tional works previous to juftification." Confident affertion ought to be accompanied with competent information. It is to be concluded, therefore, that it must have escaped your recollection, that both the authority of HALL, DAVENANT, and HOOKER, are on record against your position. It may fuffice to produce that of the latter, because it is decifive.

"Predestination (fays he, in his fermons against TRAVERS at the Temple) was not the abfolute will of GOD, but conditional; that the doings of the wicked were not of the will of GOD pofitive, but permiffive; that the reprobate are not rejected, but for the evil works which God did foresee they will commit," &c. Letter ii. p. 36, 37. And when TRAVERS called for his authority for thus expounding the Apostle against the judgment of all churches and all good writers, HOOKER replied, "that the fentences which he might have cited out of all church confeffions, together with the best learned monuments of former times, and not the meanest of our own, were more in number than perhaps he willingly would have heard of." Anfwer to TRAVERS' Supplication, fect. 22, &c.

But I must confess myself unable to understand what objection there can be to falvation upon condi

tions. For the conditions in queftion, it is to be obferved, are conditions of God's making; as fuch they appear not in the light in which you seem to confider them, as an encroachment on Divine grace on the part of man, fo much as an extenfion of that grace on the part of GOD. It will be allowed, that the giver of a free gift has a right to annex his own conditions, to the obligation. Now if the conditions annexed are calculated to render the receiver, what he otherwife would not be, fit to be a partaker of the gift, they must be confidered as an additional manifestation of that loving-kindness from which the gift in question proceeded; because they are a merciful provision on the part of the benefactor, for the fecurity of the benefit to the parties for whom it was originally defigned. In this light conditions of falvation have always appeared to me, confidering that the fame all-gracious Being who made those conditions, has engaged (if man be not wanting to himself) to enable him to perform them.

To proceed; my novel opinion of conditional falvation, as you are pleased to style it, if it be esta blished by the general tenour of fcripture, as every intelligent reader of fcripture must know, cannot, it is prefumed, be contrary to found fense, reason, or

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philofophy: and that it is neither calculated to move the government from CHRIST's fhoulders, or, by denying God's providence, to open a door for reasoning against the superintending power and wisdom of GoD in the moral world, I pledge myself to prove.

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When we talk of GOD's providence as exercised in the government of the inanimate and brutal part of the creation, we are talking of one subject: when we talk of God's moral government of his rational creatures, we are speaking of another. The argument, therefore, which you have drawn, p. 69, from God's particular providence and minute fuperintendance of all the affairs of the natural, visible, and material world, does not apply to the fubject for the fupport of which you have brought it. have brought it. An all-wise Being will, it is to be expected, fuit his mode of

government to the condition of the subjects to be governed. The inanimate and brutal course of nature, not being invested with any power of felf-direction, muft for its regularity depend upon the abfolute and fixed law of a fuperintending Providence, ordering all things to the fulfilment of the Divine will; but man is a rational creature, poffeffed of that power of felf-direction which renders him accountable for his actions. With refpect to him, therefore, the decrees of GOD relative

to his moral government must be conditional, and they muft, in fome fort, wait upon the conduct of the moral agent. Nor does the confequence at which you seem to be alarmed follow from this pofition. For, if one part of the Divine counsel, respecting the government of the world was, that man fhould, as a rational creature, be poffeffed of a fufficient degree of freedom to render him justly accountable for his conduct; a circumftance which is abundantly to be proved from the proposals, promises, and threatenings in scripture, every where addreffed to his confideration; it follows, that God's wisdom cannot be disappointed, nor his fuperintending power overruled, be man's conduct what it may; because, according to the general plan of the Divine counfel, GOD defigned to manifeft his fovereign power in the won derful creation, wife government, and righteous judgment of free agents; and not in fo overpowering their will, as thereby to facrifice all his other attributes, for the fake of placing one only in a more confpicuous light.

The doctrine of man's free-will affifted by Divine grace, according to the Gofpel plan, can never be reconciled with the doctrine of an unfcriptural ty rannical fovereignty, which has been rafhly attributed

to GOD, under the idea of doing Him honour; but is perfectly confiftent with the awful and yet amiable views, which the fcriptures give us of God's real fovereignty; of which the Divine attributes of wisdom, juftice, and mercy, are the infeparable companions.

I must leave you, Sir, with your brother fatalifts (for the doctrine of decrees, as you describe them from Archbishop USHER, page 78, is no other than fatalifm) to rejoice, in the words of JORTIN, (fince you can rejoice)" in a religious system, confisting of human creatures without liberty, doctrines without fense, faith without reason, and a GOD without mercy." You have spent many pages upon what appears to me to be not a fit fubject for human fpeculation. Whilft man confines himself to the revealed will of GOD, he has it in his power to fpeak the words of truth and fobernefs; when he attempts to fpeculate beyond it, the danger is, that he will speak the words of rashness and folly, rather than thofe of wifdom. For this reafon I pafs over the fubject of the Divine decrees, although I think I know juft as much about them as any Calvinist whatever.

Archbishop KING spoke sense upon this mysterious fubject, when he faid, "Fore-knowledge and decrees are only affigned to GoD, to give us a notion of the