from the Scriptures by many ingenious and diligent students of them, one can hardly avoid attributing, in some degree, to their entering on the study with a strong antecedent bias in favour of the conclusion they draw; in consequence of their regarding it as a truth abstractedly demonstrable by reason. But for such a bias, we should hardly find so many passages of Scripture interpreted so hastily, and often so much wrested from their obvious sense, to make them afford confirmation of the favourite hypothesis.

For instance, 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 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 some to meaner uses; but all, for some use; none with 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 those advantages. Wealth and power, and christian knowledge, and all other advantages, may be made either a blessing or a curse to the possessor; since they plainly answer to the talents in our Lord's parable: why one servant had five talents intrusted to him, another two, and another one,-in what consisted "their several

abilities,❞—we are not told; though we are clearly taught that the distribution was not made on the ground of the fore-seen use they would make of the talents; else, he who received the one, and kept it laid up in a napkin, would not have been intrusted with any. But we are plainly told on what principles all these servants were ultimately judged by their Master; those who had received the five, and the two talents, were rewarded, not from arbitrary choice, but because they had rightly employed the deposit; and the unprofitable servant was punished, not because he had received only one, but because he had let it lie idle.

The "hardening of Pharaoh's heart" again, which is mentioned in Scripture, is often triumphantly appealed to, as a recorded instance in which (according to the hasty interpretation sometimes adopted) God made the King of Egypt, what we call hard-hearted; that is, cruel and remorseless; on purpose to display his almighty power upon him: whereas a very moderate attention to the context would plainly evince that this (whether true or false) is very far from being revealed in Scripture; but, that on

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the contrary, the hardening (or as some translate, the strengthening) of Pharaoh's heart," must mean a judicial blindness of intellect as to his own interest, and a vain and absurd self-confidence, which induced him to hold out against Omnipotence. For it is remarkable that the cruelties he had practised, had all of them taken place before any mention is made of God's hardening his heart. The tyrant who had subjected to grievous slavery and attempted to extirpate the Israelites, could scarcely, after that, be made cruel; but the most unrelenting miscreant would have let them go, through mere selfish prudence, had he not been supernaturally infatuated, when he saw that they were "a snare unto him," and that "Egypt was destroyed" through the mighty plagues inflicted on their account.h

8 The "heart" is continually employed by the Sacred Writers to denote the understanding; as when our Lord is said to "upbraid the disciples for their unbelief and hardnessof-heart," &c. They never, I believe, employ okλnpokapdia, to signify cruelty. The same appears to have been anciently the usage of our own language also; of which we retain a remnant, in the expression of "learning any thing by heart."

h I have been informed that some of the hearers of the discourse of which this Essay contains the substance, under

To sum up, then, in a single sentence, the error which appears to me to have originated from a neglect of the lesson which the Old Testament may supply: the doctrine that final salvation is represented in Scripture as resting solely on the arbitrary appointment of God, is deduced from two premises; 1st, that Election infallibly implies salvation; and, 2dly, that Election is entirely arbitrary; whence it follows, certainly, that final salvation is arbitrary. Now many of the opponents of this conclusion are accustomed to deny the true premise, and admit the false one; acknowledging that Election

stood the foregoing argument to be merely a repetition of Bishop Sumner's, in his valuable work on "Apostolical Preaching." Such a misapprehension is, I trust, less likely to take place in the closet; but to guard against the possibility of it, it may be worth while here to remark, that though I coincide with Bishop S. in his conclusion, the arguments by which we, respectively, arrive at it, are different. The distinction which he dwells on, is that, between national, and individual election; that on which I have insisted, is, the distinction between election to certain privileges, and to final reward; he, in short, considers principally the parties chosen ; whether Bodies of men, or particular persons: I, the things to which they are chosen; whether to a blessing, absolutely, or to the offer of one, conditionally.