Page 78 - Absolute Predestination With Observations On The Divine Attributes

absolute belief of, and an absolute acquiescence in, God's absolute providence,
founded on absolute predestination. The apostle himself draws these
conclusions to our hand in Rom. 8., where, after having laid down, as most
undoubted axioms, the eternity and immutability of God's purposes, he thus

winds up the whole: "What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us,
who can be against us? Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or

sword? Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that
loved us."

Such, therefore, among others, being the uses that arise from the faithful

preaching and the cordial reception of predestination, may we not venture to
affirm, with Luther, hac ignorata doctrina, neque fidem, neque ullum Dei

cultum, consistere posse? that "our faith and all right worship of God, depend in
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no small degree upon our knowledge of that doctrine"?

The excellent Melancthon, in his first Common Places (which received the
sanction of Luther's express approbation), does, in the first chapter, which treats
professedly of free-will and predestination, set out with clearing and

establishing the doctrine of God's decrees, and then proceeds to point out the
necessity and manifold usefulness of asserting and believing it. He even goes so
far as to affirm roundly that "a right fear of God and a true confidence in Him

can be learned more assuredly from no other source than from the doctrine of
predestination." But Melancthon's judgment of these matters will best appear
from the whole passage, which the reader will find in the book and chapter just

referred to.

"Divina predestinatio," says he, "Libertatem homini adimit: Divine
predestination quite strips man of his boasted liberty, for all things

come to pass according to God's fore-appointment, even the internal
thoughts of all creatures, no less than the external works. Therefore
the apostle gives us to understand that God "performeth all things

according to the counsel of His own will" (Eph. 1.), and our Lord
Himself asks, "Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? yet one of
them falleth not to the ground without your Father" (Matt. 10.).

Pray what can be more full to the point than such a declaration? So
Solomon, "The Lord hath made all things for Himself; yea, even the
wicked for the day of evil" (Prov. 16.), and in chap. 20., "Man's

goings are of the Lord: how then can a man understand his own