maintain that God foresaw that every soul in them would reject the
to choose an individual to salvation, yet right not to choose a nation to those privileges through which alone salvation comes? Can it be right to pass by some nations and yet wrong to pass by some individuals? Nations are composed of individuals, and to choose a nation is to give individuals in that nation a peculiar advantage which issues in the eternal life of thousands. And so if there is any injustice in the matter, there is more injustice in a national election than in a personal one. It will be said, God knew what nations would reject His message, and therefore He did not send it to them. On this I offer this:
1. A nation being composed of individuals, our opponents must maintain that God foresaw that every soul in them would reject the truth. If not, would it not be hard, upon their theory for God to withhold the gospel from the whole nation, if He knew that some in that nation would have believed and been saved?
2. If these nations were denied the gospel, because God foreknew they would reject it, then they are condemned for a thing they never did, but which God merely foresaw they would do. Whole nations are treated as criminals, rejecters of the gospel, when the opportunity was never given them either to receive or reject it. I am not aware of anything in Calvinism so hard or unjust as this. We teach that God punishes men and nations on account of what they actually do, not on account of what He foresees they would have done if He allowed them the means. This theory, on the other hand, teaches that whole nations are condemned to that most fearful of all curses, a deprivation of the gospel, not on account of their actual sins, but because certain things were foreseen which they would have done! Now, if God can justly condemn nations on account of sin not committed, but merely foreseen as likely to be committed, why may He not condemn sinners to eternal death for sins never committed,