The maintainers and propagators of the several doctrines under contest taken into consideration — The necessity of so doing from Mr G. undertaking to make the comparison — This inquiry confined to those of our own nation — The chief assertors, of the doctrine of the saints’ perseverance in this nation since it received any opposition; what was their ministry, and what their lives — Mr G.’s plea in this case — The first objection against his doctrine by him proposed, second and third — His answers to these objections considered, removed — His own word and testimony offered against the experience of thousands — The persons pointed to by him and commended, considered — The principles of those persons he opposeth vindicated — Of the doctrine of the primitive Christians as to this head of religion — Grounds of mistake in reference to their judgment — The first reformers constant to themselves in their doctrine of the saints’ perseverance — Of the influence of Mr Perkins’ judgment on the propagation of the doctrine of the saints’ perseverance — Who the persons were on whom his judgment is supposed to have had such an influence — The consent of foreign churches making void this surmise — What influence the doctrine of the saints’ perseverance has into the holiness of its professors — Of the unworthiness of the persons who in this nation have asserted the doctrine of apostasy — The suitableness of this doctrine to their practices — Mr G.’s attempt to take off this charge — How far men’s doctrines may be judged by their lives — Mr G.’s reasons why Episcopalists arminianized the first, considered and disproved — His discord, etc. — General apostasy of men entertaining the Arminian tenets — The close.
As to the matter in hand, about the usefulness of the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints in and unto the ministry of the gospel, and the obstruction pretended to be laid unto it thereby, it may be somewhat conducing and of concernment to consider who the persons are and were, and what hath been and is the presence of God with them, in their ministry, who have been assertors and zealous maintainers of this doctrine; and withal who they were, and what they have been in their ministry, and in the dispensation of the word committed unto them, who have risen up in opposition thereunto. How, also, these different parties have approved their profession to the world, and acquitted themselves in their generation in their walking with God, may be worth our consideration. Doubtless, if the doctrine whose declaration and defence we have thus far engaged in be of such a pernicious tendency as is pretended, so destructive to gospel obedience, and so evidently rendering that great ordinance of the ministry useless, it may be traced to its product of these effects, in some measure, in the lives, conversations, and ministry, of those who have most zealously espoused it, most earnestly contended for it, and been most given up to the form and mould thereof. It were a thing every way miraculous, if any root should for the most part bring forth fruit disagreeing to the nature of it.
A task this is, I confess, which, were we not necessitated unto, I could easily dispense with myself from engaging in; but Mr Goodwin having voluntarily entered the list as to this particular, and instituted a comparison between the abettors of the several doctrines under contest, chap. ix. of his book (a matter we should not have expected from any other man), it could not but be thought a gross neglect of duty, and high ingratitude towards those great and blessed souls who in former and latter days, with indefatigable pains and eminent success, watered the vineyard of the Lord with the dew of this doctrine, to decline the consideration of the comparison made and dressed up to our hand. Now, because it is a peculiar task allotted to us, to manifest the embracement of this truth by those who in the primitive church were of greatest note and eminency, for piety, judgment, and skill in dividing the word aright; with the professed opposition made unto it by such as those with whom they lived, and succeeding ages, have branded for men unsound in the faith, and leaving the good old paths wherein the saints of old found peace to their souls; as also to manifest the receiving and propagation of it by all (not any one of name excepted) those great and famous persons whom the Lord was pleased to employ in the reformation of his church, walking in this, as in sundry other particulars, closer up to the truth of the gospel than some of their brethren, that at the same time fell off from that church which was long before fallen off from the truth; — I shall, in my present inquiry, confine myself to those of our own nation who have been of renown in their generation for their labour in the Lord, and of name among the saints for their work in the service of the gospel.
For the one half of that small space of time which is passed since the breaking forth of the light of the gospel in this nation, we are disenabled from pursuing the comparison instituted, the one part being not to be considered, or at least not being considerable. The time when first head was made against the truth we profess, and criminations like those managed by Mr Goodwin hatched and contrived to assault it withal, was when it had been eminently delivered to the saints of this nation, and to all the churches of Christ, by Reynolds, Whitaker, Greenham, and others like to them, their fellow-labourers in the Lord’s vineyard. The poor weak worms of this present generation who embrace the same doctrine with these men of name, are thought to be free (some of them, at least) from being destroyed by the poisonous and pernicious embracing of it, by their own weakness and disability to discern the natural, genuine consequences and tendency in the progress of that which in the root and foundation they embrace. Their ignorance of their own doctrine in its compass and extent is the mother of that devotion which in them is nourished thereby. So our great masters tell us, against whose kingly authority in these things there is no rising up. For the persons formerly named the like relief cannot be supposed. He that shall provide an apology for them, affirming that they understood not the state, nature, consequences, and tendencies, of the doctrine they received, defended, preached, contended for, will scarce be able, by any following defensative, to vindicate his own credit for so doing. In the lives, then, and the ministry of those men, and such as those, if anywhere, are the fruits of this doctrine to be seen. If it corrupted not their lives, nor weakened their ministry; if it turned not them aside from the paths of gospel obedience, nor weakened their hands in the dispensation of the word, in the promises, threatenings, and exhortations thereof, to the conversion of souls and building up of those who by their ministry were called, in their most holy faith, — it cannot but be a strong presumption that there is no such venomous, infectious quality in this doctrine as of late some chemical divines pretend themselves to be able to extract out of it. Now, what, I pray, were these men? — what were their lives? what was their ministry? All those who now oppose Mr Goodwin’s doctrine do it either out of ignorance, or to comply with greatness and men in authority; thereby to make up themselves in their ambitious and worldly aims, and to prevail themselves upon the opinion of men; — for what cause else in the world can be imagined why they should so engage? What though they really believe the whole fabric of his doctrine, — wherein he hath departed from the faith he once, as they say, professed, — to be a lie; a lie of dangerous and pernicious consequence to the souls of men; a lie derogatory to the glory of God, the efficacy of grace, the merit of the death of Christ, and the honour of the gospel, and full of disconsolation to poor souls, being in and under temptation? what though they suppose it secretly to undermine the main fundamentals of the covenant of grace, and covertly to substitute another covenant in the room thereof? what though they have observed that the doctrine they have received was embraced, preached, prized, by all those great and blessed souls which, in the last generation, God magnified with the conversion of so many thousands in this nation, given unto their ministry, whilst they spent their days under continual afflictions and persecutions? what though they have the general, known consent of all the reformed churches beyond the seas with them in their zeal for the doctrine under consideration? what though, under these and the like apprehensions, they profess in the presence of God, his holy angels, and men, that the eternal interest of the precious souls of men is more valuable to them ten thousand times than their own lives, and that that is the sole reason of their opposition to Mr Goodwin in his attempts against the doctrine they have so received and embraced? — yet it is meet for us to judge, and for all by whom evil surmises are not esteemed to be among the works of the flesh, that all their opposition is nothing but a compliance with, and pursuit of, those worldly, low, and wretched aims, that they are filled withal! But as to those persons before mentioned, what shall we say? Their piety, literature, zeal, diligence, industry, labour, with success in the work of the ministry (and that under manifold discouragements), are so renowned in the world, that how or wherewith they shall be shifted off from being considerable in their testimony,! cannot imagine. If ever persons in these latter ages had written upon their breasts, “Holiness to the Lord,” — if ever any bare about a conformity to the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, — they may put in for an eminent esteem and name among them, and will doubtless be found at last to be of the “thirty,” if they attain not to the first rank of the worthies of Christ in these ends of the world. How is it that they were not retarded in the course of their gospel obedience by their entertainment of this wretched doctrine of the saints’ perseverance? But what though they kept themselves personally from the pollution of it, yet possibly their ministry was defiled and rendered useless by it! And who, I pray, is it that in this generation can so support himself with success in the ministry as to rise up with this accusation against them? Many thousands who were their crown, their glory, and rejoicing in Christ, are fallen asleep; and some continue to this day. Of the reasons given by Mr Goodwin why all the zealous, fruitful preachers of former days embraced this doctrine, we shall instantly undertake the consideration. In the meantime, this seems strange, that God should magnify and make famous the ministry of so many throughout the world, and give in that visible blessing to their labours therein which hath filled this island with such an increase of children to Zion as that she hath not lengthened the cords of her tabernacle to such an extent and compass in any proportionable spot of earth under heaven, if any one eminent part of their doctrine, and that whereon they laid great weight in their ministry, which they pressed with as much fervency and contention of spirit as any head of the like importance, should indeed be so apparently destructive of holiness, and of such a direct and irresistible efficiency to render useless that great ordinance of the ministry committed to them, as this is clamoured to be. What will be the success of them in their ministry who shall undertake to deny and oppose it, I hope the people of God in this nation will not have many instances to judge by. The best conjecture we can for the present make of what will be hereafter must be taken from what hath already come to pass; and the best guess of what events will be is to be raised from the consideration of what hath been, from a like disposition of causes to an answerableness of events.