Section 5.

SECTION 5.

An answer to the arguments by which Mr. Toplady endeavours to reconcile Calvinian REPROBATION with Divine MERCY.

IF it is impossible to reconcile Calvinian reprobation with Divine JUSTICE, how much more with Divine MERCY! This is however the difficult task which Mr. T. sets about next. Consider we his arguments: — ARG. XXXIV. Page 45. “As God’s forbearing to create more worlds than he has, is no impeachment of his omnipotence: so his forbearing to save as many as he might, is no impeachment of his infinite mercy.” The capital flaw of this argument consists in substituting still the phrase “not saving,” for the phrase “absolutely reprobating to remediless sin and everlasting burnings.” The difference between these phrases, which Mr. Toplady uses as equivalent, is prodigious. Nobody ever supposed that God is unmerciful because he does not take stones into heaven, or because he does not save every pebble from its opacity, by making it transparent and glorious as a diamond: for pebbles suffer nothing by being “passed by,” and not saved into adamantine glory. But if God made every pebble an organized, living body, capable of the keenest sensations; and if he appointed that most of these “involuntary [sensible] beings” should be absolutely opaque, and should be cast into a lime kiln, there to endure everlasting burnings, for not having the transparency which he decreed they should never have; would it not be impossible to reconcile his conduct to the lowest idea we can form even of Bonner’s mercy?

Having thus pointed out the sandy foundation of Mr. Toplady’s argument, I shall expose its absurdity by a similar way of arguing. I am to prove that the king may, without impeachment of his mercy, put the greatest part of his soldiers in such trying circumstances as shall necessitate them to desert and to be shot for desertion. To do this, I learn logic of Mr. T. and say,” As the king’s forbearing to create more lords than he has, is no impeachment of his unlimited right of peerage; so his forbearing to raise as many soldiers as he might, is no impeachment of his great mercy.” So far the argument is conclusive. But if by not raising soldiers I artfully mean absolutely appointing and necessitating them to desert and be shot, I vindicate the king’s mercy as logically as Mr. T. vindicates the mercy of Manes’ God.

ARG. XXXV. Page 46. “If therefore the decree of [Calvinian] reprobation be exploded, on account of its imaginary incompatibility with Divine mercy, we must, upon the same principle, charge God with want of goodness in almost every part of his relative conduct.” If this dark argument be brought to the light, it will read thus: — “God is infinitely good in himself, though he limits the exercise of his goodness in not forming so many beings as he might, and in not making them all so glorious as he could; and therefore he is infinitely merciful, though he absolutely appoints millions of unborn creatures to remediless sin and everlasting fire.” But what has the conclusion to do with the premise? What would Mr. T. think of me, if I presented the public with the following sophism? “Nobody can reasonably charge the king with want of goodness for not enriching and ennobling every body; and therefore nobody can reasonably charge him with want of mercy for decreeing that so many of his new-born subjects shall necessarily be trained up in absolute rebellion, that he may legally throw them into a fiery furnace, for necessarily fulfilling his absolute decree concerning their rebellion.” Nevertheless, this absurd argument contains just as much truth and mercy, as that of Mr. Toplady. ARG. XXXVI. (Ibid.) “There is no way of solidly, &c, justifying the ways of God with men, but upon this grand datum, That the exercise of his own infinite mercy is regulated by the voluntary determination of his own most wise and sovereign pleasure. Allow but this rational, Scriptural, &c, proposition, and every cavil, grounded on the chimerical unmercifulness of non-election ceases even to be plausible.” The defect of this argument consists also in covering the left leg of Calvinism, and in supposing that Calvinian non-election is a bare non-exertion of a peculiar mercy displayed toward some; whereas it is a positive act of barbarity. We readily grant that God is infinitely merciful, though his infinite wisdom, truth, and justice do not suffer him to show the same mercy to ALL, which he does to SOME. But it is absurd to suppose, that because he is not bound to “show mercy” to all those who have personally and unnecessarily offended him (or indeed to any one of them,) he may show injustice and cruelty to unborn creatures, who never personally offended him so much as by one wandering thought, and he may absolutely doom myriads of them to sin without remedy, and to be damned without fail.

ARG. XXXVII. Page 48. After all his pleas, to show that God can, without impeachment of his holiness, justice, and mercy, absolutely appoint his unborn creatures to remediless wickedness and everlasting torments, Mr. Toplady relents, and seems a little ashamed of Calvinian reprobation. He tells us that “reprobation is, for the most part, something purely negative,” and “has, so far as God is concerned, more in it of negation than positivity.” But Mr. Toplady knows that the unavoidable END of absolute reprobation is DAMNATION, and that the means conducive to this fearful end is unavoidable wickedness; and he has already told us, p. 17, that “God’s own decree secures the means as well as the end, and accomplishes the end by the means.” Now securing and accomplishing a thing, is something altogether positive. Hence it is, that, p. 83, Mr. T. calls the decrees by which the reprobates sin, not only permissive but “effective;” and tells us, p. 77, that “God efficaciously permitted horrible wickedness.” And herein he exactly follows Calvin, who, in his comment on Romans 9:18, says, “INDURANI verbum, quum Deo in Scripturis tribuitur, non solum, PERMISSIONEM (ut volunt diluti quidam moderatores sed) Divinæ quoque IRÆ ACTIONEM significat.” “The word HARDEN when it is attributed to God in Scripture, means not only PERMISSION, (as some washy, compromising divines would have it,) but it signifies also THE ACTION of Divine wrath.’

Beside, something negative amounts, in a thousand cases, to something positive. A general, for example, denies gunpowder to some of his soldiers, to whom he owes a grudge; he hangs them for not firing, and then exculpates himself by saying, “My not giving them powder was a thing purely negative. I did nothing to them to hinder them from firing: on the contrary, I bid them fire away.” This is exactly the case with the Manichean God and his imaginary reprobates. He bids them repent or perish, believe or be damned, do good works or depart into everlasting fire. And yet, all the while, he keeps from them every dram of true grace, Whereby they might savingly repent, believe, and obey. Is it not surprising that so many of our Gospel ministers should call preaching such a doctrine, preaching the Gospel and exalting Christ? But Mr. Toplady replies: — ARG. XXXVIII. Page 48. “If I am acquainted with an indigent neighbour, and have it in my power to enrich him, but do it not, am I the author of that man’s poverty, only for resolving to permit him, and for actually permitting f83 him to continue poor? Am I blamable for his poverty, because I do not give him the utmost I am able? Similar is the case now in debate. Ever since the fall of Adam, mankind are by nature spiritually poor.” Mr. T. is greatly mistaken, when he says, “Similar is the case now in debate.” To show that it is entirely dissimilar, we need only make his partial illustration stand fairly “upon its legs.” If you know that your neighbour, who is an industrious tenant of yours, must work or break; and if, in order to make him break, according to your decree of the end, you make a decree of the means — an efficacious decree that his cattle shall die, that his plough shall be stolen, that he shall fall sick, and that nobody shall help him; I boldly say, You are “the author of that man’s poverty:” and if, when you have reduced him to sordid want, and have, by this means, clothed his numerous family with filthy rags, you make another efficacious, absolute decree, that a majority of his children shall never have a good garment, and that at whatsoever time the constable shall find them with the only ragged coat which their bankrupt father could afford to give them, they shall all be sent to the house of correction, and severely whipt there, merely for not having on a certain coat, which you took care they should never have; and for wearing the filthy rags, which you decreed they should necessarily wear, you show yourself as merciless to the poor man’s children, as you showed yourself ill natured to the poor man himself. To prove that this is a just state of the case, if the doctrine of absolute predestination be true, I refer the reader to section ii, where he will find Calvinism “on its legs.”

Upon the whole, if I mistake not, it is evident that the arguments by which Mr. Toplady endeavours to reconcile Calvinian reprobation with Divine MERCY, are as inconclusive as those by which he tries to reconcile it with Divine JUSTICE; both sorts of arguments drawing all their plausibility from the skill with which Logica Genevensis tucks up the left leg of Calvinism, or covers it with deceitful buskins, which are called by a variety of delusive names, such as “passing by, not electing, not owing salvation, limiting the display of goodness, not extending mercy infinitely, not enriching,” &c, just as if all these phrases together conveyed one just idea of Calvinian reprobation, which is an absolute, unconditional dooming of myriads of unborn creatures to live and die in necessary, remediless wickedness, and then to “depart into everlasting fire,” merely because Adam, according to Divine predestination, necessarily sinned; obediently fulfilling God’s absolute, irreversible, and efficacious decree of the means (sin:) an Antinomian decree this, by which, if Calvinism be true, God secured and accomplished the decree of the end, that is, the remediless sin and eternal damnation of the reprobate: for, says Mr. T., p. 17, “God’s own decree secures the means as well as the end, and accomplishes the end by the means.”

And now, candid reader, say if Mr. T. did not act with a degree of partiality, when he called his book “A Vindication of God’s Decrees, &c, from the defamations of Mr. Wesley;” and if he could not, with greater propriety, have called it, “An Unscriptural and Illogical Vindication of the Horrible Decree, from the Scriptural and rational exceptions made against it by Mr. Wesley.”