2. Especially will it assist in explaining those passages which speak of election as depending solely on the sovereign will of God. The strongest of these are in the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. This portion of revelation is the strong hold, as is supposed, of Calvinism. Whereas, we humbly conceive that _there is not one word_ in the whole chapter, of unconditional and personal election to eternal life. It is only necessary to read that epistle carefully, to see that the apostle is combatting that exclusive and Pharisaic doctrine of the Jews, already alluded to, and is proving in a forcible strain of argumentation, from reason and Scripture, that the foundation of the plan of salvation for sinners, was the goodness and unmerited love of God--that all, both Jews and Gentiles, were sinners, and therefore stood in the same relation to God--all equally eligible to salvation, and must, if saved at all, be saved on the same terms. To prove this, he argues strenuously, that God's favour to the Jews, as a nation, was not of any goodness in them, but of his own sovereign will and pleasure, so that his covenant of favour with the Hebrews, and his covenant of grace which embraced the Gentiles, was "not of works, lest any man should boast," "not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy." The apostle shows them, too, that the covenant made with Abraham was not for circumcision, nor for the works of the law, so far as it affected him or his posterity, because it was made while Abraham was in uncircumcision, and on the condition of faith. He argues farther, that this election of the Jews to the enjoyment of these national and ecclesiastical privileges, was not because they were children of Abraham, for Ishmael was a child of Abraham, and yet he and his posterity were rejected; nor yet because they were the children of Abraham through Isaac, because Esau and his posterity were reprobated from these national privileges, while Jacob and his posterity were the chosen seed--not chosen to eternal life, because many of them perished in sin and unbelief, but to the peculiar privileges of God's covenant people. And all this because it was the good pleasure of his will. And as a sovereign, he had the same right to elect the Gentiles to the enjoyment of the covenant of mercy, and upon the same conditions of faith. The apostle concludes this reasoning by an argument which cuts off entirely the idea of unconditional personal election and reprobation. He informs us, that the reason why the unbelieving Jews did not attain to personal righteousness, was "because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law;" and the Gentiles attained to personal righteousness, because they sought it by faith. Hence, those that were not his people, became his people, and those that were not beloved, became beloved--and these, "not of the Jews only, but