' " Dcus honiini rcpugnaiitiam imlidit atlversus legem." — Job. Gest. in Synod. Confes.
' " Homo uon est idoncus cui lex I'oiatur, quando in eo, ad id quod lege vctatur, non est propensio, ac inelinatio natuvalis." — ("orv. ad Molin., cap. x. sect. 15.
' "Inelinatio ad peccandum ante lapsum in liominc fuit, licet non ita vebemens ac inordiTiata nt nunc est." — Ai'min. ad Artie. Respon.
* " Justitia oiiginalis instar fi'tcni fuit, quod proestabat intcmoe concupiscentine or- dinationem." — ("orv. ad Molin., cap. viii. sect. 1.
* " In spirituali mortc uon separantur proprie dona spiritualia a voluntate, quia ilia nunquam luerunt ei insita." — Rem. Coll. Hag., p. 2i>0.
OF ORIGINAL EIGHTEOUSNESS. 85
was endued, and also deny those which he had, as a power to believe in Christ, or to assent unto any truth that God should reveal unto him ; and yet they grant this privilege to every one of his posterity, in that depraved condition of nature whereinto by sin he cast him- self and us. We have all now a power of believing in Christ; that is, Adam, by his fall, obtained a supernatural endowment far more excellent than any he had before. And let them not here pretend the universality of the new covenant until they can prove it; and I am certain it will be long enough. But this, I say, belongs not to this place; only, let us see how, from the word of God, we may overthrow the former odious heresy: —
God in the beginning '* created man in his own image," Gen. i. 27, —that is, " upright," Eccles. vii. 29, endued with a nature composed to obedience and holiness. That habitual grace and original right- eousness wherewith he was invested was in a manner due unto him for the obtaining of that supernatural end whereunto he was created. A universal rectitude of all the faculties of his soul, advanced by supernatural graces, enabling him to the performance of those duties whereunto they were required, is that which we call the innocency of our first parents. Our nature was then inclined to good only, and adorned with all those qualifications that were necessary to make it acceptable unto God, and able to do what was required of us by the law, under the condition of everlasting happiness. Nature and grace, or original righteousness, before the fall, ought not to be so distin- guished as if the one were a thing prone to evil, resisted and quelled by the other; for both complied, in a sweet imion and harmony, to carry us along in the way of obedience to eternal blessedness. [There was] no contention between the flesh and the Spirit; but as all other things at theirs, so the whole man jointly aimed at his own chiefest good, having all means of attaining it in his power. That there was then no inclination to sin, no concupiscence of that which is evil, no repugnancy to the law of God, in the pure nature of man, is i^roved, because, —
First, The Scripture, describing the condition of our nature at the first creation thereof, intimates no such propensity to evil, but rather a holy perfection, quite excluding it. We were created "in the image of God," Gen. i. 27, — in such a perfect uprightness as is opposite to all evil inventions, Eccles. vii. 29 ; to which image when we are again in some measure "renewed" by the grace of Christ, Col. iii. 10, we see by the first-fruits that it consisted in " righteousness and true holiness," — in truth and perfect holiness, Eph. iv. 24.
Secondly, An inclination to evil, and a lusting after that which is forbidden, is that inordinate concupiscence wherewith our nature is now infected; which is everywhere in the Scripture condemned as a
86 A DISPLAY OF ARMINIANISM.
sin; St Paul, in the seventh to the Romans, affirming expressly that it is a sin, and forbidden by the law, verse 7, producing all manner of evil, and hindering all that is good, — a " body of death," verse 24; and St James maketh it even the womb of all iniquity, James i. 14, 15. Surely our nature was not at first yoked with such a trouble- some inmate. Where is the uprightness and innocency we have hitherto conceived our first parents to have enjoyed before the fall? A repugnancy to the law must needs be a thing sinful. An inclination to evil, to a thing forbidden, is an anomy, — a deviation and discrep- ancy from the pure and holy law of God. We must speak no more, then, of the state of innocency, but only of a short space wherein no outward actual sins were committed. Their proper root, if this be true, was concreated with our nature. Is this that obediential harmony to all the commandments of God which is necessary for a pure and in- nocent creature, that hath a law prescribed unto him? By which of the ten precepts is this inclination to evil required ? Is it by the last, " Thou shalt not covet?" or by that sum of them all, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart," etc.? Is this all the happiness of paradise, — to be turmoiled with a nature swelling with abundance of vain desires, and with a main stream carried headlong to all ini- quity, if its violent appetite be not powerfully kept in by the bit and bridle of original righteousness? So it is we see with children now ;^ and so it should have been with them in paradise, if they Avere sub- ject to this rebellious inclination to sin.