10. When I read such scriptures, I wonder at those, who are so wrapt up in the pernicious notion, that we ought not to work for a life of glory; as to overlook even the crown of life, with which God will reward those who are faithful unto death. And I am astonished at the remains of my own unbelief, which prevent my being always ravished with admiration at the thought of the rewards offered to fire my soul into seraphic obedience. An idle country-fellow, who runs at the wake for a wretched prize, labours harder in his sportive race, than, I fear, I do yet in some of my prayers and sermons. A sportsman, for the pitiful honour of coming in at the death of a fox, toils more than most professors do in the pursuit of their corruptions. How ought confusion to cover our faces! Let those that refine the gospel, glory in their shame: let each of them say, "I thank thee, O God, that I am not like a papist, or like that Arminian, who looks at the rewards which thou hast promised; I deny myself and take up my cross, without thinking of the joy and rewards set before me,' &c. For my part, I desire to humble myself before God, for having so long overlooked the exceeding great reward, and the crown of life, promised to them that obey him and my thoughts shall be expressed in such words as these:

:

"Gracious Lord, if he that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet, shall have a prophet's reward: if our light affliction, when it is patiently endured, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory: if thou hast said, Do good and lend, hoping for nothing again [from man,] and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the highest: if thou animatest those, who are persecuted for righteousness sake, by this promissory exhortation," Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven:" Nay, if a cup of cold water only, given in thy name, shall in no wise lose its reward; and if the least of thy rewards is a smile of approbation; let me be ready to go round the world, shouldest thou call me to it, that I may obtain such a recompence."

"Since thou hast so closely connected holiness and happiness, my duty and thy favours; let no man beguile me of my reward by a voluntary humility. And whatsoever my hand findeth to do, help me to do it with my might; not only lest I lose my reward, but lest I have not a full reward; lest I lose a beam of the light of thy countenance, or a degree of that peculiar likeness and nearness to thee, with which thou wilt recompence those, who excel in virtue. So shall I equally avoid the delusion of the pharisees, who expect heaven through their faithless works; and the error of the Antinomiaus, who hope to enter into thy glory without the passport of the works of faith."

"And now, O Lord, if thy servant has found favour in thy sight, permit him to urge another request; so far as thy wisdom, and the laws, by which thy free grace works upon free agents, will permit; incline the minds of papists and protestants to receive the truth as it is in Jesus. Let not especially this plain testimony borne to the many great promises which thou hast made, and to the astonishing rewards which thou offerest them that work righteousness, be rejected by my Calvinist brethren. Keep them from fighting against thy goodness, and despising their own mercies, under pretence of fighting against “ Arminian Errors," and despising "Pelagian Checks to the Gospel." And make them sensible, that it is absurd, to decry in word the pope's pretentions to infallibility, if by an obstinate refusal to "review the whole affair," and to weigh their supposed orthodoxy in the balances of reason and revelation, they in fact pretend to be infallible themselves; and thus, instead of one Catholic pontiff, set up ten thousand protestant popes."

"Thou knowest, Lord, that many of them love thee; and that, though they disgrace thy gospel by their doctrinal peculiarities, they adorn it by

66

their godly conversation. O endue them with more love to their remonstrant brethren! Give them and me that charity which behaveth not itself unseemly, which rejoiceth not in a favourite error, but rejoiceth in the truth, even when it is advanced by our opponents. Thou seest, that if they decry true holiness and good works as dung and dross," it is chiefly for fear thy glory should be obscured by our obedience. Error transformed into an angel of light has deceived them, and they think to do thee service by propagating the deception. O gracious God, pardou them this wrong. They do it ignorautly in unbelief; therefore seal not up their mistake with the seal of thy wrath: Let thein yet know the truth, and let the truth enlarge their hearts, and make them free from the notion, that thou art not loving to every man during the day of salvation; and that there is neither mercy nor Saviour for most of their neighbours, even during the accepted time."

"Above all, Lord, if they cannot defend their mistakes, either by argument or scripture; give them more wisdom, thau to expose any longer the protestant religion, which they think to defend; and more piety, than to make the men of the world abhor thy gospel, and blaspheme thy name, as free-thinkers are daily tempted to do, when they see, that those, who pretend to exalt thee most, are of all protestauts the most ready to disarm thy gospel of its sanctions; to turn thy judicial sentences into frivolous prescriptions; to overlook the dictates of reason, and good nature; and to make the press groan under illogical assertions, and personal abuse!"

"Let thy servant speak once more: Thou knowest, O Lord, that thy power being my helper, I would choose to die rather than wilfully to de preciate that grace, that free grace of thine, which has so long kept me out of hell, and daily gives me sweet foretastes of heaven. And now, Lord, let not readers of a pharisaic turn, mistake what I have advanced in honour of the works of faith, and by that means build themselves up in their self-righteous delusion, and destructive contempt of thy merits : Help them to consider, that if our works are rewardable, it is because thy free grace makes them so; thy Father having mercifully accepted our persons for thy sake, thy holy Spirit having gently helped our infirmities, thy precious blood having fully atoned for our sins and imperfections, thy incessant intercession still keeping the way to the throne of grace open for us, and our poor performances. Suffer not one of the sons of virtuous pride, into whose hands these sheets may fall, to forget that thou hast annexed the reward of the inheritance to the assemblage of the works of faith, or to patient continuance in well doing, and not to one or two splendid works, done just to serve a worldly turn, or to bribe a clamorous conscience: And enable them so to feel the need of thy pardon for past transgressions, and of thy power for future obedience, that, as the chased hart panteth after the water-brooks, so their awakened souls may long after Christ, in whom the penitent find inexhaustible springs of righteousness and strength; and to whom, with thee, and thy eternal Spirit, be for for ever ascribed praise, honour, and glory both in heaven and upon earth;

-praise, for the wonders of general redemption, and for the innumerable displays of thy free-grace unstained by free-wrath;-honour, for bestowing the gracious reward of an heavenly salvation upon all believers, that make their election sure by patient continuance in we l-doing;-and glory for inflicting just punishment upon all that neglect so great salvation, and to the end of the accepted time daring thy vengeance by obsti nate continuance in ill-doing."

APPENDIX.

MADELEY, March 11, 1774.

YESTERDAY a friend lent me Mr. Baxter's Confession of Faith, printed in London 1655. The third part of this valuable book extends through above 140 large pages, and the title of that long section runs thus: "The testimony of reformed divines ascribing as much to works as I: and many of them delivering the same doctrine." He produces a hundred witnesses, some of whom are collective bodies, such as the AssemblyDivines, the compilers of the Homilies of the Church of England, and even the Synod of Dort. As the Antinomian spirit which flamed against Baxter's works in the last century, will probably sparkle against the preceding Essay, I beg leave to shelter behind that great man, and a few of his numerous quotations. I shall cite only Baxter's page, to which I refer those who desire to see the original of his Latin quotations, together with the books, chapters, and pages of the various

authors.

Page 322, he quotes the following words from Bishop Davenant, "As no man receiveth that general justification which discharges from the guilt of all foregoing sins, but on the concurrence of repentance, faith, a purpose of a new life, and other actions of the same kind; so no man retaineth a state free from guilt in respect of following sins, but by means of the same actions of believing in God, calling on God, mortifying the flesh, daily repenting and sorrowing for sins daily committed. The reason why all these are required on our part, is this: Because these cannot be still absent, but their opposites will be present, which are contrary to the nature of a justified man.-As therefore to the conservation of natural life it is necessarily required, that a man carefully avoid fire, water, precipices, poisons, and other things destructive to the health of the body; so to the conserving of the spiritual life, it is necessarily required that a man avoid incredulity, impenitency, and other things that are destructive and contrary to the salvation of souls; which cannot be avoided unless the opposite and contrary actions be exercised. And these actions do not conserve the life of grace properly and of themselves, by touching the very effect of conservation, but improperly and by accident, by excluding and removing the cause of destruction."

Page 324, Baxter produces these words of the same pious bishop. "We do therefore fight against, not the bare name of merit, in a harmJess sense frequently used of old by the fathers, but the proud and false opinion of merit of condignity, brought lately by the Papists into the church of God."

And again, page 325, "The works of the regenerate have an ordination to the rewards of this life and that to come. 1. Because God hath freely promised (according to the good pleasure of his will) the rewards of this life and that to come, to the good works of the faithful and regenerate," 1 Tim. iv. 8. Gal. vi. 8. Mat. xx. 8.

Page 328, he quotes the following passage from Dr. Twiss, "It lieth on all elect to seek salvation, not only by faith, but by works also, in that without doubt salvation is to be given by way of reward,

whereby God will reward not only our faith, but also all our good

works.'

Page 330, and 331, he quotes Melancthon thus, "New obedience is necessary by necessity of order of the cause and affect, also by necessity of duty or command, also by necessity of retaining faith, and avoiding punishments temporal and eternal. Cordatus stirreth up against me the city, and also the neighbour countries, and also the court itself, because in explaining the controversy of justification, I said, that new obedience is necessary to salvation."

"Works are

Page 360, 361, he quotes these words of Zanchius: necesary: 1. To justify our faith [coram Deo] before God, &c. 2. They are necessary to the obtaining eternal life, &c. 3. They are necessary to inherit justification as CAUSES, &c. 4. They are profitable to conserve and increase faith: also to PROMERIT of God and obtain many good things, both spiritual and corporal, both in this life and in another." The words of Zanchins are," Opera utilia sunt, &c. ad multa bona tum spiritualia tum corporalia, tum in hac vita tum in alia a Deo PROMERENDA et obtinenda." Zanch. Tom. 8, p. 787. loc: de just. fidei. How much more tenderly did Mr. Wesley speak of merit than the orthodox Zanchius, whom Mr. Toplady has lately rendered famons among us! I hope, that if this gentleman ever opens his favourite book to the above-quoted page, he will drop his prejudices, and confess that his dear Zanchius himself nobly contends for the "Wesleyian heresy."

Page 462, Baxter concludes his book by praying for those, who had misrepresented him to the world, and obliged him to spend so much time in vindicating his doctrine. I most heartily join him in the last paragraph of his prayer, in which I beg the reader would join us both. The Lord illuminate and send forth some messenger, that may acquaint the churches with that true, middle, reconciling method of theological verities which must be the means of healing our divisions." Let men be raised of greater sufficiency for this work, and of such blessed accomplishments as shall be fit to cope with the power of prejudice; and let the fury of blind contradiction be so calmed, that TRUTH may have oppor tunity to do its work.'

!

AN

ESSAY ON TRUTH;

BEING

A RATIONAL VINDICATION

OF THE

DOCTRINE OF SALVATION BY FAITH.

EXCEEDINGLY Sorry should I be, if the testimony which I have borne to the necessity of good works, caused any of my readers to do the worst of bad works, that is, to neglect believing, and to depend upon some of the external, faithless performances, which conceited pharisees call "good works ;" and by which they absurdly think to make amends for their sins, to purchase the divine favour, to set aside God's mercy, and to supersede Christ's atoning blood. Therefore, lest some unwary souls, going from one extreme to the other, should so unfortunately avoid Antinomianism, as to run upon the rocks, which are rendered famous by the destruction of the pharisees, I shall once more vindicate the fundamental, anti-pharisaic doctrine of sulvation by faith; I say once more, because I have already done it in my guarded Sermon: and to the Scriptures, Articles, and Arguments produced in that piece, I shall now add rational, and yet scriptural observations; which, together with appeals to matter of fact, will, I hope, soften the prejudices of judicious moralists against the doctrine of faith, and reconcile considerate Solifidians to the doctrine of works. In order to this, I design in general to prove that true faith is the only plant, which can possibly bear good works: That it loses its operative nature, and dies when it produces them not: And that it as much supasses good works in importance, as the motion of the heart does all other bodily motions. Enquire we first into the nature and ground of saving faith.

SECTION I.

'A PLAIN DEFINITION OF SAVING FAITH, HOW BELIEVING IS THE GIFT OF GOD, AND WHETHER IT IS IN OUR POWER TO believe.

WHAT is faith? It is believing heartily.-What is saving faith? I dare not say, that it is "only believing confidently, my sins are forgiven me for Christ's sake," for, if I live in sin, that belief is a destructive conceit, and not saving faith. Neither dare I say, that "saving faith is only a sure trust and confidence, that Christ loved me, and gave himself for me*:" For if I did, I should damn almost all mankind for four thousand years.

* When the Church of England, and Mr. Wesley, give us particular definitions of faith, it is plain, that they consider it according to the Christian dispensation; the privileges of which must be principally