Influences of the life of grace

3. This Adversary, if he would turn the word ratio, reason, into the word cause, or concurrence, would see himself at a loss; it will follow that the cause why Adam sinned, is because God denied his causative concurrence, and so the Argument shall hurt his cause; for the concurrence of God is causative, then must the Lords withdrawing of his concurring influence be the collateral cause of Adams sinning, except he say that man hath in his power the concurrence of God, and if so, Adam and all mens free-will must be Lord of omnipotency and omnipotent concurrences, and then why but God must rather make prayers and requests to our free-will to incline and move his omnipotency to concur ⟨image 14⟩to acts of obedience, then free-will should make prayers to God that he should by his grace incline our hearts to his testimonies. 2. Must not the created free-will of man by this be placed in the royal seat and throne of divine providence, to domineer over and dispose of all free acts of obedience and disobedience as it seems good to the Creature? And (3.) so must the sovereign King be Lord of all free acts at the second hand, with the good leave of created free-will. And (4.) the number of all free actings of final obedience and disobedience, and of the saved and damned, must be in the hand of created free-will, and that primarily, and so in the creatures power must be the Book of Life; first by way of free determination, and with the Lord and the Lamb the Book of Life is but as a second copy, and a conditional roll, containing so many as the creature first determines. (5.) And so must our Immanuel, God manifested in the flesh, ere he can get entrance in the world, have a pass subscribed by free-will, and God shall come in the flesh and be Mediator and King absolutely, as man will, it's not then eternal love who foreordained the medicine, and the Physician before ever the man was sick; and if free-will had so pleased, Christ God man should have been holden out of the world, and the gates for ever closed on him, so as knock as he pleaseth, free-will might have refused to open and let him in. (6.) Experimental grace and pardoning mercy might have stood afar off, and lost man never have tasted thereof, yea such riches of grace should never have been in the world. (7.) Mans free-will, if it be the only determiner of it self and his own free acts;

3. This Adversary, if he would turne the word ratio, reason, into the word cause, or concurrence, would see himself at a loss; it will follow that the cause why Adam sinned, is because God denied his causative concurrence, and so the Argument shall hurt his cause; for the concurrence of God is causative, then must the Lords withdrawing of his concurring influence be the collateral cause of Adams sinning, except he say that man hath in his power the concurrence of God, and if so, Adam and all mens free-will must be Lord of omnipotency and omnipotent concurrences, and then why but God must rather make prayers and requests to our free-will to incline and move his omnipotency to concur