Dan Chapa

Daniel Whitby's Discourses on the 5 Points was, during its day, the definitive Arminian work against Calvinism. Whitby had a commanding knowledge of the scriptures, and his book is a detailed and unrelenting examination of Calvinism. It drew responses from famous Calvinists Jonathan Edwards, Inquiry into the Will and John Gill, the Cause of God and Truth . Below is an index to Whitby's discourse on Grace. Archaic spellings and words have been updated, sentences broken down into shorter sentences and links to scripture references inserted. . Introduction to Whitby on Grace . Resistible/irresistible Grace – Defining the Question Chapter 2: Arguments against Irresistible Grace Opening Remarks and Argument One - Sufficient Grace Argument 2: God Desires Obedience Argument 3: Commands and Exhortations in Vain Argument 4: Justice in Punishment Argument 5: Word of God Argument 6: No Motive for Conversion Argument 7: No Preparation for Conversion Argument 8: No one could b...

IX. OBJECTION TWENTY-FIVE. Lastly, it is objected, "that the opinion which makes the grace of God resistible, leaves it uncertain whether any one will be converted by it, or not." ANSWER FIRST. To this I answer, that it leaves it as uncertain whether any one will be unconverted, or not; and surely, that opinion which affords this encouragement to all, that God, notwithstanding their fall, will afford means sufficient to convert them, if they do not neglect and refuse to use them, is much to be preferred before that which tells them he hath from eternity passed an act of preterition on them, and by that excluded them out of the number of the elect, that is, of them who only shall be saved. ANSWER SECOND. A man may, notwithstanding this opinion, be infallibly certain, otherwise, that many will be found true converts at the last, because he knows that many have already died in the fear of God, and in the faith of Christ, and because the holy scriptures do assure us that ' so...

VIII. OBJECTION TWENTY-THREE and TWENTY-FOUR That by this doctrine we administer occasion of boasting to all that are converted and saved, by attributing their conversion and salvation partly to their works; whereas the apostle says, 'by grace are we saved, NOT OF WORK?, lest any man should boast. Moreover, according to the same doctrine, the whole story of conversion will not be due to God, because man co-operates with him; whereas the divine wisdom hath so contrived the business of our salvation, that ' no flesh should glory in his sight '. ( 1 Corinthians 1:29 ) ANSWER. To the first part of the objection taken from Ephesians 2:8 , , I have already given a full answer, by showing that these words, ' are we saved by grace through faith' bear this sense, that through the saving grace of God appearing to us by the preaching of the gospel, and believed by us, we are put into a state of salvation; and that all this is done to any church or nation, through the free gr...

II. OBJECTION TWENTY-TWO. "If man doth anything towards his conversion, which another neglecting to do is not converted, he makes himself to differ from that other, which yet seems not consistent with St. Paul's enquiry, ' who made thee to differ from another " ( 1 Corinthians 4:7 ) ANSWER. The apostle manifestly speaks here of those extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, the gifts of tongues, and prophecy, &c. on the account of which they were puffed up for one against another, counting one a man of better gifts than another. Now these gifts being immediately infused without human industry, and conferred upon Christians without any such co-operation of their faculties, as is required to the exercise of any Christian duty or moral virtue, it cannot, with like reason, be enquired of these duties, as it may be of those gifts, 'who made thee to differ from another in them? Nor can it from them be duly inferred, that no man does anything to make himself differ from an...

VI. OBJECTIONS TWENTY and TWENTYONE. "The apostle informs us, Philippians 2:13 , that 'it is God that works in us both to will and do;' and prays " he would work in us what is well pleasing in his sight." ( Hebrews 13:21 ) Whatsoever therefore we will, or do, that is good, God does it in us." ANSWER. That God does this, is not denied; the question is, whether he does it by a physical operation, unfrustrable by the will of man, or by internal suasion or inducements to prevail upon us thus to will and do: And that he does this only in this latter sense, is evident from these very words, " not only in my presence, but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God that works in you, etc." For if, beyond his inward suggestions and persuasions, some physical and irresistible operation were required on God's part, which makes it necessary for us to will and do, why are we then commanded to " work out ...

OBJECTIONS EIGHTEEN and NINETEEN. "God says concerning his people, 'I will give you one heart, and I will put a new Spirit in you, and take the stony heart out of their flesh, and give them an heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my ordinances.' ' And again, ' I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean from all your filthiness, and I will put up my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments to do them;"' where a new heart and spirit are said not only to be given, but put into them by God, and therefore they were to do nothing towards it." ( Ezekiel 11:19-20 ) ANSWER FIRST. The arguments taken from both these places have two of the general faults which render all arguments of this nature null, v. g. (1.) That they speak of all the whole house of Israel, ( Ezekiel 11:15, 36:21- 22 ) to all that were "gathered out of all countries, and brought to their own land....

OBJECTIONS SIXTEEN and SEVENTEEN. "God promises to 'write his law in the hearts of his people, and to put it into their inward parts; ( Jeremiah 31:33 ) that he will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear him forever, and will make an everlasting covenant with them; that he will not turn away from them to do them good, but will put his fear in their 'hearts that they shall not depart from him'." ( Jeremiah 32:39-40 ) ANSWER. These promises are made expressly to the whole house of Israel, and to 'all the children of Israel and Judah' to all with whom the old covenant was made, and whom God' brought out of Egypt,' and would bring again ' out of captivity' it therefore, by the second general rule, can be no promise made to, or covenant made with, the elect of the house of Israel and Judah. (i.) Because then the whole nation of the Jews must have been elected and converted, (ii.) Because it is made with those who "kept not his...

V. OBJECTIONS FOURTEEN and FIFTEEN. "God promises ' to, circumcise, the heart,' ( Deuteronomy 30:6 ) and Ephraim prays thus, 'turn thou us, O Lord, and so shall we be turned ( Jeremiah 31:18 ) he therefore only does these works in us, and we are purely passive." ANSWER. Now in answer to such texts as these in general, I lay down this as a most certain rule, that when God does require us to do what he himself does promise, and hath made it our duty to, perform, his promise is only to perform what is requisite on his part towards the work, he certainly expecting we ourselves should do what he commands; and the tenor of those prayers is only to afford his assistance to help our infirmities when we are truly willing and desirous to perform our duty by virtue of those inducements he hath already laid before us; for if in such cases the whole was to be done by God immediately, not by way of persuasion only, but by unfrustrable influence, his command to us to do it, coul...

OBJECTION THIRTEEN. " 'The Lord opened the heart of Lydia;' therefore conversion is wrought by his immediate impulse and powerful influence." ( Acts 16:14 ) ANSWER FIRST. That God inclined her to do this, is not denied. The question only is, whether he did this by an extraordinary and irresistible influence. And this it seems reasonable to deny; for either she alone was prepared disposed and fitted to receive this influence, and then she had done something already towards her conversion; or if it were absolutely necessary that she might believe, and yet she alone, though no more fitted or prepared for it than the rest, received it ; the other auditors, for want of this extraordinary influence, must be under a necessity of not believing, and so it could not be blameworthy in them that they did not believe. ANSWER SECOND, ' To open the heart', and ' to open the ear' are scripture-phrases of like import; for the effect of both is the same, viz. the render...

IV. To the ELEVENTH and TWELFTH OBJECTIONS the same general answers may be given, they both depending on the same phrase, and making thus one argument: " What God gives we only receive, and so are only passive; but God gives faith and repentance." ( Acts 11:18, Ephesians 2:8 ) ANSWER FIRST. To show the vanity of such objections, I shall confront them thus, what God commands we must do, and therefore must be active in it; but God ' commands all men every where to repent,' ( Acts 17:30 ) and ' this is his commandment that we believe in the name of the Son of God,' ( 1 John 3:23 ) therefore we must be active in the works of faith, ( John 6:29 ) and of repentance. Yea, by this way of arguing, all that hardness of heart the Jews contracted must be ascribed to God, and they must have been purely passive in it, God having 'green them a spirit of slumber:' ( Romans 11:8 ) Ahab's false prophets must be purely passive; for, says Micaiah, ' the Lord hath ...

The NINTH and TENTH OBJECTIONS are in effect the same, and so will admit of the same answer, viz. "That while a man is an evil tree, ( Matthew 7:18 ) he can do nothing that is good, and that ' the carnal mind is not subject to the law of God, nor Indeed can be so;' whence the inference is this, that this evil tree must be first made good, this carnal mind must be first made spiritual, before he can do anything towards his conversion. ( Romans 8:7 ) ANSWER FIRST. Now the absurdity of these objections is visible in this, that this exposition of them renders all God's exhortations to the wicked to turn from the evil of their ways, all his promises of pardon and salvation if they turn from them, all his threats of death and destruction if they do not turn from them, all its complaints against them that they would not be converted, they would not come to him, vain and absurd; as being exhortations and commands to do what he knew they could not, and he only could do without ...

OBJECTION EIGHT. 'No man can come to Christ except the Father draw him' ( John 6:44 ) Now he that is drawn, is passive." ANSWER. To this I answer, (First,) that to be drawn of God, cannot import our being moved by any inward and irresistible impressions to believe in Christ; for then no man could come to Christ without this irresistible impression, and then no other person could be blameworthy for not believing on him, because they could not do it without that powerful attraction which God was not pleased to afford them; nor could it be praise-worthy to believe in him, because they only did so when they could not chose but do it, as being moved in so doing by a force they were not able to resist. Therefore to be drawn of God can only signify: First. To be persuaded and prevailed upon to come to Christ, by the consideration of the mighty works which God had done to justify that Christ was the true Messiah, or that prophet which he had sent into the world. To these Christ st...

OBJECTION SEVEN. " Christ says, ' without me you can do nothing,' ( John 15:5 ) whence it is inferred that no man can do anything that is good, till he be first in Christ, that is, till he be endued with justifying faith." ANSWER FIRST. This argument offends against the third general rule: for these words of Christ are spoken expressly to those who were 'abiding in Christ,' and truly believed already, that is, to his twelve apostles, to show the necessity of their continuance in that state, that they might successfully perform the work he had designed and chosen them to do, viz. ' to go forth into the World, and bring forth much fruit,' by converting many to the faith, verse 1-8 , and so it signifies that without the gifts, and powerful assistance of that Holy Spirit, who belonged only to them who abode in Christ, they could do nothing to convert the world; their sufficiency for that work deriving itself entirely from that God who gives the Holy Spirit...

OBJECTION SIX. The argument from those words of the apostle, 'we are not sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves,' is as impertinent to this purpose as the former. ( 2 Corinthians 3:5 ) For, first, if it proves anything, it proves too much, viz. That we are not sufficient of ourselves, 'to think anything' at all, whether it be good or bad. And, secondly, the words relate to the apostles, and to them alone, and are a declaration of their own insufficiency to carry on the great work of the conversion of the world to the Christian faith by their own strength and wisdom, and that their sufficiency for it derived entirely from that God who had ' made them able ministers of the New Testament,' by the assistance of his Holy Spirit; for having proved, in his first epistle, that there was a necessity of a divine revelation to enable them to make known the truths contained in the gospel to the world, because human reason, without this revelation, was not...

OBJECTION FIVE. It is still more impertinent to argue this from the words of the apostle, 'the natural man receives not the things of the Spirit of God, for they art foolishness to him; neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.' ( 1 Corinthians 2:14 ) For First. The natural man here is not barely the unregenerate man, but the wise man and disputer of the world, who will admit of nothing but what he can see proved by reason, and so receives not things revealed by the Spirit, because he doth not see them proved by philosophical deductions from reason; but deems them foolishness, for want of that which only is, in his esteem, true wisdom; as has been fully proved in the note upon that place. Secondly. When the apostle says that this man cannot know the revelations of the Spirit, he speaks not of the inability of a Heathen to understand the meaning of any revelation discovered to him; for how then is it discovered to him? Nor does he say that when they are de...

Dan's Comments: Gabcast! Dan's blog #14 ------------- III. OBJECTION FOUR. "The unregenerate man is represented as 'dead in trespasses and sins;' and he that is dead, we know, hath no motion in him, and so cannot move towards a new life." ( Ephesians 2:1, Colossians 2:13 ) ANSWER ONE. That the metaphor of being 'dead in trespasses and sins' cannot warrant our saying anything of unregenerate persons which may properly be affirmed of the dead, is evident from scripture and experience: for a dead body is void of all sense, whereas the unregenerate man is often under strong convictions, and a deep sense of his present misery. A dead man cannot awake himself out of the sleep of death, but God says to the spiritually-dead man, " Awake, thou that sleepest, arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee life." ( Ephesians 5:14 ) A dead man cannot hear, but to the spiritually-dead God says, "Hear, and your souls shall live." ( Is...

OBJECTION THREE. " Regeneration is styled A NEW BIRTH; as therefore we are passive in our generation, so must we be also in our regeneration." ANSWER. The falsehood of this argument is evident from this consideration, — that this new birth is ascribed to the word of God, which only works upon us by moral suasion; as when the scripture says, "faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God; ( Romans 10:17 ) that we are begotten by the word of the living God; ( 1 Peter 1:23 ) that God himself hath "begotten us by the word of truth. ( James 1:18 ) (ii.) It is also ascribed to the ministers of God, as when St. Paul tells the Corinthians he had " begotten them by the gospel.’ ( 1 Corinthians 4:15 ) If then this new birth, when it is ascribed to God's word or ministers, cannot import that they produce it by an irresistible action, in which we are purely passive, it will not follow that God, of his Good Spirit, does so convert men, because they are said to ...

Dan's Commments: Gabcast! Dan's blog #13 ------------------------------------ Objection Two. When it is said that this work is compared to a creation, in which it is certain that which is created must be purely passive, as when by it we are said to become, a new creation Galatians 6:15 , we being God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus to good works. ( Ephesians 2:10 ) Answer One. That this metaphor affords no certain proof that wheresoever it is used, the person it respects must be purely passive, and have done nothing towards the act styled creation; is evident from many instances to the contrary. Thus God is said to have created Jacob, and formed Israel, when he constituted them to be his church and people, ( Isaiah 43:1 ) whence the Septuagint says, Ti rns xriatus rdurns, (b) remember this creation; and yet they were not purely passive, but entered into covenant to have him for their God. When God makes use of wicked men, or men of war, to punish ot...

Dan's comments: Gabcast! Dan's blog #12 II. OBJECTION ONE. When the apostle prays that his Ephesians may know “what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead;' ( Ephesians 1:19-20 ) it must be absurd hence to infer, that the power of God working faith in believers, is equal to that which effected the resurrection of our Lord, and that we must be therefore purely passive in the whole work of our conversion. For as this power is not consistent with the persuasions and exhortations used in scripture to move sinners to repent and turn themselves from their iniquity, or with a rational choice, nor could it properly be said that " they turned," but only that " they were turned to the Lord;" so is not the exposition agreeable to the words: for the apostle speaks not of the power exercised on us to render us believers, but of the ...

XII. ARGUMENT TEN And lastly, our opinion tends much more to the glory of God, than does the contrary opinion. For seeing God is chiefly glorified by the acknowledgment and discovery of his excellencies, and more particularly of those attributes which do inform us of our duty, and are proposed for our imitation, that doctrine which tends most to the acknowledgment of those attributes, must most directly tend to the advancement of God's glory. Now, first, the wisdom of God is most glorified by that opinion which supposes He acts with man in all his precepts, exhortations, invitations, promises and threats, suitably to those faculties that He has given us, and doth not attempt by them 'to engage us to impossibilities’. For is it not a foul imputation upon the divine wisdom to suppose that He uses and appoints means for the recovery of mankind, which he knows cannot in the least degree be serviceable to that end?' But such is the consequence of that opinion which makes it as ...