in heaven, that they who are chosen and called to partake of the Divine peace, which is essential to the peculiar dispensations of the Son, and of the unspeakable joy, which is essential to the peculiar dispensation of the Holy Ghost, shall be reprobated, or "thrust out," if they do not "make their high calling and election sure:" while they that were only chosen and called to the righteousness essential to the general dispensation of the Father, shall "receive the reward of the inheritance," if they do but "walk worthy of their inferior election and calling."

Methinks that Zelotes, instead of producing solid arguments in favour of his doctrines, complains that I bring certain strange things to his ears; and that the distinction between the Christian dispensation, and the other economies of grace, by which I have solved his Calvinistic difficulties, has absolutely no foundation in the Scripture. That I may convince him of his mistake in this respect, to what I have said on this subject in the Essay on Truth, I add the following proof of my deal. ing in old truths, and not in " novel chimeras." St. Paul, 1 Cor. ix, 17, declares that "the dispensation of the Gospel of Christ [which in its fulness takes in the ministration of the Spirit] was committed unto him." Eph. i, 10, he calls this dispensation "the dispensation of the fulness of times, in which God gathers in one all things in Christ.' Chap. iii, 2, &c, after mentioning "the dispensation of the grace of God given him," as an apostle of Christ, he calls it "preaching among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ," and the "making `all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which had been hid in God from the beginning of the world." Col. i, 25, &c, speaking of the Christian Church, in opposition to the Jewish, he says, "Whereof I am made a minister according to the dispensation of God, which is given to me for you, &c, even the mystery which hath been hid from ages, but now is made manifest to his saints:" and he informs them that this mystery, now revealed, was "Christ in them, the hope of glory." Again, what he calls here the mystery hidden before, but now made manifest to Christians, he calls in another place "the new testa ment, the ministration of righteousness,-where the Spirit of the Lord is"-and where "there is liberty," even the glorious liberty of the children of God; observing, that although the Mosaic dispensation or "ministration" was "glorious," yet that of Christ exceeds in glory," 2 Cor. iii, 6, &c.

To deny the doctrine of the dispensations is to deny that God made various covenants with the children of men since the fall: it is at least to confound all those covenants with which the various Gospel dispensations stand or fall. And to do so is not to divide the word of God aright, but to make a doctrinal farrago, and increase the confusion that reigns in mystical Babel. From the preceding quotations out of St. Paul's Epistles, it follows, therefore, either that there was no Gospel in the world, before the Gospel which was "hid from ages," and "made manifest" in St. Paul's days "to God's saints," when this mystery, "Christ in them the hope of glory," was revealed to them by the Holy Ghost: or, (which to me appears an indubitable truth,) that the evangelical dispensation of Adam and Noah was bright; that of Abraham and Moses brighter; that of initial Christianity, or of John the Baptist, explicitly setting forth

"the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world," brighter still; and that of perfect Christianity, (or of Christ revealed in us by the power of the Holy Ghost,) the brightest of all.

SECTION XI.

A rational and Scriptural view of St. Paul's meaning in the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans-Some of the deepest passages of that chapter are thrown into the Scripture Scales, and by being weighed with parallel texts, appear to have nothing to do with free wrath and Calvinistic reprobation.

Ir Zelotes find himself pressed by the weights of my second Scale, he will probably try to screen his "doctrines of grace," by retreating with them behind the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. But I am beforehand with him: and appealing to that chapter, I beg leave to show that the passages in it, which at first sight seem to favour the doctrine of free wrath, are subversive of it, when they are candidly explained according to the context, and the rest of the scriptures. Five couple of leading propositions open the section.

I.

I. To deny that God out of mere distinguishing grace, may and does grant Church blessings, or the bless. ings of the covenant of peculiarity, to some men, making them comparatively vessels to honour; and making of consequence other men comparatively vessels to dishonour, or vessels less honourable: to deny this, I say, is to oppose the doctrine of the dispensations, and to rob God of a gracious sovereignty, which he justly claims.

II. God is too gracious uncondi tionally to reprobate, i. e. ordain to eternal death, any of his creatures.

III. In the day of initial salvation, they who through grace believe in their light, are conditionally vessels of mercy, or God's elect, according to one or another dispensation of his grace.

IV. God justly gives up to final blindness of mind, and complete hardness of heart, them that resolutely shut their eyes, and harden their hearts to the end of their day of initial salvation.

II.

To insinuate that God, out of mere distinguishing wrath, fixes the curse of absolute rejection upon a number of unborn men, for whom he never had any mercy, and whom he designs to call into being only to show that he can make and break vessels of wrath-to insinuate this, I say, is to attribute to God a tyrannical sovereignty, which he justly abhors.

God is too holy and too just not to reprobate his obstinately rebel. lious creatures.

In the day of initial salvation, they who unnecessarily do despite to the Spirit of grace and disbelieve, are conditionally vessels of wrath, that "fit themselves for destruction.”

Perverse free will in us, and not free wrath in God, or necessity from Adam, is the cause of our avoidable unbelief: and our personal avoidable unbelief is the cause of our complete personal reprobation, both at the end of the day of grace, and in the day of judgment.

I.

V. There can be no sovereign, distinguishing free grace in a good God; because goodness can bestow free, undeserved gifts.

II.

There can never be sovereign, distinguishing free wrath in a just God; because justice cannot inflict free, undeserved punishments.

Reason and conscience should alone, one would think, convince us that St. Paul, in Rom. ix, does not plead for a right in God so to hate any of his unformed creatures as to intend, make, and fit them for destruction, merely to show his absolute sovereignty and irresistible power. The apostle knew too well the God of love, to represent him as a mighty potter, who takes an unaccountable pleasure to form rational vessels, and to endue them with keen sensibility, only to have the glory of absolutely filling them, by the help of Adam, with sin and wickedness on earth, and then with fire and brimstone in hell. This is the conceit of the consistent admirers of unconditional election and rejection, who build it chiefly upon Rom. ix. Should you ask, why they fix so dreadful a meaning on that portion of Scripture; I answer, that through inattention and prejudice, they overlook the two keys which the apostle gives us to open his meaning, one of which we find in the three first, and the other in the three last verses of that perverted chapter.

In the three first verses St. Paul expresses the "continual sorrow," which he "had in his heart," for the obstinacy of his countrymen, the Jews, who so depended upon their national prerogatives, as Jews; their Church privileges, as children of Abraham; and their Pharisaic righteousness of the law, as observers of the Mosaic ceremonies, that they detested the doctrine of salvation by faith in Jesus Christ. Now, if the apostle had believed that God, by a wise decree of preteri tion, had irreversibly ordained them to eternal death "to illustrate his glory by their damnation," as Calvin says; how ridiculous would it have been in him to sorrow night and day about the execution of God's wise design! If God, from the beginning of the world, had absolutely determined to make the unbelieving Jews personally and absolutely vessels of wrath, to the praise of the glory of his sovereign free wrath; how wicked would it have been in St. Paul to begin the next chapter by saying, "My heart's desire and prayer to God for unbelieving Israel-for the obstinate Jews, is that they might be saved!" Would he not rather have meekly submitted to the will of God, and said, like Eli, "It is the Lord: let him do what seemeth him good?" Did it become him-nay, was it not next to rebellion in him, so passionately to set his heart against a decree made (as we are told) on purpose to display the absoluteness of Divine sovereignty? And would not the Jews have retorted his own words! "Who art thou, O vain man, that repliest against God" by wishing night and day the salvation of "vessels of wrath :" of men whom he hath absolutely set apart for destruction? "But if the apostle did not intend to establish the absolute, personal preterition of the rejected Jews and their fellow reprobates, what could he mean by that mysterious chapter?" I reply: He meant in general to vindicate God's conduct in casting off the Jews, and adopting the Gentiles. This deserves some explanation. When St. Paul insinuated to the Jews that they were rejected as a Church and people, and that the uncircumcised Gentiles (even as many as believed on Jesus of

Nazareth) were now the chosen nation, "the peculiar people," and Church of God, his countrymen were greatly offended: and yet, as "the apostle of the Gentiles," to "provoke the Jews to jealousy," he was obliged peculiarly to enforce this doctrine among them. They generally gave him audience till he touched upon it. But when he "waxed bold," and told them plainly that Christ had bid him “depart from Jerusalem," as from an accursed city; and had "sent him far thence unto the Gentiles," they could contain themselves no longer; and “ lifting up their voices, they said, Away with such a fellow from the earth," Acts xiii, 46; xxii, 21.*

When St. Paul wrote to Rome, the metropolis of the Gentile world, where there were a great many Jews, the Holy Ghost directed him to clear up the question concerning the general election of the Gentiles, and the general rejection of the Jews. And this he did, both for the comfort of the humble, Gentile believers, and for the humiliation of his proud, self-elected countrymen; that being provoked to jealousy, they, or at least some of them, might with the Gentiles make their personal calling and election sure by believing in Christ. As the Jews were generally incensed against him, and he had a most disagreeable truth to write, he dips his pen in the oil of brotherly love, and begins the chapter by a most awful protestation of his tender attachment to them, and sorrowful concern for their salvation, hoping that this would soften them, and reconcile their prejudiced minds. But if he had represented them as absolute reprobates, and vessels of wrath irreversibly ordained of God to destruction, he would absurdly have defeated his own design, and exasperated them more than ever against his doctrine and his person. To suppose that he told them with one breath, he wished to be accursed from Christ for them, and with the next breath insinuated that God had absolutely accursed them with unconditional, personal reprobation, is a notion so excessively big with absurdity, that at times Zelotes himself can scarcely swallow it down. Who indeed can believe that St. Paul made himself so ridiculous as to weep tears of the most ardent love over the free wrath of his reprobating Creator? Who can imagine that the pious apostle painted out "the God of all grace," as a God full of immortal hatred to most of his countrymen while he represented himself as a person continually racked with the tenderest feelings of a matchless affection for them all; thus impiously raising his own reputation, as a benevolent man, upon the ruins of the reputation of his malevolent God?

Come we now to the middle part of the chapter. St. Paul, having

It is remarkable that Jewish rage first broke out against our Lord, when he touched their great Diana-the doctrine of their absolute election. You think, said he, to be saved, merely because you are Abraham's children, and God's chosen, peculiar people. "But I tell you of a truth," God is not so partial to Israel as you suppose. 66 Many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, but to none of them was Elias sent, but to a Zidonian [heathen] widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the days Elisha, yet none of them was cleansed save Naaman the Syrian," Luke iv, 25, &c. The Jews never forgave our Lord that levelling saying. If he narrowly escaped their fury at Nazareth, it was only to meet it increased sevenfold in the holy city. So fierce and implacable are the tempers to which some professors work up themselves, by drinking into unscriptural notions of election!

prepared the Jews for the disagreeable message which he was about to deliver, begins to attack their Pharisaic prejudices concerning their absolute right, as children of Abraham, to be God's Church and people, exclusively of the rest of the world whom they looked upon as reprobated dogs of the Gentiles. To drive the unbelieving Jews out of this sheltering place, he indirectly advances two doctrines: (1.) That God, as the Creator and supreme Benefactor of men, may do what he pleases with his peculiar favours; and that as he had now as indubitable a right freely to give five talents of Church privileges to the Gentiles, as he had once to bestow three talents of Church privileges upon the Jews. And, (2.) That God had as much right to set the seal of his wrath upon them, as upon Pharaoh himself, if they continued to imitate the inflexibleness of that proud unbeliever; inexorable unbelief being the sin that fits men for destruction, and pulls down the wrath of God upon the children of disobedience.

The first of those doctrines he proves by a reasonable appeal to conscience: (1.) Concerning the absurdity of replying against God, i. e. against a being of infinite wisdom, goodness, justice, and power. And (2.) Concerning a right which a potter has of the same "lump of clay" to make one vessel for* honourable, and another for comparatively dishonourable uses. The argument carries conviction along with it. Were utensils capable of thought, the basin, in which our Lord washed his disciples' feet, (a comparatively dishonourable use,) could never reasonably complain that the potter had not made it the cup in which Christ consecrated the sacramental wine. By a parity of reason, the king's soldiers and servants cannot justly be dissatisfied because he has not made them all generals and prime ministers. And what reason had the Jews to complain, that God put the Gentiles on a level with, or even above them? May he not, without being arraigned at the bar of slothful servants, who have buried their talents, give a peculiar, extraordinary blessing when he pleases, and to whom he pleases? "Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus ?" Shall the foot say, Why am I not the head? and the knee, Why am I not the shoulder? Or, to allude to the parable of the labourers, "if God chooses to hire the Gentiles, and send them into his favourite vineyard, blessing them with Church privileges as he did the Jews; shall the eye of the Jews "be evil because God is good" to these newly hired labourers? "May he not do what he pleases with his own?"

I have lived these fifteen years in a part of England where a multitude of potters make all manner of iron and earthen vessels. Some of these mechanics are by no means conspicuous for good sense, and others are at times besotted through excessive drinking; but I never yet saw or heard of one so excessively foolish as to make, even in a drunken fit, a vessel on purpose to break it, to show that he had power over the work of his own hands, Such, however, is the folly that Zelotes' scheme imputes to God. Nay, if a potter makes vessels on purpose to break them, he is only a fool; but if he could make sensible vessels like dogs, and formed them on purpose to roast them alive, and that he might show his sovereign power, would you not execrate his cruelty as much as you would pity his madness? But, what would you think of the man if he made five or ten such vessels for absolute destruction, while he made one for absolute salvation, and then assumed the title of gracious and merciful potter, and called his potting schemes "schemes of grace?"