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I thence conclude must be a gracious asking, a penitent seeking--flowing from supreme love to God and regard to his glory:-but the impenitent heart is altogether selfish. If he ask any thing of God, it is invariably, that he may consume it upon his lusts.

Does not this view of the subject, my friend, remove your difficulty, and lead you to see that regeneration is an unsought grace--that the sinner never in reality sought for it before he found it-never desired it, nor prayed for it before he received it?--I regret, however to find by your next objection, that you are not yet convinced. You thus rejoin:

"What propriety, then, can there be in the command-that the sinner should be required to seek for what he has already found, and that too as the condition and necessary means of his finding? This is inverting the natural order of things; for, instead of seeking and finding, it is finding and seeking--first entering, and then knocking for admittance."

This difficulty is only in appearance. It arises from a mistaken view of the subject, and from the want of proper distinctions. It is arguing from right to fact-from actual duty to actual performance; and that because God does command the sinner to seek, that therefore he can and may seek with an impenitent heart, and comply with the command in an act of disobedience to it. But this is begging the point in controversy, and begging what no man in his reason can grant. It lies upon you, Sir, to establish this point, by proper proof, or else agree to relinquish it.

There is a clear distinction between repentance and pardon; and it is only from confounding this distinction that your difficulty arises. I acknowledge there is an inseparable connexion between them; yet they are perfectly distinct. Repentance is the act of the creature-pardon, the act of God. Repentance is the seeking-pardon, the thing sought, and the thing found. Repentance is the necessary means of obtaining pardon--but pardon is not the necessary consequence of repentance. It is indeed a certain consequence, because God has promised pardon to the penitent; but repentance does not render the creature less guilty, or less deserving of punishment; and therefore

aside from the divine promise, God would be under no obligation to pardon the penitent, but might consist-ently with justice, punish him. Repentance, in the order of nature, and according to the divine establishment, precedes pardon. The sinner first repents, and then is pardoned. "He that confesseth and 'forsaketh his sins (which is repenting) shall find mercy." This shows that repentance and pardon are distinct things-that the former precedes the latter-that repentance is seeking, and pardon the thing found.

Now if you should still insist, that repentance is the thing sought, I might turn your own objection upon you in its full force-- Why do you seek what you have already found, and that as a necessary means of your finding? for seeking repentance is an exercise of repentance--it is repentance itself. You are already in --why then continue knocking for admittance?

The objection will be found in reality to lie against the objector. But if repentance be the thing signified and enjoined by the word seeking, then there is the utmost propriety and consistency in the command, and the encouragement annexed is most gracious-the blessing promised worthy of a God of infinite mercy to bestow. Seek and ye shall find-repent and be pardoned--believe and be saved. And this we shall find most clearly the instruction of God's word, by only taking that passage in Isaiah which has been quoted, and reading it in connection with the verse immediately following. "Seek ye the Lord while he may be found-call upon him while he is near.

Let the

wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God for he will abundantly pardon." Here the latter verse explains the duty of seeking enjoined in the former, to signify repentance this is forsaking sin, and turning unto the Lord; and the promised blessing connected with such seeking is God's mercy, and abundant pardon. And the passage in Matthew 7th, is exactly parallel. They both speak the same thing, direct to the same duty, and promise the same blessing.

Yours, &c.

ARISTARCHUS.

LETTER VI.

DEAR SIR,

LET us be candid, impartial and persevering in our search after truth. It is a treasure which, when found, will abundantly reward our pains. Your next objection to the Calvinistic doctrine of divine sovereignty, is one that has long been made, and as often been answered--and yet the objection continues to be made, and the answer must be repeated.

"This doctrine destroys the free agency of the creature and makes us mere machines."

Directly the contrary, I trust can be made to appear, if language be used with propriety, and words be taken in the sense which the common consent and usage of mankind have annexed to them.-A misunderstanding of words is often the occasion of dispute about things. In order therefore to examine the merits of the present objection, we will begin by defining terms;and first inquire, what is meant by free agency and a machine. These are contrasts, and whatever essential property is to be ascribed to the one, must be denied of the other.

The ground of your objection is, that free agency is destroyed by the doctrine of absolute dependence, and as a necessary consequence, the man is left but a mere machine. If then we can precisely determine the true distinction between a free agent and a machine, it will be easy to determine the merits of the question.

The idea of free agency is so plain that it can be defined only by synonimous terms. The word itself expresses its essential property. It is the same as spontaneous volition, or voluntary motion, or capacity of choice. The opposite of this, is the essential property offa machine--that is involuntary motion, or incapacity of choice. Now I ask whether absolute dependence, or unsonght grace destroys the free agency of

the creature, or even militates against its essential property? Whether the immediate, instantaneous, and irresistable energy of the Holy Ghost in regeneration makes the subject a machine, or implies any thing like involuntary motion, or incapacity of choice. The contrary of this, I think, has been proved. It is the very thing designed and effected by regeneration. Conversion is an act of the will, in which the creature puts forth his free, spontaneous choice. It is his voluntary turning from sin to holiness, from Satan to God. And certainly it is not inconsistent with free agency, for a mutable creature to change his affections, and to love and choose what he before hated and refused. So far from it, that this is the very exercise of his free agency: otherwise it would be impossible for an impenitent sinner ever to exercise repentance and become a saint ;--this implies an entire change of the moral affections. Such is the etymological sense of the word repentance. The literal signification of the Greek word metanoia, which we translate repentance, is change of mind, or affection.

The consistency between divine agency and human liberty we must believe, whether we discern it or not, for it is the instruction of the Bible.-"Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power." Here the power of God is declared to be the effecting cause-and the thing effected, the willingness of his people, their voluntary conversion or turning to God. This is according to the given definition of free agency, the very thing constituting its essential property. Therefore the power of God exercised upon the sinner in regeneration, does not make him a machine--He does not act by an involuntary motion--or contrary to his choice--or without any choice--but by his free choice. The passage does not imply that God's people should be willing contrary to their will, or whether they were willing or not. This would be a nonsensical contradiction in terms.

From what is now proved it is clear, that absolute dependence is perfectly consistent with human liberty, and may as well belong to a free agent, as to a mere machine-this is not the point in which they differ.

And it is as absurd to believe that a creature originates his own volitions and desires, as that he is the author of his own existence-he is equally dependent on God for all his exercises, as for his powers, or his very being. Every effect must have a cause, and God is the great first cause of all things caused. If we have any powers, or exercises, or volitions, for which we are not dependent on God-whence are they derived? Are they self-caused? No more than we are selfmade for our being is but an effect equally requiring a cause and our preservation is but a continued creation, and both being and thought are equally but links in the great extended chain of effects, alike depending on some preceding, independent, first cause. Now disconnect all the links of a suspended chain from the first link, and they all fall to the ground. They all depend upon the first link. So disconnect second causes, as they are called, from the first cause, and what are they? Nothing. They cease to be causes, and have no effect. All their efficacy is from God. They have but the medium of his operation. In God we live and move (or are moved) and have our being. God is the great and universal agent, who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will. We look but a little way, and to very little purpose, if we stop short of the first cause, and ascribe any independent agency to creatures, or second causes. It does not and cannot belong to them. Absolute dependence is inseparable from the character of a creature. Independent volitions flowing from dependent being and powers, is an absurdity, as great, as that of a dependent God. The same absurdity attends the idea of a selfdetermining power in the human will. This is inconsistent with the character of a creature, and can be built on no other foundation, but that of his independence. A power in the will of choosing or refusing, loving or hating, independent of motives, and from no other cause, but its own power of willing, or forbearing to will, I cannot conceive of as belonging to any creature. Not to be influenced by motives in choosing the greatest apparent good, would argue us void of natural reason, as well as moral goodness. It would be a freedom worse

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