The old truth that Calvin preached, that Augustine preached, that Paul
preached, is the truth that I must preach to-day, or else be false to my
conscience and my God. I cannot shape the truth; I know of no such thing as
paring off the rough edges of a doctrine. John Knox's gospel is my gospel. That
which thundered through Scotland must thunder through England again.
TIS A GREAT THING to begin the Christian
life by believing good solid doctrine. Some
people have received twenty different
"gospels" in as many years; how many more
they will accept before they get to their journey's
end, it would be difficult to predict.I thank God that
He early taught me the gospel, and I have been so
perfectly satisfied with it, that I do not want to know
any other. Constant change of creed is sure loss. If a
tree has to be taken up two or three times a year,
you will not need to build a very large loft in which
to store the apples. When people are always shifting
their doctrinal principles, they are not likely to bring
forth much fruit to the glory of God. It is good for
young believers to begin with a firm hold upon those
great fundamental doctrines which the Lord has
taught in His Word. Why, if I believed what some
preach about the temporary, trumpery salvation
which only lasts for a time, I would scarcely be at all
grateful for it; but when I know that those whom
God saves He saves with an everlasting salvation,
when I know that He gives to them an everlasting
righteousness, when I know that He settles them on
an everlasting foundation of everlasting love, and that
He will bring them to His everlasting kingdom, oh,
then I do wonder, and I am astonished that such a
blessing as this should ever have been given to me!
"Pause, my soul! adore, and wonder!
Ask, 'Oh, why such love to me?'
Grace hath put me in the number
Of the Savior's family:
Hallelujah!
Thanks, eternal thanks, to Thee!"
I suppose there are some persons whose minds
naturally incline towards the doctrine of free-will. I
can only say that mine inclines as naturally towards
the doctrines of sovereign grace. Sometimes, when I
see some of the worst characters in the street, I feel
as if my heart must burst forth in tears of gratitude
that God has never let me act as they have done! I
have thought, if God had left me alone, and had not
touched me by His grace, what a great sinner I
should have been! I should have run to the utmost
lengths of sin, dived into the very depths of evil, nor
should I have stopped at any vice or folly, if God
had not restrained me. I feel that I should have been
a very king of sinners, if God had let me alone. I
cannot understand the reason why I am saved,
except upon the ground that God would have it so. I
cannot, if I look ever so earnestly, discover any kind
of reason in myself why I should be a partaker of
Divine grace. If I am not at this moment without
Christ, it is only because Christ Jesus would have His
will with me, and that will was that I should be with
Him where He is, and should share His glory. I can
put the crown nowhere but upon the head of Him
whose mighty grace has saved me from going down
into the pit. Looking back on my past life, I can see
that the dawning of it all was of God; of God
effectively. I took no torch with which to light the
sun, but the sun enlightened me. I did not commence
my spiritual life—no, I rather kicked, and struggled
against the things of the Spirit: when He drew me,
for a time I did not run after Him: there was a natural
hatred in my soul of everything holy and good.
Wooings were lost upon me—warnings were cast to
the wind—thunders were despised; and as for the
whispers of His love, they were rejected as being less
than nothing and vanity. But, sure I am, I can say
now, speaking on behalf of myself, "He only is my
salvation." It was He who turned my heart, and
brought me down on my knees before Him. I can in
very deed, say with Doddridge and Toplady—
"Grace taught my soul to pray,
And made my eyes o'erflow;"
and coming to this moment, I can add—
"'Tis grace has kept me to this day,
And will not let me go."
Well can I remember the manner in which I
learned the doctrines of grace in a single instant.
Born, as all of us are by nature, an Arminian, I still
believed the old things I had heard continually from
the pulpit, and did not see the grace of God. When I
was coming to Christ, I thought I was doing it all
myself, and though I sought the Lord earnestly, I had
no idea the Lord was seeking me. I do not think the
young convert is at first aware of this. I can recall the
very day and hour when first I received those truths
in my own soul—when they were, as John Bunyan
says, burnt into my heart as with a hot iron, and I
can recollect how I felt that I had grown on a sudden
from a babe into a man—that I had made progress in
Scriptural knowledge, through having found, once
for all, the clue to the truth of God. One week-night,
when I was sitting in the house of God, I was not
thinking much about the preacher's sermon, for I did
not believe it. The thought struck me, How did you
come to be a Christian? I sought the Lord. But how
did you come to seek the Lord? The truth flashed
across my mind in a moment—I should not have
sought Him unless there had been some previous
influence in my mind to make me seek Him. I
prayed, thought I, but then I asked myself, How
came I to pray? I was induced to pray by reading the
Scriptures. How came I to read the Scriptures? I did
read them, but what led me to do so? Then, in a
moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all,
and that He was the Author of my faith, and so the
whole doctrine of grace opened up to me, and from
that doctrine I have not departed to this day, and I
desire to make this my constant confession, "I
ascribe my change wholly to God."
I once attended a service where the text
happened to be, "He shall choose our inheritance for
us;" and the good man who occupied the pulpit was
more than a little of an Arminian. Therefore, when
he commenced, he said, "This passage refers entirely
to our temporal inheritance, it has nothing whatever
to do with our everlasting destiny, for," said he, "we
do not want Christ to choose for us in the matter of
Heaven or hell. It is so plain and easy, that every
man who has a grain of common sense will choose
Heaven, and any person would know better than to
choose hell. We have no need of any superior
intelligence, or any greater Being, to choose Heaven
or hell for us. It is left to our own free-will, and we
have enough wisdom given us, sufficiently correct
means to judge for ourselves," and therefore, as he
very logically inferred, there was no necessity for
Jesus Christ, or anyone, to make a choice for us. We
could choose the inheritance for ourselves without
any assistance. "Ah!" I thought, "but, my good
brother, it may be very true that we could, but I
think we should want something more than common
sense before we should choose aright."
First, let me ask, must we not all of us admit an
over-ruling Providence, and the appointment of
Jehovah's hand, as to the means whereby we came
into this world? Those men who think that,
afterwards, we are left to our own free-will to choose
this one or the other to direct our steps, must admit
that our entrance into the world was not of our own
will, but that God had then to choose for us. What
circumstances were those in our power which led us
to elect certain persons to be our parents? Had we
anything to do with it? Did not God Himself appoint
our parents, native place, and friends? Could He not
have caused me to be born with the skin of the
Hottentot, brought forth by a filthy mother who
would nurse me in her "kraal," and teach me to bow
down to Pagan gods, quite as easily as to have given
me a pious mother, who would each morning and
night bend her knee in prayer on my behalf? Or,
might He not, if He had pleased, have given me
some profligate to have been my parent, from whose
lips I might have early heard fearful, filthy, and
obscene language? Might He not have placed me
where I should have had a drunken father, who
would have immured me in a very dungeon of
ignorance, and brought me up in the chains of crime?
Was it not God's Providence that I had so happy a
lot, that both my parents were His children, and
endeavored to train me up in the fear of the Lord?
John Newton used to tell a whimsical story, and
laugh at it, too, of a good woman who said, in order
to prove the doctrine of election, "Ah! sir, the Lord
must have loved me before I was born, or else He
would not have seen anything in me to love
afterwards." I am sure it is true in my case; I believe
the doctrine of election, because I am quite certain
that, if God had not chosen me, I should never have
chosen Him; and I am sure He chose me before I
was born, or else He never would have chosen me
afterwards; and He must have elected me for reasons
unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in
myself why He should have looked upon me with
special love. So I am forced to accept that great
Biblical doctrine. I recollect an Arminian brother
telling me that he had read the Scriptures through a
score or more times, and could never find the
doctrine of election in them. He added that he was
sure he would have done so if it had been there, for
he read the Word on his knees. I said to him, "I think
you read the Bible in a very uncomfortable posture,
and if you had read it in your easy chair, you would
have been more likely to understand it. Pray, by all
means, and the more, the better, but it is a piece of
superstition to think there is anything in the posture
in which a man puts himself for reading: and as to
reading through the Bible twenty times without
having found anything about the doctrine of election,
the wonder is that you found anything at all: you
must have galloped through it at such a rate that you
were not likely to have any intelligible idea of the
meaning of the Scriptures."
If it would be marvelous to see one river leap up
from the earth full-grown, what would it be to gaze
upon a vast spring from which all the rivers of the
earth should at once come bubbling up, a million of
them born at a birth? What a vision would it be!
Who can conceive it. And yet the love of God is that
fountain, from which all the rivers of mercy, which
have ever gladdened our race—all the rivers of grace
in time, and of glory hereafter—take their rise. My
soul, stand thou at that sacred fountain-head, and
adore and magnify, for ever and ever, God, even our
Father, who hath loved us! In the very beginning,
when this great universe lay in the mind of God, like
unborn forests in the acorn cup; long ere the echoes
awoke the solitudes; before the mountains were
brought forth; and long ere the light flashed through
the sky, God loved His chosen creatures. Before
there was any created being—when the ether was
not fanned by an angel's wing, when space itself had
not an existence, when there was nothing save God
alone—even then, in that loneliness of Deity, and in
that deep quiet and profundity, His bowels moved
with love for His chosen. Their names were written
on His heart, and then were they dear to His soul.
Jesus loved His people before the foundation of the
world—even from eternity! and when He called me
by His grace, He said to me, "I have loved thee with
an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness
have I drawn thee."
Then, in the fullness of time, He purchased me
with His blood; He let His heart run out in one deep
gaping wound for me long ere I loved Him. Yea,
when He first came to me, did I not spurn Him?
When He knocked at the door, and asked for
entrance, did I not drive Him away, and do despite
to His grace? Ah, I can remember that I full often did
so until, at last, by the power of His effectual grace,
He said, "I must, I will come in;" and then He turned
my heart, and made me love Him. But even till now
I should have resisted Him, had it not been for His
grace. Well, then since He purchased me when I was
dead in sins, does it not follow, as a consequence
necessary and logical, that He must have loved me
first? Did my Savior die for me because I believed
on Him? No; I was not then in existence; I had then
no being. Could the Savior, therefore, have died
because I had faith, when I myself was not yet born?
Could that have been possible? Could that have been
the origin of the Savior's love towards me? Oh! no;
my Savior died for me long before I believed.
"But," says someone, "He foresaw that you would
have faith; and, therefore, He loved you." What did
He foresee about my faith? Did He foresee that I
should get that faith myself, and that I should believe
on Him of myself? No; Christ could not foresee that,
because no Christian man will ever say that faith
came of itself without the gift and without the
working of the Holy Spirit. I have met with a great
many believers, and talked with them about this
matter; but I never knew one who could put his hand
on his heart, and say, "I believed in Jesus without the
assistance of the Holy Spirit."
I am bound to the doctrine of the depravity of
the human heart, because I find myself depraved in
heart, and have daily proofs that in my flesh there
dwelleth no good thing. If God enters into covenant
with unfallen man, man is so insignificant a creature
that it must be an act of gracious condescension on
the Lord's part; but if God enters into covenant with
sinful man, he is then so offensive a creature that it
must be, on God's part, an act of pure, free, rich,
sovereign grace. When the Lord entered into
covenant with me, I am sure that it was all of grace,
nothing else but grace. When I remember what a den
of unclean beasts and birds my heart was, and how
strong was my unrenewed will, how obstinate and
rebellious against the sovereignty of the Divine rule, I
always feel inclined to take the very lowest room in
my Father's house, and when I enter Heaven, it will
be to go among the less than the least of all saints,
and with the chief of sinners.
The late lamented Mr. Denham has put, at the
foot of his portrait, a most admirable text, "Salvation
is of the Lord." That is just an epitome of Calvinism;
it is the sum and substance of it. If anyone should
ask me what I mean by a Calvinist, I should reply,
"He is one who says, Salvation is of the Lord." I
cannot find in Scripture any other doctrine than this.
It is the essence of the Bible. "He only is my rock
and my salvation." Tell me anything contrary to this
truth, and it will be a heresy; tell me a heresy, and I
shall find its essence here, that it has departed from
this great, this fundamental, this rock-truth, "God is
my rock and my salvation." What is the heresy of
Rome, but the addition of something to the perfect
merits of Jesus Christ—the bringing in of the works
of the flesh, to assist in our justification? And what is
the heresy of Arminianism but the addition of
something to the work of the Redeemer? Every
heresy, if brought to the touchstone, will discover
itself here. I have my own private opinion that there
is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him
crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called
Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism;
Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not
believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not
preach justification by faith, without works; nor
unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His
dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the
electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable,
conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can
preach the gospel, unless we base it upon the special
and particular redemption of His elect and chosen
people which Christ wrought out upon the cross; nor
can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall
away after they are called, and suffers the children of
God to be burned in the fires of damnation after
having once believed in Jesus. Such a gospel I abhor.
"If ever it should come to pass,
That sheep of Christ might fall away,
My fickle, feeble soul, alas!
Would fall a thousand times a day."
If one dear saint of God had perished, so might all; if
one of the covenant ones be lost, so may all be; and
then there is no gospel promise true, but the Bible is
a lie, and there is nothing in it worth my acceptance.
I will be an infidel at once when I can believe that a
saint of God can ever fall finally. If God hath loved
me once, then He will love me for ever. God has a
master-mind; He arranged everything in His gigantic
intellect long before He did it; and once having
settled it, He never alters it, "This shall be done,"
saith He, and the iron hand of destiny marks it down,
and it is brought to pass. "This is My purpose," and
it stands, nor can earth or hell alter it. "This is My
decree," saith He, "promulgate it, ye holy angels;
rend it down from the gate of Heaven, ye devils, if
ye can; but ye cannot alter the decree, it shall stand
for ever." God altereth not His plans; why should
He? He is Almighty, and therefore can perform His
pleasure. Why should He? He is the All-wise, and
therefore cannot have planned wrongly. Why should
He? He is the everlasting God, and therefore cannot
die before His plan is accomplished. Why should He
change? Ye worthless atoms of earth, ephemera of a
day, ye creeping insects upon this bay-leaf of
existence, ye may change your plans, but He shall
never, never change His. Has He told me that His
plan is to save me? If so, I am for ever safe.
"My name from the palms of His hands
Eternity will not erase;
Impressed on His heart it remains,
In marks of indelible grace."
I do not know how some people, who believe
that a Christian can fall from grace, manage to be
happy. It must be a very commendable thing in them
to be able to get through a day without despair. If I
did not believe the doctrine of the final perseverance
of the saints, I think I should be of all men the most
miserable, because I should lack any ground of
comfort. I could not say, whatever state of heart I
came into, that I should be like a well-spring of
water, whose stream fails not; I should rather have to
take the comparison of an intermittent spring, that
might stop on a sudden, or a reservoir, which I had
no reason to expect would always be full. I believe
that the happiest of Christians and the truest of
Christians are those who never dare to doubt God,
but who take His Word simply as it stands, and
believe it, and ask no questions, just feeling assured
that if God has said it, it will be so. I bear my willing
testimony that I have no reason, nor even the
shadow of a reason, to doubt my Lord, and I
challenge Heaven, and earth, and hell, to bring any
proof that God is untrue. From the depths of hell I
call the fiends, and from this earth I call the tried and
afflicted believers, and to Heaven I appeal, and
challenge the long experience of the blood-washed
host, and there is not to be found in the three realms
a single person who can bear witness to one fact
which can disprove the faithfulness of God, or
weaken His claim to be trusted by His servants.
There are many things that may or may not happen,
but this I know shall happen—
"He shall present my soul,
Unblemished and complete,
Before the glory of His face,
With joys divinely great."
All the purposes of man have been defeated, but not
the purposes of God. The promises of man may be
broken—many of them are made to be broken—but
the promises of God shall all be fulfilled. He is a
promise-maker, but He never was a
promise-breaker; He is a promise-keeping God, and
every one of His people shall prove it to be so. This
is my grateful, personal confidence, "The Lord will
perfect that which concerneth me"—unworthy me,
lost and ruined me. He will yet save me; and—
"I, among the blood-washed throng,
Shall wave the palm, and wear the crown,
And shout loud victory."
I go to a land which the plough of earth hath never
upturned, where it is greener than earth's best
pastures, and richer than her most abundant harvests
ever saw. I go to a building of more gorgeous
architecture than man hath ever builded; it is not of
mortal design; it is "a building of God, a house not
made with hands, eternal in the Heavens." All I shall
know and enjoy in Heaven, will be given to me by
the Lord, and I shall say, when at last I appear
before Him—
"Grace all the work shall crown
Through everlasting days;
It lays in Heaven the topmost stone,
And well deserves the praise."
I know there are some who think it necessary to
their system of theology to limit the merit of the
blood of Jesus: if my theological system needed such
a limitation, I would cast it to the winds. I cannot, I
dare not allow the thought to find a lodging in my
mind, it seems so near akin to blasphemy. In Christ's
finished work I see an ocean of merit; my plummet
finds no bottom, my eye discovers no shore. There
must be sufficient efficacy in the blood of Christ, if
God had so willed it, to have saved not only all in
this world, but all in ten thousand worlds, had they
transgressed their Maker's law. Once admit infinity
into the matter, and limit is out of the question.
Having a Divine Person for an offering, it is not
consistent to conceive of limited value; bound and
measure are terms inapplicable to the Divine
sacrifice. The intent of the Divine purpose fixes the
application of the infinite offering, but does not
change it into a finite work. Think of the numbers
upon whom God has bestowed His grace already.
Think of the countless hosts in Heaven: if thou wert
introduced there to-day, thou wouldst find it as easy
to tell the stars, or the sands of the sea, as to count
the multitudes that are before the throne even now.
They have come from the East, and from the West,
from the North, and from the South, and they are
sitting down with Abraham, and with Isaac, and with
Jacob in the Kingdom of God; and beside those in
Heaven, think of the saved ones on earth. Blessed be
God, His elect on earth are to be counted by
millions, I believe, and the days are coming, brighter
days than these, when there shall be multitudes upon
multitudes brought to know the Savior, and to
rejoice in Him. The Father's love is not for a few
only, but for an exceeding great company. "A great
multitude, which no man could number," will be
found in Heaven. A man can reckon up to very high
figures; set to work your Newtons, your mightiest
calculators, and they can count great numbers, but
God and God alone can tell the multitude of His
redeemed. I believe there will be more in Heaven
than in hell. If anyone asks me why I think so, I
answer, because Christ, in everything, is to "have the
pre-eminence," and I cannot conceive how He could
have the pre-eminence if there are to be more in the
dominions of Satan than in Paradise. Moreover, I
have never read that there is to be in hell a great
multitude, which no man could number. I rejoice to
know that the souls of all infants, as soon as they
die, speed their way to Paradise. Think what a
multitude there is of them! Then there are already in
Heaven unnumbered myriads of the spirits of just
men made perfect—the redeemed of all nations, and
kindreds, and people, and tongues up till now; and
there are better times coming, when the religion of
Christ shall be universal; when—
"He shall reign from pole to pole,
With illimitable sway;"
when whole kingdoms shall bow down before Him,
and nations shall be born in a day, and in the
thousand years of the great millennial state there will
be enough saved to make up all the deficiencies of
the thousands of years that have gone before. Christ
shall be Master everywhere, and His praise shall be
pre-eminence at last; His train shall be far larger than
that which shall attend the chariot of the grim
monarch of hell.
Some persons love the doctrine of universal
atonement because they say, "It is so beautiful. It is a
lovely idea that Christ should have died for all men;
it commends itself," they say, "to the instincts of
humanity; there is something in it full of joy and
beauty." I admit there is, but beauty may be often
associated with falsehood. There is much which I
might admire in the theory of universal redemption,
but I will just show what the supposition necessarily
involves. If Christ on His cross intended to save
every man, then He intended to save those who were
lost before He died. If the doctrine be true, that He
died for all men, then He died for some who were in
hell before He came into this world, for doubtless
there were even then myriads there who had been
cast away because of their sins. Once again, if it was
Christ's intention to save all men, how deplorably has
He been disappointed, for we have His own
testimony that there is a lake which burneth with fire
and brimstone, and into that pit of woe have been
cast some of the very persons who, according to the
theory of universal redemption, were bought with
His blood. That seems to me a conception a
thousand times more repulsive than any of those
consequences which are said to be associated with
the Calvinistic and Christian doctrine of special and
particular redemption. To think that my Savior died
for men who were or are in hell, seems a supposition
too horrible for me to entertain. To imagine for a
moment that He was the Substitute for all the sons of
men, and that God, having first punished the
Substitute, afterwards punished the sinners
themselves, seems to conflict with all my ideas of
Divine justice. That Christ should offer an atonement
and satisfaction for the sins of all men, and that
afterwards some of those very men should be
punished for the sins for which Christ had already
atoned, appears to me to be the most monstrous
iniquity that could ever have been imputed to Saturn,
to Janus, to the goddess of the Thugs, or to the most
diabolical heathen deities. God forbid that we should
ever think thus of Jehovah, the just and wise and
good!
There is no soul living who holds more firmly to
the doctrines of grace than I do, and if any man asks
me whether I am ashamed to be called a Calvinist, I
answer—I wish to be called nothing but a Christian;
but if you ask me, do I hold the doctrinal views
which were held by John Calvin, I reply, I do in the
main hold them, and rejoice to avow it. But far be it
from me even to imagine that Zion contains none but
Calvinistic Christians within her walls, or that there
are none saved who do not hold our views. Most
atrocious things have been spoken about the
character and spiritual condition of John Wesley, the
modern prince of Arminians. I can only say
concerning him that, while I detest many of the
doctrines which he preached, yet for the man himself
I have a reverence second to no Wesleyan; and if
there were wanted two apostles to be added to the
number of the twelve, I do not believe that there
could be found two men more fit to be so added than
George Whitefield and John Wesley. The character
of John Wesley stands beyond all imputation for
self-sacrifice, zeal, holiness, and communion with
God; he lived far above the ordinary level of
common Christians, and was one "of whom the
world was not worthy." I believe there are multitudes
of men who cannot see these truths, or, at least,
cannot see them in the way in which we put them,
who nevertheless have received Christ as their
Savior, and are as dear to the heart of the God of
grace as the soundest Calvinist in or out of Heaven.
I do not think I differ from any of my
Hyper-Calvinistic brethren in what I do believe, but I
differ from them in what they do not believe. I do
not hold any less than they do, but I hold a little
more, and, I think, a little more of the truth revealed
in the Scriptures. Not only are there a few cardinal
doctrines, by which we can steer our ship North,
South, East, or West, but as we study the Word, we
shall begin to learn something about the North-west
and North-east, and all else that lies between the four
cardinal points. The system of truth revealed in the
Scriptures is not simply one straight line, but two;
and no man will ever get a right view of the gospel
until he knows how to look at the two lines at once.
For instance, I read in one Book of the Bible, "The
Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that
heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come.
And whosoever will, let him take the water of life
freely." Yet I am taught, in another part of the same
inspired Word, that "it is not of him that willeth, nor
of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth
mercy." I see, in one place, God in providence
presiding over all, and yet I see, and I cannot help
seeing, that man acts as he pleases, and that God has
left his actions, in a great measure, to his own
free-will. Now, if I were to declare that man was so
free to act that there was no control of God over his
actions, I should be driven very near to atheism; and
if, on the other hand, I should declare that God so
over-rules all things that man is not free enough to be
responsible, I should be driven at once into
Antinomianism or fatalism. That God predestines,
and yet that man is responsible, are two facts that
few can see clearly. They are believed to be
inconsistent and contradictory to each other. If, then,
I find taught in one part of the Bible that everything
is fore-ordained, that is true; and if I find, in another
Scripture, that man is responsible for all his actions,
that is true; and it is only my folly that leads me to
imagine that these two truths can ever contradict
each other. I do not believe they can ever be welded
into one upon any earthly anvil, but they certainly
shall be one in eternity. They are two lines that are
so nearly parallel, that the human mind which
pursues them farthest will never discover that they
converge, but they do converge, and they will meet
somewhere in eternity, close to the throne of God,
whence all truth doth spring.
It is often said that the doctrines we believe have
a tendency to lead us to sin. I have heard it asserted
most positively, that those high doctrines which we
love, and which we find in the Scriptures, are
licentious ones. I do not know who will have the
hardihood to make that assertion, when they
consider that the holiest of men have been believers
in them. I ask the man who dares to say that
Calvinism is a licentious religion, what he thinks of
the character of Augustine, or Calvin, or Whitefield,
who in successive ages were the great exponents of
the system of grace; or what will he say of the
Puritans, whose works are full of them? Had a man
been an Arminian in those days, he would have been
accounted the vilest heretic breathing, but now we
are looked upon as the heretics, and they as the
orthodox. We have gone back to the old school; we
can trace our descent from the apostles. It is that
vein of free-grace, running through the sermonizing
of Baptists, which has saved us as a denomination.
Were it not for that, we should not stand where we
are today. We can run a golden line up to Jesus
Christ Himself, through a holy succession of mighty
fathers, who all held these glorious truths; and we
can ask concerning them, "Where will you find holier
and better men in the world?" No doctrine is so
calculated to preserve a man from sin as the doctrine
of the grace of God. Those who have called it "a
licentious doctrine" did not know anything at all
about it. Poor ignorant things, they little knew that
their own vile stuff was the most licentious doctrine
under Heaven. If they knew the grace of God in
truth, they would soon see that there was no
preservative from lying like a knowledge that we are
elect of God from the foundation of the world. There
is nothing like a belief in my eternal perseverance,
and the immutability of my Father's affection, which
can keep me near to Him from a motive of simple
gratitude. Nothing makes a man so virtuous as belief
of the truth. A lying doctrine will soon beget a lying
practice. A man cannot have an erroneous belief
without by-and-by having an erroneous life. I believe
the one thing naturally begets the other. Of all men,
those have the most disinterested piety, the sublimest
reverence, the most ardent devotion, who believe
that they are saved by grace, without works, through
faith, and that not of themselves, it is the gift of God.
Christians should take heed, and see that it always is
so, lest by any means Christ should be crucified
afresh, and put to an open shame.
Augustine preached, that Paul preached,
is the truth that I must preach to-day, or
else be false to my conscience and my
God. I cannot shape the truth; I know of
no such thing as paring off the rough
edges of a doctrine. John Knox's gospel
is my gospel. That which thundered
through Scotland must thunder through
England again.
TIS A GREAT THING to begin the Christian
life by believing good solid doctrine. Some
people have received twenty different
"gospels" in as many years; how many more
they will accept before they get to their journey's
end, it would be difficult to predict. I thank God that
He early taught me the gospel, and I have been so
perfectly satisfied with it, that I do not want to know
any other. Constant change of creed is sure loss. If a
tree has to be taken up two or three times a year,
you will not need to build a very large loft in which
to store the apples. When people are always shifting
their doctrinal principles, they are not likely to bring
forth much fruit to the glory of God. It is good for
young believers to begin with a firm hold upon those
great fundamental doctrines which the Lord has
taught in His Word. Why, if I believed what some
preach about the temporary, trumpery salvation
which only lasts for a time, I would scarcely be at all
grateful for it; but when I know that those whom
God saves He saves with an everlasting salvation,
when I know that He gives to them an everlasting
righteousness, when I know that He settles them on
an everlasting foundation of everlasting love, and that
He will bring them to His everlasting kingdom, oh,
then I do wonder, and I am astonished that such a
blessing as this should ever have been given to me!
"Pause, my soul! adore, and wonder!
Ask, 'Oh, why such love to me?'
Grace hath put me in the number
Of the Savior's family:
Hallelujah!
Thanks, eternal thanks, to Thee!"
I suppose there are some persons whose minds
naturally incline towards the doctrine of free-will. I
can only say that mine inclines as naturally towards
the doctrines of sovereign grace. Sometimes, when I
see some of the worst characters in the street, I feel
as if my heart must burst forth in tears of gratitude
that God has never let me act as they have done! I
have thought, if God had left me alone, and had not
touched me by His grace, what a great sinner I
should have been! I should have run to the utmost
lengths of sin, dived into the very depths of evil, nor
should I have stopped at any vice or folly, if God
had not restrained me. I feel that I should have been
a very king of sinners, if God had let me alone. I
cannot understand the reason why I am saved,
except upon the ground that God would have it so. I
cannot, if I look ever so earnestly, discover any kind
of reason in myself why I should be a partaker of
Divine grace. If I am not at this moment without
Christ, it is only because Christ Jesus would have His
will with me, and that will was that I should be with
Him where He is, and should share His glory. I can
put the crown nowhere but upon the head of Him
whose mighty grace has saved me from going down
into the pit. Looking back on my past life, I can see
that the dawning of it all was of God; of God
effectively. I took no torch with which to light the
sun, but the sun enlightened me. I did not commence
my spiritual life—no, I rather kicked, and struggled
against the things of the Spirit: when He drew me,
for a time I did not run after Him: there was a natural
hatred in my soul of everything holy and good.
Wooings were lost upon me—warnings were cast to
the wind—thunders were despised; and as for the
whispers of His love, they were rejected as being less
than nothing and vanity. But, sure I am, I can say
now, speaking on behalf of myself, "He only is my
salvation." It was He who turned my heart, and
brought me down on my knees before Him. I can in
very deed, say with Doddridge and Toplady—
"Grace taught my soul to pray,
And made my eyes o'erflow;"
and coming to this moment, I can add—
"'Tis grace has kept me to this day,
And will not let me go."
Well can I remember the manner in which I
learned the doctrines of grace in a single instant.
Born, as all of us are by nature, an Arminian, I still
believed the old things I had heard continually from
the pulpit, and did not see the grace of God. When I
was coming to Christ, I thought I was doing it all
myself, and though I sought the Lord earnestly, I had
no idea the Lord was seeking me. I do not think the
young convert is at first aware of this. I can recall the
very day and hour when first I received those truths
in my own soul—when they were, as John Bunyan
says, burnt into my heart as with a hot iron, and I
can recollect how I felt that I had grown on a sudden
from a babe into a man—that I had made progress in
Scriptural knowledge, through having found, once
for all, the clue to the truth of God. One week-night,
when I was sitting in the house of God, I was not
thinking much about the preacher's sermon, for I did
not believe it. The thought struck me, How did you
come to be a Christian? I sought the Lord. But how
did you come to seek the Lord? The truth flashed
across my mind in a moment—I should not have
sought Him unless there had been some previous
influence in my mind to make me seek Him. I
prayed, thought I, but then I asked myself, How
came I to pray? I was induced to pray by reading the
Scriptures. How came I to read the Scriptures? I did
read them, but what led me to do so? Then, in a
moment, I saw that God was at the bottom of it all,
and that He was the Author of my faith, and so the
whole doctrine of grace opened up to me, and from
that doctrine I have not departed to this day, and I
desire to make this my constant confession, "I
ascribe my change wholly to God."
I once attended a service where the text
happened to be, "He shall choose our inheritance for
us;" and the good man who occupied the pulpit was
more than a little of an Arminian. Therefore, when
he commenced, he said, "This passage refers entirely
to our temporal inheritance, it has nothing whatever
to do with our everlasting destiny, for," said he, "we
do not want Christ to choose for us in the matter of
Heaven or hell. It is so plain and easy, that every
man who has a grain of common sense will choose
Heaven, and any person would know better than to
choose hell. We have no need of any superior
intelligence, or any greater Being, to choose Heaven
or hell for us. It is left to our own free-will, and we
have enough wisdom given us, sufficiently correct
means to judge for ourselves," and therefore, as he
very logically inferred, there was no necessity for
Jesus Christ, or anyone, to make a choice for us. We
could choose the inheritance for ourselves without
any assistance. "Ah!" I thought, "but, my good
brother, it may be very true that we could, but I
think we should want something more than common
sense before we should choose aright."
First, let me ask, must we not all of us admit an
over-ruling Providence, and the appointment of
Jehovah's hand, as to the means whereby we came
into this world? Those men who think that,
afterwards, we are left to our own free-will to choose
this one or the other to direct our steps, must admit
that our entrance into the world was not of our own
will, but that God had then to choose for us. What
circumstances were those in our power which led us
to elect certain persons to be our parents? Had we
anything to do with it? Did not God Himself appoint
our parents, native place, and friends? Could He not
have caused me to be born with the skin of the
Hottentot, brought forth by a filthy mother who
would nurse me in her "kraal," and teach me to bow
down to Pagan gods, quite as easily as to have given
me a pious mother, who would each morning and
night bend her knee in prayer on my behalf? Or,
might He not, if He had pleased, have given me
some profligate to have been my parent, from whose
lips I might have early heard fearful, filthy, and
obscene language? Might He not have placed me
where I should have had a drunken father, who
would have immured me in a very dungeon of
ignorance, and brought me up in the chains of crime?
Was it not God's Providence that I had so happy a
lot, that both my parents were His children, and
endeavored to train me up in the fear of the Lord?
John Newton used to tell a whimsical story, and
laugh at it, too, of a good woman who said, in order
to prove the doctrine of election, "Ah! sir, the Lord
must have loved me before I was born, or else He
would not have seen anything in me to love
afterwards." I am sure it is true in my case; I believe
the doctrine of election, because I am quite certain
that, if God had not chosen me, I should never have
chosen Him; and I am sure He chose me before I
was born, or else He never would have chosen me
afterwards; and He must have elected me for reasons
unknown to me, for I never could find any reason in
myself why He should have looked upon me with
special love. So I am forced to accept that great
Biblical doctrine. I recollect an Arminian brother
telling me that he had read the Scriptures through a
score or more times, and could never find the
doctrine of election in them. He added that he was
sure he would have done so if it had been there, for
he read the Word on his knees. I said to him, "I think
you read the Bible in a very uncomfortable posture,
and if you had read it in your easy chair, you would
have been more likely to understand it. Pray, by all
means, and the more, the better, but it is a piece of
superstition to think there is anything in the posture
in which a man puts himself for reading: and as to
reading through the Bible twenty times without
having found anything about the doctrine of election,
the wonder is that you found anything at all: you
must have galloped through it at such a rate that you
were not likely to have any intelligible idea of the
meaning of the Scriptures."
If it would be marvelous to see one river leap up
from the earth full-grown, what would it be to gaze
upon a vast spring from which all the rivers of the
earth should at once come bubbling up, a million of
them born at a birth? What a vision would it be!
Who can conceive it. And yet the love of God is that
fountain, from which all the rivers of mercy, which
have ever gladdened our race—all the rivers of grace
in time, and of glory hereafter—take their rise. My
soul, stand thou at that sacred fountain-head, and
adore and magnify, for ever and ever, God, even our
Father, who hath loved us! In the very beginning,
when this great universe lay in the mind of God, like
unborn forests in the acorn cup; long ere the echoes
awoke the solitudes; before the mountains were
brought forth; and long ere the light flashed through
the sky, God loved His chosen creatures. Before
there was any created being—when the ether was
not fanned by an angel's wing, when space itself had
not an existence, when there was nothing save God
alone—even then, in that loneliness of Deity, and in
that deep quiet and profundity, His bowels moved
with love for His chosen. Their names were written
on His heart, and then were they dear to His soul.
Jesus loved His people before the foundation of the
world—even from eternity! and when He called me
by His grace, He said to me, "I have loved thee with
an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness
have I drawn thee."
Then, in the fullness of time, He purchased me
with His blood; He let His heart run out in one deep
gaping wound for me long ere I loved Him. Yea,
when He first came to me, did I not spurn Him?
When He knocked at the door, and asked for
entrance, did I not drive Him away, and do despite
to His grace? Ah, I can remember that I full often did
so until, at last, by the power of His effectual grace,
He said, "I must, I will come in;" and then He turned
my heart, and made me love Him. But even till now
I should have resisted Him, had it not been for His
grace. Well, then since He purchased me when I was
dead in sins, does it not follow, as a consequence
necessary and logical, that He must have loved me
first? Did my Savior die for me because I believed
on Him? No; I was not then in existence; I had then
no being. Could the Savior, therefore, have died
because I had faith, when I myself was not yet born?
Could that have been possible? Could that have been
the origin of the Savior's love towards me? Oh! no;
my Savior died for me long before I believed.
"But," says someone, "He foresaw that you would
have faith; and, therefore, He loved you." What did
He foresee about my faith? Did He foresee that I
should get that faith myself, and that I should believe
on Him of myself? No; Christ could not foresee that,
because no Christian man will ever say that faith
came of itself without the gift and without the
working of the Holy Spirit. I have met with a great
many believers, and talked with them about this
matter; but I never knew one who could put his hand
on his heart, and say, "I believed in Jesus without the
assistance of the Holy Spirit."
I am bound to the doctrine of the depravity of
the human heart, because I find myself depraved in
heart, and have daily proofs that in my flesh there
dwelleth no good thing. If God enters into covenant
with unfallen man, man is so insignificant a creature
that it must be an act of gracious condescension on
the Lord's part; but if God enters into covenant with
sinful man, he is then so offensive a creature that it
must be, on God's part, an act of pure, free, rich,
sovereign grace. When the Lord entered into
covenant with me, I am sure that it was all of grace,
nothing else but grace. When I remember what a den
of unclean beasts and birds my heart was, and how
strong was my unrenewed will, how obstinate and
rebellious against the sovereignty of the Divine rule, I
always feel inclined to take the very lowest room in
my Father's house, and when I enter Heaven, it will
be to go among the less than the least of all saints,
and with the chief of sinners.
The late lamented Mr. Denham has put, at the
foot of his portrait, a most admirable text, "Salvation
is of the Lord." That is just an epitome of Calvinism;
it is the sum and substance of it. If anyone should
ask me what I mean by a Calvinist, I should reply,
"He is one who says, Salvation is of the Lord." I
cannot find in Scripture any other doctrine than this.
It is the essence of the Bible. "He only is my rock
and my salvation." Tell me anything contrary to this
truth, and it will be a heresy; tell me a heresy, and I
shall find its essence here, that it has departed from
this great, this fundamental, this rock-truth, "God is
my rock and my salvation." What is the heresy of
Rome, but the addition of something to the perfect
merits of Jesus Christ—the bringing in of the works
of the flesh, to assist in our justification? And what is
the heresy of Arminianism but the addition of
something to the work of the Redeemer? Every
heresy, if brought to the touchstone, will discover
itself here. I have my own private opinion that there
is no such thing as preaching Christ and Him
crucified, unless we preach what nowadays is called
Calvinism. It is a nickname to call it Calvinism;
Calvinism is the gospel, and nothing else. I do not
believe we can preach the gospel, if we do not
preach justification by faith, without works; nor
unless we preach the sovereignty of God in His
dispensation of grace; nor unless we exalt the
electing, unchangeable, eternal, immutable,
conquering love of Jehovah; nor do I think we can
preach the gospel, unless we base it upon the special
and particular redemption of His elect and chosen
people which Christ wrought out upon the cross; nor
can I comprehend a gospel which lets saints fall
away after they are called, and suffers the children of
God to be burned in the fires of damnation after
having once believed in Jesus. Such a gospel I abhor.
"If ever it should come to pass,
That sheep of Christ might fall away,
My fickle, feeble soul, alas!
Would fall a thousand times a day."
If one dear saint of God had perished, so might all; if
one of the covenant ones be lost, so may all be; and
then there is no gospel promise true, but the Bible is
a lie, and there is nothing in it worth my acceptance.
I will be an infidel at once when I can believe that a
saint of God can ever fall finally. If God hath loved
me once, then He will love me for ever. God has a
master-mind; He arranged everything in His gigantic
intellect long before He did it; and once having
settled it, He never alters it, "This shall be done,"
saith He, and the iron hand of destiny marks it down,
and it is brought to pass. "This is My purpose," and
it stands, nor can earth or hell alter it. "This is My
decree," saith He, "promulgate it, ye holy angels;
rend it down from the gate of Heaven, ye devils, if
ye can; but ye cannot alter the decree, it shall stand
for ever." God altereth not His plans; why should
He? He is Almighty, and therefore can perform His
pleasure. Why should He? He is the All-wise, and
therefore cannot have planned wrongly. Why should
He? He is the everlasting God, and therefore cannot
die before His plan is accomplished. Why should He
change? Ye worthless atoms of earth, ephemera of a
day, ye creeping insects upon this bay-leaf of
existence, ye may change your plans, but He shall
never, never change His. Has He told me that His
plan is to save me? If so, I am for ever safe.
"My name from the palms of His hands
Eternity will not erase;
Impressed on His heart remains,
in marks of indelible grace."
I do not know how some people, who believe
that a Christian can fall from grace, manage to be
happy. It must be a very commendable thing in them
to be able to get through a day without despair. If I
did not believe the doctrine of the final perseverance
of the saints, I think I should be of all men the most
miserable, because I should lack any ground of
comfort. I could not say, whatever state of heart I
came into, that I should be like a well-spring of
water, whose stream fails not; I should rather have to
take the comparison of an intermittent spring, that
might stop on a sudden, or a reservoir, which I had
no reason to expect would always be full. I believe
that the happiest of Christians and the truest of
Christians are those who never dare to doubt God,
but who take His Word simply as it stands, and
believe it, and ask no questions, just feeling assured
that if God has said it, it will be so. I bear my willing
testimony that I have no reason, nor even the
shadow of a reason, to doubt my Lord, and I
challenge Heaven, and earth, and hell, to bring any
proof that God is untrue. From the depths of hell I
call the fiends, and from this earth I call the tried and
afflicted believers, and to Heaven I appeal, and
challenge the long experience of the blood-washed
host, and there is not to be found in the three realms
a single person who can bear witness to one fact
which can disprove the faithfulness of God, or
weaken His claim to be trusted by His servants.
There are many things that may or may not happen,
but this I know shall happen—
"He shall present my soul,
Unblemished and complete,
Before the glory of His face,
With joys divinely great."
All the purposes of man have been defeated, but not
the purposes of God. The promises of man may be
broken—many of them are made to be broken—but
the promises of God shall all be fulfilled. He is a
promise-maker, but He never was a
promise-breaker; He is a promise-keeping God, and
every one of His people shall prove it to be so. This
is my grateful, personal confidence, "The Lord will
perfect that which concerneth me"—unworthy me,
lost and ruined me. He will yet save me; and—
"I, among the blood-washed throng,
Shall wave the palm, and wear the crown,
And shout loud victory."
I go to a land which the plough of earth hath never
upturned, where it is greener than earth's best
pastures, and richer than her most abundant harvests
ever saw. I go to a building of more gorgeous
architecture than man hath ever builded; it is not of
mortal design; it is "a building of God, a house not
made with hands, eternal in the Heavens." All I shall
know and enjoy in Heaven, will be given to me by
the Lord, and I shall say, when at last I appear
before Him—
"Grace all the work shall crown
Through everlasting days;
It lays in Heaven the topmost stone,
And well deserves the praise."
I know there are some who think it necessary to
their system of theology to limit the merit of the
blood of Jesus: if my theological system needed such
a limitation, I would cast it to the winds. I cannot, I
dare not allow the thought to find a lodging in my
mind, it seems so near akin to blasphemy. In Christ's
finished work I see an ocean of merit; my plummet
finds no bottom, my eye discovers no shore. There
must be sufficient efficacy in the blood of Christ, if
God had so willed it, to have saved not only all in
this world, but all in ten thousand worlds, had they
transgressed their Maker's law. Once admit infinity
into the matter, and limit is out of the question.
Having a Divine Person for an offering, it is not
consistent to conceive of limited value; bound and
measure are terms inapplicable to the Divine
sacrifice. The intent of the Divine purpose fixes the
application of the infinite offering, but does not
change it into a finite work. Think of the numbers
upon whom God has bestowed His grace already.
Think of the countless hosts in Heaven: if thou wert
introduced there to-day, thou wouldst find it as easy
to tell the stars, or the sands of the sea, as to count
the multitudes that are before the throne even now.
They have come from the East, and from the West,
from the North, and from the South, and they are
sitting down with Abraham, and with Isaac, and with
Jacob in the Kingdom of God; and beside those in
Heaven, think of the saved ones on earth. Blessed be
God, His elect on earth are to be counted by
millions, I believe, and the days are coming, brighter
days than these, when there shall be multitudes upon
multitudes brought to know the Savior, and to
rejoice in Him. The Father's love is not for a few
only, but for an exceeding great company. "A great
multitude, which no man could number," will be
found in Heaven. A man can reckon up to very high
figures; set to work your Newtons, your mightiest
calculators, and they can count great numbers, but
God and God alone can tell the multitude of His
redeemed. I believe there will be more in Heaven
than in hell. If anyone asks me why I think so, I
answer, because Christ, in everything, is to "have the
pre-eminence," and I cannot conceive how He could
have the pre-eminence if there are to be more in the
dominions of Satan than in Paradise. Moreover, I
have never read that there is to be in hell a great
multitude, which no man could number. I rejoice to
know that the souls of all infants, as soon as they
die, speed their way to Paradise. Think what a
multitude there is of them! Then there are already in
Heaven unnumbered myriads of the spirits of just
men made perfect—the redeemed of all nations, and
kindreds, and people, and tongues up till now; and
there are better times coming, when the religion of
Christ shall be universal; when—
"He shall reign from pole to pole,
With illimitable sway;"
when whole kingdoms shall bow down before Him,
and nations shall be born in a day, and in the
thousand years of the great millennial state there will
be enough saved to make up all the deficiencies of
the thousands of years that have gone before. Christ
shall be Master everywhere, and His praise shall be
sounded in every land. Christ shall have the
pre-eminence at last; His train shall be far larger than
that which shall attend the chariot of the grim
monarch of hell.
Some persons love the doctrine of universal
atonement because they say, "It is so beautiful. It is a
lovely idea that Christ should have died for all men;
it commends itself," they say, "to the instincts of
humanity; there is something in it full of joy and
beauty." I admit there is, but beauty may be often
associated with falsehood. There is much which I
might admire in the theory of universal redemption,
but I will just show what the supposition necessarily
involves. If Christ on His cross intended to save
every man, then He intended to save those who were
lost before He died. If the doctrine be true, that He
died for all men, then He died for some who were in
hell before He came into this world, for doubtless
there were even then myriads there who had been
cast away because of their sins. Once again, if it was
Christ's intention to save all men, how deplorably has
He been disappointed, for we have His own
testimony that there is a lake which burneth with fire
and brimstone, and into that pit of woe have been
cast some of the very persons who, according to the
theory of universal redemption, were bought with
His blood. That seems to me a conception a
thousand times more repulsive than any of those
consequences which are said to be associated with
the Calvinistic and Christian doctrine of special and
particular redemption. To think that my Savior died
for men who were or are in hell, seems a supposition
too horrible for me to entertain. To imagine for a
moment that He was the Substitute for all the sons of
men, and that God, having first punished the
Substitute, afterwards punished the sinners
themselves, seems to conflict with all my ideas of
Divine justice. That Christ should offer an atonement
and satisfaction for the sins of all men, and that
afterwards some of those very men should be
punished for the sins for which Christ had already
atoned, appears to me to be the most monstrous
iniquity that could ever have been imputed to Saturn,
to Janus, to the goddess of the Thugs, or to the most
diabolical heathen deities. God forbid that we should
ever think thus of Jehovah, the just and wise and
good!
There is no soul living who holds more firmly to
the doctrines of grace than I do, and if any man asks
me whether I am ashamed to be called a Calvinist, I
answer—I wish to be called nothing but a Christian;
but if you ask me, do I hold the doctrinal views
which were held by John Calvin, I reply, I do in the
main hold them, and rejoice to avow it. But far be it
from me even to imagine that Zion contains none but
Calvinistic Christians within her walls, or that there
are none saved who do not hold our views. Most
atrocious things have been spoken about the
character and spiritual condition of John Wesley, the
modern prince of Arminians. I can only say
concerning him that, while I detest many of the
doctrines which he preached, yet for the man himself
I have a reverence second to no Wesleyan; and if
there were wanted two apostles to be added to the
number of the twelve, I do not believe that there
could be found two men more fit to be so added than
George Whitefield and John Wesley. The character
of John Wesley stands beyond all imputation for
self-sacrifice, zeal, holiness, and communion with
God; he lived far above the ordinary level of
common Christians, and was one "of whom the
world was not worthy." I believe there are multitudes
of men who cannot see these truths, or, at least,
cannot see them in the way in which we put them,
who nevertheless have received Christ as their
Savior, and are as dear to the heart of the God of
grace as the soundest Calvinist in or out of Heaven.
I do not think I differ from any of my
Hyper-Calvinistic brethren in what I do believe, but I
differ from them in what they do not believe. I do
not hold any less than they do, but I hold a little
more, and, I think, a little more of the truth revealed
in the Scriptures. Not only are there a few cardinal
doctrines, by which we can steer our ship North,
South, East, or West, but as we study the Word, we
shall begin to learn something about the North-west
and North-east, and all else that lies between the four
cardinal points. The system of truth revealed in the
Scriptures is not simply one straight line, but two;
and no man will ever get a right view of the gospel
until he knows how to look at the two lines at once.
For instance, I read in one Book of the Bible, "The
Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that
heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come.
And whosoever will, let him take the water of life
freely." Yet I am taught, in another part of the same
inspired Word, that "it is not of him that willeth, nor
of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth
mercy." I see, in one place, God in providence
presiding over all, and yet I see, and I cannot help
seeing, that man acts as he pleases, and that God has
left his actions, in a great measure, to his own
free-will. Now, if I were to declare that man was so
free to act that there was no control of God over his
actions, I should be driven very near to atheism; and
if, on the other hand, I should declare that God so
over-rules all things that man is not free enough to be
responsible, I should be driven at once into
Antinomianism or fatalism. That God predestines,
and yet that man is responsible, are two facts that
few can see clearly. They are believed to be
inconsistent and contradictory to each other. If, then,
I find taught in one part of the Bible that everything
is fore-ordained, that is true; and if I find, in another
Scripture, that man is responsible for all his actions,
that is true; and it is only my folly that leads me to
imagine that these two truths can ever contradict
each other. I do not believe they can ever be welded
into one upon any earthly anvil, but they certainly
shall be one in eternity. They are two lines that are
so nearly parallel, that the human mind which
pursues them farthest will never discover that they
converge, but they do converge, and they will meet
somewhere in eternity, close to the throne of God,
whence all truth doth spring.
It is often said that the doctrines we believe have
a tendency to lead us to sin. I have heard it asserted
most positively, that those high doctrines which we
love, and which we find in the Scriptures, are
licentious ones. I do not know who will have the
hardihood to make that assertion, when they
consider that the holiest of men have been believersv in them. I ask the man
who dares to say that
Calvinism is a licentious religion, what he thinks of
the character of Augustine, or Calvin, or Whitefield,
who in successive ages were the great exponents of
the system of grace; or what will he say of the
Puritans, whose works are full of them? Had a man
been an Arminian in those days, he would have been
accounted the vilest heretic breathing, but now we
are looked upon as the heretics, and they as the
orthodox. We have gone back to the old school; we
can trace our descent from the apostles. It is that
vein of free-grace, running through the sermonizing
of Baptists, which has saved us as a denomination.
Were it not for that, we should not stand where we
are today. We can run a golden line up to Jesus
Christ Himself, through a holy succession of mighty
fathers, who all held these glorious truths; and we
can ask concerning them, "Where will you find holier
and better men in the world?" No doctrine is so
calculated to preserve a man from sin as the doctrine
of the grace of God. Those who have called it "a
licentious doctrine" did not know anything at all
about it. Poor ignorant things, they little knew that
their own vile stuff was the most licentious doctrine
under Heaven. If they knew the grace of God in
truth, they would soon see that there was no
preservative from lying like a knowledge that we are
elect of God from the foundation of the world. There
is nothing like a belief in my eternal perseverance,
and the immutability of my Father's affection, which
can keep me near to Him from a motive of simple
gratitude. Nothing makes a man so virtuous as belief
of the truth. A lying doctrine will soon beget a lying
practice. A man cannot have an erroneous belief
without by-and-by having an erroneous life. I believe
the one thing naturally begets the other. Of all men,
those have the most disinterested piety, the sublimest
reverence, the most ardent devotion, who believe
that they are saved by grace, without works, through
faith, and that not of themselves, it is the gift of God.
Christians should take heed, and see that it always is
so, lest by any means Christ should be crucified
afresh, and put to an open shame.