[1] Dr. Griffin in his "Lectures on Important Doctrines," broadly charges the rejectors of Calvinism with embracing _another Gospel_, and with being on the high road to infidelity. "And when they have gone this length," he says, "in frittering away man's dependence on grace, they are just prepared to place him completely on his own works, to deny justification by faith, and of course, the proper influence of the atonement; short of this these systems never stop: and when they have gone thus far, there is but one step to a denial of the divinity of Christ and the infinite demerit of sin. The next step is _universalism_, and the next _infidelity_." Every intelligent reader will know how to appreciate this senseless dogmatism. The infidel might with equal propriety charge the professors of Scriptural Christianity with being on the high road to Calvinism, and prepared, by their faith in the corruption of human nature, and the atonement of Christ, for the most extreme views of the Divine decrees. Yet these bold and baseless assertions have their weight with those for whom they are intended, and many weak but good persons are held in passive bondage to these teachers and their creed, through the holy fear of moving a step towards infidelity. On the other hand, we might retort the charge. Calvinism has made more infidels than any other corruption of Christianity, excepting Popery. But we suggest this only in the way of _fair retaliation_. The rejectors of Calvinism do not reject "the doctrines of grace," but the corruptions by which they have been dishonoured. They maintain, that on the absolute predestinarian scheme, there is no room for grace, such as the Gospel exhibits to the sinful and the lost; and that their own views are not only more accordant with the justice, but with the unmerited and infinite mercy of God. They ascribe all true holiness to the Divine Spirit. [2] Dr. Coplestone, now the Bishop of Llandaff, denies that the foreknowledge of an event proves the _event to be necessary_. "_We_ may be unable to conceive how a thing not necessary in its nature can be foreknown; for _our_ foreknowledge is in general limited by that circumstance, and is more or less perfect in proportion to the fixed or necessary nature of the things we contemplate, with which nature we become acquainted by experience, and are thus able to anticipate a great variety of events: but to subject the knowledge of God to any such limitation is surely absurd and unphilosophical, as well as impious; and, therefore, to mix up the idea of God's foreknowledge with any quality in the nature of the things foreknown, is even less excusable than to be guilty of that confusion when speaking of ourselves."