No offense Danny - You need to be balanced here so for balance sake and not to submit blindly to one viewpoint why not read, for one’s own self what Wesley wrote in response to the same charges... See the following Link Below:
29. I have spoken more largely than I designed, in order to show, that neither our Lord, in the above-mentioned parable, nor St. Paul, in these words, had any view to God’s sovereign power, as the ground of unconditional reprobation. And beware you go no further therein, than you are authorized by them. Take care, whenever you speak of these high things, to “speak as the oracles of God.” And if so, you will never speak of the sovereignty of God, but in conjunction with his other attributes. For the Scripture nowhere speaks of this single attribute, as separate from the rest. Much less does it anywhere speak of the sovereignty of God as singly disposing the eternal states of men. No, no; in this awful work, God proceeds according to the known rules of his justice and mercy; but never assigns his sovereignty as the cause why any man is punished with everlasting destruction.
30. Now then, are you not quite out of your way? You are not in the way which God hath revealed. You are putting eternal happiness and misery on an unscriptural and a very dreadful footing. Make the case your own: Here are you, a sinner, convinced that you deserve the damnation of hell. Sorrow, therefore, and fear have filled your heart. And how shall you be comforted? By the promises of God? But perhaps you have no part therein; for they belong only to the elect. By the consideration of his love and tender mercy? But what are these to you, if you are a reprobate? God does not love you at all; you, like Esau, he hath hated even from eternity. What ground then can you have for the least shadow of hope? Why, it is possible, (that is all,) that God’s sovereign will may be on your side. Possibly God may save you, because he will! O poor encouragement to despairing sinners! I fear “faith” rarely “cometh by hearing” this!
31. The sovereignty of God is then never to be brought to supersede his justice. And this is the present objection against unconditional reprobation; (the plain consequence of unconditional election;) it flatly contradicts, indeed utterly overthrows, the Scripture account of the justice of God. This has been proved in general already; let us now weigh a few particulars. And, (1.) The Scripture describes God as the Judge of the earth. But how shall God in justice judge the world? (O consider this, as in the presence of God, with reverence and godly fear!) How shall God in justice judge the world, if there be any decree of reprobation? On this supposition, what should those on the left hand be condemned for? For their having done evil? They could not help it. There never was a time when they could have helped it. God, you say, “of old ordained them to this condemnation.” And “who hath resisted his will?” He “sold” them, you say, “to work wickedness,” even from their mother’s womb. He “gave them up to a reprobate mind,” or ever they hung upon their mother’s breast. Shall he then condemn them for what they could not help? Shall the Just, the Holy One of Israel, adjudge millions of men to everlasting pain, because their blood moved in their veins? Nay, this they might have helped, by putting an end to their own lives. But could they even thus have escaped from sin? Not without that grace which you suppose God had absolutely determined ever to give them. And yet you suppose him to send them into eternal fire, for not escaping from sin! That is, in plain terms, for not having that grace which God had decreed they should never have! O strange justice! What a picture do you draw of the Judge of all the earth!
32. Are they not rather condemned for not doing good, according to those solemn words of the great Judge, “Depart, ye cursed; for I was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink; a stranger, and ye took me not in; I was naked, and ye clothed me not; sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they answer.” But how much better an answer do you put into their mouths! Upon your supposition, might they not say, (O consider it well, in meekness and fear!) “Lord, we might have done the outward work; but thou knowest it would have but increased our damnation. We might have fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, and covered the naked with a garment. But all these works, without thy special grace, which we never had, nor possibly could have, seeing thou hast eternally decreed to withhold it from us, would only have been splendid sins. They would only have heated the furnace of hell seven times hotter than before.” Upon your supposition, might they not say, “Righteous art thou, O Lord; yet let us plead with thee. O, why dost thou condemn us for not doing good? Was it possible for us to do anything well? Did we ever abuse the power of doing good? We never received it, and that thou knowest. Wilt thou, the Holy One, the Just, condemn us for not doing what we never had the power to do? Wilt thou condemn us for not casting down the stars from heaven? for not holding the winds in our fist? Why, it was as possible for us to do this, as to do any work acceptable in thy sight! O Lord, correct us, but with judgment! And, before thou plungest us into everlasting fire, let us know how it was ever possible for us to escape the damnation of hell.”
33. Or, how could they have escaped (suppose you assign that; as the cause of their condemnation) from inward sin, from evil desires, from unholy tempers and vile affections? Were they ever able to deliver their own souls, to rescue themselves from this inward hell? If so, their not doing it might justly be laid to their charge, and would leave them without excuse. But it was not so; they never were able to deliver their own sons; they never had the power to rescue themselves from the hands of these bosom enemies. This talent was never put into their hands. How then can they be condemned for hiding it in the earth, for non-improvement of what they never had? Who is able to purify a corrupt heart; to bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Is man, mere man, sufficient for this? No, certainly. God alone. To him only can the polluted of heart say, “Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean.” But what, if he answer, “I will not, because I will not: Be thou unclean still?” Will God doom that man to the bottomless pit, because of that uncleanness which he could not save himself from, and which God could have saved him from, but would not? Verily, were an earthly King to execute such justice as this upon his helpless subjects, it might well be expected that the vengeance of the Lord would soon sweep him from the face of the earth.
34. Perhaps you will say, They are not condemned for actual but for original sin. What do you mean by this term? The inward corruption of our nature? If so, it has been spoken of before. Or do you mean, the sin which Adam committed in paradise? That this is imputed to all men, I allow; yea, that by reason hereof “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.” But that any will be damned for this alone, I allow not, till you show me where it I written. Bring me plain proof from Scripture, and I submit; but till then I utterly deny it.
35. Should you not rather say, that unbelief is the damning sin? and that those who are condemned in that day will be therefore condemned, “because they believed not on the name of the only-begotten Son of God?” But could they believe? Was not this faith both the gift and the work of God in the soul? And was it not a gift which he had eternally decreed never to give them? Was it not a work which he was of old unchangeably determined never to work in their souls? Shall these men be condemned, because God would not work; because they did not receive what God would not give? Could they “ungrasp the hold of his right hand, or force omnipotence?”
36. There is, over and above, a peculiar difficulty here. You say, Christ did not die for these men. But if so, there was an impossibility, in the very nature of the thing, that they should ever savingly believe. For what is saving faith, but “a confidence in God through Christ, that loved me, and gave himself for me?” Loved thee, thou reprobat! gave himself for thee! Away! thou hast neither part nor lot herein. Thou believe in Christ, thou accursed spirit! damned or ever thou wert born! There never was any object for thy faith; there never was any thing for thee to believe. God himself, (thus must you speak, to be consistent with yourself,) with all his omnipotence, could not make thee believe Christ atoned for thy sins,unless he had made thee believe a lie.
37. If then God be just, there cannot, on your scheme, be any judgment to come. We may add, nor any future state, either of reward or punishment. If there be such a state, God will therein “render to every man according to his works. To them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to them that do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that doeth evil.” But how is this reconcilable with your scheme? You say, The reprobates cannot but do evil; and that the elect, from the day of God’s power, cannot but continue in well-doing. You suppose all this is unchangeably decreed; in consequence whereof, God acts irresistibly on the one, and Satan on the other. Then it is impossible for either one or the other to help acting as they do; or rather, to help being acted upon, in the manner wherein they are. For if we speak properly, neither the one nor the other can be said to act at all. Can a stone be said to act, when it is thrown out of a sling? or a ball, when it is projected from a cannon? No more can a man be said to act, if he be only moved by a force he cannot resist. But if the case be thus, you leave no room either for reward or punishment. Shall the stone be rewarded for rising from the sling, or punished for falling down? Shall the cannon-ball be rewarded for flying towards the sun, or punished for receding from it? As incapable of either punishment or reward is the man who is supposed to be impelled by a force he cannot resist. Justice can have no place in rewarding or punishing mere machines, driven to and fro by an external force. So that your supposition of God’s ordaining from eternity whatsoever should be done to the end of the world; as well as that of God’s acting irresistibly in the elect, and Satan’s acting irresistibly in the reprobates; utterly overthrows the Scripture doctrine of rewards and punishments, as well as of a judgment to come.
38. Thus ill does that election which implies reprobation agree with the Scripture account of God’s justice. And does it agree any better with his truth? How will you reconcile it with those plain passages? — “Have I any pleasure at all that the wicked should die, saith the Lord God; and not that he should return from his ways and live? Cast away from you all your transgressions whereby ye have transgressed: For why will ye die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord: Wherefore, turn yourselves, and live ye.”(Ezekiel 18:23, etc.) “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways: For why will ye die, O house of Israel?” (Ezekiel
33:11.)
39. But perhaps you will say, “These ought to be limited and explained by other passages of Scripture; wherein this doctrine is as clearly affirmed, as it is denied in these.” I must answer very plain: If this were true, we must give up all the Scriptures together; nor would the Infidels allow the Bible so honorable a title as that of a “cunningly-devised fable.” But it is not true. It has no color of truth. It is absolutely, notoriously false. To tear up the very roots of reprobation, and of all doctrines that have a necessaryconnection therewith, God declares in his word these three things, and thaexplicitly, in so many terms:
(1.) “Christ died for all,” (2 Corinthians 5:14,) namely, all that were dead in sin, as the words immediately following, fix the sense: Hereis the fact affirmed.
(2.) “He is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world,” (1 John 2:2,) even of all those for whom he died: Here is the consequence
of his dying for all. And,
(3.) “He died for all, that they should not live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them,” (2 Corinthians 5:15,) that they might be saved from their sins: Here is the design, the end of his
dying for them. Now, show me the scriptures wherein God declares in equally express terms,
(1.)“Christ” did not die “for all,” but for some only.
(2.)Christ is not “the propitiation for the sins of the whole world;”
and,
(3.)“He” did not die “for all,” at least, not with that intent, “that they should live unto him who died for them.” Show me, I say, the
scriptures that affirm these three things in equally express terms.
You know there are none. Nor is it possible to evade the force of those above recited, but by supplying in number what is wanting in weight; by heaping abundance of texts together, whereby (though none of them speak home to the point) the patrons of that opinion dazzle the eyes of the unwary, and quite overlay the understanding both of themselves and those that hear them.
40. To proceed: What an account does this doctrine give of the sincerity of God in a thousand declarations, such as these? — “O that there were such an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep my commandments always, that it might be well with them, and with their children forever!” (Deuteronomy 5:29.) “My people would not hear my voice, and Israel would not obey me. So I gave them up unto their own hearts’ lusts, and let them follow their own imaginations. O that my people would have hearkened unto me! For if Israel had walked in my ways, I should soon have put down their enemies, and turned my hand against their adversaries.” (Psalm 81:11, etc.)
And all this time, you suppose God had unchangeably ordained, that there never should be “such an heart in them!” that it never should be possible for the people whom he thus seemed to lament over, to hearken unto him, or to walk in his ways! How clear and strong is the reasoning of Dr. Watts on this head! “It is very hard indeed, to vindicate the sincerity of the blessed God or his Son, in their universal offers of grace and salvation to men, and their sending Ministers with such messages and invitations to accept of mercy, if there be not at least a conditional pardon and salvation provided for them.
“His Ministers indeed, as they know not the event of things, may be sincere in offering salvation to all persons, according to their general commission, ‘Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.’
But how can God or Christ be sincere in sending them with this commission, to offer his grace to all men, if God has not provided such grace for all men, no, not so much as conditionally? “It is hard to suppose, that the great God, who is truth itself, and faithful in all his dealings, should call upon dying men to trust in a Savior for eternal life, when this Savior has not eternal life intrusted with him to give them if they do as he requires. It is hard to conceive how the great Governor of the world can be sincere in inviting sinners, who are on the brink of hell, to cast themselves upon an empty word of invitation, a mere shadow and appearance of support, if there be nothing real to bear them up from those deeds of destruction, nothing but mere words and empty invitations! Can we think, that the righteous and holy God would encourage his Ministers to call them to leave and rest the weight of their immortal concerns upon a gospel, a covenant of grace, a Mediator, and his merit and righteousness? all which are a mere nothing with regard to them, a heap of empty names, an unsupporting void which cannot uphold them?”
41. Our blessed Lord does indisputably command and invite “all men everywhere to repent.” He calleth all. He sends his ambassadors, in his name, to “preach the gospel to every creature.” He himself “preached deliverance to the captives,” without any hint of restriction or limitation....
