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…

It is true, all things were for him: but take the rest along with this; all things are created by him and for him: which clearly hath reference to his Godhead, one with the Father and holy Ghost, as Rom. 11. From him, and by him, and for him are all things: and Heb. 2. 10.

It is, I confess, Master Baynes his conceit, that it is as unmeet and preposterous for the members of Christ to be first thought upon in the womb of Gods counsel in predestination, as it is accounted monstrous and unnatural for the feet to be conceived in the womb before the head. And is it not as unnatural to have the feet brought forth before the head? Yet we know many thousands of Christs members were brought forth, both into the world of nature, and into the world of grace, before the man Christ. Yet am not I of their minds that think that any was elect before the predestination of Christ. I say with Aquinas, si consideretur praedestinatio Christi & nostra, quantum ad actum praedestinantis, sic una non est causa alterius, quia idem non est causa sui ipsius; sed eodem actu divino praedestinatus est Christus & nos: ergo praedestinatio Christi non est causa nostrae praedestinationis. Si verò consideretur quoad effectum & terminum, cum effectus nostrae praedestinationis sit gratia, & gloria, & adoptio siliorum; sic dicendum, quod utraque praedestinatio Christi causa est praedestinationis nostrae & efficiens & exemplaris. And I hope 'tis nothing unmeet that God should at once think of Christ and his elect; as at once he thought of Angels & worms; especially considering that Christ and his elect are correlatives; as he the head and they his mystical body. Nay at once God did from everlasting both know himself, and know all things in himself. Yet I am persuaded the chiefest motive to devise a priority of Christs predestination before others, was only this conceit, that if it be not prior, it must needs be posterior. But I have endeavoured in brief to show here (as elsewhere more at large) that the predestination of Christ is neither prior nor posterior to the predestination of the elect. And indeed most are so puzzled about devising a right place for the predestination of Christ amongst the decrees of God, that usually that is left quite out, because they know not where to find a fit place for it: and all because they presume he must be predestinate either