Goodwin was a person who thought for himself, and looked at a subject on more sides than one, and was as zealous to maintain the freeness of Divine grace as any Divine could be; consequently, we find him expressing himself, so as to appear, in the eyes of opponents, logically inconsistent, although he had a way of his own by which to defend himself against the imputation. Although he distinctly denies the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, yet he maintains, when stating his own opinion on the subject, that predestination does not depend on the foresight of faith, or righteousness. “For though it be supposed,” he says, “that God decreeth to elect, and accordingly actually electeth all that believe and none other; yet this, at no hand proveth, either that His purpose, or the execution hereof, proceed in their origination, from the faith of such persons foreseen, no nor from the foresight of their faith: though this be more tolerable than the other. There is nothing in the nature of faith, nor in God’s foresight of faith, in what persons soever, that hath in it any generative virtue of any such purpose in God.” There were other Puritans who adopted Arminian views. John Horne, Vicar of Allhallows, Lynn--a learned man of most exemplary and primitive piety who was ejected in 1662--previously published a book entitled, “The open door for Man’s approach to God; or, a vindication of the Record of God concerning the extent of the death of Christ.”[532] Tobias Conyers, Minister of St. Ethelbert’s, London, also one of the ejected clergy, accused of being “schismatical and heretical,”--but who seems to have been a man of high character, and of a catholic spirit,--published, in 1657, a translation of a work by Arminius, under the title of “The Just Man’s Defence, or the Royal Conquest.”[533] Of George Lawson, Rector of More, in Shropshire, who animadverted upon Baxter’s _Aphorisms of Justification_, Baxter himself remarks,--after eulogizing him as almost the ablest man whom he knew in England,--“He was himself near the Arminians, differing from them only in the point of perseverance as to the confirmed, and some little matters more.” He published (1659) an excellent sum of divinity, called _Theopolitica_.[534] [Sidenote: JOHN GOODWIN.]