An Answer to a Great Number of Blasphemous Cavillations

In very deed, if all were true which ye have heaped up in your unjust accusation, I for my part, would not ashamed to confess, that more were affirmed then plane scriptures do teach: but your additions which before we have touched, being removed, and that added which of malice ye have omitted, I hope, that our proposition shall be so plane and simple, that the reasonable man (if he be godly,) shall neither lack good reason nor plane scriptures to confirm the same. Albeit that ye are bold to affirm, that we have neither scripture nor good reason, and that our whole intention is contrary to true reason. But now let us form our own propositions.¹ God in his eternal and immutable counsels hath once appointed and decreed whom he would take to salvation, and whom also he would leave in ruin and perdition. Those whom he elected to salvation, he receiveth of free mercy without all respect had to their own merits or dignity, but of undeserved love gave them to his only son to be his inheritance, and then in time he calleth of purpose, who as his sheep obey his voice, and so do they attain to y• ⟨p. 28⟩joy of that kingdom which was prepared for them before the foundations of the world were laid. But to those whom he hath decreed to leave in perdition, is so shut up the entry of life, that either they are left continually corrupted in their blindness, or else if grace be offered, by them it is oppugned and obstinately refused, or if it seem to be received, that abideth but for a time only, and so they return to their blindness and crooked nature and infidelity again, in which finally they justly perish.