Letter 11.

LETTER 11.

To Mr. Richard and Mr. Rowland Hill.

HONOURED AND DEAR SIRS, — Having answered the arguments which each of you has advanced against the doctrine of justification by works in the great day, permit me to consider what may farther be advanced against it.

I. We cry to sinners, “By grace shall ye be saved through faith,” in the day of your conversion; but to believers we say, By grace shall ye be saved, through works, in the day of judgment. Turn, therefore, ye sinners; and ye saints, “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” “Saved by grace, through works, in the day of judgment! What a farrago of Popery and Gospel! Faith and works; what a shocking mixture! Geminantur tigribus agni. You have undoubtedly the full consent of Bellarmine and the scarlet whore for such a match. But with what detestation would St. Paul enter his protest against it! Does he not declare, that faith and works reciprocally exclude each other? Says he not, ‘If by grace, then it is no more of works, otherwise grace is no more grace; but if it be of works, then it is no more grace, otherwise work is no more work. If Abraham was justified by works he hath whereof to glory; for to him that worketh is the reward not reckoned of grace but of debt: but Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness: and David also describeth the blessedness of the man to whom God imputeth righteousness without works.’ Hence the apostle concludes, ‘By grace ye are saved, through faith: not of works, lest any man should boast.’ And again: ‘Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but of his mercy he saved us,’ &c. Now, how does this doctrine of justification and salvation without works agree with your doctrine of justification or salvation by works in the last day; and how can you reconcile St. Paul with Bellarmine, Mr. Wesley, and yourself?”

ANSWER 1. Should you not rather ask, how we can reconcile St. Paul with Jesus Christ, St. James, and himself? Is not the second chapter to the Romans as strong for works as the Minutes, the Epistle of St. James, and our Lord’s sermon on the mount? Have we not observed, that even in the epistles where the apostle purposely maintains the doctrine of justification by faith in the day of conversion, he writes of works in such a manner as flatly to contradict himself, if they have nothing to do with our final justification in the last day?

Says he not to the believers at Rome, “If ye live after the flesh,” or, if ye do not “cast off the works of darkness, rioting and drunkenness, strife and envying, &c, ye shall die; but if ye through the Spirit mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live?” And again: “Be subject to the higher powers: for they that resist them shall receive to themselves damnation?” And says he not to the Galatians, “All the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself?” And let no Antinomian persuade you that the law of obedient love is only a rule of life. No, it is also a rule of punishment; for, “I tell you before,” says he, “as I have also told you in time past, [see how plainly and constantly the apostle preached the law of Christ!] that they who do such things, [they who are guilty of] adultery, fornication, hatred, wrath, strife, envying, murder, drunkenness, and such like, shall not inherit the kingdom of God. Fulfil, there/ore, the law of Christ. Let every man prove his own work; for every man shall bear his own burden. Be not deceived; whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap; for he that soweth to his flesh, shall of the flesh reap corruption, [or rather, fqoran, perdition:] but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.”

When St. Paul, even in his Epistles to the Romans and Galatians, preaches so evidently justification and condemnation by works in the great day, do we not suppose him deprived of common sense, when we represent him as perpetually saying and unsaying, as building up one hour what he pulls down the next?

But as this general answer, though it vindicates our doctrine, does not vindicate the apostle from the charge of contradiction, I beg leave once more to carry the candle of the Lord into the tower of Calvinian confusion; thus shall we see the farrago made at Geneva with the words “justification, salvation, works, righteousness of the law, and righteousness of faith.” It is evident that every degree of justification is attended with a degree of salvation. Hence, when St. Paul preached to the Jews justification by faith, he said, “To you is the word of this salvation sent,” and when he wrote to those who were justified, he says, “By grace are ye saved through faith.” This holds with regard to the justification of infants, for “of such is the kingdom of heaven:” and by the same rule, eternal salvation answers to final justification.

This being premised, we may observe, that when the apostle excludes works from having any hand in our justification or salvation, it is only when he speaks of the justification of sinners, whether we consider them as infants or adults. For if he excluded works from the justification of believers, either in the day of trial or in the day of judgment, he would grossly contradict himself! But now he is quite consistent. Mr. Wesley and I, through grace, gladly join him and Titus when their say, “Not by works of righteousness which we have done, [either in our infancy or before the day of our conversion,] but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, — that being justified by his grace, we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”

But what does the apostle mean here by “the hope of eternal life?” Is it the hope of a Laodicean believer, who makes his boast of “imputed righteousness, and finished salvation,” while he goes on in strife and envying, perhaps in adultery and murder? Certainly no: this is the “hope of the hypocrite, which shall perish.” The hope, according to which we “are made heirs of eternal life” in glory, is a hope which “if any man hath,” he will “purify himself even as God is pure;” and this hope, far from being contrary to our doctrine of justification by works in the last day, is inseparably connected with “the labour of love,” by which persevering believers shall then be justified.

Inquire we now what are those works which St. Paul opposes to faith and free grace; and I observe: —

1. That it is not absolutely every work, or else he would oppose faith to itself; for believing is as much a work of the heart, as walking to church is a work of the feet.

2. Neither does the apostle oppose to faith “works meet for repentance;” for he strongly recommended them himself, Acts 26:20. Nor the works of upright Gentiles, that “fear God, and believe he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek him.” If St. Paul represented these works as “dung and filthy rags,” he would contradict the angel who said to Cornelius, “Thy prayers and alms, [far from being rejected,] are come up for a memorial before God.”

3. Much less did it ever come into the apostle’s mind to oppose “the work of faith and the labour of love,” to faith and free grace; for they are no more contrary to each other, than the stalk and the ear are contrary to the root that bears them. Far from despising these works, see how honourably he speaks of them: “We give thanks always for you, remembering without ceasing your work of faith and labour of love, in our Lord Jesus Christ. God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour that proceedeth of love. Always abound in the work of the Lord. Charge the rich, that they be rich in good works, laying up for themselves a good foundation, that they may lay hold on eternal life.”

For want of attending to this, some have preposterously opposed the righteousness of faith to personal holiness. The latter they look upon as the “righteousness which is of the law,” and which the apostle explodes, Philippians 3:9. Thus they suppose, that St. Paul formed the horrid wish of not being found clothed with holiness, “without which no man shall see the Lord;” not considering that the pardon of sins and true holiness, the two inseparable fruits of a living faith, constitute “the righteousness which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.” A righteousness this that far exceeds the outside “righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees,” with which the apostle had too long been satisfied, and which he so justly despised after his conversion.

One mistake makes way for another. Those who imagine that the apostle would not be found in his own inherent righteousness, flowing from Christ formed in his heart by faith, insinuate, that he desired to be found clothed with the personal actions of our Lord, put upon his soul by as irrational and unscriptural an imputation as if God had fed Peter, when he was hungry, by imputing to his empty stomach the meals which Christ ate in the days of his flesh; or, as if he had clothed St. Paul, when he was naked, by laying to his account our Lord’s being wrapped up in swaddling clothes in the stable at Bethlehem.

But to return: the works which St. Paul excludes, are, —

1. The works of the ceremonial law of Moses, generally called the “works of the law.” On these works most Jewish converts still laid a very great stress, and some of them went so far in this error as to say to their Gentile brethren, “Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved,” Acts 15:1. Hence the apostles wrote, verse 24, “Certain men, subverting your souls, have troubled you, saying, Ye must be circumcised, and keep the law.” Hence also it is said, that when St. Paul shaved, and “was at charges to purify himself,” in the temple, he “walked orderly and kept the law,” Acts 21:24.

2. The apostle likewise opposed to faith those hypocritical deeds of the moral law, those external works of partial piety and ostentatious mercy, by which proud Pharisees think to atone for their sins, and purchase the kingdom of heaven. Such works of unbelief and spiritual pride cannot be too much decried. They do infinite mischief; they draw a veil over our apostasy; they breed self complacence, generate self conceit and feed the opposition of Pharisees against the Gospel. Hence their contempt of Christ, their enmity against his people, their ridiculing the atonement, despising others, and boasting of their own goodness. St. Paul was the more zealous in bearing his testimony against these fruits of self righteousness, as he knew, by fatal experience, that they are the reverse of “fruits meet for repentance,” and of “the righteousness which is of God by faith;” and that they stood yet in the way of the Jews, as much as they once did in his own.

3. The apostle excludes also all the works of impious moralists, who make no scruple of robbing God, because they are just to man; all the works of Antinomian believers, who, like the Galatians, pray to the Lord, and devour their neighbours; or, like the Jews, fast to-day, and to-morrow “strike with the fist of wickedness;” all the works which are not ultimately referred to the glory of God through Jesus Christ; and all the works whose gracious rewardableness is not acknowledged to flow from the original and proper merit of the Redeemer. These works the apostle justly discards, as contrary to the doctrine of grace, because they do not spring from the grace of God, but from the pride of man. He explodes them as opposite to “the righteousness of faith,” because they are not the works of humble faith, but of conceited unbelief; the constant language of faith being, “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy name give glory, for thy mercy and truth’s sake.”

Let the judicious reader say, if by thus distinguishing between the justification of a sinner in the day of conversion, and the justification of a saint in the great day; and by making a proper difference between the works of an humble believer, which the apostle justly extols; and the works of a proud Pharisee, which he justly decries, we do not perfectly reconcile him to himself, and sufficiently secure the honour of free grace? Is it possible to make larger concessions without sacrificing St. James’ Epistle to Geneva logic, and our Lord’s invaluable sermon on the mount to Antinomian obstinacy? If we continue to assert that no sort of works have any thing to do with any sort of justification and salvation, shall we not justly shock the moral and rational part of mankind? Is it not of the Lord that the contempt which unconverted men show to religious people rises no higher than it does? And do we not deserve that our candour or good sense should be suspected, when we go about to persuade the world that half a dozen strained verses of St. Paul, put in the favourite scale of a Geneva balance, are sufficient to outweigh fifty plain texts of the apostle, and the best half of the Bible, which testifies, directly or indirectly, that though the final justification and eternal salvation of adult persons are not by the merit, yet they are by the evidence or instrumentality of good works?

II. OBJECTION. “There is some plausibility in your answer, but we are still afraid that this doctrine of justification, or salvation by works in the last day, robs the Lord Jesus Christ of his glory.”

ANSWER. Just the reverse. It delivers him from the shame of saving men by unaccountable humour, or damning them with unparalleled cruelty. But how do you prove your assertion? Of what glory does our doctrine rob the Redeemer? Does it rob him of the glory of atoning for our sins, as our High Priest? Or of leading us into all the truth necessary to our salvation, as our great Prophet? Does it rob him of the glory of pardoning our sins, and esteeming us righteous when we believe, as the Lord our righteousness? Does it rob him of the glory of making us fruitful branches in him as the true Vine? Or of rendering to every one according to his works, as an impartial Judge? On the contrary, is it not the opposite doctrine which refuses him the glory of maintaining the honour of his crown, as the King of kings, and Lord of lords?

Yes, we affirm, that to reject the doctrine of justification by works in the great day, is to set Christ at nought in the most glorious of his offices. Is it not enough that, in the days of his flesh, he was chiefly derided and crucified as the King of the Jews? Must he also, in the days of his Spirit, be every where put to open shame in his regal office? How useless is his sceptre, and contemptible his government, if he gives his subjects only shadows of laws, which amount to no laws at all? And if, leaving his immense dominions in a lawless condition, he saves the happy number of his favourites, and damns the rest of mankind, merely according to Calvin’s notions of free grace and free wrath? Or according to Dr. Crisp’s scheme of salvation and damnation finished?

To this Mr. Rowland Hill answers beforehand, (Friendly Remarks, pp. 45, 46,) “You slander the Calvinists. We grant, that in the point of justification, [and of course of condemnation,] we have nothing to do ,with the law’ [but] though we boldly say, we are not under the law as a covenant of works, yet we never were so ignorant and daring as to say, we are not under the law to Christ as a rule of life.”

Pardon my freedom, dear sir, if I tell you, without ceremony, that, like thousands more, you have learned to say shibboleth, before you have properly considered the sense of the expression. If you mean any thing by “being under the law to Christ only as a rule of life,” you probably mean, with Dr. Crisp, that Christ has indeed a law; but that with regard to believers, who are the subjects of his kingdom, this law has no more the Divine sanction of a blessing for those who observe it, and of a curse for its violators. And is not this saying, in ambiguous words, that Christ’s subjects are absolutely lawless? Let little children pompously give the name of laws to rules of play, or rules of grammar; but let not men of sense imitate their mistake, by giving that name to directions of conduct or rules of life, which are no longer enforced by rewards and penalties.

You decry “illustrations,” and I do not wonder at it; for they carry light into Babel, where it is not desired. The father of errors begets darkness and confusion. From darkness and confusion springs Calvinism, who, wrapping himself up in some garments which he has stolen from the truth, deceives the nations, and gets himself reverenced in a dark temple, as if he were the pure and free Gospel.

To bring him to a shameful end, we need not stab him with the dagger of “calumny,” or put him upon the rack of persecution. Let him only be dragged out of his obscurity, and brought unmasked to open light, and the silent beams of truth will pierce him through! Light alone will torture him to death, as the meridian sun does a bird of night that cannot fly from the gentle operations of its beams.

May the following illustration dart at least one luminous beam into the profound darkness in which your venerable Diana delights to dwell! And may it show the Christian world that we do not “slander you,” when we assert, you inadvertently destroy God’s law, and cast the Redeemer’s crown to the ground. And that when you say, “in point of justification, [and consequently of condemnation,] we have nothing to do with the law; we are under the law as a rule of life,” but not as a rule of judgment; you might as well say, “We are under no law, and consequently no longer accountable for our actions.”

“The king,” who I suppose is in love with your doctrines of free grace and free wrath, by the advice of a predestinarian council and parliament, issues out a Gospel proclamation, directed “to all his dear subjects, and elect people, the English.” By this evangelical manifesto they are informed, “that in consequence of the prince of Wales’ meritorious intercession, and perfect obedience to the laws of England, all the penalties annexed to the breaking of those laws are now abolished with respect to Englishmen: that his majesty freely pardons all his subjects, who have been, are, or shall be guilty of adultery, murder, or treason: that all their crimes, ‘past, present, and to come, are for ever and for ever cancelled:’ that, nevertheless, his loving subjects, who remain strangers to their privileges, shall still be served with sham warrants according to law, and frightened out of their wits, till they have learned to plead ‘they are Englishmen,’ [i.e. elect:] and then, they shall also set at defiance all legalists; that is, all those who shall dare to deal with them according to law: and that, excepting the case of the above-mentioned false prosecution of his chosen people, none of them shall ever be molested for the breach of any law.

“By the same supreme authority it is likewise enacted that all the laws shall continue in force against foreigners, [i.e. reprobates,] whom the king and the prince hate with everlasting hatred, and to whom they have agreed never to show mercy: that, accordingly, they shall be prosecuted to the utmost rigour of every statute, till they are all hanged or burned out of the way: and that, supposing no personal offence can be proved against them, it shall be lawful to hang them in chains for the crime of one of their forefathers, to set forth the king’s wonderful justice, display his glorious sovereignty, and make his chosen people relish the better their sweet distinguishing privileges as Englishmen.

“Moreover his majesty, who loves order and harmony, charges his loving subjects to consider still the statutes of England, which are in force against foreigners, as very good rules of life for the English, which they shall do well to follow, but better to break; because every breach of those rules will work for their good, and make them sing louder the faithfulness of the king, the goodness of the prince, and the sweetness of this Gospel proclamation.

“Again: as nothing is so displeasing to the king as legality, which he hates even more than extortion and whoredom, lest any of his dear people, who have acted the part of a strumpet, robber, murderer, or traitor, should, through the remains of their inbred corruption, and ridiculous legality, mourn too deeply for breaking some of their rules of life, our gracious monarch solemnly assures them, that though he highly disapproves of adultery and murder, yet these breaches of rules are not worse in his sight than a wandering thought in speaking to him, or a moment’s dulness in his service: that robbers, therefore, and traitors, adulterers, and murderers, who are free-born Englishmen, need not at all be uneasy about losing his royal favour; this being utterly impossible, because they always stand complete in the honesty, loyalty, chastity, and charity of the prince.

“Moreover, because the king changes not, whatever lengths the English go on in immorality, he will always look upon them as his pleasant children, his dear people, and men ‘after his own heart;’ and that, on the other hand, whatsoever lengths foreigners go in pious morality, his gracious majesty is determined still to consider them as ‘hypocrites, vessels of wrath,’ and ‘cursed children, for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever;’ because he always views them as completely guilty, and absolutely condemned in a certain robe of unrighteousness, woven thousands of years ago by one of their ancestors. This dreadful sanbenetto f43 his majesty hath thought fit to put upon them by imputation; and in it it is his good pleasure that they shall hang in adamantine chains, or burn in fire unquenchable.

“Finally, as foreigners are dangerous people, and may stir up his majesty’s subjects to rebellion, the English are informed, that if any one of them, were he to come over from Geneva itself, shall dare to insinuate that his most gracious Gospel proclamation is not according to equity, morality, and godliness, the first Englishman that meets him shall have full leave to brand him as a Papist, without judge or jury, in the forehead or on the back, as he thinks best; and that, till he is farther proceeded with according to the utmost severity of the law, the chosen people shall be informed, in the Gospel Magazine, to beware of him, as a man ‘who scatters firebrands, arrows, and deaths,’ and makes universal havoc of every article of this sweet Gospel proclamation.

“Given at Geneva, and signed by four of his majesty’s principal secretaries of state for the predestinarian department.

“JOHN CALVIN. DR. CRISP.

“THE AUTHOR OF P.O. ROWLAND HILL.”

What would wise men think of such a manifesto? Who does not see, his majesty might as well have informed us at once that all the laws of the land are now repealed; that instead of being laws, they shall be only moral finger posts, directing men in the narrow way of righteousness, or in the broad way of iniquity, if the one pleases them better than the other? Suppose a courtier asserted, That we are still under the laws of the land as rules of life; would not thinking men answer, No: we are now absolutely lawless: for statutes, according to which no Englishman can be prosecuted, much less executed, are no laws at all for Englishmen; they are only directions, which every one is at full liberty to follow or not, as he pleases. It is not less absurd to give the name of laws to rules, which are not enforced with the sanction of proper rewards or penalties, than to call Baxter’s Directory a code of laws, because it contains excellent rules of life.

O ye abettors of Dr. Crisp’s mistakes, how long will you regard vain words, and inadvertently pour contempt upon the King of kings? How long will you rashly charge us with robbing him of his glory, because we cannot join you, when, under the plausible pretence of advancing the honour of his priesthood, you explain away the most awful protestations which he made as a prophet, and rob him of the royal glory of punishing his rebellious, and rewarding his faithful subjects, according to law, as a righteous King? Alas! even while you seem zealous for God’s sovereignty, do you not unawares represent Jesus as the weakest of princes, or fiercest of tyrants? Do you not inadvertently, (for I know you would not do it deliberately for the world,) do you not, I say, inadvertently crown him with the sharpest thorns that ever grew in the territory of mystic Geneva? Instead of the “sceptre of his kingdom,” which is “a right sceptre,” do you not at one time put in his hand a reed, which the Antinomian elect may insult with more impunity than the frogs in the fable did the royal log sent by Jupiter to reign over them? And, at another time, while you give him Nimrod’s iron sceptre, do you not put upon him Nero’s purple robe; and even slip into his loving bosom a black book of horrible decrees, more full of the names of unborn reprobates than the Emperor Domitian’s fatal pocket book was full of the names of the poor wretches to whom, in a gloomy day, he took an unaccountable dislike, and whom, on this account, as well as to maintain his dreadful sovereignty, he tyrannically appointed for the slaughter? Never, no never, shall you be able to do justice to the Scripture, and our Lord’s kingly office, till you allow that, agreeably to his evangelical law, he will one day “reward every man according to his works;” and the moment you allow this, you give up what you unhappily call your foundation, that is, unconditional election and finished salvation: in a word, you allow justification by works in the great day, and are as heretical (should I not say as orthodox?) as ourselves. I am, honoured and dear sirs, yours, &c, J. FLETCHER.