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thee polluted in thy own blood, I said unto thee, Live;" would not believing free will instantly bow to the dust, and thankfully acknowledge the undeserved mercy? Why then should Zelotes think that free will will infallibly forget its place, if it be raised to the honour of an evangelical, conjugal union with free grace? If a prince raised a filthy, condemned, dead shepherdess from the dung hill, the dungeon, and the grave; graciously advancing her to princely honours, and a seat at his feet, or by his side; does it follow that she must necessarily forget her former baseness? or that his condescension must unavoidably rob him of his native superiority? For my part, when I hear St. John say, "Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we [who submit our free will to free grace] should be called the sons of God,the wife of the Lamb," &c, far from being tempted to forget my wretchedness, I am excited to "fear the Lord and his goodness," and encouraged to "perfect holiness in that fear;" for "every man who hath this faith and hope, purifieth himself, even as God is pure:" so far is he from necessarily walking in pride as a vain-glorious Pharisee; or from exalting himself as a self-deified antichrist! Beside, to all eternity the glaring truth, maintained by the apostle, will abase free will, and secure "What hast thou, which thou the transcendent dignity of free grace: hast not [more or less directly] received" of free, creating, persevering, "Who hath first given to redeeming, sanctifying, or rewarding grace? "For of him," i. e. of it, and it shall be recompensed to him again?" God, the bottomless and shoreless ocean of free grace, "and through him, and to him, are all good things: to whom be glory, for ever, Amen!"

SECTION XII.

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

IF Honestus be not averse to the rational and Scriptural terms of peace proposed in the preceding pages; and if I have removed the objections which Zelotes makes against these terms, what remains for me to do but to press them both to be instantly reconciled? To this end I shall once more urge upon them two powerful motives, the one taken from the unspeakable mischief done by their unreasonable division, and the other from the advantage and comfort which their Scriptural agreement will produce.

Permit me, Zelotes, to begin by the mischief which you do, through your opposition to the moral truths maintained by Honestus. If reason and Scripture breathe through the preceding pages, is it not evident that, under pretence of exalting free grace, which is the first weight of the sanctuary, you throw away the second weight, which is the free will offering of sincere obedience; constantly refusing it the place of a weight before God, when the children of men are weighed for eternal

life or eternal death, in the awful, decisive balance of election and reprobation? Does it not necessarily follow from thence that the personal election of some men to eternal salvation is merely of unscriptural free grace; while the personal reprobation of others from grace and glory is entirely of tyrannical free wrath? Is not this the language of your doctrine? "There is for the elect but one weight, bearing the stamp of Heaven and everlasting love; namely, the finished work of Christ, which is absolutely and irresistibly thrown into the scale of all who are predestinated to eternal life: and this golden weight is so heavy that, without any of their good works, it will unavoidably turn the scale for their eternal salvation. And, on the other hand, there is for the reprobates but one weight, bearing the stamp of hell and everlasting wrath, namely, the finished work of Adam, which is absolutely and irresistibly thrown into the scale of all that are predestinated to eternal death and this leaden weight is so heavy, that let them endeavour ever so much to rise to heavenly joys, it will necessarily sink them to eternal wo." Thus you turn the Gospel into a Calvinian farrago; whereas, if you divided the truth aright, you would do both Gospel axioms justice; asserting, that although the initial salvation of sinners is of free grace alone; yet the eternal salvation of adult believers, which is judicially as well as graciously bestowed upon them by way of reward, is both of free grace and of rectified free will; both of faith, and of its voluntary works; both of Christ living, dying, and rising again for us; and of believers graciously assisted (not despotically necessitated) to persevere in the obedience of faith.

The mischief does not stop here. To make way for your error, you frequently represent the second Scripture Scale, with the passages which it contains, as Pharisaical or Mosaical legality; distressing the minds of the simple by your unscriptural refinements, and hardening the Nicolaitans, the practical Antinomians, in their contempt of morality and sincere obedience. I do you justice, Zelotes: I confess that, like Christ, you hate their deeds; but, alas! like antichrist, you love, you dearly love their spurious doctrines of grace; and this inconsistency involves you in perpetual difficulties and glaring contradictions. One moment Solifidianism makes you extol their immoral principles; the next moment your exemplary piety makes you exclaim against their consistent immoral practices. One hour you assure them that our eternal justification entirely depends upon God's absolute predestination, and upon the salvation completely finished by Christ for us; you openly declare that, from first to last, our works have absolutely no hand in the business of salvation; and you insinuate that a fallen believer is as much a child of God when he puts his bottle to his neighbour to make him drunk, or when he commits adultery and premeditates murder, as when he deeply repents and bears fruit meet for repentance. The next hour, indeed, you are ashamed of such barefaced Antinomianism. To mend the matter you contradict yourself, you play the Arminian, and assert that all drunkards, adulterers, and murderers are unbelievers, and that all such sinners are in the high road to hell. Thus you alternately encourage and chide, flatter and correct your Nicolaitan converts; but one caress does them more harm than twenty stripes or wounds; for instead of the precious balm of Gilead, you have substituted the cheap

balm of Geneva: a dangerous salve this, which slightly heals, and too often imperceptibly poisons a wounded conscience. With this application they soon cure themselves; one single dose of unconditional election to eternal life, of inamissible, complete justification merely by the good works of another, or of "salvation finished in the full extent of the word," without any of our outward performances, makes them as hearty and cheerful as any Laodiceans ever were.

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

Happy would it be for you, Zelotes, and for the Church of God, if the mischief done by your modern gospel were confined to the immoral fraternity of the Nicolaitans. But, alas! it produces the worst effect upon the moralists also. Honestus and his admirers see you extol free grace in so unguarded a manner, as to demolish free will, and unfurl the banner of free wrath. They hear you talk in such a strain of " a day of God's power," in which the elect are irresistibly converted, as to make sinners forget that now is the day of salvation, and the time to use one or two talents, till the Lord comes with more. Perhaps also Honestus meets with a soul frightened almost to distraction by the doctrine of absolute reprobation, which always dogs your favourite doctrine of Calvinian election. To complete the mischief you drop some deadly hints about the harmlessness of sin; or, what is still worse, about its profitableness and sanctifying influence with respect to believers. Neither height nor depth of iniquity shall separate them from the love of God. Nay, the most grievous falls, falls into adultery and murder, shall be so overruled, as infallibly to drive them nearer to Christ, and of consequence, to make them rise higher and sing louder in heaven. This Solifidian gospel shocks Honestus. His moral breast swells against it with just indignation; and supposing that the doctrine of free grace (of which you

call yourself the defender) is necessarily connected with such loose principles, he is tempted to give it up, and begins perhaps to suspect that religious experiences are only the workings of a melancholy blood, or the conceits of enthusiastic brains. This, Zelotes, and more, is the mischief you inadvertently do by your warm opposition to the doctrines of justice, which support the second Gospel axiom, and are inseparable from the Scripture doctrines of grace.

And you, Honestus, if you lay aside the first weight of the sanctuary, are you less guilty than Zelotes? When you say little or nothing of the fall in Adam, of our recovery by Christ, and of our need of a living, victorious faith: and when, under the plausible pretence of asserting our moral agency, and pleading for sincere obedience, you keep out of sight the unsearchable riches of Christ, the wonderful efficacy of his atoning blood, and the encouraging doctrine of free grace; do you not inadvertently confirm Deistical moralists in their destructive notions, that scraps of moral honesty will answer the end of exalted piety, and of renovating faith? And do you not increase the prejudices of Zelotes; making him believe, by your sparing use of the first Gospel axiom, that all who represent morality and good works as an indispensable part of Christ's Gospel, are secret enemies to free grace, and stiff maintainers of Pharisaic errors?

O Zelotes, O Honestus, what have ye done? What are ye still doing? Alas! ye drive one another farther and farther from the complete "truth, as it is in Jesus." In your unreasonable contention, you break the harmony of the Gospel; ye destroy the Scripture Scales; ye tear in two the book of life, and run away with a mangled part, which ye fondly take for the whole. Ye crucify Christ doctrinally: Honestus pierces his right hand, while Zelotes transfixes the left; both pleading, as the scribes and Pharisees did, that ye only crucify a "deceiver of the people."

A skilful physician, by prudently mixing two contrary drugs, may so temper their effect as to compound an excellent medicine. Thus those ingredients, which, if they were given alone, would perhaps kill his patients, by being administered together, operate in corrective, qualifying conjunction, and prove highly conducive to health. Happy would it be for your spiritual patients, if ye imitated his skill, by evangelically combining the gracious promises, and the holy precepts, which support the two Gospel axioms! But, alas! ye do just the reverse, when ye indiscriminately administer only the truths of the first or of the second axiom. Thus, instead of curing your patients, ye sour their minds; Honestus with the poisonous leaven of the Pharisees; and Zelotes with the killing leaven of the Antinomians.

The practice of thousands shows what dangerous touches ye have, by these means, given to their principles: for your admirers, O Zelotes, are encouraged so to depend upon free grace, as not vigorously to exert the powers of free will. And it is well if some of them do not lie down in stupid dejection, idly waiting for an overbearing impetus of Divine grace, which, you insinuate, is to do all for us without us; while others cheer. fully rise up to play, in consequence of the Laodicean ease which naturally flows from the doctrine of salvation Calvinistically finished. On the other hand, your hearers, O Honestus, are so taught to depend upon their best endeavours, and the faithful exertion of their free will, that many of

them see no occasion ardently to implore the help of free grace, as depraved, impotent, blind, guilty, hell-deserving sinners ought to do. Trusting to what they will do to-morrow, they neglect and grieve the Holy Spirit, which is ready to help their infirmities to-day. And it is to be feared that many of them play the dangerous game of procrastination till the Sun of righteousness sets, with respect to them; till all their oil is burned, and their lamps, going out with a bad smell, leave them in the dreadful night when no man can work.

Who can tell the mischiefs which ye have already done by your mangled gospels? It will be known in the great day. But suppose ye had only caused the miscarriage of one soul; would not this be matter of unspeakable grief? If ye would esteem it a misfortune to have occasioned the loss of your neighbour's horse; think, O think, how sad a thing it must be to have caused, though undesignedly, the destruction of his soul! The loss of the cattle upon a thousand hills can be repaired; but if a man should gain the whole world, and through your wrong directions lose his own soul, what will he, what will you give in exchange for his soul?

In the multitude of those, whose salvation is thus endangered, I see Lorenzo-sensible, thoughtful, learned Lorenzo: his case is truly deplorable, and a particular attention to it may convince you of the fatal tendency of a gospel which wants almost one half of its proper weight. Although the dogmatical assertions of a preacher, if they be supported by the charms of a mellifluous eloquence, or the violence of a boisterous oratory, prevail with many; yet not with all. For while some greedily drink in the very dregs of error, through the weakness of their minds, the movableness of their passions, and the credulity which accompanies superstitious ignorance; others are tempted to doubt of the plainest truths, through the nicety of a keen wit, the refinements of a polite education, and the scrupulousness of a skeptical understanding. Lorenzo is one of this number. He is determined not to pin his faith upon any man's sleeve. And he sets out in search of religious truth with this just principle, that religion may improve, but can never oppose good sense and good morals. In this disposition Lorenzo hears Zelotes; and when Zelotes begins to play upon his numerous audience with his rhetorical artillery, Lorenzo examines if the cannon of his eloquence is loaded with a proper ball; if the solidity of his arguments answers to the positiveness, loudness, or pathos of his delivery. Zelotes, not satisfied to preach only the doctrine contained in the first Scripture Scale, takes upon himself warmly to decry the doctrine contained in the second; and at times he even explodes morality; unguardedly representing it as the cleaner way to hell. If this be the Gospel, says Lorenzo, I must ever remain an unbeliever; for I cannot swallow down cluster of incon. sistencies, whence the poison of immorality visibly distils.

He hears you next, Honestus; and he admires the rational manner in which you prove man's free agency, and point out the delightful path of virtue; but, alas! you mention neither our natural impotence, nor the help which free, redeeming grace has laid on Christ for helpless sinners. As this doctrine is not repugnant to the light of reason, Lorenzo prefers it to the Solifidian scheme of Zelotes. Thus reason stands him instead of Christ, free will instead of free grace, and some external acts of