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BY DANIEL WHITBY, D. D.

LATE CHANTOR OF THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF SARUM.

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THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY

161374

ASTOR, LENOX AND TILDEN FOURCATIONS.

1899.

PREFACE.

THEY who have known my education may remember, that I was

bred up seven years in the University under men of the Calvinistical perfuafion, and fo could hear no other Doctrine, or receive no other inftructions from the men of those times, and therefore had once firmly entertained all their doctrines. Now that which first moved me to search into the foundation of thefe doctrines, viz. The Imputation of Adam's Sin to all its Pofterity, was the ftrange confequences of it; this made me search the more exactly into that matter, and by reading Joshua Placeus, with the answer to him, and others on that subject, I foon found caufe to judge that there was no truth in it.

SECTION I.-After fome years ftudy I met with one who feemed to be a Deift, and telling him that there were arguments fufficient to prove the truth of Chriftian Faith, and of the holy Scriptures, he fcornfully replied, Yes: And you will prove your Doctrine of the Imputation of Original Sin from the fame Scripture; intimating that he thought that doctrine, if contained in it, fufficient to invalidate the truth and the authority of the Scripture. And by a little reflection I found the ftrength of his argument ran thus: That the truth of holy Scripture could no otherwise be proved to any man that doubted of it, but by reducing him to fome abfurdity, or the denial of some avowed principle of reafon. Now this imputation of Adam's fin to his pofterity, fo as to render them obnoxious to God's wrath, and to eternal damnation, only because they were born of the race of Adam, feemed to him as contradictory to the common reafon of mankind, as any thing could be, and fo contained as strong an argument against the truth of Scripture, if that doctrine was contained in it, as any could be offered for it. And upon this account I again fearched into the places ufually alledged to confirm that doctrine, and found them fairly capable of other interpretations. One doubt remained still, whether Antiquity did not give fuffrage for this doctrine; and here I found the words of Voffius very pofitive, that Ecclefia Carbolica fic femper judicavit, the Catholic Church always fo judged ; which he endeavors to prove by teftimonies from Ignatius to St. Austin, This fet me on the laborious task of perufing the writings of antiquity till that time, and upon an impartial fearch, I found that all the paffages he had collected were impertinent, or at least infufficient to prove the point; yea, I found evidence fufficient of the truth of that which Peter du Moulin plainly owns, that from the time of the Apofiles to St. Auftin's time, all the Ecclefiaftical Writers seem to write incautiously of this Matter, and to encling to what he calls Pelagianifm. And of this having made a collection, I finished a treatise of Original fin, in Latin, which hath been compofed about twenty years, though I have not thought it advisable to publish it.

Another time I difcourfed with a Phyfician, who faid, there was fome cause to doubt the truth of Scripture; for, faith he, it seems plainly to

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hold forth the doctrine of abfolute election and reprobation, in the ninth chapter to the Romans, which is attended with more evident abfurdities than can be charged on them who question the truth of Scripture: And alfo feemeth as repugnant to the common notion which mankind have received of divine juftice, goodness and fincerity, as even the faying that God confidering man, in massa perdita, as loft in Adam, may delude him with false miracles, feemeth repugnant to his truth. And reading in (a) Mr. Dodwell, that bold stroke, that St. Paul being bred a Pharisee fpake there, and is to be interpreted, ex mente Pharifæorum, according to the Doctrine of the Pharisees concerning, Fate, which they had borrowed from the Stoics; I fet myfelf to make the beft and exactest search I could into the fenfe of the Apostle in that chapter, and the best help I had to attain to the fenfe of that chapter which I have given in my paraphrafe, I received from a manufcript of Dr. Patrick, the late worthy Bishop of Ely, on that fubject. Thence I went on to examine all that was urged in favor of thefe doctrines from the holy Scripture, and this produced one confiderable part of these difcourfes. And it was no fmall confirmation of the fenfe both of the places here produced againft, and refcued from the falfe interpretations of the adverfaries of this doctrine, (ft.) that I found I ill failed with the ftream of Antiquity, feeing only one, St. Auftin, with his two Boatswains, Prosper and Fulgentius, tugging hard against it, and often driven back into it by the strong current of Scripture, reafon and of common sense.

SECTION II.-adly. I also found that the Heretics of old, used many of the fame texts of Scripture, to the fame purpofes, as the patrons of these doctrines do at prefent; as hath been oft obferved in these discourses.

3dly. That the Valentinians, Marcionites, Basilidians, Manichees, Priscillianifts and other Heretics were condemned by the ancient champions of the Church upon the fame accounts, and from the fame Scriptures and reafons, which we now use against these Decretalifts; and the principles on which they founded all their confutations of them, were thefe

1ft. That it is not our nature, but our will, and choice of that from which we might abftain, which was the root and fountain of all our wickedness; for otherwife, fay they, të moshσarros na ŝyukua, that God, who is the author of our nature, muft be the author of our fin; this doctrine they unanimoufly teach from Justin Martyr and Irenæus, to St. Auftin, who declares, (b) natura malas animas nullo modo effe poffe, that it is impoffible, according to the Definitions he had given of fin, that Souls bould be evil by Nature.

zdly. That we do not become finners by our birth and that they who fay we are by nature Children of Wrath in the moft dreadful fenfe,make God the author of our fin, it being God who hath established the order, in the generation of mankind, which neither he that begets, nor he that is begotten can correct, and by whose benediction mankind encrease and multiply. An infant therefore cannot, fay they, be a finner by his father's fault, (c) παῖς γὰρ ὑπὸ τῦ πατρὸς ἐ δίδωσι δίκην; for a Child doth not suffer punishment for his Father's Fault, says Chryfoftom; and (d)

(a) Proleg ad J. Stearn de obflin. § 41. p. 147.12.-(c) lu Johan, ix. 2.——(d) In Johan, ix. 2.

(b) Lib. de duab. Anim, c. lnd. L. 2. Epist. 272.

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