A.
makes grace the cause, and B. makes it only a necessary auxiliary. And
does the Socinian extricate himself a whit more clearly? Without a due
concurrence of circumstances no mind can improve itself into a state
susceptible of spiritual happiness: and is not the disposition and
pre-arrangement of circumstances as dependent on the divine will as
those spiritual influences which the Methodist holds to be meant by the
word grace? Will not the Socinian find it as difficult to reconcile with
mercy and justice the condemnation to hell-fire of poor wretches born
and bred in the thieves' nests of St. Giles, as the Methodists the
condemnation of those who have been less favoured by grace? I have one
other question to ask, though it should have been asked before. Suppose
Christ taught nothing more than a future state of retribution and the
necessity and sufficiency of good morals, how are we to explain his
forbidding these truths to be taught to any but Jews till after his
resurrection? Did the Jews reject those doctrines? Except perhaps a
handful of rich men, called Sadducees, they all believed them, and would
have died a thousand deaths rather than have renounced their faith.
Besides, what is there in doctrines common to the creed of all
religions, and enforced by all the schools of philosophy, except the
Epicurean, which should have prevented their being taught to all at the
same time? I perceive, that this difficulty does not press on Socinians
exclusively: but yet it presses on them with far greater force than on
others.
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