A Treatise of Justifying Righteousness, Postscript 2 – Postscript 3
POSTSCRIPT.
I Must intreat the Reader, when he judgeth of the Second Case, (about the Interest of Works with Faith, in our Title to Life) to remember, That the Question is not;
1. About Works of Innocency.
2. Nor Works of the Mosaical Law.
3. Nor Works meriting of God by their worth, in point of Commutative Justice, (or the foresaid governing Legal Justice.)
4. Nor of any Acts of Obedience to Christ as Christ as antecedent to Faith and Justification.
5. Nor of External good Works of Charity, as antecedent to Faith, or to our first Justification.
6. Nor any Works, to which is given the least part of that which is proper to God, to Christ, to the Spirit, to the Promise.
But I must intreat him to see the Case stated in the Preface to my Disputations of Justification, and to remember that those that I oppose do hold;
1. That Faith it self, as an Act of ours, is part of the Works to be denied as a Means or Condition of our Justification, and so a part of that Subordinate Righteousness, and that we are justified by it only as an Instrument.
2. They say, That he seeks the prohibited Justification by Works, who looketh to be justified by believing in Christ …s Teacher, King, or any Act of Faith besides the receiving his Righteousness.
3. Much more he that thinketh Repentance, Love to Christ, Desire of him, Prayer for Pardon, &c. or any other Act of Man, is a Means or Condition of our Justification or Pardon: To be justified by any such Act but as part of the Condition, is to be justified by Works.
4. Much more to make sincere Obedience the Condition of Continued or Final Justification in Judgment. See the rest of the Controversies in the aforecited Preface and Books. And also in my Pacification or Catholick Theology, where this Cause is handled positively and defensively: And he that blameth me for writing so many Books of the same thing, should be one that first considereth how many Books and daily Invectives and Censures of Men that never understood the Cause, have called me to it, and made it necessary. Four or five Divines rose in Holland, especially at Frankera, (notwithstanding the excellent Amesius his better endeavours) who have owned ill Definitions of God's Covenants, and laid the Foundations of Antinomian Libertinism, (especially Maccovius, and Cluto, and Cocceius, and Cloppenburgius too much consented) making the Covenant in Constitution to be nothing but Election by Eternal Decree, and the Covenant in Execution, to be the fulfilling or execution of that Decree of Election in all our Mercies; and Justification to be but God's eternal Decree, and Man's Justification in Conscience, and before Men, with other such confounding Notions; when verily the better Description of God's Kingdom, Laws, and Covenants should be in our Childrens Catechism; and should not be unknown to Learned Men; nor should they thus learnedly possess many honest godly (but not long and througly studying) Ministers, with such Notions which corrupt their Conceptions, their Charity, their Sermons, and their Converse as hinderances of Truth, Piety, Love, and Peace.
FINIS.
A POSTSCRIPT, ABOUT Mr. DANVERS's Last BOOK.
WHen this Book was coming out of the Press, I received another Book of Mr. Danvers against Infants Baptism, in which he mentloneth Dr. Tullies proving what a Papist I am, in his Justif. Paul. (with Dr. Pierces former Charges) and lamenting that no more yet but one Dr. Tully hath come forth to Encounter me, Epist. and Pag. 224. The perusal of that Book (with Mr. Tombs short Reflections) directeth me to say but this instead of any further Confutation.
That it is (as the former) so full of false Allegations set off with the greatest Audacity (even a few …ines of my own about our meeting at Saint James's left with the Clerk, grosly falsified) and former falsifications partly justified, and partly past over, and his most passionate Charges grounded upon Mistakes, and managed by Misreports, sometime of Words, sometime of the Sense, and sometime of Matters of Fact; in short, it is such a bundle of Mistake, Fierceness and Confidence, that I take it for too useless and unpleasant a Work to give the World a particular Detection of these Evils. If I had so little to do with my Time as to write it, I suppose that few would find leisure to read it: And I desire no more of the willing Reader, then seriously to peruse my Book (More Reasons for Infants Church-membership) with his, and to examine the Authors about whose Words or Sense we differ. Or if any would be Informed at a cheaper rate, he may read Mr. Barrets Fifty Queries in two sheets. And if Mr. Tombes revile me, for not transcribing or answering more of his Great Book, when I tell the Reader that I suppose him to have the Book before him, and am not bound to transcribe such a Volume already in Print, and that I answer as much as I think needs an Answer, leaving the rest as I found it to the Judgment of each Reader, he may himself take this for a Reply; but I must judg of it as it is.
I find but one thing in the Book that needeth any other Answer, than to peruse what is already Written: And that is about Baptizing Naked: My Book was written 1649. A little before, common uncontrolled Fame was, that not far from us in one place many of them were Baptized naked, reproving the Cloathing way as Antiscriptural: I never heard Man deny this Report: I conversed with divers of Mr. Tomber's Church, who denied it not: As never any denied it to me, so I never read one that did deny it to my knowledg: He now tells me Mr. Fisher, Mr. Haggar, and Mr. Tombes did: Let any Man read Mr. Tombes Answer to me, yea and that Passage by him now cited, and see whether there be a word of denial: Mr. Fisher or Haggar I never saw: Their Books I had seen, but never read two Leaves to my remembrance of Mr. Fishers, though I numbered it with those that were written on that Subject, as well I might: I knew his Education and his Friends, and I saw the Great Volume before he turned Quaker, but I thought it enough to read Mr. Tombes and others that wrote before him, but I read not him, nor all Mr. Haggars: If I had, I had not taken them for competent Judges of a fact far from them, and that three years after: Could they say, that no one ever did so? The truth is that three years after, mistaking my words, as if I had affirmed it to be their ordinary practice (as you may read in them) which I never did, nor thought, they vehemently deny this: (And such heedless reading occasioneth many of Mr. Danvers Accusations). I never said that no Man ever denied it; for I have not read all that ever was written, nor spoken with all the World: But no Man ever denied it to me, nor did I ever read any that denied it. And in a matter of Fact, if that Fame be not credible, which is of things Late and Near, and not Contradicted by any one of the most interessed Persons themselves, no not by Mr. Tombes himself, we must surcease humane Converse: Yet do I not thence undertake that the same was true, either of those Persons, or such as other Writers beyond Sea have said it off. I saw not any one Baptized by Mr. Tombes or any other in River or elsewhere by Dipping at Age: If you do no such thing, I am sorry that I believed it, and will recant it. Had I not seen a Quaker go naked through Worcester at the Assizes, and read the Ranters Letters full of Oathes, I could have proved neither of them. And yet I know not where so long after to find my Witnesses: I abhor Slanders, and receiving ill Reports unwarrantably: I well know that this is not their ordinary Practice: The Quakers do not those things now, which many did at the rising of the Sect; and if I could, I would believe they never did them.
2. This Book of Mr. Danvers, with the rest of the same kind, increase my hatred of the Disputing Contentious way of writing, and my trouble that the Cause of the Church and Truth hath so oft put on me a necessity to write in a Disputing way, against the Writings of so many Assailants.
3. It increaseth my Grief for the Case of Mankind, yea of well-meaning godly Christians, who are unable to judg of many Controversies agitated, otherwise than by some Glimpses of poor Probability, and the esteem which they have of the Persons which do manage them, and indeed take their Opinions upon trust from those whom they most reverence and value; and yet can so hardly know whom to follow, whilst the grossest Mistakes are set off with as great confidence and holy pretence, as the greatest Truths. O how much should Christians be pitied, that must go through so great Temptations!
4. It increaseth my Resolution, had I longer to live, to converse with Men that I would profit, or profit by, either as a Learner hearing what they have to say, without importunate Contradiction, or as a Teacher if they desire to Learn of me: A School way may do something to increase Knowledg; but drenching Men, and striving with them, doth but set them on a fiercer striving against the Truth: And when they that have need of seven and seven years Schooling more, under some clear well studied Teacher, are made Teachers themselves, and then turned loose into the World (as Sampsons Foxes) to militate for and with their Ignorance, what must the Church suffer by such Contenders?
5. It increaseth my dislike of that Sectarian dividing hurtful Zeal, which is described James 3. and abateth my wonder at the rage of Persecutors: For I see that the same Spirit maketh the same kind of Men, even when they most cry out against Persecutors, and separate furthest from them.
6. It resolveth me more to enquire less after the Answers to Mens Books than I have done: And I shall hereafter think never the worse of a Mans writings, for hearing that they are answered: For I see it is not only easie for a Talking Man to talk on, and to say something for or against any thing, but it is hard for them to do otherwise, even to hold their Tongues, or Pens, or Peace: And when I change this Mind, I must give the greatest belief to Women that will talk most, or to them that live longest, and so are like to have the last word, or to them that can train up militant Heirs and Successors to defend them when they are dead, and so propagate the Contention. If a sober Consideration of the first and second writing (yea of positive Principles) will not inform me, I shall have little hope to be much the wifer for all the rest.
7. I am fully satisfied that even good Men are here so far from Perfection, that they must bear with odious faults and injuries in one another, and be habituated to a ready and easie forbearing and forgiving one another. I will not so much as describe or denominate Mr. Danvers Citations of Dr. Pierce, to prove my Popery and Crimes, nor his passages about the Wars, and about my Changes, Self-contradictions, and Repentances, lest I do that which savoureth not of Forgiveness: O what need have we all of Divine Forgiveness!
8. I shall yet less believe what any Mans Opinion (yea or Practice) is by his Adversaries Sayings, Collections, Citations, or most vehement Asseverations, than ever I have done, though the Reporters pretend to never so much Truth, and pious Zeal.
9. I shall less trust a confounding ignorant Reader or Writer, that hath not an accurate defining and distinguishing Understanding, and hath not a mature, exercised, discerning Knowledg than ever I have done; and especially if he be engaged in a Sect (which alas, how few parts of the Christian World escape!) For I here (and in many others) see, that you have no way to seem Orthodox with such, but to run quite into the contrary Extream: And if I write against both Extreams, I am taken by such Men as this, but to be for both and against both, and to contradict my self. When I write against the Persecutors, I am one of the Sectaries, and when I write against the Sectaries, I am of the Persecutors side: If I belie not the Prelatists, I am a Conformist: If I belie not the Anabaptists, Independants, &c. I am one of them: If I belie not the Papists, I am a Papist; if I belie not the Arminians, I am an Arminian; if I belie not the Calvinists, I am with Pseudo-Tilenus and his Brother, purus putus Puritanus, and one Qui totum Puritanismum totus spirat (which Joseph Allen too kindly interpreteth): If I be for lawful Episcopacy, and lawful Liturgies and Circumstances of Worship, I am a temporizing Conformist: If I be for no more, I am an intollerable Non-Conformist (at this time forced to part with House, and Goods, and Library, and all save my Clothes, and to possess nothing, and yet my Death (by six months Imprisonment in the Common Goal) is sought after and continually expected. If I be as very a Fool, and as little understand my self, and as much contradict my self, as all these Confounders and Men of Violence would have the World believe, it is much to my cost, being hated by them all while I seek but for the common peace.
10. But I have also further learned hence to take up my content in Gods Approbation, and (having done my duty, and pitying their own and the Peoples snares) to make but small account of all the Reproaches of all sorts of Sectaries; what they will say against me living or dead, I leave to themselves and God, and shall not to please a Censorious Sect, or any Men whatever, be false to my Conscience and the Truth: If the Cause I defend be not of God, I desire it may fall: If it be, I leave it to God how far He will prosper it, and what Men shall think or say of me: And I will pray for Peace to him that will not hate and revile me for so doing. Farewell.
Septemb. 4. 1675.
FINIS.
End of the text · Richard Baxter, A Treatise of Justifying Righteousness (1676)