ll reveal their election to them,
and make them sure of it, already foretasting it; though it is
thought that no one can be saved who is ignorant of the gospel: it
is mysteriously ordered that the terms of the covenant shall be
preached to all the elect. There are correlated complexities,
miracles, absurdities, in wrought with the whole theory,
inseparable from it. The violence it does to nature, to thought,
to love, to morals, its arbitrariness, its mechanical form, the
wrenching exegesis by which alone it can be forced from the
Bible,7 its glaring partiality and eternal cruelty, are its
sufficient refutation and condemnation. If the death of Christ has
such wondrous saving efficacy, and nothing else has, what keeps
him from dying again to convince the unbelieving and to save the
lost? What man is there who, if he knew that, after thirty years
of suffering terminated by a fearful death, he should rise again
into boundless bliss and glory while rapt infinitude rung with the
paans of an applauding universe, and that by means of his
humiliation he could redeem countless millions from eternal
torture, would not with a joyous spring undertake the task? And is
a common man better than Christ?

The third general plan of Christian salvation which we are to
consider differs from the foregoing one in several essential
particulars. It affirms the free will of man in opposition to a
fatal predestination. It declares that the atonement is sufficient
to redeem not only a portion of our race, but all who will put
themselves in right spiritual relations with it. In a word, while
it admits that some will actually be lost forever, it asserts that
no one is doomed

7 Schweizer, Die Lehre des Apostels Paulus vom erlosenden Tode
Christi. Theologische Studien und Kritiken, Jahrg. 1858, heft 3.

to be lost, but that the offer of pardon is made to every soul,
and that every one has power to accept or reject it. The sacrifice
of the incarnate Deity vindicated the majesty of the law, appeased
the wrath of God, and purchased his saving favor towards all who,
by a sound and earnest faith, seize the proffered justification,
throw off all reliance on their own works, and present themselves
before the throne of mercy clothed in the righteousness and
sprinkled with the blood of Christ. Here the appropriation of the
merits of Christ, through an orthodox and vivifying faith, is the
real cause as well as the experimental assurance of salvation.