is regulated by inclination as well as evidence, we grant the fact, and it will turn to our account; for a man, who expects to be saved on the easy terms of simple believing, will have every possible inducement to give his assent, and no imaginable motive for withholding it; men sometimes do feel a disinclination to believe that the doctrine is of God, when they think the reception of it will oblige them to do the will of God, and thereby occasionally to oppose the dictates of sense and appetite; but a person will necessarily be convinced, on sufficient evidence, when he will lose nothing by it, and gain every thing. For these reasons we think that the opinion of the sufficiency of faith to salvation entails the doctrine of final perseverance.

Again. In all their accounts of Regeneration, our opponents speak of it as a single event; they never seem to allow the possibility of a second regeneration, and indeed, if they did, the effects they attribute to the first would lose much of their extraordinary nature. But, if they allow of no second regeneration, one of these two things must, on their principles, necessarily follow,-either that a man, when he once falls from a state of grace, must be inevitably lost for ever, or else that he can never fall at all; now we have reason to believe that they do not entertain the first of these opinions, and therefore we imagine they hold the latter.

But whether or not these considerations may be supposed to afford a sufficient ground for charging the opinion of final perseverance on our opponents generally, there is a portion of them who openly profess it, and there is cause to fear that their number is increasing. On these accounts we think a brief examination of this doctrine may form no improper sequel to the notice we have already taken of some others.

In any point of controversy, where arguments of considerable strength may be advanced on both sides, it may be necessary, or at least desirable, to take both a negative and positive view of the subject; we mean, both to reply to the arguments produced in favour of the question, which we mean to disprove, and also to state the direct evidence on the side

of that, which we mean to establish. In the present instance, however, we conceive the case to be so very clear, that it would be perfectly unnecessary to enter upon so wide a field of argument; we shall therefore content ourselves with submitting to your notice the positive authorities of Scripture, which disprove the doctrine of final perseverance. These

authorities may

be classed under two heads : 1st. The declarations, admonitions, promises, and threatenings of Scripture, which prove the possibility of a person falling totally, and, (without his own exertions to prevent it,) finally, from a state of grace.

2dly. The examples, which Scripture supplies, of persons, to whom that event has really happened.

1. To begin with the first of these heads of evidence:

In the prophet Ezekiel are the following words :-" when the righteous turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, and doeth according to all the abominations that the wicked man doeth, shall he live? all his righteousness that he hath done shall not be mentioned; in his trespass that he hath trespassed, and in his sin that he hath sinned, in them shall he die." To the production of this text perhaps an exception may be taken of the following nature; it may be said that this is a description of God's dealings with mankind under the old dispensation, and is, therefore, inapplicable to the spiritual circumstances of Christians. We answer that, since the attributes of God are immutably the same, so must be also the dispositions he entertains towards moral merit and demerit, and consequently the general principle of his dealings with men in relation to their moral character. This is allowed and supposed by the apostle in his epistle to the Hebrews, where he proposes the lives and conduct, not only of the patriarchs under the old dispensation, but of all the holy men, which have been since the world began, as examples for the imitation of Christians; + from which it undeniably follows

* Ezek. 18. xxiv.

Heb. chap. 11. throughout.

that moral actions, of the same Lind, are respectively pleasing or displeasing to God in all ages; and, indeed, if this were not the case, so far would the Scriptures of the Old Testament be from deserving the character given of them by the same apostle, of being able to make us wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus," that they would be absolutely useless to Christians. Supposing therefore the objection to this text sufficiently removed, let us now proceed to use it. The righteous man here mentioned was manifestly, while he continued such, in a state of favour and acceptance with God, for it is promised to him, a few verses before, that he shall surely live." Now of this same righteous man it is supposed, in the text itself, that he not only may turn away from righteousness, and commit iniquity, but the consequences of his doing so are clearly declared, namely, that "he shall die;” and, as he would equally die by the common course of nature, whether he were righteous or wicked, the death here meant can only be the second death. And, farther, as it would be absurd to threaten a punishment, which by the nature of the case, could never be inflicted, it was therefore possible for the man, who had turned away from righteousness, to persevere in iniquity to the end of his life, and thus to incur the execution of the sentence here denounced against apostacy. But we need not enter into any argument to prove this point, for the prophet, in the next verse but one, absolutely assures us of its truth. "When a righteous man,” he says, "turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, and dieth in them, for his iniquity that he hath done shall he die."

Again. In the explication, given by our blessed Lord, of the parable of the sower, is to be found the following clause : " he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; yet bath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while, for, when

* II Tim. 3. xv.

tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended."* This text then goes a step farther than the last in one respect, for it proves that even the faithful disciple of Christ may fall from his steadfastness, and indeed that such cases are not uncommon.

Still stronger in our favour is the following passage from the epistle to the Hebrews:-"It is impossible for those, who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance.”+ A minute explanation of the various particulars comprized in this text would detain us too long, nor is it at all necessary to our present purpose; we have merely cited it to prove that a person, in a state of justification and grace, may fall from that state totally and finally; and this point it establishes completely, for it tells us that Christians, who have the highest right and title to that character, who have made considerable advancement in the virtues proper to their profession, who have been made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted of the powers of the world to come,-that even they may fall away, and that too so entirely, that, in the strong language of the apostle, "it is impossible to renew them again unto repentance;" which words, though they do not imply an absolute impossibility, must in their lowest sense denote the extreme difficulty of effecting the recovery of such persons.→→ A text from St. Peter, precisely of the same import, may serve still farther to illustrate that, which we have just no ticed. "If," says this apostle, (with reference to some of the converts whom he was addressing)" if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the beginning ;" and why should their latter end be worse than

*Matt. 13. xx, xxi.

Heb. 6. iv-vi.

+ II Pet. 2. xx.

the beginning, unless there was a possibility, and indeed a probability, of its being followed by perdition? if final perseverance were true, every stage and condition of a man's life after he had once been in a state of grace, would be equally good to him, because equally safe. The apostle, however, has determined this question to our hands, for he positively affirms that real Christians may not only be again "entangled” in the pollutions of the world, but also overcome" by

them.

The exhortations of Scripture to a perseverance in faith and holiness, the promises annexed to it, and the punishment denounced against defection, are so exceedingly numerous that we can barely read the following as a specimen : -“ Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong."*-Give diligence to make your calling and election sure."+—“ Let us therefore fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it."-" Ye therefore, beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also, being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own steadfastness."§-" Quench not the Spirit."--"We are not of them who draw back unto perdition, but of them that believe to the saving of the soul."-"Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life."** Behold the goodness and severity of God; on them which fell, severity, but towards thee goodness, if thou continue in his goodness, otherwise thou also shalt be cut off."++-Now, if the doctrine of final perseverance be true, what is the meaning of all these texts and a hundred more of the same kind that might be cited ? they are really nothing else than a solemn mockery of mankind in the most important of all concerns,-their relations to God and to eternity! Well may we here adopt the comment of

* I Cor. 16. xiii.-+ II Pet. 1. x.-‡ Heb. 4. i-§ II Pet. 3. xvii.-|| I Thess. 5. xix.-¶ Heb. 10. xxxix.