The Doctrine of the Saints' Perseverance

As the practice and ways of some,¹ so the principles and teachings of others, have an eminent tendance unto offence and scandal. Indeed ever since the Reformation, there have been some endeavours against this truth to corrode it, and corrupt it: The first serious attempt for the total intercision of the faith of true believers, though not a final excision of the faith of elect believers, was made by one in the other University, who being a man of a debauched ⟨p. 8⟩& vicious conversation, no small part of the growing evils of the days wherein he lived, did yet cry out against the doctrines of others as tending to looseness and profaneness, upon whose breasts & teachings was written Holiness to the Lord all their days' Afterwards² Arminius with his Quinquarticulan Followers,³ taking up the matter, though they laboured with all their might to answer sundry of the Arguments whereby the truth of this doctrine is demonstrated,⁴ yet for a season were very faint and dubious in their own assertions: not daring to break in at once upon so great a Treasure of the Church of God:^* and therefore in their Synodalia are forced to Apologise for their Hesitation nine years before in their Conference at the Hague. But now of late since the glorious light of Socinianism hath broken forth from the pit, men by their new succours, are ^†grown bold to defy this great truth of the Gospel and grace of the Covenant, as an abomination for ever to be abhorred. Audax omnia perpeti Gens humana, ruit per vetitum nefas.

As the practice and waies of some,¹ so the principles and teachings of others, have an eminent tendance unto offence and scandall. Indeed ever since the Reformation, there have been some indeavours against this truth to corrode it, and corrupt it: The first serious attempt for the totall intercision of the faith of true believers, though not a final excision of the faith of elect belieers, was made by one in the other University, who being a man of a debauched