XVI.] NO CONSOLATION IN THE OPPOSITE DOCTRINE. 691
lute, peremptory, irresistible decree of perseverance, wliich he ascribes to us as our assertion, when he shall have convinced us of the condi- tional, non-peremptory, reversible decree of God, which he endea- vours to introduce in the place thereof, he may hear more of us; in the meantime, nihoihiv cugTep saiMsv.
Sect. 39, 40, he seeks to alleviate the instance commonly given of our Saviour Christ, who though assured of the end, and in respect of whom it was utterly impossible that his glorious exaltation should not follow in the issue, he being wholly out of all danger of being detained under the power of death, yet he laboured, and prayed, and fasted, and resisted Satan's temptations, and watched against him, and dealt with him by weapons taken out of the word of God; and in especial, when the devil urged him with the argument in hand, *' that there is no need of means or the using of them, when there is a certainty of the end, and an impossibility that it should otherwise fall out, or the end not be brought about and accom- plished," as he did when he tempted him to cast himself headlong from a pinnacle of the temj)le, because the angels had charge over him, that not so much as his foot should be hurt against a stone, whatever he did, as Satan intimated, — which is the tenor of the argument wherewith we have to do, — he returns to him the very answer that we insist upon, namely, that though it be the good pleasure of God to bring us to the end we aim at, yet are we not to tempt him by a neglect of the means which he hath appointed. It is true, there are arguments used to us that could have no place with Christ, being taken from the estate and condition of infirmity and weakness through sin wherein we are ; which is a ground only of an inference, that if Christ, who was " holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners," did yet watch, and pray, and contend against Satan, much more should we do so. But this doth not at all take off from the parity of reason that is in the case of diligent using of the means for the compassing of the end, that in some respect is under an im- possibility of not being accomplished. For the removal of this in- stance, Mr Goodwin enters into a large discourse of the cause and reason, vesting the Lord Christ with an immutability in good, and how it is not competent to any creature ; which that it is, never en- tered into the thoughts of any to assert that I ever heard of, nor is it of the least importance to the removal of our instance, as to its serviceableness unto the end for which it is produced. He tells us also, " That in case men be caused necessitatingly and unavoidably to act righteously, it will take away all rewardableness from their actings; and the reason is, because such a necessitating of them makes them merely passive, they having not any internal principle of their own to contract such a necessity;" which discourse is pursued with many other words to the same purpose. And a discourse it is, —
592 DOCTRINE OF THE saints' PERSEVERANCE. [CIIAP.
First, Exceeding irrelative to the business in hand. There is not any thing now under consideration that should minister occasion at all to consider the manner of our yielding obedience, and the way of God's grace in the bringing forth the fruits thereof; but only of the consistency that is between admonitions for the using of the means, when it is supposed impossible that the end prevented by them should ever come to pass, which may or may not be so, what- ever be the manner and way of our yielding obedience, upon the exertion of the efficacy of the grace of God. Diversion is one of Mr Goodwin's ordinary ways of warding those blows winch he is not able to bear.
Secondly, False, charging a crime on the doctrine which he doth oppose whereof it is not guilty, neither it nor they that maintain it affirming that there is a necessitation upon the wills of men by the grace of God, such a necessitation as should in the least prejudice their freedom, or cause them to elicit their acts as principles natural and necessary. All the necessity ascribed by them to the efficacy of the operation of the grace of God respects only the event. They say it is necessary that the good be done which God works in us by his grace, when he works it in us ; but for the manner of its doing, they say it is wrought suitably to the state and condition of the internal principle whence it is to proceed, and doth so, and of the agents where- by it is wrought, which are free. Neither do the}^ say that good is not wrought by any native and inward principle that is hi men, unless they will allow no principle to be native but what is in them by na- ture; and then, indeed, they say, that though naturally and physically there is, yet morally and spiritually there is not in them any native principle to that which is spiritually good, seeing in that sense " no good thing dwells in men." But if it may suffice to evince that they work from a native, inward principle, — that their wills, which are their natural faculties, quickened, improved, and heightened, by inward, indwelling habits of grace, properly theirs when bestowed on them, are the principles of all their actings, — then they assert them to work no less from a native, internal principle than Christ himself did. So that notwithstanding this diversion, given in to supply the absence of an answer, the instance, as to that wherein alone the parallel was intended, stands unmoved, and Mr Goodwin's whole charge of folly and inconsistency on the proceeding of the Holy Ghost falls to the ground; which is the issue of his eighth argument in this case. His last follows.