With these and the like expressions doth Mr Goodwin adorn and gild over that doctrine which he hath chosen to oppose; Avith these garlands and flowers doth he surround the head of the sacrifice which he intends instantly to slay, that so it may fall an undeplored victim, if not seasonably rescued from the hands of this sacred officer. Neither through his whole treatise do I find it delivered in any other sense, or held out under any other notion to his reader. The course here he hath taken in this case, and the paths he walks in towards his adversaries, seems to be no other than that which was traced out by the bishops at Constance, when they caused devils to be painted upon the cap they put on the head of Huss before they cast him into the fire. I do something doubt (though I am not altogether ignorant how abominably the tenets and opinions of those who first opposed the Papacy are represented and given over to posterity, by them whose interest it was to have them thought such as they gave them out to be) whether ever any man that undertook to publish his con- ceptions to the world about any opinion or parcel of truth debated amongst professors of the gospel of Christ, did ever so dismember, disfigure, defile, wrest, and pervert, that which he opposed, as Mr Goodwin hath done the doctrine of perseverance, which he hath un- dertaken to destroy. Methinks a man should not be much delighted in casting filth and dung upon his adversary before he begin to grapple with him. In one word, this being the account he gives us of it, if he be able to name one author, ancient or modern, any one sober person of old or of late, that ever spent a penful of ink, or once opened his mouth in the defence of that perseverance of saints, or rather profane walking of dogs and swine, which he hath stated, not in the words and terms, but so much as to the matter or purpose here intimated by him, it shall be accepted as a just defensative
L] the doctrine of perseverance as proposed by MR g. 101
against the crime which we are enforced to charge in this particular, and which otherwise will not easily be warded. If this be the doc- trine which, with so great an endeavour, and a contribution of so much pains and rhetoric, he seeks to oppose, I know not any that will think it worth while to interpose in this fierce contest between him and his man of straw. Neither can it with the least colour of truth be pretended that these are consequences which he urgeth the doctrine he opposeth withal, and not his apprehensions of the doc- trine itself: for neither doth he in any place in his whole treatise hold it out in any other shape, but is uniform and constant to him- self in expressing his notion of it; nor doth he, indeed, almost use any argument against it but those that suppose this to be the true state of the controversy which he hath proposed. But whether this in- deed be the doctrine of the perseverance of saints which Mr Good- win so importunately cries out against, upon a brief consideration of some of the particulars mentioned, will quickly appear.
First, then, doth this doctrine " promise, with height of assurance, that under what looseness or vile practices soever men do live, they shall have exemption from punishment?" Wherein, I pray? — in that it promiseth the saints of God, that through his grace they shall be preserved from such looseness and evil practices as would expose them to eternal punishment?^ Doth it teach men that it is vain to use the means of mortification, because they shall certainly attain the end whether they use the means or no? Or may you not as well say that the doctrine you oppose is, that all men shall be saved whether they believe or no, with those other comfortable and cheer- ing associate doctrines you mention? Or is this a regular emergency of that doctrine which teaches that there is no attaining the end but by the means, between which there is such a concatenation by divine appointment that they shall not be separated? Doth it "speak peace to the flesh, in assurance of a blessed immortality, though it disport itself in all folly in the meantime?" Do the teachers of it express any such thing? doth any such abomination issue from their arguings in the defence thereof? Or doth the doctrine which teaches believers (saints, who have tasted of the love and pardoning mercy of God, and are taught to value it infinitely above all the world) that such is the love and good-will of God towards them, in the covenant of mercy in the blood of Christ, that having appointed good works for them to walk in, for which of themselves they are insufficient, he will graciously continue to them such supplies of his Spirit and grace as that they shall never depart from following after him in ways of gospel obedience,^ — doth this, I say, encourage any of them to continue in sin that this grace may abound? Or are any doctrines of the gospel to be measured by the rules and lines of the