Walter Scott
The Epistle to the Galatians is directed
against the corruptions of the former, who, under the mask of an
affected zeal for the law of Moses, eagerly desired, like some modern
zealots, to superadd it as "a rule of life."
But "if I or an angel," says the Apostle, "preach any thing else to
you for gospel, let him be accursed," and he repeats the anathema.
The four Evangelists, the great bulwarks of
christianity, are for the purpose of supporting its reality on the
principle of the conformity of its author's birth, life, offices,
death, resurrection, and glorification to the predictions of the
ancient oracles and the great power of God. The gospel proposes three things as the
substance of the glad tidings to mankind the remission of sins, the
Holy Spirit, and eternal
life; and the apostles every where, in conformity
with their mission, plead for reformation towards God and faith in
our Lord Jesus Christ, as the state of mind adapted to the reception
of these inestimable blessings. In the proclamation of the gospel, therefore,
these high matters were ordered thus--faith, reformation, baptism for
the remission of sins, the Holy Spirit, and eternal life;
but how this order has been
deranged, some things added, some subtracted, and others changed,
must be manifest to all who know, and, alas! who does not know this,
that even now whole bodies of worshippers deny the resurrection of
the body; some would, to this day, superadd the law as "a
rule of life;" others deny the gift of a Holy Spirit; the Socinians
totally object to the sacrifice; and almost all who do embrace it
reject nevertheless the remission of sins in baptism, which the
sacrifice has so greatly secured to all who believe and
reform. Some have substituted sprinkling,
some the mourning bench, for the baptism of remission; and even those who most of all affect to be
orthodox, publicly preach in direct
contradiction to God's most universal
commandment, that a man can neither believe nor
repent; |they publish that faith comes by the Spirit, and not by the
word, "thus making the word of God of
non-effect," and contradicting the apostles, who every where
speak of the Spirit as a "Spirit of promise" to those who should
receive the gospel. Others will immerse, but not for the remission
of sins; and others preach the gospel maimed, disordered, changed,
and corrupted, in connexion with a scholastic election,
which not only retards the progress
of the glad tidings, but opposes itself to christian
election--to political
election--to all rational ideas of
election, and causes the entire gospel to stink in the estimation of
all unprejudiced men. The Apostles never
preached election to unconverted people as the
Calvinists do; and the disciples themselves were
never spoken to on this matter as persons who had believed, because
they were elect, but rather as those who were elected because they had
believed--"formerly you were not a
people, but now you are the people of God;" "you are an elect race;"
"make your calling and election sure." After preaching the ancient
gospel for a long time, I am finally convinced nothing, not even the
grossest immorality, is just the
old
fatalism of the
Greeks and Romans. Every election necessarily suggests to us six
things: Let us peep at the scripture election, in this
order; and, first, in regard to the elector. No one, I presume, will
dispute that God is He. .. As for the person or persons elected, I would
just observe, in accordance with the ancient oracles, that, although
there were in the world previous to the days of Abraham, and even
during the life of that patriarch, many who feared God and wrought
righteousness; yet till then none but he ever
worshipped the true God in the character of an elect person.
Elect and election are words which do not occur
in scripture with a reference to any who lived before Abraham;
previously there were no elect
head, no elect body, no elect
principles, no ends to be accomplished by an elect institution; and
therefore the scriptures speak of
none of his contemporaries as they speak of Abraham: "Thou art the
God who didst choose (i. e. elect) Abraham." This patriarch, therefore, is positively and
scripturally the first elect person mentioned in the divine oracles;
consequently the history of the doctrine of election commences with
the fact of God's having chosen, for general and magnanimous
purposes, this ancient worthy. But the choice of Abraham was accompanied with
the following promise, which at once reflected the highest praise on
God and honor on the patriarch: "In you and in your seed shall all
the nations of the earth be blessed." Now the Apostle, in Galatians
iii. says, "The seed is Christ." Substituting, therefore the
definition for the term itself, then the promise would read, "In you and in
Jesus Christ, or the Messiah, shall all the families of the earth be
blessed." God here, then, has set forth two persons in which a man
may certainly be blessed: for let it be attentively noticed that it
is in
Abraham and Christ, not out of them, that the
blessing is to be obtained.-- Christ and Abraham only are here
represented as being strictly and primarily elect persons; for it is
said of Christ, "Behold my elect." All other persons must be found in them before they are
elect, and as a person can be related to Abraham and Christ only in
one of two ways, i. e, by flesh or faith, it follows that if any one,
from the patriarch's time to the present, would enjoy the blessing of
an elect person or worshipper of the true God, he must be a child of Abraham. By
one or both of these principles he must be a Jew or a
Christian. THE election taught by the college men
(fathers) contemplates all the
righteous, from Abel to the
resurrection of the dead, as standing in the relation of
elect persons to God;
than which nothing can be more opposed to fact
and scripture: for though Abel, Enoch, and Noah, were worshippers of the true God,
they were not elect men; nay, though Melchisedeck himself, king of Salem, was
at once priest of the Most High God, and the most illustrious type of
Messiah; though he received tythes of Abraham, blessed him, and, as
Paul informs us, was greater than he; yet neither Melchisedeck nor
any of the numerous worshippers for whom he officiated in the quality
of God's priest, did ever stand in the relation of
elect worshippers in the scripture sense of the word elect.
Abraham was
the first elect man; and it remains for those who assert the contrary
of this, to prove their proposition--a thing they never can do by
scripture. The elect institution reared upon the patriarch
Abraham, and which has been made the deposite of covenants,
laws, services, glory and promises, is quite distinct from the general
righteousness of the world, whether that righteousness may have been
derived from revelations made to men before the commencement of the
elect institutions, or afterwards from traditions, or from an
apprehension of God's existence derived from the face of nature, the
currency of events, and the nature of human society among Gentiles,
ancient and modern. I say the election is a sui generis institution,
in which the worshiper does not, with the uncertainty of a Mahometan
idolator, a Chinese or Japanese, ask the remission of sins; but in
which this blessing is stable and certain, secured to him by the
promise and oath of God, two immutable things, by which it was
impossible for God to lie, that the man might have strong
consolation, who has fled into this institution for refuge to lay
hold of the hope set before him in the gospel; which is the second
apartment of the elect
building, as Judaism was the
first,-- "In thee shall all the
families of the earth be blessed"--a promise made to no other
institution. In our last essay we ascertained two of the six
things suggested to us by the term election, viz. that the living
God was
the elector, and that Abraham was the
first elect person; and now if we ask when it began and when it shall end,
I answer, first, that election will close at the end of the
world--all the gracious purposes of the institution will be
accomplished at that time--false religion and bad government--the
domination of political and trading influences--and every thing which
opposes itself to the religion and authority of this
institution--shall have been put down; and angels and men shall
behold this truth, that the God of Abraham is the true God, and Jesus
the Messiah his Son; and that Mahomet and Confucius, Zoroaster, and
Brahama, were self-created
apostles. As for the commencement of the election, if
Abraham was the first elect person, as we see he was, it follows this must
have been when God called that patriarch from his native country to
be the head of the elect people: "Now the Lord had said to Abraham, Get you out
of your country, and from your father's house to a land that I will
show you, and I will make of you a great nation; and I will bless
you, and make your name
great, and you shall be a blessing;
and I will bless them that bless you, and curse them that curse you;
and in you
shall all the families of the earth be blessed." Gen. xii. Here, then, is
the commencement of that institution which is finally to triumph over
imposition and falsehood. It only remains for us to speak of the great
and illustrious purposes for which God has set up this institution in
the earth, and finally of the principle on which a man of any nation
may be admitted to the privileges of it, viz. the remission of sins
of mankind--"In you shall all the families of the earth be blessed
, &c.; &c.;
First, then,
in regard to the ends of the election, I say, it is the blessing." This is
God's declared purpose in regard to mankind by the institution called "the election;"
consequently its purpose is not (like the election of
Edwards, Calvin, and others,) to exclude, curse, and destroy;
but to gather, to bless, and to
save! "In
you shall all the nations of the earth be blessed"--"I will make you
a blessing." Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, then, were not
chosen by God for the mean partial purpose of being
dragged
into heaven, will or no will, on the
principle of final perseverance; but for the general and benevolent
purpose of saving mankind by an institution of which they were made
the root or foundation.-- While the pulpit
of fatalism represents the God of
heaven both partial and cruel, The Magna Charta of the whole elect institution
are the covenants made by God with Abraham; from the superior and
inferior branches of which are derived what the apostle, in
Heb. viii.
calls the new and old, the first and second, the inferior and better;
or, in other words, the Jewish and Christian, covenants,
i. e.
the law and the gospel--the one enjoyed by the Jews on the footing of
flesh, the
other by men of all nations on faith. It is thus the
apostle, by a metonymy of principle and
privilege, styles the law flesh, and the gospel
faith. The infancy and rudeness
of the age of law, is indicated by the apostle in the following
metaphor: "So the law was our school
master until Christ." Again allegorically--"Now I say, as long as the
heir is a
minor he differs nothing from a bondman, although he be
lord of all; for he is under tutors and stewards, until the time
before appointed by his father." The grossness of fleshly
relationship and the spirituality of faith, together with the
substitution of the last for the first of these principles, is
thoroughly enforced upon the Galatians, in the allegory of Sarah and
Hagar: "Cast out (says the scripture) the bond maid and her son; for
the son of the bond maid shall not inherit with the son of the free
woman. Well then, brethren, we (christians) are not the children of
the bond maid, but of the free woman:" i. e. not of flesh
but of faith. It must be manifest, therefore, from what has been
written, that the entire election has been managed, first and last,
upon these two principles, and that the one half now superseded the
other.... Having given the reader a clue to the question
of God's Sovereignty, I shall now review some Scriptures which have
been quoted as opposing the doctrine of the Christian Baptist,
against the partial pickings of sectarianism. Proof-Texts for Calvinistic Election
Examined
1. It is said, Romans viii. "Whom he foreknew,
he also predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son, that
he might be the first born among many brethren.--Moreover, whom he
did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he
also justified; and whom he justified, them he also
glorified."-- Now what is this, but that God, as may be seen
from fact and from the ancient writings of the prophets, foreknew that the Jews and Gentiles indiscriminately,
would believe on his Son, and for that, had predestinated or appointed them
to share in his honors; he therefore, in the fullness of time, called
them; remitted their sins, and glorified them as his only
worshippers, by making to rest upon them, the Spirit of God and of
Glory. But it is said: "Well then, he has mercy on whom he will have mercy, and
whom he will, he hardens." This is true--and blessed be his holy
name, that he will, if the scriptures
mean what they say, have mercy on all
who believe, not of the Jews only, but
of the Gentiles also; and the unbelieving wretch who will not accept
of pardon on the gospel plan, ought to be hardened and heated seven
times in a furnace of fire; Romans ix. The ancient idolaters were hardened, and the
case of the modern Jews illustrates this verse. Again it is said,
Eph. 1st
chapter, "According as he has elected us in
him, before the foundation of the world." This is also very true, and means what it says;
but, observe, We many times determine who shall fill certain
offices, while the disciples of Mahomet, Confucius,
and others have been appointed to no such distinction. But again, "No
man can come to me unless the Father draw him." How common is this
form of speech, even among ourselves! Who has brought you here, and what
has drawn you here, are phrases which are current every where, and
yet, who ever thinks that the charm or power by which
one person is drawn after another is a physical one. The power of drawing is moral, not physical, and
so the Saviour, in the 5th John, says that no man could come to him,
unless the Father draw him, because the political mob which he
addressed, had followed him, from the gross and animal reason of
having got their bellies
filled the night before with the loaves
and fishes; paying no regard to the divine power which
wrought the miracle, "Verily, I say to you, you followed me not because you saw
the miracle, (Father in the miracle,) but because you did eat of the
loaves and were filled." PHILIP.
Quotations from "Walter Scott's four-part essay
"Election" was first published in The
Christian Baptist, Vol. VI, No. 8,
March 2, 1829; Vol. VI, No. 10, May 5, 1829; Vol. VII, No. 3, October
5, 1829. 
is so much opposed to its progress, as the scholastic election, which, indeed,