the root of all diligence and faithfulness, so strongly recommended in the oracles of God.

You will be sensible of your error if you observe, that all the fine things which you tell us of a fall into sin, belong not to the fall, but to an happy recovery from it; and my honoured correspondent is as much mistaken, when he ascribes to sin the effects of repentance and faith, as if he ascribed to a frost the effect of a thaw, or to sickness the consequences of a recovery.

And now that we have seen how you have done a pious man's strange work, permit me, sir, to tell you, that, through the prevalence of human corruption, a word spoken for sin generally goes farther than ten thousand spoken against it. This I know, that if a fall, in an hour of temptation, appears only half so profitable as you represent it, thousands will venture after David into the whirlpool of wickedness. But, alas! facilis descensus Averni, &c. it is easier to follow him when he plunges in. than when he struggles out, with his eyes wasted, his flesh dried up, and his bones broken.

:

XXI. I gladly do you the justice, honoured sir, to observe, that you exclaim against sin in the next page: but does not the antidote come too late? You say, "Whatever may be God's secret will, we are to keep close to the declaration of his own written word, which binds us to resist sin." But, alas! you make a bad matter worse by representing God as having two wills, a "secret" effectual "will," that we should sin, and a revealed will, or "written word," commanding us to "resist sin." If these insinuations are just, I ask, "Why should we not regard God's secret, as much as his revealed, will? Nay, why should we not regard it more, since it is the more efficacious, and, consequently, the stronger will?”

You add, "He would be mad who should wilfully fall down, and break a leg or an arm, because he knew there was a skilful surgeon at hand to set it." But I beg leave to dissent from my honoured opponent. For, supposing I had a crooked leg, appointed to be broken for good by God's "secret will" intimated to me; a dear friend

strongly argued, not only that the surgeon is at hand, but that he would render my leg straighter, handsomer, and stronger than before; must I not be a fool, or a coward, if I hesitate throwing myself down?

O sir, if the "deceitfulness of sin" is so great that thousands greedily commit it, when the gallows on earth, and horrible torments in hell, are proposed for their just wages; how will they be able to escape in the hour of temptation, if they are encouraged to transgress the divine law, by assurances that they shall reap eternal advantages from their sin? O! how highly necessary was it, that Mr. Wesley should warn his assistants against talking of a "state of justification and sanctification," in so unguarded a manner, as you, sir, and the other admirers of Dr. Crisp, so frequently do!

You conclude this letter by some quotations from Mr. Wesley, whom you vainly try to press into the doctor's service, by representing him as saying of established Christians what he speaks of babes in Christ, and of the commission of adultery and murder what he only means of evil desire resisted, and evil tempers restrained ;—but more of this in a treatise on Christian Perfection."

66

6

Your fifth letter begins by a civil reproof for "speaking rather in a sneering manner of that heart-cheering expression so often used by awakened divines, the finished salvation of Christ ;"" an expression which, by the bye, you will not find once in all my letters. But why some di vines, whom you look upon as unawakened, do not admire the unscriptural expression of "finished salvation," you may see, Second Check, page 364.

I am thankful for your second reproof, and hope it will make me more careful not to " speak as a man of the world." But the third I really cannot thank you for. "You are not very sparing of hard names against Dr. Crisp," says my honoured correspondent; and again, "The hard names and heavy censures thrown out against the doctor, are by far more unjustifiable than what has been delivered against Mr. Wesley." The hardest names I give to your favourite divine are," the doctor," "the good doctor," and "the honest doctor;" whom, notwithstanding all

66

his mistakes, I represent, Second Check, page 314, as a good man shouting aloud, "Salvation to the Lamb of God." Now, sir, I should be glad to know, by what rule, either of criticism or charity, you can prove that these are hard names, more unjustifiable than the names of "papist unmasked," "heretic," "apostate," worse than papists," &c., which have been of late so liberally bestowed upon Mr. Wesley. I confess that those branches of Dr. Crisp's doctrine which stand in direct opposition to the practical gospel of Christ, I have taken the liberty to call Crispianity; for had I called them Christianity, my conscience and one half of the bible would have flown in my face: and had I called them Calvinism, Williams, Flavel, Alleine, Bishop Hop'kins, and numbers of sound Calvinists, would have proved me mistaken; for they agree to represent the peculiarities of the doctor, as loose antinomian tenets; and if any man can prove them either legal or evangelical, I shall gladly recant those epithets, which I have sometimes given, not the good doctor, but his unscriptural notions.

In the mean time, permit me to observe, that if any one judges of my letters by the 36th page of your book, he will readily say of them what you say of the Rev. Mr. Sellon's works: "I have never read them; and from the accounts I hear of the abusive unchristian spirit with which they are written, I believe I shall never give myself that trouble." Now, sir, I have read Mr. Sellon's books, and have therefore more right than you, who never read them, to give them a public character. You tell us you "have heard of the imbecility of the performance,”* &c.; and I assure my readers I have found it a masterly mixture of the skill belonging to the sensible scholar, the good logician, and the sound anti-Crispian divine.

He is blunt, I confess, and sometimes to an excess. "Really," says he, in a private letter, "I cannot set my razor; there is a roughness about me I cannot get rid of. If honest truth will not excuse me, I must bear the blame

* Some of the Rev. Mr. Sellon's works are, Arguments against the Doctrine of General Redemption considered;-A Defence of God's Sovereignty; and, The Church of England vindicated from the Charge of Calvinism. All of these are well worth the reading of every sensible and pious man.

of those whom nothing will please but smooth things." But, sharp (you would say, abusive) as he is, permit me to tell you that my much-admired countryman, Calvin, was much more so.

For my part, though I would no more plead for abuse than for adultery and murder, yet, like a true Swiss, I love blunt honesty; and, to give you a proof of it, I shall take the liberty to observe, It is much easier to say a book is full of hard names and heavy censures, written in an abusive unchristian spirit; and to insinuate it is "dangerous, or not worth reading;" than it is fairly to answer one single page of it. And how far a late publication proves the truth of this observation, I leave our candid readers to decide.

66

Page 38, you assure me, upon honour, that Mr. Wesley's pieces against election and perseverance" (why did you forget reprobation?)" have greatly tended to establish your belief in those most comfortable doctrines." Hence you conclude that "Mr. Wesley's pen has done much service to the Calvinistic cause;" and add, that "some very experienced Christians hope he will write again upon that subject, or publish a new edition of his former tracts."

You are too much acquainted with the world, dear sir, not to know that most deists declare, they were established in their sentiments by reading the Old and New Testament. But would you argue conclusively, if you inferred from thence, that the sacred writers have done infidelity much service? And if some confident infidels expressed their hopes that our bishops would reprint the bible to propagate deism, would you not see through their empty boast, and pity their deistical flourish? Permit me,

honoured sir, to expose by a simile the similar wish of the persons you mention, who, if they are "very experienced Christians," will hardly pass for every modest logicians.

The gentleman of fortune you mention never read all Mr. Wesley's tracts, nor one of Mr. Sellon's on the Crispian orthodoxy; and I am no more surprised to see you both dissent from those divines, than I should be to find you both mistaken upon the bench, if you passed a decisive

sentence, before you had so much as heard one witness out. The clergyman you refer to has probably been as precipitate as the two pious magistrates; therefore you will permit me to doubt whether he, any more than my honoured opponent, "has had courage enough to see for

himself."

CONCLUSION.

HAVING So long animadverted upon your letters, it is time to consider the present state of the controversy. Mr. Wesley privately advances among his own friends some propositions, designed to keep them from running into the fashionable errors of Dr. Crisp. These propositions are secretly procured, and publicly exposed through the three kingdoms, as dreadfully heretical, and subversive of the Protestant doctrine of justification by faith. In Mr. Wesley's absence, a friend writes in defence of his propositions. The Rev. Mr. Shirley, instead of trying to defend his mistakes by argument, publicly recants his circular letter and his volume of sermons by the lump. Some of the honest souls, who had been carried away by the stream of fashionable error, begin to look about them, and ask, whether narratives and recantations are to pass for scriptures and arguments? The worthy author of Pietas. Oxoniensis, to quiet them, enters the lists, and makes a stand against the anti-Crispian propositions; but what a stand!

1. "Man's faithfulness,"" says he, "I have no objection to, in a sober gospel sense of the word." So Mr. Wesley's first proposition, by my opponent's confession, bears a sober, gospel sense.

2. He attacks the doctrine of working for life, by proposing some of the very objections answered in the Vindication, without taking the least notice of the answers; by producing scriptures quite foreign to the question, and keeping out of sight those which have been advanced; by passing over in silence a variety of rational arguments; jumbling all the degrees of spiritual life and death, acceptance and justification, mentioned in the sacred oracles; confounding all the dispensations of divine