66 A PREFACE TO THE READER.
constantly affirmed might fall away into everlasting destruction; but yet what tlicir judgment was concerning their present state indeed, even then when they so termed them regenerate and believers, in respect to the sacraments of those graces, Austin in sundry places clearly delivers his thoughts, to the undeceiving of all that are willing to be free. This he especially handles in his book De Correp. et Grat., cap. ix. " Non erant," saith he, "filii, etiam quando erant in professione et nomine filiorum; non quia justitiam simulaverunt, sed quia in ea non permanserunt." This righteousness he esteemed not to be merely feigned and hypocritical, but rather such as might truly entitle them to the state and condition of the children of God, in the sense before expressed.
And again, " Isti cum pie vivunt dicuntur filii Dei, sed quoniam victuri sunt impie, et in eadcm impietate morituri, non eos dicit filios Dei praj- scientia Dei." And farther in the same chapter, " Sunt rursus quidam qui filii Dei propter susceptam temporalem gratiam dicuntur a nobis, nee sunt tamen Deo." And again, " Non erant in numero filiorum, etiam quando erant in fide filiorum." And, " Sicut non vere discipuli Christi, ita nee vere filii Dei fuerunt, etiam quando esse videbantur, et ita vocabantur." He concludes, " Appellamus ergo nos et electos Christi discipulos, et Dei filios, quos regenerates" (that is, as to the sacramental sign of that grace), " pie vivere cernimus ; sed tunc vere sunt quod appellantur, si manserint in eo propter quod sic appellantur. Si autem perseverantiam non habent, id est, in eo quod cceperunt esse non manent, non vere appellantur quod appellantur, et non sunt." As also, De Doct. Christiana, lib. iii. cap. xxxii., " Non est revera corpus Christi quod non erit cum illo in reternum."
And these are the persons which Austin and those of the same judg- ment with him do grant that they may fall away, such as, upon the account of their baptismal entrance into the church, their pious, devout lives, their profession of the faith of the gospel, they called and accounted regenerate believers; of whom yet they tell you, upon a thorough search into the nature and causes of holiness, grace, and walking with God, that they would be found not to be truly and really in that state and condition that they were esteemed to be in; of which they thought this a sufficient demonstration, even because they did not persevere: which luideniably, on the other hand (with the testimonies foregoing, and the like innumerable that might be produced), evinces that their constant judgment was, that all who are truly, really, and in the sight of God, believers, ingrafted into Christ, and adopted into his family, should certainly persevere; and that all the passages usually cited out of this holy and learned man, to persuade us that he ever cast an eye towards the doctrine of the apostasy of the saints, may particularly be referred to this head, and manifested that they do not at all concern those whom he esteemed saints indeed, which is clear from the consideration of what hath been insisted on. Thus far he, of whom what were tlie thoughts of the church of God in the days wherein he lived liath been declared; he who hath been esteemed, amongst the ecclesiastical writers of old, to have laboured more, and to more purpose, in the doctrine of the grace of God, than all tliat went before him, or any that have followed after him; whose renown in the church hath been chielly upheld and maintained upon tlie account of the blessed pains and labours, wherein the presence of God made him to excel, for the depressing the pride of all flesh, and the exal- tation of the riches of God's love, and efficacy of his grace in Jesus Christ, wlierevvith the whole church in succeeding ages hath been advantaged beyond what is easy to be expressed.
Tliat PuosPER, HiLAUV, FuLGENTius, and the n)en of renown in the con-
A PEEFACE TO THE EEADER. 67
gregation of God at the end of that age, did fall in with their judgments to that which Austin had delivered, I suppose will be easily confessed. Prosper, ad cap. vii. Gal. : " Quomodo eos habeat pra^ordinata in Christo electio? cum dubium non sit donum Dei esse perseverantiam in bono us- que ad finem; quod istos, ex eo ipso quod non perseveraruut, non habuisse nianifestum est." Also, the breaking of the power and frustrating of the attempt of Pelagius by sundry doctors of the church, and synods to that end assembled (whereof Prosper gives us an account, reckoning them up in their order, and Austin before him, Epist. xlii. and xlvii., with special relation to what was done in Afric, and in the beginning of his verses, De Ingratis), with what troubles were raised and created anew to the champions of the grace of God.by the writings of Cassianus, Faustus, Yin- centius, the Massilienses, with some others in France, and the whole rabble of semi-Pelagians, with the fiction of Sigibert about a predestinarian heresy (whereof there was never any thing in being, no not among the Adrumentine monks, where Vossius hoped to have placed it), the council of Aries, the corruptions and falsifications of Faustus in the business of Lucidus, the im];)Ositions on Gotteschalcus, with the light given to that business from the Epistle of Florus, — have exercised the commendable en- deavours of so many already that there is not the least need farther to insist upon them. What entertainment that peculiar doctrine, which I am in the consideration of, found in the following ages is that which I shall farther demonstrate.