Wardlaw:

(3.) We must repeat it, amongst our important general principles, necessary to the full clearing of our way, that predestination ought, in strict propriety, to be regarded as relating to one side only of the alternative of life or death. The sovereign right of God to bestow His favors on whom He will among the universally undeserving, we have seen to be unequivocally affirmed in the portion of God’s word already considered.¹ Predestination to life is an act of sovereignty infinitely honorable to every attribute of the divine character and every principle of the divine government. But predestination to death, if the phrase be admissible at all (and I own my dislike to it), can mean no more than the published determination of the Supreme and Righteous Governor to punish transgressors for their sins. Now sovereignty has nothing to do with this. It comes under the category of equity. It has no freedom of selection. It proceeds in every case on the principle of desert, and bears to the desert a scrupulously just proportion. Sovereignty is the supreme right to do whatever is not inconsistent with equity. It has, therefore, and can have, no application to punishment. " The punishment of the guilty is not an object of divine sovereignty. To punish the guilty is the office of equity, which gives to all their due. For mercy to punish, or justice to confer undeserved favour, is discordant in thought and language; but not more so than sovereign punishment, without assuming another meaning of the term, or disputing about words. In brief, as equity never disapproves of any creature, especially a moral agent, where there is nothing wrong or no desert, so divine sovereignty is in no case displayed but for the welfare of its objects. In proportion as any creature has no equitable claim upon God, all he is and possesses, that may be denominated good, must be the effect of sovereignty."² The Bishop of Lincoln (Tomlin) lays down the following extraordinary position: "It is not denied that God had a right, founded on the incontrovertible will of the Creator over His creatures, to consign the far greater part of men to eternal misery, and to bestow eternal happiness on a select few, although there was in themselves no ground whatever for such distinction. But the question is, whether such conduct would have been consistent with the principles of infinite justice and of infinite mercy."³ I have called this an extraordinary position; and from such a quarter most extraordinary it is ; the abhorrer and refuter of Calvinism asserting what Dr. Williams justly denominates "the most exceptionable part of hyper-Calvinism." " That must be a very anomalous and strange kind of right," observes Dr. Williams,

which is not consistent with infinite justice. If men were consigned to eternal misery without desert, and this founded in right, what is it but saying that the Creator had a right to be unjust? But if men so consigned deserved it by previous delinquency, how could it be inconsistent with justice? Is it not of the essence of justice to give every one his due ? To ascribe to the Creator, Preserver, and Benefactor of His creatures a right, an arbitrary right of conferring benefits upon them beyond their due, is infinitely worthy of Him; but to ascribe to Him the same right to render the undeserving miserable is to offer Him ‘a compliment which He must needs reject with infinite disdain; a right to be unjust, were He not infinitely just, wise, and merciful!⁴

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