Footnotes

FOOTNOTES

ft1 This is worded in so ambiguous a manner, as to give readers room to think that Arminius held man hath a will to turn to God before grace prevents him, and only wants some Divine assistance to finish what nature has power to begin. In this sense of the words it is I deny Mr. Wesley is an Arminian.]

ft2 London, printed for J. Johnson, 1762.]

ft3 Most of these seeming inconsistencies of St. Paul, and those which are charged upon Mr. Wesley, will be reconciled with the greatest ease by considering the two axioms mentioned in my first letter.]

ft4 In the former part of the imaginary contradictions those servants of God make use of the first Gospel axiom; in the latter part they employ the second, and thus declare the whole counsel of God.]

ft5 I beg I may not be understood to level the following paragraphs, or any part of these letters, at my pious Calvinist brethren. God knows how deeply I reverence many, who are immovably fixed in what some call “the doctrines of grace;” how gladly (as conscious of their genuine conversion and eminent usefulness) I would lie in the dust at their feet to honour our Lord in his dear members; and how often I have thought it a peculiar infelicity in any degree to dissent from such excellent men, with whom I wanted both to live and die, and with whom I hope soon to reign for ever! As these real children of God lament the bad use Antinomians make of their principles, I hope they will not be offended if I bear my testimony against a growing evil, which they have frequently opposed themselves. While the Calvinists guard the foundation against Pharisees, for which I return them my sincere thanks, they will, I hope, allow the Remonstrants to guard the superstructure against Antinomians. If in doing those good offices to the Church, we find ourselves obliged to bear a little hard upon the peculiar sentiments of our opposite friends, let us do it in such a manner as not to break the bonds of peace and brotherly kindness; so shall our honest reproofs become matter of useful exercise to that “love which thinketh no evil, hopeth all things, rejoiceth even in the galling truth,” and is “neither quenched by many waters,” nor damped by any opposition. I have long wished to see, on both sides the question about which we unhappily divide, moderate men step out of the unthinking noisy crowd of their party, to look each other lovingly in the face, and to convince the world that with impartial zeal they will guard both the foundation and the superstructure against all adversaries, those of their own party not excepted. Whoever does this omne tulit punctum, he is a real friend to both parties, and to the whole Gospel; for he cordially embraces all the people of God, and joins in one blessed medium the seemingly incompatible extremes of Scriptural truth. Ye men of clear heads, honest hearts, and humble loving spirits, nature and grace have formed you on purpose to do the Church this important service. Therefore, without regarding the bigots of your own party, in the name of the loving Jesus, and by his catholic Spirit, give professors public lessons of moderation and consistence, and permit me to learn those rare virtues with thousands at your feet.]

ft6 This is frequently the stratagem of those who have no arguments to produce. I bore my testimony against it in the Vindication, and flattered myself that serious writers would be less forward to oppose the truth, and expose the ministers of Christ by that injudicious way of discussing controverted points. Notwithstanding this, I have before me a little pamphlet, in which the editor endeavours to answer Mr. Wesley’s Minutes, by extracting from his writings passages supposed to stand in direct opposition to the Minutes. Hence, in a burlesque upon the Declaration, he tries to represent Mr. Wesley as a knave. I would just observe upon that performance, (1.) That by this method of raising dust, and avoiding to reason the case fairly, every malicious infidel may blind injudicious readers, and make triumphing scoffers cry out, Jesus against Christ! Saul against St. Paul! or John the divine against John the evangelist! as well as Wesley against John! and John against Wesley. (2.) Mr. Wesley having acknowledged, in the beginning of the Minutes, he “had leaned too much toward Calvinism,” we may naturally expect to meet in his voluminous writings with a few expressions that look a little toward Antinomianism: and with some paragraphs which (when detached from the context, and not considered as spoken to deep mourners in Zion, or to souls of undoubted sincerity,) seem directly to favour the delusion of the present times. (3.) This may be easily accounted for without flying to the charges of knavery or contradiction. When after working long without cheering light we discover the ravishing day of luminous faith, we are all apt, in the sincerity of our hearts, to speak almost as unguardedly of works as Luther did; but when the fire of Antinomian temptations has frequently burned us, and consumed thousands around us, we justly dread it at last; and ceasing to lean toward Crisp’s divinity, we return to St. James, St. John, and St. Jude, and to the latter part of St. Paul’s Epistles which we too often overlooked, and to which hardly two ministers did, upon the whole, ever do more justice than Mr. Baxter and Mr. Wesley. (4.) A man who gives to different people, or to the same people at different times, directly contrary directions, does not always contradict himself. I have a fever, and my physician, under God, restores me to health by cooling medicines; by and by I am afflicted with the cold rheumatism, and he prescribes fomentations and warming remedies, but my injudicious apothecary opposes him, under the pretence that he goes by no certain rule, and grossly contradicts himself. Let us apply this to Mr. Wesley and the Versifier, remembering there is less difference between a burning fever and a cold rheumatism, than between the case of the trifling Antinomian and that of the dejected penitent. (5.) Whoever considers without prejudice what our satiric poet produces as contradictions, will find some of them do not so much as amount to an opposition, and that most of them do not seem so contradictory as numbers of propositions that might be extracted from the oracles of God. If the editor of the Answer to the Minutes will compare this note with the [28th] page of the Vindication, I hope he will find his performance answered, his direct attack upon the Minutes frustrated, and Mr. Wesley’s honesty fully vindicated.]

ft7 The misunderstandings of lovers (why not of believers) end in a renewal and increase of love.]

ft8 We make war in order to get peace.]

ft9 We enjoy peace in the midst of war.]

ft10 The word Antinomianism is derived from two Greek words, anti and nomos, which signify “against the law,” and the word “legal” from the Latin legalis, which means “agreeable to the law.”]

ft11 The legality contended for in these letters is not a stumbling at Christ, and a going about to establish our own righteousness by faithless works: this sin, which the Scripture calls unbelief, I would no more countenance than murder. The evangelical legality I want to see all in love with, is a cleaving to Christ by faith which works righteousness; a “following him as he went about doing good;” and a showing by St. James’ works that we have St. Paul’s faith.]

ft12 Our imputation of Christ’s righteousness to ourselves is a trick of our Antinomian hearts, and is a dreadful delusion: but God’s imputing of Christ’s righteousness to true believers is a most blessed reality, for which we cannot too much contend. “He speaks the word and it is done;” his imputation is not an idea, but a fiat; wherever it takes place, “Jehovah our righteousness, or Christ the righteous, dwells in the heart by faith.” I wish that with respect to imputed righteousness we paid more regard to the late Mr. Hart’s sentiment. This experienced and sound Calvinist, in the account of his conversion, prefixed to his Hymns, says, with great truth: “As much as Lazarus coming out of the grave, and feeling himself restored to life, differed from those who only saw the miracle, or believed the fact told them; so great is the difference between a souls real coming to Christ out of himself and having the righteousness of Christ imputed to him by the precious faith of God’s elect; and a man’s bare believing the doctrine of imputed righteousness, because he sees it contained in the Scripture, or assenting to the truth of it when proposed to his understanding by others.”]

ft13 This was actually the case some months ago with respect to a sermon preached by Mr. Wesley.]

ft14 Should some sincere followers of Christ read these lines, and be convinced they never visited Christ in prison, never entertained him as a stranger, &c, it is proper they should be humbled for having overlooked this important part of “pure religion;” and consider next how far it is in their power literally to practise it. Some live at a great distance from prisons, and are necessarily detained at home. Some (as women) could not, in many places, visit prisoners with decency. Others are altogether unable to do good to the souls or bodies of the sick and captives, being themselves sick, poor, and confined. If thou art in any of these cases, believer, canst not thou influence others to do what is out of thy power? Canst thou not send the relief thou art unable to carry, and show thy good will by cutting off thy superfluities, sparing some of thy conveniences, and at times a little of thy necessaries, for thy sick, naked, hungry, or imprisoned Lord? If thou art so indigent and infirm, that thou canst absolutely do nothing for the bodies of thy fellow creatures, endeavour to do works of mercy for their souls; exhort, reprove, comfort, instruct, as thou canst, all, around thee in meekness of wisdom. If thou canst do works of mercy neither with thy tongue, hands, nor feet, then be the more diligent to do them with thy heart. In spirit, visit prisons and sick beds. If thou hast no house to take in strangers, open to them thy heart; earnestly recommend them to God, who can supply all their wants, and open to them the gate of heaven, when they lie under a hedge, as he once did to Jacob in the fields of Bethel. Give thy heart continually to the Lord, and thou givest more than a mountain of gold; and the moment thou canst “give a cup of water in his name,” bestow it as freely as he did his blood; remembering, “God loves a cheerful giver, and that it is accepted according to what a man hath, and not according to what he hath not.”]

ft15 This plea is excellent when a man comes to Christ, his High Priest, as a sinner for pardon and holiness, or for his first justification on earth; but it will be absurd, when he “stands before the throne” of Christ as a rebellious subject, or “before his judgment seat” as a criminal in the last day.]

ft16 I must do the Calvinists the justice to observe, that as our Lord says, “Ask and have;” so Elisha Coles says, “Use grace and have grace,” which is all that we contend for, if the inseparable counterpart of the axiom be admitted, “Abuse grace and lose grace.”]

ft17 Page 30 of this volume.]

ft18 These four degrees of a glorified saint’s justification are mentioned in the preceding Checks, though not so distinctly as they are here. If treating of our present justification by faith, and of justification by works in the day of judgment, I have called them “our first and second justification,” it was not to exclude the other two, but to attack gradually reigning prejudice, and accommodate myself to the language of my honoured opponent, who called justification in the day of judgment “a second justification.” I should have been more exact first; but I was so intent in demonstrating the thing, that I did not think then of contending for the most proper name. Nor did I see then of what importance it is to drag the monster error out of the den of confusion, in which he hides himself.]

ft19 See 1 John 3:22, and First Cheek, pp. 47, 48. You have no right to throw out this middle term till you have proved that my quotations are false.]

ft20 “It is a great advantage to the Papists,” says our judicious author, “that many Protestants wholly disclaim the word merit, and simply deny the merit of Gospel obedience. For hereupon the teachers show their scholars that all the fathers speak for merit, and do tell them, that the Protestant doctrine is new and heretical, as being contrary to all the ancient doctors; and when their scholars see it with their eyes, no wonder if they believe it, to our dishonour.”]

ft21 Some of the Rev. Mr. Sellon’s Works are, Arguments against the Doctrine of General Redemption considered; a Defence of God’s Sovereignty; and the Church of England vindicated from the Charge of Calvinism. All these are well worth the reading of every pious and sensible man.]

ft22 This assertion is the grand argument of an evangelical writer, in the Gospel Magazine, and of a charitable gentleman (a Baptist minister, I think) in a printed letter dated Bath. If this method of arguing is Calvinistically evangelical, my readers will easily perceive it is very far from being either legal or Scripturally logical.]

ft23 God’s imputation of righteousness is always according to truth. As all sinful men actually partake of Adam’s sinful nature, by the defiling seed of his corruption, before God accounts them guilty together with him; so all righteous men partake of Christ’s holy nature by the seed of Divine grace, before God accounts them righteous together with Christ. This dictate of reason is confirmed by Scripture. “Abraham was fully persuaded that what God had promised he was able also to perform; and therefore it wall imputed to him for righteousness; and it shall be imputed to us, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus from the dead,” Romans 4:21, &c. From this passage it is evident that faith, which unites to Christ and “purifies the heart,” is previous to God’s imputation of righteousness, although not to Crisp’s imputation, which, by a little mistake of only five or six thousand years, he dates from “before the foundation of the world.” One is sadly out, either the good doctor or the great apostle.]

ft24 The ironical titles of two books written by my opponent, to expose the proceedings of the university of Oxford, respecting the expulsion of six students belonging to Edmund Hall.]

ft25 I still call them first and second, not only to accommodate myself to the Rev. Mr. Shirley’s expression in his Narrative, but because they may with propriety be thus distinguished, when considered with respect to each other.]

ft26 The Rev. Mr. De Courcy, in his “Delineation of true and false Zeal,” a little edifying tract, which does justice to St. James’ “pure religion,” and shows, that some pious Calvinists clearly see the growth, and honestly check the progress of Antinomianism, so far as their principles will allow.]

ft27 Did not David once hate Uriah as much as Jezebel did Naboth? Was not innocent blood shed in both cases by means of sanguinary letters? Is it to the honour of David that he outdid Jezebel in kindly desiring Uriah to carry his own death warrant to Joab?]

ft28 I blame, in the Second Check, only such professors of godliness as “wear gold, pearls, and precious stones, when no distinction of office or state obliges them to do it.” As you find fault with this guarded doctrine, and insinuate that I “dwindle the noble ideas of St. Paul into a meanness of sense befitting the superstitious and contracted spirit of a hermit;” it necessarily follows that you plead for finery, or that you oppose me for opposition’s sake, when you exactly mean the same thing with me.]

ft29 These were my limited expressions.]

ft30 I have shown in the Vindication how David and Ezekiel pleaded this righteousness before God. Another instance of this plea I lately found in Nehemiah. That man of God, after describing his royal hospitality, and tender regard for the poor, says,” Think upon me, my God, for good, according to all that I have done for this people,” Nehemiah 5:19.]

ft31 Who indeed would contend with them, but such as are not afraid of flying in the face of St. Paul and Jesus Christ? See Romans 2:18, and Matthew 12:37.]

ft32 Some of the Puritans understood by grace a state of justification and sanctification.]

ft33 Want of argument in a bad cause, which people will defend “at all events,” (if I may use the words which Mr. Hill too hastily lends me in his book, but justly claims as his own in the “errata,”) obliges them to fly to personal charges. Zelus arma ministrat. Their Diana is in danger. They must raise dust, and make a noise, to divert the attention of the reader from the point. Who knows but she may escape in the hurry? At the end of the above-mentioned quotation I had added three lines, to throw some light upon the last clause, which D. Williams had cut off too short. As I did not enclose them in commas, it never entered into my mind that any body would charge me with presenting them as a quotation, nor do they in the least “misrepresent,” much less “pervert” the sense of the author. Upon this, however, my opponent brings me to a trial. But if, at p. 97, he lets me escape, without condemning me point-blank for “forging quotations,” he is not so mild, p. 27. I have observed in the Second Check, p. 97, that Mr. Wesley in his Minutes guards the foundation of the Gospel by the two clauses, where he mentions the exclusion of the “merit of works” in point of salvation, and “believing in Christ.” The two clauses I present in one point of view, in the very words of the Minutes, although not in the tense of the verb “believing,” thus: “Not by the merit of works,” but by “believing in Christ.” My opponent is pleased here to overlook the commas, which show, that I produce two different places of the Minutes; and then he improves his own oversight thus: “Forgeries of this kind have long passed for no crime with Mr. Wesley. I did not think you would have followed him in these ungenerous artifices, which must unavoidably sink the writer in our esteem. But I am sorry to say, sir, that this is not the only stratagem of this sort which you have made use of. Instance your bringing in Mr. Whitefield as a maintainer of a second justification by works,” &c, &c. The bare mention of such groundless accusations being a sufficient refutation of them, I shall close this note by observing, that the pure religion which I vindicate is too well grounded on Scripture to need the support, either of the pretended forgeries which my opponent contrives for me, or of the blackening charges which he is forced to produce for want of better arguments. In almost any other but my pious opponent, I should think that this severity proceeded from palpable disingenuity; but my respect for him does not permit me to entertain such a thought. I urge for his excuse the inconceivable strength of prejudice, and the fatal tendency of his favourite system. Yes, O Calvinism, upon thee I charge the mistakes of my worthy antagonist! If at any time his benevolent temper is soured, thy leaven has done it. It is by thy powerful influence that he discovers “a forgery,” where there is not so much as the printer’s omission of a comma to countenance his discovery. It is through the mists which thou raisest that he sees in the works of one of our most correct authors, nothing but “a regular series of inconsistencies, a wheel of contradiction running round and round again.” Thou lendest him thy deceitful glass, when he looks at my Second Check, and cries out, “Base and shocking slander! Acrimonious, bitter, and low sneers! Horrid misrepresentations, and notorious perversions! Abominable beyond all the rest! A wretched spirit of low sarcasm and slanderous banter runs through the whole book,” which contains “more than a hundred close pages, as totally void of Scriptural argument as they are replete with calumny, gross perversions, equivocations,” — and a “doctrine full of rottenness and deadly poison, the spurious offspring of the man of sin, begotten out of the scarlet whore.” I beg my readers would not think the worse of my opponent’s candour, on account of these severe charges. In one sense they appear to me very moderate; for who can wonder, that a good, mistaken man, who finds Calvin’s everlasting, absolute, and unconditional reprobation in the mild oracles of the God of love, should find “forgery, vile slander, calumny, horrid perversions, deadly poison,” &c, in my sharp Checks, and perpetual contradictions in Mr. Wesley’s works? Are we not treated with remarkable kindness, in comparison of the merciful God whom we serve? Undoubtedly; for neither of us is yet so much as indirectly charged with contriving in cool blood, the murder of “one” man; much less with forming, from all eternity, the evangelical plan to save unconditionally by “free grace” the little flock of the elect, and damn unconditionally by “free wrath” the immense herd of the reprobates! and with spending near six thousand years in bringing about an irresistible decree, that the one shall absolutely go to heaven, let them do what they please to be damned; and that the other shall absolutely go to hell, and burn there to all eternity, let them do what they can to be saved!]

ft34 This is, I fear, the very doctrine of your fourth letter, where an impenitent murderer is represented as complete in Christ, &c.]

ft35 Here my worthy opponent is exactly described by Flavel.]

ft36 My worthy opponent has publicly advanced, not only that sin, even adultery and murder, does not hurt the pleasant children, but that it even works for their good.]

ft37 Dr. Crisp, who was publicly called an Antinomian by the Puritans, and his tenets loose, corrupt, and pernicious doctrine; Antinomian dotages, &c.]

ft38 The word mysticism, like the word enthusiasm, may be used in a good or bad sense. I am no more ashamed of the true mystics, i.e. those who fathom the deep mysteries of inward religion, than of the true enthusiasts, those who are really inspired by the grace and love of God. When I said that Solomon was the great Jewish mystic, I took the word mystic in a good sense; if all are mystics who preach Christ in us, and Christ the Light of the world, (as you intimate in your Five Letters,) I affirm, that St. Paul and St. John are two of the greatest mystics in the world. And when I intimated, that Solomon’s Song is a mystical book, and that the Rev. Mr. Romaine has given a mystical, and in general edifying explanation of the one hundred and seventh Psalm; I no more insulted those good men than our Church reflects upon our Lord, when she says, that “matrimony represents to us the mystical union between Christ and his Church.” If Mr. Wesley has spoken against mysticism, it is undoubtedly against that which is wild and unscriptural; for he has shown us his approbation of rational and Scriptural mysticism, by publishing very edifying extracts from the works of the great German and English mystics, Kempis and Mr. Law. Permit me to recommend to you what Mr. Hartley, a clergyman whom you have quoted with honour, has written in defence of the mystics; and to remind you, that, abroad, those who go a little deeper into inward Christianity than the generality of their neighbours, are called pietists, or mystics, as commonly as they are called Methodists in England. On the preceding accounts I hope, that when Mr. Wesley, or Mr. Shirley, shall again condemn mysticism, they will particularly observe that it is only unscriptural and irrational mysticism which they explode.]

ft39 A figure of speech, which consists in using a word in an improper sense, as when unfaithful ministers are called “dogs that cannot bark.”]

ft40 The reader is once more desired to remember, that by works we understand, not only the works of the tongue and hands, i.e. words and actions; but also, and chiefly, the works of the mind and heart, that is, thoughts, desires, and tempers.]

ft41 If I make use of irony in my Checks, I can assure thee, reader, it is not from “spleen,” but reason. It appears to me that the subject requires it; and that ridiculous error is to be turned out of the temple of truth, not only with Scriptural argument, which is “the sword of the Spirit,” but also with mild irony, which is a proper scourge for a glaring and obstinate mistake. I have already observed, that our Lord himself used it with his apostles, when he came out of his agony and bloody sweat. Some other remarkable instances of it we find in Scripture, 1 Kings 22:15. Micaiah, a prophet of the Lord, being requested by King Ahab and pious King Jehoshaphat to tell them, whether Israel should go against Ramoth Gilead to battle: he ironically answered,” Go, and prosper; for the Lord shall deliver it into the hands of the king.” Well known is that solemn, though ironical, or, as Mr. Hill would call it, sarcastic reproof of Solomon to a young prodigal, “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, let thine heart cheer thee, and walk in the way of thy heart, and in the sight of thy eyes,” Eccles, 11:9. From these examples I conclude, that an irony dictated by love not only is no sign of “a bad spirit,” but is a useful figure of speech, especially where the rapid progress of a preposterous error calls for the sharp rebukes mentioned by St. Paul in my motto.]

ft42 The prejudice of my opponents against Mr. Wesley makes them catch at every shadow of opportunity to place him in a contemptible light before the world. Witness their exclaiming against him for having suffered me to make an honourable mention of his labours in the Vindication, to counterbalance a little the loads of contempt poured upon him on all sides. Those gentlemen do not consider that there are times when a grey-headed, useful, and yet slighted, insulted minister of Christ, may not only suffer another to speak honourably of his labours, but when he ought to magnify his own office in person. St. Paul certainly did so, when he said, “In nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles. I have laboured more abundantly than they all. Are they ministers of Christ, I am more; in labours more abundant,” &c. After the apostle’s example, might not Mr. Wesley himself say, (giving, like him, all the glory to Divine grace,) “I am nothing behind the chief of Gospel ministers. I have laboured more abundantly than they all?” Nay, might he not add, “I have broken the ice, and stood in the gap for them all?” Now if, instead of answering for himself, he has permitted me to vindicate his aspersed character, and despised ministry, where is the harm? If Timothy was to let no man despise his youth, is Mr. Wesley guilty of an unpardonable crime because he has permitted me to bear my testimony against the impropriety of despising his old age? And does not even young Mr. Hill say much more for himself than I have done for Mr. Wesley the aged? The whole of what I have advanced in his favour centres in this assertion, “He has done much for God.” But my opponent addresses me thus before the public, “Friendly Remarks,” (p. 69,) “You know my character, that I have suffered much, very much for God.” And yet this very gentleman takes Mr. Wesley to task, and accuses him of self importance! O partiality, how long wilt thou blind and divide us? And how long wilt thou cause the astonished world to say, “See how these sheep bite and devour one another?”]

ft43 A frock, painted with flames and devils, in which heretics are burned by the inquisition.]

ft44 There is but one word in the original, which our translators indifferently render impute, count, or reckon.]

ft45 I have on purpose been guilty of several such repetitions, not only because the same answers solve frequently different objections; but because I should be glad to stop the mouths of some of my readers, if I may give that name to prejudiced persons, who cast a careless, and perhaps a malignant look over here and there a page; and, without one grain of candour, condemn me for not saying in one letter what I have perhaps already said in half a dozen. In these perilous times we must run the risk of passing for fools with men of unbiassed judgment, that we may not pass for heretics with some of our brethren. And it is well, if, after all our repetitions, we are not still charged with not holding what we have so frequently asserted. For, alas! what repetitions, what scriptures, what expostulations can reach breasts, covered with a shield of prejudice, which bears such a common motto as this, “Non persuadebis etiamsi persuaseris?” I could wish, that such readers as will not do justice to the arguments of our opponents, as well as to our own, would never trouble themselves with our books.]

ft46 The second instance of this heat, so favourable to my cause, may be seen in the appendix, (No. 10.)]

ft47 To produce such instances out of the “Review,” would be almost endless. One, however, Mr. Hill forces me to touch upon a second time. This is the case. The sword of the Spirit, which Mr. Wesley uses, is two edged. When he defends the first Gospel axiom against the Pharisees, he preaches “salvation, not by the merit of works, but by believing in Christ:” and when he defends the second Gospel axiom against the Antinomians, he preaches “salvation, not by the merit of works, but by works as a condition.” No sooner did the Calvinists see this last proposition at full length in the Minutes than they took the alarm, fondly imagining that Mr. Wesley wanted to overthrow the Protestant doctrine of salvation by faith. To convince them of their mistake, I appealed to Mr, Wesley’s works in general, and to the Minutes in particular; two sentences of which evidently show that he had not the least intention of setting aside faith in Christ, in order to make way for the antichristian merit of works. Accordingly, I laid those sentences before my readers, taking special care to show by commas that I produced two different parts of the Minutes, thus: “Not by the merit of works,” but by “believing in Christ.” Here is not a shadow of disingenuity, either as to the quotations, for they are fairly taken from the Minutes; or as to the sense of the whole sentences, for fifty volumes, and myriads of hearers can testify, that it perfectly agrees with Mr. Wesley’s well-known doctrine. But what does Mr. Hill? Biassed by his system, he tampers with my quotations; he takes off the two commas after the word works; he overlooks the two commas before the word believing! He (inadvertently, I hope) throws my two distinct quotations into one; and by that means adds to them the words “but by,” which I had particularly excluded. When he has thus turned my two just quotations into one that is false, he is pleased to put me into the Geneva pillory for his own mistake; and as his doctrines of grace teach him to kill two birds with one stone, he involves Mr. Wesley in my gratuitous disgrace, thus: “Forgeries of this kind have long passed for no crime with Mr. Wesley: I did not think you would have followed him in these ungenerous artifices.” (“Review,” p. 27.) Upon the remonstrance I made about this strange way of proceeding, (see note, Fourth Check, p. 229,) I hoped that Mr. Hill would have hanged down his head a moment, and dropped the point for ever. But no: he must give a Finishing Stroke, and drive home the nail of his rash accusation, by calling my remarks upon his mistakes “attempts to vindicate that most shameful, false quotation he [Mr. Fletcher] has twice made from the Minutes.” (Log. Wesl. p. 35.) And to prove that my attempts have been unsuccessful, he produces passages out of a newspaper, which represent “his majesty,” — “stealing bread,” — “her majesty,” — “committed to the house of correction.” To this I answer, that if such unconnected quotations (of which I only give here the substance) were properly distinguished by commas; if they were separated by intervening words; and if they did not in the least misrepresent the author’s sense, it would be great injustice to call them either “a most shameful false quotation,” or a “forgery.” Now these three particulars meet in my two quotations from the Minutes. (1.) They are both properly distinguished with commas. (2.) They are parted by intervening words. And (3.) They do not in the least misrepresent Mr. Wesley’s meaning: whereas, (to say nothing more of my commas expunged in the Review,) no word intervenes between Mr. Hill’s supposed quotations out of the papers; and they form a shameful misrepresentation of the publisher’s meaning. O! but as the quotations from the Minutes are linked, they “speak a language directly opposite to the Minutes themselves.” So says Mr. Hill, without producing the shadow of a proof. But, upon the arguments of the five Checks, I affirm that the two Gospel axioms, or my linked quotations and the Minutes, agree as perfectly with each other as those positions of St. Paul to which they answer: “By grace ye are saved through faith.” Therefore “work out your salvation with fear.” From this redoubled stroke of Mr. Hill, I am tempted to think, that, like Justice, “Logica Genevensis” has a covering over her eyes; but, alas! for a very different reason. Like her also she has a balance in her left hand; but it is to weigh out and vend her own assertions as proofs. And, like her, she holds a sword in her right hand; but, alas! it is often to wound brotherly love, and stab evangelical truth. Bring her into the field of controversy, and she will at once cut down Christ’s doctrine as dreadful heresy. Set her in the judgment seat to pass sentence over good works, and over honest men, that do not bow at her shrine; and without demur she will pronounce, that the former are dung, and that the latter are knaves.]

ft48 See the above-mentioned “Address from Candid Protestants.”]

ft49 Solifidianism is the doctrine of the Solifidians; and the Solifidians are men who, because sinners are justified (sola fide) by “sole faith” in the day of conversion, infer, as Mr. Berridge, that “believing is the total term of all salvation,” and conclude, as Mr. Hill, that the doctrine of final justification by the works of faith in the great day is “full of rottenness and deadly poison.” It is a softer word for Antinomianism.]

ft50 I speak only of the obedience of faith. It is only for that obedience, and for the works of faith, that St. James pleads in his epistle, Mr. Wesley in the Minutes: and I in the Checks. All other obedience is insincere; all other works Pharisaical.]

ft51 How strangely may prejudice influence a good man! Mr. Berridge (page 164, &c,) raises a masked battery against the article of the Minutes, where Mr. Wesley hints that the word merit might be used in a Scriptural sense to express what Dr. Owen, by an uncouth circulocution, calls “the rewardable condecency, that our whole obedience, through God’s gracious appointment, has unto eternal life.” “O sir,” says Mr. Berridge, “God must abominate the pride, the insolence of human pride, which could dream of merit: it is enough to make a devil blush.” There is great truth in these words, if Mr. Berridge speaks only of proper merit, or merit of condignness and equivalence; but if he extends them to the evangelical worthiness so frequently mentioned by our Lord — if he applies them to improper merit, generally called merit of congruity — he indirectly charges Christ with teaching a doctrine so excessively diabolical, that the devil himself would be ashamed of it: and what is more surprising still, if I mistake not, he indirectly enforces the dreadful heresy himself by an illustration, which, in some degree, shows how God rewards us “for” our works, and “according to” our works. “A tender-hearted gentleman,” says he, “employs two labourers out of charity to weed a little spot of four square yards: both are old and much decrepit, but one is stronger than the other. The stronger weeds three yards, and receives three crowns; the weaker weedeth one, and receives one crown. Now both are rewarded for their labour, and according to their labour, but not for the merit of their labour.” Granted, if merit is taken in the sense of proper merit, or merit of condignness and equivalence; but absolutely denied if it is taken in the sense of improper worthiness, or merit of congruity. Let Thomas Aquinas, the most famous of all the Papist divines, bring his standard of merit, and measure Mr. Berridge; and if the vicar of Everton (how loud soever he may exclaim against the word) is not found holding the doctrine of merit of congruity as much as Mr. Baxter, let me for ever forfeit all preteritions to a grain of common sense. “The angelic doctor” defines merit thus: Dicitur aliquis mereri ex condigno, quando invenitur equalitas inter præmium et meritum secundum estimationem; ex congruo autem, tantum quando talis æqualitas non invenitur: sed solum secundum liberalitatem dantis munus tribuitur quod dantem decet: that is, “A man is said to merit with a merit of condignness, [i.e. to merit properly,] when, upon an average, there appears an equality between the reward and the merit. But he is said to merit only with a merit of congruity [i.e. to merit improperly] when there is no such equality; and when a benefactor, out of mere liberality, makes a present which it becomes him to make.” Now, let candid men compare Mr. Berridge’s illustration with the definition that the most renowned Papist doctor has given us of merit; and let them say if Mr. Berridge, instead of splitting the hair, does not maintain and illustrate the doctrine of merit of congruity: and if one of the blushes which he supposes our Lord’s doctrine Of worthiness, or merit, would bring upon the face of some modest devil, does not become the author of the “Christian World Unmasked,” more than the author of the Minutes.]

ft52 Some of my readers will wonder at my coupling the Calvinists and the Romanists, when I speak of those who hold absolute reprobation; but my observation is founded upon matter of fact. We are too well acquainted with the opinion of the Calvinists concerning the vessels of wrath. The sentiments of the papists not being so public, may be brought to light by the following anecdote: — Being some years ago at Ganges, in the south of France, I went with Mr. Pomaret, the Protestant minister of that town, to recommend to Divine mercy the soul of a woman dying in child bed. When he came out of the house, he said: “Did you take notice of the person who was by the bed side? He is a man-midwife, and a strenuous Papist. You see by the consequences that this poor woman had a very hard labour. As it was doubtful whether the child would be born alive, he insisted upon baptizing it in the womb, avec une seringue, according to custom. The Protestant women in the room exclaimed against his intention of tormenting a woman in that extremity, by so ridiculous and needless an operation. ‘Needless!’ replied he, ‘how can you call that needless, which will save a soul? Do you not know that if the child dies unbaptized it will certainly be lost?’” The doctrine of the Romish Church is, then, free wrath, or free reprobation, for the myriads of infants who die without baptism all the world over. I beg leave to confirm this anecdote by a public testimony. My opponents have frequently mentioned the agreement of my sentiments with those of the Popish champion Bellarmine. This gave me a desire of looking into his works. Accordingly I procured them last winter; and, to my great surprise, before I had read a page, I found him a peculiar admirer of the great Predestinarian St. Augustine, whom he perpetually quotes. Nay, he is so strenuous an assertor of Calvinistic election, that, to prove “we can give no account of God’s election on our part,” among the reasons advanced by Calvin, Coles, Zanchius, &c, in support of unconditional election and reprobation, he proposes the following argument: — Tertia ratio, &c, ducitur a parvulorum diversitate, quorum aliqui rapiuntur statim a baptismo, alii paulo ante baptismum, quorum priores ad gloriam prædestinatorum, posteriores ad pænam reproborum pertinere non est dubium; nec possunt hic ulla merita previsa, ullusve bonus usus liberi arbitrii, aut gratis fingi.” (Bell. Opera de gratia et libero arbitrio. Cap. v, Antverpiæ, 1611, p. 766.) That is, “The third reason is taken from the different lot of little children; some being snatched immediately after baptism, and others a little before baptism: the former of whom undoubtedly go to the glory of the elect; and the latter to the punishment of the reprobates. Nor can any desert foreseen, or any good use of free will, or of grace, be here pretended.” This argument is truly worthy of the cause which it supports. The very essence of Calvinism is an irreconcilable opposition to the second Gospel axiom. And as Bellarmine’s argument demolishes that axiom, (it being impossible that the damnation of reprobated infants should be from themselves,) he necessarily builds up Calvinism, with all its gracious doctrines. I might here return my last opponent these words of his “Finishing Stroke,” (p.!5,) which he writes in capitals, “So BELLARMINE.” “See, sir, what company you are again found in!” But I do not admire such arguments. Were father Walsh and Cardinal Bellarmine in the right, it would be no more disgrace to Mr, Hill to stand between them both, than it is to me to believe, with the cardinal, that Christ has said, “In the day of judgment, by thy words thou shalt be justified:” for, as a diamond does not become a pebble upon the finger of a Papist, so truth does not become a lie under his pen.]

ft53 Mr. Berridge invites me thus to retort his bad argument against sincere obedience, (p. 94, 50. 18:) “I have been praying fifteen years for faith with some earnestness, and am not yet possessed of more than half a grain. Jesus assures you that a single grain, &c, would remove a mountain load of guilt from the conscience,” &c.]

ft54 By the word wholly, Mr. Berridge cannot mean that our damnation may not have secondary causes — such as a tempting devil, an alluring world, wicked company, a bad book, &c. He is too wise to deny it. All I suppose he means, as well as myself, is, that every reprobate is the primary, meritorious cause of his damnation. Just as Divine grace in Christ is the primary, meritorious cause of our salvation; although under that original, principal leading cause, there are inferior, instrumental, evidencing causes — such as Bibles, ministers, religious conversation, faith, good works. &c.]

ft55 The warm author of a pamphlet, entitled, “Dr. Crisp’s Ghost, or a Check upon Checks, being a Bridle for Antinomian, and a Whip for Pelagian and Arminian Methodists,” with this motto, “Without are dogs, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie:” designed, it seems, to whip the Arminian dogs, and to prove that Flavel, Baxter, Williams, and I, make a lie, when we represent Dr. Crisp as an abettor of “Antinomian dotages.” This warm author, I say, informs us, that even Dr. Crisp, overcome by the glaring evidence of truth, once said, “I must read the fearful doom of all who have not learned this lesson [denying ungodliness,] and are not yet taught it of God, &c. They are yet in the gall of bitterness, and in the bond of iniquity, and have not their part in this matter. I say, as yet, this is their fearful doom; and if they continue thus untaught their lesson, there can be no salvation by grace for them. ‘ Not every one that says, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father, which is in heaven,’ &c. Some licentious, ungodly wretches I know reply, though to their own ruin, &c, that Christ justifies the ungodly, and we are saved by faith without works. But, alas! they observe not how cunningly the devil equivocates to lull them asleep in their ungodly practices. It is true indeed that Christ justifies the ungodly; that is, he finds them ungodly when he imputes his righteousness to them: but he does not leave them ungodly after he has inspired them: he teacheth them to deny ungodliness. He affords no cloak to perseverance in ungodliness; but will come in flaming fire, with his mighty angels, to render vengeance unto such. He that denies not ungodliness, him will Christ deny before his Father which is in heaven. Why, then, wilt thou be deluded with gross sophistry in so clear a sunshine of the Gospel? Is not the light so bright that thine own heart checks thee? And if thine heart condemns thee, God is greater, and searches all things.” Hail: Crisp. Far from checking my Checks, and whipping the Arminian dog, in a happy moment thou manfully tightest St. James’ battle. Thou callest the doctrine of the Checks “sunshine:” and whippest thine own speculative error out of the Church as “gross sophistry.” Dr. Crisp (as quoted by his opponent,) almost discovered once the important difference between the salvation of a sinner previous to works; and the salvation of a believer consequent upon works. His excellent words run thus: “It is true, also, we are saved by faith without works; but here also Satan equivocates as grossly as in the other case: for though faith only saves without works efficiently, yet not consequentially, as I said before; that is, though faith only saves, yet that faith must not be alone that saves, but must be attended with its fruits, to wit, denying ungodliness; else it is so far from saving, that it is but a dead faith; and he is but a vain man that has no better, as St. James well affirms. The person believing must deny ungodliness, though this denial works not his salvation.” This is very true, if it is understood either of initial salvation, or of the primary cause of eternal salvation. “Our Saviour speaks to the same purpose: ‘A good tree bringeth forth good fruit.’ He does not say, the fruit makes it a good tree; yet the good fruit is inseparable. I speak not of quantities or degrees, &c, but of the truth; to wit, a real and sincere denial of ungodliness.” Excellent! To whip the dogs, the Rev. Mr. P — I need only prove, that when David robbed Uriah of the ewe lamb that lay in his bosom, tried to kill his soul with drunkenness, and treacherously killed his body with the sword of the Ammonites, he “really and sincerely denied ungodliness.” And that his faith produced the good fruit, which is INSEPARABLE from saving faith. The moment this is done I promise the public to clear the pious Calvinists in general from the charge of speculative Antinomianism, Dr. Crisp in particular from that of glaring contradiction, and his zealous second, who accuses me with “gross falsities,” from Calvinistic rashness. We can no more exculpate warm Calvinists, when they betray holiness into the hands of practical Antinomians, because they now and then speak honourably of good works, than we can clear Pontius Pilate from the guilt of delivering the Messiah to the Jews, because he once solemnly “took water, and washed his hands before the multitude, saying, I find no fault in this just person: I am innocent of his blood: see ye to it.” If the author of the “Whip for the Arminians” considers this, or if he turns to Fourth Check, p. 224, where I produce D. Williams’ observation concerning Dr. Crisp’s inconsistency, he will be probably less forward in checking Checks that he has not candidly considered; and in making whips for the backs of his honest neighbours, lest some of them should take them from him to lash his mistakes, and chastise his precipitation.]

ft56 Here Mr. Berridge, in a fit of legality, far exceeds the limits of the truth which I maintain in the Checks; for he insinuates that the recovery of backsliders is as improbable as their bodily translation into heaven. For my part, severe as I am represented to backsliders, I believe their return is ten thousand times more probable, than their going to heaven as Enoch and Elijah did.]

ft57 The reader is desired to take particular notice of this observation, because it cuts up by the root Bradwarden’s famous argument. “If you allow, (says he,) (1.) That God is able to do a thing, and, (2.) That he is [absolutely] willing to do a thing: then, (3.) I affirm, that the thing will not, cannot go unaccomplished: otherwise God must either lose his power, or change his mind. If the [absolute] will of God could be frustrated and vanquished, its defeat would arise from the created wills either of angels or of men. But could any created will whatever, &c, counteract and baffle the will of God, the will of the creature must be superior either in strength or in wisdom to the will of the Creator: which can by no means be allowed.” We fully grant to Mr. Toplady that the argument is “extremely conclusive,” provided the two words “absolutely” and “absolute” be taken into it; and therefore, we maintain, as well as he, that man is actually saved, so far as God absolutely wills.]

ft58 Calvinism is Christianity obscured by mists of Pharisaic election and reprobation, and by a cloud of stoical fatalism. Popery is Christianity under a cloud of Pharisaic bigotry, and under thick fogs of heathenish superstition. Judaism is Christianity under the veil of Moses. Mohammedanism is a jumble of Christianity, Judaism, Gentilism, and imposture. And Gentilism is the religion of Cain and Abel; or, if you please, of Shem, Ham, and Japheth, under a cloud of false and dark tradition. Some call it the religion of nature: I have no objection to the name, if they understand by it the religion of our nature in its present state of initial recovery, through Christ, from its total fall in Adam.]

ft59 Faith in God as a Creator, Lawgiver, and Judge, was not, less necessary to Lucifer and Adam, in order to their standing in a state of innocence, than faith in God as Redeemer, Sanctifier, and Rewarder of them that diligently seek him, is necessary to sinners in order to their recovery from a state of guilt; or to believers, in order to avoid relapses and final apostasy. Faith, therefore, so far as it implies an unshaken confidence in God and a firm adherence to his will, is as eternal as love and obedience. But when it is considered as “the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen,” which are essential properties of a believer’s faith in this present state of things, it is evident that it will necessarily end in sight, as soon as the curtain of time is drawn up; and terminate in enjoyment, as soon as God’s glory appears without a veil.]

ft60 The Rev. Mr. Madan does not scruple to call our faith “the instrumental cause” of our justification. (See his sermon on James 2:24, printed by Fuller, London, 1761, page 18.) And if we shall be justified in the day of judgment by our words, they shall undoubtedly be at least an evidencing cause of our final justification. Hence it is that the same judicious divine speaks (p. 30, 1. 4, &c,) of our being “justified in this three-fold sense of the word, meritoriously by Christ, instrumentally by faith, and declaratively by works, which are the fruits of faith.” The reader will permit me to illustrate the essential difference there is between primary and secondary causes, by the manner in which David became Saul’s son-in-law. The primary causes of this event were undoubtedly, on God’s part, assisting power and wisdom; and on King Saul’s part, a free promise of giving his daughter in marriage to the man who should kill Goliah. The secondary causes, according to the Rev. Mr. Madan’s plan, may be divided into instrumental and declarative. The instrumental causes of David’s honourable match were his faith, his sling, his stone, Goliah’s sword, &c. And the declarative or evidencing causes were his works. He insists upon fighting the giant, he renounces carnal weapons, puts on the armour of God, runs to meet his adversary, slings a fortunate stone, brings his adversary down, flies upon him, and cuts off his head. By these works he was evidenced a person duly qualified to marry the princess; or, to keep to the Rev. Mr. Madan’s expression, “by” these “works” he was “declaratively” judged a man fit to be rewarded with the hand of the princess. Now, is it not clear that his works, upon the evidence of which he received such a reward, had as important a part in his obtaining it, as the faith and sling, by whose instrumentality he wrought the works? And is it not strange that the Rev. Mr. Madan should be an orthodox divine, when he says that “we are declaratively justified by works,” and that Mr. Wesley should be a dreadful heretic for saying that we are “saved, not by the merit of works, but by works as a condition;” or, in other terms, that we are finally justified, not by works as the primary, meritorious cause; but as a secondary, evidencing, declarative cause?]

ft61 The ingenious author of a new book, called “Essays on Public Worship, Patriotism,” &c, does not scruple to send such an exhortation abroad into the world: — “Let us substitute honesty instead of faith. It is the only foundation of a moral character, and it ought to be the only test of our religion. It should not signify what, or how little a man believed, if he was honest. This would put Christianity upon the best footing.” (See the Monthly Review for March, 1773.)]

ft62 Their names were William Leddra, Marmaduke Stephenson, William Robinson, and Mary Dyer. (See The History of the Quakers, by Sewell; and New-England Judged, by George Bishop.)]

ft63 He was a pious, but injudicious clergyman of the Church of Rome, who, in some of his works, spoiled the doctrine of grace by Calvinistic refinements; and that of Christian perfection by Antinomian rant.]

ft64 (1.) When I say that God saves sinners “merely” through Jesus Christ, I do not exclude our faith, the instrumental cause of our salvation; nor our works of faith, the evidencing cause of it, any more than I exclude Divine mercy. I only meant that Christ is the primary, meritorious cause of our justification; and that from him all secondary instrumental causes receive whatever influence they have toward our eternal salvation. Nor do I take away from the Redeemer’s glory, when I affirm, with the Rev. Mr. Madan, that “we are justified instrumentally by faith, and declaratively by works;” or that faith is the instrumental, and works are the declarative cause of our complete justification. For as I speak of faith in Christ, “the light of men and the Saviour of the world;” and as I mean the works of that faith, I secure his mediatorial honours; such works being all wrought through his influence, perfumed with his merits, and accepted through his intercession. Christ is then all in all still; the primary and meritorious cause passing through all the secondary and instrumental causes, as light does through our windows and eyes; food through our mouths and stomachs; and vital blood through our arteries and veins. N. B. The parts of this discourse, which are enclosed in brackets, [ . . . ] are the additions that guard or strengthen the old sermon which my opponent calls for; and the parts contained between the two hands, F are the passages which he has extracted from it, and published at the end of his Finishing Stroke.]

ft65 (2.) My sentiment concerning election is thus expressed by a great Calvinist minister: “In the written word a decree of God is found, which shows who are the chosen and the saved people: ‘He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.’ The chosen people therefore are a race of true believers, convinced by God’s Spirit of their ruined estate, endowed with Divine faith, by which they seek to Christ for help; and seeking do obtain pardon, peace, and holiness.” (The Christian World Unmasked, second edition, p. 186.) Judicious Christians will probably agree here with this pious divine, if he does not deny, (1.) That in the Divine decree of election the word “believeth” excludes from the election those who “have cast off their faith,” or “have made shipwreck of the faith.” And (2.) That the word “is baptized,” implies “professing the faith in word and work;” or making and standing to the baptismal vow, which respects not only the believing the articles of the Christian faith, but also keeping God’s holy will and commandments.]

ft66 (3.) I say Gospel grace, because it is that which the apostle means. It may with propriety be distinguished from the original grace which Adam had before the fall, and which Deists and Pharisees still suppose themselves possessed of. Some people imagine, that if our first parents had well acquitted themselves in the trial of their faithfulness, their reward would not have been of grace; they would (strictly speaking) have merited heaven. But this is a mistake. From the Creator to the creature, all blessings are, and must for ever be of grace, of mere grace. Gabriel himself enjoys heaven through free grace. Unless some gracious promise interposes, God may this instant put an end, without injustice, not only to his glory, but to his very existence. Should you ask what difference there is between original and Gospel grace; I answer, that original, Adamic grace naturally flowed from God, as Creator and Preserver, to innocent, happy creatures: but Gospel grace, that for which St. Paul so strenuously contends in my text, supernaturally flows from God, as Redeemer and Comforter, to guilty, wretched mankind: and here let us take notice of the opposition there is between Pharisaic and evangelical obedience, between the works of the law and the works of faith. The former are done with a proud conceit of the natural strength which man lost by the fall; and the latter with an humble dependence on Divine mercy through the Redeemer’s merits, and on the supernatural power bestowed upon lost mankind for his sake. When St. Paul decries the works of the law, it is merely to recommend the works of faith: and yet, O the dreadful effects of confusion! In Babel people suppose that he pours equal contempt upon both.]

ft67 (4.) I prefer “properly” to “absolutely,” the word which I formerly used; because “absolutely” bears too hard upon the second Gospel axiom, and turns out of the Gospel the rewardable condecency, that our whole obedience, even according to Dr. Owen, hath unto eternal life, through God’s gracious appointment.]

ft68 (5.) I say now “properly merit us heaven,” and not “save us, get us heaven, or procure us heaven,” expressions which occur a few times in my old sermon; because (taking the word “merit” in its full and proper sense,) the phrase “cannot merit us heaven,” leaves room to defend the necessity of evangelical obedience, and of the works of faith, by which we shall be saved, not indeed as being the first and properly meritorious cause of our salvation, (for to ascribe to them that honour would be to injure free grace, and place them on the Mediator’s throne,) but as being the secondary instrumental cause of our justification in the great day, and consequently of our eternal salvation. Nor does the expression, “properly merit us heaven,” clash with such scriptures as these: “When the wicked man turneth from his iniquity, he shall save his soul alive — save some with fear — save thy husband — save thy wife — we are saved by hope — work out your own salvation — he that converteth a sinner shall save a soul from death — thy faith hath saved thee — in doing this thou shalt save thyself, and them that hear thee.” A preacher should do justice to every part of the Scripture: nor should he blunt one edge of the sword of the Spirit, under pretence of making the other sharper. This I inadvertently did sometimes in the year 1762. May God endue me with wisdom that I may not do it in 1774! I find it the nicest thing in practical, as well as in polemical divinity, so to defend the doctrine of God’s free grace as not to wound that of man’s faithful obedience, and vice versa. These two doctrines support the two Gospel axioms, and may be called the breasts of the Church. A child of God, instead of peevishly biting the one or the other, should suck them alternately; and a minister of Christ, instead of cutting off either, should carefully protect them both. Should any one object, that if Calvinism is supported by the Rev. Mr. Berridge’s distinction between if and if, (see the Fifth Check, second part,) the Gospel axioms, about which we make so much ado, have not a better foundation, since they depend upon a distinction between original merit and derived merit: I reply, that the distinction between legal if and evangelical if is unworthy of Christ, and not less contrary to Scripture, than to reason and morality. On the contrary, the distinction between original or proper merit, and derived or improper worthiness, far from being frivolous, is Scriptural, (see Fourth Check, p. 239, &c,) solid, highly honourable to Christ, greatly conducive to morality, very rational, and lying within the reach of the meanest capacity. This will appear from the following propositions, which contain the sum of our doctrine concerning merit. (1.) All proper worthiness, merit, or desert of any Divine reward is in Christ, the overflowing fountain of all original excellence. (2) If any of the living water of that rich spring is received by faith, and flows through the believer’s heart and works, it forms improper worthiness, or derived merit; because, properly speaking, it is Christ’s merit still. (3.) Original merit answers to the first Gospel axiom, and derived worthiness to the second. (4.) According to the first covenant, we can never merit a reward, because, of ourselves as sinners, we deserve nothing but hell; and that covenant makes no provision of merit for hell-deserving sinners. But (5.) According to the second covenant, by God’s gracious appointment and merciful promise we can, improperly speaking, be worthy of heaven, through the blood of Christ sprinkled upon our hearts, and through his righteousness derived to us and to our works by faith. (6.) Hence it is that God will give some, namely, impenitent murderers, blood to drink, “for they are worthy,” they properly deserve it; while others, namely, penitent believers, shall walk with Christ in white, “for they are worthy,” they improperly merit it, Revelation 16:6, and 3:4. An illustration, taken from a leaden pipe full of water, may show how it is possible that unworthy man should become worthy, through the righteousness which Christ supplies believers with. Strictly speaking, water does not belong to a pipe, any more than merit or worthiness to a believer; for a pipe is only a number of dry sheets of lead soldered together. But if that dry, leaden pipe really receive some of the water which a river supplies, I make myself ridiculous by asserting that the man who hints there is water in the pipe confounds the elements, seeks to dry up the river, and is guilty of a dreadful philosophical heresy. However, if our prepossessed brethren feel an invincible aversion to our Lord’s word [axiov, meriting,] we are willing to become all things to them for his sake. If it may be a mean of restoring tranquillity to their minds, we cheerfully consent to use only the word of our translators “worthy;” and here I give full leave to my readers, whenever they meet the noun “merit,” or the verb “to merit,” in my Checks, to read “worthiness” instead of the one, and “to be worthy” instead of the other. It may indeed puzzle unbiassed persons to find a difference between those expressions; but no matter. If others will expose their prejudice, we ought not only to maintain the truth, but to show our condescension. The word merit is absolutely nothing to Mr. Wesley and me; but the doctrine of faithful obedience in Christ, and of the gracious rewards with which it shall be crowned for his sake, contains all our duty on earth, and draws after it all our bliss in heaven. Therefore, only grant us truly the second Gospel axiom: — grant us, that God has not appointed his creatures to endless punishments and heavenly rewards out of mere caprice: — grant us, that while the wicked shall properly and “legally deserve their own [and not Adam’s] place in hell,” the righteous shall improperly and “evangelically be worthy to obtain that world,” where they “shall be equal to the angels,” Luke 20:35: — grant us that man is in a state of probation, and shall be recompensed for, and” according to what he has done in the body, whether it be good or bad:” — in a word, grant us the capital doctrine of a day of retribution, in which “God shall judge the world in wisdom and righteousness,” not in solemn folly or satanical hypocrisy, and we ask no more. This note is a key to all the doctrines which we maintain in the Minutes, and explain in the Checks.]

ft69 (6.) Whoever reads the Scriptures without prejudice will be of Mr. Burgess’ mind concerning this awful text. (See Fourth Check, p. 225.) It was evidently spoken with reference to Christ’s law of liberty, as well as some of the passages quoted in the preceding paragraph; and if they guard even that law, how much more the law of innocence, which, though it cannot be holier in its precepts, is yet much more peremptory in its curses!]

ft70 (7.) Here that expression is used in the Scriptural sense.]

ft71 (8.) This and the preceding clauses are added to guard the doctrine of the Gospel dispensations, of which I had but very confused views eleven years ago. (See Third Check, p. 139.) Leaning then too much toward Calvinism, I fancied, at times at least, that the Gospel was confined within the narrow channel of its last dispensation; which was as absurd as if I had imagined that the swell of our rivers at high water is all the ocean. But turning to my Bible, and “reviewing the whole affair,” I clearly see that the Jewish and Christian Gospel are not the everlasting Gospel, but only two of its brightest dispensations. Should the reader ask me what I mean by “the everlasting Gospel,” when I consider it in its full latitude, I answer, that I mean with St. Paul, “The riches of God’s goodness, forbearance, and long suffering, leading men to repentance” for Christ’s sake, who in all ages is the “Saviour of the world.” Yea, and the severe strokes of his gracious providence driving them to it. I dare not insinuate that Jonah, one of the most successful preachers in the world, was not a Gospel preacher, when he stirred up all the people of Nineveh to repentance by the fear of impending destruction; and that St. John the divine was a stranger to true divinity when he gave us the following account of the manner in which a celestial evangelist preached the everlasting Gospel: “I saw another angel having the everlasting Gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, [here is free grace!] saying, with a loud voice, Fear God, and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment,” as well as of his mercy, “is come: and worship him that made heaven and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters.” Here is, if I am not mistaken, the Gospel according to which many shall come from the east, and from the west, and shall sit down at the heavenly feast with the father of the faithful, when the unloving Pharisees shall be thrust out notwithstanding their great ado about absolute election. This note will probably touch the apple of my reader’s eye, if he be a rigid Predestinarian. But if he be offended, I entreat him to consider, whether his love does not bear some resemblance to the charity of those strong Predestinarians of old, those monopolizers of God’s election, who despised poor “sinners of the Gentiles.” How violent was their prejudice! They vastly admired our Lord’s sermon at Nazareth, till he touched the sore that festered in their strait-laced breast. But no sooner did he insinuate that their election was not yet made sure, and that the poor Pagan widow of Serepta, and Naaman the Syrian were not absolute reprobates, than “they were filled with wrath, and rose up, and thrust him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill, that they might cast him down headlong” He had touched their great Diana, and therefore, to be sure, he had committed the unpardonable sin; he had spoken treason, heresy, blasphemy. (See Luke 4:28.)]

ft72 (9.) Although there were some very unguarded passages in my original sermon, yet what was unguarded in one place was in a great degree guarded in another. Thus even in this paragraph, which is the first that Mr. Hill produces in his extract, by saying that “Christ has answered all the demands of the FIRST covenant” for believers, I indirectly assert, that he has not answered the demands of the SECOND; and that, according to the Gospel, we must personally repent, believe, and obey, to be finally accepted: the covenant of grace insisting as much upon the works of faith, as the covenant of works did upon the works of the law of innocence, in order to our continuance and progress in the Divine favour. A doctrine this, which is the ground of the Minutes, the quintessence of the Checks, and the downfall of Antinomianism. It was only with respect to the covenant of works and to the law of innocence that I said in the next paragraph, transposed by Mr. Hill, “This obedience, when we are united to Christ by a Faith of the operation of God, is accepted instead of our own.” How greatly then does he mistake me, when he supposes I asserted that the personal, Adamic, and (in one sense) anti-evangelical obedience of Christ, which sprang neither from Gospel faith nor from Gospel repentance, is accepted instead of the personal, penitential, evangelical obedience of believers! It is just here that the Calvinists turn aside from the truth to make void the law of Christ and follow Antinomian dotages. Because Christ has fulfilled the Adamic law of innocence for us, they fancy that he has also fulfilled his own evangelical law of Gospel obedience, according to which we must stand or fall, when “by our words we shall be justified, and by our words we shall be condemned.”]

ft73 (10.) If I say that penitent believers are complete in Christ, with respect to the first covenant, I do not intimate that fallen believers, who “crucify the Son of God afresh,” may even commit deliberate murder, and remain “complete in him,” or (rather as the original means also) “filled with him.” Far be the horrid insinuation from the pen and heart of a Christian. I readily grant that the true believers are not less dead to the Adamic law of innocence, than to the ceremonial law of Moses; and that with respect to it, they heartily say as David, “Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord, for in thy sight shall no man living be justified.” But mistake me not; I would not insinuate that they are lawless, or only under a rule of life, which they may break without endangering their salvation. No: they “are under the law of Christ, the law of liberty, the law of the Spirit of life, the royal law” of Gospel holiness; and according to this law they shall all be rewarded or punished in the day of judgment. Although this law admits of repentance after a fall, at least during the day of salvation; and although it does not condemn us for not obeying above our present measure of power; yet it does not make the least allowance for wilful sin, any more than the Adamic law; for St. James informs a believer that “if he offend in one point, he is guilty of all.” And indeed our Lord’s parable confirms this awful declaration. The favoured servant, who had the immense debt of “ten thousand talents forgiven him,” sinned against Christ’s law only in one point, namely, in refusing to have mercy on his fellow servant, as his Lord had had compassion upon him: and for that one offence he was delivered to the tormentors, as notoriously guilty of breaking the whole law of liberty and love. “If he who despised the law of Moses perished under two or three witnesses, of how much sorer punishment shall he be thought worthy, who” despises the law of Christ! This is the ground of the Epistle to the Hebrews. But who considers? Who believes that the Son of God will command even the unprofitable servant to be cut asunder? “When the Son of man cometh, shall he find faith upon earth?” Lord! help my unbelief.]

ft74 (11.) Without the words “former” and “past,” the sentence leaned toward Antinomianism. It gave fallen believers room to conclude that their “future” or “present” unholy lives were unconditionally atoned for; contrary to St. Paul’s guarded Gospel, “God hath sent forth Christ to be a propitiation, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sin’s that are past.” Here is no pleasing inuendo, that the present or future sins of Laodicean backsliders “are for ever and for ever cancelled.”]

ft75 (12.) This is the very doctrine of the Minutes and of the Checks. Is it not astonishing that Mr. Hill should desire me to publish my sermon, as the “best confutation” of both!]

ft76 (13.) The judicious reader will easily perceive that the additions made to this, and some other paragraphs of my old sermon, are intended to guard the inferior dispensations of the Gospel. Are there not degrees of saving faith, inferior to the faith of the Christian Gospel? And are not those degrees of faith consistent with the most profound ignorance of the history of our Lord’s sufferings, and consequently of any explicit knowledge of the atonement? Although mankind in general had some consciousness of guilt, and a confused idea of propitiatory sacrifices; and although all the Jewish sacrifices and prophecies pointed to the great atonement; yet how few, even among the pious Jews, seem to have had a clear belief that the Messiah would “put away sin by the sacrifice of himself!” How unreasonable is it then to confine the Gospel to the explicit knowledge of Christ’s atoning sufferings, to which both the prophets and apostles were once such strangers! Does not St. Peter intimate that “the prophets searched” to little purpose, “what the Spirit signified, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ;” since “it was revealed to them, that not unto themselves, but unto us, they did minister the things which are now reported” in the Christian Gospel? 1 Peter 1:11, 12. And how absurd is it to suppose that nothing is Gospel but a doctrine, which the first preachers of the Christian Gospel knew little or nothing of, even while they preached the Gospel under our Lord’s immediate direction? Did not John the Baptist exceed in evangelical knowledge “all that were born of women?” Were the apostles much inferior to him when they had been three years in Christ’s school? Did not our Lord say to them. “Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear; for verily many prophets and righteous men have desired to see the things that ye see, and have not seen them; and to hear the things that ye hear, and have not heard them?” Again: did he not testify, that in general they had justifying faith, i.e. faith working by love 7. Did he not say, “Now are ye clean through the word which I have spoken unto you: the Father himself loveth you, because you have loved me, and believed that I came forth from God?” Nay, did he not send them two and two to preach, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand: repent and believe the Gospel?” And would he have sent them to preach a Gospel to which they were utter strangers? But were they not perfectly strangers to what passes now for the only Gospel? Had they the least idea that their Master’s blood was to be shed for them, even after he had said, “This is my blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for many, for the remission of sins?” When he spoke to them of his sufferings, were not they so far from believing in the atonement which he was about to make, that they were offended at the very idea? Is not this evident from the words of Peter, their chief speaker, who “began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord; this shall not happen unto thee?” i.e. we do not yet see the need of thy blood. Nay, when Christ had actually shed it, and the atoning work was finished, far from having the least notion about what is called “finished salvation,” and “Gospel,” in our day, did they not suppose that all their hopes were blasted, saying, “We trusted that it had been he who should have redeemed Israel?” Luke 24:21. Thus the very payment of their ransom made them despair of redemption; — so great was their ignorance of the doctrine of the atonement, notwithstanding their Gospel knowledge, which far exceeded that of most patriarchs and prophets! From these observations may I not conclude: (1.) That an explicit knowledge of Christ’s passion and atonement is the prerogative of the Christian Gospel advancing toward perfection? And (2.) That those who make it essential to the everlasting Gospel most dreadfully curtail it, and indirectly doom to hell, not only all the righteous Jews, Turks, and heathens, who may now be alive; but also almost all the believers who died before our Lord’s crucifixion, and some of. the disciples themselves after his resurrection?]

ft77 (14.) I add the word anti-evangelical to point out the rise of the mistake of stone pious Protestants, who, being carried away by an injudicious zeal for the first Gospel axiom, and misled by the conciseness of the apostle’s style, get upon the pinnacle of the Antinomian Babel, and thence decry all works in general; unhappily quoting St. Paul in confirmation of their error: although it is evident that the apostle never excluded from the Gospel plan of salvation by grace any works but the “works of unbelief,” and sometimes pleaded for the “works of faith,” and for the immense rewards with which they shall be crowned, in far stronger terms than St. James himself; denouncing “indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish upon every soul of man that neglects them, or doth evil,” Romans 2.]

ft78 (15.) Those who start at every expression they are not used to, will ask if our Church admits the justification of infants. I answer: Undoubtedly, since her clergy, by her direction, say over myriads of infants, “We yield thee hearty thanks, most merciful Father, that it has pleased thee to regenerate this infant with thy Holy Spirit, to receive him for thy own child,” &c. And in her catechism she teaches all children to say, as soon as they can speak, “I heartily thank our heavenly Father that he hath called me to this state of salvation.” If my objector urges that our Church puts those words only in the mouth of baptized children, I reply: True, because she instructs no others. But why does she admit to baptism all the children that are born within her pale? Does she not vindicate her practice in this respect, by an appeal to our Lord’s kind command: “Let little children come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven?” This I had not considered, when I said, in my Appeal, that our Church returns thanks for the regeneration of baptized infants only [I should have said chiefly] upon a charitable supposition, &c. For it is evident that she does it also upon Christ’s gracious declaration, Mark 10:13, &c, the precious Gospel of her office, upon which she comments in a manner most favourable to children; concluding her charge on the occasion by these words: — “Wherefore, we being thus persuaded of the good will of our heavenly Father toward this [unbaptized] infant, declared by his Son Jesus Christ, and nothing doubting.” &c. These words I had not attended to when I wrote my Appeal. I take this first opportunity of acknowledging my mistake, which shall be rectified in the next edition.]

ft79 (16.) Here is a short enumeration of good works, so called, which I decry in this sermon. Had my opponent considered it, he would never have supposed that my discourse is “the best refutation” of what I have advanced in the Checks, in favour of the good works maintained by St. James and Mr. Wesley.]

ft80 (17.) The words enclosed in brackets are in my manuscript, and were written several years ago, when looking over my sermon I thought they savoured more of Christian modesty than those which Mr. Hill has in his copy: [and here I give a public challenge to any man living to find a flaw:] I challenge nobody now, but I promise that if any man living will be kind enough to show me my errors by plain Scripture and solid argument, he shall have my sincere thanks: for if I know my heart, pure and unmixed truth is the object of my desires and controversial pursuits.]

ft81 (18.) See the first note upon the word MERELY. N. B. Here begins the greatest addition to my old sermon. It is in favour of free grace, and runs through fourteen paragraphs.]

ft82 (19.) I need not inform my judicious readers that I use the uncouth, barbarian expression of Dr. Owen, “rewardable condecency,” to convey the meaning of our Lord, when he graciously speaks of our meriting or being worthy. If sick persons will not take a draught but out of a certain cup, made in the height of a queer fashion, we must please them for their good.]

ft83 (20.) Eleven years ago I said “the Popish way:” I drop the expression now as savouring of Protestant bigotry. Though the Papists lean in general to that extreme, yet many of them have known and taught the way of salvation by a faith that interests us in the Redeemer’s merits. Many have discovered and attacked self righteousness in its most deceitful appearances. Many have lived and died in the most profound humility. I would no more be a bitter Protestant, damning all the Papists in a lump, than a bitter Papist, anathematizing all Protestants without exception.]

ft84 (21.) Should a prejudiced reader charge me with having mixed the two covenants in my Checks, in opposition to the doctrine of this discourse: should he say that I have taught the double way of works and faith, i.e. of faithless works and faith, I protest against the groundless assertion, and appeal to all my candid readers, whether I have not constantly pointed out the one Gospel way to heaven, the good old way of faith, which worketh by love. An unfeigned faith in Christ, according to the light of our dispensation, a faith shown by evangelical works, is the Scriptural condition of the covenant of grace, which I have all along, insisted upon; whereas anti-evangelical works, helped out by a reigned faith, are the imaginary condition of the mixt, fantastic covenant, against which I so justly bore my testimony eleven years ago, and against which I bear it now, fully designing so to do, “God being my helper, till my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth.” As some persons through the force of prejudice, and others through some natural defect in their understanding cannot see any difference between “the way of faith working by obedient love,” which I point out in the Checks, and “the way of works helped out by feigned faith,” which I decry in this discourse, I shall, by a plain illustration, endeavour to show them the amazing difference. A good king pities two condemned malefactors just turned off; and, at the prince’s request, not only gets them cut down from the gallows, but after restoring them by proper assistance to a degree of strength, he sets them up in a genteel business, which they are to carry on under the constant direction of the prince. One of them, who is a publican, deeply conscious of his crimes, and wondering at the prince’s condescension, does with docility and diligence whatsoever he is commanded, frequently complaining that he does so little, and expressing the greatest thankfulness, not only for his life, but for the health, light tools, and skill he works with. The other, who is a Pharisee, forgets that he has been reprieved from the gallows. He is full of self importance and ingratitude; he wonders at the publican for making so much ado about the king’s mercy, and the prince’s favour. He pertly tells you that he does his duty; and that if he has been guilty of some faults, he thanks God they were not of a capital nature. He perpetually boasts of his diligence, and though he does nothing, or only spoils his work, by doing it entirely against the prince’s directions, he says, that he is determined to maintain himself by his own industry; and that if he do not find it possible to get his living without help, he will condescend to accept some assistance from the prince to make both ends meet; but it shall be as little as he can help; for he does not love to be under an obligation to any body, no, not to the king himself. Now who does not see, that while the king graciously rewards the humble diligence of the penitent publican, he may justly punish the proud Pharisee for his wretched hypocritical obedience?. And that, when Mr. Wesley and I have sometimes contended for the works of the publican, and sometimes decried those of the Pharisee, we have only done the work of evangelists, and declared with the prophets and apostles of old that “God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble;” and that “he will give grace and glory, and no good thing shall he withhold from them that live a godly life?” If this be an error, I ask, Whereto does it differ from that frequent and awful declaration of our Lord, “Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted?”]

ft85 (22.) The word CAUSE, left out by my opponent in his quotation of this part of my old sermon, evidently shows that even formerly I did not so far lean to Antinomianism as not to assert the absolute necessity of good works, in order to the eternal salvation of adults. For if works are the secondary cause of our final justification, they can no more be dispensed with, in the great day, than faith in the day of conversion, an effect necessarily supposing its cause. If therefore I call the justification of adults free, it is not to exclude faith and works, its instrumental causes in the day of conversion and judgment; but to intimate that all along we are primarily justified by Christ’s merits, and that we never have one single grain of original worthiness.]

ft86 (23.) The Antinomians “by fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.” Because St. Paul fully answers this objection, they make the injudicious believe that he was of their sentiment; though upon their plan of doctrine the objection which he states is absolutely unanswerable. They say, “We establish the law by preaching Christ, who has kept it for us; and by extolling his imputed righteousness, through which we are for ever complete in justifying obedience before God.” Now although we humbly and thankfully acknowledge with them that our Lord has kept the Adamic law of innocence and made it honourable for us: yet we absolutely deny that he has kept the evangelical law of liberty for us. — Personal obedience to it is indispensably required of every man, and if a believer do not fulfil it for himself, St. Paul and St. James inform us that a sorer punishment and a more merciless judgment await his disobedience, than if he had never believed, Hebrews 10:29; James 2:13. Thus those holy apostles fully make up the gap of Antinomian free grace, which some of our Gospel ministers make it their business to widen.]

ft87 (24.) How could I have had the assurance of asking these questions, if I had believed, as my late opponent, that a man who actually commits the greatest crimes may actually have as true, justifying faith as Abraham ever had? I should expect that if such a faith did not, as I said eleven years ago, “turn the heart from all sin to all righteousness,” it would at least turn it from deliberate adultery, murder, and incest.]

ft88 (25.) Instead of these words [not accuse me so rashly] I formerly wrote [be ashamed to accuse me so falsely.] I reject them now, because a minister of the Gospel should not only speak the truth, but endeavour to speak it in the most acceptable manner. It is enough to give offence when it cannot be avoided. We should not provoke the displeasure of our hearers without necessity.]

ft89 (26.) My opponent has not only done this, but he has intimated that all believers may commit adultery, murder, and incest, not only without bringing upon themselves swift destruction, but with this additional advantage, that they shall infallibly “sing louder” in heaven for their deepest falls, which can never finally hurt them, because all their sins are unconditionally for ever and for ever forgiven. Had I ever insinuated such loose principles among my parishioners, I should have had a brazen forehead indeed to look them in the face while I made the above-mentioned appeal.]

ft90 (27.) Eleven years ago I said [common sense and common honesty.] I now discard the expression as needlessly offensive.]

ft91 (30.) From this objection, it is evident that the works which I decried eleven years ago were those against which I now bear my testimony, namely Pharisaical works.]

ft92 (31.) It appears to me that my sermon, far from being “the best confutation of the Minutes,” is consonant to that proposition, which has given such offence: Not by the merit of works, but by works as a condition.]

ft93 (32.) Instead of this addition, eleven years ago I said [owned that all their righteousnesses were as filthy rags, Isaiah 64:6.] For leaning then too much toward Calvinism, I supposed that the prophet in this passage spoke of the righteousness of faith: but since I have dared to read my Bible without prejudice, and to consult the context, I have found that text is spoken only of the hypocritical righteousness of the wicked; and in the Fourth Check, page 263, I have tried to rescue it from the hands of the Antinomians, who had taught me to wrest it from its proper meaning.]

ft94 Here I leave out those words: “It [the Pharisaic conceit of merit] damned the foolish virgins and the man who had not on a wedding garment.” And I do it because, upon second thoughts, it appears to me that the boldness of the foolish virgins, and the insolence of the men, who pressed to the marriage feast, without proper dress, exactly represent the vain confidence with which immoral Solifidians cry, “Lord! Lord! and make a shining profession in the robe of self-imputed righteousness; despising the evangelical robe of real righteousness and true holiness, and calling them cobwebs spun by spiders out of their own bowels.]

ft95 I had the word Pharisaic and self righteous, to come at Mr. Fulsome and his numerous fraternity, whom I now should be glad to convince of their remorseless going on in sin, and of their Antinomian delays of conversion.]

ft96 (33.) This is strictly true; nevertheless, we must grant that as cold water, when it is put over the fire in a proper vessel, imbibes the fiery heat, and boils without damping the fire; so our works of faith, when they are laid with proper humility on the golden altar of Christ’s merits, are so impregnated with his diffusive worth as to acquire “a rewardable condecency unto eternal life.” And this they do without mixing in the least with the primary or properly meritorious cause of our salvation; and consequently without obscuring the Redeemer’s glory.]

ft97 That the works of faith save us by the covenant of grace [next to Christ and faith] will be proved in the Scriptural Essay.]

ft98 (34.) Eleven years ago I said [and making us accepted.] I now reject the expression as unguarded, for it clashes with this proposition of St. Peter: “In every nation he that worketh righteousness is accepted of him.” We should take care so to secure the foundation, as not to throw down the building.]

ft99 (35.) This is the very doctrine of evangelical rewardableness, or improper, derived merit, so honourable to Christ, so humbling to man, which I have maintained in the Vindication, (page 48, &c.) Therefore, if I am a merit monger and a heretic now, it is evident that I was so eleven years ago, when I wrote a, sermon, which, as my late opponent is pleased to say, (Finishing Stroke, p. 44,) “does me much credit, and plainly shows that I was once zealously attached to the doctrines of the Church of England.”]

ft100 (36.) I substitute the word “redemption” for the word “salvation,” that I formerly used; because English logic demands it. By the same reason I leave out in the end of the paragraph the words “Saviour,” and “joint saviours,” which I had illogically coupled with “Redeemer,” and “co-redeemers.” For although it is strictly true that no man can redeem his brother’s soul or even ransom his body from the power of the grave; yet, according to the doctrine of secondary instrumental causes, it is absolutely false that no man can save his neighbour; for “in doing this,” says St. Paul, “thou shalt both save thyself and them that hear thee,” 1 Timothy 4:16.]

ft101 (37.) I say [the law of innocence] to defend the works of the law of faith, by the instrumentality of which we shall be justified or saved in the great day. For these works flowing from Christ’s grace, and never aspiring at any higher place than that which is allotted them, viz. the place of justifying evidences, they can never detract from the Saviour’s honour or his grace.]

ft102 (38.) This illustration is not strictly just. If the king had millions of bishoprics to give, if he had promised to bestow one upon every diligent clergyman; solemnly declaring that all who neglect their charge should not only miss the ecclesiastical dignity annexed to diligence, but be put to a shameful death, as so many murderers of souls, the cases would then be exactly parallel. Beside, every clergyman is not a candidate for a bishopric, but every man is a candidate for heaven. Again: a clergyman may be as happy in his parsonage as a bishop in his palace; but if a man miss heaven he sinks into hell. These glaring truths I overlooked when I was a “late evangelical preacher.”]

ft103 Formerly I said [entirely] but experience has taught me otherwise.]

ft104 (39.) This argument is weak without the additions. Our Lord informs us that when the father in the Gospel says to his fair-spoken child, Son, “go work to-day in my vineyard,” he answers, “I go, sir,” and goes not: and God himself says, “I have nourished and brought up children, but they have rebelled against me.” We to the parents who have such children, and have no power to cut off an entail!]

ft105 (40.) If this single clause in my old sermon stand, so will the Minutes and the Checks. But the whole argument is a mere jest, if a man that wallows in adultery, murder, or incest, may have as true, justifying faith as David had when he killed Goliah.]

ft106 (41.) This argument is quite frivolous if my late opponent is right. “How has many a poor soul,” says he, “who has been faithless through the fear of man, even blessed God for Peter’s denial?” (Five Letters, second edition revised, p. 40.) Hence it appears, that denying Christ with oaths and curses will cause “many a poor soul to bless God,” i.e. to “glorify our heavenly Father.” Now if horrid crimes do this as well as good works, is it not absurd to enforce the practice of good works, by saying that they alone have that blessed effect?. But my opponent may easily get over this difficulty before those whose battles he fights. He needs only charge me with disingenuity for not quoting the third revised edition of his book, if he has published such a one.]

ft107 (42.) Formerly I did not consider that as Noah walked into the ark, and Lot out of Sodom, to save their lives; so sinners are called to turn from their iniquity, and do that which is lawful and right to save their souls alive. Nor did I observe that saints are commanded to walk in good works lest the destroyer overtake them, and they become sons of perdition. However, in Babel such capital oversights did me “much credit.”]

ft108 (43.) Here I leave out the word “selfish,” as being ambiguous. It is not selfishness, but true wisdom and well-ordered self love, evangelically to “labour for the meat that endureth to everlasting life.” Not to do it is the height of Laodicean stupidity, or Antinomian conceit.]

ft109 (44.) Here I leave out [although not with heaven,] for the reasons assigned in the Scriptural Essay.]

ft110 (45.) Here Mr. H. triumphs in his Finishing Stroke, p. 50, last note, through my omission of those two words. But without having recourse to “magical power,” or even to “Logica Helvetica” to reconcile my sermon with my Checks. I desire unprejudiced Calvinists to mention any one beside the dying thief that ever evidenced his faith by confessing Christ when his very apostles denied or forsook him; by openly praying to him when the multitude reviled him; by humbly pleading guilty before thousands; by publicly defending injured innocence; by boldly reproving blasphemy; by kindly admonishing his fellow malefactor; and by fully acknowledging Christ’s kingly office, when he was crowned with thorns, and hanging on the cross. Did St. John, did Mary Magdalene, did even the Virgin Mary show their faith by such glorious works, under such unfavourable circumstances? O ye Solifidians, where is your attention?]

ft111 (46.) OBJECTIONS. “We have all the honour through grace! (says a friend of voluntary humility.) What honour can you possibly ascribe to man when you have already ascribed all honour to God? But one who begins his sermon by pleading for merit; may well conclude it by taking from God part of his honour, dominion, and praise.” ANSWER. I plead only for an interest in Christ’s merits through faith and the works of faith. This interest I call derived worthiness, which would be as dishonourable to Christ, as it is honourable to believers. I confess, also, that I aspire at the honour of shouting in heaven, “Allelujah to God and the Lamb!” In the meantime I hope that I may pay an inferior honour to all men, ascribe derived dominion to the king, bestow deserved praise upon my pious opponents, and claim the honour of being their obedient servant in Christ, without robbing the Lamb of his peculiar worthiness, and God of his proper honour, and dominion, and praise.]

ft112 Truth is confined within her firm bounds; nay, there is a middle line equally distant from all extremes; on that line she stands, and to miss her, you need only step over it to the right hand or to the left.]

ft113 I use the word now, to stop up the Antinomian gap which one of my opponents tries to keep open by insinuating, that though a true believer may commit adultery and murder now, yet he will always work righteousness before he die.]

ft114 See the excellent comment of our Church upon these words of our Lord, Fourth Check.]

ft115 That this is spoken of a truly righteous man, i.e. of a believer, appears from the following reasons: (1.) The righteous here mentioned is opposed to the wicked mentioned in the context. As surely then as the word wicked means there one really wicked, so does the word righteous mean here one truly righteous. (2.) The righteous man’s turning from his righteousness is opposed to the wicked man’s turning from his iniquity. If therefore the righteous man’s righteousness is to be understood of feigned goodness, so the wicked man’s iniquity must be understood of reigned iniquity. (3.) The crime of the righteous man here spoken of is turning from his righteousness: but if his righteousness were only a hypocritical righteousness, he would rather deserve to be commended for renouncing it; a wicked, sly Pharisee being more odious to God than a barefaced sinner, who has honesty enough not to put on the mask of religion, Rev. 3:15. (4.) Part of this apostate’s punishment, will consist, in not having the righteousness that he has done remembered. But if his righteousness is a false righteousness, or mere hypocrisy, the Divine threatening proves a precious promise; for you cannot please a hypocrite better than by assuring him that his hypocrisy shall never be remembered. What a pity is it, that to defend our mistakes we should fix egregious nonsense and gross contradiction upon the only wise God!]

ft116 These words are another indubitable proof that the righteous here mentioned is a truly righteous person; as the holy and true God would never say to a wicked Pharisee, that he shall surely live.]

ft117 There is a two-fold glorying: the one Pharisaic and contrary to faith: of this St. Paul speaks, where he says, “Boasting is excluded, &c, by the law of faith,” Romans 3:27. The other evangelical and agreeable to faith, since it is a believer’s holy triumph in God, resulting from the testimony of a good conscience. Concerning it the apostle says, “Let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing [boasting] in himself alone, and not in another,” Galatians 6:4. [The word in the original is kauchsiv in one passage, and kauchma in the other.] These seemingly contrary doctrines are highly consistent; their opposition answering to that of the Gospel axioms. The first axiom allows of no glorying but in Christ, who has alone fulfilled the law of works, or the terms of the first covenant: but the second axiom allows obedient believers an humble kauchma, “glorying” or “rejoicing,” upon their personally fulfilling the law of faith, or the gracious terms of the second covenant, 2 Corinthians 1:12. This rejoicing answers to what St. Paul calls the “witness of our own spirit,” or “the testimony of a good conscience;” which, next to the witness of the word and Spirit concerning God’s mercy and Christ’s blood, is the ground of a Christian’s confidence. “Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God, &c, because we keep his commandments,” 1 John 3:21, 22. And yet, astonishing! this blessed rejoicing, so strongly recommended by St. Paul and St. John, who, one would think, knew something of the Gospel, is now represented by some modern evangelists as the quintessence of Pharisaism.]

ft118 This is not spoken of pious Calvinists; for some of them are remarkably diligent in good works. They are Solifidians by halves; — in principle, but not in practice. Their works outshine their errors. I lay nothing to their charge, but inattention, prejudice, and glaring inconsistency. I compare them to diligent, good-natured druggists, who, among many excellent remedies, sell sometimes arsenic. They would not for the world take it themselves, or poison their neighbours; but yet they freely retail it, and in so doing they are inadvertently the cause of much mischief. Mr. Fulsome, for example, could tell which of our Gospel ministers taught him that good works are dung, and have nothing to do with eternal salvation. He could inform us who lulled him asleep in his sins with the syren songs of “unconditional election” and “finished salvation, in the full extent of the word;” that is, he could let us know who gave him his killing dose; and numbers of Deists could tell us that a bare taste or smell of Calvinism has made them loath the genuine doctrines of grace, just as tasting or smelling a tainted partridge has for ever turned some people’s stomachs against partridge.]

ft119 The reader is desired to observe that we recommend working from life and gratitude, as well as our opponents. Life and thankfulness are two important springs of action, which we use as well as they. We maintain, that even those who “have a name to live, and are dead in trespasses and sins,” cannot be saved without “strengthening the things that remain and are ready to die;” and that thankfulness for being out of hell, and for having a day of salvation through Christ, should be strongly recommended to the chief of sinners. But thankfulness and life are not all the springs necessary, in our imperfect state, to move all the wheels of obedience; and we dare no more exclude the other springs, because we have these two, than we dare cut off three of our fingers, because we have a little finger and a thumb.]

ft120 As a proof of his being sound in the doctrines of Calvinistic grace and confusion, I present the reader with the following passage, taken from the same book, printed in London, 1683, (p. 307:) “A believer is under the law for conduct, but not for judgment, &c. It is the guide of his path, but not the judge of his state. The believer is bound to obey it, but not to stand or fall by it.” That is, in plain English, he should obey it, but his disobedience will never bring him under condemnation, and hinder him to stand in judgment. “It is a rule of life, &c, and therefore it obliges believers as much as others, though upon other motives, &c: for they are not to expect life or favour from it, nor fear the death and rigour that comes by it. The law has no power to justify a believer, or condemn him, and therefore can be no rule to try his state by.” In flat opposition to the general tenor of the Scriptures, thus summed up by St. John: “In this,” namely, committing or not committing sin, “the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil.” What this author says is true, if it be understood of the Adamic law of innocence; but if it be extended to St. Paul’s law of Christ; and to St. James’ law of liberty, it is one of the dangerous tenets that support the chair of the Antinomian “man of sin.”]

ft121 Truth is so great that it sometimes prevails over those that are prejudiced against it. I have observed that Dr. Crisp himself, in a happy moment, bore a noble testimony to undefiled religion. Take another instance of it. In the volume of the Rev. Mr. Whitefield’s sermons, taken in short hand, and published by Gurney, (p. 119,) that great preacher says: “FIRST, We must work FOR spiritual life, AFTERWARD FROM it.” And (pages 153, 154) he declares: “There are numbers of poor that are ready to perish; and if you drop something to them in love, God will take care to repay you when you come to judgment.” I find but one fault with this doctrine. The first of those propositions does not guard free grace so well as Mr. Wesley’s Minutes do. We should always intimate that there is no working FOR a life of glory, or FOR a MORE ABUNDANT LIFE of grace, but FROM an initial life of grace, FREELY given to us in Christ BEFORE any working of our own. This I mention, not to prejudice the reader against Mr. Whitefield, but to show that I am not so prejudiced in favour of works, as not to see when even a Whitefield, in an unguarded expression, leans toward them to the disparagement of free grace.]

ft122 The name which Flavel gives to Dr. Crisp’s modish tenets.]

ft123 Mr. Hill has done it “directly” in the fourth of the Five Letters which he has inscribed to me and all the Solifidians do it “indirectly.”]

ft124 When the Church of England and Mr. Wesley give us particular definitions of faith, it is plain that they consider it according to the Christian dispensation; the privileges of which must be principally insisted upon among Christians; and that our Church and Mr. Wesley guard faith against Antinomianism, is evident from their maintaining, as well as St. Paul, that by bad works we lose a good conscience, and “make shipwreck of the faith.”]

ft125 I see what is right and approve it, but do what is wrong.]

ft126 To establish the doctrine of the Gospel dispensations; to show that saving truth, in its various manifestations, is the object of saving faith; I need only prove, that a man, in order to his salvation, is bound to believe at one time what he was not bound to believe at another. Take one instance out of many. If St. Peter had died just after he had been pronounced, “blessed,” for acknowledging that our Lord was “the Son of God,” he could not have been cursed with a “Depart from me,” &c. He would have been saved; and in that case he would have obtained salvation without believing one tittle about our Lord’s resurrection, and might I not also say about his crucifixion? And, nevertheless, St. Paul, a few years after, justly represented that article as essential to the salvation of those to whom it is revealed! “IF thou shalt BELIEVE with thy heart that God HATH RAISED the Lord Jesus from the dead, thou shalt be saved,” Romans 10:9. Few people, I think, can read the Acts of the Apostles without seeing, that the numerous conversions wrought by St. Peter’s preaching were wrought by the force of this truth, “God has raised up that Jesus whom you have crucified.” A victorious truth this, which would have been a gross untruth three months before the day of pentecost. Nay, what is at one time an article of saving faith, may at another time become an article of the most confirmed unbelief. Thus the expectation of the Messiah, which was a capital article of the faith of the ancient Israelites, is now the buttress of the Babel of modern Jews. The property of faith is then to make our hearts bow to the truth as it is manifested to us; it being evident that God never blamed the children of men for not believing what was never revealed to them. MEMORANDUM. — In page 534, I have said that the genuine seed of the word is always good, always full of Divine energy.” I desire the candid reader to read the following lines, as more particularly expressive of my meaning: — The word is TRUTH: and truth, like the sun, is always efficacious where its light penetrates. But I would by no means insinuate that the truth may not, like the sun, shine more brightly and powerfully at one time than at another; the word of truth, however, always performs, though more or less sensibly, that whereunto God sends it; being always a “savour of life unto life to them that believe,” or of “death unto death” to wilful unbelievers, according to the grand decree of conditional election and reprobation: “He that believeth, &c, shall be saved; and he that believeth not shall be damned.”]

ft127 There is an evangelical boasting which St. Paul recommends to others, and indulges himself. See note, p. 504.]

ft128 These three quotations are taken from Calvin’s Institutes, Third Book, chap. 24, sec. 14; chap. 21, sec. 7; chap. 23, sec. 1.]

ft129 Should the persons whom I now address say that I falsify my subscriptions to the eighteenth article of our Church, by asserting that even the heathens, who fear God and work righteousness by the general light of Christ’s grace, are accepted through Christ’s unknown merits; I refer them to the Vindication of Mr. Wesley’s Minutes, pages 171, 172, where that objection is answered.]

ft130 I prefer this sense to that of the Calvinists, not only because unconditional election to eternal glory appears to me an unscriptural doctrine; but because the apostle having named the sins in which all wicked heathens lived, says to the Corinthians, not “such were you ALL” but “such were SOME of you;” intimating that others were of those righteous people, concerning whom our Lord speaks when he says, “Inquire who is worthy.” Let it be observed, however, that we do not rest our doctrine of free grace upon this or upon any one scripture brought in by the by, and rather by way of illustration than of proof. We have passages in abundance that are full to the point.]

ft131 I produce this as an extract, and not as a continued quotation.]

ft132 Mr. Wesley exactly describes this faith in his sermon on Scriptural Christianity, of which you have here an extract: — “By this ‘faith of the operation of God,’ which was the very ‘substance (or subsistence) of things hoped for,’ the demonstrative’ evidence of invisible things,’ he, [the penitent ‘pricked to the heart,’ and expecting the promise of the Father,] instantly ‘received the Spirit of adoption, whereby he [now] cried,, Abba, Father!’ Now first it was that he could ‘call Jesus Lord by the Holy Ghost, the Spirit itself bearing witness with his spirit, that he was a child of God.’ Now it was that he could truly say, ‘I live not, but Christ liveth in me,’ &c. ‘His soul magnified the Lord, and his spirit rejoiced in God his Saviour. He rejoiced in him with joy unspeakable, who had reconciled him to God, even the Father; in whom he had redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.’ He rejoiced in that ‘witness of God’s Spirit with his spirit, that he was a child of God;’ and more abundantly ‘in hope. of the glory of God,’ &c. ‘The love of God [was also] shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost which was given to him. Because he was a son, God had sent forth the Spirit of his Son, crying, Abba, Father!’ And that filial love of God was continually increased by the ‘witness he had in himself’ of God’s pardoning love to him, &c, so that God was the desire of his eyes, and the joy of his heart; his portion in time and eternity, &c. He that thus loved God, could not but love his brother also, &c. This lover of God embraced all mankind for his sake, &c, not excepting the evil and unthankful, and least of all, his enemies, &c. These had a peculiar place both in his heart and his prayers. He loved them ‘even as Christ loved us,’ &c. By the same almighty love was he saved, both from passion and pride, from lust and vanity, from ambition and covetousness, and from every temper which was not in Christ, &c. He spake evil of no man; nor did an unkind word ever come out of his lips, &c. He daily grew in grace, increasing in strength, in the knowledge and love of God, &c. He visited and assisted them that were sick or in prison, &c. He ‘gave all his goods to feed the poor.’ He rejoiced to labour or to suffer for them; and whereinsoever he might profit another, there especially to ‘deny himself.’ Such was Christianity in its rise, [i.e. Christianity contradistinguished from the dispensation called the baptism of John.] Such was a Christian in ancient days, [i.e. a Christian contradistinguished from a disciple of John or of Christ, before the dispensation of the Holy Ghost took place.] Such was every one of those who, ‘when they heard [the threatenings] of the chief priests and elders, lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and were all filled with the Holy Ghost.’” I here set my seal to this Scriptural description of Scriptural Christianity, being fully persuaded of two things: (1.) That till a man be thus “born of the Spirit,” he “cannot see the [Christian] kingdom of God:” he cannot be under that glorious dispensation of Divine grace which Christ and the apostles spake of when they preached, “Repent, and believe the Gospel, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (2.) That whosoever has not in his breast the above described kingdom, i.e. righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost; and does not bring forth its excellent fruits in his life, either never was a spiritual Christian, or is fallen back from the “ministration of the Spirit” into the dispensation of the letter, or the base form of godliness, if not into open wickedness. See the next note.]

ft133 I beg the reader will not mistake me. When I say that pious Jews and our Lord’s disciples, before the day of pentecost, were strangers to the great outpouring of the Spirit, I do not mean that they were strangers to his directing, sanctifying, and enlivening influences, according to their dispensation. For David had prayed, “Take not thy Holy Spirit from me:” John the Baptist had been visited by his exhilarating power, even in his mother’s womb: our Lord had “breathed upon his disciples, saying, Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” and had imparted him to them as a “Spirit of grace and supplication,” to help them to wait in faith and unceasing prayer, “till they were endued with power from on high.’ Beside, they had called him Lord in truth; and no man can do this, but by “the Spirit of faith,” which “helps our unbelief” and infirmities under all the Divine dispensations. Nevertheless, they were not fully baptized. The Comforter that visited them did not properly dwell in them. Although they had already wrought miracles by his power, “the promise of the Father was not yet fulfilled to them.” They had not yet been “made perfect in one,” by the assimilating power of the heavenly fire. They would have been puzzled by such questions as these: — “Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye believed?” Acts 19:2. “Is he fallen upon you?” Acts 10:44. “Is the love of God shed abroad in your heart by the Holy Ghost given unto you?” Romans 5:5. Is the “fountain springing up into everlasting life” opened in your breast? John 6:14. “After that ye believed, were ye sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise?” Ephesians 1:18. That Spirit which forms those “rivers of living water that flow out of the belly,” the inmost soul of believers? That Spirit which “was not given [before] Christ was glorified?” John 7:39. That Comforter which it is more expedient for us to receive, than even to have Christ’s bodily presence and constant instructions? John 16:7. If these and the like questions would have perplexed the apostles, before Christ had opened his spiritual baptism, and set up his kingdom with power in their hearts, we ought not to be surprised that professors, who “know only the baptism of John,” should ingenuously confess they “never heard there was a Holy Ghost [to be received] since they believed,” Acts 19:2. Nor should we wonder if devout Jews and easy Laodiceans should even mock and say, “You would have us to be ‘filled with new wine;’ but we are ‘rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing.’ The water of our old cisterns is preferable to the new wine of your enthusiastic doctrine, and our baptismal ponds to your baptismal flames.” This, however, was not Mr. Whitefield’s language when he admitted an adult person to baptism; (and he knowingly admitted none but believers.) He knew then how to pray for the promise of the Father, and how to point the disciple of John to the perfection of Christ’s dispensation. As a proof of it, take part of the truly Christian hymn which he sung on that occasion: — Anoint with holy fire, Baptize with purging flames This soul, and with thy grace inspire In ceaseless, living streams. Thy heavenly unction give, Thy promise, Lord, fulfil; Give power, [that is, faith] thy Spirit to receive, And strength to do thy will. This good old Gospel is far more clearly set forth in Mr. Wesley’s sermon. called “Scriptural Christianity,” and in his “Hymns for Whitsunday,” which I earnestly recommend, as pointing out the “one thing needful” for all carnal professors.]