Post by forevidence on May 23, 2008 16:58:58 GMT -5
Once more, permit me, honoured sir, to hang the mill stone of rebrobation about the neck of your Diana, to cast her back with the cumbrous weight into the sea of error, from whose scum she, like another Venus, had her unnatural origin. If the salvation of the elect is finished, because "Christ is the author and finisher of their faith," it necessarily follows, that the damnation of the reprobates is also finished, because "Christ is the author and finisher of their unbelief." For he that absolutely withholds faith, causes unbelief as effectually, as he that absolutely withholds the light, causes darkness.
If, in direct opposition to the words of our Lord , John_3:18, you say, with some Calvinists, that "Christ does not damn men for unbelief, but for their sins," I reply, This is mere trifling. If Christ absolutely refuses them power to believe in the light of their dispensation, how can they but sin? Does not Paul say, that "without faith it is impossible to please God?" Is not unbelief at the very root of every sin? Did not even Adam eat the forbidden fruit through unbelief? And is not "this our only victory, even our faith? An illustration will, I hope, expose the emptiness of the pleas which some urge in favour of unconditional reprobation, or, if you please, non-election. A mother conceives an unaccountable antipathy to her sucking child. She goes to the brink of a precipice, bends herself over it with the passive infant in her bosom, and, withdrawing her arms from under him, drops him upon the craggy rock, and thus he rolls down from rock to rock, till he lies at the bottom beaten to pieces, a bloody instance of finished destruction. The judge asks the murderer what she has to say in her own defence. The child was mine, replies she, and I have a right to do what I please with my own. Beside, I did not throw him down nor murder him: I only withdrew my arms from under him, and he fell of his own discord.
In mystic Geneva she is honourably acquitted; but in England the executioner is ordered to rid the earth of the cruel monster. So may God give us commission to rid the Church of your Diana, who teaches that He, the Father of mercies, does by millions of his passive children, what the barbarous mother did by one of hers; affirming, that He unconditionally withholds grace from them; and that, by absolutely refusing to be "the author and finisher of their faith," He is the absolute author and finisher of their unbelief, and consequently of their sin and damnation.
-John Fletcher
If, in direct opposition to the words of our Lord , John_3:18, you say, with some Calvinists, that "Christ does not damn men for unbelief, but for their sins," I reply, This is mere trifling. If Christ absolutely refuses them power to believe in the light of their dispensation, how can they but sin? Does not Paul say, that "without faith it is impossible to please God?" Is not unbelief at the very root of every sin? Did not even Adam eat the forbidden fruit through unbelief? And is not "this our only victory, even our faith? An illustration will, I hope, expose the emptiness of the pleas which some urge in favour of unconditional reprobation, or, if you please, non-election. A mother conceives an unaccountable antipathy to her sucking child. She goes to the brink of a precipice, bends herself over it with the passive infant in her bosom, and, withdrawing her arms from under him, drops him upon the craggy rock, and thus he rolls down from rock to rock, till he lies at the bottom beaten to pieces, a bloody instance of finished destruction. The judge asks the murderer what she has to say in her own defence. The child was mine, replies she, and I have a right to do what I please with my own. Beside, I did not throw him down nor murder him: I only withdrew my arms from under him, and he fell of his own discord.
In mystic Geneva she is honourably acquitted; but in England the executioner is ordered to rid the earth of the cruel monster. So may God give us commission to rid the Church of your Diana, who teaches that He, the Father of mercies, does by millions of his passive children, what the barbarous mother did by one of hers; affirming, that He unconditionally withholds grace from them; and that, by absolutely refusing to be "the author and finisher of their faith," He is the absolute author and finisher of their unbelief, and consequently of their sin and damnation.
-John Fletcher