» Pa. xliv. 21 ; Job xi. 11 ; Dan. ii. 47; Ps. vii. 9, xxvi. 2, cxlvii. 4; Luke xii. 27; Matt. X. 29, 30; Ps. cxxxix. 2.
OF THE PKESCIENCE OF GOD. 29
slioot who had determined his arrow should be the death of a king. He maketh men poor and rich, Prov, xxii. 2; He lifteth up one, and pulleth down another, Ps. Ixxv. 7. How many contingencies did yopyov '6/u,/u,a rov diff-rrorov, his piercing eye run through to foresee the crowning of Esther for the dehverance of his people ! In a word, " Known unto God are all his works."' Now, what can possibly be imagined to be more contingent than the killing of a man by the fall of an axe from out of his hand who intended no such thing? Yet this God assumeth as his own work, Deut. xix. 5, Exod. xxi. 13; and so surely was by him foreknown.
Fourthly, Do but consider the prophecies in Scripture, especially those concerning our Saviour, how many free and contingent actions did concur for the fulfilling of them; as Isa. vii. 14, ix. 6, liii. ; Gen. iii. 15, etc. The like may be said of other predictions; as of the wasting of Jerusalem by the Babylonians, which though, in regard of God's prescience, it was certainly to come to pass, yet they did it most freely, not only following the counsel of their own wills, but also using divination, or chanceable lots, for their direction, Ezek. xxi. 21. Yet he who made the eye seeth all these things, Ps. xciv. 9.
Divers other reasons and testimonies might be produced to con- firm our doctrine of God's everlasting prescience; which, notwith- standing Episcopius' blasphemy, that it serves for nought bvit to cru- ciate poor mortals, we believe to be a good part of the foundation of all that consolation which God is pleased to afford us in this vale of tears. Amidst all our afflictions and temptations, under whose pres- sure we should else faint and- despair, it is no small comfort to be assured that we do nor can suffer nothing but what his hand and counsel guides unto us, what is open and naked before his eyes, and whose end and issue he knoweth long before; which is a strong mo- tive to patience, a sure anchor of hope, a firm gi'ound of consolation. Now, to present in one view how opposite the opinions of the wor- shippers of the great goddess contingency are to this sacred truth, take this short antithesis: —
S. S. Lib. Arbit.
" Known unto God are all his " God sometimes feareth, and
works from the beginning of the prudently conjectureth, that this
world," Acts XV. 18. or that evil may arise," Vorsti.
" Neither is there any creature " God doth not always foresee
that is not manifest in his sight: the event of what he intendeth,"
but all things are naked and Corvin. ad Mol. opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do," Heb. iv. 13.
50
A DISPLAY OF ARMINIANISM.
s. s.
" He that formed the eye, shall he not see?" Ps. xciv. 9. " When a man goeth into the wood with his neighbour to hew wood, and his hand fetcheth a stroke with the axe to cut down the tree, and the head slippeth from the helve, and lighteth upon his neighbour, that he die," Deut. xix. 5. " God delivers him into his hand," Exod. xxi. 18.
" Take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed ? for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things," Matt. vi. 81 , 82.
" Take away God's prescience and you overthrow his deity," Jerome.
Lib. Arbit. " Future contingencies are not determined unto either part," Armin. That is, God hath not de- termined, and so, consequently, doth not foreknow, whether they shall come to pass or no.
" God hopeth and expecteth divers things that shall never come to pass," Rem.
" The doctrine of prescience seems to be invented only to vex and cruciate poor mortal men,"
Episcop.
CHAPTER IV.
Of the providence of God in governing the world diversely, thrust from this pre-eminence by the Arminian idol of free-will.
I COME now to treat of that betwixt which and the Pelagian idol there is helium ciffTovdov, implacable war and immortal hatred, abso- lutely destructive to the one side, — to wit, the providence of God. For this, in that notion Christianity hath hitherto embraced it, and that, in such a sense as the Arminians maintain it, can no more con- sist together than fire and water, liglitand darkness, Christ and Belial, and he that shall go to conjoin them ploughs with an ox and an ass; they must be tied together with the same ligament " quo ille mortua jungebat corpora vivis," — wherewith the tyrant tied dead bodies to living men. This strange advancement of the clay against the potter, not by the way of repining, and to say, " Why hast thou made me thus?" but by the way of emulation, "I will not be so, I will ad- vance myself to tlie sky, to the sides of thy throne," was heretofore unknown to the more refined Paganism.^ As these of contingency, so