esignedly arranged to
convey false impressions of truth, and that while God treats us now
as though we were accountable beings, He fixes our final destinies
without any regard whatsoever to our imaginary freedom and pretended
responsibility.

On the other hand, taking the general tenor of the sacred volume to
be the true representation of the moral economy under which we are
placed by the infinite wisdom of God, all the passages which are
cited by Calvinists, as being favourable to their cause, may be so
explained, and that without violence, as to accord with the current
testimony of the Scriptures to the freedom and moral agency of man.
A stronger presumptive argument cannot be conceived against the
claim of Calvinism to scriptural authority.

Let it be also distinctly observed, that the cause of Calvinism is
not served by those passages of Scripture which relate to the
election of individuals, or of nations, to certain privileges which
do not extend to the absolute enjoyment of eternal life. Of this
description is the ninth of the Romans. The subject of that
celebrated chapter is not the election of individuals to final
salvation, but the election of the Jews to the honor of being the
visible Church, and their subsequent rejection through open
unbelief. Nor does the allusion contained in it to the destruction
of Pharaoh and his host in the Red sea, yield an argument in favour
of Calvinistic reprobation. The fact that the infatuated monarch was
hardened in heart by _the leniency_ which spared him under so many
provocations and insults offered by him to the Almighty God, does
not prove, nor was it designed to prove, that he was the fated
victim of an eternal decree, whether in regard to his secular or
spiritual condition.

Nor can Calvinism plead for itself those texts which are supposed to
refer to the election of individuals to final salvation, but which
at the same time leave unsettled the important question at issue;
whether that election was absolute and irrespective of character, or
whether it was founded on the foreknowledge of their faith and
obedience. Such for example is the language of St. Paul, 2 Thess.
ii. 13, 14. All such passages leave the controversy undetermined,
proving only that the doctrine of election is scriptural, but not
fixing the sense in which it is to be taken, whether absolute or
conditional.

The terms _election_ and _predestination_, with their correlates,
are of frequent occurrence