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…

As for the allusion you find in the word [Greek or Hebrew] to the common course of Judges and suits in the law, or of wrestling in the Olympians, or of Captains in the war, who (as you say, but without any proof) were wont conscribere, to design aforehand, or set down in writing the names of such adversaries as were to have their causes or trials tried before them. I have no great edge to oppose it. But Calvin goes no further then scripture, to discover unto us this allusion: Porro (saith he) haec metaphora inde sumpta est quod aeternum Dei consilium, quo ordinati sunt fideles ad salutem liber vocatur. And Revel. 20. we read of another book besides the book of life, wherein the deeds of wicked men are written, and is not there written (think we) their condemnation also? As for the word [Greek or Hebrew] of old, I confess there is no native force therein to extend it to the signification of eternity: Nay, Mar. 15. 44. it is applied to a very little time before; for Pilate demands of Joseph of Arimathea, that ⟨p. 134⟩came unto him boldly to ask the body of Jesus, whether he were dead [Greek or Hebrew] already; yet it is appliable even to eternity, neither doth it signify any definite time rising upwards. And, although this phrase of old be distinguished from eternity, Jer. 31. 3. yet it is not Habac. 1. 12. And as the words are different in the hebrew, so neither of them is rendered by [Greek or Hebrew] in the greek: but we extend not the signification of it to eternity by any force of the word, but from the matter whereof he treats, which is the ordination and decree of God, which every intelligent and orthodox Divine acknowledgeth to be eternal; and I find it wondrous strange so worthy a Divine as your self should be of any other opinion. And, I pray, why might not this designation be from eternity, as well as 4040. years before, such ungodly men were crept in amongst the people of God? Belike not till then was the devil assigned to be an enemy to the woman; for it is expressly said, God would put enmity between the woman and the serpent, between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent. Surely, that place only signifies what Gods eternal purpose was in this particular, then breaking out and manifesting it self; not that then the Lord did begin to ordain it: For, nothing in the nature of God is temporal.