Christ; in whom you also, true Ephesian Christians, having heard the word of truth-the gospel of your salvation; in whom also having believed ye were sealed with the promised Spirit, who of our portion is the pledge for the redemption of the final acquisition to the praise of his glory.

The object here seems to be to show the foundation on which the church rested. The first believers were saved through grace abundantly or freely supplied, by faith in the blood of Christ, according to the original design of God, who acted out his own pleasure in making provisions for their salvation, blessing them, and saving them. The Ephesians stood on the same foundation, dependent upon the same grace, and saved in accordance with the same design. They also heard the gospel of salvation, believed, and were sealed with the Holy Spirit. To seal is to make sure—to put a mark or seal upon anything to show its genuineness that it is approved, confirmed, chosen. Thus Paul aimed to encourage those whom he addressed as approved of God, as predestinated.

The greatest controversies on Election and Predestination have arisen from this passage. They are announced with the conditions of holiness and blamelessness before God-of sonship by a life of faith. Paul wrote to "saints," or true believers, in Christ Jesus, who were sealed for their final redemption. We remark,

1. God must save.-This point will generally be admitted. We cannot save ourselves. We cannot cancel or pardon a single sin, and God has repeatedly declared, "I am Jehovah thy Saviour"—" And beside me there is no Saviour."

2. If God saves, he determines or intends to save.-If he does not, he must act without design and of course without wisdom. He must be governed not by a benevolent purpose, but by accident or chance. He could neither manifest goodness nor mercy. The moral quality depends on the intention. If I kill a man without any intention of injuring him, it would not be murder according to human or divine law. It makes an essential difference whether it be the result of "malice aforethought," or of mere accident. If I do that which proves a great benefit to another, with the intention of injuring him, or without the design of doing him good, it cannot be considered a good deed on my

so de

3. If God determines to save he pre-determines to do cannot determine his own acts afterwards. It would be sistent with his character, to suppose that he was plan, as not to intend them until he acts. Man with all t tingencies to which he is exposed, exercises forethought in to the most ordinary affairs of life, and can it be suppos God whose prescience is unlimited, will not exercise it, a his plans accordingly? If it cannot be supposed, then saves, he pre-determines to save, or predestinates to sal

4. The predestination of the text is from eternity.-Paul sa hath chosen us in him (Christ) before the foundation world," Having predestinated us," &c. The reason wh cannot determine his acts long beforehand is because he ha the wisdom, knowledge, and power, necessary to qualify hi it. There are so many unforeseen agencies and circumst to come in, that if he makes his calculations he will have sion to change them before he can carry them into executio he will be entirely foiled. If he knew everything before he might determine accordingly, founding his determination his foreknowledge. God is infinite in all his attributes, k the end from the beginning, and is well qualified in every spect to predetermine his own acts. He is just as well qual from eternity as now to determine his acts of to-day, so tha requires no stretch of credulity to believe that what God he always intended to do.

Anterior to creation, God must decide, as all will admit, w to make and by what laws to govern it, so that the laws of ph

ical necessity in accordance with which, the universe is controlled, are the results of God's unconditional purpose. He determines them absolutely. The shining of the sun by day and the moon by night, the routine of the seasons, the ebb and flow of the tides, and all natural phenomena are just what God designed they should be. But how is it with man? Is he just what God designed that he should be?-As far as he is subject to physical laws independent of choice, he is subject to the same predestination and no farther. God determined to make man a free moral agent and not to infringe upon that freedom. As to his salvation, which, on his part, depends on his submission to God and compliance with the conditions of the gospel, and which God in predestination must regard, either fixing it the same as a matter of physical necessity, or else taking cognizance of human acts concerning it, as indispensable to his own. To suppose the former is to make man a mere machine, and moral freedom just like the freedom of the wind and tide, and to do violence to the common convictions of men. To suppose the latter, the question returns how can God consistently predetermine to save them that believe? That he does do it, we cannot deny, but how? That is the question.

The Bible everywhere makes repentance, faith, obedience, acts of the creature, a sine qua non, or indispensable ground of salvation, The Divine purpose or predestination varies with these acts as much as the retribution; and we expect that the judge will decide the final condition of all men " according to their works." So he predestinates them "according to their works." God, who "knows the end from the beginning," can by virtue of this knowledge determine their condition "before the foundation of the world." He is not limited by time. His days are not numbered. Time belongs to us. It is one eternal present with God; so that it no more infringes upon moral agen cy to say that he determines to save us from eternity, than it does to say that he will save us at the Judgment, because all the conditions as really exist in the mind of God in one case as in the other. Strictly speaking there is no such thing with God as pre-destination and fore-knowledge. These terms are employ. ed by way of accommodation to ourselves as relating to time,

foreknowledge having the logical priority. "Whom he foreknow he also did predestinate;" i. e., whom he did know "conformed to the image of his son," him he did pre tinate to salvation. Many endeavor to confound these te or to misplace them; but to me, they are distinct, and in o of sequence foreknowledge has the precedence. In this moral freedom is left intact.

With ourselves there is a difference between knowing and termining a thing. So there must be with God. If we make a distinction between the two ideas, the point is gai Let us try and discriminate. Suppose that a being independ of God could create a world, endow it with laws, and people with intelligent beings; yet God who knows all things, wo know all about it, and all about its inhabitants, although, acco ing to the supposition, he had nothing to do with determining This would not be the case if the two things were not distin for wherever we suppose one to be, there we must suppose other to be. If we cannot understand the mode of div knowledge, or purpose, we may perceive the distinction betw them; and how God may know the act of a free agent as beforehand as well as afterwards; and how predestination based on prescience, cannot affect the acts; but if not based prescience, how it becomes absolute and fixes the same necess in human conduct as in the revolution of spheres, or in pattering of rain.

Applying this philosophy to the predestination of the te we have the doctrine that God, foreknowing that those of who Paul spoke would believe in Christ and comply with the con tions of salvation, predestinated them by Jesus Christ to so ship according to his own pleasure or purpose. The predestin tion is not absolute but restricted to sonship, or a life of faith Christ. In this way God predestinates to eternal salvation, virtue of his foreknowledge, any and every person who w comply with the conditions of salvation which he has reveale

This is Arminian theology in distinction from the Calvinisti and we believe it is just such theology as Paul advocated in th text and elsewhere. As some will have it that Paul was a Ca vinist, I may be accused of the same; but claiming to be a

piety." Differing from Calvin, he entered upon a co with the benevolent object of uniting the Genevans an ans, and eventually securing uniformity of faith in Chr Many of the most learned men of the age adhere Among them were Barnevelt, Grotius, and Hoogerb afterwards the eloquent Episcopius who occupied the theology at Leyden. They experienced the most bitt cution, which resulted in the execution of Barnevelt, i tence of Grotius and Hoogerbeets to perpetual imp and in the celebrated council of Dort, in which the A though excluded therefrom, received sentence of con and excommunication. They were then persecuted most inveterate malice. Being deprived of all their cal and civil offices, all their ministers were accordingl in their churches, or forced into exile.

What was all this persecution for? It was simply the Arminians, as Mosheim says, "abandoned the con trine of the majority in the Reformed church respectin tination and the divine decrees, and went over to th those who believe that the love of God and the me Saviour respect the whole human race." They differed at the Reformed "in nothing except the five propositions ing grace and predestination; and it was on this gr they were condemned at the Synod of Dort." These p may be found in ecclesiastical histories and theologica aries. The first which lies at the foundation of the on predestination. It is as follows, according to Mosh fore the foundation of the world or from eternity, Go