“Prepare to meet thy God…”
Amos 4:12
“If thou prepare thine heart, and stretch out thine hands toward Him…”
Job 11:13
.
.
Order of Contents
Articles 4+
Books 2
Quotes 3
Rutherford’s Propositions
Publisher 1
.
Articles
1500’s
Calvin, John – 11. ‘The Law is a preparation to come to Christ’ in Instruction in Faith (1537) tr. Paul T. Fuhrman (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1949), pp. 34-35
Beza, Theodore – A Brief & Pithy Sum of the Christian Faith made in Form of a Confession (London, 1565), ch. 4
24. After what manner the preaching of the Law serves the Holy Ghost
29. Another fruit of the preaching of the law, after the preaching of the gospel begins to work
.
1600’s
Perkins, William – A Golden Chain (Cambridge: Legat, 1600), Errors of the Papists in their distributing of the Causes of Salvation
3. All men are predestinated, i.e. disposed and ordained of God so they might attain eternal life
…
7. Man after Adam’s fall has freewill to do good and evil, though in a diverse manner: he has freewill to do evil simply, without any external aid: but to do well, none at all, but by God’s grace preventing or guiding: which grace every man has and it is in our freewill either to consent and together work with or not. Freewill’s power to do what is good and acceptable to God is only attenuated and weakened before conversion; hence man can of himself work a preparation to justification
9. That preparation to grace, which is caused by the power of free-will, may by the merit of congruity deserve justification
…
11. Man’s love of God does in order and time go before his justification and reconciliation with God
Pemble, William – pp. 137-43 in Vindiciæ gratiæ. = A Plea for Grace, More especially the Grace of Faith… (London: 1627)
Rutherford, Samuel – Rutherford’s Examination of Arminianism: the Tables of Contents with Excerpts from Every Chapter tr. Charles Johnson & Travis Fentiman (1638-1642; 1668; RBO, 2019), ch. 7
8. ‘Whether the Adversaries rightly infer this, that according to us, it is noxious for the unconverted to hear the Word and to use external means? We deny.’, pp. 85-86
9. ‘Whether legal contrition can be called preparation for conversion? We distinguish.’, pp. 86-87
Ambrose, Isaac – The Doctrine & Directions but more especially the Practice & Behavior of a Man in the Act of the New Birth… (London: 1650)
Hooker, Thomas – multiple works
.
1800’s
Alexander, A.A. – Thoughts on Religious Experience (Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication, 1841)
ch. 1 13-22
“But the persons to whom we refer seem to think that nothing is done towards the salvation of men, but at the moment of their conversion, and that every good effect must be at once manifest. Perhaps some one may infer that we believe in a gradual regeneration, and that special grace differs from common, only in degree; but such an inference would be utterly false, for there can be no medium between life and death;
but we do profess to believe and maintain, that there is a gradual preparation, by common grace, for regeneration, which may be going on from childhood to mature age; and we believe that, as no mortal can tell the precise moment, when the soul is vivified, and as the principle of spiritual life in its commencement is often very feeble, so it is an undoubted truth, that the developement of the new life in the soul may be, and often is, very slow; and not unfrequently that which is called conversion is nothing else but a more sensible and vigorous exercise of a principle which has long existed.” – pp. 16-17
.
Books
2000’s
Gerstner, John – Jonathan Edwards: Evangelist Buy (SDG, 2003) 192 pp.
Despite the title, this book primarily systematizes and expounds Edwards’s teaching about preparation unto conversion, which is good.
Beeke, Joel & Paul M. Smalley – Prepared by Grace, for Grace: The Puritans on God’s Ordinary Way of Leading Sinners to Christ Buy (RHB, 2013) 297 pp. Includes as an appendix, William Ames’s Theological Disputation on Preparation
.
Order of Quotes
Bullinger
Davenant
Corbet
.
1500’s
Henry Bullinger
The Decades ed. Thomas Harding (1549; Cambridge: Parker Society, 1850), vol. 3, 4th Decade, 2nd Sermon, ‘Of Repentance & the Causes thereof…’, pp. 62-63
“…the acknowledging of sins does not of itself obtain grace or forgiveness of sins, even as the bare acknowledging of a disease is not the remedy for the same: for even damned men also do acknowledge their sins, and yet are not therefore healed. The acknowledging of sin is a certain preparative unto faith, as the acknowledging of a disease does minister occasion to think upon a remedy.
To this at this present we add that not the very fear of God, how sincere soever it be, not the very sorrow conceived for our sins, how great soever it be, nor the very humiliation, how submiss soever it be, do of themselves make us acceptable to God: but rather that they prepare an entrance and make a way for us unto the knowledge of Christ, and so consequently do lead us to Christ Himself being incarnate and crucified for us and our redemption, and lay us upon Christ alone, by Him to be quickened and purely cleansed.”
.
1600’s
John Davenant
Question 9, ‘Free-Will is Not Granted unto the Unregenerate for their Spiritual Good’ in The Determinations, or Resolutions of Certain Theological Questions, Publicly Discussed in the University of Cambridge trans. Josiah Allport (1634; 1846), pp. 265-66 bound at the end of John Davenant, A Treatise on Justification, or the Disputatio de Justitia... trans. Josiah Allport (1631; London, 1846), vol. 2
“As to the term ‘regenerated’ or ‘born again’, I do not call one who is enlightened or breathed upon by any motion of the Holy Spirit, regenerated… I call him unregenerate who has not yet attained to this spiritual quickening, however he may have been affected by some preceding operations of the Holy Spirit.
…
We concede, then, to the Papists, that before the infusion of regenerating grace, many actions which lead the way to faith and contrition, are both required from men, and by them both can, and are wont [accustomed] to be done, through the sole assistance of awakening grace. Of this kind, are not only joining the Church and hearing the Word, but of thinking of God and divine things, considering their peculiar sins, being alarmed by the sense of them, desiring deliverance from this fear, and many other such like things, which are prerequisite to acts truly spiritual and saving.
But we affirm, moreover, that the mind and disposition of the unregenerate is engaged in a natural way only with the aforesaid things; that the will is not elevated to produce an act truly spiritual, until regenerating or quickening efficacy shall have been added, besides, to the awakening and evidencing grace. (See Suarez, Opuscula, De Auxil.Div. Grat., bk. 3, chs. 1-2)
Moreover, we grant that this regenerating grace is not infused into men remaining inactive and idling looking for some vague fervors or other; but to minds aroused, and brought under and disposed, in some measure, by the aforesaid actions, through the Word and Spirit of God; nevertheless, we deny that the free-will of an unregenerate man is assisted by these auxiliaries, in such was so to dispose itself that God should be bound to infuse quickening grace into any one from merit of congruity.
Lastly, we confess that in the Church of God, where men are excited constantly by the Word and Spirit, this regenerating grace, which alone renders them capable of repenting and believing savingly, is denied to no adult of whom it cannot be truly said, that he willingly resists the Holy Spirit in those actions before-mentioned, and also perversely repulses the quickening operation of the same. (See Spalato, bk. 7, p. 239, & Suarez, Opuscula, p. 222)
Yet we deny that any mortal man can be found, who, in repelling the preparatory actions of the Spirit, does not incur, abundantly, this demerit; and, inasmuch as some, repelling God by this intervening, common demerit, are repelled of God and left to themselves; others, notwithstanding equal or greater demerit, are often, and more powerfully assailed by grace, and are at length quickened by the omnipotent operation of the Spirit. The mystery is to be referred to the gracious will of God, pitying or not pitying, and [is] not to be rashly enquired into by any human curiosity.”
.
John Corbet
An Account Given of the Principles & Practices of Several Nonconformists… (London: Parkhurst, 1682), pp. 19-20
“In man’s conversion to God we urge not the necessity of anything that is unnecessary. We stand not on certain modes, methods and circumstances, in which it may be brought about, wherein the wisdom of God proceeds variously towards several persons, according to the different circumstances of their condition.
As for instance, we assert not a general necessity of this or that measure of humiliation, much less of a dismal despairing horror (as some have said of us); we press conviction and humiliation no farther than to make a sinner restless till he come to Christ, and find rest to his soul in Him.”
.
Rutherford’s Assertions & Propositions
Christ Dying & Drawing Sinners to Himself (London: 1647)
pp. 239-60
“Question: But are there no preparations either of nature or at least of grace going before saving grace and the soul’s being drawn to Christ?
Answer: That we may come to consider preparations or previous qualifications to conversion, let us consider whether Christ coming to the soul has need of an usher.
Assertion 1. Dispositions going before conversion come under a fourfold consideration:
1. As efficient causes; so some imagine them to be.
2. As materially and subjectively they dispose the soul to receive grace.
3. Formally or morally, either as parts of conversion or moral preparations having a promise of conversion annexed to them.
4. As means in reference to the final cause, or to the Lord’s end in sending these before; and what is said of these may have some truth proportionably in a Church’s low condition or humiliation before they be delivered. We may also speak here of dispositions going before the Lord’s renewed drawing of sinners already converted, after a fall or under desertion, Cant. 1, ‘Draw me; we will run.’
Assertion 2. No man but Pelagians, Arminians and such do teach if any shall improve their natural abilities to the uttermost and stir up themselves in good earnest to seek the grace of conversion and Christ the wisdom of God, they shall certainly and without miscarrying find what they seek.
1. Because no man, not the finest and sweetest nature can engage the grace of Christ, or with his penny or sweating earn either the kingdom of grace or glory, whether by way of merit of condignity or congruity. Rom. 9:16, ‘So then, it is not in him that willeth, nor in him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.’ 1 Tim. 1:9, ‘Who hath saved us, and called us, with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.’ So Eph. 2:1-5; Tit. 3:3-5; Eze. 16:4-10.
2. Because there is no shadow of any engagement of promise on God’s part or any word for it: ‘Do this by the strength of nature and grace shall be given to you.’
3. Nor are we ashamed to say with the Scripture, it’s as unpossible to storm heaven or make purchase of Christ by the strength of nature as for the dead man to take his grave in his two arms and rise and lay death by him, and walk: Nor does this impossibility free the sinner from guiltiness and rebukes:
1. Because it is a sinfully contracted inability, except we would deny Original Sin.
2. It’s voluntary in us and the bondage that we love.
3. The Scripture both calls it impossibility and also rebukes it as sinful, Jn. 6:44; Rom. 8:6-8; Eph. 2:1-3, 11-13; 4:17-19; 5:8.
Assertion 3. All preparations, even wrought in us by the common and general restraining grace of God, can have no effective influence to produce our conversion from the Scriptures alleged, for:
1. Then should we be called, saved and quickened when we are dead in sin, foolish, disobedient and enemies to God [Greek] and [Greek], ‘According to our works of righteousness which we had done,’ contrary to Eph. 2:1-5, 11-13; 2 Tim. 1:9; Tit. 3:3.
2. Then common general gifts might also engage Christ’s free grace.
3. Men might prevene grace and forestall Christ and his merits, which overturns the foundation of the Gospel and cries down Christ and free grace.
Assertion 4. All these foregoing endeavors and sweatings, being void of faith, cannot please God, Heb. 11:6.
These who act in the strength of them are yet in the flesh and not in the Spirit, and so can do nothing acceptable to God, being yet out of Christ, Rom. 8:8; Jn. 15:4-6, and the tree being corrupt, the fruit must be sour and naught; humiliation, sorrow for sin, displeasure with ourselves that go before conversion can be no formal parts of conversion, nor any essential limbs, members or degrees of the new creature, nor so much as a stone or pin of the new building.
Divines call them, gradus ad rem, initium materiale conversionis; non gradus in re, nec initium formale [a grade to the thing, a material entrance of conversion; not a grade in the thing, nor a formal entrance]: For parts of the building remain in the building; when the house is come to some perfect frame, all those bastard pieces, coming not from the new principle, the new heart, Christ formed in the soul, are cast out as unprofitable. Paul, when he meets with Christ, casts off his silks and satins that he was lordly of while he was a Pharisee, as old rags, loss and dung, and acts now with far other principles and tools. It’s all new work after another sampler; heaven works in him now.
Assertion 5. Those are not moral preparations which we perform before conversion, nor have they any promise of Christ annexed to them:
[1.] as ‘He that is humbled under sin, shall be drawn to Christ: he that wishes the Physician, shall be cured and called to repentance;’ we read of no such promise in the Word.
2. A man not in Christ is without the sphere or element of Christ, at the wrong side of the door of the sheepfold, he is not in Emanuel’s land; and all the promises of God are in Christ, ‘Yea’ and ‘Amen’, 2 Cor. 1:20. The whole stock of Gospel-promises are put in Christ as the first subject; and believers have them from Christ at the second hand. Christ keeps as the true ark, the book of the testament, the believer’s Bible. It’s true, the new heart is promised to the elect even while they are not in Christ, but they cannot make claim to that promise till they be first in Christ: but those promises are made, in a special manner to Christ as to the head of the redeemed, to be dispensed by Christ to those only whom the Father gave Him before time. And as the promises are peculiar to Christ, so the persons and grace promised, both the one and the other, are due to Christ and result from the Head to those who in God’s decree only shall be members, as righteousness, life eternal, and perseverance are made to those that are members.
3. Many run, and obtain not, 1 Cor. 9:24-26. Many strive to enter in and shall not be able, Lk. 13:24. Many lay a foundation and are not able to finish, Lk. 14:29. Many hunt and catch nothing: Many have storms of conscience, as Cain and Judas, who go never one step further. When therefore Antinomians impute to us that we teach that to desire to believe is faith, to desire to pray is prayer, they fouly mistake; for raw desires and wishes after conversion and Christ are to us no more conversion and the soul’s being drawn to Christ than Esau‘s weeping for the blessing was the blessing or Balaam‘s wish to die the death of the righteous was the happy end of such as die in the Lord. But the sincere desires and goodwill of justified persons are accepted of the Lord for the deed: and when Christ pronounces such blessed as hunger for righteousness, we say in that sense, a sincere desire to pray and believe is materially and by concomitancy a neighbour and near of kin to believing and praying; a virtual or seminal intention to pray, believe, love Christ, do his will, is in the seed, praying, believing when the intention is supernatural and of the same kind with the act, as the seed is the tree: we say not so of natural intentions and desires, as Abraham’s sincere intention to offer his son was the offering of his son; the widow’s casting in her mite was, in her honest desire, the casting in of all that she had, [but] certainly not all simply: that had been against charity toward herself.
2. But single desires, unfeigned aims, weigh as much with Christ as actions in their reality. So we say many are in affections martyrs who never die nor suffer loss for Christ, because nothing is wanting on the part of such saints thus disposed, but that God call them to it. So Abraham offered his son Isaac to God; because Abraham did all on his part and he was not the cause why he was not offered and made an actual sacrifice to God, but God’s countermand and his forbidding was the cause, and nothing else.
Assertion 6. The humiliation and sorrow for sin, and desire of the Physician, by way of merit or 2. by way of a moral disposition having the favor of a Gospel-promise, do no more render a soul nearer to Christ and saving grace than the want of these dispositions;
For as a horse or an ape, though they come nearer to some shadow of reason and to man’s nature than the stork or the ass, or than things void of life, as stones and the like, yet as there is required the like omnipotency to turn an ape into a man as to make a stone a son of Abraham, so the like omnipotency of grace is required to turn an unhumbled soul into a saved and redeemed saint as to turn a proud Pharisee into a saint. And merit is as far to seek in the one as the other. So an unconverted sinner, though some way humbled, if the Lord of free grace should convert him, were no less obliged to free grace and no less from laying any tie or bands of merits, or obligation, by way of promise on Christ for his conversion than a stone made a believing son of Abraham should be in the same case of conversion.
3. And the humbled soul, for ought he knows (I speak of legal humiliation), has no more any Gospel-title or promise that saving grace shall be given to him, even of mere grace, upon condition of his humiliation or external hearing or desire of the Physician, than the proud Pharisee.
Yet as the body framed and organized is in a nearer disposition to be a house to receive the soul than a stone or a block, so is an humbled and dejected soul, such as cast-down Saul and the bowed-down jailor, and those that were pricked in their hearts, Acts 2, in the moment before their conversion, were nearer to conversion and in regard of passive and material dispositions made by the Law-work, readier to receive the impression and new life of Christ formed in them than the blaspheming Jews, Acts 13, and the proud Pharisees, who despised the counsel of God and would not be baptized, Lk. 7:30. There be some preparatory colors in dying of cloth, as blue, that dispose the cloth for other colours more easily; so is it here: And a fish that has swallowed the bait and is in the bosom of the net is nearer being taken than a fish free and swimming in the ocean; yet a fish may break the net and cut the angle, and not be taken. A legally-fitted man may be not far from the kingdome of God, Mk. 12:34, and yet never enter in.
And those same dispositions in relation to God’s end in saving the elect are often means and disposing occasions, fitting souls for conversion: though some be like a piece of gold lying in the dirt, yet it is both true metal and has the king’s stamp on it, and is of equal worth with that which goes current in the market. So, in regard of God’s eternal election, many are in the way of sin and not converted as yet, notwithstanding all the luster of foregoing preparations, though they be as truly the elect of God as either those that are converted, yea or glorified in heaven; yet their preparations do lead them, in regard of an higher power (that they see not) to saving grace. And for anything revealed to us, God ordinarily prepares men by the Law and some previous dispositions before they be drawn to Christ.
I dare not peremptorily say that God uses no prerogative royal or no privileges of soveraignty in the conversion of some who find mercy between the water and the bridge; yea, I think that Christ comes to some like a roe or a young hart, skipping and leaping over hills and mountains and passes over his own set line and snatches them out of hell without these preparations; at least He works them suddenly: And I see no inconvenience, but as in God’s ways of nature, He can make dispensations to Himself; so in the ways of grace, we cannot find Him out.
However, sure of crabbed and knotty timber He makes new buildings; and it is very base and untoward clay that Christ, who makes all things new, cannot frame a vessel of mercy of. To change one species or kind of a creature into another, a lion into a lamb, and to cause the wolf and the lamb dwell together, and the leopard lie down with the kid and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child to lead them, is the proper work of omnipotency, whatever be the preparations or undisposition of sinners.
Assertion 7. Not any protestant divines I know make true repentance a work of the Law, going before faith in Christ.
1. The Law speaks not one word of repentance, but says either do or die. Repentance is an evangelic ingredient in a saint.
2. Christ was made a Prince and exalted to give repentance, Acts 5:31, and the Law, as the Law, has not one word of Christ, though it cannot contradict Christ, except we say that there be two contradictory wills in Christ, which were blasphemy; but some dispositions before conversion I conceive Antinomians yield to us. For one says, speaking of the manner of his conversion:
‘One main thing, I am sure, was to get some soul-saving-comfort; that moved me to reveal my troubled conscience to godly ministers, and not in general to allay my trouble.’
Yet I can make good from Scripture that this desire can be in no unconverted soul; a physician that mistakes the cure doctrinally will prove a cousening [deceiving] comforter. And another says:
‘The persons capable of justification are such as truly feel what lost creatures they are in themselves and in all their works: this is all the preparative condition that God requires on our part to this high and heavenly work, for hereby is a man truly humbled in himself, of whom God speaks, saying, ‘I dwell with him that is of an humble spirit, etc. [Isa. 57:15]’
To make persons capable of justification, here is required a true feeling that they are lost in themselves and in all their works. But this can be no preparative condition of justification, as Eaton says, because:
[1.] True feeling must follow faith, not go before it.
2. And true feeling is proper to justified persons, nothing going before justification, and so, [that] which is found in unjustified persons, can be proper to justified persons only.
3. Antinomians say, ‘Sinners as Sinners, and consequently all sinners’ are to believe justification in Christ, without any foregoing preparation. This man says, ‘Prepared and feeling persons that are sensible of sin, are only capable of justification.’
4. To truly feel a lost condition cannot be all the preparative condition, for the Word has annexed no promise of justification to the unjustified who shall feel his lost condition. For the place Isa. 57 speaks of a justified sinner, not of an unjustified [person] who is only prepared for justification:
1. Because God dwells in this humbled soul, then He must be justified and converted. Eph. 3:17, ‘That Christ may dwell in your heart by faith.’
2. This is a liver by faith, and so justified; ‘The just shall live by faith,’ Hab. 2:4; Rom. 1:17; Gal. 3:11; Heb. 10:38; and he must live by faith whom the high and lofty One revives.
[7 Objections & Answers]
5. The sweet witnessing of the Spirit from Isa. 55:1, ‘Ho, every one that thirsts, come to the waters,’ is Gospel-honey, but consider if there were no law-work preparing, no needle making a hole before Christ should sew together the sides of the wound. It’s but a delusion:
1. Because Isa. 61:1, no whole-hearted sinners meet with Christ; none come at first laughing to Christ; all that come to Jesus for help come with the tear in their eye.
2. To come dry and withered to the waters, Isa. 55:1, is the required preparation.
3. The gold in a beggar’s purse in great abundance is to be suspected for stolen gold because he laboured not for it. This I say, not because preparations and sweatings, and running that go before conversion are merits, or such as deserve conversion, or that conversion is due to them. Antinomians impute this to us, but unjustly. I humbly conceive it not to be the doctrine of Luther, Calvin or Protestants which Libertines charge us with.
That I may clear us in this, let these propositions speak for us:
Proposition 1. We cannot receive the Spirit by the preaching of the Law and Covenant of Works, but by the hearing of the promises of the Gospel, Gal. 3. The Law, it alone, can chase men from Christ, but never make a new creature; nor can the letter of the Gospel without the Spirit do it.
Proposition 2. When we look for anything in ourselves or think that an unrenewed man is a confiding person to purchase Christ, we bewilder ourselves and vanish in foolishness: This wrong Libertines do us, from which we are as far as the East from the West.
Proposition 3. It is not our doctrine, but the weakeness of sinners and of the flesh, that we should be shy to Christ and stand aloof from the Physician because of the desperate condition of our disease. This is, as if one should say, it is not fit for the naked to go to him who offers white linen to clothe him, nor that the poore should go to him who would be glad you would take his fine gold off his hand, or to say, set not a young plant, but let it lie above earth till you see if it beare fruit. Unworthiness in the court of justice is a good plea why Christ should cast us off; but unworthiness felt, though not savingly, is as good a ground to cast yourself on Christ as poverty, want, and weakness in place of a statute and act of Parliament to beg, though the letter of the Law forbid any to beg.
Proposition 4. Acting and doing, though neither savingly nor soundly, is not merit of grace, yet not contrary to grace; to obey the law of nature, to give alms, is not against grace. Libertines should not reject this though it be not all, but a most poor all to engage Christ.
Proposition 5. Faith is a moral condition of life eternal and wrought in us by the free grace of God. I never saw a contradiction between a condition wrought by irresistible grace and the gift, or free grace of life eternal; for life eternal given in the Law and Adam’s doing and performing by the irresistible acting and assisting of God are not contrary, yet the former was never merit, but grace; the latter was legal doing.
Proposition 6. We do receive the promise of willing and doing, wrought immediatly in us according to the good-will and most free grace of Christ, and yet we are agents and work under Christ.
Proposition 7. Luther (for I could fill a book with citations), Calvin and all our Protestant divines are for qualificati∣ons void of merit or promise before conversion and for gracious conditions after conversion under the Gospel. Antinomians bely Luther.
Proposition 8. Antinomians yield the preaching of the Law and preparations before conversion and conditions after, and peace from signs of sanctification, etc. yet they are to be reputed enemies to grace and holiness and turn all sanctification in[to] their imaginary faith and justification, of which they are utterly ignorant. Never Antinomian knew rightly what free justification is.
Proposition 9. Immediate resting on Christ for all we do, and drawing of comfort from the testimony of a good conscience, are not contrary.
Proposition 10. Holiness idolized or trusted in, is to make Christ, the alone Savior, no Savior.
Proposition 11. God is not provoked to reprobate whom He elected from eternity by new sins, yet is He displeased with David’s adultery so far as to correct him for it, and Solomon for his backsliding, with the rod of men.
Proposition 12. Works before justification please not God, but it follows not that God keeps not such an order as sense of sin, though not saving, should go before pardon and conversion, no more than because Adam’s sin pleased not God, therefore it should not go before the Son’s taking on our flesh. If we are not to do nor act any thing before conversion, neither to hear, confer, know our sinful condition, nor be humbled for sin, despair of salvation in ourselves, because these are not merits before conversion, nor can they procure conversion to us, neither are we after conversion to believe, for believing cannot merit righteousness and life-eternal, nor are we to hear, pray, be patient, rejoice in tribulation, for not any of these can procure life-eternal to us: and why is not the doing of the one as well as the other a seeking righteousness in ourselves?
Proposition 13. The promise of Christ’s comming in the flesh and of giving a new heart are absolute promises; the former requires no order of providence but that sin go before redemption: the latter requires an order of providence, not of any Gospel-promise or merit in any sort: there never was, never can be merit between a mere creature and God.
Proposition 14. There is no faith, no act of Christ’s coin or of the right stamp before justification.
Proposition 15. We are justified:
[1.] In Christ virtually, as in the public Head, when He rose again and was justified in the Spi∣rit.
2. In Christ, as his merits are the cause of our justification.
3. In Christ, apprehended by faith, formally, in the Scripture’s sense, in the epistle to the Romans and Galatians; not that faith is the formal cause or any merit in justification, but because it lays hold on imputed righteousness, which is the formal cause of our justification.
4. We are justified in our own sense and feeling, not by faith (because we may believe and neither know that we believe, nor be sensible of our justification), but as we know that we beleeve; whether this knowledge result from the light of faith or from signs as means of our knowledge.
5. Justification by way of declaration to others is not so infallible as that the Scripture calls it “justification,” properly so named.
[Objections 8-9]
Assertion 8. To believe and take Christ because I am a needy sinner is one thing; and to believe because I am fitted for mercy and humbled is another thing: This latter we disclaim.
Preparations are no righteousness of ours; nor is it our doctrine to desire any to rest on preparations or to make them causes, foundations or formalia media, ‘formal means’ of faith: they hold forth the mere order and method of graces working; not to desire pardon but in God’s way of foregoing humiliation is nothing contrary, but sweetly subordinate, to free pardon. And to cure too suddenly wounds and to honey secure and proud sinners, and sweeten and oil a Pharisee, and to reach the Mediator’s blood to an unhumbled soul, is but to turn the Gospel into a charm, and when by magic you have drawn all the blood out of the sick man’s veins, then to mix his blood with sweet poison and cause him drink and swell, and say you have made him healthy and fat.
Now Peter, Acts 2, poured vinegar and wine at first on the wounds of his hearers when he said, ‘Ye murdered the Lord of glory,’ and they were pricked in their heart. This is the Law’s work, Rom. 3, to condemn and stop the sinner’s mouth. And you cannot say that Peter failed in curing too suddenly because he preached first the Law to wound and prick them for that they crucified the Lord of glory before he preached the Gospel of belief and baptism. And the Lord rebuking Saul from heaven, convincing him of persecution, casting him down to the ground, striking him blind, while he trembled: And the Lord’s dealing with the jailor was sourer work than proposing and pouring the Gospel oil and honey of freely imputed righteousness in their wounds at the first, and a close unbottoming them of their own righteousness. And the Lord’s way of justifying Jews and Gentiles is a Law-way, as touching the order, Rom. 3. Having proved all to be under sin, verses 9-18, he says, verse 19:
‘Now we know that what things soever the Law saith, it saith to them who are under the Law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world become guilty before God.’
Indeed, if they be convinced of sin by the Spirit and so converted and yet under trouble of mind, a pound of the Gospel for one ounce weight of the Law is fit for them. But Antinomians err not knowing the Scriptures:
[1.] in dreaming that converted souls are so from under the Law that they have no more to do with the Law no more than angels and glorified saints, so as the letter of the Gospel does not lead them, but some immediate acting of the Spirit; And that
2. there is no commandment under the Gospel but to believe only.
3. That mortification and new obedience, as Mr. Towne and others say, is but faith in Christ, and not abstinence from worldly lusts that war against the soul.
4. That the Gospel commands nothing, but persuades rather, that we may be Libertines and serve the flesh, and believe and be saved.
5. That God has made no covenant with us under the Gospel; the Gospel is all promise that we shall be carried as mere patients to heaven in a chariot of love.
6. That the way is not strait and narrow, but Christ has done all to our hands.
7. That it’s legal, not Gospel-conversion to keep the soul so long under the law for humiliation, contrition and confession and then bring them to the Gospel:
Whereas we teach that the Law, purely and unmixed without all Gospel, is not to be used as a diet-potion, only to purge, never to let the unconverted hear one Gospel-promise. It is true, Peter preached not law to Cornelius, nor Philip to the Eunuch, nor Ananias to Paul, but these were all converted aforehand. We think the unconverted man knows neither contrition nor confession aright.
But I was more confirmed that the way of Antinomians is for the flesh, not for the Gospel, when I read that Mr. Crisp, expounding confession, 1 Jn. 1, makes it no humble acknowledging that the sinner in person has sinned, and so is under wrath eternal, if God should judge him; but he makes it a part of faith, by which a sinner believes and confesses that Christ paid for his sin and he is pardoned in Him. Sure confession in Scripture is no such thing, Ezra 10:1; Neh. 9:2. In Scripture confession of sins is opposed to covering of sin and not forsaking of it, Prov. 28; Joshua sought not such a confession of Achan. James commands not such a confession. Daniel ‘s, Ezra ‘s, Peter’s confession were some other thing, Jn. 1:20; Acts 19:18; Heb. 11:13; Prov. 28:13; 1 Jn. 4:2; Mk. 3:6; Josh. 7:19; Dan. 9:4; Rom. 10:10; 1 Tim. 6:13; Ps. 32:5; Jam. 5:16; Lev. 5:5; 16:21 & 26:40; 2 Chron. 6:24, in which places, faith and confession of sins cannot be one; nor are we justified by confession, as by faith. But these men have learned to pervert the Scriptures.
Assertion 9. There be more vehement stirrings and wrestlings in a natural spirit under the Law as the bullock is most unruly at the first yoking and green wood casts most smoke. Paul, Rom. 7, was slain by the Law, but this makes more way for Christ; and though it do not morally soften and facilitate the new birth, yet it ripens the outbreaking. Preparations are penal, to subdue, not moral, to deserve or merit, nor conditional to engage Christ to convert or to facilitate conversion.
Assertion 10. There be no preparations at all required before redemption, 1 Tim. 1:15; Rom. 5:8. But there is a far other order in the working of conversion: Those who confound the one with the other speak ignorantly of the ways of grace, for though both be of mere grace without wages or merit, yet we are mere patients in the one, not in the other. Saltmarsh and Antinomians argue from the one to the other most ignorantly.
Assertion 11. That the promises of the Gospel are holden forth to sinners, as sinners, has a twofold sense:
1. As that they be sinners and all [be] in a sinful condition to whom the promises are holden forth. This is most true and sound. The Kingdom of grace is an hospital and guest-house of sick ones, fit for the art and mercy of the Physician Christ.
2. So as they are all immediately to believe and apply Christ and the promises, who are sinners; and there be nothing required of sinners but that they may all immediately challenge interest in Christ, after their own way and order, without humiliation or any Law-work. In this sense it is most false that the promises are holden forth to sinners as sinners, because then Christ should be holden forth to all sinners, Americans, Indians and sinners who never by the least rumor heard one word of Christ.
2. Peter desires not Simon Magus to believe that God had loved him in Christ Jesus with an everlasting love, nor does the Gospel-promise offer immediately soul-rest to the hardened and proud sinner wallowing in his lusts, as he is a hardened sinner; nor is the acceptable year of the Lord proclaimed, nor beauty and the oil of joy offered immediately to any but to those who are weary and laden and who mourn in Zion and wallow in ashes, Mt. 11:28-30; Isa. 61:1-3. It’s true, to all within the visible Church Christ is offered without price or money, but to be received after Christ’s fashion and order, not after our order; that is, after the soul is under self-despair of salvation and in the sinner’s month, when he has been with child of hell.
I grant, in regard of time, sinners cannot come too soon to Christ, nor too early to wisdom; but in regard of order, many come too soon and unprepared. Simon Magus too soon believed. Saltmarsh says He misbelieved too soon, for he falsely believed: none can believe too soon. Answer: To believe too soon is to misbelieve, and Saltmarsh and Antinomians teach us the method of false-believing when they teach us too soon to believe; that is, to believe that God has loved you (be ye what ye will, Simon Magus, Judas or others) with an everlasting love, for that is the Antinomian Faith. Simon Magus is without any foregoing humiliation or sense of sin, or self-despair, to believe he was no less written in the Lamb’s book of life from eternity than Peter; and this he cannot believe soon enough. I say, neither soon or late ought a reprobate to believe any such thing.
A covetous man who had great possessions [the rich young ruler] had not yet bidden farewell to his old god mammon when he came to Christ; therefore he departed sad from Christ. Another came before he had buried his father; and some come, Lk. 14:28-29, before they advise with their strength and what Christ will cost them. I desire I be not mistaken: none can be thoroughly fitted for Christ before he come to Christ; but it is as true some would buy the pearl before they sell all they have, which is not the wise merchant’s part:
and they err foully who argue thus, If I were not a sinner, or if my sins were less heinous, and so I were less unworthy, I would come to Christ and believe; but ah, I am so grievous an offender and so unworthy that I cannot go. Their antecedent is true, but the consequence is naught and wicked. It is true, I am sick, and [it is] good that I both say and feel that I am sick; but, therefore, I cannot, I will not go to the Physician: that is wicked logic and the contrary consequence is good: whereas the other consequence is a seeking of righteousness in ourselves.
2. Another false ground is here laid by Libertines, that we place worth and righteousness in preparations; or, 2. that preparations make us less unworthy and less sinners. But preparations are not in any sort to us money, nor hire; we value them as dung and sin, yet such sin as sickness is in relation to physic.
2. Preparations remove not one dram or twentieth part of an ounce of guiltiness or sin. Christ, in practice of free-grace, not by Law, yea not by promise, gives grace to the thus prepared, and often He denies it also: Yea, and there is a good hour appointed by God when Christ comes. Other physicians take diseases so early as they can, lest the malice of the disease overcome art; but Christ lets sin of purpose ripen to the eleventh hour, often to the twelfth hour: He knows his art can overtake and out-run seven devils most easily.
The omnipotency of grace knows no such thing as more or less pardonable in sin; yea of purpose to heighten grace, that sinfulness may contend with grace and be overcome, the gentiles must be like corn ripe, white and yellow, ere the sickle cut them down and they be converted. Jn. 4:35. The boil must be ripe ere it break; the sea full ere it turn; therefore the Lord appoints a time and sets a day for conversion. Tit. 3:3. We ourselves were sometime [Greek], ‘mad’; but the Lord has a gracious [Greek], ‘when’; When the kindness and man-love of God appeared, He saved us. And, Jer. 50:4, ‘In those days, and at that time, saith the Lord, the children of Israel shall come, they and the children of Judah, going and weeping, they shall seek the Lord.’ Zech. 12:11, ‘And in that day there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon.’
It’s good to lie and wait at the door and posts of Wisdom’s house, and to lie and attend Christ’s tide, it may come in an hour that you would never have believed. O what depth of mercy, when for natural, or no saving-one-waiting, or upon a poor venture, what if I go to Christ, I can have no less than I have? beside any gracious intention the Lord saves, and the wind not looked for turns fair for a sea-voyage to heaven, in the Lord’s time.
Assertion 12. The ground moving Christ to renew his love in drawing a fallen saint out of the pit is the same that from heaven shined on him at the beginning.
[1.] Love is an undivided thing; there are not two loves or three loves in Christ; that which begins the good work promoves it, even the same love which Christ has taken up to heaven with Him, and there ye find it before you when ye come thither.
2. Some love-sickness goes before his return, Cant. 3, ‘I was but a little passed; I found him whom my soul loves:’ the sky divides and rents itself, and then the sun is on its way to rise; the birds begin to sing, then the summer is near, the voice of the turtle is heard, then the winter is gone; when the affections grow warm, the well-beloved is upon a return.
3. You die for want of Christ; absence seems to be at the highest when hunger for a renewed drawing in the way of comforting is great and the sad soul lowest: He will come at night and sup if He dine not.
4. Let Christ moderate his own pace; hope quietly waits; Hope is not a shouting and a tumultuous grace.
5. Your disposition for Christ’s return can speak much for a renewed drawing, as when the Church finds her own pace slow and prays, ‘Draw me; we will run;’ then He sends ushers before to tell that He will come.
6. Sick nights for the Lord’s absence in not drawing are most spiritual signs.”.
.
Publisher
This publisher reprints many works not found elsewhere on preparation, including those of the New England puritans.
.
.
.
Related Pages