XVII. And as for that which is said concerning their being ART. fallen in Adam, they argue, that either Adam's sin, and the connection of all mankind to him as their head and representative, was absolutely decreed, or it was not: if it was, then all is absolute; Adam's sin and the fall of mankind were decreed, and by consequence all from the beginning to the end are under a continued chain of absolute decrees; and then the Supralapsarian and the Sublapsarian hypothesis will be one and the same, only variously expressed. But if Adam's sin was only foreseen and permitted, then a conditionate decree founded upon prescience is once admitted, so that all that follows turns. upon it; and then all the arguments either against the perfection of such acts, or the certainty of such a prescience, turn against this; for if they are admitted in any one instance, then they may be admitted in others as well as in that. The Sublapsarians do always avoid to answer this; and it seems they do rather incline to think that Adam was under an absolute decree; and if so, then though their doctrine may seem to those, who do not examine things nicely, to look more plausible; yet really it amounts to the same thing with the other. For it is all one to say, that God decreed that Adam should sin, and that all mankind should fall in him, and that then God should choose out of mankind, thus fallen by his decree, such as he would 'save, and leave the rest in that lapsed state to perish in it; as it is to say, that God intending to save some, and to damn others, did, in order to the carrying this on in a method of justice, decree Adam's fall, and the fall of mankind in him, in order to the saving of his elect, and the damning of the rest. All that the Sublapsarians say in this particular for themselves is, that the Scripture has not declared any thing concerning the fall of Adam, in such formal terms, that they can affirm any thing concerning it. A liberty of another kind seems to have been then in man, when he was made after the image of God, and before he was corrupted by sin. And therefore though it is not easy to clear all difficulties in so intricate a matter, yet it seems reasonable to think, that man in a state of innocency was a purer and a freer creature to good, than now he is. But after all, this seems to be only a fleeing from the difficulty, to a less offensive way of talking of it; for if the prescience of future contingents cannot be certain, unless they are decreed, then God could not certainly foreknow Adam's sin, without he had made an absolute decree about it; and that, as was just now ART. said, is the same thing with the Supralapsarian hypothesis; XVII. of which I shall say no more, having now laid together in a small compass the full strength of this argument. I go next to set out with the same fidelity and exactness the Remonstrants' arguments. They begin with this, that God is just, holy, and merciful that, in speaking of himself in the Scripture with relation to those attributes, he is pleased to make appeals to men, to call them to reason with him: thus his Prophets did often bespeak the Jewish nation; the meaning of which is, that God acts so, that men, according to the notions that they have of those attributes, may examine them, and will be forced to justify and approve them. Nay, in these God proposes himself to us, as our pattern; we ought to imitate him in them, and by consequence we may frame just notions of them. We are required to be holy and merciful as he is merciful. What then can we think of a justice that shall condemn us for a fact that we never committed, and that was done many years before we were born? as also that designs first of all to be glorified by our being eternally miserable, and that decrees that we shall commit sins, to justify the previous decree of our reprobation? If those decrees are thus originally designed by God, and are certainly effectuated, then it is inconceivable how there should be a justice in punishing that which God himself appointed by an antecedent and irreversible decree should be done: so this seems to lie hard upon justice. It is no less hard upon infinite holiHab. i. 13. ness, to imagine that a Being of purer eyes than that it can behold iniquity, should by an antecedent decree fix our committing so many sins, in such a manner that it is not possible for us to avoid them: this is to make us to be born indeed under a necessity of sin; and yet this necessity is said to flow from the act and decrees of God: God repreEx. xxxiv. sents himself always in the Scriptures as gracious, merciful, slow to anger, and abundant in goodness and truth. It is often said, that he desires that no man should perish, but that all should come to the knowledge of the truth: and this Ezek. xviii. is said sometimes with the solemnity of an oath; As I live, 32. xxxiii. saith the Lord, I take no pleasure in the death of sinners. 6. 2 Pet. iii. 9. 11. They ask, what sense can such words bear, if we can believe that God did by an absolute decree reprobate so many of them? If all things that happen do arise out of the decree of God as its first cause, then we must believe that God takes pleasure both in his own decrees, and in the execution of them; and, by consequence, that he takes pleasure in the death of sinners, and that in contradiction to the most express and most solemn words of Scripture. ART. Besides, what can we think of the truth of God, and of XVII. the sincerity of those offers of grace and mercy, with the obtestations, the exhortations, and expostulations upon them, that occur so often in Scripture, if we can think that by antecedent acts of God he determined that all these should be ineffectual; so that they are only so many solemn words that do indeed signify nothing, if God intended that all things should fall out as they do, and if they do so fall out only because he intended it? The chief foundation of this opinion lies in this argument as its basis, that nothing can be believed that contradicts the justice, holiness, the truth, and purity of God; that these attributes are in God according to our notions concerning them, only they are in him infinitely more perfect; since we are required to imitate them. Whereas the doctrine of absolute decrees does manifestly contradict the clearest ideas that we can form of justice, holiness, truth, and goodness. From the nature of God they go to the nature of man; and they think that such an inward freedom by which a man is the master of his own actions, and can do or not do what he pleases, is so necessary to the morality of our actions, that without it our actions are neither good nor evil, neither capable of rewards or punishment. Mad men, or men asleep, are not to be charged with the good or evil of what they do; therefore at least some degrees of liberty must be left with us, otherwise why are we praised or blamed for any thing that we do? If a man thinks that he is under an inevitable decree, as he will have little remorse for all the evil he does, while he imputes it to that inevitable force that constrains him, so he will naturally conclude that it is to no purpose for him to struggle with impossibilities and men being inclined both to throw all blame off from themselves, and to indulge themselves in laziness and sloth, these practices are too natural to mankind to be encouraged by opinions that favour them. All virtue and religion, all discipline and industry, must arise from this as their first principle; that there is a power in us to govern our own thoughts and actions, and to raise and improve our faculties. If this is denied, all endeavours, all education, all pains either on ourselves or others, are vain and fruitless things. Nor is it possible to make a man believe other than this; for he does so plainly perceive that he is a free agent; he feels himself balance matters in his thoughts, and deliberate about them so evidently, that he certainly knows he is a free being. :: ART. XVII. This is the image of God that is stamped upon his nature; and though he feels himself often hurried on so impetuously, that he may seem to have lost his freedom in some turns, and upon some occasions; yet he feels that he might have restrained that heat in its first beginnings; he feels he can divert his thoughts, and master himself in most things, when he sets himself to it: he finds that knowledge and reflection, that good company and good exercises do tame and soften him, and that bad ones make him wild, loose, and irregular. From all this they conclude that man is free, and not under inevitable fate, or irresistible motions either to good or evil. All this they confirm from the whole current of the Scripture, that is full of persuasions, exhortations, reproofs, expostulations, encouragements, and terrors; which are all vain and theatrical things, if there are no free powers in us to which they are addressed to what purpose is it to speak to dead men, to persuade the blind to see, or the lame to run? If we are under an impotence till the irresistible grace comes, and if, when it comes, nothing can withstand it, then what occasion is there for all those solemn discourses, if they can have no effect on us? They cannot render us inexcusable, unless it were in our power to be bettered by them; and to imagine that God gives light and blessings to those whom he before intended to damn, only to make them inexcusable, when they could do them no good, and they will serve only to aggravate their condemnation, gives so strange an idea of that infinite goodness, that it is not fit to express it by those terms which do naturally arise upon it. It is as hard to suppose two contrary wills in God, the one commanding us our duty, and requiring us with the most solemn obtestations to do it, and the other putting a certain bar in our way, by decreeing that we shall do the contrary. This makes God look as if he had a will and a will; though a heart and a heart import no good quality, when applied to men: the one will requires us to do our duty, and the other makes it impossible for us not to sin: the will for the good is ineffectual, while the will that makes us sin is infallible. These things seem very hard to be apprehended; and whereas the root of true religion is the having right and high ideas of God and of his attributes, here such ideas arise as naturally give us strange thoughts of God; and if they are received by us as originals, upon which we are to form our own natures, such notions may make us grow to be spiteful, imperious, and without bowels, but do not seem proper to inspire us with XVII, love, mercy, and compassion; though God is always pro- ART. posed to us in that view. All preaching and instruction does also suppose this: for to what purpose are men called upon, taught, and endeavoured to be persuaded, if they are not free agents, and have not a power over their own thoughts, and if they are not to be convinced and turned by reason? The offers of peace and pardon that are made to all men are delusory things, if they are by an antecedent act of God restrained only to a few, and all others are barred from them. It is farther to be considered, say they, that God having made men free creatures, his governing them accordingly, and making his own administration of the world suitable to it, is no diminution of his own authority: it is only the carrying on of his own creation according to the several natures that he has put in that variety of beings of which this world is composed, and with which it is diversified : therefore if some of the acts of God, with relation to man, are not so free as his other acts are, and as we may suppose necessary to the ultimate perfection of an independent Being, this arises not from any defect in the acts of God, but because the nature of the creature that he intended to make free is inconsistent with such acts. The Divine Omnipotence is not lessened, when we observe some of his works to be more beautiful and useful than others are; and the irregular productions of nature do not derogate from the order in which all things appear lovely to the Divine Mind. So if that liberty, with which he intended to endue thinking beings, is incompatible with such positive acts, and so positive a Providence as governs natural things and this material world, then this is no way derogatory to the sovereignty of his mind. This does also give such an account of the evil that is in the world, as does no way accuse or lessen the purity and holiness of God; since he only suffers his creatures to go on in the free use of those powers that he has given them; about which he exercises a special Providence, making some men's sins to be the immediate punishments of their own or of other men's sins, and restraining them often in a great deal of that evil that they do design, and bringing out of it a great deal of good that they did not design; but all is done in a way suitable to their natures, without any violence to them. It is true, it is not easy to shew how those future contingencies, which depend upon the free choice of the will, should be certain and infallible. But we are on other accounts certain that it is so; for we see through the whole |