Page 49 - Absolute Predestination With Observations On The Divine Attributes

the non-elect, therefore there was a reprobation of some from eternity. Thus,
"Go, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his
angels" (Matt. 25.); for Satan and all his messengers, emissaries, and imitators,
whether apostate spirits or apostate men.

Now, if penal fire was, in decree from everlasting, prepared for them, they, by
all the laws of argument in the world, must have been in the counsel of God

prepared, i.e., designed for that fire, which is the point I undertook to prove.
Hence we read "of vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, kathotismena eiV

apwleian, put together, made up, formed or fashioned, for perdition" (Rom.
9.), who are and can be no other than the reprobate. To multiply Scriptures on
this head would be almost endless; for a sample, consult Prov. 16.4; 1 Peter 2.8;

2 Peter 2.12; Jude 4; Rev. 13.8.

POSITION 4.—As the future faith and good works of the elect were not the
cause of their being chosen, so neither were the future sins of the reprobate the

cause of their being passed by, but both the choice of the former and the
decretive omission of the latter were owing, merely and entirely, to the

sovereign will and determinating pleasure of God.

We distinguish between preterition, or bare non-election, which is a purely
negative thing, and condemnation, or appointment to punishment: the will of
God was the cause of the former, the sins of the non-elect are the reason of the

latter. Though God determined to leave, and actually does leave, whom He
pleases in the spiritual darkness and death of nature, out of which He is under

no obligation to deliver them, yet He does not positively condemn any of these
merely because He hath not chosen them, but because they have sinned against
Him. (See Rom. 1.21-24; Rom. 2.8,9; 2 Thess. 2.12.) Their preterition or non-
inscription in the book of life is not unjust on the part of God, because out of a

world of rebels, equally involved in guilt, God (who might, without any
impeachment of His justice, have passed by all, as He did the reprobate angels)
was, most unquestionably, at liberty, if it so pleased Him, to extend the sceptre

of His clemency to some and to pitch upon whom He would as the objects of it.
Nor was this exemption of some any injury to the non-elect, whose case would
have been just as bad as it is, even supposing the others had not been chosen at

all. Again, the condemnation of the ungodly (for it is under that character alone
that they are the subjects of punishment and were ordained to it) is not unjust,
seeing it is for sin and only for sin. None are or will be punished but for their

iniquities, and all iniquity is properly meritorious of punishment: where, then, is