Wesley Corpus

None indeed hath resisted this will of God. “He that believeth not, shall be damned.” But is this any ground for arraigning his justice? “Hath not” the great “Potter power over his own clay? to make,” or appoint, one sort of “vessels,” namely, believers, “to honour, and” the others “to dishonour?” Hath he not a right to distribute eternal honour and dis honour, on whatever terms he pleases? especially, considering the goodness and patience he shows, even towards them that believe not; considering that when they have provoked him “to show his wrath, and to make the power” of his vengeance “known, yet” he “endures, with much longsuffering,” even those “vessels of wrath,” who had before “fitted” themselves “to destruction.” There is then no more room to reply against God, for making his vengeance known on those vessels of wrath, than for “making known” his glorious love “on the vessels of mercy whom he had before” by faith “prepared for glory; even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles.” 29. I have spoken more largely than I designed, in order to show, that neither our Lord, in the above-mentioned parable, nor St. Paul, in these words, had any view to God’s sovereign power, as the ground of unconditional reprobation. And beware you go no further therein, than you are authorized by them. Take care, whenever you speak of these high things, to “speak as the oracles of God.” And if so, you will never speak of the sovereignty of God, but in conjunction with his other attributes. For the Scripture nowhere speaks of this single attribute, as separate from the rest. Much less does it anywhere speak of the sovereignty of God as singly dis posing the eternal states of men. No, no; in this awful work, God proceeds according to the known rules of his justice and mercy; but never assigns his sovereignty as the cause why any man is punished with everlasting destruction. 30. Now then, are you not quite out of your way? You are not in the way which God hath revealed. You are putting eternal happiness and misery on an unscriptural and a very dreadful footing. Make the case your own: Here are you, a sinner, convinced that you deserve the damnation of hell. Sorrow, therefore, and fear have filled your heart.