LETTER IV.

HONOURED AND REVEREND SIR,

IF the first three propositions of the Minutes are scriptural, Mr. Wesley may well begin the remaining part by desiring the preachers in his connexion to emerge along with him from under the noisy billows of prejudice, and to struggle quite out of the muddy streams of antinomian delusions, which have so long gone over our heads, and carried so many souls down the channels of vice into the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone. Well may he entreat them to "review the whole affair!"

And why should this modest request alarm any one? Though error dreads a revisal, truth, you know, cannot but gain by it.

Mr. Wesley says in this review,

"I. Who is now accepted of God? He that now believes in Christ with a loving, obedient heart."

Excellent answer! worthy of St. Paul and St. James; for it sums up in one line the epistles of both. In the first part of it, “He that now believes in Christ," you see St. Paul's gospel calculated for lost sinners, who now fly from the babel of self-righteousness and sin, and find all things in Christ ready for their reception; and in the second part, "With a loving and obedient heart," you see the strong bulwark raised by St. James to guard the truth of the gospel against the attacks of antinomian and Laodicean professors. Had he said, "He that shall believe the next hour is now accepted," he would have bestowed upon present unbelief the blessing that is promised to present faith. Had he said, "He that believed a year ago is now accepted of God," he would have opened the kingdom of heaven to apostates, contrary to St. Paul's declarations to the Hebrews. He therefore very properly says, "He that now believes;" for it is written, “He that believeth," not, He that shall believe, or, He that did believe, “hath everlasting life.”

What fault can you then find with Mr. Wesley here? Surely you cannot blame him for proposing Christ as the

object of the Christian's faith, or for saying that the believer hath a loving and obedient heart; for he speaks of the accepted man, and not of him who comes for acceptance. Multitudes, alas! rest satisfied with an unloving, disobedient faith,-a faith that engages only the head, but has nothing to do with the heart,-a faith that works by malice, instead of working by love, a faith that pleads for sin in the heart, instead of purifying the heart from sin, a faith that St. Paul explodes, 1 Cor. xiii. 2, and that St James compares to a carcass, chap. ii. 26. There is no need that Mr. Wesley should countenance such a faith by his Minutes. Too many, alas! do it by their lives; and God grant none may do it by their sermons. Whoever does, sir, it is not you; for you tell us in yours, that "Christ is to be found only by living faith; even a faith that worketh by love; even a faith that layeth hold of Christ by the feet, and worshippeth him:" page 150: the very faith of Mary Magdalen, who certainly had a loving and obedient heart; for our Lord testified that "she loved much; and ardent love cannot but be zealously obedient. There is not, then, the least shadow of heresy, but the very marrow of the gospel, in this article. Let us see whether the second is equally defensible.

"II. But who among those that never heard of Christ? He that feareth God, and worketh righteousness, according to the light he has."

And where is the error here? Did not St. Peter begin his evangelical sermon to Cornelius by these very words, prefaced by some others, that make them remarkably emphatical? "Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons; but in every nation, he that feareth God, and worketh righteousness, is accepted of him." Surely, sir, you will never insist upon a formal recantation of a plain scripture!

But perhaps you object to those words which Mr. Wesley has added to St. Peter's declaration, "according to the light he hath." What! should it be, "according to the light he has not?" Are not there people enough among us, who follow the wicked servant that intimated "his Lord was an hard and austere man, reaping where he had

not sown, and gathering where he had not strawed?" Must Mr. Wesley increase the number? or would you have him insinuate that God is more cruel than Pharaoh, who granted the poor Israelites day-light, if he allowed them no straw to make bricks; that he requires an heathen to work without any degree of light, without a day of visitation, in the Egyptian darkness of a merely natural state? and that he will damn and torment him everlastingly either for not doing or for marring his work? O, sir! like yourself, Mr. Wesley is too evangelical to entertain such notions of the God of love.

"At this rate," say some, 66 an heathen may be saved without a Saviour; his fearing God and working righteousness will go for the blood and righteousness of Christ." Mr. Wesley has no such thought: whenever an heathen is accepted, it is merely through the merits of Christ ; although it is in consequence of his fearing God and working righteousness. But how comes he to see that God is to be feared, and that "righteousness is his delight?" Because a beam of our Sun of righteousness shines in his darkness. All is therefore of grace; the light, the works of righteousness done by that light, and acceptance in consequence of them. How much more evangelical is this doctrine of St. Peter, than that of some divines, who consign all the heathens by millions to hell. torments, because they cannot explicitly believe in a Saviour, whose name they never heard; nay, and in whom it would be the greatest arrogancy to believe, if he never died for them! Is it not possible that heathens should, by grace, reap some blessings through the second Adam, though they know nothing of his name and obedience unto death; when they, by nature, reap so many curses through Adam the first, to whose name and disobedience they are equally strangers? If this is an heresy, it is such an one as does honour to Jesus and humanity.

SECOND OBJECTION." Mr. Wesley, by allowing the possibility of a righteous heathen's salvation, goes point blank against the eighteenth article of our church, which he has solemnly subscribed."

ANSWER. This assertion is groundless. Mr. Wesley,

far from presuming to say that an heathen can be saved by the law, or sect that he professes, if he frames his life according to the light of nature, cordially believes that all the heathens who are saved attain salvation through the name, that is, through the merit and Spirit, of Christ; by framing their life, not according to I know not what light naturally received from fallen Adam, but according to the supernatural light, which Christ graciously affords them, in the dispensation they are under.

THIRD OBJECTION.- 66 However, if he does not impugn the eighteenth article, he does the thirteenth, which says, that works done before justification, or before the grace of Christ, and the inspiration of his Spirit, forasmuch as they proceeded not from faith in Christ, are not pleasant to God, yea, have the nature of sin.''

Nay, this article does not affect Mr. Wesley's doctrine; for he constantly maintains, that if the works of a Melchisedec, a Job, a Plato, a Cornelius, are accepted, it is only because they follow the general justification above mentioned; which is, possibly, what St. Paul calls "the free gift" that "came upon all men to justification of life;” Rom. v. 18; and, because they proceed from the grace of Christ and the inspiration of his Spirit, they are not, therefore, done before that grace and inspiration, as are the works which the article condemns.

FOURTH OBJECTION. "But all that is not of faith is sin,' and 'without faith it is impossible to please God.'

ANSWER.-True; therefore, "he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." Cornelius had, undoubtedly, this faith; and a degree of it is found in all sincere heathens. For Christ, the light of men, visits all, though in a variety of degrees and dispensations. He said to the carnal Jews that believed not on him, "Yet a little while the light is with you; walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: while ye have the light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of the light." All the heathens that are saved are then saved by a lively faith in Jesus, the light of the world; or, to use our Lord's own words, by "believing in the light" of their dispensa

tion, before the day of their visitation is past, before total darkness comes upon them, even the night when no man can work.

FIFTH OBJECTION.-" But if heathens can be saved without the gospel, what need is there of the Christian dispensation?"

ANSWER.-1. None of them were ever saved without a beam of the internal light of the gospel, which is preached in (e) every creature under heaven. Col. i. 23. 2. The argument may be retorted. If sinners could be saved under the patriarchal dispensation, what need was there of the Mosaic? if under the Mosaic, what need of John's baptism? if under the baptism of John, what need of Christianity? Or, to answer by a comparison, if we can see our way by star-light, what need is there of moon-shine? if by moon-shine, what need of the dawn of day? if by the dawn of day, what need of the rising sun?

The brightness of divine dispensations, like the light of the righteous, shines more and more unto the perfect day. And though an heathen may be saved in his low dispensation, and attain unto a low degree of glory, which the apostle compares to the shining of a star, (for "in my Father's house," says Christ, "there are many mansions,") yet it is an unspeakable advantage to be saved from the darkness attending his uncomfortable dispensation, into the full enjoyment of the "life and immortality brought to light by the" explicit "gospel." Well might then the angel say to Cornelius, who was already accepted according to his dispensation, that Peter should tell him words whereby he should be saved; saved from the weakness, darkness, bondage, and tormenting fears attending his present state, into that blessed state of light, comfort, liberty, power, and glorious joy, where "he that is feeble is as David, and the house of David as God, or as the angel of the Lord."

Having thus briefly answered the objections that are advanced against St. Peter's and the doctrine which Mr. Wesley embraces, proceed we to the third query, in review of the whole affair.