Romans 2:9

9. Tribulation and anguish Nominatives to shall be, understood. As indignation and wrath are tempers in the Divine mind, so tribulation and anguish are the results produced in the persons of the guilty.

Jew first Priority of offer, not superiority of reward or penalty. From this paragraph it is plain that in the system under Christ the Head men are born into a scene of probation. That is, our human system is a system of free agents upon whose will and determination it depends whether they attain eternal bliss or eternal woe.

This presupposes in man a free responsible will, with the full power in the given moral alternatives to decide either way. He decides for right with the full power of deciding for the wrong instead, and is therefore praiseworthy. Or he decides for wrong, while in possession of the power for having instead decided for right, and is therefore responsible and condemnable. If he does not possess this alternative power of choice for either way, but must choose but one sole way, (without any power of choosing otherwise,) then he is an intellectual machine, and is irresponsible; that is, unless he has flung away his power, in which case he is still responsible. Since man is not a free being, and there is no true responsible probation, unless his will is thus free, we may add that he is not free in the following cases:

1 . If while God professes to hold him free in a real probation He determines and decrees beforehand which way man shall choose. There is no probation where man’s action is thus previously fixed. That probation may be a fine piece of machinery, like a panorama, or an orrery, or the solar system itself, but it is no free probationary government.

2 . If such be, by the nature of things, the force of motives on the human will as to fix with absolute necessity the determinations of a man’s will, just as the springs fix the strokes of a clock-hammer, without adequate power to strike any otherwise, then man is only a spiritual and bodily machine, and is no more responsible than a clock, and there is no true probation.

3 . If the will of man by its own intrinsic nature always acts by fixed laws of so called invariable certainty, precisely according to the measure of motive force, man is not a free being. True and free certainty is the will-be, the future of an event apart from any fixed law. A future event that will be is certain, whether it is certain according to a fixed law, or whether it is a free certainty apart from and without such regulative law. If the will of man is under a certainty previously and eternal, fixed by law, it is not free. If that law be that he shall act according to the precise force of motives and no otherwise, then he is not free, and there is no true probation.

In these three cases, then namely, where either man’s actions are previously determined, decreed, or fore-ordained by Omnipotence; or where man’s actions are fixed by the necessitating force of presented motives; or where by its own intrinsic nature man’s will always acts with invariable law in accordance with force of motive in all these three cases there is no divine government, but only a vast machinery! There is no merit, no demerit. There is no desert of reward or penalty. The judgment day is no just reality. All is fatalism. And since God’s own will is also bound by similar laws, so God is subject to the same universal eternal fatalism! Such is not the system of the New Testament.

Dr. Hodge, indeed, argues: “Surely there is such a thing as being made willing without being forced. There is a middle ground between moral suasion and coercion. God supersedes the necessity of forcing, by making us willing in the day of his power.” Our reply is: In the sinner’s act of acceptance of God’s saving grace, we promptly deny any “make-willing” on the part of God which excludes man’s power of not-willing or refusing. God demands a free acceptance. He does not make a farce of our probation by first requiring our free will -ing, and then imposing upon us a “make-willing.” The free will- ing and the “make-willing” are incompatible.

From all this it moreover follows that if man be created, or if he be born into existence, without the power (either by nature or by supernatural provision) to do right and please God, he is not responsible or justly punishable. And if through his whole existence he never had power to will good, Divine Justice can never condemn him for any evil willing.

If for the fall of Adam, or any reason whatever, the whole human race is born unable to do good, it cannot, then, be damned for not doing good. To select or elect a part from this incapable whole, and oblige it to do good by power, is to make machines of that part. To leave the rest in incapacity for good, and then reprobate, that is, damn them for their evil, would be an infinite injustice, which it is an awful thing to charge upon a righteous God.