A treatise of original sin ... proving that it is

Secondly, If to be that liberty doth consist in an active indifferency to good or evil, then the will is not free, because the former part of this description (upon Scripture-grounds) can no ways be accommodated to the will. This description is generally received and applauded by Arminians and Jesuits as the best, (though Gibieus saith it is the worst) making the very formal nature of liberty to consist herein, that when all requisites to an action are supposed, yet the will can do, or not do; and this they extend even to spiritual objects, to that great work of conversion, affirming, when grace doth assist and help all it can; (so that Ex parte Dei, all things are ready that do concur to our conversion;) yet the will, because it is free, retaineth an active indifferency, either to accept of this grace offered, or to reject it. This description we do no ways acknowledge, as that which depriveth God, Christ, and the glorified Saints from liberty; and besides, liberty being perfection, and so in the most perfect manner in the most perfect subjects, this doth debase it making a defect part of this perfection: It is wholly absurd to make a power to sin part of liberty: Indeed this was a concomitant of Adam's liberty, but not because liberty, but because his will was mutable and changeable, so that if he had been corroborated and confirmed in grace, he had not put forth any such experience of his liberty: well though we cannot assent to it, yet let it be supposed to be true; The Scripture is very clear and pregnant, That a man hath no such indifferent power in him to good or evil; Indeed to evil, that he is carried out unto with all delight, he can of himself kill himself, but he cannot of himself give life to himself: But as for the other part, to be able to love what is good, to believe and to turn himself unto God, this is above his power, for the order of nature and of grace differ as much, as the order of sense and reason; so that as the sensitive faculty cannot put forth acts of reason, (the eye cannot discourse and reason,) so neither can the rational faculties put forth the acts of grace, which come from a divine nature, and that which is borne from above; All these places which describe man in a spiritual sense to be blind in mind, deaf in ears, and hardened in understanding, yea which say, he is dead in sin;

Secondly, If to be that liberty doth consist in an active indifferency to good or evil, then the will is not free, because the former part of this description (upon Scripture-grounds) can no wayes be accommodated to the will. This description is generally received and applauded by Arminians and Jesuites as the best, (though Gibieus saith it is the worst) making the very formal nature of liberty to consist herein, that when all requisites to an action are supposed, yet the will can do, or not do; and this they extend even to spiritual objects, to that great work of conversion, affirming, when grace doth assist and help all it can; (so that Ex parte Dei, all things are ready that do concurre to our conversion;) yet the will, because it is free, retaineth an active indifferency, either to accept of this grace offered, or to reject it. This description we do no wayes acknowledge, as that which depriveth God, Christ, and the glorified Saints from liberty; and besides, liberty being perfection, and so in the most perfect manner in the most perfect subjects, this doth debase it making a defect part of this perfection: It is wholly absurd to make a power to sinne part of liberty: Indeed this was a concomitant of Adam's liberty, but not because liberty, but because his will was mutable and changeable, so that if he had been corroborated and confirmed in grace, he had not put forth any such experience of his liberty: well though we cannot assent to it, yet let it be supposed to be true; The Scripture is very clear and pregnant, That a man hath no such indifferent power in him to good or evil; Indeed to evil, that he is carried out unto with all delight, he can of himself kill himself, but he cannot of himself give life to himself: But as for the other part, to be able to love what is good, to believe and to turn himself unto God, this is above his power, for the order of nature and of grace differ as much, as the order of sense and reason; so that as the sensitive faculty cannot put forth acts of reason, (the eie cannot discourse and reason,) so neither can the rational faculties put forth the acts of grace, which come from a divine nature, and that which is borne from above; All these places which describe man in a spiritual sense to be blind in mind, deaf in eares, and hardned in understanding, yea which say, he is dead in sinne;