ART. Scriptures a thread of very positive prophecies, the accomXVII. plishment of which depended on the free will of man; and these predictions, as they were made very precisely, so they were no less punctually accomplished. Not to mention any other prophecies, all those that related to the death and sufferings of Christ were fulfilled by the free acts of the priests and people of the Jews: they sinned in doing it, which proves that they acted in it with their natural liberty. By these and all the other prophecies that are in both Testaments, it must be confessed, that these things were certainly foreknown; but where to found that certainty, cannot be easily resolved; the infinite perfection of the Divine Mind ought here to silence all objections. A clear idea, by which we apprehend a thing to be plainly contrary to the attributes of God, is indeed a just ground of rejecting it; and therefore they think that they are in the right to deny all such to be in God, as they plainly apprehend to be contrary to justice, truth, and goodness: but if the objection against any thing supposed to be in God lies only against the manner and the unconceivableness of it, there the infinite perfection of God answers all.

1 Sam. xxiii. 11, 12.

It is farther to be considered, that this prescience does not make the effects certain, because they are foreseen; but they are foreseen, because they are to be; so that the certainty of the prescience is not antecedent or causal, but subsequent and eventual. Whatsoever happens, was future before it happened; and since it happened, it was certainly future from all eternity; not by a certainty of fate, but by a certainty that arises out of its being once, from which this truth, that it was future, was eternally certain : therefore the Divine Prescience being only the knowing all things that were to come, that does not infer a necessity or causality.

The Scripture plainly shews on some occasions a conditionate prescience: God answered David, that Saul was come to Keilah, and that the men of Keilah were to deliver him up; and yet both the one and the other was upon the condition of his staying there; and he going from thence, neither the one nor the other ever happened: here was a conditionate prescience. Such was Christ's Mat. xi.21, saying, that those of Tyre and Sidon, Sodom and Gomorrah, would have turned to him, if they had seen the miracles that he wrought in some of the towns of Galilee. Since then this prescience may be so certain, that it can never be mistaken, nor misguide the designs or providence of God; and since by this both the attributes of God are

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vindicated, and the due freedom of the will of man is as- ART. serted, all difficulties seem to be easily cleared this way.

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As for the giving to some nations and persons the means of salvation, and the denying these to others, the Scriptures do indeed ascribe that wholly to the riches and freedom of God's grace; but still they think, that he gives to all men that which is necessary to the state in which they are, to answer the obligations they are under in it: and that this light and common grace is sufficient to carry them so far, that God will either accept of it, or give them farther degrees of illumination from which it must be inferred, that all men are inexcusable in his sight; and that God is always just and clear when he judges; since Psal. li. 4. every man had that which was sufficient, if not to save him, yet at least to bring him to a state of salvation. But besides what is thus simply necessary, and is of itself sufficient, there are innumerable favours, like largesses of God's grace and goodness; these God gives freely as he pleases.

And thus the great designs of Providence go on according to the goodness and mercy of God. None can complain, though some have more cause to rejoice and glory in God than others. What happens to nations in a body may also happen to individuals; some may have higher privileges, be put in happier circumstances, and have such assistances given them as God foresees will become effectual, and not only those, which though they be in their nature sufficient, yet in the event will be ineffectual: every man ought to complain of himself for not using that which wast sufficient, as he might have done; and all good men will have matter of rejoicing in God, for giving them what he foresaw would prove effectual. After all, they acknowledge there is a depth in this, of God's not giving all nations an equal measure of light, nor putting all men into equally happy circumstances, which they cannot unriddle; but still justice, goodness, and truth are saved; though we may imagine a goodness that may do to all men what is absolutely the best for them: and there they confess there is a difficulty, but not equal to those of the other side.

From hence it is that they expound all those passages in the New Testament, concerning the purpose, the election, the foreknowledge, and the predestination of God, so often mentioned. All those, they say, relate to God's design of calling the Gentile world to the knowledge of the Messias: this was kept secret, though hints of it are given in several of the Prophets; so it was a mystery; but it was then revealed, when according to Christ's commis

ART. sion to his Apostles, to go and teach all nations, they went XVII. preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles. This was a stumbling-block to the Jews, and it was the chief subject of controversy betwixt them and the Apostles at the time when the Epistles were writ: so it was necessary for them to clear this very fully, and to come often over it. But there was no need of amusing people in the beginnings of Christianity, and in that first infancy of it, with high and unsearchable speculations concerning the decrees of God: therefore they observe, that the Apostles shew how that Abraham at first, Isaac and Jacob afterwards, were chosen by a discriminating favour, that they and their posterity should be in covenant with God: and upon that occasion the Apostle goes on to shew, that God had always designed to call in the Gentiles, though that was not executed but by their ministry.

With this key one will find a plain coherent sense in all St. Paul's discourses on this subject, without asserting antecedent and special decrees as to particular persons. Things that happen under a permissive and directing Providence, may be also in a largeness of expression ascribed to the will and counsel of God; for a permissive and directing will is really a will, though it be not antecedent Exod. vii. nor causal. The hardening Pharaoh's heart may be ascribed to God, though it is said that his heart hardened itExod. viii, self; because he took occasion, from the stops God put in

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those plagues that he sent upon him and his people, to encourage himself, when he saw there was a new respite granted him: and he who was a cruel and bloody prince, deeply engaged in idolatry and magic, had deserved such judgments for his other sins; so that he may be well considered as actually under his final condemnation, only under a reprieve, not swallowed up in the first plagues, but preserved in them, and raised up out of them, to be a lasting monument of the justice of God against such hardened Rom. ix. impenitency. Whom he will he hardeneth, must be still restrained to such persons as that tyrant was.

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It is endless to enter into the discussion of all the passages cited from the Scripture to this purpose; this key serving, as they think it does, to open most of them. It is plain these words of our Saviour concerning those John xvii. whom the Father had given him, are only to be meant of a dispensation of Providence, and not of a decree; since he adds, And I have lost none of them, except the son of perdition for it cannot be said, that he was in the decree, and yet was lost. And in the same period in which God is Phil. ii. 13. said to work in us both to will and to do, we are required to

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work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. The word ART. rendered, ordained to eternal life, does also signify, fitted or predisposed to eternal life. That question, Who made thee phil. ii. 12. to differ? seems to refer to those gifts which in different de- Acts xiii. grees and measures were poured out on the first Christians; 48. in which men were only passive, and discriminated from one another by the freedom of those gifts, without any thing previous in them to dispose them to them.

1 Cor. iv. 7.

Christ is said to be the propitiation for the sins of the 1 John ii. 2. whole world; and the wicked are said to deny the Lord 2 Pet. ii. 1. that bought them; and his death, as to its extent to all men, is set in opposition to the sin of Adam: so that as by Rom. v. 18. the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation; so by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men to justification of life. The all of the one side must be of the same extent with the all of the other: so since all are concerned in Adam's sin, all must be likewise concerned in the death of Christ. This they urge farther, with this argument, that all men are obliged to believe in the death of Christ, but no man can be obliged to believe a lie; therefore it follows that he must have died for all. Nor can it be thought that grace is so efficacious of itself, as to determine us; otherwise why are we required not to grieve God's Spirit? Why is it said, Ye do Acts vii, 51. always resist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do ye. How often would I have gathered you under my wings, but Mat. xxiii. ye would not? What more could I have done in my vineyard, 37. that has not been done in it? These seem to be plain intima- Isa. v. 4. tions of a power in us, by which we not only can, but often do resist the motions of grace.

If the determining efficacy of grace is not acknowledged, it will be yet much harder to believe that we are efficaciously determined to sin. This seems to be not only contrary to the purity and holiness of God, but is so manifestly contrary to the whole strain of the Scriptures, that charges sin upon men, that in so copious a subject it is not necessary to bring proofs. O Israel, thou hast de- Hos. xiii. 9. stroyed thyself; but in me is thy help: and, Ye will not come Joh. v. 40. unto me, that ye may have life: why will you die, O house of Ezek. Israel? And as for that nicety of saying, that the evil of* sin consists in a negation, which is not a positive being, so that though God should determine men to the action that is sinful, yet he is not concerned in the sin of it: they think it is too metaphysical, to put the honour of God and his attributes upon such a subtilty: for in sins against moral laws, there seems to be an antecedent immorality in the action itself, which is inseparable from it. But

xxxiii. 11.

iii.

ART. suppose that sin consisted in a negative, yet that privation XVII. does immediately and necessarily result out of the action,

Heb. vi.

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without any other thing whatsoever intervening: so that if God does infallibly determine a sinner to commit the action to which that guilt belongs, though that should be a sin only by reason of a privation that is dependent upon it, then it does not appear but that he is really the author of sin; since if he is the author of the sinful action, on which the sin depends as a shadow upon its substance, he must be esteemed, say they, the author of sin.

And though it may be said, that sin being a violation of God's law, he himself, who is not bound by his law, cannot be guilty of sin; yet an action that is immoral is so essentially opposite to infinite perfection, that God cannot be capable of it, as being a contradiction to his own nature. Nor is it to be supposed that he can damn men for that, which is the necessary result of an action to which he himself determined them.

As for perseverance, the many promises made in the Rev. ii. and Scriptures to them that overcome, that continue stedfast and faithful to the death, seem to insinuate, that a man may fall from a good state. Those famous words in the sixth of the Hebrews do plainly intimate, that such men may so fall away, that it may be impossible to renew them again by repentance. Heb. x. 38. And in that Epistle where it is said, The just shall live by faith; it is added, but if he draw back, (any man is not in the original,) my soul shall have no pleasure in him. And it is Ezek. xviii. positively said by the Prophet, When the righteous turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, all his righteousness that he hath done shall not be mentioned; in his sin that he hath sinned shall he die. These suppositions, with a great many more of the same strain that may be brought out of other places, do give us all possible reason to believe that a good man may fall from a good state, as well as that a wicked man may turn from a bad one. In conclusion, the end of all things, the final judgment at the last day, which shall be pronounced according to what men have done, whether good or evil, and their being to be rewarded and punished according to it, seems so effectually to assert a freedom in our wills, that they think this alone might serve to prove the whole cause.

So far I have set forth the force of the argument on the side of the Remonstrants. As for the Socinians, they make their plea out of what is said by the one and by the other side. They agree with the Remonstrants in all that they say against absolute decrees, and in urging all those consequences that do arise out of them: and they