That by Adam’s fall, his posterity lost their free-will, being put to an unavoidable necessity to do or not to do, whatsoever they do or do not, whether it be good or evil, being thereunto predestinated by the eternal and effectual secret decree of God.
ART. 4. OF THE MANNER OF CONVERSION.
That God, to save his elect from the corrupt mass, doth beget faith in them, by a power equal to that whereby He created the world and raised up the dead; insomuch, that such unto whom He gives that grace, cannot reject it, and the rest, being reprobate, cannot accept it.
ART. 5. OF THE CERTAINTY OF PERSEVERANCE.
That such as have once received that grace by faith, can never fall from it finally or totally, notwithstanding the most enormous sins they can commit.
[PART II.]
PARTICULAR OBJECTIONS.
[I.—CALVINISM IMPUGNS THE MORAL CHARACTER OF THE DEITY.]
The existence of moral evil is a fact, not to be denied by any man who reverences his own understanding; and that it seemed fit to the Divine Wisdom to permit its introduction into the world, is equally beyond contradiction, unless we limit the divine power, and suppose that, by a necessity antecedent to the divine will, and controlling the divine conduct, the Deity himself acts, not spontaneously but from coercion. That sin, with its awful consequences, should even exist by permission, under the administration of infinite benevolence, has been regarded by theologians as one of the most perplexing mysteries of “the deep things of God.”