482 IRH1:0OM OF WILL. out knowledge, as well as enjoyed my shareof intellectual powers and advantages of learning ; he might have formed me the child . of a beggar, made me an heir to filth and wretchedness, and, trainedme up to ask my bread from door to door, instead of the comfortable circumstances which I enjoy, and the parents from whence I came. Wecannot but suppose it possible for the great God to have found .a way tohave made these things comport with his grand scheme and counsels in the universe, if he had so plea- sed ; but he has chosen and determined better things forme fromhis own free will and sovereign goodness, and blessed be his name. IX. This doctrine manifests and maintains the just distinc- tion betweenthe moral and positive commands of God, while we suppose his moral commands and prohibitions to be drawn from the eternal fitness or unfitness of things, whereas his positive com- mands and prohibitionsare for the most part, if not entirely, the free and arbitrary determinations of his will and choice. T do not. call them arbitrary, as though God had no reason at all for appointing them, or that they are not suited to attain very happy and divine purposes in the grand scheme of his counsels ; but . they are arbitrary in this respect, that lie might have chosen and appointed other positive commands or prohibitions, which might have been equally fit, and have attained purposes as happy and glorious, andwhich he might have introduced with equal reason : For it is very hard to suppose, as I hinted above, that every punctilio and all the little circumstances of every positive com- mand and prohibition ofGod throughout all theages of his church, patriarchal, Jewish and christian, were determined by the neces- sary superior fitness of them. I shall enquire immediately, whether any thingmore than this can be said concerning his moral commands ; and then what difference is there between the one and the other ? X. This scheme of theself-determining power of the will represents the doctrine of the freedom of man's will, and the power and prevalenceof divine grace in a most happy harmony and consistency, perhaps beyond what any other scheme can represent. Suppose God decree and determine to convert such a sinner as Onesiinus to faith and holiness : he can represent to his understanding, by his own word, and by the additional opera- tion of his own Spirit, the fitness and goodness offaith in Christ, and true repentance, in such a superior light, as he who knows the hearts and sentiments; the circumstances and situations of all men, loth certainly foreknow will be not only sufficient but effec- tual to influence and persuade the will of Onesimus to comply with it And yet perhaps God need not mechanically or physi- cally, necessarily or irrisistibly move and constrain the will ofthe creature to comply. And though the will is left to its own free,
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=