ΘΕΟΜΑΧΙΑ
ΑΥΤΕΞΟΥΣΙΑΣΤΙΚΗ
or
A Display of Arminianism:
being
a discovery of the old Pelagian idol free-will, with the new
goddess contingency,
advancing themselves into the throne of the God of heaven, to
the prejudice of his grace, providence, and supreme dominion over the
children of men;
wherein
the main errors by which they are fallen off from the
received doctrine of all the Reformed churches, with their opposition in
divers particulars to the doctrine established in the Church of England,
are discovered and laid open out of their own writings and confessions, and
confuted by the word of God.
Produce your cause, saith the Lord: bring forth your strong reasons, saith the King of
Jacob. — Isa. xli. 21.
Woe unto him that striveth with his Maker! Let the
potsherd strive with the potsherds of the earth. — Isa. xlv.
9
Θές, ὦ Ἀκεσίλαε,
κλίμακα καὶ μόνος ἀνάβηθι εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν. — Constant., apud
Socrat., lib. i. cap. 10.
Prefatory note.
The relation of man to his Creator
has engaged the attention of earnest and thoughtful minds, from the days of
the patriarch of Uz to the most recent controversies of modern times. The
entrance of sin into the world has vastly complicated this relationship; so
that, considered in its various bearings, it involves some of the most
difficult problems with which the human intellect has ever attempted to
grapple. The extent to which the intellect itself has been weakened and
beclouded by the corruption of our nature, renders us the less able to
penetrate into the deep mysteries of human duty and destiny. Whether man
sins now as essentially affected with the taint of the first sin, and
involved in the responsibilities of the first sinner, or sins wholly on his
own account and by his own free act, under the bias of no connection with
Adam, except what connection obtains between example on the one hand and
imitation on the other? whether, on the supposition of a scheme of saving
grace, grace is simply divine and external aid to the will of man, already
operating freely in the direction of what is good, and so establishing a
meritorious claim upon God for the bestowal of such aid, or a supernatural
influence creating in man the very liberty itself to will and to do what is
good? and whether, in the latter view of divine grace, as bestowed in
divine sovereignty, and therefore according to a divine purpose, it can be
reconciled with human responsibility? — are the questions which produced
the sharp encounter of keen and conflicting wits between Pelagius and Augustine of old.
Towards the middle of the ninth century, these questions
again assumed distinctive prominence in the history of theological
speculation. Gottschalc, a monk
of Orbais, distinguished himself by his advocacy of the doctrines of Augustine. It was the doctrine
of predestination chiefly on which he insisted; and the controversy in his
hands assumed this peculiar modification, that not merely the application
of gracious influence, but the reference of the atonement, was exhibited as
under the limit and regulation of the divine sovereignty and purpose. Not
that in this respect he was at variance with Augustine, but the point seems
to have been specially and formally mooted in the discussions of this age.
His view of predestination embraced an element which may be reckoned an
advance on the Augustinian doctrine; for according to him, predestination
was twofold, comprehending the punishment of the reprobate as well as the
salvation of the elect; but while he held the predestination of men to the
punishment of their sin, he was far from holding, as his opponents alleged,
that they were predestinated to the commission of sin. Council warred with
council in the case of Gottschalc. Gottschalc himself expiated by a death in prison his
audacious anticipation of the rights of private judgment and free inquiry
in a dark age.
The next revival of the same controversy in substance,
though under certain modifications, took place after the Reformation. It
is remarkable that at this period discussion on these weighty questions
sprang up almost simultaneously in three different parts of Europe, and in
three schools of theology, among which a wide diversity existed. The
shackles of mediæval ignorance were burst asunder by the awakening
intelligence of Europe; and if we except the controversy between
Protestantism and Popery, on which the Reformation hinged, no point could
more naturally engage the mind, in the infancy of its freedom, than the
compatibility of the divine purpose with human responsibility; on the
solution of which problem the nature of redemption seemed to depend, and
around which, by the spell of the very mystery attaching to it, human
speculation in all ages had revolved. When an interdict still lay on
theological inquiry, Thomists and Scotists had discussed it in its
metaphysical form, and under a cloud of scholastic subtleties, lest the
jealousies of a dominant church should be awakened. But now, when a
measure of intellectual freedom had been acquired, and the dispute between
free-will on the one hand and efficacious grace on the other involved a
practical issue between Rome and Geneva, the question received a treatment
almost exclusively theological.
First, perhaps, in the order of time, this
discussion was revived in Poland, and in connection with the heresies of
Socinus. The divinity of Christ, the
nature of the atonement, and the corruption of human nature, are all
doctrines essentially connected. It is because Christ is divine that an
adequate satisfaction has been rendered, in his sufferings, to the claims
of divine justice; and such an atonement is indispensable for our
salvation, if man, because dead in sin, has no power to achieve salvation
by any merit of his own. A denial of the total corruption of our nature
seems essential to the Unitarian system; so far there is common ground
between the systems of Pelagius and Socinus. It is not wonderful that this
measure of identity should develop consequences affecting the doctrine of
the divine purposes and of predestination though it is beyond our limits
to trace either the necessary or the historical evolution of these
consequences. Spanheim, in his
“Elenchus
Controversiarum,” p. 237, ascribes the origin of the Arminian
controversy in Holland to certain emissaries, Ostorodius and Voidovius, dispatched by the Polish Socinians into the Low
Countries, for the purpose of propagating the tenets of their sect. Their
tenets respecting the Trinity and the atonement took no root in these
countries; but Spanheim affirms
that it was otherwise in regard to certain opinions of Socinus, “quæ ille recoxit ex Pelagii disciplinâ,” on
predestination, free-will, and the ground of justification before God.
About the same time, the Church of Rome was shaken to its
centre by the same controversy. The Jesuits had always Pelagian leanings,
and in the Council of Trent their influence was triumphant, and, so far as
its decrees stereotype the Romish creed, sealed the doom of the waning
authority of Augustine.
Louis Molina, in 1588, made an attempt
in his lectures on “The Concord of Grace and Free-will ” to unite the
conflicting theories. The Jesuits regarded his attempt with no small
favour. A lengthened controversy arose, in which Molinism, as partly a
deviation from, and partly a compromise of, the fundamental principles of
the Augustinian system, was effectually assailed by the piety of Jansen, the learning of Arnauld, and the genius of Pascal, till the bull Unigenitus secured a
lasting triumph for Jesuitism, by the authoritative condemnation of the
doctrines of Augustine, as
declared in the collection of extracts from his writings which Jansen had published under the title
“Augustinus.”
But it was in Holland that the controversy on this point
arose which had the chief influence on British theology, and reduced the
questions at issue to the shape under which they are discussed by Owen in his “Display of Arminianism.” On the death of an eminent
theologian of the name of Junius,
Arminius was called to the vacant
chair in the University of Leyden. Gomar, a professor in the same university, and the
Presbytery of Amsterdam, opposed his appointment on the ground of his
erroneous principles. On giving a pledge that he would teach nothing at
variance with the Belgic Confession and
Catechism, he was allowed to enter on his office as professor in
1603. Gomar and he again fell into a
dispute on the subject of predestination, — the origin of prolonged
troubles and controversies in the Church of Holland. Gomar and his party were supported by the majority of the
clergy in the church. Arminius
depended upon the political support of the state. The former sought a
national synod to adjudicate on the prevailing controversy. The latter,
having the ear of the state, contrived to prevent it. Stormy scenes
ensued, amid which Arminius died,
and Episcopius became the leader of
the Remonstrants, as his followers were called, from a remonstrance which
they submitted in 1610 to the States of Holland and West Friesland. The
Remonstrants levied soldiers to sustain their cause, and the provinces
resounded with military preparations. At last, profiting by the confusion,
Maurice, the head
of the house of Orange, by a series of daring and reckless movements,
seized upon the government of the States. In deference to Gomar and his party, he convened a general
synod on the 13th November 1618. The doctrines of Arminius were condemned, and five articles were drawn up
and published as the judgment of the synod on the points in dispute. The
first asserts election by grace, in opposition to election on the ground of
foreseen excellence; in the second God is declared to have willed that
Christ should efficaciously redeem all those, and those only, who
from eternity were chosen to salvation; the third and fourth relate to the
moral impotence of man, and the work of the Spirit in conversion; and the
fifth affirms the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. The Church
of France embodied these articles among her own standards. The Church of
Geneva as cordially acquiesced in them.
Four English deputies, Drs Carleton, Hall,
Davenant, and Ward, together with Dr Balcanquhal from Scotland, by the command of James VI., repaired to Holland, and took their place in the Synod of
Dort, in accordance with a request of the Dutch Church to be
favoured with the aid and countenance of some delegates from the British
Churches. The proceedings of the Synod of
Dort had the sanction of these British divines. No doubt can be
entertained that the Thirty-nine Articles of the Church of England were not
Arminian; but on the elevation of Laud to the see of Canterbury, Arminianism grew strong
within its pale. A royal prohibition was issued against all discussion of
the controverted points in the pulpit. All ecclesiastical preferments at
the disposal of the Crown were bestowed on those who leaned to Arminian
views. “The fates of our church,” says Owen, in the note to the reader prefixed to the following
treatise, “having of late devolved the government thereof into the hands of
men tainted with this poison, Arminianism became backed with the powerful
arguments of praise and preferment, and quickly prevailed to beat poor
naked truth into a corner.” It would, however, be neither fair nor correct
if the statement of these facts left an impression that Arminianism made
progress solely through the help of royal and prelatic favour. It was
embraced and supported by some authors to whom no sinister motives can be
imputed; and the cause has never found an abler advocate than John Goodwin whose name, for his publications
against the royal interest, was associated with that of Milton in the legal proceedings instituted
against them both at the Restoration.
At this juncture, Owen felt
it his duty to oppose the innovations on the received doctrine of the
church, by the publication of a work in which the views of the Arminians
are exhibited on all the leading topics of the controversy, with the
exception of three points, relating to universal grace, justification, and
the perseverance of the saints. He substantiates his statements regarding
the Arminian tenets by copious quotations from the works of the Dutch
Remonstrants; and contrasts them, at the close of each chapter, with
passages from Scripture. Exception may be taken to this course, as the
sentence of any author, detached from the context, may convey a meaning
which is essentially modified by it. Some of these quotations are so far
accommodated by Owen as to present a full
statement of a particular opinion, instead of appearing in the parenthetic
and incidental form which they present in the original works, as merely
parts of a sentence. We did not feel it needful to interfere with them in
this shape; for, so far as we can judge, our author evinces perfect
integrity in all the quotations to which he has recourse, and the slight
alterations occasionally made on them never superinduce a dishonest or
mistaken gloss on the views of the authors from whom the passages are
selected. It may be questioned if Owen
sufficiently discriminates the doctrine of Arminius from the full development which his system, after
his death, received in the hands of his followers. Sometimes, moreover,
opinions possessing the distinctive features of Pelagianism are confounded
with Arminianism, strictly so called. Our author, perhaps, may be
vindicated on the ground that it was his object to exhibit Arminianism as
current and common in his day; and his quotations seem to prove that his
Display of it was not far from the truth, though, from the refinement of
modern discrimination on some of the points, many an Arminian would hardly
subscribe to some of the statements as a correct representation of his
creed, and a Calvinistic author is under obvious temptation to run up
Arminian views into what he may esteem their legitimate consequences in the
extravagance of the Pelagian theory. The style is simple; some polish
appears in the composition; and occasionally a degree of ornament and
pleasantry is employed (as when he enters on the question of Free-will,
chap. xii.), which is rare with Owen, who
perhaps prided himself on the studious rejection of literary elegance. It
could be wished that he had risen superior to the vice of the age in such
discussions, by manifesting less acerbity of temper and diction in the
refutation of the views which he combats in this work. It was Owen’s first publication (1642), and immediately
brought him into notice. The living of Fordham in Essex was conferred upon
him by the Committee of Religion, to whom the work is dedicated. — Ed.
2 Martii, anno Domini 1642.
It is this day ordered, by the
Committee of the House of Commons in Parliament for the Regulating of
Printing and Publishing of Books, That this book, entitled “A Display of
Arminianism,” be printed.
John
White
To the right honourable the lords and gentlemen of the committee for
religion.
The many ample testimonies of
zealous reverence to the providence of God, as well as
affectionate care for the privileges of men, which have been given
by this honourable assembly of parliament, encourage the adorers of the
one, no less than the lovers of the other, to vindicate that also from the
encroachments of men. And as it was not, doubtless, without divine
disposition that those should be the chiefest agents in robbing men of
their privileges who had nefariously attempted to spoil God of his
providence; so we hope the same all-ruling hand hath disposed of them to be
glorious instruments of re-advancing his right and supreme dominion over
the hearts of men whose hearts he hath prepared with courage and constancy
to establish men in their inviolated rights, by reducing a sweet harmony
between awful sovereignty and a well-moderated liberty.
Now, the first of these being demandated to your particular care, I come
unto you with a bill of complaint against no small number in this kingdom,
who have wickedly violated our interest in the providence of God, and have
attempted to bring in the foreign power of an old idol, to the great
prejudice of all the true subjects and servants of the Most High. My
accusation I make good by the evidence of the fact, joined with their own
confessions. And because, to waive the imputation of violent intrusion
into the dominion of another, they lay some claim and pretend some title
unto it, I shall briefly show how it is contrary to the express terms of
the great charter of Heaven to have any such power introduced
amongst men. Your known love to truth and the gospel of Christ makes it
altogether needless for me to stir you up by any motives to hearken to this
just complaint, and provide a timely remedy for this growing evil;
especially since experience hath so clearly taught us here, in England,
that not only eternal but temporal happiness also dependeth on the
flourishing of the truth of Christ’s gospel.
Justice and religion were always
conceived as the main columns and upholders of any state or commonwealth;
like two pillars in a building, whereof the one cannot stand without the
other, nor the whole fabric without them both. As the philosopher spake of
logic and rhetoric, they are artes ἀντίστροφαι, mutually aiding each other, and both
aiming at the same end, though in different manners; so they, without
repugnancy, concur and sweetly fall in one with another, for the reiglement
and direction of every person in a commonwealth, to make the whole happy
and blessed: and where they are both thus united, there, and only there, is
the blessing in assurance whereof Hezekiah rejoiced, — truth and
peace. An agreement without truth is no peace, but a covenant
with death, a league with hell, a conspiracy against the kingdom of Christ,
a stout rebellion against the God of heaven; and without justice, great
commonwealths are but great troops of robbers. Now, the result of the one
of these is civil peace; of the other, ecclesiastical: betwixt which two there is a great sympathy, a strict connection, having on each
other a mutual dependence. Is there any disturbance of the state? it is
usually attended with schisms and factions in the church; and the divisions
of the church are too often even the subversions of the commonwealth. Thus
it hath been ever since that unhappy difference between Cain and Abel;
which was not concerning the bounds and limits of their inheritance, nor
which of them should be heir to the whole world, but about the dictates of
religion, the offering of their sacrifices. This fire, also, of dissension
hath been more stirred up since the Prince of Peace hath, by his gospel,
sent the sword amongst us; for the preaching thereof, meeting with the
strongholds of Satan and the depraved corruption of human nature, must
needs occasion a great shaking of the earth. But most especially,
distracted Christendom hath found fearful issues of this discord,
since the proud Romish prelates have sought to establish their
hell-broached errors, by inventing and maintaining uncharitable,
destructive censures against all that oppose them: which, first causing
schisms and distractions in the church, and then being helped forward by
the blindness and cruelty of ambitious potentates, have raised war of
nation against nation, — witness the Spanish invasion of ’88; [and war] of a
people within themselves, as in the late civil wars of France, where, after
divers horrible massacres, many chose rather to die soldiers than
martyrs.
And, oh, that this truth might not, at this day, be written
with the blood of almost expiring Ireland! Yea, it hath lastly descended
to dissension betwixt private parties, — witness the horrible murder of
Diazius, whose brains were chopped out with an
axe by his own brother Alphonsus, for forsaking the Romish religion;
what rents in [the] State, what grudgings, hatreds, and exasperations of
mind among private men, have happened by reason of some inferior
differences, we all at this day grieve to behold. “Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum!” Most
concerning, then, is it for us to endeavour obedience to our Saviour’s
precept, of seeking first the kingdom of God, that we may be partakers of
the good things comprised in the promise annexed. Were there but this one
argument for to seek the peace of the church, because thereon depends the
peace of the commonwealth, it were sufficient to quicken our utmost
industry for the attaining of it. Now, what peace in the church without
truth? All conformity to anything else is but the agreement of Herod and
Pilate to destroy Christ and his kingdom. Neither is it this or that
particular truth, but the whole counsel of God revealed unto us, without
adding or detracting, whose embracement is required to make our peace firm
and stable. No halting betwixt Jehovah and Baal, Christ and Antichrist; as
good be all Philistine, and worshippers of Dagon, as to speak part the
language of Ashdod and part the language of the Jews: hence, hence hath
been the rise of all our miseries, of all our dissensions, whilst factious
men laboured every day to commend themselves to them who sat aloft in the
temple of God, by introducing new popish-arminian errors, whose patronage
they had wickedly undertaken. Who would have thought that our church would
ever have given entertainment to these Belgic semi-Pelagians, who have cast
dirt upon the faces and raked up the ashes of all those great and pious
souls whom God magnified, in using as his instruments to reform his church;
to the least of which the whole troop of Arminians shall never make
themselves equal, though they swell till they break? What benefit did ever
come to this church by attempting to prove that the chief part in the
several degrees of our salvation is to be ascribed unto ourselves, rather
than God? — which is the head and sum of all the controversies between
them and us. And must not the introducing and fomenting of a doctrine so
opposite to that truth our church hath quietly enjoyed ever
since the first Reformation necessarily bring along with it schisms and
dissensions, so long as any remain who love the truth, or esteem the gospel
above preferment? Neither let any deceive your wisdoms, by affirming that
they are differences of an inferior nature that are at this day agitated
between the Arminians and the orthodox divines of the reformed church. Be
pleased but to cast an eye on the following instances, and you will find
them hewing at the very root of Christianity. Consider seriously their
denying of that fundamental article of original sin. Is this but
a small escape in theology? — why, what need of the gospel, what need of
Christ himself, if our nature be not guilty, depraved, corrupted? Neither
are many of the rest of less importance. Surely these are not things
“in quibus possimus dissentire salvâ pace
ac charitate,” as Austin speaks, — “about which we may differ without loss of
peace or charity.” One church cannot wrap in her communion Austin and Pelagius, Calvin
and Arminius. I have here only
given you a taste, whereby you may judge of the rest of their fruit, —
“mors in olla, mors in olla;” their
doctrine of the final apostasy of the elect, of true believers, of
a wavering hesitancy concerning our present grace and future glory, with
divers others, I have wholly omitted: those I have produced are enough to
make their abettors incapable of our church-communion. The sacred bond of
peace compasseth only the unity of that Spirit; which leadeth into all
truth. We must not offer the right hand of fellowship, but rather proclaim
ἱερὸν πόλεμον, “a
holy war,” to such enemies of God’s providence, Christ’s merit, and the
powerful operation of the Holy Spirit. Neither let any object, that all
the Arminians do not openly profess all these errors I have recounted. Let
ours, then, show wherein they differ from their masters. We
see their own confessions; we know their arts, βάθη καὶ μεθοδείας τοῦ Σατανᾶ, — “the depths and
crafts of Satan;” we know the several ways they have to introduce and
insinuate their heterodoxies into the minds of men. With some they appear
only to dislike our doctrine of reprobation; with others, to claim
an allowable liberty of the will: but yet, for the most part, —
like the serpent, wherever she gets in her head, she will wriggle in her
whole body, sting and all, — give but the least admission, and the whole
poison must be swallowed. What was the intention of the maintainers of
these strange assertions amongst us I know not, — whether the efficacy of
error prevailed really with them or no, or whether it were the better to
comply with Popery, and thereby to draw us back again unto Egypt; — but
this I have heard, that it was affirmed on knowledge, in a former
parliament, that the introduction of Arminianism amongst us was the issue
of a Spanish consultation. It is a strange story that learned Zanchius tells us, how, upon the death of the Cardinal of
Lorraine there was found in his study a note of the names of divers German
doctors and ministers, being Lutherans, to whom was paid an annual pension,
by the assignment of the cardinal, that they might take pains to oppose the
Calvinists; and so, by cherishing dissension, reduce the people again to
Popery. If there be any such amongst us, who, upon such poor
inconsiderable motives, would be won to betray the gospel of Christ, God
grant them repentance before it be too late! However, upon what grounds,
with what intentions, for what ends soever, these tares have been sowed
amongst us by envious men, the hope of all the piously learned in the
kingdom is, that, by your effectual care and diligence, some means may be
found to root them out. Now, God Almighty increase and fill your whole
honourable society with wisdom, zeal, knowledge, and all other Christian
graces, necessary for your great calling and employments; which is the
daily prayer, of your most humble and devoted servant,
John
Owen.
To the Christian reader.
Reader, — Thou canst not be such a
stranger in our Israel as that it should be necessary for me to acquaint
thee with the first sowing and spreading of these tares in the field of the
church, much less to declare what divisions and thoughts of heart, what
open bitter contentions, to the loss of ecclesiastical peace, have been
stirred up amongst us about them. Only some few things, relating to this
my particular endeavour, I would willingly premonish thee of:—
First, Never were so many prodigious errors
introduced into a church, with so high a hand and so little opposition, as
these into ours, since the nation of Christians was known in the world.
The chief cause I take to be that which Æneas
Sylvius gave why more maintained the pope to be above the council
than the council above the pope, — because popes gave archbishoprics,
bishoprics, etc., but the councils sued “in
forma pauperis,” and, therefore, could scarce get an advocate to
plead their cause. The fates of our church having of late devolved the
government thereof into the hands of men tainted with this poison,
Arminianism became backed with the powerful arguments of praise and
preferment, and quickly prevailed to beat poor naked Truth into a corner.
It is high time, then, for all the lovers of the old way to oppose this
innovation, prevailing by such unworthy means, before our breach grow great
like the sea, and there be none to heal it.
My intention in this weak endeavour (which is but the
undigested issue of a few broken hours, too many causes, in these furious
malignant days, continually interrupting the course of my studies), is but
to stir up such who, having more leisure and greater abilities, will not as
yet move a finger to help [to] vindicate oppressed truth.
In the meantime, I hope this discovery may not be unuseful,
especially to such who, wanting either will or abilities to peruse larger
discourses, may yet be allured by their words, which are smoother than oil,
to taste the poison of asps that is under their lips. Satan hath βάθη καὶ μεθοδείας, depths where to hide,
and methods how to broach his lies; and never did any of his emissaries
employ his received talents with more skill and diligence than our
Arminians, labouring earnestly, in the first place, to instill some errors
that are most plausible, intending chiefly an introduction of them that are
more palpable, knowing that if those be for a time suppressed until these
be well digested, they will follow of their own accord. Wherefore, I have
endeavoured to lay open to the view of all some of their foundation-errors,
not usually discussed, on which the whole inconsistent superstructure is
erected, whereby it will appear how, under a most vain pretense of
farthering piety, they have prevaricated against the very grounds of
Christianity; wherein, —
First, I have not observed the same method in handling each
particular controversy, but followed such several ways as seemed most
convenient to clear the truth and discover their heresies.
Secondly, Some of their errors I have not touched at all, —
as those concerning universal grace, justification, the
final apostasy of true believers, — because they came not within
the compass of my proposed method, as you may see chap. i., where you have
the sum of the whole discourse.
Thirdly, I have given some instances of their
opposing the received doctrine of the church of England, contained in
divers of the Thirty-nine
Articles; which would it did not yield us just cause of farther
complaint against the iniquity of those times whereinto we were lately
fallen! Had a poor Puritan offended against half so many canons as they
opposed articles, he had forfeited his livelihood, if not endangered his
life. I would I could hear any other probable reason why divers prelates
were so zealous for the discipline and so negligent of the doctrine of the
church, but because the one was reformed by the word of God, the other
remaining as we found it in the times of Popery.
Fourthly, I have not purposely undertaken to answer any of
their arguments, referring that labour to a farther design, even a clearing
of our doctrine of reprobation, and of the administration of God’s
providence towards the reprobates, and over all their actions, from those
calumnious aspersions they cast upon it; but concerning this, I fear the
discouragements of these woeful days will leave me nothing but a desire
that so necessary a work may find a more able pen.
John
Owen
A Display of Arminianism.
ΣΥΝ ΘΕῼ
Chapter I.
Of the two main ends aimed at by the Arminians, by their
innovations in the received doctrine of the reformed churches.
The soul of man, by reason of the
corruption of nature, is not only darkened with a mist of ignorance, whereby he is
disenabled for the comprehending of divine truth, but is also armed with
prejudice and opposition against some parts thereof, which are either most above or most
contrary to some false principles which he hath framed unto himself. As a
desire of self-sufficiency was the first cause of this infirmity, so a
conceit thereof is that wherewith he still languisheth; nothing doth he
more contend for than an independency of any supreme power, which might
either help, hinder, or control him in his actions. This is that bitter
root from whence have sprung all those heresies and wretched contentions which have troubled the
church, concerning the power of man in working his own happiness, and his
exemption from the over-ruling providence of Almighty God. All which
wrangling disputes of carnal reason against the word of God come at last to
this head, Whether the first, and chiefest part, in disposing of things in
this world, ought to be ascribed to God or man? Men for the most part have
vindicated this pre-eminence unto themselves, by exclamations that so
it must be, or else that God is unjust, and his ways unequal. Never did
any men, “postquam Christiana gens esse
cæpit,” more eagerly endeavour the erecting of this Babel than the
Arminians, the modern blinded patrons of human self-sufficiency; all whose
innovations in the received doctrine of the reformed churches aim at and
tend to one of these two ends:—
First, To exempt
themselves from God’s jurisdiction, — to free themselves from the supreme
dominion of his all-ruling providence; not to live and move in him, but to
have an absolute independent power in all their actions, so that the event
of all things wherein they have any interest might have a considerable
relation to nothing but chance, contingency, and their own wills; — a most
nefarious, sacrilegious attempt! To this end, —
First, They deny the eternity and unchangeableness of God’s
decrees; for these being established, they fear they should be kept within
bounds from doing any thing but what his counsel hath determined should be
done. If the purposes of the Strength of Israel be eternal and immutable,
their idol free-will must be limited, their independency prejudiced;
wherefore they choose rather to affirm that his decrees are temporary and
changeable, yea, that he doth really change them according to the several
mutations he sees in us: which, how wild a conceit it is, how contrary to
the pure nature of God, how destructive to his attributes, I shall show in
the second chapter.
Secondly, They question the prescience or foreknowledge of
God; for if known unto God are all his works from the beginning, if he
certainly foreknew all things that shall hereafter come to pass, it seems
to cast an infallibility of event upon all their actions, which encroaches
upon the large territory of their new goddess, contingency; nay, it would
quite dethrone the queen of heaven, and induce a kind of necessity of our
doing all, and nothing but what God foreknows. Now, that to deny this
prescience is destructive to the very essence of the Deity, and plain
atheism, shall be declared, chapter the third.
Thirdly, They depose the all-governing providence of this
King of nations, denying its energetical, effectual power, in turning the
hearts, ruling the thoughts, determining the wills, and disposing the
actions of men, by granting nothing unto it but a general power and
influence, to be limited and used according to the inclination and will of
every particular agent; so making Almighty God a desirer that many things
were otherwise than they are, and an idle spectator of most things that are
done in the world: the falseness of which assertions shall be proved,
chapter the fourth.
Fourthly, They deny the irresistibility and uncontrollable
power of God’s will, affirming that oftentimes he seriously willeth and
intendeth what he cannot accomplish, and so is deceived of his aim; nay,
whereas he desireth, and really intendeth, to save every man, it is wholly
in their own power whether he shall save any one or no; otherwise their
idol free-will should have but a poor deity, if God could, how and when he
would, cross and resist him in his dominion. Concerning this see chapter
the fifth. “His gradibus itur in
cœlum.” Corrupted nature is still ready, either nefariously, with
Adam, to attempt to be like God, or to think foolishly that he
is altogether like unto us, Ps. l.; one
of which inconveniences all men run into, who have not learned to submit
their frail wills to the almighty will of God, and captivate their
understandings to the obedience of faith. [See chapter fifth.]
Secondly, The second end at which
the new doctrine of the Arminians aimeth is, to clear human nature from the
heavy imputation of being sinful, corrupted, wise to do evil but unable to
do good; and so to vindicate unto themselves a power and ability of doing
all that good which God can justly require to be done by them in the state
wherein they are, — of making themselves differ from others who will not
make so good use of the endowments of their natures; that so the first and
chiefest part in the work of their salvation may be ascribed unto
themselves; — a proud Luciferian endeavour! To this end, —
First, They deny that doctrine of predestination whereby
God is affirmed to have chosen certain men before the foundation of the
world, that they should be holy, and obtain everlasting life by the merit
of Christ, to the praise of his glorious grace, — any such predestination
which may be the fountain and cause of grace or glory, determining the
persons, according to God’s good pleasure, on whom they shall be bestowed:
for this doctrine would make the special grace of God to be the sole cause
of all the good that is in the elect more than [in] the reprobates; would
make faith the work and gift of God, with divers other things, which would
show their idol to be nothing, of no value. Wherefore, what a corrupt
heresy they have substituted into the place hereof see chapter the
sixth.
Secondly, They deny original sin and its demerit; which
being rightly understood, would easily demonstrate that, notwithstanding
all the labour of the smith, the carpenter, and the painter, yet their idol
is of its own nature but an unprofitable block; it will discover not only
the impotency of doing good which is in our nature, but show also whence we
have it: see chapter the seventh.
Thirdly, If ye will charge our human nature with a
repugnancy to the law of God, they will maintain that it was also in Adam
when he was first created, and so comes from God himself: chapter the
eighth.
Fourthly, They deny the efficacy of the merit of the death
of Christ; — both that God intended by his death to redeem his church, or
to acquire unto himself a holy people; as also, that Christ by his death
hath merited and procured for us grace, faith, or righteousness, and power
to obey God, in fulfilling the condition of the new covenant. Nay, this
were plainly to set up an ark to break their Dagon’s neck; for, “what
praise,” say they, “can be due to ourselves for believing, if the blood of
Christ hath procured God to bestow faith upon us?” “Increpet te Deus, O Satan!” See chapters nine and
ten.
Fifthly, If Christ will claim such a share in
saving of his people, of them that believe in him, they will grant some to
have salvation quite without him, that never heard so much as a report of a
Saviour; and, indeed, in nothing do they advance their idol nearer the
throne of God than in this blasphemy: chapter eleven.
Sixthly, Having thus robbed God, Christ, and his grace,
they adorn their idol free-will with many glorious properties no way due
unto it: discussed, chapter twelve, where you shall find how, “movet cornicula risum, furtivis nudata
coloribus.”
Seventhly, They do not only claim to their new-made deity a
saving power, but also affirm that he is very active and operative in the
great work of saving our souls, —
First, In fitly preparing us for the grace of God,
and so disposing of ourselves that it becomes due unto us: chapter
thirteen.
Secondly, In the effectual working of our conversion
together with it: chapter fourteen.
And so at length, with much toil and labour, they have
placed an altar for their idol in the holy temple, on the right hand of the
altar of God, and on it offer sacrifice to their own net and drag; at
least, “nec Deo, nec libero arbitrio, sed
dividatur,” — not all to God, nor all to free-will, but let the
sacrifice of praise, for all good things, be divided between them.
Chapter II.
Of the eternity and immutability of the decrees of almighty God,
denied and overthrown by the Arminians.
It hath been always believed among
Christians, and that upon infallible grounds, as I shall show hereafter,
that all the decrees of God, as they are internal, so they are eternal,
acts of his will; and therefore unchangeable and irrevocable. Mutable
decrees and occasional resolutions are most contrary to the pure nature of
Almighty God. Such principles as these, evident and clear by their own
light, were never questioned by any before the Arminians began ἀκίνητα κινεῖν, and to profess themselves to
delight in opposing common notions of reason concerning God and his
essence, that they might exalt themselves into his throne. To ascribe the
least mutability to the divine essence, with which all the attributes and
internal free acts of God are one and the same, was ever accounted ὑπερβολὴ ἀφεότητος, “transcendent atheism,”
in the highest degree. Now, be this crime of what nature it will,
it is no unjust imputation to charge it on the Arminians,
because they confess themselves guilty, and glory in the crime.
First, They undermine and overthrow the eternity of God’s
purposes, by affirming that, in the order of the divine decrees, there
are some which precede every act of the creature, and some again that
follow them: so Corvinus, the
most famous of that sect. Now, all the acts of every creature being but of
yesterday, temporary, like themselves, surely, those decrees of God cannot
be eternal which follow them in order of time; and yet they press this,
especially in respect of human actions, as a certain, unquestionable
verity. “It is certain that God willeth or determineth many things which
he would not, did not some act of man’s will go before it,” saith their
great master, Arminius. The like affirmeth, with a little addition (as such
men do always “proficere in pejus”),
his genuine scholar, Nic.
Grevinchovius. “I suppose,” saith he, “that God
willeth many things which he neither would nor justly could will and
purpose, did not some action of the creature precede.” And here observe,
that in these places they speak not of God’s external works, of those
actions which outwardly are of him, — as inflicting of punishments,
bestowing of rewards, and other such outward acts of his providence, whose
administration we confess to be various, and diversely applied to several
occasions, — but of the internal purposes of God’s will, his decrees and
intentions, which have no present influence upon, or respect unto, any
action of the creature; yea, they deny that concerning many things God hath
any determinate resolution at all, or any purpose farther than a natural
affection towards them. “God doth or omitteth that towards which, in his
own nature and his proper inclination, he is affected, as he findeth man to
comply or not to comply with that order which he hath appointed,” saith
Corvinus. Surely these men care not what indignities they cast
upon the God of heaven, so they may maintain the pretended endowments of
their own wills; for such an absolute power do they here ascribe unto them,
that God himself cannot determine of a thing whereunto, as they strangely
phrase it, he is well affected, before, by an actual concurrence, he is
sure of their compliance. Now, this imputation, that they are temporary,
which they cast upon the decrees of God in general, they press home upon
that particular which lies most in their way, the decree of
election. Concerning this they tell us roundly, that it is false that
election is confirmed from eternity: so the Remonstrants in their Apology,
notwithstanding that St Paul tells us that it is the “purpose of God,”
Rom. ix. 11, and that we were “chosen
before the foundation of the world,” Eph. i. 4.
Neither is it any thing material what the Arminians there grant, — namely,
that there is a decree preceding this, which may be said to be from
everlasting: for seeing that St Paul teacheth us that election is nothing
but God’s purpose of saving us, to affirm that God eternally decreed that
he would elect us is all one as to say that God purposed that in time he
would purpose to save us. Such resolutions may be fit for their own wild
heads, but must not be ascribed to God only wise.
Secondly, As they affirm them to be temporary and to have
had a beginning, so also to expire and have an ending, to be subject to
change and variableness. “Some acts of God’s will do cease at a certain
time,” saith Episcopius. What?
doth say thing come into his mind that changeth his will? “Yes,” saith
Arminius, “He would have all
men to be saved; but, compelled with the stubborn and incorrigible malice
of some, he will have them to miss it.” However, this is some recompense,
— denying God a power to do what he will, they grant him to be contented to
do what he may, and not much repine at his hard condition. Certainly, if
but for this favour, he is a debtor to the Arminians. Thieves give what
they do not take. Having robbed God of his power, they will leave him so
much goodness as that he shall not be troubled at it, though he be
sometimes compelled to what he is very loath to do. How do they and their
fellows, the Jesuits, exclaim upon
poor Calvin, for sometimes using the hard
word of compulsion, describing the effectual, powerful working of
the providence of God in the actions of men; but they can fasten the same
term on the will of God, and no harm done! Surely he will one day plead
his own cause against them. But yet blame them not, “si violandum est jus, regnandi causâ violandum est.”
It is to make themselves absolute that they thus cast off the yoke of the
Almighty, and that both in things concerning this life and that which is to
come. They are much troubled that it should be said that every one of us bring along with us into the world
an unchangeable pre-ordination of life and death eternal; for such a
supposal would quite overthrow the main foundation of their
heresy, — namely, that men can make their election void and frustrate, as
they jointly lay it down in their Apology. Nay, it is a dream, saith Dr Jackson, to think of God’s decrees concerning things to
come as of acts irrevocably finished; which would hinder that which Welsingius lays down for a truth, — to
wit, “that the elect may become reprobates, and
the reprobates elect.” Now, to these particular sayings is their whole
doctrine concerning the decrees of God, inasmuch as they have any reference
to the actions of men, most exactly conformable; as, —
First, Their distinction
of them into peremptory and not peremptory (terms rather used in the
citations of litigious courts than as expressions of God’s purpose in
sacred Scripture), is not, as by them applied, compatible with the
unchangeableness of God’s eternal purposes. Πρόσκαιροι, say they, or temporary believers, are
elected (though not peremptorily) with such an act of God’s will as hath a
co-existence every way commensurate, both in its original, continuance, and
end, with their fading faith; which sometimes, like Jonah’s gourd, is but
“filia unius noctis,” — in the
morning it flourisheth, in the evening it is cut down, dried up, and
withereth. A man in Christ by faith, or actually believing (which to do
is, as they say, in every one’s own power), is, in their opinion,
the proper object of election; — of election, I say, not peremptory, which
is an act pendent, expecting the final perseverance and consummation of his
faith; and therefore immutable, because man having fulfilled his course,
God hath no cause to change his purpose of crowning him with reward. Thus
also (as they teach), a man according to his infidelity, whether present
and removable, or obdurate and final, is the only object of reprobation;
which, in the latter case, is peremptory and absolute, in the former
conditional and alterable. It is the qualities of faith and unbelief on
which their election and reprobation do attend. Now, let a faithful man, elected of God according to
his present righteousness, apostate [apostatize] totally from grace (as to
affirm that there is any promise of God implying his perseverance is with them to overthrow all religion), and let the unbelieving
reprobate depose his incredulity and turn himself unto the Lord; answerable
to this mutation of their conditions are the changings of the purpose of
the Almighty concerning their everlasting state. Again; suppose these two,
by alternate courses (as the doctrine of apostasy maintaineth they may),
should return each to their former estate, the decrees of God concerning
them must again be changed; for it is unjust with him either not to elect
him that believes, though it be but for an hour, or not to reprobate
unbelievers. Now, what unchangeableness can we fix to these decrees, which
it lies in the power of man to make as inconstant as Euripus; making it,
beside, to be possible that all the members of Christ’s church, whose names
are written in heaven, should within one hour be enrolled in the black book
of damnation?
Secondly, As these not-peremptory decrees are
mutable, so they make the peremptory decrees of God to be temporal. “Final
impenitency,” say they, “is the only cause, and the finally unrepenting
sinner is the only object, of reprobation, peremptory and irrevocable.” As
the poet thought none happy, so they think no man to be elected, or
a reprobate, before his death. Now, that denomination he doth receive from
the decrees of God concerning his eternal estate, which must necessarily
then be first enacted. The relation that is between the act of reprobation
and the person reprobated importeth a co-existence of denomination. When
God reprobates a man, he then becomes a reprobate; which if it be not
before he hath actually fulfilled the measure of his iniquity, and sealed
it up with the talent of final impenitency in his death, the decree of God
must needs be temporal, the just Judge of all the world having till then
suspended his determination, expecting the last resolution of this
changeable Proteus. Nay, that God’s decrees concerning men’s eternal
estates are in their judgment temporal, and not beginning until their
death, is plain from the whole course of their doctrine, especially where
they strive to prove that if there were any such determination, God could
not threaten punishments or promise rewards. “Who,” say they,
“can threaten punishment to him whom, by a peremptory decree, he will have
to be free from punishment?” It seems he cannot have determined to save
any whom he threatens to punish if they sin, which [it] is evident he doth
all so long as they live in this world; which makes God not only mutable,
but quite deprives him of his foreknowledge, and makes the form of his
decree run thus:— “If man will believe, I determine he shall be saved; if
he will not, I determine he shall be damned,” — that is, “I
must leave him in the meantime to do what he will, so I may meet with him
in the end.”
Thirdly, They affirm no decree of Almighty God
concerning men is so unalterable but that all those who are now in rest or
misery might have had contrary lots; — that those which are damned, as
Pharaoh, Judas, etc., might have been saved; and those which are saved, as
the blessed Virgin, Peter, John, might have been damned: which must needs
reflect with a strong charge of mutability on Almighty God, who knoweth who
are his. Divers other instances in this nature I could produce, whereby it
would be farther evident that these innovators in Christian religion do
overthrow the eternity and unchangeableness of God’s decrees; but these are
sufficient to any discerning man. And I will add, in the close, an
antidote against this poison, briefly showing what the Scripture and right
reason teach us concerning these secrets of the Most High.
First, “Known unto God,” saith St James, “are all his works
from the beginning,” Acts xv.
18; whence it hath hitherto been concluded that whatever God
doth in time bring to pass, that he decreed from all eternity so to do.
All his works were from the beginning known unto him. Consider it
particularly in the decree of election, that fountain of all spiritual
blessings, that a saving sense and assurance thereof (2 Pet.
i. 10) being attained, might effect a spiritual rejoicing in the
Lord, 1 Cor. xv. 31. Such things are
everywhere taught as may raise us to the consideration of it as of an
eternal act, irrevocably and immutably established: “He hath chosen us
before the foundation of the world,” Eph. i. 4:
his “purpose according to election,” before we were born, must “stand,”
Rom. ix. 11; for to the irreversible
stability of this act of his will he hath set to the seal of his infallible
knowledge, 2 Tim. ii. 19. His purpose of our
salvation by grace, not according to works, was “before the world began,”
2 Tim. i. 9: an eternal purpose,
proceeding from such a will as to which none can resist, joined with such a
knowledge as to which all things past, present, and to come are open and
evident, must needs also be, like the laws of the Medes and Persians,
permanent and unalterable.
Secondly, The decrees of God, being conformable to his nature and
essence, do require eternity and immutability as their inseparable
properties. God, and he only, never was, nor ever can be, what now he is
not. Passive possibility to any thing, which is the fountain of all change, can have no place in him who is “actus simplex,” and purely free from all
composition; whence St James affirmeth that “with him is no variableness,
neither shadow of turning,” James i.
17; with him, that is, in his will and purposes: and himself by
his prophet, “I am the Lord, I change not;
therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed,” Mal. iii.
6; where he proveth the not changing of his gracious purposes,
because he is the Lord. The eternal acts of his
will not really differing from his unchangeable essence, must needs be
immutable.
Thirdly, Whatsoever God hath determined, according to the
counsel of his wisdom and good pleasure of his will, to be accomplished, to
the praise of his glory, standeth sure and immutable; for “the Strength of
Israel will not lie nor repent; for he is not a man, that he should
repent,” 1 Sam. xv. 29. “He declareth the
end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet
done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure,”
Isa. xlvi. 10; which certain and
infallible execution of his pleasure is extended to particular contingent
events, Isa. xlviii. 14. Yea, it is an
ordinary thing with the Lord to confirm the certainty of those things that
are yet for to come from his own decree; as, “The Lord of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely as I have
thought, so it shall come to pass; and as I have purposed, it shall stand,
that I will break the Assyrian,” etc., chap.
xiv. 24, 25; — “It is certain the Assyrian shall be broken,
because the Lord hath purposed it;” which were a weak kind of reasoning, if
his purpose might be altered. Nay “He is of one mind, and who can turn
him? and what his soul desireth, that he doeth,” Job
xxiii. 13. “The Lord of hosts hath
purposed, and who shall disannul it?” Isa. xiv.
27. So that the purpose of God and immutability of his counsel
(Heb. vi. 17) have their certainty and
firmness from eternity, and do not depend on the variable lubricity of
mortal men; which we must needs grant, unless we intend to set up impotency
against omnipotency, and arm the clay against the potter.
Fourthly, If God’s determination concerning any thing
should have a temporal original, it must needs be either because he then
perceived some goodness in it of which before he was ignorant, or else
because some accident did affix a real goodness to some state of things
which it had not from him; neither of which, without abominable blasphemy,
can be affirmed, seeing he knoweth the end from the beginning, all things
from everlasting, being always the same, the fountain of all goodness, of
which other things do participate in that measure which it pleaseth him to
communicate it unto them. Add to this the omnipotency of God: there is
“power and might in his hand,” [so] that none is able to withstand him,
2 Chron. xx. 6; which will not permit
that any of his purposes be frustrate. In all our intentions,
if the defect be not in the error of our understandings, which may be
rectified by better information, when we cannot do that which we would, we
will do that which we can: the alteration of our purpose is for want of
power to fulfil it; which impotency cannot be ascribed to Almighty God, who
is “in heaven, and hath done whatsoever he pleased,” Ps. cxv.
3. So that the immutability of God’s nature, his almighty
power, the infallibility of his knowledge, his immunity from error in all
his counsels, do show that he never faileth in accomplishing any thing that
he proposeth for the manifestation of his glory.
To close up this whole discourse, wherein I have not
discovered half the poison contained in the Arminian doctrine concerning
God’s decrees, I will in brief present to your view the opposition that is
in this matter betwixt the word of God and the patrons of free-will:—
S. S. |
Lib. Arbit. |
“He hath chosen us in him
before the foundation of the world,” Eph. i.
4. |
“It is false to say that
election is confirmed from everlasting,” Rem. Apol. |
“He hath called us according
to his own purpose and grace, before the world began,” 2 Tim. i.
9. |
“It is certain that God
determineth divers things which he would not, did not some act of man’s
will go before,” Armin. |
“Known unto God are all his
works from the beginning of the world,” Acts xv.
18. |
“Some decrees of God precede
all acts of the will of the creature, and some follow,” Corv. |
“Declaring the end from the
beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, swing,
My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure,” Isa. xlvi. 10. |
“Men may make their election
void and frustrate,” Rem. Apol. |
“For the children being not
yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God
according to election might stand,” as Rom. ix.
11. |
“It is no wonder if men do
sometimes of elect become reprobate, and of reprobate, elect,” Welsin. |
“The foundation of God
standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his,”
2 Tim. ii. 19. |
“Election is uncertain and
revocable, and whoever denies it overthrows the gospel,” Grevinch. |
“The counsel of the Lord standeth for ever, the thoughts of his heart to all
generations,” Ps. xxxiii.
11. |
“Many decrees of God cease at
a certain time,” Episcop. |
“My counsel shall
stand, and I will do all my pleasure,” Isa. xlvi.
10. |
“God would have all men to be
saved, but, compelled with the stubborn malice of some, he changeth his
purpose, and will have them to perish,” Armin. |
“I am the Lord, I change not,” Mal. iii.
6. |
“As men may change themselves
from believers to unbelievers, so God’s determination concerning them
changeth,” Rem. |
“With the Father of lights is
no variableness, neither shadow of turning,” James i.
17; Exod.
iii. 13, 14; Ps. cii.
27; 2 Tim. ii.
13; 1 Sam. xv.
29; Isa. xiv.
27; Job xxiii.
13; Ps. cxv. 3. |
“All God’s decrees are not
peremptory, but some conditionate and changeable,” Sermon at Oxford. |
Chapter III.
Of the prescience or foreknowledge of God, and how it is
questioned and overthrown by the Arminians.
The prescience or foreknowledge of
God hath not hitherto, in express terms, been denied by the Arminians, but
only questioned and overthrown by consequence, inasmuch as they deny the
certainty and unchangeableness of his decrees, on which it is founded. It
is not a foreknowledge of all or any thing which they oppose, but only of
things free and contingent, and that only to comply with their
formerly-exploded error, that the purposes of God concerning such things
are temporal and mutable; which obstacle being once removed, the way is
open how to ascribe the presidentship of all human actions to omnipotent
contingency, and her sire free-will. Now, we call that contingent which,
in regard of its next and immediate cause, before it come to pass, may be
done or may be not done; as, that a man shall do such a thing tomorrow, or
any time hereafter, which he may choose whether ever he will do or no.
Such things as these are free and changeable, in respect of men, their
immediate and second causes; but if we, as we ought to do, look up
unto Him who foreseeth and hath ordained the event of them or their
omission, they may be said necessarily to come to pass or to be omitted.
It could not be but as it was. Christians hitherto, yea, and
heathens, in all things of this nature, have usually, upon their
event, reflected on God as one whose determination was passed
on them from eternity, and who knew them long before; as the killing of men
by the fall of a house, who might, in respect of the freedom of their own
wills, have not been there. Or if a man fall into the hands of thieves, we
presently conclude it was the will of God. It must be so; he knew it
before.
Divines, for distinction’s sake, ascribe unto God a twofold knowledge; one, intuitive
or intellective, whereby he foreknoweth and seeth all things that are
possible, — that is, all things that can be done by his almighty power, —
without any respect to their future existence, whether they shall come to
pass or no. Yea, infinite things, whose actual being eternity shall never
behold, are thus open and naked unto him; for was there not strength and
power in his hand to have created another world? was there not counsel in
the storehouse of his wisdom to have created this otherwise, or not to have
created it at all? Shall we say that his providence extends itself every
way to the utmost of its activity? or can he not produce innumerable things
in the world which now he doth not. Now, all these, and every thing else
that is feasible to his infinite power, he foresees and knows, “scientiâ,” as they speak, “simplicis intelligentiæ,” by his essential
knowledge.
Out of this large and
boundless territory of things possible, God by his decrees freely
determineth what shall come to pass, and makes them future which before
were but possible. After this decree, as they commonly speak, followeth,
or together with it, as others more exactly, taketh place, that prescience
of God which they call “visionis,”
“of vision,” whereby he infallibly seeth all things in
their proper causes, and how and when they shall come to pass. Now, these
two sorts of knowledge differ, inasmuch as by the one God knoweth what it
is possible may come to pass; by the other, only what it is impossible
should not come to pass. Things are possible in regard of God’s power,
future in regard of his decree. So that (if I may so say) the measure of
the first kind of science is God’s omnipotency, what he can do; of the
other his purpose, what certainly he will do, or permit to be done. With
this prescience, then, God foreseeth all, and nothing but what he hath
decreed shall come to pass.
For every thing to be produced next and under him, God hath prepared divers and several kinds of
causes, diversely operative in producing their effects, some whereof are
said to work necessarily, the institution of their nature being to do as
they do, and not otherwise; so the sun giveth light, and the fire heat.
And yet, in some regard, their effects and products may be said to be
contingent and free, inasmuch as the concurrence of God, the first cause,
is required to their operation, who doth all things most freely, according
to the counsel of his will. Thus the sun stood still in the time of
Joshua, and the fire burned not the three children; but ordinarily such
agents working “necessitate naturæ,”
their effects are said to be necessary. Secondly, To some things God hath
fitted free and contingent causes, which either apply themselves to
operation in particular, according to election, choosing to do this thing
rather than that; as angels and men, in their free and deliberate actions,
which they so perform as that they could have not done them; — or else they
produce effects κατὰ τὸ συμβεβηκός,
merely by accident, and the operation of such things we say to be casual;
as if a hatchet, falling out of the hand of a man cutting down a tree,
should kill another whom he never saw. Now, nothing in either of these
ways comes to pass but God hath determined it, both for the matter and
manner, even so as is agreeable to their
causes, — some necessarily, some freely, some casually or contingently, yet
also, as having a certain futurition from his decree, he infallibly
foreseeth that they shall so come to pass. But yet that he doth so in
respect of things free and contingent is much questioned by the Arminians
in express terms, and denied by consequence, notwithstanding St Jerome affirmeth that so to do is destructive to the very essence of
the Deity.
First, Their doctrine of the mutability of God’s decrees,
on whose firmness is founded the infallibility of this prescience, doth
quite overthrow it. God thus foreknowing only what he hath so decreed
shall come to pass, if that be no firmer settled but that it may [be] and
is often altered, according to the divers inclinations of men’s
wills, which I showed before they affirm, he can have at best but a
conjectural foreknowledge of what is yet for to come, not founded on his
own unchangeable purpose, but upon a guess at the free inclination of men’s
wills. For instance, God willeth that all men should be saved.
This act of his will, according to the Arminian doctrine, is his
conditionate decree to save all men if they will believe. Well, among
these is Judas, as equal a sharer in the benefit of this decree as Peter.
God, then, will have him to be saved, and to this end allows him all those
means which are necessary to beget faith in him, and are every way
sufficient to that purpose, and do produce that effect in others; what can
God foresee, then, but that Judas as well as Peter will believe? He
intendeth he should, he hath determined nothing to the contrary. Let him
come, then, and act his own part. Why, he proves so obstinately malicious,
that God,
with all his omnipotency, as they speak, by any way that becomes him, which
must not be by any irresistible efficacy, cannot change his obdurate heart.
Well, then, he determineth, according to the exigence of his justice, that
he shall be damned for his impenitency, and foreseeth that accordingly.
But now, suppose this wretch, even at his last moment, should bethink
himself and return to the Lord, which in their conceit he may,
notwithstanding his former reprobation (which, as they state it, seems a great act of mercy),
God must keep to the rules of
his justice, and elect or determine to save him; by which the varlet hath
twice or thrice deceived his expectation.
Secondly, They affirm that God is said properly to
expect and desire divers things which yet never come to pass. “We grant,”
saith Corvinus, “that
there are desires in God that never are fulfilled.” Now, surely, to desire
what one is sure will never come to pass is not an act regulated by wisdom
or counsel; and, therefore, they must grant that before he did not know but
perhaps so it might be. “God wisheth and desireth some good things, which
yet come not to pass,” say they, in their Confession; whence one of these two
things must needs follow, — either, first, that there is a great deal of
imperfection in his nature, to desire and expect what he knows
shall never come to pass; or else he did not know but it might, which
overthrows his prescience. Yea, and say they expressly, “That the hope and expectation of God is deceived
by man;” and confess, “that the strength of their strongest argument lies
in this, that God hoped and expected obedience from Israel.” Secondly,
That he complaineth that his hope is deluded, which, being taken properly,
and as they urge it, cannot consist with his eternal prescience; for they
disesteem the usual answer of divines, that hope, expectation, and such
like passions, which include in them any imperfection, are ascribed unto
God per ἀνθρωποπάθειαν, — in regard of that analogy his
actions hold with such of ours as we perform having those passions.
Thirdly, They teach
that God hath determined nothing concerning such things as these in
question. “That God hath determined future contingent things unto either
part (I mean such as issue from the free-will of the creature), I
abominate, hate, and curse, as false, absurd, and leading us on unto
blasphemy,” saith Arminius. To
determine of them to either part is to determine and ordain whether they
shall be, or whether they shall not be; as, that David shall or shall not
go up tomorrow against the Philistines, and prevail. Now, the
infallibility of God’s foreknowing of such things depending on the
certainty of his decree and determination, if there be no such thing as
this, that also must needs fall to the ground.
Fourthly, See what
positively they write concerning this everlasting foreknowledge of God:—
First, They call it a troublesome question; secondly, They make it a thing
disputable whether there be any such thing or no; and though haply it may
be ascribed unto God, yet, thirdly, They think it no motive to the worship
of him; fourthly, They say, better it were quite exploded, because the
difficulties that attend it can scarcely be reconciled with man’s liberty,
God’s threatenings and promises; yea, fifthly, It seems rather to be
invented to crucify poor mortals than to be of any moment in religion. So
Episcopius. It may be excepted that
this is but one doctor’s opinion. It is true, they are one
man’s words; but the thing itself is countenanced by the whole sect. As,
first, in the large prolix declaration of their opinions, they speak not
one word of it; and being taxed for this omission by the professors of
Leyden, they vindicate themselves so coldly in their Apology, that some learned men do
from hence conclude, that certainly, in their most secret
judgments, all the Arminians do consent with Socinus in ascribing unto God only a conjectural
foreknowledge. And one great prophet of their own affirms roundly, “That God, after his manner, oftentimes feareth,
that is, suspecteth, and that not without cause, and prudently
conjectureth, that this or that evil may arise,” Vorstius. And their chiefest patriarchs, “That God doth often intend what he doth not foresee
will come to pass,” Armin., Corv. Now, whether this kind of
atheism be tolerable among Christians or no, let all men judge who have
their senses exercised in the word of God; which, I am sure, teaches us
another lesson. For, —
First, It is laid down as a firm foundation, that
“known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world,”
Acts xv. 18. Every thing, then,
that in any respect may be called his work, is known unto him from all
eternity. Now, what in the world, if we may speak as he hath taught us,
can be exempted from this denomination? Even actions in themselves sinful
are not; though not as sinful, yet in some other regard, as punishments of
others. “Behold,” saith Nathan to David, in the name of God, “I will take
thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbour, and he shall
lie with thy wives in the sight of this sun; for thou didst it secretly,
but I will do this thing before all Israel,” 2 Sam. xii. 11, 12. So, also,
when wicked robbers had nefariously spoiled Job of all his substance, the
holy man concludeth, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away,” chap. i.
21. Now, if the working of God’s providence be so mighty and
effectual, even in and over those actions wherein the devil and men do most
maliciously offend, as did Absalom and the Sabean with the Chaldean
thieves, that it may be said to be his work, and he may be said to “do it”
(I crave liberty to use the Scripture phrase), then certainly nothing in
the world, in some respect or other, is independent of his all-disposing
hand; yea, Judas himself betraying our Saviour did nothing but “what his
hand and counsel determined before should be done,” Acts iv.
28, in respect of the event of the thing itself.
And if these actions, notwithstanding these two hindrances, — first, that
they were contingent, wrought by free agents, working according to election
and choice; secondly, that they were sinful and wicked in the agents, — had
yet their dependence on his purpose and determinate counsel, surely he hath
an interest of operation in the acts of every creature. But his works, as
it appears before, are all known unto him from the beginning, for he
worketh nothing by chance or accidentally, but all things determinately,
according to his own decree, or “the counsel of his own will,” Eph. i. 11.
Secondly, The manner of God’s knowing of things doth
evidently show that nothing that is, or may be, can be hid from him; which is not by discourse and
collection of one thing out of another, conclusions out of principles, but
altogether and at once, evidently, clearly, and distinctly, both in respect
τοῦ ὅτι, and τοῦ διότι. By one most pure act of his own essence he
discerneth all things: for there is “no creature that is not manifest in
his sight, but all are naked and opened unto his eyes,” Heb. iv. 13. So that those things
concerning which we treat he knoweth three
ways:— First, In himself and his own decree, as the first cause; in which
respect they may be said to be necessary, in respect of the certainty of
their event. Secondly, In their immediate causes, wherein their
contingency doth properly consist. Thirdly, In their own nature as future,
but to his infinite knowledge ever present.
Thirdly, The Scripture is full of
expressions to this purpose, — to wit, “That God knoweth all secrets, and
revealeth hidden things: he searcheth the reins and the heart: he knoweth
the number of the stars, and the birds of the air, the lilies of the field,
the falling of sparrows, the number of the hairs of our heads.” Some
places are most remarkable, as that of the Psalmist, “He knoweth my
thoughts long before;” even before ever they come into our minds, before
their first rising. And yet many actions that are most contingent depend
upon those thoughts known unto God from eternity; nay, — which breaketh the
very neck of the goddess contingency, — those things wherein her greatest
power is imagined to consist are directly ascribed unto God, as our words,
“the answer of the tongue,” Prov. xvi.
1; and the directing of an arrow, shot by chance, to a mark not
aimed at, 1 Kings xxii.
34. Surely God must needs foreknow the event of that contingent
action; he must needs know the man would so shoot who had
determined his arrow should be the death of a king. He maketh men poor and
rich, Prov. xxii. 2; He lifteth up one, and
pulleth down another, Ps. lxxv.
7. How many contingencies did γοργὸν ὄμμα τοῦ δεσπότου, his piercing eye run through
to foresee the crowning of Esther for the deliverance of his people! In a
word, “Known unto God are all his works.” Now, what can possibly be
imagined to be more contingent than the killing of a man by the fall of an
axe from out of his hand who intended no such thing? Yet this God assumeth
as his own work, Deut. xix.
5, Exod. xxi.
13; and so surely was by him foreknown.
Fourthly, Do but consider the prophecies in
Scripture, especially those concerning our Saviour, how many free and
contingent actions did concur for the fulfilling of them; as Isa. vii. 14,
ix. 6, liii.; Gen. iii.
15, etc. The like may be said of other predictions; as of the
wasting of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, which though, in regard of God’s
prescience, it was certainly to come to pass, yet they did it most freely,
not only following the counsel of their own wills, but also using
divination, or chanceable lots, for their direction, Ezek. xxi. 21. Yet he who made the
eye seeth all these things, Ps. xciv.
9.
Divers other reasons and testimonies might be produced to
confirm our doctrine of God’s everlasting prescience; which,
notwithstanding Episcopius’
blasphemy, that it serves for nought but to cruciate poor mortals, we
believe to be a good part of the foundation of all that consolation which
God is pleased to afford us in this vale of tears. Amidst all our
afflictions and temptations, under whose pressure we should else faint and
despair, it is no small comfort to be assured that we do nor can suffer
nothing but what his hand and counsel guides unto us, what is open and
naked before his eyes, and whose end and issue he knoweth long before;
which is a strong motive to patience, a sure anchor of hope, a firm ground
of consolation. Now, to present in one view how opposite the opinions of
the worshippers of the great goddess contingency are to this sacred truth,
take this short antithesis:—
S. S. |
Lib. Arbit. |
“Known unto God are all his
works from the beginning of the world,” Acts xv.
18. |
“God sometimes feareth, and
prudently conjectureth, that this or that evil may arise,” Vorsti. |
“Neither is there any
creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and
opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do,” Heb. iv. 13. |
“God doth not always foresee
the event of what he intendeth,” Corvin. ad Mol. |
“He that formed
the eye, shall he not see?” Ps. xciv.
9. “When a man goeth into the wood with his neighbour to hew
wood, and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and
the head slippeth from the helve, and lighteth upon his neighbour, that he
die,” Deut. xix. 5. “God delivers him into
his hand,” Exod. xxi. 13. |
“Future contingencies are not
determined unto either part,” Armin.
That is, God hath not determined, and so, consequently, doth not foreknow,
whether they shall come to pass or no. |
“Take no thought, saying,
What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be
clothed? for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these
things,” Matt.
vi. 31, 32. |
“God hopeth and expecteth
divers things that shall never come to pass,” Rem. |
“Take away God’s prescience
and you overthrow his deity,” Jerome. |
“The doctrine of prescience
seems to be invented only to vex and cruciate poor mortal men,” Episcop. |
Chapter IV.
Of the providence of God in governing the world diversely, thrust
from this pre-eminence by the Arminian idol of free-will.
I come now to treat of that betwixt
which and the Pelagian idol there is bellum ἄσπονδον, implacable war and immortal hatred,
absolutely destructive to the one side, — to wit, the providence of God.
For this, in that notion Christianity hath hitherto embraced it, and that,
in such a sense as the Arminians maintain it, can no more consist together
than fire and water, light and darkness, Christ and Belial, and he that
shall go to conjoin them ploughs with an ox and an ass; they must be tied
together with the same ligament “quo ille
mortua jungebat corpora vivis,” — wherewith the tyrant tied dead
bodies to living men. This strange advancement of the clay against the
potter, not by the way of repining, and to say, “Why hast thou made me
thus?” but by the way of emulation, “I will not be so, I will advance
myself to the sky, to the sides of thy throne,” was heretofore unknown to
the more refined Paganism. As
these of contingency, so they, with a better error, made a
goddess of providence, because, as they feigned, she helped Latona to bring
forth in the isle of Delos; intimating that Latona, or nature, though big
and great with sundry sorts of effects, could yet produce nothing without
the interceding help of divine providence: which mythology of theirs seems
to contain a sweeter gust of divine truth than any we can expect from their
towering fancies who are inclinable to believe that God for no other
reason is said to sustain all things, but because he doth not destroy them.
Now, that their proud, God-opposing errors may the better appear,
according to my former method, I will plainly show what the Scripture
teacheth us concerning this providence, with what is agreeable to right and
Christian reason, not what is dictated by tumultuating affections.
Providence is a word which, in its proper signification,
may seem to comprehend all the actions of God that outwardly are of him,
that have any respect unto his creatures, all his works that are not ad intra, essentially belonging
unto the Deity. Now, because God “worketh all things according to his
decree, or the counsel of his will,” Eph. i.
11, for whatsoever he doth now it pleased him from the
beginning, Ps. cxv. 3; seeing, also, that known
unto God are all his works from eternity; therefore, three things
concerning his providence are considerable:— 1. His decree or
purpose, whereby he hath disposed of all things
in order, and appointed them for certain ends, which he hath fore-ordained.
2. His prescience, whereby he certainly fore-knoweth all things
that shall come to pass. 3. His temporal operation, or working in
time, — “My Father worketh hitherto,” John v.
17, — whereby he actually executeth all his good pleasure. The
first and second of these have been the subject of the former chapters; the
latter only now requireth our consideration.
This, then, we may conceive as an ineffable act or work of
Almighty God, whereby he cherisheth, sustaineth, and governeth the
world, or all things by him created, moving them, agreeably to those
natures which he endowed them withal in the beginning, unto those ends
which he hath proposed. To confirm this, I will first prove this
position, That the whole world is cared for by God, and by him governed,
and therein all men, good or bad, all things in particular, be they never
so small and in our eyes inconsiderable. Secondly, show the manner how God
worketh all, in all things, and according to the diversity of secondary
causes which he hath created; whereof some are necessary, some
free, others contingent, which produce their effects nec πάντως, nec ἐπὶ τὸ
πολύ, sed κατὰ συμβεβηκός, merely by accident.
The providence of God in governing the world is plentifully
made known unto us, both by his works and by his word. I will give a few
instances of either sort:— 1. In general, that the almighty Δημιουργός, and Framer of this whole universe, should
propose unto himself no end in the creation of all things, — that he should
want either power, goodness, will, or wisdom, to order and dispose the
works of his own hands, — is altogether impossible. 2. Take a particular
instance in one concerning accident, the knowledge whereof by some means or
other, in some degree or other, hath spread itself throughout the world, —
and that is that almost universal destruction of all by the flood, whereby
the whole world was well-nigh reduced to its primitive confusion. Is there
nothing but chance to be seen in this? was there any circumstance about it
that did not show a God and his providence? Not to speak of those
revelations whereby God foretold that he would bring such a deluge, what
chance, what fortune, could collect such a small number of individuals of
all sorts, wherein the whole kind might be preserved? What hand guided
that poor vessel from the rocks and gave it a resting-place on the
mountains? Certainly, the very reading of that story, Gen. vii., viii.,
having for confirmation the catholic tradition of all mankind, were enough
to startle the stubborn heart of an atheist.
The word of God doth not less fully relate it than his
works do declare it, Ps. xix., “My Father worketh hitherto,”
saith our Saviour, John v.
17. But did not God end his work on the seventh day, and did he
not then “rest from all his work?” Gen. ii. 2.
True, from his work of creation by his omnipotence; but his work of
gubernation by his providence as yet knows no end. Yea, and divers
particular things he doth besides the ordinary course, only to make known
“that he thus worketh,” John ix.
3. As he hath framed all things by his wisdom, so he continueth
them by his providence in excellent order, as is at large declared in that
golden Psalm civ.: and this is not bounded to
any particular places or things, but “his eyes are in every place,
beholding the evil and the good,” Prov. xv.
3; so that “none can hide himself in secret places that he shall
not see him,” Jer. xxiii.
24; Acts xvii.
24; Job v. 10,
11; Exod. iv.
11. And all this he saith that men “may know from the rising of
the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside him. He is the Lord, and there is none else. He formeth the light, and
createth darkness: he maketh peace, and createth evil: he doeth all these
things,” Isa. xlv.
6, 7. In these and innumerable like places doth the Lord
declare that there is nothing which he hath made, that with the
good hand of his providence he doth not govern and sustain.
Now, this general extent of his common providence to all
doth no way hinder but that he may exercise certain special acts thereof
towards some in particular, even by how much nearer than other things they
approach unto him and are more assimilated unto his goodness. I mean his
church here on earth, and those whereof it doth consist; “for what nation
is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them?” Deut. iv. 7. In the government hereof
he most eminently showeth his glory, and exerciseth his power. Join here
his works with his word, what he hath done with what he hath promised to do
for the conservation of his church and people, and you will find admirable
issues of a more special providence. Against this he promiseth “the gates
of hell shall not prevail,” Matt. xvi.
18; — amidst of these he hath promised to remain, chap. xxviii. 20; supplying them
with an addition of all things necessary, Matt. vi.
33; desiring that “all their care might be cast upon him, who
careth for them,” 1 Pet. v.
7; forbidding any to “touch his anointed ones,” Ps. cv. 15, and that because they are
unto him as “the apple of his eye,” Zech. ii.
8. Now, this special providence hath respect unto a
supernatural end, to which that, and that alone, is to be conveyed.
For wicked men, as they are excepted from this special care
and government, so they are not exempted from the dominion of his almighty
hand. He who hath created them “for the day of evil,” Prov. xvi. 4, and provided a “place
of their own” for them to go unto, Acts i.
25, doth not in this world suffer them to live without the verge
of his all-ruling providence; but by suffering and enduring their
iniquities with great patience and “long-suffering,” Rom. ix. 22, defending them oftentimes
from the injuries of one another, Gen. iv.
15, by granting unto them many temporal blessings, Matt. v. 45, disposing of all their
works to the glory of his great name, Prov.
xxi. 1, 2, he declareth that they also live, and move, and have
their being in him, and are under the government of his providence. Nay,
there is not the least thing in this world to which his care and knowledge
doth not descend. Ill would it become his wisdom not to sustain, order,
and dispose of all things by him created, but leave them to the ruin of
uncertain chance. Jerome then was injurious to his providence, and cast a
blemish on his absolute perfection, whilst he thought to have cleared his
majesty from being defiled with the knowledge and care of the smallest
reptiles and vermin every moment; and St Austin is express to the contrary: “Who,” saith he, “hath disposed the
several members of the flea and gnat, that hath given unto them order,
life, and motion?” etc., — even most agreeable to holy Scriptures: so
Ps. civ. 20, 21, cxlv.
15; Matt. vi. 26, 30,
“He feedeth the fowls, and clotheth the grass of the field;” Job xxxix. 1, 2; Jonah iv. 6, 7. Sure it is not
troublesome to God to take notice of all that he hath created. Did he use
that great power in the production of the least of his creatures, so far
beyond the united activity of men and angels, for no end at all?
Doubtless, even they also must have a well-disposed order, for the
manifestation of his glory. “Not a sparrow falleth on the ground without
our Father;” even “the hairs of our head are all numbered,” Matt. x. 29, 30. “He clotheth the
lilies and grass of the field, which is to be cast into the oven,”
Luke xii. 27, 28. Behold his
knowledge and care of them! Again, he used frogs and lice for the
punishment of the Egyptians, Exod.
viii.; with a gourd and a worm he exercised his servant
Jonah, chap. iv.; yea, he calls the
locusts his “terrible army;” — and shall not God know and take care of the
number of his soldiers, the ordering of his dreadful host?
That God by his providence governeth and disposeth of all
things by him created is sufficiently proved; the manner how he worketh all
in all, how he ordereth the works of his own hands, in what this governing
and disposing of his creatures doth chiefly consist, comes now to be
considered. And here four things are principally to be observed:— First,
The sustaining, preserving, and upholding of all things by his power; for
“he upholdeth all things by the word of his power,” Heb. i.
3. Secondly, His working together with all things, by an
influence of causality into the agents themselves; “for he also hath
wrought all our works in us,” Isa. xxvi.
12. Thirdly, His powerful overruling of all events, both
necessary, free, and contingent, and disposing of them to certain ends for
the manifestation of his glory. So Joseph tells his brethren, “As for you,
ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass,
as it is at this day, to save much people alive,” Gen. l.
20. Fourthly, His determining and restraining second causes to
such and such effects: “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever
he will,” Prov. xxi. 1.
First, His sustentation or upholding of all things is his
powerful continuing of their being, natural strength, and faculties,
bestowed on them at their creation: “In him we live, and move, and have our
being,” Acts xvii. So that he doth neither
work all himself in them, without any co-operation of theirs, which would
not only turn all things into stocks, yea, and take from stocks
their own proper nature, but also is contrary to that general blessing he
spread over the face of the whole world in the beginning, “Be fruitful, and
multiply,” Gen. i. 22; — nor yet leave them to a
self-subsistence, he in the meantime only not destroying them; which would make him an idle spectator of most things
in the world, not to “work hitherto,” as our Saviour speaks, and grant to
divers things here below an absolute being, not derivative from him: the
first whereof is blasphemous, the latter impossible.
Secondly, For God’s working in and together with all second
causes for producing of their effects, what part or portion in the work
punctually to assign unto him, what to the power of the inferior causes,
seems beyond the reach of mortals; neither is an exact comprehension
thereof any way necessary, so that we make every thing beholding to his
power for its being, and to his assistance for its operation.
Thirdly, His supreme dominion exerciseth itself in
disposing of all things to certain and determinate ends for his own glory,
and is chiefly discerned advancing itself over those things which are most
contingent, and making them in some sort necessary, inasmuch as they are
certainly disposed of to some proposed ends. Between the birth and death
of a man, how many things merely contingent do occur! how many chances! how
many diseases! in their own nature all evitable, and, in regard of the
event, not one of them but to some proves mortal; yet, certain it is that a
man’s “days are determined, the number of his months are with the Lord, he
hath appointed his bounds that he cannot pass,” Job xiv.
5. And oftentimes by things purely contingent and accidental he
executeth his purposes, — bestoweth rewards, inflicteth punishments, and
accomplisheth his judgments; as when he delivereth a man to be slain by the
head of an axe, flying from the helve in the hand of a man cutting a tree
by the way. But in nothing is this more evident than in the ancient
casting of lots, a thing as casual and accidental as can be imagined,
huddled in the cap at a venture. Yet God overruleth them to the declaring
of his purpose, freeing truth from doubts, and manifestation of his power:
Prov. xvi. 33, “The lot is cast into
the lap, but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord;” — as you may see in the examples of Achan,
Josh.
vii. 16–18; Saul, 1
Sam. x. 20, 21; Jonathan, chap. xiv. 41, 42; Jonah,
chap. i. 7; Matthias, Acts i. 26. And yet this overruling
act of God’s providence (as no other decree or act of his) doth not rob
things contingent of their proper nature; for cannot he who effectually
causeth that they shall come to pass, cause also that they shall come to
pass contingently?
Fourthly, God’s predetermination of second causes (which I
name not last as though it were the last act of God’s providence about his
creatures, for indeed it is the first that concerneth their
operation) is that effectual working of his, according to his eternal
purpose, whereby, though some agents, as the wills of men, are causes most
free and indefinite, or unlimited lords of their own actions, in respect of
their internal principle of operation (that is, their own nature), [they]
are yet all, in respect of his decree, and by his powerful working,
determined to this or that effect in particular; not that they are
compelled to do this, or hindered from doing that, but are inclined and
disposed to do this or that, according to their proper manner of working,
that is, most freely: for truly such testimonies are everywhere obvious in
Scripture, of the stirring up of men’s wills and minds, of bending and
inclining them to divers things, of the governing of the secret thoughts
and motions of the heart, as cannot by any means be referred to a naked
permission, with a government of external actions, or to a general
influence, whereby they should have power to do this or that, or any thing
else; wherein, as some suppose, his whole providence consisteth.
Let us now jointly apply these several acts to free agents,
working according to choice, or relation, such as are the wills of men, and
that will open the way to take a view of Arminian heterodoxies, concerning
this article of Christian belief. And here two things must be premised:—
First, That they be not deprived of their own radical or original internal
liberty; secondly, That they be not exempt from the moving influence and
gubernation of God’s providence; — the first whereof would leave no just
room for rewards and punishments; the other, as I said before, is injurious
to the majesty and power of God. St Augustine judged Cicero worthy of special blame, even among the
heathens, for so attempting to make men free that he made them
sacrilegious, by denying them to be subject to an overruling providence:
which gross error was directly maintained by Damascen, a learned Christian, teaching, “Things
whereof we have any power, not to depend on providence, but on our own free
will;” an opinion fitter for a hog of the Epicurus herd than for a scholar in the school of
Christ. And yet this proud, prodigious error is now, though in other
terms, stiffly maintained: for what do they else who ascribe such an
absolute independent liberty to the will of man, that it should have in its
own power every circumstance, every condition whatsoever, that belongs to
operation, so that all things required on the part of God, or otherwise, to
the performance of an action being accomplished, it remaineth solely in the
power of a man’s own will whether he will do it or no? which supreme and
plainly divine liberty, joined with such an absolute uncontrollable power
and dominion over all his actions, would exempt and free the
will of man, not only from all fore-determining to the production of such
and such effects, but also from any effectual working or influence of the
providence of God into the will itself, that should sustain, help, or
cooperate with it in doing or willing any thing; and, therefore, the
authors of this imaginary liberty have wisely framed an imaginary
concurrence of God’s providence, answerable unto it, — namely, a general
and indifferent influence, always waiting and expecting the will of man to
determine itself to this or that effect, good or bad; God being, as it
were, always ready at hand to do that small part which he hath in our
actions, whensoever we please to use him, or, if we please to let him
alone, he no way moveth us to the performance of any thing. Now, God
forbid that we should give our consent to the choice of such a captain,
under whose conduct we might go down again unto Paganism, — to the erecting
of such an idol into the throne of the Almighty. No, doubtless, let us be
most indulgent to our wills, and assign them all the liberty that is
competent unto a created nature, to do all things freely according to
election and foregoing counsel, being free from all natural necessity and
outward compulsion; but for all this, let us not presume to deny God’s
effectual assistance, his particular powerful influence into the wills and
actions of his creatures, directing of them to a voluntary performance of
what he hath determined: which the Arminians opposing in the behalf of
their darling free-will, do work in the hearts of men an overweening of
their own power, and an absolute independence of the providence of God;
for, —
First, they deny that God (in whom we live, and move, and
have our being) doth any thing by his providence, “whereby the creature should be stirred up, or helped
in any of his actions.” That is, God wholly leaves a man in the hand of
his own counsel, to the disposal of his own absolute independent power,
without any respect to his providence at all; whence, as they do, they may
well conclude, “that those things which God would have to be done
of us freely” (such as are all human actions), “he cannot himself will or
work more powerfully and effectually than by the way of wishing or
desiring,” as Vorstius speaks; which is
no more than one man can do concerning another, perhaps far less than an
angel. I can wish or desire that another man would do what I have a mind
he should; but, truly, to describe the providence of God by such
expressions seems to me intolerable blasphemy. But thus it must be;
without such helps as these, Dagon cannot keep on his head, nor the idol of
uncontrollable freewill enjoy his dominion.
Hence Corvinus will grant that the killing of a man by the slipping of an axe’s
head from the helve, although contingent, may be said to happen according
to God’s counsel and determinate will; but on no terms will he yield
that this may be applied to actions wherein the counsel and freedom of
man’s will do take place, as though that they also should have dependence
on any such overruling power; — whereby he absolutely excludeth the
providence of God from having any sovereignty within the territory of human
actions, which is plainly to shake off the yoke of his dominion, and to
make men lords paramount within themselves: so that they may well ascribe
unto God (as they do) only a deceivable expectation of those
contingent things that are yet for to come, there being no act of his
own in the producing of such effects on which he can ground any certainty;
only, he may take a conjecture, according to his guess at men’s
inclinations. And, indeed, this is the Helen for whose enjoyment, these
thrice ten years, they have maintained warfare with the hosts of the living
God; their whole endeavour being to prove, that, notwithstanding the
performance of all things, on the part of God, required for the production
of any action, yet the will of man remains absolutely free, yea,
in respect of the event, as well as its manner of operation, to do it or
not to do it. That is, notwithstanding God’s decree that such an
action shall be performed, and his foreknowledge that it will so come to
pass; notwithstanding his cooperating with the will of man (as far as they
will allow him) for the doing of it, and though he hath determined by that
act of man to execute some of his own judgments; yet there is no kind of necessity but that
he may as well omit as do it: which is all one as if they should say, “Our
tongues are our own; we ought to speak: who is lord over us? We will
vindicate ourselves into a liberty of doing what and how we will, though
for it we cast God out of his throne.” And, indeed, if we mark it, we
shall find them undermining and pulling down the actual providence of God,
at the root and several branches thereof; for, —
First, For his conservation or sustaining of all things,
they affirm it to be very likely that this
is nothing but a negative act of his will, whereby he willeth or
determineth not to destroy the things by him created; and when we
produce places of Scripture which affirm that it is an act of his power,
they say they are foolishly cited. So that, truly, let the
Scripture say what it will, (in their conceit,) God doth no more sustain
and uphold all his creatures than I do a house when I do not set it on
fire, or a worm when I do not tread upon it.
Secondly, For God’s concurring with inferior causes in all
their acts and working, they affirm it to be only a general influence, alike upon all and every one,
which they may use or not use at their pleasure, and in the use
determine it to this or that effect, be it good or bad (so Corvinus), as it seems best unto
them. In a word, to the will of man it is
nothing but what suffers it to play its own part freely, according to its
inclination; as they jointly speak in their Confession. Observe, also, that they account this
influence of his providence not to be into the agent, the will of man,
whereby that should be helped or enabled to do any thing (no, that would
seem to grant a self-sufficiency), but only into the act
itself for its production: as if I should help a man to lift a log, it
becomes perhaps unto him so much the lighter, but he is not made one jot
the stronger; which takes off the proper work of providence, consisting in
an internal assistance.
Thirdly, For God’s determining or circumscribing the will
of man to do this or that in particular, they absolutely explode it, as a
thing destructive to their adored liberty. “It is no
way consistent with it,” say they, in their Apology. So also Arminius: “The providence of God
doth not determine the will of man to one part of the contradiction.” That
is, “God hath not determined that you shall, nor doth by any means overrule
your wills, to do this thing rather than that, to do this or to omit that.”
So that the sum of their endeavour is, to prove that the will of man is so
absolutely free, independent, and uncontrollable, that God doth not, nay,
with all his power cannot, determine it certainly and infallibly to the
performance of this or that particular action, thereby to
accomplish his own purposes, to attain his own ends. Truly, it seems to me
the most unfortunate attempt that ever Christians lighted on; which, if it
should get success answerable to the greatness of the undertaking, the
providence of God, in men’s esteem, would be almost thrust quite out of the
world. “Tantæ molis erat.” The new
goddess contingency could not be erected until the God of heaven was
utterly despoiled of his dominion over the sons of men, and in the room
thereof a home-bred idol of self-sufficiency set up, and the world
persuaded to worship it. But that the building climb no higher, let all
men observe how the word of God overthrows this Babylonian tower.
First, then, In innumerable places it is punctual that his
providence doth not only bear rule in the counsels of men and their most
secret resolutions, (whence the prophet declareth that he knoweth that “the
way of man is not in himself,” — that “it is not in man that walketh to
direct his steps,” Jer. x.
23; and Solomon, that “a man’s heart, deviseth his way, but the
Lord directeth his steps,” Prov. xvi.
9; David, also, having laid this ground, that “the Lord bringeth
the counsel of the heathen to naught,” and “maketh the devices of the
people of none effect,” but “his own counsel standeth for ever, the
thoughts of his heart to all generations,” Ps. xxxiii. 10, 11, proceedeth
accordingly, in his own distress, to pray that the Lord would infatuate and
make “foolish the counsel of
Ahithophel,” 2 Sam. xv.
31, — which also the Lord did, by working in the heart of
Absalom to hearken to the cross counsel of Hushai); but also, secondly,
That the working of his providence is effectual even in the hearts and
wills of men to turn them which way he will, and to determine them to this
or that in particular, according as he pleaseth: “The preparations of the
heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the Lord,” saith Solomon, Prov. xvi.
1; — which Jacob trusted and relied on when he prayed that the
Lord would grant his sons to find favour and mercy before that man whom
then he supposed to be some atheistical Egyptian, Gen.
xliii. 14; whence we must grant, either that the good old man
believed that it was in the hand of God to incline and unalterably turn and
settle the heart of Joseph to favour his brethren, or else his prayer must
have had such a senseless sense as this: “Grant, O Lord, such a general
influence of thy providence, that the heart of that man may be turned to
good towards my sons, or else that it may not, being left to its own
freedom.” A strange request! yet how it may be bettered by one believing
the Arminian doctrine I cannot conceive. Thus Solomon affirmeth that “the king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, like the rivers of water: he turneth it
whithersoever he will,” Prov. xxi.
1. If the heart of a king, who hath an inward natural liberty
equal with others, and an outward liberty belonging to his state and
condition above them, be yet so in the hand of the Lord as that he always
turneth it to what he pleaseth in particular, then certainly other men are
not excepted from the rule of the same providence; which is the plain sense
of these words, and the direct thesis which we maintain in opposition to
the Arminian idol of absolute independent free-will. So Daniel, also,
reproving the Babylonian tyrant, affirmeth that he “glorified not the God
in whose hand was his breath, and whose were all his ways,” chap. v. 23. Not only his breath and
life, but also all his ways, his actions, thoughts, and words, were in the
hand of God.
Yea, thirdly, sometimes the saints of God, as I touched
before, do pray that God would be pleased thus to determine their hearts,
and bend their wills, and wholly incline them to some one certain thing,
and that without any prejudice to their true and proper liberty: so David,
Ps. cxix. 36, “Incline my heart unto
thy testimonies, and not to covetousness.” This prayer being his may also
be ours, and we may ask it in faith, relying on the power and promise of
God in Christ that he will perform our petitions, John
xiv. 14. Now, I desire any Christian to resolve, whether, by
these and the like requests, he intendeth to desire at the hand of God
nothing but such an indifferent motion to any good as may leave him to his
own choice whether he will do it or no, which is all the Arminians will
grant him; or rather, that he would powerfully bend his heart and soul unto
his testimonies, and work in him an actual embracing of all the ways of
God, not desiring more liberty, but only enough to do it willingly. Nay,
surely the prayers of God’s servants, requesting, with Solomon, that the
Lord would be with them, and “incline their heart unto him, to keep his
statutes and walk in his commandments,” 1 Kings viii. 57, 58; and with
David, to “create in them a clean heart, and renew a right spirit within
them,” Ps. li. 10; when, according to God’s
promises, they entreat him “to put his fear into their hearts,” Jer. xxxii. 40, “to unite their
hearts to fear his name,” Ps. lxxxvi.
11, to work in them both the will and the deed, an actual
obedience unto his law; — cannot possibly aim at nothing but a general
influence, enabling them alike either to do or not to do what they so
earnestly long after.
Fourthly, The certainty of divers promises and threatenings
of Almighty God dependeth upon his powerful determining and turning the
wills and hearts of men which way he pleaseth; thus, to them that fear him
he promiseth that they shall find favour in the sight of men,
Prov. iii. 4. Now, if,
notwithstanding all God’s powerful operation in their hearts, it remaineth
absolutely in the hands of men whether they will favour them that fear him
or no, it is wholly in their power whether God shall be true in his
promises or no. Surely when Jacob wrestled with God on the strength of
such promise, Gen. xxxii.
12, he little thought of any question whether it were in the
power of God to perform it. Yea, and the event showed that there ought to
be no such question, chap.
xxxiii.; for the Lord turned the heart of his brother Esau, as
he doth of others when he makes them pity his servants when at any time
they have carried them away captives, Ps. cvi.
46. See, also, the same powerful operation required to the
execution of his judgments, Job xii. 17, xx.
21, etc. In brief, there is no prophecy nor prediction in the
whole Scripture, no promise to the church or faithful, to whose
accomplishment the free actions and concurrence of men are required, but
evidently declareth that God disposeth of the hearts of men, ruleth their
wills, inclineth their affections, and determines them freely to choose and
do what he in his good pleasure hath decreed shall be performed; — such as
were the prophecies of deliverance from the Babylonish captivity by Cyrus,
Isa. xlv.; of the conversion of the
Gentiles; of the stability of the church, Matt.
xvi.; of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, chap. xxiv.; with innumerable others.
I will add only some few reasons for the close of this long discourse.
This opinion, that God hath nothing but a general influence
into the actions of men, not effectually moving their wills to this or that
in particular, —
First, Granteth a goodness of entity, or being,
unto divers things, whereof God is not the author, as those special actions
which men perform without his special concurrence; which is blasphemous.
The apostle affirms that “of him are all things.”
Secondly, It denieth God to be the author of all moral
goodness, for an action is good inasmuch as it is such an action in
particular; which that any is so, according to this opinion, is
to be attributed merely to the will of man. The general influence of God
moveth him no more to prayer than to evil communications tending to the
corruption of good manners.
Thirdly, It maketh all the decrees of God, whose execution
dependeth on human actions, to be altogether uncertain, and his
foreknowledge of such things to be fallible and easily to be deceived; so
that there is no reconciliation possible to be hoped for betwixt these
following and the like assertions:—
S.
S. |
Lib. Arbit. |
“In him we live, and move,
and have our being,” Acts xvii.
28. |
“God’s sustaining of all
things is not an affirmative act of his power, but a negative act of his
will.” |
“He upholdeth all things by
the word of his power,” Heb. i.
3. |
— “Whereby he will not
destroy them,” Rem.
Apol. |
“Thou hast wrought all our
works in us,” Isa. xxvi.
12. “My Father worketh hitherto,” John v.
17. |
“God by his influence
bestoweth nothing on the creature whereby it may be incited or helped in
its actions,” Corvinus. |
“The preparations of the
heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, is from the Lord,” Prov. xvi.
1. “The king’s heart is in the hand of the Lord, like the rivers of water: he turneth it
whithersoever he will,” Prov. xxi.
1. |
“Those things God would have
us freely do ourselves; he can no more effectually work or will than by the
way of wishing,” Vorstius. |
“Incline my heart unto thy
testimonies, and not to covetousness,” Ps. cxix.
36. “Unite my heart to fear thy name,” Ps.
lxxxvi. 11. “The God in whose hand try breath is, and whose are
all try ways, thou hast not glorified,” Dan. v.
23. |
“The providence of God doth
not determine the free-will of man to this or that particular, or to one
part of the contradiction,” Arminius. |
See Matt.
xxvii. 1, compared with Acts ii. 23, and iv. 27,
28; Luke xxiv.
27; John xix. 31–36. For the
necessity of other events, see Exod. xxi.
17; Job xiv. 5; Matt. xix.
7, etc. |
“The will of man ought to be
free from all kind of internal and external necessity in its actions,”
Rem. That is, God cannot lay
such a necessity upon any thing as that it shall infallibly come to pass as
he intendeth. See the contrary in the places cited. |
Chapter V.
Whether the will and purpose of God may be resisted, and he be
frustrate of his intentions.
By the former steps is the altar of
Ahaz set on the right hand of the altar of God, — the Arminian idol, in a
direct opposition, exalted to an equal pitch with the power and will of the
Most High. I shall now present unto you the Spirit of God once
more contending with the towering imaginations of poor mortals, about a
transcendent privilege of greatness, glory, and power: for having made his
decrees mutable, his prescience fallible, and almost quite divested him of
his providence, as the sum and issue of all their endeavours, they affirm
that his will may be resisted, he may fail of his intentions, be frustrate
of his ends, — he may and doth propose such things as he neither doth nor
can at any time accomplish, and that because the execution of such acts of
his will might haply clash against the freedom of the will of men; which,
if it be not an expression of spiritual pride above all that ever the devil
attempted in heaven, divines do not well explicate that sin of his. Now,
because there may seem some difficulty in this matter, by reason of the
several acceptations of the will of God, especially in regard of
that whereby it is affirmed that his law and precepts are his will, which,
alas! we all of us too often resist or transgress, I will unfold one
distinction of the will of God, which will leave it clear what it is that
the Arminians oppose, for which we count them worthy of so heavy a
charge.
“Divinum velle est ejus
esse,” say the schoolmen, “The will of God
is nothing but God willing;” not differing from his essence “secundem rem,” in the thing itself, but
only “secundem rationem,” in that it
importeth a relation to the thing willed. The essence of God, then, being
a most absolute, pure, simple act or substance, his will consequently can
be but simply one; whereof we ought to make neither division nor
distinction. If that whereby it is signified were taken always properly
and strictly for the eternal will of God, the differences hereof that are
usually given are rather distinctions of the signification of the word than
of the thing.
In which regard they are not only tolerable, but simply
necessary, because without them it is utterly impossible to reconcile some
places of Scripture seemingly repugnant. In the 22d chapter
of Genesis, verse 2, God commandeth Abraham to take his only son
Isaac, and offer him for a burnt-offering in the land of Moriah. Here the
words of God are declarative of some will of God unto Abraham, who knew it
ought to be, and little thought but that it should be, performed; but yet,
when he actually addressed himself to his duty, in obedience to the will of
God, he receiveth a countermand, verse
12, that he should not lay his hand upon the child to sacrifice
him. The event plainly manifesteth that it was the will of God that Isaac
should not be sacrificed; and yet notwithstanding, by reason of his
command, Abraham seems before bound to believe that it was well-pleasing
unto God that he should accomplish what he was enjoined. If the will of
God in the Scripture be used but in one acceptation, here is a
plain contradiction. Thus God commands Pharaoh to let his people go.
Could Pharaoh think otherwise, nay, was he not bound to believe that it was
the will of God that he should dismiss the Israelites at the first hearing
of the message? Yet God affirms that he would harden his heart, that he
should not suffer them to depart until he had showed his signs and wonders
in the land of Egypt. To reconcile these and the like places of Scripture,
both the ancient fathers and schoolmen, with modern divines, do affirm that
the one will of God may be said to be divers or manifold, in regard of the
sundry manners whereby he willeth those things to be done which he willeth,
as also in other respects, and yet, taken in its proper signification, is
simply one and the same. The vulgar distinction of God’s secret and
revealed will is such as to which all the others may be reduced; and
therefore I have chosen it to insist upon.
The secret will of God is his eternal, unchangeable purpose
concerning all things which he hath made, to be brought by certain means to
their appointed ends: of this himself affirmeth, that “his counsel shall
stand, and he will do all his pleasure,” Isa. xlvi.
10. This some call the absolute, efficacious will of God, the
will of his good pleasure, always fulfilled; and indeed this is the only
proper, eternal, constant, immutable will of God, whose order can neither
be broken nor its law transgressed, so long as with him there is neither
change nor shadow of turning.
The revealed will of God containeth not his purpose and
decree, but our duty, — not what he will do according to his good
pleasure, but what we should do if we will please him; and this,
consisting in his word, his precepts and promises, belongeth to us and our
children, that we may do the will of God. Now this, indeed, is rather
τὸ θελητόν than τὸ θέλημα, that which God willeth, rather than his
will, but termed so as we call that the will of a man which he hath
determined shall be done: “This is the will of him that sent me, that every
one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life,”
saith our Saviour, John vi.
40; that is, this is that which his will hath appointed. Hence
it is called “voluntas signi,” or
the sign of his will, metaphorically only called his will, saith Aquinas; for inasmuch as
our commands are the signs of our wills, the same is said of the precepts
of God. This is the rule of our obedience, and whose transgression makes
an action sinful; for ἡ ἁμαρτία ἐστὶν ἡ
ἀνομία, “sin is the transgression of a law,” and that such a law as
is given to the transgressor to be observed. Now, God hath not imposed on
us the observation of his eternal decree and intention; which, as it is
utterly impossible for us to transgress or frustrate, so were we unblamable
if we should. A master requires of his servant to do what he
commands, not to accomplish what he intends, which perhaps he never
discovered unto him; nay, the commands of superiors are not always signs
that the commander will have the things commanded actually performed (as in
all precepts for trial), but only that they who are subjects to this
command shall be obliged to obedience, as far as the sense of it doth
extend. “Et hoc clarum est in præceptis
divinis,” saith Durand, etc., — “And this is clear in the commands of
God,” by which we are obliged to do what he commandeth; and yet it is not
always his pleasure that the thing itself, in regard of the event, shall be
accomplished, as we saw before in the examples of Pharaoh and Abraham.
Now, the will of God in the first acceptation is said to be
hid or secret, not because it is so always, for it is in some particulars
revealed and made known unto us two ways:—
First, By his word; as where God affirmeth that the dead
shall rise. We doubt not but that they shall rise, and that it is the
absolute will of God that they shall do so. Secondly, By the effects; for
when any thing cometh to pass, we may cast the event on the will of God as
its cause, and look upon it as a revelation of his purpose. Jacob’s sons
little imagined that it was the will of God by them to send their brother
into Egypt; yet afterward Joseph tells them plainly it was not they, but
God that sent him thither, Gen. xlv.
5. But it is said to be secret for two causes:— First, Because
for the most part it is so. There is nothing in divers issues declarative
of God’s determination but only the event, which, while it is future, is
hidden to them who have faculties to judge of things past and present, but
not to discern things for to come. Hence St James bids us not be too
peremptory in our determinations that we will do this or that, not knowing
how God will close with us for its performance. Secondly, It is said to be
secret in reference to its cause, which for the most part is past our
finding out: “His path is in the great waters, and his footsteps are not
known.”
It appeareth, then, that the secret and revealed will of
God are diverse in sundry respects, but chiefly in regard of their acts and
their objects. First, In regard of their acts, the secret will of God is
his eternal decree and determination concerning any thing to be done in its
appointed time; his revealed will is an act whereby he declareth himself to
love or approve any thing, whether ever it be done or no. Secondly, They
are diverse in regard of their objects. The object of God’s purpose and
decree is that which is good in any kind, with reference to its actual
existence, for it must infallibly be performed; but the object of his
revealed will is that only which is morally good (I speak of it
inasmuch as it approveth or commandeth), agreeing to the law and the
gospel, and that considered only inasmuch as it is good; for whether it be
ever actually performed or no is accidental to the object of God’s revealed
will.
Now, of these two differences the first is perpetual, in
regard of their several acts; but not so the latter. They are sometimes
coincident in regard of their objects. For instance, God commandeth us to
believe; here his revealed will is that we should so do: withal, he
intendeth we shall do so; and therefore ingenerateth faith in our hearts
that we may believe. Here his secret and revealed will are coincident; the
former being his precept that we should
believe, the latter his purpose that we shall believe. In this case, I
say, the object of the one and the other is the same, — even what we ought
to do, and what he will do. And this inasmuch as he hath “wrought all our
works in us,” Isa. xxvi.
12. They are our own works which he works in us; his act in us
and by us is ofttimes our duty towards him. He commands us by his revealed
will to walk in his statutes, and keep his laws; upon this he also
promiseth that he will so effect all things, that of some this shall be
performed: Ezek. xxxvi. 26, 27, “A new heart
also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will
take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart
of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my
statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments and do them.” So that the
self-same obedience of the people of God is here the object of his will,
taken in either acceptation. And yet the precept of God is not here, as
some learned men suppose, declarative of God’s intention, for then it must
be so to all to whom it is given; which evidently it is not, for many are
commanded to believe on whom God never bestoweth faith. It is still to be
looked upon as a mere declaration of our duty, its closing with God’s
intention being accidental unto it. There is a wide difference betwixt “Do
such a thing,” and, “You shall do it.” If God’s command to Judas to
believe imported as much as, “It is my purpose and intention that Judas
shall believe,” it must needs contradict that will of God whereby he
determined that Judas, for his infidelity, should go to his “own place.”
His precepts are in all obedience of us to be performed, but do not signify
his will that we shall actually fulfil his commands. Abraham was not bound
to believe that it was God’s intention that Isaac should be sacrificed, but
that it was his duty. There was no obligation on Pharaoh to think it was
God’s purpose the people should depart at the first summons; he had nothing to do with that: but there was one to believe that if
he would please God, he must let them go. Hence divers things of good use
in these controversies may be collected:—
First, That God may command many things by his word which
he never decreed that they should actually be performed; because, in such
things, his words are not a revelation of his eternal decree and purpose,
but only a declaration of some thing wherewith he is well-pleased, be it by
us performed or no. In the fore-cited case he commanded Pharaoh to let his
people go, and plagued him for refusing to obey his command. Hence we may
not collect that God intended the obedience and conversion of Pharaoh by
this his precept, but was frustrated of his intention, — for the Scripture
is evident and clear that God purposed by his disobedience to accomplish an
end far different, even a manifestation of his glory by his punishment, —
but only that obedience unto his commands is pleasing unto him; as
1 Sam. xv. 22.
Secondly, That the will of God to which our obedience is
required is the revealed will of God contained in his word; whose
compliance with his decree is such, that hence we learn three things
tending to the execution of it:— First, That it is the condition of the
word of God, and the dispensation thereof, instantly to persuade to faith
and obedience. Secondly, That it is our duty by all means to aspire to the
performance of all things by it enjoined, and our fault if we do not.
Thirdly, That God by these means will accomplish his eternal decree of
saving his elect; and that he willeth the salvation of others, inasmuch as
he calleth them unto the performance of the condition thereof. Now, our
obedience is so to be regulated by this revealed will of God, that we may
sin either by omission against its precepts or commission against its
prohibitions; although by our so omitting or committing of any thing the
secret will or purpose of God be fulfilled. Had Abraham disobeyed God’s
precept, when he was commanded to sacrifice his son Isaac, though God’s
will had been accomplished thereby, who never intended it, yet Abraham had
grievously sinned against the revealed will of God, the rule of his duty.
The holiness of our actions consisteth in a conformity unto his precepts,
and not unto his purposes. On this ground Gregory affirmeth, “That
many fulfil the will of God” (that is, his intentions) “when they think to
change it” (by transgressing his precepts); “and by resisting imprudently,
obey God’s purpose.” And to show how merely we in our actions are tied to
this rule of our duty, St
Austin shows how
a man may do good in a thing cross to God’s secret will, and evil in that
which complieth with it, which he illustrates by the example of a sick parent having two children, the one wicked, who desires his
father’s death, the other godly, and he prays for his life. But the will
of God is he shall die, agreeably to the desire of the wicked child; and
yet it is the other who hath performed his duty, and done what is pleasing
unto God.
Thirdly, To return from this not unnecessary digression,
that which we have now in agitation is the secret will of God, which we
have before unfolded; and this it is that we charge the Arminians for
affirming that it may be resisted, — that is, that God may fail in his
purposes, come short of what he earnestly intendeth, or be frustrated of
his aim and end: as if, [when] he should determinately resolve the
faith and salvation of any man, it is in the power of that man to make void
his determination, and not believe, and not be saved. Now, it is only in
cases of this nature, wherein our own free wills have an interest, that
they thus limit and circumscribe the power of the Most High. In other
things they grant his omnipotence to be of no less extent than others do;
but in this case they are peremptory and resolute, without any colouring or
tergiversation: for whereas there is a question proposed by the apostle,
Rom. ix. 19, “Who hath resisted his
will?” which that none hath or can he grants in the following verses, Corvinus affirms, “It is only an objection of the Jews, rejected by the
apostle;” — which is much like an answer young scholars usually give to
some difficult place in Aristotle, when they cannot think of a better,
“Loquitur ex aliorum sententia;” for
there is no sign of any such rejection of it by the apostle in the whole
following discourse; yea, and it is not the Jews that St Paul disputeth
withal here, but weaker brethren concerning the Jews, which is manifest
from the first verse of the next chapter,
where he distinguisheth between “brethren” to whom and “Israel”
of whom he spake. Secondly, He speaks of the Jews in the whole
treatise in the third person, but of the disputer in the second. Thirdly,
It is taken for a confessed principle between St Paul and the disputer, as
he calls him, that the Jews were rejected, which surely themselves would
not readily acknowledge. So that Corvinus rejects, as an objection of the Jews, a granted
principle of St Paul and the other Christians of his time. With the like
confidence the same author affirmeth, “That they nothing doubt but that many things are not
done which God would have to be done.” Vorstius goes farther, teaching “that not only
many things are [not] done which he would have done, but also that many
things are done which he would not have done.” He means not our transgressing of his law, but God’s failing in his purpose, as
Corvinus clears it,
acknowledging that the execution of God’s will is suspended or hindered by
man; to whom Episcopius
subscribes. As, for example, God purposeth and intendeth the
conversion of a sinner, — suppose it were Mary Magdalene; — can this
intention of his be crossed and his will resisted? “Yea,” say the
Arminians, “for God converts sinners by his grace.” “But we can resist God
when he would convert us by his grace,” say six of them jointly in their meeting at the
Hague. “But some one may here
object,” say they, “that thus God faileth of his intention, doth not attain
the end at which he aims. We answer, This we grant.” Or be it the
salvation of men, they say, “they are certain that
God intendeth that for many which never obtain it;” that end he cannot
compass.
And here, methinks, they place God in a most unhappy
condition, by affirming that they are often damned whom he would have to be
saved, though he desires their salvation with a most vehement desire and
natural affection,
— such, I think, as crows have to the good of their young ones: for that
there are in him such desires as are never fulfilled, because not regulated
by wisdom and justice, they plainly affirm; for although by his infinite
power, perhaps, he might accomplish them, yet it would not become him so to
do.
Now, let any good-natured man, who hath been a little
troubled for poor Jupiter in Homer, mourning for
the death of his son Sarpedon, which he could not prevent, or hath been
grieved for the sorrow of a distressed father, not able to remove the
wickedness and inevitable ruin of an only son, drop one tear for the
restrained condition of the God of heaven, who, when he would have all and
every man in the world to come to heaven, to escape the torments of hell,
and that with a serious purpose and intention that it shall be so, a
vehement affection and fervent natural desire that it should be so, yet,
being not in himself alone able to save one, must be forced to lose his
desire, lay down his affection, change his purpose, and see the greatest
part of them to perish everlastingly, yea, notwithstanding that he
had provided a sufficient means for them all to escape, with a purpose and
intention that they should so do.
In brief, their whole doctrine on this point is laid down
by Corvinus, chap. iii., against
Moulin, and the third section; where, first, he alloweth of the
distinction of the will of God into that whereby he will have us do
something, and that whereby he will do any thing himself. The first
is nothing but his law and precepts; which we with him affirm may be said
to be resisted, inasmuch as it is transgressed. The latter, he saith, if
it respect any act of man’s, may be considered as preceding that act, or
following it; if preceding it, then it may be resisted, if man will not
cooperate. Now, this is the will of God, whereby himself intendeth to do
any thing; the sum of which distinction is this, “The will of God
concerning the future being of any thing may be considered as it goeth
before the actual existence of the thing itself, and in this regard it may
be hindered or resisted; but as it is considered to follow any act of man,
it is always fulfilled:” by which latter member, striving to mollify the
harshness of the former, he runs himself into inexplicable nonsense,
affirming that that act of the will of God whereby he intendeth men shall
do any thing cannot be hindered after they have done it, — that is, God
hath irresistibly purposed they shall do it, provided they do it! In his
following discourse, also, he plainly grants that there is no act of God’s
will about the salvation of men that may not be made void and of none
effect, but only that general decree whereby he hath established an
inseparable connection between faith and salvation, or whereby he hath
appointed faith in Christ to be the means of attaining blessedness, which
is only an immanent act of God’s will, producing no outward effect; so that
every act thereof that hath an external issue by human co-operation is
frustrable and may fall to the ground: which in what direct opposition it
stands to the word of God, let these following instances declare:—
First, “Our God is in the heavens,” saith the psalmist: “he
hath done whatsoever he hath pleased,” Ps. cxv.
3. Not only part, but all, whatsoever he pleased should come to
pass, by any means. “He ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to
whomsoever he will,” Dan. iv.
17. The transposition of kingdoms is not without the mixture of
divers free and voluntary actions of men, and yet in that great work God
doth all that he pleaseth. Yea, before him “all the inhabitants of the
earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the
army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay
his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?” verse
35. “My counsel,” saith he, “shall stand, and I will do all my
pleasure,” Isa. xlvi. 10; “I have purposed, I
will also do it,” verse
11. Nay, so certain is he of accomplishing all his purposes,
that he confirms it with an oath: “The Lord of hosts hath sworn, Surely as I have thought, so it
shall come to pass; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand,” Isa. xiv. 24. And indeed it were a
very strange thing, that God should intend what he foreseeth will never
come to pass. But I confess this argument will not be pressing against the
Arminians, who question that prescience; but yet, would they also would
observe from the Scripture, that the failing of wicked men’s counsels and
intentions is a thing that God is said to “deride in heaven,” as Ps.
ii. 4. He threatens them with it. “Take counsel together,”
saith he, “and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not
stand,” Isa. viii. 10. See also chap. xxix. 7, 8. And shall they be
enabled to recriminate, and cast the like aspersion on the God of heaven?
No, surely. Saith St
Austin, “Let us take heed we be not compelled to
believe that Almighty God would have any thing done which doth not come to
pass.” To which truth, also, that the schoolmen have universally consented
is showed by Alvarez, Disput. xxii., pro. 3.
And these few instances will manifest the Arminian opposition to the word
of God in this particular:—
S. S. |
Lib. Arbit. |
“Our God is in the heavens:
he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased,” Ps. cxv.
3. |
“We nothing doubt but many
things which God willeth, or that it pleaseth him to have done, do yet
never come to pass,” Corvinus. “We grant that some of God’s desires are never
fulfilled,” Idem. |
“I will do all my pleasure.”
Isa. xlvi. 10. “None can stay his
hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?” Dan. iv.
35. |
“It is in the power of man to
hinder the execution of God’s will,” Idem. |
“I have purposed, I will also
do it,” Isa. xlvi. 11. |
“It is ridiculous to imagine
that God doth not seriously will any thing but what taketh effect,” Episcopius. |
“As I have purposed, so shall
it stand,” Isa. xiv. 24. |
“It may be objected that God
faileth of his end: this we readily grant,” Rem.
Synod. |
Chapter VI.
How the whole doctrine of predestination is corrupted by the
Arminians.
The cause of all these quarrels,
wherewith the Arminians and their abettors have troubled the church of
Christ, comes next unto our consideration. The eternal predestination of
Almighty God, that fountain of all spiritual blessings, of all the effects
of God’s love derived unto us through Christ, the demolishing of this rock
of our salvation hath been the chief endeavour of all the patrons of human
self-sufficiency; so to vindicate unto themselves a power and independent
ability of doing good, of making themselves to differ from others, of
attaining everlasting happiness, without going one step from without
themselves. And this is their first attempt, to attain their second
proposed end, of building a tower from the top whereof they may mount into
heaven, whose foundation is nothing but the sand of their own free-will and
endeavours. Quite on a sudden (what they have done in effect) to have
taken away this divine predestination, name and thing, had been an attempt
as noted as notorious, and not likely to attain the least success amongst
men professing to believe the gospel of Christ; wherefore, suffering the
name to remain, they have abolished the thing itself, and substituted
another so unlike it in the room thereof, that any one may see they have
gotten a blear-eyed Leah instead of Rachel, and hug a cloud instead of a
Deity. The true doctrine itself hath been so excellently delivered by
divers learned divines, so freed from all objections, that I shall only
briefly and plainly lay it down, and that with special reference to the
seventeenth article of our church, where it is clearly avowed; showing
withal, — which is my chief intention, — how it is thwarted, opposed, and
overthrown by the Arminians. Predestination, in the usual sense [in
which] it is taken, is a part of God’s providence concerning his creatures,
distinguished from it by a double restriction:—
First, In respect of their objects; for whereas
the decree of providence comprehendeth his intentions towards all the works
of his hands, predestination respecteth only rational creatures.
Secondly, In regard of their ends; for whereas his
providence directeth all creatures in general to those several ends to
which at length they are brought, whether they are proportioned unto their
nature or exceeding the sphere of their natural activity, predestination is
exercised only in directing rational creatures to supernatural ends: so
that, in general, it is the counsel, decree, or purpose of Almighty God
concerning the last and supernatural end of his rational creatures,
to be accomplished for the praise of his glory.
But this also must receive a double restriction before we come precisely to
what we in this place aim at: and these again in regard of the objects or
the ends thereof.
The object of predestination is all rational creatures,
Now, these are either angels or men. Of angels I shall not treat.
Secondly, The end by it provided for them is either eternal happiness or
eternal misery. I speak only of the former, — the act of God’s
predestination transmitting men to everlasting happiness: and in this
restrained sense it differs not at all from election, and we may use them
as synonyma, terms of the
same importance; though, by some affirming that God predestinateth them to
faith whom he hath chosen, they seem to be distinguished as the decrees of
the end, and the means conducing thereunto, whereof the first is election,
intending the end, and then takes place predestination, providing the
means. But this exact distinction appeareth not directly in the
Scripture.
This election the word of God proposeth unto us as the
gracious, immutable decree of Almighty God, whereby, before the
foundation of the world, out of his own good pleasure, he chose certain
men, determining to free them from sin and misery, to bestow upon them
grace and faith, to give them unto Christ, to bring them to everlasting
blessedness, for the praise of his glorious grace; or, as it is
expressed in our church articles, “Predestination to life is the
everlasting purpose of God, whereby, before the foundations of the world
were laid, he hath constantly decreed by his counsel, secret to us, to
deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of
mankind, and to bring them by Christ unto everlasting salvation, as vessels
made unto honour; wherefore, they who are endued with so excellent a
benefit of God be called according to God’s purpose,” etc.
Now, to avoid prolixity, I will annex only such annotations
as may clear the sense and confirm the truth of the article by the
Scriptures, and show briefly how it is overthrown by the Arminians in every
particular thereof:—
First, The article, consonantly to the Scripture, affirmeth
that it is an eternal decree, made before the foundations of the world
were laid; so that by it we must needs be chosen before we were born,
before we have done either good or evil. The words of the article are
clear, and so also is the Scripture: “He hath chosen us in him before the
foundation of the world,” Eph. i. 4;
“The children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, it
was said,” etc., Rom. ix.
11, 12; “We are called with an holy calling, not according to
our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us
in Christ Jesus before the world began,” 2 Tim. i.
9. Now, from hence it would undoubtedly follow that
no good thing in us can be the cause of our election, for every cause must
in order precede its effect; but all things whereof we by any means are
partakers, inasmuch as they are ours, are temporary, and so cannot be the
cause of that which is eternal. Things with that qualification must have
reference to the sole will and good pleasure of God; which reference would
break the neck of the Arminian election. Wherefore, to prevent such a
fatal ruin, they deny the principle, — to wit, that election is
eternal. So the Remonstrants, in their
Apology: “Complete election regardeth
none but him that is dying; for this peremptory election decreeth the whole
accomplishment and consummation of salvation, and therefore requireth in
the object the finished course of faith and obedience,” saith Grevinchovius; which is to make
God’s election nothing but an act of his justice, approving our obedience,
and such an act as is incident to any weak man, who knows not what will
happen in the next hour that is yet for to come. And is this
post-destination that which is proposed to us in the Scripture as the
unsearchable fountain of all God’s love towards us in Christ? “Yea,” say they, “we
acknowledge no other predestination to be revealed in the gospel besides
that whereby God decreeth to save them who should persevere in faith;” that
is, God’s determination concerning their salvation is pendulous, until he
find by experience that they will persevere in obedience. But I wonder
why, seeing election is confessedly one of the greatest expressions of
God’s infinite goodness, love, and mercy towards us, if it follow our
obedience, we have it not, like all other blessings and mercies, promised
unto us. Is it not because such propositions as these, “Believe, Peter,
and continue in the faith unto the end, and I will choose thee before the
foundation of the world,” are fitter for the writings of the Arminians than
the word of God? Neither will we be their rivals in such an election, as
from whence no fruit, no effect, no consolation can be
derived to any mortal man, whilst he lives in this world.
Secondly, The article affirmeth that it is
constant, — that is, one immutable decree; agreeably also to the
Scriptures, teaching but one purpose, but one foreknowledge, one good
pleasure, one decree of God, concerning the infallible ordination of his
elect unto glory; although of this decree there may be said to be two acts,
— one concerning the means, the other concerning the end, but
both knit up in the “immutability of God’s counsel,” Heb. vi. 17. “The foundation of God
standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his,”
2 Tim. ii. 19; “His gifts and calling
are without recalling,” not to be repented of, Rom. xi.
29. Now, what say our Arminians to this? Why, a whole
multitude of notions and terms have they invented to obscure the doctrine.
“Election,” say they, “is either legal or evangelical, general
or particular, complete or incomplete, revocable or irrevocable, peremptory
or not peremptory,” with I know not how many more distinctions of one
single eternal act of Almighty God, whereof there is neither “vola nec vestigium,” sign or token, in the
whole Bible, or any approved author. And to these quavering divisions they
accommodate their doctrine, or rather they purposely invented them to make
their errors unintelligible. Yet something agreeably thus they dictate:
“There is a complete election,
belonging to none but those that are dying; and there is another,
incomplete, common to all that believe: as the good things of salvation are
incomplete which are continued whilst faith is continued, and revoked when
that is denied, so election is incomplete in this life, and revocable.”
Again: “There are,” they say in their Confession, “three orders of believers and repenters in the
Scripture, whereof some are beginners, others having continued for a time,
and some perseverants. The first two orders are chosen verè, truly, but not absolutè prorsus, absolutely, but only for a
time, — so long as they will remain as they are; the third are chosen
finally and peremptorily: for this act of God is either continued or
interrupted, according as we fulfil the condition.” But whence learned the
Arminians this doctrine? Not one word of it from the word of truth; no
mention there of any such desultory election, no speech of faith, but such
as is consequent to one eternal irrevocable decree of predestination: They
“believed” who were “ordained to eternal life,” Acts
xiii. 48. No distinction of men half and wholly elected, where
it is affirmed that it is impossible the elect should be seduced, Matt. xxiv. 24, — that none should
snatch Christ’s sheep out of his Father’s hand, John x. 28, 29. What would they
have more? God’s purpose of election is sealed up, 2
Tim. ii. 19, and therefore cannot be revoked; it must stand
firm, Rom. ix. 11, in spite of all
opposition. Neither will reason allow us to think any immanent act of God to be incomplete or revocable, because of the mere
alliance it hath with his very nature. But reason, Scripture, God himself,
all must give place to any absurdities, if they stand in the Arminian way,
bringing in their idol with shouts, and preparing his throne, by claiming
the cause of their predestination to be in themselves.
Thirdly, The article is clear that the object of this
predestination is some particular men chosen out of mankind; that
is, it is such an act of God as concerneth some men in particular, taking
them, as it were, aside from the midst of their brethren, and designing
them for some special end and purpose. The Scripture also aboundeth in
asserting this verity, calling them that are so chosen a “few,” Matt. xx. 16, which must needs
denote some certain persons; and the “remnant according to election,”
Rom. xi. 5; those whom “the Lord
knoweth to be his,” 2 Tim. ii.
19; men “ordained to eternal life,” Acts
xiii. 48; “us,” Rom. viii.
39; those that are “written in the Lamb’s book of life,”
Rev. xxi. 27; — all which, and divers
others, clearly prove that the number of the elect is certain, not only
materially, as they say,
that there are so many, but formally also, that these particular persons,
and no other, are they, which cannot be altered. Nay, the very nature of
the thing itself doth so demonstratively evince it, that I wonder it can
possibly be conceived under any other notion. To apprehend an election of
men not circumscribed with the circumstance of particular persons is such a
conceited, Platonical abstraction, as it seems strange that any one dares
profess to understand that there should be a predestination, and none
predestinated; an election, and none elected; a choice amongst many, yet
none left or taken; a decree to save men, and yet thereby salvation
destinated to no one man, either “re aut
spe,” in deed or in expectation. In a word, that there should be a
purpose of God to bring men unto glory, standing inviolable, though never
any one attained the purposed end, is such a riddle as no Œdipus can
unfold. Now, such an election, such a predestination, have the Arminians
substituted in the place of God’s everlasting decree. “We deny,” say
they, “that God’s election extendeth itself to any singular persons as
singular persons;” that is, that any particular persons, as Peter, Paul,
John, are by it elected. No; how, then? Why, “God hath
appointed, without difference, to dispense the means of faith; and as he
seeth these persons to believe or not to believe by the use of those means,
so at length he determineth of them,” as saith Corvinus. Well, then, God
chooseth no particular man to salvation, but whom he seeth believing by his
own power, with the help only of such means as are afforded unto others who
never believe; and as he maketh himself thus differ from them by a good use
of his own abilities, so also he may be reduced again unto the same
predicament, and then his election, which respecteth not him in his person,
but only his qualification, quite vanisheth. But is this God’s decree of
election? “Yes,” say they; and make a doleful complaint that any other
doctrine should be taught in the church. “It is obtruded,” say the true-born sons of Arminius, “on the church as a most holy
doctrine, that God, by an absolute, immutable decree, from all eternity,
out of his own good pleasure, hath chosen certain persons, and those but
few in comparison, without any respect had to their faith and obedience,
and predestinated them to everlasting life.” But what so great exception
is this doctrine liable unto, what wickedness doth it include, that it
should not be accounted most holy? Nay, is not only the matter but the
very terms of it contained in the Scripture? Doth it not say the elect are
few, and they chosen before the foundation of the world, without any
respect to their obedience or any thing that they had done, out of God’s
mere gracious good pleasure, that his free purpose according to election
might stand, even because so it pleased him; and this that they might be
holy, believe, and be sanctified, that they might come unto Christ, and by
him be preserved unto everlasting life? Yea, this is that which galls
them: “No
such will can be ascribed unto God, whereby he so willeth any one to be
saved as that thence their salvation should be sure and infallible,” saith
the father of those children.
Well, then, let St
Austin’s definition be quite rejected, “That predestination is a preparation of such
benefits whereby some are most certainly freed and delivered from sin and
brought to glory;” and that also of St Paul, “That (by reason of this)
nothing can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ.” What is
this election in your judgment? “Nothing but a decree whereby God hath appointed to
save them that believe in Christ,” saith Corvinus, be they who they will; or a general purpose of
God, whereby he hath ordained faith in Christ to be the means of salvation.
Yea, but this belongs to Judas as well as to Peter. This
decree carrieth as equal an aspect to those that are damned as to those
that are saved. Salvation, under the condition of faith in Christ, was
also proposed to them; but was Judas and all his company elected? How came
they, then, to be seduced and perish? That any of God’s elect go to hell
is as yet a strange assertion in Christianity. Notwithstanding this
decree, none may believe, or all that do may fall away, and so none at all
be saved; which is a strange kind of predestination: or all may believe,
continue in faith, and be saved; which were a more strange kind of
election.
We, poor souls, thought hitherto that we might have
believed, according unto Scripture, that some by this purpose were in a
peculiar manner made the Father’s (“Thine they were”), and by him given
unto Christ, that he might bring them unto glory; and that these men were
so certain and unchangeable a number, that not only God “knoweth them” as
being “his,” but also that Christ “calleth them by name,” John x. 3, and looketh that none
taketh them out of his hand. We never imagined before that Christ hath
been the mediator of an uncertain covenant, because there are no certain
persons covenanted withal but such as may or may not fulfil the condition.
We always thought that some had been separated before by God’s purpose from
the rest of the perishing world, that Christ might lay down his life for
his “friends,” for his “sheep,” for them that were “given him” of his
Father. But now it should seem he was ordained to be a king when it was
altogether uncertain whether he should ever have any subjects, to be a head
without a body, or to such a church whose collection and continuance depend
wholly and solely on the will of men.
These are doctrines that I believe searchers of the
Scripture had scarce ever been acquainted withal, had they not lighted on
such expositors as teach, “That the only cause why God loveth” (or chooseth)
“any person is, because the honesty, faith, and piety wherewith, according
to God’s command and his own duty, he is endued, are acceptable to God;”
which, though we grant it true of God’s consequent or approving love, yet
surely there is a divine love wherewith he looks upon us otherwise, when he
gives us unto Christ, else either our giving unto Christ is not out of
love, or we are pious, just, and faithful before we come unto him, — that
is, we have no need of him at all. Against either way, though we may blot
these testimonies out of our hearts, yet they will stand still recorded in
holy Scripture, — namely, that God so loved us when we were his “enemies,”
Rom. v. 10, “sinners,” verse 8, of no “strength,” verse 6; that “he gave his
only-begotten Son” to die, “that we should not perish, but have everlasting
life,” John iii. 16. But of this
enough.
Fourthly, Another thing that the article
asserteth according to the Scripture is, that there is no other cause
of our election but God’s own counsel. It recounteth no motives in
us, nothing impelling the will of God to choose some out of mankind,
rejecting others, but his own decree, — that is, his absolute will and good
pleasure; so that as there is no cause, in any thing without himself, why
he would create the world or elect any at all, — for he doth all these
things for himself, for the praise of his own glory, — so there is no cause
in singular elected persons why God should choose them rather than others.
He looked upon all mankind in the same condition, vested with the same
qualifications, or rather without any at all; for it is the children
not yet born, before they do either good or evil, that are chosen or
rejected, his free grace embracing the one and passing over the other.
Yet here we must observe, that although God freely, without any desert of
theirs, chooseth some men to be partakers both of the end and the means,
yet he bestoweth faith, or the means, on none but for the merit of Christ;
neither do any attain the end or salvation but by their own faith, through
that righteousness of his. The free grace of God notwithstanding, choosing
Jacob when Esau is rejected, the only antecedent cause of any difference
between the elect and reprobates, remaineth firm and unshaken; and surely,
unless men were resolved to trust wholly to their own bottoms, to take
nothing gratis at the hands of God, they would not endeavour to rob him of
his glory, of having mercy on whom he will have mercy, of loving us without
our desert before the world began. If we must claim an interest in
obtaining the temporal acts of his favour by our own endeavours, yet, oh,
let us grant him the glory of being good unto us, only for his own sake,
when we were in his hand as the clay in the hand of the potter. What made
this piece of clay fit for comely service, and not a vessel wherein there
is no pleasure, but the power and will of the Framer? It is enough, yea,
too much, for them to repine and say, “Why hast thou made us thus?” who are
vessels fitted for wrath. Let not them who are prepared for honour exalt
themselves against him, and sacrifice to their own nets, as the sole
providers of their glory. But so it is: human vileness will still be
declaring itself, by claiming a worth no way due unto it; of a furtherance
of which claim if the Arminians be not guilty, let the following
declaration of their opinions in this particular determine:—
“We confess,” say they, “roundly, that faith,
in the consideration of God choosing us unto salvation, doth precede, and
not follow as a fruit of election.” So that whereas Christians have
hitherto believed that God bestoweth faith on them that are chosen, it
seems now it is no such matter, but that those whom God findeth
to believe, upon the stock of their own abilities, he afterward chooseth.
Neither is faith, in their judgment, only required as a necessary condition
in him that is to be chosen, but as a cause moving the will of God to elect
him that hath it, “as the will of the
judge is moved to bestow a reward on him who according to the law hath
deserved it,” as Grevinchovius
speaks: which words of his, indeed, Corvinus strives to temper, but all in vain, though he
wrest them contrary to the intention of the author; for with him agree all
his fellows. “The
one only absolute cause of election is, not the will of God, but the
respect of our obedience,” saith Episcopius. At first they required nothing but faith, and
that as a condition, not as a cause; then perseverance in faith, which at length
they began to call obedience, comprehending all our duty to the precepts of
Christ: for the cause, say they, of this love to any person, is the
righteousness, faith, and piety wherewith he is endued; which being all the
good works of a Christian, they, in effect, affirm a man to be chosen for
them, — that our good works are the cause of election; which whether it
were ever so grossly taught, either by Pelagians or Papists, I something
doubt.
And here observe, that this doth not thwart my former
assertion, where I showed that they deny the election of any particular
persons, which here they seem to grant upon a foresight of their faith and
good works; for there is not any one person, as such a person,
notwithstanding all this, that in their judgment is in this life elected,
but only as he is considered with those qualifications of which he may at
any time divest himself, and so become again to be no more elected than
Judas.
The sum of their doctrine in this particular is laid down
by one of ours in a tract entitled “God’s Love to Mankind,” etc.; a book full of palpable
ignorance, gross sophistry, and abominable blasphemy, whose author seems to
have proposed nothing unto himself but to rake all the dunghills of a few
of the most invective Arminians, and to collect the most filthy scum and
pollution of their railings to cast upon the truth of God; and, under I
know not what self-coined pretences, belch out odious blasphemies against
his holy name.
The sum, saith he, of all these speeches (he cited to his
purpose) is, “That there is no decree of saving men but
what is built on God’s foreknowledge of the good actions of men.” No
decree? No, not that whereby God determineth to give some unto Christ, to
ingraft them in him by faith, and bring them by him unto glory;
which giveth light to that place of Arminius, where he affirmeth, “That God
loveth none precisely to eternal life but considered as just, either with
legal or evangelical righteousness.” Now, to love one to eternal life is
to destinate one to obtain eternal life by Christ, and so it is coincident
with the former assertion, that our election, or choosing unto grace and
glory, is upon the foresight of our good works; which contains a doctrine
so contradictory to the words and meaning of the apostle, Rom. ix. 11, condemned in so many
councils, suppressed by so many edicts and decrees of emperors and
governors, opposed as a pestilent heresy, ever since it was first hatched,
by so many orthodox fathers and learned schoolmen, so directly contrary to
the doctrine of this church, so injurious to the grace and supreme power of
Almighty God, that I much wonder any one, in this light of the gospel and
flourishing time of learning, should be so boldly ignorant or impudent as
to broach it amongst Christians. To prove this to be a heresy exploded by
all orthodox and catholic antiquity were to light a candle in the sun; for
it cannot but be known to all and every one who ever heard or read any
thing of the state of Christ’s church after the rising of the Pelagian
tumults.
To accumulate testimonies of the ancients is quite beside
my purpose. I will only add the confession of Bellarmine, a man otherwise not
over-well affected to truth. “Predestination,” saith he, “from the
foresight of works, cannot be maintained unless we should suppose something
in the righteous man, which should make him differ from the wicked, that he
doth not receive from God; which truly all the fathers with unanimous
consent do reject.” But we have a more sure testimony, to which we will
take heed, even the holy Scripture, pleading strongly for God’s free and
undeserved grace.
First, our Saviour Christ, Matt. xi.
26, declaring how God revealeth the gospel unto some, which is
hidden from others (a special fruit of election), resteth in his will and
good pleasure as the only cause thereof: “Even so, Father; for so it seemed
good in thy sight.” So, comforting his “little flock,” Luke xii. 32, he bids them fear not,
“for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom;” — “His
good pleasure is the only cause why his kingdom is prepared for you rather
than others.” But is there no other reason of this discrimination? No; he
doth it all “that his purpose according to election might stand” firm,
Rom. ix. 11; for we are “predestinated
according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after
the counsel of his own will,” Eph. i.
11. But did not this counsel of God direct him to choose us
rather than others because we had something to commend us more than they?
No; “The Lord did not set his love upon you, nor
choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; but because the
Lord loved you,” Deut.
vii. 7, 8. “He hath mercy on whom he will have mercy;” yea,
“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, The elder shall serve the
younger: as it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated,”
Rom. ix. 11–13. In brief, wherever
there is any mention of election or predestination, it is still accompanied
with the purpose, love, or will of God; his foreknowledge, whereby he
knoweth them that are his; his free power and supreme dominion over all
things. Of our faith, obedience, or any thing importing so much, not one
syllable, no mention, unless it be as the fruit and effect thereof. It is
the sole act of his free grace and good pleasure, that “he might make known
the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy,” Rom. ix.
23. For this only end hath he “saved us, and called us with an
holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose
and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began,”
2 Tim. i. 9. Even our calling is free
and undeserved, because flowing from that most free grace of election,
whereof we are partakers before we are [i.e., exist]. It were
needless to heap up more testimonies in a thing so clear and evident. When
God and man stand in competition who shall be accounted the cause of an
eternal good, we may be sure the Scripture will pass the verdict on the
part of the Most High. And the sentence, in this case, may be derived from
thence by these following reasons:—
First, If final perseverance in faith and obedience be the
cause of, or a condition required unto, election, then none can be said in
this life to be elected; for no man is a final perseverer until he be dead,
until he hath finished his course and consummated the faith. But certain
it is that it is spoken of some in the Scripture that they are even in this
life elected: “Few are chosen,” Matt. xx.
16; “For the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened,”
chap. xxiv. 22; “And shall, if it
were possible, deceive the very elect,” verse
24, — where it is evident that election is required to make one
persevere in the faith, but nowhere is perseverance in the faith required
to election; yea, and Peter gives us all a command that we should give all
diligence to get an assurance of our “election,” even in this life,
2 Pet. i. 10: and, therefore, surely
it cannot be a decree presupposing consummated faith and obedience.
Secondly, Consider two things of our estate,
before the first temporal act of God’s free grace (for grace is no grace if
it be not free), which is the first effect of our predestination,
comprehendeth us:— First, “Were we better than others.” No, in no
wise: both Jews and Gentiles were all under sin,” Rom. iii.
9. “There is no difference; for all have sinned, and come short
of the glory of God,” verse 23;
— being all “dead in trespasses and sins,” Eph. ii. 1;
being “by nature the children of wrath, even as others,” verse 3; “far off,” until we are “made
nigh by the blood of Christ,” verse 13.
We were “enemies” against God, Rom. v.
10; Tit. iii.
3. And look what desert there is in us with these
qualifications, when our vocation, the first effect of our predestination,
as St Paul showeth, Rom. viii.
30, and as I shall prove hereafter, separateth us from the world
of unbelievers. So much there is in respect of predestination itself; so
that if we have any way deserved it, it is by being sinners, enemies,
children of wrath, and dead in trespasses. These are our deserts; this is
the glory, whereof we ought to be ashamed. But, secondly, When they
are in the same state of actual alienation from God, yet then, in respect
of his purpose to save them by Christ, some are said to be his: “Thine they
were, and thou gavest them me,” John xvii.
6; — they were his before they came unto Christ by faith; the
sheep of Christ before they are called, for he “calleth his sheep by name,”
chap. x. 3; before they come into the
flock or congregation, for “other sheep,” saith he, “I have, which are not
of this fold, them also must I bring,” chap. x.
16; — to be beloved of God before they love him: “Herein is
love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us,” 1
John iv. 10. Now, all this must be with reference to God’s
purpose of bringing them unto Christ, and by him unto glory; which we see
goeth before all their faith and obedience.
Thirdly, Election is an eternal act of God’s will: “He hath
chosen us before the foundation of the world,” Eph. i.
4; consummated antecedently to all duty of ours, Rom. ix. 11. Now, every cause must,
in order of nature, precede its effect; nothing hath an activity in causing
before it hath a being. Operation in every kind is a second act, flowing
from the essence of a thing which is the first. But all our graces and
works, our faith, obedience, piety, and charity, are all temporal, of
yesterday, the same standing with ourselves, and no longer; and therefore
cannot be the cause of, no, nor so much as a condition necessarily required
for, the accomplishment of an eternal act of God, irrevocably established
before we are.
Fourthly, If predestination be for faith foreseen, these
three things, with divers such absurdities, will necessarily follow:—
First, That election is not of “him that calleth,” as the apostle
speaks, Rom. ix. 11, — that is, of the good
pleasure of God, who calleth us with a holy calling, — but of
him that is called; for, depending on faith, it must be his whose faith is,
that doth believe. Secondly, God cannot have mercy on whom he win
have mercy, for the very purpose of it is thus tied to the qualities of
faith and obedience, so that he must have mercy only on believers
antecedently to his decree. Which, thirdly, hinders him from being
an absolute free agent, and doing of what he will with his own, — of having
such a power over us as the potter hath over his clay; for he finds us of
different matter, one clay, another gold, when he comes to appoint us to
different uses and ends.
Fifthly, God sees no faith, no obedience, perseverance,
nothing but sin and wickedness, in any man, but what himself intendeth
graciously and freely to bestow upon him; for “faith is not of ourselves,
it is the gift of God;” it is “the work of God, that we believe,” John vi. 29; he “blesseth us with all
spiritual blessings in Christ,” Eph. i. 3.
Now, all these gifts and graces God bestoweth only upon those whom he hath
antecedently ordained to everlasting life: for “the election obtained it,
and the rest were blinded,” Rom. xi.
7; “The Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved”’
Acts ii. 47. Therefore, surely, God
chooseth us not because he foreseeth those things in us, seeing he
bestoweth those graces because he hath chosen us. “Wherefore,” saith Austin, “doth Christ say, ‘Ye have not chosen me, but I have
chosen you,’ but because they did not choose him that he should choose
them; but he chose them that they might choose him.” We choose Christ by
faith; God chooseth us by his decree of election. The question is, Whether
we choose him because he hath chosen us, or he chooseth us because we have
chosen him, and so indeed choose ourselves? We affirm the former, and that
because our choice of him is a gift he himself bestoweth only on them whom
he hath chosen.
Sixthly, and principally, The effects of election,
infallibly following it, cannot be the causes of election, certainly
preceding it. This is evident, for nothing can be the cause and the effect
of the same thing, before and after itself. But all our faith, our
obedience, repentance, good works, are the effects of election, flowing
from it as their proper fountain, erected on it as the foundation of this
spiritual building; and for this the article of our church is evident and
clear. “Those,” saith it, “that are endued with this excellent benefit of
God are called according to God’s purpose, are justified freely, are made
the sons of God by adoption; they be made like the image of Christ; they
walk religiously in good works,” etc. Where, first, they are said
to be partakers of this benefit of election, and then by virtue thereof to
be entitled to the fruition of all those graces. Secondly, it saith, “Those who are endued with this benefit enjoy those
blessings;” intimating that election is the rule whereby God proceedeth in
bestowing those graces, restraining the objects of the temporal acts of
God’s special favour to them only whom his eternal decree doth embrace.
Both these, indeed, are denied by the Arminians; which maketh a farther
discovery of their heterodoxies in this particular. “You
say,” saith Arminius to Perkins, “that election is the rule of
giving or not giving of faith; and, therefore, election is not of the
faithful, but faith of the elect: but by your leave this I must deny.” But
yet, whatever it is the sophistical heretic here denies, either antecedent
or conclusion, he falls foul on the word of God. “They ‘believed,’ ” saith
the Holy Ghost, “who were ‘ordained to eternal life,’ ” Acts xiii. 48; and, “The Lord added
to the church daily such as should be saved,” chap. ii.
47. From both which places it is evident that God bestoweth
faith only on them whom he hath pre-ordained to eternal life; but most
clearly, Rom. viii.
29, 30, “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to
be conformed to the image of his Son. Moreover whom he did predestinate,
them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom
he justified, them he also glorified.” St Austin interpreted this place by adding in every link of
the chain, “Only those.” However, the words directly import a precedency
of predestination before the bestowing of other graces, and also a
restraint of those graces to them only that are so predestinated. Now, the
inference from this is not only for the form logical, but for the matter
also; it containeth the very words of Scripture, “Faith is of God’s elect,”
Tit. i. 1.
For the other part of the proposition, that faith and
obedience are the fruits of our election, they cannot be more peremptory in
its denial than the Scripture is plentiful in its confirmation: “He hath
chosen us in Christ, that we should be holy,” Eph. i. 4;
not because we were holy, but that we should be so. Holiness, whereof
faith is the root and obedience the body, is that whereunto, and not for
which, we are elected. The end and the meritorious cause of any one act
cannot be the same; they have divers respects, and require repugnant
conditions. Again; we are “predestinated unto the adoption of children by
Jesus Christ,” verse 5. Adoption is that whereby we
are assumed into the family of God, when before we are “foreigners, aliens,
strangers, afar off;” which we see is a fruit of our predestination, though
it be the very entrance into that estate wherein we begin first to please
God in the least measure. Of the same nature are all those places of holy
writ which speak of God’s giving some unto Christ, of Christ’s
sheep hearing his voice, and others not hearing, because they are not of
his sheep; all which, and divers other invincible reasons, I willingly
omit, with sundry other false assertions and heretical positions of the
Arminians about this fundamental article of our religion, concluding this
chapter with the following scheme:—
S. S. |
Lib. Arbit. |
“Whom he did foreknow, he
also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he
might be the first-born among many brethren. Moreover whom he did
predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also
justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” So that
“nothing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in
Christ Jesus,” Rom. viii. 29, 30,
39. |
“No such will can be ascribed
unto God, whereby he so would have any to be saved, that from thence his
salvation should be sure and infallible,” Armin. “I acknowledge no sense, no perception of any such
election in this life,” Grevinch. “We deny that God’s election unto salvation
extendeth itself to singular persons,” Rem. Coll. Hag. |
“He hath chosen us in him
before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy,” Eph. i. 4. |
“As we are justified by
faith, so we are not elected but by faith,” Grevinch. |
“Not according to our works,
but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ
Jesus before the world began,” 2 Tim. i.
9. |
“We profess roundly that
faith is considered by God as a condition preceding election, and not
following as a fruit thereof,” Rem. Coll.
Hag. |
“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,”
etc., Rom. ix. 11. “All that the Father
giveth me shall come to me,” John vi.
37 |
“The sole and only cause of
election is not the will of God, but the respect of our obedience,” Episcop. “For the cause of this love to
any person is, [that] the goodness, faith, and piety, wherewith, according
to God’s command and his own duty, he is endued, are pleasing to God,”
Rem.
Apol. |
“Many are called, but few are
chosen,” Matt. xxii. 14. “Fear not, little
flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom,”
Luke xii. 32. |
“God hath determined to grant
the means of salvation unto all without difference; and according as he
foreseeth men will use those means, so he determineth of them,” Corv. |
“What hast thou
that thou didst not receive?” 1 Cor. iv.
7. “Are we better than they? No, in no wise,” Rom. iii. 9. But we are “predestinated
to the adoption of children by Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure
of his will,” Eph. i. 5; John
vi. 37–39, x. 3, xiii. 18, xvii. 6; Acts
xiii. 48; Tit. i.
1; 2 Tim. ii.
19; James i.
17, 18, etc. |
The sum of their doctrine is:
God hath appointed the obedience of faith to be the means of salvation. If
men fulfil this condition, he determineth to save them, which is their
election; but if, after they have entered the way of godliness, they fall
from it, they lose also their predestination. If they will return again,
they are chosen anew; and if they can hold out to the end, then, and for
that continuance, they are peremptorily elected, or postdestinated, after
they are saved. Now, whether these positions may be gathered from those
places of Scripture which deliver this doctrine, let any man
judge. |
Chapter VII.
Of original sin and the corruption of nature.
Herod
the Great, imparting his counsel of rebuilding the temple unto the
Jews, they much feared he would never be able to accomplish his
intention,
but, like an unwise builder, having demolished the old before he had sat
down and cast up his account whether he were able to erect a new, they
should (by his project) be deprived of a temple. Wherefore, to satisfy
their jealousies, he resolved, as he took down any part of the other,
presently to erect a portion of the new in the place thereof. Right so the
Arminians, determining to demolish the building of divine providence,
grace, and favour, by which men have hitherto ascended into heaven, and
fearing lest we should be troubled, finding ourselves on a sudden deprived
of that wherein we reposed our confidence for happiness, they have, by
degrees, erected a Babylonish tower in the room thereof, whose top, they
would persuade us, shall reach unto heaven. First, therefore, the
foundation-stones they bring forth, crying, “Hail, hail,” unto them, and pitch them on the sandy, rotten ground of our own
natures. Now, because heretofore some wise master-builders had discovered
this ground to be very unfit to be the basis of such a lofty erection, by
reason of a corrupt issue of blood and filth arising in the midst thereof,
and overspreading the whole platform, to encourage men to an association in
this desperate attempt, they proclaim to all that there is no such evil
fountain in the plain which they have chosen for the foundation of their
proud building, setting up itself against the knowledge of God in plain
terms. Having rejected the providence of God from being the original of
that goodness of entity which is in our actions, and his predestination
from being the cause of that moral and spiritual goodness wherewith any of
them are clothed, they endeavour to draw the praise of both to the
rectitude of their nature and the strength of their own endeavours. But
this attempt, in the latter case, being thought to be altogether vain,
because of the disability and corruption of nature, by reason of original
sin, propagated unto us all by our first parents, whereby it is become
wholly void of integrity and holiness, and we all become wise and able to
do evil, but to do good have no power, no understanding; therefore, they
utterly reject this imputation of an inherent, original guilt, and demerit
of punishment, as an enemy to our upright and well-deserving condition.
And oh, that they were as able to root it out of the hearts of all men,
that it should never more be there, as they have been to persuade the heads
of divers that it was never there at all!
If any would know how considerable this article concerning
original sin hath ever been accounted in the church of Christ, let him but
consult the writings of St
Augustine, Prosper, Hilary, Fulgentius, any of those learned fathers whom God
stirred up to resist, and enabled to overcome, the spreading Pelagian
heresy, or look on those many councils, edicts, decrees of emperors,
wherein that heretical doctrine of denying this original corruption is
condemned, cursed, and exploded. Now, amongst those many motives they had
to proceed so severely against this heresy, one especially inculcated
deserves our consideration, namely, —
That it overthrew the necessity of Christ’s coming into the
world to redeem mankind. It is sin only that makes a Saviour necessary;
and shall Christians tolerate such an error as, by direct consequence,
infers the coming of Jesus Christ into the world to be needless? My
purpose for the present is not to allege any testimonies of this kind; but,
holding myself close to my first intention, to show how far in this
article, as well as others, the Arminians have apostated from the pure
doctrine of the word of God, the consent of orthodox divines, and the
confession of this church of England.
In the ninth article of our church, which is
concerning original sin, I observe especially four things:— First, That it
is an inherent evil, the fault and corruption of the nature of every man.
Secondly, That it is a thing not subject or conformable to the law of God,
but hath in itself, even after baptism, the nature of sin. Thirdly, That
by it we are averse from God, and inclined to all manner of evil.
Fourthly, That it deserveth God’s wrath and damnation. All which are
frequently and evidently taught in the word of God, and every one denied by
the Arminians, as it may appear by these instances, in some of them:—
First, That it is an inherent sin and pollution of
nature, having a proper guilt of its own, making us responsible to the
wrath of God, and not a bare imputation of another’s fault to us his
posterity: which, because it would reflect upon us all with a charge of a
native imbecility and insufficiency to good, is by these self-idolizers
quite exploded.
“Infants are simply in that estate in which Adam
was before his fall,” saith Venator.
“Neither is it at all
considerable whether they be the children of believers or of heathens and
infidels; for infants, as infants, have all the same innocency,” say they
jointly, in their Apology: nay, more plainly, “It can be no fault wherewith
we are born.” In which last expression these bold innovators, with one
dash of their pens, have quite overthrown a sacred verity, an apostolic,
catholic, fundamental article of Christian religion. But, truly, to me
there are no stronger arguments of the sinful corruption of our nature than
to see such nefarious issues of unsanctified hearts. Let us look, then, to
the word of God confounding this Babylonish design.
First, That the nature of man, which at first was created
pure and holy, after the image of God, endowed with such a rectitude and
righteousness as was necessary and due unto it, to bring it unto that
supernatural end to which it was ordained, is now altogether corrupted and
become abominable, sinful, and averse from goodness, and that this
corruption or concupiscence is originally inherent in us and derived from
our first parents, is plentifully delivered in holy writ, as that which
chiefly compels us to a self-denial, and drives us unto Christ. “Behold, I
was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me,” saith David,
Ps. li. 5. Where, for the praise of
God’s goodness towards him, he begins with the confession of his native
perverseness, and of the sin wherein he was wrapped before he
was born. Neither was this peculiar to him alone; he had it not from the
particular iniquity of his next progenitors, but by an ordinary propagation
from the common parent of us all; though in some of us, Satan, by this
Pelagian attempt for hiding the disease, hath made it almost incurable: for
even those infants of whose innocency the Arminians boast are unclean in
the verdict of St Paul, 1 Cor. vii.
14, if not sanctified by an interest in the promise of the
covenant; and no unclean thing shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.
“The weakness of the members of infants is
innocent, and not their souls;” they want nothing, but that the members of
their bodies are not as yet ready instruments of sin. They are not sinful
only by external denomination, — accounted so because of the imputation of
Adam’s actual transgression unto them; for they have all an uncleanness in
them by nature, Job xiv. 4, from which they must be
“cleansed with the washing of water by the word,” Eph. v.
20. Their whole nature is overspread with such a pollution as
is proper only to sin inherent, and doth not accompany sin imputed; as we
may see in the example of our Saviour, who was pure, immaculate, holy,
undefiled, and yet “the iniquity of us all” was imputed unto him. Hence
are those phrases of “washing away sin,” Acts xxii.
16; of “cleansing filth,” 1 Pet. iii.
21, Tit. iii.
5. Something there is in them, as soon as they are born,
excluding them from the kingdom of heaven; for except they also be born
again of the Spirit, they shall not enter into it, John iii.
5.
Secondly, The opposition that is made between the
righteousness of Christ and the sin of Adam, Rom. v.,
which is the proper seat of this doctrine, showeth that there is in our
nature an inbred sinful corruption; for the sin of Adam holds such relation
unto sinners, proceeding from him by natural propagation, as the
righteousness of Christ doth unto them who are born again of him by
spiritual regeneration. But we are truly, intrinsically, and inherently
sanctified by the Spirit and grace of Christ; and therefore there is no
reason why, being so often in this chapter called sinners, because of this
original sin, we should cast it off, as if we were concerned only by an
external denomination, for the right institution of the comparison and its
analogy quite overthrows the solitary imputation.
Thirdly, All those places of Scripture which assert the
proneness of our nature to all evil, and the utter disability that is in us
to do any good, that wretched opposition to the power of godliness,
wherewith from the womb we are replenished, confirms the same truth. But
of these places I shall have occasion to speak hereafter.
Fourthly, The flesh, in the Scripture phrase,
is a quality (if I may so say) inherent in us; for that, with its
concupiscence, is opposed to the Spirit and his holiness, which is
certainly inherent in us. Now, the whole man by nature is flesh; for “that
which is born of the flesh is flesh,” John iii.
6; — it is an inhabiting thing, a thing that “dwelleth” within
us, Rom. vii. 17. In brief, this
vitiosity, sinfulness, and corruption of our nature is laid open, —
First, By all those places which cast an aspersion of guilt, or
desert of punishment, or of pollution, on nature itself; as Eph. ii. 1, 3, we are
“dead in trespasses and sins,” being “by nature the children of wrath, even
as others,” being wholly encompassed by a “sin that doth easily beset us.”
Secondly, By them which fix this original pravity in the heart,
will, mind, and understanding, Eph. iv.
18; Rom. xii. 2; Gen. vi.
5. Thirdly, By those which positively decipher this
natural depravation, 1 Cor. ii.
14; Rom. viii. 7; — or, Fourthly,
That place it in the flesh, or old man, Rom. vi. 6;
Gal. v. 16. So that it is not a bare
imputation of another’s fault, but an intrinsical adjacent corruption of
our nature itself, that we call by this name of original sin. But, alas!
it seems we are too large carvers for ourselves, in that wherewith we will
not he contented.
The Arminians deny all such imputation, as too heavy a
charge for the pure, unblamable condition wherein they are brought into
this world. They deny, I say, that they are guilty of Adam’s sin, as
sinning in him, or that his sin is any way imputed unto us; which is their
second assault upon the truth of this article of faith.
“Adam sinned in his own proper person, and there is
no reason why God should impute that sin of his unto infants,” saith Boræus. The nature of the first covenant,
the right and power of God, the comparison instituted by the apostle
between Adam and Christ, the divine constitution, whereby Adam was
appointed to be the head, fountain, and origin of all human kind, are with
him no reasons at all to persuade it. “For it is against equity,” saith their Apology, “that one
should be accounted guilty for a sin that is not his own, — that he should
be reputed nocent who, in regard of his own will, is truly innocent.” And
here, Christian reader, behold plain Pelagianism obtruded on us without
either welt or guard; men on a sudden made pure and
truly innocent, notwithstanding all that natural pollution and corruption
the Scripture everywhere proclaims them to be replenished
withal. Neither is the reason they intimate of any value, that their wills
assented not to it, and which a little before they plainly urge. “It is,”
say they, “against the nature of sin that that should be counted
a sin to any by whose own proper will it was not committed:” which being
all they have to say, they repeat it over and over in this case, — “It must
be voluntary, or it is no sin.” But I say this is of no force at all; for,
— first, St John, in his most exact definition of sin, requires not
voluntariness to the nature of it, but only an obliquity, a deviation from
the rule. It is an anomy, — a discrepancy from the law, which whether
voluntary or no it skills not much; but sure enough there is in our nature
such a repugnancy to the law of God. So that, secondly, if originally we
are free from a voluntary actual transgression, yet we are not from an
habitual voluntary digression and exorbitancy from the law. But, thirdly,
in respect of our wills, we are not thus innocent neither; for we all
sinned in Adam, as the apostle affirmeth. Now, all sin is voluntary, say
the Remonstrants, and therefore Adam’s transgression was our voluntary sin
also, and that in divers respects, — first, in that his voluntary act
is imputed to us as ours, by reason of the covenant which was made
with him on our behalf. But because this, consisting in an imputation,
must needs be extrinsical unto us, therefore, secondly, we say that Adam,
being the root and head of all human kind, and we all branches from that
root, all parts of that body whereof he was the head, his will may be
said to be ours. We were then all that one man, — we were all in
him, and had no other will but his; so that though that be extrinsical unto
us, considered as particular persons, yet it is intrinsical, as we are all
parts of one common nature. As in him we sinned, so in him we had a will
of sinning. Thirdly, original sin is a defect of nature, and not of
this or that particular person: whereon Alvarez grounds this difference of actual
and original sin, — that the one is always committed by the proper will of
the sinner; to the other is required only the will of our first parent, who
was the head of human nature. Fourthly, It is hereditary, natural, and no
way involuntary, or put into us against our wills. It possesseth our wills
and inclines us to voluntary sins.
I see no reason, then, why Corvinus should affirm, as he doth, “That it is absurd, that by one man’s disobedience many
should be made actually disobedient,” unless he did it purposely to
contradict St Paul, teaching us that “by one man’s disobedience
many were made sinners,” Rom. v.
19. Paulus ait, Corvinus
negat; eligite cui credatis; — Choose whom you will believe, St
Paul or the Arminians. The sum of their endeavour in this particular is,
to clear the nature of man from being any way guilty of Adam’s actual sin,
as being then in him a member and part of that body whereof he was the
head, or from being obnoxious unto an imputation of it by reason of that
covenant which God made with us all in him. So that, denying, as you saw
before, all inherent corruption and pravity of nature, and now all
participation, by any means, of Adam’s transgression, methinks they cast a
great aspersion on Almighty God, however he dealt with Adam for his own
particular, yet for casting us, his most innocent posterity, out of
paradise. It seems a hard case, that having no obliquity or sin in our
nature to deserve it, nor no interest in his disobedience whose obedience
had been the means of conveying so much happiness unto us, we should yet be
involved in so great a punishment as we are; for that we are not now by
birth under a great curse and punishment, they shall never be able to
persuade any poor soul who ever heard of paradise, or the garden where God
first placed Adam. And though all the rest, in their judgment, be no great
matter, but an infirmity and languor of nature, or some such thing, yet,
whatever it be, they confess it lights on us as well as him. “We
confess,” say they, “that the sin of Adam may be thus far said to be
imputed to his posterity, inasmuch as God would have them all born
obnoxious to that punishment which Adam incurred by his sin, or permitted
that evil which was inflicted on him to descend on them.” Now, be this
punishment what it will, never so small, yet if we have no demerit of our
own, nor interest in Adam’s sin, it is such an act of injustice as we must
reject from the Most Holy, with a “God forbid.” Far be it from the Judge
of all the world to punish the righteous with the ungodly. If God should
impute the sin of Adam unto us, and thereon pronounce us obnoxious to the
curse deserved by it, — if we have a pure, sinless, unspotted nature, —
even this could scarce be reconciled with that rule of his proceeding in
justice with the sons of men, “The soul that sinneth it shall die;” which
clearly granteth an impunity to all not tainted with sin. Sin and
punishment, though they are sometimes separated by his mercy, pardoning the
one and so not inflicting the other, yet never by his justice, inflicting
the latter where the former is not. Sin imputed, by itself alone, without
an inherent guilt, was never punished in any but Christ. The
unsearchableness of God’s love and justice, in laying the iniquity of us
all upon him who had no sin, is an exception from that general rule he
walketh by in his dealing with the posterity of Adam. So that if
punishment be not due unto us for a solely imputed sin, much less, when it
doth not stand with the justice and equity of God to impute any iniquity
unto us at all, can we justly be wrapped in such a curse and punishment as
woful experience teaches us that we lie under. Now, in this act of
injustice, wherewith they charge the Almighty, the Arminians place the
whole nature of original sin. “We account not,” say
they, “original sin for a sin properly so called, that should make the
posterity of Adam to deserve the wrath of God, nor for an evil that may
properly be called a punishment, but only for an infirmity of nature;”
which they interpret to be a kind of evil that, being inflicted on Adam,
God suffereth to descend upon his posterity. So all the depravation of
nature, the pollution, guilt, and concupiscence we derive from our first
parents, the imputation of Adam’s actual transgression, is all straitened
to a small infirmity inflicted on poor innocent creatures.
But let them enjoy their own wisdom, which is earthly,
sensual, and devilish. The Scripture is clear that the sin of Adam is the
sin of us all, not only by propagation and communication (whereby not his
singular fault, but something of the same nature, is derived unto us), but
also by an imputation of his actual transgression unto us all, his singular
disobedience being by this means made ours. The grounds of this imputation
I touched before, which may be all reduced to his being a common person and
head of all our nature; which investeth us with a double interest in his
demerits, whilst so he was:— 1. As we were then in him and parts of him; 2.
As he sustained the place of our whole nature in the covenant God made with
him; — both which, even according to the exigence of God’s justice, require
that his transgression be also accounted ours. And St Paul is plain, not
only that “by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners,” Rom. v. 19, by the derivation of a
corrupted nature, but also that “by one man’s offense judgment came upon
all,” verse 18. Even for his one sin all of
us are accounted to have deserved judgment and condemnation; and therefore,
verse 12, he affirmeth that by one man
sin and death entered upon all the world; and that because we have all
sinned in him: which we no otherwise do but that his transgression in God’s
estimation is accounted ours. And the opposition the apostle there maketh
between Christ and his righteousness, and Adam and his
disobedience, doth sufficiently evince it; as may appear by this
figure:—
|
ex |
|
in omnes |
|
redundavit, eis |
κατάκριμα, |
δικαίωσιν ζωῆς, |
|
per unum |
παράπτωμα Adami, |
δικαίωμα Christi. |
|
The whole similitude chiefly consists in the imputation of
Adam’s sin and Christ’s righteousness, unto the seed of the one by nature,
and of the other by grace. But that we are counted righteous for the
righteousness of Christ is, among Protestants (though some differ in the
manner of their expressions), as yet without question; and, therefore, are
no less undoubtedly accounted sinners by, or guilty of, the first sin of
Adam.
I shall not show their opposition unto the truth in many
more particulars concerning this article of original sin, having been long
ago most excellently prevented, even in this very method, by the way of
antithesis to the Scripture and the orthodox doctrine of our church, by the
famously learned Master Reynolds, in
his excellent treatise, “Of the Sinfulness of Sin;” where he hath discovered their
errors, fully answered their sophistical objections, and invincibly
confirmed the truth from the word of God. Only, as I have showed already
how they make this we call original sin no sin at all, neither inherent in
us nor imputed unto us, nor no punishment truly so called; so, because our
church saith directly that it meriteth damnation, I will briefly show what
they conceive to be the desert thereof.
First, For Adam himself, they affirm “that the death
threatened unto him if he transgressed the covenant, and due unto him for
it, was neither death temporal, for that before he was
subject unto, by the primary constitution of his nature; nor yet such an
eternal death as is accompanied with damnation or everlasting punishment.”
Nor why, then, let us here learn some new divinity. Christians have
hitherto believed that whatsoever may be comprised under the name of death,
together with its antecedents, consequents, and attendants, was threatened
to Adam in this commination; and divines, until this day, can find but
these two sorts of death in the Scripture, as penal unto men, and properly
so called; and shall we now be persuaded that it was neither of these that
was threatened unto Adam. It must be so, if we will believe the Arminians;
it was neither the one nor the other of the former; but whereas he was
created mortal, and subject to a temporal death, the sanction of his
obedience was a threatening of the utter dissolution of his soul and body,
or a reduction to their primitive nothing. But what if a man
will not here take them at their words, but believe, according to St Paul,
That death entered by sin; that if we had never sinned, we had never died;
that man, in the state of innocency, was, by God’s constitution, free even
from temporal death, and all things directly conducing thereunto? secondly,
That this death, threatened to our first parents, comprehended damnation
also of soul and body for evermore, and that of their imaginary dissolution
there is not the least intimation in the word of God? — why, I confess they
have impudence enough, in divers places, to beg that we would believe their
assertions, but never confidence enough to venture once to prove them true.
Now, they who make so slight of the desert of this sin in Adam himself
will surely scarce allow it to have any ill merit at all in his
posterity.
“Whether ever
any one were damned for original sin, and adjudged to everlasting torments,
is deservedly doubted of. Yea, we doubt not to affirm that never any was
so damned,” saith Corvinus. And that this is not his sole opinion he
declares by telling you no less of his master, Arminius “It
is most true,” saith he, “that Arminius teacheth that it is perversely said that original
sin makes a man guilty of death.” Of any death, it should seem, temporal,
eternal, or that annihilation they dream of. And he said true enough.
Arminius doth affirm it, adding this
reason, “Because it is
only the punishment of Adam’s actual sin.” Now, what kind of punishment
they make this to be I showed you before. But truly I wonder, seeing they
are everywhere so peremptory that the same thing cannot be a sin and a
punishment, why they do so often nickname this “infirmity of nature,” and
call it a sin; which they suppose to be as far different from it as fire
from water. Is it because they are unwilling, by new naming it, to
contradict St Paul in express terms, never proposing it under any other
denomination, or, if they can get a sophistical elusion for him, is it
lest, by so doing, Christians should the more plainly discern their heresy?
Or whatever other cause it be, in this I am sure they contradict
themselves, notwithstanding in this they agree full well, “That God
rejecteth none for original sin only,” as Episcopius speaks. And here, if you tell them that the
question is not “de facto,” what God
doth, but “de jure,” what such
sinners deserve, they tell us plainly, “That God will not destinate any infants to eternal
punishment for original sin, without their own proper actual sins; neither
can he do so by right or in justice.” So that the children of Turks,
Pagans, and the like infidels, strangers from the covenant of grace,
departing in their infancy, are far happier than any Christian men, who
must undergo a hard warfare against sin and Satan, in danger to fall
finally away at the last hour, and through many difficulties entering the
kingdom of heaven, when they, without farther trouble, are presently
assumed thither for their innocency; yea, although they are neither elected
of God (for, as they affirm, he chooseth none but for their faith, which
they have not); nor redeemed by Christ (for he died only for sinners, “he
saveth his people from their sins,” which they are not guilty of); nor
sanctified by the Holy Ghost, all whose operations they restrain to a moral
suasion, whereof infants are not a capable subject; — which is not much to
the honour of the blessed Trinity, that heaven should be replenished with
them whom the Father never elected, the Son never redeemed, nor the Holy
Ghost sanctified.
And thus you see what they make of this original pravity of
our nature, at most an infirmity or languor thereof, — neither a sin, nor
the punishment of sin properly so called, nor yet a thing that deserves
punishment as a sin; which last assertion, whether it be agreeable to holy
Scripture or no, these three following observations will declare:—
First, There is no confusion, no disorder, no vanity in the
whole world, in any of God’s creatures, that is not a punishment of our sin
in Adam. That great and almost universal ruin of nature, proceeding from
the curse of God overgrowing the earth, and the wrath of God revealing
itself from heaven, is the proper issue of his transgression. It was of
the great mercy of God that the whole frame of nature was not presently
rolled up in darkness, and reduced to its primitive confusion. Had we
ourselves been deprived of those remaining sparks of God’s image in our
souls, which vindicate us from the number of the beasts that perish, — had
we been all born fools and void of reason, — by dealing so with some in
particular, he showeth us it had been but justice to have wrapped us in the
same misery, all in general. All things, when God first created them, were
exceeding good, and thought so by the wisdom of God himself; but our sin
even compelled that good and wise Creator to hate and curse the work of his
own hands. “Cursed is the ground,” saith he to Adam, “for thy sake; in
sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and
thistles shall it bring forth to thee,” Gen.
iii. 17, 18. Hence was that heavy burden of
“vanity,” that “bondage of corruption,” under which to this day “the whole
creation groaneth and travaileth in pain” until it be delivered, Rom. viii. 20–22. Now, if our sin
had such a strange malignant influence upon those things which have no
relation unto us but only as they were created for our use, surely it is of
the great mercy of God that we ourselves are not quite confounded; which
doth not yet so interpose itself, but that we are all compassed with divers
sad effects of this iniquity, lying actually under divers pressing
miseries, and deservedly obnoxious to everlasting destruction. So that,
—
Secondly, Death temporal, with all its antecedents and
attendants, — all infirmities, miseries, sicknesses, wasting destroying
passions, casualties that are penal, all evil conducing thereunto or
waiting on it, — a punishment of original sin; and this not only because
the first actual sin of Adam is imputed to us, but most of them are the
proper issues of that native corruption and pollution of sin which is
stirring and operative within us for the production of such sad effects,
our whole nature being by it thoroughly defiled. Hence are all the
distortures and distemperatures of the soul by lusts, concupiscence,
passions, blindness of mind, perverseness of will, inordinateness of
affections, wherewith we are pressed and turmoiled, even proper issues of
that inherent sin which possesseth our whole souls.
Upon the body, also, it hath such an influence, in
disposing it to corruption and mortality, as it is the original of all
those infirmities, sicknesses, and diseases, which make us nothing but a
shop of such miseries for death itself. As these and the like degrees are
the steps which lead us on apace in the road that tends unto it, so they
are the direct, internal, efficient causes thereof, in subordination to the
justice of Almighty God, by such means inflicting it as a punishment of our
sins in Adam. Man before his fall, though not in regard of the matter
whereof he was made, nor yet merely in respect of his quickening form, yet
in regard of God’s ordination, was immortal, a keeper of his own
everlastingness. Death, to which before he was not obnoxious, was
threatened as a punishment of his sin: “In the day thou eatest thereof thou
shalt surely die;” the exposition of which words, given by God at the time
of his inflicting this punishment, and pronouncing man subject to
mortality, clearly showeth that it comprehended temporal death also: “Dust
thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.” Our return to dust is nothing
but the soul leaving the body, whereby before it was preserved from
corruption. Farther, St Paul opposeth that death we had by the sin of Adam
to the resurrection of the body by the power of Christ: “For since by man
came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam
all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive,” 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22. The life which
all shall receive by the power of Christ at the last day is essentially a
reunion of soul and body; and therefore their separation is a thing we
incurred by the sin of Adam. The same apostle also, Rom.
v., describeth a universal reign of death over all, by reason of
the first transgression. Even diseases, also, in the Scripture, are
attributed unto sin, as their meritorious cause, John v.
14; 1 Cor. xi.
30; Rev. ii. 22. And, in respect of all
these, the mercy of God doth not so interpose itself but that all the sons
of men are in some sort partakers of them.
Thirdly, The final desert of original sin, as our article
speaketh, is damnation, — the wrath of God, to be poured on us in eternal
torments of body and soul. To this end, also, many previous judgments of
God are subservient, — as the privation of original righteousness (which he
took and withheld upon Adam’s throwing it away), spiritual desertion,
permission of sin, with all other destroying depravations of our nature, as
far as they are merely penal; some of which are immediate consequents of
Adam’s singular actual transgression, as privation of original
righteousness; others, as damnation itself, the proper effects of that
derived sin and pollution that is in us. There is none damned but for his
own sin. When divines affirm that by Adam’s sin we are guilty of
damnation, they do not mean that any are actually damned for this
particular fact; but that by his sin, and our sinning in him, by God’s most
just ordination, we have contracted that exceeding pravity and sinfulness
of nature which deserveth the curse of God and eternal damnation. It must
be an inherent uncleanness that actually excludes out of the kingdom of
heaven, Rev. xxi. 27; which uncleanness the
apostle shows to be in infants not sanctified by an interest in the
covenant. In brief, we are baptized unto the “remission of sins,” that we
may be saved, Acts ii. 38. That, then, which is
taken away by baptism is that which hinders our salvation; which is not the
first sin of Adam imputed, but our own inherent lust and pollution. We
cannot be washed, and cleansed, and purged from an imputed sin; which is
done by the laver of regeneration. From that which lies upon us only by an
external denomination, we have no need of cleansing; we may be said to be
freed from it, or justified, but not purged. The soul, then, that is
guilty of sin shall die, and that for its own guilt. If God should condemn
us for original sin only, it were not by reason of the imputation of Adam’s
fault, but of the iniquity of that portion of nature in which we are
proprietaries.
Now here, to shut up all, observe, that in this inquiry of
the desert of original sin, the question is not, What shall be the certain
lot of those that depart this life under the guilt of this sin only? but,
What this hereditary and native corruption doth deserve in all those in whom it is? for, as St Paul saith, “We judge not them that are
without” (especially infants), 1 Cor. v.
13. But for the demerit of it in the justice of God, our
Saviour expressly affirmeth, that “except a man be born again, he cannot
enter into the kingdom of God,” John iii. 3, 5; and
let them that can, distinguish between a not going to heaven and a going to
hell: a third receptacle of souls in the Scripture we find not. St Paul
also tells us that “by nature we are the children of wrath,” Eph. ii. 3. Even originally and
actually we are guilty of and obnoxious unto that wrath, which is
accompanied with fiery indignation, that shall consume the adversaries.
Again, we are assured that no unclean thing shall enter into heaven,
Rev. xxi. 27; with which
hell-deserving uncleanness children are polluted: and, therefore, unless it
be purged with the blood of Christ, they have no interest in everlasting
happiness. By this means sin is come upon all to condemnation; and yet do
we not peremptorily censure to hell all infants departing this world
without the laver of regeneration, — the ordinary means of waiving the
punishment due to this pollution. That is the question “de facto,” which we before rejected. Yea, and two
ways there are whereby God saveth such infants, snatching them like brands
out of the fire:—
First, By interesting them in the covenant, if their
immediate or remote parents have been believers. He is a God of them and
of their seed, extending his mercy unto a thousand generations of them that
fear him.
Secondly, By his grace of election, which is most free, and
not tied to any conditions; by which I make no doubt but God taketh many
unto him in Christ whose parents never knew, or had been despisers of, the
gospel. And this is the doctrine of our church, agreeable to the
Scripture, affirming the desert of original sin to be God’s wrath and
damnation. To both which how opposite is the Arminian doctrine may thus
appear:—
S. S. |
Lib. Arbit. |
“By the offense of one
judgment came upon all men to condemnation,” Rom. v.
18. |
“Adam sinned in his own
proper person only, and there is no reason why God should impute that sin
unto infants,” Boræus. |
“By one man’s disobedience
many were made sinners,” Rom. v.
19. |
“It is absurd that by one
man’s disobedience many should be made actually disobedient,” Corvinus. |
“Behold, I was shapen in
iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me,” Ps. li.
5. |
“Infants are simply in that
estate in which Adam was before his fall,” Venator. |
“Else were your
children unclean; but now are they holy,” 1 Cor. vii.
14. “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one,”
Job xiv. 4. “Except a man be born
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” John iii.
3. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh,” John iii. 6. |
“Neither is it considerable
whether they be the children of believers or of heathens; for all infants
have the same innocency,” Rem. Apol. “That which we have by birth can be no
evil of sin, because to be born is plainly involuntary,” Idem. |
“By nature the children of
wrath, even as others,” Eph. ii. 3.
“By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death
passed upon all men, for that all have sinned,” to wit, in him, Rom. v. 12. “For I know that in me
(that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing,” chap. vii.
18. |
“Original sin is neither a
sin properly so called, which should make the posterity of Adam guilty of
God’s wrath, nor yet a punishment of any sin on them,” Rem. Apol. “It is
against equity that one should be accounted guilty of a sin that is not his
own, that he should be judged nocent who in regard of his own will is truly
innocent,” Idem. |
“In the day that thou eatest
thereof thou shalt surely die,” Gen. ii.
17. “For as in Adam all die, even so,” etc., 1 Cor. xv. 22. “By nature the
children of wrath,” Eph. ii. 3.
“And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth,”
Rev. xxi. 27. |
“God neither doth nor can in
justice appoint any to hell for original sin,” Rem. Apol. “It is perversely spoken,
that original sin makes any one guilty of death,” Armin. “We no way doubt to affirm, that never any one was
damned for original sin,” Corv. |
Chapter VIII.
Of the state of Adam before the fall, or of original
righteousness.
In the last chapter we discovered
the Arminian attempt of re-advancing the corrupted nature of man into that
state of innocency and holiness wherein it was at first by God created; in
which design, because they cannot but discern that the success is not
answerable to their desires, and not being able to deny but that for so
much good as we want (having cast it away), or evil of sin that we are
subject unto more than we were at our first creation, we must be
responsible to the justice of God, they labour to draw down our
first parents, even from the instant of their forming, into the same
condition wherein we are engaged by reason of corrupted nature. But,
truly, I fear they will scarce obtain so prosperous an issue of their
endeavour as Mohammed had when he promised
the people he would call a mountain unto him; which miracle when they
assembled to behold, but the mountain would not stir for all his calling,
he replied, “If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed
will go to the mountain,” and away he packed towards it. For we shall find
that our Arminians can neither themselves climb the high mountain of
innocency, nor yet call it down into the valley of sin and corruption
wherein they are lodged. We have seen already how vain and frustrate was
their former attempt: let us now take a view of their aspiring insolence,
in making the pure creatures of God, holy and undefiled with any sin, to be
invested with the same wretchedness and perverseness of nature with
ourselves.
It is not my intention to enter into any curious discourse
concerning the state and grace of Adam before his fall, but only to give a
faithful assent to what God himself affirmed of all the works of his hands,
— they were exceeding good. No evil, no deformity, or anything tending
thereunto, did immediately issue from that Fountain of goodness and wisdom;
and therefore, doubtless, man, the most excellent work of his hands, the
greatest glory of his Creator, was then without spot or blemish, endued
with all those perfections his nature and state of obedience was capable
of. And careful we must be of casting any aspersions of defect on him that
we will not with equal boldness ascribe to the image of God.
Nothing doth more manifest the deviation of our nature from
its first institution, and declare the corruption wherewith we are
polluted, than that propensity which is in us to every thing that is evil;
that inclination of the flesh which lusteth always against the Spirit; that
lust and concupiscence which fomenteth, conceiveth, hatcheth, bringeth
forth, and nourisheth sin; that perpetual proneness that is in unregenerate
nature to every thing that is contrary to the pure and holy law of God.
Now, because neither Scripture nor experience will suffer Christians quite
to deny this pravity of our nature, this averseness from all good and
propensity to sin, the Arminians extenuate as much as they are able,
affirming that it is no great matter, no more than Adam was subject unto in
the state of innocency. But, what! did God create in Adam a proneness unto
evil? was that a part of his glorious image in whose likeness he was
framed? Yea, saith Corvinus, “By reason of his creation, man had an
affection to what was forbidden by the law.” But yet this
seems injustice, that “God should give a man a law to keep,
and put upon his nature a repugnancy to that law;” as one of them affirmed
at the synod of Dort. “No,” saith the
former author; “man had
not been fit to have had a law given unto him, had he not been endued with
a propension and natural inclination to that which is forbidden by the
law.” But why is this so necessary in men rather than angels? No doubt
there was a law, a rule for their obedience, given unto them at their first
creation, which some transgressed, when others kept it inviolate. Had they
also a propensity to sin concreated with their nature? had they a natural
affection put upon them by God to that which was forbidden by the law? Let
them only who will be wise beyond the word of God affix such injustice on
the righteous Judge of all the earth. But so it seems it must be. “There was an
inclination in man to sin before the fall, though not altogether so
vehement and inordinate as it is now,” saith Arminius. Hitherto we have thought that the original
righteousness wherein Adam was created had comprehended the integrity and
perfection of the whole man; not only that whereby the body was obedient
unto the soul, and all the affections subservient to the rule of reason for
the performance of all natural actions, but also a light, uprightness, and
holiness of grace in the mind and will, whereby he was enabled to yield
obedience unto God for the attaining of that supernatural end whereunto he
was created. No; but “original
righteousness,” say our new doctors, “was nothing but a bridle to help to
keep man’s inordinate concupiscence within bounds:” so that the faculties
of our souls were never endued with any proper innate holiness of their
own. “In the spiritual death of sin there are no spiritual
gifts properly wanting in the will, because they were never there,” say the
six collocutors at the Hague.
The sum is, man was created with a nature not only weak and
imperfect, unable by its native strength and endowments to attain that
supernatural end for which he was made, and which he was commanded to seek,
but depraved also with a love and desire of things repugnant to the will of
God, by reason of an inbred inclination to sinning. It doth not properly
belong to this place to show how they extenuate those gifts also with which
they cannot deny but that he was endued, and also deny those
which he had, as a power to believe in Christ, or to assent unto any truth
that God should reveal unto him; and yet they grant this privilege to every
one of his posterity, in that depraved condition of nature whereinto by sin
he cast himself and us. We have all now a power of believing in Christ;
that is, Adam, by his fall, obtained a supernatural endowment far more
excellent than any he had before. And let them not here pretend the
universality of the new covenant until they can prove it; and I am certain
it will be long enough. But this, I say, belongs not to this place; only,
let us see how, from the word of God, we may overthrow the former odious
heresy:—
God in the beginning “created man in his own image,”
Gen. i. 27, — that is, “upright,”
Eccles. vii. 29, endued with a nature
composed to obedience and holiness. That habitual grace and original
righteousness wherewith he was invested was in a manner due unto him for
the obtaining of that supernatural end whereunto he was created. A
universal rectitude of all the faculties of his soul, advanced by
supernatural graces, enabling him to the performance of those duties
whereunto they were required, is that which we call the innocency of our
first parents. Our nature was then inclined to good only, and adorned with
all those qualifications that were necessary to make it acceptable unto
God, and able to do what was required of us by the law, under the condition
of everlasting happiness. Nature and grace, or original righteousness,
before the fall, ought not to be so distinguished as if the one were a
thing prone to evil, resisted and quelled by the other; for both complied,
in a sweet union and harmony, to carry us along in the way of obedience to
eternal blessedness. [There was] no contention between the flesh and the
Spirit; but as all other things at theirs, so the whole man jointly aimed
at his own chiefest good, having all means of attaining it in his power.
That there was then no inclination to sin, no concupiscence of that which
is evil, no repugnancy to the law of God, in the pure nature of man, is
proved, because, —
First, The Scripture, describing the condition of our
nature at the first creation thereof, intimates no such propensity to evil,
but rather a holy perfection, quite excluding it. We were created “in the
image of God,” Gen. i. 27, — in such a perfect
uprightness as is opposite to all evil inventions, Eccles. vii. 29; to which image when
we are again in some measure “renewed” by the grace of Christ, Col. iii. 10, we see by the
first-fruits that it consisted in “righteousness and true holiness,” — in
truth and perfect holiness, Eph. iv.
24.
Secondly, An inclination to evil, and a lusting after that
which is forbidden, is that inordinate concupiscence wherewith our nature
is now infected; which is everywhere in the Scripture condemned as a sin; St Paul, in the seventh to the
Romans, affirming expressly that it is a sin, and forbidden by
the law, verse 7, producing all manner of evil,
and hindering all that is good, — a “body of death,” verse 24; and St James maketh it even
the womb of all iniquity, James i.
14, 15. Surely our nature was not at first yoked with such a
troublesome inmate. Where is the uprightness and innocency we have
hitherto conceived our first parents to have enjoyed before the fall? A
repugnancy to the law must needs be a thing sinful. An inclination to
evil, to a thing forbidden, is an anomy, — a deviation and
discrepancy from the pure and holy law of God. We must speak no more,
then, of the state of innocency, but only of a short space wherein no
outward actual sins were committed. Their proper root, if this be true,
was concreated with our nature. Is this that obediential harmony to all
the commandments of God which is necessary for a pure and innocent
creature, that hath a law prescribed unto him? By which of the ten
precepts is this inclination to evil required? Is it by the last, “Thou
shalt not covet?” or by that sum of them all, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,” etc.? Is this all the
happiness of paradise, — to be turmoiled with a nature swelling with
abundance of vain desires, and with a main stream carried headlong to all
iniquity, if its violent appetite be not powerfully kept in by the bit and
bridle of original righteousness? So it is we see with children now; and so it should
have been with them in paradise, if they were subject to this rebellious
inclination to sin.
Thirdly, and principally, Whence had our primitive nature
this affection to those things that were forbidden it, — this rebellion and
repugnancy to the law, which must needs be an anomy, and so a thing sinful?
There was as yet no demerit, to deserve it as a punishment. What fault is
it to be created? The operation of any
thing which hath its original with the being of the thing itself must needs
proceed from the same cause as doth the essence or being itself; as the
fire’s tending upwards relates to the same original with the fire: and,
therefore, this inclination or affection can have no other author but God;
by which means he is entitled not only to the first sin, as the efficient
cause, but to all the sins in the world arising from thence. Plainly, and
without any strained consequences, he is made the author of sin; for even
those positive properties which can have no other fountain but the author
of nature, being set on evil, are directly sinful. And here the idol of
free-will may triumph in this victory over the God of heaven. Heretofore
all the blame of sin lay upon his shoulders, but now he begins
to complain, Οὐκ ἐγὼ αἴτιός εἰμι ἀλλὰ Ζεὺς
καὶ μοῖρα. “It is God and the fate of our creation that hath placed
us in this condition of naturally affecting that which is evil. Back with
all your charges against the ill government of this new deity within his
imaginary dominion; what hurt doth he do but incline men unto evil, and God
himself did no less at the first?” But let them that will, rejoice in
these blasphemies: it sufficeth us to know that “God created man upright,”
though he “hath sought out many inventions;” so that in this following
dissonancy we cleave to the better part:—
S. S. |
Lib. Arbit. |
“So God created man in his
own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he
them,” Gen. i. 27. “Put on the new man,
which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him,”
Col. iii. 10. “— which after God is
created in righteousness and true holiness,” Eph. iv.
24. |
“There was in man before the
fall an inclination to sinning, though not so vehement and inordinate as
now it is,” Armin. “God put upon
man a repugnancy to his law,” Gesteranus in the
Synod. “Man, by reason of his creation, had an affection to those
things that are forbidden by the law,” Corv. |
“Lo, this only have I found,
that God hath made man upright; but he hath sought out many inventions,”
Eccles. vii. 29. “By one man sin
entered into the world, and death by sin,” Rom. v.
12. |
“The will of man had never
any spiritual endowments,” Rem. Apol. |
“Let no man say when he is
tempted, I am tempted of God: for God tempteth no man: but every man is
tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust,” James i. 13, 14. |
“It was not fit that man
should have a law given him, unless he had a natural inclination to what
was forbidden by the law,” Corv. |
Chapter IX.
Of the death of Christ, and of the efficacy of his
merits.
The sum of those controversies,
wherewith the Arminians and their abettors have troubled the church, about
the death of Christ, may be reduced to two heads:— First,
Concerning the object of his merit, or whom he died for; secondly,
Concerning the efficacy and end of his death, or what he deserved,
procured, merited, and obtained, for them for whom he died. In resolution
of the first, they affirm that he died for all and every one; of the
second, that he died for no one man at all in that sense Christians have
hitherto believed that he laid down his life, and submitted himself to bear
the burden of his Father’s wrath for their sakes. It seems to me a strange
extenuation of the merit of Christ, to teach that no good at all by his
death doth redound to divers of them for whom he died. What participation
in the benefit of his suffering had Pharaoh or Judas? Do they not at this
hour, and shall they not to eternity, feel the weight and burden of their
own sins? Had they either grace in this world, or glory in the other, that
they should be said to have an interest in the death of our Saviour?
Christians have hitherto believed, that for whom Christ died, for their
sins he made satisfaction, that they themselves should not eternally suffer
for them. Is God unjust to punish twice for the same fault? his own Son
once, and again the poor sinners for whom he suffered? I cannot conceive
an intention in God that Christ should satisfy his justice for the sin of
them that were in hell some thousands of years before, and yet be still
resolved to continue their punishment on them to all eternity. No,
doubtless: Christ giveth life to every one for whom he gave his life; he
loseth not one of them whom he purchased with his blood.
The first part of this controversy may be handled under
these two questions:— First, Whether God giving his Son, and Christ making
his soul a ransom for sin, intended thereby to redeem all and every one
from their sins, that all and every one alike, from the beginning of the
world to the last day, should all equally be partakers of the fruits of his
death and passion; which purpose of theirs is in the most frustrate?
Secondly, Whether God had not a certain infallible intention of gathering
unto himself a “chosen people,” of collecting a “church of first-born,” of
saving his “little flock,” of bringing some certainly to happiness, by the
death of his only Son; which in the event he doth accomplish?
The second part also may be reduced to these two heads:—
First, Whether Christ did not make full satisfaction for all their sins for
whom he died, and merited glory, or everlasting happiness, to be bestowed
on them upon the performance of those conditions God should require?
Secondly (which is the proper controversy I shall chiefly insist upon),
Whether Christ did not procure for his own people a power to become the
sons of God, merit and deserve at the hands of God for them, grace, faith,
righteousness, and sanctification, whereby they may be enabled
infallibly to perform the conditions of the new covenant, upon the which
they shall be admitted to glory?
To the first question of the first part of the controversy,
the Arminians answer affirmatively, — to wit, that Christ died for all
alike; the benefit of his passion belongs equally to all the posterity of
Adam. And to the second negatively, — that God had no such intention of
bringing many chosen sons unto salvation by the death of Christ, but
determined of grace and glory no more precisely to one than to another, to
John than Judas, Abraham than Pharaoh? Both which, as the learned Moulin observed, seemed to be invented to make Christianity
ridiculous, and expose our religion to the derision of all knowing men: for
who can possibly conceive that one by the appointment of God should die for
another, and yet that other, by the same justice, be allotted unto death
himself, when one’s death only was due; that Christ hath made a full
satisfaction for their sins who shall everlastingly feel the weight of them
themselves; that he should merit and obtain reconciliation with God for
them who live and die his enemies, grace and glory for them who are
graceless in this life and damned in that which is to come; that he should
get remission of sins for them whose sins were never pardoned? In brief,
if this sentence be true, either Christ by his death did not reconcile us
unto God, make satisfaction to his justice for our iniquities, redeem us
from our sins, purchase a kingdom, an everlasting inheritance for us, —
which I hope no Christian will say; or else all the former absurdities must
necessarily follow, — which no rational man will ever admit.
Neither may we be charged as straiteners of the merit of
Christ; for we advance the true value and worth thereof (as hereafter will
appear) far beyond all the Arminians ascribe unto it. We confess that that
“blood of God,” Acts xx.
28, of the “Lamb without blemish and without spot,” 1 Pet. i. 19, was so exceedingly
precious, of that infinite worth and value, that it might have saved a
thousand believing worlds, John iii.
16; Rom. iii.
22. His death was of sufficient dignity to have been made a
ransom for all the sins of every one in the world. And on this internal
sufficiency of his death and passion is grounded the universality of
evangelical promises; which have no such restriction in their own nature as
that they should not be made to all and every one, though the promulgation
and knowledge of them are tied only to the good pleasure of God’s special
providence, Matt. xvi.
17; as also that economy and dispensation of the new covenant
whereby, the partition-wall being broken down, there remains no more
difference between Jew and Gentile, the utmost borders of the earth being
given in for Christ’s inheritance. So that, in some sense,
Christ may be said to die for “all,” and “the whole world;” — first,
Inasmuch as the worth and value of his death was very sufficient to have
been made a price for all their sins; secondly, Inasmuch as this word “all”
is taken for some of all sorts (not for every one of every sort), as it is
frequently used in the holy Scripture: so Christ being lifted up, “drew all
unto him,” John xii. 32; that is, believers out
of all sorts of men. The apostles cured all diseases, or some of all
sorts: they did not cure every particular disease, but there was no kind of
disease that was exempted from their power of healing. So that where it is
said that Christ “died for all,” it is meant either, — first, All the
faithful; or, secondly, Some of all sorts; thirdly, Not only Jews, but
Gentiles. For, —
Secondly, The proper counsel and intention of God in
sending his Son into the world to die was, that thereby he might confirm
and ratify the new covenant to his elect, and purchase for them all the
good things which are contained in the tenure of that covenant, — to wit,
grace and glory; that by his death he might bring many (yet some certain)
children to glory, obtaining for them that were given unto him by his
Father (that is, his whole church) reconciliation with God, remission of
sins, faith, righteousness, sanctification, and life eternal. That is the
end to which they are to be brought, and the means whereby God will have
them attain it. He died that he might gather the dispersed children of
God, and make them partakers of everlasting glory, — to “give eternal life
to as many as God gave him,” John xvii.
2. And on this purpose of himself and his Father is founded the
intercession of Christ for his elect and chosen people; performed partly on
the earth, John xvii., partly in heaven, before
the throne of grace: which is nothing but a presentation of himself and his
merits, accompanied with the prayers of his mediatorship before God, that
he would be pleased to grant and effectually to apply the good things he
hath by them obtained to all for whom he hath obtained them. His
intercession in heaven is nothing but a continued oblation of himself. So
that whatsoever Christ impetrated, merited, or obtained by his death and
passion, must be infallibly applied unto and bestowed upon them for whom he
intended to obtain it; or else his intercession is vain, he is not heard in
the prayers of his mediatorship. An actual reconciliation with God, and
communication of grace and glory, must needs betide all them that have any
such interest in the righteousness of Christ as to have it accepted for
their good. The sole end why Christ would so dearly purchase those good
things is, an actual application of them unto his chosen: God set forth the
propitiation of his blood for the remission of sins, that he might be the
justifier of him which believeth on Jesus, Rom.
iii. 25, 26. But this part of the controversy is not that which I principally intend; only, I will give you a brief sum
of those reasons which overthrow their heresy in this particular branch
thereof:—
First, The death of Christ is in divers places of the
Scripture restrained to his “people,” and “elect,” his “church,” and
“sheep,” Matt. i. 21; John x. 11–13; Acts xx. 28; Eph. v.
25; John xi. 51, 52; Rom. viii. 32, 34;
Heb. ii. 9,
14; Rev. v. 9; Dan. ix.
26; — and therefore the good purchased thereby ought not to be
extended to “dogs,” “reprobates,” and “those that are without.”
Secondly, For whom Christ died, he died as their sponsor,
in their room and turn, that he might free them from the guilt and desert
of death; which is clearly expressed Rom. v.
6–8. “He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for
our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his
stripes we are healed,” Isa. liii.
5, 6, etc. “He hath redeemed us from the curse of the law,
being made a curse for us,” Gal. iii.
13. “He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin,”
2 Cor. v. 21. Evidently he changeth
turns with us, “that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.”
Yea, in other things, it is plain in the Scripture that to die for another
is to take his place and room, with an intention that he should live,
2 Sam. xviii. 33; Rom.
v. So that Christ dying for men made satisfaction for their
sins, that they should not die. Now, for what sins he made satisfaction,
for them the justice of God is satisfied; which surely is not done for the
sins of the reprobates, because he justly punisheth them to eternity upon
themselves, Matt. v. 26.
Thirdly, For whom Christ “died,” for them also he “rose
again,” to make intercession for them: for whose “offenses he was
delivered,” for their “justification he was raised,” Rom. iv. 25,
v. 10. He is a high priest “to make intercession for them” in
the holy of holies for whom “by his own blood he obtained eternal
redemption,” Heb. ix.
11, 12. These two acts of his priesthood are not to be
separated; it belongs to the same mediator for sin to sacrifice and pray.
Our assurance that he is our advocate is grounded on his being a
propitiation for our sins. He is an “advocate” for every one for whose
sins his blood was a “propitiation,” 1 John
ii. 1, 2. But Christ doth not intercede and pray for all, as
himself often witnesseth, John
xvii.; he “maketh intercession” only for them who “come unto God
by him,” Heb. vii. 25. He is not a mediator of
them that perish, no more than an advocate of them that fail in their
suits; and therefore the benefit of his death also must be restrained to
them who are finally partakers of both. We must not so disjoin the offices
of Christ’s mediatorship, that one of them may be versated about some
towards whom he exerciseth not the other; much less ought we so to separate
the several acts of the same office. For whom Christ is a priest, to offer
himself a sacrifice for their sins, he is surely a king, to
apply the good things purchased by his death unto them, as Arminius himself confesseth; much more to
whom he is a priest by sacrifice, he will be a priest by intercession.
And, therefore, seeing he doth not intercede and pray for every one, he did
not die for every one.
Fourthly, For whom Christ died he merited grace and glory,
faith and salvation, and reconciliation with God; as I shall show
hereafter. But this he hath not done for all and every one. Many do never
believe; the wrath of God remaineth upon some; the wrath of God abideth on
them that do not believe, John iii.
36. To abide argueth a continued, uninterrupted act. Now, to
be reconciled to one, and yet to lie under his heavy anger, seem to me
ἀσύστατα, — things that will scarce
consist together. The reasons are many; I only point at the heads of some
of them.
Fifthly, Christ died for them whom God gave unto him to be
saved: “Thine they were, and thou gavest them me,” John
xvii. 6. He layeth down his life for the sheep committed to his
charge, chap. x. 11. But all are not the
sheep of Christ, all are not given unto him of God to be brought to glory;
for of those that are so given there is not one that perisheth, for “he
giveth eternal life to as many as God hath given him,” chap. xvii. 2. “No man is able to
pluck them out of his Father’s hand,” chap. x. 28, 29.
Sixthly, Look whom, and how many, that love of God embraced
that was the cause of sending his Son to redeem them; for them, and so
many, did Christ, according to the counsel of his Father, and in himself,
intentionally lay down his life. Now, this love is not universal, being
his “good pleasure” of blessing with spiritual blessings and saving some in
Christ, Eph. i. 4,
5; which good pleasure of his evidently comprehendeth some, when
others are excluded, Matt. xi. 25, 26. Yea, the love
of God in giving Christ for us is of the same extent with that grace
whereby he calleth us to faith, or bestoweth faith on us: for “he hath
called us with an holy calling, according to his own purpose and grace,
which was given us in Christ Jesus,” 2 Tim. i.
9; which, doubtless, is not universal and common unto all.
Innumerable other reasons there are to prove, that seeing
God hath given his elect only, whom only he loved, to Christ to be
redeemed; and seeing that the Son loveth only those who are given him of
his Father, and redeemeth only whom he loveth; seeing, also, that the Holy
Spirit, the love of the Father and the Son, sanctifieth all, and only them,
that are elected and redeemed, — it is not our part, with a preposterous
liberality, against the witness of Christ himself, to assign the salvation
attained by him as due to them that are without the congregation of them
whom the Father hath loved and chosen, without that church which the Son
loved and gave his life for, nor none of the members of that
sanctified body whereof Christ is the Head and Saviour. I urge no more,
because this is not that part of the controversy that I desire to lay
open.
I come now to consider the main question of this
difference, though sparingly handled by our divines, concerning what our
Saviour merited and purchased for them for whom he died. And here you
shall find the old idol playing his pranks, and quite divesting the merit
of Christ from the least ability or power of doing us any good; for though
the Arminians pretend, very speciously, that Christ died for all men, yet,
in effect, they make him die for no one man at all, and that by denying the
effectual operation of his death, and ascribing the proper issues of his
passion to the brave endeavours of their own Pelagian deity.
We, according to the Scriptures, plainly believe that
Christ hath, by his righteousness, merited for us grace and glory; that we
are blessed with all spiritual blessings, in, through, and for him; that he
is made unto us righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption; that he
hath procured for us, and that God for his sake bestoweth on us, every
grace in this life that maketh us differ from others, and all that glory we
hope for in that which is to come; he procured for us remission of all our
sins, an actual reconciliation with God, faith, and obedience. Yea, but
this is such a desperate doctrine as stabs at the very heart of the idol,
and would make him as altogether useless as if he were but a fig-tree log.
What remaineth for him to do, if all things in this great work of our
salvation must be thus ascribed unto Christ and the merit of his death?
Wherefore the worshippers of this great god, Lib. Arbit., oppose their engines against the whole
fabric, and cry down the title of Christ’s merits to these spiritual
blessings, in the behalf of their imaginary deity.
Now, because they are things of a twofold denomination
about which we contend before the King of heaven, each part producing their
evidence, the first springing from the favour of God towards us, the second
from the working of his grace actually within us, I shall handle them
severally and apart; — especially because to things of this latter sort,
gifts, as we call them, enabling us to fulfil the condition required for
the attaining of glory, we lay a double claim on God’s behalf; first, As
the death of Christ is the meritorious cause procuring them of him;
secondly, As his free grace is their efficient cause working them in us; —
they also producing a double title, whereby they would invest their beloved
darling with a sole propriety in causing these effects; first, In regard
that they are our own acts, performed in us and by us; secondly, As they
are parts of our duty which we are enjoined to do. So that the quarrel is
directly between Christ’s merits and our own free-will about procuring the
favour of God, and obtaining grace and righteousness. Let us
see what they say to the first.
They affirm that “the immediate and proper effect or end of
the death and passion of Christ is, not an actual ablation of sin from men,
not an actual remission of iniquities, justification and redemption of any
soul;” that is, Christ’s death is not the meritorious cause of the
remission of our sins, of redemption and justification. The meritorious
cause, I say: for of some of them, as of justification, as it is terminated
in us, we confess there are causes of other kinds, as faith is the
instrument and the Holy Spirit the efficient thereof; but for the sole
meritorious procuring cause of these spiritual blessings, we always took it
to be the righteousness and death of Christ, believing plainly that the end
why Christ died, and the fruit of his sufferings, was our reconciliation
with God, redemption from our sins, freedom from the curse, deliverance
from the wrath of God and power of hell, — though we be not actual
partakers of these things, to the pacification of our own consciences,
without the intervening operation of the Holy Spirit, and faith by him
wrought in us.
But if this be not, pray what is obtained by the death of
Christ? Why, “a
potential, conditionate reconciliation, not actual and absolute,” saith
Corvinus. But yet this
potential reconciliation being a new expression, never intimated in the
Scripture, and scarce of itself intelligible, we want a farther explanation
of their mind, to know what it is that directly they assign to the merits
of Christ. Wherefore they tell us that the fruit of his death was “such an impetration
or obtaining of reconciliation with God, and redemption for us, that God
thereby hath a power, his justice being satisfied, and so not compelling
him to the contrary, to grant remission of sins to sinful men on what
condition he would;” or, as another speaketh it, “There was, by
the effusion of Christ’s blood, a right obtained unto and settled in God,
of reconciling the world, and of opening unto all a gate of repentance and
faith in Christ.” But now, whereas the Scripture everywhere affirmeth that
Christ died for our good, to obtain blessings for us, to purchase our
peace, to acquire and merit for us the good things contained in the promise
of the covenant, this opinion seems to restrain the end and
fruit thereof to the obtaining of a power and liberty unto God of
prescribing us a condition whereby we may be saved. But yet, it may be,
thus much at least Christ obtained of God in our behalf, that he should
assign faith in him to be this condition, and to bestow it upon us also.
No; neither the one nor the other. “After all this, had it so seemed good unto his
wisdom, God might have chosen the Jews, and others, following the
righteousness of the law, as well as believers; because he might have
assigned any other condition of salvation besides faith in Christ,” saith
Grevinchovius.
Notwithstanding, then, the death of Christ for us, we might have been held
to the old rule, “Do this, and live.” But if this be true, I cannot
perceive how it may be said that Christ died to redeem us from our sins, to
save our souls, and bring us unto glory. Neither, perhaps, do they think
this to be any great inconvenience; for the same author affirmeth that
“Christ cannot be said properly to die to save
any one.” And a little after he more fully declares himself, that “after
Christ had obtained all that he did obtain by his death, the right remained
wholly in God to apply it, or not to apply it, as it should seem good unto
him; the application of grace and glory to any man was not the end for
which Christ obtained them, but to get a right and power unto God of
bestowing those things on what sort of men he would;” — which argues no
redemption of us from our sins, but a vindication of God from such a
condition wherein he had not power to forgive them; not an obtaining of
salvation for us, but of a liberty unto God of saving us on some condition
or other.
But now, after God hath got this power by the death of
Christ, and out of his gracious good pleasure assigned faith to be the
means for us to attain those blessings, he hath procured himself a liberty
to bestow. Did Christ obtain this faith for us of him, if it be a thing
not in our own power? No; “faith is not obtained by the death of Christ,” saith
Corvinus. So that there
is no good thing, no spiritual blessing, into which any man in the world
hath any interest by the death of Christ: which is not so great an
absurdity but that they are most ready to grant it. Arnoldus confesseth, “that he believes
that the death of Christ might have enjoyed its end, or his merit its full force, although never any had believed:” and again,
“The death and satisfaction
of Christ being accomplished, it might come to pass that, none fulfilling
the condition of the new covenant, none should be saved.” So also saith
Grevinchovius. O Christ! that
any pretending to profess thy holy name should thus slight the precious
work of thy death and passion! Surely never any before, who counted it
their glory to be called Christians, did ever thus extenuate (their friends
the Socinians only excepted) the dignity of his merit and satisfaction.
Take but a short view of what benefit they allow to redound to us by the
effusion of his precious blood, and you may see what a pestilent heresy
these men have laboured to bring into the church. Neither faith nor
salvation, grace nor glory, hath he purchased for us, — not any spiritual
blessing, that by our interest in his death we can claim to be ours! It is
not such a reconciliation with God as that he thereupon should be contented
again to be called our God; it is not justification, nor righteousness, nor
actual redemption from our sins; it did not make satisfaction for our
iniquities, and deliver us from the curse; “only it was a means of obtaining such
a possibility of salvation, as that God, without wronging of his justice,
might save us if he would, one way or other.” So that, when Christ had
done all that he could, there was not one man in the world immediately the
better for it; notwithstanding the utmost of his endeavour, every one might
have been damned with Judas to the pit of hell; for “he died as well for Simon Magus and Judas as he did for Peter and Paul,” say the
Arminians. Now, if no more good redound to us by the death of Christ than
to Simon Magus, we are not much obliged to
him for our salvation. Nay, he may be rather said to have redeemed God
than us; for he procured for him immediately a power to redeem us if he
would; for us only, by virtue of that power, a possibility to be redeemed;
— which leaves nothing of the nature of merit annexed to his death, for
that deserveth that something be done, not only that it may be done;
the workman deserveth that his wages be given him, and not that it
may be given him. And then what becomes of all the comfort and
consolation that is proposed to us in the death of Christ? But it is time
to see how this stubble is burned and consumed by the word of God, and that
established which they thought to overthrow.
First, It is clear that Christ died to procure for us an
actual reconciliation with God, and not only a power for us to
be reconciled unto him; for “when we were enemies, we were reconciled to
God by the death of his Son,” Rom. v.
10. We enjoy an actual reconciliation unto God by his death.
He is content to be called “our God” when we are enemies, without the
intervening of any condition on our part required; though the sweetness,
comfort, and knowledge of this reconciliation do not compass our souls
before we believe in him. Again, we have remission of sins by his blood,
and justification from them; not a sole vindication into such an estate
wherein, if it please God and ourselves, our sins are pardonable: for we
are “justified freely by his grace, through the redemption that is in
Christ Jesus: whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in
his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins,”
Rom. iii. 24, 25. Yea, he obtained
for us by his death righteousness and holiness. “He gave himself for the
church, that he might sanctify and cleanse it,” Eph. v. 25, 26; “that he might
present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle;” that
we should be “holy and without blemish,” verse 27.
Where, first, we have whom Christ died or gave himself for, even his
church; secondly, what he obtained for it, — holiness and righteousness, a
freedom from the spots and blemishes of sin, that is, the grace of
justification and sanctity: “He made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin;
that we might be made the righteousness of God in him,” 2 Cor. v. 21. And, lastly, he died
to purchase for us “an eternal inheritance,” Heb. ix.
15. So that both grace and glory are bestowed on them for whom
he died, as the immediate fruits of his death and passion.
Secondly, See what the Scripture ῥητῶς, “expressly,” assigneth as the proper end and
immediate effect (according to the purpose of God and his own intention) of
the effusion of the blood of Jesus Christ, and you shall find that he
intended by it to take away the sins of many; to “make his soul an offering
for sin,” that he might “see his seed,” that “the pleasure of the Lord might prosper in his hand,” Isa.
liii. 10; to be “a ransom for many,” Matt.
xx. 28; to “bear the sins of many,” Heb. ix.
28. He “bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we
should live unto righteousness,” 1 Pet. ii.
24; that “we might be made the righteousness of God in him,”
2 Cor. v. 21; thereby reconciling us
unto God, verse 19. He died to “reconcile us
unto God, in the body of his flesh through death,” that we might be “holy
and unblamable,” Col. i.
21, 22; to “purge our sins,” Heb. i. 3;
to “obtain eternal redemption for us,” chap. ix.
12. So that if Christ by his death obtained what he did intend,
he hath purchased for us not only a possibility of salvation, but holiness,
righteousness, reconciliation with God, justification freedom from the guilt and condemning power of sin, everlasting redemption,
eternal life and glory in heaven.
Thirdly, I appeal unto the conscience of all Christians, —
First, Whether they do not suppose the very foundation of all their
consolation to be stricken at, when they shall find those places of
Scripture that affirm Christ to have died to take away
our sins, to reconcile us unto God, to put away or abolish our
transgressions, to wash and regenerate us, perfectly to save us, and
purchase for us an everlasting redemption, whereby he is become unto us
righteousness, and redemption, and sanctification, the Lord our
righteousness, and we become the righteousness of God in him, to be so
wrested as if he should be said only to have done something from which
these things might happily follow?
Secondly, Whether they think it not a ready way to
impair their love and to weaken their faith in Christ, when they shall be
taught that Christ hath done no more for them than for those that are
damned in hell; that, be their assurance never so great that Christ died
for them, yet there is enough to be laid to their charge to condemn them;
that though God is said to have reconciled them unto himself in Christ,
Col. i. 19, 20, yet indeed he is as
angry with them as with any reprobate in the world; that God loveth us not
first, but so long as we continue in a state of enmity against him, before
our conversion, he continues our enemy also, so that the first act of
friendship or love must be performed on our part, notwithstanding that the
Scripture saith, “When we were enemies, we were reconciled unto God,”
Rom. v. 10?
Thirdly, Whether they have not hitherto supposed
themselves bound to believe that Christ died for their sins, and rose for
their justification? Do they not think it lawful to pray that God would
bestow upon them grace and glory for Christ’s sake? and to believe that
Jesus Christ was such a mediator of the new covenant as procured for the
persons covenanted withal all the good things comprehended in the promise
of that covenant?
I will not farther press upon this prevarication against
Christian religion; only, I would desire all the lovers of Jesus Christ
seriously to consider whether these men do truly aim at his honour and
advancing the dignity of his merit, and not rather at the crying up of
their own endeavours, seeing the sole cause of their denying these glorious
effects of the blood of Christ is to appropriate the praise of them unto
themselves; as we shall see in the next chapter.
These charges are never to be waived by the vanity of their
sophistical distinctions, as of that of impetration and application; which,
though it may be received in an orthodox meaning, yet not in that sense, or rather nonsense, whereunto they abuse it; — namely, as
though Christ had obtained that for some which shall never be imparted unto
them; that all the blessings procured by his death are proper to none, but
pendent in the air for them that can or will catch them: whereupon, when we
object that by this means all the efficacy of the merit of
Christ is in our own power, they readily grant it, and say it cannot
otherwise be. Let them that can, receive these monsters in Christianity;
for my part, in these following contradictory assertions I will choose
rather to adhere to the authority of the word of God than of Arminius and his sectaries:—
S. S. |
Lib. Arbit. |
“He made him to be sin for
us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in
him,” 2 Cor. v. 21. “He loved the church,
and gave himself for it; that he might present it unto himself a glorious
church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing,” Eph. v. 25,
27. |
“The immediate effect of the
death of Christ is not the remission of sins, or the actual redemption of
any,” Armin. “Christ did not
properly die to save any one,” Grevinch. |
“God was in Christ,
reconciling the world unto himself,” 2 Cor. v.
19. |
“A potential and conditionate
reconciliation, not actual and absolute, is obtained by the death of
Christ,” Corv. |
“When thou shalt make his
soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days,
and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his
hand,” Isa. liii. 10. |
“I believe it might have come
to pass that the death of Christ might have had its end, though never any
man had believed,” Corv. |
“By his knowledge shall my
righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities,”
Isa. liii. 11. |
“The death and satisfaction
of Christ being accomplished, yet it may so come to pass that, none at all
fulfilling the condition of the new covenant, none might be saved,” Idem. |
“Christ was once offered to
bear the sins of many,” Heb. ix.
28. “By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place,
having obtained eternal redemption for us,” chap. ix. 12. “He hath reconciled you
in the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy, and
unblamable, and unreprovable,” Col. i.
21, 22. |
“The impetration of salvation
for all, by the death of Christ, is nothing but the obtaining of a
possibility thereof; that God, without wronging his justice, may open unto
them a gate of mercy, to be entered on some condition,” Rem. Coll. Hag. |
“Whom God hath set forth to
be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness
for the remission of sins,” etc.: “that he might be just, and the justifier
of him which believeth in Jesus,” Rom. iii.
25, 26. |
“Notwithstanding the death of
Christ, God might have assigned any other condition of salvation as well as
faith, or have chosen the Jews following the righteousness of the law,”
Grevinch. |
“Who his own self bare our
sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live
unto righteousness: by whose stripes we were healed,” 1
Pet. ii. 24. |
“Why, then, the efficacy of
the death of Christ depends wholly on us.” “True; it cannot otherwise be,”
Rem.
Apol. |
Chapter X.
Of the cause of faith, grace, and righteousness.
The second part of this controversy
is in particular concerning grace, faith, and holiness, sincere obedience
to the precepts of the new covenant, all whose praise we appropriate to the
Most High by reason of a double interest, — first, Of the merit of Christ,
which doth procure them for us; secondly, Of the Holy Spirit, which works
them in us. The death of Christ is their meritorious cause; the Spirit of
God and his effectual grace their efficient, working instrumentally with
power by the word and ordinances. Now, because this would deprive the idol
of his chiefest glory, and expose him to open shame, like the bird “furtivis nudata coloribus,” the Arminians
advance themselves in his quarrel, and in behalf of their darling quite
exclude both merit of Christ and Spirit of God from any title to their
production.
First, For the merit of Christ. Whereas we affirm that God
“blesseth us with all spiritual blessings in him,” or for his sake,
Eph. i. 3, amongst which, doubtless,
faith possesseth not the lowest room; that “he is made unto us
righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption;” that “he was made sin
for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him;” that he is
“the Lord our righteousness,” and glories to be called by that name (and
whatever he is unto us, it is chiefly by the way of merit); that “to us it
is given ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ, for Christ’s
sake, to believe on him,” Phil. i.
29, where ὑπὲρ Χριστοῦ is
plainly referred to δίδοται, [ἐχαρίσθη,?] “is given,” — as if the apostle
should have said, “Christ is the meritorious cause of the bestowing of
those good gifts, faith and constancy unto martyrdom, upon you;” — when, I
say, we profess all these to be the proper and immediate products of the
passion and blood of Christ, these turbulent Davusses come in with a
prohibition, and quite expel it from having any interest therein.
“There is
nothing more vain, nothing more foolish,” say they in their Apology, “than to
attribute our regeneration and faith unto the death of Christ; for if
Christ may be said to have merited for us faith and regeneration, then
faith cannot be a condition whose performance God should require at the
hands of sinners under the pain of eternal damnation.” And again, “If faith be the effect of the merit
of Christ, it cannot be our duty.” No? Suppose, then, that the church
should pray that it would please God, for Christ’s sake, to call home those
sheep that belong to his fold not as yet collected, — that he would grant
faith and repentance, for the merit of his Son, to them that are as yet
afar off, — were this an altogether vain and foolish prayer? Let others
think as they please, it is such a vanity as I desire not to be weaned
from; nor any one else, I believe, that loves the Lord Jesus in sincerity.
Oh, that Christians should patiently endure such a diminution of their
Saviour’s honour, as with one dash of an Arminian pen to have the chief
effects of his death and passion quite obliterated! If this be a motive to
the love and honour of the Son of God, if this be a way to set forth the
preciousness of his blood, by denying the efficacy thereof in enabling us
by faith to get an interest in the new covenant, most Christians in the
world are under a necessity of being new catechised by these seraphical
doctors. Until when, they must give us leave to believe, with the apostle,
that God “blesseth us with all spiritual blessings in Christ,” Eph. i. 3; and we will take leave to
account faith a spiritual blessing, and, therefore, bestowed on us for
Christ’s sake. Again; since our regeneration is nothing but a “purging of
our consciences from dead works that we may serve the living God,” which
being done by “the blood of Christ,” as the apostle witnesseth, Heb. ix. 14, we will ascribe our new
birth, or forming anew, to the virtue of that grace which is purchased by
his blood; that “precious blood” it is which “redeemeth us from our vain
conversation,” 1 Pet.
i. 18, 19, by whose efficacy we are vindicated from the state of
sin and corrupted nature wherein we are born.
The Arminians have but one argument, that ever
I could meet with, whereby they strive to rob Christ of this glory of
meriting and procuring for us faith and repentance; and that is, because
they are such acts of ours as in duty and obedience to the precepts of the
gospel we are bound to perform; and this they everywhere press at large, “usque et usque.” In plain terms, they
will not suffer their idol to be accounted defective in any thing that is
necessary to bring us unto heaven. Now, concerning this argument, that
nothing which God requireth of us can be procured for us by Christ, I would
have two things noted:— First, That the strength of it consists in
this, that no gift of God bestowed upon us can be a thing well-pleasing to
him, as being in us, for all his precepts and commands signify only what is
well-pleasing unto him that we should be or do; and it is not the meriting
of any thing by Christ, but God’s bestowing of it as the effect thereof,
which hinders it from being a thing requirable of us as a part of our duty:
which I shall consider hereafter. Only now observe, that there being
nothing in us, by the way of habit or act, from the beginning of our faith
to the consummation thereof, from our new birth until we become perfect men
in Christ by the finishing of our course, that is not required of us in the
gospel, all and every grace whereof we are in this life partakers are, by
this means, denied to be the gifts of God. Secondly, Consider the
extent of this argument itself. Nothing whose performance is our duty can
be merited for us by Christ. When the apostle beseecheth us to be
“reconciled unto God,” I would know whether it be not a part of our duty to
yield obedience to the apostle’s exhortation? If not, his exhortation is
frivolous and vain: if so, then to be reconciled unto God is a part of our
duty; and yet the Arminians sometimes seem to confess that Christ hath
obtained for us a reconciliation with God. The like may be said in divers
other particulars. So that this argument either proveth that we enjoy no
fruit of the death of Christ in this life, or (which is most true) it
proveth nothing at all; for neither the merit of Christ procuring nor God
bestowing any grace in the habit doth at all hinder but that, in the
exercise thereof, it may be a duty of ours, inasmuch as it is done in us
and by us. Notwithstanding, then, this exception, — which cannot stand by
itself alone without the help of some other not as yet discovered, — we
will continue our prayers, as we are commanded, in the name of Christ; that
is, that God would bestow upon us those things we ask for Christ’s sake,
and that by an immediate collation, yea, even then when we cry with the
poor penitent, “Lord, help our unbelief,” or with the apostles, “Lord,
increase our faith.”
Secondly, The second plea on God’s behalf, to prove him the
author and finisher of all those graces whereof in this life
we are partakers, ariseth from what the Scripture affirmeth concerning his
working these graces in us, and that powerfully, by the effectual operation
of his Holy Spirit. To which the Arminians oppose a seeming necessity that
they must needs be our own acts, contradistinct from his gifts, because
they are in us and commanded by him. The head, then, of this contention
betwixt our God and their idol about the living child of grace is, whether
he can work that in us which he requireth of us. Let us hear them pleading
their cause:—
“It is most certain that that
ought not to be commanded which is wrought in us; and that cannot be
wrought in us which is commanded. He foolishly commandeth that to be done
of others who will work in them what he commandeth,” saith their Apology. O foolish
St Prosper, who thought that it was the whole
Pelagian heresy to say, “That there is
neither praise nor worth, as ours, in that which Christ bestoweth upon us!”
Foolish St Augustine,
praying, “Give us, O Lord, what thou commandest, and
command what thou wilt!” Foolish Benedict,
bishop of Rome, who gave such a form to his prayer as must needs cast an
aspersion of folly on the Most High! “O Lord,” saith he, “teach us what we should
do; show us whither we should go; work in us what we ought to perform.” O
foolish fathers of the second
Arausican council, affirming, “That many good things are done in man which he doth
not himself; but a man doth no good which God doth not so work that he
should do it!” And again, “As often as we do good, God worketh in us and
with us, that we may so work.” In one word, this makes fools of all the
doctors of the church who ever opposed the Pelagian heresy, inasmuch as
they all unanimously maintained that we are partakers of no good thing in
this kind without the effectual powerful operation of the almighty grace of
God, and yet our faith and obedience, so wrought in us, to be most
acceptable unto him. Yea, what shall we say to the Lord himself, in one
place commanding us to fear him, and in another promising that he will put
his fear into our hearts, that we shall not depart from him? Is his
command foolish, or his promise false? The Arminians must affirm the one
or renounce their heresy. But of this, after I have a little
farther laid open this monstrous error from their own words and
writings.
“Can any one,” say they, “wisely and seriously
prescribe the performance of a condition to another, under the promise of a
reward and threatening of punishment, who will effect it in him to whom it
is prescribed? This is a ridiculous action, scarce worthy of the stage.”
That is, seeing Christ hath affirmed that “he that believeth shall be
saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned,” Mark
xvi. 16, whereby faith is established the condition of
salvation, and unbelief threatened with hell, if God should by his Holy
Spirit ingenerate faith in the hearts of any, causing them so to fulfil the
condition, it were a mere mockery, to be exploded from a theatre as an
unlikely fiction; which, what an aspersion it casts upon the whole gospel
of Christ, yea, on all God’s dealings with the children of men ever since,
by reason of the fall, they became unable of themselves to fulfil his
commands, I leave to all men’s silent judgment. Well, then, seeing they
must be accounted ἀσύστατα, things
inconsistent, that God should be so righteous as to show us our duty, and
yet so good and merciful as to bestow his graces on us, let us hear more of
this stuff, “Faith and conversion cannot be our obedience, if
they are wrought in us by God,” say they at the Hague; and Episcopius, “That it is a most absurd thing to affirm that God
either effects by his power, or procureth by his wisdom, that the elect
should do those things that he requireth of them.” So that where the
Scripture calls faith the gift and work of God, they say it is an improper
locution, inasmuch as he commands it; properly, it is an act or work of our
own. And for that renowned saying of St Augustine, that “God crowneth his own gifts in us,” “it is not to be
received without a grain of salt;” that is, some such gloss as wherewith
they corrupt the Scripture. The sum at which they aim is, that to affirm
that God bestoweth any graces upon us, or effectually worketh them in us,
contradicteth his word requiring them as our duty and obedience. By which
means they have erected their idol into the throne of God’s free grace and
mercy, and attribute unto it all the praise due to those many heavenly
qualifications the servants of God are endowed withal, for they never have
more good in them, no, nor so much, as is required; all that
they have or do is but their duty; — which, how derogatory it is to the
merit of Christ, themselves seem to acknowledge, when they affirm that he
is no otherwise said to be a Saviour than are all they who confirm the way
to salvation by preaching, miracles, martyrdom, and example. So that,
having quite overthrown the merits of Christ, “they grant us to be our own saviours in a very
large sense,” Rem.
Apol., fol. 96. All which assertions, how contrary they are to the
express word of God, I shall now demonstrate.
There is not one of all those plain texts of Scripture, not
one of those innumerable and invincible arguments, whereby the effectual
working of God’s grace in the conversion of a sinner, his powerful
translating us from death to life, from the state of sin and bondage to the
liberty of the sons of God, which doth not overthrow this prodigious error.
I will content myself with instancing in some few of them which are
directly opposite unto it, even in terms:—
First, Deut. x.
16, The Lord commandeth the Israelites to “circumcise the
foreskin of their hearts, and to be no more stiff-necked;” so that the
circumcising of their hearts was a part of their obedience, — it was their
duty so to do, in obedience to God’s command. And yet, in the 30th chapter, verse 6, he
affirmeth that “he will circumcise their hearts, that they might love the
Lord their God with all their hearts.” So that, it
seems, the same thing, in diverse respects, may be God’s act in us and our
duty towards him. And how the Lord will here escape that Arminian censure,
that if his words be true in the latter place, his command in the former is
vain and foolish, “ipse viderit,” —
let him plead his cause, and avenge himself on those that rise up against
him.
Secondly, Ezek. xviii.
31, “Make you a new heart and a new spirit: for why will ye die,
O house of Israel?” The making of a new heart and a new spirit is here
required under a promise of a reward of life, and a great threatening of
eternal death; so that so to do must needs be a part of their duty and
obedience. And yet, chap. xxxvi. 26, 27, he affirmeth
that he will do this very thing that here he requireth of them: “A new
heart will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will
take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart
of flesh; and I will cause you to walk in my statutes,” etc. In how many
places, also, are we commanded to “fear the Lord!” which, when we do, I
hope none will deny it to be a performance of our duty; and yet, Jer. xxxii. 40, God promiseth that
“he will put his fear in our hearts, that we shall not depart from
him.”
Thirdly, Those two against which they lay particular
exceptions, faith and repentance, are also expressly
attributed to the free donation of God: He “granteth unto the Gentiles
repentance unto life,” Acts xi.
18; and of faith directly, “It is not of ourselves, it is the
gift of God,” Eph. ii. 8. To which assertion of the
Holy Spirit I shall rather fasten my belief than to the Arminians,
affirming that it is no gift of God because it is of ourselves; and yet
this hindereth not but that it may be styled, “Our most holy faith,”
Jude 20. Let them that will, deny
that any thing can properly be ours which God bestoweth on us; the prophet
accounted them not inconsistent when he averred that “the Lord worketh all our works in us,” Isa. xxvi. 12. They are our works,
though of his working. The apostle laboured; though it was not he, but
“the grace of God that was with him,” 1 Cor. xv.
10. He “worketh in us καὶ τὸ
θέλειν καὶ τὸ ἐνεργεῖν of his good pleasure,” Phil. ii. 13; and yet the performance
of our duty may consist in those acts of our wills and those good deeds
whereof he is the author. So that, according to St Austin’s counsel, we will still
pray that he would bestow what he commandeth us to have.
Fourthly, 1 Cor. iv.
7, “Who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou
that thou didst not receive?” Every thing that makes us differ from others
is received from God; wherefore, the foundation of all difference in
spiritual things between the sons of Adam being faith and repentance, they
must also of necessity be received from above. In brief, God’s
“circumcising our hearts,” Col. ii.
11, his “quickening us when we are dead,” Eph. ii. 1, 2, begetting us anew,
John i. 13, making us in all things
such as he would have us to be, is contained in that promise of the new
covenant, Jer. xxxii. 40, “I will make an
everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do
them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not
depart from me;” and is no way repugnant to the holy Scripture, declaring
our duty to be all this that the Lord would have us. And now, let all men
judge whether, against so many and clear testimonies of the Holy Ghost, the
Arminian reasons, borrowed from the old philosophers, be of any value. The
sum of them all you may find in Cicero, his
third book De Natura Deorum.
“Every one,” saith he, “obtaineth virtue
for himself; never any wise man thanked God for that: for our virtue we are
praised; in virtue we glory, which might not be were it a gift of God.”
And truly this, in softer terms, is the sum of the Remonstrants’ arguments
in this particular.
Lastly, Observe, that this error is that which, of all
others, the orthodox fathers did most oppose in the Pelagian heretics; yea,
and to this day, the more
learned schoolmen stoutly maintain the truth herein against the innovating
Jesuits. With some few of the testimonies of the ancients I will shut up
this discourse. “It is certain that when we do any
thing, we do it,” saith St
Augustine; “but it is God that causeth us so to do.” And in another
place, “Shall we not
account that to be the gift of God, because it is required of us under the
promise of eternal life? God forbid that this should seem so, either to
the partakers or defenders of grace;” where he rejecteth both the error and
the sophism wherewith it is upholden. So also Cœlestius, bishop of Rome, in his epistle to the bishops
of France. “So great,” saith he, “is the
goodness of God towards men, that he will have those good things to be our
good duties” (he calls them merits, according to the phrase of those days)
“which are his own gifts;” to which purpose I cited before two canons out
of the Arausican council. And
St Prosper, in his treatise against Cassianus the semi-Pelagian, affirmeth it to be a
foolish complaint of proud men “that free-will is destroyed, if the beginning,
progress, and continuance in good be said to be the gifts of God.” And so
the imputation of folly, wherewith the Arminians in my first quotation
charge their opposers, being retorted on them by this learned father, I
refer you to these following excerpta for a close:—
S. S. |
Lib. Arbit. |
“Circumcise the foreskin of
your heart, and be no more stiffnecked,” Deut. x.
16. “And the Lord thy God will
circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed,” chap. xxx. 6. — “Make you a new heart
and a new spirit, for why will ye die, O house of Israel?” Ezek. xviii. 31. “A new heart will
I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you,” chap. xxxvi. 26. |
“This is most certain, that
that ought not to be commanded which is wrought in us. He foolishly
commandeth that to be done of others who will work in them what he
commandeth,” Rem.
Apol. |
“If ye will fear the Lord, and serve him, then shall ye continue
following the Lord your God,” 1
Sam. xii. 14. “I will put my fear in their hearts, that they
shall not depart from me,” Jer. xxxii.
40. |
“It is absurd to affirm that
God either worketh by his power, or procureth by his wisdom, that the elect
should do those things which God requireth of them,” Episcop. |
“Thou hast wrought all our
works in us,” Isa. xxvi.
12. “God worketh in you both to will and to do of his good
pleasure,” Phil. ii. 13. |
“Faith and conversion cannot
be acts of our obedience if they are wrought by God in us,” Rem. Coll. Hag. “That God should require
that of us which himself will work in us is a ridiculous action, scarce fit
for a stage,” Rem.
Apol. |
“He hath blessed us with all
spiritual blessings in Christ,” Eph. i.
3. |
“That saying of Augustine,
that ‘God crowneth his own gifts in us,’ is not easily to be admitted,”
Ibid. |
“Unto you it is given in the
behalf of Christ to believe on him,” Phil. i.
29. “The blood of Christ purgeth our consciences from dead
works to serve the living God,” Heb. ix.
14. |
“There is nothing more vain
and foolish than to ascribe faith and regeneration to the merit of Christ,”
Idem. |
Chapter XI.
Whether salvation may be attained without the knowledge of, or
faith in, Christ Jesus.
I shall shut up all this discourse
concerning the meritorious cause of salvation, with their shutting out of
Christ from being the only one and absolutely necessary means to bring us
unto heaven, to make us happy. This is the last pile they erect upon their
Babylonish foundation, which makes the idol of human self-sufficiency every
way perfect, and fit to be sacrificed unto. Until these proud builders, to
get materials for their own temple, laid the axe to the root of
Christianity, we took it for granted that “there is no salvation in any
other,” because “there is none other name under heaven given unto men
whereby we must be saved,” Acts iv.
12. Neither yet shall their nefarious attempts frighten us from
our creed, nor make us be wanting to the defense of our Saviour’s honour.
But I shall be very brief in the consideration of this heterodoxy, nothing
doubting but that to have repeated it is fully to have
confuted it, in the judgment of all pious Christians.
First, then, They grant salvation to the ancient patriarchs
and Jews, before the coming of Christ, without any knowledge of or faith in
him at all; nay, they deny that any such faith in Christ was ever
prescribed unto them or required of them. “It is
certain that there is no place in the Old Testament from whence it may
appear that faith in Christ as a Redeemer was ever enjoined or found in any
of them,” say they jointly in their Apology; the truth of which assertion we shall see
hereafter. Only they grant a general faith, involved under types and
shadows, and looking on the promise as it lay hid in the goodness and
providence of God, which indirectly might be called a faith in Christ: from
which kind of faith I see no reason why thousands of heathen infidels
should be excluded. Agreeable unto these assertions are the dictates of
their patriarch Arminius, affirming,
“that
the whole description of the faith of Abraham, Rom. iv.,
makes no mention of Jesus Christ, either expressly or so implicitly as that
it may be of any one easily understood.” And to the testimony of Christ
himself to the contrary, John viii.
56, “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it,
and was glad,” he answereth, “He rejoiced to see the birth of Isaac, who
was a type of me,” — a goodly gloss, corrupting the text.
Secondly, What they teach of the Jews, that also they grant
concerning the Gentiles living before the incarnation of Christ; they also
might attain salvation, and be justified without his knowledge. “For although,” saith
Corvinus, “the covenant
was not revealed unto them by the same means that it was unto the Jews, yet
they are not to be supposed to be excluded from the covenant” (of grace),
“nor to be excluded from salvation; for some way or other they were
called.”
Thirdly, They are come at length to that perfection in
setting out this stain of Christianity, that Bertius, on good consideration, denied this proposition,
“That no man can be saved that is not ingrafted into
Christ by a true faith;” and Venator
to this question, “Whether the only
means of salvation be the life, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension
of Jesus Christ?” answereth, “No.” Thus they lay men in Abraham’s bosom
who never believed in the Son of Abraham; make them overcome the serpent
who never heard of the Seed of the woman; bring goats into heaven, who
never were of the flock of Christ, never entered by him, the door; make men
please God without faith, and obtain the remission of sins without the
sprinkling of the blood of the Lamb, — to be saved without a Saviour,
redeemed without a Redeemer, — to become the sons of God, and never know
their elder Brother; — which prodigious error might yet be pardoned, and
ascribed to human imbecility, had it casually slipped from their pens, as
it did from some others. But seeing it hath foundation
in all the grounds of their new doctrine, and is maintained by them on
mature deliberation, it must be looked on by
all Christians as a heresy to be detested and accursed. For, first, deny
the contagion and demerit of original sin; then make the covenant of grace
to be universal, and to comprehend all and every one of the posterity of
Adam; thirdly, grant a power in ourselves to come unto God by any such
means as he will appoint, and affirm that he doth assign some means unto
all, — and it will naturally follow that the knowledge of Christ is not
absolutely necessary to salvation, and so down falls the pre-eminence of
Christianity; its heaven-reaching crown must be laid level with the
services of dunghill gods.
It is true, indeed, some of the ancient fathers, before the
rising of the Pelagian heresy, — who had so put on Christ, as Lipsius speaks, that they had not fully put
off Plato, — have unadvisedly dropped some
speeches seeming to grant that divers men before the incarnation, living
μετὰ λόγου, “according to the dictates
of right reason,” might be saved without faith in Christ; as is well showed
by learned Casaubon in his first exercitation on
Baronius. But let this be accounted part of that stubble which
shall burn at the last day, wherewith the writings of all men not divinely
inspired may be stained. It hath also since (as what hath not?) been drawn
into dispute among the wrangling schoolmen; and yet, which is rarely seen,
their verdict in this particular almost unanimously passeth for the truth.
Aquinas tells us a story of the corpse of a heathen,
that should be taken up in the time of the Empress Irene and her son Constantine, with a golden plate on his breast, wherein was
this inscription:— “Christ is born of a virgin, and I believe in him. O
sun, thou shalt see me again in the days of Irene and Constantine.” But the question is not, Whether a Gentile
believing in Christ may be saved? or whether God did not reveal himself and
his Son extraordinarily to some of them? for shall we straiten the breast
and shorten the arm of the Almighty, as though he might not do what he will
with his own; but, Whether a man by the conduct of nature, without the
knowledge of Christ, may come to heaven? the assertion whereof we condemn
as a wicked, Pelagian, Socinian heresy, and think that it was well said of
Bernard, “That many labouring to make Plato a Christian, do prove themselves to be
heathens.” And if we look upon the several branches of this Arminian novel
doctrine, extenuating the precious worth and necessity of faith in Christ,
we shall find them hewed off by the two-edged sword of God’s word.
First, For their denying the
patriarchs and Jews to have had faith “in
Christum exhibendum et moriturum,” as we in him “exhibitum et mortuum,” it is disproved, —
First, By all evangelical promises made from the beginning
of the world to the birth of our Saviour; as that, Gen. iii.
15, “The seed of the woman shall break the serpent’s head;” and
chap. xii.
3, xlix. 10; Ps. ii. 7, 8, cx.; with
innumerable others concerning his life, office, and redeeming of his
people: for surely they were obliged to believe the promises of God.
Secondly, By those many clear expressions of his death,
passion, and suffering for us, as Gen. iii.
15; Isa.
liii. 6–10, etc., lxiii.
1–3; Dan. ix.
26. But what need we reckon any more? Our Saviour taught his
disciples that all the prophets from Moses spake concerning him, and that
the sole reason why they did not so readily embrace the faith of his
passion and resurrection was because they believed not the prophets,
Luke xxiv. 25, 26; showing plainly
that the prophets required faith in his death and passion.
Thirdly, By the explicit faith of many Jews, as of old
Simeon, Luke ii. 34; of the Samaritan woman,
who looked for a Messiah, not as an earthly king, but as one that should
“tell them all things,” — redeem them from sin, and tell them all such
things as Christ was then discoursing of, concerning the worship of God,
John iv. 25.
Fourthly, By the express testimony of Christ himself.
“Abraham,” saith he, “rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad,”
John viii. 56. His day, his hour, in
the Scripture, principally denote his passion. And that which he saw
surely he believed, or else the father of the faithful was more diffident
than Thomas, the most incredulous of his children.
Fifthly, By these following, and the like
places of Scripture: Christ is a “Lamb slain from the foundation of the
world,” Rev. xiii. 8; slain in promises, slain
in God’s estimation and in the faith of believers. He is “the same
yesterday, and today, and for ever,” Heb. xiii.
8, under the law and the gospel. “There is none other name
under heaven given unto men, whereby we must be saved,” Acts iv. 12. Never any, then,
without the knowledge of a Redeemer, participation of his passion,
communication of his merits, did ever come to the sight of God; no man ever
came to the Father but by him. Hence St Paul tells the Ephesians that they
were “without Christ,” because they were “aliens from the commonwealth of
Israel,” Eph. ii. 12; intimating that God’s
covenant with the Jews included Christ Jesus and his righteousness no less
than it doth now with us. On these grounds holy Ignatius called Abel “A martyr of Christ;” he died for his faith in the
promised Seed. And in another place, “All the saints were saved by Christ; hoping in him,
and waiting on him, they obtained salvation by him.” So Prosper, also, “We must believe that never any man
was justified by any other faith, either before the law or under the law,
than by faith in Christ coming to save that which was lost.” Whence Eusebius contendeth that all
the old patriarchs might properly be called Christians; they all ate of the
same spiritual meat, and all drank of the same spiritual drink, even of the
rock that followed them, which rock was Christ.
Secondly, If the ancient people of
God, notwithstanding divers other especial revelations of his will and
heavenly instructions, obtained not salvation without faith in Christ, much
less may we grant this happiness without him to them who were deprived of
those other helps also. So that though we confess the poor natural
endeavours of the heathen not to have wanted their reward (either positive
in this life, by outward prosperity, and inward calmness of mind, in that
they were not all perplexed and agitated with furies, like Nero and Caligula; or negative in the life to come, by a diminution
of the degrees of their torments, — they shall not be beaten with so many
stripes), yet we absolutely deny that there is any saving mercy of God
towards them revealed in the Scripture, which should give us the least
intimation of their attaining everlasting happiness. For, not
to consider the corruption and universal disability of nature to do
anything that is good (“without Christ we can do nothing,” John xv. 5), nor yet the sinfulness
of their best works and actions, the “sacrifice of the wicked being an
abomination unto the Lord,” Prov. xv. 8 (“Evil trees cannot bring
forth good fruit; men do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of
thistles,” Matt.
vii. 16, 17); — the word of God is plain, that “without faith it
is impossible to please God, Heb. xi.
6; that “he that believeth not is condemned,” Mark xvi. 16; that no nation or
person can be blessed but in the Seed of Abraham, Gen. xii.
3. And the “blessing of Abraham” comes upon the Gentiles only
“through Jesus Christ,” Gal. iii.
14. He is “the way, the truth, and the life,” John xiv. 6. “None cometh to the
Father but by him.” He is the “door,” by which those that do not enter are
“without,” with “dogs and idolaters,” Rev. xxii.
15. So that “other foundation” of blessedness “can no man lay
than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ,” 1 Cor. iii.
11. In brief, do but compare these two places of St Paul,
Rom. viii. 30, where he showeth that
none are glorified but those that are called; and chap. x. 14, 15, where he declares
that all calling is instrumentally by the preaching of the word and gospel;
and it will evidently appear that no salvation can be granted unto them on
whom the Lord hath so far poured out his indignation as to deprive them of
the knowledge of the sole means thereof, Christ Jesus. And to those that
are otherwise minded, I give only this necessary caution, — Let them take
heed, lest, whilst they endeavour to invent new ways to heaven for others,
by so doing, they lose the true way themselves.
S. S. |
Lib. Arbit. |
“O fools, and slow of heart
to believe all that the prophets have spoken: ought not Christ to have
suffered these things?” Luke xxiv. 25, 26. |
“There is no place in the Old
Testament whence it may appear that faith in Christ as a Redeemer was
either enjoined or found in any then,” Rem. Apol. |
“Abraham rejoiced to see my
day; and he saw it, and was glad,” John viii.
56. “By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many;
for he shall bear their iniquities,” Isa. liii.
11. See the places before cited. |
“Abraham’s faith had no
reference to Christ,” Armin. |
“At that time ye were without
Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from
the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in
the world,” Eph. ii. 12. |
“The Gentiles living under
the Old Testament, though it was not revealed unto them as unto the Jews,
yet were not excluded from the covenant of grace, and from salvation,”
Corv. |
“There is none other name
under heaven given unto men, whereby we must be saved,” but only by Christ,
Acts iv. 12. |
“I deny this proposition,
That none can be saved that is not ingrafted into Christ by a true faith,”
Bert. |
“The blessing of Abraham
cometh on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ,” Gal. iii.
14. “He that believeth not is condemned,” Mark xvi. 16. “Without faith it is
impossible to please God,” Heb. xi.
6. “Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is
Jesus Christ,” 1 Cor. iii.
11. |
“To this question, Whether
the only way of salvation be the life, passion, death, resurrection, and
ascension of Jesus Christ? I answer, No,” Venat. |
Chapter XII.
Of free-will, the nature and power thereof.
Our next task is to take a view of
the idol himself, of this great deity of free-will, whose original being
not well known, he is pretended, like the Ephesian image of Diana, to have
fallen down from heaven, and to have his endowments from above. But yet,
considering what a nothing he was at his first discovery in comparison of
that vast giant-like hugeness to which now he is grown, we may say of him
as the painter said of his monstrous picture, which he had mended or rather
marred according to everyone’s fancy, “Hunc
populus fecit,” — it is the issue of the people’s brain. Origen is supposed to have
brought him first into the church; but among those many sincere worshippers
of divine grace, this setter forth of new demons found but little
entertainment. It was looked upon but like the stump of Dagon, with his
head and hands laid down before the ark of God, without whose help he could
neither know nor do that which is good in any kind, still accounted but
“truncus ficulnus, inutile lignum,”
— “a fig-tree log, an unprofitable piece of wood.” “Incerti patres scamnum facerentne?” The fathers of
the succeeding ages had much debate to what use they should put it, and
though some exalted it a degree or two above its merits, yet the most
concluded to keep it a block still; until at length there
arose a stout champion,
challenging on his behalf the whole church of God, and, like a
knight-errant, wandered from the west to the east to grapple with any that
should oppose his idol; who, though he met with divers adversaries,
one especially, who in the behalf of the grace of
God continually foiled him and cast him to the ground, and that in the
judgment of all the lawful judges assembled in councils, and in the opinion of most of the Christian
bystanders, yet, by his cunning
insinuation, he planted such an opinion of his idol’s deity and
self-sufficiency in the hearts of divers, that to this day it could never
be rooted out.
Now, after the decease of his Pelagian worshippers, some of
the corrupter schoolmen, seeing him thus from his birth exposed without
shelter to wind and weather, to all assaults, out of mere charity and
self-love built him a temple, and adorned it with natural lights, merits,
uncontrolled independent operations, with many other gay attendances. But
in the beginning of the Reformation, — that fatal time for idolatry and
superstition, together with abbeys and monasteries, — the zeal and learning
of our forefathers, with the help of God’s word, demolished this temple,
and brake this building down to the ground; in the rubbish whereof we well
hoped the idol himself had been so deeply buried as that his head should
never more have been exalted, to the trouble of the church of God, until
not long since some curious wits, whose weak stomachs were clogged with
manna and loathed the sincere milk of the word, raking all dunghills for
novelties, lighted unhappily upon this idol, and presently, with no less
joy than did the mathematician at the discovery of a new geometrical
proportion, exclaim, “We have found it! we have found it!”
And without more ado, up they erected a shrine, and until this day continue
offering of praise and thanks for all the good they do to this work of
their own hands.
And that the idol may be free from ruin, to which in
himself they have found by experience that he is subject, they have matched
him to contingency, a new goddess of their own creation, who, having proved
very fruitful in monstrous births upon their conjunctions, they nothing
doubt they shall never want one to set on the throne and make president of
all human actions: so that after he hath, with various success, at least
twelve hundred years, contended with the providence and grace of God, he
boasteth now as if he had obtained a total victory. But yet all his
prevailing is to be attributed to the diligence and varnish of his new
abettors, with (to our shame be it spoken!) the negligence of his
adversaries. In him and his cause there is no more real worth than was
when by the ancient fathers he was exploded and cursed out of the church:
so that they who can attain, through the many winding labyrinths of curious
distinctions, to look upon the thing itself, shall find that they have
been, like Egyptian novices, brought through many stately frontispieces and
goodly fabrics, with much show of zeal and devotion, to the image of an
ugly ape.
Yet here observe, that we do not absolutely oppose
free-will, as if it were “nomen
inane,” a mere figment, when there is no such thing in the world,
but only in that sense the Pelagians and Arminians do assert it. About
words we will not contend. We grant man, in the substance of all his
actions, as much power, liberty, and freedom as a mere created nature is
capable of. We grant him to be free in his choice from all outward
coaction, or inward natural necessity, to work according to election and
deliberation, spontaneously embracing what seemeth good unto him. Now,
call this power free-will, or what you please, so you make it not supreme,
independent, and boundless, we are not at all troubled. The imposition of
names depends upon the discretion of their inventers. Again; even in
spiritual things, we deny that our wills are at all debarred, or deprived
of their proper liberty: but here we say, indeed, that we are not properly
free until the Son makes us free; — no great use of freedom in that wherein
we can do nothing at all. We do not claim such a liberty as should make us
despise the grace of God, whereby we may
attain true liberty indeed; which addeth to, but taketh nothing from, our
original freedom. But of this after I have showed what an idol the
Arminians make of free-will. Only take notice in the entrance that we
speak of it now, not as it was at first by God created, but as it is now by
sin corrupted; yet, being considered in that estate also, they ascribe more
unto it than it was ever capable of. As it now standeth,
according to my formerly-proposed method, I shall show, — first, what
inbred native virtue they ascribe unto it, and with how absolute a dominion
and sovereignty over all our actions they endow it; secondly, what power
they say it hath in preparing us for the grace of God; thirdly, how
effectually operative it is in receiving the said grace, and with how
little help thereof it accomplisheth the great work of our conversion; —
all briefly, with so many observations as shall suffice to discover their
proud errors in each particular.
“Herein,” saith
Arminius, “consisteth the liberty of
the will, that all things required to enable it to will any thing being
accomplished, it still remains indifferent to will or not.” And all of
them at the synod: “There is,” say they,
“accompanying the will of man an inseparable property, which we call
liberty, from whence the will is termed a power, which, when all things
pre-required as necessary to operation are fulfilled, may will anything, or
not will it;” that is, our free-wills have such an absolute and
uncontrollable power in the territory of all human actions, that no
influence of God’s providence, no certainty of his decree, no
unchangeableness of his purpose, can sway it at all in its free
determinations, or have any power with his highness to cause him to will or
resolve on any such act as God by him intendeth to produce. Take an
instance in the great work of our conversion. “All
unregenerate men,” saith Arminius,
“have, by virtue of their free-will, a power of resisting the Holy Spirit,
of rejecting the offered grace of God, of contemning the counsel of God
concerning themselves, of refusing the gospel of grace, of not opening the
heart to him that knocketh.” What a stout idol is this, whom neither the
Holy Spirit, the grace and counsel of God, the calling of the gospel, the
knocking at the door of the heart, can move at all, or in the least measure
prevail against him! Woe be unto us, then, if when God calls us our
free-will be not in good temper, and well disposed to hearken unto him! for
it seems there is no dealing with it by any other ways, though powerful and
almighty. “For grant,” saith Corvinus, “all the operations of grace which God
can use in our conversion, yet conversion remaineth so in our own free
power that we can be not converted; that is, we can either
turn or not turn ourselves;” where the idol plainly challengeth the Lord to
work his utmost, and tells him that after he hath so done he will do what
he please. His infallible prescience, his powerful predetermination, the
moral efficacy of the gospel, the infusion of grace, the effectual
operation of the Holy Spirit, all are nothing, not at all available in
helping or furthering our independent wills in their proceedings. Well,
then, in what estate will you have the idol placed? “In such a one wherein he may be suffered to sin, or
to do well, at his pleasure,” as the same author intimates. It seems,
then, as to sin, so nothing is required for him to be able to do good but
God’s permission? No! For the Remonstrants (as they speak of themselves) “do always suppose a
free power of obeying or not obeying, as well in those who do obey as in
those who do not obey;” — that he that is obedient may therefore be counted
obedient, because he obeyeth when he could not obey, and so on the
contrary:” where all the praise of our obedience, whereby we are made to
differ from others, is ascribed to ourselves alone, and that free power
that is in us. Now, this they mean not of any one act of obedience, but of
faith itself, and the whole consummation thereof. “For if a man
should say, that every man in the world hath a power of believing if he
will, and of attaining salvation, and that this power is settled in his
nature, what argument have you to confute him?” saith Arminius triumphantly to Perkins; where the sophistical innovator as
plainly confounds grace and nature as ever did Pelagius. That, then, which the Arminians claim
here in behalf of their free-will is, an absolute independence on God’s
providence in doing anything, and of his grace in doing that which is good,
— a self-sufficiency in all its operations, a plenary indifferency of doing
what we will, this or that, as being neither determined to the one nor
inclined to the other by any overruling influence from heaven. So that the
good acts of our wills have no dependence on God’s providence as they are
acts, nor on his grace as they are good; but in both regards proceed from
such a principle within us as is no way moved by any superior agent. Now,
the first of these we deny unto our wills, because they are created; and
the second, because they are corrupted. Their creation hinders them from
doing anything of themselves without the assistance of God’s
providence; and their corruption, from doing anything that is good without
his grace. A self-sufficiency for operation, without the effectual motion
of Almighty God, the first cause of all things, we can allow neither to men
nor angels, unless we intend to make them gods; and a power of doing good,
equal unto that they have of doing evil, we must not grant to man by
nature, unless we will deny the fall of Adam, and fancy ourselves still in
paradise. But let us consider these things apart.
First, I shall not stand to
decipher the nature of human liberty, which perhaps would require a larger
discourse than my proposed method will bear. It may suffice that,
according to my former intimation, we grant as large a freedom and dominion
to our wills over their own acts as a creature, subject to the supreme rule
of God’s providence, is capable of. Endued we are with such a liberty of
will as is free from all outward compulsion and inward necessity, having an
elective faculty of applying itself unto that which seems good unto it, in
which it is a free choice; notwithstanding, it is subservient to the decree
of God, as I showed before, chap. iv. Most free it is in all its acts,
both in regard of the object it chooseth and in regard of that vital power
and faculty whereby it worketh, infallibly complying with God’s providence,
and working by virtue of the motion thereof; but surely to assert such a
supreme independency and every way unbounded indifferency as the Arminians
claim, whereby, all other things requisite being pre-supposed, it should
remain absolutely in our own power to will or not to will, to do anything
or not to do it, is plainly to deny that our wills are subject to the rule
of the Most High. It is granted that in such a chimerical, fancied
consideration of free-will, wherein it is looked upon as having no relation
to any act of God’s but only its creation, abstracting from his decree, it
may be said to have such a liberty in regard of the object; but the truth
is, this divided sense is plain nonsense, a mere fiction of such an estate
as wherein it never was, nor ever can be, so long as men will confess any
deity but themselves, to whose determinations they must be subject. Until,
then, more significant terms may be invented for this free power in our
nature, which the Scripture never once vouchsafed to name, I shall be
content to call it with Prosper, a “spontaneous appetite of what seemeth good unto it,”
free from all compulsion, but subservient to the providence of God. And
against its exaltation to this height of independency, I oppose, —
First, Every thing that is independent of any else in
operation is purely active, and so consequently a god; for nothing but a
divine will can be a pure act, possessing such a liberty by
virtue of its own essence. Every created will must have a liberty by
participation, which includeth such an imperfect potentiality as cannot be
brought into act without some premotion (as I may so say) of a superior
agent. Neither doth this motion, being extrinsical, at all prejudice the
true liberty of the will, which requireth, indeed, that the internal
principle of operation be active and free, but not that that principle be
not moved to that operation by an outward superior agent. Nothing in this
sense can have an independent principle of operation which hath not an
independent being. It is no more necessary to the nature of a free cause,
from whence a free action must proceed, that it be the first beginning of
it, than it is necessary to the nature of a cause that it be the first
cause.
Secondly, If the free acts of our wills are so subservient
to the providence of God as that he useth them to what end he will, and by
them effecteth many of his purposes, then they cannot of themselves be so
absolutely independent as to have in their own power every necessary
circumstance and condition, that they may use or not use at their pleasure.
Now, the former is proved by all those reasons and texts of Scripture I
before produced to show that the providence of God overruleth the actions
and determineth the wills of men freely to do that which he hath appointed.
And, truly, were it otherwise, God’s dominion over the most things that
are in the world were quite excluded; he had not power to determine that
any one thing should ever come to pass which hath any reference to the
wills of men.
Thirdly, All the acts of the will being positive entities,
were it not previously moved by God himself, “in whom we live, move, and
have our being,” must needs have their essence and existence solely from
the will itself; which is thereby made αὐτὸ
όν, a first and supreme cause, endued with an underived being. And
so much to that particular.
Let us now, in the second place,
look upon the power of our freewill in doing that which is morally good;
where we shall find not only an essential imperfection, inasmuch as it is
created, but also a contracted effect, inasmuch as it is corrupted. The
ability which the Arminians ascribe unto it in this kind, of doing that
which is morally and spiritually good, is as large as themselves will
confess to be competent unto it in the state of innocency, even a power of
believing and a power of resisting the gospel, of obeying and not obeying,
of turning or of not being converted.
The Scripture, as I observed before, hath no such term at
all, nor anything equivalent unto it. But the expressions it useth
concerning our nature and all the faculties thereof, in this state of sin
and unregeneration, seem to imply the quite contrary; as, that
we are in “bondage,” Heb. ii.
15; “dead in sins,” Eph. ii. 1,
and so “free from righteousness,” Rom. vi.
20; “servants of sin,” verse 17;
under the “reign” and “dominion” thereof, verses 12, 14; all
“our members being instruments of unrighteousness,” verse
13; not “free indeed,” until “the Son make us free.” So that
this idol of free-will, in respect of spiritual things, is not one whit
better than the other idols of the heathen. Though it look like “silver
and gold,” it is the “work of men’s hands.” “It hath a mouth, but it
speaketh not; it hath eyes, but it seeth not; it hath ears, but it heareth
not; a nose, but it smelleth not; it hath hands, but it handleth not; feet,
but it walketh not; neither speaketh it through its throat. They that made
it are like unto it; and so is every one that trusteth in it. O Israel,
trust thou in the Lord,” etc., Ps. cxv. 4–9. That it is the work
of men’s hands, or a human invention, I showed before. For the rest, it
hath a mouth unacquainted with the “mystery of godliness,” “full only of
cursing and bitterness,” Rom. iii.
14; “speaking great swelling words,” Jude
16; “great things, and blasphemies,” Rev. xiii.
5; a “mouth causing the flesh to sin,” Eccles. v. 6; — his eyes are blind,
not able to perceive those things that are of God, nor to know those things
that are “spiritually discerned,” 1 Cor. ii.
14; “eyes before which there is no fear of God,” Rom. iii. 18; — his “understanding is
darkened, because of the blindness of his heart,” Eph. iv.
18; “wise to do evil, but to do good he hath no knowledge,”
Jer. iv. 22; so that without farther
light, all the world is but a mere “darkness,” John i.
5; — he hath ears, but they are like the ears of the “deaf
adder” to the word of God, “refusing to hear the voice of charmers,
charming never so wisely,” Ps. lviii.
5; being “dead” when his voice first calls it, John v. 25; “ears stopped that they
should not hear,” Zech. vii.
11; “heavy ears” that cannot hear, Isa. vi.
10; — a nose, to which the gospel is “the savour of death unto
death,” 2 Cor. ii. 16; — “hands full of
blood,” Isa. i. 15; and “fingers defiled with
iniquity,” chap. lix. 3; — feet, indeed, but,
like Mephibosheth, lame in both by a fall, so that he cannot at all walk in
the path of goodness; but “swift to shed blood, destruction and misery are
in his ways, and the way of peace hath he not known,” Rom. iii. 15–17. These, and divers
other such endowments and excellent qualifications, doth the Scripture
attribute to this idol, which it calls “The old man,” as I shall more fully
discover in the next chapter. And is not this a goodly reed whereon to
rely in the paths of godliness? a powerful deity whereunto we may repair
for a power to become the sons of God, and attain eternal happiness? The
abilities of free-will in particular I shall consider hereafter; now only I
will, by one or two reasons, show that it cannot be the sole and proper
cause of any truly good and spiritual act, well-pleasing unto God.
First, All spiritual acts well-pleasing unto
God, as faith, repentance, obedience, are supernatural; flesh and blood
revealeth not these things: “Not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man; but of God,” John i.
13; “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is
born of the Spirit is spirit,” chap. iii.
6. Now, to the performance of any supernatural act it is
required that the productive power thereof be also supernatural; for
nothing hath an activity in causing above its own sphere. “Nec imbelles generant feroces aquilas columbæ.” But
our free-will is a merely natural faculty, betwixt which and those
spiritual, supernatural acts there is no proportion, unless it be advanced
above its own orb, by inherent, habitual grace. Divine, theological
virtues, differing even in the substance of the act from those moral
performances about the same things to which the strength of nature may
reach (for the difference of acts ariseth from their formal objects, which
to both these are diverse), must have another principle and cause above all
the power of nature in civil things and actions morally good, inasmuch as
they are subject to a natural perception, and do not exceed the strength of
our own wills. This faculty of free-will may take place, but yet not
without these following limitations:—First, That it always requireth
the general concurrence of God, whereby the whole suppositum in which free-will hath its
subsistence may be sustained, Matt. x. 29, 30. Secondly,
That we do all these things imperfectly and with much infirmity; every
degree, also, of excellency in these things must be counted a special gift
of God, Isa. xxvi. 12. Thirdly, That
our wills are determined by the will of God to all their acts and motions
in particular; but to do that which is spiritually good we have no
knowledge, no power.
Secondly, That concerning which I gave one special
instance, in whose production the Arminians attribute much to free-will, is
faith. This they affirm (as I showed before) to be inbred in nature,
everyone having in him from his birth a natural power to believe in Christ
and his gospel; for Episcopius
denies that “any action of the
Holy Spirit upon the understanding or will is necessary, or promised in the
Scripture, to make a man able to believe the word preached unto him.” So
that it seems every man hath at all times a power to believe, to produce
the act of faith upon the revelation of its object: which gross Pelagianism
is contrary, —
First, To the doctrine of the church of England,
alarming that a man cannot so much as prepare himself by his own strength
to faith and calling upon God, until the grace of God by
Christ prevent him, that he may have a good will. — Artic. x.
Secondly, To the Scripture, teaching that it is “the
work of God that we do believe,” John vi.
29. It is “not of ourselves; it is the gift of God,” Eph. ii. 8. To some “it is given to
know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven,” Matt.
xiii. 11. And what is peculiarly given to some cannot be in the
power of everyone: “To you it is given in the behalf of Christ to believe
on him,” Phil. i. 29. Faith is our access or
coming unto Christ; which none can do “except the Father draw him,”
John vi. 44; and he so draweth, or
“hath mercy, on whom he will have mercy,” Rom. ix.
18. And although Episcopius rejects any immediate action of the Holy Spirit
for the ingenerating of faith, yet St Paul affirmeth that there is no less
effectual power required to it than that which raised Christ from the dead;
which, sure, was an action of the almighty Godhead. “That ye may know,”
saith he, “what is the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who
believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in
Christ, when he raised him from the dead,” Eph. i. 18–20. So that, let the
Arminians say what they please, recalling that I write to Christians, I
will spare my labour of farther proving that faith is the free gift of God;
and their opposition to the truth of the Scripture in this particular is so
evident to the meanest capacity that there needs no recapitulation to
present the sum of it to their understandings.
Chapter XIII.
Of the power of free-will in preparing us for our conversion unto
God.
The judgment of the Arminians
concerning the power of free-will about spiritual things in a man
unregenerate, merely in the state of corrupted nature, before and without
the help of grace, may be laid open by these following positions:—
First, That every man in the world, reprobates and others,
have in themselves power and ability of believing in Christ, of repenting
and yielding due obedience to the new covenant; and that because they lost
not this power by the fall of Adam. “Adam after his fall,” saith Grevinchovius, “retained a power of
believing; and so did all reprobates in him.” “He
did not lose” (as they speak at the synod) “the power of
performing that obedience which is required in the new covenant considered
formally, as it is required by the new covenant; he lost not a power of
believing, nor a power of forsaking sin by repentance.” And those graces
that he lost not are still in our power. Whence they affirm, that “faith is
called the work of God only because he requireth us to do it.” Now, having
appropriated this power unto themselves, to be sure that the grace of God
be quite excluded, which before they had made needless, they teach, —
Secondly, That for the reducing of this power into act,
that men may become actual believers, there is no infused habit of grace,
no spiritual vital principle, necessary for them, or bestowed upon them;
but everyone, by the use of his native endowments, doth make himself differ
from others. “Those things which are spoken concerning the infusion
of habits before we can exercise the act of faith, we reject,” saith the epistle to the Walachians.
“That the internal principle of faith required in the
gospel is a habit divinely infused, by the strength and efficacy whereof
the will should be determined, I deny,” saith another of them. Well, then,
if we must grant that the internal vital principle of a supernatural
spiritual grace is a mere natural faculty, not elevated by any divine
habit, — if it be not God that begins the good work in us, but our own
free-wills, — let us see what more goodly stuff will follow. One man by
his own mere endeavours, without the aid of any received gift, makes
himself differ from another. “What matter
is it in that, that a man should make himself differ from others? There is
nothing truer; he who yieldeth faith to God commanding him, maketh himself
differ from him who will not have faith when he commandeth.” They are the
words of their Apology, which, without question, is an irrefragable
truth, if faith be not a gift received from above; for on that ground only
the apostle proposeth these questions, “Who maketh thee to differ from
another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst
receive, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received?” The sole
cause why he denies anyone by his own power to make himself differ from
another is, because that wherein the difference consisteth is “received,”
being freely bestowed upon him. Deny this, and I confess the other will
fall of itself. But until their authority he equal with the
apostles’, they would do well to forbear the naked obtrusion of assertions
so contradictory to theirs; and so they would not trouble the church. Let
them take all the glory unto themselves, as doth Grevinchovius “I make myself,” saith he, “differ from another when
I do not resist God and his divine predetermination; which I could have
resisted. And why may I not boast of this as of mine own? That I could is
of God’s mercy” (endowing his nature with such an ability as you heard
before); “but that I would, when I might have done otherwise, is of my
power.” Now, when, after all this, they are forced to confess some
evangelical grace, though consisting only in a moral persuasion by the
outward preaching of the word, they teach, —
Thirdly, That God sendeth the gospel, and revealeth Christ
Jesus unto men, according as they well dispose themselves for such a
blessing. “Sometimes,” say they
in their synodical writings, “God calleth this or that nation, people,
city, or person, to the communion of evangelical grace, whom he himself
pronounceth worthy of it, in comparison of others.” So that whereas,
Acts xviii. 10, God encourageth Paul
to preach at Corinth by affirming that he had “much people in that city”
(which, doubtless, were his people then only by virtue of their election),
in these men’s judgments “they were called so because that even then they
feared God, and served him with all their hearts, according to that
knowledge they had of him, and so were ready to obey the preaching of St
Paul.” Strange doctrine, that men should fear God, know him, serve him in
sincerity, before they ever heard of the gospel, and by these means deserve
that it should be preached unto them! This is that pleasing of God before
faith that they plead for, Act. Synod., p.
66; that “preparation and disposition to
believe, which men attain by the law and virtuous education;” that
“something which is in sinners, whereby though they are not justified, yet they are
made worthy of justification.” For “conversion and the performance of good
works is,” in their apprehension, “a condition pre-required to
justification,” for so speak the children of Arminius; which if it be not an expression not to be
paralleled in the writings of any Christian, I am something mistaken. The
sum of their doctrine, then, in this particular concerning the power of
free-will in the state of sin and unregeneration, is, That every man
having a native, inbred power of believing in Christ upon the revelation of
the gospel, hath also an ability of doing so much good as shall procure of
God that the gospel be preached unto him; to which, without any internal
assistance of grace, he can give assent and yield obedience; the
preparatory acts of his own will always proceeding so far as to make him
excel others who do not perform them, and are therefore excluded from
farther grace; — which is more gross Pelagianism than Pelagius himself would ever justify. Wherefore we
reject all the former positions, as so many monsters in Christian religion,
in whose room we assert these that follow:—
First, That we, being by nature dead in trespasses and
sins, have no power to prepare ourselves for the receiving of God’s grace,
nor in the least measure to believe and turn ourselves unto him. Not that
we deny that there are any conditions pre-required in us for our
conversion, dispositions preparing us in some measure for our new birth or
regeneration; but we affirm that all these also are the effects of the
grace of God, relating to that alone as their proper cause, for of
ourselves, “without him, we can do nothing,” John xv.
5. “We are not sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of
ourselves,” 2 Cor. iii. 5, much less do that which
is good. In respect of that, “every one of our mouths must be stopped;”
for “we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God,” Rom. iii. 19, 23. We
are “by nature the children of wrath, dead in trespasses and sins,”
Eph. ii. 1–3; Rom. viii.
6. Our new birth is a resurrection from death, wrought by the
greatness of God’s power. And what ability, I pray, hath a dead man to
prepare himself for his resurrection? Can he collect his scattered dust,
or renew his perished senses? If the leopard can change his spots, and the
Ethiopian his skin, then can we do good who by nature are taught to do
evil, Jer. xiii. 23. We are all “ungodly,”
and “without strength” considered, when Christ died for us, Rom. v. 6; “wise to do evil,” but “to
do good we have no strength, no knowledge.” Yea, all the faculties of our
souls, by reason of that spiritual death under which we are detained by the
corruption of nature, are altogether useless, in respect of any power for
the doing of that which is truly good. Our understandings are blind or
“darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that
is in us, because of the blindness of our hearts,” Eph. iv.
18; whereby we become even “darkness” itself, chap. v. 8. So void is
the understanding of true knowledge, that “the natural man receiveth not
the things of the Spirit of God; they are foolishness unto him,” 1 Cor. ii. 14. [He is] nothing but
confounded and amazed at spiritual things; and, if he doth not mock, can do
nothing but wonder, and say, “What meaneth this?” Acts ii. 12, 13. Secondly, we are
not only blind in our understandings, but captives also to sin in our
wills, Luke iv. 18; whereby “we are servants
of sin,” John viii. 34; “free” only in our
obedience to that tyrant, Rom. vi.
20. Yea, thirdly, all our affections are wholly corrupted, for
“every imagination of the thoughts of the heart of man is only evil
continually,” Gen. vi. 5. While we are “in the
flesh, the motions of sin do work in our members to bring forth fruit unto
death,” Rom. vii. 5.
These are the endowments of our nature, these are the
preparations of our hearts for the grace of God, which we have within
ourselves. Nay, —
Secondly, There is not only an impotency but an
enmity in corrupted nature to anything spiritually good: The
things that are of God are “foolishness unto a natural man,” 1 Cor. ii. 14. And there is nothing
that men do more hate and contemn than that which they account as folly.
They mock at it as a ridiculous drunkenness, Acts ii.
13. And would to God our days yielded us not too evident proofs
of that universal opposition that is between light and darkness, Christ and
Belial, nature and grace, — that we could not see every day the prodigious
issues of this inbred corruption swelling over all bounds, and breaking
forth into a contempt of the gospel and all ways of godliness! So true it
is that “the carnal mind is enmity against God: it is not subject to the
law of God, neither indeed can be,” Rom. viii.
7. So that, —
Thirdly, As a natural man, by the strength of his own
free-will, neither knoweth nor willeth, so it is utterly impossible he
should do anything pleasing unto God. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin,
or the leopard his spots? then can he do good,” Jer.
xiii. 23. “An evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit.”
“Without faith it is impossible to please God,” Heb. xi.
6; and “that is not of ourselves, it is the gift of God,”
Eph. ii. 8. So that though Almighty
God, according to the unsearchableness of his wisdom, worketh divers ways
and in sundry manners, for the translating of his chosen ones from the
power of darkness into his marvellous light, — calling some powerfully in
the midst of their march in the way of ungodliness, as he did Paul, —
preparing others by outward means and helps of common restraining grace,
moralizing nature before it be begotten anew by the immortal seed of the
word, — yet this is certain, that all good in this kind is from his free
grace; there is nothing in ourselves, as of ourselves, but sin. Yea, and
all those previous dispositions wherewith our hearts are prepared, by virtue of common grace, do not at all enable us to
concur, by any vital operation, with that powerful, blessed, renewing grace
of regeneration whereby we become the sons of God. Neither is there any
disposition unto grace so remote as that possibly it can proceed from a
mere faculty of nature, for every such disposition must be of the same
order with the form that is to be introduced; but nature, in respect of
grace, is a thing of an inferior alloy, between which there is no
proportion. A good use of gifts may have a promise of an addition of more,
provided it be in the same kind. There is no rule, law, or promise that
should make grace due upon the good use of natural endowments. But you
will say, here I quite overthrow free-will, which before I seemed to grant.
To which I answer, that in regard of that object concerning which now we
treat, a natural man hath no such thing as free-will at all, if you take it
for a power of doing that which is good and well-pleasing unto God in
things spiritual, for an ability of preparing our hearts unto faith and
calling upon God, as our church article speaks, a home-bred
self-sufficiency, preceding the change of our wills by the almighty grace
of God, whereby any good should be said to dwell in us; and we utterly deny
that there is any such thing in the world. The will, though in itself
radically free, yet in respect of the term or object to which in this
regard it should tend, is corrupted, enthralled, and under a miserable
bondage; tied to such a necessity of sinning in general, that though
unregenerate men are not restrained to this or that sin in particular, yet
for the main they can do nothing but sin. All their actions wherein there
is any morality are attended with iniquity: “An evil tree cannot bring
forth good fruit;” even “the sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to
the Lord.” These things being thus cleared from
the Scripture, the former Arminian positions will of themselves fall to the
ground, having no foundation but their own authority; for any pretense of
proof they make none from the word of God. The first two I considered in
the last chapter, and now add only concerning the third, — that the sole
cause why the gospel is sent unto some and not unto others is, not any
dignity, worth, or desert of it in them to whom it is sent, more than in
the rest that are suffered to remain in the shadow of death, but only the
sole good pleasure of God, that it may be a subservient means for the
execution of his decree of election: “I have much people in this city,”
Acts xviii. 20; “I thank thee, O
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from
the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father;
for so it seemed good in thy sight,” Matt. xi. 25, 26. So that the
Arminian opposition to the truth of the gospel in this particular is
clearly manifest:—
S.
S. |
Lib. Arbit. |
“Of ourselves we can do
nothing,” John xv. 5. “We are not sufficient
of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves,” 2 Cor. iii.
5. “We are by nature the children of wrath, dead in trespasses
and sins,” Eph. ii.
1–3. |
“We retain still after the
fall a power of believing and of repentance, because Adam lost not this
ability,” Rem. Declar. Sen. in
Synod. |
“Faith is not of ourselves:
it is the gift of God,” Eph. ii.
8. |
“Faith is said to be the work
of God, because he commandeth us to perform it,” Rem. Apol. “There is no infusion of any
habit or spiritual vital principle necessary to enable a man to believe,”
Corv. |
“Who maketh thee to differ
from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou
didst receive, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received?”
1 Cor. iv. 7. |
“There is nothing truer than
that one man maketh himself differ from another. He who believeth when God
commandeth, maketh himself differ from him who will not,” Rem. Apol. |
“Can the Ethiopian change his
skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, who are taught to
do evil,” Jer. xiii. 23. |
“I may boast of mine own,
when I obey God’s grace, which it was in my power not to obey, as well as
to obey,” Grevinch. |
“Believing on him that
justifieth the ungodly,” Rom. iv. 5.
“Being justified freely by his grace,” Rom. iii.
24. |
“True conversion and the
performance of good works is a condition required on our part before
justification,” Filii Armin. |
“I thank thee, O Father, Lord
of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and
prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father; for so it
seemed good in thy sight,” Matt. xi. 25, 26. |
“God sendeth the gospel to
such persons or nations, that in comparison of others may be said to be
worthy of it,” Rem.
Apol. |
Chapter XIV.
Of our conversion to God.
How little or nothing at all it is
that the Arminians assign to the grace of God, in performing the
great work of our conversion, may plainly appear from what I
have showed already that they ascribe to our own free-will, so
that I shall briefly pass that over, which otherwise is so copiously
delivered in holy Scripture that it would require a far larger discussion.
A prolix confirmation of the truth we profess will not suit so well with my
intention; which is merely to make a discovery of their errors, by not
knowing the depths whereof so many are deceived and inveigled.
Two things, in this great conjunction of grace and nature,
the Arminians ascribe unto free-will:— first, A power of
co-operation and working with grace, to make it at all effectual;
secondly, A power of resisting its operation, and making it
altogether ineffectual; God in the meantime bestowing no grace but what
awaits an act issuing from one of these two abilities, and hath its effect
accordingly. If a man will co-operate, then grace attains its end; if he
will resist, it returns empty. To this end they feign all the grace of God
bestowed upon us for our conversion to be but a moral persuasion by his
word, not an infusion of a new vital principle by the powerful working of
the Holy Spirit. And, indeed, granting this, I shall most willingly comply
with them in assigning to free-will one of the endowments before recited, —
a power of resisting the operation of grace; but instead of the other, must
needs ascribe to our whole corrupted nature, and everyone that is partaker
of it, a universal disability of obeying it, or coupling in that work which
God by his grace doth intend. If the grace of our conversion be nothing
but a moral persuasion, we have no more power of obeying it in that estate
wherein we are dead in sin, than a man in his grave hath in himself to live
anew and come out at the next call. God’s promises and the saints’ prayers
in the holy Scripture seem to design such a kind of grace as should give us
a real internal ability of doing that which is spiritually good. But it
seems there is no such matter; for if a man should persuade me to leap over
the Thames, or to fly in the air, be he never so eloquent, his sole
persuasion makes me no more able to do it than I was before ever I saw him.
If God’s grace be nothing but a sweet persuasion (though never so
powerful), it is a thing extrinsical, consisting in the proposal of a
desired object, but gives us no new strength at all to do anything we had
not before a power to do. But let us hear them pleading themselves to each
of these particulars concerning grace and nature. And, —
First, for the nature of grace: “God hath appointed to save believers by
grace, — that is, a soft and sweet persuasion, convenient and agreeing to
their free-will, — and not by any almighty action,” saith Arminius. It seems
something strange, that “the carnal mind being enmity against God,” and the
will enthralled to sin, and full of wretched opposition to all his ways,
yet God should have no other means to work them over unto him but some
persuasion that is sweet, agreeable, and congruous unto them in that estate
wherein they are. And a small exaltation it is of the dignity and power of
grace, when the chief reason why it is effectual, as Alvarez observes, may be reduced to a well-digested supper
or an undisturbed sleep, whereby some men may be brought into better temper
than ordinary to comply with this congruous grace. But let us for the
present accept of this, and grant that God doth call some by such a
congruous persuasion, at such a time and place as he knows they will assent
unto it. I ask whether God thus calleth all men, or only some? If all,
why are not all converted? for the very granting of it to be congruous
makes it effectual. If only some, then why them, and not others? Is it
out of a special intention to have them obedient? But let them take heed,
for this will go near to establish the decree of election; and out of what
other intention it should be they shall never be able to determine.
Wherefore Corvinus denies that any such congruity is required to the
grace whereby we are converted, but only that it be a moral persuasion;
which we may obey if we will, and so make it effectual. Yea, and Arminius himself, after he had defended it
as far as he was able, puts it off from himself, and falsely fathers it
upon St Austin. So that,
as they jointly affirm, “they confess no grace for the begetting of faith to
be necessary, but only that which is moral;” which one of them interpreteth
to be “a declaration of the gospel unto
us;” — right like their old master, Pelagius.
“God,” saith he, “worketh in us to will that which is
good and to will that which is holy, whilst he stirs us up with promise of
rewards and the greatness of the future glory, who before were given over
to earthly desires, like brute beasts, loving nothing but things present,
stirring up our stupid wills to a desire of God by a revelation of wisdom,
and persuading us to all that is good.” Both of them affirm the grace of
God to be nothing but a moral persuasion, working by the way of
powerful, convincing arguments; but yet herein Pelagius seems to ascribe a greater efficacy to it than the Arminians, granting that it works upon us when, after
the manner of brute beasts, we are set merely on earthly things. But
these, as they confess that, for the production of faith, it is necessary that such
arguments be proposed on the part of God to which nothing can probably be
opposed why they should not seem credible; so there is, say they, required
on our part a pious docility and probity of mind. So that all the grace of
God bestowed on us consisteth in persuasive arguments out of the word;
which, if they meet with teachable minds, may work their conversion.
Secondly, Having thus extenuated the grace of God, they
affirm, “that in
operation the efficacy thereof dependeth on free-will:” so the Remonstrants
in their Apology. “And to speak
confidently,” saith Grevinchovius, “I say that the effect of grace, in an
ordinary course, dependeth on some act of our free-will.” Suppose, then,
that of two men made partakers of the same grace, — that is, [who] have the
gospel preached unto them by the same means, — one is converted and the
other is not, what may be the cause of this so great a difference? Was
there any intention or purpose in God that one should be changed rather
than the other? “No; he equally desireth and intendeth the conversion of
all and every one.” Did, then, God work more powerfully in the heart of
the one by his Holy Spirit than of the other? “No; the same operation of
the Spirit always accompanieth the same preaching of the word.” But was
not one, by some almighty action, made partaker of real infused grace,
which the other attained not unto? “No; for that would destroy the liberty
of his will, and deprive him of all the praise of believing.” How, then,
came this extreme difference of effects? who made the one differ from the
other? or what hath he that he did not receive? “Why, all this proceedeth
merely from the strength of his own free-will yielding obedience to God’s
gracious invitation, which, like the other, he might have rejected: this is
the immediate cause of his conversion, to which all the praise thereof is
due.” And here the old idol may glory to all the world, that if he can but
get his worshippers to prevail in this, he hath quite excluded the grace of
Christ, and made it “nomen inane,” a
mere title, whereas there is no such thing in the world.
Thirdly, They teach, that notwithstanding any purpose and
intention of God to convert, and so to save, a sinner, — notwithstanding
the most powerful and effectual operation of the blessed Spirit, with the most winning, persuasive preaching of the word, — yet it is in
the power of a man to frustrate that purpose, resist that operation, and
reject that preaching of the gospel. I shall not need to prove this, for
it is that which, in direct terms, they plead for; which also they must do,
if they will comply with their former principles. For granting all these
to have no influence upon any man but by the way of moral persuasion, we
must not only grant that it may be resisted, but also utterly deny that it
can be obeyed. We may resist it, I say, as having both a disability to
good and repugnancy against it; but for obeying it, unless we will deny all
inherent corruption and depravation of nature, we cannot attribute any such
sufficiency unto ourselves.
Now, concerning this weakness of grace, that it is not able
to overcome the opposing power of sinful nature, one testimony of Arminius shall suffice: “It always remaineth in the power of
free-will to reject grace that is given and to refuse that which followeth;
for grace is no almighty action of God, to which free-will cannot resist.”
Not that I would assert, in opposition to this, such an operation of grace
as should, as it were, violently overcome the will of man, and force him to
obedience, which must needs be prejudicial unto our liberty; but only
consisting in such a sweet effectual working as doth infallibly promote our
conversion, make us willing who before were unwilling, and obedient who
were not obedient, that createth clean hearts and reneweth right spirits
within us.
That, then, which we assert, in opposition to these
Arminian heterodoxies, is, That the effectual grace which God useth in
the great work of our conversion, by reason of its own nature, — being also
the instrument of and God’s intention for that purpose, — doth surely
produce the effect intended, without successful resistance, and solely,
without any considerable co-operation of our own wills, until they are
prepared and changed by that very grace. The infallibility of its
effect depends chiefly on the purpose of God. When by any means he intends
a man’s conversion, those means must have such an efficacy added unto them
as may make them fit instruments for the accomplishment of that intention,
that the counsel of the Lord may prosper, and his word not return empty.
But the manner of its operation, — that it requires no human assistance,
and is able to overcome all repugnance, — is proper to the being of such an
act as wherein it doth consist. Which nature and efficacy of grace, in
opposition to an indifferent influence of the Holy Spirit, a metaphorical
motion, a working by the way of moral persuasion, only proposing a desirable object, easy to be resisted, and not effectual unless it
be helped by an inbred ability of our own (which is the Arminian grace), I
will briefly confirm, having premised these few things:—
First, Although God doth not use the wills of men, in their
conversion, as malign spirits use the members of men in enthusiasms, by a
violent wrested motion, but sweetly and agreeably to their own free nature;
yet in the first act of our conversion the will is merely passive, as a
capable subject of such a work, not at all concurring cooperatively to our
turning. It is not, I say, the cause of the work, but the subject wherein
it is wrought, having only a passive capability for the receiving of that
supernatural being, which is introduced by grace. The beginning of this
“good work” is merely from God, Phil. i.
6. Yea, faith is ascribed unto grace, not by the way of
conjunction with, but of opposition unto, our wills: “Not of ourselves; it
is the gift of God,” Eph. ii. 8.
“Not that we are sufficient of ourselves; our sufficiency is of God,”
2 Cor. iii. 5. “Turn thou us unto
thee, O Lord, and we shall be turned,” Lam. v. 21.
Secondly, Though the will of man conferreth nothing to the
infusion of the first grace, but a subjective receiving of it, yet in the
very first act that is wrought in and by the will, it most freely
cooperateth (by the way of subordination) with the grace of God; and the
more effectually it is moved by grace, the more freely it worketh with it.
Man being converted, converteth himself.
Thirdly, We do not affirm grace to be
irresistible, as though it came upon the will with such an
overflowing violence as to beat it down before it, and subdue it by
compulsion to what it is no way inclinable [unto.] But if that term must
be used, it denoteth, in our sense, only such an unconquerable efficacy of
grace as always and infallibly produceth its effect; for who is it that can
“withstand God?” Acts xi.
17. As also, it may be used on the part of the will itself,
which will not resist it: “All that the Father giveth unto Christ shall
come to him,” John vi. 37. The operation of grace
is resisted by no hard heart; because it mollifies the heart itself. It
doth not so much take away a power of resisting as give a will of obeying,
whereby the powerful impotency of resistance is removed.
Fourthly, Concerning grace itself, it is either common or
special. Common or general grace consisteth in the external revelation of
the will of God by his word, with some illumination of the mind to perceive
it, and correction of the affections not too much to contemn it; and this,
in some degree or other, to some more, to some less, is common to all that
are called. Special grace is the grace of regeneration, comprehending the
former, adding more spiritual acts, but especially presupposing the purpose
of God, on which its efficacy doth chiefly depend.
Fifthly, This saving grace, whereby the Lord
converteth or regenerateth a sinner, translating him from death to life, is
either external or internal. External consisteth in the preaching of the
word, etc., whose operation is by the way of moral persuasion, when by it
we beseech our hearers “in Christ’s stead that they would be reconciled
unto God,” 2 Cor. v. 20; and this in our
conversion is the instrumental organ thereof, and may be said to be a
sufficient cause of our regeneration, inasmuch as no other in the same kind
is necessary. It may also be resisted in sensu diviso, abstracting from that
consideration wherein it is looked on as the instrument of God for such an
end.
Sixthly, Internal grace is by divines distinguished into
the first or preventing grace, and the second following cooperating grace.
The first is that spiritual vital principle that is infused into us by the
Holy Spirit, that new creation and bestowing of new strength, whereby we
are made fit and able for the producing of spiritual acts, to believe and
yield evangelical obedience: “For we are the workmanship of God, created in
Christ Jesus unto good works,” Eph. ii.
10. By this God “gives us a new heart, and a new spirit he puts
within us;” he “takes the stony heart out of our flesh, and gives us an
heart of flesh;” he “puts his Spirit within us, to cause us to walk in his
statutes,” Ezek. xxxvi. 26, 27.
Now, this first grace is not properly and formally a vital
act, but causaliter only, in
being a principle moving to such vital acts within us. It is the habit of
faith bestowed upon a man, that he may be able to eliciate and perform the
acts thereof, giving new light to the understanding, new inclinations to
the will, and new affections unto the heart: for the infallible efficacy of
which grace it is that we plead against the Arminians. And amongst those
innumerable places of holy Scripture confirming this truth, I shall make
use only of a very few, reduced to these three heads:—
First, Our conversion is wrought by a divine, almighty
action, which the will of man will not, and therefore cannot resist. The
impotency thereof ought not to be opposed to this omnipotent grace, which
will certainly effect the work for which it is ordained, being an action
not inferior to the greatness of his “mighty power, which he wrought in
Christ when he raised him from the dead,” Eph.
i. 19, 20. And shall not that power which could overcome hell,
and loose the bonds of death, be effectual for the raising of a sinner from
the death of sin, when by God’s intention it is appointed unto that work?
He accomplisheth “the work of faith with power,” 2 Thess. i. 11. It is “his divine
power that giveth unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness,”
2 Pet. i. 3. Surely a moral,
resistible persuasion would not be thus often termed the “power” of God,
which denoteth an actual efficacy to which no creature is able
to resist.
Secondly, That which consisteth in a real efficiency, and
is not at all but when and where it actually worketh what it intendeth,
cannot without a contradiction be said to be so resisted that it should not
work, the whole nature thereof consisting in such a real operation. Now,
that the very essence of divine grace consisteth in such a formal act may
be proved by all those places of Scripture that affirm God by his grace, or
the grace of God, actually to accomplish our conversion: as Deut. xxx. 6, “And the Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart
of thy seed, to love the Lord thy God with all
thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.” The
circumcision of our hearts, that we may love the Lord with all our hearts,
and with all our souls, is our conversion, which the Lord affirmeth here
that he himself will do; not only enable us to do it, but he himself really
and effectually will accomplish it. And again, “I will put my law in their
inward parts, and write it in their hearts,” Jer. xxxi.
33. “I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall not
depart from me,” chap. xxxii.
40. He will not offer his fear unto them, but actually
put it into them. And most clearly, Ezek. xxxvi. 26, 27: “A new heart
also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you: and I will
take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart
of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my
statutes.” Are these expressions of a moral persuasion only? Doth God
affirm here he will do what he intends only to persuade
us to, and which we may refuse to do if we will? Is it in the power of a
stony heart to remove itself? What an active stone is this, in mounting
upwards! What doth it at all differ from that heart of flesh that God
promiseth? Shall a stony heart be said to have a power to change itself
into such a heart of flesh as shall cause us to walk in God’s statutes?
Surely, unless men were wilfully blind, they must needs here perceive such
an action of God denoted, as effectually, solely, and infallibly worketh
our conversion; “opening our hearts, that we may attend unto the word,”
Acts xvi. 14; “giving us in the
behalf of Christ to believe on him,” Phil. i.
29. Now, these and the like places prove both the nature of
God’s grace to consist in a real efficiency, and the operation thereof to
be certainly effectual.
Thirdly, Our conversion is a “new creation,” a
“resurrection,” a “new birth.” Now, he that createth a man doth not
persuade him to create himself, neither can he if he should, nor hath he
any power to resist him that will create him, — that is, as we now take it,
translate him from something that he is to what he is not. What arguments
do you think were sufficient to persuade a dead man to rise? or what great aid can he contribute to his own resurrection?
Neither doth a man beget himself; a new real form was never yet introduced
into any matter by subtle arguments. These are the terms the Scripture is
pleased to use concerning our conversion:— “If any man be in Christ, he is
a new creature,” 2 Cor. v.
17. The “new man after God is created in righteousness and true
holiness,” Eph. iv. 24. It is our new birth:
“Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God,” John iii. 3. “Of his own will begat
he us with the word of truth,” James i.
18. And so we become “born again, not of corruptible seed, but
of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever,”
1 Pet. i. 23. It is our vivification
and resurrection: “The Son quickeneth whom he will,” John v. 21, even those “dead,” who
“hear his voice and live,” verse
25. “When we were dead in sins,” we are “quickened together
with Christ by grace,” Eph. ii. 5;
for “being buried with him by baptism, we are also risen with him through
the faith of the operation of God,” Col. ii.
12. And “blessed and holy is he that hath part in that first
resurrection; on such the second death hath no power, but they shall be
priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand
years.”
Τῷ Θεῷ ἀριστομεγίστῳ
δόξα.