t a prop is found in "the grace of God
by Christ going before to give a good will, and to work with that good
will." So the grace of God by Christ must go before to displace a bad will
by giving "a good one." But this fails to relieve the doctrine from
embarrassment; for if the sinner is unwilling, has a bad will, it is
claimed that the Spirit goes away and leaves him to die in his
helplessness. Does the Omnipotent Spirit go to a man to give him a good
will, and then refuse to give it because the poor man has it not already?
Do you say he resisted? Well, well; suppose he did? _What_, is that in the
way of an Omnipotent Spirit? Who can explain such nonsense?

If I had a son laboring under the conviction that the Bible is the source
of such teachings, and he was to become disgusted and fall out with it on
that account, I should be proud of his common-sense. Is the poor man
mocked in that manner? If he dies in his sins, on account of his not being
in possession of a good will, can his future reward be according to the
deeds done by himself? No! He was never on trial--he had no ability to try.
There is just as much sense in the idea that an ape is on trial. Adam, the
first, ruined him; and Adam, the second, did not help him. Can a man be
justly condemned because he was not what he never had the power to be?

_Third._ The idea that the Lord would command men to _convert themselves_,
knowing, at the same time, that they could not do it. He commands men to
convert. He "commands all men everywhere to repent." He knows, also, that
they can do it; so Protestantism, to the contrary, is an everlasting
disgrace to our religion. The original term translated by the word convert
is in the _imperative active_ in many places. Our translators put it in
the passive in the third chapter of Acts, where it is imperative active in
the original. Why they did this no scholar can tell, unless it was to
favor their Calvinistic ideas upon conversion. The term occurs forty-seven
times in the New Testament, and it is translated thirty-eight times by the
words _turn_ and _return_.

Paul says he "showed to the people that THEY SHOULD TURN TO GOD, and do
works meet for repentance."

This great thought harmonizes with all that is taught upon the subject of
future rewards. A man _can turn_, and he is therefore accountable. To make
man responsible, it must be shown that he is capable, or able. This is the
one great fact that lies at the foundation of fut