ravel; and though in one sense it is the truth, it is by no means the whole truth of Scripture. In short, the dangers arising from the doctrine of predestination, under any of its modifications, are so practical, so plain, and so favoured by the slothful and self-excusing principles of human nature, that it ought to be read in St. Paul with the plainness of the command to believe in Christ, or to love our neighbour, before it is inculcated to a congregation. It matters not that a pious Calvinist disclaims the natural results, or an acute disputant can explain them away: it is notorious that the illiterate enthusiast believes, and the sinner flatters himself with expecting, that, if he is one of the elect, he shall some how or other be finally snatched out of the fire: and if he is not, that no exertions of his own can ever avail. Thus the real conclusion and the practical evil of the doctrine of election meet together.*

* I do not consider this as a matter of argument, but of historical experience. The passage in Burnet is often referred "The Germans soon saw the ill effects of the doctrine of decrees. Luther changed his mind about it, and Melanc

to:

Let the preacher, before he ventures upon this deep subject, consider at once the seduc

thon wrote openly against it; and since that time the whole stream of the Lutheran churches has run the other way; but both Calvin and Bucer were still for maintaining the doctrines, only they warned the people not to think much about them, since they were secrets that men could not penetrate into. Hooper, and many other good writers, did often exhort the people from entering into these curiosities; and a caveat to the same purpose was put into the Article about predestination." On Reform. part ii. p. 113.

Luther, in his answer to Erasmus's Diatribe, certainly maintains in strong terms the absolute decrees of God. But experience afterwards taught him the wisdom of using great moderation on this head. See his letters, particularly one to Caspar Aq. which is translated by Milner, vol. v. p. 514. In the year 1657 Baxter wrote, “One objection I find most common, in the mouths of the ungodly, especially of late years: they say, we can do nothing without God, we cannot have grace if God will not give it us; and if he will, we shall quickly turn: if he have not predestinated us, and will not turn us, how can we turn ourselves or be saved? It is not in him that wills, nor in him that runs. Thus they think they are excused." Call to the Unconverted, Preface, xxii.

Whitefield in several places candidly acknowledges that many of his followers had wrested his doctrine to their own destruction, and that he grew cautious, which he had not been thirty years before, "of dubbing people converts too Eighteen Sermons. Several excellent papers have

soon."

tive nature, and the tremendous consequences, of such an error. How far these consequences may redound upon himself, will depend, no doubt, upon the " necessity," which conscientiously, and in the sight of God, he feels "laid 66 upon him" to inculcate this as the doctrine of the Gospel. But before he defends this practice upon St. Paul's authority, let him consider that St. Paul addresses as "the elect of God," persons who were his only worshippers in large districts, or even extensive nations; persons who had been called to the knowledge and faith of Christ from the actual exercise of idolatry and habits of the grossest wickedness, by

appeared in the Christian Observer, strongly exemplifying the dangerous consequences of Calvinistic theology. The writer of one says, "Election and final perseverance were the never-ceasing topics of all the conversations and sermons I formerly heard; and indeed they were soon the only topics of a religious nature that I could endure. Then my mountain of self-sufficiency stood so strong, I was a stranger to self-examination, and of course knew not what manner of spirit I was of. A contention and strife about words suited my then unsanctified temper: and if ever one man was disposed to make another an offender for a word, it was myself." Obs. February 1815.

which they were still surrounded on every side; persons who had relinquished, for the sake of the Gospel, the religious worship in which all the rest of their countrymen were persevering: lastly, persons who for the same object had given up their kindred and their father's house, and were either suffering, or destined to suffer, the severest privation and the heaviest loads that pain or imprisonment can lay on nature; and who, if they did not believe themselves especially favoured and beloved by God, were indeed of all men most miserable." It is our inestimable privilege, that there is nothing similar to circumstances such as these in the situation of modern Christians: and genuine imitation does not consist in borrowing detached expressions, but in applying them to the cases and circumstances in which they were employed originally.

108

CHAPTER III.

ON THE CORRUPTION OF HUMAN NATURE.

No quality, to speak generally, is less the character of St. Paul's Epistles than regular arrangement. Writing commonly with an immediate view to the establishment of some particular point, or the refutation of some particular error, he does not introduce the doctrines of Christianity in the systematical order of a theological treatise or confession of faith; but incidentally, as they follow the train of his ideas. The chief exception to his usual neglect of method is the Epistle to the Romans, which is at once the most elaborate and the most systematic of all his writings. Being addressed to a church which he had neither planted nor visited in person, it contains little of local or temporary allusion; and the specific error against which it was directed, has the advantage of leading the Apostle to a full exposition