acceptable and perfect will of God For why should he exhort us to so great purity both of Body and Mind if God Almighty in the work of Justification had no manner of regard to those as the Conditions of his Favour or if indeed we cannot so much as endeavour to be transformed or renewed of our selves by the exercise of the natural Faculties and Powers of our own minds but all must be oweing to an irresistible Grace by which we are carried away as by a mighty Torrent without any the least ability or strength to stemme so rapid and so impetuous a stream Whereas if we go a middle way betwixt these two extreams it will be very easie to reconcile these places of St. Paul to themselves and to one another to the faculties of men and the nature of things and to the rest of the Evangelical and Apostolical writings Follow peace with all men saith the Authour to the Hebrews c. 12. v. 14. and holiness without which no man shall see the Lord. But now if a man should say that the true and genuine sense of that place is this that no man shall see the Lord but he that cannot help it or he that must see and enjoy him whether he will or no this would certainly be looked upon by all men as a most absurd and impious Interpretation and yet this is no other than the necessary consequence of the Calvinistical Doctrine if Holiness be meerly owing to an irresistible Grace and if it be not then nothing can be plainer than that there is something of Endeavour or self-activity required on our parts But you will say then how comes it to pass that St. Paul tells us so often that we are justified only by Faith and by Grace and not by works why this with a very little attention upon what hath been said already will become very plain and easie For it is one thing to say that Repentance and good works are necessary to Salvation by way of merit and another to affirm that they are required as an indispensible Condition without which God will not impute Righteousness or make application of the passion of his Son to the person of a Sinner The first of these is manifestly false because as hath been said already all we can possibly do is no more than our Duty and our best performances are accompanied with so many and so great imperfections that instead of expiating for our grosser Crimes they themselves do stand in need of an Atonement But yet after all it is true that without Holiness and without Repentance no man shall see the Lord and it is so true that even in those to whom God is pleased to extend his Mercy at the very instant of Death which we have reason to believe to be but very few yet in these there is at least required an hearty sorrow and contrition for what is past out of a due sense of the foul nature of Sin or of the heinous malignity of Disobedience and ingratitude to so good and gracious a God and there is required also such a serious and devoutly fixt resolution of living better for the future if in case it shall please God to grant us a longer Life as may be not an obligation but a motive or inducement to his infinite Goodness which in such cases as these hath great latitude of operation to accept the will for the deed Neither does it follow in the least because Repentance and Obedience are required that therefore we are not justified by Grace or by Faith only for since our Repentance and our good works have no manner of merit or Atonement in themselves it is certain that that Atonement must be wholly oweing to something else and the Scripture tells us plainly what that is namely to the sufferings of Christ upon the Cross for our Sins the merit of which sufferings is by the Grace and favour of God without any pretence or title which we have otherwise to them appli'd to every true Believer as the reward of his Faith in him by whom that expiation is wrought which Faith though it can never be unaccompani'd with good works yet it implies in its very nature so perfect a reliance upon the merit and satisfaction of Christ for Justification and Redemption as does at the same time amount to an absolute Renunciation or an utter disowning of all kind of claim and title in our selves It is almost the same case as if a Malefactor having committed something worthy of Death should yet notwithstanding in pity to the innocence of his past Life before the commission of this offence have a Reprieve allowed him to put him upon a new Tryal and see how he would behave himself for the future and though neither his past nor future deportment be so absolutely blameless as that no advantage can be taken of them yet since he endeavours to make up in his Repentance what in his obedience is defective and since he plainly acknowledges himself a debter to the justice of the Law and reposeth his only confidence not in his own uprightness or sincerity but in the goodness of his Prince or Judge he is upon these Considerations pardoned which pardon though without such Considerations and Circumstances it had not been past yet the very nature of a pardon implies a guilt in him to whom it is given and a right of punishment in him that gives it so that notwithstanding these Conditions the offender's Life is merely and entirely an effect of Mercy because notwithstanding them he might very justly have been Condemned to Die This may be sufficient to have said concerning the first of those six accounts which I have promised to give of the first rise of the Predestinarian Doctrine that it is grounded upon a mistaken Interpretation of those places of St. Paul which are opposed only to those who had too high an opinion of themselves or were not so sensible as they ought to be of the grace and favour of God towards them by sending his Son into the world to be the propitiation for their Sins and of the necessity of that Grace in order to their Justification but were by no means intended to destroy the necessity of Obedience and a good Life or to discourage our honest endeavours at Perfection how short soever they be of that mark at which they are directed but it is rather on the contrary a new obligation to watchfulness and diligence in all our Conversation that God has been pleased to apply so mercifull and so effectual a remedy to those Diseases and Dangers to which either the frailty of our natures or the perversness of our wills assisted by the malicious and crafty insinuations of degenerate Spirits do continually expose us and I dare confidently appeal to any man let him be who he will who is not enslaved past all possibility of redemption to a Spirit of Bigotry and prejudice for a party without having patience to attend to
placing us in a State if not of perfect Innocence yet of Forgiveness and Justification ARTICLE XII Of good Works ALbeit that good works which are the fruits of Faith and follow after Iustification cannot put away our Sins and endure the severity of Gods Iudgement yet are they pleasing and acceptable to God in Christ and do spring out necessarily of a true and lively Faith in so much that by them a lively Faith may be as evidently known as a Tree discerned by the fruit In this Article there is nothing which I have not already sufficiently asserted and insisted upon in what I have said above about Justification and in what I have just now observed upon the Article of freewill And Lastly In what I have said concerning Perseverance and of the case of St. Peter and that confession which he made that Jesus was the Christ and the Son of the Living God ARTICLE XIII Of Works before Justification WOrks done before the grace of Christ and the inspiration of his Spirit are not pleasant to God for as much as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ neither do they make Men meet to receive Grace or as the School Authors say deserve Grace of Congruity yea rather for that they are not done as God hath Willed and Commanded them to be done we doubt not but they have the nature of Sin In which last recited Article though more difficulty may seem to lie then in the two foregoing yet upon a more particular survey of it it will appear that there is nothing which is not very consistent to those principles which I have laid down For First This Article asserts plainly that good Works may be done but that they are not pleasant to God before the Grace of Christ and the inspiration of his Spirit forasmuch as they spring not of Faith in Jesus Christ of which I have already spoken Secondly This Article does not deny that there is such a thing as Grace of Congruity and consequently that there may and must be some manner of preparation in our selves by which we are made capable of receiving it but only that we cannot deserve this grace of Congruity and that is very true for it is still an infinite condescention in the Spirit of God that it will stoop to our Infirmities and enter into so strict a Friendship with such polluted Beings as the best of Men of themselves are found to be Lastly When the Article tells us that before the Reception of this Grace even our good Works themselves have the nature of Sin it is not so to be understood that good Works proceeding out of an honest Heart and a pious Intention are or can be displeasing to God so far forth as they are done to good Purposes and out of good Designs for this would be to make them good and bad at the same time but before the Reception of this Grace they are tainted with much of imperfection in themselves and by their having the nature of Sin may be also meant that before the Reception of this Grace and without the satisfaction of Christ for the transgressions of our Lives they are no more available for our Justification than if they had been bad or wicked Works because no future innocence or virtue can be a proper Attonement or satisfaction for the guilt that is past so it being no more than we are always obliged to it cannot expiate for our former Sins Neither is it affirmed as I conceive in the tenth Article that we cannot turn or prepare our selves at all or in the least degree but that Article is rather to be explained by this expression in the thirteenth that we cannot so turn or prepare our selves as to deserve the grace of Congruity which I have already granted to be True and I have shown the Reason why it is so St. Paul tells us Rom 8. 7. That the Carnal Mind is at Enmity against God by which it is imply'd at least that there is a friendship and Congruity betwixt the spiritual mind and the mind of God And the case of the Heathen world in the first Chapter of that Epistle who were deserted by the spirit of God and given over to their own beastly Lusts and Affections to defile themselves with all manner of Wickedness and Uncleanness shews plainly that there is a common Grace or Influence of the Divine Spirit running through the World and that it never forsakes us till we by many acts of willful Sin have broken and violated those Congruities to which its presence is inseperably united according to the greater or lesser proportions in which those Congruities exert themselves though since no Man by the Assistances of this common Grace did ever live up to the perfection of the law of Nature I shall neither be so Uncharitable as to exclude them from all benefit in the Passion of Christ nor so presumptuous as to determine how far the Merits of that Passion may be applicable to them However if it be granted as it is all the reason in the World that it should what we find contained in the twentieth Article that it is not lawful for the Church it self to Ordain any thing that is contrary to Gods word neither may it so expound one place of Scripture that it be repugnant to another then it is easie to perceive what we are to pronounce of the Doctrines of irresistable Grace and of absolute Reprobation if we will adhere either to the Judgment of right Reason or to the sentiments of the Church of England it being impossible to maintain either of these Doctrines without explaining one Text after such a manner as to make it flatly contradictory to another and consequently to invalidate the Authority of the Scripture which if it be not consistent to its self can be of no force or obligation to us Besides what hath been already largely represented of the inconsistency of these Doctrines with the constant tenour design and current of the Scriptures if in the place of St. Paul so lately mentioned where he exhorts us to work out our Salvation with fear and trembling it be but granted as it cannot be avoided but it must be that there is a Power or ability of working supposed in them to whom this exhortation is made otherwise it would be a very impertinent Exhortation and if it be affirmed of the very next words for it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do that they are so to be understood as if he had said that we are able to do nothing of our selves but that God does all by an irresistable Grace then it is manifest that these two places though immediately Joyned are yet plainly contradictory to one another How is it possible then if we will follow the Counsel of the Church of England but we must expound this latter so as I have done since any other way they cannot be consistent together And what can be a greater disparagement to
Divine worship which must have continued still in force so long as those shadows were not done away by the more perfect Sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross Secondly By this means God gave the world the strongest assurance that it could possibly receive of his Veracity or of his fixt and unalterable resolution to perform on his part the Conditions of that new Covenant which he had entered into with Mankind whose sanction was founded in the Blood of his only Son it being not only unreasonable but impious and highly derogatory to the Honour and Majesty of God to suppose that the Divinity it self should condescend to appear in the form and likeness of a Servant should take our Flesh and our Nature upon him should stoop to those mean Indignities which were offered him by the vilest of men and should suffer such a shameful and ignominious Death upon the Cross by the hands of Sinners and in the scandalous Company of two notorious Malefactors and all this to no purpose in the world Thirdly A third reason why this Method was taken seems to me to have been not only that by faith in a crucified God we might have sufficient assurance of the remission of Sins but also that by his Resurrection and Ascension which were consequent upon that Crucifixion we might have the most sensible Demonstration that could be given us of the certainty of our own Resurrection and of those Eternal Joys that expect us in Heavenly places there being no way so proper to bring life and immortality to light as for him who first made so clear and perfect a discovery of them to rise himself from the Dead and become the first-fruits of them that slept and if to these three you will add likewise a fourth Consideration it may be this that if God had bestowed a gratuitous remission upon the world that is for I would not be mistaken in the use of that word a remission without any satisfaction made for Sin either by our selves or our Proxy it would have argued such an easiness in the Divine nature in the opinion of many men that it would rather have proved an encouragement to continue in Sin than an obligation as it ought to be in point of Gratitude to greater strictness and Holiness of Conversation as on the Contrary if for this reason without shedding of Blood there could be no forgiveness it follows plainly that nothing less than the Sacrifice of God himself upon the Cross would serve the turn because nothing short of this could possibly be a compleat Expiation and Atonement for the Sins of the whole world but it would be so far from it that all the Sacrifice that could be offered would fall infinitely short of the value of this and God might as well pardon us without any Atonement at all as by that which would be so infinitely disproportionate to the guilt of the offending Parties Further Though it be certain that God could not possibly give the world a more signal Demonstration of his love than by sending his only begotten and his entirely beloved Son to die for it for he that spared not his own Son but delivered him up for us all how shall he not with him also freely give us all things Rom. 8. 32 Yet this will but enhance and aggravate the Condemnation of our Disobedience if after so dear a purchase paid for our Redemption we shall still notwithstanding continue in an obstinate and wilful course of Sin for how shall we escape if we neglect so great Salvation And now having thus clearly explained what is meant by Justification namely the pardon of our Sins or the remission of that right of Punishment which is devolved upon God by them and having likewise seen by what means this Justification is to be procured that it cannot be obtained by any thing in our selves but that it is wholly oweing to the Grace and Mercy of God in and through the meritorious Death and passion of his Son and our Saviour Jesus Christ the Righteous who knew no Sin neither was guile found in his Mouth and who by the Sacrifice of himself once offered upon the Cross made a full perfect and compleat Satisfaction Propitiation and Redemption for the Sins of all Mankind We may now from hence give such a clear and solid Exposition of many places in the writings of St. Paul which are so miserably abused and stretched beyond their true extent by the Calvinistical Doctors as to make them for ever hereafter utterly useless to that cause and party which without that method which I have used cannot so convincingly be done by any other way of proceedure St. Paul tells us Rom. 11. v. 6. if we are saved by Grace then is it no more of Works otherwise Grace is no more Grace But if it be of Works then is it no more Grace otherwise Work is no more Work and Gal. 2. 16. Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law but by the Faith of Jesus Christ even we have believed in Jesus Christ that we might be justified by the Faith of Christ and not by the works of the Law For by the works of the Law shall no Flesh be justified Lastly Eph. 2. 4 5. God who is rich in Mercy for his great love wherewith he loved us even when we were dead in Sins hath quickned us together with Christ by Grace ye are saved And again v. 8 9. For by Grace are ye saved through Faith and that not of your selves it is the gift of God not of works lest any man should boast Which places together with several others of a like purport and signification are so far strained beyond their true sence and meaning by Calvinistical Interpreters as if God in the justification of a Sinner had no regard to any previous Conditions of Repentance or good Works but that he proceeded perfectly by an arbitrary Goodness and had not the least respect to any other Consideration whatsoever which it is plain does not only destroy the necessity of Obedience and a good Life but renders all the exhortations and Encouragements to it which are so plentifully and so pathetically interspersed up and down the Scriptures both of the old and the new Testament and all the arguments or menaces made use of to deter us from sinful gratifications or desires not only useless but ridiculous and consequently very unbecoming the Majesty of that God in whose name and Authority they are delivered and St. Paul would be very inconsistent with himself if this opinion were true when in the 12th of his Epistle to the Romans v. 1 2. he exhorts them with so much passion as he does I beseech you Brethren by the Mercies of God that ye present your Bodies a living Sacrifice holy acceptable unto God which is your reasonable Service and be not conformed to this world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that ye may prove what is that good that
Divine Grace by considering only in a Philosophical way the power of God and his ability to produce those effects which exceed any humane Efficiency or Skill and by attending to the nature of that Doctrine which Christ is said to have Taught which conduced so much to the Benefit and advantage of Mankind compared with that human or traditionary Testimony which has been handed down to us through so many Centuries of years by Men of unquestionable Credit and Virtue who neither had nor could propound any design of temporal advantage to themselves but on the contrary met with Trouble and Persecution and expcted to meet with no other for their Pains I say upon these Grounds any reasonable Man may of himself believe that there was such a Person as Jesus Christ Born of a pure Virgin who lived a most Holy and Exemplary Life wrought very many and very great Miracles and Wonders among Men who was the Promulger and Preacher of a most wise useful and Glorious Gospel to the World who Died upon the Cross to Seal and ratifie that Covenant which he had made between God and Men and who after his Crucifixion arose again from the Dead and ascended in a Glorious and Triumphant manner into Heaven having obtained a compleat Victory over Death and Sin where he still continues performing the Office of an everlasting Mediator and making a perpetual Intercession for us all This may be believed barely upon the Credit of that Historical Testimony which is given to it but if by Faith we mean a practical and saving Belief of these Truths which by being set home upon our hearts and being always present upon our Minds shall have a lasting and a powerful influence upon our Lives this as I conceive cannot be had or hoped for without the special influence of the Grace of God for the same Reasons upon which I have already asserted an habitual Goodness not to be obtained without the assistance and influence of the same Spirit And therefore when Peter made that Confession Matth. 16. 16. Thou art Christ the Son of the living God Jesus answered v. 17. Blessed art thou Simon Bar-jona For Flesh and Blood hath not revealed it unto thee but my Father which is in Heaven Not that it was Impossible to come to the Knowledge of this in any degree without asupernatural Revelation For several of the Jews did from the greatness of his Miracles and the Wisdom of his Doctrine suspect and partly believe him to be the Prophet that was to come by which they meant either the Messias or his Forerunner and the Centurion who cannot be thought to have received his Information by any such Miraculous way when he saw our Saviour giving up the Ghost and considered the dreadful Agony of Nature at the instant of his Passion said of a truth this was the Son of God But such a Belief as Peter had of this Truth that is a practical and deeply rooted Sense of the Truth of what he said whereby his heart was changed and his affections subdued and his whole Man captivated into the Obedience of Christ and his Gospel this cannot be revealed by Flesh and Blood which is apt to suggest thoughts and invite to practices of a quite contrary Nature but it is owing to the Grace of God and to the supernatural Illuminations and Influences of the Divine Spirit working upon those who have experienced the new Birth and are become Regenerate and Born again into newness of Life by the adoption of Grace Thus have I endeavoured to explain the operations of the Holy Spirit upon the hearts of Men and especially of the Faithful so as neither to make them useless with Pelagius nor irresistable with Calvin nor unintelligible with some of our Modern Writers who are cry'd up by their Adherents for nothing more then that they understand not what they say or Write nor the other what they Read or hear and who do on both hands exactly fulfil that witty and Judicious Character which Lucretius gives of Heraclitus and his admirers Clarus ob obscuram linguam magis inter Inanes Quam de grates inter Graias qui vera requirunt Omnia enim stolidi magis admirantur amantque Inveris quae subverbis latitantia cernunt Veraque constituunt quae bellè tangere possunt Aures lepido quae sunt fucata sonore But now that I may not seem in what I have Written upon this weighty Question to depart from the Sentiments of the Church of England to whose Authority I shall always pay as I am in Duty obliged a most profound respect I will here Transcribe those Articles of Hers in which this point is Concerned which are these three which follow ARTICLE X. Of Freewill 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 In which Article it is plainly imply'd both that we have some natural strength and that we are capable of performing some good Works though that strength be so imperfect that we cannot by the sole Power and Virtue of it prepare and turn our selves to Faith and calling upon God neither are those Works pleasant and acceptable to God in themselves by reason of that mixture of imperfection with which they are attended and because they are interwoven with many bad ones of both which Causes of their non-acceptation I have already spoken without the assistances of Grace by which the Crudities of the carnal and concupiscible Life in us are attenuated and exalted which would otherwise ascend in gross and malignant Fumes darkning the understanding and depraving the will so as neither the one could discern its Duty with that Clearness nor the other execute it with that entire Resignation of it self to the conduct and governance of Reason and with that inward Fervo◠Chearfulness and Sincerity which is necessary to make our performances acceptable and well-pleasing in the sight of God and which is that which this Article calls a good will to which as well in its Being as continuance and preservation the Grace of God is of necessity required Neither would our good works though assisted and improved by these supernatural auxiliaries from above be acceptable and pleasant in his sight that is so as to be subservient to the great ends of Happiness and Salvation because in themselves they are no more than what by the Laws of Reason and self-Preservation we are obliged to do and because they are allay'd and tempered by so many Misdemeanours whose Guilt all our after-amendment can never wash away if it were not for the Blood of Christ which God has accepted as an Attonement and Propitiation for our Sins and for the
Typical or Prophetick reasons seems clear to me from the testimony of St. Paul himself Rom. 9. 11 12. For the Children being not yet born neither having done any good or evil that the purpose of God according to Election might stand not of works but of him that calleth it was said unto her Rebecca the elder shall serve the younger As much as to say that God made a distinction where there was really none as to the Children themselves but only they were both of them Typical persons the one was a type or shadow of the Mosaick dispensation the other of that of Christ and the difference put between them was intended to shew us that by the works of the Law or by an exact obedience which is morally impossible no man shall be justified but that after all we must owe our happiness not to our selves but to him that calleth that is to the mercy and grace of God in and through the merits of his Son apply'd to us by a stedfast and lively Faith upon the Evangelical condition of Repentance and that upon such terms as these God will call us that is he will do that as an act of Mercy which as an act of Justice he was not obliged to do To the same purpose are the next words as hath been said already It was said unto her the elder shall serve the younger For you cannot fairly expound it in any other sense but this That the Oeconomy of the Law was to be subservient to and was to usher in that nobler and more perfect dispensation of the Gospel of which and of the sufferings of Christ who purchased that advantagious Covenant for us with his Blood the Ceremonies and Sacrifices of the Law were plainly significative and expressive For it is clear notwithstanding this that Jacob together with his Wives and Children did afterwards pay that homage and obedience to his Brother Esau which by the custom of those times was usually given to the elder Brother and is very inconsistent with that temporal Dominion which is pretended by this Blessing of Isaac to be conferred upon his younger Son Jacob Gen. 33. Besides in the blessing if it may be called one which Isaac bestowed upon Esau we find these words Gen. 27. 4. By thy Sword shalt thou live and shalt serve thy Brother which two things taken both of them in the literal and first Sense are inconsistent with one another For to live by the Sword is to live by Conquest by Rapine and Spoile and to Serve is to live in Subjection and to obey It is necessary therefore that they be understood in different Senses since without a manifest Contradiction it is impossible to expound them both the same way by thy Sword shalt thou live that is thou shalt be the Father of Warlike and predatory Nations 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nations that live upon Spoile and Rapine without regard to Equity or Justice that is perhaps of the Arabs Turks or Tartars all whose originals at this day depend upon very obscure Conjectures and they may either one or more of these people owe their discent to Esau as well as to any other But then thou shalt serve thy Brother neither must nor can be understood in the same way and the clean contrary of it is at this day manifestly true but it is to be understood not of his Posterity but his Person which as I have shown was Typically designative of that State of the Church which was to be subservient to and introductive of the more noble and lasting Establishment of the Gospel All which may be still further confirmed from the story of Ishmael the Son of Hagar of whom the Angel of the Lord gives this Character Gen. 16. 12. He will be a wild man his hand will be against every man and every man's hand against him which is to be understood of his Posterity he being generally thought and that by the Jews themselves who call them Ishmaelim or Ishmaelites to be the Father of the Turks of whom this Character is exactly true which Ishmaelites may also for ought we know be the same with the Edomites or Sons of Esau too that is to say the descendants of Esau by his Wife Mahalath the Daughter of Ishmael Gen. 28. 9. But now notwithstanding he was to rule and to be so powerful that all the rest of Mankind would scarce be an equal match for him which is the case of the Turks at this Day yet whatever he was in his Posterity in himself he was the Son of a Bond-woman and a Servant a person Typical of the legal Administration which was in time to be rejected to make way for the Son of the Free-woman that is to say the Gospel which Christ the descendant of Isaac and the rightful Heir of all things was to bring into the world For Hagar and consequently Ishmael her Son is as St. Paul saith Mount Sinai in Arabia that is to say the legal dispensation and as the persons of Ishmael and Esau so likewise those of Isaac and Jacob too had a double respect the one to the natural seed the other to the Children of the promise according to that place of St. Paul already cited Rom. 9. 8. They which are the Children of the Flesh these are not the Children of God but the Children of the promise are counted for the seed Again Gen. 27. 40. We find it thus written It shall come to pass when thou shalt have dominion that thou shalt break his Yoke from off thy Neck I speak with all due submission to better Judgments but indeed I think nothing can be more impertinent and trifling than this Translation For it is plainly an Identical proposition and is as much as to say when thou shalt have dominion thou shalt have dominion for to have dominion and to break a Yoke are both of them the same thing in the Hebrew it is thus Vehajah caasher Tarid 70. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which the Roman Edition renders Erit cum deposueris solveris jugum illius there shall be a time when thou shalt lay down and loose his Yoke from off thy Neck St. Jerom. Erit quando depones solves jugum illud de collo tuo the Scholiast in the Roman Edition 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and it shall be when thou art bent or humbled or when thou shalt submit thy self that thou shalt break this Yoke from off thy Neck which manifestly respects the calling of the Jews by laying aside that Yoke to which they now stoop with a voluntary obedience and which it either is or has been in all their powers to shake off from themselves which is as much as to say they will never be an happy people never equal in any respect to their younger Brother Jacob Esau in this case being considered as their Father till laying aside their obstinacy and perversness and laying down the intolerable Yoke of the Mosaick bondage they shall submit themselves
the Cause all his Prayers do either return into his own Bosome that is they signifie just nothing at all or else they flie in his Face and upbraid him with not giving Glory to God by an humble acknowledgment and a right use of that Freedom which those very Prayers do naturally suppose For to what purpose do we pray if all things are so unalterably predetermin'd that they cannot be reversed and if it be so that nothing can prevail with God to alter or to suspend his decrees or why in truth should he be moved more by our Prayers than by our Curses by the supplications of those who call themselves the Sanctifi'd and the Godly party than by the Blasphemies and Execrations of those who are not less wrongfully stiled the wicked and unregenerate part of the world when both of them with respect to us are equally Necessary and it is impossible for those that do these things to do otherwise than they do or is not this to vilifie and ridicuel if not perfectly destroy the Christian Life when at this rate the worst actions which we can commit are very excuseable things and our Duties are so far from having any rational expectation of acceptance at the hands of God that they are rather so many pregnant Instances of the Frailty and infirmity of our Natures overborn by the strength and power of those eternal Decrees which it is impossible to Conquer and against which without their own help we cannot strive But tell us that Prayers Almes-giving Good works a good Conversation and the like are means some way or other conducing by the divine appointment to the happiness of men to the procuring those blessings for which and to the averting those Judgments against which we pray that he that has predestin'd the end has also predetermin'd the means he that has resolv'd from all Eternity to be pleased with such a set number or company of Men has also appointed that they shall please him by his acceptance or his taking in good part such or such Actions which he has before hand determined they shall do or by his approbation of certain habits and dispositions of Mind which he has always resolv'd shall be iresistibly infus'd into them The English of all which is That they shall be happy without any reason at all if Men can be happy that never were â—ood or if Men can be good whose â—ctions are governed not by choice but by necessity and resistless fate But let us admit that he does predetermine the means as well as he does the end which it cannot be avoided but he must do in that Hypothesis which makes all things necessary what is the natural consequence of this but that when by the same eternal Decrees he reprobates so unequal a proportion of Mankind he does also by the same act of his Will necessitate them to the Commission of such Actions which he has resolved beforehand though they be necessary shall be displeasing to him and for which as if they had been voluntary he has decreed to condemn them to everlasting Torments or rather for no reason at all but what is founded in his own Arbitrary will and power there being no manner of natural Connexion betwixt necessity and punishment or reward But is it not a most astonishingly strange and surprizing thing that Men should be so obstinate against their own sense and experience and that they should perpetually deny what they can never help thinking to be true What is it for which we so much decry the Papists for asserting their bold and contradictious Doctrine of Transubstantiation Is it not for this reason that their opinion includes in it so flat a repugnancy to their own senses That it is so full of absurdities and contradictions that let them pretend what they please they can never heartily believe it themselves Neither can any Man indeed be said properly to believe such Propositions as have no ground of credibility in them but on the contrary are big with Arguments against the belief of themselves And is not this reason every whit as good against those who subject all humane actions to an unalterable fate For every Man let him say what he pleases in a fit of Disputation yet he does naturally seem to himself to be free and unrestrain'd in most of the actions of his life neither can there be any better Argument of that freedom which he denies than that he finds himself indu'd with a power of affirming or denying so contrary to the natural sentiments of his own mind and understanding One Man he looks upon himself to be wise another just a third merciful and good a fourth he is temperate chast and sober and upon account of these several Accomplishments they all put a proportionable value upon themselves and do at the same time despise or hate their Neighbours if they find them destitute of the same virtuous dispositions and qualifications of Mind and all this they do upon a supposition of freedom otherwise necessity makes all things equal they would have no reason to pride themselves in doing what they could not avoid It would be the greatest nonsense in the world when Fate and Mechanism are perfect Strangers either to praise or to disgrace for any Man to value himself or to despise and much more hate another And as Pride without a supposition of Liberty is a most ridiculous Passion a Passion that deserves more contempt than it bestows upon others so is Anger too unless we admit a liberty in that thing or person which is the object of our anger whereby it might have behav'd it self otherwise than it has but to be angry with things that are acted by necessity is the anger of Dogs that bark at the Moon it is what Solomon calls the Anger of Fools and such may be angry if they please with the Wind for blowing too rudely in their faces or with the Dust for annoying them in a Summer's day Sometimes it is a Man's unhappiness to commit a grievous fault or rather according to this Hypothesis to be fallen into a grievous misfortune for which some are angry others are sorry and some endeavour to make him better for the future by giving him good and wholsom advice and by shewing him the folly or wickedness of what is past and these last no question look upon themselves as very friendly and charitable Men which it is manifest they cannot do but upon supposition that they might have done otherwise if they had pleased for Fate admits of no such thing as Charity Friendship Wisdom or Virtue but it is the same necessity neither commendable nor blame-worthy in any which displays it self by different effects in them all which makes one of them commit such an action another censure a third pity it and a fourth apply himself to remedy the like inconvenience for the future by his fruitless advice and counsel which can never hope to stand in competition with the
is more plain than the reason and the usefulness of his Intercession for Salvation being annext to Faith and Repentance and a good Life and the satisfaction of Christ being apply'd to the person of a Believer upon these conditions which conditions are not so fully performed by any as they might be nor equally by all it is manifest there must needs be very many whose performance is so weak and imperfect that without any breach of that Covenant which God has entered into with Mankind he might very justly abandon them to eternal Flames to be tormented for ever with and by the Devil and his Angels but that the intercession of Christ extends and enlarges the benefit of his satisfaction and makes it more operative and available than otherwise it would have been But besides the Prophetick Office of Christ under which I include his example and his preaching and the Priestly to which his Sacrifice and his Intercession in virtue of that Sacrifice belong there is also his Kingship to be considered one great part of the exercise of which consists in his sitting in Judgment at the last day to pronounce the irreversible sentence of Death or Life upon all Men but there can be no Judgment where there is no difference made betwixt the Moral good or evil of things for to judge is to act with reason and Fate and Morality are inconsistent together which Fate if it were the only principle and spring of Action the Reprobate at the last day need not stand in justification of themselves from other Topicks as they are made to do in Scripture but they need only say that what they had done they could not avoid which being a very reasonable excuse and yet not urged where the Pleas of the Wicked are set down by our Saviour himself it is a very powerful and convincing Argument that he will at that day proceed by other measures and that he will not much less did he design it from all Eternity condemn the meanest Wretch that ever wore the shape and title of a Man for any but voluntary and wilfully committed Sins Shall not the Judge of all the Earth do right said Abraham to his God Gen. 18. 25. That be far from thee to do after this manner Which Expostulation and Appeal of his to the Divine Justice must either be acknowledged to be very frivolous and nothing at all to the purpose or else we must be forced to confess that Christ when he sustains the person and character of a Judge and a Judge of all the Earth as he will do at the last day he will not proceed by Arbitrary measures which know no distinction of Persons or of Causes but condemn or save by unaccountable methods without any regard to reason or to justice the exercise of which is founded upon the differences of Moral good and evil all which differences must come to nothing where the liberty of humane Actions is destroyed but he will act with us upon a supposition of Freedom for the improvement or abuse of which we shall reap a proportionable punishment or reward And as nothing is or can be more contrary to the whole current of the Scripture than the Doctrine of absolute Reprobation so neither is there any thing more destructive of that meek charitable and humble frame of Mind which it was the design of the Gospel to establish in the World the natural and immediate tendency of such Doctrines in the minds of inconsiderate Men though if they consider all they have no reason to be proud being to create a Spiritual Pride and overweaning Conceit of themselves together with a contempt and hatred of all others whom they call the Reprobate and are pleased to look upon as the Dross and Off-scouring of the World There neither is nor can be any other opinion which is so naturally fitted to make distinctions and parties amongst Men or to preserve those distinctions when they are made for what greater or what wider difference can there possibly be thought of than between the Reprobate and the Elect Those who are irrecoverably given over to everlasting Torments and those who are out of all danger of miscarrying and past the possibility of not being as happy as God and happiness themselves can make them Or what greater indignity or reproach can be cast upon one Man by another than for some to separate from the rest under pretence that they are rejected and forsaken by God This being if those that separate would speak their minds one of the true reasons of their separation as it is likewise the strongest Prop and Pillar by which that uncharitable Schism is supported for I reckon that there are six accounts especially to be given of the first rise of this absurd and impious Doctrine of absolute Reprobation and of its continuance in the World to this day The first of which is that inconsiderate Interpreters not minding the whole scope and drift of the Writings of St. Paul but looking only to the immediate seeming sense of one single Proposition and not considering that neither so well as they should have done have stretched the interpretation of those places beyond their natural extent wherein St. Paul sets himself in opposition to the Jews who expected Justification from the Law of Moses or to the Judaizing Christians who would have retained that Law either in whole or in part as thinking that Justification could not be had without it or lastly to any other who expected Salvation from an exact observance of the Duties of natural Religion or of the Law of Nature For by the Law in the Writings of St. Paul both these are promiscuously understood as might be shewn from several places but that of Gal. 5. 22 23. is sufficient The Fruit of the Spirit is Love Joy Peace long Suffering Gentleness Goodness Faith Meekness Temperance against such there is no Law that is whether of Moses or of Nature And the same may very well be the sense of all those places where he says That the knowledge of Sin is by the Law and that if it had not been for the Law he had not known Sin and that by the works of the Law no Flesh can be justified and that where there is no Law neither is there any Transgression All which may very well be understood of the Law of Nature as well as of that of Moses it being equally true of both Now the reasons why Justification could not be obtained by the works of the Law of Moses were these two First That that Law containing the Types and Shadows of things to come when once their Antitypes appeared in the World they could be of no longer value or signification And Secondly That besides that those legal Rites and Ceremonies had a respect to future events which events were now exactly fulfilled they did also under them contain a shadow of that inward sincerity and purity of Mind without which notwithstanding all the accuracy of external Observations
liberty of the Will but speaking of that famous Difficulty concerning the inconsistence of the Divine Prescience with it he says that we are not to deny the truth of a Proposition or Notion which we feel and of which we are intimately conscious to our selves for the sake of a Being whose Modes of operation and ways of scientifical Intuition by reason of his infirnity we cannot comprehend And I do appeal to any Man in the World let him be who he will and of what perswasion soever if Posidonius in a raging fit of the Gout or Stone should yet out of an affected piece of Stoicism pretend that all that while he feels no manner of Pain but that he is perfectly at ease and should not have suspected himself to be at all discomposed were it not for the Visits of his Friends and the formality of a Nurse and a Physician by his Bed-side that he is listning all this while with unspeakable Delight to the Tunefull and Melodious Musick of the Spheres when yet his Groans and wry Faces do sufficiently confess that he feels no such Harmony within would not every one say that he does not believe himself and that he has no reason to expect that any one else should believe him And shall we not with equal reason say the same of him who will needs argue and dispute himself into a necessary Agent notwithstanding he feels himself inwardly to be Free Or how is it possible for us ever to look on any Proposition as True when the universal Seemings and Appearances of Mankind and those not of things without us but such as if they be any thing at all are a part of our very Nature and are always most intimately present with and in us shall yet notwithstanding be looked upon as no better than Dreams and Delusions of a sickly Mind This is the first Answer to the first Advantage that may be taken from the consideration of that Lucta or Contention which there is between the two Principles of the Flesh and Spirit as that Contention is described by St. Paul But Secondly The second Answer may be that if this place of St. Paul or any other be to be understood of an absolute and uncontrollable Necessity overruling all actions and thwarting perpetually all our good Desires so as without the help of an irresistible Grace they can never produce their effect this will destroy not only the Necessity but the nature of Obedience for Obedience and Compulsion are inconsistent together to Obey is one thing and to be compelled is another not only of a quite different but of a quite contrary Nature Thirdly Since it is supposed at least from this very place of St. Paul that there are such good Desires implanted in us by Nature which yet for all that are everlastingly overborn without being able to attain that end to which they are directed what is this but to represent God as the most cruel and arbitrary Being that can possibly be conceived who does not only plague and torment us in the other World for no reason but his own arbitrary Will and Pleasure but to compleat the Torment of those whom he has predestined to Eternal Flames and to signalize his utmost Vengeance and Displeasure against them He begins the Tragedy in this Life and creates in them a longing after Happiness and Virtue only to make them the more exquisitely Miserable by an everlasting Frustration Fourthly and Lastly St. Paul himself in the beginning of the next Chapter hath these words For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made us free from the law of Sin and Death For what the law could not do in that it was weak through the Flesh God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful Flesh and for Sin condemned Sin in the Flesh that the Righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit In which words it is plain beyond all possible colour of Exception that we are capable by Nature of paying some sort of Obedience to the Laws of God and right reason for whatever is weak is acknowledged to have a comparative though imperfect Strength and whatever wants to be fulfilled or compleated is at the same time acknowledged to have something of its own And so St. Paul tells us elsewhere not that we cannot possibly do any good work or think so much as a good thought of our selves by our own natural ability and power but that we have all Sinned and come short of the glory of God that is that our Obedience though it is not nothing and though it may be syncere yet it is imperfect and stands in need upon account of its defects of some other Expiation than what we are able to make so that after all it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth though we may do both but of God that sheweth Mercy It is so far from being true that by reason of the Original corruption of our natures we are carried forth with such an irresistible violence to all manner of Evil that it needs a perpetual Miracle to hinder the most profligate wretches from being worse than they are which yet Mr. Calvin does expresly assert and I have shewn that by his principles he is bound to do it that on the contrary it is acknowledged by St. Paul himself that there are very strong desires and tendencies to Goodness very powerful inclinations and breathings after Virtue implanted in us by nature and it is manifest by experience that all manner of Wickedness even in those who are arrived at the utmost perfection of degeneracy and Lewdness is at first accompanied with a sensible regret and pain that every man in the cool and unprejudiced retirement of his thoughts condemnes it and finds always in it an harsh and grating Incongruity to the natural grain and byass of his mind Nemo repente fuit turpissimus it requires a great deal of exercise and practice for a man to arrive at such a desperate pitch of Madness and Folly as to sin without any reluctancy or pain without some inward blushing and secret shame without a silent Confession of his Guilt and an earnest though fruitless and impracticable Desire that his lost Innocence might be retrived Every man is naturally desirous of a good name and a good name in the common judgment of all Mankind not excepting those themselves who have most grosly forfeited their Title to it is only to be purchased by worthy Inclinations and virtuous Deeds and for what those Deeds and those Inclinations are we have the same unanimous and universal consent All men admire and envy the Virtues of those who are better than themselves they excuse their own Follies by comparing them with those of other men and they uphold their drooping Spirits which would otherwise be oppressed by the too heavy weight of guilt and shame either by such Intemperance as removes from