know not who are elect, and who reprobate, they are bound to preach promiscuously to all; that holiness is made a mark of election by all who preach it; that the seventeenth article of the English Church asserts, that the doctrine of “predestination and election in Christ is full of unspeakable comfort to godly persons;” that dooming millions to everlasting burnings is not an act of injustice, because God, for the sin of Adam, might justly have thus doomed all; that God’s absolute purpose of saving His chosen does not preclude the necessity of the gospel revelation, or the use of any of the means through which He has determined the decree shall take effect; that the doctrine of election does not make the Bible contradict itself, for though it asserts, that “the Lord is loving to every man, and His mercy is over all His works,” the reference is to His _general_, not His _saving_ mercy; that it is unjust to charge the doctrine of reprobation with blasphemy; and that, on the other hand, the doctrine of universal redemption, as set forth by Wesley, “is really the highest reproach upon the dignity of the Son of God, and the merit of His blood;” and Whitefield challenges Wesley to make good the assertion, “that Christ died for them that perish,” without holding, as Peter Bohler had lately confessed in a letter, “that all the damned souls would hereafter be brought out of hell;” for “how can all be universally redeemed, if all are not finally saved?” In conclusion, he writes:— “Dear sir, for Jesus Christ’s sake, consider how you dishonour God by denying election. You plainly make man’s salvation depend not on God’s _free grace_, but on man’s _free will_. Dear, dear sir, give yourself to reading. Study the covenant of grace. Down with your carnal reasoning. Be a little child; and then, instead of pawning your salvation, as you have done in a late hymn-book, if the doctrine of _universal redemption_ be not true; instead of talking of _sinless perfection_, as you have done in the preface to that hymn-book; and instead of making man’s salvation to depend on his own _free will_, as you have in this sermon, you will compose a hymn in praise of sovereign, distinguishing love; you will caution believers against striving to work a perfection out of their own hearts, and will print another sermon the reverse of this, and entitle it ‘Free Grace _Indeed_’—free, because not free to all; but free, because God may withhold or give it to whom and when He pleases.”[376]