An Appendix, to Prevent Objections.

in thy Church supply the want of thy light to our souls? No, Lord: be then our sun and shield for ever. Visit the earth again, thou uncreated Sun of righteousness and truth: hasten thy second advent: thy kingdom come! Shine without a cloud! Scatter the last remains of error’s night! Kindle our minds into pure truth! Our hearts into perfect love! Our tongues into ardent praise! Our lives into flaming obedience!

Bold may we wax, exceeding bold,

No more to error’s ways conform;

Nor shrink the hardest truths t’ unfold,

But more than meet the gathering storm.

Adverse to earth’s erroneous throng,

May each now turn his fearless face;

Stand as an iron pillar strong,

And steadfast as a wall of brass.

Give us thy might thou God of pow’r,

Then let or men or fiends assail;

Strong in thy strength, we’ll stand, a tower

Impregnable to earth or hell.

AN APPENDIX, TO PREVENT OBJECTIONS.

To plead for error in an Essay on Truth, would be preposterous. If I have done it, it has been inadvertently; and I shall be thankful to any of my readers who will be at the trouble to set me right. But I once more beg forward disputants not to produce assertions and invectives, instead of arguments and well applied scriptures; and not to wire draw the controversy by still urging objections which I have already directly or indirectly answered, unless they show that such answers are insufficient; that my arguments are inconclusive; and the scriptures I quote misapplied. Two of those objections, however, deserve a more direct and full answer. I. Should it be said, “I puzzle people, by asserting that there can be any other saving faith but the Christian faith; and any other object of saving faith but Christ crucified:” I reply, that though Christ crucified is the capital object of my faith, I dare not admit the contracted notions that the Solifidians have of faith; because, if I did, I should subscribe to the necessary damnation of three parts of my fellow sinners out of four; and reject Christ’s word, under pretence of exalting his person. Take a few more instances of it.

Did not our Lord himself say to his disciples, “Have faith in God;” distinguishing that faith from faith in himself, as Mediator? John 17:3. Does not St. Paul declare that, as believing God was imputed to Abraham for righteousness, so it shall be imputed to us, “if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead?” Do I “forge” the following scriptures: “The righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith — according to the proportion of faith — according as God hath dealt the measure of faith: if I have told you of EARTHLY things, and ye believe not; how shall ye believe if I tell you of HEAVENLY things?” And can we read Hebrews xi, without seeing that the faith there described is more general than the faith which characterizes the Christian dispensation? By what art can we make it appear that Christ crucified was the object of the faith of those believers, of whom the apostle says, “By faith Noah, moved with fear, built an ark: by faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau [the supposed reprobate] concerning things to come: by faith Jacob blessed the sons of Joseph: by faith Joseph gave commandment concerning his bones: by faith the harlot Rahab perished not with them that believed not when she had received the spies?” If you insinuate, with respect to Rahab, that Joshua sent the spies, whom she entertained, and that they informed her that Joshua was a type of Christ crucified; will you not render your “orthodoxy” as ridiculous as if you rested it upon the frivolous difference there is between if and if? Mr. B. cannot show that the apostle ever distinguished between a Jewish IF, and a Christian IF; but I can quote chapter and verse, when I assert that he clearly distinguishes between Jewish and Christian faith. For, not to transcribe Hebrews viii and x, does he not say, Galatians 3:23, “Before faith [i.e. before Christian faith] came, we were kept under the law,” i.e. under the Jewish dispensation, and the obscurer faith peculiar to it? Nor was this a damnable state; for St. Paul begins the next chapter by telling us that “the heir, as long as he is a child, differeth nothing from a servant, though he be LORD OF ALL; but is under tutors and governors till the time appointed of the father. Even so we, When we were children, [when we were under the Jewish dispensation,] were in bondage under the elements of this world: but when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we [children differing nothing from servants] might receive the adoption of sons,” i.e. the privileges of sons that are of age, and are no longer under tutors and governors. “For after that [Christian] faith is come, we are no longer under a school master, for we are all the [emancipated] children of God by faith in Christ Jesus,” Galatians 3:25, 26. Is it not evident, from the comparing of these passages, that the faith of Jews constituted them children of God, but such children as, in general, “differed nothing from servants,” — such children as were in a state of nonage and bondage? Whereas Christian faith, (emphatically called faith,) by its superior privileges, introduces true Christians into “the glorious liberty of the adult sons of God.” Before we can overthrow this doctrine, must we not, to use St. Peter’s words, “wrest our beloved brother Paul’s words, so as to overthrow the faith of some,” yea, of all the Jews that lived “before faith came,” i.e. before Christ brought believers from Mount Sinai to Mount Sion; from the earthly “Jerusalem, which is in bondage with her children, to the new Jerusalem, which is free, and is the mother of us all — that stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and are not entangled again with the yoke of bondage?”

The difference between the privileges of the Jewish, and those of the Christian faith and dispensation, is still more clearly described, 2 Corinthians 3. There the Christian dispensation (called the ministration of the Spirit, because the promise of the Spirit is its great privilege, see John 7:39,) is opposed to the Jewish dispensation, which the apostle calls “the ministration of condemnation,” because it appointed no particular sacrifices for penitents guilty of adultery, idolatry, murder, blasphemy, &c, and absolutely doomed them to die. This severe dispensation, says St. Paul, “was glorious, though it is done away: much more that which remaineth [the Christian dispensation] exceedeth in glory.” Again: “Moses put a typical veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end, &c: but we [Christians] all, with open face beholding, as in a glass, the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory.” What a privilege! And how many nominal Christians live below it; yea, below the privileges of the very heathens!

This, however, is the one faith of true Christians, who “have the same spirit of faith.” It is one in its great object, “God manifest in the flesh” — one in its great promise, the promise of the Father, or “the kingdom in the Holy Ghost” — one in its new commandment, brotherly, universal love, that “perfects believers in one,” and makes them partakers of so great salvation. This is the faith which St. Paul calls “the faith of God’s elect,” i.e. the faith of Christians, who are “chosen [above Jewish believers] to see the glory of the Lord with open face,” when Jewish believers see it only “darkly through a veil.” This very faith he calls, immediately after, the faith “common” to all Christians, “to Titus, my own son after the common faith,” Titus 1:1, 4. With an eye to this faith he likewise names Timothy, his “own son in the faith, — which is in Christ Jesus.” A faith this, whereby Timothy, who was a Jewish believer from a child, was “made a partaker of Christ the great [i.e. the Christian] salvation:” — a faith which St. Peter calls “precious faith,” and St. Jude, “most holy faith;” indirectly comparing it to “the most holy place” in the temple: — a faith which Christ calls “my faith,” Revelation 2:13, and “faith that is in me,” Acts 26:18. A faith this, far superior to the faith of the noble Jewish believers in Berea, who so candidly searched the Scriptures, when they had heard St. Paul preach, — and very far exceeding the candid disposition of those sincere heathens at Corinth, concerning whom our Lord said to St. Paul f130 “I have much people in this city.” If the reader divests himself of prejudices, I hope that, instead of calling the doctrine of the Gospel dispensations, and the degrees of faith belonging to them, a “novel chimera,” he will embrace and receive it as a truth which leads to a thousand others.

II. Some of my opponents, who find it easier to pass a jest than to answer an argument, will probably think that to beat me and the doctrine of the dispensations out of the field of truth, they need only laugh at my “inventing” different sorts of faith “by the dozen.”

To nip this witticism in the bud, I declare, once more, that I make no more difference between the faith of a righteous heathen, and the faith of a father in Christ, than I do between daybreak and meridian light. That the light of a sincere Jew is as much one with the light of a sincere Christian, as the light of the sun in a cold, cloudy day in March, is one with the light of the sun in a fine day in May. And, that the difference between the saving faith peculiar to the sincere disciples of Noah, Moses, John the Baptist, and Jesus Christ, consists in a variety of degrees, and not in a diversity of species; saving faith under all dispensations agreeing in the following essentials:

(1.) It is begotten by the revelation of some saving truth, presented by free grace, impressed by the Spirit, and received by the believer’s prevented free agency.

(2.) It has the same original cause in all, that is, the mercy of God in Jesus Christ.

(3.) It actually saves all, though in various degrees.

(4.) Its sets all upon working righteousness; “some bearing fruit thirty, some sixty, and some a hundred fold.” And

(5.) Through Christ it will bring all that do not make shipwreck of it, to one or another of “the many mansions,” which our Lord is gone to prepare in heaven for his believing, obedient people.

III. Should it be objected, that “the doctrine of this Essay confounds faith and works;” to what I have said on this head in the preceding Checks I add:

(1.) There is an essential difference between the holy faith of Adam in a state of innocence, and the justifying, sanctifying faith of a penitent sinner: for Adam only stood and worked by faith in God as Creator; but we rise, stand, and work, chiefly by faith in God as Redeemer and Sanctifier.

(2.) Adam worked upon the terms of the first covenant, which requires innocence and perfect obedience; and we work upon the terms of the second, which, for Christ’s sake, admits the sincere obedience of penitential faith. Here is then no mixing of the covenants, no confounding of faith and works; but only a vindication of the works of faith, and defending the faith that works by love.

(3.) St. Augustine, the favourite father of the Solifidians, wrote a treatise (De Fide el Operibus) upon Faith and Works, in the twenty-first chapter of which he has these words: “By believing in God with a right faith, by worshipping and knowing him, we are so far benefited, (ut et bene vivendi ab illo sit nobis auxilium, etsi peccaverimus ab illo indulgentiam mereamur) as to be assisted by him to live well, and to obtain of him [for I must not literally translate the heretical word mereamur] a pardon, if we have sinned.” And, chap. 23, he adds: “Inseparabilis est bona vita a fide quæ per dilectionem operatur; imo vero ea ipsa est bona vita: a good life is inseparable from the faith that works by love; nay, that faith itself is a good life.” Had I spoken so unguardedly, there would be just room for raising the objection which I prevent; but I have carefully distinguished between faith and works; representing faith as the beating of the heart, and works as the pulses caused thereby; and holding forth faith as the root, and works as the fruit of evangelical obedience.

IV. If some readers think that my views of truth are singular, I reply, that when I have reason and Scripture on my side, I am not afraid of singularity. However, as I should be glad to obviate even this objection, I shall present the reader with the sentiments of two of the most judicious divines of the last century, Mr. Flavel and Mr. Goodwin.

Mr. Flavel says, in his Discourse on Mental Errors: “Truth f131 is the proper object, the natural and pleasant food of the understanding. ‘Doth not the ear’ (that is, the understanding by the ear) ‘try words, as the mouth tasteth meat?’ The minds of all that are not wholly immersed in sensuality, spend their strength in the laborious search and pursuit of truth. Answerable to the sharpness of the mind’s appetite, is the fine edge of pleasure and delight which it feels in the discovery and acquisition of truth. If Archimedes, upon the discovery of a mathematical truth, was so ravished that he cried out, Eurhca eurhca, I have found it! I have found it! What pleasure must the discovery of a Divine truth give to a sanctified soul! ‘Thy words were found of me,’ says Jeremiah, ‘and I did eat them’ and thy word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart.’ Truth lies deep [Veritas in puteo] as the rich veins of gold do; if we will get the treasure, we must not only beg but dig also. We are not to take up with what lies uppermost, and next at hand upon the surface. ‘Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind that you may prove what is that good, acceptable, and perfect will of God.’ It is a very great judgment of God to be given over to an erroneous mind: for the understanding being the leading faculty, as that guides, the other powers of the soul follow, as horses in a team follow the fore horse. Now how sad and dangerous a thing is this, for Satan to ride the fore horse, and guide that which is to guide the life of man! That is a dreadful, spiritual, judicial stroke of God, which we read of, Romans 1:26: ‘Because they received not the love of the truth, God gave them up to strong delusions,’ 2 Thessalonians 2:13. They are justly plagued with error that slight truth. Beside, what shame and trouble it must be to the zealous promoters of errors, not only to cast away their own time and strength, but also to ensnare and allure the souls of others into the same or worse mischief! For though God may save and recover you, those that have been misled by you may perish.”

Mr. Goodwin thus confirms Mr. Flavel’s noble testimony in the preface to his Redemption Redeemed: “Truth is for the understanding, and the understanding for truth: truth, especially in things of a supernatural concernment, the knowledge whereof faceth eternity, &c, being nothing else (interpretatively) but God himself prepared, of and by himself, for a beatifical union with the understanding, and from hence with the heart and affections of men. Error, in things of high import, can be nothing else than Satan, contriving and distilling himself into a notion, or impression likely to be admitted by the understanding, under the appearance, and in the name of truth, into union with itself, and by means hereof into union with the hearts of men. All error (of that kind I now speak of) being seated in the understanding, secretly and by degrees infuseth a proportionable malignity into the will and affections, and occasioneth unholy dispositions. Error is the great troubler of the world. It is that fountain of death that sendeth out all those streams of sin which overflow the earth. Why do men so universally walk in ways of oppression, deceit, drunkenness, uncleanness, envy, pride, &c, but because they judge such ways as these (all circumstances considered) more desirable to them than ways of a contrary import? And what is this but a most horrid error and mistake, the result of those lying apprehensions concerning God, wherewith men willingly suffer their minds to be corrupted even to spiritual putrefaction? Neither could the devil have touched Adam or Eve but by the mediation of some erroneous notions or other concerning God.” And in his Dedicatory Epistle to the University of Cambridge he hath this fine thought, which I address to my readers: — “If you condemn, who will justify? Only God’s eldest daughter, truth, has one mightier than you on her side, who will justify her in due time, though you should condemn her; and will raise her up from the dead the third day, in case you shall slay her.”

V. “By granting that people, who are under dispensations inferior to Christianity in its state of perfection, may have a degree of saving faith, although they have not yet the luminous faith of Christian believers, you damp the exertion of seekers, and invite them to settle, as most dissenters do, in a lukewarm, Laodicean state, short of assurance and ‘the kingdom of God,’ which consists not only in, righteousness, but in peace and joy by the Holy Ghost.’”

If this objection could not be answered, I would burn my Essay; for I had much rather it should feed my fire, than the Laodicean spirit, which is already so predominant in the Church. But that this new difficulty is by no means unanswerable, will appear, I hope, by the following observations: —

1. Judicious Mr. Baxter, by a variety of strong arguments, shows, that to represent assurance, or the kingdom of God in the Holy Ghost, as essential to all true faith, and promiscuously to shut up, in a state of damnation, all those to whom that “kingdom is not yet come with power,” is both cruel and unscriptural. (See the arguments in his Confession of Faith, from p. 189 to 214.)

2. Ought we to keep from those who sincerely seek the kingdom of God the comfort that the Gospel allows them? Are not “they that seek the Lord” commanded “to rejoice?” And how can they do it, if “the wrath of God abideth on them,” as it certainly does on all absolute unbelievers? Did not our Lord and St. Peter speak in a more evangelical strain, when they said to sincere seekers, “Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” of grace, as well as that of glory? “The promise [of the kingdom in the Holy Ghost] is unto you and to your children, and to as many as the Lord our God shall call” to believe explicitly in Jesus Christ.

3. When Joshua urged the Israelites to cross Jordan, would he have done right if he had made them believe that they were still in Egypt, and had not yet taken one true step toward Canaan? Did he not encourage them to go up and to possess the good land by the very consideration which my objector supposes would have made them sit down in the wilderness? Nay, did not those who had already taken possession of the kingdoms of Og and Sihon, on the other side Jordan, cross that river first, and nobly lead the van, when their brethren went on from conquering to conquer? And why should not spiritual Israelites, who turn their back upon spiritual Egypt, and seek the kingdom of God, be led on “from faith to faith” in the same comfortable manner?

4. It is trifling to say, “Dead dissenters, and the formal Scotch clergy, preach up a faith, short of Christian assurance, and therefore such a faith is a dangerous chimera:” for if they preach it in an unguarded, or in a careless manner, to set aside and not to illustrate the doctrine of Christian faith, they do the devil’s work, and not the work of evangelists: what wonder is it then that such preaching should lull their congregations asleep? Again: if we ought not to give up the doctrine of sincere obedience and good works, though our opponents cry out perpetually, “It is the doctrine of all the carnal clergy in the kingdom:” and if it be our duty to maintain the doctrine of the trinity, though Dr. Priestley and all the Unitarians say, with great truth, “It is the doctrine of the superstitious Papists;” how absurd is it to urge that our doctrine, concerning a faith inferior to the faith of assurance, is false, merely because the objector says that this part of our doctrine is held by all the sleepy dissenters? Might we not, at this rate, be also ashamed of the doctrine of the Divine unity, which the Socinians, the Jews, and even the Turks hold, as well as we?

5. Are there not many pious and judicious ministers in the Churches of England and Scotland, as well as among the dissenters, who dare not countenance the present revival of the power of godliness, chiefly because they hear us sometimes unguardedly assert that none have any faith but such as have the faith of assurance; and that the wrath of God actually abides on all those who have not that faith? If we warily allowed the faith of the inferior dispensations, which such divines clearly see in the Scriptures, and feel in themselves; would not their prejudices be softened, and their minds prepared to receive what we advance in defence of the faith of assurance?

6. If it be urged, that the Spirit of God witnesses to all sincere seekers of the kingdom in the Holy Ghost, that they are in a damnable state till they feel the pardoning “love of God shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost given unto them:” I demand proof; I deny the fact, and assert that the Divine Spirit can no more bear witness to an accepted, mourning Cornelius, that he is not accepted in any sense, than it can give testimony to a palpable contradiction. The truth is, our unbelieving fears and awakened hearts are very prone to surmise the worst, and we are very apt to take their surmisings for Divine impressions, even when we “bring forth fruits worthy of repentance.” I doubt not but St. Paul himself, in his agony of penitential grief, when he spent three days and three nights in fasting and prayer, had many such gloomy despairing thoughts; but they were certainly lying thoughts, as well as those which David wisely checks in some of his Psalms. Who will dare to say that Ananias found the apostle in a damnable state, though he found him without a sense of sin forgiven, as appears from the direction which he gave him, “Arise, why tarriest thou? Wash away thy sins, calling upon [and consequently believing in] the name of the Lord.”

7. My objector’s argument is as much levelled at St. Paul’s doctrine as at my Essay: “Men and brethren,” &c, said he to his audience at Antioch, “whosoever among you FEARETH God, to you is the word of THIS SALVATION sent,” Acts 13:26. But none of the pious hearers, whom he thus addressed, were unwise enough to reply, “Thou acknowledgest that we ‘fear God:’ and David says, ‘Blessed is the man that feareth the Lord.’ Now, if we fear him, and are blessed, we are already in a state of salvation, and therefore need not ‘this salvation’ which thou preachest. If we see our way by the candle of Moses, as thou intimatest, what need is there that ‘the Sun of righteousness’ should arise upon us with ‘healing in his wings?’” I demand proof, therefore, that men who fear God in our day are more ready to draw pernicious inferences from the doctrine of the dispensations, than they were in St. Paul’s time.

8. The objections which I answer may, with equal propriety, be urged against St. Peter’s doctrine. Acts 2:5, and 10:7, we read of “DEVOUT men out of every nation under heaven,” and of “a DEVOUT soldier that waited continually” on Cornelius, who himself “feared God, wrought righteousness, and was accepted — with all his house.” By Acts 11:9, 14, it evidently appears, that though Cornelius was cleansed by God himself, yet he must “send for Peter,” who was to “tell him words whereby he and all his house SHOULD BE SAVED, that is, should become partakers of the great salvation revealed by the Gospel of Jesus Christ. But although St. Peter began his discourse by acknowledging that his pious hearers “were accepted with God,” none of the congregation said, “Well, if we are accepted, we are already in a state of salvation, and therefore we need not ‘hear words whereby we shall be saved.’” On the contrary, they all “believed the word of this fuller salvation: for the Holy Ghost fell on all them that heard the word;” and St. Paul informs us that we “receive the Spirit by the hearing of faith:” compare Acts 10:44, with Galatians 3:2, and John 7:39. It is plain, from this account, that no preaching was ever attended with a more universal blessing, and that no discourse was ever so instrumental in conveying to all the power of the faith of assurance, than that very sermon which the apostle began by intimating that his hearers were already accepted, according to an inferior dispensation. Hence it is evident that the doctrine we maintain, if it be properly guarded, far from having a necessary tendency to lull people asleep, is admirably calculated to excite every penitent to faith, prayer, the improvement of their talents, and the perfecting of holiness.

9. May we not sufficiently guard the Christian dispensation, by constantly affirming,

(1.) That all Christian believers “have now the witness in themselves.”

(2.) That those who have it not either never had Christian faith, which is emphatically called faith in the Gospel, see Acts 14:27, or that they know only ‘“the baptism of John:” or that, with the unsettled Galatians, they are actually “fallen from grace, that is, from the Christian dispensation; and now live “under the law,” that is, in the darkness of the Jewish dispensation; supposing they are not quite departed from God by indulging known sin.

(3.) That if they do not press after the faith of assurance, they are in the utmost danger of losing their talent of grace; like the young man whom Jesus loved, and who nevertheless went away sorrowful, when he was unwilling to give up all, and follow Jesus without reserve; or like those thousands of Israelites, “whom the Lord SAVED OUT OF the land of Egypt, and whom he afterward destroyed,” when “they believed not” the word by which they were to be SAVED INTO the land of promise, Jude 1:5.

10. Not to mention all the arguments by which the zealous Puritans defended the doctrine of assurance in the last century, and those by which the Methodists prove its necessity in our days, is not the first argument used in my address to the antichristian moralists, p. 564, sufficient, if it be properly managed, to enforce the absolute necessity of rising to higher dispensations, when God calls us to it? If Queen Vashti lost her crown for refusing to come to the royal banquet, at “the king’s commandment:” if those who “begged to be excused,” when they were invited to the Gospel feast, were at last dreadfully punished: if St. Paul says to loitering believers, who are backward to go on to perfection, “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation, which at first began to be spoken by the Lord;” nay, if Christ himself threatens to “spue lukewarm,” slothful Laodiceans “out of his mouth;” do we want even terrifying arguments to lash the consciences of those carnal professors who, hoping they are perfectly safe in their low attainments, despise higher dispensations, and “bury their talent” of grace, till it be “taken from them, and given to” those who best improve their own? To conclude.

11. You are afraid that the doctrine of this Essay will make “seekers rest in Laodicean lukewarmness;” but permit me to observe that the seekers you speak of are either forward hypocrites, or sincere penitents. If they are forward hypocrites, preaching to them the faith of assurance will never make them either humble or sincere. On the contrary, they will probably catch at an election, and then at an assurance of their own making; and so they will profess to have the faith for which you contend, when in fact they have only the name and notion of it. The religious world swarms with