I shall adduce the larger evidence, in order to make good what the title imports. The reader will not, however, expect a synopsis of the whole evidence, by which this great truth is authenticated: for, were I to attempt that, I must transcribe well nigh all the 89 chapters of the four evangelists.

It should seem that our blessed Lord began his public ministrations with his sermon on the Mount, recorded Matt. v. vi. and vii. In that discourse, are the following passages.

One jot, or one tittle, shall in no wise pass from the law, until all be fulfilled.

Thou canst not make one hair white or black.

Your Father, who is in heaven, maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. Surely man can neither promote nor hinder, the rising of the sun and the falling of the rain!

Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever.-How can a free-willer say the Lord's Prayer?

Which of you, by taking thought, can add one cubit unto his stature? The word a signifies both stature and age. As we have no single term, in English, which comprises both those ideas together; the passage should be rendered periphrastically: which of you, by being anxious, can either make addition to his stature, or prolong the duration of his life?

Be not tormentingly distressed, concerning futurity for futurity shall take care of its own things. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof: i. e. commit yourselves, in a believing and placid use of reasonable means, to the will and providence of him, who has already lain out the whole plan of events in his own immutable purpose. The appointed mea sure of supposed evil is infallibly connected with its

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day, which no corrodings of imaginary anticipation can either stave off, or diminish.

"Reasonable means! are not all means hereby, shut out of the case ?" No. Not in any respect whatever. For we know not what means God will bless, until we have tried as many as we can. when all tried, the result still rests with him.

But,

I shall only quote one other passage, from the sermon on the Mount.-The rain [of affliction] descended, and the floods [of temptation] came, and the winds [of persecution] blew, and beat upon that house [the house of an elect, redeemed, converted soul]: but it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock. That is, in plain English, it could not fall. It stood, necessarily: or, as the sense is yet more forcibly expressed in St. Luke, when the flood arose, the stream beat vehemently upon that house, and could not shake it. Luke vi. 48.

In other parts of the gospels, we find Christ reasoning and acting on the highest principles of necessity.

I will; be thou clean: said he, to the poor leper. What was the consequence? And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. Matt. viii. 3. The effect necessarily followed. The leper could not but be healed.

And indeed, what were all the miracles wrought by Jesus, but effects of his irresistible and necessitating power? Let the Christian reader examine and weigh each of those miracles, with this remark in his eye; and he will soon become a convert to the doctrine of necessity. Was it possible for those miracles not to have taken effect? i. e. was it possible for Christ's miracles not to have been miracles? Was it chance which armed his word with ability to heal and to destroy? If so, farewel to all Christianity at once. I can perceive no shadow of medium between necessity and rank infidelity.

Neither can I make any thing of the prophecies of Christ, unless those prophecies be considered as infallible: i. e. as inferring a certain, or necessary, accomplishment, in every part. For, if a single predicted circumstànce can possibly happen, otherwise than it is foretold; the entire argument, for the truth of divine revelation, drawn from the topic of prophecy, moulders into dust.

Nor is the Arminian self-determining hypothesis more compatible with (what is the essential basis of prophecy) the foreknowledge of God. If, for example, it so lay at the free-will of Christ's betrayer and murderers, that they might, or might not, have betrayed and crucified him; and if it so lay at the free-will of the Romans, as that they might, or might not, have destroyed Jerusalem; it will follow, that those events were philosophically contingent; i. e. there was no certainty of their taking place, till after they actually had taken place. The selfdetermining will of Judas might possibly have determined itself another way. So might the self-determining will of every person concerned in the crucifixion of Christ. And so might the self-determining wills of those Romans, who besieged and razed Jerusalem. Consequently (on that principle), divine foreknowledge could not, with certainty, know any thing of the matter. For that which is not certainly future, is not certainly foreknowable. It may be emptily considered, as possible: or (at the very utmost) be uncertainly guessed at, as not improbable. But knowledge must be left out of the question for knowledge will stand on none but (a)

(a) There are four links which all the art of man can never separate; and which proceed in the following order: Decree-Foreknowledge-Prophecy-Necessity. Let us take a short scripture view of those sacred links, and of their connection with each other.

I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me: declaring the end, from the beginning; and, from ancient times, the things that are not yet done: saying, my counsel shall stand, and

certain ground. God does not foreknow, but afterknow (i. e. he is never sure of a thing's coming to

I will do all my pleasure. Yea, I have spoken: I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed: I will also do it, Isaiah xlvi. 9, 10, 11. I admit, that this sublime passage had immediate reference to the certainty of Babylon's capture by Cyrus. But not to that only. "The things which are not yet done," as well as that in particular, are all known to Jehovah; and many of them explicitly predicted likewise. And on what is God's absolute and all-comprising knowledge grounded? On the "counsel," or decree; and on the "pleasure," or sovereign and almighty determination; of his will.-By the same rule, that God had predestinated, and did foreknow, the exploits of Cyrus; he must bave predestinated, and foreknown, the exploits of every other man. Since, if any one being, or any one fact, incident, or circumstance, be unknown to God; every being, fact, incident, and circumstance, may be equally unknown by him. But, putting matters upon the best footing on which Arminianism can put them; the divine knowledge can neither be eternal, nor infinite, nor infallible, if aught is exempted from it, or if aught can happen otherwise than as it is foreknown.

How great a stress God lays on this his attribute of complete and unmistaking prescience; and how he claims the honour of it, as one of those essential and incommunicable perfections, by which he stands distinguished from false gods; may be seen among other places, in Isaiah xli. 21, 22, 23. and xlii. 8, 9. and xliii. 9. 12. and xlv. 21.-Well, therefore, might St. James declare, in the synod of apostles and elders held at Jerusalem, known unto God are all his works, a avos, from eternity, Acts xv. 18.

The late excellent Mr. William Cooper, of Boston, in New England, (I say, the late; because I suppose that good man to be, ere this time, gathered into the assembly of saints made perfect) observes, in the second of his Four Discourses on Predestination unto Life, that it was the scripture doctrine of God's omniscience, which proselyted our famous Dr. South to Calvinism. "I have it," says Mr. Cooper, "from very good authority" [appealing in the margin, to Dr. Calamy's Continuation, vol. i. p. 146.] "that, some time after the Restoration, Dr. South being in company, at Oxford, with several persons of note, and among the rest with Mr. Thomas Gilbert, who was afterwards one of the ejected ministers; they fell into a conversation, about the Arminian points.—On Mr. Gilbert's asserting, that the predestination of the Calvinists did necessarily follow upon the prescience of the Arminians; the doctor presently engaged, that, if he [Gilbert] could make that out, he [i. e. Dr. South] would never be an Arminian, so long as he lived. Mr. Gilbert immediately undertook it: and made good his assertion, to the satisfaction of those present. And the doctor himself was so convinced, as to continue, to the last, a very zealous asserter of the

pass, until it does or has come to pass) if it be in the power of his creatures to determine themselves to a contrary point of the compass.

"Oh, but God foreknows to what particular point of the compass they certainly will determine themselves." Pray, leave out the word, certainly; and likewise the word, will: for they stab poor selfdetermination to the heart. If you retain these words and their ideas, you give up the very essence of your cause. For, what certainly will be, is no longer uncertain. And what is not uncertain is necessary, or will surely come to pass, and cannot but do so: else, the certainty evaporates into nothing.

When Christ sent his disciples for an ass's colt, which, he foreknew and foretold, they would find exactly at such a place; he added, that the owner of the animal, on their saying, the Lord wants it, would immediately permit them to lead it away. They went to the village, and made up to the very spot; where every thing fell out precisely, as their heavenly Master had predicted Let me ask: Was the man's consent to part with his colt necessary; or was it uncertain? All circumstances considered, had he power to refuse, and might he actually have refused to let go his property? If (which was certainly the case) he could not possibly withhold his assent, Christ's foreknowledge was real; and the man himself, what the ingenious Mr. Wesley would term, "a fine piece of clock-work;" but what I should term, a necessary free agent. If, on the other hand, he might have denied complying with the disciples' request, and could have dismissed them without success; it will necessarily follow, that our Lord shot his arrow at a venture, sent his messengers on a blind errand, and that his own foreknowledge was not foreknowledge, but random, conjecture and sur

reformed [i. e. of the Calvinistic] doctrine, against its various opposers."