Should it be said, What! Can glorified saints and angels fall away? I reply: They will never fall away, because they are called off the stage of probation, stand far above the reach of temptation, and have 'henceforth crowns of righteousness laid up for them, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give them at that day.' In the mean time, they rest from their [probatory] labours, and their works follow them.' But still, in the nature of things, they are as able to disobey, as Joseph was to commit adultery, had he set his heart upon it: For, if they had no capacity of disobeying, they would have no capacity of obeying, in the moral sense of the word: Their obedience would be as necessary, and as far from morality, as the passive obedience of a leaden ball, which you drop, with an absurd command to tend towards the centre. If I am not mistaken, these answers fully set aside Mr. T.'s argument taken from the necessary goodness of God, angels, and glorified saints.

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ARGUMENT XXXII. (p. 45.) "God is, and cannot but be, inviolably just, amidst all the sufferings of fallen angels and fallen men, involuntary beings as they are. And he will continue to be just in all they are yet to suffer."-That "God is, and will be just," in all that fallen angels and men have suffered, and may yet suffer, is most true, because they are voluntary Beings (Mr. Toplady says, involuntary Beings") and free-agents (Mr. Toplady would say necessary agents) who ally deserve what they suffer; or who, if they suffer without personal offeuce, as infants do, have in Christ a rich cordial, and an efficacious remedy, which will cause their temporary sufferings to answer to all eternity the most admirable ends for themselves, if they do not reject God's gracious, castigatory, probatory, or purificatory counsels towards them, when they come to act as free-agents. But that "God is and will be just," in absolutely ordaining "involuntary beings" to sin and be damned, is what has not yet been proved by one argument which can bear the light. However, Mr. VOL. IV.

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Toplady, with the confidence which suits his peculiar logic, concludes this part of his subject by the following triumphal exclamation :

ARGUMENT XXXIII. (Ibid.)—" And if so, what becomes of the objection to God's Decree of Preterition, [a soft word for Absolute Reprobation to remediless sin and eternal death] drawn from the article of Injustice?"

Why, it stands in full force, notwithstanding all the arguments which have yet been produced. Nay, the way to shew that an objection is unanswerable, is to answer it as Mr. Toplady has done; that is, by producing arguments which equally shock Reason and Conscience, and which are crowned with this new paradox: "Fallen angels, and fallen men are involuntary Beings." So that the last subterfuge of moderate Calvinists is now given up. For when they try to vindicate God's Justice, with respect to the damnation of their imaginary reprobates, they say, that the poor creatures are damned as voluntary agents. But Mr. Toplady informs us, that they are damned as "involuntary beings," that is, as excusable beings;—and might I not add, as sinless beings? For (evangelically speaking) is it possible that an "involuntary being" should be sinful? Why is the murderer's sword sinless? Why is the candle by which an incendiary fires your house, an innocent flame? Is it not because they are "involuntary beings,' or mere tools used by other beings? A cart accidentally falls upon you, and you involuntarily fall upon a child, who is killed upon the spot. The father of the child wants you hanged as a murderer: But the judge pronounces you perfectly guiltless. Why? Truly because you were, in that case, an "involuntary being" as well as the cart. When therefore Mr. Toplady asserts that we " are involuntary beings," and insinuates that God is just in absolutely predestinating us to sin necessarily, and to be damned eternally, he proves absurdum per absurdius—injustum per injustius-crudele per crudelius. In a word, he gives a finishing stroke to God's Justice; and his pretended "Vindication" of that tremendous Attribute

proves, if I may use his own expression, a public, though, (I am persuaded,) an undesigned “ defamation of it.

SECTION V.

An Answer to the Arguments, by which Mr. Toplady endeavours to reconcile Calvinian REPROBATION with divine MERCY.

If it is impossible to reconcile Calvinian Reprobation with divine JUSTICE, how much more with divine MERCY! This is however the difficult task which Mr. T. sets about next. Consider we his arguments :

ARGUMENT XXXIV. (p. 45.)—“ As God's forbearing to create more worlds than he has, is no impeachment of his Omnipotence : So his forbearing to save as many as he might, is no impeachment of his Infinite Mercy."-The capital flaw of this argument consists in substituting still the phrase "not saving," for the phrase "absolutely reprobating to remediless sin and everlasting burnings." The difference between these =phrases, which Mr. Toplady uses as equivalent, is prodigious. No body ever supposed that God is unmerciful because he does not take stones into heaven, or because he does not save every pebble from its opacity, by making it transparent and glorious as a diamond: For pebbles suffer nothing by being "passed by," and not saved into adamantine glory. But, if God made every pebble an organised, living body, capable of the keenest sensations; and if he appointed that most of these "involuntary [sensible] beings," should be absolutely opaque, and should be cast into a lime-kiln, there to endure everlasting burnings, for not having the transparency, which he decreed they should never have; would it not be impossible to reconcile his conduct to the lowest idea we can form even of Bonner's mercy?

Having thus pointed out the sandy foundation of Mr.

a man to be burnt in the hand for a moment, and, therefore his justice will continue unstained, if he order red-hot irons to be applied to that man's hauds and feet, back and breast, ad infinitum. I hope that when Mr. Toplady threw this scrap of Latin over the nakedness of his Diana, his good-nature suggested that she is too horrible to be looked at without a veil. But could he not have borrowed the language of mother-church, without borrowing a maxim which might shock any inquisitor, and might have put Bonner himself to a stand?

ARG. XXIX. (P. 44.)—“ He [God] permits, and has for near 6000 years permitted, the reign of natural evil. Upon the same principle, might he not extend its reign to--a never-ending duration ?"-He might, if a never-ending line of moral evil, personally and avoidably brought on by free-agents upon themselves, called for a never-ending line of penal misery: And our Lord himself says, that he will: These [the wicked, who have finally hardened themselves] shall go away into everlasting punishment-where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.' (Matt. xxv. 46; Mark ix. 48.)

ARG. XXX. (Ibid.)-"But still the old difficulty, [a difficulty which Arminianism will never solve,] &c., the old difficulty survives. How came moral evil to be permitted, when it might as easily have been hindered, by a Being of infinite goodness, power, and wisdom?"-Page 39, Mr. T. speaks partly the same language; giving us to understand, as openly as he dares, that God worketh all things in all men, even wickedness in the wicked. His pernicious, though guarded insinuation, runs thus: "You will find it extremely difficult, (may I not say impossible?) to point out the difference between permission and design, in a Being possessed (as God most certainly is) of unli mited Wisdom and unlimited Power."-Hence we are given to understand, that, because God does not

absolutely hinder the commission of sin, "it would non-plus all the sagacity of man, should we attempt clearly to shew wherein the difference lies," between God's permitting sin, and his designing, or decreeing, sin, or (to speak with more candour) between God's placing free-agents in a state of probation with a strict charge not to sin, and between his being the author of sin. Is not this a "most masterly" "Vindication of the Decrees and Providence of God;" supposing you mean by " God," the sin-begetting deity worshipped by the Manichees ? This Antinomian blow at the root of divine holiness is dangerous : I shall therefore ward it off by various answers.

1. When God placed man in Paradise, far from permitting him to sin, he strictly forbade him to do it. Is it right then in Mr. T. to call God" the Permitter of sin," when the scriptures represent him as the Forbidder of it? Nay, is it not very wrong to pour shame upon the holiness of God, and absurdity upon the reason of man, by making a Calvinistic world believe, that forbidding and threatening is one and the same thing with permitting and giving leave; or at least, that the difference is so trifling, that "all the sagacity of man will find it extremely difficult, not to say impossible, clearly to point it out?"

2. I pretend to a very little share of "all the sagacity of man ;" and yet, without being non-plussed at all, I hope to shew, by the following illustration, that there is a prodigious difference between not hindering and design, in the case of entering in of sin :

A general wants to try the faithfulness of his soldiers, that he may reward those who will fight, and punish those who will go over to the enemy; in order to dis play, before all the army, his love of bravery, his hatred of cowardice, his remunerative goodness, and his impartial justice. To this end, he issues out a proclamation, importing that all the volunteers, who shall gallantly keep the field in such an important engagement, shall be made captains; and that all those who shall go over to the enemy, shall be shot. I suppose