them And if I had that as theirs first I must by the same reason have more of theirs And who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean And David's Mother is said to conceive him in sin Psal 51. 8. Let it be noted for answer to the objections from Ezek. 18. c. 1. That there is by the Covenant of Grace a pardon with right to Christ and Life freely given to all the faithful and their infant-seed as by them having full power thereto in Covenant given up to Christ Now no one is damned for pardoned sins The infant is at once guilty of Adam's and his Parents sin and at once his nature receiveth pravity from both but immediately only by the immediate Parents and at once both are pardoned to him and this pardon solemnly sealed and delivered in Baptism Therefore well may God say to the pardoned to the penitent and to the innocent that he shall not die for his Parents sins no not for Adam's 2. For the Text speaketh to the adult and to men that thought themselves innocent and that they suffered for their Parents sins and not their own And God assureth them 1. that if they are innocent they shall not die 2. yea if they be repenting persons and pardoned and obedient evangelically hating all the sins of their wicked Parents they shall live 3. yea this is true of their children also for their sakes But this is not because the Law never judged them guilty and worthy of death but because the Grace of Christ forgiveth it else the Text would exempt all infants from the guilty of death for Adam's sin But there is not a word in the Text to prove 1. that children need no pardon for their guilty of Parents sins 2. or that those that are not pardoned being themselves unsanctified or if adult live wickedly as their Parents did shall not die for them 3. or that such sins of Parents are not the cause of such guilt and pravity in the child as that he is truly said to die for his own sin Sect. 43. XIII Yet further methinks to a conformable Doctor the judgment of the Church of England in her Liturgy should not be insignificant Remember not Lord our offences nor the offences of our fore-Fathers neither take thou vengeance on our sins In what sense do men subscribe this and daily use it 1. Do they think that the Church meaneth only Adam's sin by our fore-Fathers 2. Or that by not-remembring they mean not-pardoning and not-punishing 3. Or do they think that they pray for the dead in Purgatory Hell or Heaven Or rather do they not imitate David and the Jewish Church and Ezra Nehemiah Daniel c. who confessed that they were punished for their Fathers sins Sect. 44. I conclude this subject with a second request to the Christian Reader to pity and pray for the poor distressed Church of Christ which is distracted and distressed thus even by such as are most devoted to its service through the great weakness of our judgments and the unhappy passions and strivings that thence follow Either I or this worthy person are mistaken or else we differ not When I look to the Person only and not to the Evidence nor to the Consenters I have far greatest reason to suspect that I am liker to erre than he And if it prove so the evidence yet seemeth to me so full for what I hold that I am almost hopeless of being otherwise perswaded And my judgment is not at my command How then shall I avoid the injury of souls But yet I think that to hold our selves more guilty of our Parents sins than we are is no dangerous damning error it may molest us but not undo us and I never saw many much molested by it But if either we differ not when yet he giveth you so loud an Alarm or if it be he that erreth indeed alas what must the Church expect from the too great number of ignorant and ungodly Teachers when it must be thus used by the Learned and the Godly My thoughts are 1. that it deserveth tears from faithful Ministers to observe that so considerable a part of the common guilt and misery of all mankind should by godly men be no more confessed and lamented 2. And that by those that for any denial or extenuation of our original sin as from Adam are so heinously and justly offended with the erroneous yea ready to vilifie men as Arminians if not Socinians that they think come near it 3. That ever the stream of a Party Reputation Interest Example or whatever else of that kind should with so many good men have so great a power in making truth or error duty or sin good or evil orthodox or heretical in their conceits and so much faction he found in their Religion 4. That ever so many millions should be taught impenitency in so plain a case when repentance and confession have so considerable a place among the requisites to remission 5. That ever so many millions should by Preachers be taught that they have no need of a Saviour nor of Pardon nor to pray for Pardon for so much of their guilty and punishment 6. That ever so much of the plain stream of Scripture-evidence can be denied and made light of by good men that cry up the Scripture authority and sufficiency even when they can lay a great stress in some unprofitable hurtful controversie upon some one Text whose sense is not to be certainly understood 7. That ever good and learned Teachers should be so conceited of their own conceptions as in their confidence in such a cause to brand God's truth with the name of error and their brethren as dangerous men for not erring as they do 8. And finally that the poor people must be under such grievous perplexing temptations as I before mentioned and that the Papists should be thus hardened in their opinion that we shall never be at peace and concord unless we unite in their usurping tyrannical Peace-maker And that Poor Scholars and young Ministers must be thus frightned from Truth Duty Charity and Peace and men made believe that the Church is about to be set on fire if we are told of that which is contrary to our former opinions This must be lamented if it be not I but others that here erre Sect. 45. But yet before I end he calls me so loud to consider of another matter that I must not deny his invitation In my Direct for Cure of Church-Divisions Dir. 42. I said Your belief of the necessary Articles of Faith must be made your own and not taken meerly on the authority of any And in all points of belief and practice which are of necessity to salvation you must ever keep company with the universal Church for it were not the Church if it erred in these And in matters of peace and concord the greater part must be your guide that is caeteris paribus In matters of humane obedience
Writers I pray you say not that I send you to School to them I do but answer your earnest request Sect. 47. But 4. I also intreat you to tell me whether you differ from me in the rule of counsel which I there gave the ignorant people or not If you did not you would never have given me such a summons If you do deal openly with your Scholars and the World and tell them whether your meaning be that the major vote of those that never read Logick Physicks Metaphysicks Law Medicine c. is to be believed before one Aristotle Downame Gassendus Zabarell Grotius Cook Littleton Cujacius Fernelius c. Tell your Scholars that you are but one and they are many and must believe themselves before you in defining Justification Faith c. Tell all the University that thus they must use their Tutors Should Mr. Ainsworth's Church of Separatists have judged of all his critical expositions by the major vote Tell the World that all the Criticks and Dr. Walton's Labours and all such mens must stand or fall at the judgment of the majority of people or Ministers that never studied those tongues If you think I take my self for one of these Judges you are quite mistaken And I may ask you Are you not herein a man singular even to admiration And yet will you plead thus as if it were against singularity Are not all Protestants Papists Christians learned Heathens agreed of the Rule that I gave All your University save your self I hope in charity do think that your Professors and Readers and Tutors are to be believed in their several Professions and Readings before all their unlearned Pupils or any others that are ignorant What sort of men in the World are more faulty in tying up mens Faith too much to men than the Papists are And yet I presume you know that they commonly acknowledge that in Dogmatical difficulties especially such as depend on Arts and Sciences such as Defining for the most part is the majority even in a Council that are therein unlearned learned are not so much to be heard as one eminently learned in those things One Gabriel Ockam Greg. Arim One Scotus Rada Lychetus One Pennous Vasquâ—â— Ruiz Or if you had rather one Bradwaâ—dine Bannes Alvarez Twisse is more to be heard in telling us what Concurse Predetermination Natural Free-will are than many that never studied the point though yet perhaps the best of them may deserve little regard about unsearchable things If you please but to read Mr. Femble his Vind. Grat. you will find somewhere almost the very words of the rule or saying of mine which you exceptingly recite Sect. 48. 5. But what mean you to bring in the intimation that thus the great truths of God will depend on humane suffrages even whether God shall be God I beseech you consider 1. Whether you do well to number Artificial Logical Definitions controverted by the greatest Divines with the great truths of God How various are the Definitions of Justification considered also variously as Constitutive Sentential Executive in this life at the last Judgment in fore Dei iâ— foro Conscientiae in foro Humano Civili Ecclesiastico c which are given by great Divines And how various the definitions of Faith between that of Camero and such others as place it in the intellect Amesius and such others as place it in the will Davenant and such others as place it in both Pemble and such others as make them one faculty The differences about the act the formal object the material object as whether with Chamier we must hold that the spirits inward testimony that you are justified be verbum Dei Fidei objectum with abundance such are too too many when yet perhaps most mean the same thing and differ but in Logical notions And do you well to frighten men into suspicions and contentions out of their charity and peace by telling them that these are the great truths of God and likening them to the Question whether God shall be God As if you knew not that by such melancholies and phantasms the Church hath been brought into the unhappy military distracted state that it is in It is work fit for a Divine and Healer to make the World believe that the great truths of God and the Godhead it self are at the stake in such Logical quarrels and that men differ further than they do 6. But did you not see that I before expresly excepted all matters necessary to Salvation from humane trust Some will say I doubt too far that see not other explications 7. And I beseech you is it all one for truth to depend on humane suffrages yea God himself and for an ignorant man or Scholar to depend on his Teacher so far as fide humana to believe him before ten unlearned men Is this fit doctrine for a Doctor and Master of a Literate Society Say then in your Lectures Hearers and Scholars this and that is the true definition of Faith and Justification even of the various sorts of Faith and Justification but while I tell you so regard and believe what I and many such others say to you no more than you would do many unlearned men or any dissenters that tell you that I erre or speak heretically herein lest God and his Truth depend on humane suffrages And because I fain would but cannot find any other meaning in your words without taking you to be guilty of what I would not suspect and consequently that you expect no more regard or belief of this your Treatise as such I cease from any further animadversions on it as the less necessary Only adding that your conclusion that soundeth loud with the name of Popery needeth no other answer than what I have formerly given Mr. Crandon Mr. Eyres Mr. Bagshaw Mr. Danvers and such others who oft cry out Antichristian a frightful word when they needed but awakening to convince them that they were but frightned in a dream ERRATA PAg. 1. lin antep r. T. Tully p. 191. l. 12. r. God p. 215. l. 16. r. integris We Quest Whether Infants have Original Sin Aff. And of Original Righteousness THat I may as briefly and yet as clearly as I can considering that necessary brevity dispatch this Controversy I must 1. tell you what original sin is and 2. assert open the Affirmative proposition and 3. give you some Arguments for it I. In order to the first we must 1. enquire What sin is 2. What the word Original here signifieth 3. What Original Righteousnes was 1. Sin is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an irregularity or a dissonancy or disconformity to the Law of God in a subject It is any defect inclination or action contrary to the rule of Righteousness The form of it is Relative Disconformity is a true relation as well as Conformity as crooked is as well as straight and dissimile as well as simile 2. We now call it Original sin because it
TWO DISPUTATIONS OF Original Sin I. Of Original sin as from Adam II. Of Original Sin as from our Neerer Parents Written long ago for a more private use and now published with a Preface upon the invitation of Dr. T. TVLLIE By RICHARD BAXTER Exod. 20. 5 6. and 34. 7. Visiting the iniquity of the Fathers upon the children and upon the childrens children unto the third and fourth Generation of them that hate me LONDON Printed for Robert Gibbs at the Golden-Ball in Chancery-Lane 1675. To the Impartial Friends of Sacred Truth who are above the dominion of carnal Interest Faction and false Prejudice and are cured of the Malady of PREFIDENCE and HASTY JVDGING before they have heard and weighed evidence which is the corrupter confounder and disquieter of the Church and World Sect. 1. IT hath seemed good to a Doctor of the Vniversity of Oxford Dr. I. Tully whose name is honoured for Learning and Moderation I believe deservedly though I know him not newly to exercise his zeal and pen to save men from the danger of some Doctrines which he taketh to be mine Of the rest I shall God willing give a distinct account elsewhere That which I am here to consider of is found pag. 128. Justif Paulin. in these words Vnum vero praetereundum non censeo licet ab argumento magis alienum videtur estque novum quoddam inter novissima Praefatorem scilicet nescio quo fortunante Mercurio aliud invenisse peccatum originale multo citerius quam quod ab Adamo traductum est O caecos ante Theologos quicunque unquam fuistis Serio interim monendi sunt juniores ne temere illius Theologiae talia paradoxa parturienti fidem habeant Deus novit me nullo in personam Viri Rever aut aestu aut praejudicio nedum odio cui ex animo sane fausta foelicia precor omnia hoc monitum injicere sed amore veritatis uno utque satis conscientiae fiat ita liberasse animam Whereupon he next advertiseth me out of some words of my own c. Sect. 2. I have great reason to love his love to truth and the souls of men whom he would save from the danger of such errors as he supposeth me to be guilty of And I have no reason to dislike his fidelity to his conscience but rather to wish that true conscientious tenderness and fidelity were more common among the Teachers of the people and the Teachers of those Teachers Sect. 3. And far be it from me to judge him so uncharitable as to doubt whether we his ignorant brethren love not truth also and the fouls of men and search not after it with some impartiality and industry yea and would buy it at as dear a rate as others though through our sin and weakness we may not have had so good success And it is a praise to our Creator rather than to us that we love that which by natural inclination we must needs love Being and Truth are necessarily good and all evil is from good and for good Our good intentions justify not our errors nor the reasonings and considence by which we set them off as truth And by our bold and hasty judging of those things which our reasonings shew we never well digested or understood and our censures of those that perhaps better understand them we should but call men to suspect those understandings as not very like to know much more than others which no better know themselves Instead therefore of calling out to the Academical youth to take heed of the Theology of those worthy eximious persons who are my Censurers I humbly entreat them with candid impartiality to search after truth and to receive all that deserveth that name from the Censurers and to reject all that I or any other offereth them which is against it and proving all things to hold fast that which is true and good yea and to help me to see my errors that I may repent and publish my retractation Which I shall not judge any more than Augustine did to be in vain though it should please others as well as this learned Dr. to cull out for his coufutation the first Book that ever I wrote about four and twenty years after I had publickly for the crudity and unfitness of many expressions in it retracted it and to pass by about sixty others since written and some yea many much more largely and distinctly than that which I retracted on the same subject Sect. 4. But though I am more obliged than such knowing men as he to suspect my own understanding that suspition will not warrant me to resist the light nor to reject that which seemeth to me to be evidence of truth nor to forbear the rendering a reason of my judgment that I may be better informed by a confutation if I erre or if I do not may not desert that which deserveth a just vindication And though I am one of those who never was worthy of his honourable employment to teach men to be Teachers of the Flocks of Christ and these fourteen years have been judged unworthy or unmeet to teach the most ignorant Congregation in these Lands yet I doubt not but I may have his leave and concurrence in bewailing the lamentable condition of the poor people by reason of such ignorant and unhappy Teachers as I and others of my rank have long been Alas how great is their temptation and what perplexities must they needs be cast into when we that have studied night and day with our most earnest desire to know the truth whatever it cost us and with our most searching serious thoughts and with our daily prayers for divine illumination do yet remain not only ignorant but so dangerously erroneous that if some did not silence us and others call out to the people to take heed of us it seems we were like to be their deceivers and to do them more hurt than good And if this were but I and a few more such or only the many hundreds that now are silenced the case were less lamentable But alas it is the case of almost all the Christian World for the people to be cast by their Teachers weaknesses into such distracting perplexities as these The Greeks call to their people to take heed of the Romans and the Romans to theirs to take heed of the Greeks As also to take heed of the Protestants and all as Hereticks or Schismaticks that are not the subjects of the King of Rome And the Protestants requite them The Lutherans say take heed of the Calvinists and the Calvinists say take heed of the Lutherans and Arminians The Conformist saith take heed of the Non-Conformist and some Non-Conformists say take heed of the Conformists till the poor people know not when they are safe but are tempted to live as we did in the great Plague in 1665 when each one fled from the face of others lest every man that approached them should infect them Whom
to fear they know but whom to trust they know not unless they must be of the side and Religion which is uppermost and think their Rulers always in the right and so that there are as many right Religions in the World as there are Rulers of different Religions And what now shall the poor people do Can they hope to be wiser than all these Teachers to discern which of them is in the right What is their remedy Sect. 5. In this streight I am ready yea resolved so far to abate my reverence to learned Contenders as to hope that we are more agreed than they seem willing that the people should believe and therefore than they understand themselves All true Christians are agreed in that which made a Christian when the name of Christians was first known and in that which was then thought necessary to their mutual love and communion They are united in those many necessary things which I long ago mentioned in a popular discourse called Catholick Vnity And Protestants are agreed in much more than absolutely necessary things And as it is not the part of a good man to set the Churches together by the ears and to make people believe that they differ where they do not or further than they do and thereby to tempt them to suspect censure reproach or hate each other so it is not the part of a wise Teacher to think himself that agreeing men are not agreed and that different terms or orders of expression make different or contrary Doctrines or Religions and to be skilful in making one difference to seem many and verbal ones to seem real and small ones to seem great instead of being skilful by discussing ambiguity of words in helping men better to understand one another And for my part I have so much experience of the commonness of the mistake both of the matter and of each others minds by reason of the lamentable ambiguity of words and the common weakness of mankind in the ordering digesting and expressing their conceptions and also in the reception of other mens expressions that I am resolved to be still suspitious of ambiguities and not to be easily and negligently deceived by a word unexplained though men of never so great name or self-esteem should deride me for it as a troublesome distinguisher And I am resolved to endeavour to the utmost of my little skill and opportunity to undeceive them that think a different name or method is a different or contrary Doctrine and that all are Hereticks that speak not in their language and sing not in their tune or pray not in their form of words though for so doing the over-orthodox zeal do accuse me of tepidity noxious Syncretism Arminianism yea or of as much complyance with Popery or Socinians as this excellent Doctor doth Sect. 6. Though I know that Heresy may as Arianism once did creep in and hide it self in the addition of one letter yet I know also that the confusion of tongues hath made it hard to express our selves so as easily to be understood unless by such with whom we have had long leisure to open our meaning and hard to understand the mind of others And that they who agree in all that Christ his Apostles and the ancient Symbols of Faith and Concord made necessary to the agreement of Believers should not too hastily be condemned as heretical and that Church-tyranny and Schism while they cry out against each other are neerer kin in principles and effects than their owners are well aware of And that over-doing as for orthodox Concord by introducing things arbitrary difficult and numerous as the necessary terms hath been Satan's great engine to tear the Churches And had I been at Jerome's elbow when he complained so much of them that accused him of Heresy for rejecting the term Hypostasis and when he spake himself so much against it I might perhaps have ventured to say to that learned angry Father that it is possible that neither his adversaries nor he were Hereticks nor erroneous in the matter or sense at all but that they meant by Hypostasis the same that he did by Persona and that he mistakingly accused an innocent word and they mistakingly accused his innocent sense and that the time might come when those that then contended were in the dust that the Churches should indifferently without mutual condemnation use either of the terms Sect. 7. Melancholy is a suspicious humour Many a one have I known that could not be perswaded but that their best and neerest friends did plot their death or to poison them or cut their throats and every thing and person that is neer them seemeth against them and a cause of fear As a good woman yet living caetera sana dare let none come neer her till the spiders be brusht off them which she thinks she seeth on them having once been affrighted by a spider And some otherwise worthy men do so causelesly and frequently cry out This is Popery and That is Arminianism as if they were perswading the World that the contumelious saying is true Spiritus Calvinianus est spiritus melancholicus and that orthodox mens hearts must meditate terror and fear where no fear is and their charity must suspect all things and hardly believe or hope of any good in others And we have not been yea yet are not without some Sectaries carried so swiftly in the the stream of prejudice that before they can stay to weigh and understand it they cry out O Antichristian Popish Arminian of many an unquestionable truth of God as if they were perswading men that the prophane reproach is true that A Puritan is a Protestant frightened out of his wits Sect. 8. But to come to my present business This worthy Dr. and Mr. Danvers the fervent defender of the Anabaptists having both newly published their suspicions and accusations of me for my doctrine of Original sin and both called aloud to the World to take heed of me I take my self obliged to give them both some account of the reasons of what I hold and humbly to leave them to their leisurely judicious censure And because God calleth me by the messengers of death to other kind of thoughts and works than needless tedious ungrateful contending for my own vindication against the suspicions and words of others I must take it as a sufficient discharge of this duty to publish an old Country disputation on that subject used above twenty years ago in one of our by some derided meetings of those humble peaceable laborious godly Ministers neer Kederminster in Worcestershire who have most of them been silenced these fourteen years And though I am much to be blamed if my maturer thoughts since then have not helped me to clearer conceptions than I had so long ago yet finding by a hasty perusal that I am still of the same mind as then I was I must crave the Readers acceptance of it as it is from one that hath not