earth, not one actually deserved God's wrath and damnation two hundred years ago. So that if God absolutely reprobated one man now living, three hundred, much more six thousand, years ago, much more from all eternity, he did it according to Calvin's doctrine of rich, free, unprovoked, gratuitous, undeserved wrath. O ye considerate Englishmen, stand to your articles, and you will soon shake off Geneva impositions!

SECTION VII. Page 12, you say in your moral creed about faith and works, "Faith when genuine will always manifest its reality by bringing all the fruits of an holy life."

forth good works, and

Now, sir, if you stand a winter state," in

Now, sir, if to this, without secret reserves about “ which a genuine believer (so called) may commit adultery, murder, and incest for many months, without losing the character of a man after God's own heart and his title to heaven, you make up the antinomian gap, you set your seal to St. James's epistle, you ratify the Checks; and, consequently, you give up your fourth letter, which contains the very marrow of Calvinism: unless by some salvo of Geneva logic you can reconcile these two propositions, which, upon the rational and moral plan of the gospel, appear to me utterly irreconcilable : 1. Faith, when genuine, always brings forth all the fruits of an holy life. 2. A man's faith may be genuine while he goes any length in sin, and brings forth all the fruits of an unholy life, adultery and murder not excepted.

SECTION VIII. My quotation from Dr. Owen, which sets Calvinistic contradiction in a most glaring light, seems to embarrass you much. Page 14, &c., you produce passage upon passage out of his writings to show that he explodes "the distinction of a double justification." But you know, sir, the doctor had as much right to contradict himself in his writings, as you to militate against yourself in your Review. See Fourth Check, page 14, first letter. Besides, I have already observed, Fourth Check, page 39, that "a volume of such passages, instead of invalidating the doctrine I maintain," (or the quotation I produce,) "would only prove that the most judicious Calvinists can

not make their scheme hang tolerably together." However, you say,

Pages 13, 14, "He" (Dr. Owen) "drops not the least intimation of any fresh act of justification, which is then to pass upon a believer's person." What, sir, has not the doctor said, in his Treatise upon Justification, page 222, "Whenever this inquiry is made, not how a sinner, &c., shall be justified, which is" (as we are all agreed, “by faith," or, to use the doctor's unscriptural phrase,) "by the righteousness of Christ alone imputed to him; but how a man that professes evangelical faith in Christ shall be tried and judged ; and whereon, as such," (that is, as a believer,) "he shall be justified; we grant that it is and must be by his own personal obedience." Now, sir, if the doctor has said this, and you dare not deny it, has he not said the very thing which I contend for?

When you affirm, that he makes no mention of a fresh act of justification, do you not betray your inattention ? Does he not declare, that a sinner is "justified by imputed righteousness," and that a believer, as such, "shall be tried and justified by his own personal obedience?" Now if justification is the act of justifying, are you not greatly mistaken, when you represent the justification of a sinner by Christ's imputed righteousness, and the justification of a believer or a saint by his own personal obedience, as one and the same act? Permit me, sir, to refer you to the argument contained Fourth Check, pages 15, 16; on which, next to the words of our Lord, Matt. xii. 37, I chiefly rest our controversy about justification; an argument, the answering of which, (if it can be answered,) would have done your cause more honour and service than what you are pleased to insinuate next concerning Mr. Wesley's honesty and mine.

D. Williams, out of whose book I copied my quotation from Dr. Owen, being a Calvinist, and as clear about a sinner's justification by faith as Dr. Owen himself, for brevity's sake left out what the doctor says about it under the Calvinistic phrase of "Christ's imputed righteousness.” Here, as if D. Williams's wisdom was duplicity in me, page 14, you triumph not only over me, but over Mr.

Wesley, thus: "I never dare trust to Mr. Wesley or Mr. Fletcher in any quotations, &c. More words expunged by Mr. Fletcher out of the short quotation he has taken from Dr. Owen." But suppose I had knavishly expunged the words which D. Williams wisely left out as useless to his point, what need was there of reflecting upon Mr. Wesley on the occasion? O ye doctrines of free grace and free wrath, how long will ye mislead good men? How long will ye hurry them into that part of practical antinomianism, which consists in rash accusations of their opponents, in a lordly contempt of their gracious attainments, and in repeated insinuations that they pay no regard to common honesty?

When a combatant is too warm, he frequently gives an unexpected advantage to his antagonist. You are an instance of it, sir: your eagerness to reflect upon Mr. Wesley and me, has engaged you to present the world with a clause, which, though it was useless to the question debated by D. Williams, is of singular use to me in the present controversy, and in a manner decides the point. For in the passage left out by D. Williams, Dr. Owen speaks of the justification of a sinner, and says, as I have observed, that he is "justified by the righteousness of Christ alone imputed to him :" and this justification he evidently opposes to that of a believer, which, says he, "is and must be by his own personal obedience." So that the world (thanks be to your controversial heat! *) sees now, that even your champion, in one of those happy moments, when the great Diana did not stand in his light, saw and held forth the important distinction between St. Paul's and St. James's justification, that is, between the justification of a sinner by Christ's proper merits, according to the first gospel axiom; and the justification of a saint by his own personal obedience of faith, or by Christ's derived merits, according to the second gospel axiom.

Nor is this a new distinction; you would say, a “novel

* The second instance of this heat, so favourable to my cause, may be seen in the Appendix, No. 10.

chimera" among protestants: for looking lately into a "treatise upon good works," written by La Placette, that famous protestant champion and confessor abroad, who, after he had left his native country for righteousness' sake, was minister of the French church at Copenhagen, page 272, Amst. edition, 1700; I fell upon this passage: "Les protestans de leur côté distinguent une double justification, celle du pecheur, et celle du juste," &c. ; that is, "Protestants on their part distinguish a two-fold justification, that of the sinner, and that of the righteous," &c. Then, speaking of the latter, he adds: "The justification of the righteous, considered as an act of God, implies three things: 1. That God acknowledges for righteous, him that is actually so. 2. That he declares him such. And, 3. That he treats him as such." How different is this threefold act of God from that which constitutes a sinner's justification! For this justification, being also considered as the act of God, implies: 1. That he pardons the sinner: 2. That he admits him to his favour: and, 3. That under the Christian dispensation, he witnesses this double mercy to the believing sinner's heart by giving him a sense of the peace which passes all understanding, and a taste of the glory which shall be revealed. However, as if all this was a mere "chimera," you say,

Page 17, "Having fully vindicated Dr. Owen from the charge you have brought against him of holding two justifications," &c.-Nay, sir, you have not vindicated him at all in this respect. All that you have proved is, that he was no stranger to your logic, and that his love for the great Diana of the Calvinists made him inconsistently deny at one time, what at another time his hatred of sin forced him to confess. Nor is this a new thing in mystic Geneva: you know, sir, a pious gentleman, who, after militating in a book called "the Review," against the declarative justification by works, which I contend for, drops these words, which deserve to be graven in brass, as an eternal monument of Calvinistic contradiction: "Neither Mr. Shirley, nor I, nor any Calvinist, that I ever heard of, deny that a sinner" (should you not have said "a believer?") "is declaratively justified by works, both here

and at the day of judgment." Review, page 149. Now, if no Calvinist that you ever heard of denies, in his luminous intervals, the very justification which I chiefly contend for in the Checks, do you not give a "finishing stroke" to Calvinistic consistency when you say, page 18, "I am determined to prove my former assertion against you, namely, that you cannot find one protestant divine among the puritans, &c., till the reign of Charles II., who held your doctrines?" You mean those of a sinner's justification by faith, and of a saint's justification by works, according to Gal. ii. 16, and Matt. xii. 37. Is it not granted on all sides, that they all held the former justification? And do you not tell the world, "No Calvinist that you ever heard of denied the latter?" However, while you thus candidly confess that all protestant divines held those capital doctrines of the Checks, I should not do you justice, if I did not acknowledge, that few, if any of them, held them uniformly and consistently in England, till Baxter began to make a firm stand against antino, mian dotages."

66

SECTION IX. Page 20, you produce these words of mine, taken from the Fourth Check, "Your imputation stands upon a preposterous supposition, that Christ the righteous was an execrable sinner." To this you reply, with the warmth of a gentleman, who has learned politeness in mystic Geneva, "I tell you, rev. sir, with the bluntness and honesty of an Englishman, that this is execrable Swiss slander." Now, sir, that what you call "execrable Swiss slander" is sterling, English truth, I prove by these quotations from your favourite divine, Dr. Crisp, who, as quoted by D. Williams, says, page 328, "God makes Christ as very a sinner as the creature himself was." Again: page 270, "Nor are we so completely sinful; but Christ, being made sin, was as completely sinful as we." And it is well known, that Luther, in one of his unguarded moments, called Christ "the greatest," and, consequently, the most execrable, "sinner in the world." Now, sir, if "Christ was as completely sinful as we," (to use the words of your oracle,) does it not follow, that he was a sinner, as com pletely execrable as we are? and that you deviate a little