Wesley Corpus

Sorrow, therefore, and fear have filled your heart. And how shall you be comforted? By the promises of God? But perhaps you have no part therein; for they belong only to the elect. By the consideration of his love and tender mercy? But what are these to you, if you are a reprobate? God does not love you at all; you, like Esau, he hath hated even from eternity. What ground then can you have for the least shadow of hope? Why, it is possible, (that is all,) that God’s sovereign will may be on your side. Possibly God may save you, because he will ! O poor encouragement to despairing sinners! I fear “faith” rarely “cometh by hearing” this! 31. The sovereignty of God is then never to be brought to supersede his justice. And this is the present objection against unconditional reprobation; (the plain consequence of uncondi tional election;) it flatly contradicts, indeed utterly overthrows, the Scripture account of the justice of God. This has been proved in general already; let us now weigh a few particulars. And, (1.) The Scripture describes God as the Judge of the earth. But how shall God in justice judge the world? (O consider this, as in the presence of God, with reverence and godly fear !) How shall God in justice judge the world, if there be any decree of reprobation? On this supposition, what should those on the left hand be condemned for ? For their having done evil? They could not help it. There never was a time when they could have helped it. God, you say, “of old ordained them to this condemnation.” And “who hath resisted his will?” He “sold” them, you say, “to work wickedness,” even from their mother's womb. He “gave them up to a reprobate mind,” or ever they hung upon their mother's breast. Shall he then condemn them for what they could not help? Shall the Just, the Holy One of Israel, adjudge millions of men to everlasting pain, because their blood moved in their veins? Nay, this they might have helped, by putting an end to their own lives. But could they even thus have escaped from sin? Not without that grace which you suppose God had absolutely determined never to give them. And yet you suppose him to send them into eternal fire, for not escaping from sin!