Remarks on the Fifth Letter.
O sir, if “the deceitfulness of sin” is so great that thousands greedily commit it, when the gallows on earth, and horrible torments in hell, are proposed for their just wages; how will they be able to escape in the hour of temptation, if they are encouraged to transgress the Divine law, by assurances that they shall reap eternal advantages from their sin? O! how highly necessary was it that Mr. Wesley should warn his assistants against talking of a state of justification and sanctification in so unguarded a manner as you and the other admirers of Dr. Crisp so frequently do! You conclude this letter by some quotations from Mr. Wesley, whom you vainly try to press into the doctor’s service, by representing him as saying of established Christians what he speaks of babes in Christ, and of the commission of adultery and murder, what he only means of evil desire resisted, and evil tempers restrained: but more of this in a “Treatise on Christian Perfection.”
REMARKS ON THE FIFTH LETTER.
This letter begins by a civil reproof for “speaking rather in a sneering manner of that heart-cheering expression so often used by awakened divines, the finished salvation of Christ;” an expression which, by the by, you will not find once in all my letters. But why some divines, whom you look upon as unawakened, do not admire the unscriptural expression of finished salvation, you may see in the Second Check, p. 117. I am thankful for your second reproof, and hope it will make me more careful not to “speak as a man of the world.” But the third I really cannot thank you for. “You are not very sparing of hard names against Dr. Crisp,” says my honoured correspondent; and again’ “The hard names and heavy censures thrown out against the doctor, are by far more unjustifiable than what has been delivered against Mr. Wesley.” The hardest names I give to your favourite divine are, the doctor, the good doctor, and the honest doctor, whom, notwithstanding all his mistakes, I represent, (Second Check, p. 85,) as a good man shouting aloud, Salvation to the Lamb of God! Now, sir, I should be glad to know by what rule, either of criticism or charity, you can prove that these are hard names, more unjustifiable than the names of “Papist unmasked, heretic, apostate, worse than Papists,” &c, which have been of late so liberally bestowed upon Mr. Wesley? I confess, that those branches of Dr. Crisp’s doctrine which stand in direct opposition to the practical Gospel of Christ, I have taken the liberty to call Crispianity; for had I called them CHRISTIANITY, my conscience and one half of the Bible would have flown in my face; and had I called them Calvinism, Williams, Flavel, Alleine, Bishop Hopkins, and numbers of sound Calvinists, would have proved me mistaken; for they agree to represent the peculiarities of the doctor as loose Antinomian tenets; and if any man can prove them either legal or evangelical, I shall gladly recant those epithets, which I have sometimes given, not to the good doctor, but to his unscriptural notions.
In the meantime, permit me to observe, that if any one judges of my letters by the 36th page of your book, he will readily say of them what you say of the Rev. Mr. Sellon’s Works: “I have never read them, and from the accounts I hear of the abusive, unchristian spirit with which they are written, I believe I shall never give myself that trouble.” Now, sir, I have read Mr. Sellon’s books, and have therefore more right than you, who never read them, to give them a public character. You tell us,” you have heard of the imbecility of the performance,” &c,f21 and I assure my readers, I have found it a masterly mixture of the skill belonging to the sensible scholar, the good logician, and the sound anti-Crispian divine. He is blunt, I confess, and sometimes to an excess. “Really,” says he in a private letter, “I cannot set my razor; there is a roughness about me I cannot get rid of. If honest truth will not excuse me, I must bear the blame of those whom nothing will please but smooth things.” But sharp (you will say abusive) as he is, permit me to tell you, that my much admired countryman, Calvin, was much more so.
For my part, though I would no more plead for abuse than for adultery and murder, yet, like a true Suisse, I love blunt honesty; and to give you a proof of it, I shall take the liberty to observe, It is much easier to say, a book is full of hard names, and heavy censures, written in an abusive, unchristian spirit; and to insinuate it is “dangerous, or not worth reading;” than it is fairly to answer one single page of it. And how far a late publication proves the truth of this observation, I leave our candid readers to decide.
Page 38, you “assure me upon honour that Mr. Wesley’s pieces against election and perseverance [Why did you forget reprobation?] have greatly tended to establish your belief in those most comfortable doctrines.” Hence you conclude, that “Mr. Wesley’s pen has done much service to the Calvinistic cause;” and add, that “some very experienced Christians hope