2. The doctrine of perseverance is against security, because it uniteth together the end and the means: for they that teach that the justified shall never totally fall from grace, do also teach that they shall never totally fall into security, or to any reigning sin; for this is to fall away from grace. And they teach that they shall never totally fall from the use of the necessary means of their preservation; nor from the cautelous avoiding of the danger of their souls: God doth not simply decree that you shall persevere; but that you shall be kept in perseverance by the fear of your danger, and the careful use of means; and that you shall persevere in these, as well as in other graces. Therefore if you fall to security and sin, you fall away from grace, and show that God never decreed or promised that you should never fall away.
3. Consider how far many have gone that have fallen away: the instances of our times are much higher than any I can name to you out of history. Men that have seemed to walk humbly and holily, fearing all sin, blameless in their lives, zealous in religion, twenty or thirty years together, have fallen to deny the truth or certainty of the Scriptures, the Godhead of Christ, if not christianity itself. And many that have not quite fallen away, have yet fallen into such grievous sins, as make them a terrible warning to us all, to take heed of presumption and carnal security.
4. Grace is not, in the nature of it, a thing that cannot perish or be lost. For, 1. It is a separable quality. 2. Adam did lose it. 3. We lose a great degree of it too oft; and the remaining degrees are of the same nature. It is not only possible in itself to lose it, but too easy; and not possible without cooperating grace to keep it.
5. Grace is not natural to us: to love our ease, and honour, and friends, is natural; but to love Christ, and his holy ways and servants, is not natural to us: indeed when we do it, it is our natural powers that do it, but not as naturally disposed to it, but as inclined by the cure of supernatural grace. Eating, and drinking, and sleeping we forget not, because nature itself remembereth us of them; but learning and acquired habits may be lost, if not very deeply radicated, and it is commonly concluded as to the nature of them, that habitus infusi habent se ad modum acquisitorum: infused habits are like to acquired ones.[95]
6. Grace is, as it were, a stranger, or new comer in us. It hath been there but a little while, and therefore we are but raw and too unacquainted with the right usage and improvement of it, and are the apter to forget our duty, or to neglect it, or ignorantly to do that which tendeth to its destruction.
7. Grace dwelleth in a heart which is not wholly dispossessed of those objects which are against its work, nor delivered from those principles which have an enmity against it. The love of the world and flesh was in the heart, before the love of God and holiness, and ignorance was before knowledge, and pride before humility, and selfishness before self-denial. And these are not wholly rooted out; we have dealt so gently with them, (as the Israelites with the Canaanites, Jebusites, and other inhabitants of the land,) that they are left to try us, and to be thorns in our sides. And the garrison is not free from danger, that hath an enemy always lodged within. Our enemies are in the house with us, they lie down and rise up with us, and are as near us as our flesh and bones: we can never be where they are not, nor leave them behind us, whithersoever we go, or whatever we do. No marvel, if brother be against brother, and the father against the son, when we are so much against ourselves.[96] And are we yet secure?
8. And the number of the snares that are still before us, and of the subtle malicious enemies of our souls, may easily convince us, that we are wholly free from danger. How subtle and diligent is the devil! How much do his servants imitate him! Every creature or person that we have to do with, and every common mercy which we receive, hath matter of danger in it, which calleth us to fear and watch.
9. Perseverance is nothing else but our continuance in the grace which we received: and this grace consisteth in act as well as in habit: and the habit is for action; and the act is it that increaseth and continueth the habit. And the fear of God, and the belief of his threatenings, and repentance, and watchfulness, and diligent obedience, are a great part of this grace. And the acts are ours, performed by ourselves, by the help of God: God doth not believe, and repent, and obey in us, but causeth us ourselves to do it. Therefore to grow cold, and secure, and sinful, upon pretence that we are sure to persevere, this is to cease persevering, and to fall away, because we are sure to persevere, and not to fall away: which is a mere contradiction.
10. Lastly, bethink you well what is the meaning of all these texts of Scripture, and the reason that the Holy Ghost doth speak to us in this manner. Col. i. 21-23, "And you—hath he reconciled,—to present you holy:—if ye continue in the faith, grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel." John xv. 4-6, "Abide in me, and I in you. If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch and withered. If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will." Heb. iv. 1, "Let us therefore fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it." Jude 21, "Keep yourselves in the love of God." 1 Cor. x. 4, 5, 12, "They drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ; but with many of them God was not well pleased: wherefore let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall." Rom. xi. 20, 21, "Be not highminded, but fear; for if God spared not the natural branches, take heed lest he spare not thee." Gal. v. 4, "Ye are fallen from grace." Matt. x. 22, "He that endureth to the end shall be saved;" Matt. xxiv. 13. Heb. iii. 6, 14, "Whose house are we, if we hold fast the confidence, and the rejoicing of the hope firm unto the end. For we are partakers of Christ, if we hold the beginning of our confidence stedfast unto the end." Heb. iv. 11, "Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief." Rev. ii. 25, 26, "Hold fast till I come. And he that overcometh and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations;" Rev. iii. 2, 3; ii. 4.
Take heed therefore of that doctrine which telleth you, that sins to come are all pardoned to you before they are committed, and that you are justified from them, and that it is unlawful to be afraid of falling away, because it is impossible, &c. For no sin is pardoned before it is committed, (though the remedy be provided,) for it is then no sin; and you are justified from no sin any further than it is pardoned. Suppose God either to decree, or but to foreknow the freest, most contingent act, and there will be a logical impossibility in order of consequence, that it should be otherwise than he so decreeth or foreseeth. But that inferreth no natural impossibility in the thing itself; for God doth not decree or foresee that such a man's fall shall be impossible, but only non futurum.