Page 46 - Absolute Predestination With Observations On The Divine Attributes

and have not been favoured with the preaching of God's Word or any revelation
of His will. Thus, anciently, the Jews, who were in number the fewest of all
people, were, nevertheless, for a long series of ages, the only nation to whom
the Deity was pleased to make any special discovery of Himself, and it is

observable that our Lord Himself principally confined the advantages of His
public ministry to that people; nay, He forbade His disciples to go among any
others (Matt. 10.5,6), and did not commission them to preach the Gospel

indiscriminately to Jews and Gentiles until after His resurrection (Mark 16.15;
Luke 24.47). Hence many nations and communities never had the advantage of
hearing the Word preached, and consequently were strangers to the faith that

cometh thereby.

It is not indeed improbable, but some individuals in these unenlightened

countries might belong to the secret election of grace, and the habit of faith
might be wrought in these. However, be that as it will, our argument is not
affected by it. It is evident that the nations of the world were generally ignorant,
not only of God Himself, but likewise of the way to please Him, the true manner

of acceptance with Him, and the means of arriving at the everlasting enjoyment
of Him. Now, if God had been pleased to have saved those people, would He
not have vouchsafed them the ordinary means of salvation? Would He not have

given them all things necessary in order to that end? But it is undeniable matter
of fact that He did not, and to very many nations of the earth does not at this
day. If, then, the Deity can consistently with His attributes deny to some the

means of grace, and shut them up in gross darkness and unbelief, why should it
be thought incompatible with His immensely glorious perfections to exclude
some persons from grace itself, and from that eternal life which is connected

with it, especially seeing He is equally the Lord and sovereign Disposer of the
end to which the means lead, as of the means which lead to that end? Both one
and the other are His, and He most justly may, as He most assuredly will, do

what He pleases with His own.

Besides, it being also evident that many, even of them who live in places where
the Gospel is preached, as well as of those among whom it never was preached,

die strangers to God and holiness, and without experiencing anything of the
gracious influences of His Spirit, we may reasonably and safely conclude that
one cause of their so dying is because it was not the Divine will to communicate

His grace unto them, since, had it been His will, He would actually have made
them partakers thereof, and had they been partakers of it they could not have
died without it. Now, if it was the will of God in time to refuse them this grace,