2 and ERTE VELA TE Cab Long By appoint de d eternal Samvation. Th e with the fourwitz ELastly punish his disobedient give his sick child a bitter m e he may justly break a ammer, and daily dread To produce such absurd

is he unjust in passing by some men; nay he might, had he so pleased, have passed by the whole of mankind, without electing any one individual of the fallen race; and yet have continued holy, just, and good."

True He might have passed them by without fixing any blot upon his justice and goodness, if, by passing them by, Mr. T. means “leaving them in the wretched state of seminal existence," in which state his vindictive justice found them after Adam's fall. For then, an unknown punishment, seminally endured, would have borne a just proportion to an unknown sin seminally committed. But if, by passing some men by, this gentleman means, as Calvinism does, "absolutely predestinating some men to necessary, remediless sin, and to unavoidable, eternal damnation;" we deny that God might justly have passed by the whole of mankind; we deny that he might justly have passed by one single man, woman, or child.-Nay, we affirm, that, if we conceive Satan, or the evil principle of Manes, as exerting creative power, we could not conceive him worse employed, than in forming an absolute reprobate in embryo; that is, a creature unconditionally and absolutely doomed to remediless wickedness and everlasting fire."

As the simple are frequently imposed upon by an artful substituting of the harmless word "passing by,” for the terrible word "absolutely reprobating to death,” I beg leave to shew, by a simile, the vast difference there is between these two phrases :-A king may, without injustice, pass by all the beggars in the streets, without giving them any bounty; because, if he does them no good in thus passing them by, he does them no harm. But suppose he called two captains of his guards, and said to the first, If you see me pass by little, dirty beggars without giving them an alms, throwthem into the mire; or if their parents have cast them into the mire, keep them there: Then let the second captain follow with his men, and take all the dirty beggars who have thus been passed by, and throw them, for being dirty, into a furnace hotter than that

of Nebuchadnezzar :-Suppose, I say, the king passed his little indigent subjects by in this manner, would not his decree of preterition he a more than diabolical piece of cruelty? I need not inform my judicious readers, that the passing by of the king represents Calvinian passing by, that is, Absolute Reprobation to death; that the first captain, who throws little beggars into the dirt, or keeps them there, represents the decree of the means, which necessitates the reprobate to sin, or to continue in sin; and that the second captain represents the decree of the end, which necessitates them to go to everlasting burnings.

ARGUMENT XXIV. (P. 39.)—Mr. Toplady endeavours to reconcile Calvinian Reprobation with divine justice by an appeal" to God's providential dealings with men in the present life." His verbose argument, stript of its Geneva dress, and brought naked to open light, may run thus: "If God may, without injustice, absolutely place the sons of Adam in circumstances of temporarymisery, he may also, without injustice, reprobate them to eternal torments: But he may justly place the sons of Adam in circumstances of temporary misery; witness his actually doing it: And therefore he may without injustice reprobate them to eternal torments, and to remediless sin, as the way to those torments." -The flaw of this argument is in the first proposition, and consists in supposing, that, because God can justly appoint us to suffer a light affliction, which [comparatively speaking] is but for a moment, and which [if we are not perversely wanting to ourselves] will work for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,' (2 Cor. iv. 17,) he can also justly appoint us to remediless wickedness and eternal damnation. This conclusion is all of a piece with the following argument:-A father may justly punish his disobedient child with a rod, and give his sick child a bitter medicine; and therefore he may justly break all his bones with a forge-hammer, and daily drench him with melted lead. To produce such absurd consequences

without a mask, is sufficiently to answer them. farther what is said upon p. 42.

See

ARGUMENT XXV. (Page 40.)-Mr. Toplady is, if possible, still more abundantly mistaken, while, to prove the justice of Calvinian Reprobation, he appeals to "the real inequality of providential distributions below."-We cannot "pronounce the great Father of all unjust, because he does not make all his offspring equally rich, good, and happy;" and therefore, God may justly reprobate some of them to eternal misery; just as if inferior degrees of goodness and happiness were the same thing as remediless wickedness and eternal misery!

ARGUMENT XXVI. (Ibid.)—“The devils may be cast down to hell to be everlastingly damned, and be appointed thereto; and it gives no great concern. No hard thoughts against God arise No charge of cruelty, injustice," &c. Indeed, if Dr. Gill, whom Mr. Toplady quotes, insinuated, that God had absolutely predestinated myriads of angels to everlasting damnation, through the appointed means of necessary sin; and that God had made this appointment thousands of years before most of those angels had any personal existence, it would give us great concern, both for the honour of God's justice, and for the angels so cruelly treated by free wrath. But as matters are, the case of devils gives us no great concern, because they fell knowingly, wilfully, and without necessity. To the end of the day of their visitation, they personally rejected God's gracious counsel towards them; and, as they obstinately refused to subserve the judicial display of his remunerative bounty, it is highly agreeable to reason and equity, that they should subserve the judicial display of his vindictive justice.

ARGUMENT XXVII. (P. 41.)-"The king of Great Britain has unlimited right of peerage, &c. Will any one be so weak and perverse as to charge him with

Tyranny and Injustice, only because it is not his will, though it is in his power, to make all his subjects noblemen?"-This is another barrel thrown out to the whale. This illustration does not touch, but conceal the question. For the similar question is not, Whether the king is unjust, in leaving gentlemen and tradesmen among the gentry and commonalty, but whether he could, without injustice and tyranny, pretend, that, because he has an unlimited right of peerage, he has also an unlimited right of (what I beg leave to call) felonage,―a Calvinian right this, of appointing whom he pleases to rob and murder, hat he may appoint whom he pleases to a cell in Newgate, and a swing at Tyburn! This is the true state of the case. If Mr.T. had cast a veil over it, it is a sign that he is not destitute of the feeling of justice, and that, if he durst look at his Manichean picture of God's Sovereignty, without a veil, he would turn from it with the same precipitancy, with which he would start back from the abomination of the Moabites, or from the grim idol to which mistaken Israelites sacrificed their children in the valley of Hinnom.

ARGUMENT XXVIII. (P. 42.)-" Misery, though endured but for a year, &c., is, in its own nature, and for the time being, as truly misery, as it would be if protracted ever so long, &c. And God can no more cease to be just for a year, or for a man's life-time, than he can cease to be just for a century, or for ever. By the same rule that he can, and does, without impeachment of his moral attributes, permit any one being to be miserable for a moment; he may permit that being to be miserable for a much longer time: And so on, ad infinitum ;"—that is, in plain English, for ever. The absurdity of this argument may be sufficiently pointed out by a similar plea :-A surgeon may, without injustice, open an imposthume in my breast, and give me pain for an hour, and therefore he may justly scarify me, aud flay me alive ten years.-A judge may, without impeachment of his justice, order