Dr. Payne has very few remarks on the passage, but they are emphatic enough. "The passage is so conclusive," he says, "that it scarcely seems to require or even to admit of many remarks," and he does not give many. The simple question is this: does this passage prove unconditional election? Is there anything in the context to prove the reverse? We think that there is. In the twenty-eighth verse the apostle says, "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose." He is thus writing of a certain class of persons, or of persons in a certain moral state, that moral state being that they were lovers of God, as he expressly states in verse 28. He does not say that they were visited by a special and irresistible influence bestowed on them and withheld from others. He simply asserts that those lovers of God had all things working for their good; that they were called or invited to glory, as (in 1 Peter v. 10) it is said, "But the God of all grace, who hath called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus." And having intimated their call, Paul goes on to show what was the destiny awaiting the believer. He says, "For whom He did foreknow," and when he said this he could not mean the mere knowledge of entities, or of persons, for this reason, that God knows the finally lost as well as the finally saved. The apostle therefore could only mean that God, knowing beforehand those who would love him, fore-appointed or decreed in eternity that those who possessed this moral state should be conformed to the image of His Son, or personal appearance of Christ (1 John iii. 2). Those lovers of God thus predestinated are invited to heavenly bliss, and will be ultimately justified before the world, and glorified. The twenty -eighth verse, then, lays down the condition upon which the whole passage rests; and to bring forward the text as a proof of unconditional election, is simply to ignore the context. As far as this portion of the Bible is concerned, there is nothing to perplex the most simple. Become a lover of God, and the destiny sketched by the apostle awaits you. We become lovers of God by believing in His love to us. "We love Him," says John, "because He first loved us" (1 John iv. 19).