A Display of Arminianism
By John Owen
Chapter 8
OF THE STATE OF ADAM BEFORE
THE FALL, OR OF ORIGINAL RIGHTEOUSNESS.
In the last chapter we discovered the Arminian attempt of re-advancing
the corrupted nature of man into that state of innocency and holiness wherein
it was at first by God created; in which design, because they cannot but
discern that the success is not answerable to their desires, and not being able
to deny but that for so much good as we want (having cast it away), or evil of
sin that we are subject unto more than we were at our first creation, we must
be responsible to the justice of God, they labor to draw down our first
parents, even from the instant of their forming, into the same condition
wherein we are engaged by reason of corrupted nature. But, truly, I fear they
will scarce obtain so prosperous an issue of their endeavor as Mohammed had
when he promised the people he would call a mountain unto him; which miracle
when they assembled to behold, but the mountain would not stir for all his
calling, he replied, “If the mountain will not come to Mohammed, Mohammed will
go to the mountain,” and away he packed towards it. For we shall find that our
Arminians can neither themselves climb the high mountain of innocency, nor yet
call it down into the valley of sin and corruption wherein they are lodged. We
have seen already how vain and frustrate was their former attempt: let us now
take a view of their aspiring insolence, in making the pure creatures of God,
holy and undefiled with any sin, to be invested with the same wretchedness and
perverseness of nature with ourselves.
It is not my intention to enter
into any curious discourse concerning the state and grace of Adam before his
fall, but only to give a faithful assent to what God himself affirmed of all
the works of his hands,—they were exceeding good. No evil, no deformity, or
anything tending thereunto, did immediately issue from that Fountain of
goodness and wisdom; and therefore, doubtless, man, the most excellent work of
his hands, the greatest glory of his Creator, was then without spot or blemish,
endued with all those perfections his nature and state of obedience was capable
of. And careful we must be of casting any aspersions of defect on him that we
will not with equal boldness ascribe to the image of God.
Nothing doth more manifest the
deviation of our nature from its first institution, and declare the corruption
wherewith we are polluted, than that propensity which is in us to every thing
that is evil; that inclination of the flesh which lusteth always against the
Spirit; that lust and concupiscence which fomenteth, conceiveth, hatcheth,
bringeth forth, and nourisheth sin; that perpetual proneness that is in
unregenerate nature to every thing that is contrary to the pure and holy law of
God. Now, because neither Scripture nor experience will suffer Christians quite
to deny this pravity of our nature, this averseness from all good and
propensity to sin, the Arminians extenuate as much as they are able, affirming
that it is no great matter, no more than Adam was subject unto in the state of
innocency. But, what! did God create in Adam a proneness unto evil? was that a
part of his glorious image in whose likeness he was framed? Yea, saith
Corvinus, [i][i] [1] “By
reason of his creation, man had an affection to what was forbidden by the law.”
But yet this seems injustice, that [ii][ii] [2] “God
should give a man a law to keep, and put upon his nature a repugnancy to that
law;” as one of them affirmed at the synod of Dort. “No,” saith the former
author; [iii][iii] [3] “man
had not been fit to have had a law given unto him, had he not been endued with
a propension and natural inclination to that which is forbidden by the law.”
But why is this so necessary in men rather than angels? No doubt there was a
law, a rule for their obedience, given unto them at their first creation, which
some transgressed, when others kept it inviolate. Had they also a propensity to
sin concreated with their nature? had they a natural affection put upon them by
God to that which was forbidden by the law? Let them only who will be wise
beyond the word of God affix such injustice on the righteous Judge of all the
earth. But so it seems it must be. [iv][iv] [4] “There
was an inclination in man to sin before the fall, though not altogether so
vehement and inordinate as it is now,” saith Arminius. Hitherto we have thought
that the original righteousness wherein Adam was created had comprehended the
integrity and perfection of the whole man; not only that whereby the body was
obedient unto the soul, and all the affections subservient to the rule of
reason for the performance of all natural actions, but also a light,
uprightness, and holiness of grace in the mind and will, whereby he was enabled
to yield obedience unto God for the attaining of that supernatural end
whereunto he was created. No; but [v][v] [5] “original
righteousness,” say our new doctors, “was nothing but a bridle to help to keep
man’s inordinate concupiscence within bounds:” so that the faculties of our
souls were never endued with any proper innate holiness of their own. [vi][vi] [6] “In
the spiritual death of sin there are no spiritual gifts properly wanting in the
will, because they were never there,” say the six collocutors at the Hague.
The sum is, man was created with
a nature not only weak and imperfect, unable by its native strength and
endowments to attain that supernatural end for which he was made, and which he
was commanded to seek, but depraved also with a love and desire of things
repugnant to the will of God, by reason of an inbred inclination to sinning. It
doth not properly belong to this place to show how they extenuate those gifts
also with which they cannot deny but that he was endued, and also deny those
which he had, as a power to believe in Christ, or to assent unto any truth that
God should reveal unto him; and yet they grant this privilege to every one of
his posterity, in that depraved condition of nature whereinto by sin he cast
himself and us. We have all now a power of believing in Christ; that is, Adam,
by his fall, obtained a supernatural endowment far more excellent than any he
had before. And let them not here pretend the universality of the new covenant
until they can prove it; and I am certain it will be long enough. But this, I
say, belongs not to this place; only, let us see how, from the word of God, we
may overthrow the former odious heresy:—
God in the beginning “created
man in his own image,” Genesis 1:27,—that is, “upright,” Ecclesiastes 7:29,
endued with a nature composed to obedience and holiness. That habitual grace
and original righteousness wherewith he was invested was in a manner due unto
him for the obtaining of that supernatural end whereunto he was created. A
universal rectitude of all the faculties of his soul, advanced by supernatural
graces, enabling him to the performance of those duties whereunto they were
required, is that which we call the innocency of our first parents. Our nature
was then inclined to good only, and adorned with all those qualifications that
were necessary to make it acceptable unto God, and able to do what was required
of us by the law, under the condition of everlasting happiness. Nature and
grace, or original righteousness, before the fall, ought not to be so
distinguished as if the one were a thing prone to evil, resisted and quelled by
the other; for both complied, in a sweet union and harmony, to carry us along
in the way of obedience to eternal blessedness. [There was] no contention
between the flesh and the Spirit; but as all other things at theirs, so the
whole man jointly aimed at his own chiefest good, having all means of attaining
it in his power. That there was then no inclination to sin, no concupiscence of
that which is evil, no repugnancy to the law of God, in the pure nature of man,
is proved, because,—
First, The Scripture, describing
the condition of our nature at the first creation thereof, intimates no such
propensity to evil, but rather a holy perfection, quite excluding it. We were
created “in the image of God,” Genesis 1:27,—in such a perfect uprightness as
is opposite to all evil inventions, Ecclesiastes 7:29; to which image when we
are again in some measure “renewed” by the grace of Christ, Colossians 3:10, we
see by the first-fruits that it consisted in “righteousness and true
holiness,”—in truth and perfect holiness, Ephesians 4:24.
Secondly, An inclination to
evil, and a lusting after that which is forbidden, is that inordinate
concupiscence wherewith our nature is now infected; which is everywhere in the
Scripture condemned as a sin; St Paul, in the seventh to the Romans, affirming
expressly that it is a sin, and forbidden by the law, verse 7, producing all
manner of evil, and hindering all that is good,—a “body of death,” verse 24;
and St James maketh it even the womb of all iniquity, James 1:14,15. Surely our
nature was not at first yoked with such a troublesome inmate. Where is the
uprightness and innocency we have hitherto conceived our first parents to have
enjoyed before the fall? A repugnancy to the law must needs be a thing sinful.
An inclination to evil, to a thing forbidden, is an anomy,—a deviation and
discrepancy from the pure and holy law of God. We must speak no more, then, of
the state of innocency, but only of a short space wherein no outward actual
sins were committed. Their proper root, if this be true, was concreated with
our nature. Is this that obediential harmony to all the commandments of God
which is necessary for a pure and innocent creature, that hath a law prescribed
unto him? By which of the ten precepts is this inclination to evil required? Is
it by the last, “Thou shalt not covet?” or by that sum of them all, “Thou shalt
love the LORD thy God with all thy heart,” etc.? Is this all the happiness of
paradise,—to be turmoiled with a nature swelling with abundance of vain
desires, and with a main stream carried headlong to all iniquity, if its
violent appetite be not powerfully kept in by the bit and bridle of original
righteousness? So it is we see with children now;[vii][vii] [7] and so it should have been with them in
paradise, if they were subject to this rebellious inclination to sin.
Thirdly, and principally, Whence
had our primitive nature this affection to those things that were forbidden
it,—this rebellion and repugnancy to the law, which must needs be an anomy, and
so a thing sinful? There was as yet no demerit, to deserve it as a punishment.
What fault is it to be created? [viii][viii] [8] The
operation of any thing which hath its original with the being of the thing
itself must needs proceed from the same cause as doth the essence or being
itself; as the fire’s tending upwards relates to the same original with the
fire: and, therefore, this inclination or affection can have no other author
but God; by which means he is entitled not only to the first sin, as the
efficient cause, but to all the sins in the world arising from thence. Plainly,
and without any strained consequences, he is made the author of sin; for even
those positive properties which can have no other fountain but the author of
nature, being set on evil, are directly sinful. And here the idol of free-will
may triumph in this victory over the God of heaven. Heretofore all the blame of
sin lay upon his shoulders, but now he begins to complain, Oujk eJgw< ai]tio>v eijmi ajlla<
Zeu<v kai< moi~ra. “It is God and the fate of our creation
that hath placed us in this condition of naturally affecting that which is
evil. Back with all your charges against the ill government of this new deity
within his imaginary dominion; what hurt doth he do but incline men unto evil,
and God himself did no less at the first?” But let them that will, rejoice in
these blasphemies: it sufficeth us to know that” God created man upright,”
though he “hath sought out many inventions;” so that in this following
dissonancy we cleave to the better part:—
S. S.
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Lib. Arbit.
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“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God
created he him; male and female created he them,” Genesis 1:27. “Put on the
new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created
him,” Colossians 3:10. “—which after God is created in righteousness and true
holiness,” Ephesians 4:24.
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“There was in man before the fall an inclination to
sinning, though not so vehement and inordinate as now it is,” Armin. “God put
upon man a repugnancy to his law,” Gesteranus in the Synod. “Man, by reason
of his creation, had an affection to those things that are forbidden by the
law,” Corv.
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“Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man
upright; but he hath sought out many inventions,” Ecclesiastes 7:29. “By one
man sin entered into the world, and death by sin,” Romans 5:12.
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“The will of man had never any spiritual endowments,”
Rem. Apol.
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“Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God:
for God tempteth no man: but every man is tempted when he is drawn away of
his own lust,” James 1:13,14.
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“It was not fit that man should have a law given him,
unless he had a natural inclination to what was forbidden by the law,” Corv.
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ENDNOTES:
[ix][ix] [1] “Ex ratione creationis homo habebat
affectum ad ea quae vetabantur.” — Corv. ad Molin., cap. 6. sect. 1.
[x][x] [2] “Deus homini repugnantiam indidit
adversus legem.”—Joh. Gest. In Synod. Confes.
[xi][xi] [3] “Homo non est idoneus cui lex
feratur, quando in eo, ad id quod lege vetatur, non est propensio, ac
inclinatio naturalis.”—Corv. ad Molin., cap. 10. sect. 15.
[xii][xii] [4] “Inclinatio ad peccandum ante
lapsum in homine fuit, licet non ita vehemens ac inordinata ut nunc
est.”—Armin. ad Artic. Respon.
[xiii][xiii] [5] “Justitia originalis instar fraeni
fuit, quod preestabat internae concupiscentiae ordinationem.”—Corv. ad Molin.,
cap. 8. sect. 1.
[xiv][xiv] [6] “In spirituali morte non separantur
proprie dona spiritualia a voluntate, quia illa nunquam fuerunt ei
insita.”—Rem. Coll. Hag., p. 250.
[xv][xv] [7] “Vidi ego zelantem parvulum qui
nondum loquebatur, et intuebatur pallidus, amaro aspectu colluctaneum
suum.”—Aug.
[xvi][xvi] [8] “Operatio quae simul incipit cum
esse rei, est ei ab agente, a quo habet esse, sicut moveri sursum inest igni a
generante.”—Alvar., p. 199.
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