“But you did not read it all. You have read just as our opposers do who give garbled extracts from the Confession, and then draw the most absurd inferences. You stopped in the middle of the sentence. Read it all.”
Ernest read:
“Without any foresight of faith or good works, or perseverance in either of them, or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving Him thereunto.”
“The meaning,” said the Doctor, “is that God did not choose His people on account of their faith and good works. Faith itself is the gift of God. All men are in a state of guilt by nature. How, then, could the Lord fore-see faith and good works in any of them, growing out of their evil natures? How could they possibly perform good works without a regenerated heart?”
“For what did He choose them, then?”
“I can answer you only in the language of His own Word, which says, it was ‘according to the good pleasure of His will.’ Certainly, the Lord has some good reason for saving a portion of the human race and rejecting, or rather passing by the rest, but He has nowhere acquainted us with that reason. If election is such a ‘hard’ doctrine, what would have been the result, if God had not made any choice at all, but left men to follow the bent of their own wills, how many do you suppose would have been saved? The carnal heart is enmity against God. Could men, then have chosen God? Verily not. Christ Himself declares, ‘No man can come unto me, except the Father, which sent me, draw him.’ Do you not see clearly, then, that, without this much-abused doctrine of election, no human being could possibly be saved? It is a doctrine which the Church cannot afford to give up, and it is a doctrine to which every denomination holds in some form. We differ only as to the principle upon which the election is based. We Presbyterians, adhere rigidly to the Bible, and say that God’s choice grows out of His own will and pleasure, while our opposers affirm that it is founded upon the good works of the creature, and thus make salvation a matter of debt, and not of pure, free grace. That is the difference between us, and I leave it to you, with the Bible as your guide, to determine which view is the more Scriptural.”
“There is another thing I should like to ask you about,” said Ernest, feeling that he could produce no further objections.
“What is it? I will answer to the best of my knowledge and ability.”
“I have heard it said that some Presbyterian preachers hold to the view that there are infants in hell ‘not a span long.’”