' Plaut. iu Curcul. 2 cjc. pi-o Flacco. et 2 do Lcgib. pro Plaucio.
Plutarchus in Alcibiad, * Lucian. in Proinctli.
III.] THE IMMUTABILITY OF THE DIVINE PUKPOSES. 155
Farther; what is the meaning oi pre-approving ? God's approving of any person as to their persons is his free and gracious acceptation of them in Christ. His pre-approving of them in answer hereunto must be his eternal gracious acceptation of them in Clirist. But is this Mr Goodwin's intendment ? Doth God accept any in Christ an- tecedently to their predestination, calling, and justification (for they are all consequential to this act of pre-approbation) ? This, then, is that which is affirmed : God approves and accepts of men in Christ; thereupon he predestinates, calls, and justifies them. But what need [for] all these if they be antecedently accepted ? I should have ex- pected that this foreknowledge should have been resolved rather into a middle or conditionate prescience than into this pre-approbation, but that our great masters were pleased (in the place newly cited), though without any attempt of proof, to carry it another way. That God should approve of, love, accept persons, antecedently to their pre- destination, vocation, and justification, is, doubtless, not suitable to Mr Goodwin's principles; but that they should love God also before they fall under these acts of his grace is not only openly contradic- tious to the truth, but also to itself. The phrase here of " loving God '•" is confessedly a description of believers; now, to suppose men be- lievers, that is, to answer the call of God, antecedently to his call, will scarce be salved from a flat contradiction with any reserved considerations that may be invented.
This solid foundation being laid, he proceeds : " Those who thus love him, and he approves of them, he predestinates to be conformed to the image of his Son." It is true, the apostle speaks of them and to them that " love God," but doth not, in the least, suppose them as such to be the objects of the acts of his sovereign grace after men- tioned. If God call none but those that love him antecedently to his call, that grace of his must eternally rest in his own bosom, with- out the least exercise of it towards any of the sons of men. It is those persons, indeed, Avho, in the process of the work of God's grace towards them, are brought to love him, that are thus predestinated and called; but they are so dealt withal, not upon the account or consideration of their love of God (which is not only in order conse- quential to some of them, but the proper effect and product of them), but upon the account of the unchangeable purpose of God apjDoint- ing them to salvation ; — which I doubt not but Mr Goodwin studiously and purposely omitted to insist upon, knowing its absolute incon- sistency with the conclusion (and yet not able to waive it, had it been once brought under consideration) which from the words he aimeth to extract. As, then, to make men's loving of God to be antecedent to the grace of vocation is an express contradiction in itself; so to make it, or the consideration of it, to be previous unto predestina- tion is an insinuation of a gross Pelagian figment, giving rise and
156 DOCTRINE OF THE SAINTS' PERSEVERANCE. [CHAP.
spring to God's eternal predestination, not in his own sovereign will, but the self-differencing wills of men. " Latet anguis" also in the add- ing "grass" of that exegetical term " pre-ordinated," — 'predestinated, that is, pre-ordinated. Though the word, being considered in the lan- guage whereof it is, seems not to give occasion to any suspicion, yet the change of it from pre-ordained into pre-ordinated is not to be supposed to be for nothing in him who is expert at these weapons. To ordain is either " ordinare ut aliquid fiat," or " ordinem in factis statu ere," or, according to some, " subjectum disponere ad finem." To pre-ordain is of necessity precisely tied up to the first sense; — to pre-ordinate, I fear, in Mr Goodwin's sense, is but to predispose men by some good inclinations in themselves, and men pre-ordinated are but men so predisposed ; which is the usual gloss that men of this persuasion put upon Acts xiii. 48.
Thus far, then, we have carried on the sense affixed to these words, if it may so be called, which is evidently contradictious in itself, and in no one particular suited to the mind of the Holy Ghost.
He proceeds: " 'To give you yet,' saith our apostle, 'a farther and more particular account how God, in the secret of his counsel, hath belaid things in order,' " etc.
This expression, " God hath belaid things in order to the sal- vation of them that love him," is the whole of the assurance here given by the apostle to the assertion formerly laid down for the consolation of believers; and this, according to the analogy and pro- portion of our author's faith, amounts only thus far: " You that love God, if you continue so to do, you will fall under his predestination ; and if you abide under that, he will call you, so as that you may farther obey him, or you may not. If you do obey him, and believe upon his call (having loved him before), he will justify you; not with that justification which is final, of which you may come short, but with initial justification; which if you continue in and walk up unto, solvite curas when you are dead in your gi-aves." This is called God's belaying of things in his secret counsel ; whereby the total accomplishment of the first engagement is cut off from the root of God's purposes, and from the branches of his effectual grace in the pur- suit thereof, and grafted upon the wild olive of the will of man, that never did, nor ever will, bear any wholesome fruit of itself to eternity. What is afterward added of the qualification of those whom God predestinates, being an intrusion of another false hypothesis, for the confirmation of an assertion of the same alloy, is not of my present consideration. But he adds, " Ye are to understand that whom he hath predestinated he hath also called, hath purposed or decreed to call, to the knowledge of his Son, or his gospel," as before, etc.