.11 230 SIXTH SERMON or purposes of his to receive their ultimate form and stamp from the previous and intercurrent casualties or conditions of the creature. This I have always looked on as the principal cause of those dangerous errors concerning grace, free will, and the decrees of God, wherewith the churches of Christ have been so miserably in the former ages, and in this of ours, exercised by the subtlety of Satan, and by the pride of corrupt - minded men ; namely, the too low and narrow thoughts and conception which men have framed to themselves of God, the not acquiescing in his sovereign dominion and absolute power of dispos- ing all things which he made, unto whatsoever uses he himself pleaseth : into which I am sure the holy scripture cloth resolve all, Matt. xviii. 25, 26. Rom, ix. 18. 21. xi. 33. 36. Eph. i. 5. 9. 11. Psa. cxxxv. 6. Even in the sinful actions of men, God's influence and providence bath a particular hand. A s actions, his influence ; as sinful, his providence. 1. His in- fluence to the natural motion and substance of the action, though not to the wickedness of it ; for this standeth not in being or perfection (else the fountain of being and perfection must needs be the first cause of it) but in defect and privation of perfection. As when a hand draweth a line by a crooked rule, the line is from the hand, but the crookedness of it is from the rule : or, as when a man goeth lamely, the motion as motion is from the natural faculty, but the lameness of the motion is from the defect and vicious- ness of the faculty. A swearer could not speak an oath, nor a murderer reach out his hand to strike a blow, but by the force of those natural faculties which in and from God have all their being and working. But that these natural motions are by profaneness
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