Is not compassion for the miseries of his own lost creature as natural to a God of infinite benevolence as moral indignation against all sin is to a God of infinite righteousness? And when two guilty creatures are suffering similar miseries, equally deserved in both cases, can the divine immutability, consistency, and goodness be reconciled with the belief that the compassion which exists in the one case has not even the slightest existence in the other case? If this particular position be assumed, then the charge of unaccountable partiality, which the Arminian unjustly casts against predestination, will have some fair application. Not that either sufferer has a personal right to either compassion or succor as against God. But the anomaly will be this: how comes it that an essential principle of God’s nature should act normally towards one object, and refuse the similar exercise towards the precisely parallel object? This is God’s absolute sovereignty, answers the supralapsarian. But a sound theology answers again, no; while God is perfectly free in every exercise of his essential principles, yet he freely does some things necessarily, and other things optionally; and God’s optional liberty is not whether he shall have the propensions of his essential principles, but whether he shall execute them by his volitions. The counterpart truth, then, must be asserted of Jacob and Esau. As God had the natural and appropriate affection of disapprobation against Jacob’s ill desert (and still elected him) which he had against Esau’s; so, doubtless, he had the same affection, appropriate to his infinite goodness, of compassion for Esau’s misery (and yet rejected him) which he had for Jacob’s deserved misery. If any compassion for Esau existed in the sovereign mind, why did it not effectuate itself in his salvation? We answer with a parallel question: Why did not the righteous reprehension against Jacob’s ill desert, if any of it existed in the sovereign mind, effectuate itself in his damnation? All of us have agreed to the answer to this latter question; we dare not say that God could distinctly foresee all Jacob’s supplanting falsehood, and feel no disapprobation whatever; it would come near to blasphemy. We must reply: Because this disapprobation, while existing in the holy mind, was counterpoised by a wise, gracious, and sovereign motive unrevealed to us. Well, let the parallel answer be given to the parallel question: The divine compassion existing towards Esau’s misery was counterpoised by some holy, wise, and sovereign motive unrevealed to us; so that righteous disapprobation for his sin remained the prevalent motive of righteous preterition.

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