the works of john gill vol2 SAMPLE

The Cause of God and Truth
So the determining the everlasting fate of souls, or the appointing of
them to damnation, is not without respect to evil done by them:
though this is to be considered, not as the cause of God’s decree, which
is his own sovereign pleasure, but as the cause or reason of the thing
decreed: so that this is not without reason on the part of God, nor
without cause on their parts. And hence the entrance of each of these
persons upon their everlasting state, so determined, though not the
determination of it, is suspended until these several things take place.
And where is the injustice or unmercifulness of such a procedure?
But, perhaps the cruelty lies here, that “God determines of the
everlasting fate of the souls he daily doth create after the fall of Adam;”
the meaning of which is, either that God has determined the
everlasting fate of souls, and appointed them to damnation after the
fall of Adam, which is what we deny; since no decree or determination
of God is temporal, but eternal: or that God has appointed men to
damnation for the sin of Adam, in consideration of his fall, and their
concern in it: a doctrine, by no means to be rejected, since death hath
passed upon all men: for that, or in him, that is, Adam, all have
sinned 32 ; and by his offence of one, judgment came upon all men to
condemnation; it can never be unworthy of God, or contrary either to
his justice or mercy, to determine the everlasting fate of men,
considered as fallen in Adam, by resolving to punish some and spare
others.
Though none, as I know of, affirm, that God has appointed such
who live to riper years, to damnation purely for the sin of Adam, but
for their own actual transgressions; and as for such who die in infancy,
God’s determinations about them are a secret to us; and if they perish,
it is for, and in the corruption of nature in which they are born. Or the
meaning is, that “it must be a piece of cruelty in God, daily to create
souls after the fall of Adam, whose everlasting fate was before
determined, without any respect to good or evil done by them.”
32 Rom. 5:12, 18.
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