Jonathan Edwards Selected Shor
desire, or will, is a contradiction. Therefore, it must proceed from the determining grace of God; which being allowed, the great point in dispute is allowed. 15. Eph. 2:8, "By grace are ye saved, through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God." Mr. Beach observes, "this text does not mean that their faith is so God's gift, as not to be of themselves, as is most evident to any who reads the original." This is certainly a great mistake. What I suppose he means is that the relative that, being of the neuter gender, and the word πιϚις of the feminine, they do not agree together. But if he would translate the Greek relative that thing, viz. the thing last spoken of, all the difficulty vanishes. Vid. Beza in Loc. Such Scriptures as these, 1 Cor. 15:10, "Not I, but the grace of God that was with me;" Gal. 2:20, "Not I, but Christ liveth in me;" prove efficacious grace. The virtuous actions of men that are rewardable, are not left to men's indifference, without divine ordering and efficacy, so as to be possible to fail. They are often in the Scripture the matter of God's promises. How often does God promise reformations! How often does God promise that great revival of religion in the latter days! Dr. Whitby seems to deny any physical influence at all of the Spirit of God, on the will; and allows an influence by moral suasion and moral causes only, p. 344. This is to deny that the Spirit of God does anything at all, except inspiring the prophets, and giving the means of grace, with God's ordination of this in his providence. If God do anything physically, what he does must be efficacious and irresistible. Such an assistance Dr. Whitby maintains, and, concerning it, says the following things — p. 221, 222. "First. Then I say it must be granted that in raising an idea in my brain by the Holy Spirit, and the impression made upon it there, the action is truly physical. Second. That in those actions I am wholly passive: that is, I myself do nothing formally to produce those ideas, but the good Spirit, without my operation, does produce them in me. Third. That these operations must be irresistible in their production, because they are immediately produced in us without our knowledge of them, and without our will, and so without those faculties by which we are enabled to act." Though it should be allowed that God assists man with a physical assistance, and yet an obliged and promised assistance only, then God does not do, or effect, or give the thing assisted to, any more than if he operated and assisted men only according to the established laws of nature, and men may as properly be said to do it of themselves and of their own power. The doing of the thing, is in the same manner in their power. The assistance by which God assists a drunkard that goes to the tavern, and there drinks excessively, or by which he assists an adulterer or pirate in their actions, is that he upholds the laws of nature; the laws of the nature of the human soul, whereby it is able to perform such and such acts in such order and dependence; the laws of the union of soul and body, and moves the body in such a stated manner in consequence of such acts of the soul; and upholds the laws of motion and causes that there shall be such and such effects in corporeal things, and also of men's minds in consequence of such motions. All the difference is that the assistance which he grants in the duties of religion, is according to a newer establishment than the other, according to a method established a little later, and also that the method of assistance, in the one case, is written and revealed by way of promise or covenant, and not in the other. But if it be said that though God has promised assistance, yet he has not promised the exact degree, as, notwithstanding his promise, he has left himself at liberty to assist some, much more than others, in consequence of the very same endeavor. — I answer, that this will prove a giving up of their whole scheme, and will infallibly bring in the Calvinistical notion of sovereign and arbitrary grace: whereby some, with the very same sincerity of endeavor, with the same degree of endeavor, and the same use of means, nay, although all things are exactly equal in both cases, both as to their persons and behavior, yet one has that success by sovereign grace and God's arbitrary pleasure, that is denied another. If God has left himself no liberty of sovereign grace in giving success to man's endeavors, but his consequent assistance be always tied to such endeavors precisely, then man's success is just as much in his own power, and is in the same way the fruit of his own doings, as the effect and fulfillment of his endeavors to commit adultery or murder, and indeed much more. For his success in those endeavors is not tied to such endeavors, but may be providentially disappointed. Although particular motions follow such and such acts of will, in such a state of body, exactly according to certain laws of nature, yet a man's success in such wickedness is not at all tied to his endeavors by any divine establishment, as the Arminians suppose success is to man's endeavors after conversion. For the Spirit of God, by assisting in the alleged manner, becomes not the efficient cause of those things, as the Scriptures do certainly represent him. If God be not the proper bestower, author, and efficient cause of virtue, then the greatest benefits flow not from him, are not owing to his goodness, nor have we him to thank for them. "Christ upbraids the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, that they were worse than Sodom, etc. and the Jews of that generation, that they were worse than the men of Ninevah; and the Pharisees, that the publicans and harlots went into the kingdom of God before them. But why did he do this, if the only reason was that the one was