providence in that which is least, you in fact dethrone Him from His sovereignty over that which is greatest. You remember the example that we gave from a very critical passage in the life of Mahomet-how he was preserved by the flight of a bird, and by the rapid process of inference which this gave rise to in the minds of his pursuers; and that, had it not been for these two steps in the concatenations of providence, all the designs of the impostor would have been arrested: And one of the greatest moral revolutions in the history of our species was thus made to turn on the most minute and familiar of all incidents. The doctrine that would limit the predestinations of God to the world of matter, might allow that it was He who hollowed the cave in which the pretender hid himself; and guarded its entrance with shrubbery ; and perhaps even detained the bird for the purpose of turning away the footsteps of the destroyers: But one step remains, and that hath been placed by the assertors of a self-determining power in man beyond the reach of the Being from whom he sprung. It all hinged, you will observe, on a rapid volition in the breast of the murderers. And if there be any thing there to abridge God of His sovereignty-if when it be the part of man to will it is the part of God as it were to stand by and to wait on the uncertain decision-if the Creator, instead of foreseeing all and determining all, must thus attend on the decisions of the creature; and shape the measures of His providence on earth, according

to the signals that are given out by all the petty and independent powers that swarm upon its surface-Then never, in the whole history of this world's politics we will venture to affirm, never was there exhibited a more disjointed and tumultuous government-never have we read of a more helpless or degraded sovereign.

181

IN

LECTURE LXI.

ROMANS, viii, 29, 30.

For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the first-born among many brethren. Moreover, whom he did predestinate them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified; and whom he justified, them he also glorified."

my last remarks upon the subject I confined myself, nakedly and absolutely, to the truth of the doctrine of predestination; and had no time left for any moral or practical application. And yet it is for a good and powerful application of the truth in this instance, that I feel greatly more anxious, than even for the truth itself. It is not your curiosity, but your conscience that I want to address; neither am I so solicitous for dogmatising you into a right belief on the topic of predestination, as for evincing that, whether true or false, all your present energies should be given entire to the present work of repenting, and believing, and labouring with all diligence in the new obedience of the gospel. As to the speculative doctrine itself, I do not scruple to aver, that, while a firm and unexcepted believer in it myself, I do not regard it as one of those articles which are indispensable to salvation-that many

are the eminent worthies, and more especially of our sister church, who have the root of the matter in them; and yet who eye this doctrine, not with incredulity alone, but with a sort of keen and sensitive antipathy-who have, in short, a kind of horror at this most revolting feature of what they denominate a rigid and revolting Calvinism; and deem, that, unfit for modern ears, it should now be suffered to be forgotten in the unwieldy folio, whose scowling frontispiece represents the theologian who penned it. I, of course, hold them to be wrong. I think that they misunderstand the subject, and view it through a medium of passion and prejudice which may at length be dispersed. Nevertheless, though we count them in an error, it, like certain sins mentioned by the apostle John, is an error not unto death. I do not see how they can get over the evidence that there is for predestination-both in the scriptures of truth; and in those independent reasonings to which man, even unaided and alone, seems altogether competent. Yet I am aware, that, to a certain limit, there may be varieties of opinion, and all of them alike consistent with reverence for God and His communications, so far as the ability to understand them has been given; and such varieties on the much controverted topic of predestination appear to me within that limit. So that it is not in the spirit of Athanasian intolerance, that I have hitherto urged my convictions upon this subject; nor indeed so much with a view to impress these convictions, as to demonstrate if I can-that

the great cause of practical Christianity remains uninjured by a doctrine, which is conceived by many to be fatal to it.

The apostle Paul, however strenuous and resolute in his assertion of certain doctrines, was, in regard to certain others, the most indulgent and liberal of men. He admitted a certain latitude of sentiment even among his own converts; and, though there were errors for which he had no toleration, yet there were also errors, both in opinion and in practice, which he regarded in the spirit of a most benignant forbearance. There were articles of faith, on which he would not give place even to the slightest mitigation of them-no not for a single hour; and when the apostle Peter offered something like a compromise with the doctrine of justification by faith alone, he withstood him to the face because he was to be blamed. Nay he called down the imprecation of Heaven on any who should pervert the mind of his disciples from that gospel of free grace, wherewith he linked the whole of a sinner's salvation; and yet, while there were truths respecting Jesus Christ and Him crucified which he could not surrender, there were also truths in which he suffered a variety of conception on the part of his fellow-Christians; and so far from scowling excommunication upon them because of it, he waits in hope and charity the progress of a more enlightened conviction in their minds. "Let as many as be perfect be thus minded, and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto