Goodwin, in his _Redemption Redeemed_, earnestly insists upon the broad view of the effect of the Atonement,--“that there is a possibility, yea a fair and gracious possibility, for all men without exception, considered as men, without and before their voluntary obduration by actual sinning to obtain actual salvation by His death; so that, in case any man perisheth, his destruction is altogether from himself, there being as much, and as much intended, in the death of Christ to and towards the procuring of his salvation, as there is for procuring the salvation of any of those who come to be actually saved.”[530] The great moot point between the old-fashioned Calvinists and their opponents is treated by this intensely-evangelical Arminian in such a way in his concessions, that he approaches rather closely to modern Calvinism, without conceding the whole for which the advocates of the latter system would stipulate.[531] [Sidenote: JOHN GOODWIN.] John Goodwin’s object was, whilst magnifying the grace of God, to preserve what is demanded by the personality, the free agency, and the responsibility of man. He so clearly explains his opinion and so carefully fences it round, he so distinctly asserts the Divine origin of salvation in every individual, and so vigilantly repels every idea of indigenous rectitude in human nature, suffering from the fall, that no one can charge his creed with any Pelagian or even semi-Pelagian taint. So far as that point is concerned, Goodwin’s opinion might have received the approval of Augustine, and it ought to have passed muster with the second Councils of Milevis and Orange. Whether the keen Catholic theologians of the fourth and fifth centuries, in their jealousy for orthodox opinion, would have endorsed the following sentence is another question: “That the act of believing whensoever it is performed, is at so low a rate of efficiency from a man’s self, that suppose the act could be divided into a thousand parts, nine hundred, ninety, and nine of them are to be ascribed unto the free grace of God, and only one unto man. Yea, this one is no otherwise to be ascribed to man, than as supported, strengthened, and assisted by the free grace of God.”