A53688:10
The Doctrine of the Saints' Perseverance
The doctrine of the saints perseverance, explained and confirmed, or, The certain permanency of their 1. acceptation with God & 2. sanctification from God manifested & proved from the 1. eternal principles 2. effectual causes 3. external means thereof ... vindicated in a full answer to the discourse of Mr. John Goodwin against it, in his book entitled Redemption redeemed : with some digressions concerning 1. the immediate effects of the death of Christ ... : with a discourse touching the epistles of Ignatius, the Episcopacy in them asserted, and some animadversions on Dr. H.H. his dissertations on that subject / by John Owen ...The doctrine of the saints perseverance, explained and confirmed, or, The certain permanency of their 1. acceptation with God & 2. sanctification from God manifested & proved from the 1. eternal principles 2. effectuall causes 3. externall meanes thereof ... vindicated in a full answer to the discourse of Mr. John Goodwin against it, in his book entituled Redemption redeemed : with some degressions concerning 1. the immediate effects of the death of Christ ... : with a discourse touching the epistles of Ignatius, the Episcopacy in them asserted, and some animadversions on Dr. H.H. his dissertations on that subject / by John Owen ...
London: printed by Leon. Lichfield, 1654
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
TO HIS HIGHNESS OLIVER LORD PROTECTOR OF THE COMMON-WEALTH OF England, Scotland and Ireland, with the Dominions thereof.
TO HIS HIGHNESSE OLIVER LORD PROTECTOR OF THE COMMON-WEALTH OF England, Scotland and Ireland, with the Dominions thereof.
SIR,
THE Wise man tells us, that no man knoweth Love or hatred, by all that is before him. The great variety wherein God dispenseth outward things in the World, with the many changes and alterations, which according to the counsel of his will, he continually works in the dispensations of them, will not allow them nakedly in themselves, to be evidences of the fountain from whence they flow. Seeing also, that the want, or abundance of them, may equally by the Goodness and Wisdom of Cod, be ordered and cast into an useful subserviency, to a Good infinitely transcending what is, or may be contained in them, there is no necessity, that in the distribution of them, God should walk according to any constant uniform Law of procedure, all the various alterations about them, answering one eternal purpose for a determinate end. Of Spiritual good things, there is another Reason and Condition; for as they are in themselves Fruits, Evidences and Pledges of an Eternal unchangeable love; so the want of them, in their whole kind, being not capable of a tendency to a greater Good than they are, the Dispensation of them, doth so far answer the eternal spring and Fountain from whence it floweth, as in respect of its substance and being, not to be obnoxious to any alteration. This is that which in the ensuing Treatise is contended for. In the middest of all the changes and mutations, which the infinitely wise providence of God, doth daily effect in the greater and lesser things of this World, as to the communication of his love in Jesus Christ, and the merciful gracious distributions of the unsearchable Riches of his Grace, and the hid Treasures thereof purchased by his blood, he knows no repentance. Of both these you have had full experience. And though your concernement in the former, hath been as eminent as that of any person whatever in these latter Ages of the World, yet your Interest in, and acquaintance with the latter, is, as of incomparable more importance in it