Jonathan Edwards Selected Shor
27. The vast differences of Arminians to an accurate and clear view of the scope and design of the sacred penmen, and a critical knowledge of the original, will prove forever vain and insufficient to help them against such clear evidence as the Scripture exhibits concerning efficacious grace. I desire it may be shown, if it can be that ever any terms that are fuller and stronger are used more frequently, or in greater variety, to signify God's being the author, efficient, and bestower of any kind of benefit, than as to the bestowment of true virtue or goodness of heart: whether concerning the deliverance out of Egypt, or the manna that was rained down from heaven, or the bestowment of the blessings of Canaan, or saving Noah and his family in the ark, or the raising any from the dead, or Christ's giving health to the sick, or sight to the blind, or bread to the hungry in the wilderness, or anything else whatsoever. There also is: the giving being to mankind in their creation; the giving reason to them with their other natural faculties; the giving them life and breath; the giving them the beautiful form of their bodies; the giving them life at the general resurrection; the giving them their glory and happiness in heaven; the prophets and the Word of God by the prophets and others; the giving the means of grace and salvation; and the giving Christ and providing means of salvation in him. Yea, I know of no one thing in Scripture wherein such significant, strong expressions are used, in so great variety, or one half so often, as the bestowment of this benefit of true goodness and piety of heart. But after all, we must be faced down in it with vast confidence, that the Scriptures do not imply any more than only exhibiting means of instruction, leaving the determining and proper causing of the effect wholly with man, as the only proper, efficient, and determining cause: — and that the current of Scripture is all against us, and that it is because we do