edly excluded from mercy, and driven, through total dereliction and despair, into such a horrible obduracy in wickedness, as rendered them not only examples of divine vengeance, but most useful instruments, in the hands of overruling wisdom and power, for the execution of a providential scheme, out of which more good to the cause of virtue, and more glory to God, will be derived, than had resulted from their perseverance in duty.

This hardening, which at first hearing sounds so harshly, ought to be considered. When the heart is softened, and made penetrable to the motions of grace, by affliction, &c. we with reason believe this change to be the mixed effect of God's Spirit, and the towardly disposition of that heart yielding to chastisement, and opening itself to the influx of new and better thoughts, with which the divine agent of virtue inspires it. This blessed Spirit alone can sufficiently warm and soften the heart of man. But if any man, by longcontinued resistance, and repeated insults, hath quenched the Spirit within him, then it is, that, for want of a mollifying warmth, he grows hard like wax, and becomes incapable of good impressions. His hardness is the mixed effect of his own cold and perverse disposition, and of the divine dereliction; yet, to conclude it was not in his power to subdue his disposition to the motions of grace, is to exculpate him entirely, as having no hand in hardening himself. Here we may discern whence arises the first degree of hardness, which is enough to fit a man for his own destruction. There is however a higher degree, which may be requisite to qualify him for the purposes of providence; and this he is brought to by an evil spirit, permitted, if not sent, to enter into his heart, and there to work every spring of action within him. Such was the case of Saul, after the Spirit of God had left him. And more remarkably still, such was the case of Judas, after having received the sop, when the devil entered into him, and hardened him for an action, which we cannot suppose him capable of, merely on the strength of his own peculiar avarice and other bad qualities. Nevertheless, thus hardened, though he became an instrument of the devil in the murder of Christ, was he not an instrument of God too, in working salvation for all men? In the same manner I think is to be explained, that re

markable passage of Isaiah, concerning the hardness and blindness of the Jews, quoted by our Saviour himself, by St. John, and twice by our apostle; The Lord said, Go and tell this people, hear ye indeed, but understand not, and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes, lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.' All this, in St. John's quotation, is given as the act of God; and in that of St. Paul, the Jews are charged with closing their own eyes, Acts xxviii. 27, and again, Rom. xi. 8. The act is ascribed to God; from whence I conclude, that it was the mixed effect of divine providence and Jewish perversity. He who hath considered the infinite service done to Christianity by the Jews, as thus blinded, and consequently enemies to Christ and his gospel, will at once perceive the drift of this providence, and accede to the explanation I have given to the places of Scripture under consideration.

There is another expression of the apostle in this passage, which seems to bear still harder on my assertion of moral freedom in man. It is this; So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.' I hope I have laid nothing across the real sense of this text. Certain it is, I could not have intended it, for I ascribe every thing to the mercy of God, and nothing to man, but a mere will and choice, often not more than a bare wish. But does not the text imply, that man hath a will, as well as a power to run? And what, in reference to good and evil actions, is the will of man? Let St. Paul himself answer the question. To will,' saith he, is present with me. When I would do good, evil is present with me.' It is of man 'to plough and sow, but it is of God to give the increase. He that planteth' even the gospel, and he that watereth, is nothing, but God that giveth the increase.' Yet Paul was in the right to plant, and Apollos to water, though the labours of both should have come to nothing, had not God been pleased to bless and prosper those labours. The true meaning then of the text in question is, man may will, and so far is free, but his will is of no force to accomplish its own purpose. The mercy of God, and his free grace alone, can do that. However,

is not God pleased with a will to do good in man, who might, if he were to follow the corrupt dispositions of his nature, as readily, or more readily, will to do evil?

You will say then, with the opponent in the passage, 'Why doth God yet find fault, for who hath resisted his will?' To this question I have already given the answer of St. Paul, and here shall add, which is a known truth, that all wicked men have resisted the will of God, nay, and good men too, but in a less heinous degree. The apostle could not have intended to grant, that no man does, or can, resist the will of God, for he speaks of men who 'resist the truth,' that is, the truths of God, and says, 'the carnal mind is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be.' Did this blessed saint believe, that sin is agreeable to the will of God? Why then should he exhort men to forsake their sins, to die to sin, &c. Surely he thought it utterly offensive to him, who cannot look on sin.' The truth is, the objector means no such horrible piece of impiety, as may be easily understood by St. Paul's answer, or if he did, he deserved no answer. But supposing

he said these words in reply to those of the apostle, 'whom he will, he hardeneth,' which was really the case, then we readily grant, that a man hardened, as Judas, for a particular purpose of Providence, does not, in regard to that purpose, resist the will of God, though he often did so before, for purposes of his own, which provoked God to give him over to a reprobate mind, since which, being no longer disposed to obey the moral will of God, he like the devil, is compelled to promote the providential purposes of his Maker, even by his wickedness. In one sense, no man resisteth the will of God, who permits us, generally speaking, to act as we please. In another, we act against his will, as often as we sin, for he saith, sin not.

Having sufficiently delivered my thoughts on the most difficult parts of this passage, and having often insisted, that God predestinated those, whom he foreknew, to be conformed to the image or resemblance of his Son, on ac count of the good and nurturable dispositions he saw in them, I leave it to the reader to judge for himself, whether this was the foreseen recommendation, for which they were thus elected and preferred to others; or whether it was

somewhat else in them, which, ere they were yet raised out of the quarry, gave the great statuary an occasion to judge, that they were of fit materials to take the figure and polish of so beautiful an image. He chose the block because he saw a Jesus in it. While some are said to be predestinated to this image, it is not said here, or elsewhere, that any man was predestinated to wickedness, or the image of the devil. We find indeed, that Christ, was delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, to be taken,' and by wicked hands to be crucified and slain;' but it is not said there, that God predestinated his crucifiers to the perpetration of that enormous deed. He foresaw it indeed in all its circumstances, as the concurrent act of all who were concerned in it. Nay, he determined and decreed the amazing transaction. But it is not intimated, that he caused any one of them, Caiaphas, Pilate, Judas, to act the part he did in the horrible tragedy. Yet, had even this been said, it could not have represented God as the author of their sin, inasmuch as having foreseen the extreme readiness of these wretches to run into the most flagitious crimes, if he had appointed them to this particular piece of cruelty, so necessarily instrumental to the salvation of mankind, rather than suffered them, at that time, to vent their wickedness on other objects, what had he done more, than brought good out of evil, and employed the devil, and his infernal agents, in the service of infinite goodness?

It is true, that all have sinned, which, without moral freedom, not one could have done, and all freely subjected themselves to the sentence of eternal death, and therefore the execution of that sentence on all could bring no imputation of injustice on their Judge. On the other hand, his mercy must be glorified, if he is pleased to save some. If he 'hath mercy on whom he will have mercy,' be it for what reason you will, is this to impeach his justice? Surely not. If you forgive one debtor your demand, are you therefore dishonest or unjust, in exacting your money from another, whom you love less, though perhaps you love only out of whim and humour; and will you charge God with partiality or injustice, for a preference founded on some weighty reason, which you do not know, and on infallible wisdom too, which you readily acknowledge?

At the end of this much agitated passage, the apostle saith, But if' (what if, in our English version does not rightly give the sense of the original) 'God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory, even us whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles' (the other verses from the twentyfourth to the thirtieth, of the ninth chapter to the Romans, being all thrown in as parenthetical); 'what shall we say then?' ver. 30, why, that the Gentiles, which followed not after righteousness, have attained to the righteousness, which is of faith; but Israel, which followed after the law of righteousness, hath not attained to the law of righteousness. Wherefore? Because they sought it not by faith.' Any other way of interpreting the place, but this, goes against the rules of grammar, and wrongs the sense and connexion of the apostle. He seems to have kept this question in reserve for a yet farther solution of the difficulties pressed upon him by the subject, and for a winding up of his argument in an application of the whole to believers and unbelievers; to the infidel Jews, on whom blindness in part had fallen, and who, for this, as vessels of wrath and dishonour, were made examples of divine vengeance; and to the Christians, whether Jews or Gentiles, who had attained to righteousness, even the righteousness which is by faith. This is as much as to say, what will you, or can you, say, but that God is just, if he, with longsuffering and undeserved patience, bears the perversity of men, voluntarily, obstinately, and desperately wicked, who have rendered their own destruction inevitable, in order to shew his power and majesty by the judgments justly poured on them at length, that all others, at once adoring his lenity and equity, may learn to hear and fear, and do no more presumptuously;' and that a better sort of men, who for their voluntary attachment to goodness, and their ready acceptance of his gospel, even under circumstances of persecution on that very account, may be admired and honoured by the rest of mankind, and the more, for a fair comparison with the former? Here the apostle represents God as angry