Of Free-Will, The Nature And Power Thereof
Chapter 12
OF FREE-WILL, THE NATURE
AND POWER THEREOF
Our next task is to take a view of the idol himself, of this great deity of free-will, whose original not being well known, he is pretended (like the Ephesian image of Diana) to have fallen down from heaven, and to have his endowments from above. Yet, considering what a nothing he was at his first unveiling, in comparison to that vast giant-like hugeness to which he has now grown, we may say of him, as the painter said of his monstrous picture which he had mended (or rather marred) according to everyone's fancy: hunc populus fecit – it is the issue of the people's brain. Origen is supposed to have first brought him into the church;318 but among those many sincere worshippers of divine grace, this setter forth of new demons was little entertained. It was looked upon like the stump of Dagon, with his head and hands laid down before the ark of God, without whose help he could neither know nor do what is good in any kind. It was still accounted but truncus ficulnus, inutile lignum, "a fig-tree log, an unprofitable piece of wood."
Incerti patres scamnum facerentne? The fathers of the succeeding ages debated much about what use they should put it to. Though some exalted it a degree or two above its merits, most concluded to keep it a block [of wood]. At length there arose a stout champion,319 challenging the whole church of God on behalf of the idol. Like a knight-errant, he wandered from the west to the east to grapple with
Chapter 12: OF FREE-WILL, THE NATURE AND POWER THEREOF
anyone who would oppose his idol. Though he met with various adversaries,320 one especially,321 on behalf of the grace of God, continually foiled him and cast him to the ground – and he did so in the judgment of all the lawful judges assembled in councils,322 and also in the opinion of most Christian bystanders.323 Yet, by his cunning insinuation, this knight-errant planted in the hearts of diverse persons, such an opinion of his idol's deity and self-sufficiency, that to this day it has not been rooted out.
Now, after the decease of his Pelagian worshippers, some of the corrupter schoolmen, out of mere charity and self-love, built this idol a temple – seeing him thus exposed to all kinds of assaults from his birth, and having no shelter from wind and weather. They adorned this temple with natural lights, merits, uncontrolled independent operations, along with many other festive attendances. But in the beginning of the Reformation – that fatal time for idolatry and superstition, and for abbeys and monasteries – the zeal and learning of our forefathers, with the help of God's word, demolished this temple, and tore this building down to the ground. We well-hoped the idol himself had been so deeply buried in the rubble, that his head would never again be exalted to the trouble of the church of God. That was until not long ago, when some curious wits, whose weak stomachs were clogged with manna, and who loathed the sincere milk of the word – raking all the dunghills for novelties – lighted unhappily upon this idol. And presently, with no less joy than the mathematician at the discovery of a new geometrical proportion, they exclaimed, "We have found it! We have found it!" Without any more ado, they erected a shrine; and until this day, they continue an offering of praise and thanks for all the good they do to this work of their own hands.
So that the idol may be free from the ruin which they have found by experience he is subject to, they matched him to Contingency, a new goddess of their own creation. Having proved very fruitful in monstrous births upon their conjoining, they have no doubts that they will always have an offspring to set on the throne, and make president
Chapter 12: OF FREE-WILL, THE NATURE AND POWER THEREOF
of all human actions. After he has contended with the providence and grace of God at least twelve hundred years, with various success, he now boasts as if he had obtained a total victory. Yet all his prevailing is to be attributed to the diligence and varnish of his new abettors, with (to our shame!) the negligence of his adversaries. There is no more real worth in him and his cause than there was when he was rejected and cursed out of the church by the ancient fathers. Those who can look at the thing itself, through the many winding labyrinths of curious distinctions, will find that, like Egyptian novices, they have been brought through many stately frontispieces and goodly fabrics, with a great show of zeal and devotion, to the image of an ugly ape.
Yet observe here that we do not absolutely oppose free-will, as if it were "nomen inane," a mere figment; it is no such thing. We oppose it only in that sense which the Pelagians and Arminians assert it. We will not contend about words. We grant that man, in the substance of all his actions, has as much power, liberty, and freedom as a mere created nature is capable of. We grant that he is free in his choice from all outward co-action, or inward natural necessity, to work according to election and deliberation, spontaneously embracing what seems good to him. Now, call this power free-will, or whatever you please. As long as you do not make it supreme, independent, and boundless, we are not at all troubled. The imposition of names depends on the discretion of their inventers. Again; even in spiritual things, we deny that our wills are at all debarred, or deprived of their proper liberty. But here we say, indeed, that we are not properly free until the Son makes us free – there is no great use of freedom in what we can do nothing about. We do not claim a liberty that would make us despise the grace of God 324
– the grace by which we may attain true liberty indeed – which adds to, but takes nothing from, our original freedom. But more about this after I have shown what an idol the Arminians make of free-will. Only take notice at the start that we speak of free-will now, not as it was at first created by God, but as it is now corrupted by sin. Yet, being considered in that estate also, they ascribe more to it than it was ever
Chapter 12: OF FREE-WILL, THE NATURE AND POWER THEREOF
capable of. As it now stands, according to my formerly-proposed method, I will show first, what inbred native virtue they ascribe to it, and with how absolute a dominion and sovereignty over all our actions they endow it. Secondly, I will show what power they say it has in preparing us for the grace of God. Thirdly, I will show how effectually operative free-will is in receiving grace, and how, with little help from grace, it accomplishes the great work of our conversion – all briefly, with only as many observations as will suffice to reveal their proud errors in each particular.
Arminius says, "The liberty of the will consists in this: that all things required to enable it to will anything being accomplished, it still remains indifferent to will or not to will."325 And all of them at the synod said, "There is an inseparable property accompanying the will of man, which we call liberty, for which the will is termed a power. When all things pre-required for the operation of the will are fulfilled, it may will anything, or not will it."326 That is, our free wills have such an absolute and uncontrollable power in the territory of all human actions, that no influence of God's providence, no certainty of his decree, no unchangeableness of his purpose, can sway it at all in its free determinations, or have any power with his highness, Free-Will, to cause him to will or resolve to do any act which God intends to produce by him.
Take for example the great work of our conversion.327 "All unregenerate men," says Arminius, "have, by virtue of their free-will, a power to resist the Holy Spirit, to reject the offered grace of God, and contemn328 the counsel of God concerning themselves, to refuse the gospel of grace, and not open the heart to him that knocks." What a stout idol this is, whom neither the Holy Spirit, the grace and counsel of God, the calling of the gospel, nor the knocking at the door of the heart, can move at all, or in the least measure prevail against him! Woe to us, then, if when God calls us, our free-will is not in good temper, and well-disposed to hearken to him! For it seems there is no dealing with free-will by any other way, however powerful and almighty.329
Chapter 12: OF FREE-WILL, THE NATURE AND POWER THEREOF
"For if we grant," says Corvinus, "all the operations of grace which God can use in our conversion, conversion still remains so much in our own free power that we cannot be converted; that is, we can either turn or not turn ourselves." Here the idol plainly challenges the Lord to work his utmost, and tells him that after he has done so, the idol will do what he pleases. God's infallible prescience, his powerful predetermination, the moral efficacy of the gospel, the infusion of grace, the effectual operation of the Holy Spirit – all are nothing; they are not available at all in helping or furthering our independent wills in their proceedings.
Well, then, in what estate will you have the idol placed? "In such an estate that he may be allowed to sin, or to do well, at his pleasure,"330 as the same author intimates. Does it seem then, as to sin, that nothing is required for this idol to be able to do good except God's permission?
No! For the Remonstrants (as they speak of themselves) "always suppose a free power to obey or not to obey, in those who obey as well as in those who do not obey – he that is obedient may therefore be counted obedient, because he obeys when he might not obey, and so too on the contrary." 331 All the praise of our obedience, by which we differ from others, is thus ascribed to ourselves alone, and to that free power that is in us. Now, by this they mean not any one act of obedience, but faith itself, and the whole consummation of it.332
Arminius said triumphantly to Perkins, "For if a man were to say that every man in the world has a power to believe if he will, and of attaining salvation if he will, and that this power is settled in his nature, then what argument have you to confute him?" Here the sophistical innovator confounds grace and nature as plainly as Pelagius ever did.
What the Arminians claim here in behalf of their free-will is an absolute independence of God's providence in doing anything, and an independence of his grace in doing what is good. It is self-sufficient in all its operations, a plenary333 indifference in doing what we will, whether this or that, being neither determined to the one nor inclined to the other by any overruling influence from heaven. So that the good
Chapter 12: OF FREE-WILL, THE NATURE AND POWER THEREOF
acts of our wills do not depend on God's providence as they are acts, nor do they depend on his grace as they are good; but in both regards, they proceed from a principle within us that in no way is moved by any superior agent.
Now, the first of these we deny to our wills, because they are created; and the second we deny, because they are corrupted. Their creation hinders them from doing anything of themselves without the assistance of God's providence; and their corruption hinders them from doing anything that is good without God's grace. We cannot allow a self-sufficiency that operates without the effectual motion of Almighty God, who is the first cause of all things. We cannot concede this for men or angels, unless we intend to make them gods. And we cannot grant that man has the power to do good by nature, equal to his power to do evil, unless we deny the fall of Adam, and fancy that we are still in paradise. But let us consider these things separately.
FIRST, I will not try to decipher the nature of human liberty, which perhaps would require a larger discourse than my proposed method will bear. It may suffice that, according to my former intimation, we grant as large a freedom and dominion to our wills as a creature is capable of over its own acts, subject to the supreme rule of God's providence. We are endued with a liberty of will that is free from all outward compulsion and inward necessity, having an elective faculty to apply itself to whatever seems good to it, and in which it is a free choice. Notwithstanding this, its will is subservient to the decree of God, as I showed before, chap. 4. It is most free in all its acts, both in regard to the object it chooses, and in regard to that vital power and faculty by which it works. It infallibly complies with and works by virtue of the motion of God's providence. But surely it plainly denies that our wills are subject to the rule of the Most High if we assert such a supreme independence, and in every way an unbounded indifference as the Arminians claim. All other requisite things are pre-supposed, so that it remains absolutely in our own power to will or not to will something, to do anything or not to do it. It is granted that in such a
Chapter 12: OF FREE-WILL, THE NATURE AND POWER THEREOF
chimerical,334 fancied consideration of free-will, which is seen as having no relation to any act of God's except its creation, abstracted from his decree,335 it may be said to have such a liberty in regard to the object. But the truth is, this divided sense is plain nonsense, a mere fiction of such an estate which never was, nor ever can be, so long as men confess any deity but themselves, to whose determinations they must be subject. Until more significant terms are invented for this free power in our nature, which the Scripture never once deigns to name, I will be content with Prosper, to call it a "spontaneous appetite for what seems good to it"336 – free from all compulsion, but subservient to the providence of God. Against exalting it to the height of independence which they claim, I oppose –
First. Everything that is independent of anyone else in its operation is purely active; and so consequently, it is a god – for nothing but a divine will can be purely active, possessing such a liberty by virtue of its own essence. Every created will, however, must have its liberty by participation, which includes such an imperfect potentiality that it cannot be brought into action without some pre-motion (if I may say so) of a superior agent. Being extrinsic, this motion does not at all prejudice the true liberty of the will. Such liberty indeed requires only that the internal principle of operation be active and free, not that an outward superior agent cannot move that principle to operate. In this sense, nothing can have an independent principle of operation which does not have an independent being. It is no more necessary to the nature of a free cause – from which a free action proceeds – that it be the first beginning of that action, than it is necessary to the nature of a cause that it be the first cause.
Secondly. If the free acts of our wills are so subservient to the providence of God that he uses them to whatever end he will, and he effects many of his purposes by them, then they cannot be so absolutely independent as to have every necessary circumstance and condition in their own power, that they may use or not use them at their pleasure. Now, the former is proved by all those reasons and texts
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of Scripture I produced before to show that the providence of God overrules the actions and determines the wills of men to freely do what he has appointed. And, truly, if it were it otherwise, God's dominion over most things in the world would be quite excluded; he would have had no power to determine that any one thing should ever come to pass which has any reference to the wills of men.
Thirdly. All the acts of the will being positive entities, if they had not previously been moved by God himself, "in whom we live, move, and have our being," then they must have their essence and existence solely from the will itself. Such a will is thereby made aujto< o>n, a first and supreme cause, endued with an underived being.337 So much for that particular.
Let us now, in the SECOND place, look at the power of our freewill in doing what is morally good. Here we will find not only an essential imperfection, inasmuch as it is created, but also a contracted effect, inasmuch as it is corrupted. The ability which the Arminians ascribe to it, of doing what is morally and spiritually good, is as great and competent for this as in the state of innocence: a power to believe and a power to resist the gospel, a power to obey and not to obey, a power to turn or not to be converted.
The Scripture, as I observed before, has no such term at all, nor anything equivalent to it. Rather, the expressions it uses concerning our nature and all its faculties in this state of sin and unregeneration, seem to imply quite the contrary: that we are in "bondage," Heb 2:15;
"dead in sins," Eph 2:1, "free from righteousness," Rom 6:20; "servants of sin," verse 17; under the "reign" and "dominion" of sin, verses 12, 14; all our members are "instruments of unrighteousness," verse 13; we are not "free indeed," until "the Son makes us free." So that this idol of free-will, in respect to spiritual things, is not one whit better than the other idols of the heathen. Though it looks like "silver and gold," it is the "work of men's hands. It has a mouth, but it does not speak; it has eyes, but it does not see; it has ears, but it does not hear; a nose, but it does not smell; it has hands, but it does not handle;
Chapter 12: OF FREE-WILL, THE NATURE AND POWER THEREOF
it has feet, but it does not walk; nor does it speak through its throat.
Those who made it are like it; and so is everyone that trusts in it. O Israel, trust in the LORD," etc., Psalm 115:4-9. I showed before that it is the work of men's hands, or a human invention. For the rest, it has a mouth unacquainted with the "mystery of godliness," "full only of cursing and bitterness," Rom 3:14; "speaking great swelling words,"
Jude 16; "great things, and blasphemies," Rev 13:5; a "mouth causing the flesh to sin," Ecc 5:6 – his eyes are blind, not able to perceive those things that are of God, nor to know those things that are "spiritually discerned," 1 Cor 2:14; "eyes before which there is no fear of God,"
Rom 3:18 – his "understanding is darkened, because of the blindness of his heart," Eph 4:18; "wise to do evil, but to do good he has no knowledge," Jer 4:22.
So that without further light, all the world is but a mere "darkness,"
John 1:5 – he has ears, but they are like the ears of the "deaf adder" to the word of God, "refusing to hear the voice of charmers, charming ever so wisely," Psalm 58:5; being "dead" when his voice first calls it,
John 5:25; "ears stopped so that they would not hear," Zec 7:11; "heavy ears" that cannot hear, Isaiah 6:10 – a nose, to which the gospel is "the savor of death to death," 2 Cor 2:16 – "hands full of blood,"
Isaiah 1:15; and "fingers defiled with iniquity," chap. 59:3 – feet, indeed, but, like Mephibosheth, lame in both by a fall, so that he cannot walk at all in the path of goodness; but is "swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in his ways, and the way of peace he has not known," Rom 3:15-17. The Scripture attributes these, and various other endowments and excellent qualifications, to this idol which it calls "The old man," as I will more fully reveal in the next chapter. Is this not a solid reed to rely on in the paths of godliness? It this not a powerful deity to which we may repair for a power to become the sons of God, and attain eternal happiness? I willconsider the abilities of free-will in particular later; for now I will, by one or two reasons, show that it cannot be the sole and proper cause of any truly good and spiritual act that is well-pleasing to God.
Chapter 12: OF FREE-WILL, THE NATURE AND POWER THEREOF
First. All spiritual acts that are well-pleasing to God, such as faith, repentance, and obedience, are supernatural; flesh and blood does not reveal these things: "Not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man; but of God," John 1:13; "What is born of the flesh is flesh; and what is born of the Spirit is spirit," John 3:6. Now, the performance of any supernatural act requires that its productive power also be supernatural; for nothing can actively cause something above its own sphere. Nec imbelles generant feroces aquilas columbae.338 But our free-will is a merely natural faculty; there is no relation between it and those spiritual, supernatural acts, unless it is advanced above its own orb by inherent, habitual grace. Divine, theological virtues, differ in the substance of their acts, from those moral performances of the same acts to which the strength of nature may reach (for the difference in acts arises from their formal objects, which vary between the two).
They must therefore have another principle and cause above all the power of nature in civil things and morally good actions; for they are subject to a natural perception, and do not exceed the strength of our own wills. This faculty of free-will may exist, yet not without the following limitations: First. That it always requires the general concurrence of God, by which the whole class339 in which free-will subsists may be sustained, Mat 10:29-30.340 Secondly. That we do all these things imperfectly and with much infirmity; also, every degree of excellence in these things must be counted a special gift of God, Isaiah
26:12.341 Thirdly. That our wills are determined by the will of God as to all their acts and motions in particular; but we have no knowledge, no power to do what is spiritually good.
Secondly. I gave one special instance of faith, the production of which the Arminians greatly attribute to free-will. This they affirm (as I showed before) to be inbred in nature, everyone having in him from his birth a natural power to believe in Christ and his gospel. For Episcopius denies that "any action of the Holy Spirit on the understanding or will is necessary, or promised in the Scripture, to make a man able to believe the word preached to him."342 So it seems
Chapter 12: OF FREE-WILL, THE NATURE AND POWER THEREOF
that every man has at all times a power to believe, to produce the act of faith upon the revelation of its object. This gross Pelagianism is contrary – First, To the doctrine of the church of England, warning that a man cannot so much as prepare himself by his own strength, to faith and to call upon God, until the grace of God by Christ prevents him,343 so that he may have a good will. – Artic. 10.
Secondly, To the Scripture, teaching that it is "the work of God that we believe," John 6:29. It is "not of ourselves; it is the gift of God,"
Eph 2:8. To some "it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven," Mat 13:11. And what is peculiarly given to some cannot be in the power of everyone: "To you it is given in behalf of Christ to believe on him," Phil 1:29. Faith is our access or coming to Christ; which none can do "unless the Father draws him," John 6:44; and he so draws, or "has mercy, on whom he will have mercy," Rom 9:18. Although
Episcopius rejects any immediate action of the Holy Spirit for ingenerating faith, St. Paul affirms that there is no less effectual power required for it than that which raised Christ from the dead; which surely was an action of the almighty Godhead. "That you may know," he says, "what is the exceeding greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead," Eph 1:18-20.
So that, let the Arminians say what they please, recalling that I write to Christians, I will spare my labor of further proving that faith is the free gift of God; the Arminians' opposition to the truth of the Scripture in this particular is so evident to the lowliest capacity of Christians, that there is no need to recapitulate to present the sum of it to their understandings.