A treatise of miscellany questions wherein many useful questions and cases of conscience are…A treatise of miscellany questions wherein many usefull questions and cases of conscience are…

Surely this is not the way (as is pretended) to ease and encourage the troubled and terrified conscience: Neither can they by their principles minister solid comfort to a sinner, tempted to despair of mercy. All the scrupulosity and unsatisfaction of conscience which they object against our Doctrine ⟨p. 278⟩(that Christ died not for all, but for the Elect only whom the Father gave him) followeth as much yea more (as I shall show afterwards) upon their own way. First of all when they give comfort and encouragement to sinners upon this ground, that Christ hath dyed for all upon condition of faith, tis to be remembered that conditio nihil ponit in re, the generality of men can draw no result from the death of Christ (as it is set forth by their Doctrine) but that Christ hath by his death made sure this proposition, that whoever believes on him shall be saved, or that all men shall be saved, if all men believe: Now a conditional proposition is true in the connection of one thing to another, (if this be that shall be) although neither the one nor the other shall ever have an actual existence. If Satan and wicked men get their will, Christ shall have no Church on earth, if the Elect fall away from faith and obedience they shall perish, If the damned in hell had place and grace to repent and to believe in Christ, they should be saved, or the like. So what solid comfort can the soul have from that conditional proposition (which is all the encouragement they do or dare give from the death of Christ, to all men) all men shall be saved by Christ if they believe on him. Is it not as true and as certain, (may a sinner think with himself) that no man on earth shall be saved, if no man on earth believe, and for my part, if I believe not I shall be damned? If all this hang upon the condition of my believing (saith the troubled conscience) why then, hath not Christ merited to m•e, and will he not give me the grace of believing? That new Doctrine answereth that Christ hath merited faith and gives the grace of believing not to all, but to the Elect only, that God hath in his eternal decree, intended to pass by in the dispensation of his grace the greatest part of mankind, and to keep back from them that grace without which he knows they cannot believe on Jesus Christ:

Surely this is not the way (as is pretended) to ease and encourage the troubled and terrified conscience: Neither can they by their principles minister solid comfort to a sinner, tempted to despair of mércy. All the scrupulosity and unsatisfaction of conscience which they object against our Doctrine