We, your Majesty's loyal subjects, humbly approach the throne on behalf of A. B., now lying under sentence of transportation for life. We have every reason to believe that he is one of the very chief of transgressors: we know that the law by which he is sentenced is just, and good: and that the sentence is exactly what justice demanded. But we venture to remind your Majesty that mercy is the brightest jewel in the crown; and that its exercise is most glorious, where the guilt has been most heinous: and therefore pray your Majesty will graciously grant to A. B. a free pardon.

Such a petition would be an insult to the community; and the Queen could not accede to it without violating the principle of all law, doing injustice to the nation, and affixing a perpetual stigma to her government. As Zaleucus has become a name honoured throughout all generations for his example of righteousness, so Victoria would be immortalized as an example of unrighteousness, because she had set aside the law to shew mercy to one offender.

About the middle of the last century there was a student at Cambridge named William Dodd, who in 1753 took orders and soon became one of the most popular preachers in London, and in 1764 was chosen one of His Majesty's chaplains. In the distress occasioned by an extravagant style of living he forged a bond, intending as was commonly supposed to discharge it at a future time. He was detected, tried, and condemned to die. He is said to have exhibited every appearance of penitence. An intense and widely spread desire existed to prevent his execution. Numerous petitions were presented on his behalf, and Doctor Johnson's pen was employed in his favour. But the government was powerless. If Dr. Dodd were saved, the law against forgery must be annulled.

If the king could not pardon Dr. Dodd, without bringing into disrepute the law which condemned him; if it be impossible for an earthly monarch by the mere

sovereignty of mercy to set aside, in a single instance, a sentence assumed to be just; how can any man conceive that the sentences of God's universal and eternal law may be safely annulled, by an act of mere mercy, in millions of instances? The connexion between wrongdoing and penalty, is an unchangeable truth. A righteous law measures and pronounces the penalty which ought to be inflicted: and no one, be he parent, tutor, or sovereign, can withhold the punishment which righteousness bids him inflict, without dishonour to himself and injury to others. Better that heaven and earth should pass away, than that one single instance of such disregard to law, that is to truth, should be chargeable on the divine government. It is not unreasonable to imagine, that the one greatest difficulty of all eternity was found, in making mercy and truth meet together in harmonious embrace. Vast beyond all human conception must have been the obstacle to such union, as is proved by the means employed to remove it. As God gave up his Son to be a propitiation that he might be just and justify the ungodly, we infer that the work was one tasking to the very utmost the wisdom and prudence which are infinite.

Accept the Scriptural explanation of the way in which sinners are saved, namely, by Christ becoming a substitute for them, and magnifying the law by bearing their sins in his own body on the tree, and no doubt can exist as to the sufficiency of the price of redemption. That the Father should give up the Son, and the Son undertake the cause of sinners, is the great manifestation of divine justice and love. It is not in the flood, nor in the destruction of Sodom or Jerusalem, nor in the flames of Tophet, but by the cross of the Lord Jesus that we find most awfully declared the "holy, holy, holy Lord God"; while the same cross

is the demonstration to the universe that "God is love." And in the divine justice and love so declared, we have probably the two truths around which all things will group themselves in beauty and music, world without end.

"The righteousness of God" having received such a manifestation, the law can require no further vindication, however great the multitude of those who are saved. Hence we read that "the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life." Yet all are not saved; for many reject the great boon which cost the Saviour of men his life. But to those who believe in him, he is made righteousness. Were they suffered to enter Paradise, and stand accepted in the great day merely as pardoned sinners, saved by mercy but without a ransom, they would cower beneath the thought that truth, law, and government had suffered damage by their deliverance; and the blush of shame would become them for ever. But as their sin has been borne by Christ, law has been more than vindicated, and government perfected, by the very means through which they are forgiven. No one of their fellow creatures has any ground of complaint concerning them; and the confusion of face which would otherwise pertain to them. in the presence of God, is removed: and thus are we sinful creatures able to anticipate a time, when we shall stand, with conscience undimmed and untroubled amid all our relations to our Maker, the universe, and eternity.

CHAPTER XI.

ON PREDESTINATION.

IN theological literature the word Election means the divine choice of some human beings with a view to the accomplishment of certain purposes concerning them; and the word Predestination means that God has decreed that those purposes shall be fulfilled. So far as the present inquiry is concerned, the two terms may be used interchangeably.

Toward the end of the reign of Elizabeth, and when the despotic Whitgift was Archbishop of Canterbury and chief adviser of the Queen in things ecclesiastical, there sprang up in the University of Cambridge a vehement doctrinal controversy; the two Professors of Divinity holding different opinions. A Fellow of Caius College, named Barrett, preached a sermon in St. Mary's church, in which he reflected severely on Calvin, and other foreign reformers, and exhorted his hearers not to read their writings.* He was summoned before the

* Calvinism in common speech is now another name for Predestinarianism, and it is this part of Calvinism that comes under consideration in the present volume. They who desire to understand the character of Calvin should read his letters, from the perusal of which no candid man can rise without very high admiration of his rare ability, honesty, and piety. From two of the errors of his age he did not emancipate himself. He did not understand that churches to be pure, must be free: nor did he understand the liberty which individual members of a church have the right to claim. Two passages of Scripture he never comprehended, "My kingdom is not of this world," "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant": and from the two errors thus indicated sprang the greatest faults and miseries of his public life.-See Letters of 1538, Feb. 21st; 1541, May 31st; 1542, Mar. 14th, Aug. 19th, September;

Vice-Chancellor, and the result was that the Archbishop convened an assembly of divines at Lambeth, who adopted nine articles of faith to which the Scholars of the University were required to conform; and which abundantly shew that with great reason do the evangelical Clergy plead for the Calvinistic interpretation of the 39 Articles. From the Lambeth articles, an extract will be found below.

The Westminster Confession, to which it is grievous to say the ministers of the Kirk and of "the Free Church" of Scotland still declare their adherence, but many of them with a laxity of interpretation which forbids them to remonstrate against the immoral subscription of Episcopalians, differs little as to the doctrine of Election from the Lambeth articles.

"God from eternity has predestinated some men to life, and reprobated others to death.

"The moving or efficient cause of predestination to life is not the foreknowledge of faith, or perseverance, or good works, or of any other thing in the person predestinated, but only the good-will and pleasure of God. The number of the predestinated is fixed, and cannot be lessened or increased.

"Those who are not predestinated to salvation shall be necessarily damned for their sins.

"God made a general conditional decree of predestination, under the condition of faith, and perseverance; and a special absolute decree of electing those to life, whom he foreknew would believe and persevere under the means and aids of grace, faith, and perseverance and a special absolute decree of condemning them, whom he foresaw would abide impenitent in their sins."

This is the opinion of Melanchton, of the Lutherans that follow the Augustan Confession, of the

1543, the day before Easter; 1544, May 30th. They who would form a just opinion of his theology, should not limit their reading to his Institutes, but examine his Commentary on the Scriptures, one of the very best ever written. In his views of predestination he was by no means singular, but held them in common with many eminent Reformers; but he it was who, by his mental power and the weight of his character, gave them their great ascendancy. As the name of Aristotle held captive the ancients for centuries, so has the name of Calvin been mainly instrumental for centuries in holding the moderns in the bondage of fatalism.