Page 38 - Absolute Predestination With Observations On The Divine Attributes

(2) His foreknowledge would be wavering, indeterminate, and liable to
disappointment, whereas it always has its accomplishment, and necessarily
infers the certain futurity of the thing or things foreknown: "I am God, and there

is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and, from ancient times,
the things that are not yet done; saying, My counsel shall stand and I will do all
My pleasure" (Isa. 46.9,10).

(3) Neither would His Word be true, which declares that, with regard to the
elect, "the gifts and calling of God are without repentance" (Rom. 11.29); that
"whom He predestinated, them He also glorified" (Rom. 8.30); that whom He

loveth, He loveth to the end (John 13.1), with numberless passages to the same
purpose. Nor would His word be true with regard to the non-elect if it was
possible for them to be saved, for it is there declared that they are fitted for

destruction, etc. (Rom. 9.22); foreordained unto condemnation (Jude 4), and
delivered over to a reprobate mind in order to their damnation (Rom. 1.28; 2
Thess. 2.12).

(4) If, between the elect and reprobate, there was not a great gulf fixed, so that
neither can be otherwise than they are, then the will of God (which is the alone
cause why some are chosen and others are not) would be rendered inefficacious

and of no effect.

(5) Nor could the justice of God stand if He was to condemn the elect, for

whose sins He hath received ample satisfaction at the hand of Christ, or if He
was to save the reprobate, who are not interested in Christ as the elect are.

(6) The power of God (whereby the elect are preserved from falling into a state
of condemnation, and the wicked held down and shut up in a state of death)
would be eluded, not to say utterly abolished.

(7) Nor would God be unchangeable if they, who were once the people of His
love, could commence the objects of His hatred, or if the vessels of His Wrath
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could be saved with the vessels of grace. Hence that of Augustine, "Brethren,"
says he, "let us not imagine that God puts down any man in His book and then
erases him, for if Pilate could say, 'What I have written, I have written,' how can

it be thought that the great God would write a person's name in the book of life
and then blot it out again?" And may we not, with equal reason, ask, on the
other hand, "How can it be thought that any of the reprobate should be written

in that book of life, which contains the names of the elect only, or that any