them And will you think this worthy and becoming the Majesty of that Good and Just God who hath taken such strange and unimaginable wayes to make his Creatures happy and who dayly woes the Sons of Men with arguments of the greatest weight and seriousness to accept his offered Salvation I cannot but speak and it were a crime to be silent when the glory of heaven thus lies at stake the honour of my Creator trampled in the dust and the spotless purity and holiness of his Nature sullyed and defiled by the impure conceptions of unhallowed judgments Hear O Heavens and give ear O Earth while I plead the cause of the holy One who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity against the ignorant zeal of inconsiderate persons who under pretence of doing honor to his Name do really render that admirable contrivance of God in the Gospel than which nothing was ever communicated to the World more full of incomprehensible Wisdom the most unreasonable project in the choicest parts of it that ever was set on foot among the Sons of men Do you think the Eternal Logos or Reason of God would declare a Doctrine to the World that should be in all points of all his numerous issue only unlike the Father that is that the Gospel alone among all the projections and contrivances of that All-comprehensive Wisdom should be found unreasonable Reflect a while upon the Heroick Generosity and Innate Nobility of your own Spirits and let not your conceptions of God and his Works dwindle away into childish Words and Names nor stifle and suppress any noble sentiments by perverse altercations about terms but let a manly spirit possesse your breasts and look upon men as rational Creatures the composure of whose souls I mean their Intellectual frame is such that every thing is not a congruous and proportionate object of their inward sense and it is not in their power to receive Truth and Falshood alike but as the eye cannot behold the sun 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unless it have some resemblance of the Sun it self so neither can the soul without a great deal of molestation and regreat embrace what is not congenerous to it 's rational Nature And as it is in Nature every Plant is not adapted to entertain every particle that comes to nourish it but admits only such as are consimilar to it 's own pores so the spirit of man being rational in all the ducts and lineaments of it's moral structure cannot acquiesce in any thing that is irrational nor receive any Doctrine but what is homogeneal to it's inward temper Consider this I say and judge of the Doctrins you so earnestly contend for by this Index and Rule and remember that so often as you propound any of the Dogmata of Christianity either as unreasonable in themselves or make them appear so to others by your unwary and irrational Explication of them you become treacherous to your Saviour by hindring as much as in you lies those good effects he intended by the Propogation of the Gospel throughout the World and you likewise do violence to the Nature of Mankind by imposing upon them what is plainly repugnant thereto But I fear I have been too luxuriant in this sudden though not wholly impertinent Excursion I shall therefore immediately fall upon the last Proposition which is 4. Prop. 4. That to Create and bring into Being on purpose to destroy and make miserable is most irrational There is no Being whether meerly Sensitive or Rational too but by a natural sympathy and propension loves and takes care for it's own off-spring The Beasts of the field and the Fowls of the air bear a tenderness and affection towards their young and never cast of the care and protection of them till time have enabled them to shift for themselves The Hircanian Tygers never discover the fierceness of their cruel natures more vehemently and passionately than when they are in danger of being bereaved of their whelps Thus have I seen a Serpent pull down the nest and devoure the young ones of a little Bird before her eyes while the innocent damme not daring to come nigh and yet unwilling to flie away suffers a pretty controversie between love and fear within her breast continually environing her more powerful adversary by many circular flights and powring out in vain her pitiful complaints into those insensible ears till the cruel beast hath eaten up her loving care and charge and then she mourns and makes the trees participate of her grief and often with sad notes visits the place where lay the tragick Scene of her latest sorrows Should we ascend to men who bear the similitude of heaven even the most barbarous not excepted they all have a more regular care and love to their off-spring than brute Animals inasmuch as they partake of a higher degree of life and have the principles of Reason seated in them And can any tender and compassionate Father behold without a relenting and bleeding heart his only Son racked or massacred before his eyes to satisfie the brutish passion of some blood-thirsty Tyrant Shall frail men then be a precedent of love and tenderness to his Maker Shall God whose love is alwayes amiable and serene without the least disturbance or cloud of passion be less pitiful to what he hath brought into being then frail and imperfect mortals It was a prevalent argument which Moses used in the behalf of the murmuring and discontented Israelites That if God proceeded against them in fury to their utter undoing Numb 14.15 16. the Nations which had heard his fame would say Because the Lord was not able to bring his people into the land which he sware unto them therefore he hath slain them in the Wilderness and may not the same infamous obloquie with a farr more specious pretext be cast upon the righteous Providence of God while in displeasure he persecutes to the death his innocent Progeny That because he was not able to maintain them in that happiness he designed them for he hath by an unalterable law fixed their eternal misery and destruction The ancient Philosopher Pherecides taught that God transformed himself into Love when he brought into being the whole Creation and surely that Love which moved him first to act cannot be thought to degenerate so far from it's Nature as to be busied in contriving the ruin of what is so newly brought forth And though the Ancients did veil and obscure their choicest Mysteries in Fables and Aenigmatical Symbols yet the intelligent inquirer may gather many substantial truths from them which being in themselves so coherent with the Divine Oracles seem to be a firm indication of Gods love and affection to the Sons of Men and that Providence being never excluded from any time or place did in all ages and parts of the World raise up such considerable persons and every way furnish them with gifts and abilities as might serve as instruments in her hand to
follows their conduct shall be led to the knowledg of their inexhausted source and origine Having therefore such a determinate notion of God before us we shall descend to some particular Deductions from the consideration of his Nature As 1. That there is something Soveraign in the Deity which is the root and spring of all his other perfections and that this is Absolutely full Goodness That the Attributes of God are arbitrarious and like loose-hanging adjuncts to be put off and on at pleasure I think there is no man who knows what he sayes so blasphemous as to affirm but God is what he is by the necessity of his Nature for he cannot be God except he be immutable in all his essential proprieties which immutability of his is such that he can neither cease to be nor act any otherwise then may be consonant to the fundamental laws of his own Being Wherefore God being the highest and most incomprehensible life and activity cannot fail through the Essential fecundity and plenitude of his blessed Nature of communicating himself to all possible and capable subjects for the more perfect and compleat any life is the more diffusive it is of it self and the reason why Creation is not competible to any Being below the Deity arises not from any positive will of God to the contrary but from the impotency and imperfection of it's Essence But God being no steril and barren principle but every way full and absolute is not only carried forth to the production of things but to the order and management of them in such a way as may most correspond and suit with their intrinsical natures Whether therefore these operations of God ad extra as the Schoolmen phrase it be guided and steered by an explicite and arbitrary Will or whether they have not some other primary foundation from which it is impossible they should at any time swerve and in which they are all terminated comes now to be demonstrated For to say that they are all bounded in the Divine Essence and swallowed up in that immense Abyss introduces such a confusion in the Divine Attributes that our minds can have no particular or distinct apprehension of this or the other mode and beside gives no satisfaction to a rational inquirer who would be apt to question Whether there were not a subordination in the Divine Idiomata and Whether they be all equally active and operative and lastly Whether the Holy Scriptures do not universally magnifie and extol some one Attribute above the rest For the Solution of these Difficulties we must examine our own faculties and consider what we mean by that Idea and representation we have of the Divine Nature and what it is that principally confers to the formation of that notion and conception we entertain in our minds of God That there is in us naturally an Idea of a Being absolutely perfect which we neither derived from sense nor framed by the power of Fancy and Imagination but is indelibly wrought and engraven in our souls by a Divine principle and of the sense of which we can never totally rid our minds however impiously diligent we may be in debauching our Spirits and Sacrilegiously racing the venerable Name of the Deity out of his Temple I shall take for granted But there are some perfections which do more signally appear in the Deity and which peculiarly constitute the Nature of a God such as absolute and compleat Goodness which being so boundlessly diffusive and communicative of it self is necessarily attended with an infinite Wisdom to govern and direct and Power to execute and bring into being whatever this fertile wombe of Love shall travail withall These are the constitutive Principles of a Deity and all other proprieties are but those three grand Attributes severally varied and modified Now that they are not all of equal worth and excellency will appear if we look upon them as so many distinct qualities in created Beings wherein there appears such pain dissimilitude that a man can scarce withhold himself from concluding that they will likewise retain their differences when exalted into the Nature of God himself Goodness is of an universal latitude and extent and all other excellencies and perfections of humane Nature are indiscriminately complicated in it For a good man is not only excited by the innate generosity and goodness of his mind to do that which is best but summons his Wisdom and Knowledg to project and contrive and then uses his utmost Power to bring it into act Goodness is the rule and measure of his actions and Wisdom and Power receive their worth and excellency from the degree of Goodness they partake of Knowledg and Power are more particular and strait and more in a lower sphear and our actions receive no moral denomination from them but as they participate more or less of Goodness For a clearer illustration of the present Theme we will suppose Power to have actual Existence and carryed out to the effecting of whatever lies within it's sphear and comprehension and being infinite and unlimited to be utterly incapable of any hindrance or impediment in it's operations and it will amount to no more than a furious and Gygantick self-will wholly indeterminate to good or evil and as indifferent to destroy and remand back again into non-entity what it hath made if we can without a contradiction attribute to it the Power of Creation as at first to make it whose blind and impetuous self-will is the sole rule of all it 's exorbitant actions which being no knowing principle they may oft prove as ridiculous as the vain attempt of those mighty Gyants to scale heaven by throwing mountain upon mountain We see then that Power alone though we imagine it to have actual Existence speaks no more perfection than that great and mighty wind which rent the Mountains and brake in pieces the Rocks when God passed by before the Prophet Elijah And as the Lord was not in the wind so neither is he to be found in such boisterous effects whose productive cause is meer selfishness and inconsiderate Will God works not after any such unaccountable impulses nor are we to look for meer Will and Power in the Creation of things but for Wisdom and Counsel deriving from immense benignity and love which never acts but for worthy and decorous ends and for the behoof of things themselves This being therefore the Nature of Power considered in it's distinct capacity let us add to it the principles of Wisdom and then it will suggest to us the Idea of the Manichean God whom they make the Author of all the evill in the World For Wisdom and Power disjoyn'd from the blessed fountain of Goodness is nothing else but armed wickedness There is no Being can communicate any thing to another which it self is not invested withal and if we suppose the Existence of a Being of infinite Subtlety and Power it is impossible it should be the Author of any Good in
himself or how the Grace of God which came by Christ did abound and was made more efficacious then sin For if the sin of Adam destroyed and slew more than the Death and Passion of the Lord Christ made alive then were Sin of a larger extent and more potent than Grace 〈◊〉 v. and the Apostle could not truly affirm That where Sin abounded Grace did much more abound CHAP. IV. A fourth Argument against the Doctrine of Inconditionate Reprobation taken from the Evangelical Dispensation wherein is shown the purport and design of the Gospel which is to reinstate all men into the Participation of the Divine Nature and that that Rigid Doctrine is destructive of so high and glorious an end THere is no Man that knows himself and discerns the true frame of his own Being what sublime and noble perfections the soul is capable of and withal reflects upon the weak and imperfect state of the Sons of men how uncertain and fluctuating their judgments are at the best and how frequently obscured with prejudice how impotently stubborn their wills to the election of substantial good and how broken and disordered the faculties of their whole man but will assuredly conclude that all Mankind however it comes to pass are extremely alienated and apostatiz'd from that innate purity and excellent state in which they were created for no Man that believes himself made by an Alwise and infinitely perfect Author can imagine that he came thus lame and maimed out of his hands and sunk as low as the capacities of their Nature will permit being only vivacious and active to trifling low and bodily interests and concernments carrying on such poor and momentary designs as are unworthy the native generosity of their minds in a word so devoid of that life in the possession of which consists their true felicity that they are past hopes of recovering by their own solitary endeavours their pristine and ancient glory But although Man by that venturous and bold revolt from the blessed Kingdom of Light dispossessed himself of Gods favour and forfeited all right and title to his ordinary care and Providence yet that ever-to-be-magnified Goodness which made him at first Lapsable beheld him as a calamitous object of compassion and designed the erecting and reedifying that glorious Temple which sin and unrighteousness had miserably defaced and ruined and the repossessing his own life of it's rightful Government and Dominion in the Souls of Men which however they come into the World the subjects of bruitish lusts and passions are yet capable of Angelical accomplishments and a Vital Union with the Creator of all things God therefore being the highest and most perfect life and feeling and knowing his Nature to be the most pretious thing in all the World and the utmost perfection of every Rational Being could not but intend graciously to his lapsed Creatures and seek the extension and dispreading of his goodly Attributes over all capable subjects of the World of life For he that shall look upon the diligence and activity of the dark Powers in enlarging the bounds of their usurped Kingdom and consider the contagious and disseminating Nature of every pitiful and degenerate lust how every crazie and sickly vice attempts and offers at a further explication of it self and every small Exarchat of that Hellish Principality endeavours dayly to make new additions and take in fresh supplies to maintain the general cause of unrighteousness and augment their petty Royalties can never think that God will sit as a disinteressed spectator but promote and advance his own good life to the command of the whole Creation and brake down the power of that great Arimanus who captivates the sons of Men in the fetters and shackles of Mortality and Death The life of God is a strong and powerful principle and hath alwayes the arme of Heaven to aid and assist it but all sin and unrighteousness is a meer poverty and deficiency not able to exist in the World did not the self-wills of men uphold it and can never stand against the potent assaults of the Heavenly Nature Which holy life that God might reestablish in the World he hath delivered the Gospel the last and most perfect dispensation that ever was or shall be communicated to Men which consists not in an external and dead form of words nor is it a meer systeme and compendium of such precepts that like the Mosaical Law sanctifie only to the purifying of the flesh but cannot 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Perfect him that doth the service as pertaining to the Conscience that is Purge and cleanse his mind from dead Works and make way for the consummation of the life of God within him whereby he shall no longer be in bondage and servility to every caitive lust but act spontaneously under a free and generous principle and become a law to himself but such a Method of perfect Righteousness and Virtue as shall purifie refine and exalt the spirits of Men from all feculent concretions and subdue every irregular motion and unruly desire that would tempt and sollicit their choice of corporeal joyes and beget in them so true a relish of unblameable Goodness and Holiness as should at the end of their mortal life instal them in the full possession of everlasting Tranquility and Peace Of which glorious contrivance though we have a Scheme and Model drawn out in the Holy Gospels yet there is a life and spirit in Christianity that cannot be blotted on paper but lives and acts in such hearts as are framed and squared according to those Rules contained in the Sacred Writings And this he who is the Author of our Faith and Blessedness testified when he said that his Words were Spirit and Life such as were able and designed to revive the dead and sensless minds of Men and propagate a vital heat and motion through the torpid and benummed World and accordingly the Apostle St. Paul tels us that Christianity is indeed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The Law of the Spirit of life Rom. viii 2. 2 Cor. 3. and in another place 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The ministration of the Spirit and the ministration of Righteousness in opposition to the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The dispensation of Death and Condemnation intimating that under the Gospel men shall not have a Mechanical and Artificial Religion but such as frames the life and spirit of God in their hearts and becomes a Vital forme tuning their souls into an Universal consent with Gods own Will whereby they send forth most harmonious and Divine accents not only when they are stricken and beaten upon by an external hand like Memnon's statue whose Musical notes ceased so soon as the Sun-beams were withdrawn from it but from an internal Power incorporated and made one with their own spirits It is true when God at first made Man and sent him into this lower World he left him to be governed by those innate prescriptions and rules of Righteousness
defluxe and moulting of our plumes whereby we soared aloft caused our descent into the region of Mortality and Wretchedness so it is the rejection of our bodily passions and the growth and springing of virtue as of new wings which will carry us to the pure habitations of Holiness and Divine felicity But whether our lapse were thus or not it makes little however it was this is certain that our Reascent to God must be in all points contrary to our Apostacy from him As we have polluted our Natures by a boundless regard and Adhesion to corporeal pleasures and sunk our selves deep into the material World so on the other side our reversion to our lost happiness must be effected by refining our souls from terrene dregs and conversing with our mind and intellect and subjugating our Animal powers to the dictates and Imperium of Reason As our descent came by listning to the impure whispers and titillations of the bodily life so our ascent and Resurrection must come by hearkning to the suggestions of the Intellectual Man And what more effectual and powerful means can be excogitated to recover mankind from the thraldom and bondage of sin then that sacred method divulged to the World in the manifestation of the Gospel whose great tendency and scope is to enforce the necessity of a good and vertuous life and mortifie all irregular and inordinate desires and reinthrone Divine Righteousness to it's just rights and possession in the hearts and minds of men To what other purpose are we commanded in the Gospel to extirpate every extravagant lust and passion and crucifie the spurious productions of Vice and prosecute with all diligence and affection their lovely contraries but because the one depresses our minds from their true state by subjecting them to a base and ignoble drudgery and the other recovers them to their first and genuine freedom and puts them into a capacity of immortality For all passions the more corporeal they are and participate of the body the more they draw and wind the soul to the center of the Animal life which by a copious emission of fuliginous rayes obnubilates the intellectual and perceptive powers and whoever purges himself from these shall be a vessel unto honour This purgation of Soul and Spirit was judged indispensably necessary for the recuperation of the Divine Image by the Pythagorean Philosophers and is called by Porphyry 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the ablation of every thing extraneous leaving only such forms in the soul as are congenit with it's own Nature It 's true as we come into the World we relish little else but the fond gratifications of the body and are taken up and inamour'd with the inescations and allurements of the plastick life whereby our better parts are dulled and stupified and in this degenerate state the soul is truly said in the Pythagorick sense 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to pass into brutes not by a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 transfusion of the humane soul into Beasts but by it's descent into the brutish life and assimilating it self to ferine passions and inclinations 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Arrian expresses it The great work therefore of the Gospel is to beat down and conquer the brutish and irrational part in us to eradicate our vile and depraved affections and to place the Divine life in a full and entire command over all our inferior faculties To the bringing about which blessed design and to compleat and perfect a through Purgation of our minds we are injoyned in the Gospel great Temperance Sobriety and Moderation of all terrestrial desires as the most conducive means to spiritualize and attenuate our minds whereas the contrary drowns * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Porphyr l 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 them in corporeal effluxes and exsudations And moreover we are commanded an Universal abstinence from all wrong and injustice and a hearty love and good will to all mankind to hold fast that which is good and abstain from all appearance of evil to abstract our hearts from Mundane and Temporal felicities and make treasures for our selves in heaven and to be no more sollicitous for terrene concernments then the Lillies of the field or the fowls of the air to seek first the Kingdom of God and his Righteousness and to depend upon his Fatherly Care and Providence for the necessities of our lives to keep our selves pure and undefiled not only from outward and grosser but internal and more refined pollutions to be ready to do good and distribute to the necessities of our Brethren to live peaceably if it be possible with all men In a word Whatsoever things are true whatsoever things are honest whatsoever things are just whatsoever are pure whatsoever are lovely whatsoever are of good report if there be any vertue if there be any praise to think on those things These are the proper food and nourishment of our intellectual man and bring a present pleasure in the exercise of them far surpassing the choicest entertainments of sense For what truer and nobler delight can accrew to our spirits then to have done an act of Charity to have bound up an aking head dryed up a watry eye and relieved a naked and hungry body How sordid and base is the narrow and contracted mind that never looks beyond it self but moves in a sphear distinct from all the World beside as if it were some particular Being and not a part and member of the Universe What is there more noble and Divine than Love which neither envies nor seeks it's own but fills the mind of man with a solid peace and contentment and How broken and troublesom is the state of that man whose heart is continually corroded with Envie and Malice and cannot look upon his Neighbour without an evil eye What serenity and quietness of life is he possessed of who following the Precepts of the Gospel makes himself master of his passions and never suffers any impure and brutish lust to creep up into the bed of Reason and defile it but lives in a clear exercise of his discriminative faculties and subdues all his lower powers to the obedience of his mind and Intellect while he that renders himself captive to the passions and various motions and inclinations of sense which God gave to be his servants never possesses any true and real tranquillity but carries a Tempest within his breast which perpetually tosses him to and fro like those disconsolate spirits our Saviour mentions Matth. xii who walk through dry places seeking rest but finding none He that sincerely conforms himself to the Evangelical method of Truth and Righteousness forsakes the muddy and grosser World and ascends above the clouds in Divine and peaceful Contemplations and finds himself out of the reach of the storms and thunders of the troubled air he hath left behind him He apprehends God as the most lovely and desirable object in the whole World and then feels himself most at ease when he
endeavours to unite and become one with that ever-blessed Being subtracting his affections from all earthly vanities as finding something more noble and worthy to bestow them upon Lib. 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 thus as Porphyry speaks of the Egyptian Priests 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He hath given up his whole life to Divine Contemplation and search after the Deity Such Power have Evangelical Truths over the minds of men that they transform them into their own native image and similitude and the more they are looked into the more they enravish them with their heavenly beauty and pulchritude And because afflicted and persecuted Vertue could not be thought eligible meerly for it self nor be a sufficient argument to induce us to the love and practice of it who were so fatally addicted to the concerns of sense therefore God who knew our frame and how far and to what degrees we had apostatiz'd from his holy Nature did not only propound good things to our choice but solicit our wills to the embracing of them by the strongest evidences and most attractive motives that our Natures were capable of receiving The life of sense being more powerful and laying a greater though not a juster claim to our minds as we are born into this World God was pleased to deal with us after a sensible manner and in a way of condescending Wisdom proportioning the Truths he delivered to us to our capacity of reception And this was that the Apostle called the Foolishness of Preaching wherein God stoops down and puts on the garb and frailties of humanity and suits the results of his will with our mean and shallow apprehensions Great is the Mysterie of Godliness God was manifested in the flesh and cradled in the circle of a Virgins arms which clearly demonstrates even to outward sense the exceeding Goodness and Wisdom of Almighty God that he hath not cast off the care of Mankind but is at peace with the World and hath put on the bright robes of Loving-kindness and Mercy which he hath given a large Specimen and full proof of in the Mission of the Lord Christ from heaven God would have all men lay aside their hard thoughts and causless-jealousies and suspicions of his Nature as if he did not from his heart intend them good but only suspended his anger for a time which might again break out upon them in prodigious floods of vengeance and fury For this is the most certain sign that God wills and desires our happiness and welfare in that he hath united himself to our Nature and sent down his only begotten Son for no other purpose but to seek and to save that which was lost And if he spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all how shall he not with him also freely give us all things What is there now can lay a greater tie upon ingenuous spirits then the discovery of so much undeserved kindness and love What heart is there so obdurate and rocky that this will not dissolve into the tears of love and joy to behold the blessed Jesus hanging between heaven and earth upon the Cross that he might reconcile all things that are in heaven and earth and become a propitiatory Sacrifice for all mens sins in the World It is said of Socrates that he was so inamour'd with this Divine passion of Love that he styled himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 A servant of Love Let therefore Love which is the Proxenet of Nature the great instrument of conciliating hearts beget in thee a return and retribution of Love and never think of those streams of blood which so copiously flowed from the wounded body of thy dying Lord without a passive and melting spirit but be likewise a servant of Love and act under that generous principle for Love is of God And every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God And that we may not think we are set to remove mountains or perform impossibilities when we are exhorted by the Gospel to the participation of Gods holy life we shall never be left alone to sink under our load and die but shall have the assistance of that Almighty and Demiurgical spirit of Love who hovered over the dark Chaos and brought into Being the goodly frame of heaven and earth and replenished all the immense tracts of space with sutable inhabitants Wisd ch vii This is that Wisdom which is the brightness of the Everlasting the unspotted mirrour of the power of God and the Image of his Goodness which remaining in her self makes all things new and in all ages entring into holy souls makes them friends of God and Prophets She will not lodge in a sinful body nor abide when unrighteousness cometh in For she is more beautiful then the Sun and above all the order of stars being compared with the light she is found before it This kind and loving spirit will God bestow upon every one that asks it of him to repair his broken and decayed Nature to raise up the Divine Image to joynt and confirm every perverse dislocation in the frame of his soul and to perfect and compleat the living efformation of Christ within him Let no man then despair of attaining to a state of Blessedness under the Gospel for this Benign Spirit whose delights are with the Sons of Men pervades the whole World and touches and overshadows every man with out-stretched wings who is willing to have the Divine Image and Pourtraiture formed in him and doth not by impurity and uncleanness chase it away Though our enemies are mighty and our souls weak yet let none despair of Victory for through the assistance and conduct of that Almighty we shall be able to overcome them He is ever cherishing and fostring the life of God wherever it 's born into any soul and sweetly insinuates into our minds and hallows and sanctifies all our powers and excites us to a serious and hearty pursuit after the indispensable laws of Truth Righteousness and Goodness We are not fallen and degenerated beyond the power of God but his Spirit is able to raise and bring up our souls from the lowest Hell and to renew and reform our debased and wretched Natures For what cannot he do who at first made us faultless and happy till we ruined and defaced his blessed Image and rendred our selves the miserable objects of his compassions What is there in our frame so stubborn and insequacious that he cannot rectifie and redress who at first created all things and brought into Being all the Beauty and Harmony of Heaven and Earth He will never leave us destitute and forlorn but will take hold of every fitness and capacity till he have perfected in us the Divine life and brought us unto Glory But because Examples are more prevalent with mankind then Precepts and Instructions that God might not leave any thing undone which would in any kind conduce to our Interest he hath recommended to us the Example
would cast a fatal damp upon their attempts and endeavours after righteousness but being fully convinced as well of the Existence as that God will take care of their souls when they depart this obscure and evanid life and recompence their labour and trouble here with such great degrees of Happiness as shall farr surpass the highest calamity they can suffer in this World it cannot but inspirit their minds with life and resolution to break through all difficulties and discouragements and with a manly valour fight the good fight of Faith and never give over till they lay hold on Immortality and God Crown them as Victorious Conquerors with wreaths of immarcescible Glory It is but a groundless fancy in some to think that the intuition of the reward proposed to us in order to our further progress in Holiness and Virtue is acting upon Mercenary principles since that Christ himself in his greatest Agonies and conflicts supported the weakness of his Nature with the consideration of the reward he should receive as the compensation of his humiliation and sorrows for so we read That he endured the Cross Heb. xii 2. and despised the shame 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for the joy that was set before him Besides they understand not the nature of the Reward promised to us in the Gospel for Glory Blessedness and Felicity are not Other things from Piety and Holiness but the consummation and perfection of that Divine Nature whose efformation is begun in this life Grace and Holiness is but Happiness wrapped up and closed and Glory is nothing but Holiness explicated and unfolded to it's due latitude and dimensions Piety is Heaven masked with a cloud of flesh and begirt with sorrow and Heaven is Virtue shining in it's native brightness and clothed with a Celestial splendour And that Ethereal and Paradisiacal body with which all believers shall be arrayed through the gracious bounty of the Lord Jesus at the Resurrection of the Just is the necessary appendage of our felicity and by it's easie and obsequious motions will raise in the exalted powers of the soul the highest sense of love and joy and delightful enravishments of spirit He then that loves Virtue for it's appendant reward does in effect love it for it self and is no whit behind him that is attracted by the naked pleasure resulting from it and thinks it eligible amidst the hoarse bellowings of Phalaris his Bull because the Reward hath a very great affinity and cognation with Virtue and is no otherwise attainable then by a full and perfect exercise of it This great happiness therefore accruing to the soul of Man when refined and purified from the dregs of Earth and Mortality is very rationally set forth in the Gospel to invigorate the minds of men and raise them to the free exertions of the Divine life and to animate their dying resolutions when they walk through a troublesome wilderness and are called to resist even unto blood And if it were not for the expectation of future Blessedness all Religion would fall to the ground the inward sense and feeling of the soul being so much weakned and debilitated by her continual imbibition and attraction of the dregs of the Earthly and mortal Nature whereby she is become sluggish and inactive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 her passions and apprehensions being in a manner wholly corporeal and Truth and Virtue be but idle names or dreams of a shadow existing only in the tongues and fancies of Men but never descending into the depth of the soul and impregnating it with their living Image These are the grand Instruments which the Spirit of God makes use of in the Gospel to induce and perswade the World to act under the Government of the Divine life which if skilfully applyed and managed will undoubtedly compleat and perfect that blessed work which Providence intended them for For we cannot think that Heaven would alarm the World with a false report or raise the expectations of Men by a great sound and noise of something extraordinary when in the conclusion it amounts but to some inconsiderable and trifling design The Eternal Son of God who was that Wisdom which is the delight of Heaven and rejoyced in the habitable parts of the Earth brought down with him from the seat of Majesty that Sacred and recondit method of recovering lapsed mankind which was carryed in the pregnant womb of Goodness from the dayes of Eternity and he became our Redeemer and pervades the very Centre of our Being and shapes and frams his Image of Wisdome and Righteousnes there strengthning our decayes and supporting our weakness and consuming and expelling all our dross and corruption by a subtle and powerful Energy which in Scripture phrase is to be Baptized with the Holy Ghost and with Fire We are fallen into a narrow and contracted state and those Divine forms in our union and fruition of which consisted our blessedness are quite defaced by our fond longing after and adhesion to corporeal features Now God manifesting himself in our flesh renews and perfects those glorious Images again and stamps his impress upon us and as the great conciliating Principle of the corporeal World figures and shapes out of prepared matter the body of a plant so the Holy Spirit frames and shapes out the Divine Nature in the lapsed World of Mankind But this great purpose of the Gospel this great design and plot which God hath laid to reduce Mankind to that blessed state from whence they fell is wholly frustrated and evacuated by the Doctrine of Irrespective Decrees And that I may not charge it with what it stands not guilty of I shall make it good by these two Instances 1. It renders ineffectual the purpose of God in the Gospel by lulling Men asleep in the lap of Security and Presumption of their good estate upon the groundless fancy of their Absolute Election from all Eternity For Men being once initiated and instructed in the Mysterie of this profound Doctrine will with much anxiety and vehemency of mind contend for the truth of that which they so passionately desire to be so and having withal so amorously courted and espoused their lusts and unruly passions and yet being terrified and affrighted with the lashes of their own Consciences they will with great easiness and zeal take sanctuary in so pleasing an opinion which both gives them a fair countenance to enjoy and reap the pleasure of their sensual passions and secures them from those domestick furies which perpetually hurried and tormented them and over and above sooths them up with a confidence of eternal bliss and felicity And he that can attain to this Plerophory or full perswasion of his Election from before the foundation of the World hath the White Stone given to him though he be so farr from eating of the hidden Manna that he feeds upon nothing but husks and vanities and his name is enrolled among the Stars and he is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 out
sinners of the love of their offended God and that yet they had not sinned out of the reach of Mercy but that now while 't is called to day if they would hear the God of love speaking to their consciences and gently mollifying their obdurate hearts they should run unto him by a speedy repentance and he would melt and thaw their frozen spirits into a plyable ductility by the warm gleams of his Eternal Love loosen the wings of their entangled Souls and secure their flight into the quiet regions of Peace and Joy When this Son of Love who was alwayes going about doing good saw the Multitude scattered abroad like Sheep that have no Shepherd it is said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Mat. ix 36. He was moved with compassion on them which word sayes a Learned Critick denotes Summam vehementem commiscrationem ex intimis visceribus profectam Such an inward feeling and yerning of the heart and soul as melts the very bowels into a pitiful commiseration of the object they are affected with which intense affection is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The bowels of the mercy of God Luk. i. 78. And when he came to Jerusalem how did he weep over her and moisten his fresh Laurels with a shower of Tears O Jerusalem Matth. xxiii 37. Jerusalem thou that killedst the Prophets and stonedst them that were sent unto thee how often would I have gathered thy children together as an hen gathereth her chickens under her wings and ye would not His heart was so full of grief that it could hold no longer but must empty it self in a sympathizing flood of tears over that incorrigible City softning that ground with his watry eyes which shortly after should be bedewed with blood Oh that thou hadst known even thou at least in this thy day the things that belong unto thy peace but now they are hid from thine eyes Surely there is no man so blasphemous as to think Christ wept tears of deceit and treachery No they were the very breathings of his heart to a people that were going into inevitable destruction For if we look into the whole History of the Gospel we shall find that our blessed Lord was of as tender and passive a constitution as ever the world had any cognizance of and in this very instance which was Christs last solemn visit for the recovery of those rebellious Jews he hath left upon record to all succeeding ages of the World the fervency of his Love and the greatness of their Obstinacy and Rebellion He rode in triumph the children sang Hosanna to him and he cured many impotent and diseased persons that at least that miraculous and wonder-working Power residing in him might extort this confession from them that he was the Son of God and the promised Messiah and after all this he weeps for their Infidelity and pities them with tears and having his heart and spirit full of love that is stronger then death he leaves no way untryed but spends the whole day amongst them and looks round about him towards evening to see if any would invite him home being unwilling to depart till their Ingratitude forces him away And now that he is exalted in Glory and sits at the right hand of his Father invested with Majesty and Power his Compassions are no whit abated nor is that benign care and Providence which in the dayes of his Humiliation and condescent he exercised over the fallen generations of Men at all lessened by the augmentation of his Blessedness and Felicity but dayly woes and beseeches us by his Ministers and Servants to enter upon terms of amity and friendship with God who in him hath been pleased to reconcile the World unto himself Should we now cast our eyes upon the whole frame and fabrick of the Gospel we shall find it to be the most effectual engine that infinite Wisdome could contrive for the winding of the minds and spirits of men from their too eager pursuit of the pleasures and gratifications of the lower life and working them up to those noble and high purposes for which they were made And doubtless there is no man in whom prejudice doth not outbalance reason but will readily set his seal to this truth there appearing in the Gospel such sweet condescentions to our capacities and complyances with the frailty of our condition such infinite aversness to our misery and destruction and such powerful endearments and attractives to Holiness and Righteousness that he cannot judge it to proceed from any other then a principle of Infinite Goodness Love and Wisdome I might here further tell you that the Gospel being designed to be the Religion of men of all sorts and conditions of all ranks and qualities and so adapted to our rational powers and in the main drift and scope of it so plain and easie even to the most illiterate capacities Divine Wisdom could not but highly approve of it and by a favourable benediction suffer it to have that Universal effect it pretends to that is the full and compleat renovation of all mankind that would not wilfully reject the counsel of God against themselves and the perfecting every one without exception or limitation that would faithfully and cordially to his utmost powers adhere unto it CHAP. II. Absolute Reprobation repugnant to Right Reason wherein is set out the Moral Nature of our Souls in reference to Good and Evil Truth and Falshood And this Second Argument made good in Four Propositions THere is nothing that can lay any claim or pretence to the decision of Questions of a Moral Nature and Import but will appear very lame and ineffectual without the aid and assistance of Right Reason which is so noble and generous a principle that if we take a serious view of it it will soon discover to us it 's Royal Pedigree and Divine Extraction There is a near alliance and consanguinity between the Reason of Man and that Eternal Goodness which at first sealed it as an impression of his Nature upon our souls and therefore there need be no such distance between true Christianity and it For assuredly that Divine Wisdom which at our first production implanted in us the apprehensions and Idea's of things did so order the business that if we used our discriminative faculties aright we should have no other conceptions of them then what did really and significantly express the Natures of the things themselves and such as were Eternally lodg'd in the All-comprehensive Intellect of the Deity There being then no Judge on Earth whose Dictates and Determinations may be credited as Authentick and Infallible and every man being commanded to prove all things to try the Spirits whether they be of God and to look carefully and diligently to himself that he fall not nor be led into Error and the Reason and understanding of man if rightly manag'd being the Candle of the Lord whereby he is inabled to examine and judge of Doctrines it will follow
the excellency and glory of her Nature when divested of the rags of Mortality an obscure subindication of which we have as well in those conflicts she hath with the body wherein she aspires and elevates her self to the obtaining something better then she now possesses and also in those high and raised presages she makes of a transcendent free and enlarged life when she takes her flight from this lower world if I say we consider the extent of her capacities and the exquisite pulchritude and beauty of her frame and structure it will appear an act of the highest unreasonableness that I may not say extreamest rigour and injustice in the World to render her being innocent and blameless the more miserable by being once happy and to make her condition infinitely worse then that wherein she was at first created or to which she is in a possibility of attaining Nor can this be salved and cured by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of Gods unlimited and uncontrollable Power and Dominion over his Creatures whereby he may do with them whatever he pleases For beside that 't is no way dishonourable to Gods everblessed Nature to say that his Will and Power are not arbitrarious and ungovernable but regulated and ballasted by a Supreme Goodness we are not in this case to look for bare Will which is in it self a meer blind principle but for something more Soveraign for Wisdom and Counsel and for ends worthy of that adorable Majesty which not only brought into being but perpetually interesses it self in the affairs of the whole Creation God cannot act below himself or stain the beautious productions of his fertile Nature with the base alloy of self-advantage and accruments but alwayes works conformably to Absolute Goodness in which all his Actions are terminated and concluded It was from this fertile womb that the whole Creation issued forth and God can deal no otherwise with his Creatures then may be consistent with the Eternal and Unchangeable Laws of so Majestick a principle and if it were once concluded against the proud Pharisees by him who is the Essential Wisdom of God That it is better to save life then to destroy we may be sure that Almighty arme which sustains and governs the World will never hurt any of mankind before they ruine and undo themselves Sooner may those bright Lamps of Heaven which are perpetually circling us keep back and suspend their beams then the Divine Goodness be separated from any thing that is willing to be united to him Gods Rule and Dominion over the World is good and just 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Hierocles speaks out of Plato that is God being naturally and essentially Good cannot possibly conceive any envy or hatred at the condition of any thing he has made He is not like the Ostritch which as Job tells us leaves her eggs in the sand and forgets that the foot may crush them and hardens her self against her young ones as if they were not hers but exercises a tender care and loving Providence over the whole Creation and sheds a benigne influence upon his numerous issue And to this the inward sense of every good man bears witness whose felicity is multiplyed by seeing others as happy as himself and if it be a perfection in our Natures to be propense to mercy and compassion and to do all that good which lies in our powers then surely if we take a prospect of Gods infinite and complete Goodness from the benigne and harmless temper of a vertuous and good man we must necessarily conclude that he cannot make any of the Creation miserable without consideration of their own default A good man looks not upon himself as some particular being divided from the rest of the World but as a member of the whole Creation which in conformity to his Great Maker he accounts a part of his care and grasps every degree of life within his boundless mind and if it lay in his breast he would invest them with all that happiness God made them for And beside what every bountiful and benigne man experiences in himself we have some instances of this Universal Charity left upon record What passionate eruptions of spirit do we find in the holy men of old Blot me out of thy book sayes Moses and I could wish my self accursed from Christ for my Brethren and Kinsmen according to the flesh sayes St. Paul Yea further I am perswaded that if it were possible for a good man to be slain a thousand times yet so often as he revived he would still forgive the hand that struck him and which is yet more he could be content if it might stand with the goodness of God to lie in Hell to all Eternity so that he might be without sin rather then that any of the sons of men should be forever excluded and debarr'd from the love and favour of God And now do but compare this Noble and Heroical Spirit with that inexhausted fountain of Goodness which is concentred in the Essence of the Deity and we shall soon see that God is so far from making any of his innocent Creatures miserable that acting according to the eternal laws of his own Nature he must necessarily consult the good and welfare of them all God is Essential Goodness an immense Ocean of love which knows no bounds nor limits Man is only good by participation and his greatest perfection is but a derivative ray from that spotless Orbe of light and glory Man can but wish and desire the accomplishment and perfect establishment of every thing in that happiness 't is capable of but it is in the Power of God not only to wish all things happy but if he please to make them really so What is there then left but the malignity and bitterness of peevish Spirits to hinder or discountenance the Universal happiness of the whole World I wish therefore that the strenuous asserters of Gods 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and unaccountable Dominion over his Creatures would take heed that under pretence of magnifying his Power they do not derogate from those more excellent perfections of his Nature Wisdom and Goodness There are certain immutable and unchangeable laws fixed and radicated in the very centre of the Deity and which he can no more swerve from then he can cease to be and Goodness being the first pregnant root of all things cannot fail of acting according to it 's Essential plenitude and exuberancy that is of communicating it's self to all capable subjects as the light cannot withhold from darting it's beams through the pervious air And here I cannot omit to recite those blasphemous Positions which have been maintained by some rigid Calvinists that the World may see how farr men may put out the light of their Natural Reasons by prejudice and passion and yet avouch their Dogmata as Oraculous Amyraldus apud Curcellaeum de jure Dei in Creatur as innocentes Cap. 7. Hoc igitur ex istâ Jobi
their order wait upon him and he scatters his bounty in the midst of them and by a provident care looks down from Heaven and tends all his charge so that not a Sparrow closeth it's wings on Earth but that watchful eye observes it's fall And 't is very strange that those armes which fold and embrace every thing that exerts any faculty and degree of life should be employed in plunging humane souls while innocent and undefiled into woe and misery * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Porphyr l. 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and that to Eternal ages Where is that love and pity which all Creatures proclaim to be in their Soveraign Lord and Maker And if it were an Almighty Goodness that brought them into being surely the same Goodness being never disjoyned from an All-comprehensive Wisdom which beheld the Natures mutual relations and dependences of all Creatures would have judged it fitter never to have brought them into being then that they should be made perpetually unhappy so soon as ever they were created To conclude this Argument Our Religion being in all the parts of it highly reasonable as being propounded to rational natures in whom there are manifest Idea's and notions of Eternal verity and they being so deeply sealed upon them that it is neither in their power to obliterate nor without great reluctancy receive any thing repugnant to them it will appear from the nature of the thing it self that there can be no such absolute Decree of Reprobation as some pretend CHAP. III. The third Argument taken from the Consideration of the Moral Nature of God from whence are deduced such legitimate Inferences and Conclusions as diametrally oppose the Doctrine of Inconditionate Reprobation TO speak worthily and becomingly of that adorable Being to whom we and all creatures else owe not only our Existence but our present subsistence and conservation in the several states of life wherein we are and to have right apprehensions of his Nature * This is made by Epictetus â—…p 38. a Prolepsis of Religion 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as it is a great piece of our duty so it spirits and invigorates our minds to manly and generous attempts and leads us to the knowledge of the most considerable Theories in Nature and Providence For whether we consider the exuberant plenitude and fecundity of the Divine Goodness which cannot but communicate it self to the utmost capacities of things or the fathomless depth of that Wisdom which hath framed the whole world with such curious and exquisite Artifice that the most perspicacious wit cannot find the least flaw in that beautious structure and yet was able to produce it after another manner beyond our conceptions if he had so pleased or whether we weigh the infinity of the Divine Power which is able to effect any thing that implies no contradiction in Naturals or deformity in Morals Or lastly whether we contemplate the vast fetches and circuits of Providence which though to the low and contracted spirit seem to clash and interfeer yet to the noble and capacious soul are all concentrick and harmonious and make that still and sweet Musick in his ears which the mistaken vulgar thought Pythagoras heard from the motion of the Sphears whereas it was nothing in reality but that admirable and enravishing consent of Providence which God the great Harmostes orders in such tunable and methodical proportions whether I say we attend to any of these things the contemplation of them cannot but widen and enlarge that which is the flower and summity of our souls I mean their Intellectual Natures and fill them with such raised and sublime Notions and Idea's that it will be almost impossible for us to miss of finding out some material Truth which shall be worthy the Author of all things and gratifie and reward our diligent inquisition Now that we may have a true and genuin conception of the Nature of God it is altogether necessary that we free our minds from all prejudice and anticipation of judgment and purge them throughout from the gross and impure steams of the Corporeal life lest when we think we have an Idea of him it be only an Image of our unclean fancies and imaginations but as that Holy One is altogether Spiritual and immaterial so must our apprehensions of him be spiritualiz'd and removed as far from the vile commerce with matter as possibly we can that our eyes being freed from the dust and soil of the earth we may behold him as he is that is as a Being absolutely perfect For he that thus judges of that ever-blessed Being not only removes from him all imbecility and imperfection but invests him in the most infinite manner with whatever the mind of Man doth rationally repute to be an excellency and perfection And whatever the prophane Atheist may object who under pretence of honoring God with the title of Incomprehensible removes him so far that he professes he can have no certain conception of him at all and therefore concludes that he is not and perversely laughs all incorporeal substances out of the World as if there were a contradiction in the very terms yet he that will discard the perplext dictates of Fancy and Imagination and keep close to the sure Deductions of free and solid Reason will I doubt not ingenuously confess that the Idea of God is as easie and natural as of any thing else in the World But it is no wonder if he whose mind is perpetually enveloped with a cloud of vice and sin cannot behold the Eternal Existence of that glorious Being which we call God or acknowledging of him yet deciphers him to the World by such strange Characters as no reasonable man can believe to be a true copy of his Nature It is an indubitable Truth that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Every thing is best known by that which is most analogical to it and as the eye cannot behold the Sun 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unless it have some picture and resemblance of the Sun drawn in it no more can any Man have a true notion of the Deity 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 unless he be made God-like and partake of his image and similitude There is a certain congruity and harmony between Truth and the Soul of Man and however that ancient league by our unhappy lapse came to be violated and broken yet still there are some strokes and impresses in our minds which claim a cognation and affinity where-ever they meet with it And those few sparks which yet remain after the extinction of that great fire of Divine life whose harmless and innoxious flame burnt bright within us and by it we saw our selves and beheld the Natures and proprieties of things till we suffocated and choaked it by casting an heap of dust and rubbish upon it these I say though faint and glimmering yet retain their alliance with heaven and God owns them as the projections and rayes of his own good life and whoever sincerely
of an unlimited Will and Power how and when he pleaseth and declaring their effluxes and emanations to be the rule of reason and measure of all Moral Actions and the grand Law of the whole Creation or else in those Hymns and Hallelujahs which are offered up to him by intellectual Beings from all quarters of the Universe Whereas in truth his Glory is nothing without himself nor any acquisition and purchase to augment his happiness for he being an Infinite Plenitude of all Perfection is incapable of receiving any complement of Glory or Blessedness but then he most of all elevates and raises his glory and lustre when he most of all communicates his Nature and shines in with a full and uninterrupted light of Truth and Goodness upon all the intellectual Creation He never seeks his Glory in respect of us in any other way than by dispreading and imparting those Soveraign Attributes of Love Mercy Patience Wisdom and Justice And we in the most proper sense do then advance the Glory of God highest and discover it to the World in the most ample and transcendent manner when the life of God becomes a Vital Principle in us carrying us beyond the reach of corporeal exsudations and defilements which render the soul inept for a conformity to his blessed Image and when Truth Holiness and Righteousness in which the Divine Nature is copyed out become not empty and insignificant Names and sounds of words but actuating and quickning Principles and we studiously endeavour to engrave those beautiful Forms in our minds and spirits In a word then do we glorifie God when we converse with him in the Temple of an unspotted heart and derive from him in whom there is no blemish of iniquity such an Universal Holiness as lives within us and pervades and sanctifies all our actions And this the Lord Christ who best knew how to glorifie God hath intimated to us Joh. xv 8. Herein is my Father glorified that ye bear much fruit I have now finished this Argument from the consideration of the Divine Nature and have deduced such genuine and legitimate Conclusions that if rightly estimated and weighed cannot but implant for the future in every unprejudic'd mind more generous and serene Apprehensions of the Deity then are offered in any Scheme of the Supralapsarian or Sublapsarian Doctrins both which concurr in that which appears most deformed to every pure and defecate eye viz. The Eternal Reprobation and Confusion of the greatest part of Mankind the one upon pretence of Gods sole Will and Pleasure and the other under the mantle and cover of Adam's transgression in whose loins the whole race of Mankind was included when he fell and lost his Paradise Both which opinions though never so fairly guilded over do really make God put on the mask of cruelty and rigour that he might appear just in his Oeconomy and Administration of the affairs of the World and that which is most barbarous and infamous in the eye of reason is made to speak the glory of the Deity And that God might bring about this dismal and black design of Damning his Creatures he must compass it by injurious artifices and tyrannical contrivances rot unlike that inhumane fraud Tiberius used to Brutus and Nero the sons of Germanicus Suet. in Vit. Tâ—…b c. 54. Variâ fraude induxit ut concitarentur ad convitia concitati perderentur How deep a stain doth this cast upon the lovely rayes and efflorences of the Divine Goodness and Mercy making him to become the Executioner to his own off-spring and rend that dear life in pieces which his own hands gave Being to And although the Sublapsarian Dogma be entertained of some on purpose to mollifie that harsh decree of the Supralapsarian Reprobation yet if we divest it of those terms and artifices of words wherewith it is mantled over to appear more specious to the World we shall find it cast as great a blot upon the Divine Nature as the other For whether is it better to say That God by his Eternal Prerogative of Absolute Dominion over all his Creatures has adjudged the greatest part of Mankind to inevitable misery for no other reason but upon the impulse of his own Will and to shew the glory of his Power Or to say That God for the sin of one Man whom he made the Representative of the succeeding Generations of Men to the end of the World committed some thousands of years ago and imputed only to his Posterity who were no more able to help it than to hinder their being born into the World should take the advantage of his lapse and decree the greatest number of Mankind to Everlasting destruction And if we impartially view this latter it will appear no less precarious and absurd than the former For though it be true that we are really and formally guilty of Original Sin yet to say that God did physically predetermine Adam's fall or in the mildest sense That he looked upon man as fallen for the Reprobationists are not consistent with themselves and so took the opportunity which he foresaw would offer it self by his lapse to bring about his design of ruining the greatest number of Mankind is to bring Almighty God the Father of compassions upon the stage of the World speaking unto the calamitous Off-spring of Adam like the Wolfe when he intended to devour a Lamb Ante hos sex menses ait maledixisti mihi Respondit agnus Equidem natus non eram Pater hercule tuus inquit maledixit mihi Atque ita correptum lacerat injustâ nece Should God take the souls of men being yet innocent so soon as he set them upon acting in the World according to those Principles and Powers he bestowed upon them at their first production and cast them into everlasting burnings they would have this comfort left to them that they suffered innocently and never in the least measure violated any of the sacred Laws of Heaven But when they shall hear that their Creator and Father who upon that very account could not inflict a greater evil than the good he bestowed on them hath contrived their death and drawn them into sin that he might with the fairer shew of equity punish them with infinite tortures both in body and soul this injustice must needs appear unspeakably grievous For although some would seem to excuse this Oeconomy from all harshness iniquity and rigor by substituting the softer termes of Preterition or negative Reprobation yet if they will unmask their apprehensions and speak plain sense the difference will appear only in words not in the thing it self and is all one as if a man should seek to alleviate the calamity of a condemned Malefactor by telling him he should not die by Common but Noble hands For the event declares Gods intention and the denial of his help to extricate them from misery is equivalent to a positive Reprobation Let us consult a little our own faculties and reason
he interwove in the constitution of his Nature at his first production and while he followed this light and turned not aside to the false fires of his depraved will he walked in safe and secure paths But when Men began to multiply upon earth Sin and Vice increased and the infectious steams of Iniquity soon grew into a cloud and obscured the light of the day and men forsook their ancient Guide and wandred about in Darkness and Error and the voice of Reason was not heard when Self-interest and Passion became the sole principles of action Hence it came to pass that in succession of time Mens discriminative faculties growing insensate and dull through the life and vigour of their Animal powers and their Criteria abating and loosing their quick and nimble tast and rellish of true good and happiness they choose only the present satisfaction and pleasure of their corrupt Appetites and embraced blindfold every inordinate motion and passion and it was too late now to curb and restrain their lawless and rampant Desires For although Divine Goodness which was never absent nor withdrawn from the World did in all Ages and Places raise up considerable and holy Persons to instruct the perverse Sons of Men in the wayes of Righteousness yet their Precepts and Admonitions were entertained by very few the rest of the World still slumbring in their old wickedness and stupidity and chusing such faint and glimmering flames to guide themselves by such weak and sickly Principles as might least distrub their fancied Peace and molest their desired Security Wherefore when this way proved unserviceable and unfit for Mans Restauration God entred upon a new Dispensation and revealed himself more plainly to the Jews selecting Jacob for his Portion and Israel for the lot of his Inheritance conducting them by an infant Religion which should make way and prepare their minds for the reception of that glorious Mysterie which in due time should be communicated to the World and delivering to them Laws Statutes and Judgments fencing and hedging in the impure eruptions of their debased Natures by Judicial Decrees and besiedging Vice and Iniquity by the actual promulgation of a Law But the main of this Oeconomy was only Thetical and Positive deriving it's obligation meerly from the Divine Command and adapted for the most part to the Plastick Powers of the soul for it consisting chiefly in external Performances which had no intrinsick Goodness contained in them nor any other Reason of their injunction but the will and pleasure of the Imposer it could not ascend higher then the Fancy or Imagination nor contribute any thing to the sublimating Reason and Intellect while all it's motions were determined in so low a spear And hence arose the great imperfection of the Mosaical Law in that it had only an Adumbration and presented a Landtschap of good things and not the very image and substance Heb. x. 1. and consequently was altogether destitute of a Vital and Energetical Power to promote true and substantial Holiness or extirpate and mortifie the exorbitant passions of corporeal life For indeed the whole body of the Judaical Service was only a Prefiguration of something more perfect and illustrious to be discovered to the World the most mysterious part of it being Typical and Emblematical carrying an abscondit signification under an External Symbol which the Author to the Hebrews seems to allude to when he sayes it was necessary that the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Heb. ix 23 24. The patterns of things in the Heavens should be purified with these And again Christ is not entred into the holy places made with hands 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The figures of the true But when notwithstanding this careful Discipline men were still corrupt and satisfied themselves with the bare observance of the letter of the Law neglecting the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the weightier and more principal matters such as Justice Righteousness Truth and Goodness God grew weary of this Oeconomy and called more for the performance of the Moral then Ceremonial part of the Law and when the fulness of time was come resolved to bring about his last and most perfect determination which was to send down his well-beloved Son with full Power and Authority to communicate an Everlasting Righteousness and deliver to the World the Gospel which is the sum and substance the flower and quintessence of those 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 exterior modes and schemes wherewith he instructed the Jewish Church of old and which retains only such Ceremonies as are necessary in regard of our frail and mortal state in which we are more affected with the propulsions and motions of sense then with Truths of a refined and intellectual constitution and is compounded and made up of such things as are naturally and immutably good such as have an eternal and indispensable obligation being nothing but the Idea's of our own souls which we had buried and obscured by our fall raised and brought to light again the results of Gods own Nature imprinted upon our minds and his moral Being explicated and dispread throughout our spirits The Gospel is nothing but God manifested in the flesh his Goodness Wisdom Justice and Mercy veiled under the Cortex of words and expressions adapted and fitted to our mean capacities and it 's highest aime and design is to make us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Partakers of the Divine Nature and perfect us according to his own Image of Righteousness and Truth and in our due time invest us with the immortal robes of life and glory This was the Noble end of the Pythagorean Philosophy Hierocles in Carm. Pythag. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 And questionless a Divine and Heroick spirit moved in those Philosophers veins and they knew and felt the irradiations of that Heavenly life which quickens and informs every Rational Being that puts no wilful stop and impediment to it's kindly operations But whether ever they obtained that high and excellent atchievement they aimed at by living up to the Precepts and Principles of their Philosophy I shall not now enquire Sure I am there was never any Oeconomy yet divulged to the World which more illustriously propagated the Divine Life and Nature or more effectually conduced to the drawing Men from Sin and Wickedness and weakning the Diabolical Kingdom then that Evangelical Mysterie which hath been hid from Ages and Generations but is now made manifest to Mankind by the appearing of Jesus Christ That we are deeply lapsed and degenerated from God is the universal consent of all Men although they differ in the manner of it's explication Plato taught that the Fall of Man consisted 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the defluxion of the souls pinions whereby not being able any longer to bear her self up in the higher Regions she fell to the Earth and inhabited a Mortal body which the above named Author thus Paraphrases upon 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is As our departure from God and the
of the reach of danger and if he fall he shall not be utterly cast down for God will raise him up The gates of hell shall never pluck him out of Gods hands nor separate him from his eternal Love for having loved his own he loveth them unto the end The thickest cloud of sin and darkness arising from his polluted and rotten heart though it may suspend for a while yet can never totally divest him of Gods paternal Love and favour because he is one of Christ's Sheep of his little flock and he knows him and is confident he is known of him and though he have lived in vice and rolled in the dirt and mire of the Earth till the utmost Period of his life yet the holy Spirit will infallibly and irresistibly at the very Exit of his soul change and renew it and cast the robes of Christ's spotless Righteousness upon it and then 't is impossible the man should miss of heaven And is this a Doctrine adapted to the carrying on the design God intended in the Gospel namely the Reduction of the world to a conformity to the Divine will to forsake and abandon all their sinful and false wayes and to live in a universal submission and resignation to his holy Laws and Commands What proof or evidence doth it bring that it aims at any such thing Is it in that it declares to a man that Faith and Repentance and every good motion of the soul is the irresistible work of God and that 't is no more in his Power to confer any thing to his being a good Christian a just and Righteous person than to add one cubit to his bodily stature but if he be not as yet regenerated he must stay and wait till that good time come wherein the Spirit of the Lord shall enter into him and make him a New Creature for the wind bloweth where it listeth Or is it in that it affirms That Christ dyed for the Elect and though the value of his Satisfaction were infinite and sufficient to redeem the whole World for them only and that his death hath satisfied for all their sins and that now God imputes the Righteousness of the Lord Christ to them and upon his account they are esteemed as righteous as if in their own Persons they had fulfilled the whole Evangelical Law though in the mean time their hearts are very corrupt and unsound Are these the Demonstrations by which this Doctrine of Irrespective Decrees manifests it self to come from God If it bear the Superscription and Image of God upon it it is then as he himself is Light and there is no Darkness no mixture of impurity and humane imagination in it for God cannot patronize any thing but what is holy as he is holy and pure as he is pure But if we consider well such Positions will appear very obscure and frightful horrid and amazing savouring of the Prince of Darkness by whom they were breathed into the minds and spirits of unsanctified Persons and by them communicated to the World as the Arcana of Christianity but tending in reality to the eversion of it and the augmentation and increase of the Devils Kingdom For when Men shall hear that upon such and such Pulpit-signs which their Impertinent Preachers deliver to them they may gather their Election from all Eternity and that maugre all the Oppositions of Men and Devils they shall never fall quite away by a final Impenitence but assuredly recovered by an uncontrollable and peremtory power when they shall be told likewise That Gods calls are at certain times and seasons and that till they perceive themselves forcibly inacted and carryed away by the impulse of the Divine Spirit all their previous actions are to no purpose Will not these things cause them to sit down in laziness and take their ease without troubling themselves with the renovation of their minds sith that God will take care for that and soak themselves in terrestrial joyes and pleasures till the dead-awakening trump which when it will be they know not call them from the Grave of sin and death as Christ did Lazarus and bid them come forth Will not the imputation of Christs Righteousness and the mantle of his Satisfaction damp the endeavours of men after real and inward Righteousness and inherent Holiness by which they attain to a participation of the Divine Nature since they can have anothers at so cheap a rate which will likewise be as beneficial and stand them in as much stead as if they had of their own Men are prone to palliate their sin and take hold of any pretence to stop the mouth of their accusing consciences and need no such artifices to lead them into those paths that go down to Hell and the comfortless chambers of death Their evil Natures and the examples of others and temptations of Satan are sufficient to draw them into Vice and Irreligion that none need disseminate such doctrins as shall invite them to immorality and iniquity from the Authority and Countenance of Gods word But it is supposed that every Christian Mâ—stagogus who acknowledges himself to have a Master in heaven to whom he must give an account for the souls committed to his charge if not for theirs yet for his own felicities sake will have so much prudence and circumspection as not to build on the foundation of the Gospel Wood Hay or stubble any such Doctrins as will not abide the test of Reason but prove both to God and Mens souls very mischievous and injurious for though he does it ignorantly his work shall be burnt but he himself shall be saved 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 yet so as by fire that is with extreme difficulty as he that hardly escapeth out of the fire 2. The second Instance wherein the Doctrin of Irrespective Decrees inverts and destroyes the end and purpose of God in the Gospel is by leading Men into desperation I do not mean that they should despair of mercy so long as they continue in their sins for this every Criminal ought to do that he may be induced to come out of them the sooner but by Desperation here I mean a disbelief of Gods will or power to save them whereby they go on carelesly and resolutely in a course of Rebellion and Iniquity For being perswaded on the one hand that the number of the Elect is but small in comparison of Reprobates and that both the one and the other are particularly designed and marked out by name for the Lord knows who are his and that all the labours of men after the Kingdom of Heaven will prove unsuccessful and abortive till God by a high and mighty hand come upon them and powerfully convince them of the evil of their wayes and astonish them with the weight and multitude of their sins laying them low and bringing them down as they phrase it to the gates of Hell and shewing them the worm that never dies and the fire which never shall
descendeth from the Father of Lights exert it self in pure peaceable gentle merciful and impartial actions But we finding all things go contrary and Autaesthesie the Grand principle of our deviation from God so mischievously powerful leading men to a life of self-seeking and inamouring them with the fading beauties of this inferior World making Intellect and Reason drudge in unjust policy and subtlety for the promoting self-interest and carrying on little and private designs for the treasuring up Riches though by the greatest Extortion and Rapine and consuming and overrunning the poor and innocent like a sweeping Torrent that leaves nothing behind it but the miserable tokens of ruine and desolation This being the state of men and farr worse then I have here represented it under the brutish life and law of sin what signs can they shew that they are arrived to any considerable measure of liberty For it is not some one particular lust but the whole unrighteous and Diabolical Nature which mingles and insinuates it self with the whole frame of the soul and enthrals it to it 's imperious dictates But yet there is some freedome left still and men are not destitute of a light though languid and glimmering to lead them to greater degrees of Vertue if they would suffer themselves to be guided by it There is yet in every man in his greatest Apostacy and lapse from the Divine life a Principle of Conscience accusing and condemning him for the perpetration of evil and that regret and shame a man finds in himself after the commission of impiety is a manifest evidence that he had Power to avoid it 2. Again there is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the law of the mind or conscience ver 23. Another law warring against the law of my mind And this is the second state and condition of mankind For as while they were under the Law of sin they were wholly alive unto themselves and disjoyned from the Universal Spirit of life and true freedome they became at last strangers to their own Beings and ignorant of their high and noble extraction so under this Dispensation of the mind or conscience there is a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or double-livedness within them being partly alive unto themselves and partly unto God sometimes lending a patient ear to the soft whispers of Divine wisdom and at other times carryed away with the loud murmurs and noises of that worser Principle as Medea in Euripides complains 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 My Conscience tells me that I act amiss But fury stronger than my Reason is And now they begin to awake out of their lethargick drowziness and sleep and open the windows of their souls and receive in some beams of the Sun of Righteousness that hath long circled about them and by his light they see themselves in a broken and unhappy plight and fain would come out of it but dare not put themselves to any trouble or pain so they lay themselves down again to slumber But conscience being once forcibly rouz'd up is not so easily lulled asleep but alarms them with fatal cryes and shews them the guiltiness that lies upon them and the mortiferous and dangerous state they are in by reason of the certain punishment all sin draws along with it thus being affrighted they become Religious out of fear and account Christianity as a task and burdensome service imposed upon them only to deprive them of their liberty and abridge them of that freedom they before possessed and still they bear a love and liking to their lusts and often visit them with dear embraces And while they are here they carry a perpetual warr within them between the Law of sin and the Law of the mind sometime the one and sometime the other prevailing the life of the body strugling against the mind or reason and the light endeavouring to chase away the darkness and night And of this state are to be understood these and such like places of Scripture For that which I do I allow not for what I would that do I not Rom. vii but what I hate that do I. So then with the mind I my self serve the law of God but with the flesh the law of sin For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the flesh Gal. v. 17. and these are contrary one to the other 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that ye cannot do or that ye do not the things that that ye would Now the liberty of Mans will begins to spread and enlarge it self under this Oeconomy for though mens strength be but small yet God whose Goodness both Earth and Sea and the whole community of life partake of cannot behold his own dear life contending with the Powers of darkness and never countenance nor abet it but will lead it victoriously through the midst of hell and secure it from all the Magical spels and enchantments of the inferior World and as this Divine life grows more potent in the soul so the liberty and freedom of the will arises to a greater latitude and perfection But if we prove false to the Divine light and notwithstanding the great helps and means vouchsafed us pretend still our disability and infirmity we may easily lapse again into the brutish life and lie under the Power of the law of sin out of which we began to be delivered and the freedom of our will which was in some measure enlarged will be again contracted into narrowness and exility and our last state will be worse then the first 3. But he that makes good use of Gods gifts and behaves himself as a good Souldier of the Lord Christ and conquers and subdues his rebellious lusts by the power of his Spirit descendihg into the grave with the holy Jesus by a profound humility and mortification and becoming perfectly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 dead to all the self-feeling and the luscious relishes of the corporeal life he is arrived to the highest dispensation of Christianity which is to be under the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. viii 2. Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus Such a man is wholly alive unto God and though he be encumbred with many hardships afflictions and outward calamities which threaten approaching ruine to his body of earth yet his life is holy harmless and innocent like the life of Christ upon Earth and his soul is so affected as his was having but one only will in the World which is to annihilate himself that God may be all in him And whoever is arrived to this high pitch of Divine perfection hath attained an enlarged and boundless freedom his life being melted into the Divine life and his will fitted and adapted to the comprehension of the Divine Will For the true liberty of our wills consists not in an uncertain indifferency and dubious fluctuation between two different objects presented to our choice For this arises out of the darkness and imperfection of our
not closely and Syllogistically connected but loosly propounded and discoursed of as well for the delight and pleasure of the Reader as that he who is in a good measure prepared for the entertainment of them may light upon something agreeable to his own mind which will appear to his inward sense as Apodictical as a Mathematical Notion or the evidence of his external sense For there is something in us which will not fail to embrace whatever it finds suitable and congruous to it 's own nature and ofttimes an accidental hint proves more advantagious for the establishing and confirming a Truth before but weakly impressed upon the mind then a sapless argumentation formed after the rules of mood and figure But that I may yet give more light to the precedent discourse I shall bring into view the chief places and Texts of holy Scripture which have been by some distorted and wrested to the upholding a Doctrine they are not at all acquainted with that this Obex being removed by rendring the plain and genuine sense of them there may be nothing remaining to hinder mens free and full assent unto it John vi 37. All that the Father giveth me shall come to me From hence some draw such an unexpected conclusion as this Solent praeparationes ad fidem patri tribui Mat. xvi 17. ut fidei operatio filio obsignatio spiritui Gâ—ot viz. That there are some particular persons known to God by name whom he hath from all eternity given to Christ and that all others are devoted to destruction For the explication therefore of this we must know that God once promised the Lord Christ Psal 2. that he would give him the Heathen for his inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession by which we may discern what kind of giving this is which is mentioned here viz. the giving for an inheritance or possession That Christ may reign over them which God doth by his Vital presence pervading their souls and laying hold of every disposition and capacity and preparing their hearts by his softning and preventing grace for a benign reception of the Divine Image of the Lord Jesus And this Act of God in fitting and qualifying them is called His drawing Vers 44. No man can come unto me except the Father which hath sent me draw him which attraction is no wayes involuntary and irresistible as if he who knows all the secret recesses and intrigues of our Natures were put to his shifts and had no other means to reduce men to righteousness but by the destruction of their powers and faculties but his drawing is with the Cords of a Man Hos xi 4. and the Bands of Love with gentle and perswasive arguments farr different from those unaccountable impulses and violent motions attributed to Gods Spirit by the Calvinists as Jer. xxxi 3. and Cant. i. 4. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clem. Strom. 4. Now the persons given unto Christ must needs be such who are fitly disposed qualified and prepared to receive Christ being offered such who are 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 set in order and rankt to life Act. xiii 48. and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 fitted and capacitated for the Kingdom of God Such as are like that subactum solum Luk. ix 62. good and mellow ground in the Parable which is fitted for the receiving the seed of Gods Words For if by Gods donation of men to Christ were signified his Electing a certain number to eternal life without any consideration of their future obedience it would follow 1. That that number could never be diminished but we read that one of those who was given to Christ was lost Joh. xvii 12. Those that thou gavest me I have kept and none of them is lost 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 but the Son of Perdition 2. It would follow that those who are already elected to Eternal life and in the favour and love of God are yet given to Christ which is very crude and improper for to what purpose should they be given to Christ when they are already reconciled to God 3. Christ here speaking to the incredulous Jews if by this exclusive form of Locution he had meant that only some few particular persons preordained from eternity should come to him that is Believe on him Heb. xi 6. he would not only have extenuated the sin of the Jews in not believing on him but wholly taken it away by rendring them an account and reason of this their incredulity viz. That they were destitute of that vital influence and grace which streams from a particular Election and is given only to some certain persons known to God by Name from all eternity Acts xiii 48. And as many as were ordained to eternal life believed Here the Contra-Remonstrants as their manner is whenever they meet with any such word as Ordained Elected or Predestinated presently fancy that it concludes their absolute Decrees and so obstinately and wilfully blind are they that they cannot see any other sense but their own and obtrude it upon Men as Infallible and Authentick Such is the Text here in hand which they they imagine makes much for their cause but the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hath no such signification or import that they should put upon it but is a Military term and signifies to Marshal to stand ready in rank and file and accordingly denotes here those who are fitted and aptly disposed to eternal life so it is used 1 Cor. xvi 15. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 disposed or devoted themselves to the function of ministring to the Saints So the Greeks express a well-governed and disposed life by 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and those that live not so the Apostle calls 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 disorderly persons 1 Thess v. 14. The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 therefore here hold proportion with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the forementioned place Luke ix 62. and denotes such who are fitted by due preparations for the reception of the Gospel And if the Text were to be expounded of such an absolute Predestination of certain particular persons undoubtedly the words 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 would have been used which had made more for that purpose and not such a Phrase which is no where in the whole Scripture found to signifie Gods eternal Decrce For a further confirmation of this I will annex Grotius his Observations upon the place against the Calvinistical Exposition 1. Praedestinati omnes unius loci non eredunt eodem tempore 2. Neque omnes qui credunt sunt eâ— sensu praedestinati 3. Neque id arcanum de singulis qui ad salutem perventuri essent qui non Lucae erat revelatum 1 Pet. ii 8. And a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence even to them which stumble at the Word being disobedient whereunto also they were appointed That which our Adversaries collect from hence is That there are some ordained and
to or Reprobation from Eternal life and happiness For 1. If this were loving from eternity God could not afterward have given Jacob and the people of Israel a Law annexing a conditional benediction to it For that which God had decreed to them by an immutable and special Decree could not be promised to them under the condition of obedience for it implies a contradiction that a thing should be absolute and conditional at the same time and to the same persons 2. If this love were absolute and eternal to Jacob and his Posterity they could not then have fallen from Gods grace and favour which we find some of them did 1 Cor. x. 5. Heb. iii. 19. As therefore the love here mentioned cannot signifie an Election to eternal life so neither can the Hatred denote eternal Reprobation 1. Because 't is often taken otherwise in Scripture comparatively for a less degree of love and therefore may admit of a more candid interpretation Deut. xxi 15. If a man have two wives one beloved and another hated i. e. If he have one that he loves less then the other For it being lawful at that time to divorce their wives it would scarce ever happen what the text implies if hating were taken properly for who would retain a wife that he really and truly hated when he might put her away and take another which he loved better So Gen. xxviii 31. When the Lord saw that Leah was hated i. e. as in the precedent verse loved with a less degree of affection then Rachel After the same manner must the words of Christ be expounded in the Gospel Luke xiv 26. If any man cometh to me 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and hateth not his Father and Mother i. e. if he love not me more then them he cannot be a true Christian 2. That cannot be the object of such an eternal and implacable hatred which hath no cause of hatred in it but Esau had no cause in him that God should thus hate him Before the children had done good or evil Vers 16. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we may here observe that they do very much misconstrue and misapply the words of the Apostle who make this the sense of them as if it were not at all requisite for obtaining life and eternal Salvation that we should live well and diligently attend to the exercise and performance of faith and good works This I say is a dangerous error and mistake and every holy man experiences the effects of the contrary to be most true For 1 Cor. ix 24. all Christians are plainly and distinctly commanded 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to run that they may obtain the heavenly 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and reward of their labours 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 all run but one obtains the prize 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so run that ye may obtain So likewise Heb. xii 1. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Let us run with patience And there is the same reason of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Job vii 17. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If any man will do his will he shall know of the Doctrine And upon this account incredulous and unbelieving persons are reprehended for this very thing that they Will not come unto Christ John v. 40. And Christ complains of Jerusalem 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 I would but ye would not Wherefore when it is said here It is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth we must not understand it of that Will whereby a man would do what God commands him But the sense is this That it is not sufficient for the acquisition of Divine favour and grace that we seek it after any sort but it necessarily lies upon us and stands us in stead to endeavour after it by that way and means by which God hath declared to us it may be acquired And hence the Apostle gives an indication of the fruitless attempts of the Jews in contending with so much zeal and noise for the obedience of the Law when God required faith in his Son whom he had sent into the world of them and had openly declared that men should be accounted righteous not by the works of the Law but by the faith of the Gospel Verse 18. The word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hardens is by many misunderstood and therefore will need some explication That God hardened Pharaoh's heart the Scripture testifies but of the manner how it was done we are now to enquire Some understand this hardning of the heart to be a positive act of God either by conveying a new degree of obstinacy and refractoriness into it or by intending and corroborating that which was in it before But this is neither agreeable to the purity and simplicity of the Divine Nature nor consentaneous to any Oeconomy which God has yet manifested to the World for his Holiness is such that he cannot be the cause or Author of any Impurity or Rebellion which this way of solution would certainly charge upon him The Reverend and Learned Dr. Hammond in his Annotations upon this place observes That God is not said to harden Pharaoh 's heart although he predicted it before in Chap. iv 21. vii 3. till after the sixt judgment and the addition of a special warning given him by Moses before that and then 't is said Exod. ix 12. as it were in a new style The Lord hardens Pharaoh's heart By which computation of time when God hardned Pharaoh's heart he thinks it will appear what is the proper intimation of hardning viz. The total substraction of Gods grace of Repentance from him in the same manner as when one is cast into Hell which Pharaoh at that time had been had it not been more for Gods Glory to continue him alive a while in that desperate irreversible condition which sure was no whit worse to him but somewhat better and more desirable then to have been adjudged to those flames all that time But methinks with submission to more excellent judgments the main of this Explication is not so solid so rational and coherent as might be desired For 1. It may very well be question'd Whether those plagues which were inflicted on him after the immission of the sixt judgment and consequently after God is said to harden his heart were not as efficacious for his amendment and so designed of God as any of the former That they were sufficiently convictive and of force and power enough to subdue and conquer his untamed spirit if he would have made a right use of them is evident as well from Gods upbraiding the people of Israel of incredulity upon this very reason and account that they refused to be wrought upon by those many notable miracles and signs done in the midst of them Deut. xxix 2 3 4. as from the temporarious penitence and suddain sensibility of his miscarriage which the actual and present immission of judgment drew from him Exod. ix 27 28. I have sinned this time and so likewise Chap. x.
36. to judge themselves unworthy of everlasting life Acts xiii 46. To reject or render ineffectual the Counsel of God against themselves Luke vii 30. Not that they do directly and principally intend any such thing but because they commit and act those things which do either naturally or by virtue of the Divine command produce such an event and consequence In like manner on the contrary Men are said to work out their Salvation Phil. ii 12. To save themselves 1 Tim. iv 16. To save their own souls Luke ix 24. because they act and prosecute those things which have an indisputable tendency to such a desired end For a Conclusion of this whole Discourse I shall briefly examine these two following Illations and Deductions of the Contra-Remonstrants from the Doctrine of Absolute and Irrespective Decrees 1. That none can be a true believer or sincere Christian who knows not when nor how he was regenerated and born again by the Spirit that is to speak in their language who cannot tell when he felt the mighty and efficacious power of the Divine Spirit dashing asunder his strong heart and gathering up the broken shivers and uniting them together and changing them into a heart of flesh and infusing new qualities into the will and raising the whole man from death to life See XI and XII Canons of the Dort Synod De homonis corrupt convers◠ad Deau 2. That every man who by those evidences signs and marks of True Believers prescribed to him can collect himself to be such that is to be in a state of Grace and Salvation may assuredly believe that he shall to the last Period of his life remain and 〈◊〉 a living member of the Catholick Church and undoubtedly partake of everlasting bliss and glory Attic. IX and X. of the Dort Synod De Perseverantia Sanctorum Against the first of these I shall lay down these Conclusions 1. That he is a true and sincere Believer who hath to his utmost endeavours so mortified and subdued the body of sin that he willingly harbours no vice nor takes any complacency in the impure motions of the brutish life but through a fixed belief in the Goodness of God displayed unto mankind through the Lord Christ resolutely presses forward to higher measures and degrees of Christian perfection and incessantly breaths after a fuller participation of the Divine Nature Such a man I look upon to be truly regenerate and born anew of the Spirit of God and to be affected according to his proportion as Christ himself was affected when he dwelt on earth and conversed with men And though this Divine life dispread and manifest it self by successive acts and shine not so full and bright as when it is near it's Center yet it is as truly a God-like Nature as an Infant is a Man though he be not so in growth and stature It is nothing but our self will which stands out against heaven and keeps such an impregnable fort against the grace of God and whoever is truly dead to it and receives the gentle impressions of the Divine Spirit into his soul and acts correspondently to so holy a principle he is certainly in the Land of Life and Truth and partakes of that blessed Nature which cannot rest among the dust and rubbish of this lower World but separates whatever is heterogeneous in the soul of man and by perpetual and successful attempts restores again those Divine forms which shone gloriously in humane minds before their unfortunate recession and retrogradation from the lucid fountain of their everlasting joy and happiness 2. The first actings of Grace in such a Man as I have above described are altogether undiscernible and imperceptible being nothing else but the preparatory Exertions of that Almighty Goodness the Source and Father of all things for the fitting and adapting Men to receive the Divine Image and Form of the Holy Jesus according to the words of the Lord Christ John vi 44. No man can come unto me except the Father which hath sent me draw him and in this the Nature of Man is wholly passive and the only thing pertaining to him is to see that he do not obstruct and hinder the progress of that efficacious Love by a cowardly submission to the importunate motions of iniquity and unhallowed actions Now the effluxes and operations of this Vital Principle are coeval with the first actings of Reason and discriminative Perception and extend themselves according to the dimensions of the intellectual Powers but no man is any more conscious of it's energy then of the growth of his bones for so he that made the Nature of man and knows his frame hath told us Luke xvii 20. The Kingdom of God cometh not with observation And Mark iv 26 27. So is the Kingdom of God as if a man should cast seed into the ground and should sleep and rise night and day and the seed should spring and grow up he knoweth not how And when men are born again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of that incorrupible seed 1 Pet. i. 23. sown in their hearts by the Eternal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Christ calls his Father John xv 1. it breaks through the clods and springs up being cherished by the dew of heaven and the warmth of that immortal fire which passeth through the intellectual world and melts and refines every lapsed Being from the contracted filth of material concretions and no man can say Lo here I was caught by the breath of God or lo there was my resurrection from the comfortless grave of sin and death John iii. 8. For as the wind bloweth where it listeth and thou hearest the sound thereof but canst not tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth so is every one that is born of the Spirit But this I would have understood of the ordinary way of Gods dispensing his Grace and not of that supernatural manner whereby he converted Saul casting him down to the Earth by a voice from heaven nor of the diffusion of the Spirit to the Heathens when first converted to the faith For such as also notorious and gross sinners may have some sensibility of Divine Vegetation and apprehension of some external circumstances attending the New-birth unto righteousness But for those who are born and educated under Christian Parents our Church hath excellently well determined in the service and office of Baptisme That they are Regenerated and born again not only of Water but of the Spirit by which their Natures are Sanctified as we read of the Prophet Jeremy and John the Baptist who received the spirit of holiness and were hallowed from their Mothers wombs and for any man to enquire of such or for them curiously to search after some preternatural stirrings and motions of the Divine Spirit in their souls by which to discern the first dawnings of the grace of God upon them is as impertinent as it would be to demand of them when first they heard or perceived