he hath constantly decreed by his counsel, secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour." But if this be true, man has no choice of any kind in the matter; for not only is grace to do right the gift of God, but man's acceptance of the gift is also compulsory. God has arranged, before he made the world how many and whom he will save. What, then, becomes of man's boasted free will? Before the creation God drew the plan of every human life, and as the potter moulds the ductile clay into the shape he desires, so God moulds his human pottery after his own will into "vessels made to salvation" or made to dishonour. To talk of man's freedom is a mockery. What freedom had Adam and Eve in Paradise? "They might have stood:" nay; for was not "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world?" Before the sin was committed God had made the atonement for it. If Adam were free not to sin, then it would be possible that he might not have sinned, and then God would have offered a needless sacrifice, and would have a Saviour with no one to save, so that it would have been necessary to provide a sinner in order to utilise the sacrifice. All idea of justice is here hideously impossible; God has predestinated some human beings _out of mankind_. These "in due season" he calls; "through grace they obey the calling;" "they be justified freely... and at length, by God's mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity." And the rest--those who are _not_ predestined; those who are _not_ called; those to whom _no_ grace is given; those who are _not_ justified freely; those who have no God's mercy to aid them;--what of them? Made by God, the creatures of his hand, the vessels of his moulding, the clay of his shaping, are they cast into the lake of brimstone, into the fire that never shall be quenched, simply because God in "his sovereignty" put them--unconscious--under his curse and left them there, adding to the cruelty of creation the more savage cruelty of preservation? No! whether such deeds should be wrought by God or man, they would be wickedly wrong. Almighty power is no excuse for crime, and the God of the Articles of the Church of England is a gigantic criminal, who uses his Almightiness to make life that he may torment it, and to create sentient beings foredoomed to bitterest agony, to keenest woe. Such frightful misuse of power can only meet with strongest reprobation from all moral beings; unlimited power turned to evil purposes may trample upon and crush us into helplessness, but it can never force us to worship, nor compel us to adore.