have mercy, and compassion on him on whom He will have
long decline in Great Britain came the wonderful revival of true religion under Wesley and Whitefield. Contemporaneously the great awakening occurred throughout this country. And thus from time to time, and in all parts of the Church, we see these evidences of the special and sovereign interventions of God. The sovereignty of these dispensations is just as manifest as that displayed in the seven years of plenty and the seven years of dearth in the time of Moses. Every pastor, almost every parent, can bear witness to the same truth. They pray and labour long apparently without success; and then, often when they look not for it, comes the outpouring of the Spirit. Changes are effected in the state and character of men, which no man can produce in another; and which no man can effect in himself; changes which must be referred to the immediate agency of the Spirit of God. These are facts. They cannot be reasonably denied. They cannot be explained away. They demonstrate that God acts as a sovereign in the distribution of his grace. With this fact no other scheme than the Augustinian can be reconciled. If salvation is of grace, as the Scriptures so clearly teach, then it is not of works whether actual or foreseen.
Express Declarations of Scripture
6. The Scriptures clearly assert that God has mercy on whom He will have mercy, and compassion on him on whom He will have compassion. They teach negatively, that election to salvation is not of works; that it does not depend on the character or efforts of its objects; and affirmatively, that it does depend on God. It is referred to his good pleasure. It is declared to be of Him; to be of grace. Passages in which these negative and affirmative statements are made, have already been quoted. In Rom. 9 it is said that election is "not of works, but of Him that calleth." "So then, it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy." As in the time of Elias amid the general apostasy, God said, "I have left me seven thousand in Israel, all the knees which have not bowed the knee unto Baal." (1 Kings, 19:18.) "So then," says the Apostle, "there is a remnant according to the election of grace. And if by grace, then
is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace." (Rom. 11:5, 6.) So in Rom. 8:30, it is said, "Whom He did predestinate, them He also called," i.e., He regenerated and sanctified. Regeneration follows predestination to life, and is the gift of God. Paul said of himself, "It pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me." (Gal. 1:15, 16.) To the Ephesians he says that those obtain the inheritance, who were "predestinated according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will." (Eph. 1:12.) In 2 Tim. 1:9, he says, we are saved "according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began." The Apostle James, 1:18, says, "Of his own will begat He us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures." The Apostle Peter speaks of those who "stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed." (1 Pet. 2:8.) And Jude speaks of certain men who had "crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation." (Jude 4.) This foreordination to condemnation is indeed a judicial act, as is taught in Rom. 9:22. God condemns no man, and foreordains no man to condemnation, except on account of his sin. But the preterition of such men, leaving them, rather than others equally guilty, to suffer the penalty of their sins, is distinctly declared to be a sovereign act.
The Words of Jesus
Of all the teachers sent by God to reveal his will, no one more frequently asserts the divine sovereignty than our blessed Lord himself. He speaks of those whom the Father had "given Him." (John 17:2.) To these He gives eternal life. (John 17:2, 24.) For these He prays; for them He sanctified Himself. (John 17:19.) Of them He says, it is the Father's will that He should lose none, but raise them up at the last day. (John 6:39.) They are, therefore, perfectly safe. "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life; they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my
Father's hand." (John 10:27–29.) As the sheep of Christ are chosen out of the world, and given to Him, God is the chooser. They do not choose Him, but He chooses them. No one can be added to their number, and that number shall certainly be completed. "All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." (John 6:37.) "No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day." (John 6:44.) "Every man therefore that hath heard, and learned of the Father, cometh unto me." (Verse 45.) "No man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father." (Verse 65.) With God it rests who shall be brought to the saving knowledge of the truth. "It is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given." (Matt. 13:11.) "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." (Matt. 11:25.) In Acts 13:48, it is said, "As many as were ordained to eternal life believed." The Scriptures, therefore, say that repentance, faith, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost are gifts of God. Christ was exalted at the right hand of God to give repentance and remission of sins. But if faith and repentance are the gifts of God they must be the fruits of election. They cannot possibly be its ground. If the office of the theologian, as is so generally admitted, be to take the facts of Scripture as the man of science does those of nature, and found upon them his doctrines, instead of deducing his doctrines from the principles or primary truths of his philosophy, it seems impossible to resist the conclusion that the doctrine of Augustine is the doctrine of the Bible. According to that doctrine God is an absolute sovereign. He does what seems good in his sight. He sends the truth to one nation and not to another. He gives that truth saving power in one mind and not in another. It is of Him, and not of us, that any man is in Christ Jesus, and is an heir of eternal life. This, as has been shown, is asserted in express terms, with great frequency and clearness in the Scriptures. It is sustained by all the facts of providence and of revelation. It attributes to God nothing but what is proved, by his actual government of the world, to be his rightful prerogative. It only teaches that God purposes what, with our own
eyes, we see He actually does, and ever has done, in the dispensations of his providence. The consistent opponent of this doctrine must, therefore, reject the truths even of natural religion. As Augustinianism agrees with the facts of providence it of course agrees with the facts of Scripture. The Bible declares that the salvation of sinful men is a matter of grace; and that the great design of the whole scheme of redemption is to display the glory of that divine attribute,—to exhibit to the admiration, and for the edification of the intelligent universe, God's unmerited love and boundless beneficence to guilty and polluted creatures. Accordingly, men are represented as being sunk into a state of sin and misery; from this state they cannot deliver themselves; for their redemption God sent his own eternal Son to assume their nature, obey, and suffer in their place; and his Holy Spirit to apply the redemption purchased by the Son. To introduce the element of merit into any part of this scheme vitiates its nature and frustrates its design. Unless our salvation from beginning to end be of grace it is not an exhibition of grace. The Bible, however, teaches that it was a matter of grace that salvation was provided; that it was revealed to one nation and not to another; and that it was applied to one person and not to another. It teaches that all goodness in man is due to the influence of the Holy Spirit, and that all spiritual blessings are the fruits of election; that we are chosen to holiness, and created unto good works, because predestinated to be the children of God. With these facts of Scripture the experience of Christians agrees. It is the intimate conviction of every believer, founded upon the testimony of his own consciousness, as well as upon the Scriptures, that his salvation is of God; that it is of Him, and not of himself, that he has been brought to the exercise of faith and repentance. So long as he looks within the believer is satisfied of the truth of these doctrines. It is only when he looks outward, and attempts to reconcile these truths with the dictates of his own understanding that he becomes confused and sceptical. But as our faith is not founded on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God, as the foolishness of God is wiser than men, the part of wisdom, as well as the path of duty and safety, is to receive as