08.03.16. Note F—Page 44

Note F—Page 44 The Inexplicable Difficulty—Where It Should Be Placed.

It is most essential to a right apprehension of the Calvinistic system, to bear in mind that it does not profess to solve the great difficulty in the relation of God’s will to man’s, but only to adjust the position of that difficulty aright, so that it shall not interfere, either with the sovereignty of divine grace from first to last, on the one hand, or with the responsibility and dependence of man, on the other. In this respect, the doctrine which has been so much vilified as presumptuous and sophistical, may fairly challenge, more than any other, the praise of humility and honesty. Other theories undertake to explain and vindicate the divine administration, to the satisfaction of human reason—with what success, let the tendency from one expedient to another, in the attempt to get rid of mystery, show. This, alone, frankly owns the impossibility of making all plain: and makes its appeal to the undoubted supremacy and almighty power of God, as the only answer, in the last resort, to cavilling questions; and all the service it pretends to render is, that it assigns to the inexplicable knot its right position. What it chiefly contends for is, that this knot shall not come in between the counsels of the Godhead and the salvation of believers, so as to occasion any discrepancy, in passing from the purpose of redemption to its purchase, or from its purchase to its application.