was neither malady nor remedy at that time yet he might have spiritual light in the substance thereof and the Image of God might principally consist in this The Apostle speaking of the regenerate hath this expression renewed in knowledge after the Image of him that created him Col. 3.10 This sheweth plainly that man in the beginning was created after the Image of God and that Image did chiefly consist in the spiritual light that was in the understanding But because there is a great controversie between the Arminians and us about the nature of this light viz. Whether Adam had a power before his fall to beleeve in Christ and because this is a point pertinent to our purpose I will briefly recite three Arguments used by Corvinus in his Answer to Du Moulin First saith he Adam was not bound to beleeve in Christ therefore he did not receive ability to beleeve in him such an ability would be unnecessary and unprofitable where there was no use of it at all Chap. 11. sect 4.5 page 156. Answ The Argument doth not hold God did not require Adam to beleeve the Stories written in the five Books of Moses the Books of Josbua Judges Samuel c. But will any man be so void of reason to argue that he had no power to beleeve these Stories in case they had been revealed to him so God did not require Abraham to beleeve in Christ as he was revealed and exhibited in the last dispensation of the promise shall we therefore argue that he had not ability to beleeve or that he had not the same spirit in substance which the Saints now have He that doth so judge let him answer the meaning of this Scripture We having the same spirit of faith according as it is written I beleeved and therefore have I spoken we also beleeve and therefore speak 2 Cor. 4.13 It is clear from hence that the Patriarchs Prophets and Apostles had all of them the same spirit of faith in substance yet all of them have not the same revelation of the promise in the circumstances thereof Secondly Corvinus saith that before the fall the Gospel was not credible because in the Gospel a sinner is commanded to believe himself to be a sinner and that by himself and his own works he cannot be saved and that all salvation is placed in Christ the Mediatour And further he addeth It was so far from man to be able to believe all these things that he was then bound rather to believe the contrary to wit himself to be upright and that he should be blessed if he did persist in his uprightnesse p. 154 162 164 165. Answ To this we willingly agree That the way to salvation as now it is doth differ very much from that state wherein Adam stood But the question is not concerning the diversitie or contrariety of the states but concerning the power and ability that Adam had whether it be one and the same in substance with that which the Saints now have White and black are two contrary colours yet the same eye doth see both Heat and cold are two qualities in the extream yet they are tangible objects to one and the same sense of seeling So in the like case though the Word of the Law and the Word of the Gospel are two contrary wayes to salvation yet there is nothing doth exclude but they may be apprehended by one and the same spirit of faith The Word may be one and the same in the general notion and nature of the Word and it may be apprehended by one and the same spirit of faith yet it may differ in circumstance But because the force of the Argument doth lie in the contradictory nature of the two states we will come to instance in a case or two Adam before his fall could not shew mercie if we look to the outward act or the performance of the duty for where there is no misery what mercy can be shewed shall we therefore argue that he had no such affection in him as mercy So in the like case it is not compatible with the state of the blessed Angels to beleeve in a Christ to recover them out of their fall for they that never fall have no need of a recovery what then shall we say that they have no ability to understand the Mysterie of the Gospel This cannot be for so the Apostle reasoneth By them which have preached the Gospel unto you with the Holy Ghost sent down from Heaven which things the Angels desire to look into 1 Pet. 1.12 Though the blessed Angels have no need of salvation by grace held out in the Gospel yet they have ability to understand it they have a desire to pry and gaze into it So in the like case though Adam had no need of salvation before his fall by the Mediatour yet he might have ability to understand that way of salvation in case it had been revealed Thirdly Corvinus saith that greater abilities are required to faith in Christ then that ability which Adam bad before his fall Answ I cannot see possibly how he can consist with his own principles For seeing he doth stand upon it in his Treatises against Moulin page 159.165 that God doth proportion abilities to commands and seeing also he saith that God did promise life to Adam under the condition of most perfect and absolute obedience By the position of these two he must necessarily affirme Adams abilities to be exceeding great before his fall For seeing the work required was to yield such a perfect obedience as none else can perform since the fall but Christ alone it must necessarily follow that Adam must have a large portion of spirit fitted for such an employment As in some Monuments of Antiquity we do argue how strong such a Prince was that died many hundred yeares ago from the greatnesse and weight of his sword so from the spirituality of the Law given to Adam before his fall we do infer his abilities to have been exceeding great And thus much out of Corvinus his own principles Now Mr. Everard let us return back again to you And here to deal plainly with you and the Churches that do
him of sinne he is then able to judge himself when the Lord also discovers the love of Christ to the heart by the teachings of the Word without and the Spirit within he is then able to beleeve Further when God giveth a Christ-like disposition he is then able to shew son-like affections towards God and make expression that the Law is written in his heart In a word he hath power so farre to open the doore as he hath ability from Christ he cannot go one step further And therefore when the Spirit stands at the doore and knocks to speak properly there is no natural ability in us all ability is from grace we must look to Christ onely and the more we look to him in the sense of our own weaknesse the more we shall have All that may truely be gathered from this Scripture is that a man is a free agent in the work of his salvation but the ability is onely from Christ and not from us Now we will consider the force of your third Reason Reas 3. If God say you giveth men actions of obedience then were he to be obeyed by men no otherwise then the winds and seas obey him In this case there can be no talent no neglect of duty on mans part no more then there is in the axe or saw in dividing of a piece of timber Answer This argument I confesse is of force against them who give all to the Spirit that they make man himself meerly passive as a stupid block I am against them as well as you But you do not onely strike at these but against them also who are for the Lords free election and the special communication of his own grace infallibly to bring his people to salvation And thereupon say you such an obedience may thus be compared as if God should come and put a purse of gold into the hand of men and force it upon them and call that their obedience and to many other men give them not a penny-worth and demand some of them and because it was not there dispose of their persons to everlasting ruine page 53. Here you endeavour to misrepresent the doctrine of the Lords free election and make it odious to your own ends But we will make it clear that mans obedience may well consist with the doctrine of election and his disobedience also may consist with the doctrine of non-election ☞ For the first let us consider the meaning of that place I will make an everlasting covenant with them I will never turne away from them to do them good I will put my feare into their hearts and they shall never depart from me Jer. 32.40 That which is here spoken must needs be a promise to the elect because it is expressely said I will make an everlasting Covenant with them I will never turne away from them These words do note the communication of an infallible grace but yet not so as any kind of way to diminish and empaire the endeavour of man for this is not wrought immediately by the Spirit alone but mediately by the Spirit upon the heart of man And therefore these words are immediately added I will put my fear into their heart and they shall never depart from me Because the Lord had an intent to keep them from back-sliding de did resolve to infuse a son-like fear into their hearts to avoid all spiritual dangers and to keep themselves from falling And so we may see how the infallible administration of the grace may stand with the free act and endeavour of man But let us go to another Scripture I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh and will give you a heart of flesh I will put my Spirit within you and will cause you to walke in my statutes and ye shall keep my judgments and do them Then shall ye remember your own evil wayes and your doings that were not good and shall loath your selves in your own sight for your iniquities and for your abominations Ezek. 36.25 26 27. Here in these words also there is a promise to the Lords peculiar people that he will bestow his special grace upon them in these words a new heart will I give them and they shall keep my commandments I will wash them with cleane water Secondly here is their particular act by the power of grace received they shall freely walk in the Lords statutes when he shall give them a new heart they shall loath their abominations when he shall wash them with cleane water The more subtile sort of Arminians in several Treatises do seeme to ascribe much to grace onely they make the point of the question to stand in the modus rei or the manner of the grace that God doth not so infallibly work upon the heart ut eventus non possit non sequi that the event cannot chuse but follow This is the stumbling stone and the rock of offence that they stumble at Now let us consider what is alledge in their Apology to the forementioned Scripture First say they this promise is peculiar to the last times therefore it cannot be applied to the conversion of the elect which is one and the same in all times Answ Though the promise is specially to be applied to the call to the Jewes yet it doth strongly inforce the point For the question being onely de modo rei concerning the manner of the thing this Scripture plainly sheweth the certainty and infallibility of such a grace by and thorough which the Jewes shall be brought home in the last dayes If we look to the dispersion of that Nation over all Countreyes of the world we may conceive it a thing impossible to natural reason for them to be gathered together yet God hath promised to gather them into one body and that David shall be their King in the latter dayes Even so if we look to the enmity and perversenesse of a people against the Gospel of Christ there is no Nation under the whole heaven for these many hundred years that hath been such desperate adversaries as they have been There are neither English nor Spanish nor French nor Italian no not Turks nor Tartars that are greater haters of the Gospel then this people have been and yet are Yet notwithstanding all this antipathy they shall be called and thorough the call they shall be infallibly brought home in the latter times Though according to natural reason this may seeme very improbable God will certainly performe his promise and no obstacle or hindrance shall be able to obstruct the work From hence then it is clear if we go to the modus rei or the manner of the thing we may easily collect that the way of God in working the conversion of his people may be after a certain and infallible manner Secondly they argue If God will do all by his power why are men commanded to make themselves a new heart and a new spirit This were irrational to do on
same spiritual drink for they drank of that rock which followed them and that rock was Christ 1 Cor. 10.4 5. Further after the fourty years pilgrimage were ended the Lord doth promise that their Convoy should not leave them but that he should go before them and drive out the Canaanites because it was not in their own power to bring the land into subjection This is the Lords promise and therefore in sense and substance the Angel must do the whole work Secondly let us consider what is the duty of the people and that is contained in these words Beware of him obey his voice provoke him not c. Because they did wholly depend upon him for all therefore they should be careful to observe him and to follow him in his leadings The force of the reason is the same in the words of the text work out your salvation with fear and trembling because God works in you the will and the deed because his Spirit is all in all the cause of mans salvation to carry on the work because his Spirit doth convince reprove teach comfort seal and guide the Saints therefore they should walk tenderly and carefully toward him The Apostle saith grieve not the Spirit of grace by which ye are sealed unto the day of Redemption Ephes 4.30 In case they do with him as disobedient children do with their parents when they give them good counsel the Spirit will neither comfort nor seal them any more but will leave them to a state of darknesse and discomfort And this is the true meaning of the text We may hereby understand how God doth carry on the whole work of salvation and this doth no way impair or diminish the endeavour of man In the close of all you tell us Let us say with the Apostle in our hearts that we desire to strive with dayly labourings according to the mighty workings whereby he worketh in us Col. 1.29 And do not say any more it is God that worketh our actions but be thankful to him that giveth us sufficient means Page 63. You have heard before that the Lord doth work in us the will and the deed and therefore the spirituality of the action is wholly from God though we are free workers by the help of his grace But let us take your words in the fairest construction If you will stand firmly to this principle that God gives sufficient means by a power working in us you need not fly to the purity of nature to natural free-will and to such like beggerly rudiments to salve the endevour of man In this place you seem to speak for grace when elsewhere through your whole treatise you drive the bargain altogether for the natural abilities of the will But seeing you have offered this text to our consideration we will endeavour to draw from it the concord betwixt the grace of God and the endeavour of man The words are these Whereunto I also labour striving according to his working which worketh in me mightily The Apostle speaketh of the work of the Ministery whom we preach warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdome that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus whereunto I labour according to the mighty workings that he worketh in us Here it is plain that the Apostle did work in teaching and instructing every one and it was not so much his work as the work of the Spirit in him and by him When he was at Athens his Spirit was stirred up in him when he saw the City wholly given to Idolatry Why are not the like excitations of spirit in men in there dayes who travell to Constantinople to Ligorn to Rome seeing hose people are wholly given either to Mahumetan superstition or Popish Idolatry The reason is manifest the same spirit doth not work so mightily in the hearts of men as it did sometime in the heart of Paul because he was filled with the Spirit he did shew abundant sympathy and bowells of affection towards all the lost sonnes of men But to come to instances in these last times when the Gospel was plucked down and the Mass was set up in Queen Maries dayes the Martyr being in a journey declared his intention that he would preach in his charg the next Lords day and when he that journeyed with him told him then he would certainly be cast into prison his answer was I am in prison till I am in prison He was bound in his spirit to preach the Gospel to the soules which he had taken charg of he could have no peace otherwise then in the discharge of his duty He did labour freely yet so as his labour was by the inward moving of the Spirit But of all other places that passage of our Saviour is most used by the Enthusiasts Ye shall be brought before Kings and Princes for my sake but when they shall deliver you up take no thought how or what you shall speak for it shall be given to you in that houre what you shall speak For it is not ye that speak but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you Mat. 10.18 19 20. Though this promise is made to the Martyrs and Confessors in times of persecution yet it is not made to them in that manner as to extinguish and drown all endeavour of their own as though God would do all and they should be discharged of their duty The promise is only made to such as should engage themselves for Christ and should humbly in the use of the means depend upon him for the supply of his Spirit And thus we see that the Spirit does all and yet in the most spiritual actions man himself is a free-worker It shall be given you in that houre what you shall speak This expression what you shall speak sheweth plainly that the Saints are free Agents Let us now consider that place Ephes 2.8 9. For by grace ye are saved through faith not of your selves it is the gift of God ☜ Here you yield that salvation as purchased by Christ is the gift of God but you will not have faith it self to be the gift of God you grant one part of the text to deny another If you consider the words you shall finde that not onely salvation but also faith it self is Gods free gift If this be not so how could the Ephesians come to beleeve The Apostle saith that they were dead in trespasses and sinnes they walked according to the course of the world they fulfilled the lusts of the flesh and of the mind Therefore they could not come to beleeve by any natural ability but meerly by the quickning work of the Spirit Further this expression is added ver 10. We are his work manship created of God unto good works By nature they were dead in trespasses and sinnes and if that now they could perform any spiritual act they were made able to do this by the new creation or workmanship of God Further if faith be not the
the holy One of Israel page 126. Sir I would intreat you not to make the doctrine of salvation odious by picking quarrels against words For we do not peremptorily define that there was no other way possible to save man unlesse Christ had stepped in we leave it onely to the Lord himself to judge of the several possibilities of the salvation of man This onely we affirme so far as it is revealed to us the present is the most excellent way to satisfie the justice of God and to shew abundant mercy And though you now as others before you go about to cast an hatred upon the doctrine of the Church in the points of the fall of Adam original sinne free-will and the like I must tell you if you and they would not tear those things asunder which should be joyned together if you would compare one thing with another you should find that there is nothing so deformed in the state of the first man but there is that in the second which will answer all But here is the misery you look upon the mystery of salvation in some broken pieces and parts onely and do not consider the whole compages or sum of the truth in one body We will now proceed to your next Chapter CHAP. XV. Whether Adams posterity were guilty of his transgression IN this Chapter you endeavour to make good the purity of nature and the freedome of all infants from original sin you do not as the Jesuites and Arminians extenuate the matter but after the manner of the ancient Pelagians you deny the sinne of the nature And here you do not go alone The Confession of faith lately set forth by the thirty separate Congregations doth not speak one word of this sin of the nature If we go to the beginning of their book where all other Chatechismes do shew the misery of man by nature they are altogether silent in the point of original sinne In the middle where they speak of the grace of Christ there is not one syllable concerning the grace that doth regenerate or purge out the sinne of the nature In the third and last part of the book when they come to duties after regeneration they speak nothing of the great work of the mortification of the Old man and the putting on of the New man but onely of dipping and baptizing Disciples and of the manner of living in their way of Church-membership And thus one great errour at the foundation doth in a manner overthrow the whole building of the Christian faith And this is the wofull state of the separate Congregations with us Neither are these Churches in so bad a condition but the Examinors and Censors of the late Confession of faith set forth by the Assembly of Divines these clancular Authours whosoever they be have further swarved from the truth ☜ For they in their late Examen do not onely maintain the purity of the natural birth but also have many other positions and damnable tenents I will therefore take the liberty to joyn all together And therefore Mr. Everard where you and they do agree one answer shall serve both and where they have any thing which you have not touched I shall begin with them as assoon as I have ended with you Before I come to answer your arguments let me put both you and them in mind of your sophystical dealing ☞ For neither you in your treatise nor they in their Examen do mention our chiefest argument drawn from Job 3. These are the words of our Saviour to Nicodemus Jesus answered and said unto him verily verily I say unto thee except a man be born again he cannot see the Kingdome of God Nicodemus saith unto him how can a man be born when he is old can he enter the second time into his mothers womb and be borne Jesus answered verily verily I say unto thee except a man be born of water and of the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdome of God That which is born of the flesh is flesh and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit Marvail not that I said unto thee you must be borne again verse 3.4 5 6 7. These words are most plain and significant to prove the impurity of the natural birth and the necessity of the new birth as every one that readeth may easily understand I do marvell then that you should overpasse this place in silence But let us now come to the meaning of the text to prove the necessity of Regeneration our Saviour doth use this medium that which is borne of flesh is flesh Because man is polluted in his natural birth therefore he needs have a new birth By flesh we do not understand that masse and lump of the body which we carry about us for in it there is neither good nor evil but our Lord Christ doth here intend the corruption of nature as it is opposed to the sanctifying work of the Spirit for so flesh and Spirit are commonly opposed in Scripture This may more particularly be seen in Rom. 8. in the beginning of the Chapter Therefore our Saviours argument is much in effect because the nature of man is defiled with original sinne from the very birth the remedy must be proportionable to the disease ☞ it is necessary that every one that shall enter into the Kingdome of heaven must be new born There be divers cause that do bring men to a habit of sinne and there are divers means to be used to break of such habits First men are brought to a custome in sinning by example and therefore the Word commands that we should turn away from such evil communications as will corrupt good manners Secondly men are brought to a habit in sinne by long custome which is as it were a second nature and therefore the Scripture speaks that we should break off such kind of customes by a kind of violence Thirdly men come to a practise of sinne by temptation as Achan saw the wedge of gold and the babylonish garment and coveted it and therefore the Scriptures do every where say that we should resist the temptations of the world the allurements of the flesh and to pray unto the Lord that he would not lead us into temptation These are in part the causes of the habit and practise of sin but they are not the original the principal cause that lies higher in the natural birth There is a necessity of Regeneration by the Spirit because all that are borne in the natural way are defiled with sinne They then who maintain the purity of the natural birth as the Examiners Mr. Everard and the separate Churches do overthrow the doctrine of the foundation of Christ Now Mr. Everard ☞ let us come to your arguments First you say we could not sinne in Adam our souls and bodies were not together in him and how we could commit sinne you know not therefore believe not page 127. But Sir if you would seriously consider
too much and to these the exhortation is given in special that they should be humbled and become as little children There lyeth then a palpable and grosse fallacy in your whole discourse when you take the words absolutely that all infants are free from sinne when our Saviour speaketh in a particular sense only of the act and execution of this or that particular evil Now you proceed and tell us it was never heard that children had any sinne by way of act and by way of omission you cannot make it good that they ever received a command or were capable of any command from God page 138. Answ What we have learned we are willing to acknowledge and though we never heard that infants had any sinne in them by any act of their own yet we have learned from Scriptures yea from the very first principles of the faith that they have it by contagion and the disobedience of the first man The words of our Saviour are plain Joh. 3.8 That which is born of the flesh is flesh And that of the Apostle Rom. 5.12 By one man sinne entred into the world and death by sinne And many such places there are to prove infants to be guilty of sinne by the disobedience of the first man and to be involved in the pollution of nature by hereditary contagion But because you and the Examiners are so strict upon the point I pray you resolve me in this one case When the promise was made the seed of the woman shall break the Serpents head was not this the promise of Christ to Adam after his fall If infants therefore are absolutely acquitted from the guilt of Adams sinne as being another mans act if they be free from the pollution of nature to what end was the promise of Christ How did he come in the nature of a Physician to cure when there was no disease Where there is no malady there needs no remedy And whereas you go about to free infants from the sinne of omission because they are not capable of a command I pray you shew the reason why the Lord was so strict in his command to the Jewish infant that he should be circumcised upon the eighth day and that the uncircumcised man-child should be cut off from his people Gen. 17.11.12 c. For my part I know no reason of the strictnesse of this Law but that the Lord would signifie to beleevers under this dispensation that there infants were born in original sinne and that it was not safe to omit the remedy for that disease And though in strictnesse of termes we will yeeld so farre to Corvinus and to Julian the Pelagian that there is no particular command that forbids an infant to be born in original sinne yet for all this they must needs allow that the Law was given to reveal to convince and to discover the sinne of the nature and by the discovery thereof to drive a man to Christ to look to him onely for sanctifying and regenerating glrace S. Paul saith the Law is spiritual and I am carnal sold under sinne And in the same text I had not known sinne except the Law had said thou shalt not covet Rom. 7. You go on for this sinne called original if infants had committed it God would have called them to repentance for it when they had come to years at least wise but I can safely say that there is no man living that to this day ever made it appear to be the mind of God for any man to repent of that sinne Truly Sir your confidence is very great and you have more boldnesse than truth on your side For we may beleeve that you never heard of the promises nor the commands mentioned in Scripture when you dare affirme such things as these When the Lord promiseth in the new Covenant I will take out of their bowels a heart of stone and will give them a heart of flesh Ezek. 36. By the heart of stone he means a hard heart and a sinful nature that every infant did bring into the world he doth promise to take away the corruption of nature and that he will sanctifie his people by his Spirit So for the commands of God we read every where that men are exhorted to put off the Old Adam-like disposition That ye put off concerning the former conversation the Old man which is corrupt according to the deceivable lusts Ephes 4.22 By the Old man he doth mean the carnal disposition which we have from Adam by natural generation This corrupted disposition of the flesh he would have the beleeving Ephesians and in them all others to subdue and mortifie And further if you look to the right use of Baptisme now as of circumcision of old you shall finde that the institution of these things doth primarily intend the doing away of the sinne of the nature as I have already shewed in my Treatise of Infant Baptisme Therefore I cannot but admire at your boldnesse when you stand so much upon it that you can safely say that God never called men to repentance for original sinne I am so farre from your judgment that I think the greatest part of repentance lyes in the mortification of the sinne of the nature But you have an evasion this sinne called original sinne if infants had committed it God would have called them to repentance Here you put that upon us which we do not speak and I know no solid Writer in the world that doth use such an expression of committing original sinne It is proper onely to men of ripe years to commit sinne For original sin we say that is onely by propagation thorough the disobedience of the first man and when men come to be sanctified by the Spirit of God they are qualified with inward principles to purge out the sin of the nature Neither doth your argument drawn from the example of Christ any whit promote your cause You say If this principle should finde a being in the world that every infant was born in sinne because lineally derived from Adam then where will you get water to wash your hands of that grand absurdity to wit that Jesus Christ was not free from original sinne for then he must have a share because he came from the loynes of a woman the Daughter of Adam page 139. To this I answer if you will make Christ and all Infants to run parallel in the purity of their natural birth then why did Christ die for them why did he sanctifie their nature There is no need of salvation by the merit of Chri st where there is no guilt of sinne There needs no sanctification of the Spirit where there is no pollution of nature Why do not you exclude all Infants from these as you do from the water of baptisme For your Argument drawn from the example of Christ If you build so much upon that I would entreat you to consider two things First why he did assume our nature Secondly assuming our
nature how came he to be exempt from original sinne For the first he did assume our nature with all the miseries thereof sinne onely excepted that he might make expiation of sin in that nature that had sinned He did not take the nature of Adam before his fall nor that humane nature which the Saints shall have in the state of glory but meerely the nature of man clothed with all the infirmities thereof to sanctifie that nature and to satisfie divine justice To this purpose the Apostle speaketh Rom. 8.3 What the Law could not do in that it was weak through the flesh God sent his Son in the similitude of sinful flesh and for sinne condemned sinne in the flesh In these words we may note that because Christ came in the similitude of sinful flesh all flesh besides his of infants as well as others was sinful flesh onely Christ came in the similitude of sinful flesh He had the reality of our nature with all the miseries thereof onely he was born in the similitude of our sinfulnesse that he might satisfie the justice of God And for the second point how he came to be free from original sinne this is plainly expressed in the articles of the Creed He was conceived by the Holy Ghost born of the Virgin Mary For his conception that part of the Virgins flesh was so sanctified by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit that it might be free from the natural contagion and that the nature of God and the nature of man together might make one person And that which may further amplifie the truth of this Christ was not born by vertue of that promise increase and multiply for this since the fall hath filled the world with sinners but he was born by vertue of the special promise the seed of the woman shall break the Serpents head And this is the true reason for though Christ was born of the Virgin Mary a Daughter of Adam though he had the common nature of all mankind for truth and substance yet he was made free from original sinne by the mean of a wonderful generation And in this matter by way of retortion we may turn your own weapons upon your self and upon the Examiners For if that be true that all infants are free from natural pollution what need was there that the Son of God should be conceived by the Holy Ghost and be born of the Virgin Mary His conception needed not to have been by the Holy Ghost in case the natural generation did not necessarily inforce the propagation of original sinne These extraordinary means would have been superfluous in case he might have been exempt from all sinne in the ordinary way The arguments which you further alledge are as invalid as the former You say If we were in the transgression assoon as Adam himself how come we to derive it from him page 139. To the satisfying of this doubt I would entreat you to distinguish between the things that are attributed to Adam as a publick man and the things that are ascribed to him as a particular person If you speak of his publick relations as the root and head of all his posterity It is true what he did we did in him we were in the transgression assoon as himself was his sin was not so much his own as the sin of the humane nature But if you speak of him as a particular person according to the order of existence he is the first of the race and so in succession of generations all that were in the corrupted masse as they come to be born severally and individually to derive from him In a sense therefore it is true that we were in the transgression assoon as himself was It is the Apostles own expression in whom all have sinned Yet in flux and succession of generations it is as true that he did go before and all others did follow after in their respective times Next you argue If we sinned in him why might not we have sinned without him how came we all to be of one mind page 139. You may I confesse make such a supposition and a thousand more of the like kind and there will be no end of your cavilling But the Scriptures tell us plainly that one man was made in the beginning he was the root of all mankind and by this one man sinne entred into the world If this seem harsh to you to the Examiners and to others that all should be brought under a necessity of sinning and perishing by the disobedience of one man this should pacifie your minds that all are brought under a possibility of salvation by the obedience of the second man This is the doctrine of the Prophets and Apostles Take heed then lest by diminishing the sinne of the first man you do not take away from the grace and the blessing brought in by the second If your nature was never defiled what need have you of a Christ What need of a new nature What need of regeneration of the Spirit I hope the Examiners and you will not say that these are onely for the purging out of actual sinne or the habit of sin got by imitation Let us now come to hear your admirations I strange say you at your hard thoughts of Adam that he had more pronenesse to sinne after the fall than before If you can bring no proof for what you say for this or for the like case then you must excuse my infidelity in the point You proceed after that manner as your brethren do they desire to have their infidelity excused because they do not read in so many letters and syllables of the Baptisme of infants in the new Testament And so here you do not read of such and such particular sinnes which Adam did commit after his fall and therefore you desire to be excused for your unbeleef in that point But Sir If you would look to the harmony of Scripture you should finde that this testimony is not onely given of Adam but also of all his posterity God saw the wickednesse of man that it was great in the earth and that every imagination of the thought of his heart was onely evil from his childhood Gen. 6.5 If every imagination of his heart was evil from his childhood then there must be some particular time assigned where this universal corruption and depravation of nature did begin If it did begin at the fall as there begin it must then you must also necessarily conclude that Adam had a greater pronenesse to sin after the fall than he had before But say you If it could be proved that Adam sinned ten thousand times afterward must we therefore set all his sinnes upon the first sinnes score page 142 As difficult a point as you make of it the Apostle doth set all upon the disobedience of the first man as he doth put all upon the obedience of the second man As by the disobedience of one many were made sinners so by the
conversation of evil customes of evil acts of evil desires he must come to an evil nature that lies at the bottome and that which is worst of all he will find it to be the very root and cause of the the mischief The Apostle doth very elegantly call all lusts the works and effects of the flesh because they are the effects that the flesh doth produce in opposition to the effects and fruits of the Spirit Gal. 5.19 20 21. This ground being laid let us come to his exceptions as they follow in their order First saith he I know Saint Paul reckons concupiscence to be one of the works of the flesh and consequently such as excludes from heaven Col. 3.5 Evil concupiscence concupiscence with something superadded but certainly that is nothing that is natural for God made nothing that is evil and whatsoever is natural and necessary cannot be mortified Repl. That which is natural and necessary by creation we confesse cannot nor ought not to be mortified Of this kind is the lust after meat drink sleep c. but that which is natural and necessary by corruption ought chiefly to be mortified nay it is the prime work of Christianity to put off the Adam-like and by degrees to put on the Christ-like disposition Gal. 5.24 He proceedeth I come saith he to consider that by concupiscence either must be meant the first inclinations to their object or the proper acts of Election which are the second acts of concupiscence If the first inclinations be meant then certainly that cannot be a sinne which is natural and necessary Repl. We do willingly admit such a distinction concupiscence is sometime taken for the habit or the root it self and sometimes for those second acts that do flow from the root Now in such a case it is to me a great wonder that any should own the second acts of concupiscence to be sinne and yet own no sinfulnesse in the concupiscence that is more radical and fundamental Acts do flow from the nature and therefore where acts be bad the nature cannot be good It is our Saviours own argument Men do not gather grapes of thornes nor figs of thistles And whereas he stands upon this subtilty that the first inclinations are unavoidable therefore they are not sinful If he means that they are absolutely unavoidable this we deny For that which is unavoidable by nature may be avoided by grace The guilt of concupiscence may be taken away that it be not imputed the power of it may be broken by the Spirit and the remainders of it may be clean extinguished in the life of glory Now he proceedeth To desire that to which all men tend naturally is no more a sin than to desire to be happy is a sin Desire is no more a sin than joy or sorrow is Repl. If he speak of the natural tendency of desire as it is by creation We willingly subscribe and so it is no sinne to desire to eat drink or to long after an happy estate But if he speak of natural desires as they are now since the fall The desires of the flesh do wholly rend to evil The flesh lusteth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 against the Spirit and the works of the flesh are manifest adultry fornication c. Gal. 5.18 c. He further argues Then there can be no reason told why it is more a sin to will evil than to understand it and how doth that which is moral differ from that which is natural For the understanding is first and primely moved by his object Rep. The Scripture doth testifie of the blindnesse of the minde and the perversity of the judgement as well as of the pravity of the will Not to go far for an instance the words of the text are plaine The Ephesians are said to be the children of wrath under this title and formality because they did fulfill the lusts of their minde or according to the original the wills of their cogitations and their reasonings They are tearmed the wills of the cogitation because the choise of the will and the disorder of that choise doth arise commonly from the blindnesse of judgement As for his question how doth that which is natural differ from that which is moral We need not trouble our selves in the businesse For the blindnesse of the judgement and the perversity of the will are natural and moral both They are natural so far forth as they come by propagation from the first root they are moral in respect of the anomy and irregularity as being contrary to the spiritual holy and pure law of God He goeth on I cannot but wonder saith he why men are pleased where-ever they finde the word concupiscence in the new Testament presently to dreame of original sinne and make that to be the summe total of it whereas concupiscence if it were the product of Adams fall is but one small part of it Rep. There is a double reason may be given as I conceive where men finde mention made of concupiscence they do thereby understand original sinne First because that sinne is commonly called by the title of concupiscence Secondly Those derivative concupiscences as I may so say which are by choice and election do all flow from the mother concupiscence and do exceedingly symbolize with her As in that famous passage of the Apostle Every man is drawn away with his own lust and enticed and lust when it hath conceived it bringeth forth sinne and sinne when it is finished bringeth forth death Jam. 1.14 15. By sinne he must needs meane the open act of sinne as it is in the publick view of man After this he speaks of finishing of sinne when men have filled the measure of their iniquity then death comes at last as the wages of sin Though this be so in the end yet at the first all sin is brooded in the lust of the heart All secondary acts of concupiscence do spring from the original concupiscence which is the cause of all Upon these grounds The sinful disposition of the nature may well passe under the name and notion of concupiscence because the operations within do chiefly consist in lusting and all the acts of sinne do flow from the lust of the heart within Concupiscence saith he is but one of the passions and in the utmost extension of the word it can be taken but for one halfe of the passions for not only all the passions of the concupiscible faculty can be a principle of sinne but the irascible doth more hurt in the world that is more sensual this more devilish pag. 94. Rep. It is true in moral Philosophy the usual distinction is into 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 et 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the irascible and concupiscible faculty but what need is there of such a difference in the case that we now speak for the Apostle reckons up the lusts of the flesh adultery fornication uncleannesse hatred variance emulation c. Gal. 5.19 There is no man will
doubt but in this list or catalogue he hath respect as well to things that belong to the irascible as to the concupiscible faculty yet all is contained under the notion and name of concupiscence For in the verses immediately going before he exhorteth walk in the Spirit and ye shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh According to the original it is ye shall not accomplish 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the concupiscence of the flesh In the present case then when the Galathians did live in malice envy hateful and hating one another they did fulfill the concupiscence of the flesh And so by this account the lusts both of the concupiscible and the irascible faculty are comprehended more generally under one name and title of concupiscence And all his contrary reasoning is just nothing at all Now let us come to his last Scripture The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God because they are foolishnesse to him 1 Cor. 2.14 Here he bestows much paines to weaken the force of the text An animal man saith he that is a Philosopher or a rational man such as were the Greeke and Roman Philosophers upon the stock and account of the learning of all the Schooles could not discern the excellency of the Gospel-mysteries as of God incarnate Christ dying the resurrection of the body and the like Rep. It s true that the Philosophers aforementioned were such natural or animal men but it is not the whole truth For they that come to Church and publickly professe may be animal men also and in their animality may be far from receiving the things of the Spirit A schoole-boy that is able some way to make a Gramatical construction of the Greek of Euclide and Ptolomy is not presently capable of the mysteries of Geometry and Astronomy That requireth the skill of an Artist as well as of a Gramarian And if the laws of the land were translated into English I think we should not be all Lawyers out of hand So in the present case though all may outwardly own and some may preach the Doctrine and mysteries of salvation this doth not presently entitle them to that kinde of learning that comes only by the teaching of the Spirit Many may speak much of the love of Christ that never had the feeling of it in their hearts Moses tells the people in his time ye have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes yet the Lord hath not given you an heart to perceive and eyes to see and eares to heare unto this day Deut. 29.24 They did see and they did not see they did outwardly see the works but they did not inwardly believe the truth wisedome goodnesse and power of God For had they seen these things as they ought they could not but have loved the Lord their God and have lived in obedience to his laws So then not only the Greek Philosophers but many Christians also may be called natural or animal men He further sheweth what animality is Animality which is a reliance upon natural principles without revelation is a state privatively opposed to the Spirit and a man in that state cannot be saved because he wants a vital part he wants the Spirit Rep. What he saith here and in the words immediately following is the same in substance that we speak and is extreamly contrary to the designe that he derives at For if in the state of animality a man cannot be saved because he wants the Spirit the chief vital of salvation Why doth he to make religion intelligible deny original sin plead for the freedome of the will and establish the purity of the natural birth We say because a man is borne in original sin and dead in trespasses and sinnes therefore he cannot be saved without the infusion of a new life He saith that a man in his animality cannot go to heaven without the Spirit the chiefe vital of salvation Let a wise man now judge where we and he do differ But to blind the businesse he hath a subtle distinction between carnality and animality Carnality saith he or the state of being in the flesh is not only privatively opposed but contrarily also to the spiritual staee of grace Rep. This expression of his might passe well enough were it not for that which followeth First speaking of the state of animality and then of carnality afterwards he hath these words The first is only an imperfection and a want of supernatural aides the other is indeed a direct state of sin and hated by God but superinduced by choice and not discending naturally Rep. In this expression of his there are two things that need a better enquiry First how doth he prove that the state of animality is only a state of meer imperfection and no more St. James tells us the wisdome from beneath is earthly sensual devilish or according to the original earthly animal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 devilish I think none will say that the animality of this wisdome is a bare imperfection and no more It s positively opposed to the wisdome that is above and can there be a greater enemy to the wisedome above then that which is beneath The Apostle St. Jude also saith that Mockers should come walking after their ungodly lusts These are they that separate themselves sensual not having the Spirit ver 18 19. the word is they are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 animal not having the Spirit Now in this case will any man be so void of understanding to affirme that these in their animality were meerly defective and that they were not in a direct state of enmity against God I think none will easily assert it Sure I am many ensamples may be brought to prove the distinction between animality and carnality to be a meer non-ens or nullity Secondly we agree that the state of carnality is a state of sin and hated of God but whereas he saith that it is only superinduced by choice as also that it doth not naturally descend Herein we crave liberty to depart from him The Scriptures all along specially the writings of St. Paul speak of the flesh in opposition to the Spirit Now will he or any man else assert that this is a state meerly superinduced and that men come to be flesh purely by the choice of their own will If this be so how do all come to agree in one and the same choice All do not agree to be Souldiers to be Scholars to be Merchants to be Mariners yet all are flesh before they come to be sanctified by the Spirit Seeing he will not have this state naturally to descend let him assigne some general cause how all do agree to be carnal Necessarily some general cause must lye at the bottome but he further saith Adam did leave us all in an animal state but this is not a state of anmity of direct opposition to God but a state insufficient and imperfect Rep. This state of meer imperfection which he speaks so
piety and godlinesse On the other side others trusting in their own ability liberty of will and the like they bereave the Lord of that honour that is due to him He sheweth that a middle course is to be taken between these two extreames and that the rocks on either side are to be declined For the clearing of this he sheweth how far a natural man may go in all natural civil ecclesiastical actions and how by the general assistance and concurrence of the Spirit he may do great things in all Physical Mathematical Ethical Oeconomical and Political kinds of learning Only when he cometh to that which is spiritual here he plainly tells us that a man hath no power and to use the words of the Author he hath no ability to offer a sacrifice to God What is then to be done here he tells us that we must have recourse to the freenesse of the promise where all fulnesse is to be had To that end he cites the words of the Prophet Isaiah I will poure water upon him that is thirsty and floods of water upon the dry ground Isa chap. 44.3 And againe Ho every one that thinsteth come ye to the waters of life chap. 55.1 Having cited these and such like passages he comes to close in these words Quae testantur ad percipiendas dei benedictiones nullos admit ti nisi suae paupertatis sensu tabescentes Which testifieth to the receiving of the blessings of God no others are to be admitted but such only which languish with a sence of their own poverty And then he addeth Semper sanè mihi vehementer illud Chrysostomi placuit Fundamentum nostrae Philosophiae esse humilitatem That of Chrisostome hath alwayes pleased me exceedingly Humility to be the foundation of our Philosophy Or rather that of Augnstine even as the Retoricion saith when he was demanded what was the chief thing in the precepts of eloquence answered pronunciation what the second pronunciation what the third pronunciation So if thou mayest ask me concerning the precepts of Christian Religion first second and third alway it would please me to give this answer humility and more he hath to the same purpose I have drawn out the words more at length because the Author himselfe is a chiefe leader in the reformed Churches and because indeed they are the patterne of whole some words By this our Author may understand though Original sin be asserted the natural liberty of the will denyed and the necessity of sinning introduced yet neverthelesse according to the tenour of these principles men may have a sacrifice to offer and exhortations may be of good use Dr. Preston in his Treatise of humiliation pag. 224. doth propound the question who is able to practise according to his knowledge His answer is and I will appeale to any mans experience let him look back to the course of his life and examine himselfe was there any particular action in all thy life from which thou wast so hindred that thou caust say that thou couldst not do it was there any particular sin of which thou couldest say this sin I could not abstaine from And howsoever we may make it a matter of dispute in the Schooles yet the worst man in whom we may think corruption of nature to be most strong when he comes to dye doth not excuse himselfe but acknowledges he is guilty In the next page he propounds the maine objection How can a man he condemned for not believing and turning to God when naturally he hath no power to do these things To this he answers Though a man hath no power to believe and repent yet he is condemned for the neglect of such precedent actions which he had a liberty to do c. Our Divines in the Synod of Dort in the Suffrage of the Britans do distinguish betwixt regeneration and those antecedaneous acts that lead towards regeneration These antecedaneous acts a natural man by the help of the Spirit may do as to see sinne mourne over it judge himselfe for it he may go further he may taste the sweetnesse of the promise and have some beginnings of joyes all which he may fall from many other testimonies may be brought to shew that our Authours by the tenour of their principles do not extinguish the endeavour of man but do rather more truely direct and instruct men to follow the right course I shall stay too long upon this point because I perceive that it is the chief rock of offence that our Author doth stumple at he further sheweth All things else are determined and fixed by the divine providence even all the actions of men but the inward act of the will is left under the command of laws only and under the arrest of threatnings and the invitation of promises Answ It s true that laws threatnings promises are made with special respect to the will But that the inward act of the will should be so under laws that it should not be under the decree of God this Tenet doth exclude the chiefest part of the world from being under the care of God Nay if the matter be well considered here is the very height of the Atheisme of the ancient Philosophers To maintaine the absolutenesse independency and sovereignty of the will of man upon the earth they do deny the providence of God in heaven Cicero upon this reason did deny the infallibility of the prescience of God And our Authour seemeth to me to come too near to this coast In the next words he gives his reason And that this is left for man can no way impede any of the divine decrees because the outward act being over-ruled by the divine providence it is strange that the Schooles will leave nothing to man whereby he may glorifie God Answ If it be supposed that the inward act of the will be under the decree of God as well as the outward action this doth not take away that by and through which we may glorifie God For it is not all kinds of necessity that are contrary to liberty but some onely The necessity of nature the necessities of a bruit instinct and outward compulsion cannot stand with liberty but the necessity of the decree of God the necessity of infallibility the necessity of the creatures dependency can be proved to consist with liberty For God usually brings his decrees to passe by the free act of his creature which work under his decrees and are subservient to those ends that he hath appointed And for the inward motions of the will innumerable examples may be brought to prove that they are under the decrees of God The Kings heart is in the hand of the Lord and he turneth it about as the streams of water Prov. 21.1 God hath put it into their hearts to hate the whore and to burne her flesh with fire Apoc. 17.11 And speaking of the Egyptians he turned their heart to hate his people Psal 105.25 Besides the promise A new heart and
lie a great question between the grace administred to the elect and to the non-elect where doth the way part and how shall we distinguish them In this case we may not look so nicely to every punctilio there is a day appointed in which God will judge the world yet for the particular time no man can tell when it shall be that all may be prepared for it So in the present case it is confessed by all serious and sober-minded men that God doth administer his grace to bring the sonnes of men to salvation yet for the manner why he should administer it to some this way and to others that way why he should continue it to some notwithstanding all resistings and on the contrary take it from others when they have resisted such a certaine time For these various several ways of administration I think they are of set purpose kept secret in the will of God that men should work out their salvation with fear and trembling that they should strive to enter in at the strait gate that they should not neglect the day of their visitation We now come to your fourth reason Reas 4. If God say you were so the giver of actions that our not performing of actions were for want of his gift then our not acting could not be transgression pag. 56. Answer Let them consider this to whom it doth belong it is none of our doctrine but you are as faulty in the other extreame when you say that God requireth action of none but those whom he hath furnished with present abilities This if my judgment be any thing is the grand fallacie that hath not onely imposed upon you but also upon many others of your way But seeing you will needs have it that God calleth men to act according to present abilities I pray you tell me what present ability had Moses to bring Israel out of Egypt what ships had he prepared to transport them over the red sea shew me also what provision he had laid up in store for fourty years march thorough the wildernesse what councel of warre had he to judge when it was fit for the campt to move Nay thorough the whole story of the Bible make it appear what abilities any of the Saints had ☞ if you speak of their own abilities to do the greatest works of faith In these cases I think rather that Gods Word of command is given in mutual relation and correspondencie to his Word of promise and not to abilities which any man hath in present possession If we attentively consider the meaning of the Scriptures we shall finde when the Spies returned from searching the Land of Canaan the great sinne of the people of Israel was that they measured all by present abilities Because the sonnes of Anach were there they did conclude it was a thing impossible to bring that Land into subjection they never considered that it was the Land of promise and that the Lord himself would do all by his own power Num. 13.27 28. Josh 1.2 3. Psal 44.1 2 3. And for that speech of yours that Christ never blamed the unprofitable servant for want of abilities Though he did not blame him for that yet he did condemne him for not putting his money to the exchanger In this case though he had no ability of his own yet he might have it from another if he had looked after the grace and the power of God And further whereas you say that Christ calls for action of them onely whom he hath already furnished this is not so he calleth for action of those whom he either hath furnished or will furnish The Martyrs have been called forth to great sufferings in times of persecution yet the whole stock of abilities was not put into their hands at one time they did beleeve what God did call them to he would make them able to bear And that which they had not for the present they did beleeve they should have seeing he was faithful that had promised As for that instance which you aledge that Jethro Moses his father in Law did blame him for doing of that which he was not able to do Consider the case aright Jethro did question whether the thing which Moses did was commanded of God or no and therefore he did debate the matter with him why he did undertake a businesse beyond his strength But it is not so in the matter that concernes our salvation we are to do that which is commanded of God and to look to him for supply of Spirit for the performance of his own work But against this you let fall a desperate speech Such a neglect of action say you will never deserve to be called sinne because it is a forced waiting and staying the Lords leasure But where men are entituled offendors for not putting forth to action is not because they stayed for Gods acting but rather God for a long time waited for them pag. 57. I answer men are entituled offendors both wayes first because they come not in to God when he calls them Secondly when they do not waite upon him for the performance of the promise The Israelites in the Wildernesse may be an example they sinned in this in that they came not in to God when he waited for them and it is as true also that they sinned in not putting forth to action when they had so many promises of the presence and assistance of God to go along with them The Psalmist did assigne this as the chief cause of their grand rebellio they alwayes erred in their hearts because they knew not his wayes They would have all in present possession and God would have them also to live by faith in the promise Reas 5. We must say you take heed of harbouring such a doctrine which in the very nature of it breedeth such conceits that God is a respecter of persons if he should give some men meanes to act and actions and not give them unto all whom he bath commanded to act page 60. Answ In this I do agree with you that they do involve themselves in many difficulties whosoever they be that teach that obedient actions are so the gift of God that man is meerly passive without life or motion There are more then too many in these dayes that are of this belief and there are a multitude of abfurdities which follow that doctrine But whereas you admonish us of harbouring such a tenent as in the very nature of it breedeth such conceits that God is a respecter of persons this imputation as of old so now of late in your apprehension doth seeme to lie heavie upon them that maintaine the doctrine of Gods free election But in this case the Apostle himself doth make a plaine and an expresse answer he hath mercy on whom he will have mercy and he hath compassion on whom he will have compassion Rom. 9.11 12 13. The sense of the place is briefly this If God chuse Jacob it
only He did shed his blood not onely to obtain a possibility for them but that they may be certainly and insallibly brought to glory Hence is it that he speaketh concerning his sheep for whom he dyed in a special manner My Father that gave them me is greater then all and none can take them out of my Fathers hands Joh. 10.29 And in another place who shall lay any thing to the charge of Gods elect it is God that justifieth who is he that condemneth it is Christ that dyed Rom. 8 33 34. The death of Christ for the elect is not only to obtain salvation upon termes of repentance and faith or other general fruits of his death but it is certainly and infallibly to bring them to salvation In relation to this peculiar love the Apostle saith Who shall separate us from the love of Christ Rom. 8.35 And our Saviour John 10.28 I will give them eternal life and they shall never perish neither shall any man be able to take them out of my hand He speaketh these things of his sheep for whom he had layed down his life in that special sense mentioned before Having thus cleared all your Objections in this Chapter we proceed to the next CHAP. XI Whether Adams sinne or any other mans sinne doth produce death or condemnation in a natural way TOuching the manner of the thing how sinne doth cause death whether death be the natural fruit of sinne or whether it doth meerly depend upon the will of him who hath threatned to punish sinne with death is much disputed But Mr. Everard leaving that which may be supposed it is too too plain in this Chapter that you mainly drive at this to prove that sinne is not the meritorious cause of death and that Adams sinne was no cause of his condemnation And then afterwards going to discover the causes of judgment you tell us for the efficient cause God is onely the contriver who doth inflict punishments For the material cause the creatures are the onely instruments For the formal it is the manner of judgment coming upon men the fire by burning the water by drowning For the final it is the declaration of the justice of God upon the contemners of his grace And so you conclude That sin sinne is no cause of punishment neither efficient material formal nor final page 95. 96. And for the meritorious cause You say also that sinne doth not merit death but it doth onely prepare fit and qualifie a man for death as grace doth for eternal life page 106 107 108. You do not shunne to tell us in the last two lines of the Chapter speaking of eternal life and eternal death That God is as simply and entirely the Author of the one as of the other Page 108. In opposition to all this I do affirme that sinne is the meritorious cause of death and death is the fruit of sin Let us consider the Scriptures and let us vindicate them from your cavils First it is said the wages of sinne is death but the gift of God is eternal life Rom. 6.23 From hence it is plain that eternal life sanctification of the Spirit belief of the truth and all other things that tend to salvation are the meer gift of God but the wages of sinne is death If death be the wages of sin then sinne must be the meritorious cause of death But say you Though death be the wages of sinne yet it is not the fruit thereof page 91. Though in some cases we may call that the fruit which is not the wages yet in the sense of the text the wages and the fruit are all one Read but the words going before What fruit had you then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed the wages of sinne is death The fruit and the wages are all one and the sense of the whole text is this that sinne is the meritorious cause of damnation For the second Scripture Rom. 8.6 To be carnally minded is death but to be spiritually minded is life and peace Here say you If it be death it self it cannot be the cause of death But Sir you are to look to the sense and not to the strictnesse of the letter In strict termes you cannot say that to be spiritually minded is life and peace In this life many that are truly spiritual that have the reality of grace in their heart have not the peace of grace The meaning of the text is briefly this that as peace and life doth follow a spiritual mind so death doth follow the carnal mind as the wages and fruit thereof But here you shew your skill at catch-ball I confesse say you that he who walketh carnally to his end shall receive eternal death so he that lives a spiritual life shall enjoy everlasting life But neither the death nor the life were any branches produced by either for they came both from God And as God hath no desire that any man should sinne so sinne hath as little desire to receive punishment pag. 92. Still you go on in the same way of sophistry We willingly agree that he who walketh spiritually to the end shall receive eternal life because such walking is the way to eternal life But the carnal walking is not only the way that leadeth to death but by a Metonymie the effect being put for the cause it is death it self or in the way of causality a carnal mind is that which produceth death and death is the fruit thereof But whereas you affirme that neither death nor life are branches produced either by carnal or spiritual walking in this you erre For though a godly walking is not the meritorious cause of eternal life yet a carnal and sinful walking is the meritorious cause of eternal death Why else should it be said The wages of sinne is death Masters use to pay their servants their wages at night in relation to that which they have deserved in the day and for a weeks work they pay them commonly at the end of the week The payment of wages hath near relation to the labour of the hireling that hath deserved it And therefore the Scriptures do use this expression the wages of sinne is death shewing that sinne is the meritorious cause of death and death is the desart of sin And for that expression of yours that death is no branch produced by sin ☞ but it cometh meerly from God who inflicteth death this I think no pious man can look upon but with a great deal of horror What is this but to transfer the cause of death upon God onely But if to mend the matter you shall say that God doth inflict death as the just punishment of sin in so saying you contradict your self and blow up your own position For if God doth inflict death as the punishment of sin then it will follow that sinne is the meritorious cause of death and death doth not onely come from God but also from the sinner who hath
had been ten thousand times more sinful yet without an Ordinance from God death could never have seized upon the world page 101. 102 103. What is all this but a palpable and grosse mistake of the question or as Logicians call it an ignorance of the elench We do confesse as shrist brought life into the world he brought it in by the institution of his Father so when sinne brought death into the world it was by the just appointment of God to punish sinne with death The question that is in debate betwixt us is whether sinne be the 〈◊〉 cause of death as the obedience of Christ active and passive is the meritorious cause of life If you yield this as yield it you must we have as much as we do desire Next you enquire how sinne may be the cause of condemnation supposing that it cannot be the principal cause you demand whether it may be a cause in subordination And here you tell us that sinne will not be found neither seeing such causes are good in their own nature Well then what is the cause you tell us seeing sinne is an invention of man and the Devil a meere accident that cleaveth to the subject man we may call sinne an accidental cause of condemnation seizing upon man found sinful page 105. If this way of reasoning be good why may not I proceed in the like manner Heat is an accident in the subject fire therefore the heat of the fire is a meere accidental cause of the boyling of the water The force of your reason is no better when you say sinne is a meere accident in the subject man therefore it is onely the accidental cause of condemnation If you well observe the expression you shall find it to be very absurd to call sin a meere accidental cause of condemnation Condemnation is alwayes set in relation to the guilt of some sinne that doth deserve it how then can you call sinne an accidental cause of condemnation The Scriptures say that the Lord will render to every one according to his works that they who commit such things are worthy of death And many passages of the like kind What will you say to all this Here you have a pretty shift to help you out Sinne say you puts a man in a sutable disposition and qualification for death page 106. Indeed our Divines when they speak of eternal life that the Lord will render to every man according to his works they take the word worthy onely for a sutable qualification According to that of the Apostle he hath made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the Saints in light Col. 1.12 Though this may be affirmed of the Saints that they are made meet for eternal life it were too short and too diminuent an expression to affirme that wicked men onely are made suitable to receive vengeance for then the wicked are no more worthy of eternal death then the Saints are worthy of eternal life ☞ which is plainly to crosse the Apostle the wages of sinne is death but the gift of God is eternal life I cannot then but mention your words with a kind of horrour with which you close the Chapter speaking of the wicked they are say you a sutable matter to receive vengeance as Gods people are sutable to receive all the joyes of eternal life Now the joyes of eternal life are the free-gift of God All qualifications dispositions frames of spirit though never so evangelical in the abundance thereof do not abate the worth of an hair of eternal life to be the free-gift of God For there was not the least desarts in a holy life to the procuring of eternal salvation but onely it was the will of God to make eternal life as a Crown to put upon the head of those men that lived holy here which were fit or sutable for the Crown of honour So men that have lived never so notoriously wicked rebeling and blaspheming against God day after day to their lives end are no otherwise worthy than persons fitted as the true subjects sutable for wrath and God is as simply and intirely the authour of the one as the other And so farre you Now I leave it to all tender consciences to understand and to give sentence We do willingly confesse that we cannot merit any thing by our own works in the way to salvation there being such a disproportion between them and the glory to come But I do detest and abhorre that speech of yours when you say that the greatest sinner who continues so all his life long is no otherwise worthy of death than a person fitted or a subject made sutable for wrath and that God is as much the cause of the damnation of the one as the salvation of the other If this doctrine of yours be sound and Orthodox why may not the wicked in hell cast all upon God as the sole Authour of their misery as well as the Saints in heaven ascribe all to the glory of his free grace I will use your own words though to farre better purpose If a man should study many years for a destroying Principle to dishonour his Creator he could not parallel this which is the sharpest Sword that was ever drawn against the righteousnesse of God I have staid the longer upon this point because you have used so many arguments to prove sin to be no meritorious cause of condemnation I have more carefully endeavoured to vindicate the truth because this is one of the first fundamentals that is put into the heart of the Gentiles They knowing the judgment of God against them which do such things that they are worthy of death not only do the same but have pleasure in them that do them Rom. 1.32 That sinne is the meritorious cause of death and that a sinner is worthy of death is graven in the heart of every man alive and God at seasons doth stirre up the confideration of the guilt of sinne in the conscience of the Gentiles to look after pardon and to make their peace with God The first convictions of the Spirit do begin with considerations of the Godhead and the guilt of sinne that so men may be brought to see their misery And yet you teach us here in this Chapter that sinne is not the meritorious cause of condemnation Now we proceed to your next Chapter CHAP. XII What Adam retained of his forfeiture till his death HERE also you teach such things as do little lesse then strike at the foundation You tell us that Adam after the fall for his body had all the parts and lineaments thereof He had his senses and retained his knowledge And further you adde I make no question but God had so ordered the imployments that he had for Adam some of them to be more spiritual than ever he had to do before his fall and then that he should utterly disable him from the performance thereof will never be made good by any man under
the words of the Apostle Rom. 5.12 by one man sinne entred into the world c. You should finde that all then were in one publick man and sinned in him and this is the reason which the Apostle giveth why death passed universally upon all men because in one all have sinned his one act was the act of all But for more abundant confirmation let us consider the scope of the text The drift of the Apostle is to draw a parallel between both the Adams Frist in those points wherein they do agree Secondly in those wherein they do disagree For the points of agreement the most remarkable to the purpose in hand are these First the two Adams are described as two persons which are the roots to their several and respective posterities The first Adam is a root to all his branches and the second Adam is a root to all branches I marvail then what delusion hath seized upon the Examiners who do positively maintain that the first Adam is not here intended as he was the Father of us all Secondly they are described by the plurality of branches as the first Adam had a multiplicity of branches out of him so the second Adam had a plurality of branches out of him And therefore the Apostle doth elegantly proceed in the collation as by the offence of one many be dead so the gift of grace which is by one man Jesus Christ hath abounded unto many As by one mans offence death reigned by one much more they which receive abundance of grace shall reign in life by one Jesus Christ And so the Apostle doth compare one Adam to one Christ Adam the root of all his branches Christ the root of all his branches Thirdly they are set forth by the passage of the common sap out of each root into its branches respectively And therefore the Apostle speaketh concerning the first Adam by one man sinne entred into the world and death by sinne and death passed over all men The common sap then that passed out of the first man into all his branches is first sinne and then death by sinne By sinne is here principally meant original sinne and all other sinnes that flow from this as the fountain But if further enquiry be made concerning the passage of sin death into all the branches that come of Adam the passage is not all at one and the same instant It is now five thousand six hundred years since the fall of Adam and in all this time original sinne hath been in continual flux and succession As in several generations men come to be born so they actually participate of the sap that comes from the first root The like may be said of the second Adam and of his branches They which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousnesse shall reigne in life by one Jesus Christ ver 17. The sap then that cometh from Christ as the common root is grace and spiritual life this doth flow out of him into all his branches And for the passage thereof it is not all at one time but as men come to receive the gift of righteousnesse and to be born anew they come to the actual fruition thereof For let the death of Christ be never so largely tendred to the lost sonnes of men there is no actual participation of him till he be received by faith The words of the text are most emphatical and significant They which receive abundance of grace and the gift of righteousnesse shall reigne in life As who would say in plainer termes they only shall reign in life by one Jesus Christ who do particularly receive the gift of righteousnesse which is generally offered This is the undoubted meaning of the text And therefore for you to say that we could not sinne in Adam our soules and bodies not being in him how do you answer the scope of the text by the disobedience of one many were made sinners by one man sinne entred into the world Adam is here set forth as the root of all his branches and al the branches were in him as the first publick man What can you or the Examiners say to this 2ly you say that we had no Law in Adam Now where there is no Law there is no transgression if we had received any Law it must have been made known to us but there was none made known to us and therefore there was no Law page 127. To this I rejoyn ☜ if there was no Law given to us in Adam how come we to be guilty of his transgression how come we to bear the burden of his sinne why doth the Apostle speak so plainly by the disobedience of one many were made sinners We must then necessarily come to affirme this for a truth that the Law was given to Adam as a publick man and in him to all his posterity And whereas you say that there was no Law made known to us at that time therefore we had no interest in the Law why do not you infer by the like reason when the second Adam the Lord Jesus Christ suffered death upon the Crosse because at that very time the merit of his death was not made known you had no part or portion in that death which was one thousand six hundred years before you were born If you will be loth to stand to the latter to lose your priviledge by the second Adam I pray you give us leave to maintain the dammage that was brought in by the first Adam And yet further to take away all scruples from tender consciences if it might seem harsh for all the sonnes of men to perish by the disobedience of one man especially when the Law was not made known to them in their own individual persons but in the common root of all mankind let us consider how the second man came as a remedy to free the same miserable sonnes of men from the state of sinne and death especially when they neither thought nor knew any thing concerning the means of their salvation The greatnesse of our misery by Adam doth amplifie and set forth the merrit of Christ in the fulnesse thereof Now then when the Examiners and you both go about to extenuate the misery of the fall you do rob Christ of the glory of his grace You say The branch hath not any thing but what it hath by dependance upon the tree Now it is not so with us for that which we call the Principal part of man his soul or spirit was not dependant upon Adam but had his dependancy from the very same fountain from whence Adam received his even from God himself p. 128. Here I confess there is a great question concerning the manner of the propagation of Original sin and men do wearie themselves very much to find out whether the soul be by infusion or by traduction But I see no cause why we should intangle our selves in that difficultie ☞ For whether the soul be infused or
Scripture In the beginning you agree that we bear the punishment of another mans sinne But say you that children have any spawn of sinne cleaving to them as seed to hatch and gender in and by any thing received from Adam as we sprang from his loynes this I deny page 136. This also is the judgement of the Examiners in many pages together Now if this be so that infants have no such spawn of original sinne in them why do the Scriptures speak so largely of the pollution of nature why is it said of man in general that the thoughts of the imaginations of his heart are onely evil from his childhood Why doth the Lord Christ so earnestly presse a necessity of regeneration Why doth he urge it upon such a ground as this that which is born of the flesh is flesh There is nothing more clear than that the nature of man is wholly defiled from the very birth And for the Psalmist in his particular though it be true that he did bear the burden of Adams sinne yet it is not the whole nor the full truth The full truth is this that he was conceived in sinne that in the conception his nature was defiled and the natural defilement was the cause of the two great sinnes of murther and adultery And hereupon in relation to his natural pollution he doth pray unto the Lord to give him a new heart he went to the true root and cause of all the evil I must needs acknowledge that the Authors of the Examen when they speak of fallen man they render true causes of his not willing of good First the ignorance of that which is good the second a depraved judgment the third a want of due remembrance the fourth the power of temptation the fifth the habit and custome of sinne page 132. These are indeed true causes but they are too short and too narrow in their determination they do not come to the root of the evil to the inherent perversenesse of the will it self and the pollution of the natural birth When the bottome of a wound is not searched such Mountebanks must needs make a palliate cure Next you say If you will take from Davids particular example the general condition of all infants why do not you take the text concerning John his being sanctified from his mothers womb and argue that all the children of the world are sanctified in that sense as John was sanctified And if this were so there would not be so many lazy Priests and others in the world as there be page 135. For the parallel between David and John there is no equality betwixt them in the present collation For whereas it is said of John that he was sanctified from his mothers womb this was by a peculiar priviledge granted to him And whereas David saith I was shapen in iniquity and in sinne did my mother conceive me he doth not speak this as a King or a Saint or an Israelite but in the most general relation as one of the lost sonnes of men fallen in Adam and born in the corrupted masse and this is the reason why from the particular example of David we draw a general conclusion of the pollution and the defilement of nature in all But the Authours of the Examen do stifly maintain that the nature conveyed from Adam to all his posterity in the way of ordinary generation is not defiled with sinne For say they some are sanctified from the womb as Jeremiah and John the Baptist were and the Virgin Mary might possibly be page 65. Though this may be admitted that some of the Saints may be sanctified sooner then others and the work of sanctification may begin in them from their childhood yet what is all this to the purpose It must necessarily be supposed that corruption will have a being in certain moments of time before the grace of God can have its being Jeremiah was sanctified from his mothers womb yet he did curse the day of his birth he did resolve to speak no more to the people in the name of the Lord he did shew many fruits of the flesh as well as he did manifest many fruits of the Spirit And therefore to the particular case as he did consist of flesh and spirit in him the flesh the Old man had its being before the Spirit and the new man This I beleeve none can rationally deny though they will acknowledge also that he was sanctified from his mothers womb But Mr. Everard to return to you again For the trouble you have with the lazy Priests I fear Sir the more godly the more conscientious the more laborious any Minister is the worse he is in your opinion and in the opinion of such as you are if he oppose the innovations and errors of the times But I pray God give you repentance else you will have an heavy account to make one day for all your hard speeches against the godly Ministry For the text Mat. 18.3 Except ye be converted and become as little children ye cannot enter into the Kingdome of heaven Here say you If infants be so filthy why doth our Saviour set such a pattern before us And the Authours of the Examen also page 70 speak much to the same effect doth not our Saviour say they declare the state of children both to be innocent and blessed when first he makes it terminus ad quem the mark unto which in our conversion and regeneration we must return And then tells us that the Kingdome of heaven belongs to such and is replenished with such I answer in parables and similitudes we are to look onely to the scope Our Saviour speaketh of the unjust Steward of putting the talent to the exchanger of his own coming like a thief in the night What then is it his intent to approve of the evil of these wayes No he doth onely point to something wherein the force of the similitude doth stand And so in the present case when he speaketh of humbling our selves and becoming like little children it is not his purpose to ascribe such perfection to them as though all infants were free from original sinne or that their innocency were the terminus ad quem the terme to which our conversion and regeneration must return These are very strange deductions The words of our Saviour are therefore to be taken only in a restrained sense that in affectation of worldly glory we should be like little children There is no such distance between the children of Princes and the children of beggars but all are one The mind of the Lord is onely this that we should come to act the same things by the power of grace as little children do thorough the weaknesse and infirmity of age We should not look upon Lords and Ladies upon learning or parts or upon any other external excellency in comparison of the grace of God Commonly men that have these things are very proud of them and do look upon them
natural say you were to have acted such actions as might have testified to the world that they had been lovers of God because those actions were wanting they are said to be unnatural So it may appear that nature was not improved to those ends to which God assigned it page 146. It is true that in these Scriptures the word nature is taken in the better sense yet not in such a sense as will furnish your intention First I do acknowledge that God hath left reliques or remainders of his Law in the hearts of the Gentiles This is commonly called the Law of nature and by this men know that God ought to be worshipped that parents ought to be honoured and that every man is to have his own c. Secondly I yield also that they who go against this Law may rightly be called unnatural because they go against the dictates or principles of of nature Thirdly they who do thus deviate from natural principles do not improve nature to those ends which God hath made it All these things I do allow so far I wil go along with you But how do you prove from hence the purity of nature and that a meer natural man as such is able to understand the things of the Spirit of God You do in the next page distinguish natural men into two kinds these are your words Who requireth no other way to be glorified but by those principles that he had furnished them withal And because they opposed their own nature resusing the counsel of God they are called unnatural because they imployed their nature wholly to satisfie their lusts Such natural men percieve not the things of God The same matter in substance is spoken by the Examiners in the Chapter of free will for the Synod having rightly determined according to the Scriptures that a natural man being altogether averse from that good and dead in sinne he is not able by his own strength to convert himself or prepare himself thereunto Against this passage the men take great offence and as their manner is accuse the Synod for their defects and falshoods For their defects they blame them because they do not distinguish the several kinds of natural men and for their falshoods they accuse them for saying that the fallen man hath lost all ability to spiritual good They distinguish also several kinds of will and tell us in the third place as the will of our first parents so of all men else doth stand in a kind of aequilibrium pag. 128.129 130. Now to take off these several Objections I would entreat both you and them to consider these two points First if you look to the better sort of natural men to those who are no Backbiters no Covenant-breakers c. Whether may not many of these in the most essential vital and spiritual parts of the Law be great enemies against God and be lovers of themselves more than lovers of God If the most refined natural men may be secret enemies why do you and they speak of pure nature and of the improvement of natural abilities when it is certain that men can do no good without the help of the Spirit Natural men may be distinguished into a thousand kinds according to the different circumstances of time and place yet all of them do agree in this that they are natural and without the help of the Spirit they are not able to judge of the things of God Secondly when the Apostle speaketh of the Gentiles who having no Law do by nature the things contained in the Law their thoughts in the mean while accusing or else excusing one another Romans 2.14 When the Gentiles do make use of the Law written in their heart as they do at certain seasons to judge themselves doth not this proceed from the general convictions and workings of the Spirit If the act of self-judging be from the conviction of the Spirit this is no praise to natural abilities but the glory belongs to the grace of God And the words of the Confession are very sound that a natural man cannot convert himself or prepare himself thereunto In which words they do distinguish between conversion it self and the antecedaneous works before conversion In neither of these they say that a natural man is able to do any thing of himself but all his ability is from the help of the Spirit I wonder then what reason the Examiners had given them to cavil at such an innocent expression But if you shall stand upon the letter of the text that the Gentiles do by nature the things contained in the Law Here you may observe that the Apostle doth onely oppose the natural Law to the Law written in tables of stone and communicated to the Church by revelation He never meant that any of the Gentiles meerly by their own strength were able to keep that Law which was made known to them Only at seasons the Spirit did excite and stirre up strong convictions in their consciences to apply those principles and dictates which they had by the light of nature The most common and universal maxime of all men in the world is this that there is a God Why then doth the consideration of the Godhead so forcibly and powerfully awake at some intervals of time more than at others We can give no other reason but this that the truth in the hearts of the Gentiles is like a cinder in the Smiths forge which by the operations and stirrings of the Spirit is enlivened and being once enlivened men have more power to judge themselves and to look after God in those seasons than at others And from hence also we might take occasion to answer that great difficulty in the Epistle to the Romans The Apostle in the first Chapter speaking of the knowledge of the Gentiles and how naturally they hold the truth in unrighteousnesse and that for this cause the Lord doth give them up to a reprobate sense yet in the next Chapter he doth shew that the Gentiles do by nature the things contained in the Law and do shew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the work of the Law written in their hearts when their thoughts do at sundry times accuse or excuse one another To the resolution of the difficulty we say that the Gentiles so farre forth as they are principled by the corruption of nature are prone to no other but to imprison the light but as they are under and do submit unto the convictions of the Spirit they are helped sometimes to go so farre as to judge themselves and to cry out in their misery O being of beings have mercy upon us The main drift of the Apostle is to shew that Jewes and Gentiles are both under sinne and how by the sight of the misery of nature such of them as are saved come to be saved onely by looking after the grace and the free-mercy of God If this be the meaning of the Spirit what shall we think of pure nature or
the emproving of nature to those ends to which God had assigned it These are the Chimera's and fictions of mens own devising For if we will go to the utmost that a natural man can do at seasons he hath ability to judge himself this is not from himself but from the convictions of the Spirit And it is never better with him in the way to attain salvation than when he is beaten off from all his own abilities when in the sight of his own misery and emptinesse he doth rely upon the mercy of God Now we will go on to the meaning of that expression and were by nature the children of wrath as well as others Here you distinguish betwixt that wrath which is due by the appointment of God for Adams sinne and the wrath which is due for despising the riches of grace Concerning this text say you we were by nature the children of wrath as well as others if it be universal it must be meant of the first condemnation which came by Adam But if it be meant of the second wrath then it belongs to such persons onely as are dead in trespasses and sinnes that is such as have been in actual defiance which walked after the course of the world after the Prince of the power of the aire in opposition to the Spirit of truth page 150. Here I do agree with you that distinction is to be made between the wrath due for the sinne of Adam and the wrath due for the actual refusal of Christ in the tender of grace Though this distinction be admitted yet it doth not disanul that truth we were by nature the children of wrath as well as others For infants so farre forth as they come out of Adams loynes in that precise and single consideration they may be the children of wrath by nature though the cause why wrath doth not seize upon them is from the shedding of the blood of Christ Secondly let us take this expression and were by nature the children of wrath as well as others that it is meant onely of those who have been in actual defiance this will avail nothing so long as it is clear from the text that men by nature can do no other than live in actual defiance against God Neither do the Examiners mend the matter by their Intepretation when they say it is one thing to be sinners from our first nativity and another in time to become the children of wrath by our personal fall and actual disobedience which also coming to pass in our natural man and by his default we may truly be said to be by nature the children of wrath especially when sinne by custome becomes a second nature to us page 78. Here we will be no adversaries to them so farre as they say that men become the children of wrath by their own personal falls and actual disobedience But the question is whether this disobedience doth not radically and originally proceed from the default of the nature They seem to say so much in sense when they do oppose it Secondly though it be true which they say that the evil doth come upon men throught heir personal fall yet the Apostle doth especially look unto the sinne of the nature And therefore doth amplifie the grace of God in quickning and enlivening again when he saith you hath he quickned that were dead in trespasses and sinnes They were not onely truly dead in sinne thorough custome and sinful conversation but also thorough the state and condition of their natural birth they were by nature the children of wrath as well as others Upon these grounds he tells them that God who was rich in mercy did quicken them when they were dead in trespasses and sins Next you come to open the meaning of the expression dead in trespasses and sinnes You say a spiritual death must be meant of a declining from spiritual things which is a resistance of the spirit or a dying that is a forsaking the truth of God made manifest in them Now such a death as this cannot befall any who never had that spiritual life for it is the losse of life that must prove a death or otherwise we may say that all other creatures besides man are spiritually dead page 151. In this point you and I do agree that the losse of life must prove a death and this to me is the great reason why not only the Ephesians but also all mankind had sometimes spiritual life before they became to be dead in trespasses and sinnes It is plaine from the scope of Scripture and the Analogy of faith as I have proved before that this death came in by the fall of Adam therefore he had spiritual life before his fall And for that expression of yours otherwise we may say as well that all other creatures are spiritually dead I answer not so neither other creatures can not properly be said to be spiritually dead because they never had a capacity of spiritual life And though men are dead in trespasses and sinnes they are not dead as stocks and stones and other sencelesse creatures but they are dead as they who sometime had spiritual life and may have the return of the same life again in and thorough Christ the way the truth and the life So also the Examiners in the Chapter of free will page 130. do but calumniate when they say that we teach that a man is a meere passive block or a dead trunck without a willing or a nilling faculty This is an odious imputation of their own devising we hold that man is a rational creature and he hath those natural and essential properties of the soul though in spiritual things he be altogether dead And for spiritual things also he may be said to have a remote capacity when blindnesse shall be taken away from his understanding and perversenesse from his will It is an excellent speech of Augustine posse credere naturae est hominum to have a remote ability to beleeve is of the nature of men for stocks and stones have no such capacity And in opposition to natural men he saith velle credere gratiae est fidelium to have a will to beleeve is of the grace given to beleevers shewing that no natural man hath an immediate power to beleeve till he come inwardly to be enlivened by the Spirit Let us hear then what you can say how the sonnes of men may be said to be dead in trespasses and sinnes If you shall mean that every man or all mankind in that sense is dead before the light or the life of the Gospel is made known to them then I shall grant it But I shall deny that such a death is any sinne For where no Law is made manifest there is no transgression But all children if you mean infants have no Law or Law made known page 152. This is true in the case of actual sinne that there must be a Law and a Law made known or else there can be
spirit He did desire that his defilement by natural generation might be done away by the work of the new creation And whereas these confident men would desire to know whether it be not Davids scope in his confession to aggravate his sinne I answer it is and therefore he doth cry out against the sinne of the nature he doth use the same expression in effect as Paul doth Rom. 7. I know that in me that is in my flesh dwelleth no good thing ver 18. And O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death ver 24. Where we may observe these three points First they who are inwardly and truly enlightned do feel the burden of a carnal mind which they have by natural generation whereas other men account the liberty of lust their greatest freedome Secondly they feeling the propension of their nature wholly to sinne do hereupon aggravate the sinfulnesse of their nature Thirdly by this means they do more highly prize the grace of Christ and that freedome which he doth bring to set them at liberty from the bondage of corruption and the reigne of their lusts Joh. 8.31 32 33. Isa 61.1 2 3. Mat. 12.20 The promise of Christ is that a bruised reed he will not break and the smoaking flax he will not quench untill he have brought forth judgment unto victory By judgment is here meant deliverance from under the tyranny and reign of original sin when men serve divers lusts and pleasures The deliverance from the power of corruption is the judgment meant in the text This deliverance is not wrought in an instant but by degrees and our Saviour is ready to help the weakest that flie to him in a sense of their own misery There is nothing more weak than a bruised reed and the least degree of fire will make flax to smoak Even so if there be the least grace to feel the bondage of corruption the Lord Christ is ready to cherish it and never to leave till he have brought forth judgment unto victory to make men conquerors of their lusts But the ground of all this is to feel the burden of a carnal mind which it is most probable these Censors are strangers to or else they would not so extenuate the sin of the nature as they do Now let us heare what interpretation they give of the Psalmists words It was say they the lie or lying promises of Sathan with the folly therein contained by which he was shapen in iniquitie or conceived in sin pag. 74. And they ground themselves upon that passage that the devil is the father of sin These are their words besides our natural parents we have spiritual fathers and mothers whether for our begetting in evil and iniquity or for our regeneration in grace and goodnesse Concerning our procreation in sin our Saviour speaks thus unto the Jewes Joh. 8.44 Ye are of your father the Devil and his lusts will ye do Now this father makes use of a twofold mother to beget men in wickednesse besides their own lust which when it is enticed and drawn away by temptation conceiveth and bringeth forth sin Jam. 1.14 15. And here first they reckon the lying word or promise by which Sathan deceiveth men and secondly the false Synagogue which thorough Sathans helps begets men in a false faith Page 75. 76. But this glosse will not serve their turn neither for though the Devil be the father of sin he is so onely by temptation and suggestion but the Psalmist speaketh of sin by derivation and propagation I was shapen in iniquitie and in sin did my mother conceive me And for that which they alledge out of the Epistle of St. James he doth onely speak of the order of generation of sin in the heart every man is drawn away of his own lust and enticed and lust when it hath conceived bringeth forth sin But what is this to the purpose of the Psalmist he doth not speak of the generation of lust or of sin in his heart but he doth speak of his own generation This is evident from the words themselves I was shapen in iniquitie and in sin did my mother conceive me Secondly it is manifest from the words that follow because he was defiled with the pollution of the natural birth by way of opposition he prayeth unto the Lord to create in him a clean heart because his old was defiled therefore he did beg a new nature Fourthly to that place Eph. 2.3 And were by nature the children of wrath as well as others they answer by a distinction It is one thing say they to be sinners from our first nativity and another thing in time to become the children of wrath by our personal fall and actual disobedience which also coming to passe in our natural man and by his default we may truly be said by nature to be the children of wrath when sin by custome becomes a second nature to us Page 78. Here I yield that the Ephesians before their conversion and all other natural men do thorough their own actual disobedience serve divers lusts and pleasures This is the truth but it is not the whole truth If they were only defiled by custome which in a sense may be called a second nature by good custome then they need onely a remedy of the evil of their nature and we need not the knowledge of Divinity but onely of Moral Philosophie toward the recovery out of our misery For that which is now the judgment of these Censors was sometimes the opinion of Aristotle He did beleeve that man in his birth was like a white sheet of paper and that thereupon the habit of vertue was attainable by many acts But the Apostle doth not deal upon such weak beggerly and Ethical grounds because the Ephesians were not only sinners by conversation but by nature also were the children of wrath hereupon in relation to their natural corruption he saith you hath he quickened which were dead in trespasses and sinnes Their quickening by the spirit a posteriori doth shew the pollution of their natures a priori But if they were the children of wrath only by custome a second nature by breaking off old customes they might reduce themselves to their ancient purity of nature And this is the Moral Philosophie of these Censors and the separate Churches of this way Fifthly for that place of the Romans by one man sin entred into the world and death by sin Chap. 5. v. 12. That we may more orderly proceed let us consider how they plant their own interpretation and then how they oppugne ours This one man say they by whom sinne entred into the world is not our first parent Adam but our own earthly or natural man which is called Adam and Edom from the earth of his foundation pag. 78. Here I do plainly and openly confesse I do not know what they meane by this Adam neither can I see how possibly they can apply such a sense to
man onely this is sufficient that the first man is the root of all his branches and all that come of him were made sinners by him and the second man is the root of all his branches and all that are ingraffed into him are made righteous by him Secondly some of them that stand for the universal redemption do not plead an absolute or universal justification of all men by the obedience of the first man but onely plead for a general impretation or possibility of salvation which then onely comes to be applied when men believe and receive the promise by a lively faith Thus we have passed through all the arguments of the Examiners and we have seen their cavils against the several Scriptures alledged by us As for those similitudes of punishing the posterity of Traitors for the treason of their parents and the killing of the young vipers with the old by reason of their poysonous nature c. forasmuch as these are onely illustrations of the truth so all the pains which they take here is onely to cavil at illustrations Other passages they have of lesser moment which we have answered before onely they have one argument in the Chapter of free will from that place Isaiah 7.14 Before the child shall know to refuse the evil and chuse the good the land which thou abhorrest shall be forsaken of both her Kings Here they would have us observe two points First that though this place be commonly understood of our Saviour yet it is meant of the common state of man Secondly this child from his infancy according to the common state of mankinde should have the knowledge and ability to refuse the evil and choose the good From hence they do inferre that a natural man can both will and act according to his first integrity untill he disables and corrupts himselfe Further they stand upon it that a man hath a power to choose the good and to that purpose they cite the words of Moses Deuteronomie 30.19 I have set before you life and death blessing and cursing therefore choose life page 126 127 128. If they did well understand the meaning of these Scriptures they would not pervert them to so strange a sense For the Text in Isaiah we do acknowledge that the children in an ordinary way have a power to choose the good and to refuse the evil when they come to yeares of discretion But what kinde of good is here meant not that good which is spiritual or divine for this they cannot chuse without an inward work of the Spirit but that good onely which is moral and civil and this at yeares of discretion men are able to make choyce of And for the words of Moses I have set before you blessing and cursing therefore choose life c. To the clearing of this Let us distinguish First what he speaks of and Secondly the persons to whom he speaks First if by choosing the good be meant the true God in opposition to all the Heathen gods of the Gentiles here Moses speaks to the Israelites as to a people that had cleare evidences and convictions that there was no other God in all the world but theirs onely And therefore he doth exhort them to chuse the true God for their God Secondly if by choosing the good be meant the loving of the Lord their God with all their heart and with all their soule as it is implyed verse 10. then this word of command is given onely in relation to the word of promise verse 6. And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart and the heart of thy seed to love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul that thou mayest live In immediate relation to this promise Moses saith I command thee this day to love the Lord thy God to walk in his wayes and to keep his commandments that thou mayest live verse 16. So then we do conclude that the ability to choose the good is not from any natural power but from the grace of God and the word of promise Thus I have gone thorough all the reasons which are alledged either by Mr. Everard or the Examiners the late Patrones of the purity of natural birth If they have any thing more to say for this my desire is that they would shew their strength or else confesse their wicked errors and submit to the clear evidence of truth Now let us consider the several and respective arguments of Dr. Jeremy Taylor and what hath been lately said by him concerning the same subject The third Book containeth the Answer to several Arguments of Dr. Jeremy Taylor in his Vnum Necessarium and two smaller Treatises of his Forasmuch as this Learned man doth tread in the footsteps of our Antagonists and doth plead the same things against the Doctrine of original sinne as they have pleaded against us for certain years last past And seeing also that many are like to be taken with the purity and elegancy of his Style that probably are not able to judge of the foulenesse and impurity of his Doctrine We have thought it worth our labour to provide an antidote to secure the soules of men and if it may be possible in a peaceable and brotherly manner to reduce him from the evil of his opinions And so we come to the several Sections of the sixth Chapter in the treatise aforesaid SECT 1. Of Concupiscence and original sinne and whither or no and how far we are bound to repent of it ORIGINal sinne is so called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or figuratively meaning the sinne of Adam which was committed in the original of mankind by our first parent Answ We deny not but the sinne of Adam may be called the original or the first sinne because it was the first that was committed But then we must take heed that with our Authour we do not deny also the pollution and the corruption of the natural birth In so doing we must needs destroy regeneration or the new birth we must needs also evacuate the Baptisme of the Spirit so farre as it doth seal regeneration humiliation for the birth sinne will be a meere non ens and the mortification of the sinne of the nature will be a nullity In a word one of the chief ends of the Christian faith which is to put on the Christ-like disposition will be frustrated and greatly impaired For what need I to put on the new disposition as it is from Christ the root of all grace and spiritual life if there be no pravity and sinfulnesse of nature from Adam the root of corruption In Scripture the one is set forth as the immediate opposite to the other But he further sheweth This sinne brought upon Adam all that God threatned but no more a certainty of dying together with the proper effects and affections of mortality Answ Besides the affections of mortality and the certainty of dying this sinne also brought upon Adam the depravation of original righteousnesse
and the depravation of his nature as afterwards shall be shewed Next he seemeth to speak more fairely Man being left in the state of pure naturals could not by his own strength arrive to a supernatural end for eternal life being an end above our natural proportion cannot be acquired by any natural means Answ In this and such like passages of his he doth seem to me to crosse his whole undertaking One chief end of entitling his book as may appear by the preface The Doctrine and Practice of repentance rescued from popular errours is the scandal offence that he seemes to take at our Doctrine of original sinne For thinks he if the nature be depraved a necessity of sinning will be introduced and the natural liberty of the Will will be taken away and therefore in much compassion and tendernesse he seemeth to himself at least to vindicate the truth to make Religion more reasonable and intelligible and to rescue the Schooles and Pulpits from the rigour and austerity of the doctrines of such a nature But when all is done he speaks the same in effect that we do For if man being in his natural condition by his own strength cannot arrive to a supernatural end but needs the help of the Spirit This being suppos'd I will put it upon him seriously to consider whether the same Spirit that helps a man out of this imaginary deficiency privation and imperfection is not as able also to rescue him from that inherent defilement pravity and corruption of the natural birth The Spirit can do as much in the one as in the other And exhortations will be as useful in the one case as in the other What need then hath our Authour to raise up all this dust But he further addeth What gifts and graces or supernatural endowments God gave to Adam in his state of innocency we know not God hath no where told us Answ Though he hath no where told us in so many letters yet by collation of circumstances we may gather that Adam had the Spirit and was a spiritual man before his fall In the creation it is expressely said come let us make man after our own image Gen. 1. The Apostle doth declare wherein this image doth consist That concerning the former conversation ye put off the Old man which is corrupt according to deceitful lusts and that ye be renewed in the Spirit of the mind and that ye put on the New man which after God is created in righteousnesse and true holinesse Ephes 4.22 23 24. In these words there are four particulars that seem to speak faire for Adam that he had the Spirit and was a spiritual man before his fall First it is said that they should put off the Old man corrupt according to deceitful lusts Corruption is of a different nature according to the condition of the subject-matter there is a corruption of seeds of graines of metals of the members of a mans body but here the Apostle must needs speak of the corruption of that which is spiritual From whence we collect that the Old man or the disposition of the flesh is but the corruption of that holy and spiritual state n which Adam was made Secondly it is said be ye renewed in the spirit of your minds The word renewed doth import the restoring of a thing to that perfection which sometime it had in its first institution An house is renewed not when it is built new from the ground but when it is amended When an infant is born into the world it is not proper to say that he is renewed but a man doth renew his strength when he doth recover it by degrees after a long sicknesse So in the present case when the Apostle saith be renewed in the spirit of your mind he speaketh of the renovation of that knowledge holinesse and righteousnesse that Adam sometimes had but lost it by his fall Thirdly it is said after the image of him that created him Though this is specially meant of the new creature yet it is with respect also to that passage in the old creation let us make man after our own image For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 secundum Deum according to God is as much in effect as after the likeness similitude and image of God who upon this account must needs be the pattern in both creatio'ns Fourthly to put all out of question it is expressely said which after God is created in righteousnesse and true holinesse What difference soever there may be between Adam in innocency and the Saints in the state of regeneration certain it is that holinesse and righteousnesse must needs be the morality of the Law and none can rationally deny but that Adam was endued and invested with these two before his fall By his righteousnesse he was enabled to deale justly with man and by his holinesse he was carried out to know God to love him to delight in him to fear him and to take him as his chiefest good All these particulars expressing the spirituality and purity of the Law do signifie to us that Adam had the Spirit and was a spiritual man before his fall Now let us go on Receiving more by the second Adam than we lost by the first the sons of God are now spiritual which he never was that we can finde Answ That which he writes here doth manifestly contradict what he speaks elswhere for page 383. He plainly sheweth that original righteousnesse in Adam and habitual righteousnesse in the Saints are all one These are his own words if one sinne saith he could naturally and by a physical causalty destroy original righteousnesse then every ones sinne in the regenerate can as well destroy habitual righteousnesse because that and this differ not but in their principle not in their nature and constitution And why should not a righteous man as easily and as quickly fall from grace and loose his habits as Adam did naturally it is all one so farre he To which we answer Adam fell from original righteousnesse because he stood onely by the covenant of workes the Saints do not fall from habitual righteousnesse because they have their standing by the covenant of grace But as to the point in hand original righteousness in Adam and habitual righteousnesse in the Saints he tells us that both are one and the same in essence and constitution and then again he tells us the sons of God are spiritual which Adam never was that he could finde So great a faculty he hath to blow hot and cold in the same breath Now he comes to explicate that Scripture by one man sin entred into the world Rom. 5. c. That sinne saith he entred into the world by Adam is therefore certaine because he was the first man It must needs enter in him because it first comes in by the first Answ It is true that sinne entred into the world by Adam as the first man but it is not the whole truth for in such
powers they cannot without a new grace and favour go to heaven But then it cannot presently be inferred that therefore they go to hell but this ought to be inferred which indeed was the real consequent of it therefore it is necessary that Gods grace should supply this defect if God intends heaven to them at all and because nature cannot God sent a Saviour by whom it was effected so far he pag. 15. Now I leave it to any man to judge whither the same mutatis mutandis may not be said of our opinion though infants are borne in Original sin and are by nature the children of wrath yet they may be saved by grace By all this it is evident that we are as faire for the salvation of infants as he is and by the same doore as he goes out we will go out at the same And for the sayings of our writers I have three things to answer First some speak more mildly in the point rather inclining to the salvation than the damnation of infants Junius in his collation de naturâ gratiâ hath these words Nemo nostrum it a fuerit aut furere compertus est c. There is none of ours that is so mad or was ever found so void of reason who would simply affirme infants to be damned They which teach otherwise let themselves look to it by what right they moy do it and by what authority it may be done For although in respect of their own selves and that common nature of ours they may be in a state lyable to damnation it follows not that we should passe the sentence of damnation upon them c. In the processe of his discourse he giveth sundry reasons First the promise of God to believers and their natural seed Secondly his mercy to thousands and that through many descents where the Ancestors have sometimes belonged to the Covenant Thirdly The judgement of charity seeing it is the Lords pleasure to take them away in their infancy we may presume that by that fatherly act of his he intends to receive them to mercy Other testimonies may be brought of such that have gone in the milder way but these shall suffice A second sort of our Expositiors there are that do pitch more hard They say that some infants may go to hell yet they moderate their sentence as Chamier Non abhorret a verisimilitudine paenas eorum esse mitissimas It is very probable their punishments are most mild A third sort leave the matter wholly in suspence they think it sufficient to believe that all infants are borne in a state lyable to damnation they have in them the seeds of all evil yet for all this they conceive that God may shew mercy in and through Christ specially to the infants of such that do belong to the Covenant specially where conscience is made to enter them into the outward visible Church by baptisme And this is all that we will say of this question Leaving this businesse of the state of infants and reserving to God the secrets of election or non-election we will come to the point that is more useful and more easie to be understood And here he questions whether Adam did debauch our nature and corrupt our will and manner by his fall And if he did it he further enquires after the manner how it was done First whether it was done by a natural or physical efficiency of sin it selfe Secondly whether was it because we are all in the loynes of Adam or Thirdly whether was the sentence and the decree of God the cause thereof he hath foure arguments against a physical efficiency which we have in part handled already and shall have occasion to speak afterwards And therefore to avoid repetition we will come to the second branch whether Adam did debauch our nature because we are all in his loynes Against this he hath sundry reasons that follow in order By the same reason saith he we are guilty of all the sins that he committed while we were in his loynes there being no imaginable reason why the first should be propagated and not the rest Answ As I have formerly shewed so I declare againe the pollution of nature can only be propagated from the first sin because in that only Adam did act as a publick man in which sence the Apostle calls him the figure of him that is to come But of this I have spoken already Secondly upon this account saith he all the sins of all our progenitours will be imputed to us because we were in their loynes when they sinn'd them Answ Not so neither for though we were in their loynes when they sinned yet in a strict sence they are only vehicula so many conduit pipes of the conveyances of the nature from the first root To speak properly there are only two roots of the nature Adam the root of corruption to all his branches Christ the root of grace and spiritual life to all his branches If any question be made of the truth of this there is every where in the doctrine of St. Paul an antithesis between the flesh and the spirit between the old man and the new betwixt generation and regeneration betwixt Adam and Christ Between these two there is a plaine opposition in three things in point of justification Secondly in point of sanctification Thirdly in point of the resurrection from the dead And therefore whereas the first man by his act brings us under the guilt of sin the second washes away the guilt of sin by his blood and whereas the first man pollutes our nature and is the root of the corruption of nature the second man sanctifies our nature and is the root of a new nature to all his branches And whereas the first man did bring in death and all the miseries of nature upon our bodies that lead to death the second man frees us from all these by the resurrection from the dead But he further alledgeth Thirdly Sin saith he is seated in the will it is an action and so transient and when it dwels or abides it abides no where but in the will by approbation and love to which is naturally consequent a readinesse in the inferiour faculties to obey and act accordingly and therefore sin doth not infect our meer natural faculties but the will only and not that in the natural capacity but in its moral only Answ Though it be true that sin is principally seated in the will yet we shall finde all along that the Scriptures do lay great weight upon the blindnesse and the perversity of the judgement and as in the old creation so it is in the new The first work that is done is the creation of light Besides the Christ-like disposition is begun and carried on by degrees and all this by the renovation of light The understanding is first enlightned and then the will comes to choose the things of God Further let it be supposed that sin is only seated in the will
come and let him that is athirst come Revel 22 17. c. All these desires are the fruit of the Spirit He that comes to the first doth not come to the second at least not to the third or fourth degree However the whole course of Christianity is unum continuum sitis one continual succession of spiritual desires And in immediate opposition there is unum continuum auxilii an interchangable supply of auxiliary grace this latter answering the former as the one part of the deed doth answer the other So then though the Saints have no ability in themselves to supernatural duties yet they may have it from Christ and the freenesse of the promise These things I have drawn out more at large because I see as formerly it hath done to others So our doctrine doth seem to give great offence to our Authour It seemeth strange to him that we should exhort men to spiritual duties and yet teach that all mankind through the condition of the natural birth lye under a necessity of sinning Whereas if he did well understand the grand designe of the Gospel he should finde that all ability to do these things is to be had from Christ alone and that upon termes of beleeving desiring longing and waiting for them The Prophets Apostles Martyrs and other holy men have in their several times done their duties and served their generation But how not by any ability of their own but by the continual supply of the Spirit of Christ as the Scriptures and all experience do abundantly testifie Now we come to the next Section SECT 2. Consideration of the objections against the former Doctrine THE first Scripture which he insists upon is Gen 6. Every imagination of the thoughts of mans heart are onely evil continually Here he doth end avour to frame sundry answers First it is true saith he they were so but it was their own fault not Adams for so it is said expressely All flesh had corrupted their way upon earth and the earth was filled with violence Repl. It was their own fault and Adams too It was their own as they corrupted their own wayes it was Adams as they were flesh for he brought them into that sinful condition by his fall So then the force of our argument stands thus First the thoughts of man were evil Secondly they were all evil Thirdly they were onely evil Fourthly they were continually evil Fifthly they were evil from his childhood Now such an universal effect cannot be without some universal cause from whence all this evil must necessarily spring And where shall we look for the cause but in the text it self My Spirit shall not alway strive with man because he is but flesh Because he is but flesh and borne in the sinne of the nature therefore the thoughts of his heart are evil from his childhood Secondly saith he if this corruption had been natural and unavoidable why did God punish all the world for it except eight persons Why did he punish those that could not help it and why did others escape that were equally guilty Repl. That which God did punish in the old world in ordinary men was the violence of their hands and in his own people was the breach of covenant Though these two did naturally flow from original corruption as all other evils do yet we cannot say that they are absolutely unavoidable for the act of violence and of marriage with the daughter of a strange god men have a liberty to forbeare the outward execution of these evils And for the lust of the heart though it is unavoidable by nature yet it is not simply unavoidable for God is so full of mercy that he is ready to help all those that flee to him in the sense of their own misery He hath declared himself to be a Physician ready to cure all broken-hearted sinners The men of Nineveh did turne from the violence of their hands and how ready was he to forgive them The people in the dayes of Ezra and Nehemiah did repent of their Idolatrous marriages and how did he passe by their iniquity Of all the Authors that ever I met with Luther in his Tract deservo arbitrio is most severe against the liberty of the will yet in the end of the treatise he bringeth in Erasmus thus speaking Why doth he command us any duty seeing all things are done by necessity His answer is he doth command that he may admonish and instruct us what we ought to do that being humbled in the sense and feeling of our own evil we may repair to his grace for help as we have abundantly spoken And as for the Lords punishing of those that could not help it We say in publick solemn and exemplary judgments he hath alway reserved a liberty for the exemple of others and the declaration of his justice and mercy It is true also that they that were equally guilty did not perish in the waters of the flood What of all this though they did escape that judgment they were lyable to the judgment of God Thirdly saith he God might have as well punished all the world for sleeping once in a day or for being hungry as for sinning if so to do be natural and unavoidable Repl. The cases are not equal mankind cannot live without meat and drink sleep and such other refections of nature when they were made in the beginning they were made in such an estate that they had need of these things I trow they had no need of sinne Againe for sinful acts though they come from the corruption of the flesh as the sparkes do out of the Chimney yet in externals man hath a liberty to commit or not commit such an evil Also for the lust of the heart that which is unavoidable by nature is avoidable by grace The guilt of sinne may be taken away by the blood of Christ the power of it by the Spirit of Christ and the very being of it when the Saints shall be made partakers of the adoption or the redemption of their bodies Fourthly if God in these words complained of their natural and original corruption why did he but then as if it were a new thing complain of it and repent that he made man since he proved so bad Repl. God did then complain of original corruption because in a most eminent degree it did put forth it self in oppression breach of covenant and other evils He did complain in those times because iniquity was then come to a ripenesse and the years of his patience was almost runne out Fifthly saith he this malice and corruption was such that God did send Noah a Preacher of righteousnesse to draw the world from it But no man supposes that it was fit to send a Preacher to dehort them from being guilty of original sinne Repl. So farre as we may gather Noahs message to the old world was the same in effect as that of Jonah's to Nineveh he was to exhort them to turn from
the violence of their hands as being one fruit of original sinne Moreover he was sent to admonish the people of God in those dayes of their sinful confederacies and marriages with Idolaters and whereas he saith no man supposeth it fit to send a Preacher to dehort men from being guilty of original sinne Though the best as long as they live here are subject to that sinne yet I hope he will allow that a Preacher may be sent to exhort men to mortifie the lusts of their nature and to fly to the mercy of God for the pardon and forgivenesse of that sinne as well as others What the Economy or dispensation of grace was in those times I will not take upon me to define sure I am the Lord himself saith My Spirit shall not alway strive with man The best Scholars according to the original have it My Spirit shall not alway dispute reason or plead with man It argues then that as the Spirit was in the Ministry of Noah so it was some way operative in the consciences of the people of those times to bring them to repentance Compare with this 1 Pet. 3.19 20. Now he comes to lay the blame of all upon evil-custome which is the very height of Pelagianisme Blame not nature saith he but thy own evil customes for the neglect of thy fields will make fearne and thistles to grow It is not onely because the ground is accurst but because it is neglected it bears thornes Thou art deceived if thou thinkest that vices are born with us No they are super-induced and come upon us afterward To which we reply These strange expressions he hath not from any of the Prophets or Apostles but from Horace and Seneca As these things are scarcely tolerable in them so they are not to be born with in our Authour and others which have had their being and education in the Church of God Because in these dayes there are more then too many which cannot distinguish between Ethicks and Divinity between that which is moral and that which is spiritual we will insist upon this point a little more largely The chief principals and foundation of moral Philosophy are such as these First that nature is pure Secondly that nature hath the seed of all vertue Thirdly there is a natural freedom of the will Fourthly by the repitition of many vertuous acts men come to the habit of vertue These and many such like rules there are in the treatises of the learned Grecians and Romans And according to this sense the aforementioned sayings of Horace and Seneca are to be understood We deny not but toward the attaining of a Philosophical good a man hath some power by general assistance he may do some duties of the first and second table He may containe his hands from the outward acts of murder adultery theft and the like But for the spiritual and theological good to love God above all to delight in him to beleeve in him to trust in him In order to these plaine experience sheweth that he hath no ability nay the contrary is evident that he hath a down-right enmity The wisdome of his flesh is alwayes prone to reare up some earthly excellency or other and to set it in the place of the true God Therefore these are the true principles of Theology First the nature of man is depraved from the pollution of the natural birth Secondly that he hath no freedome to spiritual good Thirdly in this miserable estate the first step to his recovery is by the reproving work of the Spirit whose office it is to convince the conscience of the guilt of sin and of the bondage of corruption Fourthly the conscience being so convinced it is prepared and fitted for the grace of the Gospel and the freenesse of the promise that he which hath no help in himself may have it from Christ Fifthly When he is come to Christ and united to him by faith he hath ability from him as a root of all grace life heating spiritual nature and in a word all that we have lost in the first man is to be recovered in him This is the very scope the Gospel By these things it is evident that the endeavour of man is not destroyed by the principles of Theology Onely he is more soundly directed to the attaining of that good which is spiritual There be many passages in moral Philosophy concerning the liberty of the will which we may well admit of and again others there are which will scarce hold water As in the young man in the Gospel our Saviour did not disallow his outward moralities onely he convinced him that he fell short of the holinesse purity and spirituality of the Law When he was put upon it to love God above all to leave all for him by this he was brought to understand his own imperfection and that he had need of some power from above But that this matter may be the more fully understood we will referre our selves to that place of Scripture which is commonly called Saint Peters Ethicks There we may distinguish between the Ethicks as I may so say of the Apostles and those of the ordinary moral Philosophers These are his words According as his divine power hath given us all things that pertaine to life and godlinesse by the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and vertue Whereby are given to us exceeding great and precious promises that by these we may be made partakers of the divine nature having escaped the pollution of the world through lust And besides this giving all diligence adde to our saith vertue and to vertue knowledge c. 2 Peter Chap. 1. ver 3 4 5. As in our ordinary books of moral Phylosophy so these words of the Apostle may conveniently be divided into two parts into that which treateth of the divine nature and vertue in general and into that which speaketh of particular vertues For the divine nature these particulars are to be observed First the Apostle calls it a nature as there is a nature of Birds Beasts and Fishes so there is a nature peculiar to the Saints which they have and none else Secondly it is called the divine nature though in a more peculiar sence Father Son and holy Ghost are said to have the divine nature yet in a more general acception the new creature is said to have the divine nature because he comes in the nearest similitude to the nature purity and holinesse of God because he derives it from Christ as the root of the nature The Apostle hath a like expression that ye may be filled with the fulnesse of God that is with the fulnesse of the grace and the love of God Eph. 3.16 17 18 19. But the chief thing in the Apostles words is concerning the meanes how we may come to this nature As in moral Phylosophy great regard is had to the natural liberty of the will to the towardlinesse of the disposition and too
bondage of the soul under the tyranny of a carnal mind Sixthly He addeth that David thought nothing of this or any thing like it we may understand by the preceding words which are a preface to these in the objection against thee only have I sinned Reply We willingly yield that it was the purpose of David to cleare the justice of God but here is no need to call his justice in question for though David was borne in sin the act of murther and adultery were the deeds of his own will besides the lust of his heart might have been cured by the grace of God Seaventhly saith he if this had been natural and unavoidable God who knew perfectly well would have expected nothing else of him For he will not require of a stone to speak nor a fire to be cold unlesse himself be pleased to work a miracle to have them so Repl. The case is not all one It is not in the nature of stones to speak but men may avoid many outward acts of sinne and the evil of their natural disposition may be mortified by the Spirit The Apostle speaking of certain that had eyes full of adulery that cannot cease from sinne 2 Pet. 2.14 Our Authour in his answer to the Bishops letter doth expound 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 eyes full of the adulteresse therefore they cannot cease from sin This sheweth how hard it is to escape adultery when men have received the beauty of the adulteresse into their eye Why then are Laws made against this sinne It is in their power outwardly to fly such occasions that lead thereto The wise man saith remove thy way farre from her and come not neare the doore of her house Is not this too precise and strict a point No some mens natures are like tinder to the fire they must not onely fly sinnes but all occasions that lead thereto Now it is plain that in these things men have a power to forbear the evil and therefore the wise man accordingly doth temper his exhortation And for the lust of the heart though a man cannot flee from it yet God is able to give more grace which he is alway ready to do to those who in the sense of their own emptinesse do flee to him for help Where is the man that did ever truely desire and continue desiring helps against his infirmities that God did ever neglect If this could be proved then something may be said to the purpose Now we go to the next Scripture Among whom we in all times past had our conversation in the lusts of the flesh fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by nature the children of wrath as well as others He hath many observations upon the words of this text This therefoore saith he as appears by the discourse of the Apostle relates not to riginal sinne but to actual Repl. It relates to both as the Ephesians had their conversation in the lusts of the flesh and did fulfill the lusts of the flesh and minde so it doth relate to actual sinne But as they were by nature the children of wrath this is with reference to original sinne And whereas he doth bring in Justin Martyr arguing upon this ground that therefore it cannot be extended to Christ we willingly yield that Christ is an exempt person by reason of his extraordinary birth and conception but then in Justines sense all else infants as well as others will partake of the sinne of the nature But he further addes Heires of wrath signifies persons liable to punishment heires of death It is an usual expression among the Hebrewes So sons of death in the holy Scripture are those that deserve death or are condemned to dye Repl. It is true that the Hebrews call a man the son of death that hath deserved death specially when he is condemned to die Though all this be granted it doth not void the force of our reason for we do not argue so much from the Apostles words that the Ephesians before conversion were the children of wrath but from those words were by nature the children of wrath The scope of all which is to shew that they were not onely subjected to wrath through a sinful conversation but through an evil nature the root of that evil conversation If therefore our Authour or any man else will make use of the Hebrew Idiotisme the words will go fairely in this sense that the beleeving Ephesians both by the condition of the natural birth and the whole course of their conversation as they did serve divers lusts and pleasures were liable to wrath and the onely mean by which they did escape was the quickning and enlivening work of the Spirit by and through which they were brought out of that estate in which they were born But he hath another evasion By nature is here most likely to be meant that which Galen calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an acquisite nature 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 customes and evil habits Repl. If we would apply our selves to authours and to the ordinary speech of men custome and nature are usually opposed each to other In some cases a man may be said to have a thing both by nature and custome very rarely or never we say that custome is nature Sometimes men speak in a more general sense that custome is as it were a second nature But because he stands upon it that it is most likely that the words of the Apostle are meant onely of custome and acquired nature for so he desires to speak then by this rule we must say that the beleeving Ephesians before conversion were by ill custome onely the children of wrath If this be so why doth the Apostle say you hath he quickned who were dead in trespasses and sinnes What need of the infusion of a new life to bring them off off an ill custome In such a case it were onely requisite to reduce nature to her original purity and to amend that by good usuages which ill customes had marred Besides seeing several Nations have their customes was it a peculiar custome to the Ephesians Or was it common to all Nations to be the children of wrath It was peculiar to the Ephesians then they onely had need of the infusion of a new life If it was common to all Nations How did they all generally agree in such a custome And what was the cause of the agreement Besides seeing there are some in their tender years of whom we may presume that they are neither quickned by grace nor hardened by ill custome whether such may be saved without the infusion of a new life yea or no If they may be saved without the infusion of a new life this will be against the scope of the Apostle who tells us they were saved from wrath by the inward quickning But if he will say that such cannot be saved without the infusion of a new life then 't is plain that by nature must be meant more than acquired
nature Infants are born in a sinful nature and do need the sanctification of the Spirit But he hath a passage out of Suidas when the Apostle saith you were by nature the children of wrath he means not that which is the usual signification of nature for then it were not their fault but the fault of him that made them such To which we rejoyn In men of ripe years it is both their fault that they do abide in the sinne of the nature and it is also the fault of Adam that did vitiate and deprave the nature at his fall That men do fulfill the lusts of the flesh and mind is their own voluntary act And though indeed and in truth it is not their personal fault that men are born in original sinne yet it is their fault that they fulfill the lusts of their nature and continue in that state at least that they do not use and hearken to those precursory motions and previous workings of the Spirit which the Lord doth administer to them at some seasons at least The end of all which is to bring them out of the evil of that state The first workes of the Spirit are to reprove to convince to accuse to terrifie men to humble them for their evil deeds that so they may come to Christ for pardon of their sin and for the healing of their nature But here they wilfully shut out the light will not see what they may and this will be the great condemnation Joh. 3.18 19 and 20 verses He goes on By nature the Apostle saith he means not by birth natural extraction or any other original derivation from Adam Rep. By the same reason he might argue that the Ephesians when they were quickned had not a new life by regeneration or spiritual extraction out of the second Adam which is immediatly opposed to the other as the counterpane or the other part of a deed In seeking to deny the misery by the first he must take away the happinesse grace and life that comes in by the second man But he gives his reason The Ephesians were no more guilty than every one else and no more before their conversion than after We say the same in effect and it is the force of our argument because all need a new life a new birth a new extraction out of the second Adam as well as the Ephesians therefore all are equally by nature the children of wrath and do partake of the sinne of the nature as well as they But whereas he addes that the Ephesians were no more guilty of this sinne before conversion than they were after in this he is monstrous absurd For after conversion the guilt of that sinne was done away and the power of it was broken by the inward work of the Spirit now he cannot say that this was done before their conversion He further addeth By nature the children of wrath must be expounded as much as 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 really and truly the children of wrath it is agreeable to the usuage of the same phrase Galatians 4.8 Ye did service to them that by nature were no gods that is which really are none Repl. We may understand the meaning of the Apostle in this Scripture by comparing it with others God that made the world and all that is therein dwelleth not in Temples made with hands Acts 17.24 The invisible things of him are clearly seen from the creation of the world even his eternal power and Godhead Rom 1.20 So in the present case when the Galatians did service to those that by nature were not gods his meaning is no other but this they did service to them that had not the essence and the being of the Godhead As in a little case the nature of Birds Beasts and Fishes is taken for the essence and the being it self As in the expression of Saint James every kinde of Birds that is every nature of Birds Beasts and Fishes is tamed and hath been tamed by mankind or according to the original by the nature of man So in the present case when the Apostle saith that the Ephesians were by nature the children of wrath he doth not say onely that they were really and truly the children of wrath For so they might be by ill-custome when their nature was good as the water is really and truely hot though it be not naturally hot But his meaning is this that their very essence and being was sinful and that their corruption was in the very nature it self as they did derive out of Adam a common root The scope of the text doth plainly shew that this is the meaning the sinfulnesse of nature immediately opposed to that life spiritualnesse and new nature they had from the second Adam And whereas he saith as these Ephesians were before their conversion so were the Israclites in the dayes of their rebellion a wicked stubborne people insomuch that they are by the Prophet called children of transgression a seed of falshood All this doth confirme the truth of our interpretation he calleth them a seed of evil doers meaning that they were not onely sinners by custome and evil ensample but by propagation of the kind Let him grant this in the case of the Ephesians and the question is at an end This is all that he hath in his Vnum Necessarium Now let us consider what further he saith to this Scripture in his answer to the Bishops letter Here he tells us that these words do not at all relate to the matter of original but to the state of Heathens sinnes habitual Idolatries and impurities in which the world was dead before the great Reformation by Christ page 74. Repl. By this account when the Ephesians had a new life infused this was onely to cure them of their heathenish Idolatries and superstitions In which sense the Jewes free from such Idolatries needed no new life at all Besides how is it possible that the words are to be understood onely of heathenish Idolatries and impurities when the Apostle himself expressely saith among whom we all had our conversation Did he live in heathenish Idolatries before his conversion or was he an Idolater before his calling But seeing our Authour tells us how the Bishop did admonish him to remember how often the Apostle calleth concupiscence sinne we will urge the text a little more closely and consider what is the value of his answers To ground the businesse we argue thus If the Ephesians were accounted the children of wrath because they had their conversation in the lusts of the flesh by this reason then the flesh must needs be evil because it was evil to converse in those lusts Further to come to the point If the lusts of the flesh be evil it must be true in a sense that the flesh it self must be more evil because it is the very fountain from which the lusts do streame When he hath said all that he can when he hath accused the Ephesians of an evil
much of both here and else-where is only a notion of his own commenting For when God made man in the beginning he made him in a state very good but when he fell he left all his posterity not only in an imperfect but in a sinful condition As for that middle state of deficiency which he imagins I know not where it is to be found unlesse it be in the Atlantis of Plate Besides if animality be only a state of deficiency why doth the Apostle so plainly tell us that the animal man receives not the things of the Spirit they are foolishnesse unto him This cannot be a state of meer imperfection but a state of direct opposition the principles of animality diametrally opposite to the things of the Spirit Michal scoft at Davids dancing before the Ark. Lot seemed to his sons-in-law to be as one that mockt when he told them of the destruction of the City the preaching of the crosse seemed to be very meane matter to the Philosophers and learned Grecians Now shall we say that all these were only in a state of animality or imperfection and no more I think none will easily believe it But in the close of all he hath these words In the state of animality saith he a man cannot go to heaven but neither will that alone carry them to hell and therefore God doth not let a man alone in that state for either God suggests to him that which is spiritual or if he doth not it is because himselfe hath superinduced something that is carnal Rep. We are told here of a state that carries neither to heaven nor to hell and I beleeve if we go to men of ripe years there is no man lives in this estate in all Asia Africa Europe and America Why then doth he trouble us with that which is not Further we do agree that the Lord doth at seasons suggest something that is spiritual to animal men by this they are enabled to see their own misery and to judge themselves Now this doth rather strengthen the force of the argument for if an animal man could purely of himselfe perceive the things of the Spirit what need had he of the suggestion of the Spirit But for that which he addeth that the animal man doth superinduce something that is carnal I think this cannot reasonably be denyed and therefore I do not see but the state of animality and carnality both are equal estates of enmity against God Thus have I been more large in clearing those Scriptures which concerne the maine of the question in others of lesse moment I will be more briefe SECT 3. How God punisheth the Fathers sin upon the children THe end wherefore he is so willing to dispute this point he himselfe doth expresse pag. 40â— Vpon this account alone saith he it must be impossible to be consented unto that God should still under the Gospel after so many generations of vengance and taking punishment for the sinne after the publication of so many mercies and so infinite a graciousnesse that is revealed to mankind in Jesus Christ after so great provisions against sin even the horrible threatnings of damnation still to persevere to punish Adam in his posterity and the posterity for that he never did Rep. In this passage of his he doth shew how much he doth mistake the scope of Scripture for it is the chiefe designe of the holy Ghost to amplifie the sin of Adam and all the evil that comes thereby to the end that all might be humbled and that they might come to Christ as to a Sovereigne remedy to help them in their misery And in very deed whatsoever he thinks to the contrary the Doctrine of the Gospel cannot be so clearly preached without the knowledge of that misery that came by the fall The knowledge of the one doth as it were open a doore to the knowledge of the other Againe in the whole processe of the discourse he is very faliacious Suppose ordinarily God doth not now punish the fathers sin upon the children is this a good argument to prove that the sin of Adam is not rightly imputed to posterity Other Parents comparatively are but private persons and their sins are but the sins of private men but Adam was the root of the nature and his sin was the sin of the whole kind As on the other side the suffering of Christ upon the crosse was not the suffering of a private person but the suffering of the whole humane nature By this the lost sons of men have a doore of grace opened the tender of grace is made to all and the great condemnation is for unbelief Now we will consider what the rules are which he doth lay down First saith he God may and doth very often blesse children to reward the Fathers piety as it is notorious in the famous descent of Abrahams family But the same is not the reason of favours and punishments Answ Here we would entreat him to observe that it is true that for a long descent God did shew kindnesse to the family of Abraham but if he well observe the matter this kindnesse was extended not so much for Abrahams piety as for the Lords own promise and for his truth in keeping the promise Againe whereas he saith There is not the same reason of favours and punishments let him shew why the Jewes are cast away why they have been little better than out-casts of the Covenant now above one thousand five hundred years Questionlesse as God will magnifie his mercy in their call so for many ages together they have stood and do yet stand under the burthen of that heavy curse which they did wish upon themselves his blood be upon us and our children c. Secondly saith he God never imputes the sin to the son or relative formally making him guilty or being angry with the innocent eternally Answ Though we should say the sin of Adam is imputed to all his relatives and that also to their eternal damnation this in the whole were no hard assertion as long as we teach that a second man is provided for eternal salvation We willingly yeild as the case now standeth the great condemnation is for the neglect and the contempt of that salvation mercy and grace that is to be had by Christ If men run out the years of the patience and long-suffering of God if they continue in unbelife and hardnesse of heart if they resist the convictions and operations of the Spirit as they are administred in their respective seasons I think it is but just that they should fall not only under the guilt of their own actual sins but under the eternal damnation also that was brought upon them by the sin of Adam the root of the nature All the hurt of such a position if it be a hurt is more vigorously to drive men to Christ As for infants though they are fallen into all kinds of miserie temporal and eternal by Adams sin what harme
to us For though we wholly ascribe all to grace ☜ yet we acknowledge man to be a free agent who worketh and acteth by the help of grace administred Though God himself be almighty often doth work so almightily that none can or shall resist him yet his way of working in the soul in the excitings and movings of his grace are not always in that almighty way Sometimes men do resist nay the very elect themselves do oppose the workings of his Spirit though they do not nor cannot finally resist We constantly affirme that the grace is Gods and the act is mans For proof of this let us consider the meaning of that expression By the grace of God I am what I am and his grace in me was not in vaine but I laboured more then they all yet not I but the grace of God which was with me 1 Cor. 15.10 Here he doth ascribe all to grace when he saith by the grace of God I am what I am Though he doth attribute all to grace as to the Architectonical and principal cause for all was done by the vigour and efficacie of that grace which was in him yet for all this he doth not deny himself to be a free agent He did instrumentally work by the power of that grace which was in him Therefore in the work of his Ministery there is a truth that grace did all and Paul did labour more then any of the Apostles Grace did it principally and Paul did it organically and ministerially And thus you see though the action be mans the vigour spirituality and efficacie is wholly from God and nothing from man This is the substance of our doctrine Now let us see how you concord Gods grace with mans endeavour Without further controversie say you let it be confessed that the teachings of God come in to the sons and daughters of men as the tillings and manurings of God to provoke them to produce obedient actions page 50. This passage of yours we might let go for present were it not for a Pelagian sense which it carries with it For from what Scripture or experience have you this similitude that mans nature is to be compared to a fruitful soile in such things as concern salvation A fruitful soile though it do want due culture hath a natural aptnesse to bring forth fruit will you say that there is the same aptnesse in the nature of man to produce actions of obedience doth not this go against the scope of Scripture and do not the Saints for the production of obedient actions finde need of a daily and continual supply of the Spirit of Christ All shall turne to my salvation through your prayer and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ Phil. 1.19 Though the Saints do bring forth fruit and though it be the act of their own free obedience yet it is not from nature as a fruitful soile but from Christ the Vine John 15.1 2 c. Our Saviour doth plainly shew that every branch abiding in him brings forth fruit But if you will needs argue from hence the goodnesse and fertility of the branch in it self he saith in expresse termes without me ye can do nothing Further you add If this opinion should take place that God giveth our actions it would as well dismisse the office of the Spirit of God and so destroy the internal meanes The Spirit standeth at the doore of the heart and calleth provoking us with a multiplicity of allurements that we would put forth our abilities to a present performance of action p. 51. Here Sir as I have formerly said we have nothing to do with that idle opinion that obedient actions are only the gift of God we have nothing to do with them who demolish the endeavour of man let them bear their own burden whosoever they be But on the other side we must needs blame you for running into a contrary extreame for whereas you say that the Spirit standeth at the doore of the heart provoking us with a multiplicity of allurements to put forth our abilities to present performance here I would entreat you to define what those abilities are which the Spirit doth provoke us to exert and put forth If you mean our natural abilities as you can mean no other seeing they stand contradistinct to the allurements of the Spirit then you will ascribe the chief work of salvation to mans nature and the part of the Spirit shall be onely to allure and perswade By this account not onely the action but also the ability and the power to act will be from man But because the Pelagians of old the Arminians of late and you now have such frequent recourse to this Scripture Rev. 3. 17 18 19 20. let us read the words Because thou sayest I am rich and increased in goods and have need of nothing and knowest not that thou art poor miserable blind and naked I counsel thee that thou buy of me gold tryed in the fire that thou mayest be rich and white rayment that thou mayest be clothed that the shame of thy nakednesse do not appear and anoint thine eyes with eye-salve that thou mayest see As many as I love I rebuke and chasten be zealous therefore and amend Behold I stand at the door and knock if any man heare my voice and open the door I will come in and sup with him From the words these Corollaries may be deduced First not onely the Church of Laodicea but also all men else are spiritually dead and miserable if we look upon them as considered in the state of nature Secondly men by their natural ability do not discern the miserie of that condition Thirdly such as Christ doth intend to bring to salvation he will begin with them in the opening of the eye of their understanding to see that in themselves they are poor miserable blind and naked Fourthly by the conviction of his Spirit he will shew them that he hath a supply for all their wants for their blindnesse he hath eye-salve for their nakednesse he hath white raiment for their poverty he hath gold tried in the fire and for all their wants he hath a proportionable supply Fifthly the Lord Christ at sundry intervals of time doth stand at the door shew these things to the hearts of the sons men if therefore they see them receive them and in the sense of their own emptinesse go to him for all they shall have more large and full communications of himself he will come in and sup with them This is the natural sense of the text and what is here to set up the ability of man The whole scope of the place is rather to pluck down his abilities that the Lord Christ may be all in all But in case you stand upon these words if any man hear my voice and open the doore we grant that in the matter of salvation man is a free agent when God sends the Spirit into his heart to reprove
shall he only be punished and never survive or live so long as to see the punishment againe the words of the Apostle are cleare as by the offence of one judgement came upon all men to condemnation ver the 18. If it came upon all men it came upon infants as well as others and if it came upon all to condemnation then infants beare the guilt of sin the infelicities miseries and paines of death not by way of sovereignty but as a punishment and judgement laid upon them for their sin and disobedience of the first man But to colour the matter he hath a restriction in his answer to the Bishops letter Now then your Lordship saith he sees that what you note of the meaning of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I admit and is indeed true enough and agreeable to the scope of the Apostle and very much in justification of what I taught The word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 signifies a punishment for sin and this sin to be theirs upon whom the condemnation comes I easily subscribe to it but then take in the words of St. Paul 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by one sinne or by the sin of one the curse passed upon all men to condemnation that is the curse descended from Adam for his sake it was propagated 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to a real condemnation viz. when they should sin for though this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or curse of death was threatned only to Adam yet upon Gods being angry with him God resolved it should descend and if men did sin as Adam or if they sin at all though lesse than Adam yet the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the curse threatned to them should passe 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unto the same actual condemnation which fell upon him that is it should actually bring them under the reigne of death pag. 45 46. By these words of his it is cleare that the curse doth descend upon infants not when they are borne in sin for he doth own no such sin of the nature but it descends only to their real condemnation when they come to act sinne Here I would entreat him to consider the words of the Apostle so by the righteousnesse of one man the free gift came upon all men to justification of life If it came upon all men it came upon infants if the blessing of Christ doth come upon infants surely the curse also must descend upon them For we cannot imagine any to be made partakers of the blessing benefit grace and life by the second man but he must be some way involved in the guilt misery death and condemnation brought in by the first On the contrary if he will say that the curse doth not descend upon infants by the rule of proportion it will follow that infants shall have no part in the comforts priviledges and blessings that come by the Gospel And truely this must be the upshot of this dismal doctrine Now let us consider what exposition he giveth of those words by the disobedience of one many were made sinners But that saith he which I dwell and rely upon is this sinne is often used in Scripture for the punishment of sinne and they that suffer are called sinners though they be innocent so it is in this case by Adams disobedience many were sinners that is the sinne of Adam passed upon them and sate upon them with evil effect Answ We do not deny but the word sinne may be taken for the punishment of sinne and to that purpose what he speaketh of Bathsheba I and my sonne Solomon shall be sinners but more especially that of our Saviour he made him sinne for us that knew no sinne These and such like passages which he hath page 368 c. We do not deny the truth of them in the general Only this we say that we are not onely made sinners by imputation but also we derive a sinful nature from Adam by propagation and by contagion For First If there were onely an imputation of guilt and no inherent corruption men would bear the burthen and punishment of sinne without cause and God would punish sinne where none is Our Saviour indeed was made sin who knew no sinne because he came in the nature of a Surety But the sonnes of Adam are no sureties they must be some way sinners themselves if they will righteously bear the burthen of Adams sinne Again the words of the Apostle are most emphatical by the disobedience of one many were made sinful for the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 doth note one that hath the habit of sinne that is a sinful man as I have proved in the former part of the Treatise from whence we collect that the sonnes of Adam are not onely made sinners by imputation but sinful also by hereditary contagion Further the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 are constituted sinners or sinful This expression if it be seriously considered is set in immediate opposition to the constitution of things in the creation If a reason be demanded concerning the Sun Moon and Starres of the ebbing and the flowing of the Sea of the vicissitude of Winter and Summer The answer is easie all these things have their being because God made them and constituted them so in the beginning But if a reason be demanded how all men came to be sinners by imputation and sinful by propagation the answer is as easie They are made and constituted as by the disobedience of the first man so by the just judgment of God upon that disobedience If the sinfulnesse of nature be not by the fall it must come by creation or some other reason must necessarily be assigned to make all men so unanimous and universal in matter of sinning Lastly the Apostle draweth a parallel between both the Adams as by the disobedience of one many were made sinners so by the obedience of one many shall be made righteous Now it is evident none are made righteous by imputation in the ordinary way but they do in some measure or other partake of the life and spiritual nature of Christ as the seccond Adam Therefore we say on the contrary part there are none that have the guilt of the sinne of Adam imputed to them but they must also derive the pollution of nature from him as the root of corruption But to this he hath a solution as he pretends at least in his answer to the Bishops letter This is sufficient saith he for the Apostles argument and yet no necessity to affirme that we are sinners any more than by imputation for we are by Christ made just no other wise than hy imputation page 38 c. To which we reply the question is not about the formal reason of our justification which we acknowledge to be by the alone imputation of the righteousnesse of Christ But the point in hand is whether any be justified by the blood which are not sanctified by the Spirit So in the present case we say
none have the guilt of Adams sinne but such onely that partake of his nature For in the next Chapter when the Apostle cometh to speak of sanctification he hath these words know ye not that our Old man is crucified with him that the body of sinne might be destroyed Rom. 6.6 By the old man he means the sinful disposition of the flesh derived from Adam the root of corruption So then the Scripture plainly doth shew that the opposition between both the Adams doth not onely stand in imputation of guilt but also in the propagation of the nature And it is a great wonder that any exception can be made against so plain a truth Thus I have passed through all the material objections and we have seen all of moment that can be said if it might be possible to take this Scripture out of our hands Now he comes to forme the state of the question to shew how farre he allowes original sinne and where he differs from us Because this is the foot of the work let him deliver himselfe in his own words Adams sinne saith he was punished by an expulsion out of Paradise in which was a tree appointed to be the cure of diseases and the conservatory of life There was no more told as done but this and its proper consequents He came into a land lesse blessed a land which bore thistles and bryars c. And then he addeth thus death came in not by any new sentence or change of nature for man was created mortal and if Adam had not sinned he should have been immortal by grace that is by the use of the tree of life and now being driven from the place where the tree grew was left in his own natural constitution that is to be sick and dye without that remedy And he further explaineth himselfe pag. 372. This evil which is the condition of all our natures viz. to dye was to some a punishment to others not so It was a punishment to all that sinned both before Moses and since upon the first it fell as a consequent of Gods anger upon Adam upon the latter it fell as a consequent of that anger threatned in Moses his law But to those that sinned not at all as infants and innocents it was meerly a condition of their nature and no more a punishment than to be a child is It was a punishment of Adams sin because by his sin humane nature came to be disrobed of their preternatural immortality and therefore upon that account they dye But as it is related to the persons it was not a punishment not an evil inflicted for their sake or any guiltinesse of their own properly so called And then going on he saith we finde nothing else in Scripture exprest to be the effect of Adams sin and beyond this without authority we must not go Turning his style against us he addeth other things are said but I finde no warrant for them in that sence as they are usually supposed and some of them in no sence at all Then he cometh to particularize The particulars saith he commonly reckoned are that from Adam we derive an original ignorance a pronenesse to sin a fomes or nest of sin imprinted and placed in our souls a losse of our wills liberty and nothing else left but a liberty to sin which liberty upon the summe of affaires is expounded a necessity to sin and the effect of all is we are borne heires of damnation These are the particulars which he excepts against and these he endeavours with all his might to oppugne we will go in the same method as he doth beginning with original ignorance he thus speaketh It is true saith he that we derive it from our Parents I meane we are borne with it but I do not know that any man thinks that if Adam had not sinned that sin Cain should have been wise as soon as his navel had been cut Answ We cannot so precisely determine what Adams children should have been in innocency because he did not continue so long to beget a child in that pure estate yet I think none may doubt had he begotten children in that estate he had conveied the same image of God the same knowledge respecting the kind of it that himselfe was created in And though in respect of actual knowledge Cain should not have been wise as soon as his navel was cut yet in respect of potential knowledge he should have been borne in a capacity and by degrees should have attained the same knowledge as Adam himselfe was created in But he further argues If he had so great knowledge saith he it is likely that he would not so cheaply have sold himselfe and all his hopes out of a greedy appetite to get some knowledge Answ The Apostle St. Jude tells us The Angels that left their first habitation are kept in chaines of darknesse to the judgement of the great day v. 6. Shall we say then because they did so cheaply leave their first habitation was there no such dignity or excellency in it The way of reasoning is one and the same in substance He goeth on The state of ignorance we do derive from Adam as we do our nature which is a state of ignorance and all manner of imperfection but whether it was not imperfect and apt to fall into forbidden instances we may best guesse it by the event Answ We may guesse by the event that he was made in a state from which he might fall but this doth no way hinder his being a spiritual man or that endowment of spiritual knowledge which he had before his fall First by his fall he did lose in his judgement he and all mankind did fall from faith to unbelief and hence it is that ever since for happinesse all men rely upon their own wit learning beauty strength friends riches nobility c. This plainly sheweth that Adam at the first was made in a state of dependance upon the true God which could not be but he must be endued with a great measure of spiritual knowledge and in his judgement at least he must discerne that excellency that is in God Further the Apostle speaketh ye have put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him Col. 3.10 By knowledge he doth not point so much to that which is literal hystorical and textual but to that which is spiritual by which the Saints come to be cloathed with a new nature Secondly he saith is renewed which importeth the restitution of that knowledge that man once had but had lost by his fall In a sence therefore we may say that the knowledge of the Saint is a kinde of remembrance and that saying of Plato is not to much out of the way Thirdly is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him This plainly sheweth that in the old and the new creation a man is made after the image of God and this image doth
a new spirit I will give them Ezek. 36.26 The Psalmist prayed create in me a cleane heart O God and renew within me a right Spirit Psal 51.10 All these places of Scripture do abundantly prove that the inward act of the will is under the decree of God as well as under laws and that the certainty of the decree doth not overturne the liberty of the will but both do go together Next he tells us That Augustine in his zeale against a certaine errour of the Pelagians made him take in auxiliaries from an uncertaine and lesse discerned errour and caused him to say many things which all antiquity disavowed and which the following ages took up upon his account Answ The following ages specially since the times of Luther have adhered to the doctrine of Augustine But that the Sager sort have done this meerly upon his account we cannot easily admit They have followed him so far as his interpretations have come nearer to the natural and genuine sence of Scripture What hard speeches he hath concerning original sin the natural servitude of the will the spirituality of the law and the imperfection of man the rigour and austerity of them will be well allayed by comparing them with other sweet sayings of his concerning the fulnesse of Christ and the freenesse of the promises His scope is no way to hinder the endeavour of man but to ground and settle it upon such principles that are more solid and divine And whereas our Author in his Vnum Necessarium and his further explication doth commend the Fathers before the times of Auguistine for their temperate speeches concerning free-will Here many things are to be observed First who will assures us that he may not do the same with their authorities about free-will as he doth with the doctrine of the Church of England and the sence of the Article in the point of Original sin If he will pervert the plaine sence of that which is open in the view of all men what may he not do with the testimonies of the Ancients Besides what he alleadgeth for free-will out of Justin Martyr Cyril Hierome and others those speeches may admit of a benigne interpretation All Divines do agree that a man hath free-will he hath a power to understand to choose to refuse to act by counsell he were not a man if he could not do this The speeches of the Fathers may be taken in such an absolute sence in relation also to a particular state Adam had free-will in innocency and the Saints have free-will to that which is spiritually good in the state of grace Further suppose some things have escaped from them that have been lesse authentick let us consider that many of them came new out of the Schooles of the Philosophers and therefore together with the truth they might mingle some errours of Philosophy Their conflicts also were with the Philosophers and the Maniches and therefore it was necessary that they should speak something more than ordinary for the liberty of the will But enough of this matter which is so largely spoken and so plentifully by others FINIS A Catalogue of some books printed for and sould by Edmund Paxton over against the Castle Taverne near to the Doctors Commons THe holy Arbor containing the body of Divinity or the summe and substance of Christian Religion for the benefit and delight of such as thirst after righteousnesse wherein also are fully resolved the questions of whatsoever point of moment have been or are now controverted in Divinity By John Godolphin J. C. D. fol. The holy Lymbeck or A Semicentury of spiritual extractions wherein the Spirit is extracted from the letter of certaine eminent places in the holy Scriptures By John Godolphin J. C. D. 12. The Temple measured or a brief survey of the Temple mystical which is in the instituted Church of Christ wherein is solidly and modestly discussed most of the material questions touching the constitution and Government of the visible Church-militant here on earth c. By James Noyes of New England 4. Lawes and Ordinances of War in 4. Englands compleat law-Judge and Lawyer by Charles George Cock The method of grace in the justification of sinners being a reply to a book written by Mr. William Eyre of Salisbury by Benjamin Woodbridge Minister of Newberry