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O. Allen Bailey
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"Father I stretch my hands"
Arr. A. Bailey
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God's Decrees
By Isaac Backus, Boston, 1773
Beloved Friend,
Although we should endeavor to avoid all needless contention, yet
the faith once delivered to the saints is sometimes treated in
such a manner as to make it our incumbent duty earnestly and
publicly to contend for it. Such a case I think is presented before us by
means of a printed paper lately spread in Providence and towns
adjacent which you have requested me to make some remarks upon. It begins in
this manner:
On Traditionary Zeal. Some good Christian pastors will not scruple
to tell you that they could find no joy in their own state, no
strength or comfort in their labors of love towards their flocks, but
because they know and are assured from St. Paul that God never
had, nor ever will have, mercy upon all men; but that an unknown
multitude of them are, through all the ages of the world, inevitably
decreed to the eternal fire and damnation of Hell; and that an unknown number of
others are elected to a certain, irresistible salvation. Wonder not, my friends, if the
inquisition has its pious defenders, for inquisition, cruelty, and every barbarity that
must have an end, is mere mercy if compared with this reprobation doctrine.
And to be in love with it, to draw comfort from it, and to wish it Godspeed is a love that
absolutely forbids the loving our neighbors as ourselves and makes the Scripture-wish, that
all men might be saved, no less than a rebellion against God.
This writer's evident design is against the doctrine of particular election and efficacious
grace in our salvation, and against those who preach it. And he takes the same method that
the heathen persecutors did with the primitive Christians, viz., to cover them with skins of wild beasts in order that they might be devoured by dogs, or if not, yet that they might be hated and avoided by all men. He asserts that some Christian pastors tell their people such a story as he has here related. If he can find any man upon earth that teaches so, he is
welcome to correct him as much as he deserves, but till he exhibits his proof, he ought to be accounted a blasphemer of God's sovereignty and a false accuser of Christ's ministers. Yea, out of his own mouth he is condemned, for as short as his paper is he has not been able to keep to one consistent story, but the same preachers that he accuses of rejoicing that
God never will have mercy upon all men, when he comes to give us their own language it
is, "O, the sweetness of God's election!" And neither the Devil nor any of his children will
ever be able to make a rejoicing in God's everlasting love to a chosen number to be the same thing as it would be to rejoice in the destruction of the rest. Our Lord says, Every
one that doth evil hateth the light, but he that doth truth cometh to the light; and let the reader judge which of these characters suits the conduct of the writer before us. He casts out these horrid accusations against some good Christian pastors without naming any
one, while his evident aim is against all that profess a sweetness in sovereign election; at
the same time (like the savages) he tries to keep himself and his principles hid. Though
it fares with him as it did with the old enemies of the sure foundation which God has laid in Zion, whose bed was shorter than a man could stretch upon it, and the covering narrower than that he could wrap himself in it. Isa. xxviii. For though by the title of his piece he would have people esteem him as a bold champion against tradition and a friend to
Paul and the sacred writings, yet he does not so much as attempt to prove that sovereign
decrees and irresistible grace are not fully taught by them. No, instead of confusing us or defending himself by the sacred oracles, he, like those who prophesied out of the deceit
in their own hearts, first makes his address to men's passions and exerts all his art to bring up the horrid ideas of an inevitable decreeing of multitudes to hellfire, of cruelty vastly worse than the inquisition, of God's sacrificing of myriads of his creatures to the Devil, etc., and having done his utmost thus to raise a tempest in the souls of men, he winds up by asserting that "The only possible way of avoiding every prevaiiing error and of
finding every saving truth is to listen, solemnly, attentively to listen, agreeable to the written word, to the small still small voice within you."
This is just like the old serpent who, with malicious reflections upon God's government and lying pretences of friendship to man, drew him into rebellion against God's revealed will and to gratify his own heart's lusts. Yet from that day to this, when the tempter thinks it will serve his turn, he is very ready to catch at some Scripture words, to entice people into violations of the truth which is therein taught.
Let the pretended advocate for the truth now before us mean what he will by the voice within, yet when he or any others are brought solemnly and attentively to listen either to reason, conscience, or the Spirit of God they will teach them that the way to avoid error and to find the truth in any case, is not first to inflame our passions before our judgments are well informed. No, for a gift will blind the eyes of the wise and pervert the words of the righteous; therefore we must have our eye single or else our whole body will be full of darkness. Hence appears the necessiy of the Holy Spirit to renew us in the spirit of our minds and to guide our souls into all truth.
The grand contest ever since sin entered into the world has been between the will of the Creator and the will of the creature. But as it is too shocking for human nature to have it openly appear in that light, God's enemies in all ages have made lies their refuge and
under falsehood have hid themselves. And in the controversy before us we may take notice of the following refuges of lies which the enemies of sovereign grace try to hide themselves in:
1. As the sacred writers often appealed to men's reason and conscience and exhorted the saints to regard the teachings of the Holy Spirit in their souls above all human authority on earth, deceivers of various denominations have caught at and perverted that sacred custom as a place for setting up a standard in themselves to decide every case so as not to admit anything for truth that does not agree with their inward test. But it is well
known in our nation that in order for us to enjoy our just rights and liberties, rulers as
well as subjects must be governed by known laws and established rules, and that for judges to assume a discretionary power to dispense with old laws or to make new ones as occasion
served would introduce arbitrary government, or rather a cruel tyranny. And were not people deluded with the religious names and great swelling words of deceivers, as their attempts to set up a voice with-in which speaks in any respects contrary to God's written word would
appear as arbitrary and tyrannical as any such proceedings of earthly judges can be. Those holy men whom God employed to write his Word had their authority so to do confirmed by divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, and woe to that man who presumes either to add or take from those holy oracles.
2. The advocates for their own free will in opposition to sovereign grace have determined that the doctrine of fixed decrees in the divine mind concerning the future state of men, is consistent with the liberty of their own wills and with the proper influence of precepts and promises, rewards and punishments. And, having quoted a number of precepts
with considerations to enforce them (of which the Bible is full) they boast that they have gained their argument, when in truth they have never touched the point in debate. We know, and as firmly hold as any free willer on earth, that all men are under moral government
where precepts and promises, exhortations, warnings, etc. have their proper place, and
ought to influence us in all our conduct. And I believe from the bottom of my heart that God never did or ever will punish any but the guilty, and that he will finally reward every man according to his works. But in the present controversy the true state of the question is
this, viz., Whether the whole plan of God's government and the final issue of every action through the universe has not been known and fixed in his counsels from the beginning, so that nothing can be put to it nor anything taken from it. Eccls iii, 14. Or whether many events are not held in suspense and uncertainty in his infinite mind, till they are decided by the free will power of men? We hold the first, they the last side of this question. But
instead of attending to the true state of the controversy, and instead of referring the
decision of it to the divine oracles, tradition and corruption has carried them into the way which this writer pursues of representing our doctrine to be that God decrees some to
misery in the same manner that he does others to happiness. Yea, this slanderer in imitation of those who have gone before him, sets reprobation foremost, and would have people believe that we hold God's first design to be the damnation of multitudes and then, secondly, the
irresistible salvation of a number! Hoping no doubt by these horrid colorings to guard people sufficiently against all the Gospel weapons which are appointed to pull down the
strongholds that are raised against the knowledge of God, and to cast down the imaginations which keep men's thoughts too high to yield their all to a meek and lowly Jesus, 2 Cor. x, 4, 5) Many in latter ages have carried their imaginations so high on this subject as,
3. To assume a dignity to themselves that they will not allow to the eternal God, for they claim a self-determining power in their own wills while they deny it to the Most High, and insist upon it that his choice of some men to either a foresight or aftersight of good
dispositions and good doings in them more than others, so making that to be the cause of his choice which he declares is the effect of it, and representing that God is influenced in his work by motives without himself, at the same time that they hold to a power to determine all their own actions within themselves. Can any imagination ever be entertained more absurd or
more contrary to Holy Writ than these are! See Matt. xi, 25-28; Rom. xiii, 29, 30; Eph. i, 4, 5; 1 Pet. i, 2; 1 John iv, 19.
The people we are now speaking of commonly deny the doctrine of man's universal depravity, but if to claim a sovereignty to their own will, while they deny it to God, does not prove them to be rebels against Heaven, I know not what can do it.
Nebuchadnezzar made trial how it would do to ascribe all his achievements to himself, but after he had grazed among the beasts of the field till seven times had passed over him, he declares that, "All the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing (before the Most High) and he doth according to HIS WILL in the army of Heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay has hand or say unto him, what dost thou?" Dan. iv, 35. Thus it happens that the hearts of kings are in the hands of the Lord so that as rivers of water he turneth them whithersoever he will; i.e. to act voluntarily as he designs to have them. From whence it appears evident that there is no inconsistency in holding God's decrees to be immutable, and yet that men act as voluntarily as if it were not so. And the great reasoners on the other side cannot avoid this consequence, if they would once own that the will of man is always determined in its choice by motive or by what they at present prefer and think to be best, for that person must be stupid indeed who cannot see the HE in whom we live, move, and have our being, can at any time set things in such a view before our minds as to make us think it best to choose one way of acting rather than another. Though Balaam was so madly set after the wages of unrighteousness that he wculd not be turned even by the reproof of a dumb ass, yet when the Lord opened his eyes to see the angels with a drawn sword before him, he at once chose to fall to the earth or to turn back rather than run upon it, Num. xxii. 31, etc. In order therefore to keep up their conceit that fixed decrees interfere with men's liberty, some of their great doctors have,
4. Tried to shelter themselves in such a miserable refuge as to pretend that they have a power in their wills to act with motive or against motive just as the will pleases. But I
suppose it is as great a piece of nonsense in itself to hold that a rational soul can act
voluntarily in any case without or against motive, as it would be to say there can be a rational action without any infuence of reason in it! Thus professing themselves to be wise they become fools, for as Mr. Locke truly observes, even delirious persons are
influenced by reason only they reason from wrong premises; As when such a man imagines that he is all made of glass, he is moved to act with the caution that would be necessary if the case were so. And the like may be said of other imaginations. And persons must be idiots and not reason at all, or else reason and motive will always influence their choice and conduct. Evil imaginations and thoughts always move men to act wickedly, Gen. vi, 5 and xiii, 21.
But when any are brought to know the truth it makes them free, free from sin, so as to
become servants of righteousness, John viii, 31; Rom. vi, 18. The main objections I ever
heard against sovereign election and certain salvation, by free grace alone, appear to me
to spring from this root, viz., Man who was flattered with the motion of being as gods still conceits that he has a power in himself to do as he pleases, let that pleasure
be to comply with or to disappoint God's designs; and therefore, if they are not disposed at present to engage in his service, then he must wait their leisure, and be ready, when ever they set about the work in good earnest, to grant them the assistance of his grace and, if they improve it well unto the end, then to receive them to his glory. But for my part I have no more notion of worshipping a deity that can possibly be mistaken or disappointed in any one event than I have of worshipping Baal, who could not defend either his altar or grove when his votaries were asleep, Judges vi, 31.
(To be continued)
