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1675. work of his conversion: the learned rectifier contendeth, that all this is really nothing; that it manifestly tendeth to confound supernatural grace and common providence together: and to argue thus is no less illogical, than to say, Man doth all in improving the Gospel to his own conversion: therefore God doth all. To conclude, he highly commendeth that sober sentiment of the great bishop - Sanderson, who confessing his own disability to reconcile the consistency of grace and free-will in conversion, and being sensible that they must both be maintained, tells us, " He ever held and still doth "hold it the more pious and safe way to place the grace of God in the throne, where we think it "should stand, and so to leave the will of man to "shift for the maintenance of its own freedom, as "well as it can; than to establish the power and liberty of free-will at its height, and then to be at "a loss how to maintain the power and efficacy of "God's grace."

Some other

objections

raised against

Mr. Bull.

66

66

66

Besides these, there are some few other objections which he made against Mr. Bull's book, as particularly, that though he gave indeed the true sense of many verses in the fourth chapter to the Romans, yet he feigneth the apostle to bring them in too desultorily; that he is mistaken in stating the case of Abraham from St. Paul, making that to be before, which was really after the divine calling, and his believing; that upon his principles men might after their conversion live perfectly, and do as much as they are required to do by the word of God; and that his inference from the defended and received

• See Dr. Hammond's Letter to Dr. Sanderson, concerning God's Grace, &c. §. 90, 91.

opinions amongst the Jews, about the nature of obe- 1675. dience to their law, is not well supported. And whereas Mr. Bull hath spent a whole chapter in citing out of some authors certain sayings of the Jews, in defence of the power of free-will, without the assisting grace of the Spirit, he will have it that many of them may be capable of no ill construction : and that they possibly mean no more than that men have the natural power of free-will, without which they cannot be men, from God's common providence ; and not that the will is not in a moral sense insuperably wicked without grace.

Truman's

As to what Mr. Bull had written concerning the Some of Mr. ritual and ceremonial law, and the works thereof, as concessions. circumcision, sacrifices, and the like; or concerning the Jewish interpretations of the whole body of the Mosaic law, containing under it the moral law; or concerning human inventions and additions to it, and the several erroneous opinions of many of the learned Jews in respect to it; or concerning the most pernicious solifidianism of the Gnostic heretics; or, lastly, concerning the several contrary errors and mistakes of some Christian sects, which are with great judgment considered by him in his Epilogue; Mr. Truman, with all his metaphysical subtlety, could find nothing herein to condemn yea, he expressly commendeth him for having shewn out of the Jewish writers, that it was a vulgar error among them, to imagine that they perfectly fulfilled God's law, and did all that was required by it, though they did but some few externals only; as thinking that those commandments which require the obedience of the heart or internal righteousness and holiness, were only matter of counsel, and not strictly of precept;

1675. and instead of bringing up their lives to the law, maintaining such opinions as brought the law down to their lives.

The result

of the

ter.

Upon the whole, he thinketh it improbable that whole mat- every chapter of both dissertations of Mr. Bull should be revised and approved by so able a divine as Dr. Nicholson, bishop of Gloucester: and suspecteth, that he had great temptations to pretend his approbation of the whole and every part of it, to gain repute to his opinion, by the great name of so reverend a prePage 264. late and so learned a writer. And concluding, that he had said enough to shew the danger and inconsistency of some prevailing opinions concerning the nature of grace and the Mosaic dispensation; he insinuateth nevertheless, that he might probably write more hereupon, if urged to it; and did accordingly begin soon after a treatise upon the covenant of grace, which he lived not to finish: for saith he, My great aversation to such principles (common to Dr. Hammond and Mr. Bull) will much incline me upon an easy call to oppose the prevalency of them; till I shall see some fitter man of our own church and language, where they prevail, (as I doubt not but that there are many, whose abilities and circumstances make them far more fit,) willing to undertake it, and save the labour of my weak endeavours. From which it appeareth, that Mr. Truman was very far from the sentiments of the rigid dissenters; and that he did not totally leave our church upon the Act of Uniformity; but did consider himself still as a Church of England man, some lesser matters only excepted.

XXXV. Mr. Bull, not long after, wrote an answer

him in Eng

in English to Mr. Truman, which yet was never 1675. published P, wherein we are told his hypothesis was Mr. Bull fully examined, and all his objections replied to; not answereth without the consentient testimony of all the catholic lish. doctors of the church, both before and after the rise of Pelagius, and of the ancient Jewish rabbins. For out of a fear that offence might be given to the common people, by handling certain abstruse and profound questions, to the treating yet of which he was necessitated by the exceeding great subtleties of this writer; he was willing that what he had thus written should not come abroad, but only be communicated to a few friends, whose testimony he appealed to herein. In this answer to Mr. Truman he set himself to overturn his fundamental distinction of natural and moral impotence, and to shew the many absurd consequences flowing from such a position, and how that at the bottom it was neither more nor less than downright Pelagianism. In it he endeavoured to prove, that the law of nature, as considered in itself, or the moral law, prescribeth not a most perfect and absolute righteousness, but is contented with that which is much inferior to that which is required by the Gospel: and moreover, that eternal life was not due at all to the observation of that law. Also he maintaineth, that man, even in the state of innocence, had not a natural power or ability of obtaining by the perfect obedience of the law an heavenly immortality; and that besides the perfection and integrity of nature wherein he was made, he was likewise endowed with the divine Spirit, as with a principle of the divine nature; by which his natural faculties, otherwise insufficient, P Appendix ad Exam. Cen. Animad. 17. §. 6.

1675. were improved and exalted to the attainment of the superior paradise, whereof the inferior was a type. This he saith is abundantly made out in his English papers against Mr. Truman, though not in a style so very fit for vulgar readers: and having represented the strangeness and inconsistency of his hypothesis, which he saith was borrowed from Amyraldus 4, he sheweth how from one absurdity a multitude of other absurdities cannot but flow; how upon his principles it is possible for every man, if he hath but his natural faculties sound, perfectly to fulfil the law of God, when sufficiently made known to him, without the assistance of any inward grace; how it is naturally possible, but at the same time morally impossible: how God may lawfully require of fallen man most perfect obedience, without either giving him or being ready to give him any grace, by which that obedience may be wrought; how the law of nature to those that shall keep it, can give life everlasting; how the evangelical law doth not convey together with it grace and power, to perform the obedience which it requireth; and that this grace is only given according to the good pleasure of God, to some few thereunto ordained; but that all the rest are justly damned, because they might have lived well if they would, but that they had not power to will it. This by those hints which he himself hath given of it, seemeth to have been the substance of what was written by him in English on occasion of Mr. Truman's two mentioned books, his Discourse of natu

[Moyse Amyrault, a Calvinist, of Saumur in the seventeenth century he published several works upon grace, and a paraphrase on the Epistle to the Romans.]

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