XVII. ART. has received a fufficient oblation and fatisfaction for the fins of the whole world, it is not reconcileable to justice, that all fhould not be faved by it, or fhould not at least have the offer and promulgation of it made them; that fo a trial may be made whether they will accept of it or not. The grace of God is fet forth in Scripture by fuch figures and expreffions as do plainly intimate its efficacy; and that it does not depend upon us to use it, or not to Eph. ii. 10. use it at pleasure. It is faid to be a creation; que are 2 Cor. v. 17. created unto good works, and we become new creatures: it is Phil. ii. 13 called a regeneration, or a new birth; it is called a Jer. xxxi. quickening and a refurrection; as our former ftate is 33, 34. compared to a feebleness, a blindnefs, and a death. God Ezek. is faid to work in us both to will and to do: His people sball xxxvi. 26, be willing in the day of his power: He will write bis laws in Rom.ix.21. their hearts, and make them to walk in them. Mankind is compared to a mass of clay in the hand of the potter, who of the fame lump makes at his pleasure veffels of bonour or of difbonour. These paffages, this laft in particular, do infinuate an abfolute and a conquering power in grace; and that the love of God constrains us, as St. Paul speaks exprefsly. Pf. cx. 3. 27. Pr. xxxvi. 9. All outward co-action is contrary to the nature of liberty, and all those inward impreffions that drove on the Prophets, fo that they had not the free use of their faculties, but felt themselves carried they knew not how, are inconfiftent with it; yet when a man feels that his faculties go in their method, and that he affents or chooses from a thread of inward conviction and ratiocination, he still acts freely, that is, by an internal principle of reafon and thought. A man acts as much according to his faculties, when he affents to a truth, as when he chooses what he is to do and if his mind were fo enlightened, that he saw as clearly the good of moral things, as he perceives fpeculative truths, fo that he felt himself as little able to refift the one as the other, he would be no less a free and a rational creature, than if he were left to a more unlimited range: nay, the more evidently that he faw the true good of things, and the more that he were determined by it, he should then act more fuitably to his faculties, and to the excellence of his nature. For though the faints in heaven being made perfect in glory, are no more capable of farther rewards, yet it cannot be denied but they act with a more accomplished liberty, because they fee all things in a true light, according to that, in thy light we fball fee light: and therefore they conclude that fuch an overcoming degree of grace, by which a man is made willing willing through the illumination of his understanding, and ART. not by any blind or violent impulfe, is no way contrary to XVII. the true notion of liberty. After all, they think, that if a debate falls to be between the fovereignty of God, his acts and his purpofes, and the freedom of man's will, it is modeft and decent rather to make the abatement on man's part than on God's; but they think there is no need of this. They infer, that befides the outward enlightening of a man by knowledge, there is an inward enlightening of the mind, and a fecret forcible conviction ftamped on it; otherwife what can be meant by the prayer of St. Paul for the Ephefians, who had already heard the Gospel preached, and were inftructed in it; that the eyes of their underflanding being enlightened, Eph. i. 17. they might know what was the hope of his calling, and what 18, 19. the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the faints, and what was the exceeding greatnefs of his power towards them that believed. This feems to be fomewhat that is both internal and efficacious. Chrift compares the union and influence, that he communicates to believers, to that union of a head with the members, and of a root with the branches, which imports an internal, a vital, and an efficacious influence. And though the outward means that are offered may be, and always are, rejected, when not accompanied with this overcoming grace, yet this never returns empty: thefe outward means coming from God, the refifting of them is faid to be the refilling God, A&svii. 51. the grieving or quenching his Spirit; and fo in that fenfe Eph. iv. 30. we refift the grace or favour of God: but we can never withstand him when he intends to overcome us. As for perfeverance, it is a neceffary confequence of abfolute decrees, and of efficacious grace: for fince all depends upon God, and that as of bis own will be begat us, Jam. i. 17, fo with him there is neither variableness nor fhadow of 18. turning whom he loves be loves to the end; and he has John xiii. 1. promifed, that he will never leave nor forfake thofe to whom Heb. xiii. 5. be becomes a God: we muft from thence conclude, that the purpofe and calling of God is without repentance. And therefore though good men may fall into grievous fins, to keep them from which there are dreadful things faid in Scripture, against their falling away, or apoftaty; yet God does fo uphold them, that though he fuffers them often to feel the weight of their natures, yet of all that are given by the Father to the Son to be faved by him, none are loft. Upon the whole matter, they believe that God did in himfelf and for his own glory foreknow fuch a determinate number, 29, 30. ART. number, whom he pitched upon, to be the perfons in XVII. whom he would be both fanctified and glorified that having thus foreknown them, he predeftinated them to be holy, conformable to the image of his Son: that these were to be called not by a general calling in the sense of Mat. xx. 16. these words, many are called, but few are chofen ; but to be Rom. viii. called according to his purpose: and thofe he justified upon their obeying that calling; and he will in conclufion glorify them. Nor are thefe words only to be limited to the fufferings of good men, they are to be extended to all the effects of the love of God, according to that which follows, that nothing can feparate us from the love of God in Rom.ix. 18. Chrift. The whole reafoning in the 9th of the Romans does fo plainly refolve all the acts of God's mercy and juftice, his hardening as well as his pardoning, into an abfolute freedom, and an unfearchable depth, that more exprefs words to that effect can hardly be imagined. Ver. 11. Ver. 17. Ver. 20. It is in general said, that the children being yet unborn, neither having done good or evil; that the purpofe of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth; Jacob was loved, and Efau bated; that God raised up Pharaoh, that be might fhew bis power in him; and when an objection is fuggefted against all this, inftead of answering it, it is filenced with this, Who art thou, O man, that replieft against God? And all is illuftrated with the figure of the potter; and concluded with this folemn queftion, What if God, willing to fhew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long-fuffering the veffels of wrath fitted to deftruction? This carries the reader Exod.iv.21. to confider what is so often repeated in the book of Exodus, X. 20. concerning God's hardening the heart of Pharaoh, so that be xiv. 8. would not let bis people go. It is faid, that God has made Prov. xvi. 4. the wicked man for the day of evil; as it is written on the Acts xiii. other hand, that as many believed the Gospel, as were Some are faid to be written in the Rev. xiii.8. appointed to eternal life. Ver. 22. 48. xi. 10. iii. 5. book of life, of the Lamb flain before the foundation of the xx. 12. world, or according to God's purpofe before the world began. Rom. i. 26, Ungodly men are laid to be of old ordained to condemnation, 28. and to be given up by God unto vile affections, and to be given xxi. 27. over by him to a reprobate mind. Therefore they think that reprobation is an abfolute and free act of God, as well as election, to manifeft his holiness and juftice in them who are under it, as well as his love and mercy is manifefted in the elect. Nor can they think with the Sublapfarians, that reprobation is only God's paffing by those whom he does not elect; this is an act unworthy of God, as if he forgot them, which does clearly imply imperfection. And XVII. And as for that which is faid concerning their being ART. fallen in Adam, they argue, that either Adam's fin, and the connection of all mankind to him as their head and representative, was abfolutely decreed, or it was not: if it was, then all is abfolute; Adam's fin and the fall of mankind were decreed, and by confequence all from the beginning to the end are under a continued chain of abfolute decrees; and then the Supralapfarian and the Sublapfarian hypothefis will be one and the fame, only variously expreffed. But if Adam's fin was only foreseen and permitted, then a conditionate decree founded upon prefcience is once admitted, fo that all that follows turns upon it; and then all the arguments either against the perfection of fuch acts, or the certainty of fuch a prefcience, turn against this; for if they are admitted in any one inftance, then they may be admitted in others as well as in that. The Sublapfarians do always avoid to answer this; and it feems they do rather incline to think that Adam was under an abfolute decree; and if fo, then though their doctrine may seem to thofe, who do not examine things nicely, to look more plaufible; yet really it amounts to the fame thing with the other. For it is all one to say, that God decreed that Adam fhould fin, and that all mankind should fall in him, and that then God fhould choose out of mankind, thus fallen by his decree, such as he would fave, and leave the reft in that lapsed state to perifh in it; as it is to fay, that God intending to fave Tome, and to damn others, did, in order to the carrying this on in a method of juftice, decree Adam's fall, and the fall of mankind in him, in order to the faving of his elect, and the damning of the reft. All that the Sublapfarians fay in this particular for themselves is, that the Scripture has not declared any thing concerning the fall of Adam, in fuch formal terms, that they can affirm any thing concerning it. A liberty of another kind feems to have been then in man, when he was made after the image of God, and before he was corrupted by fin. And therefore though it is not eafy to clear all difficulties in fo intricate a matter, yet it feems reasonable to think, that man in a ftate of innocency was a purer and a freer creature to good, than now he is. But after all, this feems to be only a fleeing from the difficulty, to a lefs offenfive way of talking of it; for if the prefcience of future contingents cannot be certain, unlefs they are decreed, then God could not certainly foreknow Adam's fin, without he had made. an abfolute decree about it; and that, as was just now ART. faid, is the fame thing with the Supralapfarian hypothefis; XVII. of which I fhall fay no more, having now laid together in a fmall compafs the full ftrength of this argument. I go next to fet out with the fame fidelity and exactness the Remonftrants' arguments. They begin with this, that God is juft, holy, and merciful: that, in fpeaking of himself in the Scripture with relation to thofe attributes, he is pleafed to make appeals to men, to call them to reafon with him: thus his Prophets did often befpeak the Jewish nation; the meaning of which is, that God acts fo, that men, according to the notions that they have of thofe attributes, may examine them, and will be forced to justify and approve them. Nay, in these God propofes himfelf to us, as our pattern; we ought to imitate him in them, and by confequence we may frame juft notions of them. We are required to be holy and merciful as he is merciful. What then can we think of a justice that fhall condemn us for a fact that we never committed, and that was done many years before we were born? as alfo that defigns firft of all to be glorified by our being eternally miferable, and that decrees that we fhall commit fins, to justify the previous decree of our reprobation? If thofe decrees are thus originally defigned by God, and are certainly effectuated, then it is inconceivable how there fhould be a juftice in punishing that which God himself appointed by an antecedent and irreversible decree fhould be done: fo this feems to lie hard upon juftice. It is no lefs hard upon infinite holiHab. i. 13. nefs, to imagine that a Being of purer eyes than that it can behold iniquity, fhould by an antecedent decree fix our committing fo many fins, in fuch a manner that it is not poffible for us to avoid them: this is to make us to be born indeed under a neceffity of fin; and yet this neceffity is faid to flow from the act and decrees of God: God reprefents himself always in the Scriptures as gracious, merciful, flow to anger, and abundant in goodness and truth. 2 Pet.iii. 9. It is often faid, that he defires that no man should perish, but that all bould come to the knowledge of the truth: and this Ezek. xviii. is faid fometimes with the folemnity of an oath; As I live, 32. xxxiii. faith the Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of finners. They afk, what fenfe can fuch words bear, if we can believe that God did by an abfolute decree reprobate fo many of them? If all things that happen do arise out of the decree of God as its firft caufe, then we must believe that God takes pleasure both in his own decrees, and in the execution of them; and, by confequence, that he takes pleasure in the death of finners, and that in contradiction Ex. xxxiv. 6. 21. to |