Chapter 13: The Power of Free Will in Unregenerate Man

The judgement of the Arminians, concerning the power of free-will about spiritual things, in a man unregenerate, merely in the state of corrupted nature, before and without the help of grace, may be laid open by these following positions.

First, that every man in the world, reprobates and others, have in themselves power and ability of believing in Christ, of repenting, and yielding due obedience to the new covenant, and that because they lost not this power by the fall of Adam: Adam after his fall, says Grevinchovius, retained a power of believing, and so did all reprobates in him: he did not loose (as they speak at the Synod) the power of performing that obedience, which is required in the new covenant considered formally, as it is required by the new covenant, he lost not a power of believing, nor a power of forsaking sin by repentance: and those graces that he lost not are still in our power, from where they affirm that faith is called the work of God, only because he requires us to do it: now having appropriated this power to themselves, to be sure that the grace of God be quite excluded, which before they had made needless, they teach.

Secondly, that for the reducing of this power into act, that men may become actual believers, there is no infused habit of grace, no spiritual vital principle necessary for them, or bestowed upon them, but every one by the use of his native endowments, does make themselves differ from others: Those things which are spoken concerning the infusion of habits, before we can exercise the act of faith, we reject, says the Epistle to the Walachrians: That the internal principle of faith required in the Gospel, is a habit divinely infused by the strength and efficacy whereof, the will should be determined, I deny, says another of them. Well then? if we must grant, that the internal vital principle, of a supernatural spiritual grace, is a mere natural faculty not elevated by any divine habit? if it be not God that begins the good work in us, but our own free-wills, let us see what more goodly stuff will follow: one man by his own mere endeavours, without the aid of any received gift, makes himself differ from another: What matter is it in that, that a man should make himself differ from others? there is nothing truer; he who yields faith, to God commanding him makes himself differ from him, who will not have faith when he commands, they are the words of their Apologie: which without question, is an irrefragable truth, if faith be not a gift received from above: for on that ground only the Apostle proposes these questions, who made you differ from another? or what have you that you have not received? and if you have received, why boast you as if you have not received? the sole cause why he denies any one by his own power to make himself differ from another, is, because that wherein the difference consists, is, received, being freely bestowed upon him: deny this, and I confess the other will fall of itself. But until their authority, be equal with the Apostles, they would do well to forbear the naked obtrusions of assertions so contradictory to theirs; and so they would not trouble the Church, let them take all the glory to themselves, as does Grevinchovius: I make myself (says he) differ from another, when I do not resist God and his divine predetermination, which I could have resisted, and why may I not boast of this as of mine own, that I could, is of God's mercy, (endowing his nature with such an ability, as you heard before) but that I would, when I might have done otherwise, is of mine power. Now when after all this, they are forced to confess some evangelical grace, though consisting only in a moral persuasion, by the outward preaching of the word, they teach.

Thirdly, that God sends the Gospel, and reveals Christ Jesus to men, according as they well dispose themselves for such a blessing: Sometimes (say they in their Synodical writings) God calls this or that nation, people, city, or person, to the communion of evangelical grace, whom he himself pronounces worthy of it, in comparison of others: So that whereas (Acts 18:10) God encourages Paul to preach at Corinth by affirming that he had much people in that city (which doubtless were his people then, only by virtue of their election) in these men's judgements? they were called so, because that even then they feared God, and served him with all their hearts, according to that knowledge they had of him, and so were ready to obey the preaching of Saint Paul: strange doctrine? that men should fear God, know him, serve him in sincerity, before they ever heard of the Gospel, and by those means deserve that it should be preached to them? this is, that pleasing of God before faith that they plead for; Act. Synod. fol. 60. That preparation and disposition to believe, which men attain by the Law, and virtuous education: that something which is in sinners, whereby though they are not justified, yet they are made worthy of justification: for conversion and the performance of good works, is in their apprehension a condition prerequired to justification, for so speak the children of Arminius: which if it be not an expression, not to be paralleled in the writings of any Christian, I am something mistaken: the sum of their doctrine then in this particular concerning the power of free-will, in the state of sin, and unregeneration, is, that every man having a native inbred power, of believing in Christ, upon the revelation of the Gospel, has also an ability of doing so much good, as shall procure of God, that the Gospel be preached to him, to which, without any internal assistance of grace, he can give assent and yield obedience: the preparatory acts of his own will, always proceeding so far, as to make him excel others, who do not perform them, and are therefore excluded from further grace. Which is more gross Pelagianism than Pelagius himself would ever justify: therefore, we reject all the former positions, as so many monsters in Christian religion, in whose room we assert these that follow.

First, that we being by nature dead in trespasses and sins, have no power to prepare ourselves for the receiving of God's grace, nor in the least measure to believe and turn ourselves to him. Not that we deny that there are any conditions prerequired in us for our conversion, dispositions preparing us in some measure for our new birth or regeneration, but we affirm that all these also are the effects of the grace of God, relating to that alone as their proper cause, for of ourselves, without him we can do nothing (John 15:15). We are not able of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves (2 Corinthians 3:5), much less do that which is good; in respect of that, every one of our mouths must be stopped, for we have all sinned and come short of the glory of God (Romans 5:19, 23). We are by nature the children of wrath, dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1; Romans 8:9); our new birth is a resurrection from death, wrought by the greatness of God's power: and what ability, I pray, has a dead man to prepare himself for his resurrection? Can he collect his scattered dust, or renew his perished senses? If the leopard can change his spots, and the Ethiopian his skin, then can we do good who (by nature) are taught to do evil (Jeremiah 13:23). We are all ungodly, and without strength, considered when Christ died for us (Romans 5:6); wise to do evil, but to do good, we have no strength, no knowledge. Yes, all the faculties of our souls, by reason of that spiritual death under which we are detained by the corruption of nature, are altogether useless in respect of any power for the doing of that which is truly good. Our understandings are blind or darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in us, because of the blindness of our hearts (Ephesians 4:18), whereby we become even darkness itself (chapter 5:8). So void is the understanding of true knowledge that the natural man receives not the things that are of God; they are foolishness to him (1 Corinthians 2:14); nothing but confounded and amazed at spiritual things, and if he does not mock, can do nothing but wonder and say, what means this (Acts 2:12, 13). Secondly, we are not only blind in our understandings, but captives also to sin in our wills (Luke 4:18), whereby we are servants to sin (John 8:34), free only in our obedience to that tyrant (Romans 6). Yes, thirdly, all our affections are wholly corrupted, for every imagination of the thoughts of the heart of man is evil continually (Genesis 6:5). While we are in the flesh, the motions of sin do work in our members, to bring forth fruit to death (Romans 7:5).

These are the endowments of our nature, these are the preparations of our hearts for the grace of God, which we have within ourselves. No,

Secondly, there is not only an impotence, but an enmity in corrupted nature, to anything spiritually good. The things that are of God are foolishness to a natural man (1 Corinthians 2:14), and there is nothing that men do more hate and contemn than that which they account as folly. They mock at it as a ridiculous drunkenness (Acts 2:13). And would to God our days yielded us not too evident proofs of that universal opposition that is between light and darkness, Christ and Belial, nature and grace, that we could not see every day the prodigious issues of this inbred corruption, swelling over all bounds, and breaking forth into a contempt of the Gospel, and all ways of godliness. So true it is that the carnal mind is enmity against God, it is not subject to his law, neither indeed can it be (Romans 8:7). So that,

Thirdly, as a natural man by the strength of his own free will, neither knows, nor wills, so it is utterly impossible he should do anything pleasing to God. Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the Leopard his spots, then can he do good (Jeremiah 13). An evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit, without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6). And that is not of ourselves, it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2). So that though Almighty God, according to the unsearchableness of his wisdom, works divers ways, and in sundry manners, for the translating of his chosen ones, from the power of darkness to his marvelous light, calling some powerfully in the midst of their march in the ways of ungodliness, as he did Paul, preparing others, by outward means, and helps of common restraining grace, moralizing nature before it be gotten anew by the immortal seed of the Word, yet this is certain, that all good in this kind, is from his free grace, there is nothing in ourselves, as of ourselves, but sin. Yes, and all those previous dispositions, wherewith our hearts are prepared by virtue of common grace, do not at all enable us to concur by any vital operation, with that powerful blessed renewing grace of regeneration, whereby we become the sons of God. Neither is there any disposition to grace so remote, as that possibly it can proceed from a mere faculty of nature, for every such disposition, must be of the same order with the form that is to be introduced, but Nature in respect of Grace, is a thing of an inferior alloy, between which there is no proportion: a good use of gifts, may have a promise of an addition of more, provided it be in the same kind. There is no rule, law, or promise, that should make grace due, upon the good use of natural endowments. But you will say, here I quite overthrow free will, which before I seemed to grant; to which I answer: That in regard of that object, concerning which now we treat, a natural man has no such thing as free will at all, if you take it for a power of doing that which is good and well pleasing to God in things spiritual, for an ability, of preparing our hearts to faith and calling upon God, as our Church Article speaks, a home-bred self-sufficiency, preceding the change of our wills by the Almighty grace of God, whereby any good should be said to dwell in us, and we utterly deny that there is any such thing in the world. The will, though in itself radically free, yet in respect of the term or object, to which in this regard it should tend, is corrupted, enthralled, and under a miserable bondage, tied to such a necessity of sinning in general, that though unregenerate men are not restrained to this, or that sin in particular, yet for the main, they can do nothing but sin. All their actions wherein there is any morality, are attended with iniquity, an evil tree cannot bring forth good fruit, even the sacrifice of the wicked, is an abomination to the Lord. These things being thus cleared from the Scripture, the former Arminian positions will of themselves fall to the ground, having no foundation but their own authority, for any pretence of proof they make none from the word of God. The first two I considered in the last Chapter, and now add only concerning the third, That the sole cause why the Gospel is sent to some, and not to others, is not any dignity, worth, or desert of it in them to whom it is sent, more than in the rest, that are suffered to remain in the shadow of death, but only the sole good pleasure of God, that it may be a subservient means for the execution of his Decree of Election. I have much people in this city (Acts 20). I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hid these things from the wise and prudent, and has revealed them to babes, even so Father, for so it seemed good in your sight (Matthew 11:25, 26). So that the Arminian opposition to the truth of the Gospel in this particular, is clearly manifest.

Of ourselves we can do nothing (John 15:5). We are not able of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves (2 Corinthians 3:5). We are by nature children of wrath, dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1). Faith is not of ourselves, it is the gift of God (Ephesians 2). Who makes you differ from another? or what have you, that you have not received? and if you have received, why do you boast, as if you had not received? (1 Corinthians 4:7). If the Leopard can change his spots, and the Ethiopian his skin, then can you do good who are taught to do evil (Jeremiah 13:23). Believing on him who justifies the ungodly (Romans 4:5). Being justified freely by his grace (Romans 3:24). I thank you Father Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hid these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them to babes; even so O Father, for so it seemed good in your sight (Matthew 11:25, 26). We retain still after the fall, a power of believing, and of repentance, because Adam lost not this ability: Rem. Declarat. Sen. in Syn. Faith is said to be the work of God, because he commands us to perform it: Rem. Apol. There is no infusion of any habit or spiritual vital principle necessary to enable a man to believe: Corvin. There is nothing truer than that one man makes himself differ from another: he who believes, when God commands, makes himself differ from him who will not: Rem. Apol. I may boast of my own, when I obey God's grace, which it was in my power not to obey, as well as to obey: Grevinch. True conversion and the performance of good works, is a condition required on our part before justification: Filii Armin. God sends the Gospel to such persons or nations, that in comparison of others, may be said to be worthy of it: Rem. Apol.