But if God’s glory requires it, will not this reconcile the good and gain their consent?

God’s glory doth not—­cannot require it.  “The spirit of the Lord is not straightened.”  Human guilt and misery are not necessary to God’s honor.

It is necessary that divine justice should be exercised on those who refuse divine grace; but not necessary that men should refuse divine grace.  “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.”

Such is the language of revelation; and the measures which God hath adopted relative to our guilty race speak the same language.  He hath provided a city of refuge, and urges the guilty to “turn to the strong hold.”—­He weeps over obstinate sinners who refuse his grace?  “How shall I give thee up?  How shall I deliver thee?” But rejoiceth over the penitent, as the father rejoiced over the returning prodigal.

God would not have provided a Savior, and made indiscriminate offers of pardon and peace had he chosen the destruction of sinners, and had their ruin been necessary to his honor.  But God hath done these things, and manifested his merciful disposition toward mankind.

We have no need to “do evil that good may come.  Our unrighteousness is not necessary to commend the righteousness of God.”

How then, are we to understand the prayer of Moses, placed at the head of this discourse—­blot me, I pray that, out of thy book which than hast written?

As this is one of the principal passages of scripture which are adduced to support the sentiment we have exploded, a few things may be premised, before we attempt to explain it.

I. Should it be admitted that Moses here imprecated utter destruction on himself, it could not be alleged as a precept given to direct others, but only as a solitary incident, in the history of a saint, who was then compassed with infirmity.  And where is the human character without a shade?  This same Moses neglected to circumcise his children—­broke the tables of God’s law—­spake unadvisedly with his lips—­yea, committed such offences against God, that he was doomed to die short of Canaan, in common with rebellious Israel.

II.  The time—­in which it hath been particularly insisted that a person must be willing to be damned for God’s glory, is at his entrance on a slate of grace; but Moses had been consecrated to the service of God long before he made this prayer.  Nothing, therefore respecting the temper of those under the preparatory influences of the spirit can be argued from it.

III.  Should we grant that Moses here imprecated on himself the greatest evil, a sense of other people’s sins, and not a sense of his own sins, was the occasion.  But,

IV.  No sufferings of his could have been advantageous to others, had be submitted to them for their sake.  Had he consented to have been a castaway—­to have become an infernal, as we have seen implied in damnation, this would not have brought salvation to Israel.  Moses’ hatred of God, and his sufferings and blasphemies, would not have atoned for the sins of his people, or tended in any degree to turn away the wrath of God from them.