The real Christian, or, A treatise of effectual calling wherein the work of God…

By the Answer to this Question we may a little call into question, that high Divinity which many have published, yea, and given it for a note of a true and sound Christian, of one who is a Son, ¹and not a Slave, viz. for a man to worship and serve God for the love of himself, though there were neither Hell to punish, nor Heaven to reward. I meet with this Divinity in several persons, I shall name but three. Clemens Alex. Strom. l. 4. hath many lines to this purpose: of our late Divines, Calonius, an angry Lutheran, but for whose labours against the Socinians, and that particular piece of Crellius de Deo uno patre, I bless God. He answered Schmalrius (that gross Heretic) well enough, and might have answered him full enough, though he had not added this note of distinction between Servants and Sons. Servants, or Mercenaries, worship God for reward, or fear of punishment: (if these be all the motives, they are Servants and Mercenaries indeed) Sons from the mere study of the glory of God, so that if there were neither reward nor punishment, neither heaven nor hell, nevertheless for the praise of God alone, they would consecrate and give themselves up to the worship of God. This I hope agrees with the Scripture, but not one that he names. I care the less than for these two, for no Scripture quoted by either of them to prove it: but there is a third person who moves me more than these: As for Calonius, I only say ⟨p. 303⟩to him, what I find him frequently alleging against us, and some who are truly Heretics, and it stands in the front of his Answers, This is [Greek or Hebrew], and we must not be wise above that which is written. ²I am sure though this Divinity be written in Calonius, Clem. Alex. and others, yet it is not written by the Prophets or the Apostles, we shall fear the less: but the other person is our learned and holy Perkins, whom I much value; and that he hath put it down for a Catechetical head, supposing this to be a fundamental truth; this is more than the other: about the end of his fourth principle the question is moved.

By the Answer to this Question we may a little call into question, that high Divinity which many have published, yea, and given it for a note of a true and sound Christian, of one who is a Son,