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…

I had thought rather it had brought the knowledge of God and means of grace to them. Or rather is the very ⟨p. 265⟩bringing of it, or to speak more properly is the very means of grace it self. All which considered, I am yet to seek of your meaning, I find it so miserably involved, and that in the very close of all, enough to make any intelligent Reader despair to receive satisfaction from you, when in the very last act he shall find himself so far from making any tolerable construction of your words, thereby to pick out any sober meaning.

I had thought rather it had brought the knowledge of God and meanes of grace to them. Or rather is the very ⟨p. 265⟩bringing of it, or to speak more properly is the very means of grace it self. All which considered, I am yet to seek of your meaning, I finde it so miserably involved, and that in the very close of all, enough to make any intelligent Reader despaire to receive satisfaction from you, when in the very last act hee shall finde himselfe so farre from making any tolerable construction of your words, thereby to pick out any sober meaning.

Then again, by offering helps, you seem to imply some terms or condition whereupon it is offered them, but no such condition is expressed by you. If it had, perhaps thereby we might have taken the altitude. I mean the depth of your meaning throughout. The same grace of redemption bestows also (you say) sometimes some excellent though common graces. I have heard (I confess) you stand much upon common graces. But what they are, and to what end they tend, and whether absolutely or conditionally imparted according to your opinion: when I shall be sufficiently informed, I will do my best endeavour to weigh them in the balance of Christian and Scholastical examination, and accordingly to give them that due respect which belongs unto them. It may be about a third covenant, which they might seem to make, partly of grace and partly of works: I should not be much contentious. Yet it followeth not, that because they do bind the more to the keeping of the Covenant of works, as having more means and helps vouchsafed unto them; therefore it doth not make a third Covenant: You say it is not the helps of grace offered or given, that include men within any part of the covenant of grace, but the condition whereupon it is offered or given: that is, whereupon they are offered or given, to wit, the helps of grace.