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Chapter 36. It Should Be Openly Preached – Part 10
VI.—Hence results another reason nearly connected with the former for the unreserved publication of this doctrine, namely, that, from a sense of God's peculiar, eternal and unalterable love to His people, their hearts may be inflamed to love Him in return. Slender indeed will be my motives to the love of God on the supposition that my love to Him is beforehand with His to me, and that the very continuance of His favour is suspended on the weathercock of my variable will or the flimsy thread of my imperfect affection. Such a precarious, dependent love were unworthy of God, and calculated to produce but a scanty and cold reciprocation of love from man. At the happiest of times, and in the best of frames…
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Chapter 37. It Should Be Openly Preached – Part 11
VII.—Hence arises a seventh argument for the preaching of predestination, namely, that by it we may be excited to the practice of universal godliness. The knowledge of God's love to you will make you an ardent lover of God, and the more love you have to God, the more will you excel in all the duties and offices of love. Add to this that the Scripture view of predestination includes the means as well as the end. Christian predestinarians are for keeping together what God hath joined. He who is for attaining the end without going to it through the means is a self-deluding enthusiast. He, on the other hand, who carefully and conscientiously uses the means of salvation as steps to the end is…
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Chapter 38. It Should Be Openly Preached – Part 12
VIII.—Unless predestination be preached, we shall want one great inducement to the exercise of brotherly kindness and charity. When a converted person is assured, on one hand, that all whom God hath predestinated to eternal life shall infallibly enjoy that eternal life to which they are chosen, and, on the other hand, when he discerns the signs of election, not only in himself, but also in the rest of his fellow-believers, and concludes from thence (as in a judgment of charity he ought) that they are as really elected as himself, how must his heart glow with love to his Christian brethren! How feelingly will he sympathise with them in their distresses! How tenderly will he bear with their infirmities! How readily will he relieve…
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Chapter 39. It Should Be Openly Preached – Part 13
IX.—Lastly, without a due sense of predestination, we shall want the surest and the most powerful inducement to patience, resignation and dependence on God under every spiritual and temporal affliction. How sweet must the following considerations be to a distressed believer! (1) There most certainly exists an almighty, all-wise and infinitely gracious God. (2) He has given me in times past, and is giving me at present (if I had but eyes to see it), many and signal intimations of His love to me, both in a way of providence and grace. (3) This love of His is immutable; He never repents of it nor withdraws it. (4) Whatever comes to pass in time is the result of His will from everlasting, consequently (5) my…
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Appendix (1): The “Fate” Of The Ancients From The Latin Justus Lipsius.
Concerning The “Fate” Of The Ancients From The Latin Justus Lipsius.[1] Fate (says Apuleius), according to Plato, is that, whereby the purposes and designs of God are accomplished. Hence the Platonics considered providence under a threefold distinction: (1) The providentia prima, or that which gave birth to all effects, and is defined, by them, to be the intention or will of the supreme God. (2) The providentia secunda, or actual agency of the secondary or inferior beings, who were supposed to pervade the heavens, and from thence, by their influence, to regulate and dispose of all sublunary things, and especially to prevent the extinction of any one species below. (3) The providentia tertia, supposed to be exerted by the genii, whose office it was to…
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Appendix (2): The Predestination of the Muslims
Concerning the Predestination of the Muslims. The reader may, if he pleases, consider himself as entered, at present, on a kind of historical voyage. Some people pretend to think that we are in full sail for Constantinople, and that predestination is at once the compass by which we steer, and the breeze by which we are carried plump into the Grand Seignior's harbour. Predestination and the ineluctabilis ordo rerum are, according to these sage Arminian geographers, situate only in the latitude of Muhammad, and every man who believes with Scripture that God "worketh all things after the counsel of His own will," and, with our Church, that all things, both in heaven and earth, are ordered by a never-failing providence—every man who thus believes is,…
