ndeed, so close is
the connection, that certain verses supposed to prove one of them,
are also adduced to prove the other, as--"Jacob have I loved, but
Esau have I hated." It is, however, stoutly maintained that election
is scriptural, whilst reprobation is repudiated. It is important to
have clear ideas on the subject.

What, then, are we to understand by the doctrine of reprobation? The
question is not whether those dying in impenitency shall be
subjected to suffering; for this is held by the opponents of
Calvinism as well as by Calvinists themselves. The question is this,
Is it true that God in a past eternity foreordained millions of men
to endless misery, that to this end they were born, and to this end
they must go? John Calvin held that it was so. He says, "All are not
created on equal terms, but some are foreordained to eternal life,
others to eternal damnation; and accordingly as each has been
created for one or other of these ends, we say that he has been
predestinated to life or to death." He says, again, "If we cannot
assign any reason for God's bestowing mercy on His people, but just
that it so pleases Him, neither can we have any reason for His
reprobating others; but His will. When God is said to visit in
mercy, or to harden whom He will, men are reminded that they are not
to seek for any cause beyond His will." He says, again, "The human
mind, when it hears this doctrine, cannot restrain its petulance,
but boils and rages, as if aroused by the sound of a trumpet. Many,
professing a desire to defend the Deity from an invidious charge,
admit the doctrine of election, but deny that any one is reprobated.
This they do ignorantly and childishly, since there could be no
election without its opposite--reprobation. Those, therefore, whom
God passes by He reprobates, and that for no other cause but because
He is pleased to exclude them from the inheritance which He
predestines to His children". (_Inst_., b. iii.). Zanchius held--"It
was therefore the first thing which God determined concerning them
from eternity--namely, the ordination of certain men to everlasting
destruction" (_Thesis de Reprob_.). Elnathan Parr maintained, "If a
man be reprobated he shall certainly be damned, do what he can"
(_Grounds of Divinity_). Maccovius says that "God has indeed decreed
to damn some men eternally, and on this account He has ordained them
to sin but each sins on his own account, and freely." To like
purpose we might quo