1675. and instead of bringing up their lives to the law, maintaining such opinions as brought the law down to their lives.

The result

of the

ter.

Upon the whole, he thinketh it improbable that whole mat- every chapter of both dissertations of Mr. Bull should be revised and approved by so able a divine as Dr. Nicholson, bishop of Gloucester: and suspecteth, that he had great temptations to pretend his approbation of the whole and every part of it, to gain repute to his opinion, by the great name of so reverend a prePage 264. late and so learned a writer. And concluding, that

he had said enough to shew the danger and inconsistency of some prevailing opinions concerning the nature of grace and the Mosaic dispensation; he insinuateth nevertheless, that he might probably write more hereupon, if urged to it; and did accordingly begin soon after a treatise upon the covenant of grace, which he lived not to finish: for saith he, My great aversation to such principles (common to Dr. Hammond and Mr. Bull) will much incline me upon an easy call to oppose the prevalency of them; till I shall see some fitter man of our own church and language, where they prevail, (as I doubt not but that there are many, whose abilities and circumstances make them far more fit,) willing to undertake it, and save the labour of my weak endeavours. From which it appeareth, that Mr. Truman was very far from the sentiments of the rigid dissenters; and that he did not totally leave our church upon the Act of Uniformity; but did consider himself still as a Church of England man, some lesser matters only excepted.

XXXV. Mr. Bull, not long after, wrote an answer

Mr. Bull

him in Eng

in English to Mr. Truman, which yet was never 1675. published P, wherein we are told his hypothesis was fully examined, and all his objections replied to; not answereth without the consentient testimony of all the catholic lish. doctors of the church, both before and after the rise of Pelagius, and of the ancient Jewish rabbins. For out of a fear that offence might be given to the common people, by handling certain abstruse and profound questions, to the treating yet of which he was necessitated by the exceeding great subtleties of this writer; he was willing that what he had thus written should not come abroad, but only be communicated to a few friends, whose testimony he appealed to herein. In this answer to Mr. Truman he set himself to overturn his fundamental distinction of natural and moral impotence, and to shew the many absurd consequences flowing from such a position, and how that at the bottom it was neither more nor less than downright Pelagianism. In it he endeavoured to prove, that the law of nature, as considered in itself, or the moral law, prescribeth not a most perfect and absolute righteousness, but is contented with that which is much inferior to that which is required by the Gospel: and moreover, that eternal life was not due at all to the observation of that law. Also he maintaineth, that man, even in the state of innocence, had not a natural power or ability of obtaining by the perfect obedience of the law an heavenly immortality; and that besides the perfection and integrity of nature wherein he was made, he was likewise endowed with the divine Spirit, as with a principle of the divine nature; by which his natural faculties, otherwise insufficient, P Appendix ad Exam. Cen. Animad. 17. §. 6.

1675. were improved and exalted to the attainment of the superior paradise, whereof the inferior was a type. This he saith is abundantly made out in his English papers against Mr. Truman, though not in a style so very fit for vulgar readers: and having represented the strangeness and inconsistency of his hypothesis, which he saith was borrowed from Amyraldus a, he sheweth how from one absurdity a multitude of other absurdities cannot but flow; how upon his principles it is possible for every man, if he hath but his natural faculties sound, perfectly to fulfil the law of God, when sufficiently made known to him, without the assistance of any inward grace; how it is naturally possible, but at the same time morally impossible: how God may lawfully require of fallen man most perfect obedience, without either giving him or being ready to give him any grace, by which that obedience may be wrought; how the law of nature to those that shall keep it, can give life everlasting; how the evangelical law doth not convey together with it grace and power, to perform the obedience which it requireth; and that this grace is only given according to the good pleasure of God, to some few thereunto ordained; but that all the rest are justly damned, because they might have lived well if they would, but that they had not power to will it. This by those hints which he himself hath given of it, seemeth to have been the substance of what was written by him in English on occasion of Mr. Truman's two mentioned books, his Discourse of natu

9 [Moyse Amyrault, a Calvinist, of Saumur in the seventeenth century he published several works upon grace, and a paraphrase on the Epistle to the Romans.]

ral and moral Impotency, and his Endeavours to 1675. rectify some prevailing Opinions.

contented

answers him

tin.

But Mr. Bull being engaged, as he thought, to But not vindicate himself against Mr. Charles Gataker's Anim- with that, adversions upon his Harmony, thought it also con- also in Lavenient to answer Mr. Truman in Latin; as to the principal objections made against him, Dr. Hammond, and bishop Taylor, thereby to render his reply more full and complete. And this he hath done, both in his Appendix to the Examination of the 17th Animadversion, and in his answers to the 19th, 21st, and 22d Animadversions of Gataker, relating to the twofold defect of the Mosaic dispensation. Where he learnedly and strenuously defendeth what he had advanced in his former book, concerning the grounds of the impossibility of justification by the law, for which he is so severely handled by Gataker, Truman, and others; and laboureth to prove that the opinion of his adversaries therein is strictly and properly Pelagian; and that his only is the true catholic doctrine, supported by the authority of St. Augustin and other orthodox Fathers.

stance of

He is very large in discussing the question, whe- The subther there was any law or covenant, distinct from his answer. the Gospel, requiring perfect righteousness of fallen man, with the promise of eternal life if he did perform it, and under the penalty of eternal damnation if he did not. And having explained the state of the question, he proceedeth, and defendeth the true catholic opinion thereupon in the following theses. 1. The covenant of life made with Adam in his state of innocence, was by his transgression of the same, made void, not only for himself, but for his posterity also; so that now all the children of Adam,

1675. as such, are the children of death, that is, are excluded wholly from all promise of immortal life, and are subjected to the necessity of death, without any hopes of a resurrection. 2. All those of the posterity of fallen Adam, who are altogether destitute of divine revelation, and to whom the new covenant of life hath not yet been manifest, are under the obligation of no law but that of nature. 3. The law of nature, (which is the dictate of reason,) so far as it is considered in fallen man, as destitute of the Spirit, and of divine revelation, doth not prescribe the most perfect and absolute virtue, nor is an immortal and heavenly life due to the observation of this law. 4. God never entered into any covenant of eternal life with the posterity of fallen Adam, but what was confirmed and established in our Saviour Christ; and must consequently have been the very Gospel itself, according to that of the apostle, The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. 5. The Gospel, or the law of Christ, though it prescribe a religion that is most excellent and perfect, especially as it is most fully revealed in the books of the New Testament, doth not command any thing to man in his fallen state, but that which is possible to be fulfilled by the grace which it promiseth. 6. Though according to the Gospel, or law of Christ, all those degrees of righteousness, which are possible for us by the grace of the same Gospel to be performed, are binding to us; yet they are not all binding strictly and precisely under the penalty of everlasting damnation. Forasmuch as the evangelical law doth not for every default whatsoever, yea, though by grace it could have been avoided, denounce against man exclusion from the