his plan, and made a means of pushing it forward toward the appointed consummation: some he raises up to eminence in the world, some he casts down; some he enlightens, some he abandons to blindness; some he calls to the enjoyment of high religious privileges, and some he gives over to hardness of heart and reprobacy of mind. "Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour." (Rom. ix. 21.) And most gloriously does this whole argument end. Love is shown to be the foundation of the whole scheme of divine government; in all of its infinitely diversified manifestations, grace is interwoven throughout the texture grace indeed is the warp and the woof; of God are all things; through God are all things; to God are all things. Such (in Rom. xi.) is the apostle's final and satisfactory disposition of this perplexing and much mooted question. "Grace all the work shall crown It lays in heaven the topmost stone, Betwixt Calvinism and Arminianism (so far as respects their connection with this question) there is not a hair's breadth of rational difference; the former indeed seems to be the more harsh of the two, but the more consistent in itself, în reality, however, they are the same; Calvinism is Arminianism, asserted in honest directness of terms; Arminianism is Calvinism, expressed by circumlocution. In verbal modification, however, these isms differ. Calvinists acknowledge the conclusion, that God has fore-appointed all things, to be inevitable from the fact that he foreknew all things; Arminians affect to think differently, and affirm, that Jehovah may design an event to be, when he knows it never will be; and not to be, at the same time that he knows it certainly will! hence, although he created us with the certain knowledge, that with regard to a large majority, the act would prove infinitely disastrous, yet he is not answerable for the result, because he meant it should happen otherwise! Most sage and consistent Arminianism! Doctor Drugg had been heard to say, that of the two medicines he had left in his patient's room-the one sanative, and the other fatal in its qualities-he knew that the sick man would choose the latter, and that his death would be the consequence. When put upon his trial for murder, on this ground, the Doctor plead as follows: "May it please the honorable court, there is as wide a difference between the foreknowing, and the foredetermining of a thing, as between the occipital and metatarsal extremities of the human subject, and therefore, though I knew my poor patient would come to his death by means of the nostrums left in his chamber, yet I beg your honors to believe that such was not my intentionI positively designed his cure." Unfortunately for Doctor Drugg, the court determined the case on common-sense principles, rather than on those of Arminianism; they could not comprehend how he could possibly purpose to cure his patient by means which he positively knew would kill him! Stupid fellows! had they but been Arminians, they could have found a parallel for the case in the conduct which their creed ascribes to the deity, and thus the poor Doctor would have been longer spared to the cause of science. "So! then," exclaims the Arminian objector, "the author really seems bent on proving, that as Jehovah foreknew of the existence of sin, he must also have designed it!" Yes, such is really my purpose, and this I mean to do upon your own admitted principles; you have been accustomed to casting the supposed odium, of this conclusion upon Calvinism, and I am now showing that it equally pertains to your own system. Calvinism, it is true, comes to it by a direct path, whilst you, more cautious, approach it by a circuit. For example, you hold that God made certain angels, with the ability to become devils if they chose ; he knew they would so choose; he knew that he should banish them to hell; he knew that if he should allow them they would escape from hell to this earth, and tempt from their allegiance to himself the race of beings called man: he did so allow them; he knew that for as long as time should last, age after age should roll its successive millions of this race into the infernal abyss; he knew when he created hell that such should be its uses; and when he created these ill-fated beings, he knew that they were to people its fiery caverns—all these things were as plain before his eyes as though they were then present facts; he could have prevented them if he pleased, but did not please! It unanswerably follows, then, that he designed them. Calvinism admits this at once. Where is the difference, then? Just here; your system alters neither the length nor the direction of the chain of fate; it but makes it to consist of a greater number of links. Having, then, as I think, established the conclusion, that absolute foreknowledge implies absolute foreordination, I proceed to notice the objections which seem to lie against it. I have already considered the most formidable of these, viz., that it makes God the author of sin; and I now ask how, on any ground, is this to be avoided? I assert, moreover, that it is plainly scriptural. Shall we affect to be more scrupulous in this respect than were the inspired penmen? We are told in sacred story, that God put certain dreams into the mind of Joseph, the interpretation of which was, that he should come to be a man of so great dignity that his father and brethren should be brought to reverence him. What means did Jehovah employ to bring this end about? Can it be denied, that among those means were several guilty transactions? Such, for instance, were the envy of the brethren, their selling him for a slave, and the incontinence of Potiphar's wife. Will any pretend that God did not appoint these events? If he did not, then he provided other means for accomplishing the end, or no means at all; if other means, they were not brought into use! and God knew they would not when he appointed them! If he provided no means at all, what must we think of his wisdom, in appointing ends, without the requisite means for bringing them about? Of but one method of evasion know I from the force of this case. The Arminian may say, that in the dreams of Joseph, God only intimated what he foresaw would come-not what he designed should come; and that God merely overruled these sinful transactions for good, but did not appoint them as a means to that good. Ah! this plea will not do. Let us see of what the good consisted: 1st, the deliverance of the chosen people from the famine: 2nd, nor from the famine of Canaan merely, but also from its idolatries, to which, as they increased, they would have been much exposed: 3rd, their establishment by themselves in Goshen, (a rich pasturage country,) where they multiplied to a numerous nation: 4th, the raising from them a line of prophets, reaching down in unbroken succession to the rise of the prophet of prophets, Christ Messiah, through whom a more glorious kingdom should be established, as wide in its sway as the extension of being, and as lasting as the age of the Most High. And will you say, my dear reader, that these stupendous occurrences were not previ ously marked out by Jehovah, and every link in the well-arranged series of means by which they were brought about, appointed and adjusted by him? Was the effecting of these great ends left to the agency of accident? So at least, thought not Joseph; for when, after his father's death, his brethren came to him to implore his forgiveness for their evil conduct toward him, he said unto them, "Fear not; for am I in the place of God? But as for you, ye thought evil against me, but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive." (Gen. 1. 19, 20.) Thus is God directly recognised by Joseph as the prime agent in this business; but his was a different motive from their's, who were the subordinate agents or instruments. Take another example. Jehovah appointed his Son to die for the world's redemption; he meant, of course, that this important .event should be effected in a certain definite way. What was that way? The Savior was to be denied by one of his disciples; betrayed by another; forsaken by all; rejected by his own nation; scourged, and in death confounded with malefactors. All these things are said by Jesus himself to have been previously marked out by the purposes of heaven; and the inspired recorders of these transactions make no scruple of referring them to the same source. (Matt. xxvii. 35. John xii. 38; xv. 25; xvii. 12; xviii. 32; xix. 24, 36.) After Christ's death, the apostles set forth the same fact in their preaching. “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain." (Acts ii. 23.) The following is to the same effect. "And now, brethren, I wot that through ignorance ye did it, as did also your rulers. But those things, which God before had showed by the mouth of all his prophets, that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled." (Acts iii. 17, 18.) Even in solemn prayer together they recognise these events as the result of the divine purpose. "For of a truth, against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together, for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done." (Acts iv. 27, 28.) I cannot conceive how any rational man can dream, that God, having for ends of unspeakable glory and benevolence appointed his Son's death, took no express mea sures for the accomplishment of that event, but left it to be brought about by mere chance! Yet have I heard even preachers prate to that effect from the pulpit! I have even heard them affirm that the death of Christ was no necessary part of the divine plan! Let such wise heads turn to Heb. ix. 8. Col. i. 19, 20, and compare notes with the great apostle upon this point. Equally unphilosophical as unscriptural is the denial, that all things, in the broadest acceptation of the phrase, have their origin in the unchangeable designs of heaven; it is, in effect, to dethrone the deity, and to put the sceptre of the universe into the hands of finite creatures, whose wills may shape its occurrences to suit themselves. The pious worthies in bible times were better philosophers. Job ascribed his calamities directly to Jehovah. "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away." (Job i. 21.) "Shall we receive good at the hand of the Lord, and shall we not receive evil?" (Job ii. 10.) Yet in bringing these evils to pass, God employed the agency of Sabine and Chaldean freebooters, as well as winds, and fire, and disease. (These agencies are, in the bible, personified under the name of Satan ;) the scheme, you perceive, involved the sins of robbery and murder! Jeremiah accounts God the author of the public calamities which he bewails in his Lamentations. "The Lord hath cast off his altar; he hath abhorred his sanctuary: he hath given up into the hand of the enemy the walls of her palaces; they have made a noise in the house of the Lord, as in the day of a solemn feast. The Lord hath purposed to destroy the wall of the daughter of Zion: he hath stretched out a line, he hath not withdrawn his hand from destroying: therefore he made the rampart and the wall to lament; they languished together. Her gates are sunk into the ground; he hath destroyed and broken her bars: her king and her princes are among the Gentiles: the law is no more; her prophets also find no vision from the Lord." (Lam. ii. 7-9.) The same prophet asks, "Who is he that saith, and it cometh to pass, when the Lord commandeth it not?" (Ibid. iii. 37.) Now in this visitation upon Jerusalem, Jehovah employed the ambition, the lust of fame and spoil, of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon; the earthly mon arch's purposes were those which his own lusts suggested-God's were those of retribution upon a sinful people. Let me here askdo we not account Napoleon to have been a scourge of Providence Ꮓ |