plead the forcknowledge and designs of God as an excuse for doing nothing to secure his salvation. God as really knows whether you will sow and whether you will have a crop now and has from eternity as he ever will. He has either designed that you shall, or that you shall not have a crop this year, from all eternity; and it will infallibly be just as he has foreseen and designed. Yet you are really just as free to raise a crop or to neglect to do so as if he neither knew nor designed any thing about it.

The man who will stumble either at the doctrine of election or reprobation, as defined and maintained in these lectures, should, to be consistent, stumble at every thing that takes place and never try to accomplish any thing whatever; because the designs and the foreknowledge of God extend equally to every thing; and unless he has expressly revealed how it will be, we are left in the dark in respect to any event and are left to use means to accomplish what we desire or to prevent what we dread, as if God knew and designed nothing about it.

6. But it is objected that this is a discouraging doctrine and liable to be a stumbling block, and therefore should not be inculcated. I answer,

(1.) It is taught in the bible, and plainly follows also from the attributes of God as revealed in the reason. The scriptures that teach it are not less likely to be a snare and a stumbling block than are the definition and explanation of the doctrine.

(2.) The proper statement, explanation, and defense of the doctrines of election and reprobation, are important to a proper understanding of the nature and attributes of God.

(3.) The scriptures that teach these doctrines are often subjects of cavil and sometimes of real difficulty. Religious teachers should, therefore, state these doctrines and explain them so as to aid the inquirer after truth and stop the mouths of gainsayers.

(4.) Again, these doctrines have often been so misstated and perverted as to make them amount to an iron system of fatalism. Many souls have heard or read these perversions and greatly need to be enlightened upon the subject. It is therefore all the more important that these truths should find a place in religious instruction. Let them be understood, properly stated, explained, and defended, and they can no more be a stumbling block than the fact of God's omniscience can be so.

REMARKS.

1. The salvation of reprobates is impossible only because they make it so by their own wicked conduct.

2. God will turn the damnation of the reprobate to good account. In establishing his government, he foresaw that great evils would be incidental to it-that multitudes would sin, and persevere in rebellion, until they were lost, notwithstanding all that could consistently be done to save them. Yet he foresaw that a vastly greater good would result from the virtue and happiness of holy beings, and that he, also, could make a good use even of the punishment of the wicked. Here is an instance

of the Divine economy in turning every thing to the best account. I do not mean that the damnation of the wicked results in greater good than their salvation would if they would repent. If their salvation could be secured by any means that would consist with the highest good of the universe, it would be greatly to be preferred. But, as this can not be, he will do the best that the nature of the case admits. When he can not save them, he will, by their punishment, erect a monument to his justice, and lay its foundation deep in hell, and build it up to heaven, that being seen afar off in the smoke of their torment that ascendeth up forever and ever, it may ever stand as an affecting memento of the hatefulness and desert of sin.

3. It is very wicked and blasphemous to complain of God, when he has done the best that infinite wisdom, benevolence, and power could do. Who should complain? Surely not the elect; they have no reason to complain. Shall the reprobate complain, when he has actually forced upon God the necessity of giving up his government, or of sending him to hell?

4. Reprobates are bound to praise God. He has created and given you many blessings, sinner, and offers you eternal life; and will you refuse to praise him?

5. God has every reason to complain of you, sinner. How much good you might do! see how much good individuals have often done! Now, of all the good you might do, you rob God. While eternity rolls its everlasting rounds, on how many errands of love you might go, diffusing happiness to the utmost bounds of Jehovah's empire? But you refuse to obey him; you are in league with hell, and prefer to scatter firebrands, arrows, and death, to destroy your own soul, and lead others to perdition with you. You drive on in your ca

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reer, and help to set in motion all the elements of rebellion in earth and hell. Will you complain of God? He has rea-. son to complain of you. He is the injured party. He has created you, has held you in his hand, and fanned your heav ing lungs; and in return, you have breathed out your breath in rebellion and blasphemy and contempt of God, and compelled him to pronounce you reprobate.

6. There is reason to believe that there are many reprobates in the church. This is the probable history of many professors of religion. They had convictions of sin, and after a while their distress, more or less suddenly abated. If their distress had been considerable, if the Spirit left them, their minds would naturally go toward the opposite extreme. When their convictions left them, they thought, perhaps, this was conversion; this very perhaps created a sensation of pleasure, and the thought that this felt pleasure was evidence that they were converted, would naturally increase their confidence. As their confidence increased, their joy at the thought of being saved would be increased. This selfish joy has been the foundation upon which they have built their hopes for eternity; and now you see them in the church, transacting business upon worldly principles, pleading for sin, and finding a thousand apologies for conformity to the world. They live on in sin, perhaps not only vicious, but negligent of duty, cold and formal reprobates, and go down to hell from the bosom of the church.

7. Reprobates live to fill up the measure of their iniquity. We are informed that the Amorites were spared, not because there was any hope of their reformation, but because their cup of iniquity was not yet full. Christ said to the Jews, Fill ye up the measure of your fathers;" and God said to Pharoah, "For this purpose have I sustained thee, that I might show in thee my mighty power." Oh, dreadful thought! live to fill up the measure of your sins! The cup of trembling and of wrath is also filling up, which shall soon be poured out to you without mixture, when there shall be none to deliver you. "Your judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and your damnation slumbereth not." 8. Saints should not envy sinners.

The Psalmist once had this trial. He says, "Truly, God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart; but as for me, my feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped, for I was envious at the foolish, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked, for there are no bands in their death,

but their strength is firm. They are not in trouble as other men, neither are they plagued like other men. When I thought to know this, it was too painful for me, until I went into the sanctuary of God; then understood I their end. Surely thou didst set them in slippery places, thou castedst them down into destruction. How are they brought into desolation as in a moment! they are utterly consumed with terror." How can a saint envy them, standing upon a slippery steep, with fiery billows rolling beneath them! "Their feet shall slide in due time." Christians, do not envy the wicked, though they enjoy the wealth of the world; do not envy them; poor creatures! their time is short, they have almost had all their good things.

Perhaps there are individuals, here, to whom I have been speaking, that have not been in the least benefitted by any thing I have said, or could say. You have set yourselves to oppose God, and have taken such an attitude, that truth never reaches you to do you good. Now, sinner, if you do this, and go home in this state of mind, you will have additional evidence that God has given you up, and that you are a reprobate. Now, will you go away in your sins, under these circumstances? Don't talk of the doctrine of election or reprobation as being in your way. No man is ever reprobated for any other reason than that he is an obstinate sinner.

Have you not been listening to find something in this lecture that you can stumble over? Take care! if you wish to cavil, you can always find occasions enough. Sinners have stumbled over every other doctrine of the Bible into hell, and you may stumble over this.

What would you say of any man that should go home and cut his throat, and say he did it because God foreknew that he would do it, and by creating him with this foreknowledge, designed that he should do it. Would saying that excuse him? No. Yet he is under just as much necessity of doing it as he is of going away from this house in his sins.

You only show that you are determined to harden your hearts, and resist God, and thus compel the holy Lord God to reject you. There is no doctrine of the Bible, that can save you, if you persevere in sin, and none that can damn you, if you repent and embrace the Gospel. The blood of Christ flows freely. The fountain is open. Sinners, what say you? Will you have eternal life? will you have it now, or will you reject it? Will you trample the law under foot, and stumble over the Gospel to the depths of hell?

LECTURE LXXIII.

DIVINE SOVEREIGNTY.

In this discussion I shall endeavor to show,

I. WHAT IS NOT INTENDED BY THE TERM SOVEREIGNTY, WHEN APPLIED TO GOD.

III. WHAT IS INTENDED BY IT.

III.

THAT GOD IS AND OUGHT TO BE AN ABSOLUTE AND A UNIVERSAL SOVEREIGN.

1. What is not intended by the term sovereignty when applied to God.

It is not intended, at least by me, that God in any instance wills or acts arbitrarily, or without good reasons; reasons so good and so weighty that he could in no case act otherwise than he does, without violating the law of his own intelligence and conscience, and consequently without sin. Any view of Divine Sovereignty that implies arbitrariness on the part of the Divine will, is not only contrary to scripture, but is revolting to reason, and blasphemous. God can not act arbitrarily, in the sense of unreasonably, without infinite wickedness. For him to be arbitrary, in the sense of unreasonable, would be a wickedness as much greater than any creature is capable of committing, as his reason or knowledge is greater than theirs. This must be self-evident. should therefore never be represented as a Sovereign, in God the sense that implies that he is actuated by self or arbitrary will, rather than by his infinite intelligence.

Many seem to me to represent the sovereignty of God as consisting in a perfectly arbitrary disposal of events. They seem to conceive of God as being wholly above and without any law or rule of action imposed upon his will by his infinite reason and conscience. They appear shocked at the idea of God himself being the subject of moral law, and are ready to inquire, Who gives law to God? They seem never to have considered that God is and must be a law unto himself; that he is necessarily omiscient, and that the Divine Reason must impose law on, or prescribe law to the Divine Will.