left by God infallibly to fail of salvation,' he need not do it, since God himself, according to this doctrine, hath done that work effectually to his hand. To what end should he strive to hinder the progress of the gospel, seeing according to this doctrine, it must have its effect upon the elect infallibly and unfrustrably, and upon others it can only be a savour of death unto death,” and an aggravation of their condemnation? To what end should he go about to hinder the conversion of any man? Must he not know his labour will be certainly in vain, where this is wrought by a divine unfrustrable operation, and is as needless where God hath decreed not to vouchsafe that operation? Now hence it follows,

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II. COROLLARY. That the liberty belonging to this question, is only that of a lapsed man in a state of trial, probation, and temptation; whether he hath a freedom to chuse life or death, to answer or reject the calls and invitations of God to do, by the assistance of the grace afforded in the gospel to him, what is spiritually good as well as evil; or whether he be determined to one, having only a freedom from co-action, but not from necessity. This liberty is indeed no perfection of human nature; for it supposes us imperfect, as being subject to fall by temptation, and when we are advanced to the spirits of just men made perfect,' or to a fixed state of happiness, will, with our other imperfections 'be done away;' but yet it is a freedom absolutely requisite, as we conceive, to render us capable of trial or probation, and to render our actions worthy of praise or dispraise, and our persons of rewards or punishments; nor is this liberty essential to man as man, but only necessary to a man placed in a state of trial, and under the power of temptation. And therefore vain are the ensuing arguments,

(1.) That God is a free agent, and yet can have no freedom to do evil, since he is in no state of trial, nor can he be tempted to do evil. Or, (ii.) that the confirmed angels have not lost their freedom though they cannot sin; for if there was a time when they were not confirmed in goodness as now they are, they have lost that liberty, ad utrumvis,* they then had; and being thus confirmed they are not in a state of trial, nor under any temptation to do evil, nor are their actions now rewardable, since they already do enjoy the beatifick vision, and so they cannot act out of

*To both, that is, to good and evil. ED.

.

respect to any future recompence, or be induced to action out of hope or fear, as in this state of trial all men are. the devils and the damned spirits lie under no

Or, (in.) That capacity of doing good, or under a necessity of doing evil, and yet do it voluntarily, their state of trial being past, and they having no farther offers of grace, and so no motive to do good; and as for any evil they are now necessitated to do, or any good they do not, they are not subject to any farther punishment, the damned spirits being only to receive at the day of judgement, according to what they have done in the body,' or in their state of trial, and the damned angels being reserved 'to the day of judgement to be punished for what they did in a like state of trial: and if they are to suffer any thing on the account of their temptations of men to do evil, or to draw them from their obedience to the will of God, they so far lie under no necessity of doing this, but might abstain from those temptations. Excellent to this purpose are these words of Mr. Thorndike," "we say not that indifference is requisite to all freedom, but to the freedom of man alone in this state of travail and proficience, the ground of which is God's tender of a treaty, and conditions of peace and reconcilement to fallen man, together with those precepts and prohibitions, those promises and threats, those exhortations and dehortations it is enforced with. So that it is utterly impertinent to alledge here the freedom of God and angels, the freedom of saints in the world to come, the freedom of Christ's human soul, to prove that this indifference is not requisite to the freedom of man, because it is not found in that freedom which they are arrived to, to whom no covenant is tendered, no precept requisite, no exhortation useful."

And hence ariseth a necessity of saying,

Ill. First. That the freedom of the will, in this state of trial and temptation, cannot consist with a determination to one, viz. on the one hand in a determination to good only by the efficacy of divine grace, infallibly or unfrustrably inducing to that operation, or engaging men, respectu divina ordinationis certó et infallibiliter agere, 'in respect of the divine appointment infallibly and certainly to act,' so that he cannot fail of acting; seeing this determining operation puts him out of a state of trial, and

* Epil. part 2. p. 183.

makes him equal, when this divine impulse comes upon him, to the state of angels; since he who must certainly, and without fail, do what the divine impulse doth incite him to do, is as much determined to one as they are. And this is farther evident from the general determination of the Schools, and of all that I have read upon this subject, that the general will to be happy, and not to be miserable, though it be voluntary, is not free; because we cannot chuse either not to be happy, or to be miserable; and on the same account, say they, this will is not praise-worthy, or rewardable. There also is no place for election and deliberation about this action; because all election and deliberation is about the means and not about the end. If therefore where I am by the divine influx determined to one, there is equally no place for refusing that one, or for not chusing it; that action, though it may be voluntary upon the same account, it cannot be free, praise-worthy, or rewardable.

Nor can this liberty consist with the contrary determination to one, viz. with an incapacity in men, through the fall, to do good but evil only; for then man, in this state of trial, must be reduced to the condition of the devil, and of damned spirits, who, though they are not determined to evil actions in particular, are yet determined to do evil in the general, and not good. This, indeed, some suppose he is, by being given up to hardness of heart, and a judicial blindness, or by a customary habit of iniquity; but this doth rather prove the contrary, as being not the natural, but the acquired state of fallen man. It is the consequent of a course of sin, to which he never was determined, and which he never can lie under without abusing of that grace which was sufficient to prevent it. For, as Bishop Bramhall" truly saith, "God never forsakes his creature, by with-holding his grace from him, until his creature hath first forsaken him; he never forsakes his creature so far, but that he may by prayer, and using good endeavours, obtain the aid of God's grace either to prevent or remove hardness of heart.” Moreover, though these things do render it exceeding difficult for such men to do good, they do not render it impossible for them to do so; though they do give men a strong bent and powerful inclination to what is evil, yet do they not determine him to do it,

a Castig. of Mr. Hobs, p. 745.

as is evident (i.) from God's applications to such men to reform and hearken to his exhortations: as when he saith, (Isa. xlii. 18,) "Hear, ye deaf, and look, ye blind, that ye may see; and to Jerusalem accustomed to do evil, (Jer. xiii. 23,) wilt thou not be made clean, when shall it once be? (verse 27.) When he sends his prophet to the 'impudent and hard-hearted house of Israel which would not hearken to him, saying, go and speak unto them, whether they will hear or will forbear.' (Ezek. iii. 7, 11.) From the calls of Christ to the obdurate Jews who had 'eyes to see, and saw not,' &c. Mat. xiii. 13. For unto them he saith, these things I say unto you that ye might be saved; and again, while ye have the light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of the light. And, lastly, from St. Paul's ' desire and prayer for Israel when blinded, and lying under a spiritual slumber, that they might be saved, (Rom. x. 1.) and his endeavour to save some of them.' xi 14. And if such persons are not by these things determined only to do evil, or incapacited to do good, much less can this be the sad state of fallen man in general, before he hath contracted these additional indispositions to do good, and inclinations to do evil. This will be farther evident, as to both parts, from this consideration, that it is generally owned that the actions of the understanding or the mind deserve neither praise nor dispraise, reward nor punishment, as they proceed purely from the mind, but only as they result, ab imperio voluntatis,* and come under the power of the will; or that they deserve praise or dispraise, not as he understands, but as he wills to understand; of which the reason can be only this, that as they proceed from the understanding they are necessary; for when evidence is propounded and discerned, the mind doth necessarily assent unto it. If therefore in like manner when God unfrustrably moves the will it cannot. but consent, why should that action be more praiseworthy than the assent of the mind to what is evident? And as it is not culpable in the mind not to assent where it hath no evidence; nor can it properly be said to do so, because it is only real or seeming evidence which causeth that assent; so if it be only this unfrustrable operation on the will which causeth it to repent and turn to God, and it cannot will to do so without this powerful motion, but must refuse all invitations

*From the command of the will.' ED.
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or inducements so to do, which do not come attended with that operation, when that is not vouchsafed; why should it not be as unblamable in not chusing to repent and turn to God as the mind is in not assenting without evidence, seeing this operation is as necessary to that choice of the will, as evidence of truth is to the assent of the mind? Why also is it not as unblamable in refusing to repent without that operation, as the mind is in refusing to assent without evidence? For if necessity in the mind, though it be not extrinsical, or that of co-action, (of which both will and mind are equally uncapable) takes away from its actions praise or dispraise, and renders them uncapable of either of them, why should not an extrinsical necessity laid upon the will do the same? Add to this, that those School-men who assert that the will may be free where the act is necessary, do yet confess that in that case the will cannot be deliberans;* whereas, it is certain, that the liberty of man in this state of trial and temptation must be deliberative if it doth chuse, there being no election without deliberation. And hence in order to the performance of his duty, Godrequires him to ponder and consider, to bring again to mind, and lay to heart his sayings, proposes motives and inducements to him so to do, and promises and threats to excite him to it by his hopes and fears; whereas no promises are made to the confirmed angels, no motives offered to engage them to chuse the good, no evils are threatened to the devils or the damned spirits to deter them from doing evil. I conclude then with that of the judicious Bishop Bramhall, "God may, and doth sometimes, determine the will of man to one; but when it is so determined, the act may be voluntary, but not free."

IV. SECONDLY. This auréolov, or "FREE-WILL' of man, being neither an act, for that is the exercise of the will; nor an habit, for that only doth facilitate and incline to action; but a faculty or power; and the object of that power being in moral actions something morally, in spiritual actions something spiritually, good to be chosen, or spiritually evil to be avoided; that which disables any man from chusing what is spiritually good or refusing what is thus evil, and therefore is destructive to his soul and spirit, must also take away his liberty to chuse what is spiritually good, and to refuse what is spiritually evil.

* 'Deliberating.' ED.