which an innocent man was condemned to die, were crimes in themselves most atrocious, and are declared in Scripture to have been the cause of that unexampled misery which the Jewish nation suffered. Yet all this is also declared, Acts ii. 23, to have happened, "by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God." And Acts iv. 27, "Both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done." And Peter, after relating the manner in which our Lord was put to death, adds the following words, Acts iii. 18: "Those things which God before had showed by the mouth of all his prophets that Christ should suffer, he hath so fulfilled;" i. e. the purpose of God in delivering the world embraced all the wicked actions of the persecutors of his Son, and could not have been accomplished in the manner which he had foretold without these actions. Hence it came to be necessary that these actions should be performed: and this necessity is intimated as in many other places of Scripture, so particularly Matth. xvi. 21. "Jesus began to show unto his disciples how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes, and be killed and be raised again the third day." In the original, the same verb δει governs the infinitives απελθεῖν, παθειν, αποκτανθήναι, εγερθήναι; i. e. the form of the expression represents his going to Jerusalem, which was an action depending upon his own will, and his suffering many things of the chief priests, which depended upon their will, as being as unalterably fixed, and as having the same necessity of event as his resurrection from the dead, which was accomplished by an exertion of divine power without the intervention of man.

This last example is more particular and more interesting to us than any of the former: but it is exactly of the same order with the rest; and all of them conspire in establishing the following positions: -that actions, contrary to the law of God, and to the principles of morality, may form part of that plan originally fixed and determined in the divine mind;-that these actions do not lose any of their moral turpitude by being so determined, but continue to be the actions of the moral agents by whom they are performed, for which they deserve blame and suffer punishment; and that actions thus wicked and punishable are made the instrument of great good. When we find these positions true in many particular instances, and also agreeing with general expressions in Scripture, we conclude by fair induction that they may hold true in the great system of the universe; and we seem to be warranted to say, not merely that the providence of God brings good out of evil when the evil happens;-that is allowed by the Socinians who deny the divine foreknowledge;-not merely that God, foreseeing wicked actions which were to be performed, connected them in the plan of his providence with the events which he had determined to produce;-this is what the Arminians say ;but that the Supreme Being, to whom the series of events, of good and of bad actions that constitute the character of this world, was from the beginning present, determined to produce this world; that the bad, no less than the good actions result from his determination, and contribute to the prosperity of the whole; and yet that the liberty of moral agents not being in the least affected by this determination,

they deserve praise or blame in the same manner as if their actions had not been predetermined. But these are some of the fundamental principles of Calvinism; and if the Scripture, both by general expressions, and by instances illustrating and exemplifying such expressions, gives its sanction to these principles, we have found a considerable support which the Calvinistic system derives from Scripture.

SECTION II.

THE predestination, of which the Scripture speaks, is ascribed to the good pleasure of God.

There does not occur in the Greek Testament any substantive word equivalent to predestination. But the verb googišw, prædestino, is used in different places; gols, exhoyn, exhɛxtoi, also occur;* and there does not appear to be any unwarrantable departure from the style of the New Testament in the language commonly used upon this subject. But it is not agreed, and it is not incontrovertibly clear, whether the sacred writers employed the words upon which this language has been framed, in the sense affixed to it by the Calvinists. There are two systems upon this point; and as these systems extend their influence to the interpretation of a great part of Scripture, it is proper to state distinctly the grounds upon which they rest.

The system by which all those, who do not hold the Calvinistic tenets, expound that predestination of which the Scripture speaks, is of the following kind. It appears from Scripture that God was pleased very early to make a discrimination amongst the children of Adam, as to the measure in which he imparted to them religious knowledge. The family of Abraham were selected amidst abounding idolatry to be the depositories of faith in one God, and of the hope of a Messiah: and they are presented to us in Scripture under the characters of the church, the peculiar people, the children of God. But the Old Testament contains many hints, which are fully unfolded in the New, of a purpose to extend the bounds of the church, and to admit men of all nations into that relation with the Supreme Being, which for many ages was the portion of the posterity of Abraham. This purpose, formed in the divine mind from the beginning, began to be executed when the apostles of Jesus went forth preaching the gospel to every creature. It was a purpose so different from the prejudices in which they had been educated, and it appeared to their own minds so magnificent, so interesting and delightful, (after they were enabled to comprehend it,) that it occupies a considerable place in all their discourses and writings. It made a blessed change upon the moral and religious condition of the persons to whom these discourses and writings were generally addressed. For all former communications from heaven had been confined to the land of Judea; and the other nations of the earth, having been educated in idolatry, had no hereditary title to the privileges of the people of God. But the execution of that purpose declared in the gospel placed them upon a level with

* Ephes. i. Rom. ix. xi. 1 Pet. i. 1.

the chosen race. Accordingly Paul, the apostle of the gentiles, in many of his epistles, addresses the whole body of professing Christians to whom he writes, as elect, saints, predestinated to the adoption of children; and magnifies the purpose, or as he often calls it, the mystery, which in other ages was not made known, but had been revealed to him, and was published to all, that ra on, the gentiles, who were aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, were called to be fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of faith. Eph. iii. 3-7. By contrasting the enormity of the vices which had been habitual to them while they lived in idolatry, with the spiritual blessings, or the advantages for improving in virtue and attaining eternal life, which they enjoyed through the gospel, he cherishes their thankfulness to God for his unmerited grace in pardoning their past transgressions, and he excites them to the practice of those virtues which became their new faith. When we employ this leading idea of all the epistles of Paul as a key to the meaning of particular passages which are much quoted in support of the Calvinistic system, the predestination of which he speaks, appears to be nothing more than the purpose of placing the inhabitants of all countries where the gospel is preached in the same favourable circumstances with respect to religion as the Jews were of old: the elect are the persons chosen out of the world, and called to the knowledge of the gospel; and the spiritual blessings, which the apostle represents as common to all the members of the Christian societies whom he addresses, are the advantages flowing from that knowledge.

It is allowed that predestination, even in this sense, originates in the good pleasure of God. As he chose the posterity of Abraham, not because they were more mighty or more virtuous than other nations, but because he loved their fathers, so he dispenses to whomsoever he will, the inestimable blessings connected with the publication of the Gospel. To nations who had been the most corrupt this saving light was sent; to individuals whose attainments did not seem to prepare them for this heavenly knowledge the Spirit revealed those "things that are freely given to us of God;" and our Lord has taught us, that instead of presuming to complain of that revelation, which the Almighty was not bound to give to any, having been sent to some parts of the world and not to others, it is our wisdom and our duty to acquiesce in the sovereignty of the divine administration, and to say with him, Matth. xi. 25, 26, "Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight."

But although those, who admit of predestination only in this sense, acknowledge that it originates in the good pleasure of God, yet they do not consider this acknowledgment as giving any countenance to the Calvinistic system. They say that we are not warranted to record expressions, which originally marked a purpose of sending the blessings of the Gospel to all countries, as implying a purpose of confining eternal life to some individuals in all countries; and that although the Sovereign of the universe is accountable to none in dispensing the knowledge of the Gospel, any more than in dispensing the measures of skill, sagacity, or bodily strength, by which individuals are distinguished, because in the end he will render to all men according to their improvement of the advantages which they

enjoy, yet it does not follow that it is consistent with the impartiality and universal beneficence of our Father in heaven to make such a distinction in conferring inward grace, as shall certainly conduct some of his creatures to everlasting happiness, whilst others are left without remedy to perish in their sins.

The system of interpretation which I have now explained has been adopted and defended by very able men; by Whitby, the author of the commentary upon the New Testament; by Dr. Clarke, whose sermons discover more knowledge of Scripture than any other sermons that have been printed; and by Taylor of Norwich, author of a Key to the Epistle to the Romans, who, in a long introductory essay, has unfolded the ideas now stated, and made various use of them. The system is extremely plausible. It draws an interpretation of epistles, letters to different churches, from the known situation of these churches, and from the known ideas of the writer; and by considering particular passages in connexion with the scope of the epistle, it gives an explication of them, which, in general, is most rational and satisfying. The light, which every one who has lectured upon an epistle can communicate to the people by the application of this system, is so pleasing to himself, and so instructive to them, that he is apt to be confirmed in thinking it the full interpretation of the writer's meaning. And I have no difficulty in saying, that if the Calvinistic doctrine derived no other support from Scripture than that which can fairly be drawn from our finding the words predestination, elect, and other similar words frequently recurring in the epistles, it might seem to an intelligent inquirer and a sound critic, that that doctrine had arisen rather by detaching particular texts from the contexts, and applying them in a sense which did not enter into the mind of the sacred writers, than by forming an enlarged comprehension of their views.

But after paying this just tribute to the system which I have explained, and after admitting that more stress is laid upon some particular texts, which are commonly quoted as Scripture authority for the Calvinistic doctrine, than they can well bear, I proceed to state fully the grounds of the other system of interpretation, according to which there is mention made in Scripture of a predestination of individuals arising from the mere good pleasure of God: and I entertain no doubt that the observations now to be made will appear sufficient to warrant the Calvinists in saying, that they do not pervert Scripture, when they pretend to find a general language pervading many parts of it which evidently favours their doctrine.

1. The former interpretation proceeded upon this ground, that the epistles are addressed to Christian societies, all the members of which enjoyed in common the advantages of the preaching of the Gospel, but all the members of which cannot be supposed to have been in the number of those who shall finally be saved; and hence it is inferred, that such expressions as occur in the beginning of the Epistle to the Ephesians, mean nothing more than that change upon their condition, that external advantage common to the whole society, which God, in execution of the purpose formed by him from the beginning, had, through the publication of the Gospel, conferred upon all. Admitting that many of the persons addressed as saints and elect shall not finally

be saved, still these words imply something more than a change upon the outward condition; and there is no necessity for our departing so far from their natural and obvious meaning, as to bring it down to mere external advantage, because the apostle was not warranted to make a distinction between those who are predestinated to life, and those who are left to perish in their sins. This distinction is one of those secret things which belong to the Lord, and which he has not intrusted to his ministers. They are bound in charity to believe, that all to whom the external blessings are imparted, and who appear to improve them with thankfulness, receive also that inward grace by which these blessings are made effectual to salvation; and they have no title to separate any persons from the society of the faithful, but those who have been guilty of open and flagrant transgressions. Such persons the apostle frequently marks out in his epistles; and he warns the Christians against holding intercourse with them; but to all who remained in the society, he sends his benediction, and of all of them he hoped things that accompany salvation.

2. Although many passages in the epistles, which speak of predestination and of the elect, might seem to receive their full interpretation from the purpose of God to call other nations besides the Jews to the knowledge of the Gospel, yet there are places in the epistles of Paul, which intimate that he had a further meaning. Of this kind is the ninth chapter to the Romans, and a part of the eleventh; two passages of Scripture which give the greatest trouble to those who deny the truth of the Calvinistic doctrine, which have received a long commentary from Arminius himself, and from many Arminian writers, but which, after all the attempts that have been made to accommodate them to their system, are fitted, in my opinion, to leave upon the mind of every candid reader, an indelible impression that this system does not come up to the mind of the apostle. The ninth chapter to the Romans is one of the most difficult passages in Scripture; and I am far from saying that the Calvinistic system makes it plain. There is an obscurity and extent in the subject which is beyond the reach of our faculties, and which represses our presumptuous attempts to penetrate the counsels of the Almighty. But after reading that chapter, and the eleventh, with due care in the original, the amount of them, it will probably be thought, may be thus stated. God chose the posterity of Abraham out of all the families of the earth. He made a distinction in the posterity of the patriarch, by confining to the seed of Isaac the blessings which he had promised; of the twin sons of Isaac, Esau and Jacob, he declared before they were born, that he preferred the younger to the elder, and rejecting Esau he transmitted the blessing through the children of Jacob. In all these limitations God exercised his sovereignty, and executed his own purpose according to the election of grace; and he made still a further limitation with regard to the children of Jacob. For all they who are descended from the patriarch, according to the flesh, are not the children of promise; all who are of Israel are not truly Israel, or the people of God. The calling of the nation of Israel is, indeed, without repentance; and, therefore, Israel as a nation, shall yet be gathered; but many individuals who belong to that nation shall perish. "Israel," as the apostle speaks, understanding by that word