Wesley Corpus

even while he is crying, “Come ye, come ye, from that evil place: For why will ye die, O house of Israel!” “Why l’’ might one of them reply, “because we cannot help it. We cannot help ourselves; and thou wilt not help us. It is not in our power to break the gates of brass, and it is not thy pleasure to open them. Why will we die! We must die; because it is not thy will to save us.” Alas! my brethren, what kind of sincerity is this, which you ascribe to God our Saviour? 42. So ill do election and reprobation agree with the truth and sincerity of God! But do they not agree least of all with the scriptural account of his love and goodness? that attribute which God peculiarly claims, wherein he glories above all the rest. It is not written, “God is justice,” or “God is truth:” (Although he is just and true in all his ways:) But it is written, “God is love,” love in the abstract, without bounds; and “there is no end of his goodness.” His love extends even to those who neither love nor fear him. He is good, even to the evil and the unthankful; yea, without any exception or limitation, to all the children of men. For “ the Lord is loving” (or good) “to every man, and his mercy is over all his works.” But how is God good or loving to a reprobate, or one that is not elected? (You may choose either term: For if none but the unconditionally elect are saved, it comes precisely to the same thing.) You cannot say, he is an object of the love or goodness of God, with regard to his eternal state, whom he created, says Mr. Calvin plainly and fairly, in vitae contume liam et mortis exitium, “to live a reproach, and die ever lastingly.” Surely, no one can dream, that the goodness of God is at all concerned with this man’s eternal state. “However, God is good to him in this world.” What when by reason of God’s unchangeable decree, it had been good for this man never to have been born? when his very birth was a curse, not a blessing? “Well, but he now enjoys many of the gifts of God, both gifts of nature and of providence.