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368 THE ABSOLUTE DECREE

detestation we denounce them accursed, as the Arausican council also did. By these testimonies (which are but a few of many) it appeareth that absolute and inevitable reprobation found but cold entertainment from antiquity.

Considering this, I begin to call it into question.

For although I make not the decisions of the fathers or councils, the rules of my faith, (because they are but men, and therefore subject to error:) yet I honouor their grey hairs and their grave assemblies, and vehemently mistrust those doctrines which they never taught or approved, but disliked and condemned.

2. My second reason for doubting of it, is its unwillingness to abide the trial. I find the authors and abettors of it have been very backward to bring it to the standard; not only when they have been called upon by their adversaries, to have it weighed, but when they have been intreated thereto by their chief magistrates, who might have compelled them: a shrewd argument that it is too light.

In the disputation at Mompelgart, anno 1586, held between Besa and Jacobus Andreæ, with some seconds on both sides, Beza and his company having disputed with the Lutherans about the person of CHRIST and the Lord's supper, when they came to this point, declined the sifting of it, and gave this reason, that it could not be publicly disputed of without the great scandal and hurt of the ignorant and unacquainted with these high mysteries. The Contra-remonstrants also in their conference with the opposite parties, at the Hague, in the year 1611, could not be drawn to dispute with them about this point, but delivered a petition to the states of Holland, and West Friezland, that they might not be urged to it, resolving rather to break off the conference, than to meddle with it.
In the fynod likewife at Dort, in the years of 1618 and 1619, the Remonaflrants were warned by the president, That they should rather dsipite of the point of election, than the odious point of reprobation. 
 Can this doctrine be a truth, and yet blush at the light, which maketh all things manifest? Especially considering these things: 
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1. That reprobation is a principal head of a divinity, by the well or ill floating on which the glory of GOD and the good of religion are much promoted or hindered 
2. That there is such a necessary connexion between the points of election and reprobation (both being parts of predestination) that the one cannot well be handled without the other. 
3. That the doctrine of reprobation was the chief cause of all the uproar in the church at that time 
4. That it was accused openly of falsehood; and therefore bound in justice to purge itself of the charge.
5. That the Remonstrants did not desire that is should be talked of among the common people; but among the most judicious and learned
This striving to loe close, is no infallible argument of a bad cause, yet it is a very probable one. 
Truth, whether it be in men or doctrines, is best when it is uncovered; it covets no corners, though error does, but is willing to abide the trial. As St. Paul faith of an heretic, he is self-condemned; so we may say of heresy and untruth; it condemneth itself, and by nothing more than by refusing the touch-stone.
My third reason for doubting of it is, its affinity with the old errors of the Stoics and Manichees. 
The opinion of the stoics was, that all actions and events were unavoidable, determined either by the revolutions of the heavens, or by the concatenation of natural things, and the disposition of the first matter, all things being so put together from eternity, that one thing must needs follow another, as it doth; and the first matter being so disposed that things cannot successfully come to pass otherwise than they do, but mist of necessity be as they are, even [unvito Deo] though GOD would have some things to be other-wise.
The manichees held, that all men's actions, good or evil, were determined; good actions by a good GOD, who was the author of all good things that were created and of all good actions that came to pass in the world; evil 
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