left to their own discretion in such and such circumstantials But do they dream of Perfect Concord on earth and that men of such various Interests tempers educations converse and degrees of knowledge should not differ in a word or gesture Our English Rulers make no Laws what Gesture shall be used in singing Psalms or in Hearing Sermons and there is no division or great disorder in them But if on pretence of nearer Concord they should tye all to one Gesture this or that we should presently find it an engine of division And O how many such Engines have the Papal Clergie made and used long and to what purpose To silence faithful Ministers to torment faithful Christians in the Inquisitions to brand the best men with the names of Hereticks and Schismaticks to gratifie all profaneness and malignity to quench brotherly love and to tear the Church into pieces And no experience will make them wiser II. And the DOGMATISTS also have done their part by departing from the Simplicity of the Christian Doctrine to set the Christian world together by the ears Of which Hilary hath written sharply against the Making of new Creeds not sparing to tell them that even the Nicene Fathers led others the way And Hierome wonders that they that were for the word hypostasis questioned his Faith as if he that had been Baptized had been without a Faith or Creed which all at Baptism do profess But this will not serve turn to these Corrupters Councils Doctors and Schoolmen have been led by the temptation of more subtle-knowledge to be Wise and Orthodox over-much till the Churches Faith is as large as all the Decrees of General Councils de side at the least and the Churches Laws a great deal larger And what abundance of dubious Confessions Declarations or Decrees are now to be subscribed or believed and justified before a man can have his Baptismal birth-right even the Love peace and Church-Communion bequeathed to him as a Christian by Christ And now controversal writings fill our Libraries by Cart-loads And a Use of Confutation is a great part of most Sermons among the Papists Lutherans and many others And men are bred up in the Universities to a Militant striving kind of life that their work may be to make Plain Christians seem unlearned dolts and dissenters seem odious or suspected men and themselves to be the wise and Orthodox persons and triumphant over all the erroneous that were it not for these Contenders would destroy the And so Ministers are armed against Ministers Churches against Churches Christians against Christians yea Princes against Princes and Countreys against Countreys by wrangling contentious Clergie men And O what an injury is â—t Young Students are almost necessitated to waste much of their lives which should be spent in preparing them to promote faith holiness and Love in reading over multitudes of these wrangling writers to know which of them is in the right And most readers catch the disease hereby themselves And those few that at great cost and labour come to the bottom of the differences do perceive that the Proud Opiniators have striven partly about unrevealed or unnecessary things but chiefly about meer ambiguous words and arbitrary humane notions and multitudes condemn and revile each other while they mean the same things and do not know it One writeth a Learned Book against such a party and another confuteth such an Adversary especially about Predestination Redemption Free-will Humane Power Grace Merit Justification Pardon Imputation c. and then many read and applaud all as excelently done Alas for the low estate of the Clergie that while when a truly discerning man perceiveth that it is but a striving about unexplained words for the most part And thus being Over-wise in pretences of Zeal for Truth and under-wise in understanding it and departing from Christian simplicity of doctrine and even deriding the Christian Creed hath made even some honest men become dividing Engineers and their Articles and Controversies the Churches calamity III. And what Practical misguided zeal about worship hath done almost all Sects Novatians Anabaptists in Germany and here and the various sort of Churches that refuse Communion with one another and that condemn or cast out dissenters from them and preach and talk and backbite their brethren into the odium or distaste of their seduced auditors the bitter invectives in Pulpit talk and press of the several Pastors and people against each other and worse than words where they have power all these speak so loud as may spare me the labour of any further discovery and calls us all to make it the matter of our lamentation And what shall I say in the conclusion now I am near to my departure from this contentious world but sound a Retreat to all these unhappy militants that will not let Holiness prosper by the necessary advantage of Peace Cease your Proud contendings O vain-glorious Militant Clergie Learn of the Prince of peace and the holy Angels that preached him to give Glory to God in the highest who giveth Peace on Earth and well-pleasedness in or towards men Did Christ or his Apostles make such work for Christians as you do The great Shepherd of the flock will take your pretences of ORDER ORTHODOXNESS or Truth and PIETY for no excuse for your corrupting ORDER FAITH and PRACTICE by your TYRANNY SELF-CONCEITEDNESS and blind ZEAL and SUPERSTITION and for using his name against himself to the destroying of that Love and Concord and Unity which he hath bequeathed to his Church and for serving his enemy and dividing his people and hardning Infidels and ungodly ones by these scandals Return to the primitive simplicity that we may return to unity Love and peace Dream not of them upon your own corrupting terms And read and read over again and again Jam. 3. which doth describe you condemn you and instruct you If you say Physicion heal thy self Who hath wrote more of Controversies I answer peruse what I have written and you will see it is of Controversies but against Controversies tending to End and reconcile If any thing be otherwise except necessary defence of certain necessary faith or duty I retract it and condemn it Let it be as not written I have meddled much with Controversies in this Book but it is to end them The God of Peace give Wisdom and peaceable principles minds and hearts to his servants that though I shall not live to see it true Love and Piety may revive in the Christian world by the endeavours of a healing Ministry and the shaming restraint and reformation of the CONTENTIOUS CLERGIE whether TYRANNICAL DOGMATICAL or SUPERSTITIOUS Amen Jan. 25. 167â— Of DIVISIONS and CONTENTIONS among Christians Consider I. The EFFICIENT I. PERSONS 1. The Devils 2. Men 1. A Contentious Clergie 2. Unwise and wicked Rulers instigated by them 3. The deceived people that follow them II. QUALITIES viz. I. Remotely 1. Selfishness in Carnal hypocrites who prefer worldly interest 2.
of the great alterations in the World being admirably fetcht from the various Passive or Receptive dispositions of matter no wonder Cum Thomistae dicunt Deum suo auxilio efficaci physice praedeterminare Voluntatem ad actum bonum non excludunt Motionem Moralem sed eam praesuâ—â—â—â—â—â— Alvarez de Aâ—xil disp 23. p. 108. â—â— if it be so with mans soul also A spark of fire which long was unseen if you put Straw Gunpowder or other fuel to it may burn a City or Kingdom when yet the fuel is not an efficient cause save the fire that is in it but an objective Matter What work doth a Student find all his life among Books What abundance of knowledge doth he learn by them which he had none of in his Infancy And so do Travellers by viewing the actions of the World And all these are but fuel to the fire The soul only is the Agent and all these are signs and objects that do nothing really on the soul at all You may lead a Beast up and down and govern them by objects which yet act nothing on them So Satan doth by the Drunkard Glutton Fornicator Gamester Covetous c. What Reputed work do objects make on them by doing nothing Thus Verâ—m Bonum are said to work And the case is this The Active Spirit is not only Naturally Active but Essentially Inclined to some certain objects Truth and Goodness And this Inclination being their very Nature when the object is duly presented to it and it self delivered from all false objects and erroneous Action on them and ill habits thence contracted it will Naturally work accordingly And therefore duly externally and internally to bring God and Holy objects to the prospect of the soul is the way of working them to God And sure the World would never make such a stir about Preaching to get fit men and to perswade them to diligence and to keep sound doctrine c. if these objective causes as fuel to the fire did not do much by occasioning the Active soul to do its proper work 9. Yet still remember again that Jesus Christ is the Political Head of Influx if not more who sendeth forth the Spirit as he please but ordinarily upon his setled Gospel terms to work on souls by his threefold fore-mentioned influx with and by these means according to them but in an unsearchable manner As God doth in Nature by the Sun and other Natural Causes SECT XI What Free-Will Man hath to Spiritual Good c. § 1. THe understanding of the Nature of the Power and Liberty of the Will is the very key to open all the rest of the controverted difficulties in these matters But having spoken of it so much before in the former part of this Book and more elsewhere I shall no further weary the Reader with repetitions than to note these few things following § 2. If any like not the name of Free-will Libera Voluntas let them but agree about these two the Power of the Will and Free-choice * * * Nolite esse adeo delicati ut abhorreatis ab usâ— vocabuli Lib. arbit Hypocritarum propriâ—m est rixari de vocabulis Nemo offendatur hoc titulo quia August in multae Volum singulis fere pagellis ad fastidium Lectoris hoc vocabulum inculcat Melancth Loc. Com. de lib. arb c. 1. Liberum arbitrium and they need not contend about Free-will § 3. 1. As to the first It is the very Essence of the Will to be a natural Power or faculty of Willing Good and Nilling evil apprehended by the Intellect and commanding the inferiour faculties either politically or despotically difficultly or easily perfectly or imperfectly according to its resolution and their Receptivity § 4. 2. The Liberty of choice is not only Libertas Voluntatis but Libertas Hominis when a man may have what he chooseth or willeth Here the Act of choosing is the Wills but the object is somewhat else either an Imperate act of some inferiour faculty or some extrinsick thing So we say truly that the unbeliever or unconverted sinner may believe may repent may have Christ and life if he will as Dr. Twisse frequently asserteth § 5. 3. But the Liberty of the Will it self is but the mode of its self-determination as without constraint it is a self-determining principle in its elicite Acts considered comparatively § 6. The Liberty of the Will is threefold 1. Liberty of Contradiction or exercitii 2. Of †††Note that the Papists confess that by Christs Case it is proved that Libertas specificationis inter bonum malum is not necessary to merit So Pet. â— S. Joseph Thes Univers pag. 90. Contrariety or specification in the Act 3. Of objective specification which is Liberty of Competition 1. The first Liberty is to will or not will to nill or not nill 2. The second is Liberty to will or nill this 3. The third is Liberty to will This object or That or to nill This or That * * * Of the real difference of these three see Rob. Baron Metaphys I take not that which many Schoolmen call Liberty of Complacence to be another sort of Liberty Though I distinguish Liberty of simple Complacence from Liberty of election as being a prior distribution And I deny not but that Liberty of Complacency specially may stand with necessity of immutable disposition yea and with some sort of necessitating operation of God as is in Christ and the Glorified And in this large essential sense Liberum and Voluntarium are all one supposing Voluntarium to be the act of a self-determining unconstrained will So that the word Free-will being so exceeding ambiguous as my foresaid Scheme sheweth we must be sure that we pretend not the Controversies de nomine to be de re But it is the Indifferency of a Viators will that we have now to do with and not that state of perfect determination or that Amplitude or advancement of the will which Gibieâ—f and such others talk of And note that by Posse agere vel non agere which we put into the definition of free-will we must not mean that Potentia moralis metaphorica which is nothing but the wills moral disposition or habit but the Potentia Naturalis And so it may be said of Christ and the glorified that their not sinning or not willing sin is not ex impotentia naturali but ex perfectione § 7. The Will hath not all these sorts of Liberty about every object For it cannot will known evil as such c. But it hath all these about several objects § 8. By this power and Liberty the Will is made of God to be a kind of Causa prima secundum quid of the Moral ORDER or specification of its own acts Not simply or strictly a Causa prima For 1. It was God the first Cause that gave man this self-determining Power 2. It is God that upholdeth it And so it
his overlooking and undervaluing Gods Design in Making and Governing free Intellectual agents by his Sapiential Moral Directive way He supposeth this way to be so much below that of Physical Motion and Determination as that it is not to be considered but as an instrument thereof As if it were unworthy of God to give any creature a Meer Power Liberty Law and Moral Means alone and not to Necessitate him Positively or Negatively to Obey or Disobey And this looking only at Physical Good Being and Motion and thereby thinking lightly of Sapiential Regency is the summ as of his so of Hobbes Spinosa's Alvarez Bradwardines Twisses Rutherfords and the rest of the Predeterminants errors herein And had not I other thoughts of this one thing I should come over to their Opinion For I confess the case to be of very great difficulty § 28. I think that as the Divine Life and Power glorifieth it self eminently in the Causation of the Being Motion and Life of the creatures so the Divine Wisdom eminently glorifieth it self in the Order of all things and in the Moral Directive Sapiential Regiment of Intellectual free agents And that Gods Laws and Doctrine are the Image of his Wisdom and an admirable harmonious and beautiful frame And that all would think so and be wonderfully delighted in them were they compleatly printed on our Minds and Hearts § 29. II. And accordingly I think that the glory of his governing Wisdom and Punishing and Rewarding Justice is a great and notable part of that glory which man must give him now and for ever And that this Justice is not his physical using all things according to their physical aptitude only But his Judging and Executing according to that moral aptitude commonly called Merit by Punishments and Rewards And that to deny God the glory of all this is no small error in a Philosopher or Divine § 30. III. Accordingly I think that God made man a free self-determining agent that he might be capable of such Sapiential Rule And that it is a great Honour to God to make so noble a Nature as hath a Power to determine its own elections And though such are not of the highest rank of Creatures they are far above the lowest And that God who we see delighteth to make up beauty and harmony of diversities doth delight in the Sapiential Moral Government of this free sort of Creatures And though man be not Independent yet to be so far like God himself as to be a kind of first-determiner of many of his own Volitions and Nolitions is part of Gods Natural Image on Man § 31. IV. Accordingly I take Duty to be Rewardable and Laudable and sin to be odious as it is the Act of a free agent And that the Nature of Moral Good and Evil consisteth not in its being the meer effect of physical premotion but in being a Voluntary Conformity or Disconformity to the Sapiential Rule of duty by a free agent that had Power to do otherwise § 32. V. Free-will then is not only the same with willing it self or a meer agency according to Nature by the premotion of the first determining necessitating Mover It is not only such a freedom as Fire Water Beasts and every moved thing hath to be moved according to the first Moyers action which is in the will of man But it is a Power to be a first determining Specifier of its own acts as Moral Not that it is never predetermined but that it can do this § 33. VI. Accordingly I judge of Guilt and Shame and the Accusation of Conscience which will not be a bare discerning what God made us do or be but what we voluntarily did or were when we could do otherwise § 34. VII And I am past all doubt that he grosly mistaketh the nature and distinction of Law and Gospel 1. To think that Gods Law when it is not accompained with physical predetermination is but to shew us that we are creatures that cannot but sin 2. Yea hereby he wrongeth the glory of the Creator that made no creature with a power to do any thing but evil unless predetermined physically thereto 3. It 's gross to say that all the Doctrine of Redemption and Faith and Justification by Christ as a meer signum Letter or Law is the Law or Covenant of Works and so that every Command is the Covenant of Works and Physical Efficiency of Good in us is the Gospel or Covenant of Grace For that which we call the Gospel is not true if this be true For this Gospel is a preached word spoken by mans mouth which some believe and some believe not but reject and disobey and therefore perish Matth. 4. 23. 11. 5. 24. 14. 26. 13. Mark 16. 15. Luke 4. 18. 1 Cor. 9. 14 16 18. Heh 4. 2. 1 Pet. 1. 25. 1 Pet. 4. 6. 2. Thess 1. 8 10 11. Matth. 13. 10. Acts. 13. 7. It is a Law by which men shall be judged to life or death Rom. 2. 16. Mar. 16. 15 16. 2 Thes 1. 8. Rom. 10. 16. John 3. 19 20 21. 2 Cor. 4. 3 4. It is a word which some pervert Gal. 1. 7. and many sin against Gal. 2. 14. 1 Pet. 4. 17. The rejecters of it are to speed worse than Sodom and Gomorrah and they cannot escape that neglect so great salvation Whereas by his description 1. No man ever yet sinned against the Gospel or Covenant of Grace For it is not that Covenant or Gospel further than it is a physical effect on the soul 2. And every Heathen that hath any good effect on his soul by Common Grace hath so much Gospel 3. Yea why is not then all Gods Creation being a physical effect the Covenant of Grace if that he doth be it and all that he commandeth as such be the Law of Works 4. And how then can the Law of Works and Grace be two if every proper Law be the Law of Works For a Law is sub genere signi and a produced event is another thing 5. And what sense will be found throughout the Scripture if we must hold that It is the Covenant or Law of Works which telleth us that the Law of Works is abolished and calleth us to believe in Christ for free Justification and not to expect Justification by the Works of the Law and offereth us pardon and life in Christ c. But I will add no more seeing the plainness of the matter makes it needless § 35. The truth is he distinguisheth between the Law and the effect of the Law and Spirit of God and calleth one the Law of Works and the other the Gospel whereas the Scripture only maketh it the excellency of the Gospel that by it the Spirit effectually worketh on the soul more usually and more excellently and no meer Law of Works or Grace will renew us without the Spirit § 36. VIII And if Redemption be nothing but Physical efficiency by Christ who as a creating Mediator
regenerate men have free-will to do good and forbear evil even when Grace effecteth not the event B. This is an English Objection What men that write in Greek or Latin deny Free-will Did not all the ancient Fathers and Churches hold it till Augustine's time of whom we have any notice And are you coming to turn Christ's Body into a Heresie or the members of an Harlot by your charge Did not Augustine Prosper and Fulgentius hold it VVho denied it for above a thousand or thirteen hundred years after Christ And do you deny all free-will your self C. No but it is free-will to spiritual good B. What need I tire you with the same things again 1. Read but what I said to A. of Free-will 2. And see the Table of it in the Second Book 3. And peruse what I have just now said of the power of the Will and you will see that here is no more necessary Make not new words to seem a new Controversie Put but Liberty for Power and and the answer to the last Crimination serveth to this C. The tenth Article of the Church of England saith The condition of man after the Fall of Adam is such that he cannot turn and prepare himself by his own natural strength and good works to Faith and calling upon God wherefore we have no power to do good works pleasant and acceptable to God without the Grace of God by Christ preventing us that we may have a good Will and working with us when we have that good Will B. I had rather you dealt plainly and kept close to the word of God and evidence of Truth than seek shelter from the words of those in power But what Jesuite or Arminian will not subscribe to this Who doubteth of it How oft do they all maintain the necessity of this preventing and co-operating Grace But by the words no Power you must not understand no natural power or faculty but no moral power For 1. Else man is no man 2. It is a moral Subject which they speak of and must accordingly be understood But what Free-will is it that you deny Tell me what you mean by Free-will C. If you know what Will is and what Free is you need no exposition the words are plain enough of themselâ—â—s B. Thus do men strive about words that profit not to subvert the hearers and increase to more ungodliness Answer me these Questions Quest 1. Hath not the Will more than a Liberty Political or by Gods Law to forbear sin and to do all good Doth God forbid it C. No he commandeth it which is more than leave or licence B. Quest 2. Do you think that the Will is forced Is it not a contradiction to Will unwillingly eodem respectu C. Yes we all hold freedom from compulsion B. Quest. 3. Is not mans Will a self-determining faculty or principle naturally so as to be Domina suorum actuum under God C. Yes under God the understanding directing it B. Quest. 4. Hath not the Will power and liberty to choose evil or to sin without Gods predetermining premotion C. I dare not deny it though many do B. Quest 5. Hath not the Will a certain command over the inferior faculties respectively and can move or not move them C. Yes supposing it moved accordingly it self B. Quest 6. Can Angels or Devils necessitate the Will by any efficient predetermining premotion C. No I think not for its commonly thought so B. Quest 7. Can any man by force or flattery necessitate another man to will any thing evil or good efficiently C. No They may strongly tempt but not necessitate B. Quest 8. Can meer Objects as such necessitate the VVill to a comparative The Opinion of Aegidiuâ— Roman how the Will is actuated determined I will set down though not wholly approving it Quodlib 3. qu. 15. p. 177 178 A fine ab â—o quod apprehenditur sub omni ratione boni voluntas Activatur Necessitatur Ab his autem quae sunt ad finem ab his quae non apprebenduntur sub ratione omni boni potest Actuari sed non necessitari A â—ullo autem potestviolentari Ad finem nec activando nec determinando semovet Ad ea autem quae sunt ad finem facta in actu per finem potest se determinare sed non activare Quantum ergo ad actuationem nihil seiplum secundum seipsum movere potest aliter idem secundum idem esset actus potentia Nunquam voluntas per sâ— directe actuat seipsum sed bonum apprehensum est quod causat Volitionem in voluntate quod actuat eam Sed super hujusmodi Volitione voluntas habet dominium quia in potestate voluntatis est sistere vel non sistere in tali Volitione Libâ—ra est quia cum intellectus â—ffert ei e. g fornicationem sub utraque ratione sub mala sub bona oportet quod utraque consideratio sit Volita Quamdiu enim stat in utraque tamdiu vult de utraque considerare determinat autem se hoc modo Quia est domina sui actus potest totaliter desistere a consideratione unius totaliter insistere in consideratione alterius Vel potest non totaliter desistere ab uno nec totaliter intendere aliâ—d sed magis esse intenta ad unum quam ad aliud Si autem totaliter desistat velle considerare de inordinatione vel notabiliter sit attenta ad considerandum de delectatioâ—e modicum autem attendat ad inordinationem tunc fornicatio sic apprehensa activabit cam causabit in â—a volitionem So that he thinketh that the free omission of the Wills command of necessary thoughts is the beginning of Sin But what he saith of the Wills being actuated per finem non per seipsam needeth better explication Objects actuate but morally that is are occasions and quosi materia disposita ad actuâ— terminationem but it is the faculty or form that actuateth by proper vital agency Et postea Qu. 16. pag. 183. Etsi entitas effectus reducatur in entitatem causae non tamen defectus reducitur in defectum â—â—â—sdem causae Non deficit causa sed effectus ille deficit a causa Etsi non sit voluntas in actu nisi prius sit in actu intellectuâ— non sequitur quod non possit voluntas deficere nisi prius deficiat intellectus Absque enim eo quod intellectus male proponat voluntati potest se voluntas determinare male viz. si sit intenta circa delectationem non circa inordinationeâ— act that is to choose this rather than that de mediis C. To good they cannot but I doubt of it as to evil whether Objects do not necessitate some men so that they cannot forbear B. Who made these Objects and causeth their nature and existence C. God made all things Meat Drink Pulchritude Money c. B. Doth God then necessitate men efficiently to Sin by
RICHARD BAXTER'S Catholick Theologie PLAIN PURE PEACEABLE FOR PACIFICATION Of the DOGMATICAL WORD-WARRIOURS Who 1. By contending about things unrevealed or not understood 2. And by taking VERBAL differences for REAL and their arbitrary Notions for necessary Sacred Truths deceived and deceiving by Ambiguous unexplained WORDS have long been the Shame of the Christian Religion a Scandal and hardning to unbelievers the Incendiaries Dividers and Distracters of the Church the occasion of State Discords and Wars the Corrupters of the Christian Faith and the Subverters of their own Souls and their followers calling them to a blind Zeal and Wrathful Warfare against true Piety Love and Peace and teaching them to censure backbite slander and prate against each other for things which they never understood In Three BOOKS I. PACIFYING PRINCIPLES about Gods Decrees Fore-Knowledge Providence Operations Redemption Grace Mans Power Free-will Justification Merits Certainty of Salvation Perseverance c. II. A PACIFYING PRAXIS or Dialogue about the Five Articles Justification c. Proving that men here contend almost only about Ambiguous words and unrevealed things III. PACIFYING DISPUTATIONS against some Real Errors which hinder Reconciliation viz. About Physical Predetermination Original Sin the extent of Redemption Sufficient Grace Imputation of Righteousness c. Written chiefly for Posterity when sad Experience hath taught men to hate Theological Logical Wars and to love and seek and call for Peace Ex Bello Pax. LONDON Printed by Robert White for Nevill Simmons at the Princes Arms in S t. Pauls Church-yard MDCLXXV I intreat the WRATHFUL CONTENTIOUS ZEALOUS DOGMATISTS conscientiously to study these Texts of Scripture MATTH 28. 19 20. Go Teach all Nations Baptizing them into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you Mar. 16. 16. He that believeth and is Baptized shall be saved Acts 11. 26. The Disciples were called Christians 1 Cor. 15. 1 2 3 4. I declare to you the Gospel which I preached to you which also you have received and wherein ye stand by which also ye are saved if ye keep in memory what I preached to you unless ye have believed in vain That Christ dyed for our sins and that he was buryed and that he rose again the third day 2 Tim. 1. 13. Hold fast the FORM of sound words which thou hast heard of me in FAITH and LOVE which is in Christ Jesus 1 John 4. 15. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God God dwelleth in him and he in God Rom. 10. 9 10. If thou confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thy Heart that God hath raised him from the dead thou shalt be saved For with the Heart man believeth unto Righteousness and with the Mouth confession is made to salvation Acts 8. 37. If thou believest with all thy heart thou maist be baptized And he said I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God Rom. 14. 1. 17 18 19. Him that is weak in the Faith receive but not to doubtful disputations For the Kingdom of God is not meat and drink but Righteousness Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost For he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God and approved of men Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace and things wherewith one may edifie another Rom. 15. 5 6 7. Now the God of patience and consolation grant you to be like minded one towards another or mind the same thing one with another according to Christ Jesus That ye may with one mind and one mouth glorifie God Wherefore Receive ye one another as Christ also received us to the glory of God 1 Tim. 1. 3 4 5. Charge some that they teach NO OTHER doctrine nor give heed to fables and endless Genealogies which minister Questions rather than godly edifying which is in faith Now the End of the Commandment is Charity out of a pure heart and of a good conscience and of faith unfeigned From which some having swerved have turned aside to vain janglings 1 Tim. 6. 3 4 5 6. If any man teach OTHERWISE and consent not to wholsome words the words of our Lord Jesus Christ and to the doctrine which is according to Godliness he is PROUD KNOWING NOTHING but DOTING about Questions and STRIFES of WORDS whereof cometh envy strife railings evil surmisings perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth supposing that gain is godliness or thinking that godliness is advantage from such turn away 2 Tim. 2. 22 23 24. Follow righteousness saith charity peace with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart But foolish and unlearned Questions avoid knowing that they do gender strifes and the servant of the Lord must not strive V. 15 16 17. Study to shew thy self approved unto God a workman that needeth not be ashamed RIGHTLY DIVIDING the word of truth But shun profane and vain bablings for they will increase to more ungodliness and their word will eat as doth a canker 2 Tim. 2. 14. Charging them before the Lord that they STRIVE not about WORDS to no profit to the subverting of the hearers 1 Cor. 8. 2 3. If any man think that he knoweth any thing he knoweth nothing as he ought to know But if any man LOVE GOD the same is KNOWN OF HIM Jam. 3. 1 13 c. My Brethren Be not Many Masters knowing that we shall receive the greater condemnation Who is a wise man and indued with knowledge among you Let him shew out of a good conversation his WORKS with meekness of wisdom But if ye have bitter zeal or envying and strife in your hearts Glory not and Lye not against the truth This WISDOM descendeth not from above but is earthly sensual devilish For where envying and strife is there is confusion and every evil work But the wisdom from above is first pure then peaceable gentle easie to be intreated full of mercy and good fruits without partiality and without hypocrisie And the fruit of Righteousness is sown in Peace of them that make Peace Acts 15. 28. It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us But not to Church-Tyrants Dogmatists or superstitious ones to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things Phil. 3. 15 16 17. Let us as many as be perfect be thus minded and if in any thing ye be otherwise or diversly or contrarily minded God shall reveal even this unto you Nevertheless whereto we have already attained let us walk by the same rule let us mind the same thing Phil. 2. 1 2 3 4. If there be any consolation in Christ if any comfort of love if any fellowship of the Spirit if any bowels and mercies fulfil ye my joy that ye be like minded having the same Love being of one accord of one mind Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other
the Synod of Dort and been as far from Tyranny as they should have been matters had never come so oft to Blood or Tumult among them as they have done nor Grotius and the Arminians had so much to say against them I will not meddle with the matters of this Island in our times seeing they sufficiently speak themselves But how cometh this Clergie Tyranny to be so common so long and so powerful in the World to make Parties and draw Princes into Wars 1. It must be remembred that true Godliness is not common in the World Too many take up Christianity as in the Eastern parts the posterity of the old famous Christians are now Mahometans 2. The Gospel and true Spirit of Christianity is contrary to the minds and worldly interests of carnal ambitious covetous voluptuous men So that they profess a Religion which their own hearts abhorr as to its serious practice 3. Every unrenewed man hath such a worldly fleshly nature and is voluptuous proud and covetous And none of them love to be reproved or crossed in their way 4. Church Honours Dignities and great Revenues and Clergie-ease in an idle life are a great bait or temptation to a carnal mind And the worse men are the more they will desire and seek Church preferments and make all the friends they can to get them And the more self-denying men will not do so but perhaps avoid them 5. The diligent seekers are liker to obtain and find than the neglecters and avoiders And so the Churches to be usually in the power of the worser sort of men and Religion to be under the Government of its enemies 6. Men in power and the Major Vote have great advantage to execute their own wills and to put Laws on others and bring them under what Characters they please and so to affix the names of Hereticks or Schismaticks on them if they fulfil not all their wills yea to silence them and suppress their Writings and make them to be little understood in the World yea or by their neighbours round about them 7. The Vulgar as they are for the Conquerour in the Wars so usually are for the upper and stronger side in peace that have Power to hurt them and have the Major Vote And also easily believe them and think men that suffer are like to be guilty of what they are accused 8. Godliness being against a worldly mind and interest and the Rabble usually for it hence ariseth a Conspiracy of carnal Clergie-men and the Rabble against those that are most seriously Godly as if they were their enemies and a surly proud intractable sort of people As Sulpitius Severus describeth Ithacius and his followers and even Mr. Hooker out of him Eccl. Pol. Praefat. 9. Such men in Power never want flatterers at their ears to praise all that they do and to exasperate them by slandering and reviling sufferers 10. The long possession since the dayes of Constantine of Great Places and Power by the Clergie within the Roman Empire now the Greek and Latine Churches doth seem to justifie mens Usurpations and Tyranny and make all dissenters seem singular and Schismatical which was and is the Papal strength against the Reformed 11. Too many of the Secular Rulers of the World have much of the same Spirit And find also their interests so twisted in shew with the Papal Clergies that they dare not cross them 12. The faults of those that suffer by them in doctrine and imprudent carriages use to give them great advantage and make all their odious characters and names of them believed and received as the case of the Waldenses and of the Lutherans and Calvinists in Germany too fully prove II. The second Rank of Church-disturbers are DOGMATISTS or men that profess exceeding zeal for ORTHODOX Opinions or Theological Knowledge And thus three instances tell us of the Cause of our Calamities 1. That of Gnostick and Heretical persons who account every new Conceit of theirs to be worthy the propagating even at the rate of Theological Wars and Church Confusions and cry out But the Truth and sell it not when it is some error of their own or some unprofitable or unnecessary notion 2. The case of the Romanists to say nothing of all the old contentious Bishops and Councils and the controversies about Persona and Hypostasis and about many words and forms of speech What do the Roman Councils for many hundred years last but on pretence of preserving the faith uncorrupted multiply divisions and new Articles of faith quoad nos And while they cry down most of Christs Church as Heretical or greatly erroneous they have run themselves into the grossest errors almost that humane nature is capable of even to the making it necessary to salvation to deny our own and all the sound mens senses in the World in the case of Transubstantiation 3. The case of the Schoolmen and such other Disputing Militant Theologues who have spun out the Doctrine of Christianity into so many Spiders Webs and filled the World with so many Volumes of Controversies as are so many Engines of contention hatred and division And I would our Protestant Churches Lutherans and Calvinists had not too great a number of such men as are far short of the Schoolmens subtilty but much exceed them in the enviousness of their zeal and the bitterness and revilings of their disputes more openly serving the Prince of hatred against the Cause of Love and Peace O how many famous Disputers in Schools Pulpit and Press do little know what Spirit they are of and what reward they must expect of Christ for making odious his Servants destroying Love and dividing his Kingdom How many such have their renown as little to their true comfort as Alexanders and Caesars for their bloody Wars But how cometh this Dogmatical Zeal so to prevail Consider 1. Nature it self is Delighted in Knowing much Else Satan had not made it Eves temptation Without Grace even Theological Speculations may be very pleasing to mens minds Morality and Holiness is principally seated in the Will 2. Satan hath here a far fairer bait than worldly Wealth and Pleasures and Honours to tempt men and steal away their hearts from that Love and Practice which is Holiness indeed All men are bound to Love Gods Word and his Truth must be precious to us all and now it is easie for the hypocritical Dogmatist to take up here and make himself a Religion of Zeal for those opinions which he entitleth God to And O that I could speak this loud enough to awaken the Learned World of Disputers to so much jealousie of their own hearts as is necessary to their own safety as well as to the Churches peace This thing called Orthodoxness Truth and Right-believing precious in it self if it be what it is called is made by Satan an ordinary means to deceive Learned men and keep them from a holy and heavenly mind and life when grosser cheats would be less effectual
delusion to pretend that you are accused for making God a sinner We charge no such thing on you But only for making him the chief insuperable cause of all the sins of men and Devils 655. Pag. 400. he plainly professeth that the Will as a physical agent is the cause of the act as physical and as under a Law and that act is against the Law so he is the cause of the Malitia actûs and culpablo So that God causing by his own confession both Act and Law there is no modest subtersuge left for his not openly professing that he asserteth God to be the cause of all sin the principal cause both as to matter and form 656. The rest of that Disputation striketh me with such horror in the reading that I confess I have not the patience to proceed any further â—n it nor shall further thus exercise my Readers patience The case is plain Either Hobbs or Free-will permitted must carry the cause in the case of sin There is no middle way He that will read Ruiz and Rutherfords answer impartially needeth no more of mine for the confutation of his vain responses 657. But cap. 29. p. 484. he falleth also on our most Learned and Judicious Dr. Field because in his lib. 3. c. 3. of the Church he contradicteth his opinion and it must move just indignation in the Reader that he addeth idque probare conatur contra reformatas Ecclesias Unworthy injury to the Reformed Churches more than to the worthy Dr. Field How falsly are they interessed in your unhappy cause See the Synod of Dort where there is not a word for it Is one Twiss with his Rutherford or Maccovius or a few such the Reformed Churches Let the Reader peruse the Articles of the Churches of England Scotland France and all the rest and see where he can find your Doctrine of Predetermination unto sin Even Jansenius himself is against it among the Papists when his Dominican Predecessors are the Fathers of it Nothing more common with English Divines than as you did before your self to explicate Gods causing the acts of sinners by the similitude of the Riders spurring a halting Horse or the Suns making a Dunghill stink which only speak the cause which we call universal and is the very thing which we assert And it is most unsavourily done to get into the Chair and magisterially say Fieldus vir alioqui doctus in his controversiis minime se versatâ—â— esse prodit Zumelem * * * Zumel in Disp 1. Thom. de Voluntat hom lib. arb pag. 219 220. Quod Dâ—â—s non sit causa peccati though he speak cautesously and as in other mens names yet concludeth plainly that God is but the Causa Universalis of sin and that man is the specifying determining cause even que universalem determinat ad speciem concursus actus ipsius sive solum determinet eam formaliter ad speciem c. Yet this is a high Thomist and defender of absolute grace non satis intelligit quippe non satis gâ—â—rus controversiarum Arminianarum scripsit dum aulam Arminiâ—â— plus aequo faventem haberent †††Thus magisterially did good Dr. Twisse censure Junius and Vossius his Son-in-law as men unskilled in Scholastick Divinity who were both most excellent men and hit upon the reconciling truth above most in their age Junius his Discourse of predetermination is one of the first that ever I found that excellency in and with his Irenicon is most worthy of great esteem But how easie is it for a man to overvalue himself and contemn another I highly value the piety in Mr. â—â—therfords Letters I am no fit arbiter ingeniorum But when I hear other men say that one Field was more Judicious than many Rutherfords I câ—â—fess by reading their several writings I find no temptation to deny it And why should Field and consequently Davenant Usher Carlton Mâ—ton Hall the Synod of Dort and I think the far greatest part of Protestants I verily think fifty if not an hundred for one who are against you be made odious by the supposition of being not far enough from Arminians rather than Maceovius Twisse and Rutherford take it for a disgrace to hold the same opinions against Gods Holiness which the Dâ—â—nican Fryars hold who have been the bloody Masters of the Inquisition and murdered so many thousand Protestants or Waldenses and Alligenses And that which he saith of Fields writing when the Court favoured Arminianism is notoriously false and such insinuations unworthy of so good a man as the speaker Fields Works were printed singly before they were printed together in Folio And his fifth Book was printed Aâ—no 1610. and the words cited are in the third printed before And the Synod of Dort was called An. 1618. and sate 1619. also And King James was a zealous suppressor of Arminianism and sent five or six Divines thither to that end And long after in King Charles his dayes Pet. Heylin in the life of Archbishop Laud will tell you that the Arminiâ—â— Bishops then were but five Neale Laud Buckeridge Corbet and Howsâ—â— to whom Learned Montague was after added So that they durst not trust their Cause with a Convocation Field then shall be a most Judicion worthy Divine when partiality hath said its worst 658. And what is his error Why he saith that it 's a contradiction to say that God causeth the Act in all its state which is the Materialâ— peccati and causeth not the formale which is inseparable A foul error indeed to tell you that he that causeth the subjectum fundamentâ—â— rationem fundandi terminum causeth the relation and that he that maketh an European white and an African black causeth the dissimilitâ—de and so doth he that maketh the straight Rule and the crooked line thâ— forbidding Law and the forbidden act 659. Were it not that the necessity requireth such work because such Books are in mens hands I should think I had injured the Reader by thâ—â— much For my work is not to confute Books but to assert sure reconciling truths Otherwise the confutation of the rest of that Book for Gods willing and causing all forbidden acts in their full state and the existence of sin is most easily answered SECT XX. The old Reconciling Doctrine of Augustine Prosper and Fulgentius And first Prosper ad Gallorum Qu. 660. IT is a strange thing to me that when Pelagius Julian Faustus c. thought Augustine a Novelist and as Usher asserteth would have fastned the title of Predestination-Hereticks on his followers and almost all confess that Augustine was if not the first yet the most notable publick Vindicator of absolute Predestination and Grace yet the Judgement of Austin with his Disciples Prosper and Fulgentius doth not serve turn to quiet if not to end these controversies among those who profess to be their followers when as they have so copiously and plainly written upon the
defectus talis potestatis non est aliud quam duritia malâ— voluntatis à qua suscepta recedere non posse non est aliud quam tenaciter nolle Nature teacheth all the world so much to difference between mans Voluntary and Involuntary Acts and Habits as to take the first to be directly laudable or culpable as being not only virtuous or vicious but in their relations to the Rule to be Virtue or Vice it self and the more men have of a vicious obstinacy and voluntariness in evil the more all mankâ—nd condemn and hate them Whereas involuntary necessity is every-where taken for a just excuse yea a necessit as volendi in a mad man or a phrenetick or melancholy person maketh them the objects of mens compassion And this Light and Law of humane nature is not to be rejected because it may seem hard to answer the sophisms of those that would confound these sorts of Power and Impotency § 13. Therefore of a man that is no otherwise unable to Love God e. g. but only because or in that directly or indirectly he will not that is is Dispositively Actually and Habitually Unwilling it is more proper and intelligible to say that he will not than that he cannot Though we may also say He cannot when we mean but that he will not But the most explicatory words are best § 14. No man-shall be able so far to accuse God and excuse himself justly at last as to say I was truly willing to have Christ and Life as offered me but I could not or I was truly willing to leave my sins and worâ—â—ly vanities and to live a holy life to God but I could not Yea Augustine and Twisse say more that no man can truly say I would believe but cannot which yet I think needeth some limiting explication § 15. Obj. But though all men Can have Christ or faith if they will yet the unregenerate are unable to be willing Answ By Unable you must 1. Either mean that they want the Natural Power or faculty of willing it 2. Or that they want some naturally necessary concause or object without which this faculty is no formal Power ad hoâ— 3. Or that the Will is not well Disposed so to Act. 1. The first no man will say that taketh an unbeliever for a Man 2. The second no man will say that will not by Hobbes his physical necessitation turn Religion into a name or nothing or the natural motâ—on of an Engine called Man 3. And the third which is the truth must be named as it is In Controversies which exercise so great animosities and â—â—â—â—al zeal as this doth in the Churches it is an injurious thing to use sedâ—â—ing improper names when the more plain and intelligible are at hand Hereafter speak plainly in your contendings and instead of Cannot say An unconverted man will not believe and his will is viciously undisposed to it yea ill-disposed against it Hold to this that we may understand each other or confess that you quarrel about a word § 16. Obj. The Scripture useth the word Cannot Can a Blackâ—ore change his skin c. Answ 1. The text may as fitly at least be translated Will a Blackmore change his skin c. Yet the word Cannot is brought in in the application for here it is all one That is the meaning is that some custome in sin doth cause such a setled Ill disposition or Habit as without special Grace is never overcome Which signifieth no more than a râ—â—ted wilfulness and Love of sin and enmity to Good 2. But the meaning is not to affirm these two sorts of Impotency to be of the same nature An Ethiopian cannot change his skin were he never so willing and he cannot be willing to change it without Grace But you cannot say that an accustomed sinner cannot learn to do good were he never so willing nor yet that he can be as easily willing as the Ethiopian nor as hardly made willing as the Leopard 3. Figurative speeches are frequent in Scripture and may alike be used by us in the like cases But in Controversies a trope is an equivocal till explained and must not be used without necessity and explication 4. Where the text once saith They could not believe or repent it saith many and many times They would not 5. The phrase They could not believe because Esaias saith c. Joh. 12. 39. notoriously speaketh but of an Impossibilitas Logica consequentiae and not of a physical disability in themselves though it intimateth a setled wilfulness 6. When it 's said Act. 4. 14. They could say nothing against it it signifieth not a want of physical power but mediate advantage It 's said of Christ Mark 1. 45. He could no more enter into the City 6. 5. He could there do no mighty work because of their unbelief 7. 24. He could not be hid Isa 5. 4. What could have been done more to my Vineyard Jer. 15. 1. My mind could not be towards this people Mark 3. 20. They could not so much as eat bread 1. Thes 3. 1. When we could no longer forbear c. 1 Joh. 3. 9. He cannot sin Heb. 9. 5. Of which we cannot now speak particularly Act. 4. 16. We cannot deny it And 19. 36. These things cannot be spoken against Joh. 7. 7. The world cannot hate you Luk. 11. 7. I cannot rise and give thee and yet he did Luk. 14. 20. I have marryed a wife therefore I cannot come Mar. 2. 19. They cannot fast Neh. 6. 3. I cannot come down So Gen. 34. 14. 44. 26. 2 Cor. 13. 8. Numb 22. 18. 24. 13. Jos 24. 19. 1 Sam. 25. 17. Psal 77. 4. and other places I think you will not say it is natural and utter disability that is here spoken of No nor of God when it is said that He cannot deny himself or Lye 2 Tim. 2. 13. Tit. 1. 2. We must therefore explain such doubtful words before we draw controverted conclusions from them as supposing them falsly to be univocal § 17. The same Natural faculty may by the Alteration of objects and means become formally a Power or no power ad hoc vel illud And when Nature made it a faculty Grace can make it a formal power to this or that without changing it in it self at all in many instances or cases § 18. Men have a power even moral to the use of many means which God hath appointed for the begetting of faith before they have a moral power to believe § 19. God hath appointed or commanded to all men the use of certain duties and means for their Recovery by faith and repentance unto God And there is no man that is not obliged to use such means nor any man that is to use them in despâ—ir of success The very command being some signification of Gods will that obedience shall not be in vain Whether the name of an Implicite Promise be apt for that command I leave to those
before No man can deny but that God usually prepareth the Soul fer Conversion by a common sort of Grace And though he may do what he list with his own and extraordinarily may in an instant convert the most unprepared malignant obdurate person yet that is not his usual way And some that think otherwise are led into the mistake by thinking that a man is converted when he hath suddenly some terrifying humbling preparation which endeth in conversion Whether he convert all that are brought to the very highest and nearest degree of preparation I know not nor perhaps you neither But that usually he converteth all such we have very great reason to think probable And that he hath not commanded men to seek his special Grace in vain So that whether it be a proper promise on Gods part or only an encouragement short of proper promise I told you before is a hard question But we maintain that it is not that proper mutual Covenant which maketh a Christian and is celebrated in Baptism and giveth Salvation If one of old John Rogers's Thomas Hooker's or Robert Bolton's hearers when they were vehemently urging preparatory humiliation desire endeavour c. should have said to them Sir you play the Arminian and contradict St. Paul who saith that Grace is not given according to Ista â—â—â—dia nemini Deus destâ—â—â—â— propter vel secundum morita ipsius sed ex pura puta Gratia Nemini etiam denegat nisi juste propter gracedentia peecata Armin. Disp Privat Thes 41. Sect. 10. Adrian VI. Quodl 3. q. 1. fol. 21. expoundeth Habenti dabitur thus Qui habet verbi Dei amorem ut illuc mentis intuitum dirigat dabitur ei sensus intelligendi qui non habet verbi Dei amorem auferetur ab eo naturalis capacitas intelligend c Works Therefore God will give it me never the more for such preparations what would you have said to him The truth is practical Preachers in these practical cases are carried with full sail into that truth which Disputers would wrangle out of Doors But as for any workâ— meritorious in point of commutative Justice yâ—a or of any full and proper Covenant of God giving a proper Right to the Sinner upon which he may claim special Grace as his due I know of none such before true Conversion though Gods commands and general promises give men sufficient encouragement C. But what say you to Rom. 9. It is not in him that willeth or runneth c. B. I do not love to expound hard Texts unsatisfactorily by scraps I will give you God willing a Paraphrase of the Chapter together by it self I suppose you have read John Goodwin's and Dr. Hammonds Paraphrase At present it may suffice to say 1. That the meaning is not that he that would have Christ and Grace and Holiness is no fitter for it than he that would not have them nor that he that seeketh them is no fitter for them than he that rejecteth themâ—nor that he that believeth is no fitter for Justification than â—n Iâ—fidel nor he that is holy any fitter for Heaven than the unholy nor yet that he that heareth meditateth prayeth aâ— he can and attaineth the highest degree of common Grace is no fitter or likelier for Faith or special Grace than he that despiseth it and the means of it 2. But the meaning is that God of his free mercy câ—lled the Gentiles that were further from him than the Jews and may give both the Gospel and the Grace of the Gospel to one and take it from or not give it to another when both of them are equally unworthy of it by their sin So that the first and principal cause that differenceâ—ha Jacob from an Esau is not that Jacob before Gods Grace did will and râ—n deâ—ire and seek Grace but that Mercy begun with him and gave him though as unworthy as Esau both commonner and special Grace which caused him to will and run And yet for all that both are supposed to have forfeited mercy by sinning against it and it is in him that willeth not and runneth not that the cause of his misery and privation of mercy is to be found Yea in many an instance where mercy and helps are given by an equality a wicked man may make himself to differ by his sin and wilfully become worse than others C. At least you must here confess that de facto we do really differ from each other in this point B. All they that hold all that Doctrine of Preparation for Conversion which you find in the suffrages of the British Divines in the Synod of Dort do not that I know of differ from many of the Lutherans and Jesuites nor from many of the Arminians herein while by the name of merit of Congruity used by some and Preparation by the other no more is meant than they there assert And as to the question of a promise or no promise I shew'd you before how small the difference is yea with some it is but de nomine while one calleth that a Promise which another calleth but a half promise with Mr. Cotton or a precept to use means with sufficient encouragement when perhaps in the description of the thing they agree So that among the most and sober practical Preachers I yet see no real difference in sense at all about the necessity of preparatory Grace The sixth Crimination C. For ought I can understand some of them acknowledge no Corruption nor Grace in the Will as having no Habits but meer Indifferency or Liberty but think that the illuminating of the understanding is enough to change the will * The Remonstrants say Synod circ art 3. 4 p. 15. Voluntatem iâ—super Deus in obsequium suum fle ctit ad actuâ— fidei obedientiâ— ita inclinat per spiritum suum sanctum verbo utentem ut voluntas per illam operationem non solum possit obedire â—ed obediat quoties obedit non ex se anâ— per se aut a se B. 1. These are a few odd persons that differ from the generality of your Adversaries and I am not to justifie all that every man writeth 2. But even of these I suppose the meaning of the most is but this that sin began inthe Intellect and there Grace must begin and that God worketh on the will but mediante Intellectu And these Camero held as well as they and so do many more And these seem to differ not about the necessity of Grace but the manner of its conveyance to the will whether it be only by the intellect 3. And as the wind bloweth where it listeth and we hear its sound but know not whence it cometh or whither it goeth so is every one that is born of the Spirit We know that the will is vitiated as ill as the understanding and needeth Grace as much as it and that God is as near to the one in his operations as to the
reason to vex himself with any such fears as consist not with a life of greater hope and peace and comfort And that living by faith on Christ and his Spirit and General promise they should comfortably Trust him with their souls 5. It 's granted that the more Faith Love Holiness and obedience any hath the nearer they may come to full assurance of persevering and may live the more confident and joyful lives 6. Many with Austin hold an Antecedent absolute special Election to faith and perseverance and that no such elect ones fall away 7. Many hold that besides Election a degree of Grace called Confirmation doth settle some in a certainty of perseverance and neither the Elect nor Confirmed fall away And that the confirmed may be certain of their own election perseverance and salvation And this seemeth to be the opinion of Origen Macarius and divers Antients Even that God doth with Believers as he did with the Angels and Adam to whom he would have given confirming Grace had he at first overcome And where faith hath kindled so much LOVE to God and Heaven and Holiness as that it is become a Divine nature in the soul and operateth as the Love of Children to Parents above meer Reason as a fixed Habit like a nature then Grace seemeth to some Confirmed and not loseable All these Concessions laid together and more which I could fetch from the most learned Schoolmen do shew that though here the difference be real it is in a point and a degree where humane frailty and the difficulty and the non-necessity of a fuller understanding it do fully prove to all sober self-knowing loving believers that it is their duty to bear with one another without the quenching of brotherly Love or denying Christian-communion to each other But the wicked will do wickedly and none of the wicked will understand but the wise shall understand Dan. 12. 10. The Eleventh Dayes CONFERENCE Of Christs Righteousness imputed of Faith Justification and mans duty their several parts to a Christians Comfort Speakers Saul Paul a Libertine Teacher CHAP. I. S. SIR I am now come to you in a greater straight than I was in before I have met with a Teacher that tells me you are a deceiver and have all this while misled me and have taught me to build upon the sand of my own Righteousness and set me on doing to my own undoing and that I have not built on the Righteousness of Christ and therefore all will end in my overthrow and ruine I was not able to answer him And I have prevailed with him to come to you that I may hear you speak together P. Did not I tell you before-hand of such temptations and give you instructions for your preservation against them S. I confess you did But I find my self insufficient to use them without help when it comes to tryal P. The truth is Infant Christians will still need the help of their Elders and of Christs Ministers when they have been never so well fore-armed as you need a Physicion in your sickness after all the preventing directions which he can give you And you have done well to bring him and to hear both sides together Had you trusted to your own understanding and only disputed it out privately with himself you might have been enfnared to your danger I shall willingly conferr with him on these two conditions 1. That you remember that it is You and not Him that I am to satisfie and therefore when I have satified you I have done For to follow him as long as he will talk will waste more time than we have to spare 2. That when you are delivered from this snare you will remember that you must meet with many more such in the world The Anabaptist will say as much to you for his way and the Papist much more for his way And most of them will affright you with the danger of damnation if you turn not to them Therefore when ever you are assaulted by any of them bring them to me and hear us together as you now do Lib. I am sorry to see how you abuse poor souls and build them not on Christ but on themselves What a deal have you said to this man of Doing and of Working and how little of Believing You have set him on tasks of Duty and he thinketh now to Do this and Live and to be saved in his own doings his repenting his praying his keeping the Lords day c. while the poor man knoweth not Jesus Christ and submitteth not to the Righteousness of God You will needs be a Teacher of the Law and bring back poor souls to bondage that Christ may profit them nothing but trusting to their own works and righteousness for life they may fall from grace and be found in their nakedness and sin P. Sir these General exclamations do but tell us that there is something that you differ from us in but tell us not what If you are a lover of truth and will speak to edification tell us distinctly what are the points of our doctrine which you dislike and let us debate them one by one Lib. Among many others the chief are these I. That you must not have men come to Christ till they are prepared II. That you set men on Repenting and Doing and Working for salvation and so teach them to trust in a Righteousness of their own and do not tell them that All Christs Righteousness is ours being imputed to us and that Believing is our Conversion to which you are to call men If they Believe they have a perfect Righteousness in Christ III. That you overthrow the Gospel in making it a Law IV. And you make the new Covenant to be made with us when Christ is the only party in Covenant with God V. And you make the new Covenant to have Conditions and so to be the same with the old VI. You make Justifying faith to be a believing in Christ as a Teacher and Law-giver that you may lead in works and not a meer Believing in him for Righteousness VII You make Faith to justifie as a condition of our performance and not meerly an Instrument of our Justification or apprehending Christ VIII You make faith in it self to be imputed to us for Righteousness and not Christ only the object of faith IX That God is made Mutable by you and forgiveth and justifieth them when they believe whom he did not justifie from eternity X. That a justified man must be afraid lest his sin should unjustifie him again XI You make men think that they are able to believe of themselves XII You call men to Duttes and to Mortification before they believe and are regenerate XIII Instead of the Witness of the Spirit you comfort men by the Evidence of their own holiness and righteousness These with abundance more are the errors by which you corrupt and deceive poor souls P. Because Christ would have his Servants as Teachable as
Christ as a Saviour to effect it and bring them home to God And believing that he is freely offered to them they next thankfully Accept him by consent and Trust him and give themselves to him And all this is Christs own work upon them but in this order and by these degrees So that coming to Christ signifieth divers acts of which one is preparatory to the other And whereas he tells you that we keep men off from Christ till they are prepared judge you whether he speak truth or falshood Do we use to call to sinners and say Do not believe that Christ Reconcileth God and man till you first believe that there is a God Do not make haste and believe that Christ will save you from misery before you believe that you are miserable Or that he will wash away and pardon your sin before you believe that you are sinners and need a pardon Do not consent that Christ shall be your Saviour before you are willing to be saved or before you believe that he hath dyed rose c. and is offered you What need we perswade men from Impossibilities Is it we or their own necessity that keepeth them from Consenting before they Believe and from believing before they Understand We do as it were intreat poor sinners who love their dungeon to open the windows that the Light may come in And these men rail at us and say that we perswade men not to let in the light till they have first opened the windows What need we do that when it is impossible to do otherwise We perswade men to believe that they are sick that they may go to the Physicion And they rail at us for perswading men to delay going to the Physicion till they think they are sick We exhort sinners that are asleep in sin to awake and run the Christian race And they rail at us as if we perswaded them not to run it till they are awake So that the preaching of these men according to their Doctrine must be thus Come presently to Christ stay not to hear the Gospel or to consider of it or to understand the meaning of it before you Trust Christ as your Saviour Presently cast your selves upon him before you know who he is or what he hath done for you and trust him for the pardon of your sin before you perceive that you are sinners or feel any need of pardon Stay not for a will but Take him or Accept him for your Saviour before you are willing of him or willing to be saved Do you think this is the only Gospel-preaching I pray you Sir tell me your self How would you preach to the Indians if you were Mr. Eliots assistant or to any other Heathens Would you at the first word call them to cast themselves upon Christ for salvation before you taught them to know that there is a God or a Law or sin or punishment c Lib. The Apostle called men presently to Believe in the Lord Jesus without delay Acts 2. and Acts 16. and Acts 8. c. And so should we P. 1. What talk you of Delay Are we for Delay any more than you The Angel Acts 12. that smote Peter and bid him arise and go forth was not for his delay because he bid him not go forth before he arose and before his fetters were off 2. And you forget that the Apostles spake to Jews who had the Preparatory belief of a God and of the Law and of the promise of the Messiah before 3. And yet they first humbled them for sin Acts 2. 37. till they were pricked at the heart And the Jaylor first trembleth and both say What must we do Is this your kind of proof And why did all the antient Churches from the Apostles dayes teach men the Creed or Christian Doctrine and Catechise them long before they baptized them And I think the Anabaptists will do so now And I think you would be loth your selves to gather your Churches from among Heathens Mahometans or Infidels till you had taught and prepared them as much at least as we require But let us hear whether in the second point you have any better or wiser Doctrine to teach us CHAP. II. Lib. II. You should teach men to believe that all our own Righteousness is as filthy rags abominable to God and to be cast away with our sins And that we are neither to trust to nor to look at any thing in our selves for justification or acceptance with God or to procure eternal life But that Christ hath both satisfied for our sins and fulfilled the Law of Innocency for us God imputed our sins to him and he was by Imputation the greatest sinner in all the world the greatest murderer thief fornicator perjured person rebell and ungodly man For the sins of all the Elect did meet upon him and were his Therefore he was forsaken of God and suffered the same Hell that we deserved And God imputeth all his satisfaction and righteousness so to us as that in Gods account all the Elect or at least All believers did satisfie and fulfill all the Law in and by Christ For he was our surety and our Legal Person though not our Natural person So that what Christ was we were and what Christ did we did and what Christ suffered we suffered in Gods â—â—count or imputation And so we are as righteous as Christ himself because all Christs righteousness is ours And we have no other nor need no other Righteousness at least in order to our Justification This Righteousness of Christ is it by which we are Justified by the Law of works which saith Obey perfectly or Do this and Live For we Did all that is required in and by Christ In this Righteousness only God accepâ—â—th us We have Right to it from eternity by Gods Decree of Election and our Consciences perceive our right upon our Believing And to set men on Doing themselves for Life when they should only Do from Life is to deceive them and undo them P. If these words did offer me any Light which we had not before received I should gladly learn and give you thanks But if such talk as this be all that must show you to â—e wiser than your neighbours and â—â—â—â—rant you to rail at them as Legal Preacherâ— and such as â—â—â—â—â—â—â—â— on by works my soul must pitty you and all such poor sinners â—â—â—â—â—â—â—bled or seduced by you But because this Head containâ—â—â— many particular doctrines I pray you let us speak to them in order I. And first about our own Righteousness And seeing I am the Leaâ—â—er I must crave your answer as fiâ—ted to my own doubts And Quest 1. Do you know how many times the words Just Righteous and Righteousness are used in the Bible Lib. No I have not taken such an account as to tell you P. Let us see the Concordance Here you find it about six hundred and twelve times used besides the words Justifie Justifying and
against those things which their ignorance misrepresenteth to themselves And so Gods ordinances are made a snare to souls which are appointed for their salvation and the man that can kindle in his hearers a transporting passion against this or that opinion or form as Popish is cryed up for an excellent preacher and seemeth to edifie the people while he destroveth them 11. And by this means you seem to justifie the Papists lyes and calumnies against the Protestants by doing as they do They belye Luther Zuinglius Calvin Beza c. with just such intentions and such a kind of zeal as some over doing Sectaries belye them And is it bad in them and good in you 12. You teach the people a dangerous and perverse way of reasoning à minùs notis which will let in almost any errours From a dark text in the Revelations or Daniel or from the supposition that the Pope is the Antichrist and all Papists have received the mark of the beast you gather conclusions against the notorious duties of Love and peace which the light of nature doth commend to all Not that I am perswading you that the Pope is not Antichrist but that all things be received but according to their proper degree of evidence S. Now you open your self indeed All that revolt to Popery begin there with questioning whether the Pope be the Antichrist and telling men of the darkness of the Book of Revelations P. I tell you I will abate no certainty that you have but increase my own and yours if I could but I would not have any falsly to pretend that they are certainer of any thing than they are And no certainty can go beyond the ascertaining evidence And if all Scriptures be equally plain St. Peter was deceived that tells us of many things hard to be understood which the unlearned wrest as other Scriptures to their own destruction And if the Revelations be not one of the hardest I crave your answer to these questions 1. Why are five Expositors usually of four opinions in the expounding of it when it is those that have spent much of their lives in studying it as Napier Brightman c. who are the Expositors 2. Why will none of you that find it so easie at last write one certain Commentary which may assure which of all the former if any one of them was in the right 3. Why did Calvin take it to be too hard for him and durst not venture to expound it 4. And if you take it to be so necessary as you pretend tell me whether it was so necessary and so taken by all those Churches that for a long time received it not as Canonical Scripture Surely they were saved without believing it Though no doubt but the book of Revelation is a great mercy to the Church and all men should understand as much of it as they can But all that I blame you for here is the perverting of the order of proof in arguing à minùs notis 13. And these over-doers that run things into the contrary extreams do most injuriously weaken the Protestant cause by disabling themselves and all men of their principles to defend it and arming the Papists against it by their errors When it cometh to an open dispute by Word or Writing one of these mens errors is like a wound that lets out blood and spirits and puts words of triumph into the adversaries mouth A cunning Papist will presently drive the ignorant disputant to resolve his cause into his mistake and then will open the falshood of that and thence inferr the falshood of all the rest And what an injury is that to the souls of the auditors who may be betrayed by it and to the cause it self For instance If one of our over-doers hold that we are reputed to have kept all the Law of Innocency and merited salvation our selves by Christ or that no act of faith is Justifying but the accepting of his righteousness or that faith Justifieth only as the efficient instrumental cause or that we have no righteousness which hath any thing to do in our Justification but only Christs imputed Merits or that mans faith Love or obedience are not rewardable c. how easily will a Papist open the falshood of such an opinion to the hearers and then tell them that they may see by this who is in the right And alas what work would one Learned Papist make in London by publick disputing if we had no wiser men to deal with him than these over-doers They may call Truth and Sobriety Antichristian and talk nonsence as against Popery successfully to their own party but I hope never to see the cause managed by their publick disputes lest half the Congregation turn Papists on it at once If Chillingworth had not been abler to confute a Papist than those that used to calumniate him as Popish or Socinian he had done less service of that kind than he did 14. And it is an odious injury that these Over-doers do to the ancient and the universal Church while in many cases they ignorantly or wilfully reproach and condemn them as if they were all the favourers of Popery and call their ancient doctrine and practice Antichristian Some of them ignorantly falsifie the Fathers doctrine and upon trust from their Leaders aver◠that they held that which they plainly contradict and that which they held indeed they cry out against as Popery Such an instance we have newly in a Souldier Major Danvers an Anabaptist which I have detected And will Christ take it well to have almost all his Church condemned as Antichristian 15. And hereby what an honour is done to Popery and what a dishonour to the Reformed Churches when it shall be concluded that all the Churches heretofore even next after the age of the Apostles and almost all the present Churches were and are against the doctrine of the Protestants and on the Papists side And yet how many do us this injury and the Roman Church this honour About the nature of Justifying faith and its office to Justification and about the nature of Justification it self and Imputation of Righteousness and free-will and mans Works and Merits and about assurance of salvation and perseverance how many do call that Popery which the whole current of Greek and Latine Fathers do assert and all the ancient Churches owned and most of all the present Churches in the world And those that call all forms of prayer Popery or the English Liturgie at least when almost all the Christian world have forms and most such as are much worse do but tell men that the Christian world is on the side that they oppose and against their way 16. And it is a crime of infamy to be taken for Separatists from the universal Church And in doctrines and forms of Worship not only to avoid what we take to have been a common weakness but also to condemn them as Antichristian or as holding pernicious errours is but
to perswade men that we are not of the same body and to own a sinful dishonourable separation 17. And by all these means these Over-doers do greatly increase Atheism and Infidelity and prophaneness among us while their zeal against Truth and reproaches of sound doctrine do make men think that our Religion is nothing but proud humour and self-conceit and while they see us so boldly condemn almost all the world except our selves they will think that so few as we deserve not to be excepted 18. By this injurious extremity against the Papists we do but kindle in them a bitterer enmity to us and hatred of them breedeth hatred in them of us and so we set them on plotting revenge against us as implacable injurious enemies when we should deal soberly and righteously with all men and seek to win them by truth and gentleness 19. I And such dealings with them do draw Persecution on the Protestants that live under their Dominions and if we refuse to use them here as Christians no wonder if abroad they use not the Protestants as Men. 20. And by such great abuses of Reformation men hinder Reformation for the time to come and do their part to make it hopeless while they discourage such attempts by dishonouring the Reformation which is past Even as David George and Muntâ—er and the Munster Doâ—ages and Rebellions do hinder the â—eviving of Anabaptistry in the world and the shame of their old practices and successes is as a Grave stone upon the Sepuleher of their Cause so do these men do their part to make it with the whole Reformation that none hereafter may date to own or meddle with such work These that I have opened briefly to you are the real fruits of false injurious and ignorant zeal and over-doing against the Papists And if Popery revive it 's like to be by such men S. But Popery is an heinous evil and corrupt nature is so prone to evil thaâ— you need not thus disswade men from going too far from it or from over-doing against it no more than from being overmuch religious P. You may say the same as truly of the errors on the contrary extream All of them are evil and men are prone to evil But 1. Little know you how common it is in the world to spend mens zeal against the real or supposed evil of other mens Opinions and thereby to strengthen the mortal evil of their own carnal affections and passions and worldly lives and to take a zeal for Truth and Orthodoxness for real Holiness while usually such miss of Truth it self 2. And you know not the wiles of Satan how ordinarily he betrayeth a good Cause by the ill management of its most zealous friends and doth undo by over-doing When he will play the Devil indeed with Eve he will seem to be more than God himself for Knowledge of Good and Evil and for the advancement of mankind to be like God and God shall be accused by him as if he were untrue and envyed our perfection When he will play the Devil indeed with Christ he will seem to be more for valiantness and trusting God than Christ was and pleadeth Scripture for tempting God When he will play the Devil indeed in the Pharisees he will be stricter for the â—abbath and for Discipline in avoiding the company of the Publicans and sinners and stricter in fastings and dyet and other observations than Christ himself And he will be a zealous enemy to Blasphemy and a zealous Royalist for Caesar and a zealous honourer of the Temple and the Law when Christ or Paul or other Apostles are to be destroyed by it And when he will play the Devil in the Nicolaitans Simonians and Gnostick Hereticks he will seem to be for higher knowledge and greater liberty than the Apostles were And so when he would sow discord among Christians and would kill their Love and divide Christs Church and set them in a mental and oral War against each other he will aggravate the errors and faults of others and he will seem a more zealous friend of Truth and enemy to Popery Heresie Error Superstition false Worship or other faults than Christ is But he knoweth why S. But God telleth us himself that he is jealous about his Worship and hath in Scripture more severely executed his Justice upon the corrupters of his Worship than almost any other crime P. No doubt but God is jealous against Idolatry He that knoweth not the true God from Idols cannot honour him And he that worshippeth him not as a most Great and Holy God dishonoureth or blasphemeth him on pretence of worshipping him And to worship him by an Image is to perswade men that God is like that which that Image doth represent which is to deny him to be God And no doubt but the Jews great temptations to Idolatry from the Nations about them were to be oppugned by great severities of God And no doubt but Moses Law was to be honoured by Gods severe executions on the breakers of it But when you come to Christs preaching you find how oft he teacheth the Pharisees to go learn what that meaneth I will have Mercy and not Sacrifice When he conferreth with the Woman of Samaria John 4. she presently turneth from the doctrine of faith as Sectaries do among us to the Controversies of the times Our Fathers say In this Mountain and you say At Jerusalem men ought to worship But Christ calleth her off such low discourse and teacheth her to worship God as a Spirit in spirit and truth if ever she would be accepted of him S. But it is a time now when Popery is striving to rise again and how unseasonably would you abate mens zeal against it P. No more than he was against his Lawyers Zeal who grew hoarse with senseless bawling for him saying I am glad he hath lost his voice or else I might have lost my Cause I am so much against Popery that I wish it wiser and abler adversaries than self-conceited unstudied Zealots who will honour Popery by entitling it to the Truths of God and the Consent of the Antient or Universal Church or would make people believe that it consisteth in some good or indifferent things as in some Doctrines Forms or Government which others can see no harm in And so teach men to say If this be Popery we will rather be Papists than of them that rave as in their sleep against they know not what Could these men be perswaded to lay out their Zeal and diligence in propagating the practical knowledge of Christianity it self and let things alone which they understand not and SUSPEND TILL THEY HAVE THROUGHLY STUDIED or at least to forbear hindering wiser men and calumniating and backbiting those that would by wisdom defend that truth which by folly and rashness they go about to betray they might be meet for their share of that honour which now they forfeit S. You strive against Gods Judgements by which he