A treatise of original sin ... proving that it is, by pregnant texts of Scripture vindicated from false glosses / by Anthony Burgess.

¶. 15.

An Examination of the Descriptions and Definitions of Freedome or Liberty of Will which many give it; Shewing, that none of them are any wayes competent to the Will unsanctified.

WE proceed therefore to make a further discovery of the bondage of the will to sinne, and that it hath no liberty, no power or ability to do any thing that is truly godly; If we take notice of all those wayes, wherein learned men do place liberty or freedome of will, we shall find evidently, that none of these descriptions, or definitions are any wayes competent to the will, while it is unsanctified; For,

First, if that opinion be received, (which Bellarmine and others follow) That liberty is radically in the understanding, though formally in the will, (that is) the reason of the wils liberty is from the understanding, which doth propound several objects, and thereupon the will is indeterminate, whereas in beasts their appetite is plainly limited, because they want reason; as it is arbitrium, so (they say) it is in intellectu, as liberum so in voluntate. Now (I say) let this be received (for I do not dispute the truth of it) then we must say, The will hath no liberty to what is good, because it faileth in the root; The streame cannot runne, when the spring is dried up; for if we take the understanding in respect of spiritual, and heavenly things, so it is altogether darkened and blinded; Therefore there is the grace of illumination required that it may know and believe the things of God, without which men love and delight in darkness rather then light: The things of God are said to be foolishness to a natural man; so that all the while a man hath no more then nature in him, he is like those birds that can see in the night, but are blind in the day; They have quick and sharp appre∣hensions in worldly and earthly matters, but are altogether stupid and sensless in regard of heavenly; How then can the will be free, when the mind is alto∣gether dark; for God in conversion, when he will set the will and affections at liberty from sinne, begins first in the understanding, light in the mind is first created, there are holy thoughts and spiritual convictions wrought in the soul, and by this light the other parts of the soul they come to be sanctified; now then if there be not so much as this antecedaneous work upon the mind, the will is as yet very farre from the Kingdom of heaven? Wonder not then if ye see unregenerate men walking and stumbling in the dark; that you see them so captivated unto every lust; you may as soon remove a mountain out of its

place, as take them off from their iniquities; For how can it be otherwise while the will hath no guid to lead it, none to informe it concerning the evil and danger of those wayes it is going in? If there be no light in the mind, there is no liberty in the will; so that hereby both horse and rider are (as it were) thrown into the sea.

Secondly, If to be that liberty doth consist in an active indifferency to good or evil, then the will is not free, because the former part of this description (upon Scripture-grounds) can no wayes be accommodated to the will. This description is gene∣rally received and applauded by Arminians and Jesuites as the best, (though Gibieus saith it is the worst) making the very formal nature of liberty to consist herein, that when all requisites to an action are supposed, yet the will can do, or not do; and this they extend even to spiritual objects, to that great work of conversion, affirming, when grace doth assist and help all it can; (so that Ex parte Dei, all things are ready that do concurre to our conversion;) yet the will, because it is free, retaineth an active indifferency, either to accept of this grace offered, or to reject it. This description we do no wayes acknowledge, as that which depriveth God, Christ, and the glorified Saints from liberty; and besides, liberty being perfection, and so in the most perfect manner in the most perfect subjects, this doth debase it making a defect part of this perfection: It is wholly absurd to make a power to sinne part of liberty: Indeed this was a concomitant of Adam's liberty, but not because liberty, but because his will was mutable and changeable, so that if he had been corroborated and confirmed in grace, he had not put forth any such experience of his liberty: well though we cannot assent to it, yet let it be supposed to be true; The Scripture is very clear and pregnant, That a man hath no such indifferent power in him to good or evil; Indeed to evil, that he is carried out unto with all delight, he can of himself kill himself, but he cannot of himself give life to himself: But as for the other part, to be able to love what is good, to believe and to turn himself unto God, this is above his power, for the order of nature and of grace differ as much, as the order of sense and reason; so that as the sensitive faculty cannot put forth acts of reason, (the eie cannot discourse and reason,) so neither can the rational faculties put forth the acts of grace, which come from a divine na∣ture, and that which is borne from above; All these places which describe man in a spiritual sense to be blind in mind, deaf in eares, and hardned in understan∣ding, yea which say, he is dead in sinne; and therefore the work of conversion is compared to regeneration, and to a resurrection; all these do plainly declare, that the will hath no activity at all as to the first beginnings of grace. It is true indeed, there are commands to repent, to be converted, yea we are bid to choose life and death, but there are none of these duties commanded, which in other places are not made the gracious gifts of God; so that to repent, to be con∣verted, they are promised by God as the workings of his grace, whereby they are both duties and gifts; Although the Arminian thinketh that impossible: They are duties because we are the people who do believe and do repent, and are commanded thereunto; They are also gifts because it is the grace of God alone that doth enable thereunto; when therefore you read of such commands, you must not think, that they imply our power and ability, for then grace would be wholly excluded, seeing these Texts speak absolutely, as if a good work were wholly done by our own power; whereas the Ar∣minian and Papist will not wholly exclude grace, and so these Texts would prove more then they contend for; But such commands are still imposed upon us by God, to shew what doth belong to him; what he may justly expect from us; for seeing he created man with full power and ability to keep these commands, if man wilfully cast himself into an utter impotency, God hath

not thereby lost the right of commanding, though we have the power of obeying.

Besides by these Commands, as we are to know our duty, so thereby also we are provoked to be deeply humbled under our great inability, seeing our selves treasuring up wrath every day, and preparing more torments for our selves, un∣lesse the grace of God doth deliver us; Yea by these commands God doth work grace, they are practical and operative means, whereby he doth communicate life unto us.

And lastly, Therefore God doth use Commands, Because this way is suit∣able to man, who is a rational Agent; For although the work of grace is more than meerly swasive, it is efficacious and really changing the heart, so that the Spirit of God doth farre more in converting of a sinner, then the Devil doth in tempting to sinne; yet God dealeth suitably to the nature of a man; We are not like stocks and stones, to whom it is ridiculous to preach, there being not in them a passive capacity of receiving the worke of grace; Hence it is that the Word is preached, Miracles are wrought, powerfull Arguments are used to draw off the heart; So that grace doth worke Ethicophysically (as some expresse it,) Commands then and Threat∣nings are used, because grace is wrought in us after a rational manner, in an attempered manner to our constitution; The understanding being first wrought upon, that so the will and affections may more readily give up themselves.

Thirdly, If liberty be the same with voluntariness and no more, (as many learn∣ed men do contend, making voluntas and liberum arbitrium all one, as that which is opposed to coaction and natural necessity; yea if we adde Aurtelus his opinion to this, that libertas was nothing but complacentia, liberty is the complacency and delight of the will in its object) then in this sense, (if rightly understood,) a man hath no freedom to what is holy. It is true indeed, the learned to shew, that grace in converting doth not destroy the liberty of the will, (viz. the natural liberty) no more then the will it self; Grace doth not compel the will, or put an inherent natural necessity upon it; for if there could be coaction, the velle would be nolle, which is a contradiction; and if a natural necessity could be imposed upon it, it would not be appetitus rationalis, a rational appetite; so that though grace in converting of man doth insuperably, and invincibly change the will, making it of unwilling willing, so that there is a necessity (not natural,) but of immu∣tability and unchangeableness; The will doth most certainly give it self up to the grace of God mollifying and fashioning of it for that purpose: This Iron (as it were) is put into the fire, and then it is made pliable to receive any form or impression, yet the essential liberty is not destroyed; For the Question about Free-will is not An sit? but Quid possit? And herein lieth the difficult knot in this whole point about grace and the will of man, How to assert the irresistible (as many call it, but others reject that expression, though the sense of those who use it, is very sound and significant enough) work of grace, insuperably deter∣mining the will to that which is good, and yet to be free from coaction or such a necessity as is destructive to liberty? The Quomodo. How these two are to be reconciled, is that which in all ages hath exercised the most learned and ju∣dicious; insomuch that some have advised to rest in it by faith, as in a mystery above our understanding, even as we doe in many other Doctrines to be belie∣ved by us; But I am not to ascend this mountain at this time; This is enough for our purpose, to shew, That if liberty be said to consist in willing a thing freely from coaction and necessity, even in this respect, we have not thus farre liberty to good, because it is God that worketh in us to will. Indeed when we doe will, we are not compelled by the Grace of God, onely we cannot will till the Grace of God enable us thereto; It is

not of him that willeth, but of God that sheweth mercy; Neither are, we born of the will of man, but of God; It is grace then onely that maketh us to will the good things tendered to us, though the will in eliciting of this is not com∣pelled, but doth it freely, yea grace giveth this freedome to it, so that grace doth not destroy, but give liberty; And therefore Austin of old urged,

That they denied Liberum arbitrium, who would not have it Liberatum;

They cannot hold free-will in a true sense, that doe not hold free and ef∣ficacious grace, which giveth the will all the strength it hath to what is good: Thus liberty, if it be the same with willingness, we have it not of our selves, till the grace of God bestow it upon us.

Fourthly, If liberty consist in having dominion and power over our actions, then also the will cannot be said to be free, as to doe holy things; For al∣though the will, when it doth will, is the subordinate cause under God of its own action, and as a cause, so also may be said to have dominion over it, yet because the actual willing of what is good, doth not arise or exist by the strength of the will, but by the grace of God, therefore it is that (in re∣spect of good things) the will cannot be said to have the dominion over them. This Definition of liberty (viz.) [to have a dominion over our own actions,] is by Jansenius asserted to be the true and proper meaning of Augustine, that his judgement is, then the will is said to be free, when it hath dominion and power over what it doth; and if so, no wonder then the will be so often said to be captivated and enslaved, that it hath no freedom to what is holy; For what power can the will have over holy actions, when it is corrupted and defiled, that no holy thought, or holy motion is under the power of it. It was Ambrose his complaint of old, That Cor nostrum non est in nostrâ potestate; Our heart is not in our power, but sinnefull and evil workings of soul rise up in us, which we are no wayes able to extin∣guish.

Fifthly, If liberty be (as Anselme of old defined it, to which some Ne∣otericks doe adhere, viz) Facultas servandi rectitudinem, propter rectitudi∣nem ipsam, That it is a power to observe that which is right, for righteous∣nesse sake, then this doth evidently proclaime, That man hath no Free-will, for to observe that which is holy and righteous for holinesse sake, which must needs argue a man regenerated and borne again; And indeed liberty in this sense is nothing but the Image of God repaired in a man, and so is no more then to be like God himself; And now that every man by nature hath lost this Image of God, is so plain, that the experience of every man concerning his distance from God may fully confirme it. If to this be ad∣ded Aquinas his Description, That it is, Vis electiva mediorum servato or∣dine ad finem. A power to chuse means with a due order and respect to the end (yet still freedome in the will to what is good cannot be found) For as (saith he) The understanding which is an apprehensive faculty, hath its simple and bare apprehension of a thing (viz. of the first principles) And then it hath another act, which is to Reason and Discourse, and that is pro∣perly of Conclusions to be deduced from those principles; So what princi∣ples are in respect of conclusions to the Understanding, the same the end is, in respect of the means to the will; And therefore as the understanding doth necessarily erre, when it doth not discourse suitably to the first prin∣ciples; So the will, which is the appetitive part of a man, must necessarily sinne, when it doth not chuse means with a due order to the end: Now God being the chief end of all our actions, how impossible is it for the will corrupted as it is, to will riches, health, learning, or any creature in reference to God as the end.

Lastly, If liberty consist (as Gibieuf would have it) in an amplitude of spirit and independency upon the creature, so that it is above every created ob∣ject with an eminent magnanimity of spirit adhering to God alone, and resting in him as the chiefest good, then it is plain also, That by nature the will of man is utterly impotent to this thing, for the love of the creature is so predominant that we live and doe all things in reference to that; So that whereas grace maketh us to doe all things of God, and through God, and to God; Now the creature doth so reigne in our hearts, that we move on∣ly in all the workings of our soul to it. Aristotle observeth, That some

are slaves by nature, and such have no reason of their owne to guide them, that doe Sentire rationem magìs quàm habere, Feele Reason rather then make use of it:

And if we speak in a spiritual sense, we are all thus borne slaves and vassals, not being able to put forth the actings of true and right reason, but do follow the lusts of our own soul, and are taken captive by the De∣vil at his will.

Thus we have at large discovered the bonds and chaines of sinne our wils are fastened in; Oh that in the reading of this, God would breathe into the souls of such wretched sinners, strong desires and ardent groans to be redeemed from this thraldome! Shall the ungodly say, (Psal. 2.) concern∣ing Christ, Let us break his bonds, when yet they are bonds of love, which are for our eternal happiness? And wilt not thou rather cry out, concern∣ing these bonds, and these yokes, which are for thy eternal damnation, Let us break them and rend them asunder? Doth not the senslesnesse and stupi∣dity of men, while they hear these things too sadly evidence the state of thraldom we are in to sinne?