E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 313—“Reprobation, in the sense of absolute predestination to sin and eternal damnation, is neither a sequence of the doctrine of election, nor the teaching of the Scriptures.” Men are not “_appointed_” to disobedience and stumbling in the same way that they are “_appointed_” to salvation. God uses positive means to save, but not to destroy. Henry Ward Beecher: “The elect are whosoever will; the non‐elect are whosoever won’t.” George A. Gordon, New Epoch for Faith, 44—“Election understood would have been the saving strength of Israel; election misunderstood was its ruin. The nation felt that the election of it meant the rejection of other nations.... The Christian church has repeated Israel’s mistake.” The Westminster Confession reads: “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.” This reads as if both the saved and the lost were made originally for their respective final estates without respect to character. It is supralapsarianism. It is certain that the supralapsarians were in the majority in the Westminster Assembly, and that they determined the form of the statement, although there were many sublapsarians who objected that it was only on account of their foreseen wickedness that any were reprobated. In its later short statement of doctrine the Presbyterian body in America has made it plain that God’s decree of reprobation is a permissive decree, and that it places no barrier in the way of any man’s salvation. On the general subject of Election, see Mozley, Predestination; Payne, Divine Sovereignty; Ridgeley, Works, 1:261‐324, esp. 322; Edwards, Works, 2:527 _sq._; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 446‐458; Martensen, Dogmatics, 362‐382; and especially Wardlaw, Systematic Theology, 485‐549; H. B. Smith, Syst. of Christian Theology, 502‐514; Maule, Outlines of Christian Doctrine, 36‐56; Peck, in Bapt. Quar. Rev., Oct. 1891:689‐706. On objections to election, and Spurgeon’s answers to them, see Williams, Reminiscences of Spurgeon, 189. On the homiletical uses of the doctrine of election, see Bib. Sac., Jan. 1893:79‐92. II. Calling.