A64003:431
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 5: The Fifth Doubt.
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.
His eternal power and God-head the Apostle tells us is made manifest by his works, no such content doth he make of the Law written in our hearts, Rom. 2. 14. but when you say this is done to this end to move them to seek after the Lord, you fall upon the incongruity formerly spoken of. For the very administration of Gods providence, is the moving of them to seek after the Lord.
His eternall power and God-head the Apostle tels us is made manifest by his works, no such content doth hee make of the Law writen in our hearts, Rom. 2. 14. but when you say this is done to this end to move them to seek after the Lord, you fall upon the incongruity formerly spoken of. For the very administration of Gods providence, is the moving of them to seek after the Lord.
I say the administration of Gods providence in his works, moves men, as the Apostle signifies, to seek after the Lord. The Apostle no where refers this to the Law written in mens hearts; but you put all together, and that for a special purpose as it 1serves. For the phrase of seeking after the Lord, Act. 17. seems only to import the seeking after his nature, manifested by his works; but you desire (as it seems) to bend it to denote such a seeking after the Lord, as whereby to pacify ⟨p. 226⟩him, and to find mercy from him. In which sense you say it was far more accommodable to the Law of God written in mans heart, then to the Administration of his providence in his works; and therefore you couple both these courses together, and then assign the end of them both, to seek after the Lord; which through the ambiguous signification thereof, is applicable to both; though the Apostle utters it in such a sense only, as whereby it is applied to one course only, namely to the administration of his providence in his works. Which yet I do not conceive to proceed from any ill mind in you, but out of a desire to hold our tenets up in that course of opinion which pleaseth us, which is a common fault of all.