116 VINDICIiE EVANGELICiE.
tures that " God knoweth not our free actions until they come to pass." Why doth not this "mere Christian," that is of no sect, name his companions and associates in these learned collections from Scripture ? Would not his so doing discover him to be so far from a mere Christian, engaged in none of the sects that are now amongst Christians, as to be of that sect which the residue of men so called will scarce allow the name of a Christian unto?^
3. What he intends by the close of his query, " Yea, that there are such actions." An advance is evident in the words towards a farther negation of the knowledge of God than what was before expressed. Before, he says, God knows not our actions that are future contingent; here, he knows not that there are such actions. The sense of this must be, either that God knows not that there are any such actions as may or may not be, — which would render him less knowing than Mr B., who hath already told us that such there be, — or else that he knows not such actions when they are, at least without farther inquiring after them, and knowledge obtained be- yond what from his own infinite perfections and eternal purpose he is furnished withal. In Mr B/s next book or catechism, I desire he would answer these questions also.
Now in this endeavour of his Mr B. doth but follow his leaders. Socinus in his Prelections, where the main of his design is to vindi- cate man's free-will into that latitude and absoluteness as none before him had once aimed at, in his eighth chapter objects to himself this foreknowledge of God as that which seems to abridge and cut short the liberty contended for.^ He answers that he grants not the foreknowledge pretended, and proceeds in that and the two following chapters, labouring to answer all the testimonies and arguments which are insisted on for the proof and demonstra- tion of it, giving his own arguments against it, chap. xi. Crellius is something more candid, as he pretends, but indeed infected with the same venom with the other; for after he hath disputed for sundry pages to prove the foreknowledge of God, he concludes at last that for those things that are future contingent, he knows only that they are so, and that possibly they may come to pass, possibly they may not.^ Of the rest of their associates few have spoken ex-
' Stegman. Photin. Refut. Disput. 1 q. 2 ; An Photiniani uUo modo Christiani dici queant ; Ncg. Martin. Smiglcc. Jes. Nova Monstra, novi Ariani. cap. 1 ; Arianos nuUo modo Christianos dici posse.
2 " Ut ad rationem istam non minus plene quam plane respondearaus, animadverten- dum est, infallibilem istam Dei prteuotionem, quam pro re concessa adversarii summit, a nobis non admitti." — Sociii. Prtelec. cap. viii. p. 25. "Cum igitur nulla ratio, nullus sacrarum literarum locus sit, ex quo aperte colligi possit, Dcum omnia quos fiunt, scivisse aiitcquam fiercnt, concludcndum est, minime asscrendam esse a nobis istam Dei prsescicntiara : prcesertim, cum ct rationes non paucas, et sacra testimonia non desiut, undo eam plane ncgandam esse apparct." — Idem, cap. xi. p. 38.
* " Itaque inconsiderate illi faciunt, qui futura contingentia Deum determinate scire
OF god's prescience or foreknowledge. 117
pressly to this thing. Smalcius once and again manifests himself to consent with his masters in his disputations against Franzius, ex- pressly consenting to what Sociniis had written in his Prelections, and affirming the same thing himself, yea, disputing eagerly for the same opinion with him.^
For the vindication of God's foreknowledge, I shall proceed in the same order as before in reference to the other attributes of God insisted on, namely: — 1. What Mr B. hath done, how he hath dis- posed of sundry places of Scripture for the proof of his assertion, with the sense of the places by him so produced, is to be con- sidered ; 2. Another question and answer are to be supplied in the room of his ; 8. The truth vindicated to be farther confirmed.
For the first : —
In the proof of the assertion proposed Mr B. finds himself entangled more than ordinarily, though I confess his task in general be such as no man not made desperate by the loss of all in a shipwreck of faith would once have undertaken. To have made good his proceeding according to his engagement, he ought at least to have given us texts of Scripture express in the letter, as by him cut off from the state, condition, and coherence, wherein by the Holy Ghost they are placed, for the countenancing of his assertion : but here, being not able to make any work in his method, proposed and boasted in as signal and uncontrollable, no apex or tittle in the Scripture being pointed to- wards the denial of God's knowing any thing or all things, past, pre- sent, and to come, he moulds his question into a peculiar fashion, and asks, whence or from what place of Scripture may such a thing as he there avers be gathered ; at once plainly declining the trial he had put himself upon of insisting upon express texts of Scripture only, not one of the many quoted by him speaking one word expressly to the business in hand, and laying himself naked to all consequences rightly deduced from the Scripture, and expositions given to the letter of some places suitable to "the proportion of faith," Rom. xii. 6. That, then, which he would have, he tells you is gathered from the places of Scripture subjoined, but how, by whom, by what consequence, with what evidence of reason, it is so 'gathered, he tells you not. An understanding, indeed, informed with such gross conceptions of the nature of the Deity as Mr B. hath laboured to insinuate into the minds of men, might gather, from his collection of places of Scrip- ture for his purpose in hand, that God is afraid, troubled, grieved,