Second Appendix.

instances of this kind. If, on the other hand, the seekers for whom you seem concerned are sincere penitents; far from being hurt, they will be greatly benefited by our doctrine: for it will at once keep them from chilling, despairing fears, and from false, Crispian comforts; the two opposite extremes into which upright, unwary mourners are most apt to run. Thus our doctrine, instead of being dangerous to sincere seekers, will prove a Scriptural clue, in following which they will happily avoid the gloomy haunts of Pharisaic despair, and the enchanted ground of Antinomian presumption.

SECOND APPENDIX.

CONTAINING 1. Ten more arguments to prove that all men universally, in the day of their visitation, have some gracious power to believe some saving truth. And, 2. An answer to three more objections.

BEING conscious that I cannot be too careful and guarded in writing upon so important and delicate a subject as that of the preceding Essay, I once more take up the pen to explain, strengthen, and guard the doctrine that it contains.

I. I have said, (p. 523,) that “faith [considered in general] is believing heartily:” I add, “and sometimes it may signify a power to believe heartily.” For, as God gives to all the heathens, in the day of their visitation, “a power to believe heartily that God is,” &c, indulging them with gracious calls and opportunities to use that power; we may say that he gives them the faith of their dispensation. Nevertheless all the heathens have not that faith: for many obstinately bury their talent, till at last it is taken from them.

As this doctrine of faith entirely subverts the doctrine of finished damnation, which is so closely connected with the doctrines of absolute election and finished salvation; and as a Calvinist clergyman, who has seen part of this Essay, assures me that it shall be taken notice of; I beg leave to add the following arguments to those which I have produced, section first, to prove that faith is not the work of God in the sense of our adversaries, and that in the day of salvation, through “the free gift which is come upon all men,” we have all some gracious power to believe some saving truth.

1. If faith be the work of God in the same sense in which the creation is his performance, when Christ “marvelled at the centurion’s faith,” he marvelled that God should be able to do what he pleases, or that a man should do what he can no more help doing, than he can hinder the world from existing’ that is, he marvelled at what was not at all marvellous: and he might as well have wondered that a ton should outweigh an ounce.

2. When God invites “every creature” in “all the world” to believe, Mark 16:15, if he denies most of them power so to do, he insults over their wretched impotence, and acts a part which can hardly be reconciled with sincerity. What would the world think of the king, if he perpetually invited all the Irish poor over to England to partake of his royal charity, and took care that most of them should never meet with any vessels to bring them over, but such as would be sure to founder in the passage?

3. When our Lord endeavoured to shame the Pharisees for their unbelief, he said, “John came to you, &c, and ye believed him not, but the publicans and harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not afterward, that ye might believe.” But if faith is the work of God in the sense of our adversaries, was it any shame to the Pharisees that God would not do his own work? Had they any more reason to blush at it, than we have to redden, because God does not give us wings and fins, as he does to birds and fishes?

4. To suppose that Christ assiduously preached the Gospel to the inhabitants of Capernaum, while all the time he withheld from them power to believe it, and that afterward he appointed them a more intolerable damnation for not believing: to suppose this, I say, is to cast the most horrible reflection upon the Lamb of God. But if it be allowed that those obstinate unbelievers will justly, be sent into a more dreadful hell for having buried to the end their talent of power to believe in their stronger light; is it not reasonable to suppose, that those who shall go to a less intolerable hell, will also be sent there for having finally refused to use their talent of power to believe in their weaker light?

5. Although Christ positively says that men shall be damned for their unbelief, see John 3:18; Mark 16:16, yet some of our adversaries deny it, being deservedly ashamed of representing our Lord as damning myriads of men for not doing what is absolutely impossible. Hence they tell us that reprobates shall be damned only for their sins. But this unscriptural contrivance does not mend the matter; for I have shown, section seventh, that bad works, or sins, necessarily flow from unbelief. Now unbelief being nothing but the absence of faith, God, by absolutely withholding all saving faith, necessarily causes all unbelief; and unbelief, by necessarily causing all sin, necessarily causes also all damnation. For he that absolutely withholds all light, necessarily causes all darkness, and of course all the works of darkness. Thus “the doctrines of grace” (so called) that seem to rear their graceful head to heaven, end in the graceless, venomous tail of finished damnation. “Desinet in piscem mulier formosa superne.”

6. The design of the Gospel, with regard to God, is evidently to extol his grace, and clear his justice. Now if an absolute decree of preterition or limited redemption hinders a vast majority of mankind from believing to salvation, both these ends of the Gospel are entirely defeated in all that perish: for God, by passing by the reprobated culprits, thousands of years before they were born, and by withholding every dram of saving grace from them, shows himself an absolutely graceless Creator to them all. Nor does this opinion less horribly impeach God’s justice than his grace; for it represents him as judicially sentencing men to eternal torments, merely for the sin of a man whom most of them never heard of; or, which is all one, for the necessary, unavoidable, preordained consequences of that sin.

7. St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, takes particular care to clear God’s justice with respect to the condemnation of the wicked, “that every mouth may be stopped” — and (eiv to einai) “that they may be without excuse,” But the scheme which I oppose, instead of leaving men anapologhtouv without excuse, opens their mouths, and fills them with the best apology in the world: “Absolute necessity, and complete impossibility, caused by another before we were born.” An apology this, which no candid person can ever object to.

8. Agreeable to St. Paul’s doctrine, our Lord observes that the man, sentenced to be cast into outer darkness for “not having on a wedding garment, was speechless.” But if the Crispian doctrines of grace be true, might not that man, with the greatest propriety, have said to the Master of the feast, while the executioners “bound him hand and foot,” “To all eternity I shall impeach thy justice, O thou partial Judge: thou appointest me the hell of hypocrites, merely because “1 have not on a wedding garment,” which thou hast from all eternity purposely kept from me, under the strong lock and key of thy irreversible decrees! Is this the manner in which thou “judgest the world in righteousness?”

9. The parable of the talents, and that of the pounds, decide the question. The wicked and slothful servants, whose destruction they inform us of, are not condemned because their master was “hard and austere;” but because the one had “buried his talent [of power] in the earth,” and the other had hid his “pound [of grace] in a napkin” manufactured at Laodicea.

10. If salvation depends upon faith, and if God never gives reprobates power to “believe in the light that enlightens every man,” and a sufficiency of means so to do; it follows that he never gives them any personal ability to escape damnation; but only to secure and increase their damnation; and thus he deals far more hardly with them than he did with devils. For Satan and his angels were all personally put in a state of initial salvation, and endued with a personal ability to do that on which their eternal salvation depended. To suppose, therefore, that a majority of the children of Adam, who are born sinful without any personal fault of their own, and who can say to the incarnate Son of God, Thou art flesh of our flesh, blood of our blood, and bone of our bone; — to suppose, I say, that a vast majority of these favoured creatures have far less favour shown them than Beelzebub himself had, is so graceless, so unevangelical doctrine, that one might be tempted to think it is ironically called the doctrine of grace; and to suspect that its defenders are styled “evangelical ministers” by way of burlesque. From the preceding arguments I conclude, that when it is said in the Scriptures people could not believe, this is to be understood either of persons whose day of grace was over, and who of course were justly given up to a reprobate mind, as the men mentioned in Romans 1:21, 28, or of persons who, by not using their one talent of power to believe the obvious truths belonging to a lower dispensation, absolutely incapacitated themselves to believe the deep truths belonging to Christianity. II. Although I flatter myself that the preceding arguments guard the doctrine of free grace against the attacks of those who indirectly contend for free wrath; I dare not yet conclude this appendix. Still fearful lest some difficulty unremoved should prejudice the candid reader against what appears to me to be the truth, I beg leave to intrude upon his patience, by answering three more plausible objections to the doctrine of this Essay. OBJECTION. “If faith be the gift of the God of grace to us, as sight is the gift of the God of nature, according to your assertion, (p. 525;) does it not follow that as we may see when we will, so we may believe in Christ — believe the forgiveness of our sins; and by that means fill ourselves with “peace and joy in the Holy Ghost” when we have a mind? But is not this contrary to experience? Do not the best Christians remember a time when they could no more believe than they could make a world, though they prayed for faith with all the ardour they were capable of?” ANSWER 1. You still seem to take it for granted that there is no true faith, but an explicit faith in Christ; and no explicit faith in Christ, but the faith of full assurance. But I hope that I have already proved the contrary in my answer to the fifth objection, (p. 577.) There are two extremes in the doctrine of faith which should be carefully avoided by every Christian: the one is that of the author of Pietas Oxoniensis, who thinks that an adulterous murderer may have true, saving faith in the height of his complicated crimes: and the other is that of those who assert there is no saving faith but that which actually cleanses us from all inbred sin, and opens a present heaven in our breasts. The middle path of truth lies exactly between those opposite mistakes, and that path I endeavour to point out. As, on the one hand, it never came into my mind that an impenitent murderer can have even the saving faith of a heathen: so, on the other hand, it never entered my thoughts, that a penitent can believe with the faith of full assurance when he will: for this faith depends not only upon our general belief of the truth revealed to us, but also upon a peculiar f132 operation of God, or revelation of his powerful arm. It is always attended with a manifestation of “the Spirit of adoption witnessing with our spirits that we are the children of God.” And such a manifestation God in general grants to none but them that groan deeply under “the spirit of bondage unto fear,” as Paul did while he remained blind at Damascus; — or them that are peculiarly faithful to the grace of their inferior dispensation, and pray as earnestly for “power from on high,” as the apostles did after our Lord’s ascension.

Therefore, from my asserting (p. 528) that “so long, as the day of salvation continues, all sinners, who have not yet finally hardened themselves, may day and night [through the help and power of the general light of Christ’s grace mentioned John 1:9, and Titus 2:11,] receive some truth belonging to the everlasting Gospel,” which takes in the dispensation of the heathens; from my asserting this, I say, you have no reason to infer that I maintain any man may, day and night, believe the forgiveness of his sins, and the deep truths of the Gospel of Christ; especially since I mention immediately what truth it is which all may believe, if they improve their talent, namely, this’ “There is a God, who will call us to an account for our sins, and who spares us to break them off by repentance.”

2. It would be absurd to suppose that you can believe with the luminous faith of assurance, when God is casting your soul into the dark prison of your own guilt to bring down your Pharisaic looks, and make you feel the chains of your sins. But even then may you not believe that God is just, holy, and patient? May you not acknowledge that you deserve your spiritual imprisonment far more than Joseph’s brethren deserved to be “put all together into ward three days” by their loving, forgiving brother? May you not believe that, although “heaviness may endure for a night,” yet “joy cometh in the morning?” And when you have humbly groaned with David, “I am so fast in prison that I cannot get forth;” may you not pray in faith, “Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name. Let the bones which thou hast broken rejoice. Give me the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Convince” me as powerfully “of righteousness,” as thou hast “of sin:” and let thy Spirit, which now acts upon me as a “Spirit of bondage unto fear,” begin to act as a “Spirit of adoption” and liberty — of “righteousness, peace, and joy?” May you not even add, “O God, I believe thy promise concerning the coming of the Comforter; ‘help thou my unbelief,’ and grant me such a faith as thou wilt vouchsafe to ‘seal with that Holy Spirit of promise.’ Thou shakest before me the rod of infernal vengeance: I deserve it a thousand times; but, O Father of mercies, O my Father, if for the sake of thine only begotten Son thou wilt yet permit such a wretch as I am to call thee Father, give me the Spirit of adoption; and witness to my spirit that I am a child of thine. But if thou wilt still hide thy face from me, never suffer me to entertain one dishonourable thought of thee; never let me think thee a Moloch. Though thy justice slay me, let me still trust in thee, and believe that for Christ’s sake thy mercy will revive my soul?” Is it Scriptural to rank among absolute unbelievers a penitent who thus humbly and obediently waits for the faith of full assurance — the faith of Christianity in its state of perfection? If our Lord pronounces such mourners blessed, does it become us to pronounce them accursed? But I return to your objection.

3. The latter part of it confirms, instead of overturning my doctrine; it being evident that if the persons you speak of prayed with ardour for the faith of assurance, they had already some degree of faith: for praying is “calling upon the Lord,” and St. Paul speaks “the words of soberness,” where he says, “How shall they call on him in whom they have not believed?”

4. I am so far from thinking our power to believe is absolute, that I have asserted, (p. 528,) it is impossible heartily to believe the truths which do not suit our present state. And (page 538, &c,) I have observed, that we savingly believe the “truth suitable to our present circumstances, when it is kindly presented by free grace, and affectionately embraced by prevented free will;” adding, that when we believe our “faith is more or less operative, not only according to the earnestness with which we welcome the truth to our inmost souls,” but also “according to the power with which the Spirit of grace impresses it upon our hearts.” Nay, I have ascribed so much to the power of the free grace by which saving faith is “instantly formed,” as to insinuate that sometimes (as at St. Paul’s conversion) this power for a while bears all down before it. This at least was my meaning, when I said, section first, “We may in general suspend the act of faith. especially when the glaring light [i.e. the luminous power] that some. times accompanies the revelation of truth is abated.” Consider the force of the words, in general and especially; advert to the exception for which they make room; and you will see I allow that free grace, at times, acts with almost as much irresistibility, as some moderate Calvinists contend for.

5. With respect to my comparison between our power to believe, and our power to see, far from showing that all men may at any time believe the Gospel of Christ, it intimates, nay, it proves the very reverse. Can you see when you will, and what you will? Can you see in a dark night without a light? Can you see in a bright day, when a thick veil covers your face? Can you see if you place an opaque body full in your light? Can you see what is out of the reach of your eyes? Can you see the rising sun when you look full west, or the stars when you pore upon a dung hill? Can you see when you obstinately shut your eyes? Or when you have let a wicked man put them out, lest you should not live in idleness? Apply to faith these queries about sight; recollect the preceding observations: and you will perceive,

(1.) That our power to believe is various ways circumscribed; it being impossible that he who has but one talent, perhaps unimproved, should carry on as extensive a trade as the man who diligently improves his five or ten talents.

(2.) That nevertheless, supposing we have still a ray of the light of truth, and have not yet been given up to judicial blindness, or to final hardness, we may day and night [if we do not still bury our talent] believe, by the above-mentioned helps, some obvious truth belonging to the lowest dispensation of Divine grace, and begin to follow our Lord’s direction, “While ye have the light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of the light.” And,

(3.) That if we oppose this doctrine, we begin to follow our Calvinist brethren into Crispianity; and are just ready to bow at the shrine of the great Diana of the day, and to kiss her iron-clay feet, finished salvation and finished damnation.

OBJECTION VII. “Your doctrine concerning the school of faith, and its several forms; concerning the temple of faith, and its capital partitions, is entirely founded upon the doctrine of the dispensations of Divine grace; a doctrine this which many people will rank with what they call, The novel chimeras of your Checks.”

I hope that I have proved what I have advanced concerning the dispensations, by arguments founded upon Scripture, reason, and conscience. However, that the idea of novelty may not stand in the way of any of my readers, out of fifty authors, whom I may quote in support of this important doctrine, I shall produce two, a Calvinist and an anti- Calvinist; not doubting but their consentaneous testimony will sufficiently break the force of your objection. The first is the Rev. Mr. Green, late curate of Thurnscoe, in Yorkshire, and once an assistant to Mr. Whitefield. In his book, called Grace and Truth Vindicated, (page 116,) you will find the following just remarks: —

“It appears to me, from Scripture as well as experience, that there are divers dispensations, but the same Spirit: the kingdom of heaven consists of various degrees, and different mansions. This is true, whether by the kingdom of heaven we understand the outward professors of religion and the privileges, the inward kingdom of grace, or the kingdom of glory: [in all which senses the words in Scripture are frequently used.] As face answers to face in a glass, so do these respectively answer each other. Thus the outward privileges of religion from Adam to Moses were least; from Moses to Christ greater; and from Christ to the restitution of all things greatest. Again: to be a spiritual or enlightened heathen, as Socrates, Plato, or Cornelius before he heard Peter, is one degree or dispensation of grace. To be a spiritual or enlightened Jew, and with Peter and the other disciples before the day of pentecost to believe and acknowledge that Jesus is the Messiah, though not spiritually come, is a greater. But to be a spiritual Christian, to have Christ, the exalted God-man, revealed in us from heaven, and to be sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise unto the day of the redemption of this vile body, is the last and most perfect dispensation of grace, he that is feeble here shall be as David, and he that is strong, &c, shall be, &c, as the angel of the Lord, &c. For it may be observed, that every dispensation admits of a growth therein; and moreover, that each of them is in some sort and degree experienced by a spiritual Christian,” &c.

My second witness is the Rev. Mr. J. Wesley, who, even in his first sermon on salvation by faith, preached near forty years ago, clearly distinguishes Christian faith, properly so called, or faith in Christ glorified, not only from the faith of a heathen, but also from the faith of initial Christianity, that is, “the faith which the apostles had while our Lord was upon earth.” “And first,” says he, “it [the faith that saves us into the great salvation described in the second part of the sermon] is not barely the faith of a heathen. Now God requires of a heathen to believe ‘that God is, that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him, &c, by glorifying him as God,’ &c, and by a careful practice of moral virtue, &c. A Greek or Roman therefore, yea, a Scythian or Indian, was without excuse if he did not believe thus much: the being and attributes of God, a future state of reward and punishment, &c. For this is barely the faith of a heathen.” Soon after he adds: — “And herein does it [this faith in Christ glorified] differ from that faith which the apostles themselves had while our Lord was upon earth, that it acknowledges the necessity and merit of his death, and the power of his resurrection.”

The doctrine of Christian perfection is entirely founded on the privileges of the Christian dispensation in its fulness: privileges these which far exceed those of the Jewish economy and the baptism of John. Accordingly Mr. Wesley in his sermons on Christian perfection makes the following just and Scriptural distinction between those dispensations: — “It may be granted,

(1.) That David, in the general course of his life, was one of the holiest men among the Jews. And, (2.) That the holiest men among the Jews did sometimes commit sin. But if you would hence infer that all Christians do, and must commit sin, as long as they live; this consequence we utterly deny. It will never follow from those premises. Those who argue thus seem never to have considered that declaration of our Lord, Matthew 11:11, ‘Verily I say unto you, among them that are born of women, there hath not arisen a greater than John the Baptist. Notwithstanding, he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.’ I fear indeed there are some who have imagined the kingdom of heaven here to mean the kingdom of glory: as if the Son of God had just discovered to us that the least glorified saint in heaven is greater than any man upon earth. To mention this is sufficient to refute it. There can, therefore, no doubt be made, but the kingdom of heaven here (as in the following verse, where it is said to be taken by force) or the kingdom of God, as St. Luke expresses it, is that kingdom of God on earth, whereunto all true believers in Christ, all real Christians belong. In these words then our Lord declares two things:

(1.) That before his coming in the flesh, among all the children of men, there had not been one greater than John the Baptist: whence it evidently follows that neither Abraham, David, nor any Jew, was greater than John.

(2.) That he who is least in the kingdom of God (in that kingdom which he came to set up on earth, and which the violent now began to take by force) is greater than he. Not a greater prophet (as some have interpreted the word) for this is palpably false in fact: but greater in the grace of God, and the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore we cannot measure the privileges of real Christians by those formerly given to the Jews. ‘Their ministration,’ or dispensation, we allow ‘was glorious;’ but ours ‘exceeds in glory.’ So that whosoever would bring down the Christian dispensation to the Jewish standard, doth ‘greatly err, neither knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.’” From these excellent quotations, therefore, it appears that you do me an honour altogether undeserved, if you suppose that I first set forth the doctrine of the dispensations. OBJECTION VIII. “I cannot help thinking, that the doctrine of a faith proper to all those dispensations is above the capacity of plain Christians, and should never be mentioned, lest it should puzzle, instead of edifying the Church.”

If your fears be well grounded, even the apostles’ creed is above the capacity of plain Christians; for that creed, the simplest of all those which the primitive Church has handed down to us, evidently distinguishes three degrees of faith:

(1.) Faith “in God the Father Almighty, who made heaven and earth,” which is the faith of the heathens.

(2.) Faith in the Messiah, or “in Jesus Christ, his only begotten Son, our Lord,” which is the faith of pious Jews, of John’s disciples, and of imperfect Christians, who, like the apostles before the day of pentecost, are yet strangers to the f133 great outpouring of the Spirit: and

(3.) Faith “in the Holy Ghost;” faith of the operation of God, by which Christians complete in Christ believe “according to the working of God’s almighty power,” and are “filled with righteousness, peace, and joy in [thus] believing.”

And here honesty obliges me to lay before the public an objection which I have had for some time against the appendages of the Athanasian creed. I admire the Scriptural manner in which it sets forth the Divine unity in trinity, and the Divine trinity in unity: but I can no longer indiscriminately use its damnatory clauses. It abruptly takes us to the very top of the Christian dispensation, considered in a doctrinal light. This dispensation it calls the catholic faith: and, without mentioning the faith of the inferior dispensations, as our other creeds do, it makes us declare that, “except every one keep that faith [the faith of the highest dispensation] whole and undefiled — he cannot be saved; without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.” This dreadful denunciation is true with regard to proud, ungodly infidels, who, in the midst of all the means of Christian faith, obstinately, maliciously, and finally set their hearts against the doctrine of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; equally despising the Son’s atonement and the Spirit’s inspiration. But I will no more invade Christ’s tribunal, and pronounce that the fearful punishment of damnation shall, “without doubt,” be inflicted upon “every” Unitarian, Arian, Jew, Turk, and heathen, “that fears God and works righteousness,” though he does not hold the faith of the Athanasian creed whole. For if you except the last article, thousands, yea millions, are never called to hold it at all; and therefore shall never perish for not holding it whole. See the notes, pages 451 and 551. At all hazards then, I hope, I shall never use again those damnatory clauses, without taking the liberty of guarding them agreeably to the doctrine of the dispensations. And if Zelotes presses me with my subscriptions, I reply beforehand, that the same Church which required me to subscribe to St. Athanasius’ creed, enjoins me also to believe this clause of St. Peter’s creed: “In every nation he that feareth God, and worketh righteousness, is accepted of him.” And if those two creeds are irreconcilable, I think it more reasonable that Athanasius should bow to Peter, warmed by the Spirit of love; than that Peter should bow to Athanasius, heated by controversial opposition.

To return: that the distinction of the three degrees of saving faith, omitted in the Athanasian creed, but expressed in the apostles’ creed, and in the Nicene creed; that this distinction, I say, is neither chimerical nor enthusiastical, may be proved by a variety of arguments, two or three of which, I hope, will not intrude too long upon the reader’s patience.

1. The first is taken from the doctrine expressly laid down in the New Testament. To what I have said on this head, p. 573, &c, I add here what Christ said to his disciples, “Ye believe in God, believe also in me.” Here the most prejudiced may see that faith in the Father is clearly contradistinguished from faith in the Son. As for faith in the Holy Ghost, see in what manner our blessed Lord sowed the seed of it in the hearts of his disciples. “When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, he shall testify of me. It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you. Behold I send the promise of my Father unto you: but tarry ye in the city of Jerusalem, until ye be endued with power from on high.” Nor was this great promise made to the apostles alone; for “in the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man [not if an apostle] thirst, let him come to me and drink. He that believeth on me, as the Scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this he spake of the Spirit, which they that believed on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; [his dispensation, which is the highest of all, was not yet opened;] because that Jesus was not yet glorified.” And the opening of this dispensation in our hearts requires, on our part, not only faith in Christ, but a peculiar faith in the promise of the Father; a promise this, which has the Holy Ghost for its great object.

2. My second argument is taken from the experiences of those who, by the Holy Ghost, were made partakers of Christ glorified, either on the day of pentecost, or after it; and could feelingly confess Christ dying for us, and Christ living “in us, the hope of glory.” Acts 2:5, we read of “devout men out of every nation under heaven,” who were come to worship at Jerusalem. But how could they have been devout men if they had not believed in God? What could have brought them from the ends of the earth to keep a feast to the Lord, if they had been mere Atheists? And yet it is evident, that through prejudice many of them rejected our Lord; putting him to open shame and a bloody death. But when Peter preached Christ on the day of pentecost, they at first believed on him with a true, though not with a luminous faith. This appears from the anguish which they felt upon being charged with having “slain the Prince of life.” No man in his senses can be “pricked to the heart” merely for having had a hand in the just punishment of an impostor and a blasphemer, who “makes himself equal with God.” If therefore keen remorse pierced the hearts of those penitent Jews, it is evident that they looked no more upon Christ as an impostor, but already believed in him as the true Messiah.

No sooner had they thus passed from faith in the Father to an explicit faith in the Son, but they cried out, “What shall we do?” And Peter directed them to make, by baptism, an open, solemn profession of their faith in Christ, and to believe the great promise concerning the Holy Ghost. “The promise is unto you,” said he. “Be baptized every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins; and ye [every one of you] shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” And upon their “gladly receiving the word,” that is, upon their heartily believing the gladdening promise relating to pardon and to the Comforter; and no doubt upon their fervently praying that it might be fulfilled in them, “they were all filled with the Spirit,” all their hearts overflowed with “righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.”

St. Peter, speaking, Acts 11, of a similar outpouring of the Spirit, says: “The Holy Ghost fell on them [Gentiles] as on us [Jews] at the beginning. Then remembered I the word of the Lord, how that he said, John indeed baptized with water, [them that entered his dispensation,] but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost,” when you shall enter the full dispensation of my Spirit: “God,” adds Peter, “gave them the like gift as he did unto us, who believed on the Lord Jesus Christ.” And when “the apostles heard these things, they glorified God;” not indeed by shouting, “Then hath God given the Gentiles power to speak Arabic:” but by saying, “Then hath God also to the Gentiles granted repentance unto life,” according to the fulness of the Christian dispensation.

That this dispensation of the Holy Ghost, this coming of Christ’s spiritual kingdom with power, is attended with an uncommon degree of sanctifying grace, is acknowledged by all; and that the gift of tongues, &c, which at first, on some occasions and in some persons, accompanied the baptism of the Spirit, for a sign to bigoted Jews, or to stupid heathens; — that such a gift, I say, was a temporary appendage, and by no means an essential part of Christ’s spiritual baptism, is evident from the merely spiritual effect which the receiving of the Holy Ghost had upon the penitent Jews, who, being “born of water and the Spirit,” pressed after the apostles into the kingdom on the day of pentecost.

“Even in the infancy of the Church,” says an eminent divine, “God divided those [miraculous] gifts with a sparing hand. ‘Were all [even then] prophets? Were all workers of miracles? Had all the gifts of healing? Did all speak with tongues?’ No, in no wise. Perhaps not one in a thousand. Probably none but the teachers of the Church, and only some of them. It was therefore for a more excellent purpose than this that they, the brethren and apostles, ‘were all filled with the Holy Ghost.’ It was to give them [what none can deny to be essential to all Christians in all ages] ‘the mind which was in Christ,’ those holy ‘fruits of the Spirit,’ which whosoever hath not, is none of his; to fill them with ‘love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness.’”

It is very remarkable, that although three thousand converts “received the gift of the Holy Ghost” on the memorable day in which Christ opened the dispensation of his Spirit, no mention is made of so much as one of them working a single miracle, or speaking with one new tongue. But the greatest and most beneficial of miracles was wrought upon them all: for “all that believed,” says St. Luke, “were together; continuing daily with one accord in the temple, breaking bread from house to house, eating their meat with gladness and singleness of heart, praising God and having favour with all the people,” by their humble, affectionate, angelical behaviour. Or, as the same historian expresses it, Acts 4:32, “The multitude of them that believed” — spoke Greek and Latin! No: but “were of one heart and of one soul; neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common;” having been made perfect in one, agreeably to our Lord’s deep prayer, recorded by St. John: “Neither pray I for these [my disciples] alone, but for them also who shall believe on me through their word, that they may be one; I in them, [by my Spirit,] and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one.”

3. To this argument, taken from the experiences of the primitive Christians, I may add, that the doctrine of the dispensations is indirectly taught by our Church even to children, in her Catechism, where she instructs them to say, “By the articles of my belief I learn, first, to believe in God the Father, who made me, &c. Secondly, in God the Son, who redeemed me, &c. And, thirdly, in God the Holy Ghost who sanctifieth me.” For these three distinctions are expressive of the three grand degrees of the faith, “whereby we inherit all the promises of God,” and “are made partakers of the Divine nature.” They are not descriptive of faith in three gods, but of the capital manifestations of the triune God, in whose name we are baptized; and of the three great dispensations of the everlasting Gospel, namely, that of the heathens, that of the Jews, and that of spiritual Christians; the dispensation of Abraham being only a link between heathenism and Judaism; and the dispensation of John the Baptist or of Christianity begun, being only a transition between Judaism and Christianity perfected.

Our Church Catechism brings to my remembrance the office of confirmation. It was, it seems, originally intended to lead young believers to the fulness of the Christian dispensation, agreeably to what we read, Acts 8:12, &c. Peter and John went from Jerusalem to Samaria to lay their hands on the believers who had not yet been baptized with the Holy Ghost, and to “pray that they might receive him: for as yet he was fallen upon none of them, only they were baptized by Philip in the name of the Lord Jesus. When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith upon the earth?” I fear but little of the faith peculiar to his full dispensation. Most professors seem satisfied with John’s baptism or Philip’s baptism. The Lord raise us apostolic pastors to pray in the demonstration of the Spirit and of power. “Strengthen thy servants, O Lord, with the Holy Ghost, the Comforter; and daily increase in them thy manifold gifts of grace; the spirit of wisdom and understanding; the spirit of counsel and ghostly strength; the spirit of knowledge and true godliness; and fill them with the spirit of thy holy fear now and for ever.” (Order of confirmation.) Can it be said that those in whom that prayer is not now answered live under the dispensation of Christianity perfected? Are they either established Christians or spiritual Churchmen? How long shall the mystery of iniquity prevail? How long shall a Pharisaic, Deistical world destroy the faith of the Son, under colour of contending for faith in the Father? And how long shall a world of Antinomian, Solifidian professors destroy faith in the Holy Ghost, under pretence of recommending faith in the Son? O Lord, exert thy power. “Pour out thy Spirit upon all flesh,” and give wisdom to all thy ministers to divide the word of truth aright, and to feed thy people according to their states and thy dispensations!

If these answers give my objector no satisfaction, and he still think it his duty to attack my Essay, I beg leave to address him in the words of a judicious divine of the last century: — “I shall not need, I presume, to desire you, that in your answer you will not rise up in your might against the weaker, looser, or less considerate passages or expressions, (of which kind you may very possibly meet more than enow,) but that you will rather bend the strength of your reply against the strength of what you shall oppose. You well know that a field may be won, though many soldiers of the conquering side should full in the battle; and that a tree may flourish and retain both its beauty and firmness of standing in the earth, though many of the smaller twigs and lesser branches should prove dry, and so be easily broken off. So may a mountain remain unmoved, yea, unmovable, though many handfuls of the lighter and looser earth about the sides of it should be taken up, and scattered into the air like dust. In like manner the body of a discourse may stand entire in its solidity, weight, and strength, though many particular expressions, sayings, and reasonings therein, that are more remote from the centre, should be detected either of inconsiderateness, weakness, or untruth.”