Discovery of Jacksons Vanity

CHAP. XVI.

I Have now waded thorough fifteen Chapters of these your Contemplations, and should by this in reason be pretty well acquainted with the manner of your discourse. But I find myself as much pus • ed in searching after the coherence of the parts of the first Section here, as hitherto I have been in any part of the Treatise. But it may be I do but labor to gather that which you never strewed, and then no marvel if I labor in vain.

As in other parts so in this it may be your purpose was to write Quodlibets: well, such as they are, I purpose to consider them as I find them. To sum up the particulars; in the first place you discover unto us the causes of conceiving difficulties, and of ignorance in assoiling them, and that is because we extend this Maxim, (Both parts of contradictories cannot be true,) not so far as we should, and the reason thereof is (you say) because we extend our power to the utmost, yea farther then justice or goodness can accompany it: To this you add 〈◊〉 our nature is humorous and inconstant, and therefore nothing can imply any constant contradiction to our nature, and that look what is constant and still the same, that will at one time or other contradict our humor. And humors, you say, enraged with contradiction arm power against whatsoever contradicts them.

By the way you tell us, that the use of power in creatures sensitive is to satiate their appetite of sense; in man, to accomplish his will and desire of good. And that being corrupt, his power becomes an under-commander unto his unruly appetites, as in voluptuous men; and that in men esteemed good, motions of equity are so weak, that men yield their consents to such proposals, as were they firm, they would offensively contradict them. And the reason why they yield, is lest upstart appetites, which custom countenanceth, should be enlarged by reluctance: But love, you say, is not alike set on divers objects, but divides itself unequally, when it comes to opposition between sense & reason; ourselves and friends or common equity: And the inconveniences whereto the world and flesh exposeth us are reducible to two heads, the blinding of the judgment, and consequently the abusing of power and authority.

Then again you return to our inconstant humor, and upon the back of that tell us, that though none doth good, yet we may do less evil then others. And lastly, that they who love equity, are hardly drawn to dispense with injustice; and at last having sat long, you hatch an excellent Maxim, that where judgment is infallible, and love to justice invincible, there • s not possible to transgress in judgment. All which when I compare together, and with your theme proposed, How God may be said to have done all that he could for his vineyard, it calls to my remembrance a certain mad fellows discourse, when I was a Scholar at Winchester, that would talk of master Killigree, and Abbey lands, fat venison, and such like uncoherences a long time together.

But let us examine them apart: Both parts of contradiction cannot be true; and it is as true that both parts of contradiction cannot be false. But whereto this tends, and how pertinent to your purpose in this place, I cannot devise; Only you tell us that the not extending of this Maxim so far as we should, is the cause why we conceive difficulties in your wild discourse premised, as also of our ignorance in assoiling them. A strange conceit, and whereof I see no color of reason, neither do you take any pains to explicate it, by accommodation or instance, but let fly at random, as if you would employ your readers in seeking after sense and reason where there is none to be found. And if this were true, yourself should have assoiled the difficulties conceived in the points proposed, by extending this Maxim to the utmost, to serve your turn; and shown, how by not extending it so far as is meet, difficulties are conceived, and no means found to assoil them: but yourself have taken no such course: And who was ever known, not to extend this Maxim to the uttermost? where can you find any limitation or confining of it? what do you mean to abuse your readers patience with such incredible fictions?

Again, herehence it followeth, that whosoever do extend this maxim so far as naturally it would reach, they shall not be apt to conceive difficulties in the points proposed, nor be touched with ignorance in assoiling them. For the truth whereof I appeal to every man's conscience that reads your writings: of whom I am persuaded not one of a thousand, if Scholars, doth deny but that this Maxim holds universally; yet you take upon you to give a reason why we extend it not so far as naturally it would reach, and that you say is our proneness to extend our own power to the utmost, even farther then true goodness can accompany it. So then the honester men are, the more apt they are to extend this Maxim to the utmost, and consequently less apt to conceive difficulties in the points proposed, and less ignorant to assoil them: and the reason why men do conceive difficulties in your writings, or are not able to assoil them, is for want of honesty. And you in the mean time would not be supposed to show any want either of wit or honesty in your discourses. Well, this article of your natural Creed is observable, They that do things unjustifiable, they do not extend this Maxim (Both parts of contradiction cannot be true) so far as naturally it would reach, which is a mystery unto me, and whereof I can devise no reason, neither do you give any. For although our natures are humorous, inconstant, and we find contradiction, and are enraged with contradiction, and arm power against that which doth contradict us, yet herehence it followeth not that we limit or restrain the rules of contradiction; unless out of some such curious sophistry and subtlety as this, you dispute in this manner; We oppose them that contradict us, therefore we do restrain the rules of contradiction: I doubt my reader would scarce think me sober, if I should go about to dissolve this sophistry; yet the face of your discourse looks no other way then this. And I confess the law of God, and rules of good manners shall never fail to contradict him that is of a dishonest disposition. And though passions turn commonly into their contraries, yet notwithstanding all such inconstancy, true morality will always be an opposite to him that is dishonest. But yet I find no propension herehence to maintain, that both parts of contradiction are true, or both false.

Power, you say, is for the execution of will, and so is wit too, and no marvel if sometimes both of them are in knaves keeping. This is stuff serving to fill paper. And if S. Paul complained of a law in his members rebelling against the law of his mind, and leading him captive to the law of sin, no marvel if natural men, esteemed good and sober, do sometimes yield to things unfit: but that it is out of such mature deliberation as you speak, to prevent forsooth the enraging of carnal appetites, (which why you should call upstarts, I know not, unless you deny them to be as old as the fall of Adam) I see no reason. I give a thief my purse, lest I should lose my purse, and somewhat else also. But if I give over unto my passions my honesty, to be defiled by them, alas what have we more or greater to lose? And let them rage while they will, we can but lose our honesty, therefore in reason we will not stop passions mouth at the first with our honesty, we will rather tugge and pull for it, and keep more ado then Michah for his gods; Ye have taken away my gods, and the Priest, and go your ways, and what have I more? The motions of the flesh must needs offend the spirit, for they are lustings against the spirit. But there is no proportion between this contradiction, and that which is between pain and pleasure. For pain and pleasure are not felt at once, as this contradiction is.

Love, as not alike set on divers objects, is brought in by way of adversative, whereas the sentence is no other then that which went before, touching the contradiction between carnal desires, and virtuous motions. Yet to betray some quaint strain of learning, by way of parenthesis, you make question whether Love be one simple and indivisible quality, or an aggregation or cluster of divers inclinations rooted in one center: neither do you determine it, but leave your reader to gaze upon it, as a child doth upon a cluster of grapes first ripe, and the more like to be first rotten: you might make the same question of hatred also. For Quot modis dicitur unum oppositorum, tot modis dic • tur & alterum. It was wont to be said of love, that it was as the weight of the soul. Anima amore quasi ponder fertur quocunque fertur. But it hath different acceptions. For there is amor amicitiae, and there is amor concupiscentiae. And this amor concupiscentiae is either ordinate or inordinate: ordinate love becomes moral virtue, and inordinate, moral vice. And S. John divides this inordinate concupiscence into three kinds; concupiscence of the flesh, concupiscence of the eye, and pride of life. And will you put all these into one cluster, or posy rather, consisting partly of garden flowers, partly of stinking flowers of the field? The two originals you speak of, if subordinate, they are not two originals, there is but one; and the love of the world and the flesh carry men on, even in despite of judgment and conscience to the contrary, into manifest impi • ties, iniquities, impurities.

I do not find it strange that things seem not impossible to us, if they are within our power, yet though they be within our power one way, I see no cause but they may seem unpossible, and be unpossible another way. And be our variousnesse never so great, yet I see no reason to justify you in saying, that what cannot be admitted today, will be allowed of tomorrow. For the vicious person,

to that which is good. And Absalom two years together watched opportunity to revenge himself on his brother Amnon, and afterwards continued as settled in his course os aspiring to the kingdom: And therefore herein certainly you reckon without your host. Yet it is most true, that the better men are, the more hardly are they drawn to unjust courses: this I say is as true, as that all this is nothing to the purpose: yet hereupon you commend unto us by way of consequence, a truth in great state, and scored in the margent as very remarkable, and yet you call it an experienced truth, That if any man's judgment in matters of equity and justice were infallible, and his love to justice constant and invincible, it would be unpossible for him to transgress in judgment; and indeed if this were not true, both parts of contradiction manifestly should prove true. For tis unpossible to transgress but either by error in judgment, or corruption in will: And therefore where judgment is infallible, and will incorruptible, tis not possible for such a one to transgress. This is as true as one of Euclides elements. But it depends upon such Ifs and Ands, that the world is nothing like to profit either in wit or honesty by this information. Only in this clause alone I find some coherence with the former, to wit, with the first sentence of this Section: for that laid down the thesis, this delivers the self same in hypothesis.

The conclusion is, that God's ideall perfection in integrity and constancy hath no mixture of vice or humerous impotency. And our conceit of this perfection in God, you say, is rectified thus, to wit, by experience of the strength of inconstant humerous desires, & of the faintness of our love and equity, as well as by the contrary virtues. Your wit hath plaid his part here, when you strained to derive the rectification of our conceits, touching God's integrity and constancy, from the contrary disposition in man.

Belike, if Adam had never fallen, our conceits could not have been so rectified touching God's integrity and perfection as now they are, neither shall they be so well rectified in the kingdom of heaven, because there we shall be acquainted with no such humorous inconstancy, or faintness of equity in man.

2 In the former Section you complained of not extending the maxim mentioned, so far as naturally it would reach, and you discoursed unto us the dangerous consequence of such an humor, and the cause of it. The consequence was partly aptness to conceive difficulties in the points proposed by you, and ignorance to assoil them. The cause was the extending of our own power too far. And in this Section you endeavor to rectify our conceits hereabouts; now whereas I was intent (as it is fit every Reader should be) to observe what was your drift and scope in all this, in the end of the former Section, you fell upon the rectifying of our conceits touching God's ideall perfection, in the way of integrity and constancy, as if that were the scope you aimed at: but neither did your discourse in any handsome manner tend thereunto, though finally it lighted thereupon, neither do I yet perceive whereunto this ideall perfection of God, you speak of, is directed, as being nothing congruous, for ought I discern, to the point in hand. I rather think, that was delivered (as many other things in that Section) on the by, and that the immediate end you aim at, is this here mentioned in the beginning of this Section, namely, the rectifying of our conceits, touching the right extending of the aforesaid maxim, which is the principal negative touching contradictories. Both parts of contradiction cannot be true, (no, nor false neither) you had rather express it thus, To make both parts of contradiction true (or false) is no object of power omnipotent: Now we seem to have found the hare again, at least the tract and sent of the hare, and desire to pursue, without making any fault, as near as we can. Now the rule you give us for the right extending of the maxim mentioned, is this, Many effects are very possible to power alone considered, which imply contradiction to some other divine attributes. This passage hath seemed wondrous harsh unto me, and as it were, Iuterpretationem commodam indignata, such as could not admit a commodious interpretation: and the issue of searching into the meaning thereof, is not to justify it, but rather to discover sundry incongruities involved herein.

In the former Section you complained of men, as extending their own power too far, which you conceived to be the reason why they did not extend the maxim there proposed so far as naturally it would reach.

But here you admonish us of extending the power of God aright, not considering it at large, but rather as joined with other attributes of God.

Secondly, you complained, that men did not extend the maxim you speak of so far as naturally it would reach, and therefore when here you come to give rules for the extending of it aright, every man would imagine that you take a course to enlarge it at full, whereas indeed you take a course to restrain it, for you tell us here, that a thing is not to be accounted possible in reference unto power, but in reference unto other attributes of God also, as love, truth, goodness, and justice, which manifestly doth restrain the possibility of anything, rather then enlarge it.

Thirdly, whereas the effect of power which you treat of in this place, is only this, To make both parts of contradiction true, when you tell us, that, Many effects which are very possible to power alone considered, do necessarily imply contradiction unto some divine attributes. What do you but hereby give us to understand, that this effect, to wit, of making both parts of contradiction true, though it be possible to power alone considered, yet it is not possible in respect of some other attributes divine.

Now I demand in the name of common sense and sobriety, whether this be a decent thing to say, that to make both parts of contradiction true is possible to power alone considered, whereas indeed it is no more possible, in reference to any power to make both parts of contradiction true, then to make both parts of contradiction false. Neither indeed is it in the power of God, as touching any one part of contradiction, if it be not true, to make it true, or if it be true to make it false. As for example, I am alive; it is not in the power of God to make it false. He may take my life from me, but that is not a course to make that proposition false. For it was true only for that time when it was pronounced, not for the time to come when my life is taken from me. So when Socrates is dead this proposition is false, Socrates is alive, neither is it in the power of God to make it true: for though he can restore life to Socrates, yet thereby he shall not make that proposition true. For that proposition was true for that time only, when it was pronounced, not for the time to come, least of all for that time when God had restored life to Socrates. But you will say, the being of a thing is the cause why a proposition concerning the being of that thing is said to be true, not on the contrary. And God is the cause of the being of things.

This I confess is a truth in part. God is the cause of the being of things, yet not of all things, but only of things contingent. God is not the cause of that which hath necessary being, such as he is himself. So that these like propositions, God is eternal, omnipotent, omniscient, most simple, &c. no way depend on the execution of God his power, which proceeds always according to the counsel of his own will. But hereupon depends not the nature of God, nor many other principles containing necessary truth: I grant many things are denominated possible to the human nature, which are not so in reference to the divine. For the human nature hath power to transgress, the divine nature hath not. Yet if you mark it well, this which in this case is called power, will finally be resolved not so much into power, as into impotency: For it is not to be presumed that our Savior had less power then another man, because he could not sin; or the Angels since their confirmation, then they had before, or that men in their glorified condition shall be more impotent then before. And indeed confirmation of integrity and innocence, doth not abolish power, but only rectify the use of it, and establish that rectitude in the use of power. Yet there is a denomination of power attributed to man, and denied unto God, as when we say man can transgress, God cannot: But the ground of this is not the want of power in God, and a surplusage of power in man; but only this, that a man is capable of restraint from a superior power, God is not. For to say, that man can transgress, is as much as to say, that man can do that which he is forbidden to do, or from the doing whereof he is restrained. But this cannot be affirmed of God, as who hath no superior power to restrain him.

Your next sentence is full of non-sense, as when you say, It is more shameful then impossible for rich men to lie or cozen, or for Magistrates to oppress and wrong their inferiors; albeit the ones riches or others power were infinitely increased, without internal increase of their fidelity. For the better opening whereof I will resolve it into its parts. And they are two, considered apart without comparison.

The first is this, It is shameful for rich men to lie and cozen, for Magistrates to oppress and wrong, albeit the ones riches and the others power were infinitely increased, without internal increase of their fidelity. Now I say there is plain non-sense in this, and that in divers respects.

First in saying it is is shameful for rich men to lie and cozen, albeit their riches be never so much increased: for the coherence by virtue of the particle albeit, doth imply, thatit is a shameful course for them to lie, though never so much provoked thereunto. This I say should be the sense. But your sentence hath a quite contrary sense. For whereas according to the most convenient sense it should run thus; It is a shameful course for a man to lie and cozen, though he be never so poor, poverty indeed being usually a provocation unto lying and coozening, as we read Prov. 30. 9. you pronounce it in a quite contrary sense thus: It is a shameful thing for a rich man to lie and cozen, though he be never so rich.

Secondly, your adversative is as unreasonable in respect of the latter part of it, which is this, Albeit he be without increase of internal fidelity: As much as to say, it is a shameful thing for a rich man to lie and cozen, though he be never a whit the more honest for his riches: and tis like unto his speech that said of a swine, It was a creature which though it was polluted yet it was not clean, as if there were an opposition between being polluted, and being not clean: so you imply an opposition between being never the more honest, and doing that which was shameful. Whereas indeed he that doth shameful things, is hoc ipso never a whit the more honest.

The solecism is the same applied to the Magistrate, as touching the latter part, not as touching the former; because their power and authority may seem to countenance them in dealing more hardly with inferiors, then if they were not in magistracy would seem fit.

The second part is this; It is possible for rich men to lie and cozen, though they were rich, and never a whit the more honest.—It is possible for the Magistrate to oppress and wrong, though they were never so powerful, and never a whit the more honest. Here the solecism is alike in both, as touching the latter part. For you imply by the form of the sentence, that want of honesty were some hindrance to lying and coozening, some hindrance to oppressing and wronging.

But as touching the former part, the solecism is most foul in the speech concerning the Magistrate, as when you imply, that the great power the Magistrate hath, is an hindrance to his possibility of oppressing and wronging his inferiors, whereas it appears manifestly, that rather it is a furtherance thereunto.

But it is impossible for God to speak an untruth, or to do wrong. Before, I have shown, that to have a power to transgress, is to imply a being in subjection to a superior power that restraineth him, and consequently such a power is resolved into weakness and impotency. In special to speak untruth implieth less power then to speak truth; for to speak truth implieth knowledge of truth: And to know truth is a thing of more power, then to be ignorant of truth.

But it may be you propose this of lying, which is to speak contrary to a man's knowledge: but this is not power to do ought: For the speaking of this or that is not the lying: but lying is a denomination of the act of speaking, arising from the contrariety of the speech, to the knowledge or intentions of the mind. So that if he speak the same thing in his dream, or if another delivereth the same words, yet is it no lying. In a word, power to do ill, or peccabilitas, which is per naturam, doth no more relish of true power, then impoccabilitas per gratiam doth savor of impotency and weakness. But God you say cannot speak untruth. The truth is, God cannot speak at all in proper speech; for God hath no tongue to be the interpreter of his heart. But God doth inspire his servants with truth, and move them to speak it, or to write it: And it is impossible he should inspire with falsehood; man himself would never speak falsehood, but always truth, if he might advantage himself as much with telling truth, as telling untruth. Now though a man sometimes promotes his ends by false courses, yet it is absurd to think that God needs false courses to promote his ends, seeing he is almighty.

As for the doing of wrong, it is well known, that if he should command Abraham to sacrifice his son, and see him execute it; or command Sampson to sacrifice himself by dying with the Philistines, he shall do no wrong either to the one or to the other; or by making Prince Job as poor as poor Job, in destroying his substance, his children, and last of all striking his body with a sore boil, yet shall he not do any wrong to Job. Nay were Job as innocent as Adam was in his creation, or as the elect Angels are now in their confirmation, and should deal so with them as he did with Job, yet should they have just cause to say as Eli did, He is the Lord, let him do what seemeth good in his sight.

Arminius confesseth, that the most innocent creature God can annihilate without prejudice to his justice, yea to inflict the torments of hell upon such a creature. Medina maintains, that God as Creator hath such power over his creature, Ex 〈◊〉 omnium Theologorum sententia: yet do we distinguish between potentia absoluta, and potentia ordinata; God can do that by power absolute, which he cannot do on supposition that he will not do it: for that were to change, and that were impotency, rather then power. And to speak in proper terms; It is not fit to say that God cannot do this because he will not; for there is no consequence in this, either in respect of God or man: Such a one will not do this or that; therefore he cannot do it.

But supposing God's will to do this or that, tis more proper to say, that upon this supposition, it is impossible God should do otherwise, because it is impossible he should change his will. For there are but two causes of the change of the creatures will and resolution, the one fickleness of the will, the other improvidence of the understanding, in not foreseeing all that might come to pass. But neither of these is possibly incident unto God. So then if God hath promised ought, tis unpossible that it should not be performed, or that God should provountrue. If God loves a man, tis as much as to say, he is determined to doc him good, and tis impossible it should be otherwise then he hath determined. But to say that God in point of justice cannot perform that, without performing whereof he shall be untrue, is a paradox of paradoxes. For if in performing it he shall be true, then in not performing of it he shall be untrue. And doth God's justice bind him to be untrue? you might as well say, it binds him to be unjust.

Again, if God out of his love hath resolved to do this or that good unto man; shall his justice hinder the fulfilling of the counsels and determinations of his own will? This is strange Divinity; yet you deliver these uncouth assertions like a positive Theologue, without all proof, as if they carried their evidence in their foreheards. Men are bound by rules of a superior power to work after this or that manner; and therefore it is not lawful for them to do many things, from the doing whereof they are restrained by lawful authority, which commands them. It is not so with God, who doeth what he will in heaven, and amongst the inhabitants of the earth, and no man can say unto him, What dost thou? In this sense you think you may say that all before Christ were thieves and robbers. And though I think this interpretation is very aliene from the true meaning of the Text you point at, yet I doubt not but that everyone, Christ excepted, hath been found in sin, and thereby more or less found to play the thief, and rob God of that glory of obedience which is due unto him.

I doubt not but the Angel of the Lord that discomfited the army of Sennacherib, might in like manner have smoakt away the army of the Romans, yea and God might have done so to, even the one as well as the other, had it pleased him, without any prejudice to his justice. For if it be justly possible to him to pardon our sins, tis as justly possible to him to remove his judgments. And both Suarez and Vasquez, though opposite in some specialities about the justice of God, yet concurs in acknowledging that there is no justice in God in reference to his creature, but upon presupposition of his will. It is just with God to approve a merciless war. And tis as just with God to approve a merciful peace: neither is it disgraceful to God though by his long suffering and patience he gives space for repentance, although his goodness were despised unto the end.

As many live prosperously in sinful courses unto the death and then obtain 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , an easy departure at last, as Guiccia • dine observes in the particular of Pope Alexander the sixth; and no marvel: for what is wanting in the condign vengeance in this life, God can and will supply to the full at the day of judgment. And the reason why God leaves some men's sins unrequited in this world, is out of a special providence, as Chrysostom hath observed of old, namely to this end, that we may entertain some conceit of a resurrection, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 . And though God doth not afflict them with outward terrors, yet he hath inward terrors enough to exercise the wicked, and to keep peace as far from them, as a guilty and tormenting conscience is near unto them, according to that of Solomon, The wicked flieth when no man pursueth him. The Deere when he is stricken, albeit Sylvas saltusque peragrat Dictaeos, yet, haeret lateri laetalis arunde. O what an uncomfortable sentence do you edge this Section withal; as if God's infinite power could not save them that stubbornly abandon the ways of peace, and willfully neglect saving health, so often and lovingly tendered unto them? For consider, did you never abandon the ways of peace, or willfully neglect saving health, lovingly tendered unto you? Were you never out of the state of grace? For Augustine hath taught me, that Libertas sine gratia, non est libertas sed contumatia. Or were you converted at the first, or second, or at the third sermon that you heard? Nay, when God's children are converted, do they not too often abandon the ways of peace, and willfully neglect saving health? Did not David in the matter of Uriah and Bathsheba? Did not Solomon in his idolatry? Did not Manasseh in his idolatrous fury, sealing it with blood? Saint Paul exhorts Timothy, to carry himself gently towards them without, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , if at any time God give them repentance, implying manifestly, that God can at any time give repentance to any man if he will. Neither are we taught, that God hath denied possibility of renovation by repentance unto any, but such as sin the sin against the Holy Ghost.

3 You say, it had been unjust with God to strike the men of Sodom with blindness, before lust had entered their eyes. A manifest untruth which yet you deliver, satis magistraliter, as a dictate without any reason to enforce it. In the ninth of John we read of one that was borne blind, is it not just with God to deal with any one so as he dealt with him? You will not deny I hope this work to have been the work of God; if you should, our Savior would convict you of error, when he saith, that he was borne blind, to the end the mighty work of God might be manifest in the curing of him. And this work to this end could be no others but God's work.

I had thought, to have been borne blind had been a judgment, yet you make it to be a blessing, as whereby the Sodomites had been guarded from temptations. And indeed, lust usually enters into the heart by the windows of the eyes. Yet the Poet tells us also of one,

So then it had been a mercy of God that their eyes had been pulled out of their heads in your divinity. I do not deny, but the greatest temporal blessings may be cursed unto a man by the power of God, and the greatest temporal • nrses, blessed unto him. But I never heard or read before, that blindness should be considered only as a mercy, and such a mercy as whereby we are guarded from temptation. But were a man never so lustful, yet I think in just reason he should rather desire to enjoy his eyes then to lose them, that so he might be partaker of God's word by private reading, which hath more power to his salvation, then the sight of any Cockatrices to his destruction.

And if Democritus had been acquainted with this word of God, I do not believe he would have pulled out his eyes, in pretence as if they hindered his meditations. Alas, what had the Sodomites been the better for the blindness of their eyes, if God had not corrected the lusts of their hearts? Especially considering that fancy can supply the want of sight, for the provocation of lust in any degree upon any unknown object. For a man can fancy him as he lusteth. Say rather, God could not in justice change their hearts, seeing they had willfully contemned his goodness, and abused his long suffering and loving kindness.

Yet this saying of yours should be far enough off from truth and sobriety? Who hath not willfully contemned his goodness, and abused his long suffering? All out of the state of grace do so; for, Libertas sine gratia non est libertas sed contumacia. Yea and too often we do so in the state of grace also. Then again, a year before, this sin of the Sodomites was not so obstinate, less a year before that, and so the farther we descend to times passed, they were less and less obfirmate. Why did no • God then change their hearts; or if you will have this to be a fruit of mercy, why did he not blind their eyes in mercy to keep them from these temptations? But you put it out of question, that to have prevented the Sodomites former contempt and abuse of his long suffering and loving kindness, did imply contradiction to his goodness, and eternal equity. A most unreasonable assertion. For I demand, Hath God prevented your willful contempt of his goodness, yea or not? your abusing his long suffering and loving kindness, yea or not? If he hath not prevented it, then either yourself have prevented it without his grace, or you are guilty or have been guilty of willful contempt of his goodness, and abusing his long suffering and loving kindness: which if it be so, what would become of you, if God should deal with you according to these immutable and eternal rules, according whereto you profess he deals with all? I persuade myself you have a good opinion of your own sufficiency to prevent these foul symptoms of human corruption, otherwise you should make but a bad reckoning.

The reason you give to enforce this assertion, is in part nothing for you, in part against you. For though all his ways are truth, yet this is nothing for you, unless you can prove that in such a state of sin as the Sodomites, God hath determined to use no effectual means to the curing of them. But how will you prove this? for hitherto you have not. You might as well say, God could not cure • he sin of those Jews, to whom our Savior said, It shall be easier for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, then for you: If this were granted you, yet herehence it follows only, that God cannot cure them, because he will not, for he hath determined the contrary. But you undertake to prove, that God cannot do it in point of justice, although he would do it out of his love to mankind.

But when you say that all God's ways are mercy, that is directly rather against you then for you. For mercy doth rather incline to pardon sin, then not to pardon it: and withal we are given to understand, that as touching the execution hereof, God will have mercy on whom he will; and therefore surely he can have mercy on whom he wll.

You talk after your fashion of an eternal rule of goodness appointing his justice to debar the fruits of his mercy. But you are a mere talker, and prove nothing. Who is not willful in the state of nature in contemning God's goodness? Yet doth not he by his grace and holy Spirit ex nolentibus volentes facere? Doth not Austin profess that God hath converted not only aversos à vera fide, but adversus verae fidei voluntates also, and binds it with a Novimus, we know it to have been so. Was it not so in Saul? Doth not God profess of his willful and stubborn people, that he will rule them with a mighty hand, and make them pass under the rod, and bring them under the bond of his covenant, Ezech. 20. 37. Doth he not call some at the first, some not till the last hour of the day?

Neither can it be made good by any tolerable color of reason, that because a creature cannot be impeccabilis from his creation, therefore God cannot cure men's willfulness in the way of his mercy towards them, as you most incoherently discourse, as if you were in potting verses, rather then upon meditating a coherent and methodical course of argumentation: yet the maxim here mentioned, though brought in with some state of self conceit, is very preposterously contrived by you. We commonly say, a reasonable creature cannot be impeccabilis per naturam, uncapable of sin by nature; he may be impeccabilis per gratiam, uncapable of sin by grace, as the elect Angels are, elect men shall be in the state of glory: but of being so some while after the creation, and not immediately from the creation; of being so absolutely, and of being so not absolutely, I know no sobriety in these conceits, neither do I think you have any authority to countenance them. The Son of God I doubt not but you will confess that he was impeccabilis from the first: So might Angels have been, so might men have been by grace, had it so pleased God to make them; I see no reason to the contrary; yet had not this been absolutely impeccable, but merely upon the supposition of the will of God. Such is the impeccability of the elect Angels at this present, such shall be ours in the world to come. God indeed without supposition, & out of his own absoluteness is no way obnoxious unto sin: If Angels are, or we at any time shall be free from this obnoxious condition, it is and shall be by the mere will and good pleasure of God; whereby yet I mean not to exclude all second causes in the way of God's glorious qualification of our natures: And therefore it is an idle discourse to say that God intended to make us happy after a certain manner, to wit, by way of reward of our obedience; therefore he could not make us immutable at first. For thus to discourse, is to profess that God could make them so upon supposition, to wit, upon supposition of such an end as was incompatible with their impeccability. And this is not to prove that God could not make them absolutely impeccable, but to prove that God could not make them impeccable only upon a certain supposition. Such is the miserable incongruity of your miscellaneous discourse. If to decline to evil, implies no contradiction but only to omnipotent being, then seeing neither the elect Angels for the present have, nor the Saints of God for the time to come, shall have any omnipotent being, it follows that to decline from evil is neither contradictory to the present state of the elect Angels, nor to the future glorified condition of the Saints of God: God is impeccabil • s per naturam, the creatures some are & others shall be impeccabilis per gratiam, & to decline to evil implieth contradiction to them both. To say that to decline to evil is possible to all creatures, is true only in men, in the confirmed Angels tis not true. It was once of them also I confess, but now it is not: It is false for the present of the Saints of God in heaven; it ever was false of the manhood of Christ, which yet was and is a creature, yet i • Christ as man more like to his Creator, then either Angel or any other Saint of God. If restraint of possibility in man to decline from good to evil, doth cause him not to be truly and inherently good, then either Christ as touching his manhood could have sinned, or else he was never truly and inherently good. Further, if the elect Angels from within few days after their creation have continued truly and inherently good, notwithstanding their impeccability, from that time forward, why they should not have been altogether as truly and inherently good, if their impeccability had begun a few days sooner, even with their creation, I see no reason. For did not God make them good, yea truly and inherently good? Surely he did; therefore if immediately they had been impeccable by grace, they had notwithstanding their impeccabilitie continued unto this day truly and inherently good: God's goodness is his happiness, this happiness of his being increate, cannot be communicated unto us subjectively, but objectively only.

Yet there is a goodness created, called God's goodness, because it proceeds from God, which is our happiness of grace, shall be our happiness of glory, not the foundation of it, but it; save that the happiness of grace is the foundation of our happiness of glory, but to this manner of foundation you seem to have no reference.

Neither is there any color of reason to infer as you do, that therefore God's justice and loving kindness did remove all necessity from man's will, because that had utterly extinguished that goodness wherein only it was possible for the creature to express the Creators goodness manifested in creation. And you may as well say, that Christ also might have sinned; for necessity to keep him from sin would have utterly extinguished that goodness, wherein only it was possible for his manhood (being a creature) to express his Creators goodness manifested in his creation and assumption into one person with the Son of God. Nay the truth is, if from the beginning we had been necessarily inclined unto good, we had more lively expressed God's goodness, then now we do being freely good. For God himself is good necessarily, not freely.

It is a senseless speech to say that man's goodness expresseth God's goodness communicative: for man's goodness is the very goodness communicative of God. For God's goodness communicative is no goodness formally in God; but God's formal goodness is uncreate, and therefore incommunicable unto creatures. Therefore it must be goodness create which is God's goodness communicative; and that is the very goodness of man it self. For God is the author of it, in genere causae efficientis. Create in me a new heart, and renew a right spirit within me. And therefore the distinction of the goodness of God communicative, and communicated is very absurd: like as your similitude resembling it to a seal, and the stamp thereof: Only the Son is the image and character of his Father, we are made after the image of God. His goodness increate is that which doth communicate goodness unto us in genere causae efficientis. And our goodness is the work of God's goodness. But no more proportion between them, then is between nature increate, and nature create. But it is your usual course to affect similitudes contrary to all sobriety.

Yet you have found out a proportion between God's goodness and ours: but in as disproportionable a manner as could be invented. For you compare God's working freely with man's being freely, most incongruously. God communicates his goodness freely, that which duly answereth unto this, is man's communicating his goodness freely. But seeing God's being good, is as a being necessarily, if God had made us to be good necessarily, that is impeccable by his grace, herein had we better expressed the manner of his goodness. And if otherwise we could not be like unto God, it follows that the Angels now for many thousand years have not been good like God, because they have been good by necessity, and not freely. So neither God's Saints in heaven are good like God, because they are good by necessity, and not freely. It is untrue which you add, that man could not be confirmed in such goodness as he had, or translated unto everlasting happiness, but by continuing freely good for some space. For Christ was impeccable from the first moment of his conception, yet this never hindered his confirmation in his goodness, or translation to everlasting happiness. And it is a most absurd conceit to say that impeccability should hinder confirmation in that goodness which man had from the beginning, even from the creation. For if God made him good and withal impeccable, how was it possible he should not be confirmed in that good wherein he was created? And yet here you decline to the corrupting of the question, as when you oppose impeccability to the doing of good freely. For I hope yourself will not deny, but that Christ was impeccable, and that what good soever he did, he did it freely: For like as the wicked, in state of nature, cannot but sin in general, that is one way or other; yet because they are not necessitated to any particular sin, therefore there is no particular evil that they do, but they do it freely: In like sort though Christ could not but do good in general, so that whatsoever he did should be good; yet seeing he was not necessitated to any particular good, therefore what good in particular soever he did, did it freely. So do the Angels, so shall we in the kingdom of heaven.

Hitherto under color of consequence, which yet indeed was no tolerable consequence, you did stride very wide from the matter you had in hand, (to wit, of God's obligement in justice to make men taste of the fruits of his mercy, after their willful contemning of it) into an aliene matter far removed, touching impeccability.

Now you seem to return to your former discourse, but in such a manner, as if you meant utterly to overthrow it: for here you give us to understand, that so long as man doth less evil then he might do, he may be confirmed in goodness, and translated unto happiness. Now I pray, as bad as the Sodomites were, yet were they not less evil then they might be? For if God had suffered them longer, and left them destitute of his grace, had they not profited in pejus, growing worse and worse? And yet I confess hereupon to be confirmed in no better goodness then they had, had not been much, seeing this their goodness had been never a whit: but you say not only this, that they that do less evil then they might, may hereupon not only be confirmed in that goodness which they have (which may be very far off from any goodness at all) but also translated to everlasting happiness. Since man's fall (you say) we are not capable of mercy, but by free abstinence from some evils.

Now I demand whether this free abstinence from some evils, be of grace or no? If of grace, whether this grace be not a fruit of mercy? If so, then it appears that before we abstain from any evil, we are capable of mercy, thereby to obtain grace, to abstain from evil.

I know no state that makes a man uncapable of mercy in this life, but only the state of sinning against the holy Ghost. I do not like your distinction of doing good, and doing it naughtily; for, whatsoever we do naughtily, therein we cannot be said to do good, but evil rather: for therein we sin, and in sinning we do not any good, but evil rather. Yet I confess, we may be said to do good imperfectly, but not naughtily in my judgment. Though we do both less evil, and the good that we do less naughtily then possibly we might do, God still you say diminisheth the riches of his bounty towards us. I profess at first sight, I took this to be a notorious untruth, but when I considered a claw of your sentence, which is this, less evil then possibly we might do. I reverse my judgment, and find it to be a most vulgar and despicable conceit, though in the way of truth. For the contrary proposition to your supposition is a thing impossible. For how is it possible that a man can do at once all the evil that he can do? Now if he doth not do all the evil that possibly he can do, there is some comfort in your paramutheticall contemplations, and he need not fear lest God proceed to diminish the riches of his bounty towards him. And so might the Sodomites comfort themselves at the worst, for certainly they had not done all the evil that possibly they might do. Now it was well worth the having, to hear you explain unto us, what you understand by the influence of God's gracious providence, which you say God restrains, and by restraining suffers men to fall from one wickedness to another, suffering the reins of our unruly appetites to be given into our u • ieldie hands. Here be good phrases, which if you would be pleased to interpret unto us in plain terms, I doubt not but we should find good matter to work upon.

But to the comfort of all profane persons be it spoken, God doth never deal thus with any by your computation, but such as have done as much evil as possibly they can do. To be capable of well doing is to be capable of God's mercy, and you have already told us to our comfort, that to do less evil then possibly we can do, doth make us capable of God's mercy; yet here you say, this cannot be done without God's love and favor. Now to my judgment, no person is so profane or impious, but that he doth less evil then possibly he might do; whence it followeth, that to this state of impiety considered as less then possibly might be, he is arrived through the love and favor of God. Yet what you mean by the love and favor of God I know not, and throughout I find cause to doubt, that you mean nothing less then to advance the honor of God's grace, but only your scope to advance the power of man's free will.

And I wonder you consider not how you enterfare, and cross your own shinnes in your discourse, when you conceive the love and favor of God as a means to make us capable of the mercy of God; you might as well say, that the mercy of God makes us capable of his mercy: for love and favor shown unto him that is in misery, is in the way of mercy. So when you make a great difference between withdrawing a man's self from the extremities of mischief, and the doing of such good as may make a man capable of well doing, you contradict yourself: for to do less evil then possibly might be, what is it other, then to withdraw from extremities of mischief? yet that is enough to make a man capable of well doing, as you have signified in this very page more then once, as namely, both in the first sentence, and in the third, yet this is wild enough to say, A man must do good to make himself capable of well doing. By the sentence following it seems that this good that is to be done to make us capable of well doing, is to repent, and this you say cannot be done without the attractions of infinite love; yet usually you make a work of nature to be a preparation to grace, and sometimes you call that work of nature humility, sometimes the doing of less evil then we might do. And what you mean by the attractions of infinite love, I know not, for you make it incident to men without the Church, who are not so much as drawn hereunto by the word, so that, as it seems, it can be no other then God's patience in sparing them, and so leading them to repentance, that you mean in this place.

Yet see into what absurdity of conceit you cast yourself, while you make show to honor the grace of God; as namely, when you say, since Adams fall, our love to sinful pleasures is so strong, that we cannot repent without the infinite attractions of love, implying thereby that before Adams fall, we could repent without infinite attractions of love. But I pray consider, what need was there of repentance before Adams fall? Yet such obedience as then was congruous to innocent and und • filed nature, could he perform without special grace? Yes you think he could: this is a bit you can swallow easily, and digest with as great facility.

And so belike your opinion is of the Angels, to wit, that the good Angels stood by the mere freedom of their own wills, having no other adjutorium gratiae then the reprobate Angels had: directly against Austin de Civitate Dei, l. 12. c. 9. You begin to discover the mystery of your meaning, when you say, that Many whom this infinite love doth daily embrace, because they apprehend not it, are never brought by the attractions of it, to true repentance. So then the attractions of God's infinite love are the causa sine qua non, but what is the cause, qua posita ponitur effectus? O this is our apprehending of it. And I pray what style do the learned give to that causa sine qua non? do they not commonly account it causam fatuam? So then you make show to magnify the attractions of God's love, and the efficacy thereof, but tis only in a fatuous manner, and you make but a fatuous efficacy thereof: but man's will alone, in the apprehending of it, hath the true efficacy of repentance in the course of your Divinity. Now I pray what is this love you speak of, and what manner of attraction is it, and wherein doth it consist? and how are we said to apprehend it? and wherein doth that consist? By the place alleged out of Rom. 2. 4. you signify that this love of God is no other then that goodness whereby he leadeth unto repentance, and that goodness there mentioned seems to be no other then God's forbearance and long suffering. Call you this the attractions of his infinite love? Yet notwithstanding Austin was bold to profess, Quantamlibet praebuerit patientiam nis • Deus dederit quis aget poenitentiam? Though God affords never so much patience, yet who shall repent except God gives repentance? your present discourse preacheth unto us another doctrine, to this effect; Quantamlibet praebuerit patientiam nisi homo apprehenderit quis aget poenitentiam? Though God affords never so much patience, yet who shall repent except he apprehends it? And I pray what is it to apprehend God's patience, or his leading of us to repentance by his goodness and patience? Can it be anything else then the taking of the opportunity offered, and to repent indeed?

So then your meaning is this in plain terms, Many whom this infinite love of God doth embrace, (to wit, in leading them by his goodness and patience unto repentance) yet are never brought by the attraction of it to true repentance, and all because they do not apprehend it, that is, because they do not repent.

Is not this issue of your discourse very grave and Theological? yet when you say the reason why by this love they are not brought to repentance, is because they do not apprehend it, you seem to imply that they may apprehend it if they will. Yet because the Text alleged by you is expressly against this, therefore you are contont to nick your former assertion your self, with a cross blow, that so yourself may have the first credit of contradicting and confuting yourself, as when you say, of whom speaks he thus, of sueh only as truly repent? A mad question as ever was proposed, as if there were any color that the Apostle should say of them that repent, that they despise the riches of God's goodness, leading them to repentance; yet that you may have some matter to work upon, having erected an enemy of straw, you foil him most valiantly, by answering, Nay, but of them who for hardness of heart cannot repent. Not considering how fondly herein you contradict yourself. Nay by the way I note an aknowledgement of yours, to wit, that a man may despise the goodness of God leading him to repentance, though through the hardness of his heart he cannot repent at all.

4. You demand in the next place, whether the riches of God's bounty were feigned, or whether he did only profer, but not purpose to draw them to repentance which repented not? I answer, it was not feigned, neither do I find anything that he proffered at all in this passage of the Apostles. But that this is a mere fiction of yours, ut recto stet fabula talo, and that he did truly draw them to repentance; but how? as by patience and longsuffering he may be said to draw them, and no other goodness of God drawing them to repentance is mentioned in this place. Like as opportunity is said to draw and invite men to the doing of something in season.

In like sort the judgments of God invite unto repentance, the mercies of God provoke unto▪ obedience, to thankfulness. But yet Austin was bold to say, Quantamlibet praebuerit patientiam nisi Deus dederit, quis aget poenitentiam? So that this is a tacit exhortation and invitation to repentance by God's works. And much inferior to the power of the exhortations of his word: yet God doth exhort by the ministry of his word, many whose hearts notwithstanding he hardeneth. As is apparent in sending unto Pharaoh, and commanding him to let Israel go; yet withal made known to Moses, that he would harden Pharaohs heart, that he should not let Israel go.

And dare you profess this course of his, so plainly testified in holy Scripture, to be no part of God's protection, no fruit of that wisdom which is from above, but a point of earthly policy devoid of honesty, a mere trick of worldly wit, to whose practice nothing but weakness and impotency to accomplish great designs, can misin • line man's corrupted nature? And the truth is, in this course of God nothing is proffered at all, but only something suspended, to wit, the execution of just vengeance. In his word something is proffered, but what is that? Not repentance, as you misconceive, that rather is required and commanded only upon repentance, remission of sins, and salvation is proffered. And if repentance were proffered, I pray upon what terms? you will say, in case they would apprehend it. This have I already shown to be all one, as if you should say, In case they did repent; and of the sobriety hereof let any man judge.

Again, you profess that this is proffered to such men as through the hardness of their hearts cannot repent, and judge whether the same incongruities which you charge upon our Tenet, are upon any other ground then this, and while you maintain this, whether they do not reflect upon your Tenet also.

Now on the contrary, whereas we object against you, that if God willeth, and so ardently as you speak, that all men should repent and be saved, how comes it to pass that they do not repent? Considering that the Apostle professeth that God's will cannot be resisted, and that it manifestly implies an impotency or weakness in God, in not being able to bring to pass what he so ardently desires. Now to the latter objection of these, you answer, by denial that it implieth any such impotency in God; yet Austin long ago did acknowledge this consequence, Enchirid. 96. Deo quam facile est quod vult facere, tam facile est quod non vult esse non sinere. Hoc nisi credamus, periclitatur, ipsum nostrae fidei confessionis initium, qua consitemur in Deum Patrem omnipotentem credere. Neque veraciter ob aliud vocatur omnipotence, nisi quia quicquid vult potest; nec voluntate cujusquam creaturae, voluntatis omnipotentis, impeditur effectus. Et cap. 27. In caelo & in terra non quaedam voluit & fecit: quaedam vero voluit & non fecit, sed omnia quaecunque voluit fecit. Et cap. 98. Quis porro tam impii desipiat ut dicat Deum malas hominum voluntates quas voluerit, quando voluerit, ubi voluerit, in bonum non posse convertere.

And whereas you say, that man is not capable of endless joys, unless he will be wrought by mere love, without the impulsions of unresistible power to love him, to love God, the same infinite love which draws him unto repentance in congruity leaving a possibility not to be drawn by it: This is a notorious untruth. For was there any possibility in Christ to sin, or not to be drawn to that which was good? I think you will not avouch it: And was he not therefore capable of endless joys? And if God's will be unresistible, as the Apostle plainly testifieth, shall not the operation whereby his will is accomplished, be irresistible? And shall such a bug-bear deter us from acknowledging God to be the author of repentance? and move us to give the glory thereof to the will of man, who through the hardness of his heart cannot repent, as the Apostle speaketh.

Again, the Scripture testifieth that whatsoever God willeth, that he doth both in heaven and earth; whether it be by power resistible or unresistible is nothing to the purpose. But you maintain, that what God ardently willeth, is not brought to pass, by reason that man willeth not. Neither do w • e maintain, that God in working whom he will unto repentance, doth do this by bereaving man of power to resist, (which alone denominates the operation of God irresistible) but only by taking away the will of resisting, while ex nolentibus volentes facit. And consequently we say not, that God takes away all possibility of refusing to be drawn by it. For we maintain that God brings to pass contingent things contingently, that is, with a possibility to the contrary; though supposing God's will to the contrary, this possibility shall not be actuated. And so when God works a man to faith and to repentance, nullum humanum resistit arbitrium, No man's will resists; and that the grace which God gives, a nullo duro cord respuitur, is refused by no hard heart. So that all this is done without all coaction. For neither can the will be constrained, and God in making men volentes ex nolentibus, cannot without great absurdity be said to contstrain them, as you would fain insinuate, having no sound argument for it, but such poor tricks to serve your turn withal.

And when God promiseth to circumcise the hearts of his people, and thereby to make them love the Lord their God with all their heart, and with all their soul, he doth not say he will contstrain them to repent, Deut. 30. 6. So when he promiseth to take away their stony heart, and give them an heart of flesh, and put his own Spirit within them, and cause them to walk in his statutes and judgments, and to do them, Ezech. 36. 27. he doth not signify that he will contstrain them. For God can change any man's will without constraining. Nay in making them willing, it is contradiction to say he doth contstrain them to be willing: for constraint is against the will: but it is impossible a man should be willing against his will; yet this you obtrude upon your adversaries, as though they maintained that God by his power did make them repent against their wills.

Neither yet can we like that other extreme which you approve, that men must first be brought to a willingness, and then God makes them repent. For to will to repent, is to repent; for repentance is the very change of the will. Neither can you in any sober manner expound unto us, how God is said to make men repent after they are made willing hereunto. And yet the very will to repent is the work of God, as who it is that worketh in us both the will and the deed, according to his good pleasure, Philip. 2. 13. not by such attractions only you speak of, though you are loath to betray your Pelagian Tenet, though you express the threatening of judgment and thereby imply what you mean by attraction of love, to wit, the promises of reward.

Now this apparently is not to work it: for this is only suadere, and suadere is not to work it. And the case is clear, even by your opinion, that God doth not work it, as oft as he doth exhort unto it, which yet he should, if suadere and hortari thereunto were to work it. And indeed suadere & hortari ut resipiscamus; is only to exhort and persuade, that we would work ourselves unto repentance: And in this sense to interpret S. Paul, where he saith, God works in us both the will and the deed, according to his good pleasure, was of old the practice of the Pelagians, as S. Austin hath discovered long ago, de grat. Christi cont. Pelag. & Calest. cap. 10. For thus Pelagius plaid the commentator upon S. Paul: Operatur in nobis velle quod bonum est, velle quod sanctum est, dum nos terrenis cupiditatibus deditos mutorum more animalium tantummodo praesentia diligentes, futurae gloriae magnitudine & praemiorum pollicitatione succendit; dum revelatione sapientiae in desiderium sui stupentem suscitat voluntatem; dum nobis suadet omne quod bonum est. And therefore he urgeth Pelagius to confess another manner of grace then this, if he will be accounted a Christian: Ibid cap. 11. Nos eam gratiam volumus isti aliquando fateantur, qua futurae gloriae magnitudo non solum promittitur, verumetiam creditor us speratur. Nec solum revelatur sapientia verumetiam & amatur, nec suadetur solum omne quod bonum est, sed & persuadetur: han • debet Pelagius gratiam consiteri, si vult non modo vocari, sed & esse Christianus.

And thus to circumcise our hearts in causing us to love him, and to walk in his ways, and to keep his statutes and judgments, and to do them; this I hope is not to strangle us, yet here is no violent operation in all this. For, Dum non mod • versas à vera side, sed adversas verae fidei voluntates convertit & ex volentibus nolentes facit: it is so far from violence, that the will rejoiceth that God hath thus reformed it; we do but as Scriptures teach, when we make the work of faith a work of power, 2 Thess. 1. And shall not the raising of men from the dead be a work of power? and is not the work of grace such a work, Eph. 2. 2?

But you do ill, under color of magnifying the love of God, to dishonor both his love and his power; his love, in confining it only to promises, and threatenings, as if by these operations alone he moved us unto repentance; his power, in denying that God brings to pass those things which he desires to bring to pass, and that ardently. And this latter is Austin's objection as well as ours; and he makes the former to be mere Pelagianism, as well'l as we do.

In the next place you tell us, We are to believe that God's infinite power shall effect all things possible for them that love him; but constrains no man's will to love him. But doth he make man's will to love him without constraint? why did you not express your mind on this point? you are willing to acknowledge God to be the author of glory; but I do not find you so ready to acknowledge God to be the author of all goodness, the author and finisher of our faith, of our repentance, of our obedience. Did you acknowledge this, there should be no difference between us. For we do not affirm that he works faith and repentance in us, by way of constraint. And when the Apostle prayeth that God would work in the Hebrews, that which was pleasing in his sight; you shall never find in any of our Divines, that the meaning of the Apostles prayer was, that he would contstrain them to do that which is good and acceptable in the sight of God: I know no power in God but infinite, and seeing what work soever he works, is by the exercise of his power, it cannot be denied, but that it is the exercise of that power which is infinite.

Again, is man or Angel able to circumcise our hearts, so as to make us to love the Lord our God with all our hearts; It is not, as I presume you will confess; why then shall not this work of God's love in circumcising our hearts, and making us to love him, be accounted a work of power infinite? And Austin divers times professeth, that God doth convert our hearts, omnipotenti facilitate, by an almighty facility, and when God regenerates us he quickeneth us and raiseth us from death to life, Eph. 2. 2. and is said to transform, us as it were of beasts to make us become men, Isaiah 9. and how can this be wrought by less then power infinite, as when Bernard confesseth of God saying, Bern • n circumcise. Dom. Serm. 2. Numquid non vere admirabilem experti sumus in imitatione utique voluntatum nostrarum. As for God's power to the immediate parent of our love to God, it is no article of our Creed, but a trick of yours to insinuate anything on your adversaries part that may make your own cause seem plausible: we rather conceive God's grace and mercy to be the immediate cause of the circumcision of our hearts, whereby we are brought to love him. Neither do we say, that he works in us the love of himself immediately, but rather by faith brings us first acquainted with the love of God towards us, according to that of John, 1 John. 3. 19. We love him, because he loved us first; and to that of S. Paul, The end of the Law is love out of a pure heart and good conscience, and faith unfeigned, 1 Tim. 1. 5. No other seed of our love to God, do I acknowledge to be sown in our soul.

Yet I doubt you refer this to a seed of nature, and not to a seed of grace, though you do not affect to manifest your meaning so plainly, as it were fit you should. And no marvel. For they which do evil hate the light. As for constraint; we hold that infinite power cannot so work the will: Bodies may be constrained to suffer the execution of men's lusts upon them, and may justly breed loathing in the parties so constrained.

As for the will, that non potest cogi, cannot be constrained: And I wonder you that take notice of so many choice points of philosophy and divinity, whereof others do not, should not all this while take notice of so popular a Maxim as this: though I confess your taking notice of it in this place had marred your game; for the furthering whereof you are content to obtrude upon your adversaries so unreasonable a conceit, as if they maintained, that the will of man may be constrained: yet suppose the will were constrained by God to love him, would this breed in God a loathing of him? Thus the foul and uncivil resemblance you make transports you. Yet I have read, My soul loathed them, and their soul abhorred me: but I never heard the contrary, My soul loathed them, and their soul loved me: for while we abhor God, as enemies unto him, yet notwithstanding even then he loved us, Rom. 5. 8. how much more when we love, will he continue to love us, and not turn his love into loathing; as men's lusts turn into loathing sometimes, as being satisfied, and disdaining to be scorned by them, whose bodies though they could force to be subject to their lusts, yet could not win their loves.

But God never makes us unwillingly to love him (it is a thing impossible) but as Augustine saith, Ex nolentibus volentes facit. It is true, God loves a cheerful giver, but who makes this cheerfulness but God? and whose works is it fit he should love but his own? Like as it is said of him, that Cor • nat non merit a nostra sed donasua, he crowns not our works, but his own: And where there is a willing mind, there it is accepted, not according to that which a man hath not, but to that which he hath: but whose work is this willing mind? Is it not God that worketh in us both the will and the deed? And that God doth not wrest any obedience from us, but makes us willing, and ready, and cheerful in the performing of it, not only in the way of doing what he commandeth, but in suffering what he inflicteth, or permitteth the sins of others to inflict upon us. In so much that the Apostles rejoiced that they were accounted worthy to suffer for the name of Christ. And if a father prevail to work his child to dutifulness, though with much a do, yet in the end masters his stubbornness, will he love his child, or his obedience, or dutifulness the worse for this: yet God more effectually, and with a great deal more case changeth our hearts, even omnipotent facilitate, as Augustine speaketh, and shall he love our obedience, our thankfulness, our repentance the less for this?

5 Now we are like to receive something concerning the main problem, to wit, In what sense God may be said to do all that he can for his vineyard: All this while you have been as it were in trimming your instrument, and it seems not to be yet in tune: the first music is so harsh, and without all harmony, I cannot devise a construction thereof to carry any tolerable sense. But the sentence following seems to be of the same nature: where you call that Revenue, which before you called Charge very incongruously, as if a man's revenues were a burden unto him, whereof he did exonorate himself. Or if it be spoken of Bursers accounts in Colleges, the incomes are not to them that are charged, and put to exonerate themselves, but to the Colleges; this at the best is but a gamboll, lets come to the naked truth. Though man's love to his dearest friend, be in respect of God's love to us, but saint, and his power small, yet because his love to justice is much less, he • ofttimes effects that for his temporal good, which God, though infinite in power doth not effect for those whom he infinitely loves. I think I may be bold to say that this is infinitely false: God loved Jacob, and hated Esau: now all whom God hates as he hated Esau, he damns; and all those whom he loves as he loved Jacob, he saves; yet this love was but infinite: and what love of man or Angel, vicious or virtuous, can effect the like? Yet God blessed both Esau and Ishmael with temporal blessings; and what friend by good courses or lewd courses was able to equal it? what creature can equal that temporal good that God affords to any reprobate? for he gives him his being and all that he enjoys; nay, what man or Angel can do ought for him, in the effecting whereof, God hath not a greater hand then the man or Angel himself? Yet you suppose that God infinitely loves the very reprobates. It is familiar with you to suppose, that God loved Esau, and that infinitely, of whom the Scripture professeth, that God hated him. Your suppositions are fat and well fed, but your arguments are more lean and ill favored then the lean kine of Pharaoh.

Yet I will be content to help you a little in the way of argument: God's love, saith Aquinas, is in respect of designing some good to his creature; now God doth will temporal good to the very reprobates, and that in such a manner as cannot be supplied unto them but by power infinite.

In no other sense do I find, that it may be tolerably avouched, that God loves them infinitely, though you are pleased to suppose it often.

It is untrue, that his grants made to man, must undergo the examination of justice; for it is law full for him to do what he will with his own, to bestow being, and gracious being, and consequently glorious being on whom he will; for both grace and glory is executed on man in the way of mercy, and he hath mercy on whom he will. And though he hath revealed unto us by what rules he will proceed in pronouncing the sentence of salvation, or condemnation, yet hath he revealed unto us no rules, according whereunto he proceedeth in giving grace unto some, and denying grace unto others. And both Suarez and Vasquez (though opposite in other points about the justice of God) concurrently profess, that there is no justice in God towards man, but upon presuposition of his will.

And those unchangeable rules you speak of, for confining God in the execution of his power, according to his gracious will, are like Castles in the air that have no foundations, and fit for nothing but to discover the new world in the Moon, and to ease the man there of his burden, that travelled so long with a bush at his back: God may convert whom he will, and consequently save whom he will, as the Holy Ghost teacheth us; this is no fiction, Quis porro, saith Augustine, tam impie desipiat ut dicat Deum malas hominum voluntates, quas voluerit, quando voluerit, ubi voluerit, in bonum non posse convertere? Who doth so impiously doat as to say, that God cannot convert the evil wills of men, whom he will, when he will, and where he will. Yet you say as much as this comes to, when you tell us of unchangeable rules of justice, restraining God from converting and changing the hearts of men, without all fear of imputation, either of dotage or impiety: God you say loves justice more then mankind: God loves himself better then he loves mankind, or all his creatures; for he made all things for himself, Prov. 16. 4. But as for any justice in God that limits his will, I know none, neither are you able to prove any as I am verily persuaded. What you have hitherto delivered, I think I have not suffered in any material part to pass unsaluted, unanswered.

CHAP. XVII.

I Would your propositions were only paradoxes; but indeed, we have weighed them in the balance, and found them plain untruths; yet what those propositions are which you intimate when you say, These are no paradoxes, but plain truth, I am to seek; neither can I tell whereto to refer it, but to a point which you aim at and insinuate rather then express, as if you feared plain dealing most. For, that which you undertook to show in the former Chapter, was only this, In what sense God may be said to have done all that he could do for his vineyard: yet your ensuing discourse throughout hath very little correspondency thereunto. But the point you aim at is to persuade, that God doth all that he could do for all reprobates, and that he doth as much for them as for his elect, and the difference between the elect and reprobates, ariseth rather from their free wills, then from any different dispensation of God's providence, in giving that grace unto the one which he denies unto the other. A most foul opinion, and therefore no marvel if you are content to travail long in the delivery of such a monster, and seem to desire that your Readers forwardness in understanding your meaning, should deliver you thereof, and if his propitious affections should be as ready to embrace it upon your weak suggestions, the whole business shall be very preposterously carried.

Yet unless this conceit of yours be admitted, you tell us, We shall hardly find any true sense or good meaning in God's protestations of sorrows for his people's plagues, or in his expostulations of their unthankfulness, or in his kind invitations of them to repentance which never repent, or in his tender profer of salvation to those that perish.

Whensoever you shall charge us with any of these like places; if a true sense and good meaning of them shall be found by us, though hardly, without the acknowledgment of your foul Tenets, we shall not fail to obtain wherewithal to answer you.

Certainly, sorrow is not incident to God, no not for the plagues of his elect, and therefore cannot be attributed unto him but, per 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , by conformity to the nature of man. Sorrow may be incident unto Christ, for he was man as well as God; and so man is subject to the law of God, which commands us to love our neighbor as our self, and who is to be accounted our neighbor, himself hath taught us in the parable of a certain man that descended from Jerusalem to Jericho, by the way as he went fell into the hands of thieves; and a fruit of this love is well known to be compassion, whereby we rejoice with them that rejoice, and weep with them that weep; yea, weep for them who weep not for themselves.

And yet it is very strange to infer, that because God's sorrows for his people's plagues, doth infer that he hath done all that he can for his people, therefore God hath done all that he can do for them that perish. Or, because God doth expostulate with his people for their unthankfulness, therefore he doth all he can do for the salvation not only of his people, but of them that perish also. But it is true, in the ministry of the word, he invites them to repentance that do not repent.

And it is as true, that if this be required to the doing of all that he can do for the salvation of them that perish, then many thousands perish, for whose salvation God doth not all he can do. For many thousands have perished that never enjoyed the ministry of the word to bring them to repentance. They indeed that live within the precincts of God's sanctuary enjoy this benefit, though many thousands of them perish. Neither doth it follow, that because God invites them to repentance, he doth all he can do for their salvation: For if it pleased him, he could not only invite them to repentance, but give them repentance, 2 Tim. 2. last, and Act. 5. 35. and Act. 11. and the 18. And as Augustine saith, Quantamlibot Deus praebuerit patientiam, nisi Deus dederit quis aget poenitentiam; so may I say, Quantumlibet Deus invitaverit ad rescipiscendum nisi Deus dederit quis aget poenitentiam. And as Augustine in the same place professeth of such as God hath not predestinate, whether out of the Church or in the Church, Istarum neminem adducit Deus ad salubrem spiritualem{que} poenitentiam, qua homo reconciliatur Deo in Christo, sive illud ampliorem patientiam, sive non imparem praebeat.

And consequently though he profereth salvation upon condition of faith and repentance (for no otherwise doth he profer it to any) unto some of those that perish; yet herehence it followeth not, First that he profereth this unto all that perish; or secondly, in proffering it to any that perish, he doth all that he could do for the salvation of them that perish, as when he saith, Esa. 65. 2. I have spread out my hands all the day long unto a rebellious people which walk in a way that was not good; and herehence it followeth not, that he did all that he could do for their salvation: For this signifieth only his invitation of them, and readiness to embrace them upon their repentance, and complaint of the hardness of their heart in not repenting.

But God could do more then this, he could take away their stony heart, and give them an heart of flesh, and put his own Spirit within them, and cause them towalke in his statutes, and to do them, Ezech. 36. 27. And therefore it is a very vain discourse of yours, when you say, The unremovable rules of eternal equity, will not suffer him to stretch out his hand any further then he doth towards the sons of men: for it is apparent that he doth stretch them further, to as many as in the course of his loving kindness he doth convert; and thus far he doth stretch them out to as many as he transports into the land of promise, as yourself confess.

But whereas you say, The measure of their iniquity being accomplished, is an obstacle to God, as whom his justice in this case will not suffer to stretch them out so far any longer; this is one of the articles of your creed, besides all text of Scripture, or Christian reason: for God calls some even at the last hour of the day, as the Gospel preacheth in the parable of the laborers hired into the vineyard, end in the example of the thief upon the cross, & the example of the Apostle, 2 Tim. 2. sc. 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , if at any time God may give them repentance: and the ancient saying is, inter pontem & fontem. And S. Augustine counts it impiety and madness to think otherwise, Enchir. 98. Quis porro tam impie desipiat ut dicat Deum malas hominum voluntates quas voluerit, quando voluerit, ubi voluerit, in bonum non posse convertere? And the order of our Church in visiting the sick doth justify this, in urging us to visit all, to invite all to repentance, even to the last gasp. saving that indeed no man's iniquity is at full till his death, and after death no calling to repentance; for the wicked immediately upon their death are carried into hell, as Dives was; and, Ex inferno nulla redemptio, out of hell no redemption. At you say, that with sorrow he doth withdraw his hands, so you may with as good sobriety say, that with soraow he doth punish the reprobate men and Angels with eternal fire, and directly contrary to Scripture phrase, Prov. 1. 24. Because I have called and you refused: I have stretched out mine hand and none will regard: 26. I will also laugh at your destruction, and mock when your fear cometh.

As for the love of God in stretching out his hands, I deny it not, because to stretch out his hands in inviting unto repentance, is a special favor which God denies to many thousands, and such as whereby many a reprobate may and doth profit, ad exteriorem vitae emendationem quo mitiùs puniantur, to an outward emendation of their lives, that they may be punished more mildly.

But you make this love to reprobates equal to the love of God towards his elect; for you maintain, that God doth as much as he can do for the salvation of the reprobates. And it it apparent, he doth no more for the salvation of his elect. Now this is an abominable opinion. And the stranger is God's mercy in electing you (whereof as I have read in some of your writings you make no doubt) when you think you are not bound to render him more thanks for his goodness towards you then a reprobate is: but though yet you do not, you may do ere you die, and be pulled out of this abominable opinion of yours, as out of the fire with fear. For as Paul was a chosen vessel of God, though for a while he persecuted the truth of God, even unto blood, so may you be not withstanding your impugning of it, though in a milder manner I confess: for your impugnation is not like to do any great harm save only to yourself.

Our Savior was the Son of man as well as he was the Son of God, and made under the law, and therefore was bound to be as compassionate to his people as Jeremiah was, Ier. 13. 17. But if you will not hear this, my soul shall weep in secret for your pride, and mine eye shall weep and drop down tears, because the Lord's slock is carried away captive: So our Savior wept over Jerusalem, saying, If thou hadst known even then a • the least in this thy day the things which belong unto thy peace, but now they are hid from thine eyes. Luk. 19. 42. You ask, whether he spake this as man, or whether the spirit doth not say the same? and I ask whether your wits were your own when you made such a question? Who could weep and speak but man, and how could man weep or speak this but as man? Hath God any heart to be filled with woe, or eyes to be filled with tears? yet the Spirit moved him to speak this.

So if any Prophet had said it, as he might have said it, the Spirit of God had moved him hereunto. And when Jeremiah said, My soul shall weep in secret for your pride, and mine eye shall drop down tears, the Spirit of God moved him to utter this, for, Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the holy Ghost, 2 Pet. 1. 21. The truth is, the words are congruous to him, both as God, and as man, but the sorrow of heart, and tears of eyes wherewith it was uttered, are only agreeable to the nature of man.

How do you prove, that he that spake this, spake nothing but words of Spirit and life; because our Savior saith, John. 6. 63 It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing, the words that I speak unto you are spirit and life: will it therefore follow that all that he spake was spirit and life? Suppose it were so, would it herehence follow, that these words were not spoken by him as man? Then belike, when he said I thirst, this also being words of Spirit and life (as it needs must if all that he spake were spirit and life) he spake not this as man likewise when he said, My soul is heavy unto death, and on the cross, My God my God why hast thou forsaken me, these words were not his words as he was man: and though he spake nothing, but what the Father gave him in commandment to speak, yet herehence it followeth not, that therefore he spake them not as man. For by just proportion of reason, if this were admitted, it would follow, that he spake nothing as man; no not that, I have desired to eat this Passover with you; nor that, How was it that he sought after me, wist he not that I must go about my Fathers business? nor that, My Father is greater then I,

It is true, His bowels of compassion were freely extended towards them in exact conformity, not so much to the love of God (as you discourse at pleasure, according to your own extravagant conceits of the love of God, equally extended to the elect and reprobate) as to the will of God: for, being made under the law, he was bound to the like compassion & commiseration, as to pray for his persecutors, so to mourn for the judgments of God upon his brethren, according to the flesh: yet one word by the way concerning this, Was the measure of Jerusalem's iniquity at this time filled up, or no? It seems it should be so in your computation; for now its said, The things that belonged unto their peace, were now hid from their eyes; When should the door of repentance be shut upon them, if not at such a time, and in such a case as this? If so, then by your own doctrine, God's love ceaseth towards them, as but in the former sentence you signified; & consequently Christ's love and compassion should cease also, if it were but in conformity to God's love; but rather it was in conformity to God's law, as I have shown; God the Father having made him in subjection to the law, and consequently was he bound to mourn for them, as well as to pray for them: for he was by virtue of the law to love his neighbor as himself. This incongruity (as it seems) of yours you observed, and therefore as I guess, you added, that his bowels of compassion were restrained also, by the same conformity, and though you tell us, that from different motions and distractions, occasioned from the indissolvable union of his divisible soul (this is your own language) with these two attributes of the indivisible nature (to wit, love and justice) his tears were squeized out.

Yet neither do you tell us how his bowels of compassion were restrained, or wherein; neither do you make known unto us what these different motions and distractions in our Savior were: Neither doth the story of the Gospel afford us any discovery of any such different motions & distractions you talk of: But to the end he continued in his bowels of compassion towards them, as it appears by his prayers for them upon the cross: for indeed, his first coming was not to condemn the world, but to save the world. But in the Old Testament, God himself, as God, expresseth his desires of his people's obedience; O that my people had hearkened unto me. This you will have to be understood in proper speech: Piscator by a figure of speech, Talis optatio, saith he, Deotribuitur per anthropopathiam. Utri creditis. With Piscator concurreth Junius also. And we have reason for it, because whatsoever God wills, that brings he to pass both in heaven and earth; how much more what he desires, and that ardently. Yet you keep your course contrary to reason and authority, in attributing desires unto God, of such things which never come to pass, which Augustine long ago professed to be all one with the denying of God's omnipotency.

And not content with this, you most ridiculously contradict yourself, and call it also an unquenchable desire, whereas yourself have often professed, that the filling up the measure of man's iniquity doth quench this desire in God; thereby making God not only impotent, but mutable also.

Israel might have truly said, Was there ever any love like unto this love wherewith the Lord embraced me? But what Israel? even the true Israel of God we say: but the true Israel of God cannot say so, the elect of God cannot say so according to your Tenet, for as much as you make the love of God towards reprobates to be as great as the love of God towards the elect, yet as if you strained your words, you call it the excessive fervency of his loving kindness, to wit, even towards them that perish: and add by way of Parenthesis, that God's will is infinite, as if you had a mind to infer thereby, that his love towards them were infinite.

Now of God's infinite will I never heard before: his power we say is infinite, because he can do everything that is possible to be done, his knowledge is infinite because he knows all things that may be known, but God doth not will all things that may be willed by him: Nay, his power receives limitation and restriction by his will, as touching the execution thereof; for he doth no more then what he will. Likewise we say God's love is infinite in the way of extension, for it neither had beginning, neither shall it have end. But such is not God's love towards them that perish, for it ceaseth by your doctrine when the measure of their iniquity is filled up: but such as it is, you say, it layeth no necessity upon their wills. A most ridiculous speech, as much as to say, it doth not make men repent necessarily; whereas concerning them that perish, it is apparent that it neither makes them repent necessarily; nor contingently.

And as for the elect, he gives them repentance, which he doth not to the reprobates; as Augustine long ago professed, Istorum neminem adducit Deus ad salubrem spiritualemque poenitentiam qua homo reconciliatur Deo in Christo, sive illis ampliorem patientiam sive non imparem praebeat. Nyither do we say, that to whom God gives repentance, he gives obedience, he makes them to repent necessarily, to obey necessarily, but freely. For it is manifest that grace takes not away the power of disobedience, but only prevents the act of disobedience, and that not in all particulars neither: for the children of God sin too often. And as for those which want this grace which God bestows on his elect, they have not only liberty left them unto sin, but also this liberty turns into willfulness, according to that of Augustine, Libertas sine gratia non est libertas sed contumacia, Liberty without grace is not liberty but willfulness.

But yet we say upon supposition, that God will give any man repentance and that at such a time. that man shall repent at such a time; and tis impossible he should not repent; yet in repenting he shall repent freely, and not necessarily Like as God ordaining Christ's bones should not be broken, upon this supposition it was impossible it should be otherwise, albeit the soldiers abstained from breaking of his bones, not necessarily, but deliberately and freely. It is true the Lord saith, Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it: but his people would not hearken unto his voice.

And now the question is only as touching their obedience, whether God did any otherwise will that, then by commanding it in respect of those that perish; we say he did only command it in respect of such, we say he did not resolve to give them repentance, to give them obedience, though he could have done this, and doth do this unto his elect, making them to pass under the rod, and bringing them under the bond of the covenant, not only seeing their ways, but healing them also; healing their rebellions, and subduing their iniquities, and treading Satan under their feet: opening their eyes, and bringing them out of darkness into light, and from the power of Satan unto God, quickening them when they were dead in trespasses and sins, creating a new heart, and renewing a right spirit within them: Do you but acknowledge this, as you must unless you will renounce the Scriptures, and we will never quarrel with you for saying, God doth all this contingently, and not necessarily.

2 The Apostles move a question to our Savior concerning him that was borne blind, John. 9. whether he had sinned or his fathers, that he was horn blind, this was in respect of judgment corporal, you apply this to a judgment spiritual; that judgment was positive to be bereaved of sight, which in course of nature is otherwise then only permissive, in suffering them to be such as he found them. That was spoken in respect of some not common, but extraordinary sin: for though there be sin common unto all, yet this judgment is not; and therefore they might well think, if sin were the cause, it must be some extraordinary sin, but our Savior signifieth, that it befell him in the course of God's providence, not so much in respect of sin, as in respect of a certain end whereto God had ordained it. But I hope neither the Apostles, nor any sober man would imagine that some extraordinary sin was required unto this, that God should leave men as he finds them, without bestowing some supernatural grace upon them.

And in despite of sin, God doth afford this grace to many thousands: for God hath mercy on whom he will; like as on the other side, in despite of men's civility, and natural morality, whom he will he hardeneth. Yet to the question by you proposed at pleasure you make no answer, but add hereunto out of Ion. 2. 8. They that follow lying vanities forsake their own mercies: as if you had a mind to imply, that there is something in man, that makes a difference, why some are suffered to walk in their own ways, some are not, wherein you do but corrupt the state of the question after your usual manner.

For the question is not about the consequent of lying vanities, or not observing them, but about the observing of lying vanities it self, or not observing them; that is, how cometh it to pass that some are suffered to go on in the course of their lying vanities, some are not, but rather are taken off from those ungodly courses wherein they have been brought up, as many thousands were taken off thus in the Apostles days: we say it is the mere good pleasure of God that puts this difference, having mercy on some, and hardening others; you take another course, as when you say, in your familiar and soliloquiall meditations with God; Never hadst thou given them up to their own hearts lust, to treasure up wrath against the day of wrath, had they not despised the riches of thy bounty: Here you mixe different courses of God together; for when you talk of giving them over to their own hearts lusts, (Which scripture applieth to God's dealing with his own people Israel, upon the despising of his grace, offered them in his word) but the rest, as this also, being accomodated unto the heathens, you seem to refer to the despising of the riches of God's bounty declared to them in his works: for as for the riches of God's bounty declared in his word, the heathen were not partakers of this, until the days of the Gospel: and whereas by the phrase of speech used, you seem to have an eye to that of the Apostle, Rom. 2, 3. 4. the riches of God's bounty in that place is specified only to consist in patience and longsuffering: And how did they refuse it, but in refusing to repent? For the bounty there mentioned is noted to be a bounty leading unto repentance. So that in the issue your meaning comes to this, that God would never have suffered them thus to have walked in their own ways, and to treasure up wrath against the day of wrath, if so be they had repented?

Now the question is, whether they had power to repent or no; you seem to imply they had, but you dare not express so much, because you see how manifestly contradictious that were to the text it self, where it is expressly said, But thou after the hardness of thine heart, which cannot repent, treasurest up wrath against the day of wrath. So that you, what by taking up pieces of Scripture at pleasure, and leaving out pieces as you list, make up a patched coat contrary to the Scripture, which yet you commend unto us as Scripture it self; Nay, what will you say if God did not so much as admonish them to repent? Doth not the same Apostle plainly signify so much, Act. 17. 30. where he saith And God regarded not the time of this ignorance: but now he admonisheth all men everywhere to repent. Again, consider I pray you what is to be accounted the time, when this ceasure deserved to be fastened upon them, namely, of despising the riches of his bounty? It seems by your former discourse, it is not till they have filled up the measure of their iniquity; for till then God's infinite love was towards them (according to your opinion) and he did not give them over to their own lests. Now I pray consider, did he not even afore this time suffer the Gentiles to walk in their own ways, according to the Apostles meaning, Act. 14. 16. although as the same Apostle saith, even at that time, He left not himself without witness, giving them rain and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts with food and gladness.

And this you take hold of in the next place, and tell us, that, these were unquestionable earnests of God's everlasting love, and to prove it you add by way of reason, for thou so lovedst the world, still holding up your deyout Soliloquies, as if you would enchant your Readers with an affected strain of devotion, that thou gavest thine only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish.

If this be not like capping of verses, I do not know what is: for will it follow by any Logical method, that because the giving of Christ for everlasting life to all that believe in him, is an evidence of God's love to all; therefore the giving of rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, is an unquestionable earnest of God's everlasting love to all? Yet I grant it is an evidence of God's love as touching the preservation of their state temporal; but you urge it as an evidence of God's love, as touching the state of their souls spiritual and eternal: otherwise your discourse were nothing to the purpose. Yet to speak according to the Apostles drift in that place, he proposeth them not as witnesses of his love, but as of his providence, which we know extends even to brute beasts, and to the very lilies of the field. Only man is capable of deserving this testimony of divine providence, and so accordingly should be moved to seek the Lord, and to worship him as God, who governs all, and provides for all, and not as a corruptible thing, thus we interpret the Apostle, Act. 14. 16. according to the Apostle, Act. 17. 27. and Rom. 1. 23. and not at random as you do, fashioning his meaning in such a manner as may best accord with your extravagant opinions.

Lastly, who seeth not, that if these be unquestionable earnests of God's love towards them, then notwithstanding they have filled up the measure of their iniquity, yet God's love continueth towards them the same still, and therefore cannot be said to give them over to their own lusts, and to treasure up wrath against the day of wrath. For these and the like temporal blessings they enjoy still, and that in greater measure then is usually the portion of God's own dear children. To conclude this, we make no doubt but that if all and everyone should believe in Christ, all and everyone should be saved by Christ.

But the question is, whether God gives faith to all: it is apparent he doth not, but only to those whom he hath predestinated, Rom. 8. 30. to those whom he hath ordained to everlasting life, Act. 13. 45. to such as shall be saved, Act. 2. last. Perhaps your meaning is, that though God doth not give faith to all, but only to some; the reason is, because some fit themselves for faith, and others do not. And I verily believe this is your opinion, but it seems you are ashamed to profess it and speak it out plainly.

Yet the texts mentioned are directly against you, which confine the giving of faith not to man's disposition, but to God's predestination; like as those other also, Rom. 9. God hath mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth, and it is not of him that willeth, or of him that runs, but of God that showeth mercy: and 2 Tim. 1. 9. the Apostle professeth, that God calleth us, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace.

To the prosecuting of every which place, and making it good against any exceptions that you shall bring, I shall be willing to condescend, so long as God affords me life and opportunity. But as yet you dissemble your Tenet, and play least in sight, and discover your meaning only by insinuation. I know there is no greater argument of God's love, then the giving of his Son, whence it manifestly followeth, that unless God's love to reprobates be as great as his love to his elect, Christ was not given to the reprobates; like as our Savior signifieth, that, He sanctified himself unto his death and passion; not for the world, but for those for whom he prayed, which were partly those whom God had already given him, and partly those who hereafter should believe through their word. Yet I confess you are audacious enough to resist this argument, and openly to profess, that God's love to the reprobate is as great as his love to the elect, which no Arminian was ever yet known to profess: yet you take upon you to prove, that this love was tendered to all.

A strange phrase, which I think was never heard of before, as if love were like an ointment in a box, that might be offered and received if a man would. Of tendering grace I have heard, to wit, the grace of remission of sins and salvation upon our belief, but of tendering love I never heard.

And of the tendering of this grace in Christ unto all that hear it preached, whoever doubted? For this is no more then to say, that It is tendered unto all to whom it is tendered. And are you well in your wits to address yourself to the proving of this, with some notable argument, which should be like a thunderbolt, and therefore no great marvel if some great noise precede it.

But still I perceive your meaning reacheth further then you dare as yet to profess; for your meaning is to prove, that All that hear the Gospel and do not believe it, seeing they shall be guilty of greater sin, and incur greater condemnation at the day of judgment, therefore they could believe it if they would. This is the point that sticks in your teeth, and which you dare not openly and plainly profess, as indeed it is manifest Pelagianism, and which the Arminians dare not at this day openly avouch, but rather profess that no man can believe or repent without grace.

Whereas yet, like as yourself maintain, that no man in state of nature can do otherwise of himself then sin, yet is he justly condemned for sinning, none compelling him: in like sort, no man of himself can believe the Gospel, yet he may be as justly condemned for not believing. For as for that natural impotency unto that which is good, which is in all derived unto us from our father Adam, that is of it self sufficient to condemn us, and therefore most insufficient to excuse us. And that impotency being in all alike, the condemnation therefore shall be unto all alike; but the increase of it by actual transgressions which are freely committed, is not in all alike: for neither doth inclination natural, or temptations spiritual, or occasions temporal hinder a man's liberty, in doing or refusing to do any act; so likewise neither can it hinder the aggravation of his sin. But neither can this natural impotency be cured in any part but by the grace of God habitual, neither any good act according to this grace habitual he performed without another grace, both prevenient and subsequent actual. If your mind serves you to deal plainly in opposing ought of this, you shall not want them that will be ready to enter with you into the lists, and scholastically to encounter you. Yet I confess the providence of God, especially in ordering and governing the wills of men, is a misterious thing, and the operation and cooperation of his will, with the operation and cooperation of the will of man.

But I am a long time inured unto this, and now I fear no bugbeares, least of all from yourself, with whom I have been of old acquainted in our private and familiar discourse on these and such like arguments, and to tell you plainly my opinion, I doubt you have written so much, that you have had time to read but little. And truly as for myself, as I have written little, so also I have not read much. But in these points I have spent not a little time, in searching after truth, and examining arguments.

As for the place of the Apostle, Act. 17. 30. it seems your meaning is, it pleads for universal grace now after Christ's death: yet yourself immediately before profested, that only they that hear it and do not believe, are guilty of greater sins; implying manifestly, that since Christ's death all do not hear it. Yet if you have any other meaning, and will deal roundly in propounding it, I will be ready to consider this or any other place that you shall be able to produce to what purpose soever, if orthodox in my judgment to subscribe unto it, if otherwise, to do my best to confute it.

3 In the next place you are so far from maintaining universal grace, that you undertake to give causes why all men in the world have not heard of this love of God in Christ. But these causes to be assigned by you are put off till hereafter, and that not of certainty neither: you only say, They may be assigned. It is your usual course to feed your Readers with expectation, as it were with empty spoones. If you do not gull them in putting them off to expectation tis somewhat the better.

The reason you give why many might have heard of Christ, which yet have not heard of him, and might have been partakers of his death, (I think you mean of the benefit of his death) which yet have not been partakers of it, is stark naught. For that evil courses of men cannot hinder them from the participation of Christ's death, appeareth by the calling of the Gentiles, and casting off of the Jews. For were the deeds of Babylon (think you) better then they of Zion? We Jews by nature, and not sinners of the Gentiles, saith the Apostle, Gal. 2. 15.

The Apostle in divers places, puts no difference between them that are called, and them that are not, as touching their manners before grace, 1 Cor. 6. 11. Eph. 2. 23. Tit. 3. 23. God sindes us weltering in our blood, when he saith unto us, Live, Ezech. 16. and Saul was taken off from his bloody courses to be made a member of Christ.

And your doctrine to the contrary tends shamefully to the obscuring and disparaging of God's grace, and to the advancing of the power of nature, and liberty of will; the trick of the Pelagians of old, of whom Augustine professed thus, Inimici gratiae Dei latent in commendatione naturae, The enemies of God's grace welter themselves under the commendation of nature. And Augustine professeth it to be impiety and madness to deny, that God can convert any man's will, when he will, and where he will. And you blush not to profess in another discourse of yours, that humility is the disposition, which prepares us for grace. I doubt you will find little comfort in such humility, and that at the day of judgment, such humility will be found abominable pride.

What you mean by pledges I know not, you love to walk in clouds, and in the dark: if you mean the fruits of God's temporal blessings, how will you prove that these were evidences of that love which God man fested in the death of his Son? And if it were so, then this evidence should be manifested to all of ripe years: for all are partakers of God's temporal providence, even they that have filled up the measure of their iniquity. Yet then you usually profess, God withdraws his love from them: but how can that be if he afford them the unquestionable earnests thereof, as before you called these pledges: whereas in the close you say, that many are not acquainted with this manifestation of God's love, and that out of mere mercy, it may well pass for one of your paradoxes. I never doubted but that it was a mercy to know Christ, and the love of God to the world in him; but that it was a mercy to want Christ, I never read nor heard till now. Neither is it necessary that men, though reprobates, should be enraged to evil by the Gospel: for God can make even reprobates to profit by it, ad exteriorem vitae emendationem quà mitius puniantur, To the outward emendation of their lives, to the end their punishment may be the milder. And we find by experience that all were not enraged against it.

CHAP. XVIII.

FRom God's love to his Vineyard, you have proceeded to discourse of his infinite love towards them that perish; and because in the issue they are never the better for it: and Solomon saith, that open hatred is better then secret love, which some understand of fruitless love: therefore to salve this inefficatious nature of God's love as you shape it, (though yet you count it infinite and ardent, and excessively fervent) you here take upon you to discover unto us the reason why it proves so inefficacious, and that without prejudice to the love of God; and that is, you say, on man's part, to wit, Want of consideration, or ignorance of God's unfeigned love towards them.

Yet we do not say, God is made any looser by the damnation of so many thousands, both men and Angels: for the glory of God is indifferently advanced, as well in the condemnation of them that perish, as in the salvation of his Elect. And the Apostle in this case professeth, saying, 2 Cor. 2. 15. We are unto God the sweet savor of Christ in them that are saved, and in them that perish: But you proceed and tell us, That God hath from eternity infallibly forecast the entire redemption of his infinite love, which unto us may seem utterly cast away. And of men, if many die, the fault is their own, or their instructors.

But by your leave, I see not how God's infinite love (if there be any such towards them that perish as you plead there is) is redeemed from being utterly cast away; for surely, they that are thus cast away, are never a whit the better for it. God I confess is never a whit the worse for their damnation: but if God's love were such towards them that perish as to will their salvation, surely God is much the worse for that in two respects; First, because his omnipotency is hereby shaken, in as much as that is not brought to pass which he would, and ardently desired (as you speak) that it should come to pass. In which case it followeth, that God is not omnipotent; as Augustine long ago discoursed, and thereupon was driven to give such commodious interpretation of that place (whereupon you only insist in your own sense, notwithstanding the analogy of Scripture phrase is as directly against that construction of the place, which you lay for a ground of your present discourse as for it) as might not enterfare upon God's omnipotency: for by experience we find, that whatsoever we desire to bring to pass, we always do bring to pass, if it lies in our power to bring it to pass: and if we do not effect it, it is a manifest sign that we are not able to effect it. Secondly, God is the worse for it in another respect; for this love and will of God to them that perish, you make to cease, as soon as they have filled up the measure of their iniquity, how much more after the time of their damnation is come? And this is to make God mutable, and his will and love to be of a changeable condition. But God is so perfect as to be without all variableness or shadow-of change.

And by the way I observe, you are apt to discourse of God's infinite love towards them that perish amongst men, but of any such love towards them that perish amongst Angels, nor a word: yet it is as evident, that if any perish amongst Angels, it is merely their own faults also: Nay, much more evident is this in the nation of Angels, then in the nation of men. For many thousand infants perish in original sin, for no personal original fault of their own, but for the transgression of Adam, and in that corruption which is naturally derived unto them from the loins of Adam, after that by his actual transgression he fell into the state of that corruption, which since from him is become hereditary unto us all. As for that miscarriage which makes all men obnoxious unto the wrath of God, and unto condemnation, we hold it impossible to be prevented.

For original sin and Adams transgression is it, which you well know, cannot be prevented: Only God may have mercy on whom he will, even in despite of any actual miscarriage (which you doat upon as an only hinderer from grace) like as on the other side he hardeneth whom he will, in spite of all civil and moral good carriage found in the best of heathen men.

This I speak according to the doctrine of Saint Paul; I confess, I speak it not according to the doctrine of Silius Italicus, nor according to the doctrine of Sozimus, as sound at heart for true heathenism, as Silius was for his life. And that Sozimus amongst other reproaches he casts upon Christianity, this is one, that we offer God's free grace of pardoning all manner of sins, to all manner of men that believe in Christ Jesus. And to touch by the way, if it be the fault, or may be the fault only of their instructors that many perish, then it is not their own fault.

Yet certainly it is their own fault that Angels perish: yet we see not any pains you take to show, How God hath infallibly forecast the entire redemption of his infinite love towards Angels that are cast away: belike he never entertained any love towards those Angels at all. But Silius Italicus himself, that knew this, and considered this, and preacheth it unto others, what did he fare the better for it, was he saved by it think you?

Nay, how many thousands knew this amongst heathen men, as well as Silius, that Mite & cognitum est homini Deus, and that he delighted not in the sacrificing of the blood of men, which yet were never a whit the nearer unto salvation for all this: Much less so near as Abraham, even at that time when he travelled three days journey to the sacrificing ofhis son Isaac. Yet we confess, his love is unfeignedly extended to all that call him Maker; for in that he made them, and a world for them, and by giving rain and fruitful seasons, doth fill their hearts with food and gladness, he may be said to love them, but herehence it followeth not, that he loves them unto salvation.

And yet how many are so far from having their hearts filled with food and gladness, that sometimes they perish for want of bread? But instead of arguing you turn to prophesying, and tell us, that Had the doctrines which those divine oracles (God is love and would have all men to be saved) naturally afford, been for these forty years last past, as generally taught, and their right use continually pressed with as great zeal and fervency as the doctrine and uses of God's absolute decree, for electing some, and reprobating most in that space have been; the plentiful increase of God's glory and his people's comfort throughout this land, might have wrought such astonishment to our adversaries, • as would have put their mutinous mouths to silence.

I commend your wit in this; for I profess of all inartificiall arguments, I never heard any answerable unto this. Now if you had added an artificial argument, unto this inartificiall which you might have had the hap to have read in Southwell, it had been most complete; and I had not easily devised what could have been added hereunto. And the argument is this, Suppose God the Father had written this, and that with the pen of his Spirit, dipt in the blood of his Son, would you not then have believed it? I presume you would, why then believe it now, for the difference is not in substance, but only circumstance.

It is the only thing I remember in that book of Southwell; and this argument of yours I may perhaps remember when you have forgotten it. But I pray consider, what sect is there in the world that might not use the like? Perhaps you will say, they might use it, not so truly as you do. But then I pray consider, what evidence have we for the truth of it on your part, but your own confidence, and your bare word expressing it? And I hope you will give every sect leave to be as confident of the truth of their own way, as you are of yours; and as liberal in proving their bare words for it as yourself.

I have read in Chaucer (to betray unto you what use I can make of him, as well as you of Silius Italicus) of somo rime that is called rime dogrell, and if there be any Logic dogrell, I think this is it. But I do not mean to let your grave discourse pass thus; those Oracles, God is love, and would have all men to be saved, you suppose do naturally afford your doctrines, to wit, that God's infinite love extends to all and everyone, as that he will that all and everyone should be saved.

But no such things do these oracles afford, either expressly, or by any just consequence. And of the first (God is love) it is apparent that it containeth no such thing expressly; and as for the deducing of any such consequence herehence, yourself never yet adventured, nor yet do; you may as well deduce herehence, that he will save all Angels, as well as all men, yea the very devils. And as for the second, you think that doth expressly signify as much; but that is untrue; the Scripture phrase doth use that universal sign frequently in another sense, as when it saith of the Pharisees that they did tithe omne olus, which cannot be meant of every herb in particular, but of every sort of herb in special, as Augustine himself 1200. years ago observed. So Peter is said to have seen a vessel let down from heaven, wherein was 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , which cannot be meant of every particular, but only that of every sort, or of most sorts, or of many sorts someone. So it is said, that all Jerusalem and all Judea went forth to John, the meaning whereof can be no other then that of all parts of Judea and of Jerusalem, some went forth unto him.

As for the plentiful increase of God's glory and the people's comfort, which you promise upon the preaching of your doctrine; this is only upon your word, which unless you take upon you to be a Prophet, and be received also for such a one, is of no force.

But suppose it had been preached, and not received nor believed by the hearers, I pray what then? Had the people's comfort been any whit the more increased? And for you to presume, that upon the preaching of it, it had been received, is to take upon you too much; the Gospel it self when first preached, the Jews told S. Paul when he came to Rome, it was everywhere spoken against: Yet I confess, the more erroneous a doctrine is, especially if it be plausible to the judgment of flesh and blood, the more apt it is to be entertained by flesh and blood.

But I pray, what comfort is this you speak of, is it comfort in things spiritual, or comfort in God's blessings temporal? I grant willingly, that the truth of God is more apt to breed comfort spiritual, then errors in matters of faith. Now first you must prove your doctrine to be true, and then we will nothing doubt but it shall be comfortable. You take too much upon you to prophesy that it shall be comfortable and therehence infer that it is true. But if you speak of comfort in respect of blessings temporal; as I guess by comparing this with what you delivered in the Epistle dedicatory, we have but your bare word for this also. But suppose it would prove so, shall we from the temporal comforts we may enjoy, conclude, that therefore our religion is the true religion?

Alas, what comfort in outward things had christianity in the first three hundred years? why may you not as well conclude, that the Synagogue of Antichrist is the very Church of Christ; and our Churches which we call reformed, are no Churches of Christ; seeing for many years God hath humbled us under their hands, and given us over into the hands of beastly men, skillful to destroy, and still sends serpents and cokatrices amongst us, that will not be charmed? Well, this we see is the comfort you afford us in these heavy times; you give us to understand that tis God's just judgment upon us, for preaching so much of God's absolute decree of electing some, and reprobating most,

And yet the Lutheran Churches preach as little of this as you do, and yet wherein have they fared better then their brethren the Calvinists; witness the Marquisate of Baden, the land of Brunswick, the land of Hulst, the land of Pomerania and Meckelburgh. And the whole kingdom of Bohemia, wherein it is well known, the Calvinists were but few in comparison to the Lutherans. In the days of King James, a restraint began of preaching the doctrine of predestination. Did the people's comforts, or the comforts of this kingdom increase any whit hereupon? Within these four years space books savouring of Arminianism, such as youas, have had the press open unto them with far greater liberty then their opposites, yet how do the comforts of the people, and of this kingdom increase?

Yet this is an old trick of Satan, who is therefore called by one 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , a circkling Dragon: For in Saint Augustine's days, when the Empire began to be invaded by the Goths, the cause of this was by the heathens alleged to be the embracing of Christian religion, whereupon it was that Augustine was moved to write his two and twenty books of the City of God. Why may not we as well say, that the cause why we taste so little of the grace of God is, because there are so many risen up with might and main impugning the grace of God. And it is well known, no reformed Churches prosper so well as the Hollanders, though no doubt they have as rank sins to be found in them as others; yet this they have to their singular commendation, that they suppressed Arminianism, that Canker-worm of God's grace, and of his soveraignety over his creatures, & banished the greatest patrons thereof out of their territories.

This inartificiall argument of yours I thought deserved the canvassing, and therefore I have spent so many lines in discovering the rottenness of it.

Now to proceed; you ask, Who would not be willing to be saved, if he were fully persuaded that God did will his salvation in particular? When we read this, I muse at the contrariant disposition of our adversaries: for, when we discourse of election absolute, the Arminian party crieth out against us; as if hereby we took a course to make men most careless of their salvation; you, though you shake hands with the Arminian party, oppose in a direct contrarious manner, and say, Who would not be willing to be saved (which is as much as to say, Who would not be careful of his salvation) if he were fully persuaded, that God did will his salvation in particular. Your meaning is, everyone would be careful of it. So then, all that are of your mind, are most careful of their salvation: so that it is opposite to the Arminian Tenent, to harden himself, or humor himself in any profane course, or lewd course of life.

All such must needs turn Saints here on earth, which if it were true, tis to be feared they would be accounted Puritans, and then their opinions would be liked so much the worse for that. Touching God's protestation that he will not the death of any, but the repentance of all, we have said enough, and shown how you vary from the most authentical translation of our Churches. And it is apparent, that God neither gives repentance nor life to all; and to say that God wills anything (otherwise then by his will of commandment, which is improperly, though usually called his will) which cometh not to pass, Augustine long ago professed, was as much as to deny God to be omnipotent.

How sorily you have performed the justifying of your doctrine in this particular, by the authority of the Church of England, we have likewise shown in its proper place. And if it be true, that if this doctrine of yours were believed, all would unfeignedly endeavor with fervent alacrity to be truly happy, then it must needs be that like as yourself do, so every Arminian doth, unfeignedly endeavor with fervent alacrity (words enough) to be truly happy: So that a profane person like Esau, that sold his birthright for a mess of pottage, is not likely to be found amongst the Arminian generation: And I doubt not but a part of your own unfeigned endeavors, with fervent alacrity in this kind, consists in writing such books as these, containing so many blasphemies both against the nature and against the grace of God.

For proof whereof I appeal to the consideration and judgment of every indifferent Reader, that shall peause the answer of mine thereunto. You tell us, God's love and goodness is so great. that he cannot pass any act, whereby any of his creatures should be debarred, either from being like him in love or goodness. Thus you dictate magisterially, more like a Prophet then a Pastor of God's Church. But though you bring no reason for what you say, I will try whether I cannot bring something against it.

And because it is proposed of his creatures in general, I will begin with the Angels. If this be true, then the Devils are not excluded by any act of God from being like him in love and goodness. What hinders then, but that they may be like him in love and goodness if they will, and that they may will it? for is not their will as free as man's, in the state of his corruption? Secondly, God hath decreed, that all that are descended from Adam, shall be born in original corruption; also he hath ordained, that many thousands of them shall die in their infancy, as well out of the Church as within the Church. Now let any man judge, whether by virtue of these decrees of God, they be not utterly excluded from being like unto God in love and goodness, after an ordinary manner, whereof alone you speak. Again, all that shall be damned, God hath ordained unto damnation. Now let any man judge, whether by virtue of this decree, and upon supposition thereof, it is not impossible that such should be saved. Of those who are not predestinated unto life, God brings none unto wholesome and spiritual repentance; If God brings none of them unto true repentance, then he hath decreed to bring none of them unto true repentance; and by virtue of this decree they are debarred from being like unto God in love and goodness, which I prove thus, None can be like unto God in goodness without true repentance, and none can repent except God gives repentance: therefore God having decreed not to give them repentance, by virtue of this decree they are debarred from repentance, and consequently, from being like unto God in goodness.

You close this Section with an, Alas, the effect whereof is, that by your opposites doctrine, a mispersuasion is wrought in most men of his goodness towards them; and consequently your meaning is, they grow careless of their salvation. Because as before we heard from you, carefulness of salvation is an herb that grows only in the gardens of Arminianism. And what is this dangerous doctrine? Surely it is very pretily expressed by you, to wit, in teaching that God doth oftentimes dispose his blessings of this life, not as undoubted pledges of a better. Well then, to say, that God doth dispense his blessings of this life unto Turks and Sarazens, not as pledges of a better, is in danger to make Christians conceive that God is not good to them.

But perhaps you mean it only in respect of those who partake of these blessings. Now I profess I never read any of our divines make use of any such consideration in this argument: you love to shape opposites opinion after your own fancy: And yet the truth is, that according to Scripture evidence, temporal blessings are so far from being generally the pledges of a better life, as that they are noted out unto us in Scripture to be the character of the wicked, namely, to have their portion in this life. Woe be to you rich (saith our Savior) for you have received your consolation. And they are the poor of this world for the most part that God hath chosen. Iac. 2. 5. God hath chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith and heirs of salvation. And on the other side, the prosperity of the wicked is such as hath been a scandal to the children of God, as we read Ps. 73. David himself took offense at it, until he went into the sanctuary of God, then he understood their end, verse. 17. Surely (saith he) thou hast set them in slipery places, and castest them down into desolation, how suddenly are they destroyed, perished, and horribly consumed.

So likewise Jeremiah desired to dispute with God hereabouts, O Lord (saith he) if I despute with thee thou art righteous: yet let me talk with thee of thy judgments: Wherefore doth the way of the wicked prosper? why are all they in wealth that rebelliously transgress, 2. Thou hast planted them, and they have taken root: they grow and bring forth fruit: Thou art near in their mouths, and far from their heart. 3. But thou, O Lord, knowest me, thou hast seen me and tried my heart toward thee: pull them out like sheep for the slaughter, and prepare them for the day of slaughter.

Now to my simple understanding, the Prophet herein discovereth unto us that particular of God's providence which you impugn; when he seeth the prosperity of the wicked, he is scandalized, but when he seeth that this prosperity of theirs is but like the fatting of sheep and oxen unto the day of slaughter, he is satisfied. For as Solomon saith, Ease slayeth the foolish, and the prosperity of fools destroyeth them. And look in what sense God doth make men's tables to be their snares, Psal. 69. 22. may he not, or doth he not in the same manner make their prosperity be their snares? how can it be otherwise if God doth not bless their prosperity, but rather curse it?

And is not this in God's power? Nay, is it not found to be practiced in the course of his providence? I will send a curse upon you (saith the Lord) and will curse your blessings; yea, I have cursed them already. And if it be lawful for God to make Christ to be a snare, and a rock of offense unto many, how much more may it well become him to make temporal blessings to be snares unto them, wherein they shall be taken unto destruction? As S. Peter compares some to brute beasts, borne to be taken and destroyed, 2 Pet. 2. 12. And that Christ was made by God a snare unto many, you may learn out of your Forerius (whom I have heard you commend not a little) upon that in Esau 8. 34. And he shall be as a sanctuary, to wit, unto some, but unto others, a stumbling stone, and a rock to fall upon, and as a snare and a net to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And old Simeon prophefied as much of him, saying, Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising again of many in Israel, and for a sign which shall be spoken against, Luk. 2. 34. Even heathen men have observed, that in the course of God's providence, wicked men are exalted to their greater shame in their ruin. Tolluntur in altum, ut lapsa graviore cadant. And if it be a base mind in any man to bestow gifts on others, hoping thereby for advantage in the way of his commodity: shall it not be lawful unto God to give the wicked their hearts desire, which is only set on temporal prosperity; and to expose them unto temptation, and abandon them, leaving them destitute of his grace, for the distribution whereof he is bound to none; to advance his glory in making them examples in the way of his justice, punishing their pride, unthankfulness, lusts, and intemperance?

What can you say to that of Solomon, God hath made all things for himself, even the wicked against the day of evil, Pro. 16. 9. and that of the Apostle, Rom. 9. 21. Hath not the potter power of the clay to make of the same lump, one vessel to honor, and another unto dishonor?

But you keep your course in the way of your own invention, without reflecting your eyes upon these sacred oracles, as if you meant to broach unto the world a new Law, and a new Gospel. As for the love of the reprobates, God cares not for it. It is in his power alone to work his love in the hearts of men, by the circumcision of them, Deut. 30. 6. and that he will do in whom he will, for he hath mercy on whom he will, and whom he will hardeneth.

2 As for sinister respects, they may be found in the creature; they may be found in man, they cannot be found in God. He must respect, and cannot but respect himself, and the manifestation of his own glory as the supreme end of all. For, as all things are from him, so all things must be for him, Rom. 11. last. And accordingly, He made all things for himself. Prov. 16. 4. And his glory is as well seen in the heardening of whom he will, as in the comiserating of whom he will.

And for all the good wit that you and others have learned, to take good turns, and not to be taken by them; There is a wisdom of God that will be sure to take them, for whom he hath laid snares; and make their wisdom, and cunning, and pride, and insolency, and willfulness, tend to the praise of his glory, in what kind soever pleaseth him, either in the way of his justice in their just condemnation, or in the way of his glorious grace, in the pardoning of their sins, and saving their souls.

As for your rules of observation, touching the natures of men, I might let them pass: I am no professed student in such like; yet I find yours shallow enough. I see no reason but such as are worldly wise may meet with their matches, that may know when to trust them, and when not, and work out their own advantage either way.

Why mistrust should make an honest man the worse, I know no reason; as for a knave, whether he mistrusts others or no, what becomes he the better? A silly conceit it is in my judgment, to think that any man should be moved to justify an others ill opinion of him, by doing evil, unless that evil be pleasing to him, whose good opinion he affects for his own advantage. For as he that refraineth himself from evil, maketh himself sometimes a prey; so a man must, audire aliquid brevibus Gyaris & carcere dignum si vult esse aliquid. And there never want some knights of the post, and such as will prostitute their conscience to serve any turn for advantage. No faithless age can make any good rules of morality out of date of truth, though out of date of practice. Yet I have heard a story of a French Gentleman in the wars of France, when certain Freebooters were unawares entered within his house, saved his own life, and his family from spoiling, by mere confidence, and was bid at parting, to thank his own confidence for speeding so well.

It is always true, Ipsa sides habita (in good ground) obligat fidem • it is sometimes true, procurat fidem. Themistocles found it true, when he offered himself to the king of the Molossians, who formerly had been his enemy: and many generous Generalls deal never a whit the worse with them that cast themselves at the foot of their mercy. Yet God is true, and every man a liar.

Let us be bold to trust in God, and desire to fall into his hands, and keep us from falling into the hands of men: yet if God calleth us thereunto, to commit ourselves unto God, when we do cast ourselves into the hands of men. Because in God's hands are the hearts of kings, and he turneth them whither soever it pleaseth him; certainly, They that put their trust in the Lord shall want no manner of thing that is good, even at such times when Lions want and suffer hunger. Yet by your leave it is not the nature of God that is the ground of our confidence, but the revealed will of God. For whatsoever God's nature is, he works freely in the communicating of any good thing unto us: but he hath revealed, that he will never fail them that put their trust in him. And this is that loving kindness of God, as much as to say, his loving and gracious will and pleasure revealed to us, which excites the sons of men to put their trust under the shadow of his wings. It was improbable that there should be any motive from the creature, why God should give them a being; neither was it his love to the creature that moved God to make the creature, as you superficially use to discourse, but merely the love of himself. For he made all things for himself.

And the creature before God made him was just nothing, neither was there at that time any distinction between King Alexander and his horse Bucephalus. It is a strange conceit to say, that the being of the creature is like unto God's being, who is the Creator. For what likeness is there between an apple and a nut, between an horn and a bagpipe, an harp and an harrow.

Ens hath no univocation in the comprehending of all created entities, much less as by denomination it comprehends both the Creator, and the creature. Certainly all do not love God whom he loves; for he loved us when we were his enemies, Rom. 5. 8. But if all did so love him, as all shall either sooner or later, it will not follow that all should be saved. For only such as Jacob are loved of him in Scripture phrase, and such as Esau are hated rather.

And though you will not be beaten off from that uncoth assertion, That they whom God wills to be saved are not saved, yet we had rather abhor so foul a sentence with Augustine, as denying God's omnipotency, then concur with you in boldness to the embracing of it. The apprehension of God's love to us, is the cause (moral) of our love to him: though God it is that by the circumcision of our hearts works it, Deut. 30. 6. But if loveliness in the object be the cause of love; how dare you profess God loves the reprobate, and that ardently, and with excessive and infinite love. Is there any loveliness in them in the state of their corruption, and not rather unlovelinesse throughout?

Neither will it serve your turn to say, that he loves them as his creatures: For if this be sufficient to qualify the business of the object which he loves, you may as well say that he loves frogs and toads; yea, and the Devils and damned Spirits.

3. I make no question but an unregenerate man may love his friend and companion in evil, as brethren in evil do love one another: and our Savior hath taught us as much, Matt. 5. 49. If ye love them that love you what reward shall ye have? do not the Publican's even the same? I never heard nor read before that condemnation was dispensable. The doing of things otherwise unlawful, in some cases may be dispensed with, but punishment was never known to be dispensed with; it may be remitted, but that is not to dispense with it. I take your meaning and leave your words, you think belike that infinite mercy cannot free the world from condemnation. I no way like such extravagant assertions, though frequent in your writings; as if you would innovate all both natural reason, and divinity.

I know no sin which infinite mercy cannot pardon; neither do I know any sin beside the sin against the Holy Ghost, and final impenitency, which God will not pardon in his elect. Much less is man's dull backwardness to love him unpardonable. For though as it seems you were never conscious of any such dullness in yourself, yet I cannot easily be persuaded until I find cause, that any Christian in the world entertains such a conceit of himself, as you do of yourself. Be God never so lovely, yet if a man know him not, how can he love him?

And do you think it is natural for a man to know God? Suppose we do know him to be most wise, most powerful: yet if he be our enemy, how should this move us to love him, or put our trust in him? If we know him to love us, and to be our friend, yet are not the best backward enough from loving him, when we are easily drawn to sin against him? And are all sins of this kind unpardonable? what an uncomfortable doctrine is this, and how prone to carry all that believe it into desperation? God regards not our love unless we keep his commandments, John. 14. 5. Again, what is the love of God? Is it not to love him above all things? even above ourselves? as Gerson expresseth it, Amor Dei usque ad contentum sui. Is this natural? long ago Augustine hath defined it to be supernatural: And if any dull backwardness be found in us to this love of God; if we are loath to lose our lives for Christ's sake, is this sin unpardonable? You are a valliant Champion, I hear you are ready to die in maintenance of your opinions, but I cannot believe you are any whit the readier for that to die for Christ.

But, alas, what should become of poor Peter, that for fear of some trouble upon confessing himself to be a follower of Christ, denied that he knew him, and that with oath and imprecation? Yet Christ looked back upon him, • s before he had prayed for him, that his faith might not fail; and Peter looked back upon himself, and went forth and wept bitterly; and within three days after the Angels take special order, that Peter by name should be acquainted (with the first) with the comfortable news of Christ's resurrection from the dead; that as he died for his sins, so he rose again for his justification. The infinite love of God becomes known only to the regenerate, who take notice of it chiefly, as touching blessings spiritual. As for temporal blessings, God's love therein to man, how can it be known to a man unregenerate, seeing it can be known only by faith? Those temporal blessings you speak of in the judgment of flesh and blood, coming to pass only by course of nature.

But that his intention in bestowing temporal blessings upon the wicked, is to bind himself to instate them in the incomprehensible joys of endless life, which he never means to perform, is one of your incomprehensible paradoxes. To the children of God there is no such obligation: for tis not the blessings, but the sanctified use of them, that is a pledge and assurance to them of the favor of God unto salvation; and so the sanctified use of God's temporal curses, are no less evident a pledge and assurance to them of the same favor of God: For by chastising divers and sundry ways with crosses and afflictions, he manifests unto them, that God receives them for his sons, and so esteems of them, and not as bastards, Heb. 12. 8.

I am glad to hear you acknowledge, that, Of all the motions of our hearts and souls God is the sole author and guide. For such acknowledgements are most rare with you; and which you cannot embrace without manifest contradiction to yourself, and overthrowing all your discourse touching God's decree, which as you say, decreeth contingency, but not the contingent things themselves.

But the motions of the soul and heart are contingent things, and these must needs he decreed by God, if they be produced by God: And if God be the author of them, he must needs produce them. So that the whole tower of your discourse touching God's decree is suddenly overthrown by yourself, and that with the blast of this one sentence. Besides, when you acknowledge God to be the author of all the motions of our hearts and souls, you therewithal acknowledge him to be the author of evil motions as well as good: For you do nor say, he is the author of all good motions, but, of all whose motions (in reference to our hearts, our souls, our strength) God is the sole Author and guide: yet we dare not avouch that God is the Author, much less the sole Author of all our motions, without manifold distinctions. And to my thinking, it became you to be very cautulous of such assertions, who are so apt to charge your opposites with making God the Author of sin.

Of every action of man that is free, we maintain man to be the author as well as God; but man we make in operation subordinate unto God, the second cause unto the first. This is true as touching actions naturally considered, and as touching good actions, but with a difference; man in working any natural action we make him subordinate unto God in respect of influence general; in working good actions, we make him subordinate unto God in respect of influence special.

But as touching evil actions there we make man alone to be the author of them as they are evil, without any subordination unto God in respect of any influence, general or special. And cannot sufficiently wonder what improvidence hath overtaken you, to out-lash in so strange a manner. But even in this we acknowledge a providence of God confounding the wits and longs of them that build up Babel. I remember what the Prophet saith of the Egyptians, The Lord hath mingled among them the spirit of errors: and they have caused Egypt to err in every work thereof, as a drunken man erreth in his vomit: and how is that, but in defiling himself; and that which is before him. o • his own favorites that sit next unto him. Christ's yoke is easy and his burden light to the regenerate: but is it so unto natural men? do they not account it cords and bands? Psal. 2. Doth not the Apostle tell us, The affections of the flesh are not subject to the law of God, nor can be? It seems you are a very moral man, you do so willingly fall upon this theme, of advancing the power of man's natural morallity. But I remember withal what Augustine sometimes said, Malo humilem peccatorem quam superbum innocentem. And arrogancy is a special fruit of pride: And you discourse in such sort of the nature of man, as if it had never been corrupt in Adam.

4 If our love of God be raised from the belief of his loving kindness to us, then our love to God is not the first conception or plantation of true happiness, but rather our faith, as the Apostle plainly testifieth, 1 Tim. 1. 5. saying. The end of the law is love, out of a pure heart, and good conscience, and faith unfeigned. And neither the one nor the other is the work of nature, but of Grace; nor the work of God neither by influence general and natural, but by influence special and spiritual.

As for the conclusion you deduce herehence, it is well known that life, and sense, and reason we obtain by course of nature, and natural generation of natural and reasonable parents. And to know that God gives all this, and maintains natural generation by the counsel of his will, that he it is that fashioneth us in the womb, is not known by light of nature: for the greatest Philosophers knew not this but by light of grace, and so the moanest Christian comes acquainted with this mystery. But herehence to infer that God hath a purpose to give me with them whatsoever good things my heart, my sense, or reason can desire, is a very loose inference. God hath no purpose to give his own children whatsoever good thing they do desire, much less what they can desire. Paul desired and prayed thrice to be delivered from the buffetings of Satan, but God granted it not unto him. Moses desired to go over Jordan to see the goodly mountain, and Lebanon, but it was denied him. Abraham desired that the blessing might be conferred on Ishmael, but could not obtain it. And no marveyle. For God knows what is better for us then ourselves; the child prayeth for his Fathers health saith Augustine, but it is God's pleasure to take him away by death. God hath not promised to give us all that we desire, much less that sense desireth; but hath promised that all things shall work together for our good. even poverty as well as riches, sikenesse as well as health, and adversity as well as prosperity. For every creature of God is sanctified unto them that believe and know the truth. This is the faith only of a child of God, who is the heir of the World by faith in Christ. But to say of all and everyone, hand over head that God hath a purpose to give them all eternal life, is your common error, that now is like an hereditary sickness unto you: driving you to maintain two foul tenets; the one, that God is not omnipotent, as purposing to give that which he never performs, a manifest sign that he is not able to perform it; as Augustine many hundred years ago disputed Enchirid 95. Deus noster in caelo sursum, in caelo & in terra omnia quaecunque voluit, fecit. Quod utique non est verum, si aliqua voluit & non fecit, & quod est indignius, ideo non fecit quoniam ne fieret, quod volebat omnipotence, voluntas hominis impedivit. And Enchirid. 96. Deo procul dubio quam facile est quod vult facere, tam facile est quod non vult esse, non sinere. Hoc nisi credamus periclitatur ipsum nostrae fidei confessionis initium qua nos in Deum Patrem omnipotentem credere consitemur. Neque enim veraciter ob aliud vocatur omnipotence, nisi quia quicquid vult potest, nec voluntate cujusquam creaturae, voluntatis omnipotentis impeditur effectus. The other tenet as foul as the former is this, that God changeth. For undoubtedly at this time he hath no purpose to save the Devils and damned souls of men: therefore if ever he had any such purpose it is now changed; and consequently God is changed himself, You have no way to avoid this, but by saying that God's purpose you speak of, is not absolute but conditional as before you upbraided your opposites for maintaining God's decree of electtion to be absolute. Yet the Arminians at the conference of Hage utterly declined the maintenance of God's decree of election to be conditional,

Yet the shifre will not serve your turn, being too narrow a leaf to cover the shameful nakedness of your assertion. For to purpose conditionally is no more a purpose of salvation then of condemnation; which is no way an evidence of God's love to any man in particular, the issue whereof is indifferent to be condemnation as well as salvation. But you hitherto in this respect have insisted upon the maintenance of God's love to all and everyone.

The beginning which God found out for mankind was a being indifferent to stand or fall, which indifferency fitted him no more for salvation in case he stood, then for damnation in case he fell; save that God was withal resolved to provide him of a Savior upon his fall, that should be as tabula post naufragium, but to whom? only to these whom he loved as he loved Jacob, not unto those whom he hated as he hated Esau. For as he made all things for himself, so also he made the wicked against the day of evil, and ever that for himself also. Why God's love in respect of creation, should be accounted his infinite love, I know no reason, considering, that the meanest creature was partaker of that love as well as man.

And as he gave being unto all things, so he maintaynes being to Devils and damned men and ever will do. We are knit unto God by faith as well as by love and of the two, faith is the more noble as being the Fountain and cause of love. If God out of love be said to make us what we are; it may as well be said that out of love he made all other creatures what they are. If you reply, that they were made out of his love to us, for as much as they were made for our use and service: In like sort I answer, that it was out of love to himself that he made us, for as much as he made us for his own use and service; yea and all things else that were made. For he made all things for himself. In like sort if God made us what we are because he was lovinge to us: he made also all creatures what they are because he was loving to them. Yet by your leave, He made all things for himself.

And this is the four and twenty Elders acknowledgment Revela. 4. 11. Thou art worthy o Lord, to receive glory, and honor, and power. For thou hast created all things, and for thy wills sake they are and have been created. You say true, where faith and love is found there is assurance of God's favor towards us to set both his wisdom & power on work to make all things work together for our good, and so to preserve us to his heavenly Kingdom.

But the question is whether this faith and love be the works of nature, and whereof all are capable by power of nature or whether they are the mere fruits of God's grace, afforded to some denied to others according to the good pleasure of his own will, as who hath mercy on whom he will and whom he will he hardeneth.

CHAP. XIX.

NOw because you cannot but perceive how this pincheth sore upon the unchangeable nature of God. Therefore you spend two chapters in the clearinge of this difficulty; wherein if you satisfy yourself it is well. As for my part I am so far from receiving satisfaction that I am utterly to seek in understandinge the course you take to give satisfaction. Whether anger, hate, or jealosie, have any seat in the omnipotent Majesty is little to the purpose.

But to show how God of a most loving Father becomes a severe and inexorable judge, without any change, this alone is to the purpose. For the very manner of proposing it doth imply the ceasing to be a loving Father which he was, but becomes a severe & inexorable judge, which he was not. For to be a loving Father and a severe judge all at once, is not of a lovinge Father to become a severe judge. And though this were granted you; yet it is not congruous to your tenet to maintain that God was an inxorable judge to any, before the measure of his iniquity be full. And as then he first begines to become an inexorable judge, so it is requisite that then he ceaseth to be a loving Father. And albeit you are loath to acknowledge this because it doth so manifestly imply a change in the nature of God; yet you must be driven hitherto whether you will or no unless you maintain, that still God continueth a most loving Father unto the Devils and ever shall be both unto them and to all damned persons notwithstanding the wrath of God continue upon them to everlasting damnation.

And it is a very strange dialect to acknowledge that God is a most loving Father unto damned persons: especially considering that in Scripture phrase we are said to be the Sons of God by faith in Christ Jesus. Gala. 3. 26. And indeed if you can make good, that to inflict everlasting damnation, doth consort with infinite mercy; then you shall obtain, not that God of a most loving Father doth become an inexorable judge; but that at once he is both a most loving father and a most inexorable judge also.

As for anger whether it be in God or no, or whether Lactantius hath carried himself well or no in this Argument, it is nothing at all to this present business. The question is whether God ardently desiring the salvation of any man doth at length cease to desire it, or whether still he continueth to will and ardently desire a man's salvation notwithstanding that he purposeth to inflict or actually doth inflict upon him condemnation. For this seems to be the intended issue of your discourse as when you undertake to illustrate, how extreme severity may stand with the fervency of fatherly unfeigned love. As much as to say, that God loves the Devils and loves the damned; and continueth the fervency of fatherly unfeigned love towards them, notwithstanding that he doth inflict everlasting condemnation upon them, and because this love you account all one with mercy and that it is infinite; in like sort infinite mercy may consort (as before you speak) with extreme severity.

Hence it followeth that all are vessels of mercy, the reprobate as well as the elect, only here is the difference, the elect are only vessels of mercy, but the reprobate are both vessels of mercy and vessels of wrath also. Now I demand what is the fruit of this love, and of this mercy of God towards the damned. Can you devise any fruit of this but the preservation of them in being? And may you not as well say; that he loves at this day every creature, in as much as he preserveth them? And consider I pray do you call this fatherly love and do you account this the fervency of fatherly love? And doth either Scripture or Eclesiasticall phrase allow you in this? Yet speak your mind plainly, and say that God's will to preserve his creatures may stand with extreme severity used towards them, and no man will contend with you at all in this.

But then consider, whether you are well in your wits, when you enter upon the proof of this as of some rare notion; when the issue of your meaning falleth upon a most vulgar conceit and explication. And whether this be to prove that God of a most lovinge Father becomes a severe and inexorable judge, when the only fruit of his love is the holding of his children's noses unto the grindstone of his wrath, and inplacable displeasure. Yet let us take notice of your illustration.

2. Here we have a large discourse of Manlius Torquatus and his severe execution upon his own Son, for transgressing the commandment of his General; therefore Martial law was executed by the father (being at that time General) upon his own son. But were it all true that you discourse in justifying that fathers severity upon his child; Yet you miserably forget yourself, when you say, That excessive love which he bare unto his person, whilst his hopeful beginnings did seem to promise an accomplishment of his Martial virtues, turns into extreme severity and indignation after he proves transgressor. For this is not to show, how extreme severity may stand with the fervency of fatherly unfeigned love; but rather to show how fatherly love ceaseth and severity and indignation comes in the place thereof.

This is rather answerable to the theme proposed how a most loving Father becomes a severe judge, and answerable to the former discourse of God's withdrawing his goodness from those that have once filled up the measure of their iniquity. But because in this manner it cannot be applied unto God without acknowledging mutability in the nature of God, as well as in the nature of men: Therefore as I conceive your pretence was to illustrate how extreme severity may stand with the fervency of fatherly love; though indeed you perform nothing less, but rather show how that fatherly love ceased as being turned into extreme severity and indignation. Yet it seems you did but forget yourself in this.

And that your drift was to show how notwithstanding his love towards his son continuing the same, yet in a greater love of Martial dicipline he caused his head to be stricken of. But this also will nothing serve your turn. For notwithstanding this, we see a manifest alteration. For Manlius conceived not any such indignation against his son till now, never entertained any will to cut him off till the noise of his transgression came unto his ears. All which cannot be said of God (as it must be if the case be alike) without acknowledging as manifest alteration and innovation in the nature of God.

There was a time wherein Manlius desired his sons life and prosperity; there was a time when he willed and commanded him to be put to death. It was impossible that both those should be at once in Manlius as implying flat contradiction: Yet you place them both in God either at once and so imply contradiction, or successively and so introduce alteration into the nature of God: Manlius his purpose and will was changed upon the fact of his son, and his son was consumed by it.

But God is the Lord and is not changed, and therefore the sons of Jacob are not consumed. So Selencus never entertained any thought or purpose of pulling out his sons eyes til he was found guilty of adultery; this cannot be said of God without subjecting him to variableness and somewhat more then shadow of change. And therefore though Manlius and Selencus be justified in their courses and God justified in his, as no man makes question, whether God be just in that which he doth: yet this proves not that God is exempt from alteration one way, in making a will to damn a man succeed in God his will to save him; or yourself from contradiction another way, in making God at one and the same time both to will a man's salvation, and at the same time to will the same man's condemnation, yea and to inflict it also. And look by what reason God may at one, and the same time will both the salvation, and condemnation of the same man, by the same reason he may at the same time both damn and save the same man.

For if you say he wills to save him as he is a man, and wills to damn him as he is a sinner; by the same reason you may say that he can both save him, as he is a man, and damn him as he is a sinner. For the contradiction is as manifest in the one, as in the other: Yet there is a great deal of difference between the course of Manlius Torquatus and the courses of God. For Manlius did not cut of his sons head, but for an actual and personal transgression of his son: but God causeth many thousand Infants to perish in original sin, through no actual and personal transgression of their own. What place can you find for that fervency of God's fatherly love towards them?

Agayne God hath power in the course of his graciouse providence to keep men from those transgressions, which make them incur condemnation.

Now let any man judge whether Manlius would not have kept his son from transgression in this kind if he could. Thirdly Manlius was not able to provide that the strictness of Military discipline should not be remitted, by relaxation of the punishment of his son; but God is able to procure that no discipline shall be the more remitted by reason of his showing mercy on whom he will. Nay there is mercy with thee saith the Prophet that thou mayst be feared.

Lastly Manlius had no power to pardon whom he would without partiality: but God hath power to have mercy on whom he will, yea and to harden whom he will and that without injustice or partiality. Yet I am content to consider the course you take in justifying Manlius.

First you acquaint us with your persuasions and lay them for grounds, a very proper course of argumentation. And these are that few had taken the like care and pains to trains up their children in the most commendable qualities of that age.

Secondly, that None would have adventured his own person further to have rescued his son from the enemy, or justified him in any honorable quarrel; and this is very ponderously amplified by comparison with a tender hearted Mother whom notwithstanding all her tenderness, the imbecility of sex would not suffer to go so far. Spectatum admissi risum teneatis amici? Most frivolous conjectures and serving to no purpose. For no man doubts but that it might well be, that the love and care of maintayninge Martial discipline prevailed above the love of his son.

I say it might well be so, I do not say it was so. Now give me leave to say something against Manlius and the like Manliana imperia as you have spent many wasteful lines in pleading for him and them. Consider what Livy observeth hereupon; in his return homewards victoriouse, the fathers only went forth to meet him: the youth of Rome both then and ever after hated and abominated him. Before this we read of Aulus Posthumius a famous dictator, of him Livy writes thus: Egregiae dictaturae tristem memoriam faciunt qui silium ab Aulo Posthumio, qui occasion been pugnandi captus, injussu discesserit praesidio, victorem securi percussum tradunt, nec libet credere: & argumento est quod imperia Manliana non Posthumiana appellata sint quam qui prior autor tam saevi exempli foret, occupaturus insignem titulum crudelitatis fuerit.

After this L. Papirius Cursor nothing inferior in care of Martial discipline to Manlius Torquatus, as whom the Romans had destinated as fit to oppose Alexander the great, had he invaded Italia, in the like case pardoned Q Fabius, upon the intercession of the people; who yet was no son of Papirius. Consider the case it self. No laws of men are so strict but may admit temperantum aliquod, because man's providence is so shallow, as cannot foresee all particular cases. Lex non cavet de particularibus. For a stranger to go upon the walls of the Town in some places hath been Capitall, yet when the enemy hath been in skalinge the walls, and a stranger seeing it hath encouraged himself to advance, and beat down the enemy, this fact of his hath been deemed rather meritorious of reward then of punishment.

Manlius the young Gentleman was provoked by the proud speeches of Metuis the Captain of the enemy. To endure his braving, had been to suffer the reputation of cowardice, and enough to have discouraged his own troupe & made his enemies insolent. As Goliath's defying of Israel struck fear and terror into the hearts of the Israelites and lifted up the hearts of the Philistines.

Neither do I comprehend how any rank was broken or disordered by this single fight or any inconvenience might redound by this fact of his. But the end being victoriouse and all the damage redounding to the disgrace and dishonor of the enemy. I fear something else possessed the carnal heart of Manlius the Father besides care of Martial discipline. Why might he not disdeyne that the glory of his son already equalling the glory of his father, might shortly blemish it? at the best a dogged and pertinaciouse adherence to the maintenance of his own imperiouse course might quench all natural affection in him. For could no other punishment serve the turn but death?

And might not discipline be maintained unless in so extraordinary a case, the Consulls son trasgressing, were adjudged to the same punishment that the basest cowarde deserved? Observe what issue the like severity of Papirius had; and whether it had not been likely to have marred all, had not he in time tempered it with mildness and gentleness. For the enemy understanding of such like strict commaundes, whensoever the Dictator was absent, then would they stir most, knowing that the Roman Soldiers durst not stir, yea the hearts of his own Soldiers began to forsake them, that they had no courage to fight.

Yet consider how Papirius carried himself towards a Captayne of Praeneste (not his son) and that when he had played the coward. Praenestinus Praetor per timorem segnuis ex subsidijs suos duxerat, in primam aciem, quem cum inambulans ante tabernaculum vocari jussisset, victorem expedire securim jussit. Ad quam vocem examine stante Praenestino. Agedum lictor, excide radicem hanc, inquam, incommodam ambulantibus: perfusumque ultimi supplicij metu, multa dicta, dimisit. By the way I cannot but take notice of an inconsideration if not altogether ridiculous passage of yours, as when you say of this Manlius, that the more desirous he was to make him like himself in religious observance of Martial discipline, and practice of justice towards the enemies, the readier he was to do justice upon him for doing the contrary. Why was the cutting off of his head a fit course to make him like himself in religious observance of Martial discipline, and practice of justice towards the enemy? I profess, I see no reason for it, it might rather make him the moro desperate, because now he had no more heads to loose. Yet I confess he taught him effectually herby never to spare any in the like transgression.

As for the rest, I esteem it but frothe, I have no cause to trouble myself or others with any farther consideration thereof.

3. God you say must enjoy liberty or privilege of loving himself best. Your form in expressing this I do not so well like: For I had thought this had rather been a necessity then a liberty; And privilege is of signification too base to be applied unto God. For privileges are granted from superiors to inferiors. But who shall privilege God? In a word God loves himself only as the end of all other things, and all other things which he loves but as means tendinge to that end. For he made all things for himself; and of Israel he professeth that he hath formed him also for himself. Here you conclude that he loves equity and justice better then he doth any man; but what meant you to leave out Mercy? did that stick in your teeth, especially considering that forthwith you acknowledge him to be the eternal pattern of mercy as well as of justice? And if he be equity it self, is he not justice it self also? And if he be justice it self, is he not mercy it self also seeing you make him the eternal pattern of the one as well as of the other? And give that as a reason why he must love justice better then any man? Yet I no way like your divinity in this. For I do not acknowledge the nature of God to be the pattern which we must imitate in the first place, but rather the law of God; and we are to imitate his nature only in those things, the performance whereof is allowable by God's law, God might allow the Israelites in robbing the Egyptians, Abraham in sacrificing his son, Sampson in sacrificing himself; we may not allow any in the like: God hath power to expose men unto sin, to harden men's hearts, we may not take any such courses; but rather do all we can to keep our brethren from sin.

Now from your discourse it no more followeth that God cannot be unjustly merciful, then that he cannot be unmercifully just, especially towards those whom he loves more dearly then any man doth himself as you speak. And if you would be pleased to take notice by the way of the oracles of God, and not follow still the course of your own inventions you might find that God hath mercy on whom he will, and hardeneth whom he will. Yet is not he either unjustly merciful in the one, or unmercyfully just in the other; Neither should he be, though the case were altered, and he were merciful to those whom now he hardeneth, and hardened those whom now he comiserateth satis contraria fata reponens.

But let us go with you along the coast of Barbarie. God's love (you say) extends it self unto our nature so polluted with corruption. It is true and that not only in respect of corruption by sin orginall but by sin actual. For he gave his son to dy for us, when we were his enemies, and when we were dead in sin and walked after the Prince of the air, and fashions of the world, he quickened us. Ephes. 2. 29. The effects of this love you say are limited towards men by the correspondency, which they hold or loose with that absolute goodness, or with those rules of equity, in which his will is to have man made like him. This manner of limitation is unsound, and foully unsounde; as that which apparently excludeth our correspondency to God's goodness, and unto God's love, out of the number of the effects of God's love; as much as to say that faith and repentance, thankfulness and obedience are no effects of God's love, but merely works of nature, as if it were not God that worketh in us both the will & the deed according to his good pleasure.

As if regeneration were but the imagination of a vain thing; For I presume, you will not say, it is in the power of man to regenerate himself. And how can it be a work of God if not an effect of his love, and correspondency unto God's goodness you make to prevent the effects of God's love. Agayne the effects of God's love the Scripture teacheth us are limited according to the good pleasure of God, both as touching graces of edification (for he distributes to everyone as he will. 1. Cor. 12.) and as touching the graces of sanctification. For he hath mercy on whom he will. Rom. 9. And according to his purpose and grace he hath saved us and called us not according to our works. 2 Tim. 1. 9. And of his own will hath he begotten us, &c. There is a condition of moral goodness, which God doth accept to reward with glory; but there is no condition of moral goodness which God doth accept to reward with grace: For then grace were of works, and consequently no more grace. And then God should call us according to our works which he expressly denieth. Tit. 3. 5. and 2 Tim. 1. 9. There is no condition of moral viciousness that excludes God's mercy in calling men unto faith and salvation.

Augustine coumpts it impiety and madness to think otherwise, as I have often alleged him. Enchirid. 96. He calls some at the first hour of the day, some at the last. And what absurd conceit is it to require some mitigation of sin or moral good qualification to make correspondency unto mercy in pardoning sin and curing it? As no disease of the body is uncurable by God; so no disease of the soul or simfull course is unpardonable or uncurable by the mercy of God the Father, the merits of God the son. For each are infinite; but the sins of all the world are finite. God himself may limit the demonstration and exercise of his mercy as he thinks good. Now as touching the limitation hereof nothing is revealed unto us, but only this, that the sin against the Holy Ghost shall not be pardoned and cured no small infidelity and impenitency.

All other limitations are merely revelations of flesh and blood, and the inventions of idle Brains; that impugn the prerogative of God's grace, and in the place thereof advance the operation of nature, as that which first commends us in some sort unto God's grace; you are apt to discourse of God's inviting men unto God, and of the riches of his bounty that way; but of God's working men unto God, and of the riches of his bounty, that may never any Arminian or Pelagian spake less then you. Yet the despising of God's goodness shown either in his word or in his works shall indoubtedly increase men's condemnation. But God can break of these their contemptiouse courses in whom he will, and when he will, and where he will, as Augustine professeth with such confidence, as that he censureth him of impiety and dotery whosoever he be that denieth it.

A silly course it is, to infer that vicious courses do exclude men from God's mercy, because God hates filthiness or uncleanness. For God undoubtedly hates all manner of filthiness and uncleanness whether the measure of it be filled up or no; For did he not hate Manasseh his idolatry and his bloody courses, and his using them that were given to sorcery and witchcrast? Yet all this excluded him not from the participation of God's mercy. And if for this reason, to wit because God hates filthiness, men are excluded from God's favor, so as to be uncapable of his mercy; then every man should be a reprobate and incapable of mercy; and abandoned as a vessel of wrath unto everlasting condemnation.

And you consider not, that to be uncapable of mercy is to be uncapable of God's love; even in your own discourse; whence it followeth, that God must after a certain time cease to love them; as in reason it should be acknowledged by you, according to the tenor of your opinion; and that when the door of repentance is shut upon them, as yourself have phrasified it, most of all when God condemns them to everlasting torments in hell fire, he must needs cease to love them. And consequently you must necessarily admit mutability in the nature of God, which is directly contrary to the perfection of God delivered unto us in holy Scripture. I the Lord am not changed and you sons of Jacob are not consumed. Mala. 3. 6. And with God is no variableness nor shadow of change. Iac. 1. 19. This rock you have in your eye & labor to keep your Tenet from dashing it self desperately against it. Wherein how well you have carried yourself we are to consider in the next place.

CHAP. XX.

THe objection that by your Tenet the nature of God is made subject to change and alteration, yourself proposed in the former chapter; but you address yourself to make answer thereunto in this yet not without fetching a great compass which inclines rather to a work of circumvention then of satisfaction. Love you say is the Mother of all God's works and the fertility of his power and essence; that is the fruitful Mother of all things, and the power and essence of God by love becomes the fruitful Mother of all things. Yet to show how apt you are to forget yourself (which usually falleth out whē men discourse quicquid in buccam venerit) in the 8. chap. and pag. 91. you told us as a quaint conceit that we may conceive wisdom to be the Father and power the Mother of all God's works of wonder; and I think you account few or no works more wonderful then the creation.

And yet that which you say here, I prefer before that which you had formerly expressed there; because the love of God hath stricter sociation with the will of God then either wisdom or power. But you have not discovered unto us, if love be the Mother what is to be accounted the Father. Or if you refer this to the loving will and affection of God, why this should be accounted the Mother rather then the Father of the works of God.

Agayne we have earthly parents as Father and Mother, which are endued with wills and loves and other affections, and it is out of all course to say that their love or their will is the Mother of their children; especially considering that will is found in the Father, as well as in the Mother, yea and love also; if not in greater measure. But I deny not but that God made the world out of love; but out of love to whom? to the creature? Nothing less I should think (as before I have shown) but rather out of love to himself, as Prov. 16. 4. God made all things for himself. And great reason, God who is the sovereign Creator of all things, should be the supreme end of all things. But let this pass. Your next sentence is more serious and ponderous, but very preposterous, and unsound. First it contains a general proposition with the reason of it; and then a qualification or limitation thereof (by way of exception) unto a certain time. The proposition is this: No part of our nature can be excluded from all fruits of his love. Now the fruits of God's love you make to be not only grace and glory, but our temporal being also and the preservation thereof. For you make creation to be a fruit of God's love.

Now this proposition so general to my understanding is utterly untrue. For not only God is not bound to give grace and glory unto any. (For they are merely gratuita dona, and it is lawful to do what he will with his own, in bestowing it on whom he will, and denying it to whom he will. And therefore the Apostle testifieth that He hath mercy on whom he will, and whom he will he hardeneth.) But more then this as God was not bound to create any, so neither can anything (save his own will) bind him to preserve anything in being. But as he deals with other creatures so could he deal with men, even take their temporal being from them, without any purpose ever to restore it, and not only the being of their bodies, but of their souls also, turning both into nothing. Yet thus could God deal with men and Angels were they never so innocent, never so holy as Arminius confesseth.

But let us consider the reasons whereupon you ground this. Now these are two, the one because God hath created our natures: Now the unsoundness of this reason appears by this, that God hath created other things as well as man; Yet who will conclude herehence, that God must needs preserve them, and not exclude them from this fruit of his love. Your other reason is because, God cannot change and this is as weak as the former. For like as God though at one time he gives us life, another time takes life from us; yet all this is done by him without any change in himself, like as in course of nature, though he causeth changes and alterations in the seasons of the year in the wether, in the heavens, in the earth, in the Sea, in the states and Kingdoms of the World, and in the bodies of all creatures, yet without any change at all in himself; yea though he set an end to this visible World, this can infer no variableness in God, so if he should take all manner of being from men and Angels, and so exclude them from all fruits of his love: Yet should all this come to pass without any shadow of change in God.

Yet you have a third reason, which is this; Love is the nature of God as Creator: You could not be ignorant that God did freely create the World, and therefore that it was not natural to God to create it; therefore you say that Love is the nature of God as Creator, the sense and meaning whereof I comprehend not. And I have made it already appear that though God creates a thing, yet is he not thereby bound to preserve it any longer then he seeth good; and what other sense you imply when you say, Love is God's nature as a Creator, I discern not. You make creation to be a fruit of God's love; it is very incongruous to say that this love of God, whereby he creates anything belongs unto him as a Creator: But rather creation of things belongs unto him as he loves them. For fitter it is that the effect should be thus modified by the cause, then the cause by the effect in denominating any subject. Who ever said that a man was rationals quatenus risibilis and not rather risibilis quatenus rationals?

But let us proceed to the limitation of this your proposition; and that is this: No part of our nature can be excluded from all fruits of his love, until the sinister use of that contingency wherewith he endued it, or the improvement of inclinations, naturally bent unto evil come to that hight, as to imply a contradiction for infinite justice or equity to vouchsafe them any favor. First touching your meaning in this, then touching the manner how you express this meaning; your meaning in brief is this. No part of our nature can be utterly excluded from all fruits of God's love: until men have filled up the measure of their iniquity. Of this your opinion I have spoken often; I hope it shall be sufficient now to consider the reason whereupon you ground it. And that is this, Such an hight of sin implieth a contradiction to infinite justice to vouchsafe them any favor.

Now of this proposition of yours I see no reason. Nay I seem to observe manifest reason to the contrary. For justice consists in giving to everyone his own; Now seeing the wages of any sin is death even everlasting death; Not to condemn him that hath deserved to be condemned, seems as contradictory to justice as not to condemn him that is come to an hight of impiety.

And which is more, many thousand infants perish in Original sin, and yet we believe that Manasseh who unto Original sin added many abominable sins, was notwithstanding all this, saved; and will you say, there was any contradiction unto God's justice in all this? And I wonder you so much beat upon the contradiction unto God's justice and take no notice of God's mercy, whereas we do not consider the pardoning of sins as an act of God's justice but rather as an act of his mercy: and without quest on it is not contradiction to God's mercy to pardon any sin.

And God is merciful as well as just; and it is very absurd in my judgment to say that God in performing an act of mercy contradicts his justice, as well as to say that in performing an act of justice he contradicts his mercy. And the reason is because it is indifferent to God to exercise either his mercy in commiserating whom he will, or his justice in hardening whom he will. And therefore when the Apostle proposeth such an objection, against his former doctrine of election & reprobation as this; What shall we say then, is there any injustice with God? He answereth it by this, that God is free and hath a lawful power to exercise mercy and compassion on whom he will. God forbid saith he we should think so; For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on him to whom I will show mercy, and will have compassion on him, on whom I will have compassion.

And yet I pray consider, what color of contradiction to God's justice in pardoning the sins of them, be they never so many never so fowl; for whom the son of God (as you say) hath suffered the sorrows of death, and thereby made full satisfaction for all their sins; unless you will say, that Christ died to make satisfaction for original sin only and not for sins actual, or for some of their actual sins and not for all; to which strange and uncouth opinion: You seem to incline in the end of your 15. Chapter, where you say, that Christ only received our infirmities and original disease, and not the contempt of him and his law. I have cause to suspect that you concur with Arminians in maintaining, that all Infants, the very children of Pagans, Turks and Saracens that perish in their infancy are saved. For how can it be conceived that any improvement of evil inclinations is made in them unto such an hight as that it should imply contradiction to God's justice, to show them any favor?

And where such an hight of impiety is not, you profess they cannot be excluded from all fruits of his love. Yet I confess their souls have a being and that eternal; and if this be a fruit of God's love, then though the hight of impiety be never so great, yet is no man or devil excluded from this fruit of God's love: For they shall continue forever and that to their everlasting woe. As touching your manner of expressing your meaning, this increase of sin, you call the sinister use of contingency that God hath bestowed upon them, your meaning must be the sinister use of the liberty of their wills: which in your phrase is the sinister use of contingency, whereof I am persuaded you can give no example.

And by the way I observe you suppose in every natural man, a power to use the liberty of his will, either will or ill. I had thought and do still think there is no power in carnal man to use their natural liberty well, but only to use it either in this or that subject, but so as still the use of it shall be evil. For the affection of the flesh is not subject to the law of God nor can be, saith the Apostle, and every man is dead in sin till God quickeneth him. Ephesi. 2. 2. And a dead man can perform no action of life natural, if dead naturally, no action of life spiritual, if dead spiritually: But whether natural inclinations unto evil may be thus far improved in the children, by their Forefathers on no, (you say) is disputable but in another place: that is, it is a disputable question, whether children may not by the sins of their Father be so far corrupt, that it implieth contradiction to God's justice to show them any favor.

You might as well say it is a disputable question whether there be any God or no; For that there should be a God, and yet not able to cure the natural corruption wherein any man is borne is contradiction. And if he were, then sure he were able to show them no small favor. And as for contradictions to God's justice, there is so little color hereof in the saving of Infants, that on the contrary, there is nothing (the condemnation of the Son of God alone excepted) wherein the justice of God is more obscure, then in the condemnation of Infants. I think you have little mind to come to an account, how you do accommodate this your doctrine unto Infants; yet you must be called hereunto whether you will or no, unless you clippe the wings of your general propositions, as when you say: None can be excluded from the fruits of God's love until the improvement of inclinations naturally bent to evil come to that hight of impiety as to imply a contradiction for infinite justice or equity to vouchsafe them any favor. Yet by the way you put in an exception concerning Infants, and that is in case there be a neglect of duties, to be performed to them by their Elders; why do you not speak plainly and say, saving in case they are not baptized? And what think you in this case? Are they damned? I cannot believe you think so; yet the face of your discourse looks this way. I say I cannot believe it; and that for two reasons.

The one is, because the tenor of your tenet carrieth you rather to maintain with the Arminians, that all children dying in their Infancy though they die without the Church, are saved. My second reason is, because herein you should directly contradict the discourse Kinge James had with certain Divines a little before his death, and his apparent profession to the contrary; not as his private opinion, but as the opinion generally of our Divines, whom he had learned in his younger days to have censured Augustine for his opinion to the contrary, as one that was Durus Pater Infantum. Now I am so well persuaded of you, that I think you would not willingly enter upon so flat a contradictiō to such a discourse of Kinge James in the days of Kinge Charles, and that so soon after his death.

If you write only concerning men of ripe years, you must have a care to limit your propositions accordingly, and not to give them longer wings then is fit.

In the next place you touch upon a distinction much talked of, and as much advanced by some as cried down by others. Yet both Scotus and Durand give a tolerable, and Aquinas with the Dominicans after him, an orthodox interpretation thereof, though neither suitable to the mind of Damascene commonly reputed the Father of it. Yet look what in this kind is wanting in them is supplied by Arminiensis, who gives both an orthodox construction thereof, and that also in conformity to the opinion of Damascene, of whose text he gives a very sound and orthodox interpretation and the more orthodox the more opposite to their constructions, who with great cry of words draw it to the countenancing of their Arminian Tenets without cause, Love you say is the fruit of God's antecedent will, wrath and severity are the proper effects of his consequent will. Fruit and effect you make all one (as with good reason you may.)

Now what, I pray you, is this effect which you call love? You seem to intimate, that they are the effects of creation, as when you say, Every particular faculty of soul or body is a pledge undoubted of God's love. Yet faculties of souls and bodies are found in beasts, but God's antecedent will in Damascene is referred wholly unto men. Neither doth Damascene at all refer it to the work of creation; but makes it to be that whereby God will have all to be saved.

Liberty of will is proper to man in distinction from beasts, but who seeth not that this indifferently makes him obnoxius unto damnation as well as capable of salvation? Then when you say wrath and severity is the effect of God's consequent will, what do you mean by wrath? Is it either a resolution to take vengeance, or the execution of vengeance it self? I think you take it for the execution of vengeance it self. Now there is an execution of reward also properly opposite unto this which whether it be the same love you speak of, it became you to express so much, or whether you conceive it to be different, yet it were fit you should take notice of it, and acknowledge that this is a fruit of God's consequent will, as well as wrath; that as effectually presupposing obedience, as this disobedience: and that love in rewarding is every way as infallibly consequent to the obeying of God's will revealed, as wrath is of our neglecting and despising it. A full explication of this distinction you promise in good time, how well you perform it we may in good time consider with God's help.

Next you enter upon another form of the same distinction (as you pretend) and you suffer it to fly with one wing; For you talk of God's absolute will, (which you seem to confound with God's antecedent will) but as touching the member congruously opposite, you leave us to seek for that. But as it is we are to consider it; God's absolute will was (you say) to have men capable of Heaven and Hell, of joys and miseries immortal. This cannot be understoode of God's consequent will; for this absolute will is indifferent to end in the bestowing of reward or punishment, and is immediately terminated only in making man capable of either; but his consequent will is not so indifferent. For the only effect thereof you mention to be wrath and severity, and this presupposeth rather then causeth capableness.

Neither can this absolute will be the antecedent will of God according to Damascens meaning. For the antecedent will in Damascene, is only referred to the will of God, whereby he wills man's salvation: but this absolute will is (you say) to have men capable of Heaven and Hell. To help this you tell us: That this absolute will (whose possible objects are two) is in the first place set on man's eternal joy. But you do not proceed to show on what it is set in the next place, as if by such like incongrueties you desired rather to confound your reader, then to satisfy him.

Yet by the tenor of your discourse you leave it to us to guess, that in the second place to wit upon the despising of God's love, it is set upon a man's damnation. So that by this your doctrine, both God's antecedent will and consequent will is all one, and that is God's absolute will. But no such thing is found in Damascene, from whom such as you are, do usually take this distinction of will antecedent in God, and will consequent: And indeed you do well to make one as absolute as another; for like as wrath, the fruit of this will of God in the second place (as you imply) hath not its course but upō presuppositiō of disobedience; so in like manner, the proper opposite to wrath on the other side the fruit of this will of God in the first place, hath not its course but upon presupposition of obedience.

And that you may know what this fruit I speak of is; I say as wrath is taken for the execution of vengeance; so the proper opposite hereunto must be love as it is taken for the execution of reward; And let any man judge whether this doth not every way presuppose obedience, as well as the other presupposeth disobedience. And thus shall God as truly be said absolutely to wish a man's damnation as his salvation, and no more conditionally will the one then the other. And like as if God be absolutely said to will a man's salvation, it shall not herhence follow he shall so will it, as to contradict himself by frustrating the contrary possibility, which unto man he had appointed: so though God be said absolutely to will a man's damnation; yet it will not follow that God doth so will it as to contradict himself by frustrating the contrary possibility which unto man he had appointed: Only it is absurd to call this possibility a contrary possibility. It is I confess a possibility to the contrary, but not a contrary possibility. Like as liberty unto good and liberty unto evil are liberties unto things contrary in the way of manners: but yet they are no contrary liberties; so the possibilities of obtaining salvation or damnation, which are consequent upon the use of this liberty, though they are possibilities to contrary things, yet are they not contrary possibilities. And as God's anger signifying the execution of vengeance doth never rise up, but upon the despising of his love alluringe unto good; so God's love signifying the execution of reward, doth never rise up, but upon the embracing of his love alluring unto good.

But if you take God's wrath for his will to punish. I say that look by what reason God's wrath, as it signifies his will to punish, doth not arise in God but upon foresight of man's disobedience; in like sort the love of God, as it signifieth his will to reward, doth never arise in God but upon foresight of his obedience. And look in what congruity God's will to punish for sin deserves to be called reprobation: in the same measure of congruity God's will to reward for obedience, is to be called Election, if so be we will make Election and reprobation congruously opposite, as it is fit we should. Neither can it be avoided, but that the turning of tender love and compassion into severity and wrath must imply manifestly an extreme change in God. For like as when man's obedience is turned into disobedience, this cannot be without change; so when God's fervent love is turned into severe wrath, this cannot be possibly without change. Which I further prove a priori thus, where that which was, ceaseth to be, and that which formerly was not, beginneth to be, there must needs be a change, and that more ways then one: But where tender love is turned into severe wrath and that inexorable (as before you have expressed) there that which was, ceaseth to be, and that which was not, begins to be: therefore there must needs be change, and that more ways then one, to wit a change from something, and a change into another thing.

The minor is proved; For if the same tender love did still continue, it could not be said to be turned into wrath, but rather it should be said to consist with wrath. Likewise wrath formerly was not in God; for as much as you make it arise out of the ashes of his love despised, whereby that phrase (the ashes of God's love) doth manifestly argue that you will have God's love as it were consumed to ashes; therefore it must needs cease towards those that have thus despised it.

Neither is it true but a bold affirmation without all truth, to say that the changs is wholly seated in man's deviation, which you avouch without any color of proof: But I have already proved that this Tenet of yours maintaynes a change in God, unavoidable by all the wit of man.

It seems you would reason thus, the cause why the love of God is turned into wrath, is wholly seated in man; therefore the change is only in man. But this is so inconsequent that it seems common modesty would not suffer you expressly to insist upon it.

Though we sin, yet can we not make any change in God; I the Lord am not changed: therefore ye Sons of Jacob are not consumed. To touch this by the way; Adam I confess deviated from the good course of obedience, which he might have taken: but I deny that any natural man hath liberty, to take any good course of obedience, till God hath renewed him; yet such Pelagian acknowledgements are so frequent in your discourse, that they are found in every hedge.

2. The Sun indeed never changeth with the Moon, nor without the Moon, saving from place to place, and so he never changeth, one time only excepted in the days of Joshua.

But what mean you to say, that it is one & the same heat, that is with us in the spring time, and with them that travail in the sandes of Afric? Can it be one and the same accident in so not different only but distracted subjects. Yet it is one in kind but not in degree; like as grace and glory in the Saints of God is the same kind though different in degree; and produced in them all by one and the same love of God, that neither differs in kind nor in degree. The same heat of the Sun enflames matter capable of cumbustion not other matter. So God the same and without all change doth refresh the good, and consume the wicked. We nothing doubt of this; but then we must not say, his love is turned into wrath. For like as the heat of the Sun could not be turned into cold without change in the Sun; so neither could God's love be turned into wrath without alteration in God himself: God consumes the wicked, but not by love. God saves his Elect, but not by wrath; Yet his will is one and the same in both, though the effects be different, and no marvnile; For his will is free, as whereby he hath mercy on whom he will and whom he will he hardeneth; and as the one tends to the salvation of some, so the other tends to the condemnation of others.

It is true, there is none but hath been partaker of God's blessings one way or other. It is true, the measure of his wrath is equal to the riches of his bounty despised thus far. The more riches of his bounty we despise, the greater will by the measure of his wrath, of we continue in impenitency. Yet there is a subordinate difference, according as the same riches of God's bounty, may be in greater measure despised by one then by another. You are pleased needlessly to phrasifie this over and over again instead of affording better matter to satisfy your reader; but you are very liberal of words. But by the way you foist in a false die as thinking, that in the multitude of words it might not be perceived, as truly I was like to have overslipped it. As when you say, the only rule for measuring sin or transgression right, must be taken from the degrees of man's opposition to God's delight or pleasure in his salvation. Wherein you manifestly contradict yourself; For before you said it was to be taken from the degrees of mercy despised; But now you say it is only to be taken from the degrees of man's despising it. Which indeed is the righter of the two. So then the measure of Judas his sin is to be taken from the degrees of his opposition unto grace; which you in a strange manner express by the delight that God doth take in his salvation; Why what mean you by this? Is Judas saved think you or shall any reprobate be saved and not damned rather? what moved you then to talk of God's delight in the salvation of them, that are or shall be damned?

Is it possible that God can take delight in that which never was, nor is, not ever shall be? You may as well say that God takes delight in a multitude of other worlds of men and Angels, which were and are possible.

Yet as if this conceit of yours were a principle of credit you tell us demurely, that not a dram of God's delight or pleasure can be abated not a scruple of his will, but must be accomplished, to wit of that delight in Judas his salvation, which you do very gravely attribute unto God, and so consequently, God's will you speak of, which must be accomplished, is his will of Judas his salvation.

And this must be accomplished, & indeed so it had need, before God can take any delight and pleasure in it. But how or when shall God's will of Judas his salvation be accomplished? Will you give me leave to read this riddle out of your intimations? You seem to me to imply that this will of God is accomplished in Judas his damnation. Because look in what measure of love, God would have saved him, in such a measure of wrath, he doth damn him and so accordingly, look in what measure, God's delight would have been in Judas his salvation had he been saved; in the same measure God doth delight in his damnation he being damned. Vous avez; thus have you the interpretation of this riddle.

And by the same reason, you may proceed to make other riddles, and ask how is the will of God as touching Peters damnation, and God's delight and pleasure therein accomplished to every dram and scruple; and answer that this is accomplished in his salvation. For look in what measure God would have delighted in his damnation had he been damned; in the same measure God now delights in his salvation, he being saved.

And thus the delight and pleasure that any man takes in his childes salvation may be said to be accomplished in the delight and pleasure, which he shall take in his childes condemnation. For the Saints shall judge the World, even the Godly Father join with Christ in pronouncing the sentence of condemnation upon his ungodly Son, &c. God delights in our obedience and in our repentance when it is; but where there is no repentance or obedience how is it probable he or any should delight in that which is not. 1 Sam. 15. 22. Hath the Lord as great pleasure in burnt-offerings and sacrifices as when the voice ef the Lord is obeyed? Perhapps you will say, yet his will is that all should repent; I answer his will commanding, is so to all that hear it; but his will decreeing is not that all shall repent that are commanded to repent. For then all should repent: To say, that God will have anything come to pass which yet never comes to pass, Augustine hath long ago professed to be as good as to deny God's omnipotency. And whereas repentance is the gift of God, as the Scripture plainly testifieth, it is apparent that God doth not give repentance unto all, and therefore neither did he will or determine to give repentance unto all. God is said to love persons in as much as he willeth good things unto them. God may be said to love things moral as repentance and obedience, in as much as he will reward persons for their repentance and obedience.

Neither of these loves is accommodable to punishment, no more then unto reward. Yet look in what respect God may be said to love the one, so may he be said to love the other; And the Apostle professeth of himself, and his fellows that they were the good savor of the Lord even in them that perish. And every man knoweth reward to be a fruit of justice remunerative, as well as punishment is of justice vindicative; and each presupposeth the will of God, as well one as the other. For God is not bound to punish sin, he may pardon it. Nay how is he not bound to pardon all sin, of all men, if so be Christ hath made satisfaction for the sins of all?

And with these Tenets of yours you are grown so far in love, that because some school points do not bear such fair wether towards them as might be wished; you would put the maintayners of them upon some better explication of such Tenets. The Tenet is, that God doth punish sinners in the life to come citra condignum. The Moderne divines (as it seems) by your margent are Calvin & Zanchi that maintain this; against whom you oppose Coppenius, a Lutheran I guess, I do not think he is a Papist. Sure I am, Bradwardine and Gerson maintain the same; and as I remenber it is most generally received amongst the Schoolmen. And as for Coppenius his reasons; when he demands whether God doth remit ought for Christ's satisfaction or no: I answer it is not for Christ's satisfaction; but merely according to the good pleasure of his own will.

And when he urgeth that of James, Judgment mercylesse shall be to him that showeth no mercy: I answer that like as when the Apostle prayeth for Onesiphorus that he may find mercy at that day, his meaning can be no other then this, that his sins might be pardoned and his soul saved: so likewise in just proportion they may be said to taste of judgment mercylesse, whose sinners are not pardoned and whose souls are not saved. As for your reason it is grounded merely upon a fiction of your own, that subjecteth the delight of God unto degrees, (whereas his simplicity freeth him as well from composition of degrees, as from any other kind of composition,) as also unto change even there where you undertake to clear God from change: If Judas had been saved and Peter damned, God had still been the same and no other then now he is, as touching will and delight, and every thing that is in God. But by the way let me tell you, you corrupt the state of the question in supposing that by this Tenet, which you dislike, the punishment of reprobation is less then divine justice exacts. For they maintain no such thing, but rather the contrary that no degree of punishment is exacted by any justice in God, but left indifferent to the determination of God's will; And therefore Bradwardine distinguisseth between meritum actual and meritum potentiale. Meritum actual is in reference to such a degree of punishment or reward, which the will of God hath determined.

But meritum potentiale is in reference to any degree of reward or punishment which God might have determined. And Gerson professeth that when a sin is committed, it is merely in the good pleasure of God to inflict what kind or degree of punishment he will.

2. Your text is to prove that God's nature admitteth no change, albeit of a loveing Father he becomes a severe judge; albeit his tender love be turned into wrath. And for proof of this you think it enough to say that the change is in man: and that God's wrath kindles not but out of the ashes of his love despised. To this you take on another point (nothing at all to the purpose) that God's wrath is in proportion to men's sins, neither less nor more; and this you prosequu • e a whole leaf and more, that what you want of solid answer, you may supply by silling men's eyes with an idle discourse. Well we have considered what your discourse hath been on the by, touching this, that men's punishments are not less then their deserts. Now let us consider your following extravagancy, in showing that men's punishments are not more then their deserts.

And here you tell us that to think God should punish sin, unless it were truly against his will, or any sin more deeply then it is against his will and pleasure is one of those 3. gross transformations of the divine nature which Saint Augustine refutes. For thus to do, is neither incident to the divine nature, nor to any other imaginable. I would we were worthy to know 3. things. First who they are whom you oppose in this: Secondly what those 3. so gross transformations are, which you speak of out of Augustine. Thirdly, to what end tends all this, on which you spend so many words.

But to take it as we find it. No Christian I think ever doubted, but that all sin is 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 , a transgression of God's law, & accordingly contrary to the commaundment of God, which is usually called the will of God. But that any sin should be committed contrary to the will of God, as it is taken for the decree and determination of God, I had thought no sober man would have affirmed. Augustine I am sure plainly professeth that Non aliquid sit nisi omnipotence feri velit, vel sinendo ut fiat vel ipse faciendo. And albeit Aquinas seems concealedly to oppose Augustine in this in q. 9. 19. art. 9. Yet notwithstanding concludeth thus: Deus igitur neque vult mala fieri, neque vult mala non fieri, sed vult permittere mala fieri: Ibid. ad tertium. Yet I willingly grant that every sin is against God's will and pleasure, as it signifieth his pleasure what shall be our duty to do; which is nothing else but his commaundment. And it is as true that herein are no degrees, every sin is equally against the commaundments of God.

And the will and pleasure of God whereby he will have this or that to be our duty to do or leave undone, hath no degrees. For God's simplicity freeth him as well from composition of degrees as from any other composition. But yet some transgressions are greater then others in as much as God may be more or less wronged by us, or ourselves, or our brethren. It is neither incident to the divine nature nor to the human, to punish anymore then it is ones will and pleasure to punish. But to a man it is incidēt to punish for those crimes wherein themselves take delight. For a man may be condemned and punished for adultery by them who are adulterers themselves; as appears in those that brought unto our Savior a Woman taken in adultery. For when our Savior said. Let him that is amoungst you without sin cast the first stone at her, the text saith herupon being accused by their own conscience, they went out one by one beginning at the eldest, even to the last. John. 8. 7. Wherefore you do overlash in not contenting yourself to affirm this of the divine nature, but extending it to every nature imaginable.

Agayne, what mean you to call that a way wardnesse of men, whereof you profess the human nature is uncapable; as namely to be offended at that which doth not offend them? What is a wild manner of discourse, if this be not? Nothing inferior in absurdity is that which followeth, as when you say, that To punish any which do not contradict their wills, is an injustice scarce incident to the inhabitants of Hell. If the Divills punish any, as you say they do; do they punish them for sins committed in contradiction to their wills? And how many Magistrates do punish even such sins, whereof themselves are guilty? They are bound by law to punish profane swearers, to punish drunckerds; is it necessary that every such Magistrate should be free from such sins themselves? But the Divills themselves you say do not vex the wicked but the Godly; this being a most absurd conceit at first sight, you have taken a course to charm the absurdity of it by adding, concerning the wicked. Till God's justice overtake them; might you not as well add concerning the Godly, Till God's will and pleasure is, and so far as his pleasure is, the Devil shall vex them; as appears in the example of Job? But ordinarily in the course of God's providence; who are more vexed by the Devil, the godly or the wicked rather?

Now because it it apparent that in your opinion the Devil torments infernally the damned and hath no power over the Saints of God; though they are more prone to vex the godly then the wicked as you think: therefore you put yourself to devise a reason why the Divills torment the damned, whereas the sins of the damned men were committed only in following the will of the Devil too much.

But the reason you give is of the wildest and most contradictious nature that ever any I think was heard of. For the reason you give is this: Therefore the Divills cease not to torment them, because they can find no ease in tormenting them: Whereas if they could find any case in tormenting them, then (you say) they would be less displeased with them, and consequently torment them less; which if it were true the Divills should be as arrant fools as ever lived; as namely in ceasing to do that, by the doing whereof they should find ease, by this supposition of yours.

And in the mean time you represent unto as a proper model of God's providence, while you conceive, the tormenting of the damned to be put over by God to the will of the Devil; as if the dispensation of the degrees of punishment, thereby to justify God's proceeding, were remitted to the discretion and equity of those Angels of darkness. And who I pray shall be the dispenser of that punishment, that in justice belongs to the Divills themselves? Yet as if you had performed some great exployte against somebody, you demand bravely; Whether they did not rather dream then think of God, that sometimes write, as if it were not as much against God's will, to have men die, as it is against man's will to suffer death. In writing this, you think, they did rather dream then think on God in writing of the former, sure I am you did if not dream yet think of the Devil.

But which writing yours or theirs, be like unto a sick man's dream, let not the indifferent only, but the unindifferent also judge. For you show as little sobriety in the impugning of these, in their writing concerning the will of God, then in inventing your former fancies concerning the Devil. Is it not by the will of God appointed that all must die? And is it probable then, it should be against God's will that any should die? O but you speak belike of the second death, I answer; Is it not as well appointed by the will of God that all that die the first death in sin, shall die the second death of everlasting sorrow; as it is appointed by the will of God that all shall die the first death? And will it not by the same reason follow; that look in what sense it is impossible that any should die the first death against the will of God, in the same sense it is impossible that any should die the second death against the will of God? and if they suffered death (as you say) to this end, that God's will may be fulfilled in their suffering; how is it possible that this their suffering of death should be against the will of God? which yet you boldly affirm and that with such confidence as to break out into a censure of them that think the contrary, as if they did rather dream then think the contrary.

And yet when you break forth in avouching manifest contradiction, would you have your reader conceive yourself to be in a sober discourse waking? or in a dream sleeping? Yet this is usual in your writings.

4. The main point proposed: (to wit how God without change of a loving Father becomes a severe judge) you dispatched in a few words saying, the change is wholly in man; and therein giving us your word for it; and afterwards served yourself with certain illustrations nothing to the purpose. And to refresh your spirits and get some breath you turned aside, to the consideration of the proportion of men's punishments to their sins; points merely extravagant. And now you take liberty to maintain your extravagant discourse by inquiring, how it stands with God's justice to inflict eternal punishments for temporal sins. We must be content to follow you in your wild goose race; For seeing we are in, we must go thorough and get out as we can. Yet you acknowledge the doubt proposed nothing pertinent; but to make matter of farther discourse you tell us, it were pertinent, if the immortal happiness whereunto the riches of God's bounty did daily lead them here on earth, had not farther exceeded the pleasure of this life, then the pains of Hell do those grievances which caused them to murmur against their heavenly Father. You are very bold to acknowledge, God to be the heavenly Father of the reprobates. Whereas the Apostle professeth that we are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. Gal. 3. 25. And if sons then heirs even heyrs of God and coheyres with Christ. Rom. 8. Much more bold, if because our Savior Christ exhorts the Apostles to be like their heavenly Father, therefore you will acknowledge him the heavenly Father, even of reprobates also.

This is by the way, I come to the main: and say first; were it so as you speak, yet this doubt were nothing pertinent to this place, of clearing God from innovation and change of nature, as often as his tender love is turned into fierce wrath. Secondly, your argument contracted being this. Immortal happiness doth more exceed the pleasures of this life, then the pains of Hell exceed the grievances of this life: therefore it is impertinent to make a doubt how God's justice doth appear in inflicting eternal punishment for temporal sin. I see no just consequence at all in this. I will draw it to the best form I can devise, in congruity to your meaning which I desire to pick out as well as I can. And that is this; Theire obedience should be rewarded with infinite joy: therefore their obedience may be justly punished with infinite sorrow: and no doubt is to be made hereof. And this I confess is more suitable, speaking of the protension & duration of each then of their intension as you do. For though the joys of Heaven were never so great beyond the degree of sorrows of Hell.

Yet if they were not everlasting the comparison would not hold. Because there could be but a finite difference between their intensions; for joys of man cannot be infinite in degree. But if the one were everlasting the other not; there should be an infinite difference in this. And albeit the joys of Heaven were but of equal degree, in proportion to the sorrows of bell; Yet the argument would every whit proceed as well upon supposal of inequality, and that of exuberancy on the part of joys.

Now I will show, what exception may be taken against this. First no laws of the World (the execution whereof are reputed just) do or can proceed after any such proportion? Let a man take a purse upon the high way, or kill a man he shall die for it; Let him give ten times as much to the poor; let him save ten men's lives, they neither do, nor can reward, in proportion to the punishment; Let the greatest honor or any other kind of rewards be heaped upon him; all are inferior to his life. For all that ever a man hath, he will give for his life.

But then you will say, if it be just with man, to punish with death; though they cannot possibly administer rewards in any proportion thereunto; how much more is it just with God, to punish with eternal death, seeing be can and will reward obediency with eternal life? And I nothing doubt but that it is just; but the question is wherein consisteth this justice? For it seems that justice in this kind should stand in reference to the work, and not be measured by any aliene consideration. Especially considering that the question may be revived on the part of the reward. For how stands it with justice to reward with everlasting bliss a temporal obedience, so that still we shall be to seek of the right measure of justice in this kind.

Agayne, if a Master shall say unto a servant; do such a thing and I will give thee an hundred pound; it will not herehence follow, that for his disobedience the Master may make him pay an hundred pound. And the reason is because it is manifest, that like as a man may give what he will freely; so he may reward as liberally as he will. But it is not so manifest that God himself may do what evil he will unto his creature, and accordingly afflict what punishment he will for the transgression of his creature.

And therefore the reason that you give for justifying God in this is unsound; and you seem to be sensible of it, when you desire to help yourself with the consideration of men's multiplied contempts of grace, all which nevertheless do make up but a short continuance in sin. Besides that, this consideration hath no place in such infants as perish in original sin. You cannot find any neglect in them, much less often, and yet to say, and barely to say That often and perpetual neglects turns slames of eternal love into an eternal consuming fire, is to please yourself in your own dictates, but to prove nothing. The same song you sing still; when you tell us, the oftener God pardons a man, the greater is his wrath against impenitency; save that the prosequution of it is more absurd then the former; For it hath reference rather to the intention of his wrath, which is greater or less according to the qualities of men's sins, not to the protension and duration of it, which is equal to all.

But by the way, where I pray doth it appear, that God doth often pardon the sins of reprobates or that he doth at all pardon them? Doth God pardon any sins without repentance? Or are the reprobates at any time brought by God unto repentance? I am sure Augustine professeth the contrary, where he saith, Istorum neminem adducit Deus ad salubrem spiritualemque poenitentiam, qua homo reconciliatur Deo in Christo, sive illis ampliorum patientiam sive non imparem praebeat. But to return to the point; with far more reason do they discourse, that considering the infinite nature of God against whom sin is committed, do therhence infer the desert of infinite punishment, and because a creature being but finite is not capable of infinite punishment in intention, therefore make him liable to infinite punishment in duration. Though I well know also, this is excepted against; and therefore Miranrandula whom you mention makes choice to reply on this, that as many as die in sin, their sins, being never broken of, continue with them in infinitum, and therefore do justly expose them to infinite punishment in duration.

Yet I very well consider what just exceptions may be taken against this also, and the less we can satisfy ourselves in the reason hereof, the more cause have we to refer all to the will and pleasure of God; until such time as the wonderful wisdom and congruity of his actions shall be more clearly discovered unto us.

5. As for Lactantius I am not apt to quarrel with him about any incommodious speeches; but willing to accept any convenient interpretation of them; In anger, as it is in man, we all know there is something material as the kindling of the blood about the heart, and something formal, which is the desire of revenge.

But as diverse other passions do include imperfection in the very formal part of them, so doth anger, for it supposeth grief: Yet some passions in the formal part of them imply no imperfection as love and joy. And accordingly the rule that Aquinas gives is this: Cum nihil horum Deo conveniat secundum illud quod est natural in eis: illaque imperfectionem important; etiam formaliter Deo convenire non possunt nisi metaphorice propter similitudinem effectus: Quae autem imperfectionem non important de Deo proprie dicuntur ut Amor & Ga • dium, tamen sine passion, ut dictum est: 1. q. 20. art. 1. ad 2. And in another place, Ira non dicitur in Deo secundom passionem animi, sed secundum judicium justitiae: prout vult vindicta facere de peccato. 12. q. 47. art. 1. ad. 1. God you say is more deeply displeased with sin then man, as if God's displeasure and man's differed only in degree, and not rather toto genere.

Neither are there any degrees of displeasure at all in God properly, but attribuuntur Deo secundum similitudinem effectus, as anger is, when God punisheth; so he shows a grenter anger when he punisheth more severely, and a less anger, when he punisheth Jesse severely. You make God unchangeable in word yet not so always neither, as where you discoursed of an impotent immutability. But if you maintain that God did for a time will the salvation of any man before he had filled up the measure of his iniquity, and not afterwards: or that his tender love is turned into severe wrath, it cannot be avoided but you must make change and innovation in the nature of God.

6. It is true that love includes no imperfection in it, as touching the formal part thereof, unless it be considered as a passion, but anger doth, in as much as it supposeth grief. But take love as it signifieth a will to do good, and anger as it signifeth a will to take vengeance on them that do evil; and the one is as natural unto God as the other. The truth is, neither of them natural, but free; God's love to himself is: natural and nessary, but his love to his creatures is not, no more then his mercy, and he hath mercy on whom he will. He is neither tied by any natural inclination to make the World, nor being made, is he bound to maintain it, but as he made it according to the good pleasure of his will, so he doth maintain it. Every love of God to his creatures is not suitably opposite to his anger. 〈◊〉 • he anger of God being the will of punishing, nothing is congruously opposite hereunto but his love, as it signifieth the will of rewarding, and rewarding presupposeth obedience, as well as punishing presupposeth disobedience; but the will of doing the one or the other presupposeth neither.

You might as well say that justice is not so natural to God as mercy; and I wonder at your unreasonable declination of this comparison in this place; whereas in other places you insist so much on God's justice, as to take little or no notice of his mercy. Yet if it be true, as you have heretofore discoursed, that there is a justice before the will of God, by which the will of God is ordered; how can you make that doctrine conformable unto this? It is true, God condemns no man but for sin; and it is as true that God rewards no man but for obedience; only here is the difference. The best obedience of man's is no meritorious cause of his salvation, but only disposing thereto: but man's disobedience is not only a disposing cause, but meritorious of his condemnation.

It is untrue that compassion come naturally from God; it comes freely • so doth punishment also, not naturally, much less unnaturally, but freely: For he could pardon sin in allof it pleased him, and doth pardon it in all his elect. 〈◊〉 God when he punisheth, relinquisheth the exercise of his merciful nature, but undoubtedly he exerciseth his vindicative nature. Now indeed the exercise of his merciful nature is proper to his own people, as whom he hath made vessels of mercy, and for whom Christ hath made satisfaction upon the cross.

And therefore when he proceeds to punishment against them, he may be said to exercise alienum opus, and is represented unto us loathe to come unto it. How shall I give thee up. Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? Myne heart is turned within me, &c. God's anger is seen and felt by the effects of it, but to whom? only to those that know God to be the Author of the things they suffer.