Section 4.

SECTION 4.

An answer to the arguments by which Mr. Toplady endeavours to reconcile Calvinian reprobation with Divine JUSTICE.

WE have seen how unhappily the translator of Zanchius has reconciled his doctrines of grace and absolute election with God’s holiness: let us now see if he has been more successful in reconciling his doctrines of wrath and absolute reprobation with Divine justice.

ARG. XVI. Page 35. “Justice consists in rendering to every man his due.” Mr. Toplady gives us this narrow definition of justice to make way for this argument: God owes us no blessing, and therefore he may gratuitously give us an everlasting curse. He does not owe us heaven, and therefore he may justly appoint that eternal sin and damnation shall be our unavoidable portion. But is not a king unjust when he punishes an unavoidable fault with uninterrupted torture, as well as when he refuses to pay his just debts? ARG. XVII. (Ibid.) “God is not a debtor to any man.” True, (strictly speaking;) but,

(1.) Does not God owe to himself, to behave like himself, that is, like a gracious and just Creator toward every man?

(2.) When God, by his promise, has engaged himself judicially to render to every man “according to his works,” is it just in him to necessitate some men to work righteousness, and others to work iniquity, that he may reward the former, and punish the latter, according to arbitrary decrees of absolute election to life, and of absolute reprobation to death? And,

(3.) Do not the sacred writers observe, that God has condescended to make himself a debtor to his creatures by his gracious promises? Did Mr. Toplady never read, “He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth to the Lord, and,” look, “what he layeth out it shall be paid again?” Proverbs 19:17. When evangelical Paul hath “fought a good fight,” does he not look for a crown from the “just Judge,” and declare that “God is not unrighteous to forget our labour of love;” and, “if we confess our sins,” is not God bound by his justice, as well as by his faithfulness, “to forgive, and cleanse us?” 1 John 1:9.

ARG. XVIII. (Ibid.) “If it can be proved that he [God] owes salvation to every rational being he has made, then, and then only will it follow that God is unjust in not paying this debt of salvation to each, &c. What shadow of injustice can be fastened on his conduct for, in some cases, withholding what he does not owe?” This argument is introduced by Mr. Toplady in a variety of dresses. The flaw of it consists in supposing that there can be no medium between eternal salvation, and appointing to eternal damnation; and that, because God may absolutely elect as many of his creatures as he pleases to a crown of glory, he may absolutely reprobate as many as Calvinism pleases to eternal sin and everlasting burnings. The absurdity of this conclusion will be discovered by the reader, if he look at it through the glass of the following illustrations: — Mr. Toplady is not obliged, by any rule of justice, to give Mr. Wesley a hundred pounds, because he owes him no money; and therefore Mr. T. may give Mr. Wesley a hundred gratuitous stripes, without breaking, any rule of justice. The king may, without injustice, gratuitously give a thousand pounds to one man, ten thousand to another, a hundred to a third, and nothing to a fourth; and therefore the king may also, without injustice, gratuitously give a hundred stabs to one man, a thousand to another, and ten thousand to a third; or, he may necessitate them to offend, that he may hang and burn them with a show of justice.

ARG. XIX. Page 36. “I defy any man to show in what single respect the actual limitation of happiness itself is a lot more just and equitable (in a Being possessed of infinite power) than the decretive limitation of the persons who shall enjoy that happiness.” The question is not whether God can justly limitate the happiness of man; or the number of the men, whom he will raise to such and such heights of happiness. This we never disputed; on the contrary, we assert with our Lord, that when God gives degrees of happiness, as a benefactor he may “do what he pleases with his own;” he may give five talents to one man, or to five thousand men; and two talents to two men, or to two millions of men. Wherein then does the fallacy of Mr. Toplady’s argument consist? In this most irrational and unjust conclusion: God may, without injustice, “limit the happiness” of his human creatures, and the number of those who shall enjoy such and such a degree of happiness; and therefore he may also, without injustice, absolutely reprobate as many of his unborn creatures as he pleases, and decree to protract their infernal torments to all eternity, after having first decreed their necessary fall into sin, and their necessary continuance in sin, as necessary means, in order to their necessary end, which is eternal damnation. Is not this an admirable Vindication of Calvin’s Decrees? Who does not see that the conclusion has no more to do with the premises than the following argument: — The lord chancellor may, without injustice, present Mr. T. to a living of fifty pounds, or to one of two hundred pounds, or he may reprobate Mr. T. from all the crown livings; and therefore the lord chancellor may, without injustice, sue Mr. T. for fifty pounds, or two hundred pounds, whenever he pleases. What name shall we give to the logic which deals in such arguments as these? ARG. XX. Page 37. “He [man] derives his existence from God, and therefore [says Arminianism] God is bound to make his existence happy.” I would rather say God is bound both by the rectitude of his nature, and by the promises of his Gospel, not to reprobate any man to remediless sin and eternal misery, till he has actually deserved such a dreadful reprobation, at least by one thought, which he was not absolutely predestinated to think. But Calvinism says that God absolutely reprobated a majority of men before they thought their first thought, or drew their first breath. If Mr. T. had stated the case in this plain manner, all his readers would have seen his doctrine of wrath without veil, and would have shuddered at the sight. ARG. XXI. (Ibid.) “If God owe salvation to all his creatures as such, even the workers of iniquity will be saved, or God must cease to be just.” I never heard any Arminian say that God owes salvation, that is, heavenly glory, to all his creatures, as such: for then all horses, being God’s creatures as well as men, would be taken to heaven. But we maintain that God will never mediately entail necessary, remediless sin upon any of his creatures, that he may infallibly punish them with eternal damnation. And we assert, if God had not graciously designed to replace all mankind in a state of initial salvation from sin and hell, according to the various dispensations of his redeeming grace, he would have punished Adam’s personal sin by a personal damnation. Nor would he have suffered him to propagate his fallen race, unless the second Adam had extended the blessings of redemption so far as to save from eternal misery all who die in their infancy, and to put all who live long enough to act as moral agents, in a capacity of avoiding hell by “working out their own eternal salvation” in the day of their temporary salvation; a day this, which inconsistent Calvinists call “the day of grace.”

Mr. Toplady, after decrying our doctrine of grace, as leading to gross iniquity, indirectly owns that the conditionality of the promise of eternal salvation guards our Gospel against the charge of Antinomianism, — a dreadful charge this, which falls so heavily on Calvinism. Conscious that he cannot defend his lawless, unconditional election to eternal life, and his wrathful, unconditional reprobation to eternal death, without taking the conditionality of eternal salvation out of the way, he attempts to do it by the following dilemma: —

ARG. XXII. Page 38. “Is salvation due to a man that does not perform those conditions? If you say, Yes; you jump, hand over head, into what you yourself call Antinomianism. If you say that salvation is not due to a man, unless he do fulfil the conditions, it will follow that man’s own performances are meritorious of salvation, and bring God himself into debt.”

We answer,

1. To show the tares of Calvinism, Mr. Toplady raises an artificial night by confounding the sparing salvation of the Father, the atoning salvation of the Son, the convincing, converting, and perfecting salvation of the Spirit. Yea, he confounds actual salvation from a thousand temporal evils; temporary salvation from death and hell; initial salvation from the guilt and power of sin; present salvation into the blessings of Christianity, Judaism, Heathenism; continued salvation into these blessings; eternal salvation from death and hell; and eternal salvation into glory and heaven: he confounds, I say, all these degrees of salvation, which is as absurd as if he confounded all degrees of life, the life of an embryo, of a sucking child, of a school boy, of a youth, of a man, of a departed saint, and of an angel. When he has thus shuffled his cards, and played the dangerous game of confusion, what wonder is it if he wins it, and makes his inattentive readers believe that what can be affirmed with truth of salvation into heavenly glory, must be true also when it is affirmed of salvation from everlasting burnings; and that because God does not owe heaven and angelical honours to unborn children, he may justly reprobate them to hell and to Satanical, remediless wickedness as the way to it.

2. Distinguishing what Mr. Toplady confounds, we do not sample to maintain, that though God is not bound to give existence, much less heavenly glory, to any creature; yet all his creatures, who never personally offended him, have a right to expect at his hands salvation from everlasting fire, till they have deserved his eternal and absolute reprobation by committing some personal and avoidable offence. Hence it is, that all mankind are born in a state of inferior salvation: for they are all born out of eternal fire; and to be out of hell is a considerable degree of salvation, unless we are suffered to live unavoidably to deserve everlasting burnings, which is the case of all Calvin’s imaginary reprobates.

3. Mr. Toplady “throws out a barrel for the amusement of the whale, to keep him in play, and make him lose sight of the ship” — the fire ship. For, in order to make us lose sight of absolute reprobation, remediless wickedness, and everlasting fire, which (if Calvinism be true) is the unavoidable lot of the greatest part of mankind even in their mother’s womb; he throws out this ambiguous expression, “salvation due;” just as if there were no medium between “salvation due,” and Calvinian reprobation due! Whereas it is evident that there is the medium of non-creation, or that of destruction in a state of seminal existence!

4. The flaw of Mr. Toplady’s argument will appear in its proper magnitude, if we look at it through the following illustration: — A whole regiment is led to the left by the colonel, whom the general wanted to turn to the right. The colonel, who is personally in the fault, is pardoned; and five hundred of the soldiers, who, by the overbearing influence of their colonel’s disobedience, were necessitated to move to the left, are appointed to be hanged for not going to the right. The general sends to Geneva for a Tertullus, who vindicates the JUSTICE of the execution by the following speech: — “Preferment is not due to obedient soldiers, much less to soldiers who have necessarily disobeyed orders; and therefore your gracious general acts consistently with JUSTICE in appointing these five hundred soldiers to be hanged, for, as there is no medium between not promoting soldiers, and hanging them, he might justly have hanged the whole regiment. He is not bound, by any law, to give any soldier a captain’s commission; and therefore he is perfectly just when he sends these military reprobates to the gallows.” Some of the auditors clap Tertullus’ argument: P.O. cries out, that it is “most masterly;” but a few of the soldiers are not quite convinced, and begin to question whether the holy service of the mild Saviour of the world is not preferable to the Antinomian service of the absolute reprobater of countless myriads of unborn infants.

5. The other flaw of Mr. Toplady’s dilemma consists in supposing that Gospel worthiness is incompatible with the Gospel; whereas, all the doctrines of justice, which make one half of the Gospel, stand or fall with the doctrines of evangelical worthiness. We will shout it on the walls of mystic Geneva: — They that follow Christ shall “walk with him in white? rather than they that follow antichrist; “for they are [more] worthy. Watch and pray always, that you may be counted worthy to escape, and to stand rewardable before the Son of man. Whatever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, &c, knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance.” For he will say, in the great day of retribution, “Come, ye blessed, inherit the kingdom, &c; for I was hungry, and ye gave me meat, &c. Go, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, &c; for I was hungry, and ye gave me no meat,” &c. The doctrine of Pharisaic merit we abhor; but the doctrine of rewardable obedience we honour, defend, and extol. Believers, let not Mr. Toplady “beguile you of your reward through voluntary humility. If ye live after the flesh ye shall die: but if ye, through the Spirit, mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For we shall all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether it be good or bad.” Look to yourselves, that ye lose not the things which ye have wrought. So fight, that you may not be reprobated by remunerative justice. “So run, that you may [judicially] obtain an incorruptible crown. Remember Lot’s wife. By patient continuance in well doing seek for glory;” and God, according to his gracious promises, will “render you eternal life: for he is not” untrue to break his evangelical promises, nor “unrighteous to forget your work that proceedeth from love.” Your persevering obedience shall be graciously rewarded by “a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give you at that day; and then great shall be your reward in heaven.” For Christ himself hath said, “Be faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life. My sheep follow me, and I will give unto them eternal life” in glory. For I am “the author of eternal salvation to them that obey me.” What can be plainer than this Gospel? Shall the absurd cries of popery! merit! &c, make us ashamed of Christ’s disciples; of Christ’s words, and of Christ himself? God forbid! Let the Scriptures — “let God be true,” though Mr. Toplady should be mistaken.

ARG. XXIII. Page 38. “If he [God] be not obliged, in justice, to save mankind, then neither is he unjust in passing by some men; nay, he might, had he so pleased, have passed by the whole of mankind, without electing any one individual of the fallen race; and yet have continued holy, just, and good.”

True: he might have passed them by without fixing any blot upon his justice and goodness, if, by passing them by, Mr. T. means “leaving them in the wretched state of seminal existence,” in which state his vindictive justice found them after Adam’s fall. For then an unknown punishment, seminally endured, would have borne a just proportion to an unknown sin, seminally committed, But if, by passing some men by, this gentleman means, as Calvinism does, “absolutely predestinating some men to necessary, remediless sin, and to unavoidable, eternal damnation;” we deny that God might justly have passed by the whole of mankind; we deny that he might justly have passed by one single man, woman, or child. Nay, we affirm that if we conceive Satan, or the evil principle of Manes, as exerting creative power, we could not conceive him worse employed, than in forming an absolute reprobate in embryo; that is, “a creature unconditionally and absolutely doomed to remediless wickedness and everlasting fire.”

As the simple are frequently imposed upon by an artful substituting of the harmless word, “passing by,” for the terrible word, “absolutely reprobating to death,” I beg leave to show, by a simile, the vast difference there is between these two phrases: — A king may, without injustice, pass by all the beggars in the streets, without giving them any bounty; because, if he does them no good in thus passing them by, he does them no harm. But suppose he called two captains of his guards, and said to the first, If you see me pass by little, dirty beggars, without giving them an alms, throw them into the mire; or if their parents have cast them into the mire, keep them there: then let the second captain follow with his men, and take all the dirty beggars who have thus been passed by, and throw them, for being dirty, into a furnace hotter than that of Nebuchadnezzar: suppose, I say, the king passed his little indigent subjects by in this manner, would not his decree of preterition be a more than diabolical piece of cruelty? I need not inform my judicious readers that the passing by of the king represents Calvinian passing by, that is, absolute reprobation to death; that the first captain, who throws little beggars into the dirt, or keeps them there, represents the decree of the means, which necessitates the reprobate to sin, or to continue in sin; and that the second captain represents the decree of the end, which necessitates them to go to everlasting burnings. ARG. XXIV. Page 39. Mr. Toplady endeavours to reconcile Calvinian reprobation with Divine justice by an appeal “to God’s providential dealings with men in the present life.” His verbose argument, stript of its Geneva dress, and brought naked to open light, may run thus: — “If God may, without injustice, absolutely place the sons of Adam in circumstances of temporary misery, he may also, Without injustice, reprobate them to eternal torments: but he may justly place the sons of Adam in circumstances of temporary misery; witness his actually doing it: and therefore he may without injustice reprobate them to eternal torments, and to remediless sin, as the way to those torments.” The flaw of this argument is in the first proposition, and consists in supposing that because God can justly appoint us to suffer “a light affliction, which [comparatively speaking] is but for a moment, and which [if we are not perversely wanting to ourselves] will work for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,” 2 Corinthians 4:17, he can also justly appoint us to remediless wickedness and eternal damnation. This conclusion is all of a piece with the following argument: — A father may justly punish his disobedient child with a rod, and give his sick child a bitter medicine; and therefore he may justly break all his bones with a forge hammer, and daily drench him with melted lead. To produce such absurd consequences without a mask, is sufficiently to answer them: see farther what is said upon page 42. ARG. XXV. Page 40. Mr. Toplady is, if possible, still more abundantly mistaken, while, to prove the justice of Calvinian reprobation, he appeals to “the real inequality of providential distributions below.” We cannot “pronounce the great Father of all unjust, because he does not make all his offspring equally rich, good, and happy;” and therefore God may justly reprobate some of them to eternal misery; just as if inferior degrees of goodness and happiness were the same thing as remediless wickedness and eternal misery!

ARG. XXVI. (Ibid.) “The devils may be cast down to hell to be everlastingly damned, and be appointed thereto; and it gives no great concern. No hard thoughts against God arise: no charge of cruelty, injustice,” &c. Indeed, if Dr. Gill, whom Mr. Toplady quotes, insinuated that God had absolutely predestinated myriads of angels to everlasting damnation, through the appointed means of necessary sin; and that God had made this appointment thousands of years before most of those angels had any personal existence, it would give us great concern, both for the honour of God’s justice, and for the angels so cruelly treated by free wrath. But as matters are, the case of devils gives us no great concern, because they fell knowingly, wilfully, and without necessity. To the end of the day of their visitation, they personally rejected God’s gracious counsel toward them; and, as they obstinately refused to subserve the judicial display of his remunerative bounty, it is highly agreeable to reason and equity, that they should subserve the judicial display of his vindictive justice. ARG. XXVII. Page 41. “The king of Great Britain has unlimited right of peerage, &c. Will any one be so weak and perverse as to charge him with tyranny and injustice, only because it is not his will, though it is in his power, to make all his subjects noblemen?” This is another barrel thrown out to the whale. This illustration does not touch, but conceal the question. For the similar question is not whether the king is unjust in leaving gentlemen and tradesmen among the gentry and commonalty, but whether he could, without injustice and tyranny, pretend, that because he has an unlimited right of peerage, he has also an unlimited right of (what I beg leave to call) felonage, — a Calvinian right, this, of appointing whom he pleases to rob and murder, that he may appoint whom he pleases to a cell in Newgate, and a swing at Tyburn! This is the true state of the case. If Mr. T. had cast a veil over it, it is a sign that he is not destitute of the feeling of justice, and that, if he durst look at his Manichean picture of God’s sovereignty without a veil, he would turn from it with the same precipitancy with which he would start back from the abomination of the Moabites, or from the grim idol to which mistaken Israelites sacrificed their children in the valley of Hinnom.

ARG. XXVIII. Page 42. “Misery, though endured but for a year, &c, is, in its own nature, and for the time being, as truly misery, as it would be if protracted ever so long, &c. And God can no more cease to be just for a year, or for a man’s lifetime, than he can cease to be just for a century, or for ever. By the same rule that he can, and does, without impeachment of his moral attributes, permit any one being to be miserable for a moment, he may permit that being to be miserable for a much longer time: and so on, ad infinitum;” that is, in plain English, for ever. The absurdity of this argument may be sufficiently pointed out by a similar plea: — A surgeon may, without injustice, open an imposthume in my breast, and give me pain for an hour, and therefore he may justly scarify me, and flay me alive ten years. A judge may, without impeachment of his justice, order a man to be burnt in the hand for a moment, and therefore his justice will continue unstained, if he order red hot irons to be applied to that man’s hands and feet, back and breast, ad infinitum. I hope that when Mr. Toplady threw this scrap of Latin over the nakedness of his Diana, his good nature suggested that she is too horrible to be looked at without a veil. But could he not have borrowed the language of mother Church, without borrowing a maxim which might shock any inquisitor, and might have put Bonner himself to a stand?

ARG. XXIX. Page 44. “He [God] permits, and has, for near six thousand years, permitted the reign of natural evil. Upon the same principle might he not extend its reign to — a never-ending duration?” He might, if a never-ending line of moral evil, personally and avoidably brought on by free agents upon themselves, called for a never-ending line of penal misery: and our Lord himself says that he will: “These [the wicked, who have finally hardened themselves] shall go away into everlasting punishment, where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched,” Matthew 25:46; Mark 9:48.

ARG. XXX. (Ibid.) “But still the old difficulty, [a difficulty which Arminianism will never solve,] &c, the old difficulty survives. How came moral evil to be permitted, when it might as easily have been hindered, by a Being of infinite goodness, power, and wisdom?” Page 39, Mr. T. speaks partly the same language, giving us to understand, as openly as he dares, that God worketh all things in all men, even wickedness in the wicked. His pernicious, though guarded insinuation, runs thus: — “You will find it extremely difficult (may I not say impossible?) to point out the difference between permission and design, in a being possessed (as God most certainly is) of unlimited wisdom and unlimited power.” Hence we are given to understand, that because God does not absolutely hinder the commission of sin, “it would nonplus all the sagacity of man, should we attempt clearly to show wherein the difference lies” between God’s permitting sin, and his designing, or decreeing sin, or (to speak with more candour) between God’s placing free agents in a state of probation with a strict charge not to sin, and between his being the author of sin. Is not this a “most masterly” “Vindication of the Decrees and Providence of God,” supposing you mean by “God” the sin-begetting deity worshipped by the Manichees? This Antinomian blow at the root of Divine holiness is dangerous: I shall therefore ward it off by various answers.

1. When God placed man in paradise, far from permitting him to sin, he strictly forbade him to do it. Is it right then in Mr. Toplady to call God “the permitter of sin,” when the Scriptures represent him as the forbidder of it? Nay, is it not very wrong to pour shame upon the holiness of God, and absurdity upon the reason of man, by making a Calvinistic world believe that forbidding and threatening is one and the same thing with permitting and giving leave; or, at least, that the difference is so trifling, that “all the sagacity of man will find it extremely difficult, not to say impossible, clearly to point it out?”

2. I pretend to a very little share of “all the sagacity of man;” and yet, without being nonplused at all, I hope to show, by the following illustration, that there is a prodigious difference between not hindering and design, in the case of entering in of sin: —

A general wants to try the faithfulness of his soldiers, that he may reward those who will fight, and punish those who will go over to the enemy; in order to display, before all the army, his love of bravery, his hatred of cowardice, his remunerative goodness, and his impartial justice. To this end, he issues out a proclamation, importing that all the volunteers, who shall gallantly keep the field in such an important engagement, shall be made captains; and that all those who shall go over to the enemy shall be shot. I suppose him endued with infinite wisdom, knowledge, and power. By his omniscience he sees that some will desert; by his omnipotence he could indeed hinder them from doing it: for he could chain them all to so many posts stuck in the ground around their colours: but his infinite wisdom does not permit him to do it; as it would be a piece of madness in him to defeat by forcible means his design of trying the courage of his soldiers, in order to reward and punish them according to their gallant or cowardly behaviour in the field. And therefore, though he is persuaded that many will be shot, he puts his proclamation in force; because, upon the whole, it will best answer his wise designs. However, as he does not desire, much less design, that any of his soldiers should be shot for desertion, he does what his wisdom permits him to do to prevent their going over to the enemy; and yet, for the above-mentioned reason, he does not absolutely hinder them from doing it. Now, in such a case, who does not see that the difference between “not absolutely hindering” and designing, is as discernible as the difference between reason and folly; or between wisdom and wickedness? By such dangerous insinuations as that which this illustration exposes, the simple are imperceptibly led to confound Christ and Belial; and to think that there is little difference between the celestial Parent of good, and the Manichean Parent of good and evil: the Janus of the fatalists, who wears two faces, an angel’s face and a devil’s face; a mongrel, imaginary god this, whose fancied ways are, like his fancied nature, full of duplicity.

3. To the preceding illustration I beg leave to add the following argument: — No unprejudiced person will, I hope, refuse his assent to the truth of this proposition, — A world, wherein there are rational free agents, like angels and men; irrational free agents, like dogs and horses; necessary agents, like plants and trees; and dead matter, like stones and clods of earth: such a world, I say, is as much superior in perfection to a world where there are only necessary agents and dead matter, as a place inhabited by learned men and curious beasts, contains more wonders than one which is only stocked with fine flowers and curious stones. If this be granted, it necessarily follows that this world was very perfect, calculated to display his infinite power and manifold wisdom. Now, in the very nature of things, rational free agents, being capable of knowing their Creator, owe to him gratitude and obedience, and to one another assistance and love; and therefore they are “under a law,” which (as free agents) they may keep or break as they please.

“But could not God necessitate free agents to keep the law they are under?” Yes, says Calvinism, for he is endued with infinite power: but Scripture, good sense, and matter of fact say, No: because, although God is endued with infinite power, he is also endued with infinite wisdom. And it would be as absurd to create free agents in order to necessitate them, as to do a thing in order to undo it. Beside, (I repeat it,) God’s distributive justice could never be displayed, nor would free obedience be paid by rationals, and crowned by the Rewarder and “Judge of all the earth,” unless rationals were free-willing creatures, and therefore, the moment you absolutely necessitate them, you destroy them as free agents, and you rob God of two of his most glorious titles, that of Rewarder, and that of Judge. Thus we account for the origin of evil in a Scriptural and rational manner, without the help of fatalism, Manicheism, or Calvinism. Mr. Toplady replies: — ARG. XXXI. Pages 44, 45. “O, but God himself is a free agent, though his will is necessarily, unchangeably, and singly determined to good, and to good only. So are the elect angels. So are the glorious souls of saints departed, &c, and so might Adam have been, had God pleased to have so created him.”

This is the grand objection of President Edwards, which I have answered in the Scripture Scales, page 196. I shall, however, make here a few remarks upon it.

(1.) If “God worketh all things, &c, even wickedness in the wicked,” as the consistent Predestinarians directly or indirectly tell us, it is absurd in them to plead that he is singly determined to good, and to good only: for every body knows that the God of Manes is full of duplicity; having an evil principle, Which absolutely predestinates and causes all the wickedness, and a good principle, which absolutely predestinates and causes all the virtue in the world. As for the God of Christians, he is not so necessitated to do that which is good, but he might, if he would, do the most astonishing act of injustice and barbarity: for he might, if he would, absolutely doom myriads of unborn infants to remediless wickedness and everlasting fire, before they have deserved this dreadful doom, so much as by the awkward motion of their little finger. Nor need I tell Mr. Toplady this, who believes that God has actually done so.

2. God is not in a state of probation under a superior being, who calls himself the rewarder, and who says, “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay:” nor shall he ever be tried by one who will judicially “render to him according to what he hath done, whether it be good or bad.”

3. If faithful angels are unchangeably fixed in virtue, and unfaithful angels in vice, the fixedness of their nature is the consequence of the good or bad use which they have made of their liberty; and therefore their confirmation in good, or in evil, flows from a judicial election or reprobation, which displays the distributive justice of their Judge, Rewarder, and Avenger.

4. Nothing can be more absurd than to couple absolute necessity with moral free agency. Angels and glorified souls are necessitated to serve God and love one another, as a good man is necessitated not to murder the king, and not to blow his own brains out. Such a necessity is far from being absolute: for, if a good man would, he might gradually overcome his reluctance to the greatest crimes. Thus David, who was no doubt as chaste and loving once as Joseph, overcame his strong aversion to adultery and murder.

Should it be said, What! Can glorified saints and angels fall away? I reply, They will never fall away, because they are called off the stage of probation, stand far above the reach of temptation, and have “henceforth crowns of righteousness laid up for them, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give them at that day.” In the meantime, “they rest from their [probatory] labours, and their works follow them.” But still, in the nature of things, they are as able to disobey, as Joseph was to commit adultery, had he set his heart upon it: for if they had no capacity of disobeying, they would have no capacity of obeying, in the moral sense of the word: their obedience would be as necessary, and as far from morality, as the passive obedience of a leaden ball, which you drop, with an absurd command to tend toward the centre. If I am not mistaken, these answers fully set aside Mr. T.’s argument taken from the necessary goodness of God, angels, and glorified saints.

ARG. XXXII. Page 45. “God is, and cannot but be inviolably just, amidst all the sufferings of fallen angels and fallen men, involuntary beings as they are. And he will continue to be just in all they are yet to suffer.” That “God is, and will be just,” in all that fallen angels and men have suffered, and may yet suffer, is most true, because they are voluntary beings (Mr. Toplady says, “involuntary beings”) and free agents (Mr. Toplady would say, necessary agents) who personally deserve what they suffer; or who, if they suffer without personal offence, as infants do, have in Christ a rich cordial, and an efficacious remedy, which will cause their temporary sufferings to answer to all eternity the most admirable ends for themselves, if they do not reject God’s gracious, castigatory, probatory, or purificatory counsels toward them, when they come to act as free agents. But that “God is and will be just,” in absolutely ordaining “involuntary beings” to sin and be damned, is what has not yet been proved by one argument which can bear the light. However, Mr. Toplady, with the confidence which suits his peculiar logic, concludes this part of his subject by the following triumphal exclamation: —

ARG. XXXIII. (Ibid.) “And if so, what becomes of the objection to God’s decree of preterition, [a soft word for absolute reprobation to remediless sin and eternal death,] drawn from the article of injustice?” Why, it stands in full force, notwithstanding all the arguments which have yet been produced. Nay, the way to show that an objection is unanswerable, is to answer it as Mr. Toplady has done; that is, by producing arguments which equally shock reason and conscience, and which are crowned with this new paradox: — “Fallen angels, and fallen men are involuntary beings.” So that the last subterfuge of moderate Calvinists is now given up. For when they try to vindicate God’s justice, with respect to the damnation of their imaginary reprobates, they say that the poor creatures are damned as voluntary agents. But Mr. Toplady informs us that they are damned as “involuntary beings,” that is, as excusable beings; and might I not add, as sinless beings? For (evangelically speaking) is it possible that an “involuntary being” should be sinful? Why is the murderer’s sword sinless? Why is the candle by which an incendiary fires your house an innocent flame? Is it not because they are “involuntary beings,” or mere tools used by other beings? A cart accidentally falls upon you, and you involuntarily fall upon a child, who is killed upon the spot. The father of the child wants you hanged as a murderer: but the judge pronounces you perfectly guiltless. Why? Truly because you were, in that case, an “involuntary being” as well as the cart. When, therefore, Mr. Toplady asserts that we “are involuntary beings,” and insinuates that God is just in absolutely predestinating us to sin necessarily, and to be damned eternally, he proves absurdum per absurdius — injustum per injustius — crudele per crudelius. In a word, he gives a finishing stroke to God’s justice; and his pretended “Vindication” of that tremendous attribute proves, it I may use his own expression, a public, though (I am persuaded) an undesigned, “defamation” of it.