CHAPTER VII. EFFECTUAL CALLING: WITH THE MANNER OF ITS OCCURRENCE. I. 1. Effectual Calling: its Significance, and Relations.-2. Nature of the Difficulties which embarrass its Treatment.-3. Our Natural Ability to Good: wholly nugatory for Salvation.-4. Free Will: its Nature and Limitation in all Beings.-5. The Free Will of Adam, before his Fall: of all men since the Fall: utterly impotent to our Recovery.-II. 1. The Gospel Call, and its Result, with Natural Ability and Free Will to help.--2. The Work of the Divine Spirit, in our Effectual Calling. -3. Its Recognition, in its Divine Work, of Man's actual Condition: Terms of the Problem.-4. Detailed Statement:-(a) A Work of Infinite Grace and Almighty Power:-(b) Caused by God's free and special Love:-(c) Relation of the Father and the Son, to the Method of our Effectual Calling:-(d) Agency of the Holy Ghost: —(e) Means used by him:-(ƒ) Effects upon our Understanding:-(9) Upon our Will:-(h) Upon our Heart:-(2) Upon our Conscience:—(j) Result upon our present, and endless State:-(k) Effectual Calling thus considered.-III. 1. A second Analysis from the point of view thus reached.-2. Demonstration that the Root and Substance of our Effectual Calling are Divine and Gracious.-3. Detailed Statement of what is required of us.-4. Relations of Natural and Regenerate States of the Soul to each other: Obligations resulting therefrom.-5. Inefficacy of our Endeavours: Detail of the Spirit's Work within us.-6. Efficacy of this Divine Work-without Violence to our Nature. I.—1. MAN, in the state in which he was created, a personal spirit in the image of God, bore the divine likeness both in that the faculties of the soul were shadows of divine attributes, and in that the tendencies of his soul were towards all that God approved. The one God manifests himself to us in as many aspects and ways as our limited nature can comprehend; and we express our sense of God himself considered in these ways and aspects, by ascribing such and such Attributes to him; as, intellect, will, power, and the like. And to aid our weakness still further, we put into classes such of these Attributes as appear to us to be analogous to each other, or to be founded on some clear distinction; as Primary, Essential, and the like. In like manner, if we would consider this finite image of God, our own spirit, in its absolute oneness and simplicity; and consider all its faculties as only so many manifestations of its own essence; and then classify those faculties according to the analogies and distinctions which we observe amongst them: we would have the word of God on one side, and our own consciousness on the other, and the divine nature before our face, in building up to perfection the true science of our own being. At the first step we observe how such a being must perceive in God the sum of all truth and all goodness, and must cleave to him with all the fervour of its pure nature. At the next step we perceive the peril of such a being from the fallibility which is inherent in its very nature as created as dependent, and as finite. And at the third step we perceive, that having fallen, its posture with reference to God is wholly changed; and that in proportion as it has, by that fall, lost the image of God, so will it cease to cleave unto God, or become indifferent to God, or become wholly averse to God. And at the fourth step we perceive that the divine restoration, through grace, of this fallen creature now wholly averse to God, must needs be the result, not of its spontaneous endeavours after God, but of God's supernatural working upon it. It is this wonderful working whereby men are called from a state of sin to a gracious and glorious communion with God, which I intend by the phrase, Effectual Calling. For above all other distinctions in the human race, the most effectual one is that which separates it into those who love God, and those who do not: and of the former we are plainly told that all things work together for their good. And then it is added, that their love for God is the result of their having been called according to his purpose; a calling directly connected, on one hand, with their predestination to be conformed to the image of his Son, and, on the other hand, with their own justification and glorification. Results-like all others involved in divine grace-which flow from the utter impossibility of separating the elect of God, from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.1 2. If every member of the human family was to be restored to God and saved, the treatment of a question of this sort would be extremely brief and simple; if indeed, in that case, all treatment of it was not useless. Or if those who will be saved and those who will be lost, were totally separated from each other here on earth, or were capable of being unmistakeably distinguished from each other while all are living together in sin; such 1 Rom., viii. 28-39. an aspect might easily be given to the subject, as would silence the ordinary cavils of impenitent men. Whatever real difficulties embarrass the subject, arise not from the nature of this, or any other special truth; but from the absolute nature of the case, in applying the saving grace of God to the mixed and probationary condition of fallen men, in such a manner as to prevent that grace from being absolutely fruitless on one side, and from seeming to our weak faculties to be merely capricious on the other. And these difficulties are augmented by our proneness to treat with tenderness, if not with a kind of reverence, cavils which we accept as honest doubts of sincere enquirers, for whose satisfaction we would allay the mystery of godliness; while God in his blessed word constantly repels them as mere refuges of lies, fatal to the souls of men, and insulting to the majesty of God. God never permits us to forget that the real posture of the question is such, that nothing but sovereign and special grace can do us any good. Nay, if we were to judge of ourselves merely by the manner in which we have treated this very aspect of it, namely, God's calls to us to repent and believe the Gospel; we could say no less than that we must be lost, without some most effectual interposition of God. And this is merely admitting that to be true of our own soul, which the Scriptures teach us is true of every soul; a truth without which no soul can be saved at all. It is the efficacy of that truth which I desire to exhibit now. 1 3. We possess, even in our fallen state, ability to perceive and to conform to those natural and temporal obligations, which we owe as natural and moral creatures to ourselves and others :' and the right discharge of duties of that description, draws after it the greatest natural and temporal blessings-as the right understanding of them involves some of the most important parts of human knowledge. I have constantly asserted the enduring force of that natural morality which appertains to our very nature as moral beings, until we are finally sentenced and shut up in hell; and to the irrevocable permanence of all those great principles and truths, which belonged to our primeval condition as really as our very essence did. It is the culture, the love, and the practice of these things, which are the chief ornament and glory of man considered merely as a creature of God: and the 1 Rom., ii. 13-15. 1 height to which he can still rise thereby, is the noblest monument and proof of the sublime estate he once enjoyed. But the moment we pass out of natural and temporal things--the moment we enter the domain of unseen, spiritual, and eternal things— then such knowledge as nature and reason afford us as the ground of religious duty, is wholly insufficient; and all the resources of nature and reason are wholly nugatory. We have passed into a region above our strength as depraved creatures: we are seeking, as sinners, to know and to do, what was once possible to us as creatures in a higher estate-but never was possible to us as sinful creatures in any estate at all. If we never come to the knowlege of the Saviour of sinners and the obligations of Revealed Religion, we never come to the bare possibility of being saved: because as mere creatures there is no longer a conceivable way of being saved, for us; and the only way possible for us as sinful creatures, is unknown to us. And a step farther, after we have come to the mere knowledge of the Saviour, and of the obligations of Revealed Religion, and the conditions of salvation for us as sinners; we find at every endeavour that something far beyond this is needful; for our carnal mind is not only enmity against God, but it is not subject to his law, neither indeed can be.' These are not conjectures: they are ultimate truths. We speak of a divine and effectual call to salvation; and we begin by rendering salvation impossible without the revealed knowledge of Jesus Christ and impossible with that knowledge, merely of itself. Ultimate truths, I repeat: asserted ten thousand times in the word of God, attested by the universal experience of the human race, and perfectly explicable at the bar of reason and conscience. : 4. In such a case as this, it is idle to talk about free will. The free will of the fallen angels did not keep them in heaven; nor has it ever brought one of them out of hell. The free will of Adam did not prevent him from losing his estate of perfection—nor has a single one of his countless descendants gained a solitary point towards the recovery of that estate, by means of his free will. Nor is there a being in the universe who—if he knew what was meant-would believe a devil or a sinner, if he should say he had changed his nature by an act of his will; any more than he would believe an Ethiopian who should say he had made himself white by an act of his will. Now if any one sees fit to assert that if this be so, moral freedom is at an end, and sin and holiness, and reward and punishment are idle words ; which in effect is continually asserted; the answer is precise and decisive. First, as to the fact-the cavil is merely absurd. For every human being has in his own consciousness, the proof and conviction of both facts which are alleged to be contradictory, namely, his moral freedom and his moral impotence and the universe is full of one overwhelming demonstration, that its moral ruler is the author of both these convictions and facts in the soul of every sinner of the human race. And secondly, as to the theory-the cavil is purely idle and self-contradictory. For no being exists, or can be conceived to exist, with any such free will as the theory supposes. It is impious to imagine that God's Free Will is competent to counsel, or determine, or decree, or execute, or design, any thing contrary to the sum of his own perfections. It is absurd to say that Satan has any freedom of will to any thing good. It is inconceivable that any will in any being, any more than any other faculty, or attribute, or power, should be of that kind, that it will not enter into the sum of all the forces which make up the particular nature, of which it is a portion; and that it refuses to incur whatever is inherent in the essence of the nature, of which it is one element. 5. Man, therefore, when he was perfect but fallible, possessed a form of free will answerable to that peculiar form of moral existence; and was competent, it may be possible and is commonly alleged, to direct spontaneously his free actions, to good or evil; subject, however, if strictly tried, to the certainty of final lapse; and subject, moreover, to the perpetual necessity of special divine aid, founded in the intimate nature of every dependent existence; both of which conditions I have discussed elsewhere. But the will of the unfallen man, like every other will, in every being, was one of the attributes, faculties, powers of the essence; and as such, was necessarily affected by them, and in turn necessarily affected them. There was but one Adam, and he had but one nature, but one person, no matter in how many aspects he may present himself. His will, therefore, was subject to the control of his intellect and reason, enlightened by knowledge, guided by conscience, agitated by passions, determined by motives; its very freedom, perfect of its kind, but yet restricted and limited |