Jonathan Edwards Selected Shor (continued)
not understand language, and are bigots and fools for imagining any such thing as that the Scriptures say anything of that nature, and because the divines on our side do not understand Greek, and do not lay the Scripture before them, nor mind the scope of Scripture, nor consider the connection, etc. etc. Perhaps it will be said that every one of those Scriptures, which are brought to prove efficacious grace, may have another interpretation, found out by careful and critical examination. But, alas! Is that the way of the Most High's instructing mankind: to use such a multitude of expressions, in different languages, and various different ages, all which in their natural and most common acceptation, in all languages, nations, and ages, must undoubtedly be understood in a particular sense? Yea, the whole thread and current of all that God says, according to the use of speech among mankind, tends to lead to such an understanding, and so unavoidably leads his people in all ages into such thing; intending only that the true meaning should not be found out, but by the means of acute criticism, which might possibly hit upon the strange, unusual, and surprising meaning?
28. Instead of persons being the determining and efficient causes of their own virtue and piety, after all the moral means God uses with man, let us suppose some third person between God and the subject of this gift of virtue, to be in the very same manner the sovereignly determining cause and efficient of virtue; that he had power to bestow it in us, or cause us to be the subjects of it, just in the same manner as the Arminians suppose we ourselves have power to be the causes of our being the subjects of virtue; and that it depended on this third person's free will, just in the same manner as now they suppose our having virtue depends on our own free will; and that God used moral means with that third person to bestow virtue on us,