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7. Lastly. If you consider the inflexible justice of God, as seizing upon the holy Jesus, whose purity, majesty, and power were infinite; and remember how it forced a bloody sweat from all his pores, the most amazing complaints from his lips, and at last his very breath from his tortured body, you will ask yourself, "If these things are done in the green tree, what shall be done in the dry?" Luke xxiii, 31. If stern justice pursued "the Prince of life unto death, even the death of the cross," what will it not do to a sinful worm, who not only rebelled all his life against the infinite goodness, holiness, and majesty of his Creator, but trampled under foot, to the last, the free offers of infinite glory, to the last did despite to the Spirit of grace, and rejected, to the last, an interest in the infinite merits of the Redeemer's blood?

Par. You have so cleared my difficulties, and answered my objections, that I begin to think reason is on your side, as well as Scripture.

Min.-As you are candid enough to acknowledge the impression that rational truths make on your mind, I beg you will be patient enough to consider one more argument in favour of the doctrine of our sinfulness, danger, and misery, in a state of nature. I hope it will weigh so much the more with you because I have it from your own mouth. Did I not hear you this very day call Jesus "SAVIOUR?" Can you deny it?

Par.-Deny it!-God forbid! Shall I be ashamed to confess that he came to die for us, and to save us from hell and everlasting — ? Min.-Enough, sir. You have granted me more than I want to convince a man of sense. If Christ died for us, reason tells us that death is our desert. If he came to save us from hell, it is plain that he saw us in a damnable state: unless you will charge him with the unparalleled folly of coming from heaven to save, from their sins, people that were very good, and bleeding to death to save from hell people who were in no danger of going there.

Par.-I never saw things in this light! But now that Christ hath died for us, all danger is over, the bitterness of eternal death is past. Min.-Yes, for those who are savingly interested in his merit: and who these are the apostle tells us. "They that are Christ's," says he, "have crucified the flesh, with its affections and lusts;" for "if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature," Gal. v, 24; 2 Cor. v, 17. And these will readily acknowledge, that "in them [as considered out of Christ] dwells no good thing, and that they are by nature children of wrath even as others," Rom. vii, 18; Eph. ii, 3. As for the rest of mankind, far from being out of danger, our Lord tells us himself, that "the wrath of God abides on them, and that they are condemned already," John iii, 18, 36.

Here the parishioner, unable to stand his ground any longer on the field of reason, attempted to make as honourable a retreat as he could: and that he might not seem to have lost the day, he erected a new battery against the doctrine of our corrupted and lost state, which introduced the fourth part of the dialogue.

Catera desunt.

A VINDICATION

OF

THE REV. MR. WESLEY'S

"CALM ADDRESS TO OUR AMERICAN COLONIES :"

IN THREE LETTERS TO MR. CALEB EVANS.

BY THE REV. JOHN FLETCHER,

VICAR OF MADELEY, SALOP.

NOTICE BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR.

THE following tracts of Mr. Fletcher were written at a time of great political excitement. And though we can by no means accord to the sentiments advanced in them, nor justify the strong denunciations against the Americans, yet we can find an apology for their author in that love of country which is natural to every genuine patriot, and that abhorrence of civil commotion with which the bosom of every Christian is pervaded. Both Wesley and Fletcher thought the American people did wrong in taking up arms against the mother country; and being true loyal subjects, they considered it their duty to vindicate the cause of their king and country, and to denounce the colonists as rebels.

Mr. Wesley lived to see and acknowledge the hand of God in our independence as a nation; and to assist in establishing a Church in this country which recog. nized our independence and national sovereignty; and we his followers have had the happiness to witness with pious gratitude the blessed effects of that ecclesiastical economy in the extension of the Redeemer's kingdom throughout this free and happy land.

Notwithstanding the objectionable features of the following tracts, considered in a political point of view, in republishing a complete edition of Mr. Fletcher's Works, they could not consistently be omitted nor abridged; and we presume that every admirer of this pious and excellent author, would wish to read all he has written, reserving to himself the liberty of determining on what is just and true, according to the light of Scripture and reason. Infallibility in all things is what no man claims, for either Wesley or Fletcher, however much he may admire them as ministers of the sanctuary; and we must confess that we very much prefer following them as divines than as leaders in political science. In the former character they moved and shone in their own appropriate sphere; while in the latter they exhibited those eccentricities which indicated that they had wan. dered a little from their wonted course. We make these remarks to show that in publishing the following patriotic and spirited addresses, we neither subscribe to the sentiments expressed, nor withdraw our charity and veneration for the man who thus dared to utter his thoughts in defence of what he considered the rights of his king and country. Should political convulsions ever threaten to shake our own country, and to prostrate our happy constitution, we should rejoice to find a mind equally pious and ardent, engaged from the same conscientious feeling of duty, in their preservation, though we might wish him a more successful issue of his labours.

NEW-YORK, May 23, 1833.

PREFACE

TO A VINDICATION OF THE CALM ADDRESS.

It will probably seem strange that clergymen should meddle with a controversy which has hitherto been considered as altogether political, But the reader's surprise, in this respect, will probably cease, if he give himself the trouble to read these letters. He will then see that the American controversy is closely connected with Christianity in general, and with Protestantism in particular; and that, of consequence, it is of a religious as well as of a civil nature.

Is it not granted, on all sides, that the Gospel leads to the practice of strict morality? Is it not an important branch of such morality "to honour and obey the king;" to extend that honour and obedience, in a Scriptural and constitutional manner, to "all that are put in authority under him; to submit ourselves to all our governors; to order ourselves lowly and reverently to all our betters; to hurt nobody by word or deed, and to be true and just in all our dealings;" give every one his due, "tribute to whom tribute is due, and custom to whom custom ?" Do we not teach this doctrine to our children, when we instruct them in the first principles of Christianity? If divinity, therefore, can cast light upon the question which divides Great Britain and her colonies, is it impertinent in divines to hold out the light of their science, and peaceably to use what the apostle calls "the sword of the Spirit," that the material sword, unjustly drawn by those who are in the wrong, may be sheathed, and that a speedy end may be put to the effusion of Christian blood?

Another reason influences the author to write upon the question which is now so warmly agitated in England,-so dreadfully debated in America. Many of the colonists are as pious as they are brave; and while their undaunted fortitude makes them scorn to bow under a hostile arm, which shoots the deadly lightning of war, their humble piety may dispose them (or some of them) to regard a friendly hand which holds out an olive branch, a Bible, and the articles of religion drawn by their favourite reformer. Had more care been taken to inform their judgment, and to work upon their consciences, by addressing them, not only as subjects, but as free men, brethren, and Protestants, it is probable that numbers of them would never have so strongly embraced the unscriptural principles which now influence their conduct.

Should it be said that it is too late now to use spiritual weapons with the colonists, I reply, that this objection bears too hard upon their can

dour; it can never be too late to hold out plain Scripture and solid arguments to judicious Protestants. It is only to Papists strongly prejudiced, or to those who relapse into popish obstinacy, that the light of God's word, and of sound reason, can come too late. Beside, the mis. takes which have armed the provincials against Great Britain, begin to work in the breasts of many good men among us: witness the principles of Americanus. Now, therefore, is the time to keep these well-meaning men from going to the same extremes to which the colonists are gone: now is the time to prevent others, whose judgment is yet cool and sober, from drinking in errors by which such numbers are intoxicated.

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