with God 5. It is as absurd to imagine that ' Paul preached not as wel repentance as faith to the Jayler because there is no expres mention of repentance in the Text as to suppose that Peter preached not as wel faith as repentance to the Jews because in his Sermon there is no expresse mention of it or that our Saviour preached not faith but repentance onely in his first Sermons because * Matthew makes mention of this latter alone what if I should ad or that the twelv preached not faith as wel as repentance because Mark saith no more but that p they went out preaching that men should repent Such negative arguments proov nothing 6. If we shall demand of Paul what his constant cours of teaching was in his preaching of the Gospel and publishing the covenant of grace he wil tel us that it was the very same both for matter and method that his master began with and not one way to some and another way to others as this Autor seems q sometime to imply but the same for substance both to Jew and Gentile r Testifying saith he both to Jews and Gentiles s Repentance towards God and t Faith on Christ and he putteth repentance therein following u his Masters method in the front And yet more fully relating both his commission from Christ and his putting of it in execution for the former he saith that x Christ sent him to the Gentiles to open their eyes and to turn them from darknes to light and from the power of Satan to God that they might receiv remission of sins and a share among those that are sanctified by faith on Christ and for the latter that y out of obedience to Christs command and in pursuance of this his commission which I suppose he understood as wel as this Autor and kept as close to it as any Antinomian of these times yea as any that ever preached Christ z he preached or published both to the Jews and to the Gentiles that they should repent and turn to God doing works beseeming repentance such as might shew them to be truly penitent and their repentance to be sound and sincere And thus Pauls preaching to the last comes home to John Baptists preaching at first and is the very same you see with that which this Autor makes to be the very character of a Legall Teacher Oh but the pressing of these things as a duties without which a man can have no interest in Christ that is it that argues a legal Teacher I might for warrant hereof alledge that of our Saviour as b Vnlesse you believ that I am he you shal die in your sins so c unlesse ye also repent ye shall perish and that of the Autor to the Hebrews d without holines no man shal ever see God but that Mr. Eaton e tels us that that of our Saviour f Blessed are the pure in heart for they shal see God is not Gospel but Law tho therein I beleeve him not and that of John g He that saith he is in Christ is h indebted is obliged to it as a debt as a duty for what is duty but du debt to walk as Christ walked to live as he lived But I wil insist onely upon Paul as zealous and as precise a preacher of free grace as ever any he albeit he affirm confidently that i there is no condemnation to those that are in Christ yet he subjoyneth withall and that is I suppose a qalification at least k who walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit and yet further a litle after l Therefore brethren we are m debtors we stand obliged and bound to it as a du debt if ever we look to be saved not to live after the flesh but as before he said to be thence supplied here to live after the Spirit and that this is his meaning and it is in nature of a condition on mans part reqired it is apparent by what followes n For if ye live after the flesh ye shal die but if by the Spirit ye mortifie the deeds of the body ye shal live Which tho it be pure Gospel and life even upon such terms propounded free grace for no Law ever promised life unto mortification of the flesh no more then the sight of God to such imperfect purity as our blessed Saviour above spake of yet if the Minister of Christ shall in these daies pres he shal not escape the odious and opprobrious brand of a deep and down-right Legalist Howbeit we need not be ashamed a whit of our teaching when we can vouch such precedents as these are for it in regard either of this or any the like aspersions or ignominious terms that presumptuous and self-conceited persons shal endeavor to fasten upon us and must light upon them as well as upon us who have in their teaching taken that cours before us and with whom if we must be deemed erroneous we shal not blush so to be but shal o esteem it p a grace to be disgraced with them and for doing as they did To draw all to a hed if the Gospel propound and promise pardon of sin and salvation q without any condition at all as this Autor tels us required on our parts and all conditions and qalifications which he is so r oft girding at destroy the freenes of grace then neither John the Baptist nor Christ nor the Apostles of Christ from the s first to the t last did any of them preach either Gospel or free grace and if the Gospel and free grace that this Autor and other his coasserters of free grace hold out to us be such as admits not nor acknowledgeth any such conditions or qalifications as have been above-recited then we may boldly conclude that it is another Gospel and another free Grace then ever John or Christ or his Apostles preached But this Autor a if he have erred in any thing he saith it is in filling out that Wine too freely which the Master of the feast if he mistake not hath bidden him saying Drink yea drink abundantly O beloved Can. 5. And b if he must erre he would erre rather with those that pas for Antinomians then with those that go for Legall Teachers c the former whereof he must prefer before the Latter for that they being jealous least free grace loose her â— cry down men to exalt Christ whereas those other being jealous lest bolines should be sleighted to exalt men cry down Christ and the danger here it seems therefore also he supposeth the lesse because d Free grace can not of it self tempt any to sin Where first for the filling out of this Wine TOO freely let me advise him in sober sadnes to be wel advised what he doth and to take heed how he contract the guilt of so
had laid open their sin of shedding the blood of Christ were prickt to the heart for it and being inwardly troubled and wounded said Men and brethren what shall we do m Exhorted them to repent yet these Legal Preachers when they take the like cours n They run saith this Autor to the Law in their dealing with such souls for their thorow humiliation as they say or pretend for such sinister ends as before you heard and not to the Gospel and faith in Jesus Christ and who ever severs these and so o bring fier and not water to quench them but kindle them the more and setting the everlasting burnings of the Law before their souls put them all into a spirituall flame and vexation And that he may not pretend that this is spoken but by way of supposition if they do so and so which yet the whole drift of his discours wil easily unmaske he telleth us a litle after in expresse terms that p The Divinity of some former ages to these present times he knows it hath made up all their receipts for distempered souls of so much Law and so much Gospel and usually but a grain or dram of Gospel to a pound of Law not being cleer enough in judgement to unmingle things that Antichrist hath confounded and put together as the two Testaments and two Covenants and not rightly discerning Christs manner or way of preaching and the Apostles both in their holding out Law and Gospel Who belike then q making a miscelan and mixture of the Law and the Gospel as Mr. Eaton saith of these Legalists preached neither good Law nor good Gospel but a miscelan and marring of both And we do no other now then they did But thus saith this Autor r They would make the Law the ministery of life and of the Spirit being not of such a spiritual discerning as the Lord hath now reveiled Reveiled to whom think we but to himself and those of the Antinomian strain by some dream or enthusiasm sure it must be for not by the word which holds out that cours that the Legalists take pressing men upon repentance and sorrow for sin and humiliation which these men can not abide And I would gladly know of them whether of the two is s the streit gate and the narrow way that leads to life and few list to take ours or theirs But saith this man t Such put a soul upon a legall method of conversion or comming to Christ First they must be kept so long under the Law for humiliation and contrition and confession and then brought to the Gospell as many books and Teachers do Thus he describes the dealing of our Ministers with men for the bringing of them to repentance as if he were painting out some Popish Priest pressing men to shrift and putting them upon hard penance as ye shal anon heare him resembling their preaching remission of sins unto the penitent to the Popes giving out his pardons But that which follows is far wors u Who like some Chirurgians that keep their Patients from healing too soon that they may make the cure the more admired do accordingly keep such souls with their wounds open and if they pour in any thing it is rather Wine then Oyl rather something of the Law then of the Gospel so as they are not onely long in healing and getting peace through Jesus Christ but they carry a scar with them still and are as it were lame in their consciences a long time after like some poor Patients that have had as much of the sound flesh cut away as the rotten and so have been healed tho but to a bodily infirmity all their life time And what is all this indeed but meer Mountebank practise to tell men that the Physitians and Chirurgeons they have formerly made use of do but vex them by plying them with purges and pils and searching their sores and searing them and cutting them to the quick and with their causticks and corrosives put them poor souls to a world of needles pain and all this they do but to lengthen the cure and hold them long in their hands whereas they wil give them that that shal put them to no pain and yet shall perfectly heal them without all that ado But it may justly be feared that these new waies of cure that these men professe will in the end proov little better then such Qacksalvers receipts but stupifying pils or palliating remedies or topicall playsters which tho they may give some ease of pain for the present yet effect no sound cure leaving the root of the disease the same still that they found it But to free men from further trouble of daily craving pardon of their sins according to x our Saviours prescript he telleth them that y The consideration of the pardon of sin in this sense that our Divines have commonly taught and preached it not minding the spirituall analogy of the Word concerning the righteousnes of a believer breeds all this distraction while they deale out Christs blood as the Pope his pardons for one sin after another never stating a believer in the righteousnes of Christ and in a fully pardoned condition So that I wonder not now why your Antinomians should be charged and that with good proof brought of it to deliver that z A child of God need not nay ought not to aske pardon for sin and that it is no les then blasphemy for him so to do But I shall onely for the present demand of this Autor whether believers before Christs appearance in the flesh such as Abel Noah Abraham Moses David and the rest were stated in the righteousnes of Christ or no and whether it be not a profane scof unfit to come out of any Christian mans much more any Minister of the Gospels mouth to say that Nathan and other the Seers of those times dealt Christs blood out to David and other believers then overtaken with some sin as the Pope doth his pardons But any base comparison is scarce bad enough to spend upon these unchristian Legalists that a to exalt men cry down Christ Mean while as the Persian that was scuffling with the Magician in the dark b bad one that stood by with his weapon in his hand but forbearing to make use of it for fear of smiting the wrong party thrust at all adventure so he slew the Magician he cared not though it were thorough his own side so this man therein not unlike c others of the same strain litle regards how he asperse Gods Prophets and his dispensations by them so he may break some broad jest upon his Legall brethren their doctrine and dealings But all this and much more this man of peace that moves to have the name of Legalist laid down and yet not onely commonly so stiles them that are not of his strain but lays load on them as you see to make them
naturall birth so there is the seed of all grace sown together in mans soul at the very first instant of his spirituall new birth and that faith is a branch of sanctification as all other graces of the like nature are But to let that pas a man may qestion his faith and yet not qestion Christ for Christ may be Christ tho this or that party have no share in Christ or to use his description of faith be not perswaded more or les that Christ loves him a man tho he qestion not the foundation it self yet he may qestion whether he have built on it or beside it and so whether that be a foundation unto his building or no And I make no qestion but that many that pretend to believ yea that are perswaded they do so and wil not easily be beaten of from that their perswasion and stick not to compare for belief with the best yet had need to have their faith tried and may wel have it qestioned as wel by others as by themselves Yea we find in Scripture examples and instances of such as might wel have qestioned whether they beleeved aright or no and whether the faith they made profession of were tru or no g Simon the sorcerer sure might have done wel to qestion and try the truth of his faith nor might those resembled by h the seed sowen in the rockie ground but wel have done the like by theirs as also those i who tho they are said to believ in Christ yet Christ himself would not trust them and those vain k ones James speakes of that had a fruitles and baren faith Nor were this to aske the master of the feast whether his dainties were meer delusions or to make our blessed Saviour for he I suppose is the feast master he meaneth a sorcerer but to enqire whether we our selves have not been deluded when in some night vision such as the enthusiasts of our times too much hanker after we have with l Lucians sowter dreamed of a great feast and of such his dainties and of communion with him in them when as all hath been nothing but m a nightly delusion They did not qestion the truth of God that sought for wisdome whereby to discern between Gods messages brought by his Prophets and those n dreamers dotages who yet pretended to be sent by God as wel as the best and would not stick to demand of Gods Prophets o when the Spirit of God went from themselves to speak unto them Nor did the Apostle Paul when he called upon the Corinthians to p try their faith nor the Apostle John when he called on the faithful to q try the Spirits whether they were of God or no thereby incite them to qestion Christ the foundation of faith or to qestion Gods Spirit the worker of it but to be wise and wary in discerning between truth and falshood between sound and unsound between faith wel grounded and deceitful fancies and groundles presumptions between teachers delivering the doctrine of life and grace according to the word and such as warping from that rule yet pretended to have the Spirit Tru it is indeed that mans weaknes in the apprehension of the work of Gods Spirit in him may make the truly godly without ground or good cause sometime to qestion the truth of it in them but there is no ground or just cause for any thence to infer that no man ought to qestion whether he believe or no or whether his faith be tru or no every one otherwise should be bound to presume that he doth beleev and that his faith is tru faith For not to infist on that which we lately touched on that when the Apostle called upon some to try their faith he presumed that some such faith there was as would not go for currant but would proov r unsound when it came to the touch or the test and when he useth more then once that discriminating term of s faith not counterfeit or unfained he implies therein that there may be counterfeits and there are indeed not a few as of Christianity so of faith Not to insist hereon I say this Autor himself acknowledgeth that t there may be a kind of faith as in them that believed in the parable and in time of temptation fell away and yet not in the power of Christ nor in the life of the Spirit and that v such faith tho a ded faith may go far in resemblance carying the image of something like the new man and whether think we then is such faith to be questioned or no or wil this Autor say that for those that have such a faith to call their own faith in qestion is to qestion Christ himself But indeed according to this Autors ground there is no need for any man to qestion what manner of faith his faith is since that without any such ado whatsoever his faith be he may have interest in Christ For saith he 10. x For the way of comming by a right or purchasing an interest in this righteousnes or salvation wrought by Christ it is held forth without price or works onely for taking and receiving and believing on all being wrought to our hands so as this is as good a ground for one to belief on as another without exception y the covenant being such as was established with Noah Gen. 9. 11. nothing reqired on mans part and z this being a Scripture way he would upon these principles leav a soul Where to set aside his terms of purchase and price as if ought in that kind were by any of us attributed to faith or repentance or any work of ours and yet herein he contradicteth himself when he telleth us one while that salvation is held out a freely by the Prophet Esay in that phrase without price and yet an another while that b all the ministery of the Prophets did run in this strain as if Gods love were to be had in way of purchase by duty and doing Nor to resume again what hath been formerly said of believing and receiving another manner of matter then this man makes of them And that the like may be charged on him to that he chargeth upon the Legalists to wit c propounding to men the promises of the Gospel with such conditions of repentance d and sorrow for sin c. which because they are things that they e can not do f in steed of drawing a soul unto Christ put it further of from him for may it not as wel be objected to him as it is by him to them that he professeth indeed to make an offer of free grace and free promises but he propounds them so clogged with conditions of receiving and taking believing on that these being such as men are not able to do of themselves g they dare not meddle with them until they be prepared by
into his wounds to keep them from closing and could have no rest or ease therefore until he was setled on those Antinomian principles the relation whereof is the main subject of his whol dramaticall discours I could quit him if need were with somewhat the like story of one that having taken some evil courses troubled much and long in mind about them could not satisfie himself in ought untill he turned Papist and had upon shrift by a Popish priest been assoyled but these are unsound and sandy grounds to build new courses upon for assurance of sound peace here or salvation hereafter 2. Be it a puzzeling way or no and such as it is here said to be it is a Scripture way sure as this Autor himself can not deny but is enforced to confesse tho in the very same place where he makes such acknowledgement speaking of it in very base and broad language il-beseeming a Minister of the Gospel as he professeth himself to be For first in way of answer to that doubt x Because ye feel not your self sanctified you think not your self justified 1. y I shal allow you saith he your sanctification so far as the Scripture doth as a lower motive and more carnally mixed way of perswasion and assurance of justification z such as by spiritually carnal works of obedience and holines can give but a mixed act of assurance at the best being of a mixt nature of flesh and Spirit Where 1. I wil not stand to pres those places where Christ is said to be a made unto us as wel sanctification as righteousnes and redemption and where those that are b washed by him are said to be as wel sanctified as justified I wil give him onely his own words out of his Preface c Righteousnesse and Holines blood and water Jesus and Lord Christ called and justified are stil to be found together in the word And if they go thus together then the one may with good ground evidence the other nor can the one be where the other is not Nor are Gods Messengers to be jeered and scoffed at as Legal Teachers and Miscelane Divines for joyning them together in their teaching Yea if God in his word have so linked these together what guilt incur they that seek to divorce them and bear men in hand that they may have the one tho they have not the other 2. For those broad and base terms that he brandeth this assurance with for which he might justly expect an heavy reckoning but that he fancieth * no believer accountable to God for any sin I shal for present onely demand of him what he thinks of Faith because he saith that tho d Christ be ours without faith yet by it we know him to be ours whether our Faith be not of a mixt condition like the poor mans in the Gospel that had some dregs of e infidelity mixt with it and whether the assurance arising from such Faith be therefore but a mixt act of assurance at the best as if the assurance that the pledges f or earnests rather of Gods Spirit gives to the soul depended upon the perfection or qantity of them and Gods penny were not an earnest for that purpose as good and as sure as a pound But let us hear what he saith further to those Scriptures where such marks and signs are to such purpose propounded 2. g The marks saith this Autor as others of the same stamp before him delivered in the Epistles of John and James c. are rather marks for others then for our selvs to know us by Which is so directly contrary to the main intendement and expres words of either Apostle that it may worthily be wondered that any man of an ingenuous disposition should have the face or forhead to averre it For whom doth James direct his whole discours unto but to h the party himself whose faith was to be tried or whom did John labour to give assurance to concerning their estate but to those i whose joy and comfort arising from the apprehension of that their own blessed condition he intended and desired thereby to improov Yea that both James and Johns intendement is as to undeceiv those whose faith and profession was not sound and sincere in their as frivolous because groundles so perilous and pernicious because presumptuous conceits and mistakes concerning themselvs whereby they deceaved and beguiled k not others more as this Autor himself speaks then themselves so to settle the truly faithful and religious in a more firm and ample assurance of that their estate their own words evidently avow l If any man among you saith the one seem religious and bridle not his toung m he deceives his own heart and his religion is vain And n If we say saith the other that we have communion with him and walk in darknes we lie and deal not truly and as in those words for the negative so in the next for the affirmative p If we walk in light as he is in the light we have communion God and we either with other and the blood of Jesus Christ his Sonne cleanseth us from all sin And yet more expresly to cut of all cavils q We know not that you or others I know not who but that we our selvs are passed from death to life because we love the brethren And again r Hereby we know that we are of the truth and may s stay or assure not other mens minds of us but our own hearts not in mans ey but in his that is in Gods sight And whence ariseth this assurance of aeceptance with God and prevalence with him in their prayers for that is also subjoyned And whatsoever we reqest of him we receiv t because saith the Apostle we keep his Commandements and do those things that are wel pleasing in his sight We might again here urge that of Paul willing the Corinthians to u examine not others but each one himself and to x try not others but themselves whether they were in the faith or no and whether Christ were in them or no which sure must be by some marks and enjoyning the Galatians y each one to examine his own worke that he may have matter of joying not in another but in himself in his notice of himself and his own estate not in other mens opinion and estimation of him But to pitch upon Peter whose words also this a Autor himself takes notice of elswhere and we the rather therefore presume them to come within compas of his et caetera tho whether they do or no is not greatly materiall when he adviseth those to whom he writes that is b all the faithfull without exception to c give all diligence d to make their calling and election sure e by adding unto faith vertu and to vertu knowledge and so forward he that shal
upon Spirituall workings as Philosophers upon morall vertu and do bring down the Spirit into the Allegory and so allegorize and incarnate or make fleshly the things of the Spirit Where by the way observe a prety evasion here closely insinuated a litle before more expresly propounded that may serv to shift of whatsoever of the Apostles method matter and manner of teaching was before related contrary to that that these men approov and agreeable to that which is by those practised whom they control and oppose s The Apostle speakes many things too as himself says because of the infirmity of our flesh and they belike have found out a more spirituall way then that the Apostles in their teachings and writings used which if they have much good may it do them we shall be content to tread in their steps whom we know to have had * an unerring spirit Again t Mans obedience to God is not so notionally nor orderly caried nor so purely as the Gospel cals for This because we reqire of those that desire pardon of sin peace with God and salvation by Christ repentance and bumiliation and sorrow for sin and prayer for pardon and a new cours of life as our Saviour himself and his Apostles did But saith this man u They run in a legall strain and would work God down into his old and former way of reveiling himself as under the Law when he seemed to be onely in the way to reconciliation and peace rather then pacified and thus in prayer and fasting and other acts of obedience they deal with God as they did under the old Testament not considering the glorious love reveiled in Christ crucified and how all Gospel ordinances are onely ways and means to reveil this love and grace by the Spirit of adoption not any waies or meanes of ours for getting some love from God which Christ himself hath not gotten for us Then belike in the time of the old Testament these were waies and means for Gods people that then lived whereby to get some love from God which Christ himself had not gotten for them But if God in those times were not pacified or did not cary himself toward them as pacified how says the Psalmist x Lord thou hast been favourable to thy Land that is the inhabitants thereof Thou hast forgiven the iniqity of thy people and hast covered all their sin a passage * absurdly prest by the Antinomians to proov that to be done now which they deny to have been then thou hast wholy taken away thy wrath and turned from the fiercenes of thine anger Was not Christs blood think we as effectuall for the pacifying of Gods wrath in those times as in these These be new doctrines indeed But y This is the common way of dealing with souls and bringing them up into assurance as thus Repent and pray and live an holy life and walk according to the Law of God And dare this man without any of these give any man assurance If he do he dare do and doth more then Christ or his Apostles are read to have done But in jeering way mine Autor proceeds z If they answer they can not do thus ob then say they can you not desire to pray and repent and if they say they cannot desire ob but then say they can you not desire that you may desire and thus they wind them up by acts of their own spirit and run theni out to the end of their own working when as their desires of desires and the spinning of such fine threds in Divinity are not strong enough to bind up a broken spirit Thus is he pleased to skof some questions that such Divines as go * the old way of the Prophets and Apostles with repentance and sorrow for sin which these of the new cuâ— can not away with do some time propound to disquieted consciences in which they seem to descry some beginnings of grace not as this man speaks to wind them up by acts of their own spirit but to sift out the workings of Gods spirit in them and thereby to make way for such further matter as may give fuller satisfaction then they are as yet able to attain Nor is this a to place them on the bottome of their own righteousnes as he injuriously chargeth it b like the botome or point of a top as he is pleased to resemble it as if this were that which they perswaded men to restâ—on as that whereby the guilt of their sins were discharged and Gods justice satisfied which yet according to this mans principles was done in the the times of the old Testament when by such means as these Gods favour and pardon of sin was c purchased as with a price but to give them assurance by d the first fruits of the spirit bestowed on them and begun in them which the holy Ghost is pleased to call e Gods earnests and the Seal of our redemption that they are of the number of those that have interest in Christ by whom as freedom from Hel and the gvilt of sin so Heaven and happines is purchased for them But this wary man g Dares not take this way for that is to take the disease for the Physitian and to give men no oyntment but blood of their own wound to heal them And so belike John did when he went this way to work as before was shewed h Nor would be take that other way which many do that are of this legall strain too as to apply promises to them first which many times in steed of drawing the soul to Christ puts it further of bringing some conditions which the soul qestioning in themselves dares not meddle with before it be prepared by Christ and his freenes He might have said which mans corrupt and carnall heart until it be wrought upon by Gods Spirit and prepared by Christ who is said to i give as wel repentance as remission of sins yea first repentance and then remission of sins to Israel and to bles them as wel by turning them away from their iniqities as by discharging them of the gvilt thereof is very loth to condeseend unto and we therefore have invented a readier way and a shorter cut for them without all that ado But let them carry men on along so long as they please in a fools paradise unles the conditions that Gods Prophets for there is no new way to Heaven now but the same that ever was and Christs Apostles propound to all that look for salvation by Christ be performed there is little hope for any man to attain life eternall unles some other way can be discovered that the Word of God hath not But you see the man is humorous and very hard to please by any way that these Legall Teachers take tho never so consonant to Scripture And therefore altho that Peter when l They in the Acts after he