Wesley Corpus

You plainly say, It was not his fault, but God's. For what was Judas, or ten thousand repro bates besides? Could they resist his decree? No more than they could pull the sun out of the firmament of heaven. And would God punish them with everlasting destruction, for not pulling the sun out of the firmament? He might as well do it for this, as for their not doing what (on this supposition) was equally impossible. “But they are punished for their impenitency, sin, and unbelief.” Say unbelief and impeni tency, but not sin. For “God had predestinated them to continue in impenitency and unbelief God had positively ordained them to continue in their blindness and hardness of heart.” Therefore their not repenting and believing was no more a sin, than their not pulling the sun from heaven. 7. Indeed Mr. T. himself owns, “The sins of the repro bate were not the cause of their being passed by ; but merely and entirely the sovereign will and determinating pleasure of God.” “O, but their sin was the cause of their damnation though not of their preterition;” that is, God determined they should live and die in their sins, that he might after wards damn them ! Was ever anything like this? Yes, I have read something like it: When Tiberius had determined to destroy Sejanus and all his family, as it was unlawful to put a virgin to death, what could be done with his daughter, a child of nine years old? Why, the hangman was ordered first to deflour, and then to strangle, her ! Yet even good Tiberius did not order her to be strangled “because she had been defloured!” If so, it had been a parallel case; it had been just what is here affirmed of the Most High. 8. One word more: “I will obviate,” says Mr. T., “a fallacious objection, How is reprobation reconcilable with the doctrine of a future judgment? There needs no pains to reconcile these two.” No pains ! Indeed there does; more pains than all the men upon earth, or all the devils in hell, will ever be able to take.