Chapter II
The mutability of that first estate. By its constitution and their own weak
ness, both angels and men were liable to fall from it. God was not at all
obliged, as Creator, to preserve his creatures in that first condition effectually
by his grace. The causes of their mutability. To be changeable is the
nature of a creature, with difference from God, who only is immutable. That the creature being made of nothing, tends to a deficiency.
There needs no other nor more certain proof, both of the foregone and of
those following assertions, than the event.
28 OF THE CREATURES, AND THE CONDITION [BOOK II.
1. That these two sorts of creatures, angels and men, might fall from
their original estate of perfect holiness ; for, de facto, of both sorts did fall, and the angels that did not were of the same frame, of the same brittle metal with the other of their creation, and the dues thereof were common
* The angels that sinned, says Peter, 2 Pet. ii. 4.
* The angels that kept not their first state, but left their own habitation, says Jude, verse 6. How much more might this befall man, who dwells in houses
to both :
of clay ? as it is argued in Job, from the stronger, the angels, unto the weaker : Job iv. 18, 19, Behold, he put no trust in his servants ; and his
: how much less on them that dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, which are crushed before the moth ? And that, de facto, we are fallen, we all by sad and woeful experi ence have found.
angels he charged with folly
2. The second is, That no obligation was upon God to keep either of them from so falling, by any law of his having created them. This the event also is a sufficient demonstration of; for if there had been such an
obligation upon him, his faithfulness is such, and love unto his creature is
such, as he would then certainly have kept them. That title of faithfulness
is annexed to his being Creator : 1 Pet. iv. 19, Wherefore let them that
suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him
in well-doing, as unto a faithful Creator. The argument, then, from that he did not keep them, is invincible, that he was, as a Creator, absolutely free and disengaged from keeping them (without any breach of any due unto his creature by the law of his creation), and doth sufficiently confirm
all that is foregone in the former chapter concerning that intercourse settled betwixt God and us by creation. Nor would the holy God have put that
high sarcasm, or bitter (yet just) retortion upon man when he had sinned, which struck at the very spirit of his sin, Man is become like one of us, which had been the very inward pith and substance of his sinning, which
* ye shall be as gods, shews that
compared together with the tentation
that was it had taken them. God, I say, would not have upbraided them with that severe sarcasm, if he had been engaged to preserve them from
sinning, and yet was wanting to do it.
3. Nor must we lay upon God any influence of his, into either of their
* As God is not himself tempted with evil ; so, nor tempteth he his creature unto evil. James i. 13, 14, Let no man say, when he is tempted, I am tempted of God : for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither
falls.
tempteth he any man : but every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed. He carried himself in that matter precisely according to the exact dues of creation. He dispensed all the influence that was due thereby, and more he did not vouchsafe, merely because, as a Creator, he was not obliged thereto. And God ordered it thus, that the
difference between that creation influence and assistance, and the efficacious assistance of grace which he gave the angels that stood, and meant to give to his elect, called ones, might be manifest from that which was by crea
tion due only ; that what was God s might be given to God and his grace, and what was the creature s might be given the creature ; for it is certain
that, had God either inhibited the devil from tempting, or had cast in but a grain of assistance, more than by creation was due, into man s heart and
will when tempted, and prevented but a mere negligence or non-attendancy to God and his word (for their sin began with these at first, and they were the primum momentum of their verging), they had not sinned. If when the eyes of their minds were next door towards a wink, God had given but
CHAP. II.J OF THEIE STATE BY CREATION. 29
the least jog, it had kept them awake. Likewise, God forbore nothing, but he was not bound to give, and it was free for him to do or not to do. And unto this, of God s not being bound thereto, as on his part, doth Arminius himself put it.* y Nor had, nor could man be aforehand with God
by anything he had or could do. For all must be only by virtue of what he had received by creation from God. And so, the apostle s general pro clamation made on God s behalf, unto all his creatures, reached Adam in
that estate : Who hath first given to him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again? The sense whereof is, that God stands free, not upon
prerogative, but equity, a debtorf unto man ; but at a perfect liberty to
give, or not to give, what he had not compacted for. And Christ says the
same, on his behalf, to him that murmured, Mat. xx. 13, I do thee no
: didst not thou agree with me for a penny ? And that I have paid thee.
wrong
But besides this argument from the event, the Scripture says the same, with a Behold prefaced unto it, in two places
* Behold, he
: Job xv. 15,
putteth no trust in his saints. And that he had put no trust in them is
directly spoken in respect unto their mutability, and the hazard of their
failing him, in their serving him, if left unto themselves. So as we have God s judgment declared, that they were such unstable creatures, that he had no confidence in them as such. Which, if it be understood in the
present tense, that now, since the fall, he putteth no trust in his angels that stood, yet still it relates unto what in themselves they are, and were
by nature, and would be, if God did not continue to uphold them. The same is said in chap. iv. 18, with another behold again, Behold, he put no trust in his servants, and his angels he charged with folly. Which
latter is spoken as of the time past, upon an experience of the fall of some
of them, that shewed the same changeableness to be incident to the rest
that stood ; and that if God should deal with them only according to that law of their creation, and leave them into the hands of their own counsels,
they would be as foolish as the rest had been.
But the greater task of the two is, to evince what this mutability was and what the rise of it was, in the creature.
I begin with the latter, the rise or ground of it.
1. This changeableness in the creature is the condition of the creature
as a creature, with difference from God. Of God it is said, James i. 13, that God cannot be tempted with evil ; and evil there is the evil of sin, with which the creature is tempted, and is an opposite to that goodness which is essential to God, whereof Christ speaks, Mat. xix. 17, God only
is good, and thereby diflerenceth God s goodness from the creature s good
ness, by declaring that God alone is essentially good ; and it riseth to such
a consistency in his nature, and height of transcendent perfection, that it
cannot admit of the least impression, touch, or tincture of evil to stain,
yea, not to discolour it ; and therefore James expresseth it by this, He
cannot be tempted, James i. 13, it being a contradiction to his nature
as being God ; as elsewhere, that he cannot lie, Titus i. 2, and cannot
deny himself, 2 Tim. ii. 13. Now, if these things be said of God as he
is God, then the opposite (a capacity of being tempted with evil) must be
intended thereby of the creature considered in its creatureship.
If any one say, James speaks in the words afore and after, of and unto man fallen, that is, tempted^with his own lust, ver. 14. And so it is not
* Hoc impedimentum Deus prsestare non tenebatur. Thes. de primo hominis
peccato. t Qu - n t a Debtor ? ED.
30 OF THE CREATURES, AND THE CONDITION [BOOK II.
an argument to prove that the "creature, in its original estate, was thus
liable to temptation with difference from God.
* God cannot be tempted, being a setting forth an
Ans. 1. His saying,
attribute proper unto God, therefore however, in the occasion of it, it may be an exhortation unto men [fallen, &c., yet the maxim extends
further, and is not to be narrowed unto a comparison of God s nature, in
this respect, with corrupted man ; but in that it is made proper unto God,
it must needs, in its opposition, express the difference from all creatures as creatures.
2. It had been short of the glory which is due unto God, in this purity of his, yea, dishonourable, to have intended it as a comparison only between a man fallen that hath lust in him already, that may tempt him, and the infinitely holy nature of God, that hath no such principle in him, as thereby to set out the perfection of God. For it might be said, that a creature unfallen hath nothing in him to tempt him neither. Therefore God his cannot be tempted must extend further, in full opposition to, and exclusion of, any creature in its best estate considered.
3. It may be said of the strongest mere creature in its best estate, that
it is liable to be tempted of its own lust that may arise up in him, though he have no sinful lust as yet in him. The first sin of our first parents was a lust inordinate, to be as gods. Self-love grew into a tumour when once it heard, but afar off, of such a preferment. And so of Satan it is
said, that when he sinned, he sinned of his own. John viii. 44, Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do ; he was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own : for he is a liar, and the father of it thereby also utterly exempting God from any the least influence into his sin.
The Socinians, who hold man s nature in his first creation not to have been holy, but only indifferent unto good and evil, when we urge,
* that man was created after God s image, &c., they would retort this absur
* that then he must have been made immutably holy, for God s holiness is an immutable holiness in him ; and therefore, if man had the image of it by creation, then he should have had it immutably.
dity upon us,
But, we easily answer, God could not communicate to us his essential
holiness, whereby he is differenced from the creatures. That must be communicated only so far as it is communicable to a creature. And all the images that are made of a man do not import a communication of his
nature, but of his likeness ; that is, a communication accidental, artificial, and not substantial. And so God begat his Son indeed, who is his sub
stantial image, but the image of God in creatures is not so ; we had, and
have, but the lineaments of his holiness.
A second ground of mutability in the creatures actings with difference from God, and his unchangeableness in acting, is, that God is not com pounded of a power to act differing from himself, i. e., his essence ; but himself is the power wherewith he acts. He is actus purus et simplicissimus ; and therefore there is nothing can fall out or come between himself and his power in acting, to weaken or hinder him in acting, nor to cause any failure in his acting, and specially in his activity of holiness, which is in Scripture termed himself. And therefore, whereas in one scripture you read, he sweareth by himself, in another you find, he sweareth by his holiness : these are all one. His holiness also is that in him whereby himself is his own end to himself. God s own good and happiness is his
CHAP. II.] OF THEIR STATE BY CREATION. 31
ultimate end, and therefore he can never but act holily, for he acts by him
self and for himself; and so cannot fail in acting, but is holy in all his ways and works, and cannot be otherwise. For all in his acting is himself, both his power and his end, and all ; yea, and are all one and the same. But the creature, his power to do or act, is one thing, and himself is another. He acts not immediately by himself, but by a power given him to act ; and which is differing from himself, an accident in him, far differ
ing from himself. Neither is himself his own end in acting, but God, by his creature, is to be his end to act for, and by which he is to be moved in
acting ; and God, that is his end, is without him and far above him. And therefore himself, with all these his powers or faculties, may falter in
acting when they come to be usedfand put forth ; there may some defi
ciency come between his power to act and his act itself; as either a cessa tion to act (for he is but agens in potentid] when he ought ; a falling short, in not putting forth all its power to the utmost ; a remissness, a slackness, may befall it : as in a line stretched to the utmost, a waggling may fall out. As particularly, to instance, first, the creature s understanding may fall
into an incogitancy unawares, or a non-advertency, or the want of consi deration ; in the twinkling of an eye it may be diverted from a stedfast act of eyeing God as its truest good. And though God gave assistance accord
ing to the due of creation, whereby he had power within himself to have
kept attentive to God, yet take what was to be its own doing, its act there
upon, or duty ; there a cessation might fall out, an unattendancy, a failing in its acting. Secondly, also his will, whose voice and office still is, Who
will shew us any good ? And thereupon it is stedfastly to cleave to God ;
yet upon a buzz or hearsay, of being put into a better condition, even as
gods, knowing good and evil, the will, to which it is innate to aim at its own good (though then in subordination to God it might), did, by as sudden
deficiency and remiss station, make an halt in his way and tendency towards
happiness. As one that, in the putting forth of his hand unto what is as
high above him, as is possible for him to reach, takes hold by the way of
something that is lower and short, through a finding some present ease to
its motion in reaching unto what is higher, and the lower to suit his lower and inferior aims. And the will was agog upon it, and it fell into a tumour of seeking its own excellency. And then the will might influence the
understanding to take in the consideration, whether there might not be
something in that new proposed way of happiness ; and the appearance of it was so represented as the yielding to the temptation is plainly put upon this, that the woman s understanding was deceived ; so the apostle in 2 Cor. xi. 3, and 1 Tim. ii. 14. And this defectibility may well be supposed, seeing it is granted by all that there was that difference between the condition of saints and angels now in glory, and of the angels and Adam in their creation estate ; that in that of glory, the manifestation of God to the understanding of the creatures, and the communication of his goodness to the will, is so superabundantly
full, filling them with all the fulness of God, that these faculties and powers are swallowed up into God. God his being all in all, as it chains up and
unchangeably fixeth the whole of the soul unto him, that it cannot cease or
suspend to cleave immutably to him who is their incommutable happiness, and so they cannot sin. And had the angels (who yet we cannot say were
in the highest heaven of all) so enjoyed God, tney could not have sinned. But the law and measure, both for angels and men by creation, was that God should be so represented to them, as to give them a power to cleave
32 OF THE CREATURES, AND THE CONDITION [BOOK II.
to God as their chiefest good, as they began to do ; yet in comparison of
the former, in so inferior a way of manifestation, that as for the understand
ing, in its own amplitude, and that variety of objects it might meet with, and that might be presented unto it, a room was left for a possibility, in
its creature activity, to cast an unhappy glance towards the entertainment
of a consideration of them. And that concourse was such with the will, as
the will was still left to a possibility to cease its going out from itself up unto God, who was without itself, and to begin to affect some other excel
lency proper unto itself, and as that which was suited unto that lower aim
of self-love and self-excellency. And the evidence that they were so left
(besides the evidence the event gives) is, that God applied legal threaten-
7 have no place nor influence ; and all this might and did proceed from this, that according to the necessary constitution of a creator,* they were but agents in potentid ;
ings Thou shalt die the death, which in the life of glor}
they were not pure act, and so might cease to act holily, whilst yet they had the posse, the power from God to act holily. And by the law of crea
tion, God was not obliged to give the act of willing holily, but the power to will ; and therefore, also, he might not will when yet he ought, and so
sinned. The act of willing what was holy and good was not necessary in
them, and therefore it might fall out he might not will it. And the first
sin lay, not in an act of willing something else than God, nor in a positive act of refusing God, but a not willing, a ceasing to will, as it had hitherto
done. And yet this was not chance or contingency, but accompanied with an act of will, to cease or forbear to will that holy good thing it did. So
as the first sinning began not with a motion of the will, but with a defect, or ceasing to move as it ought to have done : upon which the understand
ing was, withal, deprived of its spiritual light to guide the will ; in that
leaven was in the will, which, though but one faculty, yet was the proper seat of sin, the whole lump was leavened, and that small speck of taint, begun in the will, fumed up into the understanding, and darkened it ; and that spiritual light being gone, it began to judge what the devil proposed to be their best happiness, and was deceived, as the apostle says. And then
the will, having been averted from cleaving to its true and only good, fell into
a tumour, as I said, of affecting to be as gods ; and so sin grew irrecoverably more and more upon them. This for a second ground of this mutability.
8. Add unto this, that farther ground which the fathers (Austin espe
cially) have run upon, viz., that these creatures, though excellent, were made out of mere nothing ; their root was nothing, and the sap would be
drawing down towards the root and withering, if not continually watered
by efficacious grace. The creature, as a creature, would be mouldering towards nothing again, and would do it every moment, if by the word of God s power it did not consist. And although God hath by charter endowed them with an immortality, which is an immutability as to the substance of
their being, which yet is by a mere participation, God by essence having
only immortality, 1 Tim. vi. 16 ; yet still he left this token of mutability, that they might lose their well-being, which sin only could dispossess them
of. And sin is but an imperfect tendency, or verging or reeling towards
nothing ; only, in the falling, God keeps them in substantial being still, that they might live to find and know their frailty, &c. To sin, and to fail
that way, is not indeed, says Austin, that which we call nothing ; but, says
he, it is a tendency unto nothing.f And he gives this reason, that by how
* Qu. creature ? ED.
t Deficere, non est nihil ; sed tendit in nihilum.
CHAP. II.] OF THEIR STATE BY CREATION. 33
much any thing is excellent, and falls or declines unto what is worse, or by how much a thing is become worse than God made it, by so much it is become nearer unto nothing, and so is, in its degree, a falling towards
nothing. I would express it thus, that sin is not a falling into pure nothing for entity, but a falling besides, or sideways, into it ; and yet, into what is worse than nothing, the perfect destruction of the well-being of it. And God thought meet to preserve the substance of their being, that those he
rejects might have a being continued, to feel the demerit of sin ; and in them he meant to recover, separating in the end their sin and their per sons ; yet, that all might see their original and the defectibility, might see an experiment of their first nothingness (which also they know not but by
faith), in that so many of both sorts are cast into sin, which is, if not lower than nothing, yet next degree unto it ; and know themselves to be but creatures that were nothing ; and that because, by the law of God s crea
tion, he was not bound to have preserved them in being, he therefore suffered the holiness he had endowed them with, and which was concreated with them, and yet was the flower, the excellency and perfection of their
being, and of more worth than all their beings without it, utterly to come to nothing.
But yet further, the holiness which, by creation, both angels and men
had, were but adjuncts, accidents, and endowments, perfecting the well-being of them, and bestowed upon them to perfect their nature, as noble qualities and dispositions use to do. But they were not ingredients constitutive of the natures of them, or any part or ingredient into the essence of them, and yet natural to them, as perfectives of their nature. And such creatures, or rather concreateds with their nature, may cease and be lost, without the
ceasing of the subject itself that is endowed with them.
In the controversy we have with the papists, we rightly affirm that the
image of God, in true holiness, was natural to man at his first creation. But then, they put this absurdity upon our assertion, that what is natural cannot be lost ; and that what was, by a supernatural act of God s, given the angels and us, must be supernatural. We answer to the first, that there were three things in man and angels at the first, that made up theirs and our nature : the substance of the soul, which was that it was a spirit, and the seat or subject of these other two that follow. As (2.) the faculties of that soul, that are essential to it in this
sense, that they are principia natura constitutiva, principles that do consti
tute the nature of a man, and which, if taken away, a man ceaseth to be a man ; and such are the understanding, and will, and affections in the soul ; and so in an angel, understanding and will. 3. There were, further, such ornaments and dispositions in those faculties, as were for the perfecting the nature of the soul, and whereby it might attain and be preserved in happi ness and blessedness. The two first are, through God s ordination, immu
tably bestowed, both in angels and men ; so as if either the souls of men should cease to be spiritual substances, or the angels to be spirits, or come not to have an understanding or will, they would cease to be either angels or men ; and therefore, these two they retain, in omni statu, in all states, both fallen and unfallen angels, good and bad. But the third, which was
this of holiness, which perfected their natures, they were and are liable to a mutation in. For it was and is but a perfection in the soul or angel, which may, abesse vel adesse sine subjecti interitu, be lost, and cease without the ceasing of the subject they belonged unto, as precious stones or herbs may lose their virtue, and yet be stones and herbs still. VOL. VIT. C
34 OF THE CREATURES, AND THE CONDITION [BOOK II.
To the second we answer, that though the image of God were concreated with the soul by a supernatural operation of God s, that hinders not at all
that it should be a natural perfection to man s nature, and natural in that
very respect objected ; that because man came forth of God s hands by immediate creation, even therefore it was meet and requisite, yea, neces
sary, that those his rational creatures should have this image, as an endow ment which was to enter into the composition of their nature. He had not
else had that perfection, which, to the nature of their being intelligent
creatures, was due ; and so, though it were supernatural in the production of it by God as the efficient, yet natural to the subject that was made by God. It hinders this no more, than that, because the creation of the soul and the faculties of it, and the union of it with the body, were by a super natural operation of God s, that therefore he was not naturally a man.
But this last demonstration proceeds upon this, that if these creatures
themselves are, in the substance of them as creatures, mutable and apt to be changed, and would sink into their nothing, if God upheld them not by the word of his power (and this mutability, or aptness to perish, at least
is affirmed of them, with difference from Christ, as [he] is God, Heb. i. 10-12 : And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the
earth ; and the heavens are the works of thine hands : they shall perish, but thou remainest ; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment ; and
as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed
: but thou
art the same, and thy years shall not fail ), then much more are these
accidental perfections mutable and apt to be changed, further than as God
shall put a stability into them.