remnant! that any of my countrymen should be found to exclude themselves by unbelief from the freely furnish a satisfactory answer to the three great questions on which the whole discussion turns: - viz. I. Whether the divine election is arbitrary, or has respect to men's foreseen conduct; II. Who are to be regarded as the elect? and, III. In what does that election consist? 'With respect to the first question, Were the Israelites, who were evidently God's elect or chosen people, thus elected or chosen arbitrarily or not? Moses clearly states that God's selection of them was arbitrary. He often reminds them, that they were not singled out of the nations for their own righteousness, since they were a stiff-necked people, but of God's free goodness, 'who will have mercy on whom he will have mercy, and will be gracious to whom he will be gracious.' 'It is manifest, then, that, under the old dispensation, the divine election was entirely arbitrary. In the second place, who were the objects of it? Evidently the whole nation without any exception. They were all brought out of Egypt by a mighty hand, and miraculously delivered from their enemies, and received the divine commandments through Moses, who uniformly ad. dressed them, not some, but all, as God's chosen people. 'But, lastly, what was the nature of this election? To what were they chosen? Were they elected absolutely and infallibly to enter the promised land, and to triumph over their enemies, and to live in security, wealth, and enjoyment? Manifestly not. They were elected to the privilege of having these blessings placed within their reach, on the condition of their obeying the law which God had given them: but those who refused this obedience, were not only excluded from the promised blessings, but were the objects of God's especial judg ments. Still, whether obedient or rebellious, they were all of them the elect people of God: because on all of them the privileges were bestowed, and to all of them the offer was made of God's blessing, on condition of their conforming to God's commands. But whether they would thus conform or not was all along studiously represented by Moses as a matter entirely dependent on themselves. Behold, (says he,) I have set before you this day good and evil, blessing and cursing; now therefore choose blessing.' The election, then, of the Jews was arbitrary indeed; but it was an election not to blessing absolutely, but to a privilege and advantage;-to the offer and opportunity of obtaining a peculiar blessing, such as was not placed within the reach of other nations. 'Now, to apply these observations to the gospel dispensation : it is plain that, as the Christian church stands in the place of the Jewish, it therefore enjoys, not the same, indeed, but corresponding benefits and privileges. The Christian religion is not, like the Jewish, confined to one nation, nor the Christian worship to one place, like the temple at Jerusalem; the church of Christ is open to all to whom the gospel has been announced, and comprehends all who acknowledge it; all members of that church are 'called and elected' by God, and are as truly his people, and under his especial government, as ever the Israelites were. And though they do not consist of any one nation in particular, they are arbitrarily selected and called to this privilege according to God's unsearchable will, no less than the Israelites offered mercy of a Saviour who would fain have saved them all! But, nevertheless, this remnant does exist: and plainly does its existence declare to us, that God has not completely cast away his people. No: in his were of old. Some nations had the gospel preached to them long before others; and many there are which remain in ignorance of Christianity to this day. We can give no account of this distinction, but that such is God's pleasure. No reason can be assigned why we ourselves, for instance, in this country, should have received the light of the gospel, while many other regions of the earth remain in the darkness of idolatry. The calling and election of us and of other Christians to the knowledge of the true God, is as arbitrary as that of the Israelites. And as the promise belonged not to some only, but to every one of that nation, whether he chose to avail himself of it, or to convert it into a heavy curse by his neglect of it, SO we may conclude that every Christian is elected to the Christian privileges, just as every Jew was to his; but that it rests with us to use or abuse the advantage. The Jews were not elected to enjoy God's favour, and to enter into the promised land absolutely; but to have the offer of that favour, and the promise of that land, on the condition of their obedience; and as many as were rebellious perished in the wilderness. So also no Christian is elected to eternal life absolutely; but only to the knowledge of the gospel,-to the privileges of the Christian church,-to the offer of God's Holy Spirit,-and to the promise of final salvation, on condition of being a faithful follower of Christ.' In order to show that the apostle intended, in his use of language, that such a parallel should be drawn, the archbishop convincingly refers to 1 Cor. x. 1-12, and thus continues: Let not the Christian, then, flatter himself that he is elected, any more than the Israelites were, to the absolute attainment of a final blessing, but only to the offer of it, together with the privileges and advantages which will enable him to attain it. Let him learn, from the example of the Israelites, that neither his promised inheritance is infallibly secured to him without obedience, nor he himself absolutely secured in the requisite obedience, without any watchfulness on his part; since the far greater portion of those whom God brought out of Egypt never reached the promised land. 'It is worth remembering that the system just described is the same with that pursued in the ordinary course of God's providence also. A man's being born, for instance, heir to great wealth,—to high rank, or to a kingdom,-of a healthy constitution, or of superior abilities, does not depend on himself: but it does depend on himself whether such advantages as these shall prove a blessing to him, by his making a right use of them, or shall aggravate his condemnation, through his ill-employment or neglect of them. 'He, then, who diligently looks to the analogy both of God's ordinary dealings with man, and of his former dispensation to the Jews, will be enabled, I think, to clear up the greater part of a difficulty, which has furnished matter of dispute among Christians for many centuries. By contemplating the correspondence between the Jewish gracious election of every Jew who has been willing to renounce all claim of birth or merit in order to accept the gospel as a message of free unmerited goodness, we read the comforting assurance that there is yet hope for Israel. The apostle is always glad, whenever an opportunity presents itself, to insist on the grand characteristic of Christ's salvation, namely, that it cannot be claimed as a debt, but must be received as a favour, or, in other words, that it is not of works, but of grace. He takes occasion, therefore, from the casual introduction of the word grace,' to renew his protest against man's right to receive blessings from God. But, he says, if the election, of which I have just spoken, be of grace, then it is no more of works. Otherwise, words would have altogether lost their distinctive meaning, and grace would no more be grace. For, evidently, a reception of gratuitous blessings through faith, and a claim arising from the performance of works, are things utterly incompatible. And so also, if we were to say that the election was of works, we could not say that it was of grace: otherwise work would no more be work.k and the Gospel schemes, he will clearly perceive that there is no such distinction among Christians as the Called and the Uncalled,the Elect and the Non-elect. He will perceive that, though all Christians are arbitrarily elected to their invaluable privileges, their salvation is not arbitrary, but will depend on the use they make of their privileges; those, namely, to which all Christians are called,—the knowledge of the gospel, the aids of the Holy Spirit, and the offer of eternal life; privileges of which all are exhorted, but none compelled, to make a right use; and which will prove, ultimately, either a blessing or a curse to each, according to the use he makes of them.' The clause, But, if it be of works, then it is no more of grace: otherwise work is no more work, which is, in fact, nothing more than the inversion of the preceding one, is generally allowed to be spurious. The best critics agree in declaring it to be a gloss. 7 What then? That, which Israel is seeking after, he has not obtained: but the election has obtained it; and the rest are blinded. 8 As it has been written: God has given them a spirit of deep sleep, eyes which cannot see and ears which cannot hear, unto this day. 9 And David says: Let their table become a snare, and a trap, and a stumbling-block, and a recompense unto them; 10 let their eyes be darkened so as not to see, and bow down their back always. The apostle, having for a moment turned aside from his argument in order to inflict a blow, in passing, on the Jewish doctrine of human merit, now returns to it, and gives a brief summary of its result. What, then (he asks), is the true state of the case with respect to the Jewish nation? Is it correct to say, that God has cast away his people? Certainly not. True, indeed, it is that, at present, the immense majority of the nation are, through their unbelief, in a position of exclusion from God's kingdom, and you may therefore assert, without contradiction, that Israel, as considered in the mass, without reference to exceptions, has not obtained that which he is seeking after. In this sense, therefore, it cannot be denied that the ancient people of God is cast away. Seeking to obtain by works of law that righteousness which, as I have proved to you, no works of law can possibly procure for any man, and scorning to accept it as an undeserved gift from God's mercy in the gospel of Christ, unbelieving Israel has now no shadow of title to the name of God's nation. But are they, who wilfully reject the Messiah and cast themselves away from God's goodness, to be allowed to say, that the nation has been cast away by Jehovah himself in virtue of some arbitrary and irreversible decree, and so excuse their own sinful rebellion by throwing the blame of it upon God? No. The answer to such men is simply this: The election has obtained righteousness. Their own believing countrymen rise up against them in judgment and convict them of falsehood. They point to themselves as proofs that God has not cast away his people. We (they will say to them), the elect of our nation, are witnesses for God that there is no national exclusion, decreed by him, from the blessings of Christianity. We did not find that our Saviour was in the slightest degree less willing to admit us into his kingdom, because we were members of the Jewish nation. We understood that the mercies of the gospel were intended by God for every Jew, as well as for every Gentile; and we entered into the church of Christ's elect through that one door of faith, which is now as open to you as it was to ourselves. Say not, then, that you cannot obtain righteousness, because you are Jews and therefore cast away, but only because, though God's Son comes to his own to bestow on them righteousness, his own will not accept it. 1 The election means, of course, in this passage, the elect. Εαυτῷ γὰρ μάχεταί, φησιν, ὁ Ἰουδαῖος, ζητῶν δικαιοσύνην ἣν οὐ βούλεται λαβεῖν. Εἶτα ἀποστερῶν αὐτοὺς πάλιν συγγνώμης ἀπὸ τῶν εἰληφότων δείκνυσιν αὐτῶν τὴν ἀγνωμοσύνην, οὕτω λέγων, Ἡ γὰρ ἐκλογὴ ἐπέτυχε, κἀκεῖνοι τούτους KATAKρIVOVσI. (For the Jew, he says, fights against himself, for he seeks for righteousness, and then is not willing to accept it. Again, depriving them of every excuse, he shows, from those who had accepted it, their stupidity, speaking to this effect, ‘The election has obtained it, and these will condemn them.) | Chrysost. |