524 DOCTRINE OF THE SAINTS' PERSEVERANCE. [CHAP,
take thereof. To play thus with the word of God is a liberty we dare not make use of yet.
3. He concludes, " That the reason why believers are overcome by the lustings of the flesh is, not because the Spirit is not stronger than the flesh, but because men have more will to hearken to the lusts of the flesh than to the Spirit."
" Fortunam Priami cantabo, et nobile bellum."
This is the issue of all the former swelling discourse: " Men's sins are from their own wills, and not because the Spirit is not stronger than the flesh." And who ever doubted it? The conclusion you were to prove is, " That believers sin with their whole will and full con- sent of their wills, and that the new principle that is in them doth not cause their wills to decline from acting in sin to the just efficacy of all their strength and vigour." But of this ovde ypv. For the in- sinuation in that expression of the " will hearkening to the lusting of the flesh, and not to the lusting of the Spirit," in a sovereign indif- ferency to both, and a liberty for the performance of either, in a way exclusive of good or vicious habitual principles of operation in the will itself, I shall not now divert to the consideration of.
What else remains in this section either doth not concern the business in hand, as the fine notion of the Spirit's return to move believers, when his motions have been rejected, with the manner thereof, according to his conception, must be afterward considered apart, — as the fall of David into adultery and murder, if there be need to go forth to the consideration of his examples and instances; and therefore I shall not longer insist upon it. Only, the close of it, consisting of an inference made from some words of Peter Martyr, deserves consideration. " Upon David's sin," saith he, " Peter Mar- tyr makes this observation. That the saints themselves, being once fallen into sin, would always remain in the pollution of it, did not God by his mighty word bring them out of it: which saying of Mar- tyr clearly also implies that the saints many times sin with their whole wills and full consents; because, were any part of their wills bent against the committing of the sin at the time when it is com- mitted, they would questionless return to themselves and repent im- mediately after, the heat and violence of the lust being over, by rea- son of the satisfaction that hath been given thereunto."
Ans. The close insinuation in Peter Martyr's words, of the saints sinning with their whole wills, and the logic of Mr Goodwin's infer- ence from them, I believe is very much hidden from the reader. To the theology of it, I say that the saints, Tapd rh vXiTarov, do imme- diately return to God by repentance, as Peter did, upon their sur- prisals into sin ; nor have they any rest in a condition of the eclipse of the countenance of God from them, as upon sin it is always, more
X7.] THE SINS OF BELIEVEES CONSIDERED. 525
or less. Of David's particular case mention may afterward be made. But the proof, " that they sin with their whole wills and full consent because they would continue in sin did not the Lord relieve and de- liver them by his word and grace/' is admirable, I would adventure to cast this argument into as many shapes as it is tolerably capable of, had I the least hope to cause it to appear any way argumentative. We deny, then, that believers have any such power habitually re- siding in them as whereby, without any new supplies of the Spirit or concurrence of actual grace, they can effectually and eventually recover themselves from any sin whatever; which supplies of the Spirit and grace we say, and have proved, are freely promised to them in the covenant of grace. But what will hence follow to the supportment of Mr Goodwin's hypothesis, "That therefore in all their sins, or any of their sins, they sin with the full and whole consent of their wills," I suppose he alone knows.
Sect. 26, he endeavours to take off that of the apostle, Rom. vii. 19-22, from appearing against him in this cause of the saints' sin- ning with their whole wills and consents, not not-willing the things they do. To this end he tells us, " That when the apostle saith, ' The evil which I would not, that I do,' his meaning is, not that he did that which, at the same time that he did it, he was not willino- either in whole or in part to do, but that he sometimes did that, upon a surprisal by temptation or through incogitancy, which he was not habitually willing or disposed in the inward man to do; but this no ways implies but that, at the time when he did the evil he speaks of, he did it with the full and entire consent of his will."
Ans. 1. It is probable the apostle knew his own meaning, and also how to express it, having so good a Teacher to that end and pur- pose as he had. Now he assures us, in the person of a regenerate man, that as what he would he did not, so what he did he would not, he hated it; and again, he did that which he would not, and therein consented to the law, by his not-willing of that he did, that it was good, verses 15, li]: which, whether it express not a reni- tency of the will to that which was done in part, and so far as to make the action itself remiss, and not to enwrap the whole consent of the will, he farther declares, verse 17, telling us that there is a perfect, unconsenting " I," or internal principle, in the very doing of evil : " It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me."