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work_n	faith_n	good_a	tree_n	12,463	5	9.4505	5	true

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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A90682	The Christians rescue from the grand error of the heathen, (touching the fatal necessity of all events) and the dismal consequences thereof, which have slily crept into the church. In several defences of some notes, writ to vindicate the primitive and scriptural doctrine of Gods decrees. By Thomas Pierce rector of Brington in Northamptonshire.	Pierce, Thomas, 1622-1691.	1658 (1658)	Wing P2166; Thomason E949_1; ESTC R18613	77,863	94

THE Christians rescue FROM THE GRAND ERROR of the HEATHEN touching the fatal Necessity of all Events AND The Dismal consequences thereof which have slily crept into the CHURCH In several Defences Of some Notes writ to Vindicate the Primitive and Scriptural Doctrine of Gods Decrees By THOMAS PIERCE Rector of Brington in Northamptonshire LONDON Printed by J. G. for Richard Royston at the Angel in Ivy-lane 1658. The general Preface to the ensuing Tracts 1. I cannot but think it very expedient and very agreeable to Reason that Altercations and Controversies in every kind those especially in Religion should be made to acknowledge their mortality as well as the Controverters themselves by whom the dissensions are kept alive This concerning Gods Decrees of Reward and Punishment as it is much stricken in years and even decrepitly aged so by the blessing of God it is drawing the faster towards its end too The Erroneous side of the controversie is grown so feeble and dispirited what with its wounds and bruises and putrifying sores which in its desperate encounters it hath received and is become so gastly to lookers on that even they who are ashamed to see it falling are more ashamed to hold it up 2. There is not sure a more effectual or shorter course for the putting a period to a Dispute then by proceeding from such principles as are assented to and granted by men of all sides 3. There are not any two Principles more universally received throughout the world then that God is the Author of every thing that is good and that he cannot be the Author of any thing that is evil I mean the evil of sin which is properly evil in it self for the evil of punishment is in it self very good and doth onely seem evil to them that suffer it 4. In these preceding Considerations I began to reason on those two * grounds And supposing my self to be of neither or at least of both parties I was resolved to state the Question between me and my self as I should finally be conducted by those infallible guides religiously intending to go as far and withal resolving to go no farther then those granted Maxims should either carry or allow me 5. I have had the happiness to observe that none of those whom I displeased in the course I took have either dared in † plain terms to deny the truth of my Principles or adventured to discover wherein my deductions could seem illegal but only talking at Rovers they have largely expressed their dislikes without exhibiting to the Reader a reason why except the contract they had made with some vulgar Errors with which my Principles Deductions were very equally inconsistent 6. What deductions they have made from their fanciful notions of Gods praescience and decrees I have abundantly proved to be blasphemous And my proofs have been taken not from Scripture only and Reason and the whole suffrage of Antiquity and the most eminent of the Moderns for Life and Learning but over and above from their own Confessions which in their soberest intervals have happily falne down from their publick Pens So unadvised was * M. Baxter in charging Grotius and others with uncharitable censures and odious inferences for the odious inferences are made by his own dear Brethren and Praedecessors who have avowedly deduced them from those grounds of Theology on which they go whereas Grotius and others have but recited them to their Authors out of their publick works 7. The head spring of their Doctrines is known by the * streams which issue from them as the † tree is known by its fruit * It cannot be a good tree which bringeth forth evil fruit much less is that a good Doctrin whose very Patrons and Abettors have often acknowledg●d it doth infer what a thousand times they have themselves inferred from it that God is the natural cause of sin 8. The head-spring of their Doctrines is that of irrespective praedestination or praedetermination of all events antecedent to praescience 9. If Gods eternal Decrees concerning the final estate of man cannot possibly be absolute or irrespective of those respective qualifications by which alone he can be qualified for reward or punishment it cannot chuse but follow by the confession of all that those Decrees are respective or as some express it conditional that is according to Gods pr●science of such and such qualifications There being clearly no medium of participation or proportion no nor so much as of abnegation betwixt the respectiveness and irrespectiveness of the very same act as they both relate to the very same object For what implies a contradiction is very happily exploded by men of all sorts So as the ruine of the one is the establishing of the other And they that are beaten from the hold of irrespective praedestination must fly to the tenet of the respective by way of refuge there being nothing betwixt them but the pit of Atheism 10. It is confessed by Mr. Whitfield Wollebius and Dr. Twisse against Moulin to name no more that there is parity of reason in the decrees both of Election and Reprobation And the respectiveness of the later doth evince the former to be respective 11. That I have spoken on these subjects according to Gods revealed will and not proceeded a step farther then I was warranted to go by unavoidable deductions from clearest Scripture not enduring their boldness who interpret Gods revealed word by those Caprices of their brains which they presumptuously call Gods secret will alwayes implying this contradiction that it is secret and not secret the following Tracts will make apparent 12. As for those mysterious Questions 1. Why the word of God is preached rather to one sort of men then to another and sometimes to a more impious people then those to whom it is not preached 2. Why the means of conversion perseverance unto the end are not afforded alike to all to whom the Gospel is daily preached and many times in greater measure to an exceedingly evil people then to a people less evil 3. Why some mens lives are prolonged to a happy opportunity of true repentance whilest others are speedily cut off like Corah and his complices in a state of impenitence I never yet have inquired I never will * The secret things belong unto the Lord our God but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children 13. I shall conclude with an Admonition to the unstable and unlearned among the people that they beware of those Teachers who prefer the interest of their Faction before the honour of their God and will rather take part with a Presbyterian in making God to be the Author and cause of sin then live in any kind of charity with an Episcopal Divine who proves that Doctrine to be blasphemous Some have made themselves examples of this prodigious partiality whilest even in Print they have thought it fitter that a Brother of the

chuse and withall to execute the will of God and that it is Gods will the greatest part shall be damn'd it will then be a duty in the greatest part of men to go industriously to Hell and to do good will be a vice because it tends Heaven-wards and so to the crossing of an absolute irreversible decree Which since I have considered I have lesse wondered than I was wont at the conclusion of Carpocrates that the very worst of Actions are out of duty to be performed and that the soul shall be punisht with its imprisonment in the body until she hath filled up the number of her iniquities according to that Text Mat. 5. 29. Which we call Iniquities but they Duties And so indeed they would be if every thing in the world the means as well as the end were absolutely ordain'd and by consequence effected by God blessed for ever who can ordain nothing but good And such sin and Hell must be exceeding good if they could possibly be ordained by as absolute a decree as the Heavens and the earth the water and the air of which God said they are very good Secondly Gods revealed will being that all should repent and his secret will being that very few shall it follows thence That it is his will that his will should not be done and that God hath one will which is the same with the Devils and that when a Reprobate saies in the Pater noster thy will be done he vehemently prayes for his own damnation Which things as they were falsly objected in France against S. Austin so Prospers way to excuse him was to make protestations against any such Tenent as conditional Reprobation He sayes the very things in his Masters vindication which I have said in my own and cals the sequels of that Opinion which he disowns most sottish blasphem●es and not only prodigious but Devilish lies But he denies not that such ill consequences will follow upon the bold assertion of irrespective Reprobation which he does therefore very distinctly and very earnestly disclaim And he doth so much speak the very minde of S. Austin that he seems sometimes to speak out of his mouth too it being hard to say whether the Answers to the Objections of Vincentius doe truly belong to the Master or to the Scholar they being inserted in both their Works and that which is called Prospers by Vossius is ascribed to S. Austin by Ludovicus Lucius If I have made any unfriendly or injurious inference I will instantly retract it upon the least conviction that it is so But truly the Reasons which I have given have serv'd to confirm me in my adhaerence to my second inference which I yet farther prove by the remaining votes of Antiquity For though my former Citations are all to this purpose yet I will not repeat them but adde some others perhaps more fully and indisputably to the number 32. * And first I will set down the Confession of Mr. Calvin That † the Schoolmen and Ancients are wont to say Gods Reprobation of the wicked is in praescience of their wickednesse but he professes to believe with one more modern that God foresaw all future things by no other means than because he decreed they should be made or done Nor ought it saith he to seem absurd that God did not onely foresee but by his will appoint the fall of Adam and in him of his posterity The Ancients he confessed were quite of another mind but because he addes dubitanter and would have it thought that S. Austin was for his turn I will set down some of their words and begin with Austins 33. No man is chosen unless as differing from him that is rejected Nor know I how it is said that God hath chosen us before the foundation of the world unlesse it be meant of his prescience of faith and good works Iacob was not chosen that he might be made good but having been seen to be made good was capable of being chosen If S. Austin was so distinctly for Conditional Election and in those very works too which he afterwards writ as very sufficient to confute Pelagius he was infinitely rather for Conditional Reprobation as any man knows that knows any thing of him and may be seen in the same book to Simplician Esau would not and did not run for if he had he had attained by the help of God unlesse he would be made a Reprobate by a contempt of his vocation It seems unjust that without the merits of good or evil works God should love one and hate another Wicked men had no necessity of perishing from their not being elected but they were not therefore elected because they were fore-seen to be wicked through their own wilful prevarication God foresaw that they would fall by their own proper will and for that very reason did not separate them by election from the sons of perdition God is the Creator of all men but no man was created to the end that he may perish 34. I have given the more Testimonies out of Prosper because he is known to have been the Scholar and vindicator of S. Austin And to produce their suffrages is to imply all the rest they having been the onely Ancients whom their contentions against Pelagianisme made to speak sometimes to the great disadvantage of their own opinion as they do not stick to confesse themselves and we ought in all reason to take that for their Iudgement which we find delivered by themselves by way of Apology and vindication But though I need not I will adde some others He therefore brought the means of Recovery to all that whosoever perisht might impute it to himself who would not be cur'd when he had a Remedy whereby he might Even they that shall be wicked have power given them of Conversion and Repentance Gods love and hatred arises from his prescience of things to come or from the quality of mens works If the day is equally born for all how much rather is Jesus Christ When every man is called to a participation of the gift what is the reason that what God hath equally distributed should by humane interpretation be any way lessened * The fountain of life lies open to all nor is any man forbid or hindred from the right of drinking Let Dr. Twisse himself be heard to speak in this matter and that against Piscator both Antiarminians Damnatio est actus Judicis procedere debet secundum justitiam vindicativam at ne vestigium quidem Justitiae apparet in damnatione Reproborum He speaks of absolute irrespective Reprobation which Piscator set up Nam justitia neminem damnat nisi merentem At esse reprobum nequaquam significat mereri damnationem Sola Damnatio peccatoris splendere f●cit dei Justitiam Twissus in vind. Gr. de Praed. l. 1. Digr. 1. Sect. 4. p. 57. 35. Time and paper would fail me