or injunction of God3 is not properly the will of God because,” saith be, “he doth not hereby so much signify what himself willeth to be done, as what is our duty to do.” I confess that no signification whatsoever, whether of what a man willeth or decreeth to be done, or of what is the duty of another to do, can properly be said to be the will of the signifier; but yet that will, wherewith or out of which God willeth or commandeth us to do that which is our duty to do, is as properly his will as that whereby he willeth or decreeth things to be done.
My will or desire that my child should obey me, or that he should prosper in the world, is as properly my will as that whereby I will or purpose to show the respects of a father unto him in providing for him; being as proper, natural, and direct an act of that principle or faculty of willing within me whereby I will the former, as that act itself of this faculty wherein I will the latter is. For the principle or faculty within me of willing, how numerous or different soever the acts of willing which I exert by virtue of this faculty may be, is but one and the same; and this faculty being natural, there can be no such difference between the acts proceeding from it which should make some to be more proper and others less, though some may be better and others worse.
But this difference can have no place in the acts of the will of God; therefore, if the precept or preceptive will of God be not properly his will, neither can any other will of his, or any other act of his will, be properly such. If so, then that will of God, or act of will in God, whereby he willeth or enjoineth faith and repentance, and consequently salvation, unto all men, is as properly his will as that whereby he willeth the salvation of any man. Therefore, if there be any secret or unrevealed will in God, whereby he willeth the destruction of any man at the same time when he willeth the salvation of all men, (be it with what kind of will soever) these two wills must needs interfere and contradict the one the other.
Nor will that distinction of the late-mentioned author salve a consistency between them, wherein he distinguisheth between the decree of God and the thing decreed by him, affirming that “the thing which God decreeth may be repugnant to or inconsistent with the thing which he commandeth, though the decree itself cannot be repugnant to the command.”4 The vanity of this distinction clearly appeareth upon this common ground, viz. that acts are differenced and distinguished by their objects: therefore, if the object of God’s decreeing will, or the thing decreed by him, be contrary to the thing preceptively willed or commanded by him, impossible it is but that the two acts of his will, by the one of which he is supposed to will the one, and by the other the other, should digladiate and one fight against the other. Therefore, certainly, there is no such pair or combination of wills in God as the distinction of voluntas signi and beneplaciti (as applied in the question in hand) doth suppose. It is impossible that I should inwardly and seriously will or desire the death of my child, and yet at the same time seriously also will and enjoin the physician to do his best to recover him.
Again, if God enjoin faith and repentance unto all men, with a declaration that he enjoineth them in order to their salvation, or with a promise that, upon their obedience to this injunction of his, they shall be actually saved, then can he not at the same time will with a secret will the condemnation of any? But most evident it is, that unto whomsoever he enjoineth faith or repentance, he enjoineth them in order to their salvation, and with promise of actual salvation upon their obedience to this injunction, Mark 1. 15; Acts iii. 19; John xx. 31, &c. Therefore, impossible it is, that he should secretly intend, will, or purpose the destruction of any to whom he enjoins faith and repentance.
The consequence in this argument is so rich in evidence, that it needs no proof. If a prince should inwardly and resolvedly determine to put such or such a malefactor to death, and yet by proclamation or otherwise promise him his life or a pardon upon condition he would reform his course, would this be a strain of divine perfection, or like unto one of the ways of God?
There is a sense, I confess, wherein the distinction now in consideration may be admitted. If by the signified or revealed will of God be meant nothing else but such declarations or manifestations made by God, which, when made by men, are signs of a will, purpose, or desire in them, suitable to their respective tenors and imports, (which is clearly their sense of this member of the distinction who were the first coiners of it, I mean the schoolmen)5 there is no inconvenience in granting a revealed will in God distinguished from or opposed unto a will of good pleasure or of purpose in him. This sense makes no opposition of wills in God, nor yet between things willed or purposed by him. It only showeth or supposeth that the will and good pleasure in God extendeth not to the actual procurement of obedience from men unto all those laws or commands which he judgeth meet to impose upon them; or, which is the same, that God hath not positively decreed that all men shall, or shall be necessitated by him to live in subjection to all those laws which he hath appointed unto them.
This sense is orthodox, and blameable, but holds no intelligence with that opinion which supposeth one will in God, according unto which he willeth all men to be saved; and another, according unto which he willeth the far greatest part of men to be damned, and both antecedent. For otherwise, two such wills as these are fairly and clearly enough consistent in him. God, according to the distinction of the will of God into antecedent and consequent, first set on foot by some of the fathers, Chrysostom, and Damascen by name, and since made use of by the schoolmen, may, with the former, be said to will the salvation of all men. Yet with the latter be said also, in a sense, to will the condemnation of far the greatest part of them.
His antecedent will, the distinction being admitted as it ought to be, having so clear a foundation in Scripture, respecteth men simply as men; his consequent will relateth to them as considerable under the two opposite qualifications, or immediate capacities of life and death, or of salvation and condemnation; the one of these being faith persevered in unto death, the other, final impenitency or unbelief. According to the former of these wills, God is said to will the salvation of all men, partly because he vouchsafeth a sufficiency of means unto all men whereby to be saved; partly also, because he hath passed no decree against any man which either formally, or consequentially, or in any consideration whatsoever excludeth any man, personally considered, from salvation before he voluntarily excludeth himself by such sinful miscarriages and deportments, which, according to the revealed will of God, render him utterly incapable thereof.
According to the latter of these wills, as he peremptorily willeth the salvation of all those who are faithful unto death; so doth he as peremptorily will the condemnation of all those who shall not be found in the faith of Jesus Christ at their end. The latter, through their own deplorable and voluntary carelessness and negligence, proving to be in number far the greater part of men, God, upon this supposition, and in a consequential way, may be said to will the condemnation of the greatest part of men, and the salvation only of a few, comparatively. But of these things more hereafter.
In the meantime, evident it is from the Scriptures argued, that Christ died intentionally for all men, without exception, considered as men; and that there was nothing more procured, nor intended to be procured, thereby for one man than another, personally considered, or simply as men. Only this was intended in this death of Christ, in the general, that whosoever, whether few or whether many, should with a true and persevering faith believe in him, should actually partake of the benefit and blessing of this his death in the great reward of salvation; and on the other hand, that whosoever, whether few or whether many, should not believe in him with such a faith, should, upon this account, be excluded from all participation in the great blessing of salvation purchased by his death. This notwithstanding the purchase that was made, and intended to be made for them as for those who come actually to inherit; even as the marriage feast in the parable was as much provided, prepared, and intended for those, who upon their invitation came not, as it was for those who came and actually partook of it; unless we shall say that the king who made this feast intended it not for those whom, notwithstanding, he solemnly invited to it, and with whom he was highly displeased for their refusal to come, being invited, Matt.
