Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Arminians deny the Gospel

Neither let any deceive your wisdoms, by affirming that they are differences of an inferior nature that are at this day agitated between the Arminians and the orthodox divines of the reformed church. Be pleased but to cast an eye on the following instances, and you will find them hewing at the very root of Christianity. Consider seriously their denying of that fundamental article of original sin. Is this but a small escape in theology? - why, what need of the gospel, what need of Christ himself, if our nature be nor guilty, depraved, corrupted? Neither are many of the rest of less importance. Surely these are not things, as Austin speaks, - "about which we may differ without loss of peace or charity." One church cannot wrap in her communion Austin and Pelagius, Calvin and Arminius. I have here only given you a taste, whereby you may judge of the rest of their fruit, "mors in olla, mors in olla;" their doctrine of the final apostasy of the elect, of true believers, of a wavering hesitancy concerning our present grace and future glory, with divers others, I have wholly omitted: those I have produced are enough to make their abettors incapable of our church-communion. - John Owen, The Epistle Dedicatory in A Display of Arminianism, pg. 7

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