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LIVING, NO LESS PERILOUS THAN DESPERATION; that is, as a due consideration of the divine. decree to save all who shall believe and obey the Gospel, is a source of inexpressible consolation to virtuous and godly persons; encourages them to rely upon the promised assistance of the Holy Spirit; fortifies them against the temptations to fleshly lusts; teaches them to set their affections on things above; strengthens their faith; and animates their love towards God: so the unwar ranted idea of God's absolute and unconditional predestination is apt to drive the presumptuous and the wicked, who resist the influence of the Spirit of Christ, either into a state of gloomy despondency on the one hand, or into a course of unbridled licentiousness on the other. "If a man thinks that he is under an inevitable decrec, as he will have little remorse for all the evil he does, while he imputes it to that inevitable force that constrains him, so he will naturally conclude that it is to no purpose for him to struggle with impossibilities; and men being inclined both to throw all blame off from themselves, and to in dulge themselves in laziness and sloth, these practices are too natural to mankind to be encou raged by opinions that favour them. All virtue

and

præcipites, vel in solutam quandam et mollem vitæ securitatem, sine aut poenitentiâ, aut scelerum conscientiâ, dilabuntur. Reformat. Legum.

and religion, all discipline and industry, must arise from this, as their first principle, that there is a power in us to govern our own thoughts and actions, and to raise and improve our faculties. If this is denied, all endeavours, all education, all pains, either on ourselves or others, are vain and fruitless things. Nor is it possible to make a man believe other than this: for he does so plainly perceive that he is a free agent; he feels himself balance matters in his thoughts, and deliberate about them so evidently, that he certainly knows he is a free being. Though he feels himself often hurried on so impetuously, that he may seem to have lost his freedom in some turns, and upon some occasions, yet he feels that he might have restrained that heat in its first beginning; he feels he can divert his thoughts, and master himself in most things, when he sets himself to it; he finds that knowledge and reflection, that good company and good exercises, do tame and soften him, and that bad ones make him wild, loose, and irregular. From all this they conclude that man is free, and not under inevitable fate, or irresistible motions either to good or evil. All this they confirm from the whole current of the Scripture, which is full of persuasions, exhortations, reproofs, expostulations, encouragements, and terrors, which are all vain and theatrical things, if there are no free powers in us to which they are addressed : to what

what purpose is it to speak to dead men, to persuade the blind to see, or the lame to run? If we are under an impotence till the irresistible grace comes, and if, when it comes, nothing can withstand it, then what occasion is there for all those solemn discourses, if they can have no effect on us? They cannot render us inexcusable, unless it were in our power to be bettered by them; and to imagine that God gives light and blessings to those, whom he before intended to damn, only to make them inexcusable, when they could do them no good, and they will serve only to aggravate their condemnation, gives so strange an idea of that infinite goodness, that it is not fit to express it by those terms, which do naturally arise upon it (a).”

FURTHERMORE, WE MUST RECEIVE GOD'S PROMISES, IN SUCH WISE AS THEY BE GENERALLY SET FORTH IN HOLY SCRIPTURE:

The promises of God are general and conditional. The gospel dispensation is described as a covenant between God and man; and the salvation of every individual is made to depend upon his observance of the proposed conditions. Men, as free agents, have it in their power to perform or not to perform these conditions; and God foresaw from all eternity who would and who would not perform them, that is, who will and who will not be saved at the day of judg

ment.

(x) Burnet.

ment. This prescience of voluntary conduct and consequent happiness or misery is very different from an irreversible decree, directing in what manner each individual shall act in this world, and whether he shall be happy or miserable in that which is to come. "God's promises generally set forth in holy Scripture," seem here to be opposed to the "counsel of God secret to us," spoken of in the former part of this article; and it is declared that, whatever promises are made to us in Scripture, we are to receive them implicitly, and not pervert their obvious sense by abstruse inquiries into the hidden mysteries of the divine dispensations. The promises that, "Whosoever believeth in the only begotten Son of God shall not perish, but have everlasting life (y)," and that the death of Christ will be accepted as "a propitiation for the sins of the whole world (z)," are so plain, that we cannot well mistake their meaning as far as they respect ourselves; and they are also so important, that, if we value our own comfort, we shall not suffer our faith in them to be shaken by any difficulties, which speculative men may raise concerning Election and Predestination, as they relate to mankind at large.

AND IN OUR DOINGS, THAT WILL OF GOD IS TO BE FOLLOWED, WHICH WE HAVE EXPRESSLY DECLARED UNTO US IN THE WORD OF GOD. The

(y) John, c. 3. v. 16.

(x)1 John, c. 2. v. 2.

The will of God can be collected from Scripture only; as it there stands revealed, it is to be obeyed without any exception or reserve: no rules of action are to be allowed which are not authorized by the declarations of Scripture; no conduct is to be justified or excused, which is contradictory to the written word of God.

This last branch of the article seems to have been directed against a set of profligate enthusiasts, who at the time of the Reformation, urged the will of God as an excuse for their vices: "In voluntatem Dei criminum suorum culpam conferunt (a)." The impiety and the mischief of such a principle (which is a most unjustifiable perversion of the doctrine of predestination) are equally obvious. The will of God, as was just now observed, can only be known from the Scriptures, and his will so revealed ought to be the rule of every one's conduct.

It is sufficiently evident from the above review and exposition of this article, that the doctrines maintained in it are by no means conformable to the principles of Calvin, who contended for absolute unconditional decrees of God, and irre sistible grace, and asserted that God, in predes tinating from all eternity one part of mankind to everlasting happiness, and another to endless misery, was led to make this distinction solely

(a) Reform. Leg.

by