makes them in general glad to preserve it; so the penal law of Christ makes no exception in favour of believers, who fall into adultery and murder, under the Calvinistic pretence, that their new nature makes them in general hunger after purity and love. See 1 Cor. vi. 8, 9. Again all sophisms fly before matter of fact. Fallen angels and our first parents once naturally hungered after righteousness, more than most believers do; and yet they grossly apostatized. And if you object to these instances, I produce David and the incestuous Corinthian: both had a 'new nature" as believers; and yet, as fallen believers, the one could thirst after Uriah's blood, and the other hunger after his father's wife, far more than after "implanted righteousness." But,

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2. Mr. Fulsome may answer Mr. Berridge as a Calvinist thus: My new nature will make me hunger for implanted righteousness "in the day of God's power:" God will do his own work; in the mean time I am "in a winter season: "I am carnal and sold under sin," as well as St. Paul; and I thirst after my tankard, as David did after Bathsheba's beauty, and Uriah's blood. Thus the antinomian gap remains as wide as ever.

It is true also that Mr. Berridge says, page 173,"Cheats will arise; and how must we deal with them? Deal with them, sir! why, hang them, when detected; as Jesus hanged Judas." I thought that Judas, and not Jesus, was the hangman. But I let that pass, to observe, that Mr. Fulsome may justly ask, Why will you hang me? Does not our Lord, speaking of his elect, say, "He that touches you, touches the apple of mine eye?" If Mr. Berridge answers, "You are no elect; you are an hypocrite; you never had grace," Mr. Fulsome may justly reply, upon the plan of the Calvinistic doctrines of grace, "I have had a call, and my election is safe. to the charge of God's elect?' he also justified:' 'yea, they things.' You have no more right to condemn me as an hypocrite, because you see me with a tankard in my hand, than to pass a sentence of hypocrisy upon all backsliders. How will you prove that I have not as much right to toss

Who shall lay any thing 'Whom he called them are justified from all

my tankard, as David to write a sanguinary letter, Solomon to worship devils, and the incestuous Corinthian to invade the rights of his father's bed? I will maintain the privileges of God's children against all the legalists and the Wesleys in the world: I will fight for free grace to the last drop in my tankard. My service to you!"

If Mr. Fulsome's arguments are conclusive, as well as Calvinistical, how can he be brought to give up his antinomian creed? Undoubtedly by being brought to give up Calvinism. Till then it is evident that he will still hold his doctrines of grace in theory or in practice, indirectly and with mental reserves, as all pious Calvinists do; or openly and without shuffling, as he does in his confession of faith. Thus has Mr. Berridge presented the world with an antinomian creed, as horrid as that which I have composed with the unguarded principles of your fourth letter. And by acknowledging that "such scandalous professors as Mr. Fulsome are found at all times," he has confirmed the necessity of my Checks, shown they are really Checks to Antinomianism, and not "checks to the gospel," silenced those who have accused me of misrepresentation, and helped me to give the world a just idea of Calvinistic principles. I say "principles," because many very many Calvinists, like Mr. Berridge, are too moral not to reject in their practice, and not to explode as detestable in their discourse, the immoral inferences which consistent antinomians justly draw from their doctrines of grace.

SECTION V. Having thus complied with your request, sir, by producing "a quotation" from an eminent Calvinist divine, to show that I do not fight against a shadow when I oppose Mr. Fulsome; and having described a rational "convert" to your doctrines of grace; I return to the "Finishing Stroke;" where, to ward off the blow given to your system by the orthodoxy and bad conduct of the Fulsomes,

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Page 9, you offer to show me a long black list of deluded creatures, (some of whom have been principal leaders in Mr. Wesley's classes,) &c., who have been carrying on abominations and wicked practices under the mask of

religion." And you tell us they are some of the fruits which the doctrines" of Mr. Wesley "have produced." But you have forgot the proof, sir, unless you think that your bare assertion is quite sufficient. Suppose that one out of twelve of Mr. Wesley's class-leaders had actually turned out a "temporary monster," what could you infer from it against Mr. Wesley's doctrine, but what the pharisees could, with equal truth, or rather with equal injustice, have inferred against the doctrine of our Lord?

By what plain and easy consequence, or by what scriptural argument, will you make it appear, that even the most abhorred of all Mr. Wesley's doctrines, that of Christian perfection, (or, which is all one, that of believing in Christ with a penitential faith, till we love God with all our heart, and our neighbour as ourselves,) has any more tendency to turn his hearers into "temporary monsters," than our Lord's sermon upon the mount had to turn his apostles into covetous traitors? But how can you free your doctrine from dangerous consequences, which flow from it as naturally as a river does from its source? Have I not just proved,-I hope, to the satisfaction of judicious readers, that Mr. Fulsome's practice perfectly agrees with your Calvinistic principles? O, sir, that " vapourer in favour of your perseverance" fairly and consistently builds upon what your brother calls "the foundation of the Calvinists," that is, unconditional election and finished salvation. He is a wise master-builder. Apply the most exact plummet of reason to the walls of his antinomian babel, and you will find them straight. They do not project a hair's breadth from your doctrines of grace, which are the foundation laid in some of our celebrated pulpits, for him and all the clan of the Fulsomes to build upon. He is a judicious monster: he has reason and your orthodoxy on his side. But the monsters of your long black list (supposing it to be a true one) are barefaced hypocrites, equally condemned by their reason and profession; for so far as they adhere to Mr. Wesley's doctrine, their principles are diametrically opposed to their practice, and, therefore, he is no more accountable for their "abominations," than our Lord was for Judas's treason.

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SECTION VI. Pages 12, 13, you leave me in full possession of all the scriptures, arguments, and quotations from our homilies and liturgy, which I have advanced in the Fourth Check; supposing that when you have called them "the novel chimeras of the Fourth Check," or a minglemangle," and that when you have referred your readers to "the faith of Mr. Ignorance," you have given my sentiments " a finishing stroke." To such forcible arguments I can make no better and shorter reply than that of my title-page, "Logica Genevensis!" However,

Page 11, you decide that my illustration of the woman dropping her child down the precipice "is totally foreign to the purpose," that is, does not at all prove that Calvinism fathers "unprovoked wrath" upon the God of love. But how do you make it appear? Why, you insinuate that 66 man has forfeited all right and title to the favour of God by his fall in Adam;" and, therefore, God has been justly provoked to drop the reprobates down the precipice of sin into hell, by an eternal, unconditional, absolute decree of non-election.

The argument is specious, and has deceived thousands of simple souls into Calvinism; but can it bear examination? Who or what provoked God to make, from all eternity, a decree of absolutely dropping Adam down the precipice of sin, and the reprobated part of his posterity down the precipice of damnation ? Was it the sin of reprobates? No: for millions of them are as yet unconceived, and, therefore, sinless; for what has not yet a subance cannot yet have a mode; what does not yet exist cannot yet be sinful. Was it a foresight of their sin? No: for, upon the Calvinistic plan, God certainly foresees what will happen, only because he has absolutely decreed what shall happen. Was it Adam's sin, as you insinuate? No: for Adam's sin was committed in time; and, therefore, could not influence an absolute decree of personal reprobation made before time, yea, from all eternity. But you add,

Pages 11, 12, "If you believe that the transgression of our first parent entailed no condemnation upon his posterity, why did you subscribe to the ninth article of our

church, which says, that in every man born into the world it deserves God's wrath and damnation?"" I apprehend you mistake, sir: that article says no such thing. What it affirms of a derivation of Adam's corruption, or of "the fault and corruption of the nature of every man," you represent as spoken of Adam's personal transgression; which is absolutely confounding the cause and the effect. Every anti-Calvinist may, and I, for one, do believe, that "in every man born into the world," and considered according to the first covenant, original corruption (not Adam's transgression) deserves God's wrath and damnation at the hands of an holy and righteous God; without dreaming that any man shall ever be damned for it; seeing that, according to God's mercy and goodness displayed in the second covenant, Christ, the second Adam, is come to "taste death for every man," and to be "the Saviour of all men;" so that for his sake, "the free gift is come upon all men unto justification of life." See Fourth Check, page 127, &c. Thus, by looking at our divine compass, the word of God, we sail through the straits of error, keeping at an equal distance from the rocks against which Calvinists run on the right hand, and Pelagians on the left.

I have warded off the stroke which you have attempted to give my sentiments with our ninth article; and now it is but just you should suffer me to return it. If I am not mistaken, that article is repugnant to Calvinism in two respects: 1. It says not one word about the imputation of the demerit of Adam's first transgression, but makes original sin to consist only in the "infection of our nature;" which saps the foundation of your imaginary imputation of Adam's personal sin, and, consequently, ruins its counterpart, namely, your imaginary imputation of Christ's personal good works distinct from some actual participation of his holiness. 2. It affirms that this "infection in every person born into the world, deserves God's wrath;" a strong intimation this, that it did not actually deserve that wrath before we were actually defiled by a sinful birth or conception. Now this, if I mistake not, implies, that of all the men now living upon the