Section 10.

SECTION 10.

Zelotes’ sixth objection to a reconciliation with Honestus — The reconciler answers it by showing,

(1.) That the evangelical marriage of free grace and free will reflects no dishonour upon God’s sovereignty.

(2.) That Mr. Toplady’s grand argument against that marriage is inconclusive.

(3.) That Mr. Whitefield’s “inextricable dilemma,” in favour of Calvinian election and reprobation, is a mere sophism. And,

(4.) That Zelotes’ jumble of free wrath, and unevangelical free grace, pours real contempt upon all the Divine perfections, sovereignty itself not excepted.

OBJECTION VI. “If you are not a Pelagian, are you not a secret Atheist? Do you not indirectly represent Jehovah as not God? You want me to meet Honestus half way: but if I meet him where you are, shall not I meet him on the brink of a horrible precipice? Are you not an opposer of God’s sovereignty, which shines as gloriously among his other perfections, as the moon does among the stars? Is not a God without sovereignty as contemptible as a king without a kingdom? And can you reconcile your arrogant doctrine of free will, with the supreme, absolute, irresistible power, by which God ‘works all things after the counsel of his own will?’ Hear the Calvin of the day — the champion of the doctrines of grace: — “‘For this [Atheism] also Arminianism has paved the way, by despoiling the Divine Being, among other attributes of his unlimited supremacy, of his infinite knowledge, of his infallible wisdom, of his invincible power, of his absolute independency, of his eternal immutability. Not to observe that the exempting of some things and events from the providence of God, by referring them to free will, &c, is another of those black lanes, which lead, in a direct line, from Arminianism to Atheism. Neither is it at all surprising that any who represent men as gods (by supposing man to possess the Divine attribute of independent self determination) should, when their hand is in it, represent God himself with the imperfections of a man, by putting limitations to his sovereignty, by supposing his knowledge to be shackled with circumscription, and darkened with uncertainty; by connecting their ideas of his wisdom and power with the possibility of disconcertment and disappointment, embarrassment and defeat; by transferring his independency to themselves, in order to support their favourite doctrine, which affirms that the Divine will and conduct are dependent on the will and conduct of men; by blotting out his immutability, that they may clear the way for conditional, variable, vanquishable, and amissible grace; and by narrowing his providence, to keep the idol of free will upon its legs, and to save human reason from the humiliation of acknowledging her inability to account for many of the Divine disposals, &c. Who sees not the Atheistical tendency of all this? Let Arminianism try to exculpate herself from the heavy, but unexaggerated indictment, which if she cannot effect, it will be doing her no injustice to term her Atheism in masquerade.’” (Revelation Mr. Toplady’s Historic Proof, p. 728, &c.)

ANSWER. If this terrible objection had the least degree of solidity, I would instantly burn the Checks and the Scripture Scales; for I trust that the glory of God is ten thousand times dearer to me than the success of my little publications. But I cannot take bare assertions, groundless insinuations, and bombastic charges for solid proofs. In a mock sea fight, cannons may dreadfully roar, but no masts are shot away, no ship is sent to the bottom. And that, in this polemical broadside, the weight of the ball (if there be any) does not answer to the noise of the explosion, will appear, I hope, by the following answers: —

I. (1.) This objection is entirely levelled at the second Scripture Scale, which is made of so great a variety of plain scriptures, that, to attempt to set it aside as leading to Atheism, is to endeavour setting aside one half of the doctrinal part of the Bible as being Atheistical. And if so considerable a part of the Bible be Atheistical, the whole is undoubtedly a forgery. Thus Zelotes, rather than not to cut down what he is pleased to call Arminianism, fells one half of the trees that grow in the fruitful garden of revealed truth, under pretence that they are productive of Atheism: and, by that means, he gives infidels a fair opportunity of cutting down all the rest.

(2.) Zelotes is greatly mistaken if he thinks that the free agency we plead for, absolutely crosses the designs of “Him who works all after the counsel of his own will:” for if part of this counsel be, that man shall be a free agent, that life and death, heaven and hell, shall be “set before him;” and that he shall eternally have either the one or the other, according to his own choice: if this be the case, I say, God’s wisdom cannot be disappointed, nor his sovereign power baffled, be man’s choice whatever it may: because God designed to manifest his sovereign wisdom and power in the wonderful creation, wise government, and righteous judgment of free agents; and not in overpowering their will, or in destroying their free agency; much less in subverting his awful tribunal, and in obscuring all his perfections to place one of them (sovereignty) in a more glaring light.

(3.) I grant that the doctrine of free will evangelically assisted by free grace, (not Calvinistically overpowered by forcible grace or wrath,) I grant, I say, that this doctrine can never be reconciled with the doctrine of an unscriptural, tyrannical sovereignty, which Zelotes rashly attributes to God, under pretence of doing him honour. But that it is perfectly consistent with the awful, and yet amiable views which the Scriptures give us of God’s real sovereignty, is, I hope, abundantly proved in the preceding pages. To the arguments which they contain, I add the following illustration: — If a king, wisely to try, and justly to reward the honesty of his subjects, made a statute, to insure particular rewards to thief catchers, and particular punishments to thieves; would it be any disparagement to his wisdom, power, supremacy, and sovereignty, if he did not necessitate, nor absolutely oblige some of his subjects to rob, and others to catch them in the robbery; lest he should not order the former for infallible execution, and appoint to the latter a gratuitous reward? Would not our gracious sovereign be injured by the bare supposition that he is capable of displaying his supreme authority by such a pitiful method? And shall we suppose that the King of kings — the Judge of all the earth, maintains his righteous sovereignty by a similar conduct?

(4.) We perpetually assert that God is the only first cause of all good, both natural and moral; and thus we ascribe to him a sovereignty worthy of the Parent of good. If we do not directly, with the Manichees, or indirectly, with the Calvinists, represent God as the first cause of evil, it is merely because we dare not attribute to him a diabolical supremacy. And we fear that Zelotes will have no more thanks for giving God the glory of predestinating the reprobate necessarily to continue in sin, and be damned, than I should have, were I to give our Lord the shameful glory of seducing Eve in the shape of a lying serpent, lest he should not have the glory of being, and doing all in all.

(5.) We apprehend that the doctrine of the Scales (i.e. the doctrine of free will, evangelically subordinate to free grace or to just wrath) perfectly secures the honour of God’s greatness, supremacy, and power without dishonouring his goodness, justice, and veracity. It seems to us unscriptural and unreasonable to suppose that God should eclipse these, his MORAL perfections, (by which he chiefly proposes himself to us for our imitation,) in order to set off those, his NATURAL perfections. A grim tyrant, a Nebuchadnezzar, is praised for his greatness, sovereignty, and power; but a Titus, a prince who deserves to be called “the darling of mankind,” is extolled for his goodness, justice, and veracity. And who but Satan, or his subjects, would so overvalue the praise given to a Nebuchadnezzar, as to slight the praise bestowed upon a Titus? Was not Titus as great a potentate as Nebuchadnezzar and Darius, though he did not, like them, make tyrannical decrees to assert his powers, and then execute them with wanton cruelty, or with absurd mourning; lest he should lose the praise of his sovereignty and immutability, before a multitude of mistaken decretists? II. Having, I hope, broken the heart of Zelotes’ objection by the preceding arguments, it will not be difficult to take in pieces his boasted quotation from Mr. Toplady’s “Historic Proof;” and to point out the flaw of every part.

(1.) “Arminianism paves the way for Atheism by despoiling the Divine Being of his unlimited supremacy.” No: it only teaches us that it is absurd to make God’s supremacy bear an undue proportion to his other perfections. Do we despoil the king of his manly shape, because we deny his having the head of a giant, and the body of a dwarf?

(2.) “Of his infallible wisdom.” No: God wisely made free agents, that he might wisely judge them according to their works; and it is one of our objections to the modern doctrines of grace, that they despoil God of his “wisdom” in both these respects.

(3.) “Of his invincible power.” No: God does whatever pleases him, in heaven, earth, and hell. But reason and Scripture testify that he does not choose to set his invincible power against his unerring wisdom, by overpowering with saving grace, or damning wrath, the men whom he is going judicially to reward or punish.

(4.) “Of his absolute independency.” Absurd! when we say that the promised reward, which a general bestows upon a soldier for his gallant behaviour in the field, depends in some measure upon the soldier’s gallant behaviour, do we despoil the general of his independency with respect to the soldier? Must the general, to show himself independent, necessitate some of his soldiers to fight, that he may foolishly promote them; and others to desert, that he may blow their brains out with Calvinian independence?

(5.) “Of his eternal immutability.” No: when we assert that God justifies men according to their faith, and rewards them according to their good works; or when we say that he condemns them according to their unbelief, and punishes them according to their bad works; do we intimate that he betrays the least degree of mutability? On the contrary, do we not hereby represent him as faithfully executing his eternal, immutable decree of judging and treating men according to their works of faith, or of unbelief? (See “the Genuine Creed,” article eighth.)

Mr. Toplady goes on:

(6.) “The exempting of some things and events from the providence of God, by referring them to free will, &c, is another of those black lanes, which lead, in a direct line, from Arminianism to Atheism.” This is a mistake all over. By the doctrine of moderate free will we exempt no event or thing from the providence of God: for we maintain, that as God’s power made free will, so his providence rules or overrules it in all things. Only we do not believe that ruling or overruling implies “necessitating, overpowering,” or “tricking,” when judgments, punishments, and rewards are to follow. Our doctrine, therefore, is a lightsome walk, which leads to the right knowledge of God, and not one of those “black lanes which leads in a direct line” from Calvinian election to “Mr. Fulsome’s” presumption; and from Calvinian reprobation, to Francis Spira’s despair.

(7.) Arminianism “represents men as gods, by supposing man to possess the Divine attribute of independent self determination.” Our doctrines of grace suppose no such thing: on the contrary, we assert that obedient free will is always dependent upon God’s free grace; and disobedient free will upon God’s just wrath: this charge of Mr. Toplady is therefore absolutely groundless.

(8.) Arminianism “represents God himself with the imperfections of a man, by putting limitations to his sovereignty.” This is only a repetition of what is absurdly said, No. 1, about God’s “unlimited supremacy.”

(9.) It “supposes his knowledge to be shackled with circumscription, and darkened with uncertainty.” It supposes no such thing: on the contrary, one of our great objections to Calvinism is, that it so shackles God’s infinite knowledge as to despoil him of the knowledge of future contingencies, or of those events which depend upon man’s unnecessitated choice: absurdly supposing that God knows what he absolutely decrees, and no more. “If events were undecreed,” says Mr. Toplady, in his Hist. Proof, p. 192, “they would be unforeknown; if unforeknown, they could not be infallibly predicted. How came God to foreknow man’s fall,” says Calvin, [nisi quia sic ordinarat,] “but because he had appointed it?” Thus Calvin and Mr. Toplady, in one sense, allow less foreknowledge to God, than to a stable boy; for without decreeing any thing about the matter, a postilion knows that if the horse he curries gets into his master’s garden, some of the beds will be trampled; and that if a thief has an opportunity of taking a guinea without being seen, he will take it. (See pages 283, 287.)

(10.) The Arminians “connect their ideas of God’s wisdom and power with the possibility of disconcertment and disappointment, embarrassment and defeat.” No such thing: we maintain that God, in his infinite wisdom and power, has made free agents, in order to display his goodness by rewarding them, if they believe and obey; or his justice by punishing them, if they prove faithless and disobedient. Whichsoever of the two therefore comes to pass, God is no more “disconcerted, disappointed, embarrassed,” &c, than a lawgiver and judge, who acquits or condemns criminals according to his own law, and to their own works

(11.) What Mr. Toplady says in the next lines about the Arminian “transferring independency to themselves in order to support their favourite doctrine, which affirms that the Divine will and conduct are dependent on the will and conduct of men;”and what he adds about their “blotting out God’s immutability, and narrowing his providence, to keep the idol of free will upon its legs,” is a mere repetition of what is answered in No. 4, 5, 6, 7. This elegant tautology of Mr. Toplady may make some of his admirers wonder at the surprising variety of his arguments; but attentive readers can see through the rhetorical veil.

What that gentleman says of “conditional, variable, vanquishable, and amissible grace,” is verbal dust, raised to obscure the glory of the second Gospel axiom, to hide one of the Scripture Scales, and to substitute overbearing, necessitating grace, and free, unprovoked wrath, for the genuine grace and just wrath mentioned in the Gospel. Let us however dwell a moment upon each of these epithets:

(1.) “Conditional grace:” we assert (according to the first axiom) that the grace of initial salvation is unconditional; and (according to the second axiom) we maintain that the grace of eternal salvation is conditional, excepting the case of complete idiots, and of all who die in their infancy. If Mr. Toplady can disprove either part of this doctrine, or, which is all one, if he can overthrow the second Gospel axiom, and break our left Scale, let him do it.

(2.) “Variable grace:” we assert that grace, as it is inherent in God, is invariable. But we maintain that the displays of it toward mankind are various; asserting that those displays of it which God grants in a way of reward to them that faithfully use what they have, and properly ask for more, may and do vary according to the variations of faithful or unfaithful free will; our Lord himself having declared that “to him that hath to purpose, more shall be given;” and that “from him that hath not to purpose, even what he hath shall be taken away.”

(3.) “Vanquishable grace:” to call God’s grace vanquishable is absurd; because Christ does not fight men with grace, any more than a physician fights the sick with remedies. If a patient will not take his medicines, or will not take them properly, or will take poison also, the medicines are not vanquished, but despised, or improperly taken. This does not show the weakness of the medicines, but the perverseness of the patient. Nor does it prove that the dying man is stronger than his healthy physician; but only that the physician will not drench him as a farrier does a brute. If Mr. Toplady asserts the contrary, I refer him to page 67 of this volume. And, pointing at Christ’s tribunal, I ask, Could the Judge of all the earth wisely and equitably sentence men to eternal life, or to eternal death, if he first drenched them with the cup of finished salvation, or finished damnation?

(4.) “Amissible grace:” why cannot evangelical grace be lost as well as the celestial and para-disiacal grace which was bestowed upon angels and man before the fall? Is a diamond less precious for being amissible? Is it any disgrace to the sun that thousands of his beams are lost upon the drones who sleep away his morning light? or that they are abused by all the wicked who dare to sin in open day? If Divine grace is both forcible and inamissible, what signify the apostolic cautions of “not receiving it in vain,” and of not “doing despite to the Spirit of grace?” In a word, what signifies our second Gospel Scale, with all the scriptures that fill it up? To conclude: if those scriptures clearly demonstrate the doctrine of a free will, always subordinate either to free grace or to just wrath; when Mr. Toplady calls that free will an “idol,” does he not inadvertently charge God with being an idol maker, and represent the sacred writers as supporters of the idol which God has made? And when that gentleman says that we “keep the idol of free will upon its legs, to save human reason from the humiliation of acknowledging her inability to account for many of the Divine disposals;” does he not impose bound will and Calvinian reprobation upon us, just as the bishop of Rome imposes transubstantiation upon his tame underlings: that is, under pretence that we must humbly submit our reason to the Divine declarations, decrees, or disposals? Just as if there were no difference between popish declarations, or Calvinian decrees, and “Divine disposals!” Just as if the bare fear of regarding reason were sufficient to drive us from all the rational scriptures which fill our second Scale, into all the absurdities and horrors of free wrath and finished damnation!

And now say, candid reader, if I may not justly apply to the Calvinian doctrines of grace a part of what Mr. Toplady rashly says of “Arminianism?” “Let Calvinism exculpate herself from the heavy, but unexaggerated indictment, which, if she cannot effect, it will be doing her no injustice to term her” (I shall not say “Atheism in masquerade,” but) an irrational and unscriptural system of doctrine.

III. “Not so, (replies Zelotes:) if you have answered Mr. Toplady’s argument, you cannot set aside Mr. Whitefield’s dilemma in his letter to Mr. Wesley. To me, at least, that dilemma appears absolutely unanswerable. It runs thus: — ‘Surely Mr. Wesley will own God’s justice in imputing Adam’s sin to his posterity: and also, that after Adam fell, and his posterity in him, God might justly have “passed them all by,” without sending his Own Son to be a Saviour for any one. Unless you do heartily agree in both these points, you do not believe original sin aright. If you do own them, you must acknowledge the doctrine of election and reprobation to be highly just and reasonable. For if God might justly impute Adam’s sin to all, and afterward have passed by all, then he might justly pass by some. Turn to the right hand or to the left, you are reduced to an inextricable dilemma.’“ (See Mr. Whitefield’s Works, vol. iv, p. 67.) ANSWER. We own God’s justice in imputing Adam’s sin seminally to his posterity, because his posterity sinned seminally in him, and was in him seminally corrupted. And we grant that, in the loins of Adam, we seminally deserved all that Adam himself personally deserved. So far we agree with Mr. Whitefield; maintaining, as he does, that, by our fallen nature in Adam, we are all children of wrath; and that, as soon as our first parents had sinned, God might justly have sent them, and us in their loins, into the pit of destruction; much more “might he justly have passed us all by, without sending his own Son to be a Saviour for any one.” Therefore Mr. Whitefield has no reason to suspect that we deny the Scripture doctrine of original sin.

This being premised, we may easily see that the great flaw of the “inextricable dilemma” consists in confounding our seminal state with our personal state: and in concluding that what would have been just, when we were in our seminal state in the loins of Adam, must also be just in our personal state, now we are out of his loins. As this is the main spring of Mr. Whitefield’s mistake, it is proper to point it Out a little more clearly. Let the following propositions form the pointer: —

(1.) “The wages of sin is death,” yea, eternal death or damnation.

(2.) The wages of sin personally and consciously committed, is damnation personally and consciously suffered.

(3.) The wages of sin seminally and unknowingly committed is damnation, seminally and unknowingly suffered.

(4.) When Adam had personally and consciously sinned, God would have been just if he had inflicted upon him the personal and conscious punishment which we call damnation.

(5.) When we had seminally and unknowingly sinned in Adam, God would have been just if he had inflicted a seminal and unfelt damnation upon us for it; for then our punishment would have borne just proportion to our offence. We should have been punished as we had sinned, that is, seminally, and without the least consciousness of pain or of loss. But is it not contrary to all equity to punish a sin seminally and unknowingly committed with an eternal punishment, personally and knowingly endured? For what is Calvinian reprobation but a dreadful decree that a majority of the children of men shall be personally bound over to conscious, necessary, and eternal sin; which sin shall draw after it conscious, necessary, and eternal damnation? Hence it appears that Calvinian predestination to death is horrible in its end, which is personal, necessary, and eternal torments consciously endured: but much more horrible in the means which it appoints to secure that end, namely, personal, remediless sin; sin necessarily, unavoidably, and eternally committed; and all this merely for a sin seminally, unknowingly, and unconsciously committed: and (what is still more horrible) for a sin which God himself had absolutely predestinated, if the doctrine of Calvinian predestination, or of the absolute f54 necessity of events be Scriptural. “It is true,” Zelotes says, “that although reprobates are absolutely reprobated merely for the sin of Adam, yet they are damned merely for their own.” But this evasion only makes a bad matter worse; for it intimates that free wrath so flamed against their unformed persons, as to determine that they should absolutely be formed, not only to be necessarily and eternally miserable, but also to be necessarily and eternally guilty; which is pouring as much contempt upon Divine goodness, as I should pour upon Phinehas’ character, if I asserted that he contrived, and absolutely secured the filthy crime of Zimri and Cosbi, that, by this means, he might have a fair opportunity of infallibly running them both through the body. An illustration may help the reader to understand how hard the ground of Mr. Whitefield’s dilemma bears upon God’s equity. I have committed a horrible murder: I am condemned to be burnt alive for it; my sentence is just; having personally and consciously sinned without necessity, I deserve to be personally and consciously tormented. The judge may then, without cruelty, condemn every part of me to the flames; and the unbegotten posterity in my loins may justly burn with me, and in me: for with me and in me it has sinned as a part of myself. Nor is it a great misfortune for my posterity to be thus punished; because it has as little knowledge and feeling of my punishment, as of my crime. But suppose the judge, after reprieving me, divided and multiplied me into ten thousand parts; suppose again that each of these parts necessarily grew up into a man or a woman; would it be reasonable in him to say to seven or eight hundred of these men and women, “You were all seminally guilty of the murder committed by the man whom I reprieved; and from whose loins I have extracted you; and therefore my mercy passes you by, and my justice absolutely reprobates your persons? I force you into remediless circumstances, in which you will all necessarily commit murder; and then I shall have as fair an opportunity of unavoidably burning you for your own unavoidable murders, as I have had of absolutely reprobating you for the murder committed by the man from whom your wretched existence is derived.” Who does not see the injustice and cruelty of such a speech? Who, but Zelotes, would not blush to call it a gracious speech, or a “doctrine of grace?” But if the persons, whom I suppose extracted from me, are reprieved as well as myself; if we are put all together in remediable circumstances, where sin indeed abounds, but where grace abounds much more, supposing we are not unnecessarily, voluntarily, and obstinately wanting to ourselves; who does not see that, upon the personal commission of avoidable, voluntary murder, (and much more upon the personal refusal of a pardon sincerely offered upon reasonable conditions,) my posterity may be condemned to the flames as justly as myself?

If this illustration exactly represents the deplorable case of Calvinian reprobates, who, barely for a sin which they seminally committed, are supposed to be personally bound over first to unavoidable perseverance in sin, and next to unavoidable and eternal damnation; will not all my unprejudiced readers wonder to hear Mr. Whitefield assert that the Calvinian doctrine of reprobation is “highly just and reasonable?” “What!” replies that good mistaken man, “will not Mr. Wesley own that God might justly have passed all Adam’s posterity by, without sending his own Son to be a Saviour for any man?” ANSWER. God forbid we should ever imagine that God was bound to send his Son to die for any man! No: God was no more bound to redeem any man, than he was bound to create the first man; redemption as well as creation entirely flowing from rich, and every way undeserved grace.

“Then you give up the point,” says Zelotes; “for there is no medium between God’s refusing to send his Son to redeem a part of Adam’s posterity, and his passing a sentence of Calvinian reprobation upon them. Now if he could justly refuse to send his Son to save all, he could justly refuse to send him to save some, and therefore he could justly reprobate some, i.e. predestinate them to a remediless state of sin, and of consequence to unavoidable damnation.”

This sophistical argument probably misled Mr. Whitefield. But the “medium” which he could not see, the medium which spoils his “inextricable dilemma,” the door at which we readily go out of the prison where Logica Genevensis fancies she has confined us, may easily be pointed out, thus: — If God had not entertained gracious thoughts of peace, mercy, and redemption toward all mankind; if he had designed absolutely and unconditionally to glorify nothing but his vindictive justice upon a number of them, for having seminally sinned in Adam, he might undoubtedly have passed them by; yea, he might have severely punished them. But, as I have observed, in this case he would have punished them equitably, that is, seminally: he would have crushed guilty Adam, and with him his Cainish, reprobated seed; contriving the birth of Abel, Seth, and others, in such a manner as to bring no man into personal existence, but such as had a personal share in his redeeming mercy. And this is the very plan, which, according to our doctrines of grace, and according to the Scriptures, God graciously laid down in eternity, and faithfully executed when “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world tasted death for every man — gave himself a ransom for all” — and became an evangelical (not an Antinomian) “propitiation for the sins of the whole world.” A third flaw in Mr. Whitefield’s dilemma is the supposition that Calvinian reprobation is only a harmless preterition: but a passing by, in some cases, is horrible cruelty. Thus if a mother Calvinistically passes by her suckling child for a week, she actually starves and destroys him. This is not all: Calvinian reprobation is a downright appointment to eternal death. “The [Calvinian] predestination of some to life,” &c, says Mr. Toplady, “cannot be maintained without admitting the [Calvinian] reprobation of some others unto death,” even unto eternal death, or damnation. But I ask, again, what can be more unreasonable and unjust than to appoint millions of unborn infants to personal, conscious, unavoidable, and eternal death, through the horrible medium of a personal, unavoidable perseverance in sin; and this merely for a sin which they never personally and consciously committed? A fourth flaw in Mr. Whitefield’s argument consists in confounding the Calvinian with the Scriptural imputation of Adam’s sin. If God imputed sin to Adam’s offspring in its seminal state, it was merely because Adam’s offspring seminally sinned in him. God’s imputation is always according to truth. When Adam had actually tainted his soul with sin, and his body with mortality, sinfulness and mortality actually tainted all his offspring then in his loins; and therefore God can truly impute sinfulness and mortality to all, that is, he could truly account them all to be what they really were, i.e. seminally sinful and mortal. How different is this righteous imputation, from the imputation maintained by Zelotes! a cruel, supposed imputation this, whereby God is represented as arbitrarily determining that numberless myriads of unformed men shall be so accounted guilty of a sin which they never personally committed, as to be personally and absolutely predestinated to eternal death, through the horrible medium of necessary, remediless sin!

If Zelotes reply: “God may as justly impute Adam’s sin to the natural seed of Adam, as he does impute Christ’s righteousness to the spiritual seed of Christ:” I reply,

(1.) The case is not parallel. The king may justly give a thousand pounds gratis to whom he pleases, but he cannot give a thousand stripes gratis to whom he pleases, because free wrath is absolutely incompatible with justice.

(2.) “Faith is imputed for righteousness;” or, if you please, God imputes righteousness to believers. Now, who are believers? Are they not men who have faith? men who have that grace which unites them to Christ the righteous, and by which they actually derive from Christ (in various degrees) not only a peculiar interest in his merits, but also the very righteousness, the very hatred of sin, and the very love of virtue, which were in the heart of Christ? Therefore when God imputes faith for righteousness, or when he imputes righteousness to believers, he only accounts that what is in believers is actually there; or, if you please, that believers are what they really are, that is, righteous. Hence it appears, that to support Calvinian imputation of sin, by Calvinian imputation of righteousness, is only to defend one chimera by another. Mr. Whitefield’s argument in defence of Calvinian reprobation appears to us so much the more inconclusive, as it is not less contrary to Scripture than to reason. Who can fairly reconcile that reprobation to the texts which intimate that “this proverb shall no more be used in Israel: — The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the case is remediless; the children’s teeth being necessarily and eternally set on edge?” that “the son shall not eternally die,” or be reprobated to eternal death “for the sins of the father;” that “God’s mercy is over all his works” till provoked free grace gives place to just wrath; that he “willeth not primarily the death of a sinner;” and that “God our Saviour will have all men to be saved,” in a rational, evangelic way, that is, by freely working out their own salvation in subordination to his free grace.

From all the preceding answers, I hope I may conclude, that the “inextricable dilemma” is a mere sophism; and that the truly reverend Mr. Whitefield understood far better how to offer up a warm prayer, and preach a pathetic sermon, than how to follow error into her lurking holes, in order to seize there the twisting viper with the tongs of truth, and bring her out to public view, stripped of her shining, slippery dress, and darting in vain her forked and hissing tongue.

IV. Having answered the threefold objection of Zelotes, Mr. Toplady, and Mr. Whitefield, I shall now retort it, and show, that upon the plan of the Calvinian “doctrines of grace” and wrath — of unavoidable, finished salvation for a fixed number of elect, and of unavoidable, finished damnation for a fixed number of reprobates, all the Divine perfections (sovereignty not excepted) suffer a partial, or a total eclipse. I have, it is true, done it already in the Checks: but as my opponents do not seem to have taken the least notice of the passage I refer to, though it contains the strength of our cause with respect to the Divine perfections, I beg leave to produce it a second time. If in a civil court a second citation is fair and expedient, why might it not be so too in a court of controversial judicature? I therefore ask a second time: —

“What becomes of God’s goodness, if the tokens of it, which he gives to millions of men, be only intended to enhance their ruin, or cast a deceitful veil over his everlasting wrath? What of his mercy, which ‘is over all his works,’ if millions were for ever excluded from the least interest in it, by an absolute decree that constituted them vessels of wrath from all eternity? What becomes of his justice, if he sentence myriads of men upon myriads to everlasting fire, ‘because they have not believed on the name of his only begotten Son;’ when, if they had believed that he was their Jesus, their Saviour, they would have believed a monstrous lie, and claimed what they have no more right to, than I have to the crown of England? What of his veracity, and the oath he swears that he ‘willeth not primarily the death of a sinner; if he never affords most sinners sufficient means of escaping eternal death? if he sends his ambassadors to ‘every creature,’ declaring that ‘all things are now ready’ for their salvation, when nothing but ‘Tophet is prepared of old’ for the inevitable destruction of a vast majority of them? What becomes of his holiness, if, in order to condemn the reprobates with some show of justice, and to secure the end of his decree of reprobation, which is, that ‘millions shall absolutely sin and be damned,’ he absolutely fixes the means of their damnation, that is, their sins and wickedness? What of his wisdom, if he seriously expostulates with souls as dead as corpses, and gravely urges to repentance and faith persons that can no more repent and believe, than fishes can speak and sing? What becomes of his long suffering, if he waits to have an opportunity of sending the reprobates into a deeper hell, and not sincerely to give them a longer time to ‘save themselves from this perverse generation?’ What of his equity, if there was mercy for Adam and Eve, who personally broke the hedge of duty, and wantonly rushed out of paradise into this howling wilderness; while there is no mercy for millions of their unfortunate children, who are born in a state of sin and misery without any personal choice, and of consequence without any personal sin? And what becomes of his omniscience, if he cannot foreknow future contingencies? if to foretel, without a mistake, that such a thing will happen, he must necessitate it; or do it himself? Was not Nero as wise in this respect? Could not he foretel that Phebe should not continue a virgin, when he was bent upon ravishing her? That Seneca should not die a natural death, when he had determined to have him murdered? And that Crispus should fall into a pit, if he obliged him to run a race at midnight in a place full of pits? And what old woman in the kingdom could not precisely foretel that a silly tale should be told at such an hour, if she were resolved to tell it herself; or, at any rate, make a child do it for her? “Again: what becomes of God’s ‘loving kindnesses, which have been ever of old toward the children of men?’ And what of his impartiality, if most men, absolutely reprobated for the sin of Adam, are never placed in a state of personal trial and probation? Does not God use them far less kindly than he does devils, who were tried every one for himself, and remain in their diabolical state, because they brought it upon themselves by a personal choice? Astonishing! That the Son of God should have been flesh of the flesh, and bone of the bone of millions of men, whom, upon the Calvinistic scheme, he never indulged so far as he did devils! What a hard-hearted relation to myriads of his fellow men does Calvin represent our Lord! Suppose Satan had become our kinsman by incarnation, and had by that mean got the right of redemption, would he not have acted like himself, if he had not only left the majority of them in the depths of the fall, but enhanced their misery by the sight of his partiality to the elect?

“Once more: what becomes of fair dealing, if God every where represents sin as the dreadful evil which causes damnation, and yet the most horrid sins work for good to some, and, as P. O. intimates, ‘accomplish their salvation through Christ?’ And what of honesty, if the God of truth himself promises that ‘all the families of the earth shall be blessed in Christ,’ when he has cursed a vast majority of them with a decree of absolute reprobation, which excludes them from obtaining an interest in him, even from the foundation of the world?

“Nay, what becomes of his sovereignty itself, if it is torn from the mild and gracious attributes by which it is tempered? If it is held forth in such a light as renders it more terrible to millions than the sovereignty of Nebuchadnezzar in the plain of Dura appeared to Daniel’s companions, when ‘the form of his visage was changed against them, and he decreed that they should be cast into the burning fiery furnace?’ For they might have saved their bodily life, by bowing to the golden image, which was a thing in their power; but poor Calvinian reprobates can escape at no rate; the ‘horrible decree’ is gone forth; they must, in spite of their best endeavours, ‘dwell,’ body and soul, ‘with everlasting burnings.’”

To these queries, taken from the Third Check, I now add those which follow: — What becomes of God’s infinite power, if he cannot make free agents, or creatures endued with free will? And what of his boundless wisdom, if, when he has made such creatures, he knows not how to rule, overrule, reward, and punish them, without necessitating them, that is, without undoing his own work — without destroying their free agency, which is his masterpiece in the universe? Nay, what would become of the Divine immutability, about which Zelotes makes so much ado, if after God had suspended in all the Scriptures the reward of eternal life, and the punishment of eternal death, upon our unnecessitated works of faith and unbelief, he so altered his mind, in the day of judgment, as to suspend heavenly thrones, and infernal racks, only upon the good works of Christ, and the bad works of Adam; through the necessary medium of faith and holiness, absolutely forced upon some men to the end; and through the necessary means of unbelief and sin, absolutely bound upon all the rest of mankind? And, to conclude, how shall we be able to praise God for his invariable faithfulness, if his secret will and public declarations are at almost perpetual variance? And if Zelotes’ doctrines of grace tempt us to complain with the poet,

Nescio quo teneam mutantem Protea nodo; f55 instead of encouraging us to say, with David, “For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven:” “thy faithfulness is unto all generations.” If Zelotes cannot answer these queries in as rational and Scriptural a manner as his objections have, I trust, been answered; will not the Calvinian doctrines of unscriptural free grace and everlasting free wrath appear to unprejudiced persons as great enemies to the Divine perfections, and to “the sincere milk of God’s word,” as Virgil’s Harpies were to the Trojan hero, and to his richly spread tables? And is there not some resemblance between the Diana and Hecate whom I unmask, and the petty goddesses whom the poet describes thus?

Sive f56 Deæ, seu sint diræ obscenæque volucres, —

Tristius haud illis monstrum, nec sævior ulla

Pestis et ira deum Stygiis sese extulit undis.

Virginei volucrum vultus, fædissima ventris

Proluvies, uncæque manus: — nec vulnera tergo

Accipiunt: ceterique fuga sub sidera lapsæ,

Semesam prædam, et vestigia fæda relinquunt.