obnoxious to those judgments. They also seem contrary to the divine purity, on the same account, as tending to diminish in others the dread of those iniquities which they are thus assured cannot prove fatal to them. In a word, there is not even the shadow of a promise in the holy scripture, that though such or such persons fall into murder, adultery, heathenish Idolatry, He will not suffer them to die in them, but will assuredly cause them to repent and turn to their obedience; but there is an express declaration, that "when the righteous turneth away from his righteousness and committeth iniquity, and doth according to all the abominations that the wicked man doth, all the righteousness that he hath done shall not be mentioned; in his trespass that he hath trespassed, and in the sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he die." The promises of the Old Testament run in another strain; viz. “The Lord will be with you while ye be with him, but if ye forsake him he will forsake you;" yea" He will cast you off for ever;" but as for such as decline to their perverse ways, the Lord will lead you forth with the workers of iniquity;" and the promises of the New, that he will stablish them, and keep them from evil, and preserve them holy and unblameable.' But I find not one promise in the Old or the New Testament, that when the righteous wickedly depart from God, and do after the abominations of the wicked, they shall yet live, and not die in their iniquities.

III. It were easy to confirm this doctrine from the concurrent suffrage of the ancient fathers; but this seems to me unnecessary after the confession of the learned Vossius, communem hanc fuisse antiquitatis sententiam, that this was the common sentence of antiquity;' and that antiquitas tota indeficibilitati adversatur,' all antiquity was contrary to this doctrine of the indefectibility of the saints. The words of the Greek and Latin Fathers, which he cites to prove this, may be seen in John Goodwin's fifteenth chapter on that subject, who also adds to them the consent of many Protestants.*

u Ezekiel xviii, 24. w 1 Chronicles xxviii, 9. 2 Chronicles xv, 2. a Psalm cxxv, 5. y Hist. Pelag. L. 6. Ch. 12. ≈ Redemp. Redeemed, from § 5. to the 14th.

Discourse VI.

CONTAINING AN ANSWER TO THREE OBJECTIONS AGAINST THE DOCTRINES ASSERTED, AND THE ARGUMENTS BY WHICH THEY ARE CONFIRMED.

CHAP. I.

OBJECTION FIRST. THE FIRST grand OBJECTION against the force of many of the arguments used in these discourses is this, that "they seem as strongly to conclude against God's foreknowledge of future contingencies, as against his absolute decrees; for that comprehending the knowledge of what all men will do, it seems as unreasonable to command, exhort, or tender motives to men to perform what God beforehand sees they will not do, as in case of what he knows they cannot do; and as contradictory to his goodness to bring them into the world, whom he foreknows will certainly be miserable through their own fault, as those whom he reserveth to be miserable through the fault of Adam. It also seems as vain, superfluous, and delusory, to seem passionately concerned that they may be saved, or to use patience, long-suffering, or any other means to prevent their ruin, or to lead them to repentance whom he certainly foresaw would not be by these means induced to repent, that they might be saved, and who infallibly would perish; as to act thus towards them who lie under a decree of reprobation." Now,

I. ANSWER FIRST. It is observable, that though this argument be offered in favour of the decrees of absolute election, and that especial grace which is vouchsafed to the objects of it, which makes it necessary for them to be vessels of mercy, and of that absolute reprobation, which makes it necessary for all the objects of it to be vessels of wrath,' and infallibly to fail of salvation, yet doth it plainly overthrow them, or render them superfluous. For,

be it that these decrees were made from eternity, yet seeing God's fore-knowledge of the events of all men was also from eternity, must he not know what would be the condition of all men when be made these decrees? And what need then could there be of a decree for that event which was infallible, by virtue of his foreknowledge without that decree? Either he foresaw these events independently on, and in the same moment that he made these decrées; and then seeing the objects of both these decrees are the same individual persons which he saw then would certainly be saved, or perish independently upon them, what need could there be of these decrees to ascertain that event which his own prescience had rendered certain and infallible? Or else it must be said, that "God only foresaw these future contingences, by virtue of his decrees, that they should come to pass;" and then his decrees must be before his knowledge and the reason of it; and so, as this argument doth not at all lessen the horror of them, so is it obnoxious to these dreadful consequences,

First. That it plainly renders God the author of sin; for to say with Calvin, Dr. Twiss, and Rutherford, Deum non aliâ ratione providere quæ futura sunt, quam quia ut fierent decrevit, God only doth foresee things future, because he hath decreed they should be so,'" is," saith Le Blanc, "to say God moves and predetermines the wills of men to those things which are evil. Now, who can affirm," saith he, "that God antecedently decrees and determines the wills of men to hate and blaspheme him, and therefore foresees that they will do so, and not make God the author of those sins?" Nor is this less evident from the way that Alvarez and many other School-men take to salve this matter, viz. that "God foresees the evil men will do, in decreto suo de non dando efficax auxilium ad vitandum peccatum; quoniam Deo deferente, aut non adjuvante peccatorem ne cadat, infallibiliter est peccaturus, in his decree not to give them efficacious help to avoid sin; for God thus deserting them, or not thus assisting the sinner, that he may not fall, he infallibly will sin':" for either God did not foresee the sin of fallen angels, or of falling Adam; or else, according to this doctrine, must render their sin necessary by his decree not to afford them efficacious assistance to avoid it, and so their sin will be no sin at all, according to St. Austin's definition of it, that "it is the will to do that from which we have

freedom to abstain." (ii.) Prescience thus stated must be attended with a fatal necessity, though in this case it is not God's foreknowledge, but his decrees, which creates that necessity; all things, upon this supposition, being necessary, that is, such as cannot otherwise be, not because God foreknows them, but because by his immutable decrees he hath made them necessary, that is, he foreknows them because they are necessary, but doth not make them necessary by foreknowing them. Consider,

Secondly. That if there were any strength in this argument, it would prove that we should not deny the liberty supposed in all the arguments we have used against these decrees, but rather prescience itself; for if those two things were really inconsistent, and one of them must be denied, the introducing an absolute necessity of all our actions, which evidently destroys all religion and morality, would tend more of the two to the dishonour of God, than the denying him a fore-knowledge.

Thirdly. Observe that if these Decretalists may take sanctuary in the fore-knowledge God hath of things future, the Hobbists and the Fatalists may do the same. For as I cannot know how God's foreknowledge is consistent with the freedom of the will of man, so am I as little able to discern how it is consistent with any freedom in his actions, or how God can foreknow them whilst they are future, without foreknowing that there are such causes as certainly and necessarily shall and must produce them. And it is very worthy of their observation that the Hobbists having knowledge of christianity, found their doctrine of the necessity of all things, and the no freedom of the will to will, upon the ninth chapter to the Romans. Thus when Bishop Bramhall had objected against Hobbs, that from his doctrine of the necessity of all events, it follows that 'praise and reprehension, rewards and pu❝nishments are all vain and unjust, and that if God should openly forbid, and secretly necessitate the same action, punishing men 'for what they could not avoid, there would be no belief among 'them of heaven or hell;'a Mr. Hobbs replies thus, 'I must bor< row an answer from St. Paul, Rom. ix, 11, to the 18th verse: ❝for there is laid down the very same objection in the case of • Esau and Jacob, &c. for the same case is put by St. Paul; and the same objection in these words following, thou wilt ask me

a P. 668, 669.

then, Why doth God complain, for who hath resisted his will? "To this therefore the apostle answers, not by denying it was God's ' will, or that the decree of God concerning Esau was not before ' he had sinned, or that Esau was not necessitated to do what he 'did; but thus, who art thou, O man, that repliest against God? 'Shall the work say unto the workman, Why hast thou made me 'thus? Hath not the potter power over his clay, to make one ves'sel to honour, another to dishonour? To say then that "God 'can so order the world that a sin may be necessarily caused in a man," I do not see how it is any dishonour to him; I hold nothing in all this question between us, but what seems to me not 'obscurely, but most expressly said in this place by St. Paul.' It also deserves to be observed by them, that the Fatalists of old founded their doctrine upon the certainty of divine prescience and predictions, which, they said, “could not be certain, nisi omnia quæ fiunt, quæque futura sunt, ex omni æternitate definita essent fataliter, if all things done, or to be done, had not been certainly determined from all eternity'." "It was the fear of this," saith Origen, "which made the Greeks embrace this impious doctrine, that God did not foreknow things future, and contingent, οιόμενοι κατηναγκάσθαι τὰ πράγματα, καὶ τὸ ἐφ ̓ ἡμῖν μηδαμῶς σώζεσθαι, εἰ ὁ θεὸς προγινώσκει τὰ μέλλοντα, “ they supposing that if God foreknew things future, all things would be necessary, and so the liberty of man's will could not be preserved;' which," saith Origen, "will not follow, because it must be owned, & Ty πρόγνωσιν αἰτίαν τῶν γινωμένων, τὸ δὲ ἐσόμενον αἴτιον τῇ τοιὰν δὲ εἶναι Tàv mégì durỡ #góyvwow, not that God's prescience is the cause of things future, but that their being future is the cause of God's prescience that they will be'." "And this," saith Le Blanc, "is the truest resolution of this difficulty,-that prescience is not the cause that things are future, but their being future is the cause they a are foreseen;" whence it must follow, that man's perishing by his own wilfulness, when he might not have done so, must be the cause that God foresees that he will do so; the reason is, because God's foreknowledge neither makes nor changes its object, but sees it as it truly is, and so must see that action to be freely and contingently fature, which indeed is This is so so, and that necessarily to be future which is so.

Cic. de Divin. 1. 2, n. 14.

e Apud Euseb. Prepar. Ev. 1. 6, c. 11, p. 286; 287.

Gg