An Answer to a Great Number of Blasphemous Cavillations

The places of Isaiah and Jeremiah,¹ I have before declared, & therefore in few words I will touch the purpose of the holy Ghost, which was not to instruct that people whom, when, or how many God had elected to lief everlasting in Christ Jesus his Son, or whom for just causes, he had reprobated, but to convict them of their manifest, and most unthankful defection, and to take from them, all excuses, both the prophets do declare, how gently God had entreated them, yea how beneficial he had been to their fathers, whom he called from ignorance, whom he nourished in •is own knowledge, and at length planted, and hedged them about with all munition and necessary defence. So that now the children declining to Idolatry could have no excuse. for their fathers Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David, whom he calleth the faithful seed, gave unto them no such example.² But how sayeth he, art thou now changed, to be unto me a degenerate vineyard? what maketh this, I pray you, for your purpose, or for to prove, that these, that be elected in Christ Jesus, to lief everlasting, may become reprobates? If I should answer, that the stock which was planted faithful, remained faithful, but that it produced many rotten, ⟨p. 247⟩and unfruitful branches, which therefore, must needs be cut of, none of your sect were able to confute me. for I should have the Apostle for my warrant. But I delight in nothing so much, as in the simple and native meaning of the scriptures, as they be alleged in their own places by the holy Ghost.³ The places of the prophets Isaiah, and Hoseas, have not both one end. for Isaiah in the 14 chapter doth promise in the person of God, that he would show mercy to Jacob, and that he would choose Israel again: yea that he would destroy Babylon, for their sake, and so would choose his people to him self again, whom for a time, he appeared to have rejected, so that other lords then he, did bear rule over them.⁴ But Hoseas in the contrary sense affirmeth, that because they had abused the long patience of God, and had not righteously considered, how tenderly he had entreated them, that therefore should the sword rsh in into the city, that it should destroy, and devour, so that none should be found to relieve them. This I doubt not, is the meaning of both the prophets.