that he fpared not his own fon, but gave him up for us all. Rom. viii. 32.

To say that God the Father provided an atonement for his own offended juftice is, in fact, to give up the doctrine. If a perfon owe me a fum of

money, and I chufe to have the debt discharged, is it not the fame thing, whether I remit the debt at once, or fupply another person with money wherewith to pay me in the debtor's name? If fatisfaction be made to any purpose, it must be in fome manner, in which the offender may be a sufferer, and the offended perfon a gainer; but it can never be reconciled to equity, or answer any good purpose whatever, to make the innocent fuffer the punishment of the guilty. If, as Abraham fays, it be far from God to flay the righecous with the wicked, and that the righteous fhould be as the wicked, Gen. xviii. 25. much farther muft it be from him to flay the righteous inftead of the wicked.

I wish the zealous advocates for this doctrine would confider, that if it be neceffary, in the nature of things, that the juftice of God be fatisfied before any fin can be pardoned, and Chrift be God as well as the Father, whether the justice of Christ ought not to have been satisfied in the first place. If fo, what other infinite being has made fatisfaction to him? But if the divine nature of the fon required no fatisfaction, why should the divine nature of the Father require any?

If it had been inconfiftent with the divine juftice. to pardon fin upon repentance only, without fome farther fatisfaction, we might have expected to have found it expressly faid to be fo in the fcriptures; but no fuch declaration can be produced either from the Old or the New Teftament. All that can be pretended is, that it may be inferred from it. Though good works are recommended to us in the ftrongeft manner, it is never with any falvo or caution, as if they were not of themselves acceptable to God. The declarations of the divine mercy to the penitent are all abfolute, without the most diftant hint of their having a reference to any confideration on which they are made. Thou, Lord, art good, and ready to forgive Pfalm lxxxiv. 5. To the Lord our God belong mercies and forgivenelles, though we have rebelled against him, Dan, ix. 3. When David and other penitents confels their fins, and entreat for pardon, they refer themselves to the divine mercy only, without seeming to have the least idea of any thing farther. Remember not the fins of my youth, nor my tranfgreffions; according to thy mercy remember thou me, for thy goodness-fake, O Lord. Pfalm xxv. 6.

It is particularly remarkable, that when facrifices under the law are expressly faid not to be fufficient for the pardon of fin, we are never referred to any more availing facrifice; but to good works only. Thou defireft not facrifice, elfe would I give it; thou delighteft not in burnt-offering. The facrifices of the Lord are a C 3

broken

even in the qualified fenfe above mentioned, oppofing, what they called, the fupreme monarchy of the Father, to the novel doctrine of the divinity of the fon; and the philofophizing chriftians were obliged to make laboured apologies to thefe early unitarians, acknowledging the perfect inferiority of the fon to the Father.

But at length thefe unitarians, 'who are exprefsly faid to have been the majority of chriftians in the third century, were overborne by the fuperior influence and popularity of their adverfaries, who, from believing Chrift to be God in an inferior qualified sense of the word, came, in the natural course of things, to believe him to be God equal to the Father himself, and to have existed from all eternity independently of him. But it was feveral centuries before this do Arine was fully established. And the holy spirit was generally confidered either as the fame thing with the power of God, that is, God hinfelt (just as the fpirit of a man is a man) or else a fuperangelic being, inferior both to the Father and the fon, 'till after the council of Nice.

In the mean time, Arius and his followers, fhocked at the doctrine of Chrift being of the fame fubftance with the Father, maintained that, though he had preexisted, and had been the medium of all the difpenfations of God to mankind, he was, like all other derived beings, created out of nothing; the opinion of all fouls having been emanations from the fupreme mind being then generally denied by chriftians.

Thus

Thus did it please God, for reasons unknown to us, to permit the rife and general fpread of the trinitarian and Arian opinions, as he permitted the rife and amazing power of the man of fin, and many corruptions and abuses of chriftianity utterly fubverfive of the genuine purity of the gospel, 'till the full time for the reformation of this and other grofs corruptions of christianity was come.

II. A CONCISE NISTORY OF THE

DOCTRINES

OF GRACE, ORIGINAL SIN, AND PREDESTI

NATION.

It was a controversy about the nature and use of baptism that occafioned the starting of the doctrine of the natural impotence of man to do what God requires of him, of the imputation of the fin of Adam to all his posterity, and of the arbitrary predestination of certain individuals of the human race to everlasting life, while the reft of mankind were left in a state of reprobation; and this was fo late as four hundred. years after Chrift. Before that time it had been the univerfal opinion of chriftians, and of Austin himself, who first advanced the doctrines above-mentioned, that every man has the power of obeying or disobeying the laws of God, that all men may be faved if they will, and that no decrees of God will be the least obstruction in the way of any man's falvation.

But Pelagius, a man of good understanding, and exemplary morals, in his declamations against some abuses of baptifm, afferting, that baptism itself does not wash away fin, as was then generally supposed (on which account it was the custom with many to defer it 'till near death) nor could have been appointed for that purpose, because infants, which have no fin, are baptifed; Auftin, in oppofition to him, maintained that, though infants have no actual fin of their own, they have the ftain of original fin in which they were born; though he was far from afferting that Adam was the federal head of all his pofterity, and that his fin was properly imputed to them. This was an improvement, upon the doctrine in after-ages. What Auftin maintained was, that men derive a corrupt nature, or a proneness to fin, from Adam.

Alfo, having been led, in the courfe of this controversy, to affert, that by means of original fin no man had it in his power to attain to falvation, he was obliged to maintain that it depended upon the will of God only who should be finally faved, and that he predeftinated whom he thought proper for that purpose, independently of any forefight of their good works, which it was not in their power to perform without his immediate affiftance, and in which he must be the first mover.

But notwithstanding this doctrine of the corruption of human nature, the neceffity of divine grace for the production of every good thought or action, and

the