Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

declares, that he was now preparing to give an awful example of the strictness with which he punishes licentiousness and impurity, by destroying the irreclaimably polluted cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and he resolves previously to honour the patriarch, by communicating to him this intention; doubtless in order to impress more deeply on him and his posterity, the moral instruction which this awful chastisement was calculated to produce. "And the Lord said, shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do; seeing that Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him; for I know him that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgment, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he hath spoken of him. And the Lord said, because the cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their sin is very grievous, I will go down now and see† whether they have done altogether according to the cry of it, which is come unto me; and if not, I will know."

*

Encouraged by this wonderful condescension, the patriarch ventured to intercede against the total destruction of two populous cities, in which his brother Lot and his family might, he feared, be involved.

"And Abraham drew near, and said, Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? Peradventure there be fifty righteous within the city, wilt thou also destroy and not spare the place for the fifty righteous that are therein? That be far from thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked, and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from thee; shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" Far from being offended at the patriarch's reasoning, that the slaying the innocent with the guilty, which would be acknowledged unjust in man, could not be right in the Judge of all the earth; the Deity adopts as it were this principle, and com

It is impossible, to read this passage without seeing how repugnant this declaration is to the tenet that the divine election has no regard to the foreknown conduct of the elect.

†This, strictly speaking, could not be necessary; but it only expressed in popular language, the care of the Supreme Judge to institute an exact scrutiny into the conduct of those, who were suspected or accused of guilt, before sentence should be passed upon them, and therefore justifies our comparison of the principles of the divine government with the plain and popular ideas of equity.

bines it with a principle of mercy far transcending any which human reason or human feeling would have connected with it, even that of extending pardon to a guilty multitude, for the sake of a few innocent persons who might be connected with the criminals, so as necessarily to sympathise with their sorrows, mourn for their loss, or share their suffering; for the Lord said, "if I find in Sodom fifty righteous within the city, then I will spare all the place for their sakes." At length the patriarch closed his repeated intercession, saying, "Oh! let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once; peradventure ten shall be found there; the Lord answered and said, I will not destroy it for ten's sake."*

When even this abundance of mercy could not avail, and after a trial which manifested in the strongest colours their audacious and abominable profligacy, the polluted cities were consumed with their depraved inhabitants, (the righteous Lot with his daughters alone excepted,) the patriarch Abraham must have felt most deeply both the mercy and justice of his God; and we can scarcely avoid concluding, that this remarkable transaction was recorded to make a similar impression on every reflecting mind. In other cases we behold the judgments of God, but know not the motives which direct their course, for the counsels of the Almighty are veiled from mortal eye, but surely we ought to rest convinced that if in every other instance as in this, that veil could be withdrawn, both the mercy and the justice of the Divinity would shine forth conspicuous, and every eye would see, and every tongue confess" that the Judge of all the earth doth right."

Thus in Job-Elihu, the approved vindicator of the providence and the glory of God, whom (as he judged) Job seemed to charge with harshness and severity, calls the attention of all men to consider that justice was necessarily connected with the power and sovereignty of the Most High. "Therefore hearken unto me, ye men of understanding, far be it from God that he should do wickedness, and from the Almighty, that he should commit iniquity. For the work of a man shall he render unto him, and cause every man to find according to his ways. Yea, surely God will not do wickedly, neither will the Almighty per

* Genesis, xviii. 17, to the end.

vert judgment. Who hath given him a charge over the earth, or who hath disposed the whole world? If he set his heart upon man, if he gather unto himself his spirit and his breath; all flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust. If now thou hast understanding hear this; hearken to the voice of my words: shall he that hateth right, govern, and wilt thou condemn him that is most just? Is it fit to say to a king, thou art wicked, and to princes, ye are ungodly? How much less to him that accepteth not the persons of princes, nor regardeth the rich more than the poor? for they all are the work of his hands. In a moment shall they die, and the people shall be troubled at midnight, and pass away, and the mighty shall be taken away without hand. For his eyes are upon the ways of man, and he seeth all his goings. There is no darkness nor shadow of death where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves. For he will not lay upon man more than right, that he should enter into judgment with God. He shall break in pieces mighty men without number, and set others in their stead. Therefore he knoweth their works, and he overturneth them in the night, so that they are destroyed. He striketh them as wicked men in the open sight of others; because they turned back from him, and would not consider any of his ways."

Could Elihu more clearly attribute the destruction of the workers of iniquity-not to an eternal decree of unconditional reprobation, or to God's requiring from them an obedience they had no power to yield, or punishing them for crimes which they had no power to avoid,-" for God will not thus lay upon man more than right, so that he should enter into judgment with God," but to their voluntary and avoidable crimes, because they obstinately "turned back from God, and would not consider any of his ways ?"

It is worthy of remark, that the reason here assigned by Elihu "for God's not accepting the persons of princes, or regarding the rich more than the poor," is such a reason, as seems to apply with equal force against the supposition of his having such respect for the persons of the elect, as to assign to them eternal happiness, while he abandons the reprobate to eternal misery, uninfluenced by the foreknowledge of how either would act.

For

[ocr errors][merged small]

it is not more certainly true of princes and subjects, of rich and poor, than it is of all human beings divided into the elect and reprobate, that "they are all the works of his hands," and by this common relation of creatures to the Creator, are alike the objects of his care and providence, and have alike an assurance that their existence will not terminate in eternal misery, if their conduct, according to the light and powers they enjoy, does not equally deserve it.

Afterwards, the same passage of Scripture exhibits a series of facts and reasonings apparently very opposite to the principles of unconditional and unalterable election or reprobation. It describes the various dispensations of God in the government of human affairs, as part of a scheme of probation, to try and discipline the children of men, for "Elihu proceeded and said, suffer me a little and I will show thee, that I have yet to speak on God's behalf. I will fetch my knowledge from afar, and will ascribe righteousness to my Maker. Behold God is mighty and despiseth not any: He is mighty in strength and wisdom. He preserveth not the life of the wicked; but giveth right to the poor. He withdraweth not his eyes from the righteous; but with kings are they on the throne: yea, he doth establish them for ever, and they are exalted. And if they be bound in fetters, and be holden in cords of affliction; then he showeth them their work and their transgressions that they have exceeded. He openeth also their ear to discipline, and commandeth that they return from iniquity. If they obey and serve him, they shall spend their days in prosperity and their years in pleasures; but if they obey not, they shall perish with the sword, and they shall die without knowledge.'

[ocr errors]

Surely it is scarcely possible to describe the divine government in a manner more repugnant to every idea of unconditional election or reprobation, which unalterably assigns each individual to happiness or misery before he is born, and therefore wholly independent of his own conduct. Here, on the contrary, every individual is said to receive from God "according to his ways:" he is supposed to have a power to change his conduct, to repent and turn from iniquity; and his doing or not doing so is the condi

Job, xxxvi. 1-13.

tion on which depends his flourishing in prosperity or sinking under punishment. Surely it is scarcely possible to ascribe to the Divinity more distinctly the same ideas of justice and mercy which the most enlightened reason forms, and the purest benevolence approves; but which appear totally inconsistent with the predestinarian scheme.

Were it required to produce a passage, which should still more clearly state the divine attributes as in opposition to the system of unconditional election and reprobation, and to the idea of any individuals being by an overruling divine influence preserved in a state of indefectible righteousness, or by originally withholding that influence, abandoned to incorrigible guilt and consequent destruction; it would, I conceive, be found in the prophet Ezekiel,* where he undertakes to correct the misconceptions of the Jews as to the divine conduct, who accused God of injustice, because according to the peculiar economy of the Jewish law, the sins of the fathers were visited on the children. They did not reflect that this dispensation extended only to the temporal punishment of sin by temporal calamities in the present life, in order to mark out the existence of a Theocracy, and maintain its authority, by exercising an immediate providential government, and, by an apparently severe but really merciful chastisement, preventing the contagion of parental depravity from infecting the children; but that it had no connexion with the rewards or punishments of the eternal world, and therefore implied no departure on the part of God from those principles of justice recognised by human reason. The prophet thus addresses those who called in question the equity of God's moral government. "The word of the Lord, (says the prophet,) came unto me again, saying, what mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge? As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel." The Divinity is then represented as determining to alter this part of the Jewish dispensation † and

Ch. xviii. to the end.

+ Vide the Author's opinion on this part of the Jewish economy, more fully stated in his Lectures on the Pentateuch. Part 3, Lecture 3, sect. 2.

« FöregåendeFortsätt »