A64003:114
A treatise of Mr. Cottons clearing certain doubts concerning predestination together with an examination…A treatise of Mr. Cottons clearing certaine doubts concerning predestination together with an examination…
A treatise of Mr. Cottons clearing certain doubts concerning predestination together with an examination thereof / written by William Twice ...A treatise of Mr. Cottons clearing certaine doubts concerning predestination together with an examination thereof / written by William Twisse ...
London: printed by J.D. for Andrew Crook, 1646
AN EXAMINATION of a Treatise written by Master Cotton, for the clea… › QUESTION •.
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.
How convincing, or demonstrative, the reasons are, I address my self to consider: It is good to make progress in the investigation 1of truth. Austin professeth himself to be of the number of those qui proficiendo scribunt, & scribendo proficiunt: only our care must be, that we go not backward, and make things worse then we found them; which comes to pass (especially with good men) many times, not so much by falling into error, as by confusion of method; for hereby it comes to pass, that the passages opening the way to the investigation of truth, are stopped up, and we find our selves in a brake, and see no way out. To prevent them, I am persuaded, it is a profitable consideration, to think with our selves, that different opinions, especially amongst godly Divines, may be no other then the dividing of the truth between them.
How convincing, or demonstrative, the reasons are, I addresse my selfe to consider: It is good to make progresse in the investigation 1of truth. Austin professeth himselfe to be of the number of those qui proficiendo scribunt, & scribendo proficiunt: only our care must be, that we goe not backward, and make things worse then wee found them; which comes to passe (especially with good men) many times, not so much by falling into error, as by confusion of method; for hereby it comes to passe, that the passages opening the way to the investigation of truth, are stopt up, and we find our selves in a brake, and see no way out. To prevent them, I am perswaded, it is a profitable consideration, to thinke with our selves, that different opinions, especially amongst godly Divines, may be no other then the dividing of the truth betweene them.
- 1Examine.Examin.
About the object of predestination there hath bin a triple difference in opinion: some standing for massa nondum condita; others for massa pura, that is condita but nondum corrupta; others for massa corrupta: yet both Junius did endeavour: but very obscurely; and Piscator hath endeavoured very perspicuously to reduce them into one. If he failed therein, especially in some one particular, his failing, rightly observed and discerned, may open a way for the discovery of the entire truth. But let the issue thereof commend it self. Your phrase of useful truths I do not like; amongst Arminians, I often meet with such a course of arguing truth, by the usefulness of it; which is like the giving of the larger coat to him that is bigger, because it is fitter for him, when in the mean time he had no right unto it.