5. That true Christians, or believers, can so fall away from the society of the saints as those here mentioned did, is denied, and a grant of it ought not to be begged at our hands. It is true that (as was before granted) a true believer may for a season desert the com- munion or fellowship of a church wherein he hath walked, and that causelessly; yea, he may be surprised through infirmity to den}^, under mighty temptations, in words, for a moment, the Lord Christ, whom yet his heart loves and honours, as in the case of Peter was too evi- dent : but that such an one may forsake the external profession of Christianity, or cease profession-making, and betake himself to a contrary interest, opposing Christ and his ways, as those here insisted on did, that is denied, and not the least attempt of proof made to the contrary.
Whilst I was upon consideration of these exceptions of Mr Good- win's to our testimony from this text of Scripture by us insisted on, there came to my hands his exposition on the 9th chapter to the Romans; in the epistle whereof to the reader he is pleased, sect. 6, studiously to waive the imputation of having borrowed this exposi- tion from Arminius and his followers, — an apology perhaps unworthy his prudence and great abilities; which testimony yet, I fear, by having cast an eye on the body of the discourse, will scarcely be re- ceived by his reader without the help of that vulgar proverb, " Good wits jump."' But yet on this occasion I cannot but say, however he hath dealt in that treatise, this discourse I have under consideration is purely translated from them, — the condition of very much of what hath been already considered being the same; which I had then thought to have manifested by placing their Latin against his Eng- lish in the margin. But these things are personal, not belonging to the cause in hand. Mr Goodwin is sufHciently known to have abilities of his own, such as wherewith he hath done, in sundry par- ticulars, considerable service to the truth, — as sometimes tliey have been unhappily engaged in ways of a contrary nature and tendency.
It being evident, from these considerations, that our author is not able in the least to take off this witness from speaking home to the very heart of the cause in hand, that it may not seem to be weakened and impaired by him in the least, I shall farther consider that diver- sion which he Avould entice the words unto from their proper channel and intendment, and so leave the apostasy of the saints dead at the foot of it. He gives us, then, sect. 23, 24, an exposition of this place of Scripture, upon the rack whereof it seems not to speak what for- merly we received from its mouth. For the occasion of the words, he says, —
" For the true meaning of this place, it is to be considered that
xvl] no consolation in the opposite doctrine. 601
the apostle's intent in the words was, to prevent or heal an offence that weak Christians might take by the doctrine which was taught and spread abroad by those antichrists or antichristian teachers spoken of in the former verse (and they are said to have been many) ; and that especially because they had sometimes lived and conversed wdth the apostles themselves in Christian churches, and had pro- fessed the same faith and doctrine with them. By reason hereof, some Christians, not so considerate or judicious as others, might possibly think or conceive that surely all things were not well with the apostles and those Christian societies with which they consorted, — that there was something not as it oiight to have been, either in doc- trine or manners, or both, which ministered an occasion to these men to break communion with them and to leave them."
Ans. 1. The intendment of the apostle in the context is evidently to caution believers against seducers; acquainting them also with the sweet and gracious provision that God had made for their pre- servation, in the abiding, teaching, anointing, bestowed on them. In the verse under present consideration he gives them a descrip- tion of the persons that did seduce them, in respect of their present state and condition. They were apostates, wlio, though they had some time made profession of the faith, yet indeed were never true believers, nor had had any fellowship with Jesus Christ, as he and the saints had ; which also they had abundantly manifested by their open apostasy, and ensuing opposition to the doctrine of the gospel and the eternal life manifested therein.
2. That any Christians whatsoever, from the consideration of these seducers falling away, did entertain any suspicion that all things were not well in that society of which the apostle speaks (not with the " apostles," which were all dead, himself only excepted, when John wrote this epistle), either as to doctrine or manners, so sup- posing them to take part with the apostates in their departure, is a surmise whereunto there is not any thing in the least contributed in the text or context, nor any thing like to it, being a mere invention of our author, found out to serve his turn, and confidently, without any induction looking that way or attempt of proof, imposed upon his credulous reader. If men may assume to themselves a liberty of creating occasions of words, discourses, or expressions in the Scrip- ture, no manner of way insinuated nor suggested therein, they may wrest it to what they please, and confirm whatever they have a mind unto.