Mr Goodwin endeavours to make the punishment threatened in the words, "He shall die for his iniquity," precisely and exclusively to signify eternal death (which the former interpretation doth not ex- clude) ; which he is no way able to make good. What he ofifers, sect. 8, concerning the incongruity of the sense, and tautology of the ex-
628 DOCTRINE OF THE SAIIS'TS' PERSEVERANCE. [CIIAP.
presslon of it, [if it] be not so understood, hath been already removed. The comparison ensuing, instituted between these words and those of 1 Cor. vi. 10, should have been enforced with some consideration of the coincidence of the scope of either place, with the expressions used in them. And though repentance (which is also added) will not deliver them from temporal or natural death, yet it may and will, as [it] did Ahab in part, from having that death inflicted in the way of an extraordinary judgment.
Sect. 4, Mr Goodwin offers sundry things, all of the same import- ance and tendency, all animated by the same fallacies or mistakes, to make good the sense he insists on, exclusively to all others, of these words, " He shall die;" and he tells you that " if the righte- ousness such a man hath done shall come into no account, if it shall not ])rofit him as to his temporal deliverance, then it is impos- sible it should profit him as to his eternal salvation." But, first, ac- cording to our interpretation of the words, there is no necessity incumbent on us to affirm that the person mentioned shall obtain salvation, though we say that eternal death is not precisely threatened in the words. But yet, that a man may not by the just hand of God, be punished with temporal death for his faults and iniquities (as Josiah fell by the sword), and yet have his righteousness reckoned to him as to his great recompense of reward, is a strain of doctrine that Mr Goodwin will scarce abide by. 1 dare not say that all who died in the wilderness of the children of Israel went to hell and came short of eternal life, and yet they all fell there because of their iniquities. But he adds, —
Sect. 4. " Again ; that which God here threateneth against that double or twofold iniquity of backsliding is opposed to that life which is promised to repentance and perseverance in well-doing; but this life is confessed by all to be eternal life: therefore the death opposed to it must needs be eternal, or the second death. When the apostle saith, ' The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord," Rom. vi. 23, is it not evident from the antithesis, or opposition in the sentence between the death and life mentioned in it, that by that death which he affirms to be the wages of sin is meant eternal death? how else will the opposition stand?"
Ans. It is true, the life and death here mentioned, the one pro- mised, verse 9, the other threatened in those insisted on, are opposed, and of what nature and kind the one is, of the same is the other to be esteemed. It is also confessed that the life promised in the cove- nant of mercy to repentance is eternal life, and the wages of sin mentioned in the law is eternal death ; but that therefore that must be the sense of the words when they are made use of in answer to an objection expressed in a proverb concerning the land of Israel, and when it was temporal death that was complained of before in
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the proverb, "The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge" (they did not complain that they were damned for their fathers' sins), that Mr Goodwin doth not attempt to prove; and I do not blame him for his silence therein. He says yet again, —
" When God in the Scriptures threatens impenitent persons with death for their sins, doubtless he intends and means eternal death, or that death which is the wages of sin; otherwise we have no suf- ficient ground to believe or think that men dying in their sins with- out repentance shall ' suffer the vengeance of eternal fire,' but only a temporal or natural death, which those who are righteous and truly eminent themselves suffer as well as they. Therefore, to say that God threatens impenitent apostates (in the place in hand) with a temporal death only, when, as elsewhere, he threatens impenitency under the lightest guilt of all with eternal death, is in effect to re- present him as vehement and sore in his dissuasives from ordinary and lesser sins, and as indifferent and remiss in dissuading from sins of the greatest provocation."
Ans. The sum of this reason is, "If the death there threatened to those men of our present contest be not death eternal, we have no sufficient ground to believe that God will inflict any death on im- penitent apostates but only that which is temporal or natural, which others die as well as they." And why so, I beseech you? Is there no other place of Scripture whence it may be evinced that eternal death is the wages of sin ? or is every place thereof where death is threatened to sin so circumstantiated as this place is? is the threat- ening everywhere given out upon the like occasion, and to be ac- commodated to the like state of things? These discourses are ex- ceedingly loose, sophistical, and inconclusive. Neither is a violent death counted natural, though it be the dissolution of nature.