Sacred Scriptures, that some few, called the elect, will be saved, and the rest totally lost, conclude in their own minds, and even assert in their doctrine, that the one class is unconditionally predestinated to heaven, while the other class, consisting of a great majority of the human race, is consigned to eternal damnation without hope or means of redemption.
It is also a prevailing opinion, not only among the simple and illiterate, but even among the learned and wise, (if they can be called such, who know nothing of the laws of divine order,) that God, being omnipotent, created the world out of nothing by the mere utterance of a word; that he governs it also in an arbitrary manner, by a power resembling the absolute power of an earthly monarch; that, if he please, he can at any time change the respective qualities and tendencies of his creatures; that he can purge every sinner upon earth, in a moment, from his sins; that he can renew, sanctify, regenerate, and make him a child of grace instead of a child of wrath, that is, justify him merely by the application and imputation of the righteousness and merits of his Son. In short, it is almost universally believed, that the divine omnipotence is regulated by no laws whatever, but that it can accomplish any thing or everything that can be proposed, however absurd or contradictory in itself; consequently that salvation may be effected on the part of God, without any regard to the freedom and rationality of man, or the necessity of his co-operation in appropriating to himself those principles of spiritual life, which, when so received, can alone prepare him for a state of future happiness.
But the groundless surmises, above stated, vanish from the mind, when it is known, that all the divine operations towards man are conducted by laws of order, in themselves immutable, because of the same
