These are questions as plain as Dr. Whitaker could wish for, and were they to be determined by the common sense and feeling of mankind, we make no doubt in favour of which side the presumption would lie.

And are there no difficulties attending these mysterious subjects? We confess-we are sure that Dr. Whitaker will confess, there are awful difficulties; such as have ever offended the common sense and feeling of mankind; such rather, as have always excited the enmity of the human heart, as have been to the nominal professor of religion, a stumbling block, and to the philosopher, foolishness. Is there a human being that can, by any metaphysical process, so divest himself of the attributes of man, as to contemplate with complacency the final destruction of a single moral agent? Let us at once meet a difficulty common to all systems which are founded on the declarations of the inspired volume. Does the admission or the rejection of the Calvinistic doctrines affect this plain question? Dr. Whitaker is aware that it does not. What is then our conclusion?-It is expressly declared in the Scriptures, which we receive as the word of God, that man's eternal destiny is suspended on the development of his character in this probationary state of existence; that without holiness he cannot see God; that a time will come, when he that is unholy, shall be unholy still; and he that is filthy, shall be filthy still; that the misery of that world of impenitent despair to which the immort sinner will be consigned, will arise, of necessity, from his opposition to the holy nature of the Divine Being. Reason informs us that no nature can change itself, no cause be self transformed into its opposite. Nor does Revelation afford ground for the supposition that the Almighty will, at any remote period in eternity, interpose to change the nature, or to annihilate the existence, of those on whom he wrought no such change while here. If it be asserted that the idea is possible, we must still reply, that as we cannot know it, even were it true, all the difficulty, as it respects the revealed character of God, remains undiminished. The Almighty has thought fit to withhold the solution of these mysteries, and of the full revelation of his own character, till that great day; to require from his creatures till then an implicit confitence in his perfections with vain impiety, therefore, would reason try to break the awful silence of the sacred volume.

If there were not inscrutable difficulties onnected with the very subjects which are involved in the Calvinistic system, would St. Paul, a reasoner as acute as he was an eloquent declaimer, in the midst of an argumentative dissertation, anticipating as it should seem an objection from the common

sense and feeling of those he was addressing, instead of fairly meeting the difficulty by attempting to reconcile it with the moral attributes of God, silence the objector with the bare assertion of the Divine Sovereignty?" Nay but, "Omn, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall "the thing formed say to him that formed it, why hast "thou made me thus ?"-And in another passage of the same Epistle, "Who hath known the mind of the Lord, or "who hath been his counsellor?" Bishop Butler, (to whom Dr. Whitaker refers), when treating of these subjects in his inestimable work on the Analogy of Religion natural and revealed, has proceeded in a very different method from that employed by our Author. Aware of the delicate nature and of the limited use of analogical reasonings, he has not displayed more of exquisite judgement and acuteness, than of modesty and circumspect humility, in attempting thus to vindicate the ways of God to man. Objections, he admits, may still be insisted upon against the wisdom, equity, and goodness, of the divine government implied in the notion of religion, and against the method by which this government is conducted; to which objections analogy can be no direct answer. Upon supposition that God exercises a moral government over the world,' he elsewhere remarks, the analogy of his natural government suggests, and makes it credible, that his moral government must be a scheme quite beyond our comprehension; and this affords a general answer to all objections against the justice and goodness of it.' The speculative difficulties in which the evidence of religion ' is involved, may make even the principal part of some persons' trial and since ignorance and doubt afford scope for probation in all senses, as really as intuitive conviction. or certainty; and since the two former are to be put to the same account, as difficulties in practice; men's moral probation may also be, whether they will take due care 'to inform themselves by impartial consideration, and after'wards whether they will act as the case requires, upon the 'evidence which they have, however doubtful.'

We have thought it not irrelevant to shew, that the objections which Dr. Whitaker raises against the Calvinistic system, are applicable to it only in common with every system of revealed religion; and it would not be difficult to prove, that by the rejection of it, they are increased tenfold. Our limits will not admit of our going more deeply into the subject; nor is it necessary, in order to shew the temerity of this unguarded assault upon the doctrines of Calvinism.

There is inaccuracy and fallacy in Dr. W.'s professed statement of Calvinism. He adduces it as an unquestionable

fact that Calvinists hold, that by a sovereign act of his will, the Almighty did, from all eternity, predestinate a certain portion of the human race to everlasting happiness, without any antecedent respect to their future character and conduct! If by the phrase antecedent respect to their future character and conduct,' he intends a respect to any moral excellency existing in them, previously to his own work of mercy in forming them to such excellency;-then, undoubtedly, the Calvinist rejects such a notion as unscriptural and absurd. He deems it inconsistent with the perfection and supremacy of God, to depend on the antecedent powers of the creature, as the motives of his conduct. He believes, and Dr. W. solemnly and we doubt not sincerely professes to believe, that all right counsels, just thoughts, and good works, proceed' from the preventing and unmerited grace of God.

But if Dr. W. means that, in the sense of Calvin and his followers, the Divine predestination respects the happiness of the elect, separately from their holiness, or as an end superior to the acquisition of a sincerely and permanently holy 'character and conduct,' he greatly errs; and Calvinists will say that he injures and misrepresents them. They think that the key-stone of their system is the single position that ALL GOOD is from God; and that, especially to sinful creatures, all good is the fruit of GRATUITOUS BENEVOLENCE.

It is astonishing that so acute a logician as Dr Whitaker, should be apparently so unconscious of any difficulties that attach to his own theological scheme. He rightly asserts that a previous and arbitrary allotment of the final destinies of moral agents, is by the very terms incapable of being rectified.' But while we disallow the term arbitrary, in the sense in which it is here used, and reprobate the inference which is attempted to be fastened on the doctrine, we must ask whether even Arminianism does not admit of a previous allotment, in the Divine prescience, of the final and irreversible destinies of moral agents, which is the only part of the statement involving the imputations he would represent as springing from the doctrine; for surely the idea of a purpose of Sovereign Benevolence superinduced, if we may so speak, upon the equitable laws of the Divine government, restricted indeed to a definite number, but infringing upon the rights of none, can add no perplexity to this awful subject. The difficulty, we repeat it, does not belong to speculative theology, but exists in what experience discovers to be true. Certainly,' says the admirable prelate before quoted, we are in a condition which does not seem, by any means, the most advantageous we could imagine or devise, either in our natural or moral capacity, for securing either our present

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or future interest. Had we not experience, it might perhaps, be speciously urged, that it is improbable any kind of hazard and danger should be put upon us by an in'finite Being; when every thing which is hazard' and danger in our manner of conception, and will end in error, confusion, and misery, is now already certain in his foreknowledge.' Does it involve the subject in deeper gloom, to know that the All merciful, in his Sovereignty, who is not willing that any should perish, has resolved that all shall not, but has predestined an indefinite portion of the human race to holiness as essential to happiness, who are "to be con"formed to the image of his Son,"-and who are designated as the called, whom he justifies, and whom he will glorify* !

Our Author has hazarded? some remarks upon the subject of the human will, the extreme futility of which appears to us less surprising, as proceeding from such a writer, from his seeming to think that plain good sense, aided by some experience of human nature,' would be competent, without, as we should suspect, either extensive reading upon the subject, or deep investigation, to seize upon the homely truths' which comprise the very core and nucleus of the metaphysical controversy. His positions that the will must, in order to exist, be free-that it consists in the power of making elections, as, otherwise, it becomes a non-entity-few persons, would, we should suppose, be found to deny. The fact,' also, that we do really possess such a faculty,' is, on the ground assumed by our Author, undeniable. But the point which Dr. Whitaker overlooks, or by a petitio principii eludes, is this. Is the Will a self moving power-an effect taking place without a cause, and subjected in its operations to no laws? or is it dependent on the determining faculty in man, on the understanding; being in itself, not the cause of our actions, but the essence of action? and are not its determinations in every case conformable to the moral nature, or disposition from which, or in which it acts? Will our opponent assert, that the will of a depraved being is uncontrolled by the nature of that being? That a wicked man may just as easily will a virtuous action, as the man whose motives are those of purity and justice? Why do we will? By chance, or because we do will? If not, the will itself must be an effect, and we know of no rational cause of that effect, but the nature of the agent.

We think Dr. Whitaker has mistaken the meaning of those who assert the passiveness of the human will, in the work

*Rom. viii, 29, 30.

of regeneration. No persuasion can be firmer than that which we feel, that he would not designedly misrepresent their doctrines. But he cannot understand Calvinists to mean, that through the whole progress of the work of Divine grace upon the human heart, the will is entirely passive, and that it 'does in no degree co-operate in the work.' We apprehend, that it can only be in reference to the bestowment of regenerating grace, that this representation has been maintained: and modern Calvinism, at least, allows of this interpretation alone. On this subject then, we must again put to our Author a plain question. It is the doctrine of some of the most distinguished members of his Church, and, according to some, of the Church of England herself, that this efficacious grace is communicated in the ordinance of baptism :-in this case, we would wish to know, what part the will of the infant takes in the work. How does it co-operate? What moral activity is exerted by the recipient? But perhaps Dr. Whitaker, in common with the most consistent Protestants, rejects this notion as unscriptural. In this, we think, he will be countenanced by the common sense and feeling of mankind.' Let us, then, change the form of our question, and we must demand in what way the act of regeneration, which all who receive the doctrines of the New Testament must believe to be both real and necessary to the production of a vital principle of holiness, takes place, in combination with the human will. Whatever disabilities,' says our Author, and he is careful not to define too precisely those disabilities, have been incurred by the will in consequence of original or actual transgression, it is the first office of grace to remove to restore that 'disordered faculty to its intermitted functions, that is, to restore it to its existence in the heart.'- Does Dr. Whitaker mean to assert that those who are not the subjects of this grace, are destitute of will, and therefore, according to his own position, destitute of that freedom which is the basis of accountability? Or does he unwittingly symbolize with the Calvinist in meaning to assert the simple truth, that the unregenerate man is incapable of the right exercise of his will, because his nature is depraved? In either case, we may recur to our plain question-How can a nature change itself? How can the will which proceeds from the nature, become a cause effective in working a change upon that nature, by any mysterious co-operation with Divine agency? As well might our objectors deny, that an infant was not wholly passive, in the first communication of the vital spark, or that it was itself the author of that birth, to which the production of moral life in the soul, is, by our Saviour himself, represented as analogous.