pensions to every vile deed. We must view Deity as the Sovereign Lawgiver, causing rebellion against his own authority, by irresistibly exciting the whole race of mankind, to detest his own laws, character, and government. We must regard Him as the Father sending his dearly beloved, and only begotten Son, to atone by a death inconceivably dreadful, for these crimes, thus wholly caused by the Father himself. And lastly, We must behold the Son raised from the dead, and invested with the character of the Sovereign Judge, to sentence to eternal perdition, innumerable millions of these necessitated rebels, for refusing to repent, although by his Almighty Father irresistibly excited to this very impenitence. Gladly, Sir, would I pause here, and proceed no further; but duty, imperious duty impels me forward. Bear with me, and be not offended, when I observe, that whilst Hopkinsians, admit in the fullest extent, the forementioned consequences of their doctrines, they consider the very same consequences as equally inferable from Calvinism, as exhibited in your Contrast. You cannot surely be offended, should I here present from your own book, a few quotations, which contain the ground of these infered consequences.

CALVINISM.

"There is an eternal divine determination, which respects all beings, actions and events." "Predes“tination, we call the eternal decree of God, whereby "he had it determined by himself, what he willed to "become of every man. For all are not created to

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"like estate, but to some eternal life, and to some "eternal damnation was fore appointed." "The de

crees were not formed in consequence of any fore"sight of sin, or holiness in the reprobate, or the "elect."

"All the confessions of the reformed churches agree, "that the decrees are executed by creation and provi"dence, and that means as well as ends are predestin"ated." "God not only foresaw the fall of the first

man, and in him the ruin of his posterity, but also “disposed it after his own will." "The fall of man “proceeded from the wonderous counsel of God." "When we affirm that God fore ordained that man "should sin freely, he could not but sin freely, unless "" Iwe would have the event not to answer to the pre"ordination of God." "From all this may be infer "ed by a plain consequence that man could not but "fall."

From the preceding positions and "infered conse quence" all genuinely calvinistic, it seems impossible wholly to avoid the Hopkinsian construction of their meaning, as signifying the causation of sin to originate in God only; nor will the following evasive apology remove the difficulty. "God's ordaining, "ordering and disposing of the fall, does not, howev"er, imply that he was the creator of a sinful volition, "or the efficient agent of sin, for Adam had the pow"er to choose evil." (Calvin.) A power necessarily to choose evil, but no power to refuse it, implied no freedom of volition in Adam. The government of his will was not in himself, but in another Being, who, as

the efficient or first cause, governed Adam, as the agent or secondary cause of sin: so that Hopkinsianism to all intents and purposes results herefrom..

To this it is replied, "It is somewhat against the "doctrine that God creates sin, that the scriptures "give us no account of God's creating any being orig“inally unholy. If sin was ever the effect of his "immediate causation, why do we not read of his "creating a devil outright? God made angels, but "angels made themselves devils." "The Calvin"ists maintain that God can govern his creatures "without doing all their deeds himself. (Ely.) Here it should be observed, that as sin is neither a substance of any kind, nor a mode of any substance, it therefore is incapable of being created; and that as it consists in the transgression of divine law, so whosoever causes such transgression, is the true and real author of the sin committed, whether he "does the deed himself," or only "governs the agent" who does it. And of this you seem well apprized, for you deny only what you term "immediate causation" of sin by Deity, that is, God's acting the sin himself. God does not create a devil outright, (you say) but he makes angels, and then governs them into self-made devils, "with"out doing all their deeds himself." As nothing, therefore, can be plainer than that the Hopkinsian inference from Calvinism of the divine causation of sin, is most strictly correct, I shall pass on to the consideration of another subject.

"The Calvinists conceive that a man is so blind in "his understanding, so corrupted in his affections,

"and so completely dead to all good, that God need

not exert a positive influence to create more sin in "him, in order to his reprobation. They would rath"er say, that if God does not bestow his grace, the "sinner is already under the sentence of condemna"tion. If God does not sanctify him completely, cor"ruption will rage, and reign even to eternal damna"tion. When God's gracious will prevents our will "from having its course, then we are saved. But "when God says concerning any one he is joined to "his idols, let him alone; I am weary with repenting, My spirit shall no longer strive with him: "then the sinner is carried along by the current of his "own propensities, to the bottomless abyss. Cast a "lifeless body into the water above the cateract of Ni

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agara, you need not apply your hand to propel it "down the precipice. A living person would require "your aid to make effectual resistance, and escape the "ruin; but the natural course of the flood will bear "the dead to the gulf, and grind them on the rocky "bed to atoms." (Ely.)

You here, sir, exhibit some traits truly characteristic of your system. You affect to assign substantial reasons for the reprobation of those whom you believe to have been consigned to eternal perdition, not in consequence of any foresight of sin in them, but because Deity willed it should be so. This fundamental principle, that men are damned, not because they deserve it, but because independently of all deservings, it was eternally so willed by the Deity, you at~ tempt to gloss over and obscure, by representing as

the causes of their destruction, that they have corrupted affections, are cleaved to their idols, have tired the patience of their God, rejected the offers of grace, and resisted the divine Spirit, which will no longer strive with them.

If these things are the real causes of damnation to the reprobates, and did you really believe them to be so, then the reprobating decree from all eternity would be to them a nullity, and in your mind be utterly subverted, for both cannot stand together. And if reprobates are actually the authors of their own corruption and crimes, most just would be their punishment; and still much more deservedly would they be objects of divine wrath, if mercy were truly extended to them, in real offers of a possible salvation.

But well you know, sir, that although your system may admit of these things, as baits upon the hook, and as decoys to the snare, yet that they have no consistent connexion with the system itself; for all that it means by the strivings of the Spirit is only "That "general calling common to the wicked; by the out"ward preaching of the word." (Calvin.) That the wilful rejection of the offers of grace consists in the "crime of the want of natural power, to climb up "into the pure and clear knowledge of God, by the "reading of the scriptures." (Calvin.) That if "cleaved to his idols," it is only with the affections of a "stone," preponderating to its centre; or as a "lifeless body afloat on the waters of Niagara, borne along by the natural course of the floods." (Ely.) And to complete the system, the corruption and mis

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