A89737:852
The orthodox evangelist. Or A treatise wherein many great evangelical truths (not a few…
The orthodox evangelist. Or A treatise wherein many great evangelical truths (not a few whereof are much opposed and eclipsed in this perilous hour of the passion of the Gospel) are briefly discussed, cleared, and confirmed: as a further help, for the begetting, and establishing of the faith which is in Jesus. As also the state of the blessed, where; of the condition of their souls from the instant of their dissolution: and of their persons after their resurrection. By John Norton, teacher of the church at Ipswich in New England.The orthodox evangelist. Or A treatise wherein many great evangelical truths (not a few whereof are much opposed and eclipsed in this perillous hour of the passion of the Gospel) are briefly discussed, cleared, and confirmed: as a further help, for the begeting, and establishing of the faith which is in Jesus. As also the state of the blessed, where; of the condition of their souls from the instant of their dissolution: and of their persons after their resurrection. By John Norton, teacher of the church at Ipswich in New England.
London: printed by John Macock for Henry Cripps, 1654
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
Doctor Ames (out of whom this Argument is taken) never intended it to this purpose: who (as he affirms in the same tract elsewhere; that other preparatory dispositions have not a certain and infallible connection with salvation: so) in this very place affirms, that that hearing of the word by which faith is wrought, hath [scil. to us,] no necessary connection with salvation:1 for who (saith he) can promise before hand that God will give faith thereby: and concludes it therefore to be saving, not formally, but causally; viz. instrumentally.
Doctour Ames (out of whom this Argument is taken) never intended it to this purpose: who (as he affirms in the same tract elsewhere; that other preparatory dispositions have not a certain and infallible connexion with salvation: so) in this very place affirms, that that hearing of the word by which faith is wrought, hath [scil. to us,] no necessary connexion with salvation:1 for who (saith he) can promise before hand that God will give faith thereby: and concludes it therefore to be saving, not formally, but causally; viz. instrumentally.
- 1Disp. Theolog. de Praep. peccat. ad conver.
Obj 6. If in the conversion of a sinner, there be a term from which, namely sin; and a term to which, namely faith: then there must be a departing of the soul from sin, the term from which; before it can attain unto faith, the term to which:
Ans. The In-come of grace to, and the out-going of sin from the soul, is not in strictness, to be compared unto two things, (for sin is not a thing, but a corrupt privation of a thing) succeeding one another in the same place, after the order of a local mutation properly; where one of those things must give way, by being outed from its place, before the other can come in: But the In-come of the Spirit of grace into the soul, is after the manner of a habit, succeeding in the room of its contrary privation, and in such alterations of the subject; the privation doth not first go out, and the habit then come in: but the in-come of the habit, causeth the out-going of the privation: as we see in knowledge, and ignorance in the soul; sight and blindness in the eye; light and darkness in the air; life and death in the body. Death did not first go out of the body of Lazarus, or of the Shunamites child, and then life come in: nor doth darkness first leave the air, and then light come in: but the in-come of life was the expelling of death: