Christ's history. Now, if some were fixed, we have reason to conclude
2. Admitting our views of foreordination to be true, could they have been expressed in language different from this, or from that employed in the Epistle to the Romans and Ephesians? Had we been left to choose our words for setting forth our views, we could not have desired any other than these. Can our opponents say the same? Are these words the most appropriate for expressing their views?
3. This determinate counsel is said to have fixed certain events in Christ's history. Now, if some were fixed, we have reason to conclude that all others also were. Yet in the life and death of Christ we see nothing but what seemed outwardly to occur in the natural order of events. It will certainly be conceded that the will of the Son of God was free from first to last. Yet we learn that what He voluntarily did and suffered was also predetermined by God. In His case there was entire free will, yet entire preordination. What, then, becomes of the objection to predestination, arising from its supposed interference with the free will of moral agents? In Christ's life and death we have a series of preordained events, and at the same time a series of free actions. And this is sufficient answer to the current objection. We may not be able to reconcile these things, yet they stand palpably before us.
4. This determinate counsel is said to have delivered up Christ into the hands of men. Pilate and Herod, etc., are said to have done what God's hand and counsel had predetermined. Here is something still more striking. The deeds of these wicked men are said to have come to pass according to this counsel, yet these deeds are no less wicked, and those men are no less responsible. Here, again, we have another objection answered, or at least silenced. To reconcile things may be difficult, yet the statement in this passage is plain. What pride and folly, then, are there in the questions and cavils which we so often hear in connection with this doctrine: