QUESTION XIV. 373 lions of grace, sinful man never would be converted and saved. Some of the professed partisans of A have thus expressed themselves*. Thefirst way of reeonciliation. R, who cannot entirely approve of the opinion of C, fir the reasons which A has given, yet is as much displeased with A's opinion, notwith- standing all the excuses he has made ; because he fears, it seems, tocontradict many of those express scriptures which ascribe the conversion, sanctification, and salvation of men, so power- fully, and plainly, and certainly, to God, and his Spirit, and his grace : And therefore he chuses another sentiment, which he thinks may reconcile all these difficulties; for he supposes his opinion to be more obviously and evidently consistent with the six propositions before laid down, and to be much more agrees- hie to all the expressions of scripture, which are urged both on the side of A and C : And on this account it is more happily suited, saith lie, to ascribe to free grace its full glory, as well as maintain the honours of God's moral government. R's opinion therefore is this : He supposes that the fall of man has so perverted his natural powers, that inward effectual grace is necessary to save him ; but that the will of man, both in its first and general turn from sin to repentance and holiness, as well as in all future acts of obedience, maintains its own liberty, as a power free to . act, or not to act : And that it shall never be thus sovereignly, entirely, and irresistibly moved by God, the all-wise Governor of mankind, as C imagines. But that, though there are some powerful divine influences, both toward the mind and the will, without which the man would never repent and be saved, yet the will is still a free faculty, and as such, is the only proper subject of moral government ; and therefore its freedom to chase good or evil, must be always finally left to its own determination, without which there would be no vice or virtue, nothing proper for reward or punishment, nor for any moral subjection to a wiseand righteous Creator and Governor. But since R believes the doctrine ofparticular persons elect- ed to salvation, he goes a middle way to secure the salvation of Christ to the particular persons designed, viz. R supposes, that divine grace strikes such a new and perspicuous light into the W In representing the Calvinist and the arminian schemeshere, I am not sen- sible that I have ascribed any one opinion to either of them, but what I am sup- ported in by John Calvin and Francia Turretine on one side, and by Philip Limborchand the remoostrants at the synod of Dort on the other side. I grant it has been too often thepractice of controversial writers on the calviutstic side,. to represent the arminians in the pelagian form ; and the writers of thearminian party have again represented all the calvinists in the form of supralapsarians and ántinomians: But this is the way to widen the divisions of the Christian worlds and inflame thespirits of .menagainst their brethren, sad not to reconcile themy, which It has hereattempted to do. A a 3
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