ainst Universal
Redemption, may justly and with very great propriety be retorted
upon the objectors.

First. "To assert that Christ died for every man, or, what is the
very same thing, that all men may be saved if they will, is mere
heathenism."

Answer. Whether it be heathenism or not, I am certain that absolute
predestination is. For it is well known that the stoics were a very
extensive sect among the heathens, and it is equally known that they
held an absolute fatality, that is, absolute predestination. They
even made Jupiter, their supreme deity, subject to the fates; and
even that "father of gods and men," as they termed him, could not
reverse what the fates had decreed to be done. Their fates
determined what kingdoms should rise, and what should fall; what
heroes should conquer, and what should be conquered. This doctrine
runs throughout the poem of Homer called the Iliad; so that he makes
the fates determine the ends of his two chief heroes, Hector and
Achilles. And though the former was knocked down several times in
the different engagements and dangerously wounded, yet as the fates
had decreed that he should fall by the hand of Achilles, he is
rescued from destruction by a deity, because the time of his death
was not yet arrived. So that whether our asserting that "all may be
saved, if it is not their own fault," be heathenism, it is certain
that unconditional predestination is; and if that proves the untruth
of it, then are their absolute decrees untrue.

Secondly. They say that "our doctrine is Popery."

This has as frightful an aspect as the other, and perhaps more so;
as many think there is less danger of their turning Heathens, than
their turning Papists. But be not frightened at nothing; perhaps the
tables again may be turned upon the objectors. Whether Christ's
tasting death for every man be Popery or not, I am sure absolute
predestination is; and it argues, that they who start that objection
are ignorant of the tenets of the Papists. It is well known, that
that large fraternity among the Papists called Dominicans, were all
rigid predestinarians, as well as those called Jansenists. And I
very much question if Calvin himself did not spring from the former
stock; and, when he came from the church of Rome, brought that
branch of Popery along with him, by which means the leaven spread
among many of the Protestants. It would shock any mind which is not
quite intoxicated with the absolute decrees, to re