These I have rehearsed to show the vanity of that clamour where- with some men fill their mouths, and frighten unstable souls with the Scripture mentioning world so often in the business of redemp- tion, as though some strength might be taken thence for the uphold- ing of the general ransom. "Parvas habet spes Troja, si tales habet." If their greatest strength he hut sophistical craft, taken from the amhiguity of an equivocal word, their whole endeavour is like to prove fruitless. Now, as I have declared that it hath divers other acceptations in the Scripture, so when I come to a consideration of their objections that use the word for this purjDose, I hope, by God's assistance, to show that in no one place wherein it is used in this business of redemption, it is or can be taken for all and every man in the world, as, indeed, it is in very few places besides. So that, forasmuch as concerning this word our way will be clear, if to what hath been said ye add these observations, —
First, That as in other words, so in these, this is in the Scripture usually an dvTa)/a.xXasig, whereby the same word is ingeminated in a different sense and acceptation. So Matt. viii. 22, " Let the dead bury their dead;" — dead in the first place denoting them that are spiritually dead in sin; in the next, those that are naturally dead by a dissolution of soul and body. So John i. 11, He came ilg ra, 7dia,
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"to his own/' even all thiugs that he had made; xai ol 'Ibtoi, "his own," that is, the greatest part of the peoiDle, " received him not." So, again, John iii. 6, " That which is born of the Sj)irit is spirit." Spirit in the first place is the almighty Spirit of God ; in the latter, a spiritual life of grace received from him. Now, in such places as these, to argue that as such is the signification of the word in one place, therefore in the other, were violently to pervert the mind of the Holy Ghost. Thus also is the word world usually changed in the meaning thereof. So John i. 10, " He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not." He that should force the same signification upon the world in that triple mention of it would be an egregious glosser; for in the first, it plainly signifieth some part of the habitable earth, and is taken subjective fjuspixug- in the second, the whole frame of heaven and earth, and is taken subjective oa/xws" and, in the third, for some men living in the earth, — namely, unbelievers, who may be said to be the world adjunctive. So, again, John iii. 17, " God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved;" where, by the tvorld in the first, is necessarily to be understood that part of the habitable world wherein our Saviour conversed ; in the second, all men in the world, as some suppose (so also there is a truth in it, for our Saviour came not to condemn all men in the world: for, first, condemnation of any was not the prime aim of his coming ; secondly, he came to save his own people, and so not to condemn all) ; in the third, God's elect, or believers living in the world, in their several generations, who were they whom he intended to save, and none else, or he faileth of his purpose, and the endeavour of Christ is, insufficient for the accom- plishment of that whereunto it is designed.
Secondly, That no argument can be taken from a phrase of speech in the Scripture, in any particular place, if in other places thereof where it is used the signification pressed from that place is evidently denied, unless the scope of the place or subject-matter do enforce it. For instance : God is said to love the luorld, and send his Son ; to be in Christ reconciling the world to liimself ; and Christ to be a pro- pitiation for the sins of the whole world. If the scope of the places where these assertions are, or the subject-matter of which they treat, will enforce a universality of all persons to be meant by the word world, so let it be, without control. But if not, if there be no enforce- ment of any such interpretation from the places themselves, wliy should the tuorld there signify all and every one, more than in John i. 10, " The world knew him not," which, if it be meant of all with- out exception, then no one did believe in Christ, which is con- trary to verse 12; or in Luke ii. 1, " That all the world should be taxed," where none but the chief inhabitants of the Roman empire can be understood; or in John viii. 26, "I speak to the world
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those things which I have heard of him/' understanding the Jews to whom he spake, who then hved in the world, and not every one, to whom he was not sent; or in John xii. 19, " Behold, the world is gone after him!" which world was nothing but a great multitude of one small nation ; or in 1 John v. 19, " The whole world lieth in wickedness," from which, notwithstanding, all believers are to be understood as exempted ; or in Rev. xiii. 3, " All the world wondered after the beast," which, whether it be affirmed of the whole univer- sality of individuals in the world, let all judge? That all nations, an expression of equal extent with that of the world, is in like manner to be understood, is apparent, Rom. i. 5; Rev. xviii. 3, 23; Ps. cxviii. 10; 1 Chron. xiv. 17; Jer. xxvii. 7. It being evident that the words ivorld, all the world, the whole world, do, where taken ad- junctively for men in the world, usually and almost always denote only some or many men in the world, distinguished into good or bad, believers or unbelievers, elect or reprobate, by what is immediately in the several places affirmed of them, I see no reason in the world why they should be wrested to any other meaning or sense in the places that are in controversy between us and our opponents. The par- ticular places we shall afterward consider.