SALVATION THROUGH FAITH IN CHRIST. 109
doubting but that to have repeated it is fully to have confuted it, in the judgment of all pious Christians.
First, then, They grant salvation to the ancient patriarchs and Jews, before the coming of Christ, without any knowledge of or faith in him at all; nay, they deny that any such faith in Christ was ever prescribed unto them or required of them. ^ " It is certain that there is no place in the Old Testament from whence it may appear that faith in Christ as a Redeemer was ever enjoined or found in any of them,'' say they jointly in their Apology; the tmth of which assertion we shall see hereafter. Only they grant a general faith, involved under types and shadows, and looking on the pro- mise as it lay hid in the goodness and providence of God, which indirectly might be called a faith in Christ: from which kind of faith I see no reason why thousands of heathen infidels should be excluded. Agreeable unto these assertions are the dictates of their patriarch Arminius, affirming, ^" that the whole description of the faith of Abraham, Rom. iv., makes no mention of Jesus Christ, either expressly or so implicitly as that it may be of any one easily understood." And to the testimony of Christ himself to the contrary, John viii. 56, " Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day; and he saw it, and was glad," he answereth, " He rejoiced to see the birth of Isaac, who was a type of me," — a goodly gloss, corrupting the text.
Secondly, What they teach of the Jews, that also they grant concerning the Gentiles living before the incarnation of Christ ; they also might attain salvation, and be justified without his knowledge. ^"For although," saith Corvinus, "the covenant was not revealed unto them by the same means that it was unto the Jews, yet they are not to be supposed to be excluded from the covenant" (of grace), " nor to be excluded from salvation ; for some way or other they were called."
Thirdly, They are come at length to that perfection in setting out this stain of Christianity, that Bertius, on good consideration, de- nied this proposition, ^"That no man can be saved that is not ingrafted mto Christ by a true faith;" and Venator to this question, ^" Whe-
' " Cert urn est locum nullum esse, unde appareat fidem istam, sub Vet. Test., prae- ceptam fuisseaut yiguisse." — Rem. Apol., cap. vii. p. 91.
2 " Consicleretur omnis descriptio fidei Abrahse, Rom. iv. et apparebit in ilia Jesu Christi non fieri mentionem, expresse, sed ilia tantum implicatione, quam explicare cuivis non est facile." — Armin. " Gavisus est videre natalem Isaac, qui fuit typus mei." — Idem.
* " Gentes sub Veteri Testamento viventes licet ipsis ista ratione qua Judseis non fuit revelatum, non tamen inde continuo ex fiedere absolute exclusae sunt, nee a salute prsecise exclusi judicari debent, quia aliquo saltern modo vocantur." — Corv. Defens. Armin. adTilen.,p. 107. ^
* " Nego banc propositionera : nemiflitn posse salvari, quam qui Jesu Christo per veram fidem sit insitus." — Bert, ad Sibrand., p. 133.
5 "Ad banc qufestionem an unicavia salutis, sit vita, passio, mors, resurrectio, et as- censio Jesu Christi ? i-espondeo, Non." — Venat., apud Fest. Horn, et Peltium.
110 A DISPLAY OF ARMINIANISM.
ther the only means of salvation be the life, passion, death, resurrec- tion, and ascension of Jesus Christ?" answereth, " No." Thus they lay men in Abraham's bosom who never believed in the Son of Abraham ; make them overcome the serpent who never heard of the Seed of the woman ; bring goats into heaven, who never were of the flock of Christ, never entered by him, the door; make men please God without faith, and obtain the remission of sins without the sprinkling of the blood of the Lamb, — to be saved without a Saviour, redeemed with- out a Redeemer, — to become the sons of God, and never knoAV their elder Brother; — which prodigious error might yet be pardoned, and ascribed to human imbecility, had it casually slipped from their pens, as it did from some others.^ But seeing it hath foundation in all the grounds of their new doctrine, and is maintained by them on mature deliberation,^ it must be looked on by all Christians as a heresy to be detested and accursed. For, first, deny the contagion and de- merit of original sin ; then make the covenant of grace to be univer- sal, and to comprehend all and every one of the posterity of Adam ; thirdly, grant a power in ourselves to come unto God by any such means as he will appoint, and affirm that he doth assign some means unto all, — and it will naturally follow that the knowledge of Christ is not absolutely necessary to salvation, and so down falls the pre- eminence of Christianity; its heaven-reaching crown must be laid level with the services of dunsfhill gods.^
It is true, indeed, some of the ancient fathers, before the rising of the Pelagian heresy, — who had so put on Christ, as Lipsius speaks, that they had not fully put off Plato, — have unadvisedly dropped some speeches seeming to grant that divers men before the incarnation, living /xsra Xoyov, " according to the dictates of right reason," might be saved without faith in Christ; as is well showed by learned Casaubon in his first exercitation on Baronius. But let this be accounted part of that stubble which shall bum at the last day, wherewith the writings of all men not divinely inspired may be stained. It hath also since (as what hath not?) been drawn into dispute among the wrangling schoolmen; and yet, which is rarely seen, their verdict in this particular almost unanimously passeth for the truth. Aquinas* tells us a story of the corpse of a heathen, that should be taken up in the time of the Empress Irene and her son Constantino, with a golden plate on his breast, wherein was this inscription : — " Christ is bom of a vu'gin, and I believe in liim. O