A53688:748
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.
What reason now can be imagined, why other Saints of God, who have the same Promise with David and Paul established unto them in the hand of the same Mediator,1 being equally taken into the same Covenant of Mercy and ⟨p. 137⟩Peace with them, may not make the same conclusion of Mercy with them; viz. That the Mercy, & Goodness of God will follow them all the days of their lives that they shall be delivered from every evil work, and preserved to God's Heavenly kingdom. To fly here to immediate Revelation as though God had particularly, and immediately assured some persons of their Perseverance, which begat in them a confidence, wherein others may not share with them, besides that it is destructive of all the vigour and strength of sundry, if not all the Arguments, produced against the Saints Perseverance, it is not in this place of any weight, or at all relative to the business in hand. For evident it is, that one of them even David, is thus confident upon the common account of Gods Relation unto all his Saints, as he is their Shepherd: one that takes care of them, and will see, not only whilst they abide with him, that they shall have Pasture and refreshment, but also will find them out in their wanderings and will not suffer any of them to be utterly lost. And he is a Shepherd equally in care and love to every one of his Saints, as he was to David. He gives them all the sure Mercies of David, 2even the Mercy contained & wrapped up in the Promise that was given to them, and what by virtue thereof, he did enjoy, with what he received from God in that Covenant-Relation wherein he stood. And for Paul, it is most evident that he grounded his Confidence and Consolation, merely upon the general Promise of the Presence of God with his, that he will never leave them nor forsake them, but be their God, and guide even unto death. Neither is there the least intimation of any other bottom of his Consolation herein. Now these being things wherein every Believer, even the weakest in the world, hath an equal share and interest with Paul, David, or any of the Saints in their generations, what should lye in their way, but that they also may grow up to this assurance, being called thereunto. I say they may grow up unto it: I do not say that every believer can with equal assurance of mind thus make their boasts in the Lord, and the continuance of his kindness to them.