Page 63 - Absolute Predestination With Observations On The Divine Attributes

peculiar people, laoV eiV peripoihsin, a people purchased to be His peculiar
property and possession" (1 Peter 2.8,9); to all which may be added,

"Whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the

world" (Rev. 17.8).

All these texts are but as an handful to the harvest, and yet are both numerous

and weighty enough to decide the point with any who pay the least deference to
Scripture authority. And let it be observed that Christ and His apostles delivered
these matters, not to some privileged persons only, but to all at large who had

ears to hear and eyes to read. Therefore, it is incumbent on every faithful
minister to tread in their steps by doing likewise, nor is that minister a faithful
one, faithful to Christ, to truth and to souls, who keeps back any part of the

counsel of God, and buries those doctrines in silence which he is commanded to
preach upon the housetops.

The great Augustine, in his valuable treatise, De Bono Persever., effectually

obviates the objections of those who are burying the doctrine of predestination
in silence. He shows that it ought to be publicly taught, describes the necessity

and usefulness of preaching it, and points out the manner of doing it to
edification. And since some persons have condemned Augustine, by bell, book,
and candle, for his steadfast attachment to and nervous, successful defences of
the decrees of God, let us hear what Luther, that great light in the Church,

thought respecting the argument before us.

Erasmus (in most other respects a very excellent man) affected to think that it

was of dangerous consequence to propagate the doctrine of predestination either
by preaching or writing. His words are these: "What can be more useless than to
publish this paradox to the world, namely, that whatever we do is done, not by
virtue of our own free-will, but in a way of necessity, etc.? What a wide gap

does the publication of this tenet open among men for the commission of all
ungodliness! What wicked person will reform his life? Who will dare to believe

himself a favourite of heaven? Who will fight against his own corrupt
inclinations? Therefore, where is either the need or the utility of spreading these
notions from whence so many evils seem to flow?"

To which Luther replies:

"If, my Erasmus, you consider these paradoxes (as you term them)