Proof 18. " Believers are exhorted to contend for the faith of this common salvation, which was once delivered to the saints; which some having heard oppose, and others turn the offers of it into wan- tonness, and, through not heeding and not walking in the faith of
OBJECTIONS AND TEXTS OF SCEIPTUilE CONSIDERED. 403
this salvation, already wrought by Christ for men, they deprive them- selves of, and wind out themselves from, that salvation, which Christ by his Spirit, in application of the former, hath wrought in them, and so deprive themselves of the salvation to come, Jude 3-5.
" And every [one] of these proofs be plain and according to Scrip- ture, and each of force, how much more altogether! — still justifying the sense that 1 Tim. ii. 6 and Heb. ii. 9 importeth, and the truth of the proposition in the beginning."
Ans. I can see nothing in this proof, but only that the salvation purchased by Christ is called " common salvation ;" which if ye con- clude from thence to be common to all, ye may as well conclude so of faith that it belongs to all, because it is called the "common faith," Tit. i. 4, though termed the " faith of God's elect," verse 1. Doubtless there is a community of believers, and that is common amongst them which is extended to the whole church of God ; there is totus mundus ex toto mu7ido; and that common salvation is that whereby they are all saved, without any colour of that strange common salvation whereby no one is saved, maintained by this disputer. The remain- der of this proof is a fulness of words, suitable to the persuasion of the author, but in no small part of them exceedingly unsuitable to the word of God and derogatory to the merits of Christ, making the salvation purchased by him to be in itself of no effect, but left to the will of sinful, corrupted, accursed men, to make available or to reject.
And these are the proofs which this author calls "plain and accord- ing to Scripture," being a recapitulation of almost all that he hath said in his whole book ; at least, for the argumentative jiart thereof, there is not any thing of weight omitted : and therefore this chapter I fixed on to return a full and punctual answer unto. Now, whether the thing intended to be proved, namely. The paying of a ransom hy Christ for all and every man, he plainly, clearly, and evidently from the Scripture confirmed, as he would bear us in hand; or whether all this heap of words, called arguments, reasons, and proofs, be not, for their manner of expression, obscure, uncouth, and ofttimes unintelligible, — for their way of inference, childish, weak, and ridi- culous,— in their allegations and interpretations of Scripture, per- verse, violent, mistaken, through ignorance, heedlessness, and cor- ruption of judgment, in direct opposition to the mind and will of God revealed therein, — is left to the judgment of the Christian reader that shall peruse them, with the answers annexed.
404 "mE DEATH OF DEATH. [BOOK IV,
CHAPTER VII.
The removal of othei' remaining objections.
The removal of some usual soi:)liisms and captious arguments of the Arminiaus, of late made common and vulgar, shall be the close of our treatise, and wind up the whole controversy, which hath drawn us with violence thus far. And in this performance I shall labour to be as brief as possible ; partly because these things have been handled at large by others ; partly because all colour of opposition to the tnith by us maintained from the Scriptures being removed, all other ob- jections will indeed naturally sink of themselves. Yet, because great boastings and swelling words of vanity have been used concerning some that follow, it is necessary that something be said to show the emptiness of such flourishes, that the weakest may not be entangled by them.
Objection I. That which we shall begin withal is an argument of as great fame and as little merit as any that, in this cause, or in- deed in any other controversy, hath been used of late days ; and it is this: — " That which every one is bound to believe is true; but every one is bound to believe that Jesus Christ died for him: therefore it is true, namely, that Jesus Christ died for every one."
This is an argument which, to discover their conviction of the weakness of the rest of their arguments, the Arminians and their friends never use, but withal they add some notable encomium of it, with some terms of affront and threatening to their adversaries ; in- somuch as, by consent on both sides, it hath obtained the name of the Remonstrants' Achilles. Noav, truly, for my part, as I shall not transcribe any thing hither out of the many full ansAvers given to it by our divines, by which this Achilles, or rather Goliath, hath been often cast to the ground, so I heartily wish that the many operose, prolix answers Avhich the boasting of our adversaries hath drawn forth had not got, [for] this poor nothing, more repute a thousand times than its own strength, or any addition of force from the managers of it could have procured unto it. Supposing then, first. That the term " believe," be used in the same sense in both propositions (for if otherwise the syllogi.sm is false in the form of it) ; secondly, That by believing is understood a saving application of Christ to the soul, as held out in the jiromise, for to believe that Christ died for me in particular, as is asserted to be the duty of every one, can be nothing else but such a saving application ; thirdly, That believing that Christ died for any, according to the business in question, must be with reference to the purpose of the Father and intention of Jesus Christ himself, for that is it which, with regard to any universalitij, is by