Chapter 2

CHAP. II.

1. What the natural man can doe to get influences; the natural man can doe more then he does, and can exercise the natural powers to come within the bosome of the net, though he cannot hale himself to land. 2. How the Lord can command the naturally blind to see and believe. 3. How sin original deserves eternal wrath. 4. Its such a sin in infants. 5. The want of original righteousnesse and a power of believing is a sin in us. 5. How the Lord commands impotent men.

The greater doubt is how the Lord can command supernatural acts to a man drowned in nature: but its not here as when a Tyrant commands a child to wheel about the first heaven, else he shall kill him: for the so moving of the heaven is neither a moral duty, nor was it ever a duty compassible by the physical power of the arm of a child or a strong man. But the main intent of our Lord in laying on supernatural commands upon man unable to believe, is that men may know what they can pay, and what they owe and can never pay, but not of their own pay the debt of faith: the precept is not unrational where the end is rational. 2. Not that the natural man may satisfie, but that he may come and compone, and acquiesce to a friendly Gospel treaty; for nothing heightneth the price and worth of Christ more in the shining of free grace, nothing kills and renders self-condemned the man more then a seen necessity of forgiving love; yes, the reading of the writ of the Law-debt with tears, when this is holden out to us (the Lord gave a bill of grace to those who had nothing to pay and he forgave them frankly) is a strongly convincing dispensation.

2. Something which is really little or nothing, a natural man may doe to fetch the wind when he cannot command it, and cannot sayl, he may and often does exercise the natural faculty of moving from place to place, and comes as a meer natural man, upon a meer natural motive, sinfull curiosity, and a purpose violently to apprehend Christ, as the souldiers doe (John 7:45, 46, 47); yes, with bloudy hearts and a purpose to persecute as the hearers of Peter doe (Acts 2), and yet beside and contrary to the will and intent, the man is wrought upon, and converted before he go away; as some go to Sea and sayl to India poor with no intention to be enriched with gold, but only to get bread, and yet they come again from India rich with Indian gold, and many precious stones far beside their intention. A man rude and ignorant goes to Athens upon no purpose to become learned, yet providence so disposeth that he falls in love with learning, and studying many years, he returns from Athens a most learned man. Now no man can say that either the Indian gold, or the learning of Athens did contribute any real or physical strength to his loco-motive and natural faculty of journeying to India or Athens: so neither can it be said the Spirit of grace or the Gospel of grace did add any new real and physical strength to Peter's hearers to cause them to come in under the stroke of the preached Gospel. Now the Gospel is the power of God to salvation; the Apostle useth such spiritual weapons of warefare to cast down strong holds; its the arm of the Lord (Romans 1:16; 2 Corinthians 10:56; Isaiah 53:1), and the preached Gospel is the triumphing chariot of Christ conquering, Christ's office-house of free grace. Now a man on his own feet, and by his own strength, though sick, may come to the Physicians office-house where all his medicine boxes and helps and remedies of health are, and be cured ere he goe a way, and may go away with perfect strength and health; yet he came to the Physicians house in no strength nor health, which he received from his art and medicine. The Word is the net, the Fish may come in its own natural motion within the bosome of the net; but its the strength of the arms of the Fisher, that hales the Fish to land; the Fish catcheth not it self. The word of God is a sharp two-edged sword, and does the work by the Spirit (Hebrews 4:12). The mouth of Christ is like a sharp sword (Isaiah 49:2). His arrows are sharp in the heart of the Kings enemies, whereby the people fall under him (Isaiah 45:5). A man may in his own natural strength come in within the shoot of Christ's arrow, and under the smiting and stroke of the drawn sword of the Gospel; for Christ puts forth his power in his Ministers, and renewed and unrenewed may come and hear.

The difference between the Law and Gospel is, that the Law neither promises nor gives strength, but presupposeth that the man has strength: but the Gospel promiseth a new heart, and the Law engraven in the heart; therefore Christ does reign in the New Testament in the actual omnipotency of grace, and men by a mere local motion of nature or some superadded morality good or bad, come in to wisdom's house of wine, and bring themselves in under the scattered fire coals of Gospel-administration, with no intention spiritual to believe and be saved; and so the coming in to hear, and the applying of the natural organ of hearing, the setting on work the unrenewed mind, judgment, conscience, heart and affections to the literal considering and weighing of the strong reasons that are in the Gospel casteth the man and his soul by a good and inevitable consequent under such heavenly flamings of quickening influences as convey the preached Gospel by an ordinance of God, in due order, to cause such as are chosen of God believe: it is in a man's free will to draw near to the fire, or not to draw near, but when he is come to the fire side, the fire can make him hot, whether he will or no. By a free election a man casts timber in the fire; but without any election, a strong fire cannot choose but burn dry fuel. It is true, the sea-man cannot create winds, nor change the blowing of the wind from East to West; yet he can prepare his vessel, hoise the sails, and fit the ship for receiving the winds. The husband-man has no command of winds, of rain, of clouds, of summer sun; yet may he dress, labor, and sit and prepare his rigs and garden to lie under the seasonable influences of such summer air, rain, dew and impressions of the heaven and the clouds, as the Lord of nature shall afford. Now as all the kings and powers on earth cannot command wind and rain; so is there no industry required of the husband-man to procure summer or calm seasons: nor can the plough act upon the sun and clouds; nor is the blame to be laid upon the seaman's sleepiness, that the wind is not fair for sailing, and that the sea flows not so high; yet has the Lord of purpose left to all unrenewed men born where the Gospel is preached, the gates and ports of wisdom's house open, that they may come and hear, and pass their judgement what they think of Emanuel's land, that runs with wine and milk; yes and the entry to this house is feasible and accessible, by natural strength, to fools and idiots, to learned and unlearned; so that they need not say, Who shall ascend up to heaven? That is, to bring Christ again from above: Or, who shall descend into the deep? That is, to bring up Christ again from the dead. But the word is now near even in your mouth, and in your heart, that is, the word of faith which we preach (Romans 10:7, 8, 9, 10; Deuteronomy 13:14). The preached Law leading pedagogically to Christ in Moses' time, and the plainly preached Gospel offered to all in Paul's time, is an open door to all, who love to come near to Christ and to be warmed by him; in which consideration there is a key put in every man's hand. 1. The unrenewed man turns away his ear from the Law, and will not let the news of the Gospel lodge in his ear, or the outer room of his soul; you set not a work the literal actings and cogitations of the heart, to think whether Christ, and heaven and hell concerns you, or no. So 2. The believer under deadness and saddest desertion, when he is at this, All is but counterfeit work I had before (Psalm 31:22; Jeremiah 2:4; Job 13:24), God reputes me as an enemy; he may read the word, hear the Gospel preached, and cast himself in Christ's way, and come in under the cast of his saving influences, and so the fire may be kindled of new: the sin is that the natural man uses wit, judgment, memory, for a worldly bargain of gain, but not for salvation. 3. Christ is in his own ordinance: never man before he be converted, can savingly intend his own conversion; Peter and John, and Matthew, when Christ spoke to them, minded no saving work on their spirits; nor did the three thousand (Acts 2), nor the jailor (Acts 16), mind so much as they met with. Many came to Christ for bodily health, and to be freed of Satan in a bodily possession; yet when they see and hear Christ lying at wait, in ambush, in the preached Gospel, they are beyond their intentions taken captives. There is a great difference between the doing of the bulk and body of an action, and the action commanded by the highest authority of God; even though the man perform not the action upon the account of a divine command. Suppose Naaman had seven times and seventy seven times washed himself in Jordan, some days before the Prophet of the Lord commanded him to wash, it had been to no purpose, he had not been cleansed from his leprosy. It were good we prize more that which men call the foolishness of preaching: the Spirit breathes in, and through his own ordinance, when we know not.

Quest. How can it stand with justice to command us, to make ourselves a new heart and a new spirit, since we are unable to make to ourselves a new heart (Ezekiel 18:51)? For says Pelagius, inability to obey cannot be both a sin and a punishment of sin.

Ans. 1. The commands of circumcising ourselves to the Lord, and of making a new heart, which are laid upon us, are materially evangelical; but as they are charged upon unrenewed men they are formally legal, upon the Lord's intention also evangelical to the chosen to fit them for Christ: Nor can these commands have this sense; I command and enjoin to you the omnipotent infusion of a new heart. 1. God lays no acts of the infinite and omnipotent God upon the finite creature. 2. It is not his intention, no nor his will, that reprobates create in themselves, new vital principles of life, since no such supernatural principles of the life of Christ, was merited to them by the death of Christ. 3. It is not physically possible to the Elect or to any to create a new heart to themselves from the very same principles in number, which they lost in Adam: for it is a contradiction, that what is done, should not be done, and what is lost, should not be lost. Nor can the Lord command the glorified in Heaven, in whom the habit of holiness is perfected, to be now in glory justified by works; for as it is a contradiction, that such as once broke the Law, can be said never to have broken the Law, so is it a contradiction, that such as have once sinned and fallen from law-righteousness, should ever after, even for eternity be justified by that law-righteousness which once they lost, or that they should be justified both by grace, or by the redemption that is in Jesus without works (Romans 3:15; Romans 4:1, 2, 3), and also should be justified by debt and hire and by works, as Paul opposes the one to the other (Romans 4), and no doubt all the glorified were once justified by grace without works; even Abraham, David, and all like them — how then can they be justified by works for ever and ever in Heaven? See Romans 11:6.

Qu. What then requires the Lord in these (believe you in Christ) [make you a new heart] except we say we have strength natural to obey, and that by nature's law many were saved?

Ans. 1. He requires the free act of believing, but withal he requires what is our duty and moral obligation, but not what is our physical strength to perform.

2. He shows our impotency to wrestle out of the pit of misery, except he give us evangelical strength to escape: nor is it the Lord's intention or decree that such as have fallen in the first Adam should rise again by the first Adam, or their own strength; or should pay of their own, the money that they wasted in Adam.

Or 3. That they should have, or get again the same individual sanctified power, which they lost in Adam.

Or 4. That they should have these influences of God they once lost.

Object. They are either condemned, because they believe not by their own strength, or because they believe not by a supernatural grace, but both are physically impossible. Now we can all keep the Law whole ourselves, justify ourselves, live without sin.

Ans. 1. They are condemned, because they believe not through a supernatural power, which power all are obliged to have; for it was once a concreated and gifted power: and the want of the power of believing is a culpable and sinful want of that image of God, which man is obliged to have (Romans 3:23).

2. Whatever principle and power of believing be the ground of gospel-unbelief which condemns men, the sons of Adam love that want, and such as are within the visible Church are condemned for their voluntary unbelief (John 5:24 and John 5:40): "You will not come to me, that you may be saved" [in non-Latin alphabet]. As for the want of the power of believing, it is common to all mankind, to such as hear the Gospel, and to all the Heathen, and therefore cannot be the nearest formal principle of that gospel-unbelief, for which they are condemned, who being within the visible Church, do not believe. And upon the same ground the culpable want of the power of believing, as of the rest of the parts of the image of God, must be a sin against the covenant of works, common to all mankind: now such as never heard the Gospel cannot be guilty of a sin proper to the covenant of grace.

Qu. What then? is that a just command that the Lord should charge, under the highest pain, even of the second death, the blind to see; that is, that the natural man believe, and in the mean time, God judicially puts out his eyes, and out of his absolute freedom refuses to restore to him the faculty of seeing.

Ans. Suppose 1. That the want of soul power to see is both a sin, (the contrary of it being moral goodness a part of original righteousness and of the concreated image of God, to wit, of righteousness and holiness (Ephesians 4:23, 24; Colossians 3:10), which makes a man lovely to God;) as also a punishment inflicted, as Pharaoh's obstinate hardness is both a heinous sin, and also judicially afflicted for former sins: And then the holy Law may as well charge men to be holy and able to believe, though they be judicially blind: As God may charge Pharaoh's heart to be soft, and moved with rods, and to yield to the command, (Let my people go) when God judicially hardens the heart.

2. Suppose that man loves willingly to be blind, as all love their native blindness.

3. Suppose the blind man to be under the moral debt of having his seeing faculty, even the complete image of God, and of loving, and not hating his Physician Christ (when revealed and preached) who only can restore his faculty of seeing. Now man remaining after the Fall a reasonable creature, is obliged by the first command to believe God in all he says, and to love Christ, God incarnate or not incarnate. He from whom the eyes are plucked, cannot be under a moral obligation to see, because the eye sees not by freedom, that is, inherent in the eye: But a man within the visible Church is obliged to perform all free obedience of believing in Christ revealed, whether habitual or actual, which his Creator commands; so the comparison halts widely.

4. Suppose the man does first with his own hand put out his own eyes, as we did in Adam; and that the relation of penalty follows this blindness, by the will of the just Creator, as it is here.

5. Suppose the blind man gave virtual consent to the voluntarily loved want of the lovely and gracious art of the only Physician, who can restore his sight, as the case is here.

Suppose that the Creator of eyes has once given the faculty of seeing, and that he is not obliged to restore it ever when the man casts it away; and that the man a thousand times winks, and shuts his eyes, and hates to be anointed; and you shall see there is no ground to quarrel with the just and holy Lord.

Q. Whereas the contrary opinion that denies original sin to be sin, as Pelagians, Arminians, Socinians, 1. Contradicts Scripture, which calls it both sin and iniquity (Psalm 51:5), uncleanliness (Job 14:4), the frame of the heart evil, 2. Only evil, 3. Continually, 4. From the womb (Genesis 6:5; Genesis 8:21), offence (Romans 5:15, 17, 18), disobedience by which many are made sinners (Romans 5:19), indwelling sin, even when Paul is justified, a body of sin (Romans 7:17, 23, 24), the sin that does so easily beset us (Hebrews 12:1). Shall we teach the Lord to speak?

The Lord says it is an offence by which many be dead (Romans 5:15). By which the judgment is, by one, to condemnation [in non-Latin alphabet]. It is the condemnation to the first and second death, from which we are delivered in Jesus Christ (Romans 5:16; Romans 8:1). It's an offence by which death reigned as a King. Now if this death be but a temporary death, how is it opposed to the reigning in life by one Jesus Christ (Romans 5:17)? And as sin reigned to death, even so grace reigns through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Romans 5:21). Now except the Scripture had taught us that there is one sort of sin that deserves temporal death, another that deserves eternal death, we cannot believe Mr. Baxter.

It makes us children of wrath (Ephesians 2:3) by nature, as others are. If it be temporary wrath only, and infants be free of sin that condemns to the second death; Christ bore in his body the sin of no infants; Christ died for sinners only, the just for the unjust (1 Peter 3:18; Romans 4:25; Isaiah 53:6, 10). Infants are not sinners, nor are sucking infants laved and washed in his blood, as others (Revelation 1:5). Nor are they sinners whom Christ came to save (1 Timothy 1:15). Nor are infants any of the many, or of the all, for whom Christ gave himself a ransom (Matthew 20:28; 1 Timothy 2:6). And since the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to infants, and they are to be baptized (Acts 2:38, 39), there must be some other name by which infants must be saved, than by the name of Jesus Christ, contrary to Acts 4:12. For what need is there of Christ's righteousness, and of remission of sins, and redemption in Christ's blood (Romans 3:25; Ephesians 1:7; Colossians 1:13, 14), to infants, if original sin be no sin?

Heathens, ignorant of original sin, are still left by such masters to accuse justice. If infants be free of sin, why is nature called by them a step-dame, which has brought forth men in such misery when they enter in the world? Why do infants suffer death, burning, drowning, ripping up, and wounding in the womb? Why suffer they such wrath of pining sickness, incursions of devils, if all these be free of sin? Some say these are temporary evils, but it proves not any sin deserving eternal burning to be in infants. The Lord needs not my lie; but let any man answer me in point of holy spotless justice, how a punishment of ten degrees can more be inflicted for that which is no sin, nor any transgression of a law, than a punishment of a thousand degrees? See how Mr. Baxter, with Arminians and Pelagians, can from Scripture teach us of whole sins and half sins, whole wrath and hell, and half wrath and half condemnation, or half hell.

Q. But what law is there that we should have the power of believing, or the image of God? The covenant of works does presuppose that image to be in man; otherwise he is not in a capacity to be in covenant with God, therefore it could not be enjoined and commanded in the covenant of works that Adam should have this image of God. And if so, the want of it must be a mere punishment, not a sin.

The Lord in creating Adam must necessarily have a two-fold consideration: one 1. of a Creator, 2. another of a Law-giver. In the first the Lord creates being; but in the latter he is such a special Creator, to wit, a Law-giving Creator, who, while he creates being, does concreate these noble principles, and write and by nature engrave the law of the image of God, the natural knowledge of God, his holiness, justice, mercy, &c. and of right and wrong, and a natural holiness and innate conformity of the heart to the eternal law of God in man's soul. A painter draws the portrait of a living beautiful heroic King, according to the living man; the painter both gives being to the painted image, and such a being, according to the law and art of painting; he follows exactly and accurately his copy and living exemplar, and so gives a law to his own acts of painting. And therefore God, in one and the same act, both creates man, and gives him a being, even holiness, his image, and holy being; and in creating of man, gives, and concreates, and engraves the image of God, sound knowledge, right inclinations; and while the Lord creates, he gives and engraves a law; and while he gives and engraves a law, he creates man. And therefore it follows not that the covenant of works does not presuppose the image of God in man; and it does not follow but the very act of God in stamping and engraving his image in Adam, is also a giving of him a law. Yes, God in creating any creature of nothing, does also concreate, as a sort of Law-giver, such a natural law. Every creature, Sun, Moon, Heaven, Earth, Sea, Man, Angel, ought to be subject as a creature to God Creator in being and operation. Here is both the act of a Creator, and also the act of a Law-giver.

Now the eternal Law of God requires that man's soul should be, by creation, indued with the image of God; and Adam and Eve by that image said Amen to that Law for a time, Eat not, lest you die. They knew the Law was just, and they knew it was their natural obligation to obey; and how can it be denied but this knowledge was a part of the man's natural goodness and holiness, and so agreeable to the eternal Law of God; and that the contrary of this, to doubt of the truth of this, as Satan induced them to do (Genesis 3), was a blacking of that fair image, and contrary to the law of nature?

2. The more of this image that is left in the souls of men by nature, as the more knowledge, natural justice, and virtue remain in Aristides, Regulus, Seneca, Tullius, &c. the more lovely they are, and so must their souls have a more natural conformity with the law of nature than other Heathens, who killed their aged Fathers, sacrificed their sons to Devils, used wives promiscuously. Then, what God condemns in us, that we should condemn in ourselves, and therefore are to be humbled for our state we are in by nature. For we are dead in sins and trespasses, by nature the children of wrath, as well as others (Ephesians 2:1, 4), We ourselves were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another. Psalm 51:5: Behold I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother warm me. Upon this account the Lord suffers his own to fall and lie in the dust, and to know what beasts they are, as the godly confess (Psalm 73:23; Proverbs 30:2) themselves to be. Nothing men are more ashamed of than that they are descended of a traitorous and bloody family, that sucked the paps of the bear or the wolf, that the father and mother were dogs and swine, and they born of leprous parents: the house of sinful Adam, that we lay claim to, is a botch-house, and leper-house, and worse. And this is more vile than if there were none of the world that we could claim kindred to but serpents, dogs, swine and wolves.

2. How proud and shameless are we to deny this running botch of original sin, and say it is no sin? Would it cure a man of a raging pest-boil, to say it was no pest, to give it another name? It is a part of original sin in our Atheism to belie the Lord, and say it is soul-sickness, but it is not sin; it deserves not the second death. Infants then, dying infants, are no debtors to the complete ransom of blood that Christ gave to deliver them from the wrath. And when our Savior blessed infants, and said, Of such is the kingdom of heaven, his sense must be, that infants departing this life in infancy, hold heaven by no charter of Christ, the heir of all; are not washed from sin, are not delivered from wrath to come, nor obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, as it is in (1 Thessalonians 5:9).

3. What debt is this; who of Angels or men can pay the hire of free love to Christ? You were born beasts, Tigers, Lions, Dogs, and broods of Satan and the Serpent's seed, and Christ has made you sons of God, Kings and Priests to God, heirs of life, co-heirs with Christ, partakers of the divine nature, the first-born of God written in heaven.

4. Never dream that your own strength, or good parts of nature can fit and spiritually capacitate you for receiving influences for spiritual duties; nature cannot more prepare itself for grace, and a gracious state, than a Thistle can change itself into a Vine-tree. Christ is good at all indispositions of deadness, of a natural state; whom he quickens that man and he only shall live; who can help a dead heart, but he that is the resurrection and the life, and he who raises the dead only can quicken such dead ones.

5. It is a bold and proud pen that would plead and advocate for such a hellish nature, and except Satan and his sons Pelagians; what do they but depose Christ from his office of the Physician of sinners, and bid him go back to Heaven with his medicaments of free grace? There be here no sick folks, free will is strong enough, new habits of grace are useless, the letter and moral acting of the word can raise dead souls? Shall we thus requite Christ for his free grace.

6. Though there be no merit in diligent seeking and hearing the preached Gospel, it is good to lie near the fountain for all that; as motion begets and augments vital heat and activity to move, frequent seeking brings home influences; so we are here in using means, compare (Canticles 3:1, 2, 3) with v. 4. and (Psalm 22:2) with (Psalm 18:6) (Genesis 32:26, 27, 28). But of this hereafter.