Animadversions on Doctor Heylins Quinquarticular History, Part 8
Dr. H. Page 5.
Amongst the Philosophical Heterodoxies of the Roman Schools, that of the Manichees first revived by Martin Luther, who in meer opposition to Erasmus, who had then newly written a Book de libero arbitrio, published a Discourse de servo arbitrio, in which discourse he not only saith, that the freedom ascribed unto the will is an empty nothing, titulus & nomen fine re, but holds expressly, that Man is drawn no other way than velut inanìmale quiddam, no other way than as a senseless stock or stone.
Answ. 1. What Christian besides Doctor Heylin would have taken upon him thus to judge before the Day of Iudgment? Had it not been censure high and hard enough, to say of so eminent a Reformer, that he did write his Book partly out of opposition to Erasmus, but it must be also affirmed, that he did it out of meer opposition to Erasmus?
2. What Scholar besides Doctor Heylin would have quoted Luther, de servo arbitrio, and never refer so much as in his Margin to any page, where we may find the things that are quoted out of him, and examine their coherence with passages antecedent and consequent?
3. As to the thing it self, Servum arbitrium, is no false Divinity, Voluntas humana non est libera, antequam liberetur; In the first conversion a man is passive, as passive as a stone is in receiving the impression or signature that is made on it; The liberty of the will discovers it self in its actings, not in its passions or receivings. I hope the Doctor holds that the Image of God in which the first man was Created, was distinct from the faculties of the soul. If he do not, then must he hold, that when man lost the Image of God, he also lost the faculties of his soul, which is contrary to reason and experience. If he do hold it distinct, I would feign know, whether the Will were not passive in receiving that Image? whether it did in the least cooperate towards the production of it? If it did not, as certainly it did not; Why may not this Image be again restored, the Will not cooperating to the first restitution, and yet its liberty not be diminished? Is it any absurdity to say that a man is dead, i. e. void of spiritual life, before he is quickened? Or that a man is senseless till he have his spiritual senses given him? Yet do not I think that Luther was ever in such a height or heat of passion, as to say, that Gods working on the soul is in all things like to our working on a stone. Similitudes do not run on all four, as the Proverb is. When I draw a stone, no internal change is wrought on the stone, I destroy not those qualities that unfit it for motion, nor do I put into it any qualities that may fit it for motion; but when God doth out of stones raise up Children unto Abraham, he makes them cease to be stones, he taketh away the heart of stone, and gives an heart of flesh, he makes them a willing people, puts into them a new Nature, and a new motive faculty, and so they run unto and follow after Christ, as readily and cheerfully as the child follows the Parent from whom he expects good things. Well but Luther is beholding to the Doctor, for though he have given him this shrewd knock, yet at last he gives him a stroke, as Bellarmine had done before, intimating his recantation of his rigorous opinion, Page 6. Luther afterwards conformed his judgment in this point, unto that of Melancthon, as appears by the Augustan Confession, in drawing up whereof, he is acknowledged to have had a principal hand. Let us hear him …ant against Calvin.