him, that they would deliver him to Pilate, that they would solicit his death, that Pilate would have the meanness and pusillanimity to yield to their intreaties; had not God known all these things, how could he have predicted them? But the men we oppose do not much respect the decisions of scripture. The principle, to which all this system tends, is, that reason is to decide on the doctrines of scripture, and not that the doctrines of scripture are to direct reason. This principle once granted all the doctrines of our faith are subverted, as experience proves. See into what rash declarations this principle hath conducted Socinus and his followers. What decision of scripture, what doctrine of faith, what truth however established, repeated and enforced, hath it not allured them to deny? The bondage of the human will seems to destroy the nature of man: this bondage must be denied. But the doctrine of absolute decrees seems to disagree with the liberty of man: these absolute decrees must be denied. But the foreknowledge of God cannot be allowed without the doctrine of decrees: the foreknowledge of God must be denied. But a thousand prophecies prove this prescience: the mystical sense of these prophecies must be denied. But Jesus Christ hath verified them: then Jesus Christ must be denied, his titles, his attributes, his works, his worship, his satifaction, his divinity, his union to God, his incarnation must all be denied: he must be made a mere man, a prophet, a teacher distinguished from others only by some extraordinary talents: the whole system of the gospel, of salvation, and of redemption must be denied. To follow these ideas, my brethren, is to tumble from precipice to precipice without knowing where we shall stop. We propose in the second place the system of our bre thren of the confession of Augsburgh, and that of Arminius; for though they differ in other articles, yet they both agree pretty nearly in this point. Their system is this. They grant foreknowledge: but they deny fore-appointment. They allow indeed that God always foresaw who would be happy in heaven, and who victims in hell: but they tremble at the thesis, which affirms that God predestinated the first to felicity, and the last to misery. According to them, God made no other decree than to save believers, and to condemn infidels; he gave all men assistance sufficient to enable them to believe, and having only foreseen who would believe, and who would not believe, he made no decree to secure the faith of some, and the unbelief of the rest. Although Although it is never our custom to envenom controversy, and to tax people with heresy for not being of our opinion; though we would rather reconcile opposite opinions than triumph in refuting them; yet we cannot help making three reflections. First, this system doth not agree with itselfsecondly it is directly opposite to many decisions of the holy Spirit, and particularly to the doctrine of the three chapters before us--and thiraly should we grant the whole, a thousand difficulties would remain in the doctrine of the decrees of God, and we should always be obliged to exclaim, as these brethren must on this article, O the depth! 1. We affirm, that this system is inconsistent with itself, that the doctrine of prescience supposes that of predestination, and that unless we deny that God foresaw our salvation, we are obliged by our own thesis to affirm that he predestinated us to it. I grant there is a sense, in which it is true that to foresee a thing is different from determining to bring it to pass: but there is another sense, in which to foresee and fore-appoint is one and the same thing. If I foresee that a prince sending armed troops into the house of the widow and orphan will expose that house to pillage, it is certain, my foresight hath no influence in the fate of that house, and in this case to foresee the act of plundering is not a determination to plunder. But if the prince foresee this event, if he knew the rage and fury with which his soldiers are animated, if he knew by experience that in such conjunctures they have committed such crimes, if, in spite of this prescience, he send his madmen into this house, if he allow them their armour, if he lay them under no restraint, if he do not appoint any superior officer to bridle their fury, do you not think, my brethren, that to foresee and to resolve this case are in him one and the same thing? Apply these reflections to our subject. Let us suppose that before the creation of this world God had subsisted alone, with one other spirit such as you please to imagine. Suppose, when God had formed the plan of the world, he had communicated it to this spirit that subsisted with him. Suppose, that God who formed the plan, and the intelligence to whom he had communicated it, had both foreseen that some men of this world would be saved, and others lost; do you not perceive, that there would have been an essential difference between the prescience of God, and the prescience of the spirit we have imagined? The foreknow VOL. V. -G g ledge ledge of this last would not have had any influence either over the salvation, or destruction of mankind, because this spirit would have foreknown, and that would have been all : but is not the foreknowledge of God of another kind? Is that a speculative, idle, and uninfluential knowledge? He not only foresaw: but he created. He not only foresaw that man being free would make a good or ill use of his liberty, but he gave him that liberty. To foresee and to fore-appoint in God is only one and the same thing. If indeed you only mean to affirm, by saying that these are two different acts, that God doth no violence to his creatures, but that notwithstanding his prescience the one hardens himself freely, and the other believes freely: if this be all you mean, give us the right hand of fellowship, for this is exactly our system, and we have no need to asperse one another, as both hold the same doctrine. There is a second inconvenience in the system of bare prescience, that is, that it doth not square with scripture, which clearly establishes the doctrine of predestination. We omit many passages usually quoted in this controversy; as that Jesus Christ said to his Father, I thank thee, O Father, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight, Matt. xi. 25. And this of St. Paul, God hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, having predestinated us to the adoption of sons, Eph. i. 4 As this famous passage, whom he did foreknow them he did predestinate, and whom he did predestinate them he also called, Rom. viii. 28, 29. We omit all these passages because our opponents dispute the sense we give of them, and because it is but justice either to hear and answer their objections (which the limits of these exercises will not allow) or not to make use of them, for that would be taking for granted what is not allowed, that is, that these passages speak of predestination in our sense of the term. Let us content ourselves, to oppose against the doctrine of prescience without predestination these three chapters in Romans, of which the text is the close. I am aware of what is objected. It is said, that we make phantoms to combat, that the meaning of St Paul is clear, that the end he had in view puts the matter out of doubt, and that his end hath no relation to absolute decrees much less did he design to establish them. The apostle had laid down this position, that the gospel would hereafter be the only œcono my my of salvation, and consequently that an adherence to the levitical institution would be fatal. The Jews object to this, for they could not comprehend how an adherence to a divine institution could lead to perdition. St. Paul answers these complaints, by telling 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 complaim, 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 number. less benedictions and favours upon you. This Redeemer is come, he 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 suprising, that God so dispenses his favours as to distin Gg 2. guish guish two nations so very different in the manner of their obedience to his authority? Instead of this, what doth St. Paul? Here 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 will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. The scripture saith to Pharoah, 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 honour, and another to dishonour? 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. And one proof that this is the doctrine he intends to each the converted Jew, to whom he addresses 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 absord 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 succour 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 thither the light of chris tianity, preach the gospel in idolatrous climes, and the mos ques |