Synopsis "A Further Enquiry After Truth & Defense Thereof"
But why must it be supposed, that God offers an opportunity to all to be saved? And, how can we understand it to be a privilege and blessing, to have an opportunity upon impossible conditions? Some answer, "that God affords an opportunity to all, that he might vindicate himself, that is, his justice, or his mercy, or both, from the charge his creatures might probably bring against them." This supposes that God will be brought to the bar of the creature to give account for his conduct towards the works of his hands; which indeed, through the amazing and confounding pride of our hearts, is frequently done. We quarrel at his righteous decrees; we quarrel at his gracious dispensations, our eye being evil because he is good; and we fall out with him as Jonah did, about the shadow of an herb, Jonah 4:9, for such is the monstrous deformity of fallen nature! But admitting this, that God was arraigned, his justice needs no vindication. The saved of the Lord justify him in his sayings!
