An answer to the discourse of Mr. William Sherlock, touching the knowledge of Christ,…

Various ways attempted!¹ what distinct and separate from Christ? Was not Christ in the first plot and design of our recovery? Was not he the Lamb slain, from the foundation of the world? Immediately after the Fall, he was promised in the Seed of the woman, and after that first Gospel, the light was still a breaking out in a succession of Promises and Sacrifices: Various ways, saith the Author, were attempted to little Success; what! was it to any success at all? Was ever any one lost son of Adam saved without a Christ, without a Satisfaction? No Christian ears will endure such an opinion; however, God having a design in those ways, as the Author imports; why did not those plots take effect, and save Christ the labour of coming in the flesh? May it become his infinite wisdom to attempt this and that, and at last light upon the right way? Or may it comport with his infinite power to be posed and nonplussed, and that in so great a concern, as Man's recovery? To think so, is, as S. Austin saith, To hazard the first Article of our Creed, ²Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem: And, if in those various ways there could be an obstacle to the Almighty, ⟨p. 109⟩what might it be? Was it for want of a satisfaction? No, according to our Author that was not necessary, God might have pardoned without it; or was it because the corrupt obstinate Will of man did frustrate those designs? Very well, after that last greatest design by Christ, may it not do the same? According to our Author, God as passionately desirous, and restlessly jealous as he is in this matter, affords yet no higher than suasory resistible Grace; and let any judge, how reconcilable such opinions are with infinite wisdom or power, or indeed with the Scripture, which tells us, That he doth whatsoever he pleases: Psal. 115.3. It's true, the great Grotius glosses on that place thus, Ideò homo libertatem habet, quia Deus voluit, which is true within the Text; but if that liberty be of so vast a latitude, that it may frustrate so great a design, as that of Salvation by Christ, the truth of the Text cannot possibly consist.

Various ways attempted!¹