They are, therefore, perfectly safe. *' My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me : and I give unto them eternal life ; they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all ; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand.'* (John X. 27-29.) As the sheep of Christ are chosen out of the world, and given to Him, God is the chooser. They do not choose Him, but He chooses them. No one can be added to their num- ber, and that number shall certainly be completed. " All that the Father giveth me shall come to me ; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." (John vi. 37.) " No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him : and I will raise him up at the last u'ay." (John vi. 44.) " Every man therefore that hath heard, and learned of the Father, cometh unto me." (Verse 45.) " No man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father." (Verse 65.) With God it rests who shall be brought to the savins knowledo;e of the truth. " It is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given." (Matt. xiii. 11.) " I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.'* (Matt. xi. 25.) In Acts xiii. 48, it is said, " As many as were ordained to eternal life believed." The Scriptures, there- fore, say that repentance, faith, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost are gifts of God. Christ was exalted at the right hand of God to give repentance and remission of sins. But if faith and repentance are the gifts of God they must be the fruits of election. They cannot possibly be its ground.
If the office of the theologian, as is so generally admitted, be to take the facts of Scripture as the man of science does those of nature, and found upon them his doctrines, instead of deducing his doctrines from the principles or primary truths of his philosophy, it seems impossible to resist the conclusion that the doctrine of Augustine is the doctrine of the Bible. Accordino- to that doctrine God is an absolute sovereign. He does what seems good in his sight. He sends the truth to one nation and not to another. He gives that truth saving power in one mind and not in another. It is of Him, and not of us, that any man is in Christ Jesus, and is an heir of eternal life.
This, as has been shown, is asserted in express terms, with great frequency and clearness in the Scriptures. It is sustained by all the facts of providence and of revelation. It attributes to God
348 PART m. ch. l — the plan of salvation.
nothing but what is proved, by his actual government of the world, to be his rightful prerogative. It only teaches that God purposes what, with our own eyes, we see He actually does, and ever has done, in the dispensations of his providence. The consistent opponent of this doctrine must, therefore, reject the truths even of natural religion. As Augustinianism agrees with the facts of prov- idence it of course agrees with the facts of Scripture. The Bible declares that the salvation of sinful men is a matter of grace ; and that the great design of the whole scheme of redemption is to dis- play the glory of that divine attribute, — to exhibit to the admiration, and for the edification of the intellio-ent universe, God's uimierited love and boundless beneficence to guilty and polluted creatures. Accordingly, men are represented as being sunk into a state of sin and misery ; from this state they cannot deliver themselves ; for their redemption God sent his own eternal Son to assume their nature, obey, and suffer in their place ; and his Holy Spirit to apply the redemption purchased by the Son. To introduce the element of merit into any part of this scheme vitiates its nature and frustrates its design. Unless our salvation from beginning to end be of grace it is not an exhibition of grace. The Bible, however, teaches that it was a matter of grace that salvation was provided ; that it was revealed to one nation and not to another ; and that it was applied to one person and not to another. It teaches that all goodness in man is due to the influence of the Holy Spirit, and that all spiritual blessings are the fruits of election ; that we are chosen to holiness, and created unto good works, because pre- destinated to be the children of God. With these facts of Scripture the experience of Christians agrees. It is the intimate conviction of every believer, founded upon the testimony of his own conscious- ness, as well as upon the Scriptures, that his salvation is of God ; that it is of Him, and not of himself, that he has been brought to the exercise of faith and repentance. So long as he looks within the believer is satisfied of the truth of these doctrines. It is only when he looks outward, and attempts to reconcile these truths with the dictates of his own understanding that he becomes confused and sceptical. But as our faith is not founded on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God, as the foolishness of God is wiser than men, the part of wisdom, as well as the path of duty and safety, is to receive as true what God has revealed, whether we can comprehend his ways unto perfection or not.
§9.] OBJECTIONS TO THE AUGUSTmiAN SCHEME. 349
§ 9. Objections to the Augustinian Scheme.
That there are formidable objections to the Augustinian doctrine of divine sovereignty cannot be denied. They address themselves even more powerfully to the feelings and to the imagination tlian they do to the understanding. They are therefore often arrayed in such distorted and exaggerated forms as to produce the strongest revulsion and abhorrence. This, however, is due partly to the dis- tortion of the truth and partly to the opposition of our imperfectly or utterly unsanctified nature, to the things of the Spirit, of which the Apostle speaks in 1 Cor. ii. 14.
Of these objections, however, it may be remarked in general, in the first place, that they do not bear exclusively on this doctrine. It is one of the unfair devices of controversy to represent difficulties which press with equal force against some admitted doctrine as valid only against the doctrine which the objector rejects. Thus the objections against Augustinianism, on which special reliance is placed, bear with their full force against the decrees of God in general ; or if these be denied, against the divine foreknowledge ; against the permission of sin and misery, and especially against the doctrine of the unending sinfulness and misery of many of God's intellio-ent creatures. These are doctrines which all Christians ad- mit, and which are arrayed by infidels and atheists in colours as shocking to the imagination and feelings as any which Anti-Augns- tinians have employed in depicting the sovereignty of God. It is just as difficult to reconcile to our natural ideas of God that He, with absolute control over all creatures, should allow so many of them to perish eternally as that He should save some and not others. The difficulty is in both cases the same. God does not prevent the perdition of those whom, beyond doubt, He has power to save. If those who admit God's providence say that He has wise reasons for permitting so many of our race to perish, the advocates of his sovereignty say that He has adequate reasons for saving some and not others. It is unreasonable and unjust, therefore, to press diffi- culties which bear against admitted truths as fatal to doctrines which are matters of controversy. When an objection is shown to prove too much it is rationally refuted.
The same Objections bear against the Providence of Crod.
A second general remark respecting these objections is, that they bear against the providence of God. This has already been shown. It is useless and irrational to argue against facts. It can avail
350 PART m. ch. I. — the plan of salvation.
nothing to say that it is unjust in God to deal more favourably with one nation than with another, with one individual than with another, if in ])oint of fact He acts as a sovereign in the distribution of his favours. That He does so act is undeniable so far as providential blessings and religious advantages are concerned. And this is all that Augustinianism asserts in regard to the dispensations of his grace. If, therefore, the principle on which these objections are founded is proved to be false by the actual facts of providence the objections cannot be valid against the Augustinian scheme.
Founded on our Ignorance.