LOGICA GENEVENSIS
OR,
A FOURTH CHECK TO ANTINOMIANISM
IN WHICH
ST. JAMES' PURE RELIGION
IS DEFENDED
AGAINST THE CHARGES,
AND
ESTABLISHED UPON THE CONCESSIONS,
OF MR. RICHARD AND MR. ROWLAND HILL
IN A SERIES OF LETTERS TO THOSE GENTLEMEN.
BY JOHN FLETCHER, A. M.,
VICAR OF MADELEY.
Reprove, rebuke, exhort, with all long suffering and (Scriptural) doctrine; for the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, 2 Tim. iv, 2, 3.
Wherefore rebuke them sharply, that they may be sound in the faith. But let brotherly love continue, Tit. I, 13; Heb. xiii, 1.
TO ALL CANDID CALVINISTS
IN THE
CHURCH OF ENGLAND.
HONOURED AND DEAR BRETHREN,-A student from Geneva, who has had the honor of being admitted a minister of your Church, takes the liberty of dedicating to you these strictures on GENEVA LOGIC, which were written both for the better information of your candid judgment, and to obtain tolerable terms of peace from his worthy opponents.
Some, who mistake blunt truth for sneering insolence, and mild ironies for bitter sarcasms, will probably dissuade you from looking into this FOURTH CHECK TO ANTINOMIANISM. They will tell you that "Logica Genevensis is a very bad book," full of" calumny, forgeries, vile slanders, acrimonious sneers, and horrid misrepresentations." But candor, which condemns no one before he is heard, which weighs both sides of the question in an impartial balance, will soon convince you, that, if every irony proceeds from spleen and acrimony of spirit, there is as much of both in these four words of my honored opponent, Pietas Oxoniensis and Goliah Slain,* as in all the four Checks; and that I have not exceeded the apostolic direction of my motto, "Rebuke them sharply," or rather, apotomos, cuttingly, but "let brotherly love continue."
[ * The ironical titles of two books written by my opponent, to expose the proceedings of the university of Oxford, respecting the expulsion of six students belonging to Edmund Hall.]
I do not deny, that some points of doctrine, which many hold in great veneration, excite pity or laughter in my Checks. But how can I help it? If a painter, who knows not how to flatter, draws to the life an object excessively ridiculous in itself, must it not appear excessively ridiculous in his picture? Is it right to exclaim against his pencil as malicious, and his colors as unfair, because he impartially uses them according to the rules of his art? And can any unprejudiced person expect that he should draw the picture of the night without using any black shades at all?
If the charge of "bitterness" does not entirely set you against this book, they will try to frighten you from reading it, by protesting that I throw down the foundation of Christianity, and help Mr. Wesley to place works and merit on the Redeemer's throne. To this dreadful charge I answer, (1.) That I had rather my right hand should lose its cunning to all eternity, than use it a moment to detract from the Savior's real glory, to whom I am more indebted than any other man in the world. (2.) That the strongest pleas I produce for holiness and good works, are quotations from the homilies of our own Church, as well as from the Puritan divines, whom I cite preferably to others, because they held what you are taught to call the doctrines of grace. (3.) That what I have said of those doctrines recommends itself to every unprejudiced person's reason and conscience. (4.) That my capital arguments in favor of practical Christianity are founded upon our second justification by the evidence of works in the great day; a doctrine which my opponent himself cannot help assenting to. (5.) That from first to last, when the meritorious cause of our justification is considered, we set works aside; praying God "not to enter into judgment with us," or "weigh our merits, but to pardon our offences" for Christ's sake; and gladly ascribing the whole of our salvation to his alone merits, as much as Calvin or Dr. Crisp does. (6.) That when the word meriting, deserving, or worthy, which our Lord himself uses again and again, is applied to good works, or good men, we mean absolutely nothing but rewardable, or qualified for the reception of a gracious reward. And, (7.) That even this improper merit or rewardableness or good works is entirely derived from Christ's proper merit, who works what is good in us, and from the gracious promise of God, who has freely engaged himself to recompense the fruits of righteousness, which his own grace enables them to produce.
I hope, honoured brethren, these hints will so far break the waves of prejudice which beat against your candour, as to prevail upon you not to reject this little means of information. If you condescend to peruse it, I trust it will minister to your edification, by enlarging your views of Christ's prophetic and kingly office; by heightening your ideas of that practical religion which the Scriptures perpetually enforce; by lessening your regard for some well-meant mistakes, on which good men have too hastily put the stamp of orthodoxy; and by giving you a more favourable opinion of the sentiments of your remonstrant brethren, who would rejoice to live at peace with you in the kingdom of grace, and walk in love with you to the kingdom of glory. But whether you consent to give them the right hand of fellowship or not, nobody, I think, can be more glad to offer it to you, than he who, with undissembled respect, remains, honored and dear brethren, your affectionate brother, and obedient servant in Christ,
J. FLETCHER.
LETTER I.
To Richard Hill, Esq.
INTRODUCTION. The doctrine of justification by works in the last day, is truly Scriptural. It is essentially different from justification by faith in the day of conversion. Mr. Hill fully grants, and yet warmly opposes, such a justification.
LETTER II.
To the same.
Justification by the evidence of works, and St. James' undefiled religion, are established upon the liturgy, articles, and homilies of the Church of England.
LETTER III.
To the same.
The sober Puritan divines directly or indirectly maintain the doctrine of justification by works in the great day, which Dr. Owen himself, and numbers of other Calvinistic ministers, do not scruple calling "an evangelical justification by our own personal obedience."
LETTER IV.
To the same.
Flavel, and many other Puritan authors, were offended at Crisp's doctrine. An important extract from Flavel's Treatise upon Antinomianism.
LETTER V.
To the same.
Mr. Wesley's Minutes, and St. James' pure religion, are established on Mr. Hill's important concession, that "we shall be justified by the evidence of works in the great day."
LETTER VI.
To the same.
If we shall be justified by the evidence of works in the last day, there is an end of Dr. Crisp's finished salvation, and Calvin's imputed righteousness: those two main pillars of Antinomianism and Calvinism are fairly broken.
LETTER VII.
To the same.
Mr. Hill's arguments in defence of Dr. Crisp's finished salvation are answered.
LETTER VIII.
To the same.
Mr. Hill is mistaken when he says, "We have Scripture authority to call good works dung, dross, and filthy rags."
To Mr. Rowland Hill.
An answer to Mr. Rowland Hill's arguments against justification by works in the day of judgment, closed by some strictures upon the friendliness of his friendly remarks.
LETTER X.
To the same, and to Richard Hill, Esq.
An answer to Mr. Richard and Mr. Rowland Hill's remarks upon the Third Check, in which the Scriptural doctrine of justification, in its several branches, is vindicated from their witticisms, and Mr. Hill cut off from some of his subterfuges.
LETTER XI.
To both the same
The doctrine of a believer's justification by works is reconciled with the doctrine of a sinner's justification by grace: and it is proved that Calvinism makes way for barefaced Antinomianism, absolutely destroys the law of Christ, and casts his royal crown to the ground.
LETTER XII.
To Richard Hill, Esq.
In which the author shows how far the Calvinists and the remonstrants agree, wherein they disagree, and what makes the latter dissent from the former concerning the famous doctrine of imputed righteousness.
LETTER XIII.
To the same.
Containing a view of the present state of the controversy, especially with regard to free will; and a conclusion, descriptive of the loving, apostolic method of carrying on controversy;-expressive of brotherly love and respect for all pious Calvinists;-and declarative of a desire to live with them upon peaceable and friendly terms.
POSTSCRIPT.
Containing an account of the reasons which engage us to make at last a firm stand against our pious opponents; and of the hope we entertain, that in so doing, our labor will not be in vain in the Lord.
LOGICA GENEVENSIS;
OR,
A FOURTH CHECK TO ANTINOMIANISM
LETTER I
To Richard hill, Esq.
HON. AND DEAR SIR,.-My entering the field of controversy to aid and defend St. James' "pure religion," procured me your Five Letters, which I compare to a shower of rain, gently descending from the placid heaven. But the six which have followed resemble a storm of hail, pouring down from the lowering sky, ushered by some harmless flashes of lightning, and accompanied by the rumbling of distant thunder. If my comparison is just, it is no wonder that when I read them first I was almost thunderstruck, and began to fear, lest, instead of adding light, I had only added heat, to the hasty zeal which I endeavoured to check.
But at the second perusal, my drooping hopes revived; the disburdened clouds begin to break; the air, discharged of the exhalations which rendered it sultry or hazy, seems clearer or cooler than before; and the smiling plains of evangelical truth, viewed through that defecated medium, appear more gay after the unexpected storm. Methinks even moderation, the phoenix consumed by our polemic fires, is going to rise out of its ashes: and that, notwithstanding the din of a controversial war, "the voice of the turtle is still heard in our land."
May the gentle sound approach nearer and nearer, and tune our listening hearts to the melodious accents of Divine and brotherly love! And thou Prince of Peace, thou true Solomon, thou pacific Son of warlike David, should an evil spirit come upon me as it did upon Saul, to make me dip my pen in the envenomed gall of discord, or turn it into a javelin to strike my dear opponent through and through; mercifully bow the heavens, gently touch the strings of my heart, and play upon them the melting tune of forgiving love! Teach me to check the rapid growth of Antinomian errors, without hindering the slow progress of thy precious truth; and graciously instruct me how to defend an insulted, venerable father, without hurting an honored, though, alas! prepossessed brother. If the latter has offended, suffer me not to fall upon him with the whip of merciless revenge; and if I must use the rod of reproof, teach me to weigh every stroke in the balance of the sanctuary with tender fear, and yet with honest impartiality.
Should I, in this encounter, gracious Lord, overcome by thy wisdom my worthy antagonist, help me by thy meekness to give him an example of Christian moderation; and while I tie him with the cords of a man and a believer, while I bind him with reason and Scripture to the left wheel of thy Gospel chariot, which, alas! he mistakes for a wheel of antichrist's carriage; let me rejoice to be tied by him with the same easy bonds to the right wheel, which he, without reason, fears I am determined to stop. And when we are thus mutually bound to thy triumphant car, draw us with double swiftness to the happy regions where the good, as well as "the wicked, cease from troubling," and those who are "weary of contention are at rest." So shall we leave for ever behind the deep and noisy" waters of strife," in which so many bigots miserably perish; and the barren mountains of Gilboa, where hurried Saul falls upon the point of his own controversial sword, and lovely Jonathan himself receives a mortal wound.
You remember, honored sir, that I opened the Second Check to Antinomianism by demonstrating that in the day of judgment we shall be justified by works, that is, by the evidence of works. A person of your penetration could not but see, that if this legal proposition stood, your favourite doctrine of finished salvation, and Calvinian imputation of' righteousness to an impenitent adulterer, would lose their exorbitant influence. You design, therefore, to bend yourself, with Samson's might, upon this adamantine pillar of our "heretical" doctrine. Let us see whether your redoubled efforts have shaken it, or only shown that it stands as firm as the pillars of heaven.
You enter upon the arduous labour of deciding, in your first paragraph, that I deal in "sneer, banter, sarcasm, notorious falsehood, calumny, and gross perversions;" and to confirm this charge, you produce three anonymous letters, one of which deposes, that what I have written upon finished salvation "is enough to make every child of God shudder;" while another pronounces, that my "book is full of groundless; and false arguments;" and the third, that I am "infatuated," and have "advanced pernicious doctrines in bitter expressions." Your initial charge, supported by this three-fold authority, will probably pass for a demonstration with some of your readers; but as I consider it only as a faint imitation of Calvin's book, called Responsio ad calumnias Xebulonis, I hasten to what looks a little like an argument.
Page 4, you say, concerning justification by works, that is, by the evidence of works, in the last day, "I may safely affirm, that it has no existence in the word of God." So, honoured sir, the plainest and fullest passages of the sacred oracles are, it seems, to fly like chaff before your "safe affirmation;" for you have not supported it by one single text. Near twenty have I produced, which declare, with one consent, that we shall be judged, not according to our faith, but according to our works; and that the doers of the law, and they alone, shall be justified in the last day; but in your "full and particular answer to my book," you take a full and easy leap over most of these texts. Two, however, you touch upon; let us see if you have been able to press them into the service of your doctrine.
1. You find fault with our translation of Rev. xxii, 14: "Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life." You say, that the word which is rendered right properly signifies privilege. Granting it, for peace' sake, I ask, What do you get by this criticism-- Absolutely nothing: for the word privilege proves my point as well as the word right; unless you can demonstrate that it makes a material difference in the sense of the following similar sentence:"Blessed was the son of Aaron, whom Moses anointed high priest, that he might have the right, (or, that he might have the privilege,) of entering once a year into the holy of holies." If those different expressions convey the same idea, your objection is frivolous, and Rev. xxii, 14, even according to your own translation, still evidently confirms the words of our Lord and his favourite disciple: "If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. And this is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another."
2. The other text you touch upon is Matt. xii, 36, 37, "In the day of judgment, by thy WORDS shalt thou be justified." Page 10, you thus comment upon it: "Our Lord points out the danger of vain and idle words; and affirms, that as every tree is known by its fruit, so may the true state of the heart be known by the evil or good things which proceed out of the mouth; and having laid down this rule of judgment, he adds the words which you have so often cited in defence of' your doctrine, 'By thy words thou shalt be justified,' &c, that is, as words and works are the streams which flow from the spring of the heart, so by these it will appear whether that spring was ever [I would say, with more propriety, is now] purified by grace; or whether it still remains in its natural corrupt state; the actions of a man being the declarative evidences, both here and at the great day, whether or no he was [I would say, he is] among the trees of righteousness which the Lord hath planted. This is the plain, easy sense of this passage."
Is it, indeed, honored sir? Well then, I have the pleasure of informing you, that supposing you allow of my little alterations, we are exactly of the same sentiments; and I think that, upon second thoughts, you will not reject them; for it is evident, the actions of to-day show what a free agent is to-day, and not what he was yesterday, or he will be six months hence. By what argument will you prove, that because Lucifer was once a bright angel, and Adam a godlike creature, they continued such under all the horrors of their rebellion? Or that David's repentance after Nathan's expostulation, evidenced that he was a penitent before? In the last day the grand inquiry will not be, Whether Hymeneus, Philetus, and Demas, "were ever purified by grace;" but whether they were so at death. Because our last works will be admitted as the last, and consequently the most important and decisive evidences; for "as the tree falls, so it lies." Apostates, far from being justified for having been once "purified by grace," will be "counted worthy of a sorer punishment" for having "turned from the way of righteousness." Would not the world hiss a physician, who should publicly maintain, that by feeling people's pulse now, he can tell whether they were ever sick or well? Or that because one of his patients was alive ten years ago, he is alive now, though every symptom of death and corruption is actually upon him? And shall your hint, honored sir, persuade your readers that what would be an imposition upon common sense in a gentleman of the faculty, is genuine orthodoxy in Mr. Hill?
But I have too high an opinion of your good sense and piety, dear sir, to think that you will persist in your inaccuracy, merely for the pleasure of maintaining the ridiculous perseverance of Antinomian apostates, and contradicting the God of truth, who expressly mentions "the righteous turning from his righteousness, and dying in the sin that he has sinned." My hopes that you will give it up are the more sanguine, as it is rectified in the same page by two quotations which have the full stamp of your approbation.
"The judicious Dr. Guise," say you, "paraphrases thus on the place: 'Your words, as well as actions, shall be produced in evidence for or against you, to prove [not whether you ever were, but] whether you are a saint or a sinner, a true believer or not; and, according to their evidence, you shall be either publicly acquitted or condemned in the great day.'" And as it is absurd to suppose that Christ shall inquire whether men are believers in the day of judgment, because faith will then be lost in sight; Mr. Wesley, whom you quote next, as if he contradicted me, wisely corrects the little inaccuracy of the doctor, and says, "Your words, as well as actions, shall be produced in evidence for or against you, to prove [not whether you are, but] whether you was a true believer or not, and according to their evidence you will either be acquitted or condemned in the great day." The very doctrine this which I have advanced at large in the Second Check.
However, triumphing as if you had won the day, you conclude by saying, "In the mouth of these two witnesses may THE TRUTH be firmly established." To this pious wish, honoured sir, my soul breathes out a cordial 'amen!' I rejoice to see that God has given you candor to the acknowledgment of THE TRUTH; and as it is firmly established in the mouth of Dr. Guise and Mr. Wesley, may it be forever confirmed by this spontaneous testimony of Mr. Hill! But, in the name of brotherly love, if you thus hold THE TRUTH which I contend for; that is, justification by the evidence of works in the last day; why do you oppose me? Why do you represent my sentiment "as full of rottenness and deadly poison?" Till you solve this problem, permit me to vent my surprise by a sigh, and to say, Logica Genevensis!
Having seen how fully and particularly you have granted the fundamental doctrine of the book, to which you was to give "a full and particular answer," -namely, that our final justification will turn upon the evidence of works in the last day; I go back to page 4, where, to my utter astonishment, you affirm, "that as this doctrine has no existence in the word of God, so neither in any Protestant Church under heaven!" Thus, to unchurch Mr. Wesley and me, you unchurch Dr. Guise and yourself'!
To support your assertion you quote Bishop Cowper, Dr. Fulke, and Mr. Hervey, who agree to maintain, that "justification is one single act, and must therefore be done or undone." As neither you nor they have supported this proposition by one single argument, I shall just observe, that a thousand bishops and doctors are lighter than vanity, when weighed in the balance against the authority of Christ and his apostles.
However, if you forget your proofs, I shall produce mine; and by the following syllogism I demonstrate that justification in the day of our conversion, and justification in the last day, are no more "one single act," than the day of the sinner's conversion and that of judgment are one single day.
Two acts, which differ as to time, place, persons, witnesses, and circumstances, &c, cannot be "one single act;" (the one may be done when the other remains undone.) But our first justification at conversion thus differs from our second in the great day. Therefore our first and second* justification cannot be one single act, &c.
[ * I still call them first and second, not only to accommodate myself to the Rev. Mr. Shirley's expression in his Narrative, but because they may with propriety be thus distinguished, when considered with respect to each other.]
The second proposition, which alone is disputable, may be thus abundantly proved. Our first and second justification differ, (1.) With respect to time: the time of the one is the hour of conversion; and the time of the other the day of judgment. (2.) With respect to place: the place of the former is this earth; and the place of the latter the awful spot, in the new heaven or on the new earth, where the tribunal of Christ shall be erected. (3.) With respect to the witnesses: the witnesses of the former are the Spirit of God and our own conscience; or, to speak in Scripture language, "The Spirit bearing witness with our spirits that we are the children of God;" but the witnesses of the latter will be the countless myriads of men and angels assembled before Christ. (4.) With respect to the Justifier in the former justification "one God justifies the circumcision and the uncircumcision;" and in the latter, "one Mediator between God and man, even the man Christ Jesus," will pronounce the sentence: for, "the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment to the Son." (5.) With respect to the justified: in the day of conversion, a penitent sinner is justified; in the day of judgment, a persevering saint. (6.) With respect to the article upon which justification will turn: although the meritorious cause of both our justifications is the same, that is, the blood and righteousness of Christ, yet the instrumental cause is very different; by FAITH we obtain (not purchase) the first, and by WORKS the second. (7.) With respect to the act of the Justifier: at our conversion God covers and pardons our sins; but in the day of judgment Christ uncovers and approves our righteousness. And, (lastly,) with regard to the consequences of both: at the first justification we are enlisted by the Friend of sinners to "fight the good fight of faith" in the Church militant; and at the second we are admitted by the righteous Judge to "receive a crown of righteousness, and shine like the sun" in the Church triumphant.
Is it not strange that the enchanting power of Calvinian logic should have detained us so long in Babel, where things so vastly different are perpetually confounded? Is it not deplorable that when Mr. Wesley has the courage to call us out of mystic Geneva, so many tongues and pens should be sharpened against him? Shall foreign logic for ever prevail over English good sense, and Christian brotherly kindness'! Have we so "leaned toward Calvinism" as to be totally past recovery? And is the balance between St. Paul's and St. James' justification lost among pious Protestants for ever? O ye regenerate Britons, who have unhappily fallen in love with the Genevan Delilah, "awake! awake! put on strength," and leap out of the arms of that enchantress! If she rocks you asleep in her bosom, it is only to bind you fast with cords of Antinomian errors, and deliver you up to the horrors of Antinomian practices. Has she not already cut off the locks, and put out the eyes of thousands? And does not Samson publicly grind for the Philistine? Have we not seen Mr. Hill himself tell the world that "all sins work for good to the pleasant children," who go on frowardly from adultery to treachery, and from treachery to murder?
But you have an answer ready. Page 6, you insinuate that it is I who have erected a Babel, by denying that the two above-described justifications are one and the same. And, to prove it, you advance a dilemma which is already obviated in the Third Check, p. 161. We readily grant you, honoured sir, that, if a man dies the moment he is justified by faith, the inward labor of his love, (for living faith always works by love,) will justify him in the day of judgment. But you must also grant us, that if he lives, and "turns from his righteousness;" or which is the same, if his faith, instead of working by love and obedience, works by lust and malice, by adultery and murder, it is no longer a living faith; it is a dead faith, of which St. James says, "What does it profit, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can that faith save him? Faith, if it hath not works, is dead." You see, then, how that, in what you call "the intermediate state," as well as in the last day, "by works a man is justified, and not by faith only," James ii.
Page 6, you assert, that my "favorite scheme is rather overthrown than supported by the instance of the collier," on whose evidence I supposed myself acquitted in a court of judicature. "His testimony," say you, "proves indeed your innocence, but it does in no degree constitute that innocence." Are then, "to justify a man," and "to constitute him innocent," expressions of the same import? Nay, some believe that when God justifies returning prodigals at their conversion, he does not constitute them innocent, but for Christ's sake mercifully pardons their manifold sins, and graciously accepts their guilty persons; and that when Christ shall justify persevering saints in the last day, he will not constitute them innocent, but only declare, upon the evidence of their last works, that they are "pure in heart," and therefore qualified "to see God, and worthy to obtain that world, where the children of the resurrection are equal to angels."
To show that the instance of the grafted tree overthrows also the doctrine of a two-fold justification, you quote that great and good man, Mr. Hervey. But you forget that his bare assertion is no better than your own. I appeal from both your assertions to the common sense of any impartial man, whether there is not a material difference between declaring that a crab stock is properly grafted, and pronouncing that an apple tree is not cankered and barren, but sound and fruitful. Mr. Hervey's mistake appears to me so much the more surprising, as the distinction which he explodes is every where obvious.
Look into our orchards, and you will see some trees that were once properly grafted, but are now blasted, dead, rotten, and perhaps torn up by the roots. Consider our congregations, and you will cry out, as the pious divine* under whose ministry you sit at present, "O what sad instances does the present state of the Church afford us of persons, who set out with the most vehement zeal at the beginning, seemed to promise great things, and to carry all before them, who are now like the snuff of an extinguished taper, devoid of any apparent life! We swarm with slumbering virgins on the right hand and on the left. The Delilah of this world has shorn their locks, their former strength is gone, their frame is totally enervated, and the Philistines are upon them."
[ * The Rev. Mr. De Courcy, in his "Delineation of true and false Zeal," a little edifying tract, which does justice to St James' "pure religion," and shows, that some pious Calvinists clearly see the growth, and honestly check the progress of Antinomianism, so far as their principles will allow.]
But, above all, search the oracles of God, and there you will see various descriptions of apostates, that is, of men who, to the last, "tread under foot the Son of God, and account the blood of the covenant wherewith they were sanctified," and consequently justified, "a common, despicable thing." These, in a dying hour, have no right to say, "I have kept the faith;" for, alas! by "putting away a good conscience, concerning faith they have made shipwreck." These, like withered. branches" of the heavenly Vine, in which they once blossomed, shall be "taken away, cast forth, and burned," in the last day, together with the chaff, for not "bearing fruit, and ending in the flesh;" agreeable to that awful clause in the Gospel charter, "The works of the flesh are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, idolatry, hatred, variance, wrath, strife, envying, murder, drunkenness, revellings, and such like; of which I tell you, [justified believers,] as I have told you in time past, that they who DO such things SHALL NOT inherit the kingdom of heaven." Thus the numerous tribe of apostates, after having been "justified by FAITH" in the day of their conversion, shall be condemned by WORKS in the day of judgment. So real, so important is this distinction, which Mr. Hervey looks upon as needless, and you, sir, as "full of deadly poison!"
However, says Bishop Cowper, "This distinction confounds two benefits, justification and sanctification." To this assertion, which, according to a grand rule of your logic, is also to pass for proof, I answer, that our sanctification will no more be confounded with our justification in the last day, than our faith is confounded with our acceptance in the day of our conversion. When you shall demonstrate that the witnesses, upon whose testimony a criminal is absolved, are the same thing as the sentence of absolution pronounced by the judge, you will be able to make it appear, that sanctification is the same thing as justification in the last day; or, which is all one, that there is no difference between an instrumental cause and its proper effect. May both our hearts lie open to the bright beams of convincing truth! And may you believe that my pen expresses the feelings of my heart, when I subscribe myself, honoured and dear sir, your most obedient servant in Him who will justify us by our words, JOHN FLETCHER.
LETTER II.
To Richard Hill, Esq.
HONOURED AND DEAR Sir,-An assertion of yours seems to me of greater moment than the quotation from Bishop Cowper, which I answered in my last. You maintain, (p. 11,) "that the doctrine of a two-fold justification is not to be found in any part of the liturgy of our Church."
1. Not to mention again the latter part of St. Athanasius' creed; permit me, sir, to ask you, if on the thirteenth and fourteenth Sundays after Trinity you never considered what is implied in these and the like petitions? "Grant that we may so faithfully serve thee in this life, that we fail not finally to attain thy heavenly promises, through the merits of Jesus Christ. Make us to love that which thou dost command, that we may obtain that which thou dost promise." Again: on St. Peter's day, "Make all pastors diligently to preach thy holy word, and the people obediently to follow the same, that they may receive the crown of everlasting glory, through Jesus Christ." And on the third Sunday in Advent: "Grant that thy ministers may so prepare thy way, by turning the hearts of the disobedient, that at thy second coming to judge the world, we may be found an acceptable people in thy sight."
St. James' justification by works, consequent upon justification by faith, is described in the service for Ash Wednesday: "if from henceforth we walk in his ways: if we follow him in lowliness, patience, and charity, and be ordered by the governance of his Holy Spirit, seeking always his glory, and serving him duly with thanksgiving:"-Then comes the description of our final justification, which is but a solemn and public confirmation of St. James' justification by works.-" This if we do, Christ will deliver us from the curse of the law, and from the extreme malediction which shall light upon them that shall be set on the left hand; and he will set us on his right hand, and give us the gracious benediction of his Father, commanding us to take possession of his glorious kingdom."-Gommination.
I flatter myself, honored sir, that you will not set these quotations aside, by just saying what you do on another occasion: "As to the quotation you have brought from Mr. Henry in defence of this doctrine, for any good it does your cause, it might as well have been urged in defence of extreme unction." I hope you will not object that the WORDS, second justification by works, are not in our liturgy; for if the THING be evidently there, what can a candid inquirer after truth require more? Should you have recourse to such an argument, you will permit me to ask you, what you would say to those who assert, that the DOCTRINE of the Trinity is not found in the Scripture, because the WORD Trinity is not read there? And the same answers which you would give to such opponents, I now beforehand return to yourself.
II. As final justification by the evidence of works is clearly asserted in our liturgy, so it is indirectly maintained in our articles. You know, honored sir, that the eleventh treats of justification by faith at our conversion, and you yourself very justly observe, (p. 11,) "That our reformers seemed to have had an eye to the words of our Lord, 'The tree is known, [that is, is evidenced,] by its fruits,' when they drew up our twelfth article, which asserts, that a lively faith may be as evidently known by good works as a tree discerned by its fruit." This, honored sir, is the very basis of Mr. Wesley's "rotten" doctrine; the very foundation on which St. James builds "his pure and undefiled religion." This being granted, it necessarily follows, to the overthrow of your favorite scheme, that a living, justifying faith may degenerate into a dead, condemning faith, as surely as David's faith, once productive of the fruits of righteousness, degenerated into a faith productive of adultery and murder.
You are aware of the advantage that the twelfth article gives us over you; therefore, to obviate it. you insinuate, in your Five Letters, that David's faith, when he committed adultery, was the same as when he danced before the ark. It was justifying faith still, only "in a winter season." This argument, which will pass for a demonstration in Geneva, will appear an evasion in England, if our readers consider that it is founded merely upon the Calvinian custom of forcing rational comparisons to go upon all four like brutes, and then driving far beyond the intention of those by whom they were first produced. We know that a tree on the banks of the Severn may be good in winter though it bear no good fruit; because no trees bear among us any fruit, good or bad, in January. But this cannot be the case either of believers or unbelievers-they bear fruit all the year round-unless you can prove that like men in an apoplectic fit they neither think, speak, nor act "in a winter season." Again:
Believers who commit adultery and murder are not good trees, even in a negative sense, for they positively bear fruit of the most poisonous nature. How then can either their faith or their persons be evidenced a good tree, by such bad fruit, such detestable evidence? While you put your logic to the rack for an answer, I shall take the liberty to encounter you a moment with your own weapons, and making the degraded comparison of our twelfth article walk upon all four against you, I promise you, that if you can show me an apple tree which bears poisonous crabs in summer, much more one that bears them "in a winter season," I will turn Antinomian, and believe that an impenitent murderer has justifying faith, and is complete in Christ's righteousness.
III. Having thus, I hope, rescued our twelfth article from the violence which your scheme offers to its holy meaning, I presume to ask, Why do you not mention the homilies, when you say that the doctrine of a two-fold justification is not found in any part of the offices and liturgy of our Church? Is it because you never consulted them upon the subject of our controversy? To save you the trouble of turning them over, and to undeceive those who are frighted from the pure doctrine of their own Church by the late cries of Arminianism! Pelagianism! and Popery! I shall present you with the following extract from our homilies, which will show you they are not less opposite to Antinomianism than our liturgy and articles:
"The first coming unto God is through faith, whereby we are justified before God. And lest any man should be deceived, it is diligently to be noted, that there is one faith, which in Scripture is called a dead faith, which bringeth forth no good works, but is idle, barren, and unfruitful. And this faith, by the holy Apostle St. James, is compared to the faith of devils. And such faith have the wicked, naughty Christian people, who, as St. Paul saith, 'confess God with their mouth,' but deny him in their deeds. Forasmuch as 'faith without works is dead,' it is not now faith, as a dead man is not a man. The true, lively Christian faith liveth and stirreth inwardly in the heart. It is not without the love of God and our neighbour, nor without the desire to hear God's word and follow the same, in eschewing evil, and doing gladly all good works. Of this faith, this is first to be noted, that it does not lie dead in the heart, but is lively and fruitful in bringing forth good works. As the light cannot be hid, so a true faith cannot be kept secret, but shows itself by good works. And as the living body of a man ever exerciseth such things as belong to a living body, so the soul that has a lively faith in it will be doing always some good work which shall declare that it is living. For he is like a tree set by the water side, his leaf will be green, and he will not cease to bring forth his fruit." (Hom. of Faith, first part.) Here is no Antinomian salve; no "winter state" allowed of, to bring forth the dire fruits of adultery and murder.
"There is one WORK in which are all good works, that is, 'faith which WORKETH by charity.' If you have it, you have the ground of all good works; for wisdom, temperance, and justice, are all referred unto this faith: without it we have not virtues, but only their names and shadows. Many have no fruit of their works, because faith, the chief work, lacketh. Our faith in Christ must go before, and after be nourished by good works. The thief did believe only, and the most merciful God justified him. If he had lived and not regarded the WORKS of faith, [N. B.] he should have lost his salvation again." (Hom. on Good Works, first part.)
"The third thing to he declared unto you is, what manner of works they are which spring out of true faith, and lead faithful men to everlasting life. This cannot be known so well as by our Savior himself, who, being asked of a certain great man this question, 'What works shall I do to come to everlasting life?' answered him, 'If thou wilt come to everlasting life, keep the commandments: Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery,' &c. By which words Christ declared, that the laws of God are the very way which leads to everlasting life. So that this is to be taken for a most true lesson, taught by Christ's own mouth, that the works of the moral commandments of God are the very true works of faith, which lead to the blessed life to come. But the blindness and malice of men hath ever been ready to fall from God and his law, and to invent a new way to salvation by works of their own device. Therefore Christ said, 'You leave the commandments of God to keep your own traditions.' You must have an assured faith in God, love him, and dread to offend him evermore. Then, for his sake, love ALL MEN, friends and foes, because they are his creation and image, and redeemed by Christ as ye are. Kill not; commit no manner of adultery in will nor deed, &c. Thus, in keeping the commandments of God (wherein standeth his pure honour, and which wrought in faith, he hath ordained to be the right trade and pathway to heaven) you shall not fail to come to everlasting life." (Hom. on Good Works, third part.)
"Whereas God hath showed, to all that truly believe his Gospel, his face of mercy in Jesus Christ, which does so enlighten their hearts, that if they behold it as they ought they are transformed to his image, and made partakers of the heavenly light and of his Holy Spirit; so, if they after do neglect the same, and order not their life according to his example and doctrine, he will take away from them his kingdom, because they bring not forth the fruit thereof. And if this will not serve, but still we remain disobedient, behaving ourselves uncharitably, by disdain, envy, malice, or by committing murder, adultery, or such detestable works; then he threateneth us by terrible comminations, swearing in great anger, that whosoever does these works shall never enter into his rest, which is the kingdom of heaven." (Hom. of Falling from God, first part.)
"We do call for mercy in vain, if we will not show mercy to our neighbour. For if we do not put wrath and displeasure forth out of our hearts to our brother, no more will God forgive the wrath that our sins have deserved before him. For under this condition doth God forgive us, if we forgive others. God commands us to forgive if we will have any part of the pardon which Christ purchased by shedding his precious blood. Let us then be favourable one to another, &c. By these means shall we move God to be merciful to our sins. He that hateth his brother* is the child of damnation and of the devil, cursed and hated of God so long as he so remaineth. For as peace and charity make us the blessed children of God, so do hatred and malice make us the cursed children of the devil." (Hom. for Good Friday.)
[ * Did not David once hate Uriah as much as Jezebel did Naboth? Was not innocent blood shed in both cases by means of sanguinary letters? Is it to the honour of David that he outdid Jezebel in kindly desiring Uriah to carry his own death warrant to Joab?]
The Homily on [ ] brings to my mind what you say, p. 35, upon that head. If I am not mistaken, you quote Mr. Hervey in support** of finery, which surprises me so much the more, as the plainness of your dress is a practical answer to what can be advanced in support of that branch of Antinomianism. Permit me, however, to guard your ornamented quotation in the plain, nervous language of our Church. After mentioning "the round attires of the head," exposed by Isaiah, she says: "No less truly is the vanity used among us. For the proud and haughty stomachs of the daughters of England are so maintained with divers disguised sorts of costly apparel, that as Tertullian saith, there is left no difference of apparel between an honest matron and a common strumpet! Yea, many care not what they spend in disguising themselves, ever desiring new toys and inventing new fashions. Therefore we must needs look for God's fearful vengeance from heaven, to overthrow our pride, as he overthrew Herod, who, in his royal apparel, forgetting God, was smitten of an angel, and eaten up with worms.
[ I do blame, in the Second Check, only such professors of godliness as "wear gold, pearls, and precious stones, when no distinction of office or state obliges them to do it." As you find fault with this guarded doctrine, and insinuate that I "dwindle the noble ideas of St. Paul into a meanness of sense befitting the superstitious and contracted spirit of a hermit;" it necessarily follows that you plead for finery, or that you oppose me for opposition's sake, when you exactly mean the same thing with me.]
"But some vain women will object, 'All which we do, in decking ourselves with gay apparel, is to please our husbands.' O most shameful answer to the reproach of thy husband! What couldest thou say more to set out his foolishness, than to charge him to be pleased with the devil's attire? Nay, nay, this is but a vain excuse of such as go about to please [themselves and] others, rather than their husbands. She does but deserve scorn to set out all her commendation in Jewish and heathenish apparel, and yet brag of her Christianity; and sometimes she is the cause of much deceit in her husband's dealings, that she may be the more gorgeously set out to the sight of the vain world. O thou woman, not a Christian, but worse than a Pagan, thou settest out thy pride, and makest of thy indecent apparel the devil's net to catch souls. Howsoever thou perfumest thyself, yet cannot thy beastliness be hidden. The more thou garnishest thyself with these outward blazings, the less thou carest for the inward garnishing of thy mind. Hear, hear, what Christ's holy apostles do write." Then follow those passages of St. Peter and St. Paul, which you suppose "I do not rightly understand."
To convince you, however, that our Church has as much of "the superstitious and contracted spirit of a hermit" as myself, I shall plead a moment more against finery in her own words: "The wife of a heathen being asked why she wore no gold? she answered, That she thought her husband's virtues sufficient ornaments. How much more ought every Christian to think himself sufficiently garnished with our Saviour Christ's heavenly virtues! But perhaps some will answer that they must do something to show their birth and blood: as though these things, [jewels and finery] were not common to those who are most vile: as though thy husband's riches could not be better bestowed than in such superfluities: as though, when thou wast christened, thou didst not renounce the pride of this world and the pomp of the flesh. If thou sayest that the custom is to be followed, I ask of thee, Whose custom should be followed? Of the wise, or of fools? If thou sayest, Of the wise; then I say, Follow them; for fools' customs, who should follow but fools? If any lewd custom be used, be thou the first to break it; labour to diminish it, and lay it down, and thou shalt have more praise before God by it, than by all the glory of such superfluity. I speak not against convenient apparel, for every state agreeable; but against the superfluity whereby thou and thy husband are compelled to rob the poor, to maintain thy costliness. Hear how holy Queen Esther setteth out these goodly ornaments, as they are called, when, in order to save God's people, she put them on: 'Thou knowest, O Lord, the necessity which I am driven to, to put on this apparel, and that I abhor this sign of pride, and that I defy it as a filthy cloth.'" (Hom. against Excess of apparel.)
So far is our Church from siding with Antinomian Solifidianism, which perpetually decries good works, that she rather leans to the other extreme. "If Popery is about half way between Protestantism and the Minutes," you will hardly think that the mass itself is a quarter of the way between Dr. Crisp's scheme and the following propositions, extracted from the Homily on First Deeds.
"Most true is that saying of St. Augustine, Via coeli pauper cr1, 'relieving of the poor is the right way to heaven.' Christ promiseth a reward to those who give but a cup of cold water in his name to them that have need of it; and that reward is the kingdom of heaven. No doubt, therefore, God regardeth highly that which he rewardeth so liberally. He that hath been liberal to the poor, let him know that his godly doings are accepted, and thankfully taken at God's hands, which he will requite with double and treble; for so says the wise man: 'He who showeth mercy to the poor doth lay his money in the bank to the Lord' for a large interest and gain; the gain being chiefly the possession of the life everlasting, through the merits of Christ."
When our Church has given us this strong dose of legality, that she may by a desperate remedy remove a desperate disease, and kill or cure the Antinomian spirit in all her children; lest the violent medicine should hurt us, she, like a prudent mother, instantly administers the following balsamic corrective:
"Some will say, If charitable works are able to reconcile us to God, and deliver us from damnation, then are Christ's merits defaced; then are ice justified by works, and by our deeds may we merit heaven. But understand, dearly beloved, that no godly men, when they, in extolling the dignity, profit, and effect of virtuous and liberal alms, do say that it bringeth us to the favour of God, do mean that our work is the original cause of our acceptance before God, &c. For that were indeed to deface Christ, and to defraud him of his glory. But they mean, that the Spirit of God mightily working in them, who seemed before children of wrath, they declare by their outward deeds that they are the undoubted children of God. By their tender pity, (wherein they show themselves to be like unto God,) they declare openly and manifestly unto the sight of all men that they are the sons of God. For as the good fruit does argue the goodness of the tree, so doth the good deed of a man prove the goodness of him that dote it."
In justice to our holy Church, whom some represent as a patroness of Antinomianism; in brotherly love to you, honoured sir, who seem to judge of her doctrines by a few expressions which custom made her use after St. Augustine; in tender compassion try many of her members, who are strangers to her true sentiments; and in common humanity to Mr. Wesley, who is perpetually accused of erecting Popery upon her ruins; I have presented you with this extract from our homilies. If you lay by the veil of prejudice, which keeps the light from your honest heart, I humbly hope it will convince you that our Church nobly contends for St. James' evangelical legality; that she pleads for the rewardableness (which is all we understand by the merit) of works, in far stronger terms than Mr. Wesley does in the Minutes; and that in perpetually making our justification, merited by Christ, turn upon the instrumentality of a lively faith, and the evidence of good works, as there is opportunity to do them, she tears up Calvinism and Antinomian delusions by the very roots.
Leaving you to consider how you shall bring about a reconciliation between your fourth letter and our godly homilies, I shall just take the liberty to remind you, that when you entered, or took your degrees at Oxford, you subscribed to the thirty-nine articles; the thirty-fifth of which declares, that "the homilies contain a godly and wholesome doctrine, necessary for these" Papistical and Antinomian "times."
That keeping clear from both extremes, we may evidence the godliness of that doctrine by the soundness of our publications, and the exemplariness of our conduct, is the cordial prayer of, honoured and dear sir, your obedient servant in the liturgy, articles, and homilies of the Church of England,
J. FLETCHER.
LETTER III.
To Richard Hill, Esq.
HONOURED AND DEAR Sir,-In my last I endeavoured to show you, that our Church, far from warping to CRISPIANITY, strongly enforces St. James' undefiled religion: let us now see what modern divines, especially the Puritan, thought about the important subject of our controversy.
Page 13, you oppose the doctrine which you have, (p. 11,) so heartily wished to be firmly established in the mouth of two witnesses:" If Mr. Whitefield had been now living," say you, "I doubt not but he would have told you, that if need should be, he was ready to offer himself among the foremost of those true Protestants, who, you tell us, could have burned against the doctrine of a second justification by works. And as to the Puritan divines, there is not one of the many hundreds of them but what abhorred the doctrine of a second justification by works, as full of rottenness and deadly poison. Surely then it is not without justice that I accuse you of the grossest perversions and misrepresentations, that perhaps ever proceeded from any author's pen. The ashes of that laborious man of God, Mr. Whitefield, you have raked up, in order to bring him as a coadjutor to support your tottering doctrine of a second justification by works." And again, (91, 92,) "I am not afraid to challenge Mr. Fletcher to fix upon one Protestant minister, either Puritan or of the Church of England, from the beginning of the reformation to the reign of Charles the Second, who held the doctrines he has been contending for." "Sure I am, that you have grieved many a pious heart among our dissenting brethren, by fathering upon their venerable ancestors such a spurious offspring, as can only trace its descent from the loins of 'the man of sin,' by which it was begotten out of the mother of abominations, the 'scarlet Babylonish whore, which sitteth upon many waters.'"
Your charges and challenge, honoured sir, deserve an answer, not because they fix the blot of the grossest perversions upon my insignificant character, but because they represent the holy Apostle James, whose doctrine I vindicate, as "the man of sin," begetting his undefiled religion "out of the Babylonish whore." I begin with what you say about Mr. Whitefield:
I never thought he was clear in the doctrine of our Lord, "In the day of judgment by thy words shalt thou be justified;" for if he had seen it in its proper light, he would instantly have renounced Calvinism. All I have asserted is, that the most eminent ministers, Mr. Whitefield himself not excepted, perpetually allude to that doctrine, when their enlarged hearts, (under a full gale of God's free Spirit,) get clear of the shallows of bigotry, or the narrow channels of their favourite systems: for then, sailing in deep water, and regardless of the rocks of offence, they cut their easy way through the raging billows of opposition, and speak ALL the truth as it is in Jesus; or at least "allude" (this was my expression, see Second Check, p. 73,) to what, at another time, they would perhaps oppose with all their might.
And do you not, honoured sir, allow that Mr. Whitefield did this in the application of his sermons with regard to my doctrine, when you say, (p. 15,) "All that can be gathered from his expressions is, that he believed there would be a great and awful day, in which all who sit under the sound of the Gospel shall be called to give a solemn account of what they hear, and every minister as solemn an account of the doctrine delivered by him?" To convince you that you grant me all I contended for, permit me to ask, whether this solemn account will be in order to -a mock trial, or to the solemn justification or condemnation mentioned by our Lord, Matt. xii, 37? If you affirm the former, you traduce heavenly Wisdom, you blaspheme Jesus Christ: if the latter, you give up the point; our hearing and speaking, that is, our works, will turn evidence for or against us in the day of judgment; and, according to their deposition, the scale of absolution and condemnation will turn for heaven or hell.
Let, therefore, the public judge who wrongs Mr. Whitefield;-I, who represent him as speaking agreeably to the plain words of his heavenly Master, Matt. xii, 37;-or you, dear sir, who make him advance as a zealot, at the head of a body of prejudiced men, to burn against as explicit and important a declaration as ever dropped from the Redeemer's lips. I say important; because the moment you strike at our justification by works in the last day, you strike at the doctrine of a day of judgment; and the moment that fundamental doctrine is overthrown, natural and revealed religion sink in a heap of common ruins.
Pass we on now to the other reason for which you "accuse me of the grossest misrepresentations and perversions that perhaps ever proceeded from any author's pen." I have affirmed, (Second Check, p. 73.) that "all the sober Puritan divines have directly or indirectly* asserted a second justification by works;" and you tell us, (p. 13,) "There is not one of them but what abhorred it, as full of rottenness and deadly poison." One of us is undoubtedly mistaken; for our propositions are diametrically opposite. Let us see who is the man.
[ * These were my limited expressions.]
To dispute about words is unbecoming men of reason and religion; and that we may not be guilty of this common absurdity, and oppose one another, when perhaps we meant the same thing, permit me to state the question as clearly as I possibly can. Not considering the meritorious, but the instrumental cause of our justification, I ask, In the day of judgment, shall we be justified or condemned by the works which Christ did in the days of his flesh? Or, in other terms, Shall we be justified by the righteousness of Christ imputed to us, as Calvin supposes it was imputed to David in Uriah's bed? or by the righteousness of Christ implanted in us, as it was implanted in David when "his eyes ran down with water because men kept not God's law?" Or, if you please, Shall we be justified by Christ's loving God and man for us? or by our loving God and man ourselves? The former of these sentiments is that of Dr. Crisp and all his admirers. That the latter was the sentiment of Dr. Owen, and all the sober Puritan divines, when they regarded Christ more than Calvin, I prove thus:
Dr. Owen, (the pious and learned champion of the Calvinists in the last century, whom you quote, p. 93,) speaking, in his Treatise on Justification, p. 222, of one justified at his conversion, says, "That God does indispensably require of him personal obedience, which may be called his evangelical righteousness. That this righteousness is pleadable unto an acquitment against any charge from Satan, the world, or our own consciences. That upon it we shall be declared righteous in the last day; and, without it, none shall. And if any shall think meet from hence to conclude unto an evangelical justification, or call God's acceptance of our righteousness by that name, I shall by no means contend with them.** Whenever this inquiry is made, How a man that professeth evangelical faith in Christ shall be tried and judged; and whereon, as such, he shall be justified? we grant that it is, and must be, by his own personal obedience."
[* I have shown in the Vindication how David and Ezekiel pleaded this righteousness before God. Another instance of this plea I lately found in Nehemiah. That man of God, after describing his royal hospitality, and tender regard for the poor, says, "Think upon me, my God, for good, according to all that I have done for this people," Neh. v, 19.
** Who indeed would contend with them, but such as are not afraid of flying in the face of St. Paul and Jesus Christ? See Rom. ii, 18, and Matt. xii, 37.]
This important quotation is produced by D. Williams, in his Gospel Truth vindicated against Dr. Crisp's Opinions, p. 149. It is introduced to confirm the following Gospel truth: "The Lord Jesus has of grace, for his own merits, promised to bring to heaven such as are partakers of true holiness, and do good works perseveringly. And he appoints these, as the way and means of a believer's obtaining salvation, requiring them as indispensable duties and qualifications, of all such whom he will save and bless; and excluding all that want and neglect them, or live under the power of what is contrary thereto." Here is evidently the pure doctrine of the Minutes, and the "undefiled religion" of St. James.
The same judicious author, in his preface, speaks thus upon the subject of our controversy: "The revival of these [Dr. Crisp's] errors must pot only exclude that ministry as legal which is most apt to secure the practical power of religion, but also render unity among Christians impossible. - Mutual censures are unavoidable; while one side [the sober Puritans] press the terms of the Gospel, under its promises and threats, for which they are accused as enemies to Christ and grace; and the other side [the followers of Dr. Crisp] ignorantly set up the name of Christ and free grace against the government of Christ and the rule of judgment.
"I believe many abettors of these mistakes are honestly zealous for the honour of free grace, but have not light to see how God has provided for this. By this pretence Antinomianism corrupted Germany: it bid fair to overthrow Church and state in New-England; and by its stroke at the vitals of religion it alarmed most of the pulpits in England. Many of our ablest pens were engaged against these errors as Mr. Gataker, Mr. Rutherford, Anthony Burgess, the provincial Synod at Londonwith very many others, whose labours God was pleased to bless to the stopping the attempts of Dr. Crisp, by name opposed by the aforesaid divines, Saltmarsh, Eaton, &c.
"To the grief of such as perceive the tendency of these principles, we are engaged in a new opposition, or must betray the truth as it is in Jesus. I believe many abettors of these notions have grace to preserve their minds and practices from their influence: but they ought to consider that the generality of mankind have no such antidote; and themselves need not fortify their own temptations, nor lose the defence which the wisdom of God has provided against remissness in duty, and sinful backslidings.
"In the present testimony of the truth of the Gospel I have studied plainness. To the best of my knowledge I have in nothing misrepresented Dr. Crisp's opinions, nor mistaken his sense: for most of them he oft studiously pleads of each I could multiply proofs, and all of them are necessary for his scheme, although not consistent with all his other occasional expressions." I have carefully avoided any reflection on Dr. Crisp, whom I believe to be a holy man.
The whole work of D. Williams, and consequently the preceding quotations, have the remarkable sanction of the following certificate:
"We, whose names are subscribed, do judge that our Rev. brother has, in all that is material, fully and rightly stated the truths and errors, mentioned as such, in the following treatise: and do account he has, in this work, done considerable service to the Church of Christ; adding our prayers, that these labours of his may be a mean for reclaiming those who have been misled into such dangerous opinions; and for establishing those that waver in any of these truths." Signed by near fifty Puritan ministers, the first of whom is William Bates, and the last Edmund Calamy, two of the greatest preachers in the last century.
The following Appendix closes the certificate. "I have by me near as many worthy names, such as Mr. Woodhouse, Mr. Hallet, Mr. Boys, &c, who have approved of this work. But I think this number sufficient to convince the world that the Presbyterian ministers, at least, espouse not the Antinomian dotages. Yea, I am credibly informed, that the most learned country ministers, of the Congregational persuasion, disallow the errors here opposed, and are amazed at such of their brethren in London as are displeased with this book."
Now, dear sir, you must either prove that what Dr. Owen, D. Williams, and such a cloud of Puritan divines consent to all an evangelical justification in the last day, by our own personal obedience, is not a justification; or, you must confess that you have given the world a true specimen of Geneva logic, when you have declared that "there is not one Puritan divine but what abhorred the doctrine of such a justification as full of rottenness and deadly poison." And you must do me the justice to acknowledge you did not give yourself time to weigh your words in the balance of brotherly kindness, when you accused me of "calumny and the grossest perversions, that perhaps ever proceeded from any author's pen," for asserting what I thought my quotations from Mr. Henry sufficiently proved, and what your groundless charge has obliged me fully to demonstrate. And now, permit me to apologize for the severity of your conduct toward me, by reminding my reader that your great Diana was in danger, and that on such a trying occasion, even a good man may be put into a hurry, and act, before he is aware, inconsistently with the Christian virtues which blazon his character.
D. Williams' Gospel Truth Vindicated might be confirmed by numberless quotations from Puritan authors, who directly or indirectly assert a second justification by works. Take one instance out of a thousand:Anthony Burgess, fellow of Emmanuel college in Cambridge, (I think one of the ejected ministers,) speaking in his twelfth sermon of obedience as a sign of grace, concludes his discourse by this truly anti-Crispian paragraph:
"Art thou universal in thy obedience? Then thou mayest take comfort. Otherwise, know if thou hast not respect to all the ways and duties required by God, thou wilt be confounded. Though with Ahab and Herod thou do many things, yet if not all things, confusion will be upon thee. O then how few are there who may claim a right to grace!* Many men have an external obedience only, and no internal; but most have a partial, and not entire, complete obedience; therefore it is that 'many are called, but few chosen.' Consider that terrible expression of St. James ii, 10, 11, where the apostle informs believers that if they are guilty but of that one sin, 'accepting of persons,' they are the transgressors of the law in general, which he farther urgeth by this assertion, 'He that keepeth all, and offendeth in one, is guilty of all;' not with the guilt of every particular sin, but in respect of the authority of the Lawgiver, according to that, 'Cursed is every one that continueth not in every thing commanded by the law.' Seeing, therefore, God in regeneration does write his law in our hearts, which does seminally contain the exercise of all holy actions, so that there cannot be an instance of any godly duty of which God does not infuse a principle in us: and seeing glorification will be universal of soul and body, in all parts and faculties, how necessary is it that sanctification should be universal! Take heed therefore that the works of grace in thee be not abortive or monstrous, wanting essential and necessary parts. Let not thy ship be drowned by any one leak."
[ * Some of the Puritans understood by grace a state of justification and sanctification.]
From this alarming quotation it appears holy Calvinist ministers saw, a hundred years ago, that if believers did not secure St. James' justification by universal obedience, the works of grace in them would prove abortive, their hopes would perish, their ship would sink, though by one leak only; and consequently they would be condemned as Hymeneus and Philetus in the day of judgment. And let none complain of the legality of this doctrine; for our Lord himself fully preached it, when he said, "Except a man forsake all, he cannot be my disciple."
Take another instance of a later date. The Rev. Mr. Haweis, that has distinguished himself among the zealous ministers of our Church who have espoused Calvin's sentiments, speaks thus to the point, in his comment on Matt. xii, 37: "Not an idle word passes without the Divine notice, but we must answer for it at the day of judgment. With what circumspection then should we keep the door of our lips, when our eternal state is to be determined thereby, and our words must all be produced at the bar of God as evidences of our justification or condemnation, and sentence proceed accordingly!" If this is not maintaining, at least indirectly, justification by works in the day of judgment, my reason fails, and I can no more understand how two and two make four.
The Rev. Mr. Madan himself, if I am not mistaken, grants what I contend for, in the very title of the sermon quoted in my motto, Justification by WORKS reconciled with Justification by FAITH, &c, but much more in the following passages, which I extract from it
"In every person that is justified, three particulars concur, (1.) The meritorious cause of our justification, which is Christ. (2.) The instrumental cause, which is faith. And then the justification in the text. [Ye see how by works a man is justified, and not by faith only,] which is to be understood in a declarative senseno person being justified in Paul's sense, that is not also in the sense of our text," that is, in the sense of St. James.
The truth contained in this last sentence is the rampart of practical Christianity, and the ground of the Minutes. If Mr. Madan considers what his proposition necessarily implies, I am persuaded he will not only side with Mr. Wesley against the Benedictine monk, but also give up Calvinism, with which his assertion is no more reconcilable, than it is with what you, sir, call "a winter (and I beg leave to name an Antinomian) state," in which we are supposed to be justified in Paul's sense, while we fly in the face of St. James by the commission of adultery and murder.
The same eminent minister asks, in the same discourse, "What does it profit though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? Can faith save him? [Can faith save David in Uriah's bed? Can it save Solomon worshipping Ashtaroth, perhaps with his seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines?] that is, such a faith as has not works, as is not productive of the fruit of the Spirit in the heart and life? Is this saving faith? Certainly not; for such a faith wants the evidence of its being true and real, and nothing but true faith can save. If my faith does not produce the proper fruits, it is no better than the devil's faith. We have no Scripture testimony of our being any other than the devil's children, unless we evidence the truth of our faith by showing forth the genuine fruits and works of faith. All this the apostle confirms, v, 20, 26; 'Faith without works is dead. As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also.'"
This excellent passage is the demolition of Calvinism, and the very doctrine of the Minutes, if you except the article about the word merit, which I do not read in our pious author's sermon. However, p. 12, I find the word deserve in the following important question:" How can we, not only escape the penalty threatened, but deserve the rewards promised under the law?" And as I do not understand "splitting a hair," I think that the two expressions, MERITING and DESERVING, when duly considered, are NOT as wide as east is from west: and I fear, that if Mr. Wesley is a heretic for using the former at a conference among friends, the Rev. Mr. Madan is not quite orthodox, for using the latter in St. Vedast's church before friends and enemies. But as this question may turn upon some nicety of the English language, which, as a foreigner, I have not yet observed, I drop it, to obviate an objection.
You will perhaps say, honoured sir, that all the above-mentioned authors, being sound Calvinists, hold your election, and that you could produce passages out of their writings absolutely irreconcilable with the preceding quotations. To this I reply, that a volume of such passages, instead of invalidating the doctrine which I maintain, would only prove, that the peculiarities of Calvin are absolutely irreconcilable with St. James' undefiled religion; and that even the most judicious Calvinists cannot make their scheme hang tolerably together.
I hope, honoured sir, the preceding pages will convince my readers that you have spoken unwarily, when you have asserted, "that there is not one of the many hundred Puritan divines, but what abhorred my doctrine as full of rottenness;" and that the author of Goliah Slain has been rather too forward in challenging me "to fix upon one Protestant minister, either Puritan, or of the Church of England, who, to the reign of Charles the Second, held the doctrine I have been contending for."
Your challenge, dear sir, provokes me to imitation; and I conclude this letter by challenging you, in my turn, to fix upon a man who will expose your mistakes more bluntly, and yet esteem and love you more cordially, than, honoured and dear sir, your most obedient servant, in St. James' pure religion. J. FLETCHER.
LETTER IV.
To Richard Hill, Esq.
HONOURED AND DEAR SIR,-Before I take my leave of the Puritan writers, you will permit me to make some observations upon the fault you find with my quoting one of them. Page 94, you introduce a judicious, worthy, reverend friend, charging me with having "most notoriously perverted the quotation" which I produced out of Flavel, (Vindication, p. 33,) and you stamp with your approbation his exclamation on the subject, "Could you have expected such disingenuity from Madeley?"
Now, dear sir, full of disingenuity as you suppose me to be, I can yet act with frankness. And to convince you of it I publicly stand to my quotation, and charge your worthy friend withwhat shall I call it?a gross mistake. My quotation I had from that judicious Puritan divine, D. Williams, who, far from notoriously perverting the sense of the ministers that drew up Flavel's preface, has weakened it by leaving out some excellent anti-Crispian sentences. Permit me to punish your friend for his hasty charge, by laying the whole passage before my readers; reminding them, that only the sentences enclosed in crotchets, [ ] are quoted in the Vindication.
A body of seven eminent divines, all friends, it seems, to Dr. Crisp, but enemies to his Antinomian dotages, charitably endeavour to apologize for him, at the same time that they recommend Flavel's treatise on Mental Errors in general, and on Antinomianism in particular, where Dr. Crisp is opposed by name. Having mentioned two similar propositions of his, viz. "Salvation is not the end of any thing we do." and, "We are to act from life, and not for life," they bear this full testimony against the absurdity which they captain: "[It were in effect to abandon human nature,] and to sin against a very fundamental law of our creation, not to intend our own felicity; it were to make our first and most deeply fundamental duty, in one great, essential branch of it, our sin; viz. To take the Lord for our God: for to take him for our God most essentially includes our taking him for our Supreme Good, which we all know is included in the notion of the last end. It were to make it unlawful to strive against all sin, and particularly against sinful aversion from God, wherein lies the very death of the soul, or the sum of its misery; or to strive after perfect conformity to God in holiness, and the full fruition of him, wherein the soul's final blessedness does principally consist.
"[It were to teach us to violate the great precepts of the Gospel:]
"Repent, that your sins may be blotted out: strive to enter in at the strait gate: work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." To obliterate the patterns and precedents set before us in the Gospel:
"We have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justifiedI keep under my body lest I should be a castawaythat thou mayest save thyself, and them that hear thee."
"[It were to suppose us bound to do more for the salvation of others than our own] salvation. We are required to save others with fear, plucking them out of the fire. Nay, we were not (by this rule strictly understood) so much as to pray for our own salvation, which is a doing somewhat; when, no doubt, we are to pray for the success of the Gospel, to this purpose, on behalf of other men.
[It were to make all the threatenings of eternal death, and promises of eternal life, we find in the Gospel of our blessed Lord, useless, as motives to shun the one and obtain the other:] for they can be motives no way, but as the escaping of the former, and the attainment of the other, have with us the place and consideration of an end.
"[It makes what is mentioned in the Scripture as the character and commendation of the most eminent saints, a fault,] as of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; that 'they sought the better and heavenly country;' and plainly declared that they did so, which necessarily implies their making it their end."
Now, honoured sir, it lies upon you to prove, that because Mr. Williams and I have not produced all that makes against you, we are guilty of a "most notorious perversion" of the quotation. If you affirm that the perversion I am charged with, consists in saying, that the divines who wrote Flavel's preface were shocked at Dr. Crisp's doctrine, when they nevertheless apologize for his person; I reply, that their apology confirms my assertion, even more than their arguments; for they say, "It is likely the doctor meant, [just what Mr. Wesley does,] that we shall not work FOR life ONLY, without aiming at working FROM life ALSO. For it is not tolerable charity to suppose that one would deliberately say, that salvation is not the end of any good work we do, or that we are not to work for life in the rigid sense of the words." And they profess their hopes, that, "upon consideration, he would presently unsay it, [namely, the absurd proposition, We are not to work FOR life,] being calmly reasoned with."
[ * Want of argument in a bad cause, which people will defend "at all events," (if I may use the words which Mr. Hill too hastily lends me in his book, but justly claims as his own in the "errata,") obliges them to fly to personal charges. Zelus arma ministrat. Their Diana is in danger. They must raise dust, and make a noise, to divert the attention of the reader from the point. Who knows but she may escape in the hurry? At the end of the above-mentioned quotation I had added three lines, to throw some light upon the last clause, which D. Williams had cut off too short. As I did not enclose them in commas, it never entered into my mind that any body would charge me with presenting them as a quotation, nor do they in the least "misrepresent," much less "pervert" the sense of the author. Upon this, however, my opponent brings me to a trial. But if, at p. 97, he lets me escape, without condemning me point-blank for "forging quotations," he is not so mild, p.27. I have observed in the Second Check, p.97, that Mr. Wesley in his Minutes guards the foundation of the Gospel by the two clauses, where he mentions the exclusion of the "merit of works" in point of salvation, and "believing in Christ." The two clauses I present in one point of view, in the very words of the Minutes, although not in the tense of the verb "believing," thus: "Not by the merit of works," but by "believing in Christ." My opponent is pleased here to overlook the commas, which show, that I produce two different places of the Minutes; and then he improves his own, oversight thus: "Forgeries of this kind have long passed for no crime with Mr. Wesley. I did not think you would have followed him in these ungenerous artifices, which must unavoidably sink the writer in our esteem. But I am sorry to say, sir, that this is not the only stratagem of this sort which you have made use of. Instance your bringing in Mr. Whitefield as a maintainer of a second justification by works," &c, &c. The bare mention of such groundless accusations being a sufficient refutation of them, I shall close this note by observing, that the pure religion which I vindicate is too well grounded on Scripture to need the support, either of the pretended forgeries which my opponent contrives for me, or of the blackening charges which he is forced to produce for want of better arguments.
In almost any other but my pious opponent, I should think that this severity proceeded from palpable disingenuity; but my respect for him does not permit me to entertain such a thought. I urge for his excuse the inconceivable strength of prejudice, and the fatal tendency of his favourite system. Yes, O Calvinism, upon thee I charge the mistakes of my worthy antagonist. If at any time his benevolent temper is soured, thy leaven has done it. It is by thy powerful influence that he discovers "a forgery," where there is not so much as the printer's omission of a comma to countenance his discovery. It is through the mists which thou raisest that he sees in the works of one of our most correct authors, nothing but "a regular series of inconsistencies, a wheel of contradiction running round and round again." Thou lendest him thy deceitful glass, when he looks at my Second Check, and cries out, "Base and shocking slander! Acrimonious, bitter, and low sneers! Horrid misrepresentations, and notorious perversions! Abominable beyond all the rest! A wretched spirit of low sarcasm and slanderous banter runs through the whole book," which contains "more than a hundred close pages, as totally void of Scriptural argument as they are replete with calumny, gross perversions, equivocations,"and a "doctrine full of rottenness and deadly poison, the spurious offspring of the man of sin, begotten out of the scarlet whore."
I beg my readers would not think the worse of my opponent's candour, on account of these severe charges. In one sense they appear to me very moderate; for who can wonder, that a good, mistaken man, who finds Calvin's everlasting, absolute, and unconditional reprobation in the mild oracles of the God of love, should find "forgery, vile slander, calumny, horrid perversions, deadly poison," &c, in my sharp Checks, and perpetual contradictions in Mr. Wesley's works? Are we not treated with remarkable kindness, in comparison of the merciful God whom we serve? Undoubtedly; for neither of us is yet so much as indirectly charged with contriving in cool blood, the murder of "one" man; much less with forming, from all eternity, the evangelical plan to save unconditionally by "free grace" the little flock of the elect, and damn unconditionally by "free wrath" the immense herd of the reprobates! and with spending near six thousand years in bringing about an irresistible decree, that the one shall absolutely go to heaven, let them do what they please to be damned; and that the other shall absolutely go to hell, and burn there to all eternity, let them do what they can to be saved!
Thus hoped those pious divines concerning Dr. Crisp: and thus I once hoped also concerning his admirers. But, alas! experience has damped my hope; for, when they have been "calmly reasoned with," they have shown themselves much more ready to unsay what they had said right, than what the doctor had said wrong; and to this day they publicly defend those Antinomian dotages, which the authors of Flavel's preface could not believe Dr. Crisp could possibly mean, even when he preached and wrote them.
You express, honoured sir, a most extraordinary wish, p. 94. Speaking of Flavel's Discourse upon Mental Errors, which is also called A Blow at the Root, you say, "I should have been glad could I have transcribed the whole discourse." But as you have not done it, I shall give a blow at the root of your system, by presenting you with an extract of the second Appendix, which is a pretty large treatise full against Antinomianism.
"The design of the following sheets," says that great Puritan divine, in the discourse you should be glad wholly to transcribe, "is to free the grace of God from the dangerous errors, which fight against it under its own colours; to prevent the seduction of some that stagger; and to vindicate my own doctrine. The Scripture, foreseeing there would arise such a sort of men in the Church as would wax wanton against Christ, and turn his grace into lasciviousness, has not only precautioned us in general to beware of such opinions as corrupt the doctrine of free grace: 'Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid!' but has marked those very opinions by which it would be abused, and made abundant provision against them. As namely, (1.) All vilifying expressions of God's holy law, Rom. vii. (2.) All opinions inclining men to the neglect of the duties of obedience, under pretence of free grace and liberty by Christ, James ii; Matt. xxv. (3.) All opinions neglecting sanctification as the evidence of justification, which is the principal scope of St. John's first epistle.
"Notwithstanding such is the wickedness of some, and weakness of others, that in all ages (especially in the lust and present) men have notoriously corrupted the doctrine of free grace, to the great reproach of Christ, scandal of the world, and hardening of the enemies of the reformation. 'Behold, (says Contzen the Jesuit,) the fruit of Protestantism, and their Gospel preaching.'
"The Gospel makes sin more odious than the law did, and discovers the punishment of it in a more dreadful manner. 'For if the word spoken by angels was steadfast, and every disobedience received a just recompense of reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?' It shows us our encouragements to holiness greater than ever and yet corrupt nature will still abuse it. The more luscious the food is, the more men are apt to surfeit upon it.
"This perversion of free grace is justly chargeable both upon wicked and good men. Wicked MEN corrupt it designedly, that, by entitling God to their sins, they might sin the more quietly. So the Nicolaitans, and school of Simon; the Gnostics, in the very dawning of Gospel light; and he that reads the preface of learned Mr. Gataker's book, will find that some Antinomians of our days are not much behind the vilest of them. One of them cries out, 'Away with the law! It cuts off a man's legs, and then bids him walk.' Another says, 'That if a man, by the Spirit, know himself to be in a state of grace, though he commit murder,* God sees no sin in him.'
[ * This is, I fear, the very doctrine of your fourth letter, where an impenitent murderer is represented as complete in Christ, &c.]
"But others** there are, whose judgments are unhappily tainted with those loose doctrines; yet being, in the main GODLY PERSONS, they dare not take the liberty to sin, or live in the neglect of known duties, though their principles too much incline that way. But though they dare not, others will, who imbibe corrupt notions from them; and the renowned piety of the authors will be no antidote against the danger; but make the poison operate the more powerfully, by receiving it in such a vehicle. Now it is highly probable these men were charmed into these opinions upon such accounts as these: "(1.) Some of them might have felt in themselves the anguish of a perplexed conscience under sin, and not being able to live under the terrors of the law, might too hastily snatch at such doctrines which promise them relief and ease. (2.) Others have been induced to espouse these opinions from the excess of their zeal against the errors of the Papists. (3.) Others have been sucked into those quicksands of Antinomian errors, by fathering their own fancies upon the Holy Spirit. (4.) And it is not unlike, but a comparative weakness of mind, meeting with a fervent zeal for Christ, may induce others to espouse such taking and plausible, though pernicious doctrines.
[ ** Here my worthy opponent is exactly described by Flavel.]
"Let all good men beware of such opinions and expressions as give a handle to wicked men to abuse the grace of God, which haply the author himself dares not do, and may strongly hope others may not do: but if the principle will yield it, it is in vain to think corrupt nature will not catch at it, and make a vile use, and dangerous improvement of it!
"For example: If such a principle as this be asserted before the world, 'That men need not fear that any or all the sins they commit shall do them any hurt:'*** let the author warn and caution his readers, [as the Antinomian**** author of that expression has done,] not to abuse this doctrine; it is to no purpose, the doctrine itself is full of dangerous consequences, and wicked men have the best skill to draw them forth to cherish their lusts. That which the author might design for the relief of the distressed, quickly turns into poison in the bowels of the wicked. Nor can we excuse it by saying any Gospel truth may be thus abused; for this is none of that number, but a principle that gives offence to the godly and encouragement to the ungodly. And so much as to the rise and occasion of Antinomian errors.
[ *** My worthy opponent has publicly advanced, not only that sin, even adultery and murder, does not hurt the pleasant children, but that it even works for their good.
**** Dr. Crisp, who was publicly called an Antinomian by the Puritans, and his tenets loose, corrupt, and pernicious doctrine; Antinomian dotages, &c.]
"II. Let us view next some of the chief errors of Antinomians. (1.) Some make justification to be an eternal act of God, and affirm that the elect were justified before the world had a being. Others, that they were justified at the time of Christ's death: with these Dr. Crisp harmonizes. (2.) That justification by faith is no more than a manifestation to us, of what was done before we had a being. (3.) That men ought not to question whether they believe or no. (Saltmarsh on Free Grace, p. 92, 95.) (4.) That believers are not bound to mourn for sin, because it was pardoned before it was committed; and pardoned sin is no sin. (Eaton's Honeycomb of Justification, p. 446.) (5.) That God sees no sin in believers, whatsoever sins they commit. (6.) That God is not angry with the elect, and that to say he smites them for their sins is an injurious reflection upon his justice. This is avouched generally in all their writings. (7.) That by God's laying our iniquities upon Christ, he became as completely sinful as we, and we as completely righteous as Christ. (Dr. Crisp, p. 270.) (8.) That no sin can do believers any hurt, nor must they do any duty for their own salvation. (9.) That the new covenant is not made properly with us, but with Christ for us; and that this covenant is all of it a promise, having no condition on our part. They do not absolutely deny that faith, repentance, and obedience are conditions in the new covenant; but say, they are no conditions on our side, but Christ's, and that he repented, believed, and obeyed for us. (Saltmarsh on Free Grace, p. 126.) (10.) They speak very slightingly of trying ourselves by marks and signs of grace. Saltmarsh calls it "a low, carnal way:" but the New-England Antinomians call it a fundamental error, to make sanctification an evidence of justification. They say, that the darker our sanctification is, the brighter is our justification.
"I look upon such doctrines to be of a very dangerous nature; and their malignity and contagion would certainly spread much farther than it does, had not God provided two powerful antidotes.
"1. The scope and current of the Scriptures. They speak of the elect as 'children of wrath' during their unregenerate state. They frequently discover God's anger, and tell us, his castigatory rods are laid upon them for their sins. They represent sin as the greatest evil; most opposite to the glory of God and good of his saints. They call the saints to mourn for their sins, &c. They put the people of God to the trial of their interest in Christ, by signs and marks from the divers branches of sanctification. They infer duties from privileges; and therefore the Antinomian dialect is a wild note, which the generality of serious Christians do easily distinguish from the Scripture language.
"2. The experience and practice of the saints greatly secure us from the spreading malignity of Antinomianism. They acknowledge that before their conversion they were equal in sin and misery with the vilest wretches in the world. They fear nothing more than sin. They are not only sensible that God sees sin in them, but they admire his patience, that they are not consumed for it. They urge his commands and threatenings, as well as promises, upon their own hearts to promote sanctification. They excite themselves to duty and watchfulness against sin. They encourage themselves by the rewards of obedience, knowing their 'labour is not in vain in the Lord.' And he that shall tell them, their sins can do them no hurt, or their duties no good, speaks to them not only as a barbarian, but in such a language as their souls abhor. The zeal and love of Christ being kindled in their souls, they have no patience to hear such doctrines as so greatly derogate from his glory, under a pretence of honouring and exalting him.
It wounds and grieves their very hearts to see the world hardened in their prejudices against reformation, and a gap opened to all licentiousness. But notwithstanding this double antidote, we find, by daily experience, such doctrines too much obtaining in the professing world, Tantuni religio suadere malorum.
"For my own part, He that searcheth my heart is witness: I would rather choose to have my right hand wither, and my tongue rot within my mouth, than to speak one word, or write one line, to cloud the free grace of God. Let it arise and shine in its meridian glory. None owes more to it, or expects more from it, than I do; and what I write in this controversy is to vindicate it from those opinions, which, under pretence of exalting it, do really militate against it."
Then follows a prolix refutation of the above-mentioned Antinomian errors, most of which necessarily flow from your second and fourth letters. When our pious author attacks them as a disciple of St. James, he carries all before him: but when he encounters them as an admirer of Calvin, his hands hang down, Amalek prevails, and a shrewd logician could, without any magical power, force him to confess, that most of the errors which he so justly opposes are the natural consequences of unconditional election, particular redemption, irresistible grace, Calvinian imputation of righteousness to impenitent murderers, the infallible perseverance of believers who defile their fathers' beds, and, in a word, salvation finished for all the "pleasant children," who go on frowardly in the way of their own heart. Thus it would appear that Calvinism is "the prolific error," to use Mr. Flavel's words, The radical and prolific error from which most of the rest are spawned."
He concludes his anti-Crispian treatise by the following truly Christian paragraph: "I call the Searcher of hearts to witness that I have not intermeddled with this controversy of Antinomianism, out of any delight I take in polemic studies, or an unpeaceable contradicting humour, but out of pure zeal for the glory and truths of God, for the vindication and defence whereof I have been necessarily engaged therein. And having discharged my duty thus far, I now resolve to return, if God permit me, to my much more agreeable studies: still maintaining my Christian charity for those whom I oppose, not doubting but I shall meet those in heaven from whom I am forced in lesser things to dissent upon earth."
While my heart is warmed by the love which breathes through the last words of Mr. Flavel's book, permit me to tell you, that I cordially adopt them with respect to dear Mr. Shirley and yourself, hoping that if you think yourself obliged "to cut off all intercourse and friendship with me" upon earth, on account of what you are pleased to call my "disingenuity and gross perversions," you will gladly ascribe to the Lamb of God a common salvation truly finished in heaven, together with, honoured and dear sir, your most obedient servant, in the pure Gospel of St. James, J. FLETCHER.
LETTER V.
To Richard Hill, Esq.
HONOURED AND DEAR SIR,-I have hitherto endeavoured to show that the exploded doctrine of a second justification by works, (i.e. by the evidence or instrumentality of works,) in the day of judgment, is Scriptural, consonant to the doctrine of our Church, and directly or indirectly maintained, as by yourself, so by all anti-Crispian Puritan divines, whenever they regard St. James' holy doctrine more than Calvin's peculiar opinions. I shall now answer a most important question which you propose about it, p. 149. You introduce it by these words: "You cannot suppose that when Mr. Shirley said, Blessed be God, neither Mr. Wesley nor any of his preachers, (Mr. Olivers excepted,) holds a second justification by works, he intended to exclude good works in an evidential sense." Indeed, sir, I did suppose it; nor can I to this moment conceive how Mr. Shirley could lean toward Calvinism, if he were settled in St. James' doctrine of justification by the evidence of works. You proceed: "Neither Mr. Shirley, nor I, nor any Calvinist that I ever heard of, deny that a sinner is declaratively justified by works, both here and at the day of judgment." You astonish me, sir. Why then do you at the end of this very paragraph, find fault with me for saying, that it will be absurd in a man, set on the left hand as a rebellious subject of our heavenly King, to plead the works of Christ, when his own works are called for, as the only evidences according to which he must be justified or condemned? Why do you cry out in the fifth letter of your Review, "O shocking to tell! Horresco referens," &c. Why do so many Calvinists shudder with horror because I have represented our Lord as condemning, by the evidence of works, (agreeably to his own express doctrine, Matt. xxv,) a practical Antinomian, a canting apostate, who had no good works to be declaratirely justified by in the day of judgment? Why do you maintain, that when David committed adultery and murder he was "justified from all things; his sins past, present, and to come, were for ever and for ever cancelled?" And why do you (p. 70) call me a "snake that bites the Calvinist ministers," because I have exposed the Antinomianism of those preachers who, setting aside Christ's doctrine of justification by the evidence of works in the last day, give thousands to understand, that they shall then be abundantly justified by righteousness imputed in Calvin's way, and by nothing else? You go on
"Therefore, I say, if you utterly disclaim all human works, as the procuring, meritorious cause of justification, what need was there of addressing Mr. Shirley as you have done? Yea, what need was there of your making this point a matter of controversy at all? We are quite agreed both as to the expression and as to the meaning of it."
Are we indeed quite agreed, both as to time expression of a second of his faith in the light of his dispensation; for this light, when we receive it by faith, if we may believe those excellent mystics,* St. John and St. Paul, is "Christ in us, the hope of glory," John i, 5, 9; Col. i, 27; Eph. iii, 27, and v, 14.
[ * The word mysticism, like the word enthusiasm, may be used in a good or bad sense. I am no more ashamed of the true mystics, i.e. those who fathom the deep mysteries of inward religion, than of the true enthusiasts, those who are really inspired by the grace and love of God. When I said that Solomon was the great Jewish mystic, I took the word mystic in a good sense; if all are mystics who preach Christ in us, and Christ the Light of the world, (as you intimate in your Five Letters,) I affirm, that St. Paul and St. John are two of the greatest mystics in the world. And when I intimated, that Solomon's Song is a mystical book, and that the Rev. Mr. Romaine has given a mystical, and in general edifying explanation of the one hundred and seventh Psalm; I no more insulted those good men than our Church reflects upon our Lord, when she says, that, "matrimony represents to us the mystical union between Christ and his Church." If Mr. Wesley has spoken against mysticism, it is undoubtedly against that which is wild and unscriptural; for he has shown us his approbation of rational and Scriptural mysticism, by publishing very edifying extracts from the works of the great German and English mystics, Kempis and Mr. Law. Permit me to recommend to you what Mr. Hartley, a clergyman whom you have quoted with honour, has written in defence of the mystics; and to remind you, that, abroad, those who go a little deeper into inward Christianity than the generality of their neighbours, are called pietists, or mystics, as commonly as they are called Methodists in England. On the preceding accounts I hope, that when Mr. Wesley, or Mr. Shirley, shall again condemn mysticism, they will particularly observe that it is only unscriptural and irrational mysticism which they explode. ]
6. Nor can you now justly refuse to clear Mr. Wesley of the charge of heresy, because he says, Salvation is not by the merit of works, but by works as a condition: for in the present case where is the difference between the word evidence, which you use, with Dr. Guise, Mr. Wesley, and me; and the word condition, which Mr. Wesley uses, and our Church, and most of the Puritan divines? An example will enforce my appeal to your candour: You sit upon the bench as a magistrate, and a prisoner stands at the bar: you say to him, "You are charged with calumny, forgery, and gross perversions; but you shall be acquitted, on condition that some of your reputable neighbours give you a good character." A lawyer checks you for using the treasonable word condition, insisting you must say, that the prisoner shall be acquitted or condemned, according to the evidence which his creditable neighbours will give of his good behaviour. You turn to the bar, and say, "Prisoner, did you understand me?" "Yes, sir," replies he, "as well as the gentleman who stops your honour." "That is enough," say you, "let us not dispute about words I am persuaded the court understands we all mean that the acquittal or condemnation of the prisoner will entirely turn upon the deposition of proper witnesses."
7. With regard to the word merit I hope our controversy is at an end: for Mr. Wesley and I, or to speak your own language, old Mordecai and young Ignorance, freely grant what Bishop Hopkins and you assert, (Review, p. 42,) namely, that "in all proper merit there must be an equivalence, or at least a proportion of worth between the work and the reward; and that the obedience we perform cannot be said, without a grand impropriety, to merit any reward from God." But you must also grant us, that if our Lord, speaking after the manner of men, by a grand catechresis,* a very condescending impropriety, frequently uses the word meriting, or deserving, we may without heresy use it after him.
[ * A figure of speech, which consists in using a word in an improper sense as when unfaithful ministers are called "dogs that cannot bark."]
Should you ask me how I can prove that our Lord ever used it, I reply, that if he used again and again words answering to it, as face answers to face in a glass, it is just as if he had used the English word merit, or Mr. Wesley's Latin word meritum: and to prove that he did so I appeal to the first Greek lexicon you will meet with. I suppose it is that of Schrevelius, because it is the most common all Europe over. Look for inereor, (to merit or deserve,) and you will find that the correspondent Greek is ~iðOov ~spsiv, literally to carry a reward, and e~io~ sum, to be worthy; A~ia answers to meritum, merit: and ce~iu~ to merito, deservedly, or according to one's merit.
To prove, therefore, that our Lord did not scruple to use the word merit in an improper sense, I need only prove that he did not scruple applying the words ~w'~oç and ce~io~ to man. Take some instances of both
1. Matt. xx, 8, "Give them 'rev ~i~ov, their hire, or reward." And again Matt. ver. 12, "Your reward (misthos) is great in heaven," &c. Hence the apostle calls God (misthapodotes) the Rewarder; and Moses is said" to look to (misthapodosia) the recompense of reward," Heb. xi, 6, 26. And the word (didomi), the bestowing of a reward, as much answers to the word ~i~opop1a, the carrying of a reward, or merit, as the relative words which necessarily suppose one another. He, therefore, that uses the former without scruple, makes himself quite ridiculous before unprejudiced people if he scruples using the latter; much more if he thinks the doing it is a dreadful heresy.
2. As for the other word (a~iof) meriting, deserving, or worthy, it IS as Scriptural as any word in the Bible. You find it used both in a proper and in an improper sense in the following scriptures:(l.) In a PROPER sense: "The labourer is worthy of, or merits, his hire, Luke x, 7. Worthy, or deserving, stripes, Luke xii, 48. Worthy' of, or meriting death, Acts xxi, 11. They have shed the blood of thy saints, and thou hast given them blood to drink, for they are worthy:" that is, they merit, they deserve it, Rev. xvi, 6. (2.) In an IMPROPER SENSE, which you represent as heretical: "They shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy, Rev. iii, 4. Inquire who is worthy, Matt. ~x, 11. Worthy of me, Matt. x, 37. They that were bidden were not worthy, Matt. xxii, 8. Worthy to escape these things, Luke xxi, 36. Worthy to obtain that world," Luke xx, 35, &c, &c.
In all these passages the original word is axios, worthy, meriting, or deserving. Bishop Cowper, therefore, whom you quote in your Five Letters, p. 26, spoke with uncommon rashness when he said, "No man led by the Spirit of Jesus, did ever use this word of merit, [i.e. a~mo~ stem] as applying to man. It is the proud speech of antichrist. Search the Scriptures, and ye shall see that none of all those who speak by divine inspiration did ever use it: yea, the godly fathers always abhorred it." What the sacred writers "never used the word n~moç cam!" "The godly fathers always abhorred" an expression which the Holy Ghost so frequently makes use of! Christ himself "spoke by the proud spirit of antichrist!" When I see such camels obtruded upon the Church, and swallowed down by thousands as glib truth, I am cut to the heart, and, in a pang of sorrow and shame, groan, "From such divinity, good Lord, deliver me, my worthy opponent, and all real Protestants!"
To this Mr. Rowland Hill answers beforehand, in his Friendly Remarks, p. 28. This is "a bad criticism upon the word axios, which more properly means meet or fit." Now, sir, to your bare assertion I oppose, (1.) All the Greek lexicons. (2.) The testimony of Beza, Calvin's successor, who speaking of the word, says, It is properly used of that which is of equal weight and importance. (3.) The testimony of Leigh, another learned Calvinist, who, in his Critica Sacra, says, "axios has its name from aystv, a trahendo: Qu preponderant lancem atirahunt; and is a metaphor taken from balances, when one scale doth counterpoise another." And speaking of o~, a word derived from axios, he adds, "It signifieth when either reward or punishment is given according to the proportion of merit." And this he proves, by I Tim. v, 17, "Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour: for the Scripture says, The labourer is worthy of his reward."
When I see the learned Calvinists forced to grant all we contend for, I wish that no Protestant may any longer expose his prejudice, in denying what is absolutely undeniable, viz. That Christ and his apostles assert, some men merit, or are worthy of rewards. Taking care, therefore, never to fix to those Scriptural words the idea of proper worthiness, or merit of condignity, let us no longer fight against Christ, by saying, they are in no sense worthy, whom Christ himself makes, accounts, and calls WORTHY; yea, whom he gloriously rewards as such.
8. As for this modest proposition of the Minutes, "It is a doubt if God justifies any one that never did fear him, and work righteousness," it stands now established by your concessions, not as matter of doubt, but as a matter of fact, if we speak of justification in the hour of conversion, or in the day of judgment. For, with respect to the former, you justly observe, (p. 12,) that "the faith whereby we are saved," and consequently justified, "cannot be without good works." And with regard to the latter, you say, (p. 149,) "What need is there of making our justification, by the evidence of works in the day of judgment, a matter of controversy at all? We are quite agreed that a sinner is declaratively justified by works." Now, honoured sir, if he is justified by works, it is undoubtedly by works of righteousness; unless it could he proved that he may be justified by works of unrighteousness, by adultery and murder.
9. It is likewise evident from your own concessions, that "talking of a justified, or a sanctified state," without paying a due regard to good works, tends to mislead men, and actually misleads thousands. If Judas, for instance, when he neglected good works, which are the mark of our first, and the instrument of our second justification, trusted to what was done in the moment, in which he was effectually called to leave all, and follow Jesus, he grossly deceived himself: or if he depended upon imputed righteousness, when he neglected personal holiness, he built upon the loosest sand.
The seasonableness of Mr. Wesley's caution in this respect will strike you, honoured sir, if you cast your eyes upon the numbers of fallen believers, who once, like obedient Judas, left all to follow Christ; but having resumed their besetting sin, like the apostolic traitor, now sell their Saviour and election, perhaps for a less valuable consideration than he did. However, they were once in a justified and sanctified state, and Mr. Hill tells them, that "in the act of justification good works have no place," and insinuates, that adulterers and murderers may be in the winter season of a sanctified state; therefore they reasonably conclude, that they are still justified and sanctified. Thus they live, and if God does not send them an honest Nathan, or if when he comes they stop their ears, and cry out, Heresy, thus like Judas they will die.
With respect to the last clause of the Minutes, you must acknowledge, "that we are every moment pleasing or displeasing to God, according to the whole of our inward tempers and outward behaviour:" or, to clothe Mr. Wesley's doctrine in words in which you agree with me, you must confess, that, "as we may die every hour, and every moment, we are liable to be every hour and every moment justified, or condemned, by the evidence of our works."* This is evident, if you consider St. Paul's words, "Without faith it is impossible to please God;"and, if you do not recant what you say, (Review, p. 12,) "Justifying faith [the faith by which we please God] cannot be without good works." You must therefore prove that adultery, treachery, and murder, are good works, and by that means openly plead for Belial, Baal, and Beelzebub; or you must grant, that when David committed those crimes he had not justifying faith, and consequently did not please God. And the moment you grant this, you set your seal to the last proposition of the Minutes, which you esteem most contrary, and I entirely agreeable, to sound doctrine.
[ * The reader is once more desired to remember, that by works we understand, not only the works of the tongue and hands, i.e. words and actions; but also, and chiefly, the works of the mind and heart, that is, thoughts, desires, and tempers]
Having thus, by the help of your own concessions, once more removed the rock of offence, under which you try to crush the seasonable rampart of St. James' undefiled religion, which we call the Minutes, I leave you to consider how much Mr. Wesley has been misunderstood, and how much the truth of the Gospel has been set at naught.
I am, honoured and dear sir, yours, &c,
J. FLETCHER.
LETTER VI.
To Richard Hill, Esq.
HON. AND DEAR Sir,-While my engine, common sense, stands yet firm upon the point of our justification by the evidence of works, which you have so fully granted me, permit me to level it a moment at the basis of the main pillars which support Antinomianism and Calvinism.
1. If righteous Lot had died when he repeated the crimes of drunkenness and incest, his justification would have been turned into condemnation, according to St. Paul's plain rule, If thou be a breaker of the law, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision: for neither the holy God, nor any virtuous man, can possibly justify a sinner upon the evidence of drunkenness and incest.
2. If old Solomon, doting upon heathenish young women, and led away by them into abominable idolatries, had died before he was brought again to repentance, he could never have seen the kingdom of God. He should have perished in his sin, unless Geneva logic can make it appear, in direct opposition to the word of God, that the impenitent shall not perish, and that idolaters shall inherit the kingdom of God, Luke xiii, 3; I Cor. vi, 9.
3. If the incestuous Corinthian had been cut off while he defiled his father's bed, the justification granted him at his first conversion, far from saving him in the day of judgment, would have aggravated his condemnation, and caused him to be counted worthy of a much severer punishment than if he never had known the way of righteousness,never been justified; unless you can prove that Christ would have acquitted him upon the horrid evidence of apostasy and incest, which appears to me as difficult a task as to prove that Christ and Belial are one and the same filthy god.
4. If David and Bathsheba had been run through by Uriah, as Zimri and Cosbi were by Phinehas; and if they had died in their flagrant wickedness, no previous justification, no Calvinian imputation of righteousness, would have secured their justification in the last day. For, upon the evidence of adultery and premeditated murder, they would infallibly have been condemned; according to those awful words of our Lord, I come quickly to give EVERY MAN, [here is no exception for the "pleasant children,"] according as HIS work shall be, not according as my work has been. Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may enter in through the gates into the city; for without are dogs, WHOREMONGERS, and MURDERERS, Rev. xxii, 12, &c.
Should you say, honoured sir, It is provided in the decree of absolute election that adulterers, who once walked with God, shall not die till they have repented: (1.) I demand proof that there ever was such a decree. In the second Psalm, indeed, I read about God's decree respecting Christ and mankind; but it is the very reverse of Calvin's decree, for it implies general redemption and conditional election. I will declare the decree. Thou art my son. I will give thee the HEATHEN for thine inheritance, and the UTTERMOST parts of the earth for thy possession. Kiss the son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way.
2. This evasion is founded upon a most absurd supposition, which sews pillows to the arms of backsliders and apostates, by promising them immortality if they persevere in sin. But setting aside the absurdity of supposing that old Solomon, for example, might have kept himself alive till now by assiduously worshipping Ashtaroth; or, which is the same, that he might have put off death by putting off repentance, because he could not (die till he had repented: I ask, Where is this strange Gospel written? Certainly not in the Old Testament; for God asks there with indignation, "When the righteous turneth away from his righteousness, and committeth iniquity, SHALL HE LIVE?" No: "in his sin that he has sinned SHALL HE DIE," Ezek. xviii, 24. Much less in the New, where Christ protests, that he will spue lukewarm believers out of his mouth, and that every branch in him which bears not fruit, shall be taken away or cut off. An awful threatening this, which was executed even upon one of the twelve apostles! For our Lord himself says, Those that thou GAVEST me I have kept, and none of THEM is lost but Judas, who fell finally, since he died in the very act of self murder, and is particularly called the son of perdition.
But granting you, that lest Lot, David, and Solomon should be condemned by works in the day of judgment, they were to be immortal till they repented and did their first works; this very supposition indicates, that till they repented they were sons of perdition, according to that solemn declaration of truth manifest in the flesh, Except ye repent, ye shall all perish.
As if you were aware of this difficulty, (p. 149,) you have recourse to a noted distinction in Geneva logic, by which you hope to secure your favourite doctrine, as well as fond Rachel once secured her favourite teraphim. You say, "that though a sinner [David, for instance, or Solomon] be justified in the sight of God by Christ alone, he is declaratively justified by works both here and at the day of judgment."
Now, honoured sir, this necessarily implies, that though David in Uriah's bed, and Solomon at the shrine of Ashtaroth, are justified in the sight of God by Christ's chastity and piety imputed to them; yet, before men, and before the Judge of quick and dead, they are justified by the evidence of their own chastity and piety. This distinction, one of the main supports of Calvinism, is big with absurdities, for if it be just, it follows,
1. That while God says of Solomon, worshipping the goddess of the Zidonians, he is still a true believer, "he is justified from all things;" Christ says, By his fruit ye shall know him; he is an impenitent, unjustified idolater; and St. James, siding with his Master, says roundly, that Solomon's faith being now without works is a