John Owen · 53 of 73

Chapter XII. Objections to the doctrine refuted. · Part 6

2. It is true, there is a fear that love cherisheth, — the fear that God hath promised in the covenant of grace to preserve in our hearts all our days; but to say it cherisheth the fear we speak of, and which the Holy Ghost in this place intendeth, is expressly to make the Holy Ghost a liar, and to contradict him to his face.

3. What love in us is that that the flesh can or may “entice to folly?” Are the fruits of the Spirit of God, the graces of his own working and creating in us, of such a temper and constitution as that they may be enticed to uncleanness and folly? And is it possible that such a thought should enter into the heart of a man professing the doctrine of the gospel? that ink should stain paper with such filth cast upon the Spirit and grace of God? The fear of hell erewhile was suited to the use of the flesh, but now, it seems, it serves to keep the love of God itself in order, that otherwise would wax wanton, fleshly, and foolish! Foolish love, that will attempt to cast out this tormenting fear, not being able to preserve itself from folly without its assistance!

Sect. 15 is spent in an answer endeavoured to an objection placed in the beginning of it, in these words:—

“If it be farther demanded, ‘But doth it not argue servility in men to be drawn by the iron cord of the fear of hell to do what is their duty to do? or doth any other service or obedience become sons and children but only that which is free and proceedeth from love?’ ”

Hereunto you have a threefold answer returned:—

First, “That God requires that it should be so;” which is a downright begging of the question.

Secondly, He puts a difference between the obedience of children to their parents and of the saints unto God, the discourse whereof discovering some mysteries of the new doctrine of grace, much pressed and insisted on, take as follows:— “There is a very different consideration of the obedience of children to their natural parents, and of the obedience of the children of God unto their heavenly Father. The obedience of the former is but by the inspiration of nature, and is an act not so much raised by deliberation or flowing from the will, by an interposure of judgment and conscience to produce the election, as arising from an innate propension in men, accompanying the very constituting principles of their nature and being; whereas the latter, the obedience of the children of God, is taught by precepts, and the principle of it, I mean that rational frame of heart out of which they subject themselves to God, is planted in the souls of men by the engagement of reason, judgment, and conscience, to consider those grounds, arguments, and motives, by which their heavenly Father judgeth it meet to work and fashion them unto such a frame. So that though the obedience of natural children to their natural parents be the more genuine and commendable when it flows freely from the pure instinct of nature, and is not drawn from them by fear of punishment, yet the obedience of the children of God is then most genuine and commendable, and like unto itself, when it is produced and raised in the soul by a joint influence and contribution, not of one, or of some, but of all those arguments, reasons, motives, inducements whatever, and how many soever they be, by which their heavenly Father useth to plant and work it in them; for in this case, and in this only, it hath most of God, of the Spirit of God, of the wisdom of God, of the goodness of God. In and upon this account it is likeliest to be most free, uniform, and permanent.”

The sum of this answer amounts to these three things:— First, That there is an instinct or inspiration of nature in children to yield obedience to their parents. Secondly, That there is no such spiritual instinct or inclination in the saints to yield obedience to God. Thirdly, That the obedience of the saints ariseth merely and solely from such considerations of the reason of that obedience as they apprehend, in contradiction to any such genuine principles as might incline their hearts thereunto.

1. For the first, that the obedience of children to their parents, though it be a prime dictate of the law of nature wherewith they are endued, proceedeth from a pure instinct, any otherwise than as a principle suiting and inclining them to the acts of that obedience, so as to exclude the promoting and carrying of it on upon the moral consideration of duty, piety, etc., it is in vain for Mr Goodwin to go about to persuade us, unless he could not only corrode the word of God, where it presseth that obedience as a duty, but also charm us into beasts of the field, which are acted by such a brute instinct, not to be improved, stirred up, or drawn forth into exercise by deliberation or consideration. There is, it is true, in children an impress of the power of the law of nature, suiting them to obedience (which yet in many hath been quite cast out and obliterated, being none of the constituting principles of their nature, which, whilst they have their being as such, cannot be thrown out of them), and carrying them out unto it with delight, ease, and complacency, as habits do to suitable actings; but withal that this principle is not regulated and directed, as our obedience to God, by a rule, and stirred up to exert itself, and [that] they in whom it is [are not] provoked by rational and conscientious considerations to the performance of their duty in that obedience, is so contrary to the experience, I suppose, of all sharers with us in our mortality, that it will hardly be admitted into debate.

2. The worst part of this story lies in the middle of it, in the exclusion of any such spiritual principle in believers as should carry them out unto obedience, at least to any such as is not begotten in their minds by “rational considerations” Whatever may be granted of acquired habits of grace (which that the first should be, that a spiritual habit should be acquired by natural actings, is a most ridiculous fiction), all infused habits of grace that should imprint upon the soul a new natural inclination to obedience, that should fashion and frame the hearts of men into a state and condition suited for, and carry them out unto, spiritual obedience, are here decried. All, it seems, that the Scripture hath told us of our utter insufficiency, deadness, disability, indisposedness to any thing that is good, without a new life and principle; all that we have apprehended and believed concerning the new heart and Spirit given us, the new nature, new creature, divine nature, inner man, grace in the heart, making the root good that the fruit may be so; all that the saints have expressed concerning their delight in God, love to God upon the account of his writing his laws in their hearts and spirits, — is a mere delusion. There is no principle of any heavenly, spiritual life, no new nature, with its bent and instinct lying towards God and obedience to him, wrought in the saints, or bestowed on them, by the Holy Spirit of grace. If this be so, we may even fairly shut our Bibles, and go learn this new gospel of such as are able to instruct us therein. Wherefore, I say, —

3. That as in children there is an instinct, an inclination of nature, to induce them and carry them out to obedience to their natural parents, which yet is directed, regulated, provoked, and stirred up, and they thereby, to that obedience, by motives and considerations suited to work upon their minds and consciences, to prevail with them thereunto: so also in believers, the children of God, who are “begotten of the will of God,” by the “word of truth,” and “born again, not of the will of the flesh, but of the will of God,” there is a new spiritual principle, a constituting principle of their spiritual lives, wrought and implanted in them by the Spirit of principle of faith and love, enabling them for, suiting them unto, and inciting them to, that obedience which is acceptable and well-pleasing to their Father which is in heaven; in which obedience, as they are regulated by the word, so they are stirred up unto it by all those motives which the Lord in his infinite wisdom hath fitted to prevail on persons endued with such a principle from himself as they are. It is not incumbent on me to enter upon the proof and demonstration of a title to a truth which the saints of God have held so long in unquestionable possession, nothing at all being brought to invalidate it but only a bare insinuation that it is not so. Then, —

4. I deny not but that the saints of God are stirred up to obedience by all the considerations and inducements which God lays before them and proposeth to them for that end and purpose; and as he hath spread a principle of obedience over their whole souls, all their faculties and affections, so he hath provided in his word motives and inducements to the obedience he requires, which are suited unto and fit to work upon all that is within them (as the psalmist speaks) to live to him. Their love, fear, hope, desires, are all managed within and provoked without to that end and purpose. But how it will thence follow that it is the intendment of God by his threatenings to ingenerate such a fear of hell in them as is inconsistent with an assurance of his faithfulness in his promises not to leave them, but to preserve them to his heavenly kingdom, I profess I know not. The obedience of the saints we look upon to proceed from a principle wrought in them with a higher energy and efficacy than mere desires of God to implant it by arguments and motives; that is, by persuading them to it, without the least real contribution of strength or power, or the ingrafting the word in them, in, with, and by, a new principle of life. And if this be the Phyllis of our author’s doctrine, solus habeto. Such a working of obedience we cannot think to have any thing “of God, of the Spirit of God, of the wisdom of God, or the goodness of God,” in it; being exceedingly remote from the way and manner of God’s working in the saints as held out in the word of truth, and ineffectual to the end proposed in that condition wherein they are. The true use of the threatenings of wrath, in reference to them who by Christ are delivered from it, hath been before manifested and insisted on.

Thirdly, In the last division of this section, he labours to prove that what is done from a principle of fear may be done willingly and cheerfully, as well as that which is done from a principle of love. To which briefly I say, —

1. Neither fear nor love, as they are mere natural affections, is any principle of spiritual obedience as such.

2. That we are so far from denying the usefulness of the fear of the Lord to the obedience of the saints, that the continuance thereof in them to the end is the great promise, for the certain accomplishment whereof we do contend.

3. That fear of hell in believers, as a part of the wrath of God from which they are delivered by Christ, being opposed to all their graces of faith, love, hope, etc., is no principle of obedience in them, whatever influence it may have on them as to restraint when managed by the hand of God’s grace.

4. That yet believers can never be delivered from it but by faith in the blood of Christ, attended with sincere and upright walking with God; which when they fail of, though that fear, supposed to be predominant in the soul, be inconsistent with any comfortable, cheering assurance of the favour of God, yet it is not with the certain continuance to them of the thing itself, upon the account of the promises of God.

Sect. 16 contains a large discourse, in answer to the apostle affirming that “fear hath torment;” which is denied by our author, upon sundry considerations. The fear he intends is a fear of hell and “wrath to come.” This he supposeth to be of such predominancy in the soul as to be a principle of obedience unto God. That this can be without torment, disquiet, bondage, and vexation, he will not easily evince to the consciences of them who have at any time been exercised under such a frame. What fear is consistent with hope; what incursions upon the souls of the saints are made by dread and bondage; the fears of hell, and the use of such fears; how some are, though true believers, scarcely delivered from such fears all their days, — I have formerly declared. And that may suffice as to all our concernment in this discourse.

In the 17th section somewhat is attempted as to promises, answerable to what hath been done concerning exhortations and threatenings. The words used to this end are many; the sum is, “That the use of promises in stirring men up to obedience is solely in the proposal of a good thing or good things to them to whom the promises are made, which they may attain or come short of. Now, if men are assured, as this doctrine supposeth they may be, that they shall attain the end whether they use the means or no, how can they possibly be incited by the promises to the use of the means proposed for the enjoyment of the end promised?” That this is the substance of his discourse I presume himself will confess; and it being the winding up of a tedious argument, I shall briefly manifest its uselessness and lay it aside. I say, then, —

1. What is the true use of the promises of God, and what influence they have into the obedience and holiness of the saints, hath been formerly declared; neither is any thing there asserted of their genuine and natural tendency to the ends expressed enervated in the least by any thing here insisted on or intimated by Mr Goodwin: so that without more trouble I might refer the reader thither to evince the falseness of Mr Goodwin’s assertions concerning the uselessness of the promises unto perseverance, upon a supposition that there are promises of perseverance.

2. Though we affirm that all true saints shall persevere, yet we do not say that all that are so do know themselves to be so, and towards them, at least, the promises may have their efficacy in that way which Mr Goodwin hath by his authority confined them to work in.

3. We say that our Saviour was fully persuaded that in the issue of his undertakings and sufferings he should be “glorified with his Father,” according to his promise; and yet, upon the account of that glory, which he was so assured of, being set before him, he addressed himself to the sharpest and most difficult passage to it that ever any one entered on. He “endured the cross, despising the shame,” for the glory’s sake whereof he had assurance, Heb. xii. 2. And why may not this be the state of them to whom, in his so doing, he was a captain of salvation? Why may not the glory and reward set before them, though enjoyed in a full assurance of faith, in the excellency of it, when possessed, as promised, stir them up to the means leading thereunto?

4. The truth is, the more we are assured with the assurance of faith (not of presumption) that we shall certainly obtain and enjoy the end whereunto the means we use do lead (as is the assurance that ariseth from the promises of God), the more eminently are we pressed in a gospel way, if we walk in the spirit of the gospel, to give up ourselves to obedience to that God and Father who hath appointed so precious and lovely means as are the paths of grace for the obtaining of so glorious an end as that whereunto we are appointed.

And thus I doubt not but that it is manifest, by these considerations of Mr Goodwin’s objections to the contrary, that the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints, as by us taught and delivered, doth not only fall in a sweet compliance with all the means of grace, especially those appointed by God to establish the saints in faith and obedience, — that is, to work perseverance in them, — but also to be eminently useful to give life, vigour, power, and efficacy, in a peculiar gospel manner, to all exhortations, threatenings, and promises, appointed and applied by God to that end and purpose.