1. Consider, that the doctrine of perseverance hath nothing in it to encourage security. The very controversies about it, may cause you to conclude, that a certain sin is not to be built upon a controverted doctrine. Till Augustine's time, it is hard to find any ancient writers, that clearly asserted the certain perseverance of any at all. Augustine and Prosper maintain the certain perseverance of all the elect, but deny the certain perseverance of all that are regenerated, justified, or sanctified; for they thought that more were regenerate and justified than were elect, of whom some stood (even all the elect) and the rest fell away: so that I confess, I never read one ancient father, or christian writer, that ever maintained the certainty of the perseverance of all the justified, of many hundred, if not a thousand years after Christ. And a doctrine, that to the church was so long unknown, hath not that certainty, or that necessity, as to encourage you to any presumption or security. The churches were saved many hundred years without believing it.
2. The doctrine of perseverance is against security, because it uniteth together the end and the means: for they that teach that the justified shall never totally fall from grace, do also teach that they shall never totally fall into security, or to any reigning sin; for this is to fall away from grace. And they teach that they shall never totally fall from the use of the necessary means of their preservation; nor from the cautelous avoiding of the danger of their souls: God doth not simply decree that you shall persevere; but that you shall be kept in perseverance by the fear of your danger, and the careful use of means; and that you shall persevere in these, as well as in other graces. Therefore if you fall to security and sin, you fall away from grace, and show that God never decreed or promised that you should never fall away.
3. Consider how far many have gone that have fallen away: the instances of our times are much higher than any I can name to you out of history. Men that have seemed to walk humbly and holily, fearing all sin, blameless in their lives, zealous in religion, twenty or thirty years together, have fallen to deny the truth or certainty of the Scriptures, the Godhead of Christ, if not christianity itself. And many that have not quite fallen away, have yet fallen into such grievous sins, as make them a terrible warning to us all, to take heed of presumption and carnal security.
4. Grace is not, in the nature of it, a thing that cannot perish or be lost. For, 1. It is a separable quality. 2. Adam did lose it. 3. We lose a great degree of it too oft; and the remaining degrees are of the same nature. It is not only possible in itself to lose it, but too easy; and not possible without cooperating grace to keep it.
5. Grace is not natural to us: to love our ease, and honour, and friends, is natural; but to love Christ, and his holy ways and servants, is not natural to us: indeed when we do it, it is our natural powers that do it, but not as naturally disposed to it, but as inclined by the cure of supernatural grace. Eating, and drinking, and sleeping we forget not, because nature itself remembereth us of them; but learning and acquired habits may be lost, if not very deeply radicated, and it is commonly concluded as to the nature of them, that _habitus infusi habent se ad modum acquisitorum_: infused habits are like to acquired ones.[95]
6. Grace is, as it were, a stranger, or new comer in us. It hath been there but a little while, and therefore we are but raw and too unacquainted with the right usage and improvement of it, and are the apter to forget our duty, or to neglect it, or ignorantly to do that which tendeth to its destruction.
7. Grace dwelleth in a heart which is not wholly dispossessed of those objects which are against its work, nor delivered from those principles which have an enmity against it. The love of the world and flesh was in the heart, before the love of God and holiness, and ignorance was before knowledge, and pride before humility, and selfishness before self-denial. And these are not wholly rooted out; we have dealt so gently with them, (as the Israelites with the Canaanites, Jebusites, and other inhabitants of the land,) that they are left to try us, and to be thorns in our sides. And the garrison is not free from danger, that hath an enemy always lodged within. Our enemies are in the house with us, they lie down and rise up with us, and are as near us as our flesh and bones: we can never be where they are not, nor leave them behind us, whithersoever we go, or whatever we do. No marvel, if brother be against brother, and the father against the son, when we are so much against ourselves.[96] And are we yet secure?