Ans. That this is not the doctrine which Mr Goodwin hath un- dertaken to oppose hath been more than once already declared. That he is not able with any colour of reason to oppose it, unless he first impose his own false and vain inferences upon it, and them upon his reader, for the doctrine itself, from his constant course of proceeding against it, is also evident. What advantage this is like in the close to prove to his cause, in the judgment of considerate men, the event will discover. The assertion of the stability of the promises of God in Jesus Christ given to believers, concerning his effectual preserving them to the end from such sins as are absolutely inconsistent with his grace and favour according to the tenor of the new covenant, or such continuance in any sin as is of the same importance, by his Sphit and grace, in the use of means, doth no way tend to the be- getting in any a certain knowledge, assurance, and persuasion, that
436 DOCTRINE OF THE SAIN1"S' PERSEVERANCE. [CHAP.
God will continue tliem in a state of grace, " how desperately care- less or wicked soever they shall be."
What is intended by the frequent repetition of this gross sophistry, or what success with the intelligent Christian ponderers of things he can hope for tliereby, I am not able to guess; neither is any im- provement in the least given to what the intendment of this argu- ment is, so far as the "common doctrine of perseverance" is concerned therein, from the comparison ensuing instituted between the growth of corn and the walking of believers in obedience before God : for notwithstanding the identity in respect of the comparison of that expression " irresistible," which indeed is proper to neither, there is a "wide difference between the growing of corn in a mere natural way, and the moral actings of an intelligent, rational creature. Whatever operations of God are about and in the one or the other, yet they are suited to the subjects about which they are. God carries on the growth of corn by a way of natural and necessary causes ; but his acting of rational agents is by such ways and means as may entirely preserve their liberty, — that is, preserving them in their being, and leaving them to be such agents. As, then, God causeth the corn to grow by the shining of his sun and the falling of his rain, so he causeth believers to persevere in obedience by ex- hortations, promises, and threatenings, and such ways and means as are suited to such agents as they are. The fallacy of this discourse lies in an insinuation that God, by his effectual (or, as they are called, "irresistible") operations for the preservation of believers in gospel obedience (a thing he hath undertaken over and over to perform) doth change their nature, and render them, not free and intelligent agents, fit to be wrought upon by the proposal of suitable and desir- able objects to their understandings, but mere brute and natural principles of all operations flowing from them ; a conceit as gross and ridiculous as certainly destructive to all the efficacy of the grace of God. All the rest of this section, as far as it concerns us, is only an affirming, this way and that, that an assurance of the end to be obtained by the use of means renders those means altogether useless; which when he proves, the controversy may be nearer to an issue than otherwise he hath any reason to hope that it is, or will be to his advantage.
Sect. 4. Leaving the farther confirmation of his argument, he enters upon the removal of a plea insisted on to the justification of the doctrine opposed, and vindication of it from the crime wherewith here by him it is charged. This he tells you is, "Tliat the exhortations, comminations, and promises spoken of, are means appointed of God for tlic accomplishing and etTecting of the perseverance of the saints, which he hath made simply and absolutely necessary by his decree." *' This," he saith, " hath neither any logical nor theological virtue in
XII.] OBJECTIONS TO THE DOCTRINE REFUTED. 437
it for the purpose for which it is produced, but is a notion irrelative to the business, the accommodation whereof it pretends."
Ans. It may be so. Suffer you to frame the objection, and who will doubt of your ability of giving an answer? But who, I pray, says that " God, by his decree, hath made the perseverance of the saints simply and absolutely necessary?" That it is certain in respect of the event, from the decree of God, we grant; but do we thereby over- throw the means whereby it is to be accomplished ? yea, we establish them. We are of the mind that God hath purposed, and thereupon promised, the accomplishment of many things (as the selling of Joseph into Egypt, the bringing of the children of Israel from thence, and the like), which yet were to be carried on to their accomplishment and brought about through innumerable contingencies, by the free, rational, deliberative actings of men. If by " Simply and absolutely necessary" you intend that the thing decreed is to be wrought of men simply and absolutely necessarily by their operations, as to the manner of them, we simply and absolutely deny any such decree. If by those expressions you improperly intend only the certainty of the event, or accomplishment of the thing decreed, with respect to the means appointed and fitted thereunto, we say this establish eth those means; neither have they the nature of means to an end from any reason whatever, but as so appointed of God thereunto. But he proceeds in the proof of his former assertion, and says, —