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 desire of the Repentance and life of Reprobates which you attribute unto God, you keep your course I confess in strange expressions, manifestly contradictious to the nature of God, and to your self.

As for the desire of the Repentance and life of Reprobates which you attribute unto God, you keep your course I consesse in strange expressions, manifestly contradictious to the nature of God, and to your self.

Can you persuade your self that ever the world will be brought about to believe, or any intelligent or sober man amongst them, that God desires the repentance and life of them, whom he hath determined from everlasting to deprive of those helps without which no man can repent and be saved? yet that he doth deprive them hereof, it is your own most express profession in the former Section.

Can you perswade your self that ever the world will bee brought about to beleeve, or any intelligent or sober man amongst them, that God desires the repentance and life of them, whom hee hath determined from everlasting to deprive of those helps without which no man can repent and bee saved? yet that hee doth deprive them hereof, it is your own most expresse profession in the former Section.

As for hardening them; doth he not harden whom he will? and hath he not from everlasting ordained all Reprobates unto destruction? As for any desire hereof in God, I account it a very absurd thing, to treat of any will in God under the notion of desire in proper speech; Speak we of the desires of weak men, who cannot effect what they will; but be advised to spare to attribute any desires to God in proper speech, as you would spare to attribute to him, eyes and ears, and hands, and heart, in proper speech, and though God be pleased in condescension to our capacities to take upon him our infirmities, let us not recompense his goodness so ill, as to conceive of his nature as obnoxious to the same imperfections whereto our natures are: When you say that the Word enables not only the Elect, but others to perform such duties, and having but erst spoken of the duty of repentance, and this being delivered in the same breath, whereto doth this tend, but to work in your Reader an opinion, that even Reprobates are enabled by the Word to perform the duty of Repentance? which you know full well cannot be affirmed by you without palpable contradiction to your self, as well as to the truth of God, and therefore I wonder not a little what you mean to carry your self in this your Discourse in such sort as to draw so near to such foul assertions. Therefore you forbear to name particularly the duty of Repentance, but flee to generals and say that even Reprobates are enabled by the Word, to perform such duties in which their natural conscience would excuse them.