is previous to having an husband, faith is previous to receiving Christ; for we receive him by faith. John i. 12. However, from this extraordinary argument, you "conclude that the doctrine of believing before justification is not less contrary to reason than it is to scripture ;" but I flatter myself that my judicious readers will draw a conclusion diametrically opposite.

XIX. A quotation from St. Augustine appears next, and secures the ruin of your scheme. For if faith is compared to "a lantern," and Christ to the "light in the lantern," common sense tells us, we must have the lantern before we can receive the candle which is to give us light. Or, in other words, we must have faith before we can receive Christ; for you very justly observe, that "faith receiveth Christ, who is the true light."

66

"No

XX. St. Augustine's lantern makes way for the witticism with which you conclude your second epistle. letters," says my honoured friend, were sent through the various provinces against old Mordecai, for supposing that the woman, Luke xv., lights a candle, &c., in order to find her lost piece; but because he insists upon it, that the piece lights the candle, sweeps the house, and searches diligently in order to find the woman."

Permit me to ask, dear sir, whether your wit here has not for a moment got the start of your judgment. I introduced the woman seeking the piece she had lost, merely to show that it is neither an heresy, nor an absurdity, to "seek something in order to find it;" and that instance proved my point, full as well as if I had fixed upon Saul seeking his father's asses, or Jacob seeking his brethren in Dothan.

If it is as great an absurdity to say, that sinners are to "seek the Lord,” as it is to say, "that a piece seeks the woman who has lost it;" let me tell you, dear sir, that Mr. Wesley has the good fortune to be countenanced in his folly, first by yourself, who tell us, (page 7,) that the knowledge of Christ, and our interest in him, "is certainly to be sought in the use of all the appointed means:" and, secondly, by Isaiah, who says, "Seek ye the Lord while he may be found;" by St. Paul, who tells the Athenians

that "all nations of men are to seek the Lord;" and by Christ himself, who says, "They that seek me early shall find me:" "Seek that you may find," &c.

I leave you to judge, honoured sir, whether it was worth your while to impeach Mr. Wesley's good sense, not only by reflecting upon your own, but by inevitably involving Isaiah, St. Paul, and our Lord himself, in the ridicule cast upon my vindicated friend! For the same sinner who is represented by the "lost piece," is a few verses before represented by the "lost son ;" and you know Jesus Christ tells us, that he came from far to seek his father's pardon and assistance. You begin your third letter by saying, "How God may deal with the heathen world, is not for us to pry into." But we may believe what God has revealed. If the Holy Ghost declares, that "in every nation he that feareth God, and worketh righteousness, is accepted of him," we may credit what he says, without "being wise above what is written."

66

If you cannot set aside that apostolic part of the Minutes, you try, however, to press it into the service of your doctrine. "There is," say you, a material difference between saying, 'He that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted,' and 'shall be accepted;"" and, because "the verb is in the present tense," you conclude, there is no need of fearing God or working righteousness, in order to find acceptance. This is exactly such another argument as that which I just now refuted, "We need not believe in order to be justified, because it is said, 'All that believe are justified,' and not shall be justified."" You can no more prove by the one, that Cornelius, provoking God and working unrighteousness, was accepted of him, than by the other, that unbelievers are justified, because it is said that believers are so.

6

"All run,"

A similar instance may convince you of it. says St. Paul, "but one receiveth the prize." I, who am a stranger to refinements, immediately conclude from those words, that running is previous to the receiving of the prize, and in order to it. "No," says a friend, "there is a material difference between saying, 'One receiveth the prize, and, 'One shall receive the prize.' The verb is in the

present tense; and therefore the plain sense of the passage is, not that by running he does any thing to receive the prize, but that he who runs is possessed of the prize, and proves himself to be so." Candid reader, if such an argument proselytes thee to Dr. Crisp's doctrine, I shall suspect there is no small difference between English and Swiss reason.

However, to make up the weight of your argument, you add, "Cornelius was a chosen vessel." True, for "God hath chosen to himself the man that is godly;" and such was Cornelius; "a devout man," says St. Luke, "and one that feared God with all his house." But if my honoured opponent speaks of an election which drags after it the horrors of absolute reprobation, and hangs the millstone of unavoidable damnation about the neck of millions of our fellow-creatures, I must call for proof. Till it comes, I follow you in your observations upon the merit or rewardableness of good works. Most of them are answered, Vindication, page 264, &c., and Second Check, page 330. The rest I answer thus:

1. If you do not believe Mr. Henry, when he assures us David speaks of himself, "The Lord rewarded me according to my righteousness," &c., (Psalm xviii.,) believe at least the sacred historian, who confirms my assertion, and consider the very title of the Psalm, "David spake unto the Lord the words of this song, in the day that the Lord delivered him from the hand of his enemies, and from the hand of Saul." 2 Sam. xxii.

2. But "when David speaks in his own person, his language is very different." "Enter not into judgment with thy servant," says he; "for in thy sight shall no man living be justified." The psalmist does not here contradict what he says of the rewardableness of good works, Psalm xviii. He only appeals from the law of innocence to the law of grace, and only disclaims all merit in point of justification and salvation, a thing which Mr. Wesley takes care to do when he says, even in the Minutes, "not by the merit of works, but by believing in Christ."

3. My honoured correspondent asks next, " Where is the man who has the witness of having done what God

commanded?" I answer, Every one has who "walks in the light as God is in the light," and can say with St. John, "Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence towards God; and whatsoever we ask we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things which are pleasing in his sight."

4. But bishop Beveridge spoke just the reverse; for he said in his Private Thoughts, "I sin in my best duties," &c. That may be; for he was but a young convert when he wrote his Private Thoughts. I hope, before he died he enjoyed more gospel liberty; but, whether he did or not, we appeal from his Private Thoughts to the above-mentioned public declaration and evangelical experience of St. John.

66

5. If many Roman Catholics do not ascribe merit to mere external performances," I have "done them great injustice;" and to repair that wrong, I declare my full approbation of the excellent passage upon "merit," which you quote in French, from the works of the bishop of Meaux. I say "in French," because your English translation represents him as looking on all opinion of merit as presumptuous, whereas he blames only l'opinion d'un mérite présomptueux, "the doctrine of a presumptuous merit," of a merit which is not at all derived from Christ, and does not terminate in the glory of his grace.

The dying challenge of Alexander Seton is answered in the Second Check, first letter. As to your quotation from bishop Cooper, it does as little credit to his learning as to his charity; for St. Augustine, who had no more "the spirit of antichrist" than the bishop himself, uses perpetually the word "merit," in speaking of man and his works.

Let us now see how you "split the hair," that is, fix the difference there is between being rewarded "according to our works," "because of our works," * and secundum merita operum, "according to the merit or rewardableness which Christ gives to our works." "The difference," say you, "by no means depends upon the splitting of an hair; those

• See 1 John iii. 22, and Vindication, page 261. You have no right to throw out this middle term, till you have proved that my quotations aze false.

expressions are as wide as east from west." Are they indeed? Then it must be the east and the west of the map of the world, which meet in one common line upon the globe. This will appear, if we consider the manner in which you untie the Gordian knot.

66

"Good works," say you, are rewarded because God, of his own mere favour, rich grace, and undeserved bounty, has promised that he will freely give such rewards to those whom he has chosen in his dear Son." Now, sir, simplify this sentence, and you tell us just that "good works are rewarded, because God freely promised to reward them."

And is this the east of my honoured opponent's orthodoxy? Surprising! It just meets the west of popish heterodoxy. You know, sir, that Thomas Aquinas and Scotus are as great divines among the Romanists, as Calvin and Luther among the protestants; and in flying from Mr. Wesley, you are just gone over to Scotus and Baxter; for Scotus and Clara, his disciple, maintain, that if God gives rewards to the godly, non oritur obligatio ex natura actûs, sed ex suppositione decreti et promissi, "the obligation does not arise from the nature of the action rewarded, but from the decree and free promise of the rewarder." "Though so much be given in scripture to good works," says the council of Trent, "yet far be it from a Christian to glory in himself, and not in the Lord, whose goodness is so great to all men, that he wills those things to be their merits, which are his gifts." Can. 16, de Justif

"Most protestants," says Baxter, "will take merit to signify something which profiteth God, and which is our own, and not his gift and grace; but they are mistaken.”

Some, however, are more candid: Bucer says, "If by 'meriting,' the holy fathers and others mean nothing but to do in faith, by the grace of God, good works, which the Lord has promised to reward; in this sense" (which is that which Scotus, Baxter, and Mr. Wesley fix to merit) we shall in no wise condemn that word."

Hence it is, that whole congregations of "real protestants" have not scrupled, at times, to use the word, “We merit," in their humblest addresses to the throne of grace. "Congregations of 'real protestants!'" says my honoured