Of Saving Faith, Section 12
SECT. XII.
YOU conclude, page 410. with these censures. [1. That this Assertion [common and special Grace are essentially the same.] Is not only erroneous, but far more dangerous then many, nay most men think.] Answer. The more dangerous you take it to be, the loather you should have been, after so many explications and Disputations for your own opion written by me) to have openly suggested that I maintain the very same thing that I deny and write against.
2. You say, pag. 411. [That the other proposition, that Charity is essential to justifying faith, is a worse mistake then the former, in respect of the many ill Consequences, &c.] Answer; As you purpose [To manifest this, when there is necessity or any just opportunity to do it.] as you after say, and thereby put us in hopes of more of your labors; so I think you are the Judge of necessity and opportunity, and seeing either will serve, I hope you will not want the later, if you do the former. But I would desire you that if God shall call you to this work, and satisfie you that it is the best improvement of your precious time to spend in the confutation of any errors of mine, that you would do me that great favour as to understand me (if I speak intelligibly) before you confute me, and to charge me with no opinions but my own, and that as delivered in my own words, and that taken together as they make up the full sense, or at lest that you will not confute any opinion as mine, which I have written purposely against: and also that you fix not on my Aphorisms, till a corrected edition come forth; the substance of the same Doctrine being more plainly expressed by me in many other books. And if this be the opinion that you are arguing against, I intreat you to say no more as my words, [that love is the essential form of faith;] But that you may neither work want, if you are destinated hereunto, nor yet lose your labor; I will before hand tell you my opinion, how far love belongs to faith; when I first told you. 1. That I resolve by Gods assistance to say no more in substance, then is the common Doctrine of Protestants, as far as I can understand it; and therefore will have company in my cause. 2. That I will not say so much in terms as many of the most famous Protestants do; I will instance but in two.
Chamier Panstrat. Tom. 3. li. 12. De fide, cap. 4. proving faith to be in the Will, hath this Argument. [§. 16. Est & hoc Argumentum certum: Omnis amor est actus voluntatis. At fides est amor. Ergo est actus voluntatis: Major per se vera & cognita; Minor probatur, quia vera fide, est ea, quae credit in Deum, at credere in Deum, est amare Deum. Augustinus, in Psal. 130, Hoc est oredere in Christum, diligere Christum. Et in Johan, tract. 29. Quid est credere in Deū? Credendo amare; & verò victus hoc argumento Gropperus in Enchiridio, &c.] and so he cites him as consenting.
The other is, Macchovius, who, 1. Colleg: Disput. de Justific. Disp. 14. §. 10, 11. 12, 13. answering Camero's objection, that by placing faith in the Will we confound it with Love, answereth, [That the love of Complacency is required in faith, to its object. Hence Chemnitus on Melancthons Com. places, pag. 660, saith, [Faith is such a knowledge in the mind, to which followeth assent in the Will, and a motion of the heart apprehending and applying to it self with desire and Affiance, that object which is manifested to be good, so that it resteth in it: Object. But thus faith is confounded with Charity: which two the Holy Ghost distinguisheth specially, 1 Cor. 13. Answ. Charity there is considered, as it is carried to God and our neighbour, and not as it is carried to Christ as the meritorious cause, and the benefits by him obtained and promised to us in him, which is the Charity or Love of faith, and is distinguished from the former.] Here he proceeds to shew the difference. Now my Judgement which you have to oppose (if that be your work) is this.
1. I take it as a certain and weighty Truth that saving faith is in the Will as well as the Understanding: and so do the stream of Protestants; though yet I highly honour Chamero, and the French Divines of his mind, that think otherwise.
2. I think the very Act of the Will is not properly called Love, according to the received use of that word.
3. I think that all gracious Love is not the thing directly meant by the Apostle, when he extolleth Charity as the everlasting Grace.
4. I think that Faith, Hope, and Charity, are three distinct Graces.
5. I suppose that this noble Grace of Charity is the simple Love of the Deity, as our beginning and end, and all, and of all things else for his sake, as he appeareth in them: or the Complacency of the soul in God as our God, Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier and Felicity, or as the chief good. And that the lawfull Love of our selves, and of food, rayment, wealth, books, Sermons, humiliation Duties, &c. may participate of some beams from this highest Charity, but is not directly the thing it self. And that faith is the fiducial Assent before described; and that Hope is the fiducial desirous expectation of the promised Glory, and the future blessings that are its necessary Foregoers.
6. I suppose that these moral acts and habits are totius hominis, and not to be confined to any one faculty, as meer simple physical Acts, at lest not ordinarily.
7. I suppose that as there is (as aforesaid) aliquid dilectionis in Desire, and yet it is to be called Desire and not Love; and aliquid dilectionis in Hope essentially, and yet Hope is not Love, nor so to be denominated; every Grace being denominated not from all that is in it, but from that which is eminent and special in it, as to the Object; even so there is aliquid fidei in spe, & aliquid spei in fide, & aliquid amoris in fide & spe, and yet Faith is not Hope, nor Hope Faith, nor Love Faith.
8. The Schoolmen having some of them taken up a custom of distinguishing between Love in the affection and in the Will, and of calling all volition by the name of rational Love: if any be resolved to use their language, and to call the very act of Affiance, or of choice, or of consent, or Acceptance of an offered Saviour by the name of Love, though I will use the ancient terms and not his, yet for the thing signified I firmly hold, that it is as essential to saving Faith in Christ, as the Intellects Assent is; and that as Davenant speaks, Faith begins in the Intellect by Assent, and is compleated in the Will by the Acceptance of the offered Saviour. But this acceptance (or if you will needs call it Love) to Christ as the Mediator or Way to the Father, doth much differ from the formentioned Love of God as our chief good and ultimate end.
9. We are not said in Scripture to be justified by Hope or by Charity, but by faith: but it is such a faith as hath aliquid spei & Amoris in it: and will operate by these Graces.
10. What sense soever the Schoolmen make of their distinction of fides informis, & formata Charitate, yet in this following sence it may truly be said, that the Love of God doth as it were animate all Graces and Duties whatsoever: that is, not as they are particular accidents which have every one, no doubt, their own form; but as they are Right Means to the End: For as the Respect to the end is essential to the means as means, (though not to the Act that materially is that means,) and the end intended or Loved is the cause of the means, (it being the very nature of a final cause to be amatum & desideratum efficaciter ab efficiente, propter quod amatum fit effectus, as Ockam Quodlib. 4. qu. 1. & in sent, passim:) So the Love of God as our end, must have the same essentiall respect and influence into all the means, that are in usu truly and acceptably such, as the Intentio finis hath into all ordinary means whatsoever. If this be the sense of fides informis & formata charitate, I think the distinction of very great use and moment: For I think that no Prayer, Study, Alms, suffering, is any further truly and fully moralized or Theological, or Religious, that is, are acceptable means to our fruition of God (which is our Salvation) then it is caused and animated by the Intention of God as our End, which is the Love of God; and so that faith in Christ, and Repentance, and Obedience, are all mediate Graces, and must be thus caused and animated by the Love of God (yet so, as that in some respect faith goeth before this Love, and in some respect Love before this faith, which having lately occasion to discuss, I shall not here digress again to do it.) Of this I have said somewhat in my annexed Explicatory Propositions. I confess I never understood whether any Papists took their distinction in this sense: But I remember Aquinas and some other of them say something that bendeth that way, though they seem not clear in it. And so much for my sense, that you may not assault me next in the dark.
If you join with the Lutheran Hethusius whom you cite in detesting them that mix Faith and Love in the act of Justification, you will detest the Generality of Protestants, who mix that is conjoin them in the act, though not to the act of Justification as of equal use: especially if you call all acts of the Will towards Good, by the name of Love, for then they commonly make them one.
As for the Hereticks you mention, p. 411. 412. I have no business with them, I'le study Gods word, and there is no Heresie. And for the right understanding of it, I have exceeding great cause to distrust my self, and depend on the gracious teaching of his Spirit. But I am resolved to be as impartial as I can, with respect to the Judgement of the Catholick Church of Christ.
As to your conclusion, pag. 413. &c. I freely confess that when such unlearned scriblers as we, impune, & infelici puerperio as you speak, do tire the (yet unsatiable) press, unhappily bringing forth our impertinencies (I leave the impious and monstrous Heresies to the fathers or the finders to dispose of,) it were unworthy dealing if such as you should be denied liberty, to cleanse & save the Church from our Errors. And for my one part, as I think not my self meet to speak when I may be your hearer, so let my travail be never so hard, if there were but one press in England, which offered me its help to deliver me of my impertinencies, I were much to blame if I would not readily discharge it for your service, there being not many whose judgement (conjecturing by your Exercitations) I have preferred before yours. And therefore I take it for an honour (though not to have been mistaken by you, nor to have been the occasion of your so much trouble, yet) that I have the encouragement of so much of your Consent, and that you condescend to be at so much pains with me; where you did but think I had differed from you.
Though you chose to conceal your name, yet Tradition having published it, your labour is to be a great deal the more acceptable for the Authors sake. And if you despair of my Conversion by it, its more likely to be, because of the unreachableness of my dull understanding, them from the imperfection of your Arguments, had you but aimed at the right mark. And where I dissent with confidence because of my Reasons that seem somewhat cogent, yet is it with a mixture of self-diffidence, when, I think what a person I dissent from.
And for your Resolution [to own and vindicate your writing if occasion be.] It were strange if any thing of yours should be unworthy to be owned by you; but instead of a vindication, were I your adviser, you should search after some of my greater errors, and Assault me rather in another point (if this be your Harvest work,) at least in something where really we differ, lest the world think that we are not in good sadness, and dispute not ex animo. But yet I leave this to your graver judgement, being so far from deprecating any of your labours to save men from the danger of my opinions, as that I am tempted to be a little proud that I am chastised by so learned and eminent a man; and can promise you that your Light shall be welcome to me, and your rebukes not altogether lost. But for [the explication and confirmation of my new untrue Hypothesis] as you call it, you speak so much too late, that I confess I have not the skil to speak much plainer then I have already done: I have here done something, but its little but what was done before. And for the confirmation, you have saved me that labour.
Had I known which are the [by-mistakes] in yours, which you would not have severely toucht, I should have past them over without any touch at all: But if I had not expressed my Dissent from you on those points that you bring in on the by, I should have had nothing to say, but to have joined with you against that Baxter whoever he be, whom you assault. And, taking me for so angry a fellow as your suppositions of a passionate Reply do intimate, I knew not whether you let not fall these passages on the by, lest, I should, like the angry man in Seneca, have fallen upon you for saying still as I say, and bid you differ from me in somewhat that we may be two. [Impertinencies] I dare not promise you to avoid: But I were very unworthy if I would be passionate with so learned and sober a man as you. But had I to do with a passionate man, I should expect to be charged with passion when ever I make him angry: as if nothing but anger could provoke anger. Even Agitation with pressure sometime sets the Turners wood on fire. When I have bin readier to nod then to be Angry, yet if I have fitted verbarebui, I have oft been called angry, when the Truth is, I am daily lamented that my pitutious brain and languid spirits, have deprived me of the passion that once I had; and which I daily find the want of in my stupidity. But at least I shall promise you, that if I be [impertineut] the very Position and Design of my whole Book shall not be Impertinent, nor left to the Vindication of a Non-Putarem. Your prayers and pitty I shall need I doubt not, and gratefully accept. But you shall not have the excuse of a Passionate Reply to deprive us of your Labours. As for your Ability not to Reply; your potui bonas horas non sit perdere, and your other business, I have the Impudency as to vie with you, and purpose so far to overgo you, as that you shall see I was able to be silent, tho…gh your writings be never so free from Passion, if they concern not me or the cause of God, any more then this that you have written And if by your fore-intimations of [Railing Rhetorick signifying nothing but want of Reason,] your Readers shall be brought into a conceit that they even hear me Rail before I speak, I intend to be so long silent till I have awaked them by saying nothing, and made them know that they did but dream. And whether I be reputed Reasonable or unreasonable, Passionate or Calme, Erroneous or Orthodox though I undervalue not the Judgement of worthy men, yet am I so neer another kind of Judgement, that I have the less regard to spare for this. Even good and learned men do judge of Persons exceeding variously, as the variety of their prejudice, and interests leads them. So the Great and famous Scaliger, Frans. Junius was so great a man that [Ab Apostolorum temporibus hactenus parem Theologum nullum vidisse seculum] was his Elogie (referente constantino L. Emperour.) But to the great and famous Dr. Twiss, how unacquainted is he with School-Divinity? How unmeet for such Disputations? How over-witted by Arminians? How obscure and what not? So our excellent Bishop Hall. he was [The Glory of Leyden, the Oracle of Textual and school-divinity, rich in Languages, subtile in distinguishing, and in Argument invincible.] Epist. 7. And to the great Thuanus, he was [Vir desultorio ingenio, qui multa Conatus, an adsecutus sit quod moliebatur, doctorum erit judic…um.] Hist. To. 3. l. 79.] What can be more contrary then the censures of these men? Who more Learned, more modest, and faithful in reports, then the two that are on the one side, and the two that are on the other? How vain a thing is the esteem and applause of men … we stand or fall to the Judgement of the most Great infallible God. They that take him sincerely for their God, do take him as Enough for them. And they that find not enough in him, will never be satisfied.
March 31. 1658.
FINIS.