Attersoll:

Again, this providence of God in everything, teaches contentation¹ of mind in every estate; yea, in adversity when we lie under the cross, so that all things go against us, forasmuch as God’s providence has appointed us our lot and position. When we live in peace, and have abundance of outward means to maintain us, as plenty, riches, health, pleasure, friends, liberty, and such like, we must remember from whom they come, and so be put in mind to be thankful for them, because they come not to us by chance, but by God’s providence: so that we must not barely look upon them, nor wholly rest upon them, but behold his goodness and blessing in them. For if we consider aright that all prosperity comes from him, as meat, drink, ease, peace, and all plenty, who is not pricked forward, and stirred up unto thanksgiving towards so loving and bountiful a Father? Hence, it is that the apostle says, “In all things give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus” [1 Thess. 5:18.]. The prophet Isaiah² complains of the unthankfulness of the Jews toward God, “I have nourished and brought up children, but they have rebelled against me, the ox knows his owner, and the ass his mater’s crib, but Israel has not known me, my people have not obeyed me” [Isa. 1:4,5,6,7.]. The prophet David dealt otherwise, and behaved himself with greater duty, teaching us all what to do, when he says, “What shall I render unto the Lord for al his benefits towards me? I will take up the cup of salvation, and praise the name of the Lord” [Psal. 116:12.]. But when these outwards things, whereby life is maintained do fail us, we must not fail to remember, whence famine, war, pestilence, sickness, trouble, and affliction come, that there is no evil in the city which the Lord has not done, Amos 3:6.

Moreover, let us depend upon him for the time to come, assuring ourselves that he will not leave us, not forsake us. He gives us every day experience of his mercies, so that by remembrance of benefits received from him, we cannot doubt of his favor towards us. Lastly, this should be a very strong reason unto us, not to be unmeasurably dismayed, nor excessively offended, when offences and great evils break out among us, as oftentimes it falls out, whereby many are ready to shrink back, and others are much disquieted to see the church of God troubled. We are not to think it strange, or to forsake the faith through these scandals: for God would not suffer any evil to come to pass, unless out of that evil he were able to bring good, and out of that sin to bring forth righteousness, to the glory of his great name, and for the salvation of his dear church. He would never have left Adam unto himself, if he had not determined out of his fall, to gain praise to himself, and to provide better for his people. It is necessary that offences come, but woe to that man by whom they come: Let us not, therefore, fret ourselves because of the wicked men, neither be envious for the evil doers, for they shall soon be cut down like grass, and shall wither as the green herb. And we must rest, and be resolved assuredly, that God does not allow or favor their sin, nor purposes to free them from the guilt and punishment of sin, howsoever he turns there wicked purpose to a good end. For sin is the transgression of his Law [1 John 3:4, John 8:44.]. But God never swerves nor strays from the straight rule of his own will, neither puts wickedness into man, but as the earth affording sap and moisture as well as to evil trees, as the good, cannot be reproved, because the cause why the evil trees bring forth evil fruit is of themselves and their own nature, or as the sun that raises evil smells, and noisome favors from their unsavory puddles, cannot justly be found fault withal, because the reason thereof is not in the sunbeams, in those corrupt places, even so, when God disposes to good ends the sins of men that proceed from the instigation of the Devil, and abide in the ungodly themselves, he cannot be called the cause or author of sin, although by his providence he moves all things, yea, even the ungodly, that are not tbe able to move or remove themselves.

Use 3

Lastly, seeing God’s providence extends to everything that is, and disposes it according to his own pleasure, it directs us in our obedience, and puts us in mind of a Christian duty: namely, to be patient in adversity. If we consider that nothing can befall us, but that which is sent by the fatherly will and counsel of God, who has always just causes to exercise his children with chastisements, either to try them, or to humble them: we shall learn to submit ourselves to him, to hold our peace because he has done it, and to keep silence, that we offend not against him [Psal. 39:9.]. This will keep us that we do not rage against second causes, that we do not mutter and murmur against God. That we seek not the revenge our enemies.

William Attersoll, A Commentary Upon the Epistle of Saint Paule to Philemon (Printed at London by Tho. Cotes, and are to be sold by Michael Speake, dwelling at the sign of the blue Bible in Greene-Arbor, 1633), 302-304. [Some spelling modernized; marginal references cited inline; footnote mine; and underlining mine.]

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¹Archaic word denoting ‘to be content.’

²Original: Esay.

Holland:

Secondly, when I say I rest upon the creator of heaven and earth: it yields unto my heart a special comfort thus: God will assuredly keep me in all dangers, for like as no man is so tender over any work as he has made it, for he cannot abide to see it in any way abused. So God being a faithful creator tenderly loves all his creatures. And if the work of any way happen to miscarry he will turn it every way to frame it again to his will, as the potter, but if no means can prevail he dashes it all in pieces [Job 10:3.].

Henry Holland, The History of Adam, or the Foure-Fold State of Man (Printed for T.E. for Thomas Man, Dwelling in Paternoster-Row at the sign of the Talbort, 1602), 128b-129a. [Some spelling modernized; marginal reference cited inline; and underlining mine.]

Davenant:

1) Before we come to answer particular objections, we must put this author¹ in remembrance of these few things which he has not well considered.

1. First, where as he troubles himself with distinguishing the supralapsarian and the sublapsarian doctrine, calling them supralapsarians, who in ordering the eternal decrees of God concerning election and preterition or reprobation place them before the consideration of the fall, and of those sublapsarians, who place them after; this pains might well have been spared. For priorities and posteriorities in the eternal immanent decrees of God are but imaginations of man’s weak reason, and framed diversely (nay contrarily) as well by Schoolmen and Papists, as by Protestants, or those which are termed Calvinists; and finally they have little or no use in this controversy. Aquinas thought it no such matter of moment, whether predestination be considered before man’s fall and state of misery or after: Motus non accepit speciem a termino a quo, sed a termino ad quem. Nihil enim refert quantum ad rationen dealbationis, utrum ille qui dealbatur fuerit niger, aut pallidus, aut rubeus: & simileter nihil refert ad rationem prædestinationis, utrum aliquis prædistinetur in vitiam æternam a statumiseriæ vel non.² And for Reprobation, he seems rather to incline to their opinion, who place it in order of consideration before the fall in making it such a part of the divine providence as permits some men, deficere a fine.³ So that this distinction of supralapsarians and sublapsarians, as served this author to no other purpose but to the inculcating of the same objections again and again. John Davenant, Animadversions Written by the Right Reverend Father in God, John Lord Bishop of Sarisbury, upon the Treatise intitled, Gods love to Mankinde (London: Printed for Iohn Partridge, 1641), 160-161. [Some spelling modernized; some reformatting; italics original; side references to Scripture cited inline; references to external works cited as footnote; [bracketed footnote content mine; and underlining mine.]

2) For the positive act, which this author describes to be a pre-ordination unto hell-torments; those who comprise them both under this one word reprobation, do notwithstanding make this act or decree respective unto sin, as we have already shown. As for those of our Church in this controversy, whether predestination and non-predestination be grounded upon the prime absolute will of God, or upon his prescience of good and bad acts to be performed by men, they do and must understand by the word reprobation, not the decree of damnation of any particular persons, but only the absolute decree of non-preparing for them that effectual grace, qua certissum liberarentur, and of leaving them to such means of grace under which by their own default infallibiliter ruunt ad interitum voluntarium. Thus our English divines in their suffrage have described it, and thus the reverent and judicious Bishop of Norwich conceived it, when he made both Remonstrants and Puritans (as the term calls them) to err out of the true middle way which the Church of England holds in opposition to them both. In election, he makes this the error of the Remonstrants, “That they ground the absolute decree of men’s particular election upon the prescience of their faith and perseverance (as this author does) whereas that reverent Prelate holds with the Church of England, and Saint Augustine, Electio non invenit fideles, sed facit. As for the errors of the Puritans about Predestination or election, he reduces them to these heads, the excluding of the conditional decree or evangelical promise, the disordering of the decree of predestination by bringing it in before the fall, and the decree of Christ’s incarnation. As for the preparation and donation of such special grace per quam non solium possint credere aut obediant, he makes it the proper fruit of election: whereas he grants unto the non-elect only salutem gratiamque communem & sufficientem in mediis Divinutus ordinatis, si verbo Dei spirituque sancto deese noluerint. Unto which add that wherein all divines of all sides agree, “That God administers this common grace with an eternal and infallibly prescience that it will be rejected or abused by the non-elect, and with an absolute decree of permitting it so to be; and then it is clear, the English divines with the Church of England nec divertisse ad dextram in illorum sententiam qui ex præscita fida & perseverantia per liberam cooperationem arbitrii humani gratiæ prævenientis deducunt, nec ad finistram declinasse & gratiam sufficientem tollunt, &c. They are the words of that reverent Prelate Doctor Overall. John Davenant, Animadversions Written by the Right Reverend Father in God, John Lord Bishop of Sarisbury, upon the Treatise intitled, Gods love to Mankinde (London: Printed for Iohn Partridge, 1641), 199-201. [Some spelling modernized; some reformatting; italics original; side references to Scripture cited inline; references to external works cited as footnote; [bracketed footnote content mine; and underlining mine.]

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Davenant:

And last of all, absolute predestination, and absolute reprobation or non-election, do not exclude or deny the eternal intuition of faith and perseverance in the elect, nor the eternal consideration of infidelity and impenitency in the non-elect, but they deny such a consideration of good or bad acts foreseen in men as causes or precedes the different decrees of God in electing some men mercifully unto salvation, and leaving others through their own default to plunge themselves into eternal damnation.

If by casting off men for ever, you¹ mean the eternal exclusion of the damned from the blessed presence of God, and their eternal tormenting in hell, no side will deny but this is grounded upon the foresight of final continuance in sin: yet so, that as the final continuance of Peter in faith was not a cause, condition or motive foreseen, and so determining the divine will to elect him, but the divine election was the cause which afterwards produced in him that foreseen faith. So the foreseen final continuance of Judas in sin and infidelity was not it which determined the divine will to pass by him in his decree of electing singular persons unto the infallibly attainment of eternal life, but being thus passed by, God foresees that through the voluntary obstinacy of his own will (not by any necessitating violence of God’s decree) he will live and die in sin and impenitency, for his voluntary sin and impenitency deserve and undergo eternal torments.

Those who in ordering the eternal decrees, place predestination and negative reprobation before the consideration of the fall, are not few for number, nor men of any late sect. Scotus with the whole army of Scotists,² the greater number of the late School-Divines,are of this opinion: And Suarez by name, whose words are these, Probabiliorem existimo communem sententiam Theologorum asserentium electionem hominem prædestinatorum antecessisse permissionem originalis peccati.³

As for Calvin, he never troubled himself with these imaginary priorities and posteriorities in the eternal immanent operations of God: but all that he aimed at, was to prove, “That the fall foreseen could not be the cause or motive unto God of some men’s election and others’ reprobation.” As for the intuition or divine considertion of all mankind in statu lapso, Calvin in plain terms avouches it: Postquam Paulus, Deum ex perdita massa eligere & reprobare quos illi visim est docuit, quare & quomodo id fiat adeo non expedit ut potius expavescens, &c.

And this presupposition of sin considered in persons, whether elected or not elected, whether to be saved or to be damned, is most convenient for helping our understanding in this deep mystery. But if any shall thereby conceive that the eternal volitions or intuitions of God have any real posteriority or priority in the divine will and understanding, he deceives himself, and troubles others with vain jangling. Utilitas distinguendi hæc instantia rationis, non est, ut ille modus intelligendi retineater, sed ut viam aperiat veritati, quæ aperta relinquatur.

John Davenant, Animadversions Written by the Right Reverend Father in God, John Lord Bishop of Sarisbury, upon the Treatise intitled, Gods love to Mankinde (London: Printed for Iohn Partridge, 1641), 20-22.

[Some spelling modernized; italics original; and underlining mine.]

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¹Davenant’s opponent.

²Lib. 1. dist. 41. Lib. 3. dist. 19.

³In 3. disp. 5. p. 103.