Footnotes

FOOTNOTES

ft1 If a delicate connection renders the word new to him.]

ft2 By “sound reason” I mean the light of the world, — the true light which enlightens every man that comes into the world.]

ft3 I do not mean that any blasphemy against God is deserved; but that, according to all our ideas of justice, this would be the ease, if the doctrine of free will were false. For supposing men and angels are not endued with free agency, is it not evident that they are mere instruments in the hand of a superior, irresistible Agent, who works wickedness in and by them, agreeable to this unguarded proposition of Elisha Coles: “All things were present with God from eternity; and his decree the cause of their after existence?” And does not reason cry aloud, that such an almighty Agent is more culpable than his overpowered, or passive tools? Can Zelotes himself say that a highwayman does not deserve hanging more than the pistol which he fires, and the horse which he rides when he commits murder? What an immense field does the doctrine of bound will open in hell for the most execrable blasphemies! The Lord forgive its supporters, for they know not what they do! The Gospel leaves even heathen unbelievers without excuse, Romans 1:20; but the modern “doctrines of grace” furnish all sorts of infidels with the best excuses in the world. “God’s predestination caused Adam’s sin and his own; and God’s decree kept Christ from dying for, and his Spirit from sincerely striving with them.” As these necessary consequences of Calvinism encourage “Mr. Fulsome” to sin here; so (if his doctrines of grace were true) they would comfort him in hell hereafter.]

ft4 Thus when St. John says the law came by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ, he does not mean that the law of Moses is a graceless and lying law: he only declares, that whereas the Jewish dispensation, which is frequently called the law, came by Moses, with all its shadowy types, the Christian dispensation, which is frequently called grace, came by Jesus Christ, in whom the shadows of the ceremonial law have their truth and reality.]

ft5 Here observe, that God prefaces the decalogue by evangelically giving himself to the Jews as their God — a gracious God, who had already “saved them out of the land of Egypt,” Jude 1:5, and who had a peculiar right to their faith and grateful evangelical obedience.]

ft6 Thus apostates (by breaking one of the ten commandments, and not repenting according to the privilege, which “the law of liberty” allows in the day of salvation) are last, though they were once first. I say apostates; because our Lord, St. Paul, and St. James, evidently speak of believers, i.e. of persons already in the kingdom of heaven, or in the Christian dispensation.]

ft7 The reader will be glad to see what judicious Calvinists make of this passage. Diodati, one of Calvin’s most famous successors, comments thus upon it: “God, out of his fatherly benignity and clemency, shall accept from us, his children, this endeavour and study to keep his law, instead of a perfect righteousness, &c. All this discourse ought to be referred to the new obedience, &c, which is the plainer, because most of these statutes were concessions, remedies, and expiations for sin.” (DIOD. in loc.) Mr. Henry is exactly of the same sentiment. “Could we perfectly fulfil but that one command of loving God with all our heart, &c, and could we say we had never done otherwise, that would be so our righteousness as to entitle us to the benefits of the covenant of innocency, &c. But that we cannot pretend to; therefore our sincere obedience shall be accepted through a Mediator, to denominate us (as Noah was) ‘righteous before God.’“ (HENRY in loc.)]

ft8 How mistaken were the divines that composed the synod of Dort, when speaking of regeneration, they said, without any distinction, (Illam Deus in nobis sine nobis operatur,) “God works it in us, without us!” Just as if God believed in us without us! Just as if we received the word without our receiving of it! Just as if the sower and the sun produced corn without the field that bears it! What led them into this mistake was, no doubt, a commendable desire to maintain the honour of free grace. However, if by regeneration they meant the first communication of that fructifying, “saving grace, which has appeared to all men” — the first visit, or the first implanting of “that light of life, which enlightens every man that cometh into the world,” they spoke a precious truth: for God bestows this free gift upon us, absolutely “without us!” Nor could we ever do what he requires of us in the scale of free will, if he had not first given us a talent of grace, and if he did not continually help us to use it aright when we have a good will.]

ft9 The word in the original is in the conjugation Hithpahel, which signifies to cause one’s self to do a thing. Our translation does not do it justice. Nor can Zelotes reasonably object to the meaning of the word used by Moses, unless he can prove that Enoch had no hand, and no foot, in his walking with God; and that God dragged him as if he had been a passive cart, or a recoiling cannon. However, I readily grant that Enoch did not set himself to walk with God without the help of that “saving grace, which has appeared to all men,” and which so many “receive in vain.”]

ft10 If Christ came to save sinners, yea, the chief of sinners, did his goodness, impartiality, equity, truth, and holiness, permit him unconditionally to reprobate any sinner less than the chief? And if he came to save sinners, the chief not excepted, why does Zelotes except all that die in unbelief? If they do not believe, and do their part as redeemed souls, is it right to infer that Christ did not die for them and do his part as the Redeemer or Saviour of all men? Especially since the Scriptures testify that eternal salvation is suspended on our works of faith; and that the reprobates perish, because they “deny in works the Lord that bought them?”]

ft11 The first signification of the Hebrew word rb (B R) is a multitude; and as Isaiah uses it in the plural number, I hope Zelotes will not think that I take an undue liberty, when I render it the multitudes: namely, the multitudes of “transgressors” mentioned in the same verse; or the multitudes of men that “have turned every one to his own ways.” See verses 3, 6.]

ft12 Zelotes represents the “sure mercies of David,” and “the everlasting covenant,” as absolutely unconditional. But I appeal to Candidus: does not this passage mention four requisites on our part? Inclining our ear: hearing: seeking the Lord: and forsaking our wicked way? And do not we accordingly find, Acts 13:34, that many of those to whom St. Paul offered those “sure mercies,” missed them by “contradicting,” instead of “inclining their ear?”]

ft13 The Rev. Mr. Madan, in his “Scriptural Comment upon the Thirty-nine Articles,” second edition, p. 71, says, “This method of construction is attended with the disadvantage of giving the Greek language a sense which it disowns, and therefore to be rejected;” and in support of this assertion, and of Calvinism, he quotes Mr. Leigh’s “Critica Sacra.” But I think, most unfortunately, since in the very next page we have it under Mr. Leigh’s, and of course under Mr. Madan’s own hand, that the learned scholiast “Syrus renders it [the controverted word] ‘dispositi,’ [DISPOSED,] for he knew not that the heretics of our day would dream of understanding tetagmenoi, &c, to signify INWARDLY DISPOSED.” Now as “the remonstrants” are immediately after by name represented as “the heretics of our day,” I beg leave to vindicate their heresy: though I fear it must be at the expense of Mr. Madan’s and Mr. Leigh’s “orthodoxy.” First, then, take notice, reader, that these gentlemen grant us all we contend for, when they grant that the word which our translators render “ordained,” means also “disposed, placed, ordered,” or “ranged, as soldiers that keep their ranks in the field of battle,” which is the ordinary meaning of the expression in the classics. Now, according to Mr. Madan’s scheme, the “disposition” of the persons that believed was merely “extrinsic, outward.” They had no hand in the matter, God “disposed” them by his necessitating grace, as Bezaleel “disposed” the twelve precious stones which adorned Aaron’s breastplate. But, according to our supposed “heresy,” the free will of those candid Gentiles (in subordination to free grace) had a hand in “disposing them to take the kingdom of heaven by violence.” They were like willing soldiers, who obey the orders of their general, and “range” or “dispose” themselves to storm a fortified town. (2.) But, says Mr. Madan, “the Greek language disowns this sense.” To this assertion I oppose all the Greek lexicons I am acquainted with, and (for the sake of my English readers) I produce Johnson’s English dictionary, who, under the word “tactics,” which comes from the controverted word “tatto,” informs us that “tactics” is “the art of ‘ranging’ men in the field of battle;” and every body knows that before men can be ranged in the field, two things are absolutely necessary; an authoritative, directing skill in the general, and an active, obedient submission in the soldiers. This was exactly the case with the Gentiles mentioned in the text; before they could be “disposed for eternal life,” two things were absolutely requisite; the helpful teaching of God’s free grace, and the submissive yielding of their own free will, touched by that grace which the “indisposed (at least at that time) received in vain.” (3.) It is remarkable that the word tetagmenov occurs but in one other place in the New Testament, Romans 13:1. “The powers that are, are tetagmenoi, ordained or placed.” And I grant that there it signifies a Divine, “extrinsic” appointment only. But why? Truly because the apostle immediately adds, upo te deou, “They are ordained or placed OF GOD.” Now, if the word tetagmenov alone necessarily signified “ordained, disposed, or placed OF GOD,” as Mr. Madan’s scheme requires; the apostle would have given himself a needless trouble in adding the words, “OF GOD,” when he wrote to the Romans; and as St. Luke adds them not in our text, it is a proof that he leaves us at liberty to think, according to the doctrine of the Gospel axioms, that the Gentiles, who believed, were “disposed” to it by the concurrence of free grace and free will — of GOD and THEMSELVES. God “worked,” to use St. Paul’s words, and they “worked out.” (4.) A similar scripture will throw light upon our text. Romans 9:22, we read that” God endureth with much long suffering the vessels of wrath kathrtismena FITTED for destruction.” The word “fitted,” in the original, is exactly in the same voice and tense as the word “ordained” or “disposed” in the text. Now if Mr. Madan’s observation about “the Greek language” be just, and if the Gentiles who believed were entirely “disposed OF GOD to eternal life,” so these “vessels of wrath” were entirely “fitted OF GOD for destruction.” But if he, and every good man, shudders at the horrid idea of worshipping a God who absolutely “fits” his own creatures “for destruction:” — if the words kathrtismena eiv apwleian mean not only “inwardly fitted,” but SELF FITTED rather than GOD FITTED “for destruction,” why should not tetagmenoi eiv zwhn aiwnoin mean SELF DISPOSED as well as GOD DISPOSED “for eternal life?” (5.) St. Luke, who wrote the Acts, is the best explainer of the meaning of his own expression. Accordingly, Luke 2:51, we find that he applies to Christ a word answering to, and compounded of that of our text. He was, says he, (upotassomenov) “subject or subjected to his parents.” Now I appeal to my readers, and ask whether the remonstrants deserve the name of “dreaming heretics” for believing, (1.) That our Lord’s subjection to his parents was not merely “outward” and passive, as that of an undutiful child who is subject to his superiors, when, rod in hand, they have forced him to submit. And (2.) That it was “inward” and active, or, to speak plainer, that “he subjected himself” of his own free will to his parents. (6.) St. Paul informs us that the “veil of Moses is yet upon the heart of the Jews, when they read” the Old Testament; and one would be tempted to think that Calvin’s veil is yet upon the eyes of his admirers, when they read the New Testament. What else could have hindered such learned men as Mr. Leigh and Mr. Madan from taking notice, that when the sacred writers use the passive voice, they do it frequently in a sense which answers to the Hebrew voice “hithpahel,” which means “to cause oneself to do a thing.” I beg leave to produce some instances. 1 Corinthians 14:32, “The spirits of the prophets upotassetai are subject [that is, subject themselves] to the prophets.” Romans 10:3, “Ouc upetaghsan,, They have not been subjected, or, (as our translators, Calvinists as they were, have not scrupled to render it,) They have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God.” Acts 2:40, “swqhte, Be ye saved, or save yourselves.” Ephesians 5:22, “Wives, upotassesqe, be subject or submit yourselves to your own husbands.” 1 Peter 5:6, “tapeinwqhte, Be humble, or humble yourselves.” James 4:7, “upotaghte, Be ye submissive,” or, as we have it in our Bibles, “submit yourselves to God,” &c, &c. I hope these examples will convince my readers, that, if our translators had shown themselves “heretics,” and men unacquainted with “the Greek language,” supposing they had rendered our text, “As many as (through grace) had disposed themselves, or were (inwardly) disposed for eternal life, believed,” they can hardly pass for orthodox or good Grecians now, since they have so often been guilty of the pretended error, which Mr. Leigh supposes peculiar to the “dreaming heretics of our day.” (7.) All the Scriptures show that man and free will have their part to do in the work of salvation, as well as Christ and free grace. If this is denied, I appeal to the multitude of passages which fill my second Scale; and I ask, Is it not strange, that a doctrine, supported by a variety of scriptures, should be called “heresy” by men that, “as real Protestants,” profess to admit the Scriptures as the rule of their faith. I shall conclude this note by an appeal to the context. (8.) St. Paul having called the Jews to believe in Christ, bids them “beware,” Acts 13:40, lest they should be found among the despisers that perish in their unbelief. Now how absurd would this caution have been, if a forcible decree of absolute election or reprobation had irreversibly ordained them to eternal life, or to eternal death! Would the apostle have betrayed more folly if he had bid them “beware” lest the sun should rise or set at its appointed time? Again, verse 46, we are informed that these unbelievers “judged themselves unworthy of eternal life,” and “put the word” of God’s grace “from them.” But if Mr. Madan’s scheme were Scriptural, would not the historian have said, that God, from the foundation of the world, had absolutely “judged them unworthy of eternal life,” and therefore had never “put” or sent to “them” the word of his grace? Once more: we are told, verse 45, that indulged envy, which the Jews were filled with, made them “speak against those things which were spoken by Paul, that is, made them disbelieve, and show their unbelief. Now is it not highly reasonable to understand the words of the text thus, according to that part of the context: “As many as” did not obstinately harbour envy, prejudice, love of honour, or worldly mindedness: — “As many as” did not “put the word from them, and judge themselves unworthy of eternal life, believed?” Nay, might we not properly explain the text thus, according to the doctrine of the talents, and the progressive dispensations of Divine grace, so frequently mentioned in the Scriptures: “As many as believed in God, believed also” in Christ, whom Paul particularly preached at that time; — as many as were humble and teachable, received the ingrafted word:” for “God resisteth the proud, but giveth grace to the humble. His secret is with them that fear him, and he will show them his covenant.” (9.) But what need is there of appealing to the context? Does not the text answer for itself, while Mr. Madan’s sense of it affords a sufficient antidote to all who dislike absurd consequences, and are afraid of traducing the Holy One of Israel? Let reason decide. If “as many as [were in Antioch] were [Calvinistically] ordained to eternal life,” believed under that sermon of St. Paul, (for almost the whole city came together to hear the word of God,) it follows, that all who believed not “then,” were eternally shut up in unbelief; that all the elect believed at once; that they who do not believe at one time shall never believe at another; and that when Paul returned to Antioch, few souls, if any, could be converted by his ministry; God having at once taken “as many as were ordained to eternal life,” and left all the rest to the devil. But, (10.) The most dreadful consequence is yet behind. If they that believed did it merely because they “were absolutely ordained of God to eternal life,” it follows, by a parity of reason, that those who disbelieved, did it merely because they were absolutely ordained of God to eternal death: God having bound them by the help of Adam in everlasting chains of unbelief and sin. Thus, while proud, wicked, stubborn unbelievers are entirely exculpated, the God of all mercies is indirectly charged with free wrath, and finished damnation.]

ft14 To say that God stood in need of Judas’ wickedness to deliver his Son to the Jews, is not less absurd than impious. “God has no need of the sinful man.” Any boy that had once heard our Lord preach in the temple, and seen him go to the garden of Gethsemane, might have given as proper an information to the high priest, and been as proper a guide to the mob, as Judas: especially as Christ was not less determined to deliver himself, than the Jews were to apprehend him. With regard to the notion that Judas was a wicked man — an absolute unbeliever — a cursed hypocrite when our Lord gave him a place in his familiar friendship, and raised him to the dignity of an apostle, it is both unscriptural and scandalous. (1.) Unscriptural: for the Scripture informs us, that when the Lord immediately proceeds to an election of that nature, “he looketh on the heart,” 1 Samuel 16:7. Again: when the eleven apostles prayed that God would overrule the lot which they were about to cast for a proper person to succeed Judas, they said, “Thou, Lord, who knowest the hearts of all men, show which of these two thou hast chosen, that he might take part of the ministry, from which Judas by transgression fell,” Acts 1:24. Now as Judas fell by transgression, he was undoubtedly raised by righteousness, unless Zelotes can make appear, that he rose the same way he fell; and, that as he fell by a bribe, so he gave some of our Lord’s friends a bribe, to get himself nominated to one of the twelve apostolic bishoprics: but even then, how does this agree with our Lord’s “knowing the heart,” and choosing accordingly? (2.) This notion is scandalous: it sets Christ in the most contemptible light. How will he condemn, in the great day, men of power in the Church, who for by-ends commit the care of souls to the most wicked of men? How will he even find fault with them, if he did set them the example himself, in passing by all the honest and good men in Judea, to go and set the apostolic mitre upon the head of a thief — of a “wolf in sheep’s clothing?” In the name of wisdom I ask, Could Christ do this, and yet remain the “good Shepherd?” How different is the account that St. Paul gives us of his own election to the apostleship. “The glorious Gospel of God was committed to my charge,” says he; “and I thank Christ, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry,” 1 Timothy 1:11, 12. Now, if we represent Christ as putting Paul into the ministry because he counted him faithful, and Judas because he counted him unfaithful — a thief — a traitor — a cursed hypocrite, do we not make Christ a Proteus? Are his ways equal? Has he not two weights? God, I grant, sets sometimes a wicked king over a wicked people, but it is according to the ordinary course of human affairs, and in his anger; to chastise a sinful nation with a royal rod. But what had the unformed Christian Church done to deserve being scourged with the rod of apostolic wickedness? And what course of human affairs obliged our Lord to fix upon a wicked man in a new election to a new dignity — and, what is most striking, in an election to which he proceeded without the interposition of any free agent but himself? O Zelotes, mistake me not: if I plead the cause of Judas’ sincerity, when he “left all to follow Christ,” and when our Lord passed by thousands, immediately to choose him for his “own familiar friend in whom he trusted;” — for a preacher of his Gospel, and an apostle of his Church; I do not do it so much for Judas’ sake, as for the honour of Christ, and the comfort of his timorous, doubting followers. Alas: if Christ could show distinguishing favour and familiar friendship to a man, on whom he had absolutely set his black seal of unconditional reprobation — to a man whom, from the beginning of the world, he had without any provocation marked out for a goat, and for unavoidable damnation; if he could converse, eat, drink, travel, lodge, and pray for years with a man to whom he bore from everlasting, and will bear to all eternity, a settled ill will, an immortal hatred, where is sincerity? where is the Lamb without blemish? the Lamb of God in whose mouth no guile was ever found? If Christ be such a sly damner of one of his twelve apostles as the “doctrines of grace” (so called) represent him to be, who can trust him? What professor — what Gospel minister can assure himself that Christ has not chosen and called him for purposes as sinister as those for which it is supposed that Judas was chosen, and called to be Christ’s familiar friend? Nay, if Christ, barely on account of Adam’s sin, left Judas in the lurch, and even betrayed him into a deeper hell by a mock call, may he not have done the same by Zelotes, by me, and by all the professors in the world? O ye “doctrines of grace,” if you are as sweet as honey, in the mouth of Zelotes, as soon as I have eaten you, my belly is bitter; poison corrodes my vitals; I must either part with you, my reason, or my peace.]

ft15 It is remarkable that Jewish rage first broke out against our Lord, when he touched their great Diana — the doctrine of their absolute election. You think, said he, to be saved, merely because you are Abraham’s children, and God’s chosen, peculiar people. “But I tell you of a truth,” God is not so partial to Israel as you suppose. “Many widows were in Israel in the days of Elias, but to none of them was Elias sent, but to a Zidonian [heathen] widow. And many lepers were in Israel in the days Elisha, yet none of them was cleansed save Naaman the Syrian,” Luke 4:25, &c. The Jews never forgave our Lord that levelling saying. If he narrowly escaped their fury at Nazareth, it was only to meet it increased sevenfold in the holy city. So fierce and implacable are the tempers to which some professors work up themselves, by drinking into unscriptural notions of election!]

ft16 I have lived these fifteen years in a part of England where a multitude of potters make all manner of iron and earthen vessels. Some of these mechanics are by no means conspicuous for good sense, and others are at times besotted through excessive drinking; but I never yet saw or heard of one so excessively foolish as to make, even in a drunken fit, a vessel on purpose to break it, to show that he had power over the work of his own hands. Such, however, is the folly that Zelotes’ scheme imputes to God. Nay, if a potter makes vessels on purpose to break them, he is only a fool; but if he could make sensible vessels like dogs, and formed them on purpose to roast them alive, and that he might show his sovereign power, would you not execrate his cruelty as much as you would pity his madness? But, what would you think of the man if he made five or ten such vessels for absolute destruction, while he made one for absolute salvation, and then assumed the title of gracious and merciful potter, and called his potting schemes “schemes of grace?”]

ft17 Is it not strange that Zelotes should infer, from this expression, that God had originally “raised up,” that is, created Pharaoh, on purpose to damn him? Is it not evident that Pharaoh justly looked upon every plague as a death? Witness his own words, “Intreat the Lord your God that he may take away from me this death only,” Exodus 10:17. And if every plague was a death to Pharaoh, was not every removal of a plague a kind of resurrection, a raising him up, together with his kingdom, from a state of destruction, according to these words of the Egyptians, “Knowest thou not yet that Egypt is destroyed?” How reasonable and Scriptural is this sense! How dreadful, I had almost said, how diabolical is that of Zelotes!]

ft18 In familiar and Scripture language the effect is frequently ascribed to the chief cause; while, for brevity’s sake, inferior causes or agents are passed over in silence. Thus David says, “Except the Lord build the house, their labour is but vain that build it.” St. Paul says, “I laboured, yet not I, but the grace of God.” And we say, “Admiral Hawke has beat the French fleet.” Would it not be absurd in Zelotes to strain these expressions so as to make absolutely nothing of the mason’s work in the building of a house; of the apostle’s preaching in the conversion of those Gentiles; and of the bravery of the officers and sailors in the victory got over the French by the English admiral? It is nevertheless upon such frivolous conclusions as these that Zelotes generally rests the enormous weight of his peculiar doctrines.]

ft19 Mr. Henry says with great truth, “All this choosing” of Jacob and refusing of Esau “was typical, and intended to shadow forth some other election and rejection.” And although he was a Calvinist, he does, in many respects, justice to St. Paul’s meaning. “This difference,” says he, “that was put between Jacob and Esau, he [the apostle] farther illustrates by a quotation from Malachi 1:2, where it is said, not of Jacob and Esau the persons, but the Edomites and Israelites their posterity: ‘Jacob have I loved and Esau have I hated.’ The people of Israel were taken into the covenant of peculiarity, had the land of Canaan given them, were blessed with the more signal appearances of God for them in special protection, supplies, and deliverances, while the Edomites were rejected, [from the covenant of peculiarity,] had no temple, altars, priests, prophets; no such particular care of them, &c. Others understand it of the election and rejection of particular persons; some loved and others hated from eternity. But the apostle speaks of Jacob and Esau, not in their own persons, but as ancestors: Jacob the people and Esau the people: nor doth God damn any, or decree so to do, merely because he will do it, without any reason taken from their own deserts, &c. The choosing of Jacob the younger was to intimate that the Jews, though the natural seed of Abraham, and the first born of the Church, should be laid aside: and the Gentiles, who were as the younger brother, should be taken in in their stead, and have the birthright and blessing.” He concludes his comment upon the whole chapter by these words, which exactly answer to the double key I have given to the reader: “Upon the whole matter the unbelieving Jews have no reason to quarrel with God for rejecting them: they had a fair offer of righteousness and life, and salvation, made upon Gospel terms, which they did not like, and would not come up to; and therefore if they perish they may thank themselves. Their blood is upon their own heads.” What precedes is pure truth, and strongly confirms my doctrine. But what follows is pure Calvinism, and shows the inconsistency of the most judicious writers in that scheme. “Were the Jews hardened? It was because it was his own (God’s) pleasure to deny them softening grace, &c. Two sorts of vessels God forms out of the great lump of fallen mankind: (1.) ‘Vessels of wrath:’ vessels filled with wrath, as a vessel of wine is a vessel filled with wine, ‘full of the fury of the Lord,’ &c. (2.) ‘Vessels of mercy,’ filled with mercy.” And again: “he (the apostle) answers by resolving all into the Divine sovereignty. We are the thing formed, and he is the former, and it does not become us to challenge or arraign his wisdom in ordering and disposing of us into this or that shape or figure.” That is, in plain English, free wrath, or, to speak smoothly as a Calvinist, Divine sovereignty may order and dispose us into the shape of vessels of wrath before we have done either good or evil. How could Mr. Henry thus contradict himself, and write for and against truth? Why, he was a moderate Calvinist: as moderate, he wrote glorious truths; and, as a Calvinist, horrid insinuations.]

ft20 This phrase: “That the purpose of God according to election might stand not of works but of him that calleth,” is to be understood merely of those blessings which distinguishing grace bestows upon some men and not upon others, and which do not necessarily affect their eternal salvation or their eternal damnation. In this sense it was that God, for the above-mentioned reasons, preferred Jacob to Esau. In this sense he still prefers a Jew to a Hottentot, and a Christian to a Jew; giving a Christian the Old and New Testament, while the Jew has only the Old, and the Hottentot has neither. Far from denying the reality of this sovereign, distinguishing grace, which is independent on all works, and flows entirely from the superabounding kindness of “him that calleth,” I have particularly maintained it, vol. i, p. 505. This is St. Paul’s edifying meaning, to which I have not the least objection. But when Zelotes stretches the phrase so far as to make it mean that God ordains people to eternal life or eternal death, “not of works but of him that” without reason forcibly “calleth some to believe and be saved,” leaving others necessarily to disbelieve and be damned: when Zelotes does this, I say, my reason and conscience are equally frighted, and I beg leave to dissent from him for the reasons mentioned in this section.]

ft21 The reader is desired to take notice, that in this and the following paragraphs, where I produce scriptures expressive of God’s just wrath, I have shifted the numbers that mark to which axiom the passage belongs. And this I have done: (1.) Because there is no free wrath in God. (2.) Because, when there is wrath in him, man’s perverseness is the just cause of it. And (3.) Because in point of evil, man has the wretched diabolical honour of being first cause; and therefore, No. I. is his shameful prerogative, according to the principles laid down Sec. III.]

ft22 Mr. Henry comments thus upon these words, “I will harden his heart,” that is, “withdraw softening grace,” which God undoubtedly did upon just provocation. Whence it follows that, inconsistent Calvinists being judges, Pharaoh himself had once softening grace; it being impossible for God to withdraw from Pharaoh’s heart what never was there. Query. Was this softening grace, which God withdrew from Pharaoh, of the reprobating or of the electing kind?]

ft23 The words palai progegrammenoi rendered “before of old ordained,” literally mean “formerly forewritten, foretypified, or foredescribed.” The condemnation of these backsliders, or apostates, was of old forewritten by David, Psalm 125:5; and by Ezekiel 18:24. Their lusts were of old foretypified by those of Sodom; their apostasy by that of the fallen angels; and their perdition by that of the Israelites, whom the Lord “saved out of the land of Egypt,” and “afterward destroyed” for their unbelief; three typical descriptions these, which St. Jude himself immediately produces, verses 5, 6, 7; together with Enoch’s prophecy of the Lord’s coming “to convince them of all their ungodly deeds and hard speeches,” verses 15, 17. Is it not strange then that Zelotes should build his notions of absolute reprobation upon a little mistake of our translators, which is contrary both to the Greek and to the context? “Beloved,” says St. Jude, verse 17, “remember ye the words [wrweirhmenwn, ‘forespoken,’ answering to Greek progegrammenoi, ‘forewritten,’ and not ‘foreappointed,’] which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.” For the apostles, no doubt, often enlarged upon these words of their Master: “Because iniquity shall abound the love of many shall wax cold [and they will fall away;] but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.”]

ft24 A beautiful face may have some freckles. Our translation is good, but it has its blemishes; nor is it one of the least to represent God as appointing men to be disobedient. To vindicate all the Divine perfections, which such a doctrine in-jutes, of the two meanings that the word fairly bears in the original, I need only choose that which is not repugnant to reason and Scripture. If charity, which “thinketh no evil and hopeth all things” consistently with reason, — if charity, I say, obliges us to put the best construction upon the words of our neighbour, how much more should decency oblige us to do it with respect to the word of God? When a modest person drops a word, that bears either a chaste or an unchaste meaning, is it not cruel absolutely to fix an “unchaste” meaning upon it? To show that St. Peter’s words bear the meaning which I fix to them, I need only prove two things. (1.) That the original word eteqhsan, which is translated “appointed,” means also “settled” or “disposed.” And (2.) That a passive word in the Greek tongue frequently bears the meaning of the Hebrew voice called “hithpahel,” which signifies the making oneself to do a thing, or the being caused by oneself to do it: a voice this, which in some degree answers to the middle voice of the Greeks, some tenses of which equally bear an active or a passive sense. To prove the first point, I appeal only to two texts, where the word tiqhmi, undoubtedly bears the meaning which I contend for. Luke 21:14, qesqe “SETTLE it in your hearts;” and Luke 9:62, euqetov “fit,” or more literally “well DISPOSED for the kingdom of God.” And to prove my second proposition, (beside what I have already said upon that head, in my note upon Mr. Madan’s mistake, p. 77,) I present the critical reader with indubitable instances of it, even in our translation. Jude, verse 10, fqeirontai, they are corrupted, or, “they corrupt THEMSELVES.” 2 Corinthians 11:13, Greek metaschmatizomenoi, being transformed, or, “transforming themselves.” Acts 18:6, autown antitassomenwn, literally, they being opposed, or, as we have it in our Bibles, “when they opposed themselves.” John 20:14, estrafh, she (Mary) was turned, or “she turned herself.” Matthew 16:23, Jesus strafeiv, being turned, or, “turning himself.” Matthew 27:3, Judas metamelhqeiv, having been penitent, or, “having repented himself,” &c, &c. In such cases as these the sacred writers use indifferently the active and passive voice, because man acts, and is acted upon: he is worked upon, and he works. Thus we read Acts 3:19, epistreyate, “convert,” namely, yourselves, “actively;” though our translators render it passively, “be converted:” and Luke 22:32, our Lord, speaking to Peter, does not say, epistrafeiv, “when thou art converted,” passively; but actively, epistreyav, “when thou hast converted,” namely, “thyself.” Now, if in so many cases our translators have justly rendered passive words, by words expressing “a being acted upon by ourselves,” I desire Zelotes to show, by any one good argument, taken from criticism, Scripture, reason, conscience, or decency, that we must render the word of our text “they were appointed,” namely, by God, “to be disobedient,” when the word eteqhsan may with as much propriety as in all the preceding eases, be rendered they disposed, set, or “settled themselves unto disobedience.” What has the Holy One of Israel done to us, that we should dishonour him by charging our disobedience upon “his appointment?” Are we so fond of the doctrines of grace, finished salvation, and finished damnation, that, in order to maintain the latter, we must represent God as appointing, out of sovereign, distinguishing free wrath, the disobedience of the reprobates, that by securing the “means” — their unbelief and sin, he may also secure the “end” — their everlasting burnings? Zelotes makes too much of some figurative expressions in the sacred writings. He forgets, that what is said of God, must always be understood in such a manner as becomes God. If it would be absurd to take literally what the Scriptures say of God’s “plucking his right hand out of his bosom;” of “his awakening as one out of sleep;” of “his riding upon the heavens;” of his “smelling a sweet savour from a burnt offering;” of his “lending an ear,” &c, is it not much more absurd to take the three following texts in a literal sense? (1.) 2 Samuel 16:10, “The Lord said unto him, [Shimei,] Curse David.” Is it not evident that David’s meaning in these words is only this? “The Lord, by bringing me to the deplorable circumstances in which I now find myself, has justly given an opportunity to Shimei to insult me with impunity, and to upbraid me publicly with my crimes. This opportunity I call ‘a bidding,’ to humble myself under the hand of God, who lashes my guilty soul by this afflictive providence; but I would not insinuate that God literally said to Shimei, ‘Curse David,’ any more than I would affirm that he said to me, Murder Uriah.” (2.) God is represented, 2 Samuel 12:11, as saying to David, “I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them to thy neighbour, and he shall lie with them in the sight of this sun, for thou didst it secretly, but I will do it before all Israel.” And accordingly God took the bridle of his restraining power out of Absalom’s heart, who had already murdered his own brother, and was, it seems, by that time a vessel of wrath self fitted for destruction. The Divine restraint being thus removed, the corrupted youth rushes upon the “outward” commission of those crimes which he had perhaps a hundred times committed in “intention,” and from which the Lord had hitherto kept him, out of regard for his pious father — a regard this, which David had now forfeited by his atrocious crimes. The meaning of the whole passage seems then to be this: “Thou shalt be treated as thou hast served Uriah. Thy wild son Absalom has already robbed thee of thy crown, and defiled thy wives in his ambitious, libidinous heart. When thou wast a good man — a man after my own heart, I hindered him from going such lengths in wickedness, but now I will hinder him no more: he shall be thy scourge; thou sinnedst secretly against Uriah, but I will stand in the way of thy wicked son no longer, and he shall retaliate before the sun.” This implies only a passive permission, and a providential opportunity to commit a crime “outwardly,” nor could wicked men ever proceed to the “external execution” of their designs without such opportunities. (3.) By a like figure of speech we read, Psalm 105:25, that “God turned the heart of the Egyptians to hate his people, and to deal subtilly with his servants.” But how did he do this? Was it by doing the devil’s work? by infusing hatred into the hearts of the Egyptians? No: it was merely by blessing and multiplying the Israelites, as the preceding words demonstrate: “He increased his people greatly, and made them stronger than their enemies.” Hence it was that fear, envy, jealousy, and hatred, were naturally stirred up in the breasts of the Egyptians. I repeat it; not to explain such scriptures in the manner becoming the God of holiness is far more detestable than to assert, that “the Ancient of Days” literally wears a robe, and his own white hair, because Daniel, after having seen an emblematic vision of his majesty and purity, said, “His garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head was like the pure wool.” For every body must allow, that it is far less indecent “literally” to hold forth God as a venerable Jacob, than to represent him “literally” as a mischievous, sin-infusing Belial. (4.) With regard to Jeremiah 20:7, “O Lord, thou hast deceived me, and I was deceived,” Mr. Sellon justly observes: (1.) That the Hebrew word here translated “deceive,” signifies also to “entice” or “persuade,” as the margin shows. And (2.) That the context requires the last sense; the prophet expressing his natural backwardness to preach, and saying, “O Lord, thou hast persuaded me” to do it, “and I was persuaded.” It is a pity, that when a word has two meanings, the one honourable, and the other injurious to God, the worst should once be preferred to the better. If Zelotes take these hints, he will no more avail himself of some figurative expressions, and of some mistakes of our translators, to represent God as the author of sin and the deceiver of men. When wicked men have long resisted the truth, God may indeed, and frequently does, judicially “give them up to believe a destructive lie;” but he is no more the author of the lie, than he is Beelzebub, “the father of lies.”]

ft25 If the expression “elect angel” is taken in a vague sense, which is most probable, it means holy, beloved angels, who are elected to the rewards of faithful obedience. If it be taken in a particular sense, it means those angels who, like Gabriel, are selected from the multitude of the heavenly host, and sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation, and especially to guard such eminent preachers as Timothy and St. Paul were. In either sense, therefore, the words elect angels, which Zelotes greedily catches at to prop up his scheme, have nothing to do with Calvinian election. That the word elect sometimes means darling or beloved, will appear evident to those who compare the following passages: “Behold mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth,” Isaiah 42:1. “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” Matthew 3:17.]

ft26 St. Paul having guarded the doctrine of sovereign, distinguishing grace, by the different matter, earth, wood, silver, &c, of which the vessels are formed: and not making any distinction between “vessels of dishonour” and “vessels of wrath,” as he does in Romans 9, it necessarily follows, according to the doctrine of rewarding grace, that the expression “vessels to honour,” and “vessels to dishonour,” should not be taken here in a comparative sense, as in Romans 9; but in a positive sense; and then they answer to “vessels sanctified,” and to “vessels not purged;” expressions which occur in the context, and fix the apostle’s meaning.]

ft27 This passage will be explained in the next section. In the meantime I desire the reader to take notice that the election of which St. Paul writes is not of the Antinomian kind; I mean, it is not Calvinian election, which insures eternal salvation to all fallen believers. That the apostle was an utter stranger to such a doctrine, appears from his own words to those elect Ephesians: “Putting away lying, speak truth: let him that stole steal no more: be not drunk: let not fornication or uncleanness be once named among you, &c, for this ye know, that no unclean person, &c, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ. Let no man deceive you with vain words, for because of these things the wrath of God cometh upon the children of disobedience,” that is, upon the disobedient children, who, by their bad works, lose their inheritance in the kingdom of God. Is it not surprising, that when St. Paul has thus warned the Ephesians against Antinomian deceptions, he should be represented as deceiving those very Ephesians first, by teaching them a doctrine which implies that no crimes, be they ever so atrocious, can deprive fallen believers of their “inheritance in the kingdom of Christ?”

ft28 I take the liberty to say “the book of life,” and not “the book of the living,” because our translators themselves, Genesis 2:7, have rendered the very same word “the breath of life,” and not “the breath of the living.”]

ft29 The Rev. Mr. Whitefield, in his answer to the bishop of London’s Pastoral Letter, says, “That prayer is not the single work of the Spirit, without any cooperation of our own, I readily confess. Who ever affirmed that there was no cooperation of our own minds, together with the impulse of the Spirit of God?” Now, that many rest short of salvation, merely by not co-operating with the Spirit’s impulse, is evident, if we may credit these words of the reverend author: “There is a great difference between good desires and good habits. Many have the one who never attain to the other. Many (through the Spirit’s impulse) have good desires to subdue sin; and yet resting (through want of co-operation) in those good desires, sin has always the dominion over them.” (Whitefield’s Works, vol. iv, pages 7, 11.) Mr. Whitefield grants, in these two passages, all that I contend for in these pages respecting the doctrine of our concurrence or co-operation with the Spirit of free grace, that is, respecting our doctrine of free will; and yet his warmest admirers will probably be my warmest opposers. But why? Because I aim at (what Mr. Whitefield sometimes overlooked) consistency.]

ft30 When Isaiah saith, “I was found of them that sought me not,” &c, Romans 10:23, he does not contradict his own exhortation, to “seek the Lord while he may be found.” That noble testimony to the doctrine of grace does not militate against the doctrine of liberty: but it proves, (1.) That free grace is always beforehand with free will: and (2.) That as God freely called the Jews to the Mosaic covenant of peculiarity; so he gratuitously calls the Gentiles to the Christian covenant of peculiarity; neither Jews nor Gentiles having previously sought that inestimable favour. But when God has so far revealed himself either to Jew or Gentile, as to say, “Seek ye my face,” we to him who does not answer in truth and in time, “Thy face, Lord, will I seek.”]

ft31 I beg the reader would pay a peculiar attention to what precedes and follows this clause. I myself would condemn it, as subversive of the doctrine of grace, and Pharisaical, if I considered it as detached from the context, and not guarded or explained by the words in Italics, upon which the greatest stress is to be laid. If Zelotes has patience to read on he will soon see how the secondary trust in the obedience of faith, which I here contend for, is reconcilable with our primary trust in Christ.]

ft32 Mr. Wesley is too judicious a divine to sign a paper that leaves the second axiom quite unguarded. Accordingly we find that axiom guarded in these words of Mr. Shirley’s declaration: “No one is a believer, (and consequently cannot be saved,) who doth not good works where there is time and opportunity.” Nevertheless, this clause does not by far form so solemn a guard as might have been demanded upon so remarkable an occasion. Mr. Shirley, and the clergy that accompanied him, might with propriety have been desired to remove the fears of those who signed the declaration which he had drawn up, by signing at least the following memorandum: “Forasmuch as Aaron, David, Solomon, Peter, and the incestuous Corinthian did not do good works when they, or any of them worshipped a golden calf, Milcom, and the abomination of the Zidonians, — denied Christ, or committed adultery, murder, or incest, we hereby solemnly declare, in the sight of God, that we abhor the doctrine of the Solifidians, who say that the above-mentioned backsliders had justifying, saving faith, while they committed the above-mentioned crimes; such a doctrine being perilous and abominable; because it absolutely overturns the twelfth article of our Church, and encourages all Christians to make Christ the minister of sin, and to believe that they may commit the most atrocious crimes, without losing their faith, their justification, and their title to a throne of glory.” If Mr. Shirley and his friends had refused to sign such a memorandum as this, the world would have had a public demonstration that Calvinism is the doctrine of Protestant indulgences; and that it establishes speculative, and consequently makes way for practical Antinomianism in all its most flagrant immoralities, as well as in its most winning refinements.]

ft33 The title of a Calvinistic pamphlet published against the Fourth Check.]

ft34 The word in the original has a peculiar force: (sunantilambanetai.) It expresses at once how God’s Spirit does his part (sun) “with us,” and (anti) “over against us;” like two persons that take up a burden together and carry it, the one at one end, and the other at the other end; or like a minister and a congregation. who join in prayer by alternately taking up the responses of the Church.]

ft35 “O ye mortals, dismiss your cares, and unbend your minds. Predestination rules the world: all things happen according to a fixed decree.” (Manilius.)]

ft36 This very passage was urged to a friend of mine by the obdurate highwayman who was hanged last year at Shrewsbury! He cited it on the morning of his execution, to excuse his crimes, and to comfort himself. He had drunk so deeply into the doctrine of necessity, bound will, and fatalism, that he was entirely inaccessible to repentance. What pity is it that Zelotes should countenance so horrid a misapplication of the Scriptures! Heated Austin is my Zelotes in this respect. Bishop Davenant saith of him, that “he did not abhor fate;” and to prove his assertion he quotes the following words of that father: — “If any one attributes human affairs [which take in all the bad thoughts, words, and actions of men,] to fate, because he calls the will and the power of God by the name of fate, let him hold his sentiment and alter his language. Sententiam teneat, linguam corrigat.” (Aug. De Grat. lib. 5, c. 1.) Is not this granting Mr. Voltaire as much fatalism as he contends for? and gilding the fatal pill so piously as to make it go down glib with all the rigid bound willers in Christendom?]

ft37 I use these limited expressions because, upon second thoughts, I do not absolutely assent to Mr. Edwards’ doctrine, that the will always necessarily follows the last dictate of the understanding. I now think that in this respect Calvin’s judgment deserves our close attention: — “Sic interdum flagitii turpitudo conscientiam urget, ut non sibi imponens sub falsa boni imagine, sed sciens et volens, in malum ruat. Ex quo affectu prodeunt istæ voces, ‘Video meliora proboque, Deteriora sequor.’“ (Inst. lib. 2, cap. 2, section 23.) Sometimes the horrid nature of vice so urges the conscience, that the sinner, no longer imposing upon himself by the false appearance of good, knowingly and willingly rushes upon evil. Hence flow these words, I see and approve what is good, but follow what is bad. Since these sheets went to the press, I have seen Mr. Wesley’s Thoughts upon Necessity. He strongly sides with Calvin against Edwards. For after asserting that sometimes our first, sometimes our last judgment is according to the impressions we have received; that in some cases we may or may not receive those impressions; and that in most we may vary them greatly; he denies that the will necessarily obeys the last judgment, and affirms that “the mind has an intrinsic power of cutting off the connection between the judgment and the will.”]

ft38 I make these exceptions for two reasons: (1.) Because I am sensible of the justness of Ovid’s advice to persons in love: — Principiis obsta, sero medicina paratur, &c. For if love, and indeed any other violent passion, is not resisted at its first appearance, it soon gets to such a height that it can hardly be mastered, till it has had its course. (2.) Because a habit strongly rooted is a second nature. It is far easier to refrain from the first acts than to break off inveterate habits of virtue or of vice. In such cases, powerful, uncommon impulses of grace or of temptation are peculiarly necessary to throw us out of our beaten track. Hence the strong comparison of the prophet, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? Then may ye also, that are accustomed to do evil, do good,” — without a more than common assistance of Divine grace.]

ft39 Soar to the stars, and with his mind travel round the universe.]

ft40 yuch is sometimes taken only for the principle of animal life. Thus, Revelation 8:9, “The third part of the sea became blood, and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea: and had yucav [not natural but] animal life, died.” Hence Calvin himself renders the word yucikov, animal man, though our translators render it “natural man,” as if the Greek word were fusikov. And upon their mistakes a vast majority of mankind are rashly represented as being absolutely destitute of all capacity to receive the saving truths of religion.]

ft41 That this is the true meaning of Psalm 110:3, is evident from the context. Read the whole Psalm; compare it with Psalm 149:6; Malachi 4:1, 2, 3; and Revelation 19:19; and you will see that “the day of God’s power,” or “the day of God’s army,” is the day of his wrath against his enemies: a day this which is expressly mentioned two verses after, and described in the rest of the Psalm.]

ft42 When Calvin speaks of the absolute destruction of “so many nations, which, (una cum liberis eorum infantibus,) together with their little children, are involved without remedy in eternal death by the fall,” he says that “God foreknew their end before he made man;” and he accounts for his foreknowledge thus: “He foreknew it, because he had ordained it by his decree:” a decree this, which three lines above he calls “horribly awful.” “Et ideo præscivit, quia decreto suo sic ordinarat. Decretum quidem horribile, fateor.” And in the next chapter he observes, that, “Forasmuch as the reprobates do not obey the word of God, we may well charge their disobedience upon the wickedness of their hearts; provided we add at the same time that they were devoted to this wickedness, because, by the just and unsearchable judgment of God, they were raised up to illustrate his glory by their damnation.” “Modo simul adjicitur, ideo in hanc pravitatem addictos, quia justo, et inscrutabili Dei judicio suscitati sunt, ad gloriam ejus sua damnatione illustrandam.” This Calvinism unmasked may be seen in Calvin’s Institutes, third book, chap. 23, sec. 7, and chap. 24, sec. 14.]

ft43 According to the doctrine maintained in these pages, God is the first cause of our conversion, or of our “becoming wheat.” But man is the first cause of his own perversion, or his “becoming chaff.”]

ft44 I have advanced several arguments to prove that Judas was sincere, when Christ chose him to the apostleship. I beg leave to confirm them by the judgment of two of the fathers. St. Chrysostom, in his fifty-second discourse, says, O Iouda; Basileiav uiov prwton hn, &c. That is, “Judas was at first a child of the kingdom, and heard it said to him with the disciples, ‘You shall sit upon twelve thrones;’ but at last he became a child of hell.” And St. Ambrose, upon Romans 9:13, has these remarkable words, Non est personarum acceptio in præscientia Dei, &c, That is, “There is no respect of persons in God’s foreknowledge; for prescience is that whereby he knows assuredly how the will of every man will be, in which he will continue, and by which he shall be damned or crowned, &c. They who, as God knows also, will persevere in goodness, are frequently bad before; and they who, as he knows also, will be found evil at last, are sometimes good before, &c. For both Saul and Judas were once good.” Hence it is, that he says, in another place, “Sometimes they are at first good, who afterward become and continue evil; and in this respect they are said to be written in the book of life, and blotted out of it.”]

ft45 Dr. Tucker judiciously unfolds St. Augustine’s thought, where he says, “There is a sense, in which it may be allowed on the semi-Pelagian, [semi-Augustinian] or Arminian plan, that grace is irresistible: but it is a sense that can do no manner of service to the cause of Calvinism. Grace, for instance, especially prevenient, or preventing grace may be considered as a precious gift, or universal endowment, like the common gifts of health, strength, &c, in which case the recipient must necessarily receive them; for he has not a power to refuse. But after he has received them, he may, choose whether he will apply them to any good and salutary purposes or not: and on this freedom of choice rests the proper distinction between good and evil, virtue and vice, morality and immorality. Grace therefore must be received; but, after it is received, it may be abused: the talent may be hid in a napkin, and the Spirit may be quenched, or have a despite done to it.”]

ft46 I desire the reader to take notice that this doctrine of the absolute freedom of prevenient grace, or initial salvation, is all along maintained in my first Scale; and that if Vossius’ account of the semi-Pelagians is exact, Zelotes cannot justly charge us with semi-Pelagianism: and we have as much right to be called orthodox as the fathers themselves.]

ft47 This would be true if it were spoken of the predestination which I contend for: but it is a great mistake when it is affirmed of the doctrine of efficacious, absolute predestination maintained by Zelotes.]

ft48 This good father, to guard the doctrine of grace as well as that of justice, should have observed that free grace is the first cause, and free will the second, in our choice of moral good; but that free will is the first cause in our choice of moral evil. Forgetting to make these little distinctions, he has given the Calvinists just room to complain, and has afforded the Pelagians a precedent to bear hard upon the doctrine of grace. Should some prejudiced reader think that this doctrine ascribes too much to man, because it makes free will a first cause in the choice of moral evil, I answer two things: (1.) To make God the first cause of moral evil is to turn Manichee, and assert that there is an evil as well as a good principle in the Godhead. (2.) When we say that free will chooses moral evil of itself, without necessity, and is, of consequence, the first cause of its own evil choice; we do not mean that free will is its own first cause. No: God made the free-willing soul, and freely endued man with the power of choosing without necessity. Thus God’s supremacy is fully secured. If, therefore, in the day of probation, we have the cast, when good and evil are set before us; our free will is not placed on a level with God by this tremendous power, but we place ourselves voluntarily under the rewarding sceptre of free grace, or the iron rod of just wrath. By this mean God maintains both his sovereignty as a king, and his justice as a judge; while man is still a subject fit to be graciously rewarded or justly punished, according to the doctrines of free grace and just wrath.]

ft49 Burnet’s History of the Reformation, (second edition, part i, p. 291,) and a pamphlet entitled, A Dissertation on the Seventeenth Article, &c, furnish me with these important quotations. The last seems greatly to embarrass Mr. Hill. He attempts to set it aside, by urging: (1.) That in The Necessary Erudition of a Christian Man, “the doctrines of the mass, transubstantiation, &c, are particularly taught as necessary to salvation.” (2.) That “Bonner and Gardiner, as well as Cranmer, gave their imprimatur to it.” And, (3.) That “even in this book the doctrine of predestination is not denied, but the thing itself clearly admitted; only it is laid down in such a manner as not to, &c, supersede the necessity of personal holiness.” To this I answer: (1.) That Cranmer expressly recanted the errors which Mr. Hill mentions, but instead of recanting the doctrines of free grace and free will, he proceeded upon that very plan, in drawing up our articles and liturgy, as I shall prove just now. (2.) That Bonner and Gardiner gave their imprimatur to this quotation, no more proves that it contains false doctrine, than their subscribing to the thirty articles some years after shows that our articles are heretical. (3.) We thank Mr. Hill for informing the public that the book called The Erudition of a Christian Man, “clearly admits the doctrine of predestination only in such a manner as not to supersede the necessity of holiness.” This is just the manner in which we admit it after Cranmer in our seventeenth article. And we argue thus: — If the doctrine of free grace and free will, admirably well balanced by Cranmer in The Erudition of a Christian Man, be a false doctrine, because the book contains some Papistical errors; does it not follow that the doctrine of a predestination consistent with personal holiness is a false doctrine, since (Mr. Hill himself being judge) such a doctrine is clearly admitted in that very book? If Mr. Hill give himself time to weigh this short answer to his pamphlet, entitled, “Cranmer vindicated from the charge of [what he is pleased to call] Pelagianism, by the author of Goliath slain;” I make no doubt but he will see that Goliath, (if that word means our doctrine,) far from being slain, is not so much as wounded.]

ft50 The Rev. Mr. Toplady makes much ado in his Historic Proof of the Calvinism of our Church, about some dissenters whom he calls free willers, and represents as the first separatists from the Church of England. But they were rigid Pelagian free willers, and not moderate, Bible free willers, such as Cranmer was, and all unprejudiced Churchmen are. This is evident from the account which Mr. Toplady himself gives us of their tenets, page 54. Some of which are as follows: — “That children are not born in original sin: that lust after evil is not sin, if the act be not committed,” &c. Honestus does not run into such an extreme: much less we, who stand with Cranmer on the line of moderation, at an equal distance from Calvinian rigid bound willers, and from Pelagian rigid free willers. I hope this hint is sufficient to show that though the simple may be frightened by the words free willers and separatists, no judicious Church-of-England man will think that he separates from our Church when he stands to the harmonizing doctrine of free grace and free will, which is maintained in our tenth article, and in these pages.]

ft51 I add the words “continued and final,” to guard the unconditional freeness of initial justification and salvation: because this justification is previous to all works on our part, and because all good works are but the voluntary (Zelotes would say the necessary) fruits of the free gift, which is come upon all men to justification, Romans 5:18.]

ft52 Not having the original, I extract what follows of Clement’s, from Mr. Wesley’s “Christian Library,” vol. 1. The quotations from the epistles of Barnabas, Polycarp, and Ignatius are taken from the translation of Thomas Elborowe, vicar of Chiswick. It is to be met with in his book, called “A Prospect of Primitive Christianity, as it was left by Christ and his Apostles;” printed in the Savoy, 1668.]

ft53 By comparing these two sentences, it is evident St. Clement believed and taught that our charity not only causes us to cover the sins of others, but in a secondary sense causes also God’s covering of our own sins: the first cause of pardon being always his free grace in Jesus Christ. Mr. Baxter exactly expresses St. Clement’s sentiment in his comment upon these words of St. Peter: — “Above all things have fervent charity among yourselves; for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.” “It is but partiality (says he) and jealousy of the cause of justification among the Papists, which makes some excellent expositors distort the text, so as to exclude from its sense God’s covering of our sins; because they consider not aright, (1.) That pardon, as continued, and as renewed, has more for the condition of it required in us, than the first pardon and begun justification has. The first act of sound faith serveth for the beginning, but the continuance of it [of sound faith] with its necessary fruits [love, &c,] is necessary to the continuance of pardon. (2.) That the faith which is required to justification and pardon, is giving up ourselves to God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in the baptismal covenant; that is, our Christianity, which is not put in opposition to that love or repentance, which is still implied as part of the same covenant consent, or as its necessary fruit; but to the works of the law of Moses, or of works, or to any works that are set in competition with Christ and free grace. If prejudice hindered not men, the reading of the angel’s words to Cornelius, and of Christ’s, (‘forgive and ye shall be forgiven,’)and the parable of the pardoned debtor, cast into prison for not pardoning his fellow servant, with James 2, and Matthew 25, would end all this controversy.” O Clement! O Baxter! what have ye said? Are ye not as heterodox as the author of the Minutes and their Vindicator?]

ft54 Wickliff used to say, “All things that happen do come absolutely of necessity.” (Historic Proof, page 191.) And Mr. Toplady, after taking care to distinguish, and set off the words will, absolutely, and necessity, says, in the next page, “I agree with him as to the necessity of events.”]

ft55 “He is like Proteus: I know not how to hold him:” whether by his secret will, which has absolutely predestinated millions of men to necessary sin and eternal damnation; or by his revealed will, which declares that he willeth not primarily that any man should perish, but that all should be eternally saved, by “working out their own salvation,” according to the talent of will and power, which he gives to every man to profit withal.]

ft56 “‘Tis hard to say whether they are goddesses or fowls obscene. However they are as ugly and dangerous appearances as ever ascended from the Stygian lake. They have faces like virgins, bands like birds’ claws, and an intolerable filthy looseness! As for their body, it is invulnerable; at least, you cannot wound it, they so nimbly fly away into the clouds; leaving the food, which they greedily tore, polluted by their defiling touch.”]

ft57 Some Calvinists have done this great truth justice, and among them the judicious Mr. Ryland, of Northampton, A.M., who hath published an extract from Dr. Long, bishop of Norwich, descriptive of the resemblance that man bears to God. The first article of his extract runs thus: — “The soul is an image of the almighty power of God. God has a power of beginning motion: so has the soul. God’s will acts with astonishing sovereignty, and absolute dominion and pleasure, where, and when, and how he will. The soul chooses or refuses, accepts or rejects an object, with an amazing resemblance to God. Even devils and the wicked refuse God with sovereign will and a most free contempt.” Hence it appears that to rob man of free agency, under pretence of making free grace all in all, is to destroy the first feature of God’s image in his living picture, man.]

ft58 Walking about my parish some years ago, I heard a collier’s wife venting her bad humour upon somebody, whom she called “son of a b — h.” I went into the house to make peace; and finding it was her own son, whom she thus abused, I expostulated with her about the absurdity of her language, so far as it offended God, and reflected upon herself. I might have added that if her child was the son of a b — ch, he must also be the son of a d-g; a circumstance this not less dishonourable to her husband than to herself: but I really forgot this argument [ad mulierem] at that time. However, I mention it here, in hopes that Zelotes, who, through voluntary humility, calls his good works as many bad names as the woman did her son, will take the hint, and will no more reflect upon Christ, by injudiciously loading the productions of his free grace with Antinomian abuse.]

ft59 A Solifidian would say entirely, and by this means he would leave no room for the second Gospel axiom, for the rewardableness of the works of faith, and for the doctrine of remunerative justice. But by saying capitally, we avoid this threefold mistake, we secure the honour of holy free grace, and shut the door against its counterfeit.]

ft60 By adding finally, we show that the top stone, as well as the foundation stone of our eternal salvation, is to be brought with “shouting, Grace! grace! unto it;” because if God had honoured his obedient saints with a sight of his heavenly glory for half an hour, and then suffered them to fall gently asleep in the bosom of oblivion, or to slide into a state of personal non-existence, he would have demonstrated his remunerative justice, and amply rewarded their best services. Hence it appears that God’s giving eternal rewards of glory for a few temporary services, done by his own grace, is such an instance of free grace as nothing but eternal shouts of “Grace! grace!” can sufficiently acknowledge. We desire our mistaken brethren to consider this remark; otherwise they will wrong the truth and us, by continuing to say that our doctrines of grace allow indeed free grace to lay the foundation, but that they reserve to the works of our rectified free will the honour of bringing the top stone of our eternal salvation, with saying, “Works! works! unto it:” a Pharisaic doctrine this, which we abhor; loudly asserting that although our free, unnecessitated obedience of faith intervenes, yet God in Christ is the Omega as well as the Alpha, — the end, as well as the beginning, of our eternal salvation.]

ft61 I add the word originally, to cut off the self-excusing opinion of those men who charge their eternal damnation upon an absolute decree of reprobation, or upon Adam’s first transgression. As for the word principally, it secures the part in the damnation of the wicked, which the Scriptures ascribe to the righteous God: it being certain, (1.) That God judicially hardens his slothful and unprofitable servants, by taking from them, at the end of their day of grace, the talent of softening grace, which they have obstinately buried. And, (2.) That he judicially reprobates or damns them, by pronouncing this awful sentence, “Depart, ye cursed,” &c. A flame of vindictive justice belongs to the Gospel of Christ, Hebrews 12:29, but not a single spark of free wrath.]

ft62 Mr. Fletcher was judged to be now in the last stage of a consumption.]

ft63 He means the rigid Calvinists.]

ft64 He means the rigid Arminians.]

ft65 To understand Romans 9, we must remember that the apostle occasionally speaks of the election and reprobation of justice; although his first design is to establish the election of grace, and the harmless reprobation which answers to it. When he speaks of Jacob and Esau, he contends for the election of grace: and when he brings in Pharaoh and “the vessels of wrath,” who, by their obstinate unbelief, have provoked vindictive wrath to harden them, or to give them up to the hardness of their hearts, he speaks of the election of justice. The passage to which this note refers, is the apostle’s transition from the one election to the other, and may be applied to both: I have applied it here to the election of grace. But if you apply it to the election of justice, the meaning is: hath not the Governor and Judge of all the earth authority over all mankind, as being their sovereign and lawgiver? Can he not fix the terms on which he will reward or punish his subjects? The terms on which he will give them more grace, or take from them the talent of grace which they have buried, and leave them to the rigour of his law? Can he not appoint that obedient believers shall be saved, or elected to eternal salvation; and that his mark of judicial reprobation shall be fixed upon all obstinate unbelievers, as Pharaoh and his host certainly were?]

ft66 “With fear” of offending any of my brethren, “and with trembling,” lest I should injure any doctrine of grace, I will venture to propose here a few questions, the decision of which I leave to the candour of those who are afraid of making one part of the Scripture contradict another. Granting that a sinner, as such, can never have any thing to glory in, unless it be his sin, his shame, and condemnation, I ask, Is there not a sense, in which a believer may rejoice or glory in his works of faith? And may not such a rejoicing or glorying be truly evangelical? What does St. Paul mean, when he says, “Let every [believing] man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing [or] glorying in himself, and not in another?” Galatians 6:4. Did St. John preach self righteousness, when he wrote, “Hereby [by loving our neighbour in deed and in truth] we shall assure our hearts before him,” that is, before God? “For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things, [that make for our condemnation, better than we do.] Beloved, if our heart [or conscience] condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God, [that is, before God.] And whatsoever we ask we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things which are pleasing in his sight,” 1 John 3:9, &c. If all such glorying is Pharisaical, who was, to the last, a greater Pharisee than the great apostle, who said, “Our rejoicing [or glorying] is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in godly sincerity, &c, we have had our conversation in the world?” 2 Corinthians 1:12. If St. Paul was guilty for living, how much more for dying full of this glorying? And is it not evident he did, from his own dying speech? “I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought — I have finished — I have kept — henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day,” 2 Timothy 4:7, 8. Does not St. John exhort us to attain the height of the confidence in which St. Paul died, when he says, “Look to yourselves, that we lose not those things which we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward?” 2 John 1:8. Does not St. Paul represent spiritual men as persons who have “God’s Spirit bearing witness together with their spirit, [and ‘vice versa,’ who have their spirit or conscience, bearing witness together with God’s Spirit] that they are the children of God?” Romans 8:16. And is it right to abolish the office of conscience, by turning out of the world all comfortable consciousness of having done that which is right in the sight of God, and by discarding all tormenting consciousness of having done the contrary, under the frivolous pretence that our Lord, in his parabolical account of the day of judgment, represents the generality of good and wicked men as not being yet properly acquainted with this Christian truth, that whatever good or wrong we do to the least of our fellow creatures, Christ will reward or punish, as if it were done to himself? Alas! if the generality of Christians do not yet properly know this important truth, which is so clearly revealed to them, is it surprising to hear our Lord intimate that the Jewish, Mohammedan, and heathen world will wonder when they shall see themselves rewarded or punished according to that deep saying of St. Paul, “The head of every man is Christ?” Whence it follows, that whatever good or evil is done to any man, (but more especially to any Christian) is done, in some sense, to a member of Christ, and consequently to Christ himself! How deplorable is it to see good men cover an Antinomian mistake by an appeal to a portion of Scripture, which our Lord spoke to leave Antinomianism no shadow of covering! Should it be said that the evangelical glorying, for which I plead after St. Paul, is subversive of his own doctrine, because he says, “He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord:” I answer, That we keep this Gospel precept, when we principally glory in the Lord himself, and when we subordinately glory in nothing but what is agreeable to the Lord’s word, and in the manner, and for the ends which the Lord himself has appointed. When the apostle says, “He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord,” he no more supposes that it is wrong to glory, as he did, “in the testimony of a good conscience,” than he supposes that it is wrong in a woman to be married to a man as well as to Christ, because he says, “If she marrieth, let her marry in the Lord.” Such a conclusion would be as absurd as the following Antinomian inferences: — “God will have mercy and not sacrifice, and therefore we must offer him neither the sacrifice of our praises, nor that of our persons.” “Christ said to Satan, ‘The Lord thy God only shalt thou serve;’ and therefore it is a species of idolatry in domestics to serve their masters.” May God hasten the time when such sophistry shall no more pass for orthodoxy! Should it be farther objected, that St. Paul says, “God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of Christ!” Galatians 6:14: I reply, That it is unreasonable not to give evangelical latitude to that expression, because, if it be taken in a literal and narrow sense, it absolutely excludes all glorying in Christ’s resurrection, ascension, and intercession; a glorying this, which the apostle himself indulges in, Romans 8:34. However, that he could, in a subordinate sense, glory in something beside the cross of Christ, appears from his own glorying in his labours, sufferings, infirmities, revelations, and converts; as well as in his preaching the Gospel in Achaia without being burthensome to the people. But all this subordinate glorying was “in the Lord, through whom” he did and bore all things, and “to whom” he referred all inferior honours, And therefore when he said, that “the righteous Judge” would give him “a crown of righteousness” for having “so run as to obtain it,” he, no doubt, designed to cast it at the feet of Him, in whose cross he principally gloried, and whose person was his “all in all.” “But all this glorying was before men, and not before God.” So it is said: but I prove the contrary by reason and Scripture: (1.) By “reason.” Next to the cross of Christ, what St. Paul chiefly gloried or rejoiced in, was “the testimony of his conscience,” 2 Corinthians 1:12. Now I ask, Had the apostle this joy and glorying only when he was in company? Did he not enjoy it when he was alone? If you say that he had it only in company, you represent him as a vile hypocrite, who could change the testimony of his conscience, as easily as he did his coat or company. And if you grant that he had this rejoicing when he was alone, you give up the point; for reason tells us, that all the rejoicing and glorying, which an enlightened man has in his own conscience, when he is alone, must be before God; because an enlightened conscience is a court, at which none is present but God, and where God always presides. 2. By “Scripture.” Paul himself exhorts the Thessalonians so to “walk” as to “please God,” 1 Thessalonians 4:1. Now the joyous testimony of our conscience that we walk so as to please God, must, in the nature of things, be a testimony “before” God. St. Peter represents our present salvation as consisting in “the answer of a good conscience toward God,” that is, “before God,” 1 Peter 3:21. And St. John cuts up the very root of the objection, where he declares, that, by the consciousness of our love to our neighbour, “we assure our hearts before God,” that “if our hearts condemn us not, then we have confidence toward God;” and that if we abide in Christ by walking as he also walked, “we shall have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming,” 1 John 2:6, 28; 3:18, &c: How surprising is it, that an objection, which is so contrary to reason, Scripture, and the experience of the apostles, should be as confidently produced by Protestants, as if it contained the marrow of the Gospel!]

ft67 Some of my readers will possibly ask why I plead here for the good sense of that much controverted phrase, “The imputed righteousness of Christ,” when, in my Second Check to Antinomianism, I have represented our Lord as highly disapproving, in the day of judgment, not only the plea of a wicked Arminian, who urges that “God is merciful, and that Christ died for all;” but also the plea of a wicked Solifidian, who begs to be justified merely by the imputed righteousness of Christ, without any good works. I answer: (1.) I no more designed to ridicule the above-stated doctrine of imputed righteousness, than to expose the doctrine of God’s mercy, or that of general redemption. And I am truly sorry, if by not sufficiently explaining myself I have given to my readers any just occasion to despise these precious doctrines of grace, or any one of them. (2.) I only wanted to guard against the abuse of evangelical principles, and to point out the absurd consequences of the spreading opinion, that “God will justify us in the great day merely by Christ’s imputed righteousness, without the works of faith, or without any regard to personal righteousness and inherent holiness.” This tenet, which as the very soul of speculative Antinomianism, leaves the doctrine of justice neither root nor branch. At this unscriptural notion only I levelled the blow, which has given so much groundless offence to so many persons, whom I honour for their piety, love for the resemblance they bear to the holy Jesus, and commend for their zeal in maintaining the doctrines of grace, so far as they do it without injuring the doctrines of godliness and justice. And I am glad to have this opportunity of explaining myself, and assuring my Calvinist brethren that I would lose a thousand lives, if I had them, rather than asperse the blood and righteousness of my Saviour, or ridicule the Christian covenant, which is ordered in all things and sure, and on the gracious terms of which (as well as on the Divine mercy which fixed them, the infinitely meritorious obedience which procured them, and the atoning blood which seals them) I entirely rest all my hopes of salvation in time, in the day of judgment, and to all eternity. And that this is Mr. Wesley’s sentiment, as well as mine, is evident from his reconciling sermon on imputed righteousness.]

ft68 Mr. Addison gives us this just view of our gratuitous election, in one of the Spectators. I shall transcribe the words of that judicious and pious writer: — “The sublimest truths, which among the heathens only here and there one, of brighter parts, and more leisure than ordinary, could attain to, are now grown familiar to the meanest inhabitants of these nations. Whence came this surprising change: that regions formerly inhabited by ignorant and savage people, should now outshine ancient Greece in the most elevated notions of theology and morality? Is it the effect of our own parts and industry? Have our common mechanics more refined understandings than the ancient philosophers? It is owing to the God of truth, who came down from heaven, and condescended to be himself our teacher. It is as we are Christians, that we possess more excellent and Divine truths than the rest of mankind.”]

ft69 Zelotes will possibly laugh at the insinuation that there is more than one covenant of grace. If he does, I will ask him if a covenant of grace is not the same thing as a covenant of promise; and if St. Paul does not expressly mention “the covenants of promise,” Ephesians 2:12, and a “better covenant,” which was “established upon better promises” than the first [particular] covenant of promise? Hebrews 8:6, 7.]

ft70 My light and theological accuracy have, I hope, increased since I wrote the sermon on these words. I did not then clearly see that the election of grace, of which the apostle speaks in this verse, is our gratuitous election to the blessings of Christianity as it is opposed to Judaism, and not merely as it is opposed to the Adamic covenant of works. I had not then sufficiently considered these words of St. John: — “The law [that is, the Jewish dispensation] came by Moses, but grace and truth [that is, a more gracious and brighter dispensation] “came by Jesus Christ.” Hence it follows, that this expression, “the election of grace,” when a sacred writer speaks of the Jewish and of the Christian dispensations, which St. Paul does throughout this part of his Epistle to the Romans, means our gratuitous election to Christianity, or to the peculiar blessings of the Gospel of Christ.]

ft71 Rigid Calvinists are persons who hold the Manichean doctrine of absolute necessity, and maintain both an unconditional election of free grace in Christ, and an unconditional reprobation of free wrath in Adam. Moderate Calvinists are men who renounce the doctrine of absolute necessity, stand up for the election of free grace, and are ashamed of the reprobation of free wrath. Rigid Arminians are persons who will not hear of an unconditional election, make more of free will than of free grace, oppose God’s gracious sovereignty, deny his partiality, and condemn Calvinism in an unscriptural manner. Candid Arminians are people who mildly contend for the doctrines of justice, and are willing to hear with candour what the judicious Calvinists have to say in defence of the doctrines of grace. In my Preparatory Essay, I have expressed myself as one, who sometimes doubts whether Arminius did see the doctrine of election in a clear light. It may be proper to account here for a degree of seeming inconsistency into which this transient doubt has betrayed me. Having been long ill, and at a distance from my books, I have not lately looked into Arminius’ Works; nor did I ever read them carefully through, as every one should have done, who positively condemns or clears him. And if I have somewhere positively said, that he was not clear in the doctrine of election, I did it, (1.) Because I judged of Arminius’ doctrine by that of the Arminians, who seem to me to be in general (as I had been for years) unacquainted with the distinction between the election of grace and that of justice. (2.) Because, at the synod of Dort, the Arminians absolutely refused to debate first the point of election, which the Calvinists wanted them to do. Whence I concluded that Arminius had not placed that point of doctrine in a light strong enough to expel the darkness which rigid Calvinists had spread over it. And, (3.) Because it is generally supposed that Arminius leaned to the error of Pelagius, who did not do justice to the election of grace. Mr. Bayle, for example, in his life of Arminius, says, “Arminius condemned the Supralapsarian Beza, and afterward acknowledged no other election than that which was grounded on the obedience of sinners to the call of God by Jesus Christ.” If this account of Mr. Bayle be just, it is evident that Arminius, as well as Pelagius, admitted only the election of justice. However, a candid clergyman, who has read Arminius, assures me that in some parts of his writings, he does justice to the unconditional election of grace. And indeed this election is so conspicuous in the Scriptures, that it is hard to conceive it should never have been discovered by so judicious a divine as Arminius is said to have been. The difficulty in this matter is not to meet and salute the truth now and then, but to hold her fast, and walk steadily with her, across all the mazes of error. The light of evangelists should not break forth now and then, as a flash of lightning does out of a dark cloud; but it should shine constantly, and with increasing lustre, as the light of the eclipsed sun.]

ft72 I humbly hope that I have followed this part of the direction in my Checks. To the best of my knowledge I have not fixed one consequence upon the principles of my opponents, which does not fairly and necessarily flow from their doctrine. And I have endeavoured to do justice to their piety, by declaring again and again my full persuasion that they abhor such consequences. But whether they have done so by my principles, may be seen in my Genuine Creed, where I show that the absurd and wicked consequences, which my opponents fix upon the doctrines that I maintain, have absolutely nothing to do with it. I do not however say this to justify myself in all things: for I do not doubt, but if I had health and strength to revise my Checks, I should find some things which might have been said in a more guarded, humble, serious, and loving manner.]

ft73 When I hear contending Calvinists and Arminians agree to print and sing this verse, I am tempted to cry to them, “Be at peace among yourselves,” or sing at your love-feasts, — Love has not our pride destroy’d, Render’d our distinctions void; Names, and sects, and parties rise, Peace retires, and mounts the skies.]

ft74 Mr. T. puts this clause in Latin: Velut unda impellitur unda.]

ft75 If the Calvinists, in their unguarded moments, represent sin as a kind of not being or nonentity, that they may exculpate God for absolutely ordaining it, do they not by this means exculpate the sinner also? If the first cause of sin is excusable, because sin is a privation, and has “not so much of positivity in it as the ancients supposed,” is not the second cause of sin much more excusable on the same account?]

ft76 Mr. Toplady, page 148, intimates to his readers that Dr. Hartley has written an “eminent defence of necessity,” and promises himself “a feast of pleasure and instruction” in reading his book.]

ft77 Our Lord, when he spake these words, did not use a bare future, woihsete, which Mr. T. would perhaps have triumphantly translated, ye SHALL do; putting the word SHALL in large capitals; but qelete woisein, a phrase this, which is peculiarly expressive of the obstinate choice of the free-willing Jews.]

ft78 Mr. Toplady dares not produce this objection in all its force: he only hints at it. His own words are, p. 130, “Let me give our free willers a very momentous hint: viz. that the entrance of original sin was one of those essential links, on which the Messiah’s incarnation and crucifixion were suspended.”]

ft79 Page 154, Mr. Toplady produces the following objection: — “‘Tis curious to behold Arminians themselves forced to take refuge in the harbour of necessity. It is necessary, say they, that man’s will should be free: for without freedom, the will were no will at all,” [i.e. no free will — no such will as constitutes a man a moral and accountable agent.] “Free agency, themselves being judges, is only a ramification of necessity.” This is playing upon words, and shuffling logical cards in order to delude the simple. I have granted again and again that there is a necessity of nature, a necessity of consequence, a necessity of duty, a necessity of decency, a necessity of convenience, &c, &c, but all these sorts of necessity do no more amount to the Calvinian, absolute necessity of all events, than my granting that the king has a variety of officers about his person by necessity of decency, of office, of custom, &c, implies my granting that he has a certain officer, who absolutely necessitates him to move just as he does, insomuch that he cannot turn his eyes, or stir one finger, otherwise than this imaginary officer directs or impels him. This objection of Mr. Toplady is so excessively trifling, that I almost blame myself for taking notice of it, even in a note.]

ft80 See “A Letter to the Rev. Mr. Toplady,” by Mr. Olivers.]

ft81 Our opponents are greatly embarrassed about the doctrine of absolute, unconditional reprobation. Though in a happy moment, where candour prevailed over shame, Mr. Toplady stood up so boldly for Calvinian reprobation; the reader, as he goes on, will smile when he sees the variegated wisdom with which that gentleman disguises, exculpates, or conceals, what he so rationally and so candidly grants here. The truth is, that as Scriptural election is necessarily attended with an answerable reprobation; so absolute, Calvinian election unavoidably drags after it absolute, Calvinian reprobation: a black reprobation this, which necessitates all who are personally written in the book of death to sin on, and to be damned. But some Calvinists are afraid to see this doctrine, and well they may, for it is horrible: others are ashamed to acknowledge it; and not a few, for want of rational sight, obstinately deny that it is the main pillar of their Gospel; and with the right leg of their system they unmercifully kick the left. Among the persons who are guilty of this absurd conduct, we may rank the author of A Letter to an Arminian Teacher: an imperfect copy of which appeared in the Gospel Magazine of August, 1775, under the following title: A Predestinarian’s real thoughts of Election and Reprobation, &c. This writer is so inconsistent as to attempt cutting off the left leg of Calvinism. He, at first, gives us reprobation. “The word reprobation,” says he, “is never mentioned in all the Scripture, [no more is the word predestination,] nor is the Scriptural word reprobate ever mentioned as the continuance of election, or as [its] opposite.” This is a great mistake, as appears from the two first passages quoted by this author, Jeremiah 6:30, and Romans 1:28, where reprobate silver is evidently opposed to choice silver, and where a reprobate mind is indubitably opposed to the mind which is after God’s own heart — that is, to the mind which God approves and chooses to crown with evangelical praises and rewards. Our author goes on: — “There is no immediate connection between election to salvation, and reprobation to damnation.” What an argument is this! Did we ever say that there is any immediate connection between two things which are as contrary as Christ and Belial? O! but we mean that “they have no necessary dependence on each other.” The question is not whether they have a necessary dependence on each other; but whether they have not a necessary opposition to each other; and that they have, is as clear as that light is opposed to darkness. “They proceed from very different causes.” True: for election proceeded from free grace, and Calvinian reprobation from free wrath. “The sole cause of election is God’s free love, &c. The sole cause of damnation is only sin.” Our author wants candour or attention. Had he argued like a candid logician, he would have said, “The sole cause of the reprobation which ends in unavoidable damnation, is only sin:” but if he had fairly argued thus, he would have given up Calvinism, which stands or falls with absolute reprobation; and therefore he thought proper to substitute the word damnation for the word reprobation, which the argument absolutely requires. These tricks may pass in Geneva; but in England they appear inconsistent with fair reasoning. It is a common stratagem of the Calvinists to say, “Election depends upon God’s love only, but damnation depends upon our sin only;” break the thin shell of this sophism, and you will find this bitter kernel: God’s distinguishing love elects some to unavoidable holiness and finished salvation; and his distinguishing wrath reprobates all the rest of mankind to remediless sin and eternal damnation. For the moment the sin of reprobates is necessary, remediless, and insured by the decree of the means, it follows that absolute reprobation to necessary, remediless sin, is the same thing as absolute reprobation to eternal damnation; because such a damnation is the unavoidable consequence of remediless sin. When the letter writer has absurdly denied Calvinian reprobation, he insinuates, p. 5, that everlasting torments and being unavoidably damned, are not the necessary consequences of the decree of Calvinian election; “nor,” says he, “can they be fairly deduced from the decree of reprobation” So now the secret is out! Our author, after denying reprobation, informs us that there is a Calvinian decree of reprobation. But if there be such a decree, why did he oppose it, p. 2? And if there is no such a decree, why does he mention it, p. 5; where he hints that insured damnation cannot be fairly deduced from it? Now, if he, or any Calvinist in the world, can prove that, upon the Calvinian plan, among the thousands of Calvin’s reprobates, who are yet in their mothers’ wombs, one of them can, any how, avoid finished damnation, I solemnly engage myself before the public, to get my Checks burnt, at Charing Cross, by the common hangman, on any day which Mr. Hill, Mr. Toplady, and Mr. M’Gowan will please to appoint. But if the Calvinists cannot do this, and if the Calvinian decree of reprobation insures the necessary, remediless sin, and the unavoidable, finished damnation of one and all the reprobates of Calvin, born or unborn; Mr. M’Gowan, and Dr. Gill, whom he quotes, insult common sense, when they intimate that insured damnation cannot be fairly deduced from the decree of reprobation. How much less candid are the letter writer and Dr. Gill, than Mr. Toplady and Zanchius, who fairly tell us, p. 75, “The condemnation (that is, the damnation) of the reprobate is necessary and irresistible!” The letter writer tells us, p. 6, “What insures holiness, must insure glory; election (that is, Calvinian election) doth so, and glory must follow. This is the right leg of Calvinism; let her stand upon the left leg, and you have this doctrine of grace: what insures remediless sin, must insure damnation; Calvinian reprobation doth so, and damnation must follow. I would as soon bow to Dagon, as to this doctrine of remediless sin and insured wickedness. Ye controversial writers of the Gospel Magazine, if you will confirm Arminian teachers in their attachment to the holy election and righteous reprobation preached by St. Paul, and in their detestation for the Antinomian election and barbarous reprobation, which support your doctrinal peculiarities, only vindicate your election as inconsistently as Mr. M’Gowan, and your reprobation as openly as Mr. Toplady. (See two other notes on the same performance; the one under the Arg. xxxviii, and the other under the Arg. 67.)]

ft82 Here Mr. Toplady adds, And, I believe, nobody ever yet heard of a willing machine. But he is mistaken: for all moral philosophers call machine whatever is fitted for free motions, and yet has no power to begin and determine its own motions. Now willing being the motion of a spirit, if a spirit cannot will but as it is necessarily made to will, it is as void of a self-determining principle as a fire engine, and of consequence it is (morally speaking) as a mere machine.]

ft83 Not unlike this argument is that of the letter writer, on whom I have already bestowed a note, sec. 2. “Divine justice,” says he, pp. 4, 5, could not condemn, till the law was broken.” True; but Calvinian free wrath reprobated from all eternity, and consequently before the law was either broken or given. “Therefore condemnation did not take place before a law was given and broken.” This author trifles; for if Calvinian reprobation took place before the creation of Adam, and if it necessarily draws after it the uninterrupted breach of the law, and the condemnation consequent upon that breach, Calvinian reprobation differs no more from everlasting damnation, than condemning and necessitating a man to commit murder, that he may infallibly be hanged, differs from condemning him to be hanged. But “suppose that out of twenty found guilty, his majesty King George should pardon ten, he is not the cause of the other ten being executed. It was his clemency that pardoned any: it was their breaking the laws of the kingdom that condemned them, and not his majesty.” Indeed, it was his majesty who condemned them, if, in order to do it without fail, he made, (1.) Efficacious and irresistible decrees of the means, that they should necessarily and unavoidably be guilty of robbery; and, (2.) Efficacious and irresistible decrees of the end, that they should unavoidably be condemned for their crimes, and inevitable guilt. The chain by which the God of Manes and Calvin drags poor reprobates to hell, has three capital links; the first is absolute, unconditional reprobation: the second is necessary, remediless sin: and the third is insured, eternal damnation. Now although the middle link intervenes between the first and the last link, it is only a necessary connection between them: for, says Mr. Toplady, p. 17, “God’s own decree secures the means as well as the end, and accomplishes the end by the means” That is, (when this doctrine is applied to the present case,) the first link, which is Calvinian reprobation, draws the middle, diabolical link, which is remediless wickedness, as well as the last link, which is infernal and finished damnation. Thus Calvin’s God accomplishes damnation by means of sin; or, if you please, he draws the third link by means of the second. Who can consider this and not wonder at the prejudice of the letter writer, who boldly affirms that, upon the Calvinian scheme, God is no more the author and cause of the damnation of the reprobates, than the king is the cause of the condemnation of the criminals whom he does not pardon! For my part, the more I consider Calvinism, the more I see that the decree of absolute reprobation, which is inseparable from the decree of absolute election, represents God as the sure author of sin in order to represent him as the sure author of damnation. The horrible mystery of absolute reprobation, necessary sin, and insured damnation, is not less essential to Calvinism, than the glorious mystery of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, is essential to Christianity; and yet Calvinism is the Gospel! the doctrines of grace!]

ft84 With Episcopius, and some other learned critics, I doubt it is not. Why should it not be read thus? Acts 4:26-28, “The rulers were gathered together against the Lord and against his Christ. For of a truth against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed, (both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles, and the people of Israel, were gathered together,) for to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.” By putting the clause “Both Herod,” &c, in a parenthesis, you have this evangelical sense which gives no handle to the pleaders for sin: “Both Herod and Pilate, &c, were gathered together against thy holy child Jesus, whom thou hast anointed to do whatsoever thy hand and counsel determined before to be done.” I prefer this reading to the common one, for the following reasons: (1.) It is perfectly, agreeable to the Greek; and the peculiar construction of the sentence is expressive of the peculiar earnestness with which the apostles prayed. (2.) It is attended with no Manichean inconveniency. (3.) It is more agreeable to the context: for if the sanhedrim, was “gathered by God’s direction and decree,” in order to threaten the apostles, with what propriety could they say, verse 29, “Now, Lord, behold their threatenings?” And, (4.) It is strongly supported by verse 30, where Peter (after having observed, verses 27, 28, according to our reading, that God had anointed his holy child Jesus to do all the miracles which he did on earth) prays, that now Christ is gone to heaven, the effects of this powerful anointing may continue, and “signs and wonders may still be done by the name of his holy child Jesus.”]

ft85 All angels and men were PRIMARILY made to enjoy an “accepted time,” and a temporary “day of salvation.” Those angels and men, who know and improve their day of salvation, were SECONDARILY made for the day of remunerative love, and for a kingdom “prepared for them from the beginning of the world.” But those angels and men, who do not know and improve their day of salvation, were SECONDARILY made for “the day of retributive wrath,” and for the “fire prepared for the devil and his angels.”]

ft86 The author of A Letter to an Arminian Teacher, (a letter this which I have quoted in a preceding note,) advances the same argument in these words, p. 5: “The doctrine of eternal [he means Calvinian] election,” for we believe the right, godly, eternal election maintained in the Scriptures, “concludes God more merciful than the Arminian doctrine of supposed universal redemption, because that doctrine which absolutely ascertains the regeneration, effectually calling, the sanctification, &c, as well as the eternal salvation of an innumerable company, &c, Revelation 7:9, must represent God more merciful than the Arminian scheme, which cannot ascertain the eternal salvation of one man now living,” &c. As it is possible to kill two birds with one stone, I hope that my answer to Mr. Toplady will satisfy Mr. M’Gowan.]

ft87 Mr. T. calls them the decrees of God, and it is an axiom among the Calvinists that “God’s decrees are God himself.”]

ft88 See Mr. Toplady’s Letter to Mr. Wesley, p. 6.]

ft89 Phillyrides puerum cithara perfecit Achillem.]

ft90 The word perfection comes from the Latin perficio, to perfect, to finish, to accomplish; it exactly answers to the words µmt, and teleiow, generally used in the Old and New Testament. Nor can their derivatives be more literally and exactly rendered, than by perfect and perfection. If our translators render sometimes the word µt by upright and sincere, or by sincerity and integrity, it is because they know that these expressions, like the original word, admit of a great latitude. Thus Columel calls wood that has no rotten part, and is perfectly sound, lignum sincerum; and Horace says that a sweet cask, which has no bad smell of any sort, is vas sincerum. Thus also Cicero calls purity of diction, which is perfectly free from faults against grammar, integritas sermonis: Plautus says that a pure, undefiled virgin is filia integra. And our translators call the perfectly pure milk of God’s word, the sincere milk of the word, 1 Peter 2:2. If, therefore, the words sincerity and integrity are taken in their full latitude, they convey the fullest meaning of hmt , and teleiothv, that is, perfection.]

ft91 I think I have said in one of the Checks that Archbishop Leighton doubted whether those who do not sincerely aspire after perfection, have saving grace: that doubt (if I now remember right) is Mr. Alleine’s, though this quotation from the archbishop shows that he was not far from Alleine’s sentiment, if he was not in it. Pious Dr. Doddridge is explicit on this head: — “To allow yourself,” said he, “deliberately to sit down satisfied with any imperfect attainments in religion, and to look upon a more confirmed and improved state of it as what you do not desire, nay, as what you secretly resolve that you will not pursue, is one of the most fatal signs we can well imagine, that you are an entire stranger to the first principles of it.” (Doddridge’s Rise and Progress, chap. 20.]

ft92 Between Adamic and Christian perfection we place the gracious innocence of little children. They are not only full of peccability like Adam, but debilitated in all their animal and rational faculties, and, of consequence, fit to become an easy prey to temptation, through the weakness of their reason, and the corruption of their concupiscible and irascible powers. Nevertheless, till they begin personally to prefer moral evil to moral good, we may consider them as evangelically or graciously innocent. I say graciously innocent, because, if we consider them in the seed of fallen Adam, we find them naturally “children of wrath,” and under the curse: but if we consider them “in the seed of the woman,” which was promised to Adam and to his posterity, we find them graciously placed in a state of redemption and evangelical salvation. For “the free gift which is come upon all men to justification,” belongs first to them, Christ having sanctified infancy first. And therefore we do not scruple to say, after our Lord, “Of such is the kingdom of heaven.” Now the kingdom of heaven is not of sinners as sinners, but of little children, as being innocent through the free gift; or of adults, as being penitent, that is, turned from their sins to Christ.]

ft93 The Rev. Mr. Toplady, in his Historic Proof, p. 235, informs us that a popish archbishop of St. Andrews condemned Patrick Hamilton to death, for holding among other doctrines, “That children incontinent after baptism are sinners,” or, which is all one, that baptism does not absolutely take away original sin. This anecdote is important, and shows that our Church levels at a popish error the words of her articles, which Mr. Hill and Mr. Toplady suppose to be levelled at Christian perfection.]

ft94 See the edition printed in London in 1773, p. 328.]

ft95 Among the professors, who have lately set up as witnesses of perfect love, I am not a little surprised to find Mr. Hill himself. This gentleman, who has treated Mr. Wesley with such severity, for standing up in defence of perfect love, or Christian perfection, most solemnly ranks himself among the perfect lovers of their neighbours, yea, of their adversaries! Hear him make his astonishing profession before the world, at the end of his pamphlet called, The Admonisher Admonished. “I most solemnly declare,” says he, “that I am in perfect charity with Dr. Adams, as well as with you, sir, my unknown antagonist.” I never yet heard a perfectionist make so solemn and so public a profession of perfect love.]

ft96 The arguments by which the doctrine of the necessary indwelling of sin in all believers till death is supported in that essay, will be considered in section 14.]

ft97 Some time after I had written this, looking into “Dr. Doddridge’s Lectures on Divinity,” p. 451, I was agreeably surprised to find that what that judicious and moderate Calvinist presents as the most plausible sense of Romans 7:14, is exactly the sense which I defend in these pages. Take his own words: — “St. Paul at first represents a man as ignorant of the law, and then insensible of sin; but afterward being acquainted with it, and then thrown into a kind of despair, by the sentence of death which it denounces, on account of sins he is now conscious of having committed; he then farther shows that even where there is so good a disposition as to ‘delight in the law,’ yet the motives are too weak to maintain that uniform tenor of obedience, which a good man greatly desires, and which the Gospel by its superior motives and grace does in fact produce.”]

ft98 Sed trahit invitam nova vis, aliudque cupido, Mens aliud suadet. Video meliora, proboque, Deteriota sequor. — OVID.]

ft99 At that time Mr. Whitefield was in orders, and had “received the Spirit of adoption.” As a proof of it, I appeal, (1.) To the account of his conversion at Oxford, before he was ordained; and, (2.) To these his own words: “I can say, to the honour of rich, free, distinguishing grace, that I received the Spirit of adoption before I had conversed with one man, or read a single book on the doctrine of free justification by the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ.” That is, before he had any opportunity of being drawn from the simplicity of the Scripture Gospel, into the Calvinian refinements. (See his Works, vol. iv, page 45.) Now, those Christians, who leave babes and young men in Christ “at so great a distance from them,” are the very persons whom we call “fathers in Christ,” “perfect Christians.”]

ft100 This doctrine of St. John is perfectly agreeable to that of our Lord, who said that “Judas had a devil,” because he gave place to the love of money; and who called Peter himself “Satan,” when he “savoured the things of men,” in opposition to “the things of God.”]

ft101 If Mr. Hill consult the original, he will find that the word translated sinneth, is in the future tense, which is often used for an indefinite tense in the potential mood, because the Hebrews have no such mood or tense. Therefore our translators would only have done justice to the original, as well as to the context, if they had rendered the whole clause, “There is no man that may not sin; instead of “There is no man that sinneth not.”]

ft102 Here, and in some other places, St. Paul by “works” means only the deeds of a Christless, anti-mediatorial law, and the obedience paid to the Jewish covenant, which is frequently called “the law,” in opposition to the Christian covenant, which is commonly called “the Gospel,” that is, the Gospel of Christ, because Christ’s Gospel is the most excellent of all the Gospel dispensations. The apostle, therefore, by the expression, “not of works,” does by no means exclude from “final” salvation, the law of faith, and the works done in obedience to that law: for, in the preceding verse, he secures the obedience of faith when he says, “Ye are saved, [that is, made partakers of the blessing of the Christian dispensation,] by grace through faith.” Here then the word “by grace” secures the first Gospel axiom, and the word “through faith” secures the second]

ft103 If the arguments and expostulations contained in these sheets be rational and Scriptural, is not Mr. Wesley in the right when he says, that “all preachers should make a point of preaching perfection to believers, constantly, strongly, and explicitly:” and that “all believers should mind this one thing, and continually agonize for it?” And do not all the ministers, who preach against Christian perfection, preach against the perfection of Christianity, oppose holiness, resist the sanctifying truth as it is in Jesus, recommend an unscriptural purgatory, plead for sin, instead of striving against it, and delude imperfect Christians into Laodicean ease?]

ft104 Mr. Wesley says, second rest, because an imperfect believer enjoys a first, inferior rest: if he did not, he would be no believer.]

ft105 Is not this expression too strong? Would it not be better to soften it as Mr. Hill has done, by saying, “Take away the love of [or the bent to] sinning?” Can God take away from us our power of sinning, without taking away our power of free obedience?]

ft106 Mr. Wesley says, perfect love, with St. John.]

ft107 Mr. Wesley says, indeed, pure and sinless; but when Mr. Hill sings pure, unspotted, he does not spoil the sense. For every body knows that the pure, unspotted Jesus does not differ from the sinless, immaculate Lamb of God. This fine hymn (I think) is not in Mr. Madan’s collection, but he has probably sung it more than once. However, it is adopted in the Shrewsbury Collection, of which Mr. Hill is the publisher, in conjunction with Mr. De Courcy. Is it not surprising, that in his devotional warmth that gentleman should print, give out, and sing, Mr. Wesley’s strongest hymns for Christian perfection; when, in his controversial heat, he writes so severely against this blessed state of heart? And may not I take my leave of him by an allusion to our Lord’s words, Out of thy own mouth, thy own pen, thy own publications, thy own hymns, thy own prayers, thy own Bible, thy own reason, thy own conscience, and, (what is most astonishing!) thy own professional and baptismal vow, I will judge thy mistakes! Nevertheless, I desire the reader to impute them, as I do, not to any love for indwelling sin, but to the fatal error which makes my pious opponent turn his back upon the genuine doctrines of grace and justice, and espouse the spurious doctrines of Calvinian grace and free wrath.]

ft108 Two Hebrew words, which mean lights and perfections.]

ft109 We do not hereby deny that some believers have a testimony in their own breasts that they shall not finally fall from God. “They may have it,” says Mr. Wesley, in the same tract, “and this persuasion that ‘neither life nor death shall separate them from God,’ far from being hurtful, may in some circumstances be extremely useful.” But wherever this testimony is Divine, it is attended with that grace which inseparably connects holiness and good works, the means, with perseverance and eternal salvation, the end: and, in this respect, our doctrine widely differs from that of the Calvinists, who break the necessary connection between holiness and infallible salvation, by making room for the foulest false — for adultery, murder, and incest.]