ling them that God had a right to annex his grace to what conditions he thought proper, and that the Jews, having rejected the Messiah, who brought salvation to them, had no reason to complain, because God had deprived them of a covenant, the conditions of which they had not performed. According to these divines, this is all the mystery of these chapters, in which, say they, there is no trace of predestination.

But how can this be supposed to contain the whole design of the apostle? Suppose a Jew should appear in this auditory, and make these objections against us. You christians form an inconsistent idea of God. God said, the mosaical worship should be eternal: but you say, God hath abolished it. God said, he that doth these things shall live by them but you say, that he who doth these things shall go into endless perdition for doing them. God said, the Messiah should come to the children of Abraham: but you say, he hath cast off the posterity of the patriarch, and made a covenant with pagan nations. Suppose a Jew to start these difficulties, and suppose we would wish simply to remove them, independently on the decrees we imagine in God, what should we say to this Jew? We should tell him first, that he had mistaken the sense of the law; and that the eternity promised to the levitical economy, signified only a duration till the advent of the Messiah. Particularly, we should inform him, that his complaints against the Messiah were groundless. You complain, we should say, that God makes void his fidelity by abandoning you, but your complaint is unjust. God made a covenant with your fathers, he promised to bless their posterity, and engaged to send your Redeemer to bestow numberless benedictions and favors upon you. This redeemer is come, he 2 Q

VOL. V.

was born among you, in your nation, of a family in one of your own tribes: he began to discharge his office among you, and set salvation before you; you rejected him, you turned his doctrine into ridicule, you called him Beelzebub, you solicited his death, at length you crucified him, and since that you have persecuted him in his ministers and disciples. On the contrary, the Gentiles display his virtues, and they are prodigal of their blood to advance his glory. It is surprising, that God so dispenses his favors as to distinguish two nations so very different in the manner of their obedience to his authority?

Instead of this, what doth St. Paul? Hear his answers. Before the children were born, before they had done either good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, he saith, the elder shall serve the younger. Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated. I zwill have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. The scripture saith to Pharaoh, for this purpose have I raised thee up, that I might make my power known. He hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. Who art thou who repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus? Have not the potter power over the clay; of the same lump to make one vessel to honor and another to dishonor? What, if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endures with much long suffering the vessels of wrath prepared to destruction? Rom. ix. 11. &c. In all these answers St. Paul had recourse to the decrees of God. one proof that this is the doctrine he intends to teach the converted Jew, to whom he addresses

And

himself, is, that this Jew makes some objections which have no ground in the system we attack, but which are precisely the same that have been always urged against the doctrine of predestination. Why doth ye yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Thus the system of prescience without predestination doth not agree with scripture.

We ask, thirdly, what is this system good for? Does it cast any light on the ways of providence? Does it fill up any of the depths which absorb our imperfect reason? In a word, is it not subject to the very same difficulties as that of predestination? These difficulties are the following: how could a God supremely good create men, who he knew must be some day infinitely miserable? How could a God infinitely holy permit sin to enter the world? How is it, that a God of infinite love to justice, doth not bestow on all mankind succor sufficient to render them perfectly holy? How came it to pass, that a God, who declares he would have all men to be saved, did not reveal his will for the space of four thousand years to any but the single nation of the Jews? How is it, that at this present time he doth not extend our conquests to the ends of the earth, that we might carry thi ther the light of christianity, preach the gospel in idolatrous climes and the mosques of Mohammed? How doth he afford life, and health, and strength, and opportunity to a creature, while he prosecutes black and horrible crimes, which make nature. tremble? These are great difficulties in providence. Let any one inform us of a system without them, and we are ready to embrace it: but in the system now before us all these difficulties are contained, and should we grant its advocates all they require, they would be obliged however

to exclaim with us on the borders of the ways of God, O the depth!

The third system is of that of such divines as

are called Supralapsarians. The word supralapsarian signifies above the fall, and these divines are so called because they so arrange the decrees of God as to go above the fall of man, as we are going to explain. Their grand principle is, that God made all things for his own glory, that his design in creating the universe was to manifest his perfections, and particularly his justice and his goodness; that for this purpose he created men with design that they should sin, in order that in the end he might appear infinitely good in pardoning some, and perfectly just in condemning others; so that God resolved to punish such and such persons, not because he foresaw they would sin, but he resolved they should sin that he might damn them. This is their system in a few words. It is not that, which is generally received in our churches, but there have been many members and divines among us who adopted and defended it: but whatever veneration we profess for their memory, we ingeniously own, we cannot digest such consequences as seem to us necessarily to follow these positions. We will just mention the few difficulties following.

First, we demand an explanation of what they mean by this principle, God hath made all things for his own glory. If they mean, that justice requires a creature to devote himself to the worship and glorifying of his Creator, we freely grant it. If they mean that the attributes of God are displayed in all his works, we grant this too. But if this proposition be intended to affirm, that God had no other view in creating men, so to speak, than his own interest, we deny the proposition,

and affirm that God created men for their own happiness, and in order to have subjects upon whom he might bestow favors.

We desire to be informed, in the next place, how it can be conceived, that a determination to damn millions of men can contribute to the glory of God? We easily conceive, that it is for the glory of divine justice to punish guilty men: but to resolve to damn men without the consideration of sin, to create them that they might sin, to determine that they should sin in order to their destruction is what seems to us more likely to tarnish the glory of God than to display it.

Thirdly, we demand, how, according to this hypothesis, it can be conceived that God is not the author of sin? In the general scheme of our churches, God only permits men to sin, and it is the abuse of liberty that plunges man into misery. Even this principle, all lenified as it seems, is yet subject to a great number of difficulties: but in this of our opponents, God wills sin to produce the end he proposed in creating the world, and it was necessary that men should sin; God created them for that. If this be not to constitute God the author of sin, we must renounce the most distinct and clear ideas.

Fourthly, we require them to reconcile this system with many express declarations of scripture, which informs us, that God would have all men saved. How doth it agree with such pressing intreaties, such cutting reproofs, such tender expostulation as God discovers in regard to the unconverted; O that my people had hearkened unto me! O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and ye would not? Matt. xxiii 37.