here avouch, whensoever he shall have occasion to dispute with the Jew, or to assign the difference between the ceremonial and the moral law, or the reason why the one is to be perpetually observed, the other not

so.

The shedding of innocent blood was evil before any law was made against it, before God's will was declared to the contrary.

The

Cain did suffer punishment for the fact, before any positive law, and before any act of God's will declared, to prohibit it. The shedding of innocent blood then was not evil because it was forbidden, but it was afterwards peremptorily forbidden because always evil. Cain's enterprise against his innocent brother was objectively evil, before there was any man that could commit this or the like enormity. Charity, peace, brotherly love, are good, not only because God hath commanded them, or willed us to follow them, but God by his law doth will and command us to follow after these things because they were always good, even before he willed or commanded us to follow them. time will never be wherein innocency, brotherly love, charity, peace, and lovingkindness, shall be as displeasing to God as murder, hatred, malice, cruelty, and uncharitableness hitherto always have been. He cannot enact a law, either to authorize these or the like practices, or to prohibit the contrary virtues. But inasmuch as rites and ceremonies, sacrifices, circumcision, &c., which God sometimes did will and command men to observe, were only good because God did will and command them; hence it is that they are now abrogated, and their use inverted, without any change of God's eternal will or of his divine nature. The negative precepts concerning rites and ceremonies have been turned into affirmatives, and the affirmatives into nega

tives; because the one containeth no other goodness, nor the other any evil in them, which did not entirely depend upon God's positive will to command or forbid them. And seeing his will, though most immutable, is immutably free, though not to do good or evil, yet free to make that which is not in its nature, or essentially, good, to be good for one time or season, not for another; and that which is not in its nature, or essentially, evil, (but of an indifferent nature,) to be sometimes good and sometimes evil; therefore hath he made the omission of some ceremonies to be as good in latter times, as their observance was in former; and the observance of others to be as evil, as their former neglect or contempt was under the law, or from the date of God's first covenant with Abraham until the ratification or publication of the new covenant made in Christ. The uncircumcised manchild, saith God to Abraham, Gen. xvii. 14, whose flesh of his foreskin is not circumcised, that soul shall be cut off from his people. But seeing the observance of that which is here commanded was only good because it was thus peremptorily willed, commanded, or required by God, not objectively good from eternity; the observance of the same thing commanded is now as dangerous and displeasing to God, as the neglect or nonobservance of it in Abraham's, in Moses', in the prophets' times had been. Hence is that wish of our apostle, Gal. v. 12, I would they were even cut off that trouble you; that is, I would that they which press circumcision upon you and upon your children, might be sentenced according to God's law enacted against such as during the first covenant did omit or neglect it.

10. Partly from ignorance of this distinction between 183 the nature of things commanded and forbidden by the

obedience to the law of ceremonies was so strictly enjoined, and the neglect of it so severely punished, ofttimes by God's immediate hand, the Jews were drawn to place as great sanctity in the observance of rites and ceremonies as in sincere obedience to the moral precepts. This was one main root of their hypocrisy, a sin from which it is scarce possible any hearer of the word should be free, unless he be taught to put some difference between the nature of things good and evil, of things commanded and forbidden, besides the will or authority of the commander. If the acts or injunctions of God's will were the only rule of goodness, and had not eternal goodness rather for their rule, it would be hard to avoid the stoical error, that all sins are equal; besides a kind of fatality in human affairs, worse than stoical.

The Turks acknowledge God's will to be a rule of goodness as sovereign as the author of the forementioned epistle doth to be such a cause of causes as he would have it. But being ignorant, or not considering, that there is an immutable goodness precedent to the act or exercise of God's will, a goodness whereof his will, however considered, is no cause-for it is coeternal to his will, to his wisdom and essence-they fall into grossly absurd errors. And consequently unto this their ignorance, or to the common error that all things are good only because God willeth them, they sometimes highly commend, and sometimes deeply discommend, the selfsame practices for quality and circumstances, wit has great vehemency of zeal and spirit, and with as fair protestations of obedience in all things to God's will, as any other men do.

For Selimus to attempt the deposition of his father was in their divinity a good and godly act: for Bajazet

to take arms against his brother was an abominable impiety. What was the reason? Selimus' attempt found good success; for he prevailed against his father; and this was an argument, that it was God's will that he should so do. But Bajazet miscarries in his attempt against his brother; and his disaster was a proof sufficient that God was displeased with his attempt, it was not his will that he should prosper. And seeing his will is the only rule of goodness, seeing he did predestinate these two princes, as he did Jacob and Esau, the one to a good end, the other to an evil; the selfsame fact or attempt was good in the one, but wicked in the other. We all condemn it as an error in the Turk a,

Injecta forte Bajazetis mentione, cœpit Chiaussus in eum inclementius invehi, quod arma sumpsisset contra fratrem. Ego contra dicebam videri mihi miseratione dignum, cui inevitabilis necessitas imposita esset, aut capiendorum armorum, aut certæ pestis subeundæ. Sed cum Chiaussus nihilominus execrari pergeret. Vos, inquam, immanis facinoris reum facitis Bajazetem. At Selimum, hujus imperatoris patrem, qui non modo contra patris voluntatem, verum etiam salutem arma tulit, nullius criminis arguitis. Recte, inquit Chiaussus, nam exitus satis docuit illum, quod fecit divino fecisse instinctu, et cœlitus fuisse prædestinatum. Tum ego, si hoc more agetur, quicquid, quamvis pessimo consilio susceptum, si bene cedat, recte factum interpretabimini, et Dei voluntati adscribetis, Deum facietis authorem mali, nec quicquam bene aut sequius factum, nisi ex eventu pendetis. Sumus

rerum

morati, cum uterque non sine animorum et vocis contentione, quod proposuisset defenderet. Collecta utrinque plura sacræ scripturæ loca-Nunquid potest vas dicere figulo, Cur me ita finxisti? -Indurabo cor Pharaonis.-Jacob dilexi, Esau odio habui―atque alia ut veniebant in mentem.-Auger. Busbequ. Epist. 4. pag. 239.

a Ex quo satis constitit, non avi misericordia eo usque nepoti parcitum, sed ex opinione quæ Turcis insedit, ut res quocunque consilio institutas, si bene cadunt, ad Deum auctorem referant. Propterea quamdiu incertum fuit, quem exitum Bajazetis conatus sortirentur, abstinendas ab infantis injuria manus Suleimannus statuit: ne si postmodum res melius vertisset, obniti voluntati Dei voluisse videretur. Sed nunc illo extincto, ac veluti divina sententia damnato, causam esse non putabat, cur filio diutius parceretur, Ne malum ovum ex malo corvo relinqueretur.— Ibidem.

for measuring the difference between good and evil by the event. But even this error hath an original which is worse. They therefore measure all good and evil by the event, because they ascribe all events (without exception) to the irresistible will of God, and think that 184 nothing can fall out otherwise than it doth, because every thing is irresistibly appointed by God's will, which in their divinity is such a necessary cause of causes, and by consequence of all effects, as the author of the said Epistle would have it to be. Whosoever he be, whether Jew, Turk, or Christian, which thinks that all events are so irresistibly decreed by God, that none can fall out otherwise than they do, must of necessity grant, either that there is no moral evil under the sun, or that God's will (which is the cause of causes) is the only cause of such evil.

11. But is the like sin or error expressly to be found in Israel? Do any make the same fact for nature, quality, and substance, to be no sin in one man, and yet a sin in another? or to be a little sin in one man, and a grievous outcrying sin in another? Though they do not avouch this of rebellious attempts against prince and state, or of other like public facts, cognoscible by human law; yet the principles of predestination, commonly held by them and the Turk, draw them to the like inconveniences, in transforming the immutable rule of goodness into the similitude of their partial affections in other cases.

The adultery and murder which David committed had been grievous sins in any other man, but in David, being predestinated, they were but sins of infirmity, sins by which the outward man was defiled, not the inward man. Such a sin was incest in Lot; such are all the sins committed by the elect. And so were all the sins of the elect remitted before they were com