Archive for July 27th, 2010
Ford:
Obj. True, we have the Gospel preached to us, and plenty of precious means (so you call them), to know Christ: But to what purpose, so long as we are one way or other shut out, so as not one, nor all, nor any of these means shall ever have any effect on us for our salvation? For this purpose they allege,
1. An absolute and irrecoverable decree of God, that shuts out more than shall be received in.
2. The narrowing of Christ’s death by some, as to the extent of it, that a great many may well think themselves incapable of any benefit by it.
3. The lamentable estate of all men since Adam’s fall, under an invincible inability, to recover themselves from that estate, more than a dead man has to raise and lift himself out of the dust.
These are the stumbling blocks which too may lay in heaven’s way, to hinder their own salvation; and I cannot pass them by, without using my endeavors to remove them. For these have been, and still are, unhappy occasions to many, or putting off all the blame from themselves, yea, obliquely, by consequence at least, to charge God himself.
In answering these objections, I am no way bound to engage the controversies that still are among the learned, nor shall I resolve one way or other to the prejudice of any party, but leave them to end their quarrels as they can.
All the business I have to do, is to apply myself to the capacities (and if the Lord so please, to resolve doubts), of those that understand nothing, or very little of these matters, more than to make them so many stumbling-blocks, to hinder, and sad occasions of blessing themselves in their own hearts, which “they walk on in their own imaginations, to add drunkenness to thirst,” [Deut. 29:19]. And now I come to particulars after I have premised this one thing in general, viz.: That the decrees of God be as absolute, as any of the learned have made them; or the death of Christ as much narrowed in the extent of it, as ever it has been by any, yet my conclusion will stand firm, that men only are wanting to themselves, and no charge in the least can justly be laid upon God. . . .