Jews. The prophets addressed the Jews, and the apostles addressed Christians, as God's chosen people, as elect, predestinated to the Church, to grace, to blessing. But then, they urge their blessings and election, as motives, not for confidence, but for watchfulness. They speak to them as having a conflict to maintain, a race to run; and they exhort them not to quench the Spirit, who is aiding them, to beware lest they fall from the stedfastness of their faith, to be sober and watch to the end.

Let us turn next to the Epistle to the Romans. In the ninth chapter more especially, St. Paul considers the question of God's rejecting the unbelieving Jews, and calling into His Church a body of persons, elected from among Jews and Gentiles. The rejection of his fellow-countrymen he himself deeply deplores; but there was a difficulty and objection arising, which he sets himself directly to solve. God had chosen Israel for His people. He had given them 'an everlasting covenant, even the sure mercies of David.' Could then the rejection of the Jews be explained consistently with God's justice, His promises and His past dealing with His people? Objections of this kind the Apostle replies to. And he does so by shewing, that God's dealings now were just as they had always been of old. Of old, He gave the promise to Abraham, but afterwards limited it to his seed in Isaac. Then again, though Esau and Jacob were both Isaac's children, He gave the privileges of His Church to the descendants of Jacob, not to those of Esau; and that, with no reference to Jacob's goodness; for the restriction of the promise was made before either Jacob or Esau were born; exactly according to those words by Malachi, where God, speaking of His calling of the Israelites, says, 'Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.' (Rom. ix. 6-13). This restriction therefore of God's promises, first to Isaac, then to Jacob, corresponded exactly with His purposes now revealed in the Gospel, viz. to bring to Christian and Church-privileges that portion of the Jews who embraced the Gospel, and to cast off the rest,

who were hardened in unbelief. From verse 11 to verse 19, St. Paul states an objection to this doctrine of God's election, which he replies to in verse 20. The objection He states thus, 'Shall we say then that there is injustice with God?' For the language of Scripture seems to imply that there is; God being represented as saying, 'I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy,' which shews that it is of God's mercy, and not of man's will. Again, it is said to Pharaoh, For this cause have I raised thee up, that I might shew my power in thee.' So that it seems to be taught us, that God shews mercy on whom He will, and hardens whom He will. It may therefore be reasonably said, why does He yet find fault with the sinner; for who hath resisted His will?' (ver. 14—19). This objection to God's justice the Apostle states thus strongly, that he may answer it the more fully. His reply is, that such complaints against God, for electing the Jewish people, and placing Pharaoh in an exalted station, and bearing long with his wickedness, are presumptuous and arrogant. Nay, but O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay to make one vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour?' (vv. 20, 21)'. Shall man complain, because

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1 See Jer. xviii. 2-10. The scriptural similitude of the potter and the clay is often triumphantly appealed to as a proof that God has from eternity decreed, and what is more, has revealed to us, that He has so decreed the salvation or perdition of each individual, without any other reason assigned than that such is His will and pleasure: we are in His hands," say these predestinarians, " as clay is in the potter's, who hath power of the same lump to make one vessel to honour and another to dishonour;" not observing, in their hasty eagerness to seize on every apparent confirmation of their system, that this similitude, as far as it goes, rather makes against them; since the potter never makes any vessel for the express purpose of being broken and destroyed. This comparison accordingly agrees much better with the view here taken; the potter, according to his own arbitrary choice, makes "of the same lump one vessel to honour, and another to dishonour," i. e. some to nobler and

God ordained the Jews for a place of eminence in His Church, or raised Pharaoh as king of Egypt to a position of honour, and yet a position in which he would only the more surely exhibit his wickedness? We know not the secret motives of God's will. What, if the real reason of all this were, that God, willing to manifest His wrath and to make His power known,' as He did with Pharaoh, so now also has endured with much long-suffering the unbelieving Israelites, who are 'vessels of wrath' already 'fitted to destruction,' in order that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had afore prepared for a position of honour, even on us, who are that Church of Christ, which He hath now called not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles,' (vv. 20-24).

If we will cast aside preconceived doctrines and conventional phraseology, it will surely appear that such is the plain meaning of this memorable chapter. The Apostle is explaining the justice of God's dealings, in having long borne with the Jewish race, and now casting them off and establishing a Church composed partly of the remnant of the Jews, partly of Gentile converts. Herein He only acted as He had ever done, calling first the seed of Abraham His chosen, then the seed of Isaac, elected from the elect, and again (elected once more out of them) the seed of Jacob; and as He had borne long with Pharaoh's wickedness, that He might make him the more signal monument of His vengeance, so perhaps it was with the Jews. He had

some to meaner uses; but all for some use; none with the design that it should be cast away and dashed to pieces: even so the Almighty, of His own arbitrary choice, causes some to be born to wealth or rank, others to poverty and obscurity; some in a heathen and others in a Christian country; the advantages and privileges bestowed on each are various, and, as far as we can see, arbitrarily dispensed; the final rewards or punishments depend, as we are plainly taught, on the use or abuse of these advantages.'-Archbp. Whately, Essays on the Writings of St Paul. Essay III. on Election, an essay full of clear and thoughtful statements and elucidations.

borne long with them, partly in mercy, and partly that He might magnify His power, and shew the severity of His justice.

The same subject is kept in view, more or less, throughout the two following chapters. In the 11th he again distinctly recurs to the bringing of a portion of the Jewish race into the Church of Christ, not indeed the whole nation-but restricted again, as it once was in Isaac, and afterwards in Jacob. He instances the case in which all Israel seemed involved in one common apostasy, and yet God told Elias that there were seven thousand men who had not bowed the knee to Baal. Even so it was at the time of the Gospel. All Israel seemed cast off, but it was not so: a remnant remained, a remnant was called into the Church, chosen or elected into it by the grace of God. • Even so at this present time also there is a remnant according to the election of grace,' Rom. xi. 5.

We may now proceed to the passage which, even more than any of the preceding, may be considered as the stronghold either of the Calvinist or the Arminian. Both claim it as unquestionably their own. The passage is Rom. viii. 29, 30: For whom He did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom He did predestinate, them He also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them He also glorified.'

The Calvinist contends that the passage plainly speaks of predestination to eternal glory; the various clauses shewing the progress, from the first purpose of God, through calling and justifying, to the final salvation of the elect soul. The Arminian replies, that, though it is true that the passage speaks of predestination to eternal glory, yet it is evidently on the ground of foreseen faith; for it begins with the words 'whom He did foreknow; shewing, that His foreknowledge of their acceptance of His grace was the motive of His predestination of their glory. That the Arminian has scarcely ground for this argu

ment seems clear from the use of ths word 'foreknew' in Rom. xi. 2; where 'Hath God cast away His people whom He foreknew? can scarcely mean otherwise than whom He had predestinated to be His Church of old.' But then, though it seems that the passage speaks of an arbitrary purpose, yet it cannot be proved to have any direct reference to future glory. The verbs are all in the past tense, and none in the future, and therefore cannot certainly be translated as future. Either 'whom He hath justified, them He hath glorified',' or 'whom he justifies, them He also glorifies,' would correctly render it; since the aorist expresses either a past or a present. Hence the passage was uniformly understood by the ancients as referring not to future glory of Christians in the world to come, but to that present glorification of the elect, which consists in their participation in the high honour and privilege bestowed by God upon His Church. And, as they viewed it, so grammatical accuracy will oblige us to understand it. And if so, then we must interpret the passage in correspondence with the language in the Epistle to the Ephesians, and in the chapter already considered in the Epistle to the Romans. Those whom God in His eternal counsels chose before the foundation of the world, His elect people, the Church, He designed to bring to great blessings and privileges; namely, conformity to the likeness of His Son, calling into His Church, justification, and the high honour and glory of being sons of God and heirs of the kingdom of heaven3.

1 οὓς δὲ ἐδικαίωσε, τούτους καὶ ἐδόξασε.

2 See Faber, Prim. Doct. of Election, who quotes from Whitby, Origen, Chrysostom, Ecumenius, Theodoret, Theophylact, pseudo-Ambrosius, and Jerome, as concurring in this interpretation of 'glorified.'

3 I have myself little doubt that this is the meaning of the passage, divested of conventional phraseology, which cramps our whole mind in these inquiries. But I should wish to guard against dogmatizing too decidedly on such passages. I think this passage, and one other (John vi. 37-39) to be the strongest passages in favour of the theory of St.