A Treatise Of Gods Free Grace And Mans Free Will

This treatise is an echo of Scripture teaching how God’s will and man’s will work in their respective spheres, and with each other working from his text, Matthew 23:37-38. This work is designed to humble the creature in realizing that God’s free grace is that which enables man to believe the Gospel. And it also teaches that man’s free will is actually a slave to his desires. Perkins' covers the will of God looking at both God’s sovereignty and God’s good pleasure in light of Jerusalem’s unwillingness to repent. He also covers the will of man in four important areas: in the garden before the fall, after the fall, in light of and after regeneration, and glorified in heaven. This is not a scan or facsimile and has an active table of contents for electronic versions.

William Perkins (1558 ¿ 1602) was a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and a famous Cambridge theologian. He was one of the foremost leaders of the Puritan movement in the Church of England before the Westminster Assembly and was a mentor to such astute puritans as Jeremiah Burroughs. He was a celebrated divine who wrote voluminously on a number of important theological and practical topics including a number of works on God¿s grace. The Works of William Perkins have not been published until now in these individual treatises.This treatise is an echo of Scripture teaching how God¿s will and man¿s will work in their respective spheres, and with each other working from his text, Matthew 23:37-38. This work is designed to humble the creature in realizing that God¿s free grace is that which enables man to believe the Gospel. And it also teaches that man¿s free will is actually a slave to his desires. Perkin¿s covers the will of God looking at both God¿s sovereignty and God¿s good pleasure in light of Jerusalem¿s unwillingness to repent. He also covers the will of man in four important areas: in the garden before the fall, after the fall, in light of and after regeneration, and glorified in heaven.This is not a scan or facsimile.

There are some persons who suppose that the freedom of the will is denied whenever God’s grace is maintained, and who on their side defend their liberty of will so peremptorily as to deny the grace of God. This grace, as they assert, is bestowed according to our own merits. It is in consequence of their opinions that I wrote the book entitled On Grace and Free Will. This work I addressed to the monks of Adrumetum, in whose monastry first arose the controversy on that subject, and that in such a manner that some of them were obliged to consult me thereon. The work begins with these words: “With reference to those persons who so preach the liberty of the human will.” Aeterna Press

"The Grace of God, the Will of Man: A Case for Arminianism" was written by an impressive team of evangelical scholars from many traditions. This work carries on the ancient debate about the scope of God's saving purposes and the manner of his effecting salvation in human beings. It defends the proposition that God is a dynamic personal Agent who respects the freedom he chose to delegate to his human creatures and relates sensitively to us in the outworking of his plans for the whole of history. God is love and expresses his power by working salvation among us under conditions of genuine mutuality. The contributors to this volume are Christian scholars who are eager to present this evangelical model as an alternative to deterministic theology. They do not claim to have said the last word on the subject but want at least to keep the ball of theological discussion in play.

"Considered Edwards' finest work, the treatise is a monument of American philosophy," noted Christian History magazine (Vol. 4, No. 4, p.19). They continue, "In this treatise Edwards painstakingly shows that man is indeed free... but that God is still sovereign and still solely responsible for man's salvation. Edwards tries to show that a sinner and humans, in the Calvinist tradition, come into the world under the curse of Adam would never by himself choose to glorify God unless God himself changed that person's character. Regeneration, God's act, is the basis for repentance and conversion, the human actions." A detailed, careful, and strongly Calvinistic look at this important question. Edwards (1703-1758) is by far the best known American theologian. After graduating from and teaching at Yale University, he began a very fruitful ministry at Northampton, MA. The church was the scene of the explosive revival of 1734, 35, and burned fiercely for God under Edwards for several years. Edwards then went to pastor the lowly Indians. But at last he was called to be the first president of Princeton University, where he served only 5 weeks, dying of smallpox.

Whether man has free will continues to be a hot topic among Bible teachers and theologians. After defining the issues involved, from both a worldview and a biblical standpoint, this work devotes three chapters to exploring the single-volume treatments against free will by the great theologians Luther, Calvin, and Edwards. The author then responds to the major issues involved in their objections to free will: foreknowledge and necessity, human depravity and the grace of God, the sovereignty and all-encompassing providence of God, and Edwards's rationalistic argument. In each instance, the doctrine of free will, rightly understood, is in full and biblical accord with these concerns. A concluding chapter summarizes and expresses the bottom-line differences in the doctrine of salvation between the Arminian and the Calvinistic wings of reformed theology.