SECTION VIII.

An answer to the argument taken from God's PRESCIENCE, whereby Mr. Toplady tries to prove that the VERY CRUELTY which Mr. Wesley charges on Calvinism, is really chargeable on the doctrine of general grace.

MR. Toplady is a spirited writer. He not only tries to reconcile Calvinian reprobation with Divine mercy, but he attempts to retort upon us the charge of holding a cruel doctrine.

ARG. LIX. Page 47. "But what if, after all, that very cruelty which Mr. Wesley pretends to charge on Calvinism, be found really charge. able on Arminianism? I pledge myself to prove this before I conclude this tract." And, accordingly, pp. 86, 87, Mr. Toplady, after observing in his way that, according to Mr. Wesley's doctrine, God offers his grace to many who "put it from them," and gives it to many who “receive it in vain," and who, on this account are condemned; Mr. Toplady, I say, sums up his argument in these words :-"If God knows that the offered grace will be rejected, it would be mercy to forbear the offer. Prove the contrary if you are able."

I have answered this objection at large, Scripture Scales, section vi. However, I shall say something upon it here. (1.) God's perfections shine in such a manner as not to eclipse one another. Wisdom, justice, mercy, and truth, are the adorable and well-proportioned features of God's moral face, if I may venture upon that expression. Now, if, in order to magnify his mercy, I thrust out his wisdom and justice, as I should do if I held a lawless, Calvinian election; or if, in order to magnify his justice, I thrust out his mercy and wisdom, as I should do if I consistently held Calvinian reprobation; should I not disfigure God's moral face, as much as I should spoil Mr. Toplady's natural face, if I swelled his eyes or cheeks to such a degree as to leave absolutely no room for his other features? The Calvinists forget, that as human beauty does not consist in the monstrous bigness of one or two features, but in the harmonious and symmetrical proportion of all; so Divine glory does not consist in displaying a mercy and a justice, which would absolutely swallow up each other, together with wisdom, holiness, and truth. This would, however, be the case, if God, after having wisely decreed to make free agents, in order to display his holiness, justice, and truth, by "judging them according to their works," necessitated them to be good or wicked, by decrees of absolute predestination to life and heaven, or of absolute reprobation to hell and damnation.

2. Do but allow that God made rational creatures in order to rule them as rational, namely, by laws adapted to their nature; do but admit this truth, I say, which stands or falls with the Bible, and it necessarily follows that such creatures were made with an eye to " a day of judg ment:" and the moment this is granted, Mr. Toplady's argument vanishes into smoke. For, supposing that God had displayed more mercy toward those who die in their sins, by forbearing to give them grace, and to offer them more grace; or, in other words, supposing that God had shown the wicked more mercy, by showing them no mercy at all, (which, by the by, is a contradiction in terms,) yet such a merciless

mercy (if I may use the expression) would have blackened his wisdom, overthrown his truth, and destroyed his justice. What a poor figure, for instance, would his justice have made among his other attributes, if he had said that he would judicially cast his unprofitable servants into outer darkness, for burying a talent which they never had, or for not receiving a Saviour who was always kept from them? And what rationals would not have wondered at a Governor who, after having made moral agents in order to rule them according to their free nature, and to judge them "in righteousness according to their works," should nevertheless show himself, (i.) so inconsistent as to rule them by effica cious decrees, which should absolutely necessitate some of them to work iniquity, and others to work righteousness. (ii.) So unjust as to judge them according to the works which his own binding decrees had necessitated them to do. And, (iii.) So cruel and unwise as to punish them with eternal death, according to a sentence of absolute reprobation to death, or of absolute election to life, which he passed beforehand, without any respect to their works, thousands of years before most of them were born? By what art could so strange a conduct have been reconciled with the titles of Lawgiver, and "Judge of all the earth," which God assumes; or with his repeated declarations that justice and equity are the basis of his throne, and that, in point of judgment, his ways are perfectly equal?

If Mr. T. should try to vindicate so strange a proceeding, by saying that God could justly reprobate to eternal death myriads of unborn infants for the sin of Adam; would he not make a bad matter worse, since, upon the plan of the absolute predestination of all events, Adam's sin was necessarily brought about by the decree of the means, which decree, if Calvinism be true, God made in order to secure and accomplish the two grand decrees of the end, namely, the eternal decree of finished damnation by Adam, and the eternal decree of finished salvation by Christ?

The absurdity of Mr. Toplady's argument may be placed in a clearer light by an illustration :-The king, to display his royal benevolence, equity, and justice; to maintain good order in his army, and excite his troopers to military diligence, promises to give a reward to all the men of a regiment of light horse who shall ride so many miles without dismounting to plunder: and he engages himself to punish severely those who shall be guilty of that offence. He foresees, indeed, that many will slight his offered rewards, and incur his threatened punishment: nevertheless, for the above-mentioned reasons, he proceeds. Some men are promoted, and others are punished. A Calvinist highly blames the king's conduct. He says that his majesty would have shown himself more gracious, and would have asserted his sovereignty much better, if he had refused horses to the plunderers, and had punished them for lighting off horses which they never had: and that, on the other hand, it became his free grace to tie the rewardable dragoons fast to their saddles, and by this means to necessitate them to keep on horseback, and deserve the promised reward. Would not such a conduct have marked his majesty's reputation with the stamp of disingenuity, cruelty, and folly? And yet, astonishing! because we do not approve of such a judicial distribution of the rewards of eternal life, and the punishments of eternal death,

Mr. Toplady fixes the charge of CRUELTY upon the Gospel which we preach! He goes on:ARG. LX. Page 85. According to Mr. Wesley's own fundamental principle of universal grace, grace itself, or the saving influence of the Holy Spirit on the hearts of men, does and must become the ministration of eternal death to thousands and millions." Page 89: "Level therefore your tragical exclamations, about unmercifulness, at your own scheme, which truly and properly deserves them."

The flaw of this argument consists in the words " does and must,” which Mr. T. puts in Italics. (1.) In the word "does;" it is a great mistake to say that, upon Mr. W.'s principles, grace itself does become the ministration of eternal death to any soul. It is not for grace, but for the abuse or neglect of grace and its saving light, that men are condemned. "This is the condemnation," says Christ himself, "that light [the light of grace] is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light." And St. Paul adds, that the "grace of God, which bringeth salvation, hath [in different degrees] appeared to all men,” John iii, 19; Tit. ii, 11. There is no medium between condemning men for not using a talent of grace which they had, or for not using a talent of grace which they NEVER had. The former sentiment, which is perfectly agreeable to reason, Scripture, and conscience, is that of Mr. Wesley; the latter sentiment, which contradicts one half of the Bible, shocks reason, and demolishes the doctrines of justice, is that of Mr. Toplady. (2.) When this gentleman says that God's grace, upon Mr. Wesley's principles, must become the ministration of death to millions, he advances as groundless a proposition as I would do if I said that the grace of creation, the grace of preservation, and the grace of a preached Gospel, absolutely destroy millions; because millions, by wilfully abusing their created and preserved powers, or by neglecting so great salvation as the Gospel brings, pull down upon themselves an unnecessary, and therefore a just destruction. (3.) We oppose the doctrine of absolute necessity, or the Calvinian must, as being inseparable from Manicheism: and we assert that there is no needs must in the eternal death of any man, because Christ imparts a degree of temporary salvation to all, with power to obey, and a promise to bestow eternal salvation upon all that will obey. How ungenerous is it then to charge upon us the very doctrine which we detest, when it has no necessary connection with any of our principles! How irrational to say, that if our doctrine of grace be true, God's grace must become the ministration of death to millions! Ten men have a mortal disorder: a physician prepares a sovereign remedy for them all: five take it properly, and recover; and five, who will not follow his prescriptions, die of their disorder. Now, who but a prejudiced person would infer from thence that the physician's sovereign remedy is "become the ministration of death" to the patients who die, because they would not take it? Is it right thus to confound a remedy with the obstinate neglect of it? A man wilfully starves himself to death with good food before him. I say that his wilfulness is the cause of his death: "No," replies a decretist," it is the good food which you desire him to take." This absurd conclusion is all of a piece with that of Mr. Toplady.

ARG. LXI. Page 89. "The Arminian system represents the Father of mercies as offering grace to them, who, he knows, will only add sin

to sin, and make themselves twofold more the children of hell by refusing it." Indeed, it is not the Arminian system only that says this: (1.) All the Calvinists who allow that God gave angelic grace to angels, though he knew that many of them would fall from that grace, and would fall deeper than if they had fallen from a less exalted station. (2.) Jesus Christ who gave Judas the grace of apostleship, and represents God as giving a pound to his servants who squander it, as well as to those who use it properly. And, (3.) Mr. Toplady himself, who (notwithstanding his pretended horror for so Scriptural a doctrine) dares not deny that God gave the grace of creation to those who shall perish. Now the grace of creation implies spotless holiness; and if God could once graciously give spotless holiness to Judas in the loins of Adam, why could he not graciously restore to that apostle a degree of free agency to good, that he might be judged according to "his own works," and not according to Calvinian decrees of "finished wickedness" and "finished damnation" in Adam? But, (4.) What is still more surprising, Mr. T. himself, p. 51, quotes these words, which so abundantly decide the question: "Thou, Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven [by the peculiar favours and Gospel privileges bestowed upon thee] shalt be brought down to hell: for if the mighty works which have been done in thee had been done in Sodom, it would have remained unto this day," Matt. xi, 23. Now, I ask, Why were these " mighty works" done in Capernaum? Was it out of love-to bring Capernaum to repentance? Or, was it out of wrath-that it might be "more tolerable in the day of judgment for Sodom than Capernaum?" There is no medium: Mr. Toplady must recant this part of the Bible, and of his book; or he must answer one of these two questions in the affirmative. If he say (as we do) that these "mighty works," which might have converted Tyre, Sidon, and Sodom, were primarily wrought to bring Capernaum to repentance, he gives up Calvinism, which stands or falls with the doctrine of necessitating means used in order to bring about a necessary end. If he say (as Calvinism does) that these mighty works were primarily wrought to sink Capernaum into hell-into a deeper hell than Sodom, because the end always shows what the means were used for; he runs upon the point of his own objection; he pulls upon his doctrines of grace the very unmercifulness which he charges upon ours; and he shows, to every unprejudiced reader, that the difficulty arising from the prescience of God, with which the Calvinists think to demolish the doctrine of general grace, falls upon Calvinism with a double weight. Mr. Toplady is sensible that God could never have appeared good and just, unless the wicked had been absolutely inexcusable; and that they could never have been inexcusable if God had condemned them for burying a talent of grace which they never had: and therefore Mr. T. tries to overthrow this easy solution of the difficulty by saying,

ARG. LXII. Page 88. "Be it so," that the wicked are made inexcusable by a day of grace and temporary salvation, " yet, surely, God can never be thought knowingly to render a man more inexcusable, by taking such measures as will certainly load him with accumulated condemnation, out of mere love to that man?" We grant it; and therefore we assert that it is not out of "mere love" that God puts us in a gracious state of probation, or temporary salvation; but out of wisdom, truth, and VOL. II.

30

distributive justice, as well as out of mercy and love. If God, therefore, were endued with no other perfection than that of merciful love, we would give up the doctrine of judicial reprobation; for a God devoid of distributive justice could and would save all sinners in the Calvinian way, that is, with a salvation perfectly finished, without any of their works. But then he would neither judge them, nor bestow eternal salvation upon them by way of reward for their works, as the Scriptures say he will.

O! how much more reasonable and Scriptural is it to allow the doctrine of free grace, and free will, established in the Scripture Scales; and to maintain the reprobation of justice-an avoidable reprobation this, which is perpetually asserted in the Gospel, and will leave the wicked entirely inexcusable, and God perfectly righteous: how much better is it, I say, to hold such a reprobation, than to admit Calvinian reprobation, which renders the wicked excusable and pitiable, as being condemned for doing what Omnipotence necessitated them to do; a reprobation this, which stigmatizes Christ as a shuffler, for offering to all a salvation from which most are absolutely debarred; a cruel reprobation, which represents the Father of mercies as an unjust sovereign, who takes such measures as will unavoidably load myriads of unborn men with accumulated condemnation, out of free wrath to their unformed souls!

Should Mr. Toplady say, "That according to the Gospel which we preach, the wicked shall certainly be damned; and therefore the difference between us is but trifling after all; seeing the Calvinists assert that some men, namely, those who are eternally reprobated by Divine sovereignty, shall certainly and unavoidably be damned; and the antiCalvinists say that some men, namely, those who are finally reprobated by Divine justice, shall be certainly though avoidably damned:" I reply, that, frivolous as the difference between these two doctrines may appear to those who judge according to the APPEARANCE of words, it is as capital as the difference between avoidable ruin and unavoidable destruction; between justice and injustice; between initial election and finished reprobation; between saying that GOD is the first cause of the damnation of the wicked, and asserting that THEY are the first cause of their own damnation. In a word, it is as great as the difference between the north and the south; between a Gospel made up of Antinomian free grace and barbarian free wrath, and a Gospel made up of Scriptural free grace, and impartial, retributive justice.

Upon the whole, from the preceding answers it is evident, if I am not mistaken, that, though the grand Calvinian objection, taken from God's foreknowledge, may, at first sight, puzzle the simple; yet it can bear neither the light of Scripture, nor that of reason; and it recoils upon Calvinism, with all the force with which it is supposed to attack "the saving grace which has appeared to all men."