The next clause in the description of these seducers is, That [Turning the grace of our God into wantonness:] Where you may take notice. 1. Of their Filthiness and brutish course of life, implied in the word [wantonness,] in the Original, [Greek or Hebrew], a word proper to luxury, and the impurities of lust, it is derived from Alpha, an augmentative Particle: and Selga, the name of a Town in Pisidia (saith Suidus) whose inhabitants were infamous for Sodomy, and weakening Nature by such prodigious filthiness as is not fit to be named among Saints: and the persons here noted the school of Simon. The Nicholaitans, the Gnostics, and other impure Heretics of that age were for promiscuous commixtures, and the free use of their fellow creatures (as some carnal wretches in our age have learned to speak) without any respect to conjugal relation, and those restraints which God and nature, and all civil Nations have laid upon the lusts of man, as if men should use no more distinction and confinement then the bests, yea gave up themselves to all manner of unnatural lust, as in the process of this Epistle, we shall more fully discover. 2. The occasion and encouragement of this wantonness, which doubleth the iniquity of it▪ and is [the grace of God,] by which is meant the Gospel when he called the grace of God, as Tit. 2. 11, the grace of God hath appeared unto us, teaching us, &c. and in the Gospel chiefly, they abused the Doctrine of Christian liberty, and free justification by Christ, this is primarily intended: you may by analogy, enlarge the expression to commit all those other Doctrines which libertines are apt to abuse; yea those gracious providences▪ which wicked men do convert into fuel and nourishment for their sins. 3. The manner how so excellent a thing as the grace of God, was made pliable to so vile a purpose, for a man would wounder that things at so great and infinite a distance as the grace of God and filthy lusts, should ever be ⟨p. 205⟩brought to cast an aspect upon one another; that is showed in the word [turning] in the Original [Greek or Hebrew] resting, transferring from its proper use. They offered violence to the Doctrine of grace, that it might be conscious to such a monstrous birth and production, as filthy lusts and carnal pleasures. 4.
The next clause in the description of these seducers is, That [Turning the grace of our God into wantonness:] Where you may take notice. 1. Of their Filthyness and bruitish course of life, implyed in the word [wantonness,] in the Original, 〈non-Latin alphabet〉, a word proper to luxury, and the impurities of lust, it is derived from Alpha, an augmentative Particle: and Selga, the name of a Town in Pisidia (saith Suidus) whose inhabitants were infamous for Sodomi, and weakening Nature by such prodigious filthiness as is not fit to be named among Saints: and the persons here noted the school of Simon. The Nicholaitans, the Gnostickes, and other impure Hereticks of that age were for promiscuous commixtures, and the free use of their fellow creatures (as some carnal wretches in our age have learned to speak) without any respect to conjugal relation, and those restraints which God and nature, and all civil Nations have layd upon the lusts of man, as if men should use no more distinction and confinement then the bests, yea gave up themselves to all manner of unnatural lust, as in the process of this Epistle, we shall more fully discover. 2. The occasion and incouragement of this wantonness, which doubleth the iniquity of it▪ and is [the grace of God,] by which is meant the Gospel when he called the grace of God, as Tit. 2. 11, the grace of God hath appeared unto us, teaching us, &c. and in the Gospel chiefly, they abused the Doctrine of Christian liberty, and free justification by Christ, this is primarily intended: you may by analogie, inlarge the expression to commit all those other Doctrines which libertines are apt to abuse; yea those gracious providences▪ which wicked men do convert into fuel and nourishment for their sins. 3. The manner how so excellent a thing as the grace of God, was made pliable to so vile a purpose, for a man would wounder that things at so great and infinite a distance as the grace of God and filthy lusts, should ever be ⟨p. 205⟩brought to cast an aspect upon one another; that is shewed in the word [turning] in the Original 〈non-Latin alphabet〉 resting, transferring from its proper use. They offered violence to the Doctrine of grace, that it might be conscious to such a monstrous birth and production, as filthy lusts and carnal pleasures. 4.
