S. What was the judgment of the primitive Christians, as in others, so in and about this head of Christian religion, is best known from that rule of doctrine which it is confessed they attended unto, being delivered unto them, and in the defence whereof, and to give testi- mony whereto, so many thousands of them " loved not their lives unto the death." Of those that committed over to posterity any thing of their thoughts in that space of time limited by Mr Goodwin (namely, three hundred years), he names but two; of whom I shall only say, that if they failed in their apprehensions of the truth in this matter, it is not the only thing wherein they so failed. And yet that it can be [made] evident in the least that they were consenting in judgment
XlIl.J ASSERTOES AND ADVERSARIES COMPARED. 489
with Mr Goodwin wherein from us he differs is absolutely denied. This elsewhere is already farther considered. It is a common ob- servation, and not destitute of a great evidence of truth, that the liberty of expression which is used by men in the delivery of any doctrine, especially if it be done obiter, by the way, before some op- position hath been framed and stated thereunto, hath given advan- tage to those following of them (when death hath prevented all possi])ility for them to explain themselves and their own thoughts) to draw them into a participation with them in that which their souls abhorred. The plea of Arius and his associates concerning the j udgment of the doctors of the church in the days before him about the great article of our faith, the deity of Christ, is known. That there are in many of the ancients sundry expressions seemingly vary- ing from that doctrine we assert, upon the account of their different apprehensions of the terms of " faith," being " regenerated," " holi- ness," and the /like (which are all of them still with us, as in the Scripture, of various significations, and not clearly expressive of any one sense intended by them, until distinguished), is not denied. Speaking of all those who had been baptized and made profession of their faith as " believers," it is no wonder if they granted that some believers might fall away; but yet, in the meantime, the most emi- nent of them constantly affirmed that there is a sort of believers who, upon the matter with them, were the only true and real be- lievers (being such as we formerly described) that could not fall either totally or finally. But as for this, I hope full satisfaction is tendered the learned reader in the preface of this discourse. So that, these exceptions notwithstanding, the prejudices that Mr Goodwin's doc- trine labours under, from the opposition made to it and against it, in the defence of that which it riseth up to overthrow, by that gene- ration of the saints of God, lies upon the shoulders thereof as a burden too heavy for it to bear.
Secondly, Mr Goodwin farther proceeds, sect. 25, to inform us of some other mistakes in the instance given to make good the former observation ; for as for Calvin, Musculus, Martyr, Bucer, with the ministers of this nation who in the last generation so zealously opposed the persecutions and innovations of some return- ing with sj)eed and violence to Kome, he tells us " they were very far from having their judgments settled as to the doctrine under contest, so as resolvedly to have embraced the one and rejected the other."
I should willingly walk in the high way for the manifestation and clear eviction of the untruth of this suggestion, — namely, by pro- ducing their testimonies in abundant, plentiful manner, to confirm their clearness and resolution in the truth we profess, with their zealous endeavours for the establishment, confirmation, and propa-
490 DOCTRINE OF THE SAINTS' PERSEVERANCE. [cHAP.
gatlon of it, — but that some few considerations delivered me from engaging in so facile a task ; for, —
1. I am not able to persuade myself that any man who ever read the writings of the first sort of men mentioned, and knows the constant doctrine to this day of the churches which they planted and watered, or ever did hear of the latter, will entertain this asser- tion of Mr Goodwin's with any thing but admiration upon what grounds he should make it. And, —
2. Himself discovering in part on what account he doth it, — namely, because of their exhortations to watchfulness, carefulness, and close walking with God, with their denunciations of threat- enings to them that abide not in the faith, which he fancies to be inconsistent with the doctrine of perseverance, as by him opposed (which inconsistency we have long since fully manifested to be the issue and offspring of his own imagination, begotten of it by the cunning sophistrj'- of his Pelagian friends), — I know not why I should farther insist upon the wiping away of this reproach cast upon those blessed souls whom God so magnified in the work of the gospel of his Son in their generation. I remember Navaret, a Dominican friar, upon his observation of the subtilties of the Jesuits to wrest many sayings of the ancients in favour of their opinions in those doctrines wherein those two orders are at variance, affirms, " That he was afraid that when he was dead, although he had written and disputed so much against them, they would produce him for a tes- timony and witness on their side." What he feared concerning him- self, Mr Goodwin hath attempted concerning many more worthy persons. Cutting off sentences from what goes before and follows after, restraining general expressions, imposing his own hypothesis on his reader in making application of what he quotes out of any author, he hath spent one whole chapter to persuade the world that men of as great abilities and judgments as any in the world since the apostles fell asleep have usually expressed themselves in a direct contradiction to what they are eminently and notoriously known, as their professed, deliberate judgments, to have maintained!