The gracious invitations and promises of the Gospel are reduced to unmeaning terms, so far as the many are concerned. And while Calvinism is denominated by its admirers "the doctrines of grace," it obliterates from the Scriptures every trace of sincere mercy, and robs the diadem of heaven of its purest and brightest gem. _Calvinism_ and _grace_ are heterogeneous terms, representing discordant ideas. The motives to a holy life, governed by piety and adorned with virtue, must be impaired by the views here given of the Deity. No human mind can be habituated to the contemplation of the divine conduct, as it is seen distorted by the predestinarian theology, and retain its just sentiments of what is right, what is just, what is honourable, what is lovely in goodness. The man who imitates the God of the Calvinist, that phantasm of a morbid or dreaming imagination, cannot fail to have his moral sentiments corrupted, and to become deceptive, shuffling, treacherous, and eventually insensible to the misery of others. The Calvinistic doctrines of _regeneration_ and _perseverance_ are not calculated to rectify these evils. These are made to harmonize with the fatalism which bears all men along with irresistible energy, the reprobate to perdition, the redeemed to blessedness. The new birth is described as a sudden transformation of our spiritual nature, effected by sovereign grace, unconnected with the preceding states of the mind, whether good or evil, and attended with the communication of spiritual life which can never afterwards be forfeited or lost. No sins, however enormous, can endanger the elect, although they may for a time cloud their evidences. The effects produced by this doctrine on the mind of that individual who believes himself to be thus specially distinguished, must be of a very dangerous kind, unless counteracted as it frequently is by other principles, or restrained by the genuine spirit of Christianity operating with antagonist energy. It is this _necessary_ corruption of the great truths of the Gospel that renders Calvinism an object of distrust and alarm. If it was a mere speculation, which was intended, in the calm spirit of Christian philosophy, to solve a problem in theology or morals, leaving untouched the essential character of revealed religion, it might pass without rebuke. But it weakens the moral sense, and it leads to the subversion of all that is consolatory in our prospects of the final destinies of the human race, leaving us no security for the salvation even of the supposed elect; for what hope can repose with confidence on the supreme Arbiter of events, when He is believed to be the author of a religion which represents Him as acting without any intelligible moral motive, destroying the majority of the human race for offences not their own, and saving the remnant without regard to their Christian virtues!