large proportion of our race. But the true scriptural doctrine would be unanimously embraced. Predestination would be presented and received in its more attractive, and only authentick form. That it does exist in the sacred volume cannot be seriously denied. But then as dissimilar to the refined absurdities of Calvin, as light is dissimilar to darkness, and truth to falsehood.

For what if God is there said to have predetermined the fate of every man? It is not with reference to persons, but to their characters. It is not by a capricious creation or selection of a certain number to be saved, and a certain number to be damned. But from everlasting the decree hath gone forth; from everlasting to everlasting, it hath been ordained, that the righteous shall hereafter be supremely blessed, and the unrighteous supremely miserable. And is not this materially variant from determining as to the persons, who shall be irresistibly constrained to become the one and the other?

When human laws describe offences, and for their prevention impose an adequate penalty to be visited on the guilty: Does this compel you to commit them? Are any selected from the mass of their fellow citizens, and by the statutes of the land invincibly coerced to the perpetration of robbery, of arson, of murder? Under such circumstances, I am sure you would find none to condemn them, as criminals; no judge or jury to pronounce them justly amenable to the severity of penal inflictions. They must rather have first occupied the attitude of free agents. Obedience and disobedience, with the respective consequences, must have been fairly set before them, and then, if they voluntarily transgress, the laws, enacted for the punishment of all transgressors, would have personal application to each individual robber, incendiary, or murderer.

And precisely thus with the decrees of God: He requires of all men to be righteous. He tells them in what righteousness consists. He promises his divine assistance in enabling them to obtain it; and, as an inducement to ardent and persevering exertions on their part, he has decreed in case of cheerful obedience, to give them the blessing of life eternal. He also demands of them to abstain from all unrighteousness. He explains its nature. He assures them of his inclination to bestow upon them power to triumph over it; and as a motive to operate upon their minds and consciences, he has decreed in case of disobedience, to consign them over to the vengeance of eternal fire.

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Yes, Brethren, these are the decrees or laws of God; the eternal purposes he has entertained and proclaimed in relation to the pre sent conduct and future destiny of all mankind. They admit of free agency. They constitute a fair, undisguised, and impartial system of jurisprudence. They convince us, that instead of being controlled, by a secret and unavoidable fatality, to become either righteous or unrighteous, we are to a certain extent the arbiters of our own condition, both in time and in eternity. Religion and irreligion are at our own option. If we embrace the former, it will be the life; if the latter, it will be the death of our souls. There is no such thing as original celestial love for the person of one man, and hatred for that of another. Character is here every thing. Righteousness and unrighteousness, obedience and disobedience, these alone are the objects of the divine decrees. After what Christ has achieved in reconciling the world to God, through these are the faithful to be rewarded, and the unfaithful punished at the judgment of the great day.

If a different doctrine from this is to be found in our seventeenth article, I have not the sagacity to detect it. Not one syllable does it contain of individual reprobation or preterition, although inseparably connected with unconditional election in the opinion of Calvin and his followers. "Predestination to life is" indeed declared to be, "the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed, by his counsel, secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation, those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour."

But here is nothing discrepant from my sentiments; nothing that the clergy of the Church are indisposed to maintain. Never do they deny, that "the godly consideration of predestination, and our election in Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things." That godly consideration this article concisely asserts, and no Christians in their senses will object to the predestination, which, founded upon the word of righteousness, entirely harmonizes with all their hopes and expectations, " as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal salvation, to be enjoyed

through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their love to wards God:" Which indeed assures them of their final acceptance with him, not from any capricious exercise of omnipotent power; but from the fact of their having fully and cordially closed with the overtures made them through Christ. "Wherefore," as the article before recites of those converted by his saving grace, "Wherefore they, which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God, be called according to God's purpose by His Spirit working in due season: they through grace obey the calling: they be justified freely: they be made sons of God by adoption: they be made like the image of his only begotten Son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works: and at length by God's mercy they attain to everlasting felicity."

And let me tell you, Brethren, that every man placed within the sound of the gospel, is "called according to God's purpose working in due season;" although it is but too evident, that many refuse to obey. Whoever does, the article pronounces predestined to eternal life, and I ask for no more consoling doctrine. I perceive that the predestination of the bible, and the predestination of the Church are in perfect concord. So little sympathy has she for the monstrous absurdity of making our Father in heaven create immortal souls, merely to evince his power and determination to punish them everlastingly from his presence, as to declare, that "for curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's predestination, is a most dangerous downfal, whereby the devil doth thrust them either into desperation, or into wretchlessness of most unclean living no less perilous than desperation." So clearly does she coincide with the views I am desirous to inculcate, as to affirm, that "we must receive God's promises in such wise as they be generally set forth to us in holy scripture: And in our doings, that will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared unto us in the word of God."

All which is manifestly inconsistent with decrees of election and. reprobation, ordained without foresight of obedience on the one hand, or of disobedience on the other. Since those promises are directed to all who believe and repent, and the divine Being is "not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." The followers of Calvin may therefore continue to determine, that "The decrees were not formed in consequence of any

FORESIGHT of sin or holiness in the reprobate or elect:" Our Zion will not so determine, will not so positively circumscribe the goodness and mercy of God, as to defeat the voluntary co-operation of man in the work of his salvation, and to render numbers of our race incapable of acquiring that sincere faith and holy obedience, which bring the Christian within the covenant of grace, and the predestination of the godly to life eternal. She advances a doctrine more analagous to common sense, more respectful to the attributes of the Deity, more illustrative of the extent of his benevolence, and more conformable to what the Apostle Peter proclaimed to the strangers enumerated in his first epistle, that they were "Elect according to the FOREKNOWLEDGE of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto OBEDIENCE and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus."

Here however I am told, that the foreknowledge of the Deity is in effect precisely the same with his predestination; in other words, that what he foreknows must as certainly come to pass, as what he predestines. But allow me to assure you, that no opinion can be more unfounded. It entirely destroys the necessity of a superintending Providence, interfering with and regulating the affairs of men; it engages us in a vain and fallacious service, when we return thanks to God, for having saved our lives from destruction in the hour of impending danger; and it contradicts a very plain and explicit narrative recorded in the twenty third chapter of the first book of Samuel. Keilah, a town besieged by the Philistines, was rescued from their grasp by David acting under the immediate di rection of God. "And it was told Saul that David was come to Keilah. And Saul said, God hath delivered him into mine hand; for he is shut in, by entering into a town that hath gates and bars. And Saul called all the people together to war, to go down to Keilah, to besiege David and his men. And David knew that Saul secretly practised mischief against him: and he said to Abiathar the priest, Bring hither the ephod. Then said David, O Lord God of Israel, thy servant hath certainly heard that Saul seeketh to come to Keilah, to destroy the city for my sake. Will the men of Keilah deliver me up into his hand? Will Saul come down as thy servant hath heard? O Lord God of Israel, I beseech thee, tell thy servant. And the Lord said, HE WILL COME DOWN. Then said David, Will the men of Keilah deliver me and my men into the hand of Saul! And the Lord said, THEY WILL DELIVER THEE UP. Then David

and his men, which were about six hundred, arose and DEPARTED out of Keilah, and went whithersoever they could go. And it was told Saul that David was escaped from Keilah; and HE FORBARE TO GO FORTH."

Here then, you perceive a wide distinction between the foreknowledge and the predestination of events. To the inquiries of David, concerning Saul and the people of Keilah, the answers of God were positive and direct, "HE WILL COME DOWN."—"THEY WILL DELIVER THEE UP. And will you undertake to assert, that they proceeded not from an attribute purely divine? Will you deny, that the prescience of God, enabled him to reveal the intended enterprise of Saul, and the course, which would be pursued by the ungrateful inhabitants, provided their town was invested? An enterprise directed against Keilah, and a course fatal to the liberty and the life of David.

Surely, Brethren, unless you are disposed to think that the immaculate Jehovah may sometimes trifle with his dependant creatures, may sometimes delight to render them the miserable dupes of a capricious and unfounded revelation; you must believe, that these replies had their foundation in the FOREKNOWLEDGE of God, and at the same time deem it totally inconsistent with his veracity to communicate as forthcoming events, what he had previously determined from all eternity never should transpire. Nor can you fail to remark in this gracious dispensation, such an interposing providence, as penetrates and overrules the designs of men, in pursuance of a settled system of moral government; and such a display of divine FORESIGHT, as had not the remotest connexion with PRE-EXISTING DECREES, because the very circumstances unfolded never occurred: Saul forbore to go forth, and the men of Keilah did not betray their guest and deliverer, because he availed himself of the disclosures of the Deity to frustrate the malignity of his open, and the treachery of his secret foes.

What then becomes of the supposed identity of foreknowledge, with predestination? That which is DECREED by God must necessarily COME TO PASS. What becomes of another doctrine of the same school, insisting, that God only foreknows, because he has previously predestined? A relation of facts is here recorded absolutely incompatible with such priority. For were it true, how could the Almighty have declared without any reservation what