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 inex. cusable 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

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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."

SECTION IX.

An answer to the charges of robbing the trinity, and encouraging Deism, which charges Mr. T. brings against the doctrine of the anti-Cal

vinists.

MR. T. thinks his cause so good, that he supposes himself able, not only to stand on the defensive, but also to attack the Gospel which we preach. From his Babel, therefore, (his strong tower of confusion,) he makes a bold sally, and charges us thus :

ARG. LXIII. Page 91. "Arminianism robs the Father of his sovereignty." This is a mistake: Arminianism dares not attribute to him the grim sovereignty of a Nero; but if it does not humbly allow him all the sovereignty which Scripture and reason ascribe to him, so far it is wrong, and so far we oppose Pelagian Arminianism as well as Manichean Calvinism. It "robs the Father of his decrees." This is a mistake it reverences all his righteous, Scriptural decrees; though it shudders at the thought of imputing to him unscriptural, Calvinian decrees, more wicked and absurd than the decrees of Nebuchadnezzar and Darius. It "robs the Father of his providence." Another mistake! Our doctrine only refuses to make God the author of sin, and to lead men to the Pagan error of fatalism, or to the Manichean error of a two-principled God, who absolutely works all things in all men, as à showman works all things in his puppets; fixing his necessary virtue on the good, and necessary wickedness on the wicked, to the subversion of all the Divine perfections, and to the entire overthrow of the second Gospel axiom, of Christ's tribunal, and of the wisdom and justice which the Scriptures ascribe to God, as "Judge of the whole earth."

ARG. LXIV. (Ibid.) "It [Arminianism] robs the Son of his efficacy as a Saviour." Another mistake! It only dares not pour upon him the shame of being the absolute reprobater of myriads of unborn creatures, whose nature he assumed with a gracious design to be absolutely their temporary Saviour; promising to prove their eternal Saviour upon Gospel terms: and, accordingly, he saves all mankind with a temporary salvation; and those who obey him with an eternal salvation. The EFFICACY of his blood is then complete, so far as he absolutely designed it should be.

ARG. LXV. (Ibid.) "It [Arminianism] robs the Spirit of his efficacy as a Sanctifier." By no means; for it maintains that the Spirit, which is the grace and light of Christ, "enlightens every man that comes into the world," and leads the worst of men to some temporary good, or at least restrains them from the commission of a thousand crimes. So far the Spirit's grace is efficacious in all; and, if it is not completely and eternally efficacious in those who "harden their hearts, and by their wilful hardness treasure up unto themselves wrath against the day of wrath," it is because "the day of wrath," for which the wicked were*

* All angels and men were PRIMARILY made to enjoy an "accepted time," and a temporary" day of salvation." Those angels and men, who know and improve their day of salvation, were SECONDARILY made for the day of remunerative love, and for a kingdom "prepared for them from the beginning of the world." But those angels and men, who do not know and improve their day of salvation, were SECONDARILY made for "the day of retributive wrath," and for the "fire prepared for the devil and his angels."

secondarily made, is to be "the day of the righteous judgment of God who will render to every man according to his deeds," Rom. ii, 5, 6: and not the day of the unrighteous judgment of Calvin, who (doctrinally renders to every man according to a finished salvation in Christ, productive of necessary goodness; and according to a finished damnation in Adam, productive of remediless wickedness, and all its dreadful

consequences.

ARG. LXVI. Page 92. Mr. Toplady produces a long quotation from Mr. Sloss, which, being divested of the verbose dress in which error generally appears, amounts to this plain abridged argument: "If the doctrine of Calvinian election be false, because all mankind are not the objects of that election, and because all men have an equal right to the Divine favour, it follows that infidels are right when they say that the Jewish and the Christian revelations are false: for all mankind are not elected to the favour of having the Old and New Testament; and therefore Arminianism encourages infidelity."

This argument is good to convince Pelagian levellers that God is partial in the distribution of his talents, and that he indulges Jews and Christians with a holy, peculiar election and calling, of which those who never heard of the Bible are utterly deprived. I have myself made this remark in the Essay on the gratuitous election, and partial reprobation which St. Paul frequently preaches: but the argument does not affect our anti-Calvinian Gospel. For, 1. We do not say that the Calvinian election is false, because it supposes that God is peculiarly gracious to some men; (for this we strongly assert, as well as the Calvinists;) but because it supposes that God is so PECULIARLY gracious to some men, as to be ABSOLUTELY MERCILESS and unjust to all the rest of mankind.

2. That very revelation, which Mr. Sloss thinks we betray to the Deists, informs us, that though all men are not indulged with the peculiar blessings of Judaism and Christianity, yet they are all chosen and called to be righteous, at least, according to the covenants made with fallen Adam and spared Noah. Hence St. Peter says, that, "in every nation, he that feareth God, and worketh righteousness [according to his light, though it should be only the lowest degree of that light, which enlightens every man that cometh into the world] is accepted of him :" and St. Paul speaks of some "Gentiles, who, though they have not the law of Moses or the law of Christ, do by nature [in its state of initial restoration through the seed of life given to fallen Adam in the promise] the things contained in the law, and are a law unto themselves; showing the work of the law, written in their hearts." Therefore, though there is a gra. tuitous election, which draws after it a gratuitous reprobation from the blessings peculiar to Judaism and Christianity; there is no Calvinian election, which draws after it a gratuitous reprobation from all saving grace, and necessarily involves the greatest part of mankind in unavoid. able damnation. Hence, if I mistake not, it appears that when Mr. Sloss charges us with "having contributed to the prevailing Deism of the present time, by furnishing the adversaries of Divine revelation with arguments against Christianity," he (as well as Mr. Toplady) gratui tously imputes to our doctrine, what really belongs to Calvinism. For there is a perfect agreement between the absolute necessity of events,