^ 2. It hath sufficiently been proved that believers have a promise, respev.vjany promises, to be ke])t by the power of God from all and of any) x^^Wi^ or any such circumstance of sin, or continuance in sin,
XV.] THE SINS OF BELIEVERS CONSIDERED. 583
as is wholly inconsistent with beheving; and that therefore they shall be preserved in believing.
3. Upon our calling the examination of the proofs of this assertion to an account, we have found it to be made up of trivial exceptions and sophistical suppositions, confident beggings and cravings of the things under contest and debate (all the endeavours to prove the promises of perseverance to be conditional haviug also involved in them an absolute contradiction to the truth and to themselves), no way sufficient to evince that the promises and work of God's grace are suspended upon any conditions in men whatsoever. And, —
4. We say that the intrusion of this vain hypothesis, that believers should continue so under the consideration here intimated by you of sin, when the main of the doctrine contended for consists in a full and plain denial that they can or shall fall under it (according to the import of 1 John iii. 9, immediately to be insisted on), being preserved by the Spirit and grace of him who so writes his law in their hearts that they shall never depart from him, is the great engine you have used in all your attempts against it, being indeed a mere begging of the thing in question.
5. That there is nothing in this doctrine in the least suited to turn aside the saints of God from the holy commandment, but that, on the contrary, it is of an excellent usefulness and effectual influence for the promotion of all manner of godliness in those that are truly saints, howsoever any man may abuse it (as any other discovery of the grace of God), turning it into lasciviousness, hath been declared. What use hath been made of the contrary doctrine in the world we have hitherto had experience only in the Pelagians, Papists, Soci- nians, and Arminians; and with what fruits of it they have abounded the church of God doth partly know. What it is like to bring forth, being now translated into another soil, or rather having won over to it men some time of another profession, is yet somewhat, though not altogether, in abeyance.
Let us, then, with the apostle, having proceeded thus far with Mr Goodwin, that a foundation may be the better laid for the removal of what he farther adds, proceed to consider the 'progress of sin, and to remark from thence the difference that is between regenerate and unregenerate men in their sinning.
The SECOND thing proposed in the apostle's discourse of the rise and progress of sin, is the general way that lust proceedeth in for the bringing of it forth, and that is temptation : " Every man is tempted of his own lust." This is the general way that lust proceeds in for the production of actual sin ; it tempts, and he in whom it is is tempted. There is a temptation unto sin only, and a temptation unto sin by sin. The first is no sin in him that is so tempted. Our Saviour was so tempted: "He was tempted of the devil," Matt. iv. 1 ; "He was in all
534 DOOTlilNE OF THE SAINTS' PERSEVERANCE. [CHAP.
points tempted like as we are, yet without sin," Heb. iv. 1 5. That his temptations were unto sin is apparent from the story of them. But " tlie prince of this world commg had nothing in him/' John xiv. 80, — found nothing in him to answer and close with his tempta- tions; and therefore, though he was tempted, yet was he without sin. Now, though this sort of temptations from Satan is not originally our sins but his, yet there being tinder in our souls that kindles more or less in and upon every injection of his fiery darts, there being some- thing in us to meet many, if not all, of his temptations, they prove, in some measure, in the issue to be ours. Indeed, Satan sometimes ventures upon us in things wherein he hath, doubtless, small hope of any concurrence, and so seems rather to aim at our disquiet than our sins; as in those whom he perplexes with hard and blasphemous thoughts of God, — a thing so contradictory to the very princijales, not of grace only, but of that whereby we are men, that it is utterly im- possible there should be any assent of the soul thereunto. To think of God as God is to think of him every thing that is good, pure, great, excellent, incomprehensible, in all perfection. Now, at the same time, to have any apprehensions of a direct contradictory im- portance, the mind of man is not capable. Were it not for the un- belief, causeless fears, and discontentments that in many do ensue upon temptations of this nature, — which are consequents and not effects of it, — Satan might keep this dart in his own forge for any mis- chief he is like to do with it. The apostle speaks here of temptations hy sin as well as unto sin; and these former are men's sins as well as their temptations. They are temptations, as tending to farther evil ; they are sins, as being irregular and devious from the rula Now, this tempting of lust compriseth two things: —