Section 12.

SECTION 12.

The author sums up the opposite errors of Zelotes and Honestus, whom he invites to a speedy reconciliation — To bring them to it, he urges strong and soft motives; and after giving them some directions and encouragements, he concludes by apologizing for his plainness of speech.

IF Honestus be not averse to the rational and Scriptural terms of peace proposed in the preceding pages; and if I have removed the objections which Zelotes makes against these terms, what remains for me to do but to press them both to be instantly reconciled? To this end I shall once more urge upon them two powerful motives, the one taken from the unspeakable mischief done by their unreasonable division, and the other from the advantage and comfort which their Scriptural agreement will produce. Permit me, Zelotes, to begin by the mischief which you do, through your opposition to the moral truths maintained by Honestus. If reason and Scripture breathe through the preceding pages, is it not evident that, under pretence of exalting free grace, which is the first weight of the sanctuary, you throw away the second weight, which is the free will offering of sincere obedience; constantly refusing it the place of a weight before God, when the children of men are weighed for eternal life or eternal death, in the awful, decisive balance of election and reprobation? Does it not necessarily follow from thence that the personal election of some men to eternal salvation is merely of unscriptural free grace; while the personal reprobation of others from grace and glory is entirely of tyrannical free wrath? Is not this the language of your doctrine? “There is for the elect but one weight, bearing the stamp of Heaven and everlasting love; namely, the finished work of Christ, which is absolutely and irresistibly thrown into the scale of all who are predestinated to eternal life: and this golden weight is so heavy that, without any of their good works, it will unavoidably turn the scale for their eternal salvation. And, on the other hand, there is for the reprobates but one weight, bearing the stamp of hell and everlasting wrath, namely, the finished work of Adam, which is absolutely and irresistibly thrown into the scale of all that are predestinated to eternal death: and this leaden weight is so heavy, that let them endeavour ever so much to rise to heavenly joys, it will necessarily sink them to eternal wo.” Thus you turn the Gospel into a Calvinian farrago; whereas, if you divided the truth aright, you would do both Gospel axioms justice; asserting, that although the initial salvation of sinners is of free grace alone; yet the eternal salvation of adult believers, which is judicially as well as graciously bestowed upon them by way of reward, is both of free grace and of rectified free will; both of faith, and of its voluntary works; both of Christ living, dying, and rising again for us; and of believers graciously assisted (not despotically necessitated) to persevere in the obedience of faith. The mischief does not stop here. To make way for your error, you frequently represent the second Scripture Scale, with the passages which it contains, as Pharisaical or Mosaical legality; distressing the minds of the simple by your unscriptural refinements, and hardening the Nicolaitans, — the practical Antinomians, in their contempt of morality and sincere obedience. I do you justice, Zelotes: I confess that, like Christ, you hate their deeds; but, alas! like antichrist, you love, you dearly love their spurious doctrines of grace; and this inconsistency involves you in perpetual difficulties and glaring contradictions. One moment Solifidianism makes you extol their immoral principles; the next moment your exemplary piety makes you exclaim against their consistent immoral practices. One hour you assure them that our eternal justification entirely depends upon God’s absolute predestination, and upon the salvation completely finished by Christ for us; you openly declare that, from first to last, our works have absolutely no hand in the business of salvation; and you insinuate that a fallen believer is as much a child of God when he puts his bottle to his neighbour to make him drunk, or when he commits adultery and premeditates murder, as when he deeply repents and bears fruit meet for repentance. The next hour, indeed, you are ashamed of such barefaced Antinomianism. To mend the matter you contradict yourself, you play the Arminian, and assert that all drunkards, adulterers, and murderers are unbelievers, and that all such sinners are in the high road to hell. Thus you alternately encourage and chide, flatter and correct your Nicolaitan converts; but one caress does them more harm than twenty stripes or wounds; for instead of the precious balm of Gilead, you have substituted the cheap balm of Geneva: a dangerous salve this, which slightly heals, and too often imperceptibly poisons a wounded conscience. With this application they soon cure themselves; one single dose of unconditional election to eternal life, of inamissible, complete justification merely by the good works of another, or of “salvation finished in the full extent of the word,” without any of our outward performances, makes them as hearty and cheerful as any Laodiceans ever were.

When they hear your Arminian pleas for undefiled religion, they wonder at your legality. If you will be inconsistent, they will not: they are determined to be all of a piece. You have inspired them with sovereign contempt for the preceptive, remunerative, and vindictive part of the Gospel: nay, you have taught them to abhor it, as the dreadful heresy of the Arminians, Pelagians, Pharisees, and free willers. And thus you have inadvertently paved and pointed out the way to the Antinomian city of refuge. Thither they have fled, by your direction, and having laid hold on the false hope which you have set before them, they now stand completely deceived in self-imputed and non-imparted righteousness. It is true that you attack them there from time to time; ashamed of the genuine consequence of your partial gospel, you call St. James to your assistance, and erect a Wesleyan battery to demolish their Solifidian ramparts: but, alas! you have long since taught them to nail up all the pieces of evangelical ordnance; and when you point them against their towers, they do but smile at your inconsistency. Looking upon you as one who is not less entangled in the law, than risen Lazarus was in his grave clothes, they heartily pray that you may be delivered from the remains of Moses’ veil, and see into the privileges of believers as clearly as they do; and when they have briskly fired back your own shots, legality! legality! they sit down behind the walls which you take so much pains to repair, I mean the walls of mystical Geneva, singing there a Solifidian Requiem to themselves, and sometimes a triumphal Te Deum to one another.

Happy would it be for you, Zelotes, and for the Church of God, if the mischief done by your modern gospel were confined to the immoral fraternity of the Nicolaitans. But, alas! it produces the worst effect upon the moralists also. Honestus and his admirers see you extol free grace in so unguarded a manner, as to demolish free will, and unfurl the banner of free wrath. They hear you talk in such a strain of “a day of God’s power,” in which the elect are irresistibly converted, as to make sinners forget that now is the day of salvation, and the time to use one or two talents, till the Lord comes with more. Perhaps also Honestus meets with a soul frightened almost to distraction by the doctrine of absolute reprobation, which always dogs your favourite doctrine of Calvinian election. To complete the mischief you drop some deadly hints about the harmlessness of sin; or, what is still worse, about its profitableness and sanctifying influence with respect to believers. Neither height nor depth of iniquity shall separate them from the love of God Nay, the most grievous falls, falls into adultery and murder, shall be so overruled, as infallibly to drive them nearer to Christ, and of consequence to make them rise higher and sing louder in heaven. This Solifidian gospel shocks Honestus. His moral breast swells against it with just indignation; and supposing that the doctrine of free grace (of which you call yourself the defender) is necessarily connected with such loose principles, he is tempted to give it up, and begins perhaps to suspect that religious experiences are only the workings of a melancholy blood, or the conceits of enthusiastic brains. This, Zelotes, and more, is the mischief you inadvertently do by your warm opposition to the doctrines of justice, which support the second Gospel axiom, and are inseparable from the Scripture doctrines of grace.

And you, Honestus, if you lay aside the first weight of the sanctuary, are you less guilty than Zelotes? When you say little or nothing of the fall in Adam, of our recovery by Christ, and of our need of a living, victorious faith: and when, under the plausible pretence of asserting our moral agency, and pleading for sincere obedience, you keep out of sight the unsearchable riches of Christ, the wonderful efficacy of his atoning blood, and the encouraging doctrine of free grace; do you not inadvertently confirm Deistical moralists in their destructive notions, that scraps of moral honesty will answer the end of exalted piety, and of renovating faith? And do you not increase the prejudices of Zelotes; making him believe, by your sparing use of the first Gospel axiom, that all who represent morality and good works as an indispensable part of Christ’s Gospel, are secret enemies to free grace, and stiff maintainers of Pharisaic errors? O Zelotes, O Honestus, what have ye done? What are ye still doing? Alas! ye drive one another farther and farther from the complete “truth, as it is in Jesus.” In your unreasonable contention, you break the harmony of the Gospel; ye destroy the Scripture Scales; ye tear in two the book of life, and run away with a mangled part, which ye fondly take for the whole. Ye crucify Christ doctrinally: Honestus pierces his right hand, while Zelotes transfixes the left; both pleading, as the scribes and Pharisees did, that ye only crucify a “deceiver of the people.”

A skilful physician, by prudently mixing two contrary drugs, may so temper their effect as to compound an excellent medicine. Thus those ingredients, which, if they were given alone, would perhaps kill his patients, by being administered together, operate in corrective, qualifying conjunction, and prove highly conducive to health. Happy would it be for your spiritual patients, if ye imitated his skill, by evangelically combining the gracious promises, and the holy precepts, which support the two Gospel axioms! But, alas! ye do just the reverse, when ye indiscriminately administer only the truths of the first or of the second axiom. Thus, instead of curing your patients, ye sour their minds; Honestus with the poisonous leaven of the Pharisees; and Zelotes with the killing leaven of the Antinomians. The practice of thousands shows what dangerous touches ye have, by these means, given to their principles: for your admirers, O Zelotes, are encouraged so to depend upon free grace, as not vigorously to exert the powers of free will. And it is well if some of them do not lie down in stupid dejection, idly waiting for an overbearing impetus of Divine grace, which, you insinuate, is to do all for us without us; while others cheerfully rise up to play, in consequence of the Laodicean ease which naturally flows from the doctrine of salvation Calvinistically finished. On the other hand, your hearers, O Honestus, are so taught to depend upon their best endeavours, and the faithful exertion of their free will, that many of them see no occasion ardently to implore the help of free grace, as depraved, impotent, blind, guilty, hell-deserving sinners ought to do. Trusting to what they will do to-morrow, they neglect and grieve the Holy Spirit, which is ready to help their infirmities to-day. And it is to be feared that many of them play the dangerous game of procrastination till the Sun of righteousness sets, with respect to them; till all their oil is burned, and their lamps, going out with a bad smell, leave them in the dreadful night when no man can work. Who can tell the mischiefs which ye have already done by your mangled gospels? It will be known in the great day. But suppose ye had only caused the miscarriage of one soul; would not this be matter of unspeakable grief? If ye would esteem it a misfortune to have occasioned the loss of your neighbour’s horse; think, O think, how sad a thing it must be to have caused, though undesignedly, the destruction of his soul! The loss of the cattle upon a thousand hills can be repaired; but if a man should gain the whole world, and through your wrong directions lose his own soul, what will he, what will you give in exchange for his soul?

In the multitude of those, whose salvation is thus endangered, I see Lorenzo — sensible, thoughtful, learned Lorenzo: his case is truly deplorable, and a particular attention to it may convince you of the fatal tendency of a gospel which wants almost one half of its proper weight. Although the dogmatical assertions of a preacher, if they be supported by the charms of a mellifluous eloquence, or the violence of a boisterous oratory, prevail with many; yet not with all. For while some greedily drink in the very dregs of error, through the weakness of their minds, the movableness of their passions, and the credulity which accompanies superstitious ignorance; others are tempted to doubt of the plainest truths, through the nicety of a keen wit, the refinements of a polite education, and the scrupulousness of a skeptical understanding. Lorenzo is one of this number. He is determined not to pin his faith upon any man’s sleeve. And he sets out in search of religious truth with this just principle, that religion may improve, but can never oppose good sense and good morals. In this disposition Lorenzo hears Zelotes; and when Zelotes begins to play upon his numerous audience with his rhetorical artillery, Lorenzo examines if the cannon of his eloquence is loaded with a proper ball; if the solidity of his arguments answers to the positiveness, loudness, or pathos of his delivery. Zelotes, not satisfied to preach only the doctrine contained in the first Scripture Scale, takes upon himself warmly to decry the doctrine contained in the second; and at times he even explodes morality; unguardedly representing it as the cleaner way to hell. If this be the Gospel, says Lorenzo, I must ever remain an unbeliever; for I cannot swallow down a cluster of inconsistencies, whence the poison of immorality visibly distils. He hears you next, Honestus; and he admires the rational manner in which you prove man’s free agency, and point out the delightful path of virtue; but, alas! you mention neither our natural impotence, nor the help which free, redeeming grace has laid on Christ for helpless sinners. As this doctrine is not repugnant to the light of reason, Lorenzo prefers it to the Solifidian scheme of Zelotes. Thus reason stands him instead of Christ, free will instead of free grace, and some external acts of benevolence instead of the faith which renews the heart. And upon the same leg of this outward morality he hops along in the ways of virtue, till a violent temptation pushes him into some gross immorality. His wounded conscience begins then to want ease and a cure; but he knows not where to seek it. Honestus seldom points him clearly to the Saviour’s blood; and when Zelotes does it, he too often defiles the sacred fountain with unscriptural refinements, and immoral absurdities, artfully wrapped up in Scripture phrases. Hence it is that Lorenzo does not see the remedy, or that he turns from it with contempt. Nor should I wonder if, while each of you thus keeps from him one of the keys of Christian knowledge, he remained a stranger to the Gospel, and began to suspect that the Bible is a mere jumble of legends and inconsistencies — an apple of discord thrown among men by crafty priests, and artful politicians, to awe the vulgar, and divert the thoughts of the inquisitive. In these critical circumstances he meets with Hume and Voltaire, whom he prefers to you both; and, renouncing equally free grace and free will, he flees for shelter to open infidelity and avowed fatalism. Thither numbers follow him daily; and thither your refinements, O Zelotes, and your errors, O Honestus, will probably drive the next generation, if ye continue to sap the foundation of the Gospel axioms. For the Gospel can no more stand long upon one of its pillars, than you can stand long upon one of your legs. Christianity without faith, or without works, is like a sun without light, or without heat. Such Christianity is as different from primitive Christianity, as such a sun is different from the bright luminary at whose approach darkness flies and winters retire.

Nor are Lorenzo, and his Deistical friends, only hurt by your doctrinal mistakes. Ye, yourselves, probably feel the bad effects of your parting the Gospel axioms. It is hardly possible that ye should take off the fore wheels, or the hind wheels of the Gospel chariot, without retarding your own progress toward the New Jerusalem. To say nothing of your spiritual experiences, may I not inquire if Honestus, after all his discourses on morality and charity, might not, in some instances, be a little more moral, or more extensively charitable, if not to the bodies, at least to the souls of his neighbours? And may I not ask Zelotes, if after all his encomiums upon free grace, he might not be a little more averse to narrowness of spirit, unscriptural positiveness, and self-electing partiality; a little less inclined to rash judging, contempt of his opponents, and free wrath?

Should ye find, after close examination, that these are the mischievous consequences of your variance; and should ye desire to prevent them, ye need only go half way to meet and embrace each other. You, Zelotes, receive the important truth which Honestus defends, and, in subordination to Christ and free grace, preach free will, without which there can be no acceptable obedience. And you, Honestus, espouse the delightful truth recommended by Zelotes. Preach free grace, without which free will can never be productive of sincere morality. So shall you vindicate morality and free will with less offence to Zelotes, and with more success among your own admirers. In a word, instead of parting the two Gospel axioms, and filling the Church with Gnostics or formalists; with Antinomian believers, or faithless workers; instead of tearing our Priest asunder from our King, and making Christianity a laughing stock for infidels by your perpetual divisions, admit the use of the Scripture Scales, contend for the faith once delivered to the saints; and, dropping your unreasonable and unscriptural objections against each other, seek, hand in hand, “Fulsome,” the gross Antinomian, and Lorenzo, the immoral moralist; earnestly seek these lost sheep, which ye have inadvertently driven from the good Shepherd, and which now wander upon the dark mountains of immorality and skepticism. They may be brought back; they are not yet devoured by the roaring lion. If you will reclaim them, you, Honestus, calm the agitated breast of Lorenzo, and strengthen his feeble knees, by all the reviving, exhilarating truths of the first Gospel axiom. And you, Zelotes, instead of frightening him from these truths by adulterating the genuine doctrine of free grace, with loose, Solifidian tenets; or by slyly dropping into the cup of salvation which you offer him, poisonous drops of free wrath, Calvinian reprobation, and necessary damnation; recommend yourself to his reason and conscience by all the moral truths which spring from the fitness of things and the second Gospel axiom. With regard to Fulsome, remember, O Zelotes, that you are commanded to “feed the fat with judgment,” and that Christ himself fed the ancient Laodiceans with that convenient food. Give therefore to this modern Laodicean chiefly the Gospel truths which fill the second Gospel scale. But give them to him in full weight. Let him have a good measure, pressed down, and running over into his Antinomian bosom, till he “hold the truth in unrighteousness” no more. And that he may receive the “whole truth as it is in Jesus,” be you persuaded, Honestus, to second Zelotes. Enforce your moral persuasions upon Fulsome, by all the weighty, evangelical arguments which the first axiom suggests. So shall you break the force of his prejudices. He will see that sincere obedience is inseparable from true faith; and, being taught by happy experience, he will soon acknowledge that the doctrine of free will is as consistent with the doctrine of free grace, as the free returning of our breath is consistent with the free drawing of it. Thus ye will both happily concur in converting those whom ye have inadvertently perverted.

While, like faithful dispensers of Gospel truths, ye weigh in this manner to every one his portion of physic or food in due season, and in proper scales; our Lord, by lifting upon you the light of his pleased countenance, will make you sensible, that, in spirituals as well as in temporals, “a false balance is an abomination to him; but a just weight is his delight.” Your honesty may indeed offend many of your admirers, and make you lose your popularity; but prefer the testimony of a good conscience to popular applause; and the witness of God’s Spirit to the praise of party men. Nor be afraid to share the fate of our great Prophet, and of his blunt forerunner, who, by firmly standing to the Gospel axioms, lost their immense congregations and their lives. Christ fell a sacrifice not only to Divine justice, but also to Caiaphas’ Pharisaic rage against the truths contained in the first Scale; and John the Baptist had the honour of being beheaded, for bearing his bold testimony to those contained in the second Scale, and against the Antinomianism of a professing prince, who “observed him, heard him gladly, and did many things.” O Honestus, O Zelotes, think it an honour to tread in the steps of these two martyred champions of truth. Let them revive, and preach again in you. Shrink not at the thought of the Pharisaic contempt, and of the Antinomian abuse which await you, if you are determined to preach both the anti-Pharisaic and the anti-Solifidian part of the Gospel. On the contrary, be ambitious to suffer something for him, who calls himself the truth: for him, who suffered so much for you, and who, for the joy of your salvation, which was set before him, despised the shame, endured the cross, and now sits at God’s right hand, ready to reward your faithfulness with a crown of righteousness, life, and glory. Ye should wade to that triple crown through floods of persecution, and rivers of blood, if it were necessary. But God may not call you to suffer for your faithfulness. And if he do, he will reward you, even in this life, with a double portion of peace and love. While the demon of discord sows the tares of division, and blows up the coals which bigotry has kindled, ye shall inherit the beatitude of peace makers. “The peace of God, which passes all understanding,” shall rest upon you as it does upon all the sons of peace. And the delightful tranquillity restored to the Church, shall flow back into your own souls, and be extended as a fiver to your families and neighbourhood, which your opposite extremes have perhaps distracted. What a glorious prospect rises before my exulting imagination! A holy, catholic Church! A Church, where the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, and the foretastes of eternal life, are constantly enjoyed; where swords are beat into reaping hooks; and where shouts for controversial engagements are turned into songs of brotherly love! To whom, next to God, are we obliged for this wonderful change? It is to you, Zelotes, whose intemperate zeal is now rectified by the judicious solidity of Honestus; and to you, Honestus, whose phlegmatic religion is now corrected by the fervour of Zelotes. Henceforth, instead of contending with each other, ye amicably bear together the ark of the Lord. While ye triumphantly sustain the sacred load, and while Christian psalmists joyfully sing, “Behold how good and pleasant a thing it is for brethren to dwell together in unity; union is the refreshing dew which falls upon the hill of Sion, where the Lord has promised his blessing, and life for evermore:” — while they sing this, I see the thousands of Israel pass the “waters of strife,” and take possession of the land of Canaan — the spiritual kingdom of God. Their happiness is almost paradisiacal! “The multitude of them that believe are of one heart and of one soul: they continue steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship — in breaking of bread, and in prayers. They eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart; neither says any of them that aught of the things which he possesses is his own: for they have all things common; they are perfected in one.” Truth has cast them into the mould of love. Their hearts and their language are no more divided. They think and speak the same. In a word, Babel is no more, and the New Jerusalem comes down from heaven.

O Zelotes! O Honestus! shall this pleasing prospect vanish away as the colours of the rainbow? Will ye still make Lorenzo think that the Acts of the Apostles is a religious novel? And the Christian harmony there described a delusive dream? O God of peace, truth, and love, suffer it not. Bless the scriptures, bless the arguments which fill these pages. Give, O give me favour in the sight of the two antagonists whom I address. Make me, unworthy as I am, the mean of their lasting reconciliation. Remove their prejudices; soften their hearts; humble their minds; and endue me with the strength of a spiritual Samson; that, taking these two pillars of our divisions in the arms of praying love, I may bend them toward each other, and press them, breast to breast, upon the line of moderation, till they become one with the truth, and one with each other. When thou hadst prospered the endeavours of Abraham’s servant, to the bringing about the marriage of Isaac and Rebecca, thou wroughtest new miracles. Thou didst melt angry Esau in the arms of trembling Jacob, and injured Joseph over the neck of his relenting brethren. Repeat, good Lord, these ancient wonders; show thyself still the God of all consolation. Let me not only succeed in asserting the evangelical marriage of condescending free grace and humble free will; but also in reconciling the contentious divines, who rashly put asunder what thou hast so strongly joined together. O Zelotes! O Honestus! my heart is enlarged toward you. It ardently desires the peace of Jerusalem and your own. If to-day ye do not despise the consistent testimonies of the fathers, and of our reformers; if to-day ye regard the whispers of reason, and the calls of conscience; if to-day ye reverence the suffrages of the prophets, the assertions of the apostles, and the declarations of Jesus Christ; if to-day “ye hear the voice of God” speaking to you by the Spirit of truth, and by the Prince of Peace; “harden not your hearts.” You, Zelotes, harden it not against free will, sincere obedience, and your brother Honestus. And you, Honestus, humbly bow to free grace, and kindly embrace your brother Zelotes. All things are now ready. Come together to the marriage of free grace and free will. Come to the feast of reconciliation. Jesus himself will be there, to turn your bitter “waters of jealousy” into the generous wine of “brotherly kindness.” Too long have you begged to be excused; saying, “I have married a wife; I have espoused a party, and therefore I cannot come!” Party spirit has seduced you; put away that strumpet. Espouse truth; embrace love; and you will soon give each other the right hand of fellowship.

I have gently drawn you both with the bands of a man — with rational arguments. I have morally compelled you with the Spirit’s sword, “the word of God.” By the numerous and heavy weights, which fill these Scripture Scales, I have endeavoured to turn the scale of the prejudices, which each of you has entertained against one of the Gospel axioms. But, alas! my labour will be lost, if you are determined still to rise against that part of the truth, which each of you has hitherto defended. Come, then, when reason invites, when revelation bids, when conscience urges, yield to my plea: nay, yield to the solicitations of thousands; for although I seem to mediate alone between you both, thousands of well wishers to Sion’s peace, thousands of moderate men, who mourn for the desolations of Jerusalem, wish success to my mediation. Their good wishes support my pen; their ardent prayers warm my soul; my love for peace grows importunate, and constrains me to redouble my entreaties. O Zelotes, O Honestus, by the names of Christians, and Protestants, which ye bear; by your regard for the honour and peace of Sion; by the blessings promised to them that love her prosperity; by the curses denounced against those who widen the breaches of her walls; by the scandalous joy, which your injudicious contentions give to all the classes of infidels; by the tears of undissembled sorrow, which God’s dearest children shed in secret over the disputes which your mistaken zeal has raised, and which your opposition to a part of the truth continues to foment; by your professed regard for the sacred book, which your divisions lacerate, and render contemptible; by the worth of the souls, which you fill with prejudices against Christianity; by the danger of those whom you have already driven into the destructive errors of the Antinomians and of the Pharisees; by the Redeemer’s seamless garment, which you rend from top to bottom; by the insults, the blows, the wounds which Christ personal received in the house of his Jewish friends; and by those which Christ doctrinal daily receives at your own hands; by the fear of being found proud despisers of one half of God’s revealed decrees, and rebellious opposers of some of the Redeemer’s most solemn proclamations; by all the woes pronounced against the enemies of his royal crown, or of his bloody cross; by the dreadful destruction which awaits antichrist; whether he transforms himself into an angel of light, artfully to set aside Christ’s righteous law; or whether he appears as a man of God, slyly to supersede Christ’s gracious promises; by the horrible curse which shall light on them, who, when they are properly informed, and lovingly warned, will nevertheless obstinately continue to weigh out, in false balances, the food of the poor to whom the Gospel is preached; and, above all, by the matchless love of him who “was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself,” I entreat you, “suffer the word of reconciliation: be ye reconciled” to reason and conscience; to each other and to me; to all the Bible and to primitive Christianity; to Christ our King and to Christ our Priest. So shall all unprejudiced Christians meet and embrace you both, upon the meridian of moderation and Protestantism, which stands at an equal distance from Antinomian dreams and Pharisaic delusions. O Zelotes! O Honestus! mistaken servants of God; if there be any consolation in Christ; if any delight in truth; if any comfort in love; if any fellowship of the Spirit; if any bowels of mercies, fulfil ye my joy, and the joy of all moderate men in the Church militant; nay, fulfil ye the joy of saints and angels in the Church triumphant: “be ye like minded; having the same love; being of one accord; of one mind. Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory; but in lowliness of mind, let each esteem the other better than himself. Look not each on his own things, [on the scriptures of his favourite scale;] but look also on the things of the other,” on the passages which fill the scale defended by your brother. Remember, that if we “have all faith,” and all external works, without “charity we are nothing.” “Charity suffereth long, and is kind: charity envieth not: charity seeketh not her own: charity rejoiceth not in iniquity and discord, but rejoiceth in the truth,” even when the truth bruiseth the head of our favourite serpent — our darling prejudice. Let then charity, never-failing charity, perfect you both in one. Hang on this golden beam, and it will make you a couple of impartial, complete divines, holding together as closely, and balancing one another as evenly as the concordant passages which form my Scripture Scales.

My message respecting the equipoise of the Gospel axioms I have endeavoured to deliver with that plainness and earnestness which the importance of the subject calls for; if, in doing it, my aversion to unscriptural extremes, and my love of peaceful moderation have betrayed me into any unbecoming severity of thought, or asperity of expression, forgive me this wrong, which I never designed, and for which I would make you all possible satisfaction, if I were conscious of guilt in this respect. Ye are sensible that I could not act as a reconciler, without doing first the office of an expostulator and reprover; an office this which is so much the more thankless, as our very friends are sometimes prone to suspect that we enter upon it, not so much to do them good, as to carry the mace of superiority, and indulge a restless, meddling, censorious, lordly disposition. If unfavourable appearances have represented me to you in these odious colours, give me leave to wipe them off, by cordial assurances of my esteem and respect for you. Yes, my dear, though mistaken brothers, I sincerely honour you both for the good which is in you; being persuaded that your mistakes spring from your religious prejudices, and not from a conscious enmity against any part of the truth. When I have been obliged to expose your partiality, I have comforted myself with the pleasing thought that it is a partiality to an important part of the Gospel. The meek and lowly Saviour, in whose steps I desire to tread, teaches me to honour you for the part of the truth which you embrace, and forbids me to despise you for that which you cannot yet see it your duty to espouse. Nay, so far as ye have defended free grace without annihilating free will, or contended for free will without undervaluing free grace, you have done the duty of evangelists in the midst of this Pharisaic and Antinomian generation. For this ye both deserve the thanks of every Bible Christian, and I publicly return you mine. Yes, so far as Zelotes has built the right wing of Christ’s palace, without pulling down the left; and so far as Honestus has raised the left wing, without demolishing the right, I acknowledge that ye are both ingenious and laborious architects, and I shall think myself highly honoured, if, like an under labourer, I am permitted to wait upon you, and to bring you some rational and Scriptural materials, that you may build the temple of Gospel truth with more solidity, more evangelical symmetry, and more brotherly love, than you have yet done.

God only knows what contemptible thoughts I have of myself. It is better to spread them before him, than to do it before you. This only I will venture to say; in a thousand respects I see myself vastly inferior to either of you. If I have presumed to uncover your theological sores, and to pour into them some tincture of myrrh and aloes, it is no proof that I prefer myself to you. A surgeon may open an imposthume in a royal breast, and believe that he understands the use of his scissors and probe better than the king, without entertaining the least idea of his being the king’s superior. If I have made a pair of Scripture Scales, which weigh Gospel gold better than your single scales; it no more follows that I esteem myself your superior, than it follows that an artist who makes scales to weigh common gold esteems himself superior to the ministers of state, because he understands scale making better than they.

Horace will help me to illustrate the consistency of my reproofs to you, with my professions of respect for you. I consider you, Zelotes, as a one-edged sword, which cuts down the Pharisaic error; and you, Honestus, as a one-edged scymetar, which hews the Antinomian mistakes in pieces; but I want to see you both as the Lord’s two-edged sword; and I have indulged my Alpine roughness, in hopes that (through the concurrence of your candour with the Divine blessing which I implore on these pages) you will be ground to the other edge you want. This, ye know, cannot be done without some close rubbing; and, therefore, while ye glitter in the field of action, let not your displeasure arise against a grinding stone cut from the neighbourhood of the Alps, and providentially brought into a corner of your Church, where it wears itself away in the thankless office of grinding you both, that each of you may be as dreadful to Antinomianism and to Pharisaism, as the cherub’s “flaming sword, which turned, and cut every way,” was terrible to the two first offenders. So shall ye keep the way to the tree of life in an evangelical manner; and instead of triumphing over you, as I go the dull round of my controversial labour, I shall adopt the poet’s humble saying: —

Fungor vice cotis, acutum

Reddere quœ ferrum valet, exsors ipsa secandi.

Not that I dare to flaming zeal pretend,

But only boast to be the Gospel’s friend;

To whet you both to act, and, like the hone,

Give others edge, though I myself have none.

Or rather, considering what the prophet says of the impartial hand which weighed feasting Belshazzar, and wrote his awful doom upon the wall that faced him, I will pray: “O God, be merciful to me a sinner; and when I turn my face to the wall on my dying bed, let not my knees smite one against the other at the sight of the killing word, ‘TEKEL: thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting.’ Let me not be ‘found wanting’ either the testimony of thy free grace, through faith, or the testimony of a good conscience through the works of faith. So shall the Spirit of thy free grace bear witness with my free-willing spirit, that I am a child of thine, that I have kept the faith, and that in the great day, when I shall be weighed in the balances of the sanctuary, I shall be found a justified sinner, according to the anti-Pharisaic weights, which fill the first Scripture Scale; and a justified believer, according to the anti-Solifidian weights, which fill the second.”