Letter 10.

LETTER 10.

To Mr. Richard and Mr. Rowland Hill.

HONORED AND DEAR OPPONENTS, — Do you hate that foul monster, Antinomianism? I know you cordially hate practical, and would cheerfully oppose doctrinal Antinomianism, if it were not inseparably connected with the favourite doctrines you have embraced. Yes, your true regard for holiness would make you wish me success, if (while I attack sin, our common adversary,) Calvinism, which passes with you for Christianity, did not justly appear to you to be sapped in its very foundation. For, to my great astonishment, I find that Calvin’s doctrine of unconditional election, and Dr. Crisp’s doctrine of finished salvation, are now substituted to Jesus Christ, and openly made the foundation of the present Calvinists. “Finished salvation and electing love, (says Mr. Hill, Friendly Remarks, p. 19,) is their foundation.”

Is it, indeed? Alas! I really thought that all the Calvinists still maintained, with Mr. Wesley, that other “foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ,” 1 Corinthians 3:11: but I now fear the breach between us is wider than I imagined; for it seems we disagree no less about the foundation than about the superstructure; and my younger opponent does me justice when be adds, “Surely you never mean to praise the Calvinists for guarding this foundation.” No, indeed, sir, no more than I would praise them for placing two of Rachel’s Teraphim upon the Mediator’s throne.

You are both conscious that your two favourite doctrines will appear empty dreams, if the doctrine of the justification of all infants without faith is true; much more, if the doctrine of the justification of adult persons by works, both in the day of trial and in the day of judgment, is Scriptural. You agree, therefore, to bear your public testimony against the Third Check, where these doctrines are set in a clearer point of view, than in my preceding publications. Permit me to remind my readers of the reasonableness of the assertions which have so greatly excited your surprise.

In the Third Check, (pp. 161 and 162,) to make my readers sensible, that Calvinism has confusion, and not Scripture, for its foundation, I made a Scriptural distinction between the four degrees that constitute a saint’s eternal justification, and each of these degrees I called a justification, because I thought I could speak as the oracles of God, without exposing the truth of the Gospel to the smiles of Christian wits.

I. From Romans 5:18, I proved the justification of infants: “As by the offence of Adam, (says the apostle,) judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of Christ, the free gift came upon all men to justification of life.” In support of this justification, which comes upon all men in their infancy, I now advance the following arguments: —

1. The Scripture tells us, that “Christ in all things hath the preeminence.” But if Adam is a more public person, a more general representative of mankind, than Jesus Christ, it is plain, that in this grand respect, Adam hath the pre-eminence over Christ. Now, as this cannot be, as Christ is at least equal to Adam, it follows, that as Adam brought a general condemnation, and a universal seed of death upon all infants, so Christ brings upon them a general justification, and a universal seed of life.

2. I never yet saw a Calvinist who denied that Christ died for Adam. Now, if the Redeemer died for our first parent, he undoubtedly expiated the original sin, the first transgression of Adam. And if Adam’s original sin was atoned for, and forgiven to him, as the Calvinists, I think, generally grant, does it not follow, that although all infants are by nature children of wrath, yet through the redemption of Christ they are in a state of favour or justification? For how could God damn to all eternity any of Adam’s children for a sin which Christ expiated? A sin which was forgiven almost six thousand years ago to Adam, who committed it in person?

3. The force of this observation would strike our Calvinist brethren, if they considered that we were not less in Adam’s loins when God gave his Son to Adam in the grand, original Gospel promise, than when Eve prevailed upon him to eat of the forbidden fruit. As all in him were included in the covenant of perfect obedience before the fall, so all in him were likewise interested in the covenant of grace and mercy after the fall. And we have full as much reason to believe, that some of Adam’s children never fell with him from a state of probation, according to the old covenant, as to suppose that some of them never rose with him to a state of probation, upon the terms of the new covenant, which stands upon better promises. Thus, if we all received an unspeakable injury, by being seminally in Adam when he fell, according to the first covenant, we all received also an unspeakable blessing by being in his loins when God spiritually raised him up, and placed him upon Gospel ground. Nay, the blessing which we have in Christ is far superior to the curse which Adam entailed upon us’ we stand our trial upon much more advantageous terms than Adam did in paradise. For according to the first covenant, “judgment was by one offence to condemnation.” One sin sunk the transgressor. But according to the free gift, or second covenant, provision is made in Christ for repenting of, and rising from “many offences unto justification,” Romans 5:16.

4. Calvinists are now ashamed of consigning infants to the torments of hell: they begin to extend their election to them all. Even the translator of Zanchius believes, that all children who die in their infancy are saved. Now, sir, if all children, or any of them, are saved, they are unconditionally justified according to our plan; for they cannot be “justified by faith,” according to St. Paul’s doctrine, Romans 5:1, as it is granted, that those who are not capable of understanding, are not capable of believing. Nor can they be “justified by works,” according to St. James’ doctrine, James 2:24, for they are not accountable for their works, who do not know good from evil, nor their right hand from their left. Nor can they be justified by words, according to our Lord’s doctrine, Matthew 12:37, because they cannot yet form one articulate sound. It follows, then, that all infants must be damned, or justified without faith, words, or works, according to our first distinction. But as you believe they are saved, the first degree of an adult saint’s justification is not less founded upon your own sentiments than upon reason and Scripture.

II. When infants grow up, they are all called to believe in the light of their dispensation; and till they do, their personal sins condemn them. Here appears the absolute need of justification by the instrumentality of faith. This justification we preach to Jews and heathens, to Pharisees and publicans. Upon it we chiefly insist, when we address penitent prodigals and mourning backsliders. This the apostle chiefly defends in his Epistles to the Romans and Galatians. Our Church strongly maintains it in her eleventh article: and as we are all agreed about it, I shall only refer to some passages where it is evidently mentioned, Romans 5:1; Galatians 2:16; Acts 13:39.

III. Whoever hath present access unto that grace wherein they who are justified by faith do stand, is also justified by works. True justification by faith is then inseparable from justification by works; for “faith works by love,” so long as it is living; and love is productive of good works. In the apostolic age as well as in ours, “the love of many grew cold,” and “concerning faith they made shipwreck, by not adding to it brotherly kindness, godliness, and charity.” But as they still professed the saving faith of God’s elect, which works by love, St. James was directed by the Holy Ghost to enforce the justification of a believer by works. Now, dear sirs, before you can reasonably explode this justification, you must execute the Antinomian wish of Luther, and tear St. James’ Epistle out of your Bible. But as we can never give you leave to take this liberty with ours, we shall still oppose the justification of evil workers, or practical Antinomians, in the day of trial, by such scriptures as these: “Know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead: Rahab was justified by works: Abraham was justified by works;” and so are all his legitimate children; “for by works a man is justified, and not by faith only.” IV. As for the last degree of an adult saint’s justification, it is so fully established upon the words of our Lord, “In the day of judgment by thy words shalt thou be justified,” that Dr. Owen and multitudes of the Puritan divines, as I have made it appear from their own writings, avowed it as the Gospel truth, in opposition to Dr. Crisp’s Antinomian error. Nay, during our controversy, truth has prevailed; for, notwithstanding the strong resistance you have made against it, you have both granted all that we contend for: witness the two first letters of this Check. Now, instead of attempting to prove, at least by one argument, that these distinctions are contrary either to Scripture or reason, Mr. Hill, sen., says, in his Remarks, (pp. 5, 6,) “What really surprises me beyond all the rest, is, your having brought out two new justifications since the Second Check: no apologies can excuse you for having concealed the matter so long.” Mr. Hill, jun., adds in the postscript to his Friendly Remarks, (pp. 65, 66, 67,) “Your doctrine is a mysterious jumble. Your three publications contain a farrago. You are quite become unanswerable. In your first Check we hear but of one justification; in your Second you treat us with two: two more are lately invented, and shoved in among the rest. These four justifications may be doubled and doubled, till they amount to four-score. Your imagination is fertile, you can invent them by dozens.”

1. Before I answer these witticisms, permit me to trouble you with a simile. I maintain that the age of man in general may properly, and at times necessarily must be considered, as made up of four different stages; infancy, youth, ripe years, and old age. Two masters of arts, who would make the world believe that youth and old age are the same, smile at the absurdity of this four-fold distinction. “How inconsistent are you,” say they: “some time ago you spoke of the age of man in general, and told us it was three-score years and ten. Yesterday, you treated us with a dissertation upon youth and old age. To-day, two more ages, infancy and ripe years, are invented, and shoved in among the rest. Your fertile imagination may double and double these four ages till they amount to four-score; nay, you can invent them by dozens.” This humorous answer highly delights thousands, and in mystic Geneva such wit passes for argument; but some in England begin to ask, “Shall we be for ever the dupes of Geneva logic?”

2. It is a very great mistake, that, “In the First Check we hear but of one justification;” for though I there treat principally of justification by faith, because Mr. Wesley principally meant it in the Minutes, yet, p. 34, the justification of infants is thus described: — It is “that general benevolence of our merciful God toward sinful mankind, whereby, through the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, he casts a propitious look upon us, and freely makes us partakers of ‘the light that enlightens every man who comes into the world.’ This general loving kindness is certainly previous to any thing we can do to find it; for it always prevents us, saying to us in our very infancy, Live, and in consequence of it, our Lord says, ‘Let little children come unto me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.’” This is not all: pp. 34 and 35, I particularly describe “justification by faith” in the day of conversion, and expressly mention “justification by words (or works) in the day of judgment;” and common sense dictates that none can be justified by works in the day of judgment but those who, according to St. James’ doctrine, have been justified by works in this life. How rash, then, is the assertion that I have invented any new Justification since the First Check! How weak is that cause, which a master of arts cannot support but by witticism, founded upon as palpable a mistake as that “one and three do not make more than one!”

And is the doctrine of a glorified saint’s complete justification changed in the Second Check! No: for the author of Pietas Oxoniensis, in his answer to that book, (Review, p. 12,) upbraids me with saying therein, “By faith a man is justified at his conversion, but by works he is justified” on earth “in the hour of trial, as Abraham when he offered up Isaac,” or “in a court of judicature, as St. Paul at the bar of Festus.” And again: “By works he is justified before the judgment seat of Christ, as every one will be whose faith when he goes hence is found working by love.” I grant, however, that I did not mention the justification of infants in the Second Check; but this does not prove that I “concealed a matter of such importance.” For I had plainly mentioned it in the Vindication, and Mr. Shirley not having opposed it in his Narrative, as he had done justification by works in the great day, it would have been absurd to spend time in establishing it.

If you ask why I have distinguished between justification by works to-day, and justification by works in the day of judgment, I answer, For two reasons,

(1.) St. James and Mr. Hill, jun., do so: “Rahab was justified by works, AT THE TIME WHEN she received the spies.” (Friendly Remarks, p. 38.)

(2.) The propriety and importance of this distinction appear from the following consideration: — Many may be justified by works to-day, who shall be condemned by works “in the day of judgment.” Take an instance: When St. Paul chose Demas to be his fellow labourer, Demas was undoubtedly justified by works, and not by faith only; for the apostle would not have been unequally yoked with an evil worker, any more than with an unbeliever. Nevertheless, in the day of judgment, if we may believe John Bunyan, Demas shall be condemned by his latter, instead of being justified by his former works.

But I have said, Second Check, that “a man is justified by faith when his backslidings are healed,” as well as at his first conversion. And as he may fall from, and return to God ten times, a facetious opponent is ready to charge me with holding ten, perhaps “three-score justifications” by faith. Witty, but groundless is the charge; for supposing I lose and find the same guinea ten times, am I not mistaken if I fancy that I have found ten guineas? Or if you draw back sixty times from a bright sunshine into a dark cave, and sixty times come into the sunshine again, do I not offer violence to reason if I maintain that you have got into “three-score” sunshines? Here you say, “Illustrations are no proofs at all.” I grant it: nevertheless, when the proofs are gone before, just illustrations wonderfully help many readers to detect the fallacy of a plausible argument.

But supposing I had not mentioned the different degrees of an adult saint’s justification either in the First or Second Check, would you not, gentlemen, have exposed Geneva logic, as you have now done your inattention, if you had hoped to set plain Scripture aside by saying, “It comes too late. You placed it in the Third Check; it should have been produced in the First?” Does not such an argument hurt your cause more than a prudent silence would have done?

However, if you cannot put out the candle with which we search the streets of mystic Geneva, and examine the foundation of its towers, you both agree to amuse the Calvinists, by bringing Mr. Wesley f42 upon the stage of controversy. He said, above twenty years ago in one of his journals, “I cannot but maintain, at least till I have clearer light, that the justification which is spoken of by St. Paul to the Romans, and in our articles, is not two-fold; it is one and no more.” Here Mr. Hill, jun., particularly triumphs; “By your four degrees of a glorified saint’s justification, you have thrown your own friend in the dirt,” says he, “help him out if you can.” To this I answer, That if Mr. Wesley, by the justification spoken of by St. Paul to the Romans, meant that which the apostle purposely maintains in that epistle, and which our Church explicitly asserts in her eleventh article, my vindicated friend speaks a great truth when he says that this justification is one and no more; for it is evidently justification by faith. But supposing he had not properly considered either the justification of infants without faith and works, or the justification of believers by works in the day of trial, and in the day of judgment; what would you infer from thence? That the Scriptures which speak of such justifications are false? The conclusion would be worthy of Geneva logic! Weigh your argument in the balance of English logic, and you will find it is wanting. Twenty-three, or, if you please, three years ago, Mr. Wesley wanted clearer light, to distinguish between the justification of a sinner by faith, and the justification of a believer by works: but two years ago God gave him this clearer light, and he immediately called his friends to “review the whole affair,” and help him to make a firm stand for St. James’ pure religion, against Dr. Crisp’s defiled Gospel. Therefore, say my opponents, St. James’ and Jesus Christ’s justification of a believer by works is a “dreadful heresy,” and Mr. Wesley is “thrown in the dirt.” Is the conclusion worthy of two masters of arts? May I not more reasonably draw just a contrary inference, and say, therefore, Mr. Wesley shakes the very dust, or, if you please, the very “dirt” of Geneva from off his feet, and exhorts his flocks to do the same through the three kingdoms?

II. As our controversy centres in the point of justification by works, both in the day of the trial of faith and in the day of judgment, whatever my opponents advance against this I shall endeavour to answer. “The Scriptures, (says Mr. Hill, sen., Remarks, p. 5,) always speak of justification as perfect, full, and complete.” For an answer to this bold, unscriptural assertion, I refer the reader to the preceding pages, where he will easily see that although God’s work is always perfect so far as it goes; yet as final justification depends upon perseverance in the faith, and as perseverance in the faith is inseparably connected with “patient continuance in well doing,” it is unscriptural and absurd to assert that final justification is complete, before we can say, with St. Paul, “I am ready to be offered up; I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith;” or rather, before Christ himself says to us, “Well done, good and faithful servants, enter into the joy of your Lord.”

III. Page 4. “You do us great injustice in supposing that we believe, or assert, any souls may strive, reform, and pray without any possibility of escaping hell. When you made the above assertion, did you not know, in your own conscience, that you charged us wrongfully?”

In the presence of God, I answer in the negative. If you maintain that Christ never died for a certain, fixed number of men, you must of consequence believe that those whom he never died for, can never flee from the wrath to come, though they should strive, reform, and pray ever so much.

If you are consistent, you must be persuaded that though Mr. Wesley, for example, has prayed, strove, and reformed for above forty years, yet if he is not one of what you call “the happy number,” he shall inevitably be damned.

IV. Page 8. You refer me to your “striking quotation of Luther, concerning the distinction between a believer and his actions.” I answer,

(1.) Luther’s bare assertions go for nothing with us, when they stand in direct opposition to St. James’ Epistle, which, in one of his Antinomian fits, he wanted to burn out of the way.

(2.) This assertion contradicts common sense and daily experience, which agree to depose that, excepting the case of lunatics and delirious persons, men are like their actions, when those actions are taken together with their principle and design.

V. You add in the same page, “It was happy for David that, when he fell so grossly, he had a merciful, gracious, promise-keeping God to deal with; and that he fell not into the hands of Arminians and Perfectionists.” I retort, “It was happy for Clodius that, if he turned from his wicked way, he had not an unmerciful, ungracious, and promise-breaking God to deal with, and fell not into the hands of an inexorable Moloch, before whom poor reprobated heathens can find no place for repentance, though they should seek it carefully with tears.” As for your insinuation, that Arminians and Perfectionists (as such) are merciless to backsliders, it is groundless; we are taught to “restore the fallen in the spirit of meekness,” as well as you. And (to the praise of Divine wisdom I write it) we are enabled to do it without encouraging them to return to their wallowing in the mire of sin, by dangerous insinuations that relapses into it will “work for their good.” VI. While we speak of David and Clodius, it may be proper to dwell a moment upon their ease. Clodius, a young heathen, forsakes his one wife, and David, an elderly Jew, forsakes his seven wives and ten concubines to commit the crime of adultery with women whose husbands they have just murdered. I maintain that David is more guilty than Clodius, and that his crime is so much the more atrocious than that of the noble heathen, as he commits it against greater light and knowledge, against greater mercies and more solemn vows, perhaps with more deliberation, and certainly with less temptation from the ferments of youthful blood, and the want of variety. But you still dissent from me, and persist to say (p. 9,) that “David remained absolved from the curse of the law, while Clodius lay under it.” And how can you prove it? “David,” say you, “was a believer.” I reply, No: he was an impenitent adulterer, and a treacherous murderer; and these characters are as incompatible with that of a believer, as heaven is irreconcilable with hell, and Christ with Belial. If a man can be a believer, i.e. a member of Christ, a child of God, and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven, while he wallows in the filth of adultery, and imbrues his hands in innocent blood, farewell Christianity, farewell heathen morality, farewell common decency! We are come to the non plus ultra of Antinomianism. Truth and virtue, law and Gospel, natural and revealed religion, are buried in a common grave. Alas! my dear sir, what can the wildest Ranter, what can Satan himself desire more?

A Deistical gentleman lately observed, that all religion consisted in morality; and that nevertheless revelation was a useful contrivance of wise politicians to keep the vulgar in awe, and enforce the practice of moral duties among the populace. But, alas! the unhappy turn which you give to revelation does not even leave it the poor use which a Deist will allow it to have. Nay, your scheme, far from enforcing morality, sets it aside at a stroke. For, if a man that actually commits adultery, treachery, and murder is a pleasant child of God, why should not a drunkard, a swearer, a thief, or a traitor, be also accomplishing God’s holy decrees? Why should he not prove his pleasant child, as well as a wanton adulterer and a perfidious murderer? Is not this stripping the woman, the Christian Church, of the glorious garment of holiness, in which she came down from heaven? Is it not exposing her to horrid derision, without so much as a scrap, I shall not say of exalted piety, but even of heathen morality, to keep herself decent before a world of mocking infidels? Hath not this doctrine driven Geneva headlong into Deism? And is it not likely to have the same effect upon all who can draw a just inference from your dangerous premises? Hitherto Protestants in general have granted to the Papists, that, although good works are not meritorious, (if any higher idea than that of rewardable is fixed to that word,) yet they are necessary to salvation. But since the doctrine of finished salvation pours in upon us like a flood; since good men do not scruple to tell the world that the salvation of a bloody adulterer, in flagrante delicto, is finished, and that he is a pleasant child of God, fully accepted and completely justified, what have good works to do with salvation? We may not only dispense with them, but do the most horrid works. Yea, “the wheel of” adultery, treachery, and murder, may “run round and round again,” for ten months, without interrupting the finished salvation of the elect; any more than praying, weeping, and reforming for ten years will prevent the finished damnation of the reprobates. But, lest you should say I “blind the eyes of the readers with deceitful dust,” I meet you on the solid ground where St. James stood, when he opposed the primitive Antinomians; and, taking that holy apostle’s Gospel trump, I sound an alarm in Laodicea, and cry out to the drowsy world of Nicolaitan professors, whether they hear the word at the Lock chapel, or at the Foundery, “Awake, ye that sleep, and arise from the dead. Show your faith by your works. Know ye not, O vain men, that faith without works is dead,” that it is a putrefying, ill-smelling corpse? Help, ye men of God, help us to bury it out of the way of good works. Let frighted morality dig a grave; let indignant piety cast the horrid nuisance into it. And, while we commit it to hell, whence it came, while the devils who believe feed upon the noisome carcass, let Bishop Cowper himself, attended by the author of Pietas Oxoniensis, say over the grave, “Justifying faith, whereby we are saved, cannot be without good works. Dead and damnable is the faith which is consistent with adultery and murder.” And let all the Church say, “Amen,” and contend for “the faith of God’s elect,” the faith maintained by St. Paul and St. James, the faith recommended in Mr. Wesley’s Minutes, the living faith that works by obedient love.

VII. Page 10. In defence of your cause you produce those words of our Lord to the proud Pharisees, “Publicans and harlots go into the kingdom of heaven before you.” Surely, sir, you would not insinuate that God takes extortioners and strumpets into heaven as such, and that adultery and whoredom are a ready way to glory! I know you start from the horrid insinuation: and, nevertheless, I fear this doctrine naturally flows from the manner in which the passage is quoted. I always thought those words of our Lord meant, that publicans and harlots could sooner be reclaimed from their execrable courses of life than self-hardened Pharisees from their diabolical pride; and that while Christ would admit a penitent Magdalene into heaven, he would thrust an impenitent Pharisee into hell. But what is this to the purpose? Does this make the case of David or any other sinner better while they remain in a state of impenitency?

VIII. Page 9. You have answered this question: “David in Uriah’s bed,” you say, “in a sense was not impenitent. The grace of repentance, &c, did lie like a spark covered with ashes.” To this I reply: —

1. If by a spark or seed of repentance, you understand a ray of that quickening “light, which enlightens every man who comes into the world,” and endues him with a gracious capacity of repenting during the day of salvation, we are agreed; supposing you grant us, that while Clodius defiled his neighbour’s bed in Rome, he was such a penitent as David when he committed the same crime in Jerusalem.

2. We deny, that a capacity of repentance is in a sense repentance, any more than a capacity of obeying is in a sense obedience. According to your idea of that sort of repentance, which David had when he committed murder, the most abandoned profligates, who have not yet filled up the measure of their iniquities, are all in a sort penitent; and Adam when he ate the forbidden fruit was in a sort obedient.

3. Your assertion is unscriptural. You cannot produce one passage to prove that a murderer, or an adulterer, in flagrante delicto, is a penitent in any sense. If David was a penitent, because repentance lay in his heart as a spark buried under ashes; I may say, in direct opposition to the words of our Lord, that “the wicked and slothful servant” was, in some sense, good and diligent, because his master’s talent lay buried in his napkin.

4. You insinuate that the ashes which covered the spark of David’s repentance were “his sin.” The comparison is not very fortunate; for ashes frequently preserve the spark which they cover; but the commission of murder always tends to quench the Spirit. If you say, “that David repented” in some sort while he sinned, because he undoubtedly sinned with remorse of conscience, I reply,

(1.) That he seems to have enjoyed his crimes at least with as much carnal security as Clodius could possibly do.

(2.) If remorse is confounded with repentance, hell is filled with penitents; and most drunkards and murderers are in a sort penitent; for when they sin, they do it frequently with much reluctance.

5. This scheme of a sort of repentance, covered as a spark in the heart of those whose eyes are full of adultery, and hands full of blood, is attended with the most fatal consequences. It tends to breed negligence in the hearts of believers, and carnal security in the breasts of apostates; for how can the former be careful not to lose what is inamissible? And how can the latter endeavour to recover what they have not lost? Again: it supersedes the distinction there is between the righteous and the wicked, and opens the door to the most horrid confusion in the moral world. Has not a traitor as much right to plead the spark of loyalty, a drunkard the spark of sobriety, and a highwayman the spark of honesty, covered under the ashes of his sin, as you have to plead the spark of repentance, chastity, and brotherly love, that lay covered in the heart of David during his long apostasy?

6. But this is not all. If your doctrine is true, that of Christ and his apostles is evidently false. For St. Paul says to the Corinthians, “Examine yourselves whether you are in the faith.” And he gives them this rule of examination, “Be not deceived; neither fornicators, nor adulterers, &c, have any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ.” Now, if a man who commits adultery and murder may have a spark of grace and repentance, which actually constitutes him a pleasant child of God, how can he know by the apostle’s rule whether he is in the faith or not? St. John says, with apostolic bluntness, “He that committeth sin is of the devil.” Yes, in Rome, replies one who is versed in your divinity; but in Jerusalem, he that committeth adultery and murder may be in a sort penitent, consequently a man after God’s own heart. Again: “By their fruits ye shall know them,” says our Lord, when he speaks of wolves in sheep’s clothing. Now, it is clear, that if your doctrine is true even when they commit adultery and murder, it cannot be known whether they are wolves, because the spark of chastity and charity that constituted David a pleasant child during his dreadful fall may be concealed under their debaucheries and barbarities. IX. (Page 13.) To enforce your doctrine of a two-fold, and, as it appears to me, Jesuitical will in God, you again produce God’s forbidding murder to free agents: and to this prohibition you oppose the murder which the Jews committed as free agents, when “by wicked hands they crucified Christ, who was delivered to them by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God.” I hope, sir, you would not insinuate that God solemnly forbids murder by his revealed, and forcibly enjoins it by his secret will! To what I have already said on the point in the Third Check, (p, 186,) I now add,

(1.) God never instigated the Jews to murder Christ. On the contrary, he frequently restrained them from the commission of their intended crime. “Ye seek to kill me,” said Jesus to them many months before they actually did it. They even made open attempts to stone him, and cast him down a precipice, before the time foretold.

(2.) When that time was come, God being about to give his Son a ransom for the many, “by his determinate counsel,” that one should die for all; and seeing “by his foreknowledge,” that the Jews, who thirsted for his blood, would put him to death, he no longer hindered them from taking him. Thus Jesus went to meet their malicious band in the garden of Gethsemane, and said, “I am he whom ye seek.”

(3.) This only shows that Divine Providence sometimes suffers moral agents to commit outwardly the sins which they have already committed in their own breasts; and he suffers it that they may come to condign punishment, or that other wicked men may be punished. Sometimes also that good men may be tried, hypocrites detected, and the godly made perfect by sufferings, like their Lord.

X. (Page 13.) In support of the same mistake you add, “You believe it to be God’s revealed will that every man should love his brother as himself; yet it was certainly according to the secret will of God, that Joseph’s brethren should sell [why do you not say, should hate] him, and that he should go into Egypt; otherwise Joseph must have told a gross untruth, when he said, ‘God did send me to preserve life: — it was not you that sent me hither, but God.’”

To vindicate what I beg leave to call God’s honesty, permit me to observe,

(1.) That I had rather believe Joseph told once a gross untruth, than suppose that God perpetually equivocates.

(2.) You must not raise a doctrine upon two sentences which Joseph spake as a fond brother, rather than as a judicious divine. When he saw his brethren confounded, and when, in a cordial embrace, he mixed his tears of joy with their tears of shame and repentance, how natural was it for him to draw a veil over their crime, and to comfort them, by observing with what providential wisdom God had overruled a circumstance which attended their sin?

(3.) All that you can therefore infer from Joseph’s case is, that God would have his brothers love him as free agents; and that when, as free agents, they chose to hate and murder him, the Lord, to save his life and bring about his deep designs, excited some compassion in their breasts: hence they thought it less cruel, while the providential appearance of the Ishmaelites made it appear more profitable, to sell him as a slave, than to starve him to death in a pit. Thus God, contrary to their intention, but not contrary to his own law, sent him into Egypt to preserve life. But what is this to the purpose? Was it God’s secret, effectual will, that Joseph’s brothers should hate him, while his revealed will commanded them to love him under pain of eternal damnation? Before you can establish this doctrine, you must prove that man is a mere machine, and God a mere Moloch.

XI. But to excuse yourself, you ask, (p. 12,) “By speaking of the secret and revealed will of God, do I suppose that God has two contrary wills?” Undoubtedly you do, honoured sir, if you are consistent. God’s revealed will, for example, is, that “all the families of the earth should be blessed in Christ” with “the grace that bringeth salvation to all men;” but by his secret will, if we may believe Calvin, most families of the earth are absolutely cursed: a decree of preterition eternally excludes them from an interest in Christ, and from the least degree of saving grace.

Again” it is God’s revealed will, that “all men every where should repent,” under penalty of destruction: but upon your plan of doctrine, it is his secret, effectual will, that most men, even all the reprobates, shall never repent. And, indeed, how should they, if he hardens them either from their mother’s womb, or from the loins of their first parent Once more: it is God’s revealed will, that all men should believe the Gospel, and be saved as free agents, if they submit to his gracious and easy terms: but, according to your scheme, it is his secret, indefectible will, either that there shall be no Gospel, or only a lying gospel for most men; and that there shall be no conditions or terms in the Gospel. Hence we are openly told, that God does not treat with the sons of men in a way of condition; his language being absolute, like himself, “I WILL and you SHALL:” that is, “Ye elect, I will that ye believe and be saved, and you shall believe and be saved’ and ye reprobates, I will that you sin and be damned, and you shall sin and be damned.” If you do not hold those propositions, you are with reason ashamed of Calvinism; if you hold them, you certainly maintain that there are two contrary wills in God, whether you suppose that you do so or not. XII. One more observation and I have done. In your Five Letters you have opposed this proposition, “Believing is previous to justification,” and said, “I deny that believing precedes justification” in the day of conversion. I have observed, in my reply, that this assertion sets aside justification by faith; because, if believing does not precede justification, there is no need of believing in order to be justified. “This is disingenuous: (say you, Remarks, p. 10:) where do I assert that justification precedes believing? I believe that true faith and justification are as inseparable as fire and heat.” To this I answer,

(1.) Your comparison is not just. Fire is not the instrument by which heat is apprehended, but the very fountain of heat itself: whereas faith justifies, not as being the very fountain of justification, but merely as an instrument that apprehends the truth of Him “who justifies the ungodly” that believes in Jesus. Here, then, you indirectly give to justifying faith the honour due to none but the heavenly Justifier.

(2.) We grant you, that as, in the very instant in which we open our eyes, we receive the light, and see: so in the very moment in which we believe, we receive Christ the truth, and are justified. But still you must grant us, that believing is as much previous to justification, as opening the eyes is previous to seeing. We are justified by faith, and common sense dictates, that the instrument by which a thing is apprehended, must exist before it can be apprehended.

Having thus endeavoured to follow you in your retreat, to cut you off from your various subterfuges; and having exposed, with my usual bluntness, the hard shifts you have been obliged to make, in order to keep your doctrine the least in countenance, permit me to assure you that I still remain, with brotherly love and respect, gentlemen, your obedient servant in the whole Gospel of Christ,

JOHN FLETCHER.