.
Ib.
p. 43.
The Interpreter answered, "This is Christ, who continually, with the oil of his grace, maintains the work already begun in the heart; by the means of which, notwithstanding what the Devil can do, the souls of his people prove gracious still. And in that thou sawest that the man stood behind the wall to maintain the fire, this is to teach thee, that it is hard for the tempted to see how this work of grace is maintained in the soul."
This is beautiful; yet I cannot but think it would have been still more appropriate, if the waterpourer had been a Mr. Legality, a prudentialist offering his calculation of consequences as the moral antidote to guilt and crime; and if the oil-instillator, out of sight and from within, had represented the corrupt nature of man, that is, the spiritual will corrupted by taking up a nature into itself.
Ib.
What, then, has the sinner who is the subject of grace no hand in keeping up the work of grace in the heart? No! It is plain Mr. Bunyan was not an Arminian.
Note in Edwards
.
If by metaphysics we mean those truths of the pure reason which always transcend, and not seldom appear to contradict, the understanding, or (in the words of the great Apostle) spiritual verities which can only be spiritually discerned — and this is the true and legitimate meaning of metaphysics, [Greek: metà tà physikà] — then I affirm, that this very controversy between the Arminians and the Calvinists, in which both are partially right in what they affirm, and both wholly wrong in what they deny, is a proof that without metaphysics there can be no light of faith.