the Fathers, equally subjected to the legislative wisdom, and executive power of their omnipotent Lawgiver.

2. Whether free-agents are rewarded or punished, saved or damned, God our Saviour will never be disappointed: For, (1.) He will pronounce the sentence; and what he will do himself will not disappoint his expectation. (2.) It is as much God's righteous, eternal design to punish wicked, obstinate free agents, as to reward yielding. and obedient free agents.-(3.) Every gospel dispensation yields a savour of life or death. The sword of the Lord is a two-edged sword: If it do not cut down a man's sin, it will cut down his person. And though God, as Creator and Redeemer, does not in the day of salvation Calvinistically desire the death of a sinner; yet, as a holy Law-giver, a covenant-keeping God, and a righteous Judge, he is determined to render unto every man according to his deeds Eternal life to them, who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory; but indignation and wrath to them, who do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness' And God will do this, in the day when he shall judge the secrets of men according to the gospel.' (Rom.ii. 6-16.) Hence it is evident that the bow of divine Justice has two strings, that each string will shoot its peculiar arrow, and although God leaves it to free-agents to choose which they will have, the arrow which is winged with remunerative life, or that which carries vindictive death; yet he can never be disappointed; he will most infallibly hit the judicial mark, which he has set up; witness the awful declaration which is engraven upon that mark: These [obstinate free agents] shall go away into everlasting punishment: But the righteous into life eternal.' (Matt. xxv. 46.)

Upon the whole, I humbly hope, that whether candid readers consider the inconclusiveness of Mr. T.'s Philosophical Arguments-the injudicious manner in which he has pressed the scriptures into the service of Absolute Necessity-or the weakness of his Objections, which he directly or indirectly makes against the doc

trine of Liberty; they will see that his scheme is as contrary to true philosophy, and to well-applied scripture, as the absolute necessity of adultery and murder is contrary to good morals, and the absolute reprobation of some of our unborn children, and perhaps of our own souls, is contrary to evangelical comfort.

SECTION V.

The Doctrine of Necessity is the capital error of the Calvinists, and the foundation of the most wretched schemes of Philosophy and Divinity.-How nearly Mr. Toplady agrees with Mr. Hobbes, the apostle of the Materialists in England, with respect to the doctrine of Necessity.-Conclusion.

We have seen on what philosophical and scriptural proofs Mr. Toplady founds the doctrine of necessity; and, if I am not mistaken, the inconclusiveness of his arguments has been fairly pointed out. I shall now subjoin some remarks, which I hope are not unworthy of the reader's attention.

1. It is not without reason, that Mr. T. borrows from false philosophy, and misapplied passages of scripture, whatever seems to countenance his doctrine of necessity For that doctrine is the very soul of Calvinism; and Calvinism is, in his account, the marrow of the gospel. If the doctrine of absolute necessity be true, Calvinian election and reprobation are true also: If it be false, Calvinism, so far as we oppose it, is left without either prop or foundation. Take away necessity from the modern doctrines of grace, and you reduce them to the scripture-standard, which we follow, and of which Arminius was too much afraid.

2. Those who would see at once the bar which separates us from the Calvinists, need only consider the following questions: Are all those who shall be damned, absolutely necessitated to continue in sin and perish? And are all those who shall be saved, absolutely neces

sitated to work righteousness and be eternally saved? Or, to unite both questions in one, Shall men be judged, that is, shall they be justified or condemned, in the last day, as bound agents, according to the unavoidable consequences of Christ's work, or of Adam's work? Or, shall they be justified or condemned, according to THEIR OWN works, as the scripture declares? I lay a peculiar stress upon the words their own, because works, which absolute decrees necessitate us to do, are no longer, properly speaking, our own works; but the works of Him, who necessitates us to do them.

3. There is but one case, in which we can scripturally admit the Calvinian doctrine of necessity, and that is, the salvation of infants, who die before they have committed actual sin. These, we grant, are necessarily or Calvinistically saved. But they will not be judged according to THEIR works,' seeing they died before they wrought either iniquity or righteousness. Their salvation will depend only on the irresistible work of Christ, and his Spirit. As they were never called personally to work out their own salvation ;' and as they never personally wrought out their own damnation, they will all be saved by the superabounding grace of God, through the meritorious infancy and death of the holy child Jesus. But it is an abomination to suppose, that because God can justly force holiness and salvation upou some infants, he can justly force continued sin and eternal damnation upon myriads of people, by putting them in such circumstances as absolutely necessitate them to continue in sin and be damned. I repeat: God may bestow eternal favours upon persons, whom his decrees necessitate to be righteous. But he can never inflict eternal punishments upon persons, whom his decrees, according to Mr. Toplady's doctrine, necessitate to be wicked from first to last.

4. The moderate Calvinists say indeed, that Adam was endued with free will, and that God did not necessitate him to sin. But if necessity has nothing to do with the first man's obedieuce and first transgression; why

ld it be supposed, that it has so much to do with

us, as absolutely to beget all our good and bad works? And if it be not unreasonable to say, "that God endued one man with a power to determine himself;" why should we be considered as enemies to the gospel, because we assert, that he has made all men in some degree capable of determining themselves; the scriptures declaring, that he treats all adult persons as freeagents, or persons endued with the power of selfdetermination?

seventeen.

5. Mr. Toplady and all the rigid Calvinists suppose indeed, that God's necessitation extended to the commission of Adam's sin; and yet they tell us, that God is not the author, but only the permitter of sin. But they do not consider, that their doctrine of absolute necessity leaves no more room for permission, than the absolute decree, that a pound shall always exactly weigh sixteen ounces, leaves room for a permission of its weighing sometimes fifteen ounces and sometimes Should Mr. Toplady reply, that "such a decree, however, leaves room for the permission, that a pound shall always exactly weigh sixteen ounces:" I reply, that this is playing upon words; it being evident that the word permission, in such a case, is artfully put for the plainer word necessity or absolute decree. It is evident, therefore, that although Mr. Toplady aims at being more consistent than the moderate Calvinists, he is in fact as inconsistent as they, if he denies that, upon the scheme of the absolute decrees preached by Calvin, and of the absolute necessity which he himself maintains, God is properly the contriver and author of all sin and wickedness.

6. It is dreadful to lay, directly or indirectly, all sin at the door of an omnipotent Being, who is fearful in holiness, and glorious in praises.' Nor is it less dangerous to make poor deluded Christians swallow down, as gospel, some of the most dangerous errors that were ever propagated by ancient or modern infidels. We ho already seen, that the capital error of Manes

doctrine of necessity.

This doctrine was

grand engine with which

Spinosa in He

Hobbes in England, attempted to overthrow Christianity in the last century. Those two men, who may be called the apostles of modern Materialists and Atheists, tried to destroy the Lord's vineyard, by letting loose upon it the very error which Mr. T. recommends to us as the capital doctrine of grace. Spinosa," says a modern author, "will allow no Governor of the Universe but Necessity." As for Mr. Hobbes he built his Materialism upon the ruins of free will, and the foundation of necessity Hear the above-quoted author giving us an account of the monstrous system of religion, known by Hobbism;" Freedom of will it was impossible that Mr. Hobbes should assert to be a property of matter; but he finds a very unexpected way to extricate himself out of the difficulty. The proposition against him stands thus Freedom of will cannot be a property of matter; but there are beings which have freedom of will; therefore there are substances which are not material.' He answers this at once, by saying the most strange thing, and the most contradictory to our knowledge of what passes within ourselves, that perhaps was ever advanced; namely, that there is no freedom of will. 'Every effect,' he says, [and this is exactly the doctrine of Mr. Toplady, as the quotations I have produced from his book abundantly prove,] 'Every effect must be owing to some cause, and that cause must produce the effect necessarily. Thus, whatever body is moved, is moved, by some other body, and that by a third, and so on 'without end.' In the same manner he [Mr. Hobbes] concludes, The will of a Voluntary Agent must be 6 determined by some other external to it, and so on without end: Therefore that the will is not determined by any power of determining itself, inherent in itself; that is, it is not free, nor is there any such thing as 'freedom of will; but that all is the act of necessity.'",

6

This is part of the account, which the author of the Answer to Lord Bolingbroke's Philosophy gives us of Mr. Hobbes's detestable scheme of necessity: And it behoves Mr. Toplady and the Calvinists, to see, if while they contend for their absolute decrees, and for the