1. It is held by the CALVINISTs, that God hath chosen, in Christ, a certain number of the fallen race of Adam, before or at the foundation of the world, to be heirs of everlasting felicity; accord-· ing to his immutable purpose, and of his free grace and love, without respect to the faith, works, or other condition performed by the creature and that the rest of mankind he was pleased to PASS BY, and to ordain them to dishonour and wrath for their sins. In the former case his glory is promoted; in the latter, his justice is dis played *.

The ARMINIANS contend, that God from all eternity determined to bestow salvation on such as he foresaw would embrace the Gospel covenant, through faith working by love; and to inflict everlasting punishment on those, who, as he fore knew, should continue in unbelief, and in resist ance of his tender of salvation: so that election and reprobation were alike conditional; although God had a sure prescience how every man would fulfil the conditions. This hypothesis they affirm to be strictly scriptural, and reconcilable with all the texts produced by Calvinists on the opposite side.

* In the language of the synod of Dort," appointed by the same decree to eternal damnation, without any regard to their infidelity or impenitency."-The Lambeth articles are yet stronger: "The number of the predestinated can neither be augmented nor diminished; those not predestinated, shall be necessarily damned for their sins."

Now, I would ask, at the very first blush of the question, which of these two suppositions accords best with common sense; with the moral feelings of man; with the wisdom, the justice, the goodness, the mercy of God; with the reason of the thing, when man is considered as a responsible being; with all moral laws, divine and human with the thousand calls to repentance with which the Scriptures abound; with the general scope and tenour of the sacred writings? And I think there can be but one reply.

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Again, if the Calvinistic hypothesis were cordially embraced, would it not be, if man have no option, no free power, to reject grace and salvation granted, or to obtain them, when withheld; would it not, I say, be the most palpable solecism, the grossest violation of all fair deduction from premises, to regard and treat man as an accountable creature, a moral agent, which the Calvinists (excepting the Antinomians) do every Lord's day, in calls, warnings, exhortations, encouragements, promises, threats? all of which, if absolute decrees are once admitted, would be superfluous, whether to the elect or to the reprobate. Faith would be vain, and preaching would be vain. Why should men be entreated to do what they cannot do? or to shun what it is unalterably determined they shall fall into? Let the Calvinists act consistently. Let then be all gospellers; all Crisps, Saltmarshes, Huntingtons, and Hawkers.

Every individual call of theirs to repentance, is an implied doubt and distrust of their own principles. Prayer in like manner is often recommended in Scripture. But prayer would be superfluous and altogether unmeaning, on the hypothesis of unconditional election and reprobation; since no prayer could save the reprobate, and no omission of it could ever ruin the elect.

Again, God is represented by natural and revealed religion to be just, holy, merciful, and true. The doctrine of absolute decrees is in opposition to all these attributes. For is it justice to condemn individuals to eternal misery, for what they never committed? even dying infants, who have committed no actual sin being numbered by the Calvinists as left to punishment, if they be not of the elect. Is it justice in God to punish men for what he decreed they should do? Is that a holy Being, who fixes beforehand, the commission of many sins by an absolute decree? Does to reprobate many, comport with the character of God, as merciful, slow to anger, abundant in goodness, desiring that no man should perish, taking no pleasure in the death of sinners? Is God not willing that any should perish; and yet willing that some should perish? He cannot have two contending wills: Ezek. xxxiii. 11, and xviii. 12. 2 Peter, iii. 9. Exod. xxxiv. 6. God must take pleasure in his own decrees: in the supposed decree, therefore, of unconditional reprobation, he

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takes pleasure; how comes it then, that, according to Ezekiel, xxxiii. 11, he takes no pleasure in the perishing of any? God is true: now, gene- ' . ral offers of mercy are often made in his word to returning sinners: Turn ye, turn ye; why will ye die?" But if these offers are false, if some sinners cannot return, and must eternally die, God is not true.dosk

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We are required to be holy as God is holy; merciful as he is merciful. But were we to imitate

this conduct in our dealings towards our brethren, we should be justly execrated as cruel, capricious, and profligate. We know what holiness and mercy are, Scripture and conscience tell us what they are. We therefore know and feel it to be absolutely impossible that God should act in a manner so unholy and so unmerciful. Abraham knew this, when, referring to the standard of his own moral feelings, he remonstrated with God, "That be far from thee, to destroy the righteous with the wicked: shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?". This rule is infallible: for if God were to deal forth a reprobation, which hardly the most worthless among mankind would inflict; man, dreadful conclusion! would be more holy and merciful than God. It were absurdity, it were blasphemy, to conceive this possible. "Shall man be more just than God? a mortal more pure than his Maker?" Job, iv. 17,

Contradictions crowd upon us at every step of

our progress, in examining this tissue of inconsistencies. Independently of the admission of some free agency, some power to reject or accept; our actions are neither good nor evil, neither capable of reward nor punishment. It is the intent, the will, that constitutes a virtue or a crime. Even human tribunals do not put the maniac to death as punishment for the mischief he commits and who but a maniac would think of punishing the dagger, the INSTRUMENT with -which the blow was struck? Yet man sinning, is, by the Calvinistic system, this instrument, this -blind, unresisting dagger in the hands of God, the decreer of the blow, Away with remorse if the sin was unavoidable. Away with penitence if it be never to avail. Why should we STRIVE to enter in at the strait gate, if we MUST either enter in thither by force, or MUST go forward by necessity to destruction? But it is impossible to drive self-approbation and compunction from the breast, We know, we feel, that we have a certain agency; that some circumstances ›are 'more favourable to our virtue than others; and that we can apply ourselves to these, or can turn away from themy Moog In to Eaton Litbusab nam ; Pulli

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Once more: all attempts to moderate and soften this horribile decretum" (as Calvin himself conIfesses it to be), by the admission of selection and denial of reprobation, by the admission of general and denial of special grace, or by whatever other