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DUKE UNIVERSITY
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2023 with funding from Duke University Libraries
https://archive.org/details/checkstoantinomi 11 flet
By Rev. JOHN FLETCHER.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOLUME I.
A VINDICATION
OF THE
REV. MR. WESLEY’S MINUTES
PUBLIC CONFERENCE, HELD IN LONDON, AUGUST 7, 1770;
OCCASIONED BY A CIRCULAR LETTER INVITING PRINCIPAL PERSONS, BOTH CLERGY AND LAITY,
AS WELL OF THE DISSENTERS AS OF THE ESTABLISHED CHURCH, WHO DIS- APPROVED OF THOSE MINUTES,
AND DESIGNED TO REMOVE PREJUDICE, CHECK RASHNESS, PROMOTE FORBEARANCE, DEFEND THE CHARACTER OF AN EMINENT MINISTER OF CHRIST, AND PREVENT SOME IMPORTANT SCRIPTURAL TRUTHS FROM BEING HASTILY BRANDED AS HERETICAL.
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Il. A discourse preached at Madeley, April 18 and May 9, 1773, on the two covenants, that of works, and that of grace; showing that ‘salvation is
II. A Scriptural Essay on the Rewardableness of the Works of true Faith, according to the covenant of grace, . . 487
TV. An Essay on Truth: ora Rational Vindication af the Dakine 3 Salvation by Faith; displaying the nature and saving power of religious truth, when cordially emoraced py faith, and the various sorts and degrees thereof; with addresses to different descriptions of persons, Bye ° . 517
PREFACE.
, WHICH GAVE OCCASION TO THIS VINDICATION,
A COPY OF THE REV. MR. WESLEY’S MINUTES.
Srr,—Whereas Mr. Wesley’s conference is to be held at Bristol, on Tuesday, the 6th of August next, it is proposed by Lady Huntingdon, and many other Christian friends, (rea “Protestants, to have a meeting at Bristol, at the same time, of such principal persons, both clergy and laity, who disapprove of the under written Minutes: and as the same are thought injurious to the very fundamental principles of Christianity, it is farther proposed that they go in a body to the said conference, and insist upon a formal recantation of the said Minutes; and in case of a refusal, that they sign and publish their protest against them. Your presence, sir, on this occasion, is particularly requested. But if it should not suit your convenience to be there, it is desired that you will transmit your sentiments on the subject to such peisons as you think proper to produce them. It is submitted to you, whether it would not be right, in the opposition to be made to such a dreadful heresy, to recommend it to as many of your Christian friends, as well of the dissenters as of the established Church, as you can prevail on, to be there, the cause being of so public a nature.
P.S. Your answer is desired, directed to the countess of Huntingdon, or the Rev. Mr. Shirley, or John Lloydy Esq. in Bath; er Mr. James Ireland, merchant, Bristol; or to Thomas Powis, Esq. at Berwick, near Shrewsbury; or to Richard Hill, Esq. at Hawkstone, near Whitchurch, Shropshire. Lodgings will be provided. Inquire at Mr. Ireland’s, Bristol.”
AT A PUBLIC CONFERENCE, HELD IN LONDON, AUGUST 7, 1770,
“Take heed to your doctrine.”
“© We said in 1744, ‘ We have leaned too much toward Calvinism.’ Wherein? ‘
“1. With regard to man’s faithfulness. Our Lord himself taught us to use the expression. And we ought never to be ashamed of it. We ought steadily to assert, on his authority, that if a man is not ‘faithful in the unrighteous mammon,’ God will not ‘ give him the true riches.’
“2. With regard to working for life. This also our Lord has expressly commanded us. ‘ Labour,’ Epya2eoée, literally, ‘work for the meat that endureth to everlasting life.’ And in fact every believer, till he comes to glory, works for, as well as from life.
“©3. We have received it as a maxim, that ‘a man is to do nothing in order to justification.’ Nothing can be more false. Whoever desires to find fayour with God, should ‘ cease from evil, and learn to do well.’ Whoever repents, should do ‘ works meet for repentance.’ And if this is not in order to find favour, what does he do them for?
* Review the whole affair.
“1. Who of us is now accepted of God?
“He thaf now believes in Christ, with a loving, obedient heart.
“2. But who among those who never heard of Christ?
“He that feareth God, and worketh righteousness according to the light he has.
“3. Is this the same with ‘he that is sincere?
“ Nearly, if not quite.
“4, Is not this ‘salvation by works?
“Not by the merit of works, but by works as a condition.
“<5. What have we then been disputing about for these thirty years?
1 am afraid, about words.
6. As to merit itself, of which we have been so dreadfully afraid : we are rewarded, according to our works, yea, because of our works. How does this differ from, for the sake of our works? And how differs this from secundum merita operum, ‘as our worl-s deserve !’ Can you split this hair? I doubt, I cannot.
“7, The grand objection to one of the preceding propositions is drawn frem matter of fact. God does in fact justify those who by their own confession, ‘ neither feared God nor wrought righteousness.’ Is this an exception to the general rule?
“Tt is a doubt whether God makes any exception at all. But how are we sure that the person in question never did ‘ fear God and work righteousness?” His own saying so is not proof: for we know how all that are convinced of sin undervalue themselves in every respect.
“8. Does not talking of a justified or sanctified sfate tend to mislead men? almost naturally leading them to trust in what was done in one moment? Whereas we are every hour and every moment pleasing or displeasing to God, according to our works: according to the whole of our inward tempers and our outward behaviour.” |
LETTER I.
Honovurep snp Reverenp Sir,—Before a judge passes sentence upon a person accused of theft, he hears what his neighbours have to say for his character. Mr. Wesley, I grant, is accused of what is worse than theft, dreadful heresy; and I know that whosoever mainiains a dreadful heresy is a dreadful heretic; and that the Church of Rome shows no mercy to such. But may not “real Protestants” indulge, with the privilege of a felon, one whom they so lately respected as a brother? And may not I, an old friend and acquaintance of his, be permitted to speak a word in his favour, before he is branded in the forehead, as he has already been on the back?
This step, I fear, will cost me my reputation, (if I have any,) and znvolve me in the same condemnation with him whose cause, together with that of truth, I design to plead. But when humanity prompts. when gratitude calls, when friendship excites, when reason invites, when justice demands, when truth requires, and conscience summons, ne does not deserve the name of a Christian friend, who, for any consideration, hesitates to vindicate what he esteems truth, and to stand by an aggrieved friend, brother, and father. Were I not, sir, on such an occasion as this to step out of my beloved obscurity, you might deservedly reproach me as a dastardly wretch: nay, you have already done it in general terms, in your excellent sermon on the fear of man. ‘ How often,” say you, “do men sneakingly forsake their friends, instead of gloriously supporting them against a powerful adversary, even when their cause is just, for reasons hastily prudential, for fear of giving umbrage to a superior party or interest?”
These generous words of yours, Rey. sir, together with the leave you give both Churchmen and Dissenters to direct to you their answers to your circular letter, are my excuse for intruding upon you by this epistle, and my apology for begging your candid attention, while I attempt to convince you that my friend’s principles and Minutes are not heretical. In order to this, I shall lay before you, and the principul persons, both clergy and laity, whom you have, from all parts of England and Wales, convened at Bristol, by printed letters,—
I. A general view of the Rev. Mr. Wesley’s doctrine.
II. An account of the commendable design of his Minutes.
III. A vindication of the propositions which they contain, by arguments taken from Scripture, reason, and experience; and by quota- tions from eminent Calvinist divines, who have said the same things va different words.
And suppose you yourself, sir, in particular, should appear to be a strong assertor of the doctrines'which you call a dreadful heresy in Mr. Wesley, I hope you will not refuse me leave to conclude, by expostulating with you upon your conduct in this affair, and recommending to vou, and our other Christian friends, the forbearance
which you recommend to others, in one of your sermons: “ Why doth the narrow heart of man pursue with malice or rashness those who presume to differ from him?” Yea, and what is more extraordinary, those who agree with him in all essential points?
I. When, in an intricate case, a prudent judge is afraid to pass an unjust sentence, he inquires, as I observed, into the general conduct of the person accused, and by that means frequently finds out the truth which he investigates. As that method may be of service in the present case, permit me, sir, to lay before you a general view of Mr. Wesley’s doctrine.
1. For above these sixteen years I have heard him frequently in his chapels, and sometimes in my church: I have familiarly conversed and corresponded with him, and have often perused his numerous works in verse and prose: and I can truly say that, during all that time, I have heard him, upon every proper occasion, steadily maintain the total fall of man in Adam, and his utter inability to recover himself, or take any one step toward his recovery, “without the grace of God preventing him, that he may have a good will, and working with him when he has that good will.”
The deepest expressions that ever struck my ears on the melancholy subject of. our natural depravity and helplessness, are those which dropped from his lips: and I have ever observed that he constantly ascribes to Divine grace, not only the good works and holy tempers of believers, but all the good thoughts of upright heathens, and the good desires of those professors whom he sees “ begin in the Spirit and end in the flesh:” when, to my great surprise, some of those who accuse him of “robbing God of the glory of his grace, and ascribing too much to man’s power,” directly or indirectly maintain that Demas and his fellow apostates never had any grace; and that if once they went on far in the ways of God, it was merely by the force of fallen nature; a sentiment which Mr. Wesley looks upon as diametrically opposite to the humbling assertion of our Lord, “ Without me ye can do nothing;” and which he can no more admit than the rankest Peljagianism. eet
2. I must likewise testify, that he faithfully points out Christ as the only way of salvation; and strongly recommends faith as the only mean of receiving him, and all the benefits of his righteous life and meritorious death: and truth obliges me to declare, that he frequently expresses his detestation of the errors of modern Pharisees, who laugh at original sin, set up the powers of fallen man, ery down the operation of God’s Spirit, deny the absolute necessity of the blood and righteousness of Christ, and refuse him the glory of all the good that may be found in Jew or Gentile. And you will not without difficulty, sir, find in England, and perhaps in all the world, a minister who hath borne more frequent testimonies, either from the pulpit or the press, against those dangerous errors. All his works confirm my assertion, especially his sermons on Original Sin, and Salvation by Faith, and his masterly Refutation of Dr. Taylor, the wisest Pelagian and Socinian of our age. Nor am I afraid to have this testimony confronted with his Minutes, being fully persuaded that, when they are candidly explained, they rather confirm than overthrow it.
His manner of preaching the fall and the recovery of man 1s attended with a peculiar advantage: it is close and experimental. He not only points out the truth of those doctrines, but presses his hearers to cry to God that they may feel their weight upon their hearts. Some open those great truths very clearly, but let their congregations rest, like the stony ground hearers, in the first emotions of sorrow and joy which the word frequently excites. Not so Mr. Wesley: he will have true penitents ‘‘ feel the plague of their own hearts, travail, be heavy laden,” and receive “ the sentence of death in themselves,” according to the glorious “ ministration of condemnation:” and according to “the ministration of righteousness and of the Spirit which exceeds in glory,” he insists upon true believers knowing for themselves, that Jesus “hath power on earth to forgive sins;” and asserts, that they “ taste the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,”) and that they “are made partakers of the Holy Ghost and the Divine nature; the Spirit itself bearing witness with their spirits that they are the children of God.”
3. The next fundamental doctrine in Christianity is that of holiness of hear! and life; and no one can here accuse Mr. Wesley of leaning to the Antinomian delusion, which “makes void the law through” a speculative and barren “ faith :” on the contrary, he appears to be peculiarly set for the defence of practical religion: for, instead of representing Christ ‘“‘as the minister of sin,” with Ranters, to the great grief and offence of many, he sets him forth as a complete Saviour from sin. Not satisfied to preach holiness begun, he preaches finished holiness, and calls believers to such a degree of heart-purifying faith, as may enable them to triumph in Christ, as ‘* being made to them of God, sanctification as well as righteousness.”
It is, I grant, his misfortune (if indeed it be one) to preach a fuller salvation than most professors expect to enjoy here; for he asserts that Jesus can “make clean” the inside as well as the outside of his vessels unto honour; that he hath power.on earth “to save his people from their sins;” and that his blood “cleanses from all sin,” from the guilt and defilement both of original and actual corruption. He is bold enough to declare, with St. John, that “if we say we have no sin, either by nature or practice, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us: but if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” He is legal enough not to be ashamed of these words of Moses: “The Lord thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to. love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, that thou mayest live.” And he dares to believe that the Lord can perform the words which he spoke by Ezekiel: “I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and you shall be clean: from atu your filthiness and from ALL your idols will I cleanse you. A new heart also will I give you: I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh; and I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes; and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them. I will also save you from all your uncleannesses.” Hence it is that he constantly exhorts his hearers “ to grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Saviour;” till by a strong and lively faith they can continually
“reckon themselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” He tells them, that “he who committeth sin, is the servant of sin;’—that “ our old man is crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth
we should not serve sin;”—that ‘if the Son shall make us free, we shall be free indeed;” ‘ the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus” will not deliver us from the innocent infirmities incident to flesh and blood, it will nevertheless make us “free from the law of sin and death,” and enable us to say with holy triumph, ‘ How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” In a word, he thinks that God can so “shed abroad his love in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost given unto us,” as to “sanctify us wholly, soul, body,
and spirit ;” and enable us to “ rejoice evermore, pray without ceasing,
and in every thing give thanks.” And he is persuaded, that He who ‘can do far exceeding abundantly above all that we can ask or think,” is able to fill us with the “ perfect love which casts out fear; that we, being delivered out of the hands of our enemies,” may have “ the mind which was in Christ;” be righteous as the man Jesus was righteous; “walk as he also walked,” and be in our measure, *‘as he was in the world:” he as the stock of the tree of righteousness, and we as the branches, “ having our fruit” from him “ unto holiness,” and “ serving” God without fear in true holiness and righteousness all the days of our life.”
This he sometimes calls full sanctification, the state of “ fathers in Christ,” or the “ glorious liberty of the children of God;” sometimes “a being strengthened, stablished, and settled;” or “ being rooted and grounded in love;” but most commonly he calls it Christian perfeeiton: a word which, though used by the apostles in the same sense, cannot be used by him without’ raising the pity or indignation of one half of the religious world; some making it the subject of their pious ‘sneers and godly lampoons; while others tell you roundly “ they abhor it above every thing in the creation.”
Tantene animis celestibus ire !
On account of this doctrine it is that he is traduced as a Pharisee, a papist, an antichrist; some of his opposers taking it for granted that he makes void the priestly office of Christ, by affirming that his blood can so completely wash us here from our sins, that at death we shall “be found of him in peace, without spot, wrinkle, or any such thing;” while others, to colour their opposition to the many scriptures which he brings to support this unfashionable doctrine, give it out, that he only wants the old man to be so refined in all his tempers, and regulated in all his outward behaviour, as to appear perfect in the flesh; or, in other terms, that he sets up Pharisaic sexr, instead of “ Christ completely formed in us as the full hope of glory.” But I must (for one) do him the justice to say he is misapprehended, and that what he calls perfection is nothing but the rich cluster of all the spiritual blessings promised to believers in the Gospel; and, among the rest, a continual sense of the virtue of Christ’s atoning and purifying blood, preventing both old guilt from returning and new guilt from fastening upon the conscience; together with the deepest consciousness of.our
helplessness and nothingness in our best estate, the most endearing discoveries of the Redeemer’s love, and the most humbling and yet ravishing views of his glorious fulness. Witness one of his favourite hymns on that subject:— R Confound, o’erpower me with thy grace; I would be by myself abhorr’d: (All might, all majesty, all praise, All glory be to Christ my Lord!) Now let me gain perfection’s height, Now let me into nothing fall;
Be less than nothing in my sight, And feel that Christ is all in all.
4, But this is not all: he holds also general redemption, and its necessary consequences, which some account dreadful heresies. He asserts with St. Paul, that ‘ Christ, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man ;” and this grace he calls free, as extending itself freely to all. Nor can he help expressing his surprise at those pious ministers who maintain that the Saviour keeps his grace, as they suppose he kept his blood, from the greatest part of mankind, and yet engross to themselves the title of preachers of FREE grace!
He frequently observes, with the same apostle, that “ Christ is the Saviour of all men, but especially of them that believe;” and that “God will have all men to be saved,” consistently with their moral agency, and the tenor of his Gospel.
With St. John he maintains that “ God is love,”’ and that ‘ Christ is the propitiation not only for our sins, but also for the sins of the whole world.” With David he affirms that “ God’s mercy is over all his works:” and with St. Peter, that ‘ the Lord is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance;” yea, that God, without hypocrisy, ‘*commandeth all men, every where, to repent.” Accordingly he says with the Son of God, ‘ Whosoever will, let him come and take of the water of life freely;” and after his blessed example, as well as by his gracious command, he “ preaches the Gospel ro every creature;” which he apprehends would be inconsistent with common honesty, if there were not a Gospel ror every creature. Nor can he doubt of it in the least, when he considers that Christ is a king as well as a priest; that we are under a law to him; that those men who “will not have him to reign over them, shall be brought and slain before him;” yea, that he will ‘‘ judge the secrets of-men,”’ according to St. Paul’s Gospel, and take vengeance on all them that obey not his own Gospel, and be the author of eternal salvation to none but them that obey him. With this principle, as with a key given us by God himself, he opens those things which are “hard to be understood,” in the Epistles of St. Paul, and “ which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do some other scriptures, if not to their own destruction, at least to the overthrowing of the faith of some” weak Christians, and the hardening of many, very many infidels.
As a true son af the Church of England, he believes that “ Christ redeemed him and all mankind ;” that “for us men,” and not merely for the elect, “he came down from heaven, and made upon the cross a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the
sins of the whole world.” Like an honest man, and yet a man of sense, he so subscribed the seventeenth article as not to reject the thirty-first, which he thinks of equal force, and much more explicit; and, therefore, as the seventeenth article authorizes him, he “ receives God’s promises in suchwise as they are generally set forth in holy Scripture;” rejecting, after the example of our governors in Church and state, the Lambeth articles, in which the doctrine of absolute uncondilional election and reprobation was maintained, and which some Calyinistic divines, in the days of Queen Elizabeth, vainly attempted to impose upon these kingdoms, by adding them to the thirty-nine articles. . Far, therefore, from thinking he does not act a fair part in rejecting the doctrine of particular redemption, he cannot conceive by what salvo the consciences of those ministers, who embrace it, can permit them to say to each of their communicants, “The blood of Christ was shed for thee;” and to baptize promiscuously ail children within their respective parishes, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” when all that are unredeemed have no more right to the blood, name, and Spirit of Christ, than Lucifer himself. ‘
Thus far Mr. Wesley agrees with Arminius, because he thinks that illustrious divine agreed thus far with the Scriptures, and all the early fathers of the Church. But if Arminius, (as the author of Pietas Oxoniensts affirms, in his letter to Dr. Adams,) * j at man’s nature is totally corrupt; and asserted, that he hath still * a freedom of will to turn to God, but not without the assistance of grace,” Mr. Wesley is no Arminian; for he strongly asserts the totaj fall of man, and constantly maintains that by nature man’s will is only free to evil, and that Divine grace must first prevent, and then continually farther him, to make him willing and able to turn to God. ,
I must, however, confess, that he does not, as some real Protestants, continually harp upon the words FREE grace, and FREE will; but he gives reasons of considerable weight for this. (1.) Christ and his apostles never did so. (2.) He knows the word grace necessarily implies the freeness of a favour; and the word will, the freedom of our choice: and he has too much sense to delight im perpetual tautology. (3.) He finds, by blessed experience, that when the will is touched by Divine grace, and yields to the touch, it is as free to good, as it was before to evil. He dares not, therefore, make the maintaining free will, any more than free breath, the criterion of an uncon- verted man. On the contrary, he believes none are converted but those who have a free will to follow Jesus; and, far from being ashamed to be: called a ‘ free-willer,” he affirms it as essential to all men to be * free-willing creatures,” as to be ‘rational animals;” and he supposes he can as soon find a diamond or a flint without gravity, as a good or bad man without free will.
Nor will I conceal that I never heard him use that favourite expression of some good men, Why me? Why me? though he is not
* This is worded in so ambiguous a manner, as to give readers room to think
that Arminius held man hath a will to turn to God before grace prevents him, and
only wants some Divine assistance to finish what nature has power to begin. In this sense of the words it is I deny Mr. Wesley is an Arminian.
at all against their using it, if they can do it to edification. But as he does not see that any of the saints, either of the Old or New Testament ever used it, he is afraid to be humble and “wise above what is written,” lest “voluntary humility” should introduce refined pride before he is aware. Doubting, therefore, whether he could say, Why me? Why me? without the seli-pleasing idea of his being preferred to thousands, or without a touch of the secret self applause that tickles the Pharisee’s heart, when he “thanks God he is not as other men,” he leaves the fashionable exclamation to others, with all the refinements of modern divinity; and chooses to keep to St. Paul’s ex- pression, “He loved me,” which implies no exclusion of his poor fellow sinners; or to that of the royal psalmist, “ Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him; and the son of man, that thou visitest him.”
5. As a consequence of the doctrine of general redemption, Mr. Wes- }
ley lays down two axioms, of which he never loses sight in his preach- /
ing. The first is, that ALL OUR SALVATION Is OF Gop IN Curist, and therefore or GRACE;—all opportunities, invitations, inclination, and power to believe being bestowed upon us of mere grace;—grace most absolutely free’: and so far, I hope, that all who are called Gospel ministers agree with him. But he proceeds farther; for, secondly, he asserts with equal confidence, that according to the Gospel dispensation, ALL OUR DAMNATION IS OF OURSELVES, by our obstinate unbelief and avoidable unfaithfulness; as we may “neglect so great salvation,” desire to “be excused” from coming to the feast of the Lamb, “ make light of ” God’s gracious offers, refuse to “occupy,” bury our talent, anc act the part of the “slothful servant;” or, in other words, “ resist, grieve, do despite to,” and “quench the Spirit of grace,” by our moral agency.
The first of these evangelical axioms he builds upon such scriptures as these:—“‘In me is thy help. Look unto me and be saved. No man cometh unto me except the Father draw him. What hast thou that thou hast not received? We are not sufficient to think aright of ourselves, all our sufficiency is of God. Christ is exalted to give repentance. Faith is the gift of God. Without me ye can do nothing,” &c, &c.
And the second he founds upon such passages as these: * This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light. Ye always resist the Holy Ghost. They rejected the counsel of God toward themselves. Grieve not the Spirit. Quench not the Spirit. My Spirit shall not always strive with man. Turn, why will ye die? Kiss the Son, lest ye perish. I gave Jezebel time to repent, and she repented not. The goodness of God leads [not drags,] thee to repentance, who after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up wrath unto thyself. Their eyes have they closed, lest they should see, and be converted, and I should heal them. See that ye refuse not him that speaketh from heaven. I set before you life and death, choose life! Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life. I would have gathered you, and ye would not,” &c, &c.
As to the moral agency of man, Mr. Wesley thinks it cannot be denied upon the principles of common sense and civil government; much less upon those of natural and revealed religion; as nothing would be
Vor... 2
more absurd than to bind us by laws of a civil or spiritual nature; nothing more foolish than to propose to us punishments and rewards; and nothing more capricious tnan to inflict the one or bestow the other upon us; if we were not moral agents.
He is therefore persuaded, the most complete system of divinity is that in which neither of those two axioms is superseded: He thinks it is bold and unscriptural to set up the one at the expense of the other, convinced that the prophets, the apostles, and Jesus Christ left us no such precedent; and that, to avoid what is termed legality, we must not run into refinements which they knew nothing of, and make them perpetually contradict themselves: nor can we, he believes, without an open violation of the laws of candour and criticism, lay a greater stress upon a few obscure and controverted paSsages, than upon a hundred plain and irrefragable Scripture proofs. } He therefore supposes that those persons are under a capital mistake who maintain only the first Gospel axiom, and under pretence of securing to God all the glory of the salvation of one elect, give to perhaps twenty reprobates full room to lay all the blame of their damnation either upon their first parents, or their Creator./ This way of making twenty real holes, in order to stop a supposed one, he cannot see consistent either with wisdom or Scripture.
Thinking it therefore safest not to * put asunder” the truths which ** God has joined together,” he makes all extremes meet in one blessed Scriptural medium. With the Antinomian he preaches, “God worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure;” and with the Legalist he cries, “ Work out, therefore, your own salvation with fear and trembling;” and thus he has all St. Paul’s doctrine. With the Ranter he says, “ God has chosen you, you are elect;” but, as itis “ through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth,” with the disciples of Moses he infers, “make your calling and election sure, for if ye do these things ye shall never fall.” Thus he presents his hearers with all St. Peter’s system of truth, which the others had rent to pieces.
Again, according to the first axiom, he says with the perfect Preacher, “ All things are now ready;” but with him he adds also, according to the second, “Come, lest you never taste the Gospel feast.” Thinking it extremely dangerous not to divide the word of © God aright, he endeavours to give to every one the portion of it that suits him, cutting, according to times, persons, and circumstances, either with the smooth or the rough edge of his two-edged sword. Therefore, when he addresses those that are steady, and “ partakers of the Gospel grace from the first day until now,” as the Philippians, he makes use of the first principle, and testifies his confidence, “ that he who hath begun a good work in them, will perform it until the day of Christ.” But when he expostulates with persons, “ that ran well, and do not now obey the truth,” according to his second axiom, he says to them, as St. Paul did to the Galatians, “I stand in doubt of you; ye are fallen from grace.”
In short, he would think that he mangled the Gospel, and forgot part of his awful commission, if, when he has declared that “ he who believeth shall be saved,” he did not also add, that he “¢ who believeth not shall be damned ;” or, which is the same, that none perish merely
for Adam’s sin, but for their own unbelief, and wilful rejection of the Saviour’s grace. Thus he advances God’s glory every way, entirely ascribing to his mercy and grace all the salvation of the elect, and completely freeing him from the blame of directly or indirectly hanging the millstone of damnation about the neck of the reprobate. And this he effectually does, by showing that the former owe all they are, and all they have, to creating, preserving, and redeeming love, whose innumerable bounties they freely and continually receive; and that the rejection of the latter has absolutely no cause but their obstinate rejecting of that astonishing mercy which wept over:Jerusalem; and prayed, and bled even for those that shed the atoning blood—the blood that expiated all sin but that of final unbelief.
I have now finished my sketch of Mr. Wesley’s doctrine, so far as it has fallen under my observation during abeve sixteen years’ particu- Jar acquaintance with him and his works. It is not my design, sir, to inquire into the truth of his sentiments, much less shall I attempt to prove them orthodox, according to the ideas that some real Protestants entertain of orthodoxy. This only I beg leave to observe: Suppose he is mistaken in all the scriptures on which he founds his doctrine of Christian perfection and general redemption, yet his mistakes seem rather to arise from a regard for Christ’s glory, than from enmity to his offices; and all together do not amount to any heresy at all; the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, namely, the fall of man, justification by the merits of Christ, sanctification by the agency of the Holy Spirit, and the worship of the one true God in the mysterious distinction of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as it is maintained in the three creeds, not being at all affected by any of his peculiar sentiments.
But you possibly imagine, sir, that he has lately changed his doctrine, and adopted a new system. If you do, you are under a very great mistake; and to convince you of it, permit me to conclude this letter by a paragraph of one which I received from him last spring:—
“T always did (for between these thirty and forty years) clearly assert the total fall of man, and his utter inability to do any good of himself: the absolute necessity of the grace and Spirit of God to raise even a good thought or desire in our hearts: the Lord’s rewarding no works, and accepting of none, but so far as they proceed from his preventing, convincing, and converting grace, through the Beloved; the blood and ‘righteousness of Christ being the sole meritorious cause of our salvation. And who is there in England that has asserted these things more strongly and steadily than I have done?”
Leaving you to answer this question, I remain, with due respect, Hon. and Rey. sir, your obedient servant, in the bond of a peaceful Gospel, J. FLETCHER.
LETTER I.
Honovurep anp Reverenp Sir,—Having proved that Mr. Wesley’s doctrine is not heretical, permit me to consider the propositions which close the Minutes of his last conference, on which, it seems, your charge of dreadful heresy is founded.
They wear, I confess, a new aspect; and such is the force of prejudice and attachment to particular modes of expression, that at first they appear to be very unguarded, if not altogether erroneous. But when the din of the severe epithets bestowed upon them by some warm friends was out of my ears; when I had prayed to the Father of lights for meekness of wisdom, and given place to calm reflection, I saw them in quite a different light. Our Lord commands us “ not to judge according to the appearance, but to judge righteous judgment;” appearances, therefore, did not seem to me sufficient to con- demn any man, much less an elder, and such an elder as Mr. Wesley. I consider, beside, that the circumstances in which a minister sometimes finds himself with respect to his hearers, and particular errors spreading among them, may oblige him to do or say things, which, though very right according to the time, place, persons, and juncture, may yet appear very wrong to those who do not stand just where he does. I saw, for example, that if St. Paul had been in St. James’s circumstances, he would have preached justification in as guarded a manner ds St. James; and that if St. James had been in St. Paul’s place, he would have preached it as freely as St. Paul; and I recollected that in some places St. Paul himself seems even more legal than St. James. See Rom. ii, 7, 10, 14; Gal. vi, 7, &c, and
These reflections made me not only suspend my judgment concerning Mr. Wesley’s propositions, but’ consider what we may candidly suppose was his design in writing them for, and recommending them to the preachers in connection with him. And I could not help seeing that it was only to guard them and their hearers against Antinomian principles and practices, which spread like wild fire in some of his societies; where persons who spoke in the most glorious manner of Christ, and their interest in his complete salvation, haye been found living in the greatest immoralities, or indulging the most unchristian tempers. Nor need I go far for a proof of this sad assertion. In one of his societies, not many miles from my parish, a married man, who professed being in a state of justification and sanetification, growing wise above what is written, despised his brethren as legalists, and his teachers as persons not clear in the Gospel. He instilled his principles into a serious young woman; and what was the consequence? Why they talked about “finished salvation in Christ,” and “the absurdity of perfection in the flesh,” till a perfect child was conceived and born; and, to save appearances, the mother swore it to a travelling man tbat cannot be heard of. Thus, to avoid legality, they plunged into hypocrisy, fornication, adultery, perjury, and the depth of Ranterism. Is it not hard, that a minister should be traduced as guilty of dreadful heresy, for trying to put a stop to such dreadful practices? And is it not high time that he should cry to all that regard his warnings, “Take heed to your doctrine?” As if he had said,
“ Avoid all extremes. While on the one hand you keep clear of the Pharisaic delusion that slights Christ, and makes the pretended merit of an imperfect obedience the procuring cause of al life; see that on the other hand you do not lean to the Antinomian error, which, under pretence of exalting Christ, speaks contemptuously of
obedience, and “makes void the law through a faith that does not work by love.” As there is but a step between high Arminianism and selfrighteousness, so there is but one between high Calvinism and Anti- nomianism. I charge you to shun both, especially the latter.
You know, by sad experience, that at this time we stand particularly in danger of splitting upon the Antinomian rock. Many smatterers in Christian experience talk of finished salvation in Christ, or boast of being in a state of justification and sanctification, while they know little of themselves and less of Christ. Their whole behaviour testifies, that their hearts are void of humble love, and full of carnal confidence. They cry, Lord! Lord! with as much assurance and as little right as the foolish virgins. They pass for sweet Christians, dear children of God, and good believers; but their secret reserves evidence them to be only such believers as Simon Magus, Ananias, and Sapphira.
Some, with Diotrephes, ‘love to have the pre-eminence, and prate malicious words,’ and not content therewith, ‘they do not themselves receive the brethren, and forbid them that would,’ and even cast them out of the Church as heretics. Some have ‘forsaken the right way, . and are gone astray, following the way of Balaam, who loved the wages of unrighteousness; they are wells without water, clouds without rain, and trees without fruit:? with Judas they try to ‘load themselves with thick clay,’ endeavour to ‘lay up treasures on earth, and make provision for the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof.’ Some, with the incestuous Corinthian, are led captive by fleshly lusts, and fall into the greatest enormities. Others, with the language of the awakened publican in their mouths, are fast asleep in their spirits; you hear them speak of the corruptions of their hearts, in as unaffected and airy a manner, as if they talked of freckles upon their faces. It seems they run down their sinful nature only to apologize for their sinful practices; or to appear great proficients in self-knowledge, and court the praise due to genuine humility.
“Others, quietly settled on the lees of the Laodicean state, by the whole tenor of their life say, ‘they are rich and increased in goods, and have need of nothing;’ utter strangers to ‘hunger and thirst after righteousness,’ they never importunately beg, never wrestle-hard for the hid- den manna. On the contrary, they sing a requiem to their poor dead souls, and say, ‘ Soul, take thine ease, thou hast goods laid up (in Christ) for many years, yea, for ever and ever;’ and thus, like Demas, they go on talking of Christ and heaven, but loving their ease, and enjoying this present world.
“Yet many of these, like Herod, hear and entertain us gladly; but, like him also, they keep their beloved sin, pleading for it as a right eye, and saving itas a right hand. ‘To this day their bosom corruption is not only alive, but indulged; their treacherous Delilah is hugged; and ~ their spiritual ‘Agag walks delicately,’ and boasts that ‘ the bitterness of death is past,’ and he shall never be ‘hewed in pieces before the Lord:’ nay, to dare so much as to talk of his dying before the body, becomes almost an unpardonable crime. f
“Forms and fair shows of godliness deceive us: many, whom our Lord might well compare to ‘whited sepulchres,’ look like angels of light when they are abroad, and prove tormenting fiends at home. We
see them weep under sermons; we hear them pray and sing with the tongues of men and angels; they even profess the faith that removes mountains; and yet, by and by, we discover they stumble at every mole hill; every trifling temptation throws them into peevishness, fretfulness, impatience, ill humour, discontent, anger, and sometimes into loud passion.
“Relative duties are by many grossly neglected: husbands slight their wives, or wives neglect and plague their husbands: children are spoiled, parents disregarded, and masters disobeyed: yea, so many are the complaints against servants professing godliness, on account of their unfaithfulness, indolence, pert answering again, forgetfulness of their menial condition, or insolent expectations, that some serious persons prefer those who have no knowledge of the truth, to those who make a high profession of it.
“Knowledge is certainly increased; ‘ many run to and fro’ after it, but it is seldom experimental; the power of God is frequently talked of, but rarely felt, and too often cried down under the despicable name of frames and feelings. Numbers seek, by hearing a variety of Gospel ministers, reading all the religious books that are published, learn- ing the best tunes to our hymns, disputing on controyerted points of doctrine, telling or hearing Church news, and listening to, or retailing, spiritual scandal. But, alas! few strive in pangs of heart-felt conyictions; few ‘deny themselves and take up their cross daily;’ few ‘take the kingdom of heaven by the holy violence’ of wrestling faith, and agonizing prayer; few sce, and fewer live in ‘the kingdom of God, which is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.’ In a word, many say, ‘Lo! Christ is here; and lo! he is there;’ but few can consistently witness that ‘the kingdom of heayen is within them.’
“‘ Many assert that ‘the clothing of the king’s daughter is of wrought gold;’ but few, very few experience that she is ‘all glorious within;? and it is well if many are not bold enough to maintain that she is all full of corruptions. With more truth than ever we may say,
Ye different sects, who all declare,
Lo! here is Christ, or Christ is there; Your stronger proofs divinely give, And show us where the Christians live: Your claim, alas! ye cannot prove,
Ye want the genuine mark of Jove.
“The consequences of this high, and yet lifeless profession, are as evident as they are deplorable. Selfish views, sinister designs, inveterate prejudice, pitiful bigotry, party spirit, self-sufficiency, contempt of others, envy, jealousy, making men offenders for a word,—possibly a Scriptural word too, taking advantage of each other’s infirmities, magnifying innocent mistakes, putting the worst construction upon each other’s words and actions, false accusations, backbiting, malice, revenge, persecutions, and a hundred such evils, prevail among religious people, to the great astonishment of the children of the world, and the unspeakable grief of the true Israelites that yet remain among us.
“ But this is not all. Some of our hearers do not even keep to the great outlines of heathen morality: not satisfied practically to reject Christ’s declaration, that ‘it is more blessed to give than to receive,’
they proceed to that pitch of covetousness and daring injustice, as not to pay their just debts; yea, and to cheat, and to extort, whenever they have a fair opportunity. How few of our societies are there where this, or some other evil, has not broken out, and given such shakes to the ark of the Gospel, that had not the Lord wonderfully interposed, it must long ago have been overset! And you know how to this day the name and truth of God are openly blasphemed among the baptized heathens, through the Antinomian lives of many, who ‘say they are Jews when they are not, but by their works declare they are of the synagogue of Satan.’ At your peril, therefore, my brethren, countenance them not: I know you would not do it designedly, but you may do it unawares; therefore ‘take heed,’—more than ever ‘take heed to your doctrine.’ Let it be Scripturally evangelical: give not the children’s bread unto dogs: comfort not people that do not mourn. When you should give emetics do not administer cordials, and by that means strengthen the hands of the slothful and unprofitable servant. I repeat it once more, warp not to Antinomianism, and in order to this, take heed, O! take heed to your doctrine.”
Surely, sir, there is no harm in this word of exhortation; it is Scriptural, and Mr. Wesley’s pen cannot make it heretical. ‘Take we then heed to the design of the directions which follow:—
It is evident, that, in order to keep his fellow labourers clear from Antinomianism, he directs them, First, Not to lean too much toward Calvinism; and, Suconviy, Not to talk of a justified and sanctified state so unguardedly as some, even Arminians do; which fends to mislead men, and relax their watchful attention to their internal and exter- nal works, that is, to the whole of their inward tempers and outward behaviour. See No. 8.
He produces three particulars, wherein he thinks that both he and his assistants in the Lord’s vineyard have leaned too much toward Calvinism, each of which has a natural and strong tendency to counashamed to maintain that every man is fazihfully to employ his every talent; though our Lord himself goes so far in maintaining this doctrine, as to declare that ‘if a man be not raiTHFUL in the unrighteous mammon, God will not give him the true riches.? The seconp:— Being afraid to use the expression, working for life; although our Lord, who must be allowed perfectly to understand his own Gospel, uses it himself. And the ruirp:—Granting, without proper distinction, that a man is fo do nothing in order to justification, “ than which,” says he, ‘nothing can be more false;” as common sense dictates, that a rebel must lay down his arms before he can receive a pardon from his prince.
This being premised, Mr. Wesley invites his fellow labourers to review the whole affair; and while he does it, he saps the foundations of the Babels built by those who call Christ “ Lord! Lord!” without departing from iniquity. Who among Christians, says he, is now accepted of God? Not he, that, like Hymeneus, formerly believed, and “concerning faith hath now made shipwreck:” nor he, that, like Simon Magus, actually believes with a speculative, Antinomian faith; ' but “he that now believes in Christ with a loving and obedient heart,” or, as our Lord and St. Paul express it, he whose “faith works by
(Lon yi
tenance the Antinomian delusion. The rirst:—Being afraid or /
love, and whose love keeps God’s commandments.” This must at once overthrow the pretensions of those whose feigned faith, instead of producing a change in their hearts, only adds positiveness to their self-conceit, bitterness to their bad tempers, and perhaps licentiousness to their worldly lives.
Still carrying on his point, he observes next, to the shame of loose Christians, that none are accepted of God even among the heathens, but those that fear him and work righteousness. Nor is this observation improper, (you, sir, being judge,) for you tell us in your fifth ser- mon, page 84,* that “Cornelius was a man of singular probity, humanity, and morality; and that a view of his character may perhaps convince some, who consider themselves as Christians, how far short they are even of his imperfect righteousness,”
This leads him, No. 4, to touch upon an important objection, that will naturally occur to the mind of a Protestant; and he answers it by standing for the necessity of works, as firmly as he does against their merit in point of salvation; thus cutting down, with one truly evangelical stroke, the arrogancy of self-righteous Papists, and the delusion of licentious Protestants. And lest Antinomians should, from the Protestant doctrine “that good works have absolutely no merit in point of salvation,” take occasion to slight them that live in sin, he very properly observes, No. 6, that believers shall be rewarded in heaven, and are even often rewarded on earth, because of their works, and according to their works, which, he apprehends, does not so widely differ from secundum merita operwm, as Protestants in the heat of their contentions With the Papisw Rave™etl apt to conclude. No. 7, he starts another objection, which Antinomians will naturally make to St. Peter’s declaration, that God accepts those “who fear him and work righteousness.”
And now, Hon. sir, reserving for another place the consideration of his answer, let me appeal to your candour. From the general tenor of these propositions, is it not evident that Mr. Wesley, (who is now among Gospel ministers, what St. James formerly was among the disciples, and Mr. Baxter among the Puritan divines, that is, the person peculiarly commissioned by the Bishop of souls to defend the Gospel against the encroachments of Antinomians,) aims at stemming the torrent of their delusions, and not at all at “injuring the fundamental principles of Christianity,” or bringing “a dreadful heresy into the Church.”
You may reply, that you do not so much consider what he aims at doing, as what he has actually done. Nay, sir, the intention is what a candid judge (much more a loving brother) should particularly consider. If aiming to kill a wild beast that attacks my friend, I unfor- tunately stab him, it is a “melancholy accident;” but he wrongs me much, who represents it as a “dreadful barbarity.” In like manner, if Mr. Wesley has unhappily wounded the truth, in attempting to give the wolf in sheep’s clothing a killing stroke, his mistake should rather be called “ well-meant legality” than dreadful heresy.
You possibly reply, ‘Let any one look at these Minutes, and say, whether all the unawakened clergy in the land would not approve and
*London, printed for J. Johnson, 1762.
receive them.” And what if they did? Would the propositions be the worse barely for this? Is nothing Gospel but what directly shocks common sense? And is the apostles’ creed dreadfully heretical, because all the carnal clergy of the Church of England, yea, and of the Church of Rome, receive it? At this strange rate we must give up the Bible itself, for all the Socinians receive it. Ashamed of taking farther notice of an argument by which every Papist might attack the reasonable simplicity of our communion service, and defend the gross absurdity of transubstantiation, I come to an objection of greater weight:—
“Mr, Wesley contradicts himself. He has hitherto preached salvation by faith, and now he talks of salvation by works, as a condition: he has a thousand times offered a free pardon to the worst of sinners,
and now he has the assurance to declare that a man is to do something in order to justification.” Where will you “find such inconsistencies?” Where! In the Old and New Testament, and espe- cially in the epistles of the great preacher of free justification, and salvation by faith. There you will see many such seeming inconsistencies as these:—Eternal life is the gift of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. ‘Charge the rich to lay up mm store for themselves a good foundation, that they may lay hold on eternal life: we are temperate, to obtain an incorruptible crown.” By grace ye are saved through faith. In so doing thou shalt save thyself. Work out your own salvation.” We are not sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves. The Gentiles do by nature the things contained in the law.” God justifieth the ungodly and him that worketh not. “He shall render to every man according to his works, even eternal life to them who by patient continuance im well doing, seek for glory.” God forbid that I should glory in any thing, save in the cross of Christ. ‘ As the truth of God is in me, no man shall stop me of this glorying,” that I have kept myself from being burdensome. J am the chief of sinners. “I have lived in all good conscience before God until this day.” We rejoice m Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. “Our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity we have had our conversation in the world.” Not by works of rightcousness that we have done, but according to his mercy ke saved us: not of works, lest any man should boast; for if it be of works, then it 1s no more grace, otherwise work is no more work. “1 keep under my body, lest I myself should be a cast-away: be not deceived; whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap: he that soweth little shall reap little; he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” JI am persuaded that neither death, nor life, neither things present nor things to come, &c, snall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus. Those that fall away “crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame: for the earth which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing, whose end is to be burned. Some of the branches were broken off by unbelief, thou standest by faith; be not high minded, but fear; continue in God’s goodness, otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.”
Now, sir, permit me to beg you would lay your hand upon your
. heart, and say, whether malicious infidels haye not a fairer show of reason to raise wicked men against St. Paul, than you have to raise good men against Mr. Wesley? And whether a grain of the candour with which you would reconcile the seeming* contradictions of the great apostle would not be more than sufficient to reconcile the seeming inconsistencies of the great minister whom you have so warmly attacked?
Some persons indeed complain aloud that “Mr. Wesley, in his new scheme of salvation by works as a condition, fairly renounces Christ’s blood and righteousness.” I grant that the words “blood and righteousness” are not found in the Minutes, but “ acceptance by believing in Christ” is found there; and he must be a cayiller indeed, who asserts that he means a Christ without blood, or a Christ without righteousness. Beside, when he cuts off the merit of works from having any share in our salvation, far from forgetting the meritorious life and death of the Redeemer, he effectually guards them, and the Protestant ark, sprinkled with the atoning blood, from the rash touches of all merit mongers.t Add to this, that Mr. Wesley has sufficiently declared his faith in the atonement, in thousands of sermons and hymns, some of which are continually sung both by him and the real Protestants, so that “ out of their own mouth” their groundless charge may be refuted.
Again, the doctrine of the atonement had been fully discussed in former conferences and Minutes, and Mr. Wesley is too methodical to bring the same thing over and over again; nor is it reasonable to expect it should be peculiarly insisted upon in a charge against Antinomians, who rather abuse;than deny it. Once more: Mr. Wesley’s extract of the Minutes is a memorandum of what was said in the latter part of a conference, or conversation; and no unprejudiced person will maintain, that those who do not expressly mention the atonement in every conversation do actually renounce it.
To conclude: if the author of the Minutes had advanced the following propositions which you have dropped in your second sermon, you might have had some reason to suspect his not doing the atonement justice, (page 36.) “ Christ only did that to the human nature which Adam (had he stood upright) would have done.” What! sir, would Adam have died for his posterity, or did not Christ die for them? You add, “See the true reason of his death; that he might subdue the earthly life in every sense.” And page 45, “ He certainly died for no other end but that we might receiye the Spirit of holiness.” Mr. Wesley is of a very different sentiment, sir; for, poor heretic! he believes with the Papists that “‘ Christ died to make an atonement for us;” and with St. John, that “he is the propitiation for our sins, and for the sins of the whole world.” Nevertheless, he will not cry out, Dreadful heresy! though he will probably think, that you were once a little too deeply in
* Most of these seeming inconsistencies of St. Paul, and those which are charged upon Mr. Wesley, will be reconciled with the greatest ease by considering the two axioms mentioned in my first letter. In the former part of the
imaginary contradictions those servants of God make use of the first Gospel
axiom; in the latter part they employ the second, and thus declare the whole counsel of God.
+ The name that Bishop Latimer gives to the Papists.
FIRST CHECK TO ANTINOMIANISM. 27 Mr. Law’s sentiments. Leaving you to think with how much justice I might descant here upon this line of the satiri¢ poet, Dat veniam corvis, vexat censura columbas:
I remain, Rey. and dear sir, yours, &c, J. FLETCHER.
LETTER III.
HonovureD AND ReEvEREND Si1r,—We have seen how exceedingly commendable was Mr. Wesley’s design in writing what you have extracted from his last Minutes; and how far from being unanswerable are the general objections which some have moved against them. Let us now proceed to a candid inquiry into the true meaning of the propositions. They are thus prefaced:—
“We said in 1744, We have leaned too much toward Calvinism. Wherein?”
This single sentence is enough, I grant, to make some persons account Mr. Wesley a heretic. He is not a Calvinist! And what is still more dreadful, he has the assurance to say that he has leaned too much toward Calvinism! This will sound like a double heresy in their ears; but not in yours, sir, who seem to carry your anti-Calvinistical notions farther than Mr. Wesley himself. He never spoke more clearly to the point of free grace than you do, page 85, of your sermons:—‘God,” say you, “never left himself without witness, not only from the visible things of the creation, but likewise from the inward witness, a spiritual seed of light sown in the soul of every.son of man, Jew, Turk, or Pagan, as well as Christians, whose kindly suscitations whoever follows, will gladly perceive increasing gleams still leading farther on to nearer and far brighter advances, till at length a full and perfect day bursts forth upon his ravished eyes.” In this single sentence, sir, you bear the noblest testimony to all the doctrines in which Mr. Wesley dissents from the Calvinists. You begin with GENERAL REDEMPTION, and end with PERFECTION: or, to use your own expression, you follow him “from the spiritual seed of light in a Turk,” quite to the “full and perfect day, bursting forth upon the ravished eyes of the Pagan who follows the kindly suscitations” of Divine grace.
And far from making man a mere machine, you tell us, page 140, “it is true that faith is the gift of God, but the exertion of that faith, when once given, lieth in ourselves.” Mr. Wesley grants it, sir; but permit me to tell you that the word ourselves being printed in italics, seems to convey rather more anti-Calvinism than he holds: for he is persuaded that we cannot exert faith without a continual influence of the same Divine power that produced it; it being evident, upon the Gospel plan, that “without Christ we can do nothing.” From these and the like passages in your sermons, I conclude, sir, that your charge of dreadful heresy does not rest upon these words, “‘ We have
- leaned too much toward Calvinism.” Pass we then to the next, in which Mr. Wesley begins to show wherein he has consented too much to the Calvinists.
“IT, With regard to man’s faithfulness Our Lord himself taught
us to use the expression. And we ought never to be ashamed of it. We ought steadily to assert, on his authority, that if a man ‘is not faithful in the unrighteous mammon, God will not give him the true
Now, where does the heresy lie here? Is it in the word man’s faithfulness? Is there so much faithfulness to God and man among professors, that he must be opposed by all good men who dares to use the bare word? Do real Protestants account “ man’s faithfulness” a grace of supererogation, and quoting Scripture a heresy? Or do they slight what our Lord recommends in the plainest terms, and will one day reward in the most glorious manner? If not, why are they going to enter a protest against Mr. Wesley because he is “not ashamed of Christ and his words before an evil and adulterous generation,” and will not “ keep back” from his immense flock any part of “ the counsel of God,” much less a part that so many professors overlook, while some are daring enough to lampoon it, and others wicked enough to trample it under foot? at
O, sir, if Mr. Wesley is to be cast out of your synagogue unless he formally recant the passage he has quoted, and which he says “ we are not to be ashamed of;” what will you do to the Son of God who spoke it? What to St. Luke who wrote it? And what to good Mr. Henry who thus comments upon it? “If we do not make a right use of the gifts of God’s providence, how can we expect from him those present and future comforts which are the gifts of his spiritual grace? Our Saviour here compares these; and shows that though our faithful use of the things of this world cannot be thought to merit any favour at the hand of God, yet our unfaithfulness in the use of them may be justly reckoned a forfeiture of that grace which is necessary to bring us to glory. And that is it which our Saviour shows, Luke xvi, 10-12, He that is unjust, unfaithful, in the least, is unjust, unfaithful also in much. The riches of this world are the less; grace and glory are the greater. Now, if we be unfaithful in the less, if we use the things of this world to other purposes than those to which they were given us, it may justly be feared we shall be so in the gifts of God’s grace, that we will receive them also in vain, and therefore they will be denied us. He that is faithful in that which is least, is faithful also in much. He that serves God and does good with his money, will serve God and do good with the more noble and valuable talents of wisdom and grace, and spiritual gifts, and the earnests of heaven: but he that buries the one talent of this world’s wealth, will never improve the five talents of spiritual riches.” ’
Thus speaks the honest commentator: and whoever charges him with legality or heresy therein, I must express my approbation by a shout of applause. Hail Henry! Hail Wesley! Ye faithful servants of the most high God. Stand it out against an Antinomian world! Hail ye followers of the despised Galilean! You “confess him and his words before a perverse generation, he will confess you before his Father and his angels.” Let not the scoffs, let not the accusations even of good people, led by the tempter appearing as an angel of light, make you give up one jot or tittle of your Lord’s Gospel. Though thousands should combine to brand you as legalists, Papists, heretics,
and anti-christs stand it out: Scripture, conscience, and Jesus are on your side. ‘ Be not afraid of their terror, but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts.” And when you shall have occupied a little longer, _ and been a little more abused by your mistaken companions, your master will come and find you employed in serving his family, and not in “beating your fellow servants.” And while the unprofitable, unfaithful, quarrelsome servant is cast out, he will address you with a “ well done good and faithful servants: Ye have been faithful over a few things; I will make you rulers over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord.”
Excuse the length of this address: it dropped from me before I was aware, and is the fruit of the joy I feel to see “ the John Goodwin of the age,” and the oracle of the Calvinists so fully agree to maintain the Christian heresy against the Antinomian orthodoxy. Nay, and you yourself are of the very same way of thinking. For you tell us (page 89) “that God so far approved of the advances Cornelius had made toward him,” (by praying, and giving, as you had obseryed before, much alms to the people,) “ under the slender light offered him; of his earnest desire of a still nearer and more intimate acquaintance with him; and of the improvements he had made of the small talent he had committed to him; that he was now about to entrust him with greater and far better treasures.”
In the mouth of two such witnesses as Mr. Henry and yourself, Mr. Wesley’s doctrine might be established; but as I fear that some of our friends will soon look upon you both as tainted with his heresy, I shall produce some plain Scripture instances to prove, by the strongest of all arguments, maiter of fact, that man’s “ unfaithfulness in the mammon of unrighteousness” is attended with the worst of consequences.
You know, sir, what destruction this sin brought upon Achan, and by his means upon Israel: and you remember how Saul’s avarice, and his “ flying upon the spoil of the Amalekites” cost him his kingdom, together with the Divine blessing. You will, perhaps, object that “ they forfeited only temporal mercies.” True, if they repented; but if then sin sealed up the hardness of their heart, then they lost all.
I can, however, mention two who indisputably forfeited both spiritual and eternal blessings: the one is the moral young man whose fatal attachment to wealth is mentioned in the Gospel. “Go,” said our Lord to him, “ sell all thou hast, give to the poor; come, follow me, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven.” He was unfaithful in the ““mammon of unrighteousness;” he would not comply with the proposal, and though “ Jesus loved him,” yet he stood firm to his word, he did not “give him the true riches.” The unhappy wretch chose to have his good things in this world, and so lost them in the next.
The other instance is Judas. “He left all,” at first, “ to follow Jesus;” but when the devil placed him upon the high mountain of temptation, and showed him the horrors of poverty and the alluring wealth of this world, covetousness, his besetting sin, prevailed again: and as he carried the bag he turned thief, and made a private purse. You know, sir, that “the love of money” proved to him “ the root of all evil;” and that on account of his “ unfaithfulness in the mammon of unrighteousness” our Lord not only did “ not give him the true riches,”
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but took his every talent from him, his apostleship on earth, and one of the twelve thrones which he had promised him in common with the other disciples. .)
Some, I know, will excuse Judas by fathering his crime and damnation upon the decrees of God. But we who are not numbered among real Protcstants think that sinners are reprobated as they are elected, that is, says St. Peter, “ according to the foreknowledge of God.” We are persuaded that because God’s knowledge is infinite he foreknows future contingencies; and we think we should insult both his holiness and his omniscience if we did not believe that he could both foresee © and foretell that Judas would be unfaithful, without necessitating him to be so, that the Scriptures might be fulfilled. We assert, then, that as Jesus loved the poor covetous young man, so he loyed his poor covetous disciple. For had he hated him, he must have acted the base part of a dissembler, by showing him for years as much love as he did the other apostles; an idea too horrid for a Christian to entertain, I shall not say of ‘God made flesh,” but even of a man that has any sincerity or truth! Judas’s damnation, therefore, and the ‘ruin of the young man, according to the second axiom,in the Gospel, were merely of themselves, by their unbelief and “ unfaithfulness in the mammon of unrighteousness:” for “ how could they believe,” seeing they reposed their “ trust in uncertain riches!”
Thus, sir, both the express declaration of our Lord, and the plain histories of the Scripture agree to confirm this fundamental principle in Christianity, that when God works upon-man-he—expects_faithfulness from-man; and that when man, as a moral agent, grieves and quenches the Spirit that strives to make him faithful, temporal and eternal ruin are the inevitable consequence.
Thus far, then, the Minutes contain a great, evangelical truth, and
not a shadow of heresy. Let us see whether the dreadful snake lurks under the second proposition. —- “IT, We have leaned too much toward Caivinism; (2.) With regard to working for life. This also our Lord has expressly commanded us. Labour (EpyaZecde, literally, work) for the meat that endureth to ever- Jasting life. And in fact every believer, till he comes to glory, works Jor as well as from life.”
Here Mr. Wesley strikes at a fatal mistake of all Antinomians, many honest Calvinists, and nota few who are Arminians in sentiment, and Calvinists in practice. All these, when they see that man is by nature dead in trespasses and sins, lie easy in the mire of iniquity, idly waiting till, by an irresistible act of omnipotence, God pulls them out without any striving on their part. Multitudes uncomfortably stick here, and will probably continue to do so till they receive and heartily embrace that part of the Gospel which is now, alas! called heresy. Then shall these poor prisoners in giant Despair’s castle find the key of their dungeon about them, and perceive that “the word is nigh them, yea, in their mouth and in their heart; stirring up the gift of God within them, and in hope believing against hope,” they will happily ‘lay hold on eternal life, and apprehend,’ by the confidence of faith, “ him that has - apprehended them” by convictions of sin.
But now, instead of imitating Lazarus, who, when the Lord had
FIRST CHECK TO ANTINOMIANISM. 3]
called him and restored life to his putrefying body, “‘ came forth’ out of his grave, though he was “ bound hand and foot;” these mistaken men indolently wait till the Lord drags them out, not considering that it is more than he has promised to do. On the contrary, he reproves by his prophet, those that “do not stir themselves up to lay hold on him;” and deciding the point himself, says, “Turn ye at my reproof: hehold, I will pour “out my Spirit upon you; because I called and ye refused, I stretched out my hands unto you, and no man regarded, I will mock when your fear cometh.”
Should you object, “‘ that the case is not similar, because the Lord gave life to the dead body of Lazarus, whereas our souls are dead in sin by nature.” ‘True, sir, by nature; but does not “ grace reign” to control nature? And “as by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so, by the righteousness of one, is not the free gift come upon all men to justification of life?” According to the promise made to our first parents, and of course to all men then contained in their loins, is not “ the seed of the woman always nigh,” both to reveal and “bruise the serpent’s head?” Is not Christ ‘the light of men,—the light of the world,—come into the world? Shineth he not in the darkness of our nature, even when the darkness comprehends him not? And is not this “light the life,” the spiritual “life of men?” Can this be denied, if the “light is Christ,” and if ‘Christ is the resurrection and the life,” who came that “we might have life, and that we might have it more abundantly 2”
In this Scriptural view of free grace, what room is there for the ridiculous cavil that “‘ Mr. Wesley wants the dead to work for life?” God, of his infinite mercy in Jesus Christ, gives te poor sinners, naturally dead in sin, a talent of free, preventing, quickening grace, which ‘“‘reproves them of sin;” and when it is followed, of “ righteousness and judgment.” This, which some Calvinists call common grace, is granted to all without any respect of persons; so that even the poor Jew, Herod, if he had not preferred the smiles of his Herodias to the convincing light of Christ which shone in his conscience, would have been saved as well as John the Baptist; and that poor heathen, Felix, if he had not hardened his heart in the day of his visitation, would have sweetly experienced that Christ had as much tasted death for him as he did for St. Paul. The living light visited them; but they, not “‘ working while it was day,” or refusing to “cut off the right hand,” which the Lord called for, fell at last into that “ night wherein no man can, work; their candlestick was removed, their lamp went out.” They quenched their “‘ smoking flax,” or, in other words, their talent unimproved was justly “taken from them.” Thus, though once through grace they could work, they died while they lived; and so were, as says St. Jude, ‘twice dead,” dead in Adam by that sentence, “In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die;” and dead in themselves, by personally renouncing Christ the life, or rejecting the light of his convincing Spirit.
This being premised, I ask, Where is the heresy in this paragraph of the Minutes? Does it consist in quoting a plain passage out of one of our Lord’s sermons? Or in daring to produce in the original, under the horrible form of the decagrammaton, Epya@ecde, that dreadful tetragrammaton, work? Surely, sir, you have too much piety to maintain the former, and too much good sense to assert the latter. Does it consist in saying that ‘“ believers work from life?” (for of such only Mr. Wesley here speaks.) Do not all grant that he who believeth hath life, yea, everlasting life, and therefore can work? And have I not proved from Scripture that the very heathens are not without some light and grace to work suitably to their dispensation?
The heresy,” say you, “does not consist in asserting that the believer works from, but for life!” Does it mdeed? Then the Lord Jesus is the heretic; for Mr. Wesley only repeats what he spoke about seventeen hundred years ago: ‘“ Labour,” says he, Epya2Zeode, “work for the meat that endureth to everlasting life.” Enter therefore “your protest against” St. John’s Gospel, if Christ will not “ formally recant it;” and not against the Minutes of his servant who dares not “take away from his Lord’s words,” for fear “ God should take away his part out of the book of life!” ;
But if the Son of God be a heretic for putting the unbelieving Jews upon working by that dreadful word, EpyaZecée, St. Paul is undoubtedly an arch-heretic for corroborating it by a strong preposition: KarepyaZecée says he to the Philippians, work ouf—and what is most astonishing, “ work out your own salvation.” Your own salvation! Why, Paul, this is even worse than working for life; for salvation implies a deliverance from all guilt, sin, and misery; together with obtaining the life of grace here, and the life of glory hereafter. Ah! poor legal apostle, what a pity is it thou didst not live in om evangelical age! Some, by explaining to thee the mystery of “ finished salvation,” or by “ protesting in a body against thy dreadful heresy,” might have saved “the fundamental doctrines of Christianity;” and the Richard Baxter of our age would not have had thee to bear him out in his Pharisaical and Papistical delusions!
Here you reply, that “ St. Paul gives God all the glory, by maintaining that ‘it is he who works in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure.’” And does not Mr. Wesley do the same? Has he not for near forty years steadily asserted that all power to think a good thought, much more to will or do a good work, is from God, by mere grace, through the merits of Jesus Christ and the agency of the Holy Spirit?’ If any dare to deny it, myriads of witnesses who have heard him preach, and thousands of printed sermons, hymms, and tracts dispersed through the three kingdoms will prove it.
But let us come closer to the point.. Is not Christ “the bread that came down from heaven to give life to the world?” Is he not “the meat that endureth to everlasting life?” ‘the meat which” he directs even the poor Capernaites “to work for?” Must we not come to him for that meat? Is not “ coming” to Christ a “ work” of the heart? Yea, “the work of God?” The work that God peculiarly calls for? John vi, 28, 29. Does not our Lord complain of those who will not work for life, that is, “* come unto him that they might have life, or that they might have it more abundantly?” And must not every believer “do this work”—come to Christ for life, yea, and live upon him every day and every hour?
Again, sir, consider these scriptures, “ He that believeth hath everlasting life: he that hath the Son hath life.” Compare them with the following complaint: “ None stirreth up himself to lay hold on God;” and with the charge of St. Paul to Timothy, “ Lay hold on eternal life.” And let us know whether “stirring up one’s self to lay hold on the God of our life,”’ and actually “laying hold on eternal life,” are not “ works,” and works for, as well as from life! And whether believers are dispensed from these works till they come to glory!
Once more? please to tell us if praying, using ordinances, “ run-* ning a race, taking up the cross, keepmg under the body, wrestling, fighting a good fight,” are not works; and if, all believers are not to | do them till death brings them a discharge? If you say that “they / do them from life and not for life,” you still point blank oppose our Lord’s express declaration.
A similar instance will make you sensible of it. Lot flies out of Sodom. How many works does he do at once! He hearkens to God’s messengers, obeys their voice, sacrifices his property, forsakes all, prays, runs, and “ escapes for his life.” “No,” says one, “ wiser than seven men who can render a reason,” ‘ you should not say that he escapes for life, but from life. Do not hint that he runs éo preserve his life; you should say that he does it because he is aluwe.” What an admirable distinction is this!
Again: my friend is consumptive. [I send for a physician who prescribes, “he must ride out every day for his life.” Some other physicians see the prescription, and, by printed letters, raise all the gentlemen of the faculty to insist in a body on a formal recantation of this dreadful prescription; declaring the health of thousands is at stake, if we say that consumptive people are to ride for life as well as from life. Risum teneatis, amici?
But they who protest against Mr. Wesley for maintaining that we ought to work for, as well as from life, must protest also against a body of Puritan divines, who, in the last century, being shocked at Dr. Crisp’s doctrine, thus bore their testimony against it: ‘To say, Salvation is not the end of any good work we do, or we are to act From life, and not ror life, were to abandon the human nature; it were to teach us to violate the great precepts of the Gospel; it supposes one bound to do more for the salvation of others than our own; it were to make all the threatenings of eternal death, and promises of eternal life in the Gospel, useless, as motives to shun the one, or obtain the other: and it makes the Scripture characters and commendation of the most eminent saints, a fault:” for they all escaped out of Sodom or Babylon for their lives; they all wrestled for, and “ laid hold on eternal life.” (Preface to Mr. Flavel’s Book against Antinomianism.)
Thus, sir, the very Calvinists were ashamed a hundred years ag0 of the grand Crispian tenet, “ that we ought not to work for
And I am glad to find you are as far from this error as they were; for you tell us in your sermons, page 69, that “ the gracious end of Christ’s coming into the. world was to give eternal life to those who were dead in sins; and that eternal life does consist in knowing the true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent.” You assure us next, that this life ne by “an exploring desire *, and that God, by giving it, “ only
means to be earnestly sought, that he may be more successfully and more happily found.” :
Perhaps some suppose the expression of working for, life implies the working in order to merit or purchase life. But, as our Lord’s words conyey no such idea, so Mr. Wesley takes care positively to exclude it, by those words, “ not by the merit of works:” for he knows
) that eternal life is the gift of God;” and yet with St. Paul he says,
‘ Labour to enter into rest, lest ye fall after the example of Israel's unbelief: and with the great anti-Crispian divine, Jesus Christ, he cries aloud, “ Strive to walk in the narrow way; agonize to enfer in at the strait gate that leads to life.”
I pass to the third instance which he produces of his having leaned too much toward Calvinism :—
“TIT. We have received it as a maxim, that a man is to do nothing in order to justification. Nothing can be more false. Whoever desires to find favour with God, should ‘ cease from evil, and learn to do well.’ Whoever repents, should ‘do works meet for repentance.’? And if this be not zn order to find favour, what does he do them for?”
To do Mr. Wesley justice, it is necessary to consider what he means by “justification.” And, First, He does not mean that general benevolence of our merciful God toward sinful mankind, whereby, through the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, he casts a propitious look upon them, and freely makes them partakers of “the light that enlightens every man that cometh into the world.” This general loving kindness is certainly previous to any thing we can do to find — it; for it always prevents us, saying to us in our very infancy, Live; and when we turn from the paths of life, still crying, “ Why will ye die?” In consequence of this general mercy, our Lord says, “ Let little children come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” Much less does Mr. Wesley understand what Dr. Crisp calls * eternal justification,” which, because I do not see it in the Scripture, I shali say nothing of.
But the “justification” he speaks of, as something that we must “* find,” and ‘in order to which something must be done,” is either that public and final sustirication which the Lord mentions in the Gospel, By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” And in this sense no man in his wits will find fault with Mr. Wesley’s assertion; as it is evident that we must absolutely **do something,” that is, speak good words, in order to be “ justified by our words.” Or he means rorcivengss, and the witness of ii; hat wonderful transaction of the Spirit of God, in a returning prodigal’s conscience, by which the forgiveness of his sin is proclaimed to him through the blood of sprinkling. This is what Mr. Wesley and St. Paul generally mean. It is thus that “ being justified by faith we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
And now, do not Scripture, common sense, and experience, show that “something must be done in order to attain or find,” though not ‘to merit and purchase this justification? \ Srey
Please to answer the following questions founded upon the express declarations of God’s word:—* 'To him that ordereth his conversation aright will I shew the salvation of God.” Is “ ordering our conyersafion aright,” doing nothing? “ Repent ye, and be converted, that your sins may he blotted out.” Are “ repentance and conversion” nothing? ‘Come unto me, all ye that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” I will justify you. Is “coming” doing nothing? ‘“ Cease to do evil, learn to do well. Come now, let us reason together, and though your sins be red as crimson they shall be white as snow,” you shall be justified. Is ‘‘ ceasing to do evil and learning to do well,” doing nothing? ‘Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.” Is “ seeking, calling, forsaking one’s way, and returning to the Lord,” a mere nothing? “ Ask, and you shall receive; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” Be “ violent, take even the kingdom of heaven by force.” Is ‘ seeking, asking, knocking, and taking by force,” doing absolutely nothing? : Please to answer these questions; and when you have done, I will throw one or two hundred more of the like kind in your way.
Let us now see whether reason is not for Mr. Wesley as well as Scripture. Do you not maintain that believing is necessary in order to our justification? If you do, you subscribe Mr. Wesley’s heresy; for “ believing” is not only “ doing something,” but necessarily supposes ‘‘a variety of things.” ‘Faith cometh by hearing,” and.some- times by reading, which implies “ attending the-ministry of the word, Saacecine the Scriptures,” as thé Saati did. It likewise presupposes at least “the attention of the mind, and consent of the heart to a revealed truth;” or “ the-consideration, approbation, and réceiymg of an object proposed to us.” Nay, it implies “renouncing worldly, and seeking Divine honour.” For, says our Lord, “ How can you believe who receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh of God only?” And if none can believe in Christ unto salvation but those who give up seeking worldly honours, by a parity of reason they must give up following fleshly lusts, and putting their trust in uncertain riches. In a word, they must own themselves sick, and renounce their physicians of no value, before they can make one true application to the invaluable Physician. What a variety of things is, therefore, implied in “believing,” which we cannot but acknowledge to be previous to justification! Who can then, consistently with reason, blame Mr. Wesley for saying “ something must be done in order to justification?”
Again, if nothing be required of us in order to justification, who can find fault with those that die in a state of condemnation? They were “born in sin, and children of wrath,” and nothing was required of them in order to find favour. It remains, therefore, that they are—damned, through an absolute decree, made thousands of years before they had any existence! If some can swallow this camel with the greatest ease, I doubt, sir, it will not go down with you, without bearing very hard pe the knowledge you have of the God of love, and the Gospel of
esus.
Once more: Mr. Wesley concludes his proposition with a very pertinent question: “* When a man that is not justified, ‘does works
meet for repentance,’ what does he do them for?” Permit me to answer it according to Scripture and common sense. — If he do them in order to purchase the Divine favour, he is under a self-righteous delusion; but if he do them as Mr. Wesley says, “in order to find” what Christ has purchased for him, he acts,the part of a wise Protestant.
Should you say that “ such a penitent does works meet for repentance from a sense of gratitude for redeeming love:” I answer, this is impossible; for that ‘love must be shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost given unto him,” in consequence of his justification, before he can act from the sense of that love and the gratitude which it excites. I hope it is no heresy to maintain that the cause must go before the effect. I conclude, then, that those who have not yet found the pardoning love of God, do works meet for repentance “ in order to find it.” They abstain from those outward evils which once they pursued; they do the outward good which the convincing Spirit prompts them to: they use the means of grace, confess their sins, and ask pardon for them; in short, they “seek” the Lord, encouraged by that promise, “they that seek me early shall find me.” And Mr. Wesley supposes they “ seek in order to find.” In the name of candour, where is the harm of that supposition?
When the poor woman has lost her ‘ piece of silver, she lights a candle,” says our Lord, “‘ she sweeps the house, and searches diligently till she find it.” Mr. Wesley asks, “ If she do not do axt this in order to find it, what does she do it for?” At this the alarm is taken; and the post carries, through various provinces, printed letters against old Mordecai; and a synod is called together to protest against the dreadful error!
This reminds me of a little anecdote. Some centuries ago, one Virgilius, I think, a German bishop, was bold enough to look over the walls of ignorance and superstition which then enclosed all Europe; and he saw, that if the earth was round there must be antipodes. Some minutes of his observations were sent to the pope. His holiness, who understood geography as much as divinity, took fright, fancying the unheard-of assertion was injurious to the very fundamental principles of Christianity. He directly called together the cardinals, as wise as himself; and by their advice, issued out a bull condemning the heretical doctrine, and the poor bishop was obliged to make a formal recantation of it, under pain of excommunication. Which are we to admire most? The zeal of the conclave, or that of the real Protestants? In the meantime let me observe, that as all the Roman Catholics do now acknowledge that there are antipodes, so all real Protestants will one day acknowledge that penitents seek the favour of God in order to find it; unless some rare genius should be able to demonstrate that it is an order to lose it.
Having defended Mr. Wesley’s third propusition from Scripture and common sense, permit me to do it also from experience. And here I might appeal to the most established persons in Mr. Wesley’s societies: but as their testimony may have little weight with you, I waive it,
~ and appeal to all the accounts of sound conversions that have been
published since Calvin’s days. Show me one, sit, wherein it appears that a mourner in Sion found the above described justification, without
doing some previous “works meet for repentance.” If you cannot produce one such instance, Mr. Wesley’s doctrine is supported by the printed expertences of all the converted Calvinists, as well as of all the believers in his own societies. Nor am I afraid to appeal even to the experience of your own friends. If any one of these can say, with a good conscience, that he found the above described justification without first stopping in the career of outward sin, without praying, seeking, and confessing his guilt and misery, I promise to give up the Minutes. But if none can make such a declaration, you must grant, sir, that experience is on Mr. Wesley’s side, as much as reason, revelation, the best Calvinists, and yourself. I say yourself:
Give me leave to produce but one instance: page 76 of your sermons, you address those “who see themselves destitute of that knowledge of God which is eternal life,” the very same thing that Mr. Wesley calls justification; and which you define, “a home-felt knowledge of God, by the experience of his love being shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given unto us: the Spirit of God bearing witness with our spirits that we are the children of God;” and you recommend to them “to seek and press after it.” Now, sir, “seeking and pressing after it” is certainly “ doing something in order to find it.”
I must not conclude my vindication of the third proposition without answering a specious objection. “If we must do something in order to justification, farewell free justification! It is no more of grace, but of works, and consequently of debt. ‘The middle wall of partition between the Church of Rome and the Church of England is pulled down, and the two sticks in the hands of that heretical juggler, John Wesley, are become one.”
I reply, (1.) That some, who think they are real pillars in the Protestant Church, may be nearer the Church of Rome than they are aware of: for Rome is far more remarkable for lording it over God’s heritage, and calling the most faithful servants of God heretics, than even for her Pharisaic exalting of good works. (2.) If the Church of Rome had not insisted upon the necessity of unrequtred, unprofiable, and foolish works; and if she had not arrogantly ascribed saving merit to works, yea, to merely external performances, and by that means clouded the merits of Christ; no reasonable Protestant would have- separated from her on account of her regard for works. (3.)
Wl seied can be more absurd than to affirm, that when “ something is
required to be done in order to receive a favour, the favour loses the name of a free gift, and directly becomes a debt.” Long, too long, persons who have more honesty than wisdom, have been frightened from the plain path of duty, by a phantom of their own making. O may the snare break at last! And why should it not break now? Have not sophisms been wire-drawn, till they break of themselves in the sight of every attentive spectator? ;
I say to two beggars, “ Hold out your hand; here is an alms for you.” The one complies, and the other refuses. Who in the world will dare to say that my charity is no more a free gift, because I bestow it only upon the man that held out his hand? Will nothing make it free but my wrenching his hand open, or forcing my bounty down his throat? Again: the king says to four rebels, “ Throw down your arms; surrender, and you shall have a place both in my favour and at court.” One of them obeys, and becomes a great man; the others, upon refusal, , are caught and hanged. What sophister will face me down that the pardon and place of the former are not freely bestowed upon him, because he did something in order to obtain them? Once more:
The God of providence says, “If you plough, sow, harrow, fence, and weed your fields, I will give the increase, and you shall have a crop.” Farmers obey: and are they to believe that because they do so many things toward their harvest, it is not the free gift of Heaven? Do not all those who fear God know that their ground, seed, cattle, strength, yea, and their very life, are the gifts of God? Does not this prevent their claiming a crop as a debt; and make them confess, that though it was suspended on their ploughing, &e, it is the unmerited bounty of Heaven?
Apply this, sir, to the present case; and you will see that our doing something in order to justification does not in the least hinder it from being a free gift; because whatever we do in order to it, we do it * by the grace of God” preventing us, that we may have a good will, and working with us when we have that good will; all being of free, most absolutely free grace through the merits of Christ. And, nevertheless, so sure as a farmer, in the appointed ways of Providence, shall have no harvest if he does nothing toward it; a professor in the appointed ways of grace, (let him éalk of “ finished salvation” all the year round,) shall go without justification and salvation, unless he do something toward them. (My comparison is Scriptural:) “He that now goeth on his way weeping,” says the psalmist, “ and beareth forth good seed, shall doubtless come again with joy, and bring his sheaves with him.” ‘“‘ Be not deceived,” says the apostle, ‘“* whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap; and he only that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.” David, therefore, and St. Paul must be proved enemies to free grace before Mr. Wesley can be represented as such: for they both did something in order to justification; they both “sowed in tears,” before they “reaped in joy;” their doctrine and experience went hand in hand together.
Having now vindicated the three first propositions of the Minutes, levelled at three dangerous tenets of Dr. Crisp; and shown, that not only yourself, sir, but moderate Calvinists are, so far, entirely of Mr. Wesley’s sentiment; I remain, honoured and reverend sir, your obedient servant in the bonds of a free and peaceful Gospel,
J. FLetcuer.
LETTER IV.
Honovurep anv REvereEND Sir,—TIf the three first propositions ot the Minutes are Scriptural, Mr. Wesley may well begin the remaining part, by desiring the preachers in his connection to emerge, along with him, from under the noisy billows of prejudice, and to struggle quite out of the muddy streams of Antinomian delusions which have so long gone over our heads, and carried so many souls down the channels of vice, into the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone. Well may he entreat them to “review the whole affair.”
And why should this modest request alarm any one? Though error dreads a revisal, truth, you know, cannot but gain by it.
Mr. Wesley says in this Review,
, Who is now accepted of God? He that now ‘believes in Christ with a loving, obedient heart.’ ”
Excellent answer! Worthy of St. Paul and St. James; for it sums up in one line the epistles of both. In the rrrsr part of it, (“he that now believes in Christ,”) you see St. Paul’s Gospel calculated for lost sinners, who now fly from the Babel of self righteousness and sin, and find “all things” in Christ “ready” for their reception. And in the SECOND part, (“ with a loving and obedient heart,”) you see the strong bulwark raised by St. James to guard the truth of the Gospel against the attacks of Antinomian and Laodicean professors. Had he said, *‘ He that shall believe the next hour is now accepted,” he would have bestowed upon present unbelief the blessing that is promised to present faith. Had he said, “ He that believed a year ago is now accepted of God,” he would have opened the kingdom of heaven to apostates, contrary to St. Paul’s declarations to the Hebrews. He therefore very properly says, “ He that now believes:” for it is written, “‘ He that believeth,” (not he that shall believe, or he that did believe,) “ hath everlasting life.”
What fault can you then find with Mr. Wesley here? Surely you cannot blame him for proposing Christ as the object of the Christian’s faith, or for saying that the believer hath a loving and obedient heart; for he speaks of the accepted man, and not of him who comes for acceptance. Multitudes, alas! rest satisfied with an unloving, disobedient faith; a faith that engages only the head, but has nothing to do with the heart; a faith that works by malice instead of “ working by love;” a faith that pleads for sin in the heart, instead of purifying the heart from sin; a faith that St. Paul explodes, 1 Cor. xiii, 2, and that St. James compares to a carcass, ii, 26. There is no need that Mr. Wesley should countenance such a faith by his Minutes. Too many, alas! do it by their lives; and, God grant none may do it by their sermons! Whoever does, sir, it is not you: for you tell us in yours, page 150, that “ Christ is to be found only by living faith; even a faith that worketh by love; even a faith that layeth hold of Christ by the feet, and worshippeth him;” the very faith of Mary Magdalene, who certainly had a loving and obedient heart, for our Lord testified that ‘6 she loved much.” and ardeat love cannot but be zealously obedient. There is not then the least shadow of heresy, but the very marrow of the Gospel in this article. Let us see whether the second is equally defensible.
“II. But who among those that never heard of Christ? He that feareth God and worketh righteousness, according to the light he has.”
And where is the error here? Did not St. Peter begin his evangelieal sermon to Cornelius by these very words, prefaced by some others that make them remarkably emphatical? “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted of him.” Surely, sir, you will never insist upon a formal recantation of a plain scripture.
First opsection. But perhaps you object to those words which
Mr. Wesley has added to St. Peter’s declaration, “according to the light he hath.”
Answer. What, should it be “according to the light he has not?” Are not there people enough among us who follow the wicked servant that intimated his Lord “ was a hard and austere man, reaping where he had not sown, and gathering where he had not strewed?”” Must Mr. Wesley increase the number? Or would you have him insinuate that God is more cruel than Pharaoh, who granted the poor Israelites daylight, if he allowed them no straw to make bricks; that he requires a heathen to work without any degree of light, without a day of visitation, in the Egyptian darkness of a merely natural state. And that he will then damn and torment him everlastingly, either for not doing, or for marring his work? 0 sir, like yourself, Mr. Wesley is too evyangelical to entertain such notions of the God of love.
“At this rate,” say some, ‘¢a heathen may be saved without a Saviour. His fearing God and working righteousness will not go for the blood and righteousness of Christ.” Mr. Wesley has no such thought. Whenever a heathen is accepted, it is merely through the merits of Christ; although it is in consequence of his fearing God and working righteousness. ‘+ But how comes he to see that God is to be feared, and that righteousness is his delight?” Because a beam of our Sun of righteousness shines in his darkness. All is therefore of grace; the light, the works of righteousness done by that light, and acceptance in consequence of them. How much more evangelical is this doctrine of St. Peter than that of some divines, who consign all the heathens by millions to hell torments because they cannot explicitly believe in a Saviour whose name they never heard! Nay, and in whom it would be the greatest arrogancy to believe, if he never died for them? Is it not possible that heathens should, by grace, reap some blessings through the second Adam, though they know nothing of his name and obedience unto death; when they, by nature, reap so many curses through Adam the first; to whose name and disobedience they are equally strangers? If this is a heresy it is such a one as does honour to Jesus and humanity.
Sreconp opsection. ‘“ Mr. Wesley, by allowing the possibility of a righteous heathen’s salvation, goes point blank against the eighteenth article of our Church, which he has solemnly subscribed.”
Answer. This assertion is groundless. Mr. Wesley, far from presuming to say that a heathen “ can be saved by the law or sect that he professes, if he frames his life according to the light of nature,” cordially believes that all the heathens who are saved, attain salvation through the name, that is, through the merits and Spirit of Christ; by framing their life, not according to I know not what light naturally received from fallen Adam, but according to the supernatural light which Christ graciously affords them in the dispensations they are under.
Turd opsecTIoN. ‘“ However, if he does not impugn the eigh teenth article, he does the thirteenth, which says, that ‘works done before justification, or before the grace of Christ and the inspiration of his Spirit, forasmuch as they proceed not from faith in Christ, are not pleasant to God, yea, have the nature of sin.’ ”
Nay, this article does not affect Mr. Wesley’s doctrine; for he constantly maintains that if the works of a Melchisedec, a Job, a Plato, a
Cornelius, are accepted, itis only because they follow the general justification above mentioned, (which is possibly what St. Paul calls the “ free gift that comes upon all men to justification of life,” Rom. v, 18,) and because they proceed rrom “ the grace of Christ, and the inspiration of his Spirit,” they are not therefore done BEForE that grace and inspiration, as are the works which the article condemns.
Fourtu ogsection. “ But ‘all that is not of faith is sin, and without faith it is impossible to please God.’ ”
Answer. ‘True: therefore, “he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” Cornelius had undoubtedly this faith, and a degree of it is found in all sincere heathens. For Christ, the Light of men, visits all, though in a variety of degrees and dispensations. He said to the carnal Jews that believed not on him, “ Yet a little while the light is with you; walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you. While ye have the light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of the light.” All the heathens that are saved are then saved by a lively faith in Jesus, “the Light of the world;” or to use our Lord’s own words, by “believing in the light” of their dispensation, before the day of their visitation is past, before total “ darkness comes upon them,” even the night when “no man can work.”
Firty opsection. “But if heathens can be saved without the Gospel, what need is there of the Christian dispensation?””
Answer, (1.) None of them were ever saved without a beam of the internal light of the Gospel, which is preached “in ev every creature under heaven,” Col. i, 23. (2.) The argument may be retorted. If sinners could be saved under the patriarchal dispensation, what need was there of the Mosaic? If under the Mosaic, what need of John’s baptism? If under the baptism of John, what need of Christianity? Or to answer by a comparison: If we see our way by starlight, what need is there of moonshine? If by moonshine, what need of the dawn of day? If by the dawn of day, what need of the rising sun?
The brightness of Divine dispensations, like the light of the righteous, “shines more and more unto the perfect day.” And though a heathen may be saved in his low dispensation, and attain unto a low
degree of glory, which the apostle compares to the shining of a star, |/
(‘for in my Father’s house,” says Christ, “ there are many mansions,”) yet it is an unspeakable advantage to be saved from the darkness attending his uncomfortable dispensation, into the full enjoyment of the “life and immortality brought to light by the explicit Gospel.” Well might then the angel say to Cornelius, who was already accepted according to his dispensation, that Peter should “tell him words whereby he should be saved;” saved from the weakness, darkness, bondage, and tormenting fears attending his present state, into that blessed state of light, comfort, liberty, power, and glorious joy, where “he that is feeble is as David, and the house of David as God, or as the angel of the Lord.”
Having thus briefly answered the objections that are advanced against St. Peter’s and Mr. Wesley’s doctrine, proceed we to the third query,
‘in the review of the whole affair.
“TIT. Is this the same with, he that is sincere? Nearly, if not quite.”
In the name of charity where is the error of this answer? Where the shadow of heresy? Do you suppose by—he that is sincere, Mr. Wesley means “a carnal, unawakened wretch who boasts of his imaginary sincerity?” No, sir, he means ‘ one who, in God’s account, and. not barely in his own, sincerely and uprightly follows the light of his dispensation.” Now, if you expose Mr. Wesley as guilty of heresy, for using this word once, what protests will you enter against St. Paul for — using it over and over? How will you blame him for desiring the Ephesians, (according to the beautiful reading of our margin,) to * be sincere in love!” aAndevovies ev wyann. Or, for wishing nothing greater to his dear Philippians, than that they might be “sincere in the day of Christ!” , sir, to fear, and much more, to love the Lord “in sincerity,” is a great and rare thing! Eph. vi, 24. We find every where too much of the “old leaven of malice,” and too little of “the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth,” 1 Cor. v, 8. Think not therefore that Mr. Wesley betrays the cause of God, because he thinks that ‘ to be sincere,” and to ‘fear God and work righteousness,” are expressions nearly, if not quite synonymous.
But you do not perhaps find fault with Mr. Wesley for setting accepted heathens too low, but too high, by giving them the character of being sincere. For you know that our translators render the Hebrew word own sometimes “ sincere,” at other times “ upright, unde- filed,” and most commonly “ perfect.” As in these sentences, ** Noah was a perfect man, Job was a perfect man,” &ce. May not then Mr. Wesley secretly bring in his abominable doctrine of PERFECTION, under the less frightful expression of sincerity? Of this more by and by. :
In the meantime, I shall close my vindication of the second and third query by the sentiments of two unquestionable Protestants on the present subject. The one is Mr. Henry, in his comment on St. Peter’s words: “ God,” says he, “never did, nor ever will reject an honest Gentile who fears God, and worships him, and works righteousness; that is, is just and charitable toward all men, who lives up to the light he has, in a sincere devotion and regular conversation. Wherever God finds an upright man, he will be found an upright God, Psalm xviii, 25. And those that have not the knowledge of Christ, and therefore cannot have an explicit regard to him, may yet receive grace for his sake, ‘to fear God and work righteousness;’ and wherever God gives grace to do so, as he did to Cornelius, he will, through Christ. accept the work of his own hands.” Here, sir, you have the very doctrine of Mr. Wesley quite down to the heretical word sincere.
The other divine, sir, is yourself. You tell us in your sermon on the same text, that “* we cannot but admire and adore God’s universal tenderness and pity for every people and nation under heaven, in that ‘ he willeth not the death of any single sinner,’ but accepteth every one ~ into Gospel covenant with him, ‘who feareth him and worketh righteousness,’ according to the light imparted to him.”
Now, sir, where is the difference between your orthodory and Mr. Wesley’s heresy? He asserts, God accepts “him that fears God and works righteousness according to the light he has.” Mr. Henry says,
‘him that lives up to the light he has:” and you, sir, “ him who feareth God and worketh righteousness according to the light imparted to him.” If Mr. Wesley must share the fate of Shadrach for his heresy, I doubt Mr. Henry will have that of Meshech, and you, of Abednego; for you are all three in the same honourable condemnation.
But Mr. Wesley, foreseeing that some will be offended at St. Peter’s evangelical declaration concerning the acceptance of sincere
“TV. Is not this salvation by works? Not by the merit of wo but by works as a condition.”
In the former part of this answer Mr. Wesley freely grants all you can require to guard the Gospel against the Popish doctrine of making satisfaction for sin, and meriting salvation by works: for he maintains, that, though God accepts the heathen who work righteousness, yet it is not through the merit of his works, but solely through that of Christ. Is not this the very doctrine of our Church, in her eleventh article, which treats of justification? ‘We are accounted righteous before God only for the merit of our Lord Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works, or deservings.” Does not the opposition of the two sentences, and the explanatory word deservings, evidently show that “works meet for repentance” are not excluded from being in the sinner that comes to be justified, but from having any merit or worth to purchase his justification? ,
Our Church expresses herself more fully on this head in the homily
heathens who work righteousness, proposes and answers the following
on Salvation, to which the article refers. “St. Paul,” says she, |
“declares nothing [necessary] on the behalf of man concerning his justification, but only a true and lively faith; and yet [observe] that faith does not shut out repentance, hope, love, [of desire when we are coming, love of delight when we are come,] dread, and the fear of God to be joined with it in every man that is justified; but it shutteth them out from the office of justifying: so that though they be all, present together in him that is justified, yet they justify not altogether.” This is agreeable to St. Peter’s doctrine, maintained by Mr. Wesley. | Only “faith in Christ” for Curistians, and “ faith in the light of their dispensation” for HEATHENS, is necessary in order to acceptance. But though rairH onty justifies, yet it is never alone; for “ repentance, hope, love of desire, and the fear of God,” necessarily accompany this faith if it is true and living. Our Church, therefore, is not at all against works proceeding from, or accompanying faith in all its stages. She grants, that whether rairu seeks or finds its object, whether it longs for, or embraces it, it is still a lively, active, and working grace. She is only against the vain conceit that worKs have any hand in meriting justification or purchasing salvation, which is what Mr. Wesley likewise opposes.
- Ifyou say, that “his heresy does not consist in exploding the merit of works in point of salvation, but in using that legal expression, salvation by works as a condition ;” I answer, that as I would not contend for the word trinity, because it is not in the Bible; no, nor yet for the word perfection, though it is there ; neither would I contend for the expression, salvation by works, as a condition: but the thing
}
-Mr. Wesley means by it is there in a hundred different turns and modes of expression. ‘Therefore it is highly worth contending for: and so much the more, as it is, next to the doctrine of the atonement, the most important part of * the faith once delivered unto the saints.”
Any candid person acquainted with Mr. Wesley’s principles, (and for such only the Minutes were written,) cannot but see that he meant absolutely nothing but what our Saviour means in these and like scriptures; namely, that salvation is suspended on a variety of things which divines call by various eae ve Wesley, with a majority of them, chooses to call conditions. “ Except ye repent, ye shalt all-perish— Except ye be converted, and become as iittle children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Pe nat and conversion are conditions of eternalsetyetion. “If ye believe not, ye shall diet your sins; for this is the work of God, [the work that God requires and approves, ] that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.” Here the work of faith is the condition. “I am Alpha and Omega, the first-amdthe-tast. Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life,” and ‘may enter in through the gates of the city.” And here it is doing God’s commandments.
St. Paul, the evangelical Paul, says the same thing in a variety of expressions: “If any man love not the Lord Jesus, let him be anathema.” If love, the noblest work of the heart, does not take place, the fearful curse will:—* If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die;” but “if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live.” Spiritual mortification is here the condition. ‘ Without holiness no man shall see the Lord” Here holiness is the condition. “Be not deceived, neither fornicators, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor thieves, nor revilers, shall inherit the kingdom of God.” Here ceasing from fornication, drunkenness, &c, is the same condition.
“St. John isin the same condemnation—as Mr. Wesley, for he declares, ‘‘ There shall in no wise enter into the New Jerusalem any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh
, alie.” Here the condition is, not working abomination, Gc. * Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer,” and “ye know that no murderer hath eternal life.” Here the condition is, ceasing from hatred, the murder of the heart.
St. Peter is equally deep in the heresy. In a variety of expressions he describes the misery and fatal latter end of those ‘ who escape the pollution of the world, through the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, and are again entangled therein,” through the non-performance of this condition, “ [f-yedo these things, -ye-shall-never fall.”
As for St. James, I need not quote him. You know that, when Luther was in his heat, he could have found it in his heart to tear this precious epistle from among the sacred books, and burn it as an epistle of straw. He thought the author of it was an enemy to free grace, an abettor of Popish tenets, an antichrist. It is true, the scales of prejudice fell at last from his eyes; but, alas! it was not till he had seen the Antinomian boar lay waste the Lord’s flourishing vineyard all over Protestant Germany. Then was he glad to draw against him St. James’s despised sword; and I shall be happily mistaken, sir, 1f
you are not obliged one day to make use of the heretical Minutes, as he did of the epistle of straw.
If any still urge, “I do not love the word condition;” I reply, it is no wonder; since thousands so hate the thing that they even choose to go to hell rather than perform it. But let an old worthy divine, approved by all but Dr. Crisp’s disciples, tell you what we mean by condition. ‘An antecedént condition,” says Mr. Flavel, in his Discourse of Errors, “ signifies no more than an act of ours; which, though it be neither perfect in any degree, nor in the least meritorious of the benefit conferred, nor performed in our own natural strength; is yet, according to the constitution of the covenant required of us, in order to the blessings consequent thereupon, by virtue of the promise: and consequently, benefits and mercies granted in this order are, and must be, suspended by the donor, till it be performed.” Such_a condition
m_faith to be, with all that faith necessarily implies. p
When Dr. Crisp, in the last century, represented all the sober Puritan divines as legal, they answered, “The covenant, though conditional, is a dispensation of. grace. There is grace in giving ability to perform the condition, as well as in bestowing the benefits. God’s enjoining the one in order to the other makes not the benefit to be less of grace; but it is a display of God’s wisdom, in conferring the benefit suitable to the nature and condition of men in this life, who are here in a state of trial; yea, the conditions are but a meetness to receive the blessings.”
“The reason,” added they, “why we use the word condition, is, because it best suits with man’s relation to God, in his present dealings with us as his subjects on trial for eternity. Christ, as a priest, has merited all: but, as a priestly king, he dispenseth all; he enjoins the conditions in’ order to the benefits,an Taubesiie Reveles maaec a i e_conditions. He treats with men as his subjects, whom he will now rule, and hereafter judge. Now, what word is so proper to express the duties as enjoined means of benefit, as the word conditions? ‘The word conditions is of the same nature as terms of the Gospel. There are few authors of note, even of any persuasion, that scruple using this word in our sense; as Ames, Twisse, Rutherford, Hooker, Norton, Preston, Owen, synod of New- England, the assembly of divines, &c. And none have reason to scruple it, except such as think we are justified before we are born.” — See “ Gospel Truth Vindicated,” by Williams, against Dr. Crisp.
If all the Protestant divines who have directly or indirectly represented REPENTANCE and-raitu_as-conditions of present salvation; and HOLINESS OF HEART AND LIFE as conditions of cternal-glory,as.things sine guibus ee ee ee follow. Tf all those divines, I say, are guilty of heresy, ninety-nine out of a hundred are heretics, and none of them deeper in the heresy than yourself. ‘
In your Sermons, page 39, clearing yourself of the slander that ‘you do not preach up, recommend, and insist on the necessity of good works;” you add, “1 not only preach this or that part of the moral law, but J preach the whole moral law; and I tell you plainly, that if you do not perform the whole will of God, you cannot be finally saved.”
Then you add, “Surely, they who contend for the doctrine of good works will be satisfied with this, or they are yery unreasonable.” Indeed, sir, Mr. Wesley is quite satisfied with it; I only wonder what in the world can make you so dissatisfied with his Minutes; for he never gave Antinomianism a more legal thrust.
And as you make works so absolutely necessary to eternal salvation, , so do you make a law work a universal prerequisite of the present salvation. Speaking of the fear and dread that seize a sinner under convictions of sin, you say, page 111, “ This inward shock of perturbation must pass upon the soul of every,returning sinner more or less, before he can possibly be rendered a proper object of Divine grace and mercy.” Hold, sir, you go one step beyond Mr. Wesley; for he steadily maintains, that if the sinner was not a proper object of Divine grace BEFORE he feels the inward shock you speak of, he would never be shocked and return. ‘
Do not all unprejudiced persons see, that what Mr. Wesley calls condition, others call way, means, or terms, &c? And that you have as little reason to pick a quarrel with him as to raise a body of men against a quiet traveller for calling a certain sum @ guinea, whereas you think it more proper to call it one pound one,—twenty-one shillings, —forty-two sixpences,—or sixty-three groats. QO, sir, what reason have we to be ashamed of our chicaneries; and to beseech the Lord that they may not stumble the weak, and harden infidels!
How justly does Mr. Wesley ask next :— i
©V. What have we then been disputing about for these thirty years? I am afraid, about words.” oe
Pardon me, sir, if here also I cannot, with you, ery heresy! Far from doing it, I admire the candour of an aged servant of God, who, instead of stiffly holding, and obstinately maintaining an old mistake, comes down as a little child, and freely acknowledges it before a respectable body of preachers, whose esteem it is his interest to secure. O how many are there that look upon Mr. Wesley as a rotten threshold, and themselves as pillars in the temple of God, who would not own themselves mistaken for the world!
He says, “I am afraid we have disputed about words:” perhaps he might have said, ‘I am very sure of it.” How many disputes have been raised these thirty years among religious people, about those works of the heart which St. Paul calls “ repentance toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ!” Some have called them the only way or method of receiving salvation, others the means of salvation, others the terms of it. Some have named them dudies or graces necessary to salvation, others conditions of salvation, others parts of salvation, or privileges annexed to it; while others have gone far round about, and used I know not what far-fetched expressions and ambiguous phrases to convey the same idea. I say the same idea; for if all maintain that although repentance and works meet for it, and faith working by love, are not meritorious, they are nevertheless absolutely necessary; that they are a thing sine qua non, all are agreed; and that if they dispute, it must be, as Mr. Wesley justly intimates, about words,
A comparison will at once make you sensible of it. A physician tells me that the way, the only way or method in which we live, is by
abstaining from poison, and taking proper food. “ No,” says another, *‘ you should say, that abstaining from poison and taking proper food are the mEANs by which our life is preserved.” “You are quite mistaken,” says a third, “ rejecting poison and eating are the Terms God hath fixed upon for our preservation.” ‘ No,” saysa fourth, “ they are duties without the performance, or blessings, without the receiving of which we must absolutely die.” ‘I believe, for my part,” says ancther, “that Providence hath engaged to preserve our life, on condition that we should forbear taking poison, and eat proper food.” “ You are all in the wrong, you know nothing at all of the matter,” says another, who applauds himself much for his wonderful discovery, ‘ turning from poison and receiving nourishment are the evercises of a living man; therefore they must absolutely be called parts of his life, or privileges annexed to it. You quite take away people’s appetite, and clog their stomach, by calling them duties, terms, conditions. Only call them Privi- LEGEs, and you will see nobody will touch poison, and all will eat most heartily.” While they are all neglecting their food, and taking the poison of this contention, he that hath mentioned the word condztion, starts up and says, “ Review the whole affair; take heed of your assertions; I am afraid we dispute about words.” Upon this all rise against him, all accuse him of robbing the Preserver of men of his glory, or holding a tenet injurious to the very fundamental principles of our constitution. :
Let us leave them to the uneasy workings of their unaccountable panic, to consider the next article of the Minutes.
“VI. As to merit itself, of which we have been so dreadfully afraid: We are rewarded according to our works, yea, because of our works. How does this differ from, for the sake of owr works? And how differs this fronr secundum merita operum? ‘as our works deserve?’ Can you split this hair? I doubt, I cannot.”
If Mr. Wesley meant that we are saved by the merit of works, and not by the alone merits of Christ, you might exclaim against his proposition as erroneous; and I would echo back your exclamation. But as he flatly denies it, No. 4, in those words, “not by the merit of works,” and has constantly asserted the contrary for above thirty years, we cannot, without monstrous injustice, fix that sense upon the word merit in this paragraph. ~
Divesting himself of bigotry and party spirit, he generously acknowledges truth, even when it is held forth by his adversaries: an instance of candour worthy of our imitation! He sees that God offers and gives his children, here on earth, particular rewards for particular instances of obedience. He knows that when a man is saved meritori- ously by Christ, and conditionally by (or if you please, upon the terms of) the work of faith, the patience of hope, and the labour of love, he shall particularly be rewarded in heaven for this work. And he observes, that the Scriptures steadily maintain, “we are recompensed according to our works, yea, because of our works.”
The former of these assertions is plain from the parable of the talents, and from these words of our Lord, Matt. xvi, 27, “The Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father, and reward every man according to his werk:” uNBELIEVERS according to the various degrees
of demerit belonging to their vile works, (for sol paratively be “ beaten with few stripes;”) and BE the various degrees of excellence found in then “one star differeth from another star in glory, so tion of the righteous dead.” ul The latter assertion is not less evident from th tions of God: “ Because thou hast kept the wor also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, W all the world,” Rey. iti, 10. “ Because Phinehs God,” in killing Zimri and Cosbi, “ behold I nant of peace, and he shall have it, and his s covenant of an everlasting priesthood.” And < hast done this, and hast not withheld thy son, k that in blessing I will bless thee, because thou Now, says Mr. Wesley, “ How differs this fro for the sake of thy obedience to my voice? | from secundum merita obedientiw? ‘as thy obe And by comparing the difference of these expr of a hair, or to a metaphysical subtilty, he very | have been too dreadfully afraid of the word me will not divest yourself of the candour that belo put on the bitter zeal of a bigot. You will not rut into the very spirit of it, by crying, Heresy! hi have maturely considered the question: or, if you you will do it no more. And if Mr. Wesley sh again “the splitting of a hair,” I hope you will ret (to say nothing of brotherly love) requires you yourself, before you can with decency stir up people against him, for modestly doubting whether he can But suppose some are determined to cry heresy! whe the word merit; I hope others will candidly bees wl the balance of unprejudiced reason. e or If we detach from the word merit the idea of * chligudia al x0d’s part to bestow any thing upon creatures who have a thousand times — forfeited their comforts and existence;” if we take it in the sense we fix to it in a hundred cases: for instance, this, “ A master may reward his scholars according to the merit of their exercises, or he may not for the merit of the best exercise can never bind him to bestow a premium for it, unless he has promised it of his own accord.” If we take, I say, the word merit in this simple sense, it may be jou the word good works, and bear an evangelical meaning. — To be convinced of it, candid reader, consider, with Mr. J Vesle that “God accepts and rewards no work but so far as it Dye vi S from his own grace through the Beloved.” Forget not that Christ’s Spirit is the savour of each believer’s salt, and that he. into the good works of his people, or else they could meth nome ber, he is as much concerned in the good tempers, words, and actions of his living members, as a tree is concerned in the sap, leaves, and fruit of the branches it bears, John xv, 5. Consider, I pecs all this; and tell us whether it can reflect dishonour upon Christ and to affirm that “as his personal merit,—the merit of his holy = ae
>
" painful death,—‘ opens the kingdom of heaven to all believers,’ so the merit of those works which he Teualiles his members to do, will determine uliar degrees of glory graciously allotted to each of them.” own, I believe there is such a dignity in every thing in which the
of God has a hand, that the Father, who is always well pleased him and his works, cannot but look upon it with peculiar complacency. Even a “cup of water given in his dear name,” that, by the efficacy of his loving Spirit, hath that in it which “ shall in Ho wise lose its reward;” for it has something of the love of the God- “iman, Jesus Christ, which merits all the approbation and smiles of the
|) in our well-meant zeal against Popery we have been driven to an | extreme, and have not done good works justice. “I am the Vine,” Says Jesus, “and ye are the branches: he that abideth in me bringeth h much fruit. Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear fruit.” What! is the Father glorified in the fruit of believers? md shall this fruit be represented to us always grub-eaten, and | Fotten at the core? Do we honour either the Vine or the husbandman, "while one hour we speak wonders of the Vine and its fruit, and the ext represent the branches and their fruit as full of deadly =, O God of mercy and patience, forgive us, for we know not what we do! We even think we do thee service. O give us genuine, and save us from voluntary humility! ’ Believer, let not the virtue of thy Saviour’s righteousness, the only good thing that is in thee, be evil spoken of. “Thou art grafted upon the good olive tree; be not high minded, but fear;” fear to be cut off like the branch that beareth not fruit.” But be not afraid to suck the balmy sap, till the peaceful olive ripens in thy soul, and drops the oil of joy that makes a cheerful countenance. Thou art “ married to Christ, that henceforth thou shouldest bring forth fruit unto God.” O let not thy mistaken brethren discourage thee from doing all the good that thy heart and hand find to do, and that “ with all thy might!”
I write these allusions as they occur to my mind, to raise thy thoughts above spiritual sloth and barrenness of heart, by showing thee, through a Scriptural glass, something of thy Husband’s glory, and of the excellence of the “ labour of love,” wherein thou hast the honour of being “a worker together with him.” Let not what I say puff thee up, but encourage thee to “be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as thou knowest thy labour shall not be in vain in the Lord.” Remember thou hast nothing to boast of, but much reason to be humbled. If thy works are compared to a rose, the colour, odour, and sweetness are Christ’s; the aptness to fade, and the thorns, are thine. If to a burning taper, the snuff and smoke come from thee; the bright and cheering light from thy Bridegroom. The excellence and merit of the performance flow from him; the flaws and imperfections from thee. Nevertheless, the whole work is as truly thine, as grapes are truly the fruit of the branch that bore them. And yet, “as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more canst thou, except thou abide in Christ; for without him ou canst do nothing.”
re thus cautioned thee aa the Popish abuse of Mr. Wesi 50 FIRST CHECK TO ANTINOMIANISM.
ley’s doctrine of the excellence of works, and shown thee the evangelical use that a real Protestant should make of it; I return to the word “merit, of which we have been so dreadfully afraid.” Let a comparison help thee to understand how a believer may use it in a very harmless sense. {
The king promises rewards for good pictures, to miserable foundlings, whom he has charitably brought up, and graciously admitted into his royal academy of painting. Far from being masters of their art, they can of themselves do nothing but spoil canvass, and waste colours by making monstrous figures. But the king’s son, a perfect painter, by his father’s leave, guides their hands; and, by that mean, good pictures are produced, though not so excellent as they would have been had not he made them by their stiff and clumsy hands. The king, however, approves of them, and fixes the reward of each picture according to its peculiar merit. If thou say, “ that the poor foundlings, owing all to his majesty, and the prince having freely guided their hands, themselves merit nothing; because, after all they have done, they are miser- able daubers still, and nothing is properly theirs but the imperfections of the pictures, and therefore the king’s reward, though it may be of promise, can never be of debt;” I grant, I assert it. But if thou sayest, “ The good pictures have no merit,” I beg leave to dissent from thee, and tell thee thou speakest as unadvisedly for the king, as Job’s friends did for God. For if the pictures have absolutely no merit, dost not thou greatly reflect upon the king’s taste and wisdom im saying that he rewards them? In the name of common sense, what is it he rewards? The merit or demertt of the work?
But this is not all: if the pictures have no merit, what hath the king’s son been doing? Hath he lost all his trouble in helping the novices to sketch and finish them? Shall we deny the excellence of his performance because they were concerned in it? Shall we be guilty of this glaring partiality any longer? No: some Protestants will dare to judge righteous judgment, and acknowledging there is meri# where Christ puts it, and where God rewards it, they will give “honour to whom honour is due,” eyen to him “ that worketh all the good in all” his creatures. ;
For my part, I entirely agree with the author of the Minutes, and thank him for daring to break the ice of prejudice and bigotry among ‘us, by restoring works of righteousness to their deserved glory, without detracting from the glory of “the Lord our righteousness.” Iam as ‘much persuaded that the grace of Christ merits in the works of his ‘members, though they themselves merit nothing but hell, as I am persuaded that gold in the ore hath its intrinsic worth, though it is mixed with dust and dross, which are good for nothing. As there is but one Mediator, one prevailing Intercessor * between God and us,” even “the man Christ Jesus;” and, nevertheless, his Spirit in us ‘maketh intercession for us, with groanings which eannot be uttered:” so there is but one man whose works are truly meritorious; but when re works in us by his Spirit, our works cannot, (so far as he is converned in them,) but be in a sense meritorious; because they are his yorks. Real Protestant, if thou deniest this, thou maintainest an anti- Siwistian proposition, namely, that Christ has lost his power of meriting.
Herein I must dissent from thee, nor will the cry, “* Heresy! Popery!” make me give up this fundamental truth of Christianity, that Jesus is the same,” the very same deserving Lord, “ yesterday, to-day, and for ever.”
In this evangelical view of things, the Redeemer 1s much exalted by the doctrine of the “ merit” of good works; and believers are still left in their native dust to cry out, “ Not unto us, not unto us, but to thy name give we the praise!” In the light of this precious truth we see and admire the endearing contest that is always carried on between God’s loving kindness and the humble gratitude of believers. God says, “Well done, good and faithful servants! reap what ye have sown:” and they answer, “ Lord, ray pound hath gained all; thou hast wrought all our works in us.” God says, “ They shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy:” and they reply, “ Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, and hath washed us from our sins in his own blood.” Christ crowns faith by this gracious declaration, “ Thy faith hath saved thee.”? And believers, in their turn, crown Christ by this true confession, “ Not by works of righteousness that we have done, but according to thy mercy thou hast saved us; for thou hast quickened us by thy Spirit, when we were dead in sin; yea, thou didst redeem us unto God by thy blood,” hundreds of years before we had done any one good work. In a word, they justly give God all the glory of their salvation, agreeable to the first axiom in the Gospel plan; and God graciously gives them all the reward, according to the second.
And now, is it not a pity, that any good men should be so far biassed by the prejudice of their education, or influenced by the spirit of their party, as to account this delightful, harmonizing view of evangelical truths, “a dreadful heresy?’ Is it not pity, that, by so doing, they should expose their prepossession, strengthen the hands of Antinomians, harden the hearts of Papists, deprive their Saviour of part of the honour due to him, leave seeming contradictions in the Scriptures unexplained, and trample under foot, as unworthy of their Protestant orthodoxy, a powerful motive to obedience, by which neither Moses nor Jesus was above being influenced? For the one “looked to the recompense of reward;” and the other, “for the joy that was set before him, both despised the shame, and endured the cross.”
It may not be amiss to illustrate what has been advanced upon the merit or rewardableness of works, by Scriptural instances of old and modern saints who have pleaded it before God. David speaks thus in the eighteenth psalm:— The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness, according to the cleanness of my hands hath he recompensed me: I was upright before him, therefore hath he recompensed me according to my righteousness,” &c. And in the one hundred and nineteenth psalm, having mentioned his spiritual comforts, he says, “ This I had, because I kept thy precepts.” Another instance, no less remarkable, is that of Hezekiah, who prayed thus in his sickness, “‘ Remember now, O Lord, I beseech thee, how I have walked before thee in teuth, and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight!”
We see instances of this boldness in the New Testament also: * We have left all to follow thee,” said once the disciples of our Lord,
and “ what shall we have” for this sacrifice? Jesus, instead of blami their question, simply told them they should have “a hundred fold” for all they had left, and made it a standing rule of distribution for all the Church. St. John, legal St. John, is not ashamed to say, that ‘if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God, and whatsoever we ask we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight.” He even exhorts the elect lady to “look to herself that she might not lose the things that she had wrought, but receive a full reward.” And the evangelical Apostle Paul desires the Hebrews “not to cast away their confidence, which,” says he, “ hath great recompense of reward;” and charges the Colossians to see ‘that none beguiled them of their reward, in a voluntary humility.” ;
From these and the like scriptures, I conclude, that those who have a clear witness they have done what God commanded, may, without “‘heresy,” humbly demand the promised reward; which they can neyer do without this idea, that, according to the tenor of the Gospel coyenant, they are fit subjects for it.
I know some will take the alarm; and, to save the ark, which they think totters by this doctrine, will affirm, that “in the above mentioned passages, David personates Christ; and Hezekiah the Pharisee.” But this is contradicting the whole context, to say nothing of all sober commentators. Mr. Henry tells us, that David, in these yerses, “reflects with comfort upon his own integrity, and rejoiceth, like St. Paul, ‘in the testimony of his own conscience, that he had had his conversation in godly sincerity.’”? And he informs us, that the psalmist lays down in this psalm “ the rules of God’s government, that we may know, not only what God expects from us, but what we may expect from him.” With regard to Hezekiah, it is plain his prayer was heard; a strong proof that it was inspired by the Spirit of Jesus, and not that of the Pharisee.
But if you reject, sir, the testimony of David and Hezekiah because they were.Jews, receive, at least, that of “* real Protestants;” for which we need only go as far as Bath or Talgarth parish; there we shall find chapels, where the Protestants have agreed together to ask rewards as solemnly as ever David and Hezekiah did. In the Hymns you haye revised for another edition, and by that means made your own with respect to the doctrine, one is calculated to “ weleome a messenger of Jesus’s grace,” and all the congregation sings,
Give reward of grace and glory To thy faithful labourer there.
What, sir, do+you allow the labours of a minister to be of sucn dignity, and his faithfulness to have such uncommon merit, that a thousand people can boldly ask God a reward for him, and that not only of gifts and temporal blessings, but of grace; and not of grace only, but of glory*too? You have in those two lines the very quintessence of the three grand heresies of the Minutes, “ faithfulness, works, and merit.” Permit me to add one passage more, from page 312, of Bazter’s Methodus Theologie Christiane.
“The word merit, rightly explained, is not amiss. All the fathers
of the primitive Church have made use of it without opposition, to the best of my remembrance. It may be used by believers who do not make it a cloak for error; by wise men who will not be offended at it, and by those who want to defend the truth, and convey clearer ideas in the explanation of things intricate. There is no word that fully conveys the same idea; that which comes nearest to it is dignity, and suspicious persons will not like it much better. We have three words in the New Testament that come very near it, a&10g, uicdoc, and dixcuos, and they occur pretty frequently there. We render them worthy, reward, and just; and the abuse which Papists make of them ought not to make us reject their use. The English word worthy conveys no other idea than that of the Latin word meritum, taken actively; nor has the word reward any other signification than the word meritum, taken passively; therefore, they who can put a candid sense upon the words worthy, and reward, should do the same with regard to the word merit.”
Having explained and vindicated the sixth article of the Minutes, I proceed to the
“VII. The grand objection to one of the preceding propositions is drawn from matter of fact. God does, in fact, justify those who, by their own confession, neither ‘ feared God, nor wrought righteousness.’ Is this an exception to the rule? It is a doubt, if God make any exception at all. But how are we sure that the person in question never did ‘ fear God and work righteousness?’ His own saying so is not proof: for we know how all that are convinced of sin undervalue themselves in every respect.”
Do you think, sir, the “heresy” of this proposition consists in intimating that God does, in fact, justify those who fear him, and not those who make absolutely no stop in the downward road of open sin and flagrant iniquity? If it does, I am sure the sacred writers are heretics to a man. See the account we have of conversions in the Scripture; please to remember what Mr. Wesley means by justification, and then answer the following questions:— '
Did not the prodigal son “come to himself,” repent, and return to his father, before he received the kiss of peace? Did not the woman that was a sinner forsake her wicked course of life before our Lord said to her, “‘ Go in peace, thy sins are forgiven thee 2?”
Again: was not the woman of Samaria convinced of sin, yea, of ‘all that ever she did,” before our Lord revealed himself to her, to enable her to believe unto justification? Did not Zaccheus evidence his fear of God, yea, and “ work righteousness,” by hearty offers of restitution, before Christ. testified that he was “a son of Abraham 2” Did not St. Paul express his fear of God, and readiness to work _ righteousness, when he cried out, “ Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?” Yea, did he not produce “fruit meet for repentance,” by praying three days and three nights, before Ananias was sent to direct him “how to wash away his sins?” Did not the eunuch and Cornelius fear God? Did not David himself, whom the apostle mentions as a grand instance of justification without the merit of works, fear God from his youth? And when he had wrought folly in Israel, was he not humbled for his sin, before he was washed from it? Did he not confess
his crime, and say, “I have sinned.” before Nathan said by Divine commission, ‘* The Lord hath put away thy sin?”
Does not St: Paul himself carry Mr. Wesley’s “heresy” so far as" to say, “ Whosoever among you feareth God, to you is the word of this salvation sent??? Acts xi, 26. Must we so understand Rom. iv, 5, as to make him contradict, point blank, his own declarations, his own experience, and the account of all the above mentioned conversions? Certainly not. Those words, ‘God justifies the ungodly, and him that worketh not, but believeth in Jesus,” when candidly explained, agree perfectly with Mr. Wesley’s doctrine. (1.) By “the ungodly,” the apostle does not mean “ the wicked that does not forsake his way;” but the man who, before he believed to justification, was ungodly, and still remains ungodly in the eye of the law of works, needing daily forgiveness by grace, even after he is made godly in a Gospel sense. (2.) By “him that worketh not” St. Paul does not mean a lazy, indolent wretch, who, without any reluctance, follows the stream of his corrupt nature; but “a penitent,” who, whatever works he does, has no dependence upon them, esteems them as nothing, yea, “as dung and dross in comparison of the excellency of Christ;” and, in short, one who does not work to merit or purchase his justification, but comes to receive that invaluable blessing as a free gift. (3.) That this is the meaning of the apostle is evident from his adding, that he who “ worketh not,” yet “believeth.” For if he took the word “ worketh not,” in an absolute sense, he could never make it agree with “ believing,” which is certainly a work, yea, a work of our noblest part; for ‘* with the heart man believeth to righteousness.” Add to this, sir, that justifying faith, as I observed before, never comes without her forerunner, conviction; nor conviction of sin without suitable tempers or inward works. “There is nothing,” says Dr. Owen, “that-I will more firmly adhere to in this whole doctrine, than the necessity of convictions previous to true believing;—as also displacency, sorrow, fear, a desire of deliverance, with other necessary effects of true convictions.” St. Paul, therefore, is consistent with himself, and Mr. Wesley with St. Paul.
Again: if God justify sinners merely as “‘ ungodly,” and people that “work not,” why should he not justify all simners; for they are all ungodly, and there is “none of them that does good, no, not one!” Why did not the Pharisee, for example, go to his house justified as well as the publican? You will probably answer, that “he was not convinced of sin.” Why, sir, this is just what Mr. Wesley maintains. Express yourself in St. Peter’s words, “‘ He did not fear God;” or in those of John the Baptist, “He did not bring forth fruits meet for repentance.”
Should some ask, “ What works meet for repentance did the woman caught in adultery do, before our Lord justified her?” I would ask, in my turn, how do they know that the Lord justified her? Do they conclude it from those words, “ Neither do I condemn thee?” Does not the context show, that as the Pharisees had not condemned her to be stoned, according to the Mosaic law, neither would our Lord take upon himself to pass sentence upon her, according to his declaration on another occasion, ‘I am not sent to condemn the world, but that the
world through me might be saved?” This by no means implies, that the world is justified in St. Paul’s sense, Rom. v, 1. But supposing
she was justified, how do you know that our Lord’s words, writing, looks, and grace, had not brought her to godly shame and sorrow, that is, to “the fear of God,” and “ the working of internal righteousness,” before he gave her the peace that passes all understanding?
After all, Mr. Wesley says, with modesty and wisdom, “It is a doubt whether God makes any exception at all:” and it lies upon you to show there is in these words any thing contrary to the humility of the true Christian, and orthodoxy of the sound divine. But please to remember, that if you judge of orthodoxy according to the works of Dr. Crisp, we will take the liberty to appeal to the word of God.
But you make, perhaps, Mr. Wesley's heresy in this proposition consist in his refusing to take the word of persons convinced of sin, when they say they never “feared God nor wrought righteousness.” “‘ For we know,” says he, “ how all that are convinced of sin, undervalue themselves in every respect.”
Had Mr. Wesley imagined that some Christian friends (O my God, deliver me from such friendship!) would leave no stone unturned to procure a copy of his Minutes, in order to find some occasion against him, he would probably have worded this with more circumspection. But he wrote for real friends; and he knew such would at once enter into his meaning, which is, that “persons deeply convinced of sin are apt, very apt, to form a wrong judgment both of their state and performances, and to think the worst of themselves in every respect, that is, both with regard to what Divine grace does in them, and by ther.”
And this is so obvious a truth, that he must be a novice indeed in Christian experience who doubts of it fora moment; and a great lover of disputing, who will make a man an offender for so true an assertion. Do not we daily see some, in whom the arrows of conviction stick fast, who think they are as much past recovery as Satan himself? Do not we hear others complain, “ they grow worse and worse,” when they only discover more and more how bad they are by nature? And are there not some, who bind upon themselves heavy burdens of their own making, and when they cannot bear them, are tormented in their consciences with imaginary guilt; while others are ready to go distracted through groundless fears of having committed the sin against the Holy Ghost? Ina word, do we not see hundreds, who, when they have reason to hope well of their state, think there is no hope for them? In all these respects do they not act like Jonah in the whale’s belly, and complain, “I am cast out of thy sight?” And have not they need to encourage themselves in their God, and say, “ Why art thou cast down,
But let your conscience speak, sir, on this matter. When some deep mourners have complained to you of their misery, danger, and desperate state, did you never drop a word of comfort to this effect— “ You undervalue yourselves; you write too bitter things against yourselves; your case is not’so bad as your unbelieving fears represent it: God’s thoughts are not as your thoughts. Many, like the foolish virgins, think themselves sure of heaven, when they stand on the brink
of hell; and many think they are just dropping into it, who are not far from the kingdom of God.”
Yea, and as it is with real seekers, so it is with real believers. Did not they undervalue, yea, degrade themselves, by the remains of their unbelief; or, which is the same, did they live up to their dignity, and every where consider themselves as ‘members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven,” “what manner of persons,” yea, what angels “‘ would they be in all holy conversation!’
Sometimes their light shines with peculiar lustre, like Moses’ face, and they “ know it not.” Thousands “ see their good works, and glorify their Father who is in heaven;” but the matter is hid from them: they complain, perhaps, that they are the most unprofitable of all his children. Let me instance in one particular: St. Paul, Mr. Whitefield, and thousands of the brightest stars of the Church, have called themselves both “the chief of sinners,” and “ the least of all saints.” Now, as ina chain there is but one link that can be called the first, or the last; so in the very nature of things, there can be but one man in the immense file of Christ’s soldiers, that is “actually “the chief of sinners,” and “the least of all saints.” If a thousand believers, therefore, say, those two appellations belong to themselves, it is evident that at least nine hundred and ninety-nine undervalue themselves. For my part, I cannot but think they suit me ten thousand times better than they did St. Paul. I must therefore insolently think myself a less sinner and a greater saint than him; or of necessity believe that he, and “all that are partakers of the same convincing grace,” undervalue themselves in every respect.
One more article remains, and if it does not contain “ the dreadful heresy,” which hitherto we have looked for in vain, the Minutes are, from first to last, Scripturally orthodox, and you have given Churchmen and dissenters a false alarm.
“VIII. Does not talking of a justified and sanctified state tend to mislead men? Almost naturally leading them to trust in what was done in one moment? whereas we are every hour, and every moment, pleasing or displeasing to God, according to our works—according to the whole of our inward tempers and outward behaviour.”
To do this proposition justice, and prevent misunderstandings, I must premise some observations.
1. Mr. Wesley is not against persons talking of justification and sanctification in a Scriptural sense: for when he ‘ knows the tree b the fruits,” he says himself to his flocks, as St. Paul did to the Corinthians, ‘Some of you are sanctified and justified.” Nor does he deny that God justifies a penitent sinner in a moment, and that in a moment ‘he can manifest himself” unto his believing people “as he does not to the world, and give them an inheritance among them that are sanctified, through faith in Jesus.” His objection respects only the idea entertained by some, and countenanced by others, that when God forgives us our sins, he introduces us into a state where we are unalterably fixed in his blessed favour, and for ever stamped with his holy image; so that it matters no longer whether the tree is barren or not, whether it produces good or bad fruit; it was set at such a time, and therefore it must be a “tree of righteousness” still. A conclusion directly contrary to the words of our Lord and his beloved disciple: “ By their fruits ye shall know them. He that sinneth is of the deyil. Every branch in me that beareth not fruit, [much more that beareth evil fruit,| my Father taketh away.” it-mre; SIT; r. Wesley-has many per- _sons in his societies, (and would to God there were none in ours !) who prowess ss_they were justified or sanctified in a moment ;—but instead of taeiee an
rusting in-the living God, so trust to what was done in as as to give over “ taking up their cross daily, and watching unto prayer
with all perseverance.” The consequences are deplorable; they slide back into the spirit of the world; and their tempers are no more regulated by the meek, gentle, humble love of Jesus. Some inquire with the heathens, ‘‘ What shpll we eat, and what shall we drink,” to please ourselves? Others evidently “love the: world, lay up treasures on earth,” or ask, ‘“‘ wherewith shall we be fashionably clothed?” Therefore “ the love of the Father is not in them.”? And not a few are “led captive by the devil at his will;” influenced by his unhappy suggestions, they harbour bitterness, malice, and revenge; none is in the right but themselves, and “ wisdom shall die with them.”
Now, sir, Mr, Wesley cannot but fear it is not well with persons who are in any of these cases. Though every body should join to extol them as “dear children of God,” he is persuaded that “ Satan has beguiled them as he did Eve;” and he addresses them as our Lord did the angel of the Church of Sardis, ‘I know thy works, that thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead, [or dying:] repent, therefore, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die; for I have not found thy works perfect before God.” Mr. Wesley hath the word of prophecy, which he thinks more sure than the opinion of a world of professors; and, according to that word, he sees that ‘they who are led by the Spirit of God are the sons of God,” and that God’s Spirit does not lead into the vanities of the world, or indulgences of fleshly lusts, any more than into the pride or malice of Satan. Nor does he think that those are not “under the law” who can merrily laugh at the law, and pass jests upon Moses, the venerable servant of God. But with St. Paul he asserts, that when people are “ under grace, and not under the law, sin hath not dominion over them.” With our Lord he declares, ‘‘He who committeth sin, is the servant of sin;” and with his prophet, that ‘God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity” with the least degree of approbation. In short, he believes that God, being unchangeable in his holiness, cannot but always “love righteousness and hate iniquity;” and that, as the heart is continually working either iniquity or righteousness, and as God cannot but be pleased at the one, and displeased at the other, he is continually pleased or displeased with us, according to the workings of our hearts, and the fruits which they outwardly produce.
Perhaps you object to the word ‘‘ every moment.”” But why should you, sir? If it be not every moment, it is never. If God do not approve holiness, and disapprove sin every moment, he never does it, for he changes not. If he do it only now and then, he is such a one as ourselves; for even wicked men will approve righteousness and condemn unrighteousness by fits and starts. I may every moment harbour
malice in my heart, and so commit internal murder. If God winks at this one instant, why not two? And so on to days, months, and years? Does the duration of moral evil constitute sin? May not I be guilty of the greatest enormity in the twinkling of an eye? And is it not the ordinary property of the most horrid crimes, such as robbery and adultery, that they are soon finished?
Do not say, sir, that this doctrine sets aside “ salvation by faith.” It is highly consistent with it. He that, in God’s account, does the best works, has the most faith, most of the sap of eternal life that flows from the heavenly Vine. And he that has most faith has most of Christ’s likeness, and is of course most pleasing to God, who cannot be pleased but with Christ and his living image. On the other hand he that in God’s account does the worst works, and has the worst tempers, has most unbelief. He that has most unbelief, is most “like his father, the devil;” and must consequently be most displeasing to him that accepts us “in the Beloved,” and not “in the wicked one.”
Having premised these observations, I come closer to the point, and assert that if we are not every moment pleasing or displeasing to God, according to the works of our hearts and hands, you must set your seql to the following absurdities :—
(1.) “ God is angry with the wicked all the day,” and yet there are moments in which he is not angry at them. (2.) Lot pleased God as much in those moments in which he got drunk and committed incest with his daughters, as in the day he exercised hospitality toward the disguised angels. (3.) David did not displease God more when he committed adultery with Bathsheba, and imbrued his hands in her husband’s blood, than when he danced before the ark, or composed the 103d Psalm. (4.) Solomon was as acceptable to God in the moment when “his wives turned away his heart after other gods,” as when he chose wisdom, and his speech pleased the Lord, when he went after the goddess Ashtaroth, and built a high place to bloody Moloch, as when he represented our Melchisedec, and dedicated the temple. (5.) Again: you must set your seal to these propositions of Dr. Crisp: “‘ From the time thy transgressions were laid upon Christ, thou ceasest to be a transgressor to the last hour of thy life; so that now thou art not an idolater, thou art not a thief, &c ; thou art not a sinful person, whatsoever sin thou committest.” Again: “ God does no longer stand offended nor displeased, though a believer, after he is a believer, do sin often ; except he will be offended where there is no cause to be offended, which is blasphemy to speak.” Yet again: “It is thought that elect persons are in a damnable estate in the time they walk in excess of riot ; let me speak freely to you that the Lord has no more to lay to the charge of an elect person, yet in the height of iniquity, and in the excess of riot, and committing all*the abominations that can be committed.” ‘ There is no time but such a person is a child of God.” (6.) In short, sir, you must be of the sentiment’ of the wildest Antinomian I ever knew, who, because he had once a bright manifestation of pardon, not only concludes that he is safe, though he lives in open sin, but asserts God would no more be displeased with him for whoring and stealing, than for praying and receiving the sacrament.
Again: It is an important truth, that we may please God for a |
time, and yet afterward displease him. St. Paul mentions those who, by putting away a good conscience, “concerning faith made shipwreck,” and therefore pleased God no longer, “seeing that without faith it is impossible to please him.”
Of this the Israelites are a remarkable instance. “ They did all drink of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. Yet with many of them God was not well pleased.” Then comes the proof of the Divine displeasure; for “ they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now,’ adds the apostle, “these things happened unto them for examples, and they are written for our admonition, that we should not lust after evil things, and tempt Christ as they did. Therefore, let him that thinketh he standeth, take heed lest,” after their example, “he fall” into wilful sin, the Divine displeasure, and utter destruction.
Our Lord teaches the same doctrine, both by parables and positive assertions. He gives us the history of a man to whom his lord and king compassionatel; “ forgave a debt of ten thousand talents.” This ungrateful wretch, by not forgiving his fellow servant who owed him a hundred pence. forfeited his own pardon, and drew upon himself the kino’s heaviesi displeasure; “for he was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors till he should pay all that was due to him;” and to the eternal overthrow of Dr. Crisp’s fashionable tenets, our Lord adds, “So likewise shall my Father do unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.”’ Agreeably to this, he assured his disciples that his Father “ pruneth every branch in him that beareth fruit, and taketh away every one that beareth not fruit;” and to show how far this displeasure may proceed, he observes that such a barren branch is “ cast forth, is withered, gathered, cast imto the fire, and burned.” ‘ "
Here, sir, I might add all those scriptures that testify the possibility of falling away from the Divine favour. I might bring the alarming instances of those apostates who once “ tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come,” and afterward “ fell from their steadfastness, lost their reward, became enemies to God by wicked works, hated the light” which once they rejoiced in, because it reproved their evil deeds; “trod under foot the Son of God, forgot they were washed from their old sins, and counted the blood of Christ, wherewith they were sanctified, an unholy thing.” But I refer you, sir, to the two John Goodwins of the age, the Rev. Mr. Wesley and the Rev. Mr. Sellon, who have so cut down and stripped the Crispian orthodoxy, that some people think it actually lies without either root, bark, or branches, exposed to the view of those who have courage enough to see and think for themselves.
Should all they have advanced to show that “we are every hour and every moment pleasing or displeasing to God, according to our internal and external works,” have no weight with you, let me conclude by producing the testimony of two respectable divines, against whom you will not enter a protest.
The one is the rector of Loughrea. You tell us, sir, in your sermons, page 88, that the acceptance of Cornelius “ was not absolutely
final and decisive;” and you add, “ So long as we continue in the flesh, © we are doubtless in a probationary state. Even after Cornelius had been endued with the Holy Ghost, had he wilfully done despite to the Spirit of grace, he might have” [not only displeased God, which is all Mr. Wesley asserts in this proposition, but] “ fallen as deep into perdition as ever Judas did.”
I know one, sir, who was burned as “a dreadful heretic,’’ that did not go farther in this heresy than you do. And that is good Bishop Latimer, my second witness. He not only affirmed that “ Christ shed as much blood for Judas as he did for Peter,” but roundly asserted, ‘ We may one time be in the book, and another out; as it appeareth by David, who was written in the book of life; but when he sinned with a high hand, [which, by the by, we may do every moment, | he, at the same time, was out of the favour of God, until he had repented; out of Christ, who is the book in which all believers are written.” (Latimer’s Sermon on the Third Sunday after Epiphany.)
Thus, sir, have I looked out for ‘the heresy,” the dreadful heresy, of Mr. Wesley’s Minutes, by bringing all the propositions they contain to the touchstone of Scripture and common sense; but, instead of finding it, I have found the very marrow of the Gospel of Christ, so far as it is opposed to Dr. Crisp’s Antinomian Gospel; which at this time would overflow our little Sion, if God did not sit above the water floods, and say to the proudest billows of error, ‘‘ Hitherto shall ye come, and no farther.” I have showed that the Minutes contain nothing but what is truly Scriptural, and nothing but what the best Calvinist divines have themselves directly or indirectly asserted; except perhaps the sixth proposition concerning the merit of works; and with respect to this, I hope I have demonstrated, upon rational and evangelical principles, that Mr. Wesley, far from “ bringing in a damnable heresy,” has done the Gospel justice, and Protestantism service, by candidly giving up an old prejudice, equally contrary to Scripture and good sense, a piece of bigotry which hath long hardened the Papists against the doctrine of “salvation by the merit of Christ,” and hath added inconceivable strength to the Antinomian delusion among us. One difficulty remains, and that is, to account for your attacking Mr. Wesley, though you could not wound him without stabbing yourself. Reserving my reflections upon this amazing step for another letter, I remain your astonished servant, in the bonds of a peaceful Gospel, :
J. FLETCHER.
LETTER V.
Honovrep anp Reverenp Srr,—Having vindicated both some important doctrines of the Gospel, and an eminent servant of Christ, from the charge of “dreadful heresy;” I will now take the liberty of a friend to expostulate a little with you.
When Brutus, among other senators, rushed upon Cesar, the venerable general, as he wrapped himself in his mantle, just said, “ And art thou also among them? Even thou, my son?” May not Mr. Wesley address you, sir, in the same words, and add, “Ifa body of men must be raised to attack me, let some zealous follower of Dr. Crisp, some
hot-headed vindicator of reprobation and eternal justification blow the trumpet, and put himself at their head: but let it not be you, who believe with me that we are moral.agents; that God-is-laye; that Jesus tasted death for every man; and that the Holy Spirit shall-not_always strive with sinners. If you do not regard my reputation, consider at least your own; and expose me not as a heretic for advancing propositions, the substance of which you have avowed before the sun.”
But had those propositions at length appeared to you unsound, yea, and had you never maintained them yourself, should you not, as a Christian and a brother, have written to him, acquainted him with your objections, and desired him to solve them and explain himself, or you should be obliged publicly to expose him?
Was this condescension more than was due from you, sir, and our other friends, to a gray-headed minister of Christ; an old general in the armies of Emmanuel; a father who has children capable of instructing even masters in Israel; and one whom God made the first and principal instrument of the late revival of internal religion in our Church?
Instead of this friendly method, as if you was a Barak, ‘commanded by the Lord God of Israel, you call together the children of Naphtali and Zebulun:” you convene, from England and Wales, clergy and laity, Churchmen and Dissenters, to meet you at Bristol, where they are, it seems, to be entertained in good and free quarters. And for what grand expedition? Why, on a day appointed you are to march up “in a body,” not to attack S.:sera and his iron chariots, but an old Caleb, who, without meddling with you, quietly goes on to the conquest of Canaan; not to desire in a friendly manner, after a fair debate of every proposition that appears dangerous, and upon previous conviction that what is exceptionable may be given up, but to do what I think was never done by nominal, much less by “real Protestants”— O Jet it not be told in Rome, lest, the sons of the inquisition rejoice!—This mixed, this formidable body, is to “insist upon” Mr. Wesley, and the preachers in his connection, “formally recanting” their Minutes, as appearing “injurious to the very fundamental principles of Christianity, and being dreadfully heretical.” And this, (as- tonishing!) without the least inquiry made into their meaning and design—without a shadow of authority from our superiors in Church or state—without an appeal to ‘the law and to the testimony’’—without form of process—without judge or jury—without so much as allowing the poor “heretics,” (who are condemned six weeks before they can possibly be heard,) to answer for themselves!
As I was fortunate enough to stop, some months ago, such rash proceedings in Wales, permit me, sir, to bear my testimony against them in England, and to tell you they exceed the late transactions in Kdmund Hall. The six students, against whom wrath was gone forth, were allowed to say what they could in their own defence before they were sentenced, as unfit members of a literary society. Likewise the vice-chancellor had the statutes of the university of Oxford, seeming to countenance his proceedings: but what statute of the university of Jesus can you produce, even to save appearances? Surely not that which the Papists made use of, “ Compel them to come in;” for lam persuaded, that although clergy and laity, Churchmen and Dissenters.
are convened to go in a body to Mr. Wesley’s conference, you mean’ no external compulsion. Much less are you authorized to “insist” upon his owning himself ‘a heretic,” by these words of the apostle, “ As much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men, and esteem mi
nisters highly in love for their works’ sake.” Neither by his command, A heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject,” &c; for you have neither proved Mr. Wesley a heretic, nor once admonished him as such.
Surely our Lord will not smile upon your undertaking; for he has left his sentiments upon record, the reverse of your practice. He had said, “ Whosoever shall receive,” not provoke, “ one of such children in my name, receiveth me. But John answered him, saying, Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, and we forbad him, because he followeth not with us. Forbid him not,” said Jesus, * for there is no man who can do a miracle in my name, that can lightly speak evil of me.” Festus himself, though a poor heathen, will disapprove of such a step: “It is not the manner of the Romans,” says he, “ to deliver any man to die,” (or to insist on his publicly giving up his repu- tation, which in some cases is worse than death,) ‘ before that he who is accused have the accusers face to face, and have license to answer for himself concerning the crime laid against him.” The lordliness of your procedure even exceeds, in one respect, the severity of the Council of Constance, where poor Jerome of Prague had leave to plead his own cause before he was obliged to acknowledge himself a heretic; and make “a formal recantation” of the propositions he had advanced. _
Beside, how could you suppose, sir, that Mr. Wesley, and the preachers who shall assemble with him, are such weak men as tamely to acknowledge themselves heretics upon your ipse divit?. Suppose Mr. Wesley took it in his head to convene all the divines that disapprove the extract of Zanchius, to go with him in a body to Mr. Top- lady’s chapel, and demand a formal recantation of that performance, as heretical; yea, to insist upon it, before they had “ measured swords, _ or broken a pike together;”? would not the translater of Zanchius, from the ramparts of common sense, deservedly laugh at him, and ask, whether he thought to frighten him by his protests, aud bully him into orthodoxy?
O sir, have we not fightings enough without to employ all our time and strength? Must we also declare war and promote fightings within? Must we catch at every opportunity to stab one another, because the livery of truth which we wear is not turned up in the same manner? What can be more cruel than this?’ What can be more cutting to an old minister of Christ, than to be traduced as “ta dreadful heretic,” in printed letters sent to the best men in the land, yea, through all Engiand and Scotland, and signed by a person of your rank and piety; to have things that he knows not, that he never meant, laid to his charge, and dispersed far and near? While he is gone to a neighbouring kingdom to preach Jesus Christ, to have his friends prejudiced, his foes elevated, and the fruit of his extensive ministry at the point of being blasted! Put yourself in his place, sir, and you will see that the wound is deep, and reaches the very heart. I can apologize for the other
real Protestants.” Some are utter strangers to polemic divinity; others are biassed by high Calvinism; and one, whose name is used, never saw your circular letter till it was in prt. But what can I say for you, sir? Against hope I must believe in hope, that an unaccountable panic influenced your mind, and deprived you for a time of the calmness and candour which adorn your natural temper. If this is the case, may you act with less precipitancy for the future! And may the charity “‘ that hopeth all things, believeth all things, does not provoke, and is not provoked,” rule in our hearts and lives! So shall the heathen world drop their just objections against our unhappy divisions, and once more be forced to cry out, ‘See how these Christians love!” And so shall we give over trying to disturb, or pull down a part of the Church of Christ, because we dislike the colour of the stones with which it is built; or because our fellow builders cannot pronounce Shibboleth just as we do.
One word more about Mr. Wesley, and I have done. Of the two greatest and most useful ministers I ever knew, one isnomore. The other, after amazing labours, flies still with unwearied diligence through the three kingdoms, calling sinners to repentance, and to the healing fountain of Jesus’ blood. ‘Though oppressed with the weight of near seventy years, and the care of near thirty thousand souls, he shames still, by his unabated zeal and immense labours, all the young ministers in England, perhaps in Christendom. He has generally blown the Gospel trump, and rode twenty miles, before most of the professors, who despise his labours, have left their downy pillow. As he begins the day, the week, the year, so he concludes them, still intent upon extensive services for the glory of the Redeemer, and the good of souls. And shall we lightly lift up our pens, our tongues, our hands against him? No, let them rather forget their cunning! If we will quarrel, can we find nobody to fall out with but the minister upon whom God puts the greatest honour?
Our Elijah has lately been translated to heaven. Gray-headed Elisha is yet awhile continued upon earth. And shall we make a hurry and noise, to bring in railing accusations against him with more success? While we pretend to a peculiar zeal for Christ’s glory, shall the very same spirit be found in us, which made his persecutors say, “ He hath spoken blasphemy,” (or heresy,) “‘ what need we any farther witnesses?” Shall the sons of the prophets, shall even children in grace and knowledge, openly traduce the venerable seer and his abundant labours? When they see him run upon his Lord’s errands, shall they cry, not, “ Go up, thou bald head,” but, ‘ Go up, thou heretic?” O Jesus of Nazareth, thou rejected of men, thou who wast once called “a deceiver of the people,” suffer it not! lest the raging bear of persecution come suddenly out of the wood upon those sons of discord, and tear them in pieces.
And suppose a Noah, an old preacher of righteousness, should have really nodded under the influence of an honest mistake, shall we act a worse part than that of Canaan? Shall we make sport of the nakedness which, we say, he has disclosed, when we have boldly uncovered it ourselves? O God, do not thou permit it, lest a curse of pride, self sufficiency, bigotry, Antinomianism, and bitter zeal, come upon us;
and lest the children, begotten by our unkind preaching and unloving example, walk in our steps and inherit our propagated punishment!
Rather may the blessing of peace makers be ours. May the meek, loving Spirit of Jesus fill our hearts! May streams, not of the bitter waters which cause the curse, but of the living water which gladdens the city of God, flow from our catholic breasts, and put out the fire of wild zeal and persecuting malice! May we know when Sion is really in danger; and when the accuser of the brethren gives a false alarm to disturb the peace of the Church, and turn the stream of undefiled, lovely, and loving religion, into the miry channel of obstinate prejudice, imperious bigotry, and noisy vain jangling. And may we at last unanimously worship together in the temple of peace, instead of striving for the mastery in the house of discord!
Should this public attempt to stop the war which has been publicly declared be in any degree successful,—should it check a little the forwardness that has lately appeared to stir up contention, under pretence of opposing heresy,—should it make warm men willing to let the light of their moderation shine before the world, and to “ keep a conscience void of offence” toward their neighbours, instead of openly opposing their liberty of conscience,—should it cause the good that is in an eminent servant of Christ to be iess evil spoken of,—and above all, should it convince any of the great impropriety of exposing precious truths as “dreadful heresies;” and of preferring the gospel of Dr. Crisp to “the truth as it isin Jesus,”—TI shall be less grieved at having been obliged to expostulate with you, sir, in this public manner.
In hopes this will be the case, and with a heart full of ardent wishes that all our unhappy divisions may end in a greater union, I remain, Hon. and Rev. sir, your obedient servant in the peaceable Gospel of Jesus Christ,
an Chree Letters
VINDICATOR OF THE REV. MR. WESLEY’S MINUTES.
Reproye, rebuke, exhort, with all long-suffering and (Scriptural) doctrine; for the time wili come when they will not endure sound doctrine. 2 Tim. iy, 2, 3.
Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith. But let brotherly love continue. Tit. i, 18; Heb. xiii, 1.
Vor: 5
PREFACE.
Tue publication of the * Vindication of Mr. Wesley’s Minutes” haying been represented by some persons as an act of injustice, the following letter is made public to throw some light upon that little event, and serve as a preface to the Seconp Cureck To ANTINOMIANISM.
To the Rev. Mr. John Wesley.
“Rev. anp Dear Sir,—As I love open dealing, I send you the substance, and almost the very words, of a private letter I have just written to Mr. Shirley, in answer to one, in which he informs me he is going to publish his Narrative. He is exceedingly welcome to make use of any part of my letters to Mr. Ireland, concerning the publication of my Vindication, and you are equally welcome to make what use you please of this. Among friends all things are, or should be, common.
“JT am, Rev. and dear sir, yours, &c, J. FLETCHER.
To the Hon. and Rev. Mr. Shirley.
“Rev. anp Dear Sir,—It is extremely proper, nay, it is highly necessary, that the public should be informed how much like a minister of the Prince of Peace, and a meek, humble, loving brother in the Gospel of Christ you behaved at the conference. Had I been there, I would gladly have taken upon me to proclaim these tidings of joy to the lovers of Zion’s peace. Your conduct at that time of love is certainly the best excuse for the hasty step you had taken; as my desire of stopping my Vindication, upon hearing it, is the best apology TI can make for my severity to you.
“J am not averse at all, sir, to your publishing the passages you mention, out of my letters to Mr. Ireland. They show my peculiar ‘ove and respect for you, which I shall at all times think an honour, and at this juncture shall feel a peculiar pleasure, to see proclaimed to the world. They apologize for my calling myself a lover of quietness, when I unfortunately prove a son of contention: and they demonstrate, that I am not altogether void of the fear that becomes an awkward, unexperienced surgeon, when he ventures to open a vein in the arm of a person for whom he has the highest regard. How natural is it for him to tremble, lest by missing the intended vein, and
pricking an unseen artery, he should have done irreparable mischief, mstead of a useful operation.
“But while you do me the kindness of publishing those passages, permit me, sir, to do Mr. Wesley the justice of informing him I had also written to Mr. Ireland, that ‘ whether my letters were suppressed or not, the Minutes must be vindicated,—that Mr. Wesley owed it to the Church, to the real Protestants, to all his societies, and to his own astersed character;—and that, after all, the controversy did not seem to me to be so much, whether the Minutes should stand, as whether the Antinomian géspel of Dr. Crisp should prevail over the practical Gospel of Jesus Christ.’
“T must also, sir, beg leave to let my vindicated friend know, that in the very letter where I so. earnestly entreated Mr. Ireland to stop the publication of my letters to you, and offered to take the whole expense of the impression upon myself, though I should be obliged to sell-my last shirt to defray it, I added, that ‘if they were published, I
must look upon it as a necessary evil or misfortune;? which of the two —
words I used I do not justly recollect. .4 misfortune for you and mes who must appear inconsistent to the world: you, sir, with your Sermons, and I with my title page; and nevertheless necessary to vindicate misrepresented truth, defend an eminent minister of Christ, and stem the torrent of Antinomianism.
“It may not be improper also, to observe to you, sir, that when I presented Mr. Wesley with my Vindication, I begged he ‘would correct it, and take away whatever might be unkind or too sharp; urging that, though I meant no unkindness, I was not a proper judge of what I had written under peculiarly delicate and trying circumstances, as well as in a great hurry; and did not therefore dare to trust either my pen, my head, or my heart. He was no sooner gone, than I sent a letter after him, to repeat and urge the same request; and he wrote me word he had ‘ expunged every tart expression.” If he has, (for I have not yet seen what alterations his friendly pen has made,) I am regonciled to their publication; and that he has I have reason to hope from the letters of two judicious London friends, who calmed my fears lest I should have treated you with unkindness.
“One of them says, ‘I reverence Mr. Shirley for his candid acknowledgment of his hastiness in judging. I commend the Calvin-
‘ists at the conference for their justice to Mr. Wesley, and their acquiescence in the declaration of the preachers in connection with him. But is that declaration, however dispersed, a remedy adequate to the evil done, not only to Mr, Wesley, but to the cause and work of God? Several Calvinists, in eagerness of malice, had dispersed their calumnies through the three kingdoms. A truly excellent person herself, in her mistaken zeal, had represented him as a Papist unmasked, a heretic, an apostate. A clergyman of the first reputation inicmaagye
s ioe 1
*
a Poem on his Apostasy is just coming out. Letters have been sent to every serious Churchman and Dissenter through the land, together with the Gospel Magazine. Great are the shoutings, And now that he lieth, let him rise up no more! This is all the cry. His dearest friends - and children are staggered, and scarce know what to think. You, in your corner, cannot conceive the mischief that has been done, and is still doing. But your letters, in the hand of Providence, may answer the good ends you proposed by writing them. You have not been too seyere to dear Mr. Shirley, moderate Calvinists themselves being judges; but very kind and friendly to set a good mistaken man right, and probably to preserve him from the like rashness as long as he lives. Be not troubled, therefore, but cast your care upon the Lord.’
‘ My other friend says, ‘ Considering what harm the Circular Letter has done, and what a useless satisfaction Mr. Shirley has given by his vague acknowledgment, it is no more than just and equitable that your letters should be published.’
“‘ Now, sir, as I never saw that acknowledgment, nor the soflening corrections made by Mr. Wesley in my Vindication; as I was not informed of some of the above mentioned particulars when I was so eager to prevent the publication of my letters; and as I have reason to think, that through the desire of an immediate peace, the festering wound was rather skinned over than probed to the bottom; all I can say about this publication is, what I wrote to our common friend, namely, that ‘I must look upon it as a necessary evil.’
“JT am glad, sir, you do not direct your letter to Mr- Olivers, who was so busy in publishing my Vindication; for, by a letter I have just received from Bristol, I am informed he did not hear how desirous I was to call it in, till he had actually given out before a whole congregation it would be sold. Beside, he would have pleaded with smart- ness that he never approved of the patched-up peace, that he bore his testimony against it at the time it was made, and had a personal right to produce my arguments, since both parties refused to hear his at the conference.
“Tf your letter is friendly, sir, and you print it in the same size with my Vindication, I shall gladly buy ten pounds’ worth.of the copies, and order them to be stitched with my Vindication, and given gratis to the purchasers of it; as well to do you justice as to convince the world that we make a loving war; and also to demonstrate how much I regard your respectable character, and honour your dear person. Mr. Wesley’s heart is, I am persuaded, too full of brotherly love to deny me the pleasure of thus showing you how sincerely I am, Rey. and dear sir, your obedient servant, Joun FLETCHER. |
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oS nett aay, ‘a Sighan:
LETTER I.
Honovrep snp ReveREND Sir,—I cordially thank you for the greatest part of your Narrative. It confirms me in my hopes that your pro- jected opposition to Mr. Wesley’s Minutes proceeded in general from: zeal for the Redeemer’s glory. And as such a zeal, though amazingly mistaken, had certainly something very commendable in it, I sincerely desire your Narrative may evidence your good meaning, as some think my Vindication does your mistake.
In my last private letter I observed, Rev. sir, that if your Narrative was kind, I would buy a number of copies, and give them gratis to the purchasers of my book, that they might see all you can possibly produce in your own defence, and do you all the justice your proper behaviour at the conference deserves. But as it appears to me there are some important mistakes in that performance, I neither dare recommend it absolutely to my friends, nor wish it in the religious world the full success you desire.
I do not complain of its severity; on the contrary, considering the sharpness of my fifth letter, I gratefully acknowledge it is kinder than I had reason to expect. But permit me to tell you, sir, I look for justice to the Scriptural arguments I advance in defence of truth, before I look for kindness to my insignificant person; and could much sooner be satisfied with the former than with the latter alone. As I do not admire the fashionable method of advancing general charges without supporting them by particular proofs, I shall take the liberty of pointing out some mistakes in your Narrative, and by that means endeavour to do justice to Mr. Wesley's declarations, your own sermons, my Vindication, and, aboye all, to the cause of practical religion.
Waiving the repetition of what I said in my last, touching the publication of my Five Letters to you, I object first to your putting a wrong colour upon Mr. Wesley’s declaration. You insinuate, or assert, that he, and fifty-three of the preachers in conference with him, give up the doctrine of “ justification by works in the day of judgment.” It appears,” say you, “from their subscribing the declaration,” notwithstanding Mr. Olivers’ remonstrances, “that they do not maintain a second justification by works.”
Surely, sir, you wrong them. They might have objected to some of Mr. Olivers’ expressions, or been displeased with his readiness to enter the lists of dispute; but certainly so many judicious and good men could never so betray the cause of practical religion, as tamely to renounce a truth of thatimportance. If they had, one step more would have carried them full into Dr. Crisp’s eternal justification, which is the very centre of Antinomianism; and without waiting for the return of the next conference, I would bear my legal testimony against their Antinomian error. Mr. Wesley I reverence as the greatest minister I know, but would not follow him one step farther than he follows Christ.
.
Were he really guilty of rejecting the evangelical doctrine of a second justification by works, with the plainness and honesty of a Suisse I would address him, as I beg you will permit me to address you.
1. Neither you, Rev. sir, nor any divine in the world, have, I presume, a right to blot out of the sacred records those words of Jesus Christ, St. James, and St. Paul: ‘ Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life. Not every one that says to me, Lord! Lord! shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that does the will of my Father. Be ye therefore doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For we are under the law to Christ. Not the hearers of the law shall be just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified. Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is.” His very words shall undergo the severest scrutiny. “I say unto you, [O how many will insinuate the contrary!] that every idle word that men shall speak they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment, for by thy words shalt thou [then] be justified, and by thy words shalt thou [then] be condemned.”
Can you say, sir, that the justification mentioned by our Lord in this passage is the same as that which St. Paul speaks of as the present privilege of all believers, and has no particular reference to “ the day of judgment” mentioned in the preceding sentence? Or will you intimate our Lord does not declare we shall be justified in the last day by works, but by words? Would this evasion be judicious? Do not all professors know that words are works in a theological sense; as being both the signs of the “‘ workings” of our hearts, and the positive “ works” of our tongues? Will you expose your reputation as a divine, by trying to prove, that although we shall be justified by the works of our tongues, those of our hands and feet shall never appear for or against our justification? Or will you insinuate that our Lord “ recanted” the legal sermons written Matt. vy, and xii? If you do, his particular account of the day of judgment, chap. xxv, which strongly confirms and clearly explains the doctrine of our second justification by works, will prove you greatly mistaken, as will also his declaration to St. John, above forty years after, “ Behold, I come quickly, and my reward is with me, _ to give to every man as his work [not faith] shall be.” *
O, if faith alone turn the scale of justifymg evidence at the bar of God, how many bold Antinomians will claim relation to Christ, and boast they are interested in his imputed righteousness! How many will say, with the foolish virgins, **‘ Lord! Lord! we are of faith, and Abraham’s children. In thy name’ we publicly opposed all legal professors, traduced their teachers as enemies to thy free graee; and, ‘to do thee service,’ made it our business to expose the righteousness, and cry down the good works of thy people; therefore ‘ Lord! Lord! open tous!” But, alas! far from thanking them for their pains, without looking at their boasted faith, he will dismiss them with a “ Depan from me, ye that work iniquity!” As if he said—
“ Depart, ye that made the doctrine of my atonement a cloak for your sins, or ‘ sewed? it as a ‘ pillow under the arms of my people,’ to make them sleev in carnal security, when they should have ‘ worked
out their salvation with fear and trembling.’ You profess to know me, but I disown you. My sheep I know: them that are mine I know. The seal of my holiness is upon them all: the motto of it, (Let him that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity,) is deeply engraven on their faithful breasts,—not on yours, ye ‘ carnal, ye sold under sin!’
** And why called ye me, Lorn! Lorp! and did not the things which I said?’ Why did you even use my righteousness as a breastplate, to stand it out against the word of my righteousness; and as an engine to break both tables of my law, and batter down my holiness ? Your heart condemns you, ye ‘sinners in Zion! Ye salt without savour!’ Ye believers without charity! And am not I ‘greater than your heart?’ And ‘know’ I not ‘your works?’ Yes, ‘I know that the love of God is not in you,’ for you despised one of these my brethren. How could you think to deceive me, ‘the Searcher of hearts and Trier of reins ?? And how did you dare to call yourselves by my name? As if you were my people? my dear people? mine elect? Are not all my peculiar people ‘ partakers of my holiness,’ and ‘ zealous of good works? Have not I chosen to myself the man that is godly,’ and protested that ‘the ungodly shall not stand in judgment, nor sinners,’ though in sheep’s clothing, ‘in the congregation of the righteous?’ And say I not to the wicked, though he should have been one of my people, Lo ammi, Thou art none of my people now. ‘What hast thou to do with taking my covenant in thy mouth?’ You denied me in works, and did not wash your hearts from iniquity im my blood; therefore, according to my word, ‘I deny you,’ in my turn, ‘ before my Father and his holy angels.’ Perish your hope, ye hypocrites: and utter darkness be your portion, ‘ye double minded! Let fearfulness surprise you,’ ye tinkling cymbals! Let the fall of your Babels crush you, ye towering professors of my humble faith! Fly, ‘ ye clouds without water ; ye chaff, fly before the blast of my righteous indignation ! ‘ Ye workers of iniquity ! Ye Satans transformed into angels of light! Ye cursed, depart!’ ”
Il. Nor is our Lord singular in his doctrine of justification, or condemnation, by works in the day of judgment. If it is a heresy, the patriarchs, prophets, and apostles are as great heretics as their Master. Enoch, quoted by St. Jude, prophesied, that when the Lord shall “come to execute judgment upon all men,” he will “ convince the ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds and hard speeches.” This conviction will no doubt be in order to condemnation; and this condemnation will not turn upon unbelief, but its effects, “ ungodly deeds and hard speeches.” Solomon confirms the joint testimony of Enoch and St. Jude, where he says, “ He that knoweth the heart, shall render to every man according to his works;” and again, “Know, O young man, that for all these things, for all thy ways, God shall bring thee into judgment.”
St. Paul, the great champion for faith, is particularly express upon this anti-Crispian doctrine. ‘The Lord,” says he, “in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, will render to every man according to his deeds; to them that continue in well dowmg,,” (here is the true perseverance of the saints!) * eternal life! Indignation upon every soul of man that does evil, and glory to every man who worketh good; for there is no respect of persons with God. We shal
all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in the body,” not according to that he hath believed, whether it be true or false, but ‘according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” St. Peter asserts, that the Father, “ without respect of persons, judgeth according to every man’s work.” And St. John, who, next to our Lord, gives us the most particular description of the day of judgment, concludes it by these awful words: And the dead were judged out of the things written in the books, according to their works.” It is not once said, “according to’ their aith.” fe Permit me, sir, to sum up all these testimonies in the words of two kings and two apostles. ‘Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter,” says the king who chose wisdom, “ Fear God, and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man; for God shall bring every work into judgment, whether it be good or eyil.” They that have done good,” says the King who is wisdom itself, (and the Athanasian creed after him,) “shall go into everlasting life; and they that have not done good,” or “that have done evil, to everlasting punishment.” ‘You see then,” and they are the words of St. James, * that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only.” By faith he is justified at his conversion, and when his backslidings are healed. But. he is justified by works, (1.) In the hour of trial, as Abraham was when he had offered up Isaac: (2.) In a court of spiritual or civil judicature, as St. Paul at the bar of Festus: and, (3.) Before the judgment seat of Christ, as every one will be whose faith, when he goes hence, is found working by love; for there, says St. Paul, as well as in consistoral courts, ‘‘ circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God,” 1
III. This doctrine is so obvious in the Scriptures, so generally received in all the Churches of Christ, and so deeply engraven on the consciences of sincere professors, that the most eminent ministers of all denominations perpetually allude to it; yourself, sir, not excepted, as I could prove from your sermons if you had not recanted them. How often, for instance, has that great man of God, the truly reverend Mr. Whitefield, said to his immense congregations, ‘ You are warned; I am clear of your blood; I shall rise as a swift witness against you, or you against me, in the terrible day of the Lord! O, remember to clear me then!” or words to that purpose. And is not this just as if he had said, “ We shall all be ‘justified or condemned in the day of judgment’ by what we are now domg: I by my preaching, and you by your hearing?””
And say not, sir, that ““ such expressions were only flights of oratory, and prove nothing.” If you do, you “touch the apple of God’s eye.” Mr. Whitefield was not a flighty orator, but spoke the words of soberness and truth, with Divine pathos, and floods of tears declarative of his sincerity.
Instead of swelling this letter into a volume, (as I easily might,) by. producing quotations from all the sober Puritan divines, who have directly or indirectly asserted a second justification by works, I shall present y~u only with two passages from Mr. Henry. On Matt. xii,
37, he says, “ Consider how strict the judgment will be on account of our words. ‘ By thy words thou shalt be justified or condemned,’—a common rule in men’s judgment, and here applied to God’s. Note the constant tenor of our discourse. according as it is gracious or not gracious, will be an evidence for us, or against us, at that day. Those that ‘seemed to be religious, but bridled not their tongue,’ will then be found to have put a cheat upon themselves with a vain religion. It concerns us to think much of the day of judgment, that it may be a check upon our tongues.” And again:
Upon those words, Rom. ii, 13, ** Not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers of the law shall be justified;” the honest commentator says, ‘“‘ The Jewish [ Antinomian] doctors bolstered up their followers with an opinion that all that were Jews, [the elect people of God,]| how bad soever they lived, should have a glorious place in the world to come. This the apostle here opposes. It was a very great privilege that they had the law, but not a saving privilege, unless they lived up to the law they had. We may apply it to the Gospel: it is not hearing, but doing that will save us,” John xiii, 17; * James i, 22. Who does not perceive that Mr. Henry saw the truth, and spoke it so far as he thought his Calvinistic readers could bear it? Surely, if that good man dared to say so much, we, who have “ done leaning too much toward Calvinism,” should be inexcusable if we did not say all.
IV. These testimonies. will, I hope, maké you weigh with an additional degree of candour the following arguments, which I shall produce as a logician, lest any should be tempted to call me a bold metaphysician, or almost a magician:-—
The voice that St. John heard in heaven did not say, “ Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord, for their rarru follows them:” no, it is their works. Faith is the hidden root, hope the rising stalk, and love, together with good works, the nourishing corn: and as the king’s agents, who fill a royal granary, do not take in the roots and stalks, but the pure wheat alone; so Christ takes neither faith nor hope into heaven, the former being gloriously ahsorbed in sight, and the latter in enjoyment.
If I may compare faith and hope to “the chariot of Israel and the courser thereof,” they both bring believers to the everlasting doors of glory, but do not enter in themselves. - Not so love and good works; for love is both the nature and element of saints in glory; and good works necessarily follow them, both in the books of remembrance which shall then be opened, and in the objects and witnesses of those works, who shall then be all present; as it appears from the words of our Lord, ‘* You have done it,” or “ You have not done it, to one of the least of these my brethren;” and those of St. Paul to his dear converts, “You shall be ‘my joy and my crown’ in that day.” Thus it is evident, that although fazth is the temporary measure according to which God deals out his mercy and grace in this world, as we may gather from that sweet saying of our Lord, “ Be it done to thee according to thy FAITH;” yet love and good works are the eternal measures, according to which he distributes justification and glory in the world to come. On these observations, I argue,
We shall be justified in the last day by the grace and evidences which shall then remain.
Love and good works, the fruits of faith, shall then remain.
Therefore we shall then be justified by love and good works, that is, not by faith, but by its fruits. ei
VY. This doctrine, so agreeable to Scripture, the sentiments of moderate Calvinists, and the dictates of reason, ‘* recommends” itself likewise “to every man’s conscience in the sight of God.” Who, but Dr. Crisp, could (after a calm “review of the whole affair,”) affirm, that in the day of judgment, if I am accused of being actually a hypocrite, Christ’s sincerity will justify me, whether it be found in me or not?
Again: suppose I am charged with being a drunkard, a thief, a whoremonger, a covetous person; or a fretful, impatient, ill-natured man; or, if you please, a proud bigot, an implacable zealot, a malicious persecutor, who, notwithstanding fair appearances of godliness, would raise disturbances even in heaven if I were admitted there: will Christ’s sobriety, honesty, chastity, generosity: or will his gentleness, patience, and meekuess, justify me from such dreadful charges? Must not I be found really sober, honest, chaste, and charitable? Must I not be inherently gentle, meek, and loving? Can we deny this without flying in the face of common sense, breaking the strongest bars of Scriptural truth, and opening the flood gates to the foulest waves of Antinomianism? If we grant it, do we not grant a second justification by works? And does not St. Paul grant, or rather insist upon as much, when he declares, that ‘ without holiness no man shall see the Lord?””
VI. You will probably ask, what advantage the Church will reap from this doctrine of a second justification by works? I answer, that, under God, it will rouse Antinomians out of their carnal security, stir up believers to follow hard after holiness, and reconcile fatal differences among Christians, and seeming contradictions in the Scripture.
1. It will re-awaken Antinomians,* who fancy “ there is no condem-
* I beg I may not be understood to level the following paragraphs, or any part _
of these letters, at my pious Calvinist brethren. God knows how deeply I reyerence many, who are immovably fixed in what some call ‘‘ the doctrines of grace;” how gladly (as conscious of their genuine conversion and eminent usefulness) I would lie in the dust at their feet to honour our Lord in his dear members; and how often I have thought it a peculiar infelicity in any degree to dissent from such excellent men, with whom I wanted both to live and die, and with whom I hope soon to reign for ever! N
As these real children of God lament the bad use Antinomians make of their principles, I hope they will not be offended if I bear my testimony against a growing evil, which they have frequently opposed themselves. While the Calvinists guard the foundation against Pharisees, for which I return them my sincere thanks, they will, I hope, allow the Remonstrants to guard the superstructure against Antinomians. If in doing those good offices to the Church, we find ourselves obliged to bear a little hard upon the peculiar sentiments of our opposite friends, let us do it in such a manner as not to break the bonds of peace and brotherly kindness; so shall our honest reproofs become matter of useful exercise to that “love which thinketh no evil, hopeth all things, rejoiceth even in the galling truth,” and is ‘‘neither quenched by many waters,” nor damped by any opposition. 4
I have long wished to see, on both sides the question about which we unhap
pily divide, moderate men step out of the unthinking noisy crowd of their party,
nation io them,” whether they “walk after the Spirit” in love, or “after the flesh” in malice; whether they “forsake all” to follow Christ, or like Judas and Sapphira “ keep back part” of what should be the Lord’s without reserve. Thousands boldly profess justifying faith, and perhaps eternal justification, who reverence the commandments of God just as much as they regard the scriptures quoted in Mr. Wesley’s Minutes.
Upon their doctrinal systems they raise a tower of presumption, whence they bid defiance both to the law and Gospel of Jesus. His law says, “‘ Love God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself, that thou mayest live” in glory. “If thou wilt enter into the life” (of glory,) “keep the commandments.” But this raises thei pity, instead of commanding their respect, and exciting their diligence. s‘ Moses is buried,” say they: “we have nothing to do with the law! We are not under the law to Christ! Jesus is not a lawgiver to control, but a Redeemer to save us.”
The Gospel cries to them, “Repent and believe!” and just as if God was to be the penitent, believing sinner, they carelessly reply, “ The Lord must do all; repentance and faith are his works, and they will be done in the day of his power;” and so without resistance they decently follow the stream of worldly vanities and fleshly lusts. St. Paul cries, “If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die.” “We know better,” answer they, “there are neither ifs nor conditions in all the Gospel.” He adds, “This one thing I do, leaving the things that are behind, I press toward the mark for the prize of my high calling in Christ Jesus—the crown of life. Be ye followers of me. Run also the race that is set before you.” ‘ What!” say they, “‘ would you have us run and work for life? Will you always harp upon that legal string, Do! do! instead of telling us that we have nothing to do, but to believe that all is done?” St. James cries, “ Show your faith by your works; faith without works is dead already, much more that which is accompanied by bad works.” © What!” say they, “ do you think the lamp of faith can be put out asa candle can be extinguished, by not being suffered to shine? We orthodox hold just the contrary: we maintain both that faith can never die, and that living faith is consistent not only with the omission of good works, but with the commission of the most horrid crimes.” St. Peter bids them “ give all diligence to make their election sure, by adding to their faith virtue,” &c. ‘Legal stuff!” say they, “The covenant is well ordered in all things and sure: neither will our virtue save us, nor our sins damn us.” St. John comes next, and declares, “ He that sinneth is of the devil.” ‘ What!” say they, ‘do you think to make us converts to Arminianism, by thus insinuating that a man can be a child
to look each other lovingly in the face, and to convince the world that with impartial zeal they will guard both the foundation and the superstructure against all adversaries, those of their own party not excepted. Whoever does this omne tulit punctum, he is a real friend to both parties, and to the whole Gospel; for he cordially embraces all the people of God, and joins in one blessed medium the seemingly incompatible extremes of Scriptural truth. Ye men of clear heads, honest hearts, and humble loving spirits, nature and grace have formed you on purpose to do the Church this important service. Therefore, without regarding the bigots of your own party, in the name of the loving Jesus, and by his‘catholie. Spirit, give professors public lessons of moderation and consistence, and permit me to learn those rare virtues with thousands at your feet.
of God to-day, and a child of the devil to-morrow?” St. dude ad- oy vances last, and charges them to “keep themselves in the love of God;” and they supinely reply, We can do nothing.” Beside, “ We are as easy and as safe without a framie as with one.” he
With the seven-fold shield of the Antinomian faith they would fight the - twelve apostles round, and come off, in their own imagination, more than conquerors. Nay, were Christ himself to come to them incognito, as he did to the disciples that went to Emmaus, and say, “ Be ye perfect, as your Father who is in heaven is perfect:” it would be well if, while they measured him from head to foot with looks of pity or surprise, some were not bold enough to say with a sneer, “ You are a perfectionist, it seems, a follower of poor John Wesley! are you? For our part, we are for Christ and free grace, but John Wesley and you are for perfection and free will.”
Now, sir, if any doctrine, humanly speaking, can rescue these mistaken persons out of so dreadful a snare, it is that which I contend for. Antinomian dreams yanish before it, as the noxious damps of the night before the rising sun. St. Paul, if they would but hear him owf, with this one saying, as with a thousand rams, would demolish all their Babels: “ Circumcision is nothing, uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God:” or, to speak agreeable to our times, ‘“ Before the tribunal of Christ, forms of godliness, Calyinian and Arminian notions are nothing: confessions of faith and recantations of error, past manifestations and former experiences ‘are nothing, but the keeping of the commandments of God;’” the very thing which Antinomians ridicule or neglect!
2. This doctrine is not less proper to animate feeble believers in their pursuit of holiness. O if it were clearly preached and steadily believed,—if .we were fully persuaded, we shall soon “ appear before the judgment seat of Christ,” to answer for every thought, word, and work, for every business we enter upon, every sum of money we lay out, every meal we eat, every pleasure we take, every affliction we endure, every hour we spend, every idle word we speak, yea, and every temper we secretly indulge,—if we knew we shall certainly “ give account” of all the chapters we read, of all the prayers we offer, all the sermons we hear or preach, all the sacraments we receive; of all the motions of Divine grace, all the beams of heavenly light, all the breathings of the Spirit, all the invitations of Christ, all the drawings of the Father, reproofs of our friends, and checks of our own consciences,—and if we were deeply conscious, that every neglect of duty will rob us of a degree of glory, and every wilful sin of a jewel in our crown, if not of our crown itself; what humble, watchful, holy, heavenly persons should we be! How serious and self denying! How diligent and faithful! In a word, how angelical and divine, “ in all manner of conversation!”
Did the woman, the professing Church, cordially embrace this doctrine, she would no more stay “in the wilderness, idly talking of her beloved;” but actually “leaning upon him,” she would “ come out of it,” in the sight of all her enemies. No more wrapped up in the showy cloud of ideal perfection or imaginary righteousness, and casting away ‘her cold garments, her moonlike changes of merely doctrinal apparel, she would shine with the dazzling glory of her Lord; she would burn
with the hallowing fires of his love: once more she would be “clothed \vith the sun, and have the moon under her feet!”
Ye lukewarm talkers of Jesus’ ardent love, if you were deeply conscious that nothing but love shall enter heaven, instead of judging of your growth in grace by the warmth with which you espouse the tenets of Calvin or Arminius, would you not instantly try your state by the thirteenth chapter of the first Epistle to the Corinthians, and by our Lord’s alarming messages to the falling or fallen Churches of Asia? Springing out of your Laodicean indifference, would you not earnestly pray for the “faith of the Gospel, the faith that works by burning love?” If the fire be kindled, would you not be afraid of putting it out by quenching the Spirit?”? Would you not even dread “grieving” him, lest your love should grow cold? Far from accounting the “ shedding abroad of the love of God in your hearts” an unnecessary frame, would you not be “ straitened” till you were baptized, every one of you, with “the Holy Ghost and with fire?”
Ye who hold the doctrine of perfection without “ going on to perfection,” and ye who explode it as a pernicious delusion, and inconsist- ently publish hymns of solemn prayer for it, how would you agree, from the bottom of your reawakened hearts, to sing together, in days of peace and social worship, as you have carelessly sung asunder,
O for a heart to praise our God! A heart from sin set free!
A jeart in every thought renew’d, And fill’d with love divine!
Perfect, and right, and pure, and good, A copy, Lord, of thine.—
Bigotry from us remove, Perfect all our souls in love, &c.
O ye halcyon days! Ye days of brotherly love and genuine holiness! if you appeared to pacify and gladden our distracted Jerusalem, how soon would practical Christianity emerge from under the frothy billows of Antinomianism, and the proud waves of Pharisaism, which continually break against each other, and openly “foam out their own shame!” “ What careftilness” would godly sorrow work in us all! ‘ What clearing of ourselves,” by casting away our dearest idols! “* What indigna- tion” against our former lukewarmness! ‘What fear” of offending either God or man! ‘ What vehement desire” after the full image of Christ! “What zeal” for his glory! And ‘what revenge” of our sins! “In all things we should approve ourselves,” for the time to come, “to be clear” from the Antinomian delusion. 'Then would we see, what has seldom been seen in our age, distinct (not opposed) societies of meek professors of the common faith walking in humble love, and supporting each other with cheerful readiness, like different battalions of the same invincible army. And if ever we perceived any contention among them, it would be only about the lowest place and the most dangerous post. Instead of “striving for mastery,” they would strive only who should stand truest to the standard of the cross, and best answer the neglected motto of the primitive Christians: JVon
‘magna loquimur sed vivimus; “ Our religion does not consist in high words, but in good works.”
3. I observed that this doctrine will likewise reconcile seeming contradictions in the Scriptures, and fatal differences among Christians.
Take one instance of the former: What can those who reject a second
justification by works make of the solemn words of our Lord, already
quoted, “ By thy words thou shalt be justified, or by thy words thou
shalt be condemned?” Matt. xii, 37. And by what art can they possibly reconcile them with St. Paul’s assertions, Rom. iy, 5, “To him
* that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his
faith is imputed to him for righteousness?” and vy, 1, “ Being justified
by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Accept an example of the latter. In the Antinomian days of Dr.
Crisp arose the honest people we call Quakers. Shocked at the general
abuse of the doctrine of justification by faith, they rashly inferred it
never could be from God; and seeing none “shall be justified in glory
but the doers of the law,” they hastily concluded there is but one justification, namely, the being made inherently just, or the being sanctified,
and then declared holy. Admit our doctrine, and you have both parts
of the truth,—that which the Antinomians hold against the Quakers,
and that which the Quakers maintain against the Antinomians. Each
alone is dangerous; both together mutually defend each other, and
make up the Scriptural doctrine of justification, which is invincibly
by works against Antinomians. Reader, may both be thy portion!
So shalt thou be eternally reinstated both in the favour and image of
God.
VI. But while I enumerate the benefits which the Church will reap from a practical knowledge of our second justification by works, an honest’ Protestant. who has more zeal for, than acquaintance with the truth, advances, with his heart full of holy indignation, and his mouth of objections, which he says are unanswerable. Let us consider them one by one. *
First ogsection. “Your Popish, antichristian doetrine I abhor, and could even burn at a stake as a witness against it. Away with your new-fangled Arminian tenets! I am for old Christianity; and with St. Paul, ‘determined to know nothing for justification but Christ, and him crucified.’ ”
Answer. Do you, indeed? Then J am sure you will not deny both Jesus Christ and St. Paul in this old Christian doctrine; for Christ says, ‘* By thy words shalt thou be justified;” and St. Paul declares, ‘¢ Not the hearers, but the doers of the law (of Christ) shall be justified.” Alas, how often are those who say they “ will know” and have ‘ nothing
but Christ,” the first to set him at nought” as a prophet, by railing at
his holy doctrine: or to reject him as a king, by trampling upon his royal proclamations! But “I wot that through ignorance they do it, as do their rulers.” ;
SEconp opsEction. ‘ This legal doctrine robs God’s dear children of their comforts and Gospel liberty, binds Moses’ intolerable burden upon their free shoulders, and ‘ entangles them again in the galling yoke of bondage.’ ”
Answer. If God’s dear children have got into a false liberty of doing the devil’s works, either by “ not going into the vineyard” when
they have said, “ Lord, I go,” or by “ beating their fellow servants” there, instead of working with them; the sooner they are robbed of it the better: for if they continue thus Ree; they will ere long be “ bound hand and foot, and cast into outer darkness.” It is the very apa of Antinomianism to represent God’s “ commandments as grievous,” and the keeping of his law “‘as bondage.” Not so the dutiful children of God: “ Their hearts” are never so much “at liberty,” as when they ‘run the way of his commandments, and so fulfil the law of Christ.” Keep them from obedience, and you keep them “in the snare of the devil, promising liberty to others, while they themselves are the servants of corruption.”
Again: you confound the heavy yoke of the circumcision and ceremonial bondage, with which the Galatians once entangled themselves, with the “easy yoke of Jesus Christ.” The former was intolerable, the latter is so “light a burden,” that the only way to “ find rest unto our souls is to take it upon us.” St. Paul calls a dear brother his “yoke fellow.” You know the word Betrat in the original signifies “without yoke.” They are sons of Belial who shake off the Lord’s yoke; and though they should boast of their election as much as the Jews did, Christ himself will say concerning them, ‘“‘ Those mine enemies that refused my yoke, and would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me!” So inexpressibly dreadful is the end of lawless liberty!
Tuirp opsection. ‘ Your doctrine is the damnable error of the Galatians, who madly left Mount Sion for Mount Sinai, made Christ the Alpha, and not the Omega, and after ‘ having begun in the Spirit would be made perfect by the flesh.’ This is the other Gospel which St. Paul thought so diametrically contrary to his own, that he wished the teachers of it, though they were ‘angels of God,’ might be even ‘ accursed and cut off.’”
_ Answer. You are under a capital mistake: St. Paul could never be so wild as to curse himself, anathematize St. James, and wish the Messiah to be again cut off: for he himself taught the Romans, that ‘the doers of the law shall be justified.” St. James evidently maintains a justification by works; and our Lord expressly says, “ By thy words thou shalt be justified.” Again: the apostle, if he had foreseen how his Epistle to the Galatians would be abused to Antinomian purposes, gives us in it the most powerful antidotes against that poison. Take two or three instances. (1.) He exhorts his fallen converts to the fulfilling of all the law: “ Love one another,” says he, “for all the law is fulfilled in this one word, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself;” because none can “love his neighbour as himself,” but he that “loves God with all his heart.” How different is this doctrine from the bold Antinomian cry; -* We have nothing to do with the law!” (2.) He enumerates the works of the flesh, “ adultery, hatred, variance, wrath, strife, envyings, heresies, &c; of which,” says he, “I te!l you before, as [have told youin time past, that they who do such things” shall not be justified in the day of judgment, or, which is the same thing, “shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” How different a Gospel is this from that which insinuates, “ impenitent adulterers may be dear children of God, even
while such, and in a very safe state, and quite sure of glory!” And Vor. I. 6
(3.) As if this awful warning were not enough, he point blank cautions his readers against the Crispian error: “ Be not deceived,” says he, “‘ whatever a MAN (not whatever Curist) soweth, that shall he also reap. He that soweth to the flesh shall reap corruption, and he that soweth to the Spirit shall reap life everlasting.” How amazingly strong therefore must your prejudice be, which makes you produce this epistle to thrust love and good works out of the important place allotted them in all the word of God! And no where more than in this very epistle !
Fourtu ossection. ‘ Notwithstanding all you say, I am persuaded you are in the dreadful heresy of the Galatians; for they were, like you, for ‘justification by the works of the law;? and St. Paul resolutely maintained against them the fundamental doctrine of justification by
aith.”
% Answer. If you once read over the Epistle to the Galatians without prejudice, and without comment, you will see, that (1.) They had returned “to the beggarly elements of this world,” by superstitiously “observing days, months, times, and years.” (2.) Imagining they “could not be saved except they were circumcised,” they submitted even to that grievous and bloody injunction. (3.) Exact in their useless ceremonies, and fondly hoping to be justified by their partial observance of Moses’ law, they well nigh forgot the merits of Christ, and openly trampled upon his law, and “ walked after the flesh.” Stirred up to contentious zeal by their new teachers, they despised the old apostle’s ministry, hated his person, and “ devoured one another.” In short, they trusted partly in the merit of their superstitious performances, and partly in Christ’s merits; and on this preposterous foundation they “ built the hay” of Jewish ceremonies, and “ the stubble” of fleshly lusts. With great propriety, therefore, the apostle called them back, with sharpness, to the only sure foundation, the merits of Jesus Christ; and wanted them to “build upon it gold and precious stones,” all the works of piety and mercy that spring from “ faith working by love.”
Now which of these errors do we hold? Do we not preach present justification by faith, and justification at the bar of God according to what a man soweth, the very doctrine of this epistle? And do we not ‘secure the foundation,” by insisting that both these justifications are equally through the merits of Christ, though the second, as our Church intimates in her twelfth article, is by the evidence of works?
Will you bear with me if I tell you my thoughts? We are all in general condemned by the Epistle to the Galatians, for we have too much dependence on our forms of piety, speculative knowledge, or ‘past experience; and too little heart-felt confidence in the merits of Christ: “* We sow too little to the Spirit, and too much to the flesh.” But those, in the next place, are peculiarly reproved by it, who “ return to the beggarly elements,” the idle ways and vain fashions “ of this world.” Those who make as much ado about the beggarly element of water, about baptizing infants and dipping adults, as * the troublers” of the Church of Galatia did about circumcising their converts, “ that they might glory in their flesh.” Those who “ zealously affect others, but not well:” those who now despise their spiritual fathers, “* whom they once received as angels of God:” those who “turn our enemies when ‘we tell them the truth,” who “ heap to themselves” teachers, smoother
than the evangelically legal apostle, and would call us blind if we said, as he does, “ Let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another,” Gal. vi, 4. Those who plead for spiritual bondage while they talk of Gospel liberty, and affirm “that the son of the bondwoman” shall always live ‘“ with the son of the free;” that sin can never be cast out of the heart of believers, and that Christ and corruption shall always dwell together in this world. And, lastly, those who say there is no “ falling away from grace,” when they are already fallen like the Galatians, and boast of their stability chiefly because they are ignorant of their fall!
Firtu opsection. “ However, your Pharisaic doctrine flatly contradicts the Gospel summed up by our Lord, Mark xvi, 16, ‘ He that believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned.’ Here is not one word about works. All turns upon faith.”
Answer. Instead of throwing such hints, you might as well speak | out at once, and say that Christ in these words flatly contradicts what he had said, Matt. xii, 37, “‘ By thy words thou shalt be justified, or by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” But drop your prejudices, and you will see that the contradicfion is only in your own ideas. We steadily assert, as our Lord, that “he who believeth,” or “ endureth unto the end believing,” (for the word implies both the reality and the continuance of the action,) ‘shall infallibly be saved;” because faith, which continues living, “ works” to the last “ by love” and good works, which will infallibly justify us in the day of judgment. For when faith is no more, love and good works will evidence, (1.) That we were grafted into Christ by true faith: (2.) That we did not “make shipwreck of the faith;” that we were not “taken away as branches in him which bear not fruit, but abode fruitful branches in the true Vine.” And (3.) That we are still in him by Hoty Love, the precious and eternal fruit of true persevering faith. How bad is that cause which must support itself by charging an imaginary contradiction upon the Wisdom of God, Jesus Christ himself!* a
* This is frequently the stratagem of those who have no arguments to produce. [ bore my testimony against it in the Vindication, and flattered myself that serious writers would be less forward to oppose the truth, and expose the ministers of Christ by that injudicious way of discussing controverted points. Notwithstanding this, I have before me a little pamphlet, in which the editor endeavours to answer Mr. Wesley’s Minutes, by extracting from his writings passages supposed to _ Stand in direct opposition tothe Minutes. Hence, in a burlesque upon the Declaration, he tries to represent Mr. Wesley as a knave.
I would just observe upon that performance, (1.) That by this method of raising, dust, and avoiding to reason the case fairly, every malicious infidel may blind injudicious readers, and make triumphing scoffers cry out, Jesus against Chrsit! Saul against St. Paul! or John the divine against John the evangelist! as well as Wesley against John! and John against Wesley. (2.) Mr. Wesley having acknowledged, in the beginning of the Minutes, he ‘‘ had leaned too much toward Calvin- ism,” we may naturally expect to meet in his voluminous writings with a few expressions that look a little toward Antinomianism: and with some paragraphs which (when detached from the context, and not considered as spoken to deep mourners in Zion, or to souls of undoubted sincerity,) seem directly to favour the delusion of the present times. (3.) This may be easily accounted for without flying to the charges of knavery or contradiction. When after working long with. out cheering light we discover the ravishing day of luminous faith, we are all apt, in the sincerity of our hearts, to speak almost as unguardedly of works as Luther
Srxru opsection. “ Your doctrine exalts man, and by giving ham room to boast, robs Christ of the glory of his grace. ‘The top stone’ is no more ‘ brought forth with shouting, Grace! Grace!’ but, Works! Works! ‘unto it!’ And the burden of the song in heaven will be,— Salvation to our works! and no more, Salvation to the Lamb!”
Answer. I no less approve your godly jealousy, than I wonder at your groundless fears. To calm them, permit me once more to observe, (1.) That this doctrine is Christ’s, who would not be so unwise as to side with our self-righteous pride, and teach us to rob him of his own glory. It is absurd to suppose Christ would be thus against Christ, for even Satan is too wise “ to be against Satan.” (2.) Upon our plan, as well as upon Crisp’s scheme, free grace has absolutely all the glory. The love and good works by which we shall be justified in the day of judgment, are the fruits of faith, and “faith is the gift of God.” Christ is the great object of faith, the Holy Ghost, called the Spirit of faith, the power of believing, the means, opportunities, and will to use that power, are all the rich presents of God’s free grace. All our sins, together with the imperfections of our works, are mercifully forgiven through the blood and righteousness of Christ: our persons and services are graciously accepted merely for his sake, and through his merits: and if rewards are granted us according to the fruits of righteousness we bear, it is not because we are profitable to God, but because the meritorious sap of the Root of David produces those fruits, and the meritorious beams of the Sun of righteousness ripen them. Thus you see, that, which way soever you look at our justification, God has all the glory of it, but that of turning moral agents into mere machines,—a glory which, we apprehend, God does no mere claim than you do that of turning your coach horses into hobby horses, and your servants into puppets. Py.
If faith on earth gives Christ the glory of all our salvation, you need not fear that love (a superior grace) will rob him in heaven: for “love is not puffed up, seeketh not her own, and does not behave herself unseemly” toward a beggar on earth; much Jess will she do so toward
did; but when the fire of Antinomian temptations has frequently burned us, and consumed thousands around us, we justly dread it at last; and ceasing to lean toward Crisp’s divinity, we return to St. James, St. John, and St. Jude, and to the latter part of St. Paul's Epistles which we too often overlooked, and to which hardly two ministers did, upon the whole, ever do more justice than Mr. Baxter and Mr. Wesley. (4.) A man who gives to different people, or to the same people at different times, directly contrary directions, does not always contradict himself. Ihave a fever, and my physician, under God, restores me to health by cooling inedicines; by and by I am afflicted with the cold rheumatism, and he prescribes fomentations and warming remedies, but my injudicious apothecary opposes him, under the pretence that he goes by no certain rule, and grossly contradicts himself. Let us apply this to Mr. Wesley and the Versifier, remembering there is less difference between a burning fever and a cold rheumatism, than between the case of the trifling Antinomian and that of the dejected penitent. (5.) Whoever considers without prejudice what our satiric poet produces as contradictions, will find some of them do not so much as amount to an opposition, and that most of them do not seem so contradictory as numbers of propositions that might be extracted from the oracles of God. If the editor of the Answer to the Minutes will compare this note with the 28th page of the Vindication, I hope he will find his performance answered, his direct attack upon the Minutes frustrated, and Mr. Wesle7’s honesty fully vindicated.
the Lord of glory, when she has attained the zenith of heavenly perfection. Away then with all the imaginary lions you place in your way to truth! Notwithstanding Crisp’s prohibitions, like the Bereans, receive Christ in his holy doctrine, and be persuaded that in the last day you will shout as loud as the honest doctor, Grace! Grace! and Salvation to the Lamb! without suggesting, with him, to those on the left hand, the blasphemous shouts of Partiality! Hypocrisy! Barbarity! and damnation to the Lamb! Thus shall you have all the free grace he justly boasts of, without any of his horrid reprobating doctrine.
SEVENTH OBJECTION. ‘ How will the converted thief, that did no good works, be justified by works?”
Answer. (1.) We mean by works “the whole of our inward tempers and outward behaviour;” and how do you know the outward behaviour of the converted thief? Did not his reproofs, exhortations, prayers, patience, and resignation, evidence the liveliness of his faith, as there was time and opportunity? (2.) Can you suppose his inward temper was not love to God and man? Could he go into paradise without being born again? Or could he be born again and not love? Ts it not said, “‘ He that loveth is born of God;” consequently, he that is born of God loveth? Again: does not he who “ loveth, fulfil all the law,” and do, as says Augustine, all good works in one? And is not “the fulfilling of the law of Christ” work enough to justify the converted thief by that law?
Eieutu opsection. “You say, that your doctrine ‘ will make us zealous of good works;’ but I fully discharge it from that office: for ‘the love of Christ constraineth us to abound in every good word and work.’ ”
Answer. (1.) St. Paul, who spoke those words with more feeling than you, thought the contrary; as well as his blessed Master, or they would never fave taught this doctrine. You do not, I fear, evidence the temper of a babe when you are so exceedingly “ wise above what” Christ preached, and “prudent above what” the apostle “ wrote.” (2.) If the love of Christ in professors is so constraining as you say, why do good works and good tempers bear so little proportion to the great talk we hear of its irresistible efficacy? And why do those who have tasted it “return to sin as dogs to their vomit?” Why can they even curse, swear, and get drunk? Be guilty of idolatry, murder, and incest? (3.) If love alone is always sufficient, why did our Lord work upon his disciples’ hearts, by the hope of “ thrones and a kingdom,” and by the fear of a “ worm that dieth not, and a fire that is not quenched?” Why does the apostle stir up believers to “serve the Lord with godly fear,” by the consideration that “he is a consuming fire?” Illustrating his assertion by this awful warning, “ If they (Korah and his company) escaped not,” but were consumed by fire from heaven, because they “refused him (Moses) that spake on earth; much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven!” Why did St. Paul himself, who, no doubt, understood the Gospel as well as Crisp and Saltmarsh, “run a race for an incorruptible crown, and keep his body under, test he himself should be a castaway?” O ye orthodox divines, and thou ludicrous versifier of an awful declaration! instead of attempting to set St. Paul against St.
Paul, and to oppose Wesley to Wesley, answer these Scriptural questions; and if you cannot do it without betraying heterodory, for the Lord’s sake, for the sake of thousands in Israel, keep no more from the feeble of the flock those necessary helps which the “ very chief of the apostles,” evangelical Paul, without any of your Crispian refinements, continually recommended to others, and daily used himself. And for your own souls’ sake, never more prostitute these awful words, “The love of Christ constraineth us;” never more apply them to yourselves, while you refuse to treat the most venerable ambassador of Christ, I shall not say, with respectful love, but with common decency.
Nintu ossection. ‘All the formal and Pharisaical ministers, who are sworn enemies to Christ and the Gospel of his grace, preach your legal doctrine of justification by works in the day of judgment.”
Answer. And what do you infer from it? That the doctrine is false? If the inference be just, it will follow there is neither heaven nor hell; for they publicly maintain the existence of both. But suppose they now and then preach our doctrine without zeal, without living according to it, or without previously preaching the fall, and a present justification by faith in Christ, productive of peace and power, what can be expected from it? Would not the doctrine of the atonement itself be totally useless, if it were preached under such disadvantages? The truth is, such ministers are only for the roof, and you, it seems, only for the foundation. But a roof, unsupported by solid walls, crushes to death; and a foundation without a roof is not much better than the open air. Therefore, “‘ wise master builders,” like St. Paul, are for having both in their proper places. Like him, when the foundation is well laid, “leaving the first principles of the doctrine of Christ, they go on to perfection;” nor will they forget, as they work out their salvation, to shout, Grace! Grace! to the last slate that covers in the building; or to “the top stone,” the key that binds the solid arch.
TENTH oBJECTION. “Should I receive and avow such a doctrine, the generality of professors would rise against me; and while the warmest would call me a Papist, an antichrist, and what not; my dearest Christian friends would pity me as an unawakened Pharisee, and fear me as a blind legalist.”
Answer. “Rejoice, and be exceeding glad when all men (the “ godly not excepted) shall say all manner of evil of you falsely for Christ’s sake,”—for preferring Christ’s holy doctrine to the loose tenets of Dr. Crisp: and remember, that, in our Antinomian days, it is as great an honour to be called legal by fashionable professors, as to be branded with the name of Methodist by the sots who glory in their shame.
VII. As I would hope my objector is either satisfied or silenced, before I conclude, permit me a moment, Rey. sir, to consider the two important objections which you directly, or indirectly, make in your Narrative.
1. “IT should tremble,” say you, (page 21,) “lest some bold metaphysician should affirm, that a second justification by works is quite consistent with what is contained in Mr. Wesley’s declaration; but that it is expressed in such strong and absolute terms as must for ever
put the most exquisite refinements of metaphysical distinctions ai defiance.”
Answer. “For ever at defiance!’ You surprise me, sir: I, who am as perfect a stranger to “ exquisite refinements” as to Dr. Crisp’s eternal justification, defy you (pardon a bold expression to a bold meiaphysician) ever to produce out of Mr. Wesley’s declaration, I shall not say (as you do) “strong and absolute terms,” but one single word or tittle denying or excluding a second justification by works; and I appeal both to your second thoughts and to the unprejudiced world, whether these three propositions of the declaration, * We have no trust, or confidence, but in the alone merits of Christ for justification in the day of judgment. Works have no part in meriting or purchasing our justification from first to last, etther in whole or in part. He is not a real Christian believer, (and consequently cannot be saved,) who does not good works where there is time and opportunity.” I appeal to the unprejudiced world, whether these three propositions are not highly consistent with this assertion of our Lord, “ By thy words thou shalt be justified,” that is, “ although from first to last the merits of my life and death purchase, or deserve, thy justification; yet in the day of judgment thou shalt be justified by thy works; that is, thy justification, which is purchased by my mervts, will entirely turn upon the evidence of thy works, according to the time and opportunity thou hast to do them.”
Who does not see, that, ‘to be justified by the evidence of works,” and “to be justified by the merit of works,” are no more phrases of the same import than minutes and heresy are words of the same signification? The latter proposition contains the error strongly guarded against, both in the declaration and the Minutes: the former contains an evangelical doctrine, as agreeable to the declaration and Minutes as to the Scriptures; a doctrine of which we were too sparing when we “leaned too much toward Calvinism,” but to which, after the example of Mr. Wesley, we are now determined to do justice.
Whosoever is “ ashamed of Christ’s words,” we will proclaim them to the world. Both from our pulpits and the press we will say, * By thy words thou shalt be condemned.” Yea, “ Whoever shall say to his brother, Thou fool! shall be in danger of hell fire; and whosoever maketh a lie shall have his part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone;” for as ** with the heart man believeth unto righteousness,” or disbelieveth to unrighteousness, so ‘“ with the mouth confession is made to salvation,” or “hard speeches” are uttered to “ damnation.” Reserve, therefore, Rev. sir, your public “praises for a more proper occasion than that which caused their breaking out in your Narrative. Blessed be God!” say you, (page 16,) “ Mr. Wesley and fifty-three of his preachers do not agree with Mr. Olivers in the material article of a second justification by works.” Indeed, sir, you are greatly mistaken, for we do agree with him; and shall continue so to do, till you have proved he does not agree with Jesus Christ, or that our doctrine is not perfectly consistent both with the Scriptures and the declaration.
2. Your second objection is not so formal as the first; it must be made up of broad hints scattered through your Narrative, and they “
A
88 SECOND CHECK TO ANTINOMIANISM, eee eee
amount to this: “ Your pretended difference between justification by the merit of works, by the evidence of works, and between a first and a second justification, is founded upon the subtilties of metaphysical distinctions. If what you say wears the aspect of truth, it is because you give a new turn to error, by the almost magical power of metaphysical distinctions,” pages 16, 20, 21.
Give me leave, sir, to answer this objection by two appeals, one to the most ignorant collier in my parish, and the other to your. own sensible child; and if they can at once understand my meaning, you will see that my “metaphysical distinctions,” as you are pleased to call them, are nothing but the dictates of common sense. I begin with the collier.
Thomas, I stand here before the judge, accused of having robbed the Rev. Mr. Shirley, near Bath, last month, on such an evening; can you speak a word for me?+ Thomas turns to the judge, and says, Please your honour, the accusation is false, for our parson was in Madeley Wood; and [ can make oath of it, for he even reproved me for swearing at our pit’s mouth that very evening.” By his evidence, the judge acquits me. Now, sir, ask cursing Tom whether I am acquitted and justified, by his merits, or by the simple evidence he has given, and he will tell you, “ Ay, to be sure by the evidence; though I am no scholar, I know very well that if our Methodist parson is not hanged, it is none of my deservings.” Thus, sir, an ignorant collier, as great a stranger to your melaphysics as you are to his mandrel, discovers at once a material difference between justification by the evidence, and justification by the merits of a witness.
My second appeal is to your sensible child. By a plain comparison I hope to make him at once understand, both the difference there is between our first and second justification, and the propriety of that difference. The lovely boy is old enough, I suppose, to follow the gar- dener and me to yonder nursery. Having shown him the operation of grafting, and pointing at the crab tree newly grafted, “‘ My dear child,” would I say, ‘though hitherto this tree has produced nothing but crabs, yet by the skill of the gardener, who has just fixed im it that good little branch, it is now made an apple tree: I justify and warrant it such. (Here is an emblem of our first justification by faith!) In three or four years, if we live, we will come again and see it: if it thrives and ‘ bears fruit,’ well; we shall then by that mark justify it a second time, we shall declare that it is a good apple tree indeed, and fit to be transplanted from this wild nursery into a delightful orchard. But if we find that the old crab stock, instead of nourishing the graft, spends all its sap in producing wild shoots and sour crabs; or if it is a ‘ tree whose fruit withereth, without fruit, twice dead, (dead in the graft and in the stock,) plucked up by the root,’ or quite cankered, far from declaring ‘it a good tree,’ we shall pass sentence of condemnation upon it, and say, ‘ Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? For every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.’?”” Here is an emblem of our second justification by works, or of the condemnation that will infallibly overtake those Laodicean professors and wretched apostates, whose faith is not shown by works, where there is time and opportunity.
Instead of offering an insult to your superior understanding, in attempting to explain by “ metaphysical distinctions,” what I suppose your sensible child has already understood by the help of a grafting knife, I shall leave you to consider whether Scripture, reason, and candour do not join their influence to make you acknowledge, at least, in the court uf your own conscience, that you have put a wrong construction upon Mr. Wesley’s declaration as upon his Minutes, and by that mean inadvertently given another rash touch to the ark of practical religion, and to the character of one of the greatest ministers in the world.
LETTER II.
Honovurep anv Reverenp Srr,—Having endeavoured in my last to do justice to the practical Gospel of Christ, and Mr. Wesley’s awful declarations, I pass on to the other mistakes of your Narrative. That which strikes me next is “the public recantation of your useful sermons, in the face of the whole world.” (Page 22.)
1. O! sir, what have you done! Do you not know that your sermons contain not only the legally evangelical doctrine of the Minutes, but likewise all the doctrine which moderate Calvinists esteem as the marrow of the Gospel? And shall all be treated alike? ‘“ Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked? ‘That be far from thee to do after this manner!” Thus did a good man formerly plead the cause of a wicked city, and thus I plead that of your good sermons, those twelve valuable, though unripe fruits of your ministerial labours. Upon this plea the infamous city would have been spared, had only “ten” good men been found in it. Now, sir, spare a valuable book for the sake of a “ thousand” excellent things it contains. But if you are _ inflexible, and still wish it “ burned,” imitate, at least, the kind angels who sent Lot out of the fiery overthrow, and except all the evangelical pages of the unfortunate volume.
Were it not ridiculous to compare wars which cost us only a little ~ ink, and our friends a few pence, to those which cost armies their blood, and kingdoms their treasures, I would be tempted to say to you, Imitate the Dutch in their last effort to balance the victory, and secure the field. When they are pressed by the French, rather than yield, they break their dykes, let in the sea upon themselves, and lay all their fine gardens and rich pastures under water: but before they have recourse to that strange expedient, they prudently save all the valuable goods they can. Why should you not follow them in their prudential care, as you seem to do in their bold stratagem? When you publicly lay your useful book under the bitter waters of an anathema, why do you save absolutely nothing? Why must Gospel truths, more precious than the wealth of Holland and the gold of Ophir, lie for ever under the severe scourge of your recantation? Suppose you had “ recanted” vour third sermon, The way to eternal life, in opposition to mysticism; and “burned” the fourth, Salvation by Christ for Jews and Gentiles, in honour of Calvinism, could you not have spared the rest?
If you say, you may do what you please with your own; I answer, Your book, publicly exposed to sale, and bought perhaps by thousands, is, in one sense, no more your own; it belongs to the purchasers, before whom you lay, I fear, a dangerous example: for when they shall hear that the author has “ publicly recanted it in the face of the whole world,” it will be a temptation to them to slight the Gospel it contains, and perhaps to ridicule it “in the face of the whole world.”
You add, “It savours too strongly of mysticism.” Some passages are a little tainted with Mr. Law’s capital error, and you might have pointed them out: but if you thmk mysticism is intrinsically bad, you are under a mistake. One of the greatest Mystics, next to Solomon, is Thomas a Kempis, and a few errors excepted, I would no more burn his “ Imitation of Jesus Christ,” than the Song of Solomon, and Mr. Romaine’s edifying “‘ Paraphrase of the 107th Psalm.”
You urge also, your sermons “ sayour too much of free will.” Alas! sir, can you recant “ free will?” Was not your will as free when you recanted your sermons as when you composed them? Is there not as much free will expressed in this one line of the Gospel as in all your sermons, “I would have gathered you, and ye would not?” Do not “ free-will offerings, with a holy worship,” delight the Lord more than forced, and, if I may be allowed the expression, bond-will services? Is not the free will with which the martyrs went to the stake as worthy of our highest admiration, as the mysticism of the Canticles is of our deepest attention? If all that strongly “ savours of free will’? must be “burned,” ye heavens! what Smithfield work will there be in your lucid plains! Wo to saints! Wo to angels! for they are all free-willing beings—all full of free will. Nor can you deny it, unless you suppose they are bound by irresistible decrees, as the heathens fancied their deities were hampered with the adamantine chains of an imaginary something they called “ fate:” witness their Fata vetant, and Fata jubent, and ineluctabile Fatum.
Pardon, Rev. sir, the oddity of these exclamations. I am so grieved at the great advantage we give infidels against the Gospel, by making it ridiculous, that I could try even the method of Horace, to bring my friends back from the fashionable refinements of Crisp, to the plain truth as it is in Jesus.
Ridiculum acri Fortius ac meiius stultas plerumque secat res.
Nor is this the only bad tendency of your new doctrine: fer te; exploding the freedom of the will, you rob us of free agency. You afford the wicked, who determine to continue in sin, the best excuse in the world to do it without either shame or remorse; you make us mere machines, and indirectly reflect upon the wisdom of our Lord, for saying to a set of Jewish machines, “I would, and ye would not.” But wheal is still more deplorable, you inadvertently represent it an unwise thing in God to judge the world in righteousness; and your new glass shows his vindictive justice in the same unfavourable light, in which England saw two years ago the behaviour of a great monarch, who was exposed in the public papers, for unmercitully cutting with a whip, and
tearing with spurs, the horses worked in a tapestry of his royal apartment, because they did not prance and gallop at his nod.
If a commendable, but immoderate fear of Pelagius’ doctrine drove you into that of Augustine, the oracle of all the Dominicans, 'Thomists, Jansenists, and all other Roman Catholic predestinarians, you need not go so far beyond him as to recant all your sermons, because you mention perhaps three or four times, the freedom of our will, in the whole volume. “ Let no one,” says judicious Melancthon, ‘be offended at the words free will, (iberum arbitrium,) for St. Augustine himself uses it in many volumes, and that almost in every page, even to the surfeit of the reader.”
The most ingenious Calvinist that ever wrote against free will is, I think, Mr. Edwards, of New-England. And his fine system turns upon a comparison by which it may be overturned, and the freedom of the will demonstrated.
The will, says he, (if I remember right,) is like an even balance which can never turn without a weight, and must necessarily turn with one. But whence comes the weight that necessarily turns it? From the understanding, answers he; the last dictate of the understanding necessarily turns the will. And is the understanding also necessarily determined? Yes, by the effect which the objects around us necessarily have upon us, and by the circumstances in which we necessarily find ourselves; so that from first to last, our tempers, words, and actions, necessarily follow each other, and the circumstances that give them birth, as the second, third, and fourth links of a chain follow the first, when it is drawn along. Hence the eternal, infallible, irresistible, universal concatenation of events, both in the moral and material world. This is, if I mistake not, the scheme of that great divine, and he spends no less than four hundred and fourteen large pages in trying to establish it. :
I would just observe upon it, that it makes the First Cause or First Mover, the only free Agent in the world; all others being necessarily bound with the chain of his decrees, drawn along by the irresistible motion of his arm, or, which is the same, entangled in forcible circumstances unalterably fixed by his immutable counsel.
And yet, even upon this scheme, you needed not, sir, be so afraid of free will; for if the will be like an even balance, it is free in itself, though it is only with what I beg leave to call “a mechanical freedom;” for an even balance, you know, is free to turn either way.
But with respect to our ingenious author’s assertion, that the will cannot turn without a weight, because an even balance cannot, I must consider it as a mere begging the question, if not as an absurdity. What is a balance but lifeless matter? And what is the will but the living, active soul, springing up in its willing capacity, and self-exerting, self-determining power? O how tottering is the mighty fabric raised, I shall not say upon such a fine spun metaphysical speculation, but upon so weak a foundation as a comparison, which supposes that two things, so widely different as spirit and matter, a living soul and a lifeless balance, are exactly alike with reference to self determination! Just as if a spirit, made after the image ‘of the living, free, and powerful God, was no more capable of determining itself, than a horizontal beam supporting two equal copper bowls by six silken strings!
I am sorry, sir, to dissent from such a respectable divine as yourself; but, as I have no taste for new refinements, and cannot even conceive how far actions can be morally good or evil, any further than our free will is concerned in them, I must follow the universal experience of mankind, and side with the author of the sermons against the author of the Narrative concerning the freedom of the will.
Nor is this freedom derogatory to free grace: for as it was free grace that gave an upright free will to Adam at his creation; so whenever his fallen children think or act aright, it is because their free will is mercifully prevented, touched, and so far rectified by free grace.
However, it must be granted, that many fashionable professors, and the large book of Mr. Edwards, are for you: but when you maintained the freedom of the will, Jesus Christ and the Gospel were on your side. To the end of the world this plain, peremptory assertion of our Lord, T would and ye would not,” will alone throw down the sophisms, and silence the objections of the most subtle philosophers against free will. When I consider what it implies, far from supposing that the will is a lifeless pair of scales, necessarily turned by the least weight, I see it is such a strong, self-determining power, that it can resist the effect of the most amazing weights; keep itself inflexible under all the warnings, threatenings, miracles, promises, entreaties, and tears of the Son of God; and remain obstinately unmoved under the strivings of his Holy Spirit. Yes: put in one scale the most stupendous weights, for instance, the hopes of heavenly joys, and the dread of hellish torments; and only the gaudy feather of honour, or the breaking bubble of worldly joy, in the other} if the will casts itself into the light seale, the feather or bubble will instantly preponderate. Nor is the power of the rectified will less wonderful; for though you should put all the kingdoms of the world and their glory in the one scale, and nothing but “ the reproach of Christ” in the other; yet, if the will freely leap into the infamous scale, a crown of thorns easily outweighs a thousand golden crowns, and a devouring flame makes ten thousand thrones kick the beam.
Thus it appears the will can be persuaded, but never forced. You may bend it by moral suasions; but if you do this farther than it freely gives way, you break, you absolutely destroy it. A will forced, is no more a will; itis mere compulsion; freedom is not less essential to it than moral agency to man. Nor do I go, in these observations upon the freedom of the will, one step farther than honest John Bunyan, whom all the Calvinists so deservedly admire. In his ‘ Holy War” he tells us, “* There is but one Lord Will-be Will in the town of Man’ssoul:” whether he serves Diabolus or Shaddai, he is Lord Wiill-be Will still, “a man of great strength, resolution, and courage, whom in his occasion no one can turn,” if he does not freely turn, or yield to be turned.
I hope, sir, these hints upon the harmlessness of mysticism, and the important doctrine of our free agency, will convince you, and the purchasers of your sermons, that you have been too precipitate in “pub- licly recanting them in the face of the whole world,” especially the ninth.
If you ask, why I particularly interest myself in behalf of that one discourse, I will let you into the mystery. At the first reading I liked
and adopted it: I cut it out of the volume in which it was bound, put it in my sermon case, and preached it nmy church. The title of it is, you know, “Justification by Faith;” and, among several striking things on the subject, you quote twice this excellent passage out of our homilies: “ Justification by faith implies a sure trust and confidence which a man hath in God, that by the merifs of Christ his sins are forgiven, and he is reconciled to the favour of God.” 0 sir, why did you not except itin your recantation, both for the honour of our Church and your own?
Were I to print and disperse such an advertisement as this: “ Eight years ago I preached in my church a sermon, entitled Justification by Faith, composed by the honourable and reverend Mr. Shirley, to convince Papists and Pharisees that we are accepted through the alone merits of Christ: but I see better now; J wish this sermon had been burned, and I publicly recant it in the face of the whole world;” how would the Popish priest of Madeley rejoice! And how will that of Loughrea triumph when he hears you have actually done it in your Narrative! What will your Protestant parishioners, to whom your book is dedicated, say, when the surprising news reaches Ireland? And what will the world think, when they see you warmly plead in August for justification by faith, as being “ the foundation that must by all means be secured;” and publicly recant, in September, your own excellent sermon on “ Justification by Faith?”
Indeed, sir, though I admire your candour in acknowledging there are some exceptionable passages in your discourses, and your humility in readily giving them up, I can no more approve of your readiness in making, than in insisting upon “ formal recantations.” We cannot be too careful in dealing in that kind of ware; and it is extremely dangerous to do it by wholesale; as by that mean we may give up, or seem to give up, “before the whole world,” precious truths, delivered by Christ himself, and brought down to us in streams of the blood of martyrs.
Among some blunt expostulations that Mr. Wesley erased in my Fifth Letter, as being too severe, he kindly but unhappily struck out this: “ Before you could with candour insist upon ‘a recantation’ of Mr. Wesley’s Minutes, should you not have recanted yourself the passages of your own sermons where the same doctrines are maintained; and have sent your recantation through the land, together with your Circular Letter?” Had this been published, it might have convinced you of the unseasonableness of your “ recantation.” Thus, this second hasty step would have been prevented; and if 1 dwell so long upon it now, believe me, sir, it is chiefly to prevent a third.
And, now your sermons are recanted, is the Vindication of Mr. Wesley’s Minutes invalidated? Not at all; for you have not yet recanted the Bath Hymnbook, nor can you ever get Mr. Henry, Mr. Williams, and a tribe of other anti-Crispian, though Calvinist divines, now in glory, to recant with you; much less the prophets, apostles, and Christ himself, on whose irrefragable testimony we chiefly rest our doctrine. P
II. As I have pleaded out the cause of free will against bound will, or that of your sermons against your Narrative, and am insensibly come
to the Vindication, give me leave, sir, to speak a word also for that performance and the author of it.
You say he has ‘“ atlempted a vindication of the Minutes;” but do not some people think he has likewise executed it? And have you proved he has not? '
You reply, “ There would be a great impropriety in my giving a full and particular answer to those letters, because the author did all he could to revoke them, and has given me ample satisfaction in his letters of submission.” Indeed, sir, you quite mistook the nature of that “submission:” it had absolutely no reference to the arguments of the Vin- dication; it only respected the polemic dress in which the vindicator had put them. You might have been convinced of it by this paragraph of his letter of submission: “I was going to preach when I had the news of your happy accommodation, and was no sooner out of church than I wrote to beg my Vindication might not appear in the dress in which I had put it. I did not then, nor do I yet, repent having written upon the Minutes; but, as matters are now, I am very sorry I did not write in a general manner, without taking notice of the Circular Letter,’ and mentioning your dear name.” He begs, therefore, you will not consider his letter of submission as a reason for not giving “a full or particular answer” to his arguments. On the contrary, if you can prove they want solidity, a letter of thanks shall follow his “letter of submission:” if he is wrong, he sincerely desires to be set right.
You add, however, that he has “ broken the Minutes into sentences ~ and half sentences; and by refining upon each of the detached particles, has given a new turn to the whole.” But he appeals to every impartial reader whether ‘he has not, like a candid man, first considered them all together, and then every one asunder. He begs to be informed, whether an artist can better inquire into the goodness of a watch, than by making first his observations on the whole movement in general, and then by taking it to pieces, that he may examine every part with greater attention. And he desires you would show, whether what you are pleased to call “‘a new turn,” is not preferable to the heretical turn some persons give them; and whether it is not equally, if not better adapted to the literal meaning of the words, as well as more agreeable to the Antinomian state of the Church, the general tenor of the propositions, and the system of doctrine maintained by Mr. Wesley for near forty years?
The vindicator objects likewise to your asserting, (page 21,) that ‘when he first saw the Minutes, he expressed to Lady Huntingdon his abhorrence of them.” Had you said surPRis£, the expression would have been strictly just; but that of abhorrence is far too strong. Her ladyship, who testified her detestation of them in the strongest terms, might easily mistake his abhorrence of the sense fixed upon the Minutes, for an abhorrence of the Minutes themselves; but she may recollect, that, far from ever granting they had that sense, he said again and again, even in their first conversation upon them, ‘ Certainly, my lady, Mr. Wesley can mean no such thing: he will explain himself.”
But supposing he had a first been so far influenced by the jealous fears of Lady Huntingdon, as to express as great an abhorrence of the Minutes as the mistaken disciples did of the person of our Lord, when
they took him for an apparition, and “cried out for fear;” would this have excused either him or you, sir, for resolutely continuing in a mistake, in the midst of a variety of means and calls to escape from it? And if the vindicator, before he had weighed the Minutes in the balance of the sanctuary, had even taken his pen, and condemned them as dangerously legal, what could you fairly have concluded from it, but that he was not partial to Mr. Wesley, and had also “leaned so much toward Calvinism,” as not instantly to discover, and “rejoice in the truth?”
In yaur last page you take your friendly leave of the vindicator, by saying, you “desire in love to cast a veil over all apparent mistakes of his judgment on this occasion;” but as he is not conscious of “ all these apparent mistakes,” he begs you would in love take off “ the veil” you haye cast upon them, that he may see, and rectify at least those which are capital.
Ill. And that you may not hastily conclude he was “ mistaken” in his Vindication of that article that touches upon merit, he embraces this opportunity of presenting you with another quotation from the Joun Wester of the last century, he means Mr. Baxter, the most judicious divine, as well as tlie greatest, most useful, and most laborious preacher of his age.
In his “ Catholic Theology,” answering the objections of an Antinomian, he says: “ Merit is a word, I perceive, you are against; you may therefore choose any other of the same signification, and we will forbear this rather than offend you. But yet tell me, (1.) What. if the words aZiog and aia were translated deserving and merit, would it not be as true a translation as worthy and worthiness, when it is the same thing that is meant? (2.) Do not all the ancient teachers of the Churches, since the apostles, particularly apply the names aia. and meritum to believers? And ig you persuade men that al! these teachers were Papists, will you not persuade most that believe you to be Papists too? (3.) Are not reward, and merit or desert, relative words, as punishment and guilt, master and servant, husband and wife? And is there any reward which is not merili premium, “the reward of some merit?” Again:
‘Ts it not the second article of our faith, and next to ‘believing there is a God,’ that ‘he is the rewarder of them that diligently seek him? When you thus extirpate faith and godliness, on pretence of crying down merit, you see what overdoing tends to. And indeed by the same reason that men deny a reward to duty, (the faultiness being pardoned through Christ,) they would infer there is no punishment for sin; for if God will not do good to the nghteous, neither will he do evil to the wicked; he becomes like the god of Epicurus, he does not trouble himself about us, nor about the merit or demerit of our actions. But David knew better: ‘ The Lord,’ says he, ‘ plenteously rewardeth the proud doers; and verily there is a reward for the righteous, for there is a God that judgeth the earth;’ that sees matter of praise or dispraise, rewardableness or worthiness of punishment, in ai] the actions of men.” This is, sir, all Mr. Baxter and Mr. Wesley mean by merit or demerit; and if the vindicator be wrong in thinking they are both in the right, please to remove “the yeil” that conceals his “ mistake.”
IV. As one of his correspondents desires him to explain himself a Jittle more upon the article of the Minutes which respects undervaluing
ourselves; and as you probably place the arguments he has advanced upon that head among his “ apparent mistakes,” he takes likewise this opportunity of making some additional observations on that delicate subject.
How we can “esteem every man better than ourselves,” and ourselves “the chief of sinners,” or ‘the least of saints,” seems not so much a calculation for the understanding, as for the lowly, contrite, and loving heart. It puzzles the former, but the latter at once makes it out. Nevertheless, the seeming contradiction may, perhaps, be reconciled to reason by these reflections:—
1. If friendship brings the greatest monarch down from his throne, and makes him sit on the same couch with his favourites ; may not brotherly love, much more powerful than natural friendship ; may not humi- lity, excited by the example of Christ washing his disciples’ feet; may not a deep regard for that precept, ‘He that will be greatest among you, let him be the least of all,” sink the true Christian to the dust, and make him lie in spirit at the feet of every one?
2. A well-bred person uncovers himself, bows, and declares, even to his inferiors, that he is their ‘most humble servant.” This affected civility of the world is but an apish imitation of the genuine humility of the Church ; and if those who customarily speak humble words without meaning, may yet be honest men, how much more the saints, who haye “truth written in their inward parts,” and ‘ speak out of the abundance of their humble hearts !”
3. He who walks in the light of Divine love, sees something of God’s spiritual, moral, or natural image in all men, the worst not excepted ; and at the sight, that which is merely creaturely in him, (by a kind of spiritual instinct found in all who are “born of the Spirit,”) directly bows to that which is of God inanother. He imitates ghe captain of a first rate man of wat, who, upon seeing the king or queen coming up in a small boat, forgetting the enormous size of his ship, or considering it is.the king’s own ship, immediately strikes his colours; and the greater vessel, consistently with wisdom and truth, pays respect to the less.
4, The most eminent saint, having known more of the workings of corruption in his own breast, than he can possibly know of them in that of any other man, may, with great truth, (according to his present yiews and former feelings of the internal evil he has overcome,) call himself ‘the chief of sinners.”
5. Nor does he know, but if the feeblest believers had all his talents and graces, with all his opportunities of doing and receiving good, they would have made far superior advances in the Christian life; and in this view also, without hypocritical humility, he prefers the least saint to himself. Thus, although, according to the humble light of others, all true believers certainly “ undervalue,” yet, according to their own humble light, they make a true estimate of ‘“ themselves.”
V. The vindicator having thus solved a problem of godliness, which you have undoubtedly ranked among his “ apparent mistakes,” he takes the liberty of presenting you with a list of some of your own ‘ apparent mistakes on this occasion.”
1. In the very letter in which you recant your Circular Letter, you desire Mr. Wesley to “ give up the fatal errors of the Minutes,” though
you have not yet proved they contain one; you still affirm, “ They appear to you evidently subversive of the fundamentals of Christianity,” that is, in plain English, still “ dreadfully heretical;” and you produce a letter which asserts, also, without shadow of proof, that the “* Minutes were given for the establishment of another foundation than that which is laid;” that they are “ repugnant to Scripture, the whole plan of man’s salyatién under the new covenant of grace, and also to the clear meaning of our Established Church, as well as to all other Protestant Churches.”
2. You declare in your Narrative that, “‘ when you cast your eye over the Minutes, you are just where you was,” and assure the public, that “nothing inferior to an aflack upon the foundation of our hope, through the all-sufficient sacrifice of Christ, could have been an object sufficient to engage you in its defence.” Thus, by continuing to insinuate such aM ATTACK was really made, you continue to wound Mr. Wesley in the tenderest part.
3. Although Mr. Wesley and fifty-three of his fellow labourers have
let you quietly “secure the foundation,” (which, by the by, had only been shaken in your own ideas, and was perfectly secured by these express words of the Minutes, “ not by the merit of works,” but by “ believing in Christ,”) yet, far from allowing them to secure the superstructure in their turn, which would be nothing but just, you begin already a contest with them about “ our second justification by works in the day of judgment.” ' 4, Instead of frankly acknowledging the rashness of your step, and the greatness of your mistake, with respect to the Minutes, you make a bad matter worse, by treating the Declaration as you have treated them; forcing upon it a dangerous sense, no less contrary to the Scriptures, than to"Mr. Wesley’s meaning, and the import of the words.
5. When you speak of the dreadful charges you have brought against the Minutes, you softly call them “ misconstructions you may seem to have made of their meaning.” (Page 22, line 4.) Nor is your “acknowledgment” much stronger than your “‘ may seem ;” at least it does not appear, to many, adequate to the hurt done by your Circular Letter to the practical Gospel of Christ, and the reputation of his eminent servant, thousands of whose friends you have grieved, offended, or stum- bled; while you have confirmed thousands of his enemies in their hard thoughts of him, and in their unjust contempt of his ministry.
6. And, lastly, far from candidly inquiring into the merit of the arguments advanced in the Vindication, you represent them as mere “ me- taphysical distinctions ;” or cast, as a veil over them, a friendly submissive letter of condolence, which was never intended for the use to which you have put it.
Therefore the vindicator, who does not admire a peace founded upon a “may seem” on your part, and on Mr. Wesley’s part upon a “ declaration,” to which you have already fixed a wrong unscriptural sense of your own, takes this public method to inform you, he thinks his arguments in favour of Mr. Wesley’s anti-Crispian propositions rational, Scriptural, and solid; and once more he begs you would remove the veil you have hitherto “ cast over all the apparent mistakes of his judgny eg occasion,” that he may see whether the Antinomian gospel