2. The worst part of this story lies in the middle of it, in the exclusion of any such spiritual principle in believers as should carry them out unto obedience, at least to any such as is not begotten in their minds by " rational considerations.'' Whatever may be granted of acquired habits of grace (which that the first should be, that a spiritual habit should be acquired by natural actings, is a most ridi- culous fiction), all infused habits of grace that should imprint upon
478 DOCTRINE OF THE SAINTS' PERSEVERANCE. [CHAP.
the soul a new natiiral inclination to obedience, that should fashion and frame the hearts of men into a state and condition suited for, and carry them out unto, spiritual obedience, are here decried. All, it seems, that the Scripture hath told us of our utter insufficiency, deadness, disability, indisposedness to any thing that is good, without a new life and principle; all that we have apprehended and believed concerning the new heart and Spirit given us, the new nature, new creature, divine nature, inner man, grace in the heart, making the root good that the fruit may be so; all that the saints have ex- pressed concerning their delight in God, love to God upon the account of his writing his laws in their hearts and spirits, — is a mere delusion. There is no principle of any heavenly, spiritual life, no new nature, with its bent and instinct lying towards God and obedience to him, wrought in the saints, or bestowed on them, by the Holy Spirit of grace. If this be so, we may even fairly shut our Bibles, and go learn this new gospel of such as are able to instruct us therein. Wherefore, I say, —
3. That as in children there is an instinct, an inclination of nature, to induce them and carry them out to obedience to their natural parents, which yet is directed, regulated, provoked, and stirred up, and they thereby, to that obedience, by motives and considerations suited to work upon their minds and consciences, to prevail with them thereunto: so also in believers, the children of God, who are " begotten of the will of God," by the " word of truth," and " born again, not of the will of the flesh, but of the will of God/' there is a new spiritual principle, a constituting principle of their spiri- tual lives, wrought and implanted in them by the Spirit of God, — a principle of faith and love, enabling them for, suiting them unto, and inciting them to, that obedience which is acceptable and well-pleas- ing to their Father which is in heaven; in which obedience, as they are regulated by the word, so they are stirred up unto it by all those motives which the Lord in his infinite wisdom hath fitted to prevail on persons endued with such a principle from himself as they are. It is not incumbent on me to enter upon the proof and demonstra- tion of a title to a truth which the saints of God have held so long in unquestionable possession, nothing at all being brought to invali- date it but only a bare insinuation that it is not so. Tlien, —
4. I deny not but that the saints of God are stirred up to obe- dience by all the considerations and inducements which God lays before them and proposeth to them for that end and purpose; and as he hath spread a principle of obedience over their whole souls, all their faculties and affections, so he hath provided in his word motives and inducements to the obedience he requires, which are suited unto and fit to work upon all that is within them (as the psalmist speaks) to live to him. Their love, fear, hope, desires, are
XII.] OBJECTIONS TO THE DOCTRINE EEFUTED. 479
all managed within and provoked without to that end and purpose. But how it will thence follow that it is the intendment of God by his threatenings to ingenerate such a fear of hell in them as is inconsistent with an assurance of his faithfulness in his promises not to leave them, but to preserve them to his heavenly kingdom, I profess I know not. The obedience of the saints we look upon to proceed from a principle wrought in them with a higher energy and efficacy than mere desires of God to implant it by arguments and motives ; that is, by persuading them to it, without the least real contribution of strength or power, or the ingrafting the word in them, in, with, and by, a new principle of life. And if this be the Phyllis of our author's doctrine, solus haheto. Such a working of obedience we cannot think to have any thing " of God, of the Spirit of God, of the wisdom of God, or the goodness of God," in it; being exceedingly remote from the way and manner of God's working in the saints as held out in the word of truth, and ineffectual to the end proposed in that condition wherein they are. The true use of the threatenings of wrath, in reference to them who by Christ are delivered from it, hath been before manifested and insisted on.
Thirdly, In the last division of this section, he labours to prove that what is done from a principle of fear may be done willingly and cheerfully, as well as that which is done from a principle of love. To which briefly I say, —