of things, God existing in futurity; and, having all possible contingencies before him, he waits the arrival of all those events which result from these contingencies. It is in this view that every event is as though it were already past; and in this view it must be seen by God, when we behold him existing in futurity. I therefore do not consider human actions and events, as "a counterpart of that history of things, which was previously written on the Divine Mind;" but I consider the history of events and things which was written upon the Divine Mind, as the counterpart of those events which result from contingent causes. Contingencies imply uncertainties; and infinite discernment implies the penetration of those uncertainties; while a certain knowledge of any event which results from these contingencies, must imply, that all these contingencies are already penetrated, and therefore already past, in order to the knowledge of an event which is obtained through that medium. Human actions are therefore not a counterpart of what was written on the Divine Mind, but the Divine Knowledge is the counterpart of those actions and events, which can alone give birth to all or any knowledge of them. In fine, reverse your arguments; make events the cause of knowledge, and not knowledge the cause of events, and you will almost hit my mode of reasoning.

Suppose it possible, that God were to be possessed of infinite discernment, without any power, and suppose man to be a free agent, I conceive no one would deny, that God could penetrate, and certainly decide upon the result of human actions in this case, as much so as if he were possessed of infinite power; and yet, in this case, no one would presume to say, "that human actions were produced through necessity," because God is supposed to be destitute of all power to produce necessary actions and events.

The case is now nearly allied. Knowledge in God, does not imply coercive power, any more than if God were destitute of active energy. And yet we are so localized by the relative ideas of past, present, and future, that we can hardly conceive it possible, how human actions can be so much past, as the Divine Knowledge, which is evidently founded upon these actions.

Dear Sir,

ON ABSOLUTE PREDESTINATION.

JUSTICE, in God, may be defined, an external or visible display of his holiness. When he is said to be just, he is considered as the Governor and Judge of the world. His justice has always an eye to beings endued with understanding, reason, and conscience, and who act by free choice; and in its exercise, is an equitable treatment of them. Beings that do not answer this character, cannot be subjects of moral government; and, consequently, can have no claim to remunerative, nor fear of vindic

tive justice. But man is the subject of hope or fear, in proportion as he is moral or immoral in his disposition and actions. It is none of the least of his excellent qualifications, that he is endued with a principle or faculty, that is not only conscious of its own actions, but enables him also to judge of moral good and evil, and accordingly, to excuse or accuse, to acquit or condemn, as it finds his actions good or bad. It is called conscience, from the Latin word conscientia, into which the Greek word, ouvidas, is exactly translated; both the Latin and Greek word for conscience, signify our knowledge with others, and intimates that we are known to some other, as well as ourselves. Conscience knows us, together with God; indeed he knows us better than we do ourselves. "If our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things. Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence towards God." Therefore, man is a subject of moral government, placed in a state of responsibility to his Maker; who will distribute rewards and punishments, happiness and misery, in an exact proportion to the different characters of such moral agents, and to the different degrees of virtue and vice which are in them. But, according to the dogmas of Calvinism, God cannot act upon the legitimate principles of justice at all, in his conduct toward mankind. The whole scheme is repugnant to divine justice, on two grounds, as stated by Limborch; 1. Because God is supposed to reprobate men, considered as innocent, even before he had created them, as the Supralapsarians maintain; or those whom he, by his mere will and pleasure, would render guilty, when they deserved no such thing, which is the notion of the Sublapsarians: but both these are contrary to the very nature of justice. To predestinate an innocent person to eternal destruction, is beyond the bounds of Divine right, which is limited by the rectitude or righteousness of the Divine Nature. Nor is it less unjust, to reprobate men, who are rendered guilty, not voluntarily, but by the determination of God. For they cannot, in any propriety of speech, be said to be guilty, who have not the power of avoiding sin: but he is properly guilty, who, when it was in his power to have avoided sin, yet made choice of it, by his own free and voluntary act. 2. Since, by this decree, God is supposed to require of the reprobate, under the awful penalty of eternal damnation, repentance, faith, love, and obedience, though he hath taken away, or decreed not to give them, the power absolutely necessary to enable them to comply with or perform these terms. Now, what can be more contrary to justice than this? For no man, as nature itself teaches us, is bound to do impossibilities; much less can he render himself guilty, and deserving of eternal punishment, for the VOL. XXXVI. OCTOBER, 1813.

non-performance thereof: for the guilt of the greatest sinner, deserving the severest punishment, pre-supposes such a power and ability, whereby he might have kept himself from that guik, and, consequently, escaped the punishment. Necessity exonerates a person from guilt, for what he is irresistibly impelled to do, cannot be charged as a fault upon him.* These two arguments are conclusive, and all the objections that any person may bring against them, can have no weight in the scale of justice.

Will Calvinistic election and reprobation comport with the goodness of God? This perfection is essential to his nature, and is the cause or ground of his doing good to his creatures. Dr. Clarke very justly observes, Eternity and immensity amaze our thoughts, infinite knowledge and wisdom fill us with admiration, omnipotence or irresistible power is great and adorable; but, at the same time, if considered singly by itself, it is also dreadful and terrible; dominion and majesty, clothed with perfect and impartial justice, are worthy of the highest praises; but still, to sinners, they appear rather awful and venerable, than the object of desire and love: holiness and purity are inexpressibly beautiful and amiable perfections, but of too bright a glory for sinners to contemplate with delight. It is goodness that finishes the idea of God, and represents him to us under the lovely character of the best, as well as the greatest Being in the universe.t Goodness is the true and genuine character of God. That he is good, is the voice of reason; all nations of the world having acknowledged him to be good. So ayabor, the good, is one of the names the Platonists expressed him by. All the ancient philosophers, both Greeks and Romans, acknowledged him to be the best, as well as the greatest of beings;-Optimus and Maximus. As the right notion of God includes goodness, so the notion of goodness includes diffusiveness. Therefore saith the Psalmist, Thou art good, and doest good.-The Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works." The most glorious display of the Divine perfections is set forth, in the redemption of the world by Jesus Christ, which astonishing and beneficial work, is said to originate in the goodness or love of God. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him, should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved." This is that inexhaustible fountain of beneficence, which, according as it is exercised upon different objects, or objects viewed in different lights, admits of different denominations; so that when mankind are considered as unworthy, it is grace; when they are considered as miserable, it is mercy; when they are viewed as See Limborch's System of Divinity, by Jones: Second Edit. Vol. i. p. 372, 373. + Clarke's Sermons, Vol. i.

ON ABSOLUTE PREDESTINATION.

distressed, it is pity; when they are in circumstances of indigence, it is bounty; when they persist in disobedience, it is patience; when they obtain favour, it is forgiveness. Now, as Limborch justly observes, this absolute decree of reprobation is inconsistent with the love of God, or the divine, philanthropy so much magnified in Scripture; especially as reconciled to us in Christ Jesus, as a tender and compassionate, as a gracious and merciful Father; as a universal Friend to mankind, and a passionate Lover of souls. But this doctrine dresses him up in the most hideous form, represents him as a wilful, cruel, revengeful, and inexorable Being; one who acts towards his rational creatures, the greatest part of them at least, with implacable rage and boundless hatred: one whose cruelty and tyranny surpasses that of the most inhuman and cruel tyrants: one who damns men by an absolute decree before they are created, or creates them on purpose to damn them: one who destines men to sin and destruction, and precludes them from all hopes and means of bettering their condition, and then consigns them over to everlasting misery, for what they could not avoid: one who sports himself at our unhappiness, and triumphs at our fall: in a word, one who wreaks his vengeance, and darts his thunderbolts, all around without distinction, sparing but a few, whom he fondly, and for no reason but out of a humour, loves, whilst he casts the rest, with a revengeful hand, into everlasting fire; not only men of all sorts and conditions, families and tribes, nations and countries, but (what is horrid to think on) even some of those helpless, innocent babes, born both of pagan and Christian parents, who die before they have known the difference betwixt good and evil, much less acted either. Whether this be not to represent God more like a ghastly spectre, a frightful monster, or some fell fury, than a God of mercy, and a Father of comfort; and whether these be not some of the fatal, but natural consequences of the doctrine of Predestination, we leave the world, nay, them ́selves, to judge.*

The faithfulness of God, I apprehend, is as much at variance with the doctrine in question, as what are his other moral perfections. "The veracity of God," (says Fiddes, in his Body of Divinity,) "is that eternal rectitude of the Divine Mind, whereby his ideas are exactly conformable to the truth and reality of things, and his words answerable to his ideas, and expressive of the real sense and intention of his mind, so as to import the utmost sincerity in such declarations, and the utmost fidelity in such promises as he shall, at any time, think fit to make to the sons of men." Plato (De Repub. lib. 2) concludes, that "God is true, and deals plainly with us, both in his words and actions.” • Limborch's System of Divinity, Vol. i. p. 379, 380. * 5 G 2*

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According to the judgment of Pythagoras, (Porphy. in vita Pythag.) "truth is so great a perfection, that if the Deity were to render himself visible to men, he would choose light for his body, and truth for his soul." And the Inspired Writings affirm, that "God is not a man, that he should lie;" that "he will not suffer his faithfulness to fail, nor alter the thing that is gone out of his lips;" and that "though heaven and earth shall pass away, yet his word shall not." But the whole doctrine of Absolute Predestination, is highly repugnant to the sincerity and faithfulness of God, and represents him as acting with duplicity and hypocrisy, in the precepts, promises, and threatenings, contained in his word.

By his revealed will, he commands "all men every where to repent;" but, say the Calvinists, he hath a secret will, directly opposed to his revealed one, by which he determines that far the greatest part shall not repent. On this supposition, the consequence then is, that the reprobates must unavoidably transgress one of these wills: if they do not repent, they transgress his revealed will; if they do repent, they transgress his secret will. But can God have two wills? And can the one contradict what the other asserts? If his word be a revelation of his will, he hath no secret will opposed to it; but if he has a secret will, whose determinations differ from the Scriptures, then these Sacred Oracles must be given up, as not having any divine authority, and we may join the deistical blasphemy and say, they are fables cunningly devised. The inconsistent doctrine of Calvinism gives much into the hands of infidels. Again, Jesus said to his disciples, "Go ye into all the world, and preach my gospel to every creature. He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved; but he that believeth not, shall be damned." Now he is the "true God," and says of himself, "I am the truth." He sent his disciples to preach his gospel to "every creature," with this express condition, that believing it should be rewarded with salvation; and believing it not, should be punished with damnation, And is it not reasonable to suppose, that the gospel belongs to 66 every creature or person to whom it is sent, not by man, but by Christ, and that such person has the privilege to believe in him, and accept of the salvation offered through him? But, on the plan of Calvinism, if a reprobate hear the gospel, and, being encouraged by its invitations and promises, ventures to believe that Christ died for his sins, behold, he is deceived, he believes a lie; on the other hand, if he do not believe that Christ died for his sins, and receive not the report of the gospel, he is condemned for his infidelity, reproached for his ingratitude, and even damned for his sin of unbelief. Then the human souls that are in hell, for whom Christ never died, are damned for ever, and this moment are suffering the vengeance of eternal fire, for