Chapter 5

CHAP. V.

Whether or not the Lord's withdrawing of his influences and impressions of grace does acquit and free us of guiltiness? objections removed.

We are not a little slandered by Jesuits and Arminians, as such who by the device of forbowing and predeterminating influences of grace, do destroy the nature of free-will and voluntary obedience to God in this argument.

He who withdraws such an influence and impression of grace, without which the act of obedience is physically impossible, he is the cause of disobedience, and he renders the non-obeyer guiltless and excusable.

But God according to the way of Calvin and his, withdraws such an influence and impression of grace, because without his impression of grace, its impossible physically that the will can be bowed to obey, it being essentially requisite in the act of obedience. Therefore God must be the cause of disobedience by this, and render the non-obeyer guiltless and excusable.

Ans. Though my dimness could not lose this argument, the validity and power of the grace of God, should be no less, and the guiltiness of man as much as it is.

But 1. He who withdraws such an influence and impression of grace, from the reasonable creature, constrained, compelled, and unwilling to want such an influence; he is the cause of the disobedience, and renders the non-obeyer guiltless and excusable. The proposition in that sense is true; but now the assumption is most false; for if the man should seek and desire the influence of God in that very act, and the Lord deny it and withdraw it violently from the will, as if the child a drowning should cry to the father being obliged to help, that he would reach help, and the father shall refuse, then is the father the cause of the child's drowning; and so should the holy Lord be the cause of our disobedience, and render us guiltless and excusable if he were obliged not to withdraw.

But he who withdraws his influence from the creature, who in the same act of wanting, is most willing to want it, and gives in the same act of disobedience, his virtual consent to the same withdrawing, he is the cause of the disobedience of the act, and renders the non-obeyer guiltless and excusable. The proposition in this sense is false; and the assumption true. God so withdraws his influence that in the same act, the man is unexcusably willing to want it. He is deservedly cold, who joyfully and willingly yields to the pulling away of his coat; here that is true, an injury is not done to a man who receives it as a favor: Volenti non fit injuria; as is clear in the Lord's active hardening of Pharaoh's heart (Exodus 7:3) and Pharaoh's hardening of his own heart (Exodus 8:15), both in a material act.

2. He who withdraws his influence, in the same moment of time (though first by order of nature) from the creature, who (2.) is willing to want that influence; and (3.) is a withdrawer of his influence by no obligation at all to give it; he is the cause of disobedience. The proposition so taken, is false; only it follows, that the withdrawing of the influence is the physical cause of non-obedience, not the moral cause of disobedience.

For 1. The withdrawer of the influence is under no obligation by any binding law to bestow it.

2. The man that wants the influence is willing to want it.

3. The man is obliged, who so wants the influence by an expressly binding law of God to perform the act commanded, and to abstain from the contrary act forbidden; and these three are the grounds why the Lord is not chargeable with the act of disobedience; and man is guilty and chargeable therewith. Hence man is the culpable cause of disobedience; and he never wants the influence of God, but his own sin interpretatively is the cause. The withdrawing of dew and rain is the cause of barrenness or non-fertility; the Lord's withdrawing is the physical cause of non-obedience; but the will of man is the only formal, vital, subjective, moral, and (as it were) the material cause of sin; yes the only formal and efficient cause of sin.

Obj. He that casts away his coat, is deservedly cold; for he does it against deliberate reason, except he be mad, or in an extreme distemper of body; but no man refuses divine influences with deliberate reason and the law of nature. 2. The law of nature lays bands upon men not to cast away their clothes; but to have, or to want the influences of God, falls under no command of God laid upon man. 3. No man, by your way, has the influences of grace in his own power to receive or reject them, as he that casts away his garments in a cold day, has undeniably such a power.

Ans. Every comparison in some thing halts; he who casts away his coat, is deservedly cold, true, and with deliberate reason and foolishly so does; and that is false, that no man with deliberate reason refuses divine influences; for willing or deliberate yielding to the sin, either of omission, or of commission, which is conjoined with the Lord's withdrawing of his influences, is both our formal sinning against the obligation of a command, and a yielding virtual (which is enough to make up guiltiness) to the want of divine influences.

2. True it is, to have or to want the influence of God, falls under no command of God laid upon man, as a man is by the law of nature forbidden to cast away his coat in a cold season; but in virtual yielding to have influences of God, conjoined with doing evil, and in virtual yielding to want influences conjoined with other sins of omission or commission, we sin, and so are under a command; as he who refuses a staff, or a stronger man to lean upon in going through a water, is guilty of drowning himself.

3. Thus far we are deliberately to desire influences that we are to pray for them; Draw me (Cant. 1:4), Lord teach me (Psalms 119:33), Open mine eyes, that I may behold the wonders of your Law (ver. 18), Incline mine heart to your testimonies, and not to covetousness (v. 36). As we are obliged to have a new heart, and to have the image of God, which we willingly lost in Adam, and to be renewed in the spirit of our mind, and to make to our selves a new heart, and are commanded so to doe (Ezechiel 18:31, Ephesians 4:23), and yet the Lord's omnipotent creating of a new heart in us cannot fall under a Commandement formally obliging us to create in our selves a new heart, and so are we commanded consequently to have the breathings and influences of grace. 1. In the same act in the which we are commanded to obey. 2. In that we are to pray for, and to desire the breathings of God. 3. In that there is a promise, to him that has it shall be given (Matthew 25:29, Matthew 13:12), but how far the promise extends is after to be discussed. (3.) As touching influences natural, they seem to be common to free and voluntary agents, and also to natural causes; so the Lord commandeth the Sun to rise, and it riseth (Psalms 104:19), and he commandeth the Sun, and it riseth not (Job 9:7), it rains, because the Lord lifteth up his voice to the clouds, that abundance of rain may come; he sendeth out lightnings (Jeremiah 14:22, Psalms 107:33, 34), God hunteth the prey for the Lyon, and gives food to the Raven (Job 38:35, 36, v. 41). In all these the natural cause acts, and yet has not in its power the influences of God; and when God withdraws his influences so as natural causes act not, they find no positive violence offered to restrain them, or by-way of any positive impediment to hinder them, only there is a negative withdrawing of influences upon the Lord's part which they want with a sort of natural yielding to the want thereof; and yet they have and keep still their natural power to act, actu primo, as the first cause shall set them on work. And the very like may be said of moral agents; God withdraws his influence, they sin, but find no positive violence coming from the Lord's withdrawing, to restrain them or impose upon them, and they connaturally and with a virtual willingness yield to such withdrawings, and keep an inferiour dominion over their own actings.

Hence 1. Moral agents are to set to work to doe duties, and not to wait upon God's acts of influences; but they are to act, as if the influences of God were in their power; for the influence from Heaven to the duty belongs to God (he does not lay formal commands upon us to have, or to want his influences), and the duty is ours; but we love more to look to God, and judge anxiously his providence of withdrawing of influences, than upon our own duty. Its strange: I judge his holy withdrawings, and not my own sinful omissions.

2. No man is to complain of the Lord's withdrawing of influences; you are joyful and well content to want them. Men put out their own eyes and yet complain God has made them blind: of this, more hereafter.

But this argument may be retorted, and impossible it is to defend the dominion and sovereignty of God by these principles; so if it be not in the dominion and sovereignty of God to procure or hinder the acts of final obedience or disobedience, he cannot be Master of salvation, and of the certain number of the saved; but the free-will of man must be absolute ever here, and the salvation of any must be physically impossible to the sovereign Lord.

But by the adversaries' way; its not in the dominion and sovereignty of God to procure, or to hinder the acts of final obedience or disobedience of any; but it must be absolutely in the power of created free-will, all things needful to be done, both upon the part of the Lord's Decree, and of the Lord's influences, being done, to nill or will, obey or disobey. And 2. its in the power of created free-will to doe, or obey, and to refuse, or disobey. And 3. to have the strongest influences of God in its dominion and created power, or to want them. 4. Created free-will first stirs and concurs, by order of nature, before the sovereign Lord join his influence; all these be the principles of Pelagians, Jesuits, Arminians; so shall created free-will have the dominion above and before the sovereign Lord of all the acts of obedience, of all the chosen of God, as to their number, who shall be saved, who not, how many, how few.