good, it of course follows that the more perfectly God is known, the more fully the highest good (not merely nor necessarily the high- est happiness) of the intelligent universe is promoted. But this is a subordinate effect, and not the chief end. It is therefore in ac- cordance with the whole spirit and teachings of the Bible, and with the essential character of Augustinianism, that our standards make the glory of God the end of all his decrees.
B. The Decrees Reducible to one Purpose. The second point included in this doctrine is, that the decrees of God are all reducible to one purpose. By this- is meant that from the indefinite number of systems, or series of possible events, present to the divine mind, God determined on the futurition or actual occurrence of the existing order of things, with all its changes, minute as well as great, from the beginning of time to all eternity. The reason, therefore, why any event occurs, or, that it passes from the category of the possible into that of the actual, is that God has so decreed. The decrees of God, therefore, are not many, but one purpose. They are not successively formed as the emergency arises, but are all parts of one all-compxehending plan^ This view of the subject is rendered necessary by the nature of an infinitely perfect Being. It is inconsistent with the idea of ab- solute perfection, that the purposes of God are successive, or that He ever purposes what He did not originally intend ; or that one part of his pLai is independent of other parts. It is one scheme, and therefore one purpose. As, however, this one purpose includes an indefinite number of events, and as those events are mutually related, we therefore speak of the decrees of God as many, and as having a certain order. The Scriptures consequently speak of the judgments, counsels, or purposes of God, in the plural number, and also of his determining one event because of another. When we look at an extensive building, or a complicated machine, we per- ceive at once the multiplicity of their parts, and their mutual rela- tions. Our conception of the building or of the machine is one, and yet it comprehends many distinct perceptions, and the appre- hension of their relations. So also in the mind of the architect or mechanist, the whole is one idea, though he intends many things, and one in reference to another. We can, therefore, in a measure, understand how the vast scheme of creation, providence, and re- demption, lies in the divine mind as one simple purpose, although including an infinite multiplicity of causes and effects.
638 PART L— THEOLOGY. [Ch. IX. — The Decrem.
C. The Decrees of God are Eternal. That the decrees of God are eternal, necessarily follows ft'om the perfection of the divine Being. He cannot be supposed to have at one time plans or purposes which He had not at another. He sees the end from the beginning ; the distinctions of time have no reference to Him who inhabits eternity. The Scriptures therefore always speak of events in time as revelations of a purpose formed in eter- nity. The salvation of men, for example, is said to be " according to the eternal purpose which He purposed in Christ Jesus." (Eph. iii. 11.) What is revealed in time was hidden for ages, i. e., from eternity in. the mind of God. (Eph. iii. 9.) Believers were cho- sen in Christ before the foundation of the world. (Eph. i. 4.) "Who hath saved us, and called us .... according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus, -po xpovwv atwi/tW, before eternal ages." (2 Tim. i. 9.) Christ as a sacrifice was " foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you, who by Him do believe in God." (1 Pet. i. 20, 21 ; Rom. xi. 33-36 ; Acts ii. 23.) This is the constant representation of Scripture. History in all its details, even the most minute, is but the evolution of the eternal purposes of God. It is no objection to this doctrine that the Scriptures often represent one purpose of God as consequent upon another, or that they speak of his purposes as determined by the conduct of men.
\The language of Scripture is founded on apparent truth; they \speak, as men always do, as things appear, not as they themselves know or believe them to be. We speak of the concave heavens, or of the firm foundation of the heavens, although we know that it is not concave, and that it does not rest on any foundation. So the Bible speaks of the decrees of God as they appear to us in their successive revelation and in their mutual relations, and not as they exist from eternity in the divine mind. Neither is there any force in the objection that the agent must be before his acts. The sun is not before his brightness, nor the mind before thought, nor life
- before consciousness, nor God before his purposes. These objec- tions are founded on the assumption that God is subject to the lim- \ itations of time. To Him there is neither past nor future, neither before nor after.
D. The Decrees of God are ImmutaUe. Change of purpose arises either from the want of wisdom or from the want of power. As God is infinite in wisdom and power, there